The discussion of Why Does E=mc2(and why should you care?) has begun over at SPOB.

In the past, I’ve always written here about books, even if I was also writing about them somewhere else, so I’m going to duplicate it here, on the grounds that some of you might be utterly fascinated by this book, but not enough that you’d actually want to go over to SPOB.

However, if you want to go to SPOB and join the conversation, we’d love to have you. There are seven of us over there right now, which is not too many for a good conversation.

Anyway, I’m really enjoying this book so far.

The introduction to the book asks us to think about space and time. It suggests that we might think of space as limitless vistas punctuated by planets, or golden ships with people named “Buzz.”

I was sort of taken aback by that. I don’t think “outer space” when I hear the word “space” in the context of physics. Do you? I think as much of the space between the molecules of an apparently solid surface as I do of the space between planets.

As for time, I don’t really believe in it. Someone said, “Time is God’s way of making sure everything doesn’t happen at once.” Or Nature’s way, if you prefer anthropomorphism to deism. But that makes sense to me. I think we define movement or change or things like that in terms of time because it’s measurable and tidy that way.

Like dividing writing up into paragraphs. It’s right and proper and even natural to do so, but it’s still a convention. Thoughts don’t actually occur in paragraph form.

So these are my random thoughts about time and space. I don’t think I’ve given anything away or gone ahead for those of you who are still waiting for the arrival of your books, but I think it would be interesting to know your current idea of time and space. Then we can see whether our ideas about these things change as we read.

Today’s music is Pachelbel’s Canon in D. This may seem like cheating, because it isn’t really a Christmas piece. However, this morning I was awakened from by this playing on Top 40 radio with an overlay of children singing “Merry Christmas” and “Toyland” or “Joy and…” or something. Google tells me that this is the Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s “Christmas Canon.”

There are people who hate this piece as much as “Little Drummer Boy” and for similar reasons, but it’s beautiful. If you aren’t wild about it, then you should check out the Pachelbel Rant.

Yesterday I finished up one of my face-to-face classes, except for the final. I have another class meeting tomorrow,  exams next week, and then grading and clean up for all three classes. By the 18th I’ll have the grades turned in and be through with that for a month.

The plan then was to come home and quickly take care of my regulars, get a couple more of the Arts Center lessons done, and be ready for rehearsal.

In fact, there was a lot of human contact yesterday. One of my regulars wants to have a blog of his own and wants me to set it up for him and teach him to use it. A previous client wants me to train his office to use Twitter and keep up a company blog. I’d like to do more of this type of work, actually, but of course the first one will require planning and the making of handouts.

Then I had an actual physical visit from a graphic designer of my acquaintance. Business is not good. I was sort of amazed. How could business not be good when I have to beg designers to take on jobs for me?

Well, she has no website, and she specializes in print work. Print work is shrinking. She has relied on word of mouth for her entire career, and had just sat down that morning to do a postcard for a long-time client — a postcard designed to get people to their website so they could cut back on their print and mail campaigns.

Unlike most of the people who come to talk with me about their desire to work in my milieu, she has skills which are in high demand, can use modern software, and is willing to learn new skills. I think I can help her out.

Then there were some tech issues. One of the new job offers I got yesterday (and I think they are increasing — maybe I had better keep track and see whether this is a trend) was to write an article about Wii Music. I reviewed it at Amazon (and they didn’t send it to me for free or anything), and apparently the manufacturer put it at their website, where this guy saw it. He’s building a new site for music teachers, and wants me to write about Wii Music’s educational potential. fun, of course. However, he needs screenshots. The Computer Guy said to use a camera. I didn’t like that answer, so I put some time into research on that question. I’ll also need to play Wii Music a bit, since I haven’t done so in a while. Clearly, this will be a project for which the fun quotient will be high. I just need to keep it profitable as well.

Or not. It may be that a low per-hour rate for playing Wii is perfectly acceptable.

And then my Arts Center project got slippery. I’m doing the physics of sound, with a set of old lesson plans involving badly-designed experiments. I’ve already roped #1 son into playing with rubber bands (I had to go buy some for the purpose) and will then be moving on to garden hose and PVC pipes.

How fun is that?

Today’s song is one which I think I have never included in the musical Advent calendar before: “O Christmas Tree.”
 

I am including it because, in honor of physics (which is in my work life and also in my play life because we are starting the new season of SPOB, the Science and Philosophy Online Bookclub, with Why Does E=MC2?), I am offering you “O, Energy,” a carol to the tune of “O Christmas Tree” by Will Wicker from Wakefield High School.

Here are Will’s lyrics:

Oh, en-er-gy, oh, en-er-gy, conserving you’s not up to me.
Some people say, “Don’t waste a Watt!!” They say it’s true, I say it’s not!
Oh, en-er-gy, oh, en-er-gy, conserving you’s not up to me.

Oh, en-er-gy, oh, en-er-gy, con-ser-va-tion, that’s the key.
What’s the big deal, what’s the fuss? Electric bills are fooling us.
Oh, en-er-gy, oh, en-er-gy, con-ser-va-tion, that’s the key.

Oh, en-er-gy, oh, en-er-gy, you are conserved in spite of me.
Your conservation is the law, you’re not used up, just changed, that’s all.
Oh, en-er-gy, oh, en-er-gy, you are conserved in spite of me.

Not sure why he felt the need for all those hyphens, but it’s cool, isn’t it?

The tune is from a German folk song of the Renaissance. The most common English words were settled (to the extent that they were settled) in 1824 or so, when hardly any English speakers had Christmas trees.  The Nazis, according to Wikipedia, popularized the song again in their day in an effort to get Christ out of Christmas. I know that the Third Reich was into neo-pagan philosophy, but I can’t substantiate this claim from Wikipedia — everywhere else that it turns up online, Wikipedia is the source. Obviously, I wouldn’t accept this in a student paper.

One of the most popular arrangements today is Vince Guaraldi’s Charlie Brown Christmas version. I have Nat King Cole’s recording, which has both German and English words. They Might Be Giants has also recorded this, and Mannheim Steamroller. And this really is a good one to sing idly as you go about your daily work, even if your daily work is perhaps less fun than mine, what with not  involving video games and physics experiments conducted with bits of rubbish from your garage.

Today’s song is “Maoz Tzur,” a traditional song for lighting a menorah. This probably doesn’t belong in an Advent calendar of music. However, last night I had a request for a proposal for a Passover program website, and this morning I went to oDesk to get my paycheck and there was a buyer saying that she’d had a provider refuse her job upon discovering that she was Jewish. So I guess it’s time for a Chanukah song.

I don’t like the custom of lumping Chanukah in with Christmas as though it were merely a Jewish variant of Christmas. Ditto for Ramadan and Diwali. While it’s true that most people have some kind of winter festival, it isn’t really the case that they are all interchangeable, and saying “Happy Holidays” somehow covers everyone’s observances.

On the other hand, it is true that some American Jews have taken up some customs reminiscent of American Christmas. When I worked in the store, I remember selling a stocking-making kit to a regular customer with grandchildren.

“Is one enough?” I asked, having seen her in the store with several kids.

“Probably more than enough,” she answered. “We’re Jewish.”

Passover programs were new to me. You see, Passover is eight days long, and observant Jews can’t have anything in any way connected with bread in their homes. “Spring cleaning on steroids,” as my client explained it.

Instead, some Jews take a vacation — sort of like Spring Break with religious elements. You go south for a week or two, and stay at a kosher resort with activities for the kids and all the religious observances taken care of, and then you go home and continue your normal life.

As for the oDesk contretemps, I am of course saddened and horrified that anyone would do such a thing. At the same time, I remember Arab students in my ESL classes who felt no shame at all about their prejudices against the Jewish people. We used to include it in an English lesson — don’t say things like that in America. Attempts to change their thinking were obviously not practical, so we just tried to convey that announcing desires to disembowel people who didn’t share your religious views were not comme il faut in the U.S.

So you can sing “Maoz Tzur” if you’re in the mood. If not, it can be a good reminder that, while it may at this time of year appear that we’re all joining in on the same holiday celebrations, we actually have a wonderful level of diversity in our nation and world, and praise God for that.

Yesterday was a nice day. I taught for a couple of hours, searched fruitlessly but enjoyably for some sheet music I need, did blogging and responses to emails, a couple of hours of strategery for the Northerners, a couple of hours of writing for the Arts Center, a review of an interesting article for the Encyclopedia, a couple of hours for my regulars. Eight hours on Toggl, plus the teaching, so not an unreasonable amount of work, and it was all interesting.

In the evening, I watched Big BangTheory with #1 son (a quick overview of physics began with “It’s a summer evening in Ancient Greece”) and read for a bit.

An enormous number of things went undone, including going to the gym, but it was a pleasant, normal day.

Today’s song is “Carol of the Birds.” This is a haunting melody, which depends on phrasing for much of its beauty. The link back there is to a solo guitar version. You can hear the UCLA Madrigal Singers singing it, or you might prefer the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.  I like Kathleen Battle’s performance best, with Joan Baez a close second.

Here are the words, so you can sing it today. Be sure to be very dramatic about it. If you can get a guitar or cello, that would be best. A rose in the teeth is optional.

This is an Andalusian carol, and there are lots of translations. There are also lots of other songs with the same name. One is a French tune, and I am going to link here to an extremely weird recording of it composed of birdsong. That’s a nice one, too, but not so dramatic.

So far this Advent season, we’ve had medieval, Renaissance, Victorian, and modern carols. In order to remain evenhanded and supportive of the cause of variety in Christmas music, we clearly need a song from that other great era in Christmas carols: the middle of the 20th century.

The 1940s and 1950s brought us a whole slew of catchy tunes, including “Run Run Rudolph” and “Christmas Time’s a-Comin’”. You can hear Peggy Lee singing little bits of a whole bunch of them if you click on her name. I think Peggy Lee and Ella Fitzgerald are about as good as you can get for this era, though Frank Sinatra did the most famous recording of my favorite song of this group, “The Christmas Waltz.” I think this song was kind of obscure the first time I suggested it, but now Kristin Chenoweth and Michael W. Smith have recorded it, so I think I have to suggest something else if I’m to have any hope of offering you something new. However, if you haven’t heard Nancy Wilson singing “The Christmas Waltz,” you should listen to it. Very stylish.

Still, you might want something different, so let me offer you “Warm December,” by Bob Russell, sung by Julie London. It doesn’t have much in the way of lyrics:

London doesn’t have that much in the way of a voice, either, but apparently she had extremely attractive album covers, and she has a sweetly sultry rendition of this that I enjoyed.

I think you could enjoy this as a sing-along in the car or something, and of course if you have one of those drum sets hanging around the house, and a clarinet and a sax and an electric guitar, you’ll be all set.

Chanthaboune could probably make a small fortune singing these things at Christmas parties.

I woke up at 4:00 this morning in a state of horror at all the things I haven’t gotten done yet, plus the realization that I have a more demanding teaching schedule next term (7:30 classes, and one a week in the Next County for the first half of the semester) and haven’t kept up on my Christmas shopping or baking.

Things always look worse at 4:00 a.m. In fact, the only time they look worse than 4:00 a.m. is at 3:00 a.m., which explains a lot of the stress of getting up to feed infants. By now, at my normal time to get up, I’m not in a state of complete horror any more. I imagine that I just need to sit down with my calendar and do a bit of planning. What’s more, it’s still three weeks till the end of the year, so I can also get back in the habit of going to the gym regularly and start 2010 off right.

This touching faith in the elasticity of time and my power over it naturally reminds us all of relativity, which reminds me that the we are starting up the online book club again. It has been on hiatus for a while, but is now revived as SPOB, the Science and Philosophy Online Bookclub.

We’re going to read Why Does E=MC2 (and why should we care?) and chat about it over there, and at Twitter and Facebook and so forth. I’ll probably talk about it here, too. We may discuss it while strolling around the cemetery, too, when members come to town, but if so I’ll try to make sure we post about it someplace.

I hope you’ll join us.

My favorite modern carol (at least at the moment) is “Born on a New Day.” The last time I presented you with a favorite new carol, it turned out to have been written for King Charles and just recently rearranged. Alissa responded at that time with one recorded by Sting which I knew was several centuries old. But I think that this one really is new. Please tell me if I’m wrong on this.

Welsh songwriter John David (b. 1946) wrote a piece called “You Are the New Day,” recorded most notably by the Kings Singers. Philip Lawson wrote the Christmas words to the tune Peter Knight had created with David, though I can’t find exactly when. Sometime at the turn of the century — let me know if you have a better date.

You are the new day.
Meekness, love, humility,
Come down to us this day:
Christ, your birth has proved to me
You are the new day.

Quiet in a stall you lie.
Angels watching in the sky
Whisper to you from on high:
‘You are the new day.’

When our life is darkest night,
Hope has burned away,
Love, your ray of guiding light,
Show us the new day.

Love of all things great and small,
Leaving none, embracing all,
Fold around me where I fall
Bring in the new day.

This new day will be a turning point
For every one,
If we let the Christ-child in,
And reach for the new day.

Christ the Way, the Truth, the Life,
Healing sadness, ending strife,
You we welcome, Lord of Life.
Born on a new day,
You are the new day.

In addition to the Kings Singers, Libera and John Rutter’s Cambridge Singers have also recorded this lovely carol, and more people should know it. It’s best with harmonies, certainly, since it was written as choral music, but the melody is good enough to be worth singing , and I think it would be very pretty on flute or violin. Guitar would be nice, too.

It’s possible that the words make more sense if you have read “You Are the New Day” and all the discussions of what it might mean, but I think they’re pretty good on their own.

Yesterday I did watch Into the Woods and work on the lesson plans, as intended, and I got my hair cut. The hairdresser told me she wanted to work from her computer the way I do. Unfortunately, she doesn’t want to buy or learn to use new software. The Art Teacher said recently, in his new student handbook, “Our software is complicated and hard and it changes all the time. Get used to it.” Probably the best advice around for people wanting to work in the context where I work, no matter what they want to do.

Messiah was probably okay. The orchestra was not so good. The soloists were fantastic. It was Messiah. You can’t mess it up enough to make it less than a wonderful experience.

There was a violinist who looked a lot like #2 son, who buzzed his hair while he was home for Thanksgiving. I just watched him during the orchestra parts, and so I enjoyed it.

I’m skipping the early service this morning, but I’m going to the second service, and then we have the matinee. After that, I’m invited to a martini party at Party Girl’s place, and I plan to go if I can get there. I may be too late, and I won’t have a car, since #1 son is working today.

Finishing up those lesson plans is on the list, too, and resting up a bit, and grading papers.

Last night we had a three hour rehearsal. The orchestra wasn’t quite ready yet, so they had more than that. They were working on the arias when we choristers arrived, and the director kept them after we left.

We were packed in like sardines and the combination of the number of people and the lights meant that it was quite hot. Tonight we’ll have a two hour rehearsal followed by a two and a half hour performance, and then there’s tomorrow’s matinee, so I’m planning to take some time off today.

I have a haircut scheduled this morning, and I’m expecting Into the Woods from Netflix. I’m doing a lesson plan on this for the arts center. I’m also doing one on Civil War music.

Actually, all this week I’ve been planning to work on these lesson plans, but have instead been doing websites. People have approached me about websites, so I’ve stopped the arts center assignment and written about replacement patio furniture cushions, paintless dent removal, one hour eyeglasses, and stuff like that. No complaints from me, since the next tuition payment is always on my mind, but I am looking forward to spending some concentrated time on the arts center project today.

Thinking of Civil War era music, as I have been, I’ve naturally thought about “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day”. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote this in 1863, having faced some rather horrible personal trials including having a son wounded in the war. If you know the story, and of course if you are one of those who cries over things like “Little Drummer Boy,” you will doubtless find yourself getting misty-eyed over this song.

The words we usually sing have a pretty simple story: someone listening to the whole “peace on earth, good will to men” in Messiah or something and finding himself unconvinced. Many people have had this feeling, after all, celebrating Christmas when we clearly don’t have peace on earth and are a bit short of goodwill, too. In the song, the speaker confirms his faith at the end.

For the traditional tune, written by John Baptiste Caulkin (who cut the verses about cannons from the poem) in 1872, you can’t do better than Harry Belafonte, though lots of other people have recorded this song, from Frank Sinatra to Larry Gatlin. Jars of Clay has done an overly sweet version which makes a good Christmas carol for people who don’t want anti-war messages in their holiday songs.

Casting Crowns has given the poem a new tune. Sally de Ford has altered the original tune, and shares hers in free sheet music. So all in all, you have lots of options for listening to this piece, and you might want to sing it, too. It’s a good one to sing as you go around your daily routine, either in a slow and thoughtful way or in a jazzed up version of your own, if it’s that kind of say.

This weekend is for Messiah. I have rehearsal tonight and performances Saturday and Sunday, and of course work to do. Next weekend is a Christmas cantata at church. The following week is Christmas. This is a startling thought.

The other thing I’ve been thinking about is vampires. This is because I teach college classes. Young people spend a lot of time thinking about vampires, and indeed one of my classes has chosen that topic for their final in-class essay (the other class picked video games, the other thing young people think about). So we were discussing all the possible ways to narrow the topic and come up with a thesis, and it struck me that it’s actually kind of odd that we are so wild about vampires in the U.S. right now, when we are also so disgusted by blood that we can’t sing songs like “There is a Fountain Filled With Blood” or “Nothng But the Blood of Jesus,” both of which have been removed from modern hymnals.

Isn’t that an interesting dichotomy? And so, while there are in fact lots of Christmas hymns containing the word “blood” or including the image of God’s blood or human flesh and blood and so forth, I think the modern vampire would prefer the Disney Christmas song “Once Upon a December.” You can hear it in Russian. Or Icelandic, though I’m not sure that it really is Icelandic. I don’t know. It sounds a lot like the Russian one. Or you might like to watch Deana Carter‘s music video. Liz Callaway and Aaliyah have both recorded it. The sheet music can be sampled or downloaded to print out.

Stephen Flaherty wrote the tune and Lynn Ahrens did the lyrics, for the movie Anastasia. Ahrens and Flaherty have a snazzy website where you can hear all kinds of stuff, including a song on gluttony sung by the wonderful Audra McDonald. Whether this has any connection with vampires I’m not prepared to say.

“Once Upon a December” has nothing to do with Christmas, which makes it a perfect song for those who think it’s unseemly to bring religion into Christmas. One of the ladies at rehearsal last night was talking about how they were required, at her place of work, to decorate for Christmas and play Christmas music and wish everyone “Happy Holidays” from about Hallowe’en on, but must be careful to avoid any hint of religion.  I think this is wimpy. People who are offended by the birth of Jesus should leave Christmas alone. (Notice I’m not saying anything about people who are observing the festival of their own religion. They’re not the ones being offended by the implication that Christmas has a religious component.) Not everyone agrees with me. The Ayn Rand Institute tells us “Why Christmas Should be More Commercial”. “It’s time,” they say, “to take Christ out of Christmas” and admit that this is a holiday designed for reveling in selfish egoism.

Philipp Nicolai wrote “Wake, Awake, for Night is Flying” during a rough spell. 1300 of his parishioners had recently died of the plague, and he was conducting 30 funerals a day. I expect he needed to be cheered up himself. He wrote both the words and the music, but Bach is the one who usually gets the credit for this piece. He did the harmony and many of us know this piece as part of the cantata “Wachet Auf,” a title which has made a lot of people laugh.

The song isn’t one of those very singable ones, but it’s a good tune, a great arrangement by Bach, and a nice joyful sentiment, perfect for Advent. If you’re not up to singing it, you can enjoy it on organ here.

I’m not very joyful, myself. I’m having ongoing trouble with my internet connection — and the internet is where I work — I’m broke in spite of having a lot of invoices out, and I’m seriously behind on my work. I’ve probably conveyed sufficiently the positives of self-employment over the past year, but one of the bad things is that people pay you on their schedules, so it’s possible to be working a whole lot and yet not earning a whole lot. Since half my income goes for tuition, I don’t have much leeway.

So I haven’t taken my computer and/or modem in to be fixed, and am just hoping I can stay connected today in order to do my work.

Yesterday I rewrote a car repair website, and today I have an optometrist’s site to do, and both of these are from oDesk, which guarantees payment. I also have grading to do, and regular clients (who haven’t paid yet) and my big project with the art center (which hasn’t yet paid). The haven’t yet paid part is why I’m continuing to take new jobs with oDesk even though I am swamped.

Last night I had to go to bell practice, always an unpleasant thing. However, Elkhart swapped bells with me. I was playing the Bs and Cs in the octave bellringers know as 5. Now I have B and C 7s. You can go through a whole piece and only have one note if you play these bells. It’s a big improvement for me. I can mostly just stand there, and then, in “Break Forth Unto Joy,” for example, play the final note with swings and a table thump.

Then we had choir practice. We had a new tenor, possibly a paid one, but that’s fine with me. He sat right behind me, next to the baritone, and Janalisa sat next to me, and this arrangement improved my experience of choir as well. We’re working on “Call Him Jesus,” by Ruth Schram, which is really quite fun to sing.

This good music — and of course the fact that we’re not dealing with the bubonic plague — has cheered me up quite a bit. I think I’ll get dressedand have breakfast, and if I’m still connected to the internet after that I can enjoy the large amount of interesting work I have scheduled for today.

Today’s song is the Huron Carol, Canada’s oldest Christmas carol, written in 1642 by Father Jean de Brébeuf, who was recuperating at the time from a broken clavicle. The oldest words are different from what we usually sing, and there are lots of translations. That last link has a guide to pronunciation and a file to download, if you want to sing it in Huron, and there’s a video recording of it in Huron here along with the various sets of words. You can play with it on mfiles, and print out sheet music for all your instruments. If you don’t want sheet music, there’s guitar tab with a nice guitar recording. It has also been recorded by the Crash Test Dummies and by Bruce Cockburn, if you just want to listen.

Frances Tyrrell has done a picture book of it, and Christmas cards, too.

This is a great example of how the early church fathers adapted their message to the context wherever they were, a practice which the apostle Paul would have applauded, though plenty of people nowadays would call it cultural imperialism. The tune was “Une Jeune Pucelle,” which you can hear played by the Boston Camerata for a moment or two, though I haven’t found lyrics.

Yesterday, the Art Teacher posted a student handbook and asked for feedback, so I went and read it. I was struck by one section, which explained that design students who didn’t have talent should plan to work harder.

I don’t have design talent. Actually, I’m good at the whole information architecture part, which is pretty central in web design, and I’m improving my coding all the time. The art part, however, escapes me. I figure this is because I have no talent.

I’m adding the front page of my project for the web design class I took this past summer as evidence. It isn’t horrible; it was in fact better than most of the projects I saw from that class. But I can look at it now and see that the typography isn’t quite right and the margins aren’t correct. I was wrong to use a single large image for the background, too, since that would slow the load time.

My inclination is to figure that my lack of talent in this area means I can’t do it, so I was interested to see the claim that untalented people merely have to work harder.

There is some support for this claim in the mere fact that I can now see the problems with the way I put in that text, though I didn’t see them at the time. However, I have sung with people for years who still aren’t any good. They don’t have the talent.

What do you think? Can untalented people become good at things like design merely by working harder?