Swing is alive
Most people today are aware that there was a swing music and dancing revival during the late 90s, at least to the extent that they remember a GAP commercial with khaki-clad dancers, one or two of the bands that enjoyed brief pop chart success, and maybe a few of the movies that featured music and dancers as well. The scene's time in the spotlight is gone, but there is a dedicated population of dancers and musicians who remain.
Last weekend was the 10th annual DC Lindy Exchange — in the scene's parlance, DCLX. A lindy exchange, is traditionally a weekend where the local scene hosts a series of dances and invites folks from outside of the area to come and "exchange" their knowledge and style of dance with the locals, often featuring local bands. DCLX this year featured two bands which are set up so that they have both a big band ensemble and a smaller group, allowing the bands to perform at different style and size venues. The core of both bands are musicians from LA and Seattle, but also included local musicians. And the DCLX organizer's planned something special. Jonathan Stout's Campus Five and full Orchestra and Glenn Crytzer's Syncopaters would share a stage for two nights, with alternating sets, and would participate in a Battle of the Bands of sorts, in which the two bands would trade two songs, transitioning back and forth mid-song.
At most dances, you're lucky to have a live band. People are generally pretty happy to dance to a DJ, but most will admit that they much prefer a live band, even if their reasoning isn't much more explanatory than, "It just has a better feel." And you shouldn't expect much more than that; most dancers aren't musicians. There are definitely dancers who really appreciate a quality live performance for the musicality, but I think they are still a small portion of the scene. But, at a dance with a live band, if you're lucky, the crowd will be feeling the music enough that you'll get a spontaneous jam circle or two. A few people might hang out near the front of the stage, clapping and cheering the band on. But for the most part, everyone is still just dancing.
So, having two bands on one stage, and having them involved in a bit of a competition, driving themselves to try to outperform each other is a pretty phenomenal event. Friday night, the bands set up their small groups and played one long set each. The crowd at the Glen Echo Bumper Car Pavilion was ridiculous, with a solid group of people cheering each band on during their set while taking a break from dancing. I could see members of each band hanging out in the wings and cheering the other band on as well. The atmosphere was definitely one of the best I've experienced since I started dancing.
Little did I know what was waiting for me on Saturday. There was a great jam circle during Jonathan Stout's second set, which really got the dancers ready for the battle. And as the battle began, a pretty solid crowd was forming at the front of the stage. Not long after the two bands started playing together on Jumpin’ At The Woodside and Fats Waller’s Honeysuckle Rose I looked at the crowd behind me, I realized that I couldn't see anyone who was dancing. That. Doesn't. Happen.
Russ Reinberg, a clarinetist in Stout's orchestra wrote about the weekend, and it's hard to trump his words about it:
At that point the music took on an intensity I never have experienced at a dance festival. All the musicians played harder and the vocalists sang better and the dancers began to notice. About fifty had stopped dancing during Jonathan’s second set and crowded up to the stage. As the music swung on, more and more couples stopped dancing and moved toward the bandstand. Soon hundreds, all but a couple of dozen people at the very back of the hall, had stopped dancing and began to cheer for the soloists. That was unprecedented. Today’s Swing dancers go to dance, not listen. Music is merely fuel for their feet.
The music pounded on. Glenn had found a young blond guy from Wisconsin who played tenor and baritone sax. His solos on both instruments knocked me out and, on that final tune, Honeysuckle, he really belted out a winner on tenor. I doubt more than a few people realized it.
But Glenn’s secret weapon was his bass player because he doubled on Sousaphone. So, in the middle of Honeysuckle, Glenn traded his guitar for a banjo and the bass player picked up the Sousaphone. The crowd went nuts. They always are suckers for unusual instruments like tubas, washboards, bones, and spoons; it’s a cheap old trick from Vaudeville dog acts. But then half of Glenn’s band dropped out and the rest slid into a Dixieland chorus: Trumpet, trombone, clarinet, and rhythm section. Now that was showmanship!
Jonathan roared back with an unrehearsed sax section riff and the section played it slightly wrong. Somewhere along the line he tossed me a second solo. Then the drummers went head to head and our drummer, Paul Lines, played a final volley that took down the house. Glenn’s band answered with a great riff from Benny Goodman’s Fletcher Henderson arrangement they had practiced that afternoon. Jonathan shot back with a riff from Count Basie’s The King and, at the bridge, I threw in Benny’s short 1938 solo. Both bands together blasted out a final chorus and the place broke out into hysteria.
He goes on to conclude, in words that probably incite a frisson or chills in any swing dancer or musician who is familiar with the history of our musical culture:
My father was at the Palomar Ballroom in Los Angeles that famous night in August 1935 when Benny Goodman made history and launched the Swing era. Our experience in Glen Echo, Maryland came as close to that as is possible today. It was an electrifying night for the musicians and the dancers.
I have played many times on the Johnny Carson Show and several other TV shows. I performed several times at Carnegie Hall. I’ve played jazz festivals. I have worked with genuine jazz stars. My groups usually received standing ovations. But Saturday night in Glen Echo was one of only two occasions where I experienced that surge of electricity you feel when you know your music has impacted an entire venue. It will stand out in my memory as a unique example of the immense power jazz possesses to bring anyone to a level of profound joy.
Jerry Almonte is putting together a longer post where he talks with several people about the battle including Russ and other musicians, and when he gets that up, I'll definitely update this post with a link to it.
Review: Bug Jack Barron
So I just finished up reading Norman Spinrad's Bug Jack Barron, a rather curious novel dating from the New Wave era of science fiction. And dated it definitely is. The plot follows a fascinating pseudo-detective storyline centering on the titular character, Jack Barron. Barron is a civil rights activist turned television talk show host of a show on which every day people call in and "bug" him with their problems which he helps bring to the larger public's attention. In the course of one of his shows he takes on the issue of a piece of pending legislation which would grant monopoly rights to a company which has perfected cryogenic storage. This leads him into a conflict with that company's President and Chairman, Benedict Howards, who has secretly developed a process for human immortality, and hopes to use Barron's influence with the public to manipulate Congress. But because of Barron's ideological opposition to fat-cat power brokers, Barron attempts to find out the secret behind the process.
That all seems pretty standard and would work well if someone wanted to make it into a movie, but it's the societal background which Spinrad has created that puts the story into an odd world for the modern reader. The highly racially divided, socially liberalized society is a direct reflection of and a potential future from the late 1960s when the book was written. Barron was the founder of a civil rights-focused political party, the Social Justice Coalition, which is almost completely supported by southern blacks. (Republicans are a second class party, almost entirely beholden to big business, and the Democrats aren't much better, and are tightly tied to Howards' influence.) Marijuana use is legalized and sexual relationships are very reflective of the lifestyle of the summer of love. However, the way Spinrad depicts the women makes them all very subservient — both professionally and sexually.
Race is the key mover behind the story though, playing a large part in the conflict between Howards and Barron, and driving associated story arcs which tie in to the primary drama. The associated class differences and social limitations on blacks (unashamedly referred to as niggers, while whites are frequently called 'shades') are best shown though Lukas Greene, Barron's good friend and Governor of Mississippi, a state which is depicted as being almost entirely populated by blacks living in abject poverty, despite the efforts of the SJC to revitalize the economy and population.
The story itself is quite interesting though, despite the moments of realization that this is an alternate future which never came to be and which probably can't happen in our future which occasionally draw you out of the story (for instance Lukas Greene's internal monologue in which he says that he knows a black man can't be president). Stylistically, Spinrad is clearly influenced by the free association and lyrical prose of the beat generation. But that style is also cross-pollinated by the rise of commercialism and television advertising.
In all, it's definitely an book worthy of reading to see the diversity of New Wave science fiction. I could definitely imagine the story being adapted to the modern era, or an updated future one, and turned into a movie. The conflict between the common man and big money/big business set against a backdrop of social and class divisions is one that is going to have a long life in literature and film.
Review: Wise Man’s Fear
In the land of fantasy literature, fans are pretty much guaranteed of a few things. Rule number one is that if they really, really, really like a series of books, they are going to have to wait longer than they originally expected for the next book in the series to be published. Another good rule of thumb is that it is pretty safe to assume that when a new book comes out, it is going to be a rather oversized tome (gone are the days of the less than 200 page novel).
For the average person, this phenomenon is best seen in the Harry Potter series. For the folks who are more invested in the fantasy literature genre, over the last 10-15 years two names have been synonymous with big books and long waits between them: Robert Jordan and George RR Martin. Four years ago, Patrick Rothfuss quietly introduced himself to the fantasy genre with his novel Name of the Wind, and it definitely fulfilled the second of the two characteristics of fantasy lit. And the name of that book was passed through the fan community almost as quickly as the wind itself, propelling it onto the NYT bestseller list. And fans of the book quickly learned (told by the main character of the novel, no less) that it was the first book in a trilogy. And Rothfuss told the world that the rest of the story was already written. More or less.
That's where rule number one comes into play. Fans were hopeful that book two would be out within a year or two, because it was "already written". But two years turned into three. And three years turned into four. And a wind rose in the backwoods of Wisconsin, and the wind was a beginning, but it was not the beginning. Er, sorry there, started channeling my inner-Jordan. The name of that wind was the anticipation that mounted and mounted over the publication of Wise Man's Fear. It is safe to say that the only more anticipated fantasy novel is George RR Martin's A Dance With Dragons (recently announced to have a July 11, 2011 publication date, 6 years after the previous book in the series), and depending on who you ask, they may argue the point.
Well, let me tell you something folks, Rothfuss delivers. In spades. In buckets and buckets of stew. Released on March 1, I swung by one of the two Barnes & Nobles in DC. I knew that the book was going to be popular, so I skipped trying a local store, because I figured that B&N would have copies in stock. No dice. Sold out in two hours according to the employee I talked to, who called the other store which was also sold out. So I tried one of the local stores. Also sold out. So on the third I called up B&N to reserve a copy and picked it up on my way home.
I got home around 6 and read until 2. I was only about halfway through the book. That tells you 1) the size of the book (there's that other pesky rule of thumb again), and 2) the density and quality of the writing. (In comparison, I knocked off the last book in the Harry Potter series in 6 hours.) Rothfuss' writing is complex, but clear; engaging and absorbing. I need to break out a thesaurus to be able to describe his ability to produce quality dialogue (clever and sparkling), descriptions of the world (elaborate and elegant), characters (multidimensional and necessary) and societal behaviors and political intrigues (inventive and detailed) without repeating myself.
And all of this is combined in a narrative that, despite the length of the novel, is so tightly wrapped and bound together that it doesn't seem that a single word is wasted. The interweaving of the external narrative of Kvothe and Bast and Chronicler and the story which Kvothe is telling are producing a world which, while we, as readers still lack the full story, is extremely well-developed and hints at the story which we don't yet know. In itself, the anticipation it creates for the resolution of both Kvothe's story and the larger narrative and how the two are connected is almost maddening.
What really amazes me is the way that Rothfuss is able to take various standard tropes of fantasy literature and adapt them and turn them on their head. Sure, we've got the "hyper-competent" boy hero, but we see his doubt, his failures, his innocence. And we see him learn to overcome them and begin to grow from boy to man; it is a true process, not just a sudden "thing" which is so common. And how many of these other things have you seen before? He goes to a school for magic. He searches through an excessively large library. He trains with a special warrior society. He dabbles in palace intrigues. Yet, all of these are turned on their heads. But I'm not telling you how because I don't want to ruin the story and the surprises.
What Rothfuss did in Name of the Wind was to introduce himself to the fantasy literature world by slapping it upside the head with a sea bass and saying, "I love this genre and a lot of the things about it, but dammit I'm doing it my way." And he has definitely continued in that vein. A week or two ago, there was a bit of a brouhaha over the state of fantasy literature and it's supposed degradation from the glorious high fantasy of Tolkien to the blackened, rotting husk of authors such as Joe Abercrombie*. No one can read Wise Man's Fear and accept that claim as true. As good at Name of the Wind was, Wise Man's Fear is even better. I don't like to rank "best" books, so I can't really tell you where it places, but Wise Man's Fear is easily one of the best fantasy novels of all time. And if The Doors of Stone (book three's working title) improves as much on Wise Man's Fear as Wise Man's Fear did on Name of the Wind, I will be hard pressed to find a better fantasy novel.
*I love Joe Abercrombie's work and am reading through his most recent novel now.
Predictions of physics theories
Over at Cosmic Variance, Sean Carroll posted yesterday about a straw poll taken at a small gathering of physicists who focus on the cosmological theory of inflation, asking them what they thought the likelihood of the general principle of the theory being true was. He noted that his estimate of of 75% chance was on the low side compared to the majority of the people attending the conference who put the likelihood of inflation being a fact at around 90%. After the conference, he asked several of his colleagues at Caltech, and found that many of them, none of whom were directly working on inflation, put the likelihood at only 25%.
He then asked his readers to present their own estimate for the probability that inflation was true. And he added a few other major theoretical concepts in physics: supersymmetry, string theory, the Higgs boson, large extra dimensions, WIMP dark matter, and "any non-cosmological-constant explanation for cosmic acceleration." He left the categories quite vague (for example, does "large" mean, "micro/macroscopic" or just "larger than Planck length") because there are often multiple theories within each category, but for the most part there is a single unifying concept for each theory.
60+ people with a wide range of backgrounds have responded with their estimates now. And the results are interesting in a couple of ways. The two charts below show the how many people proposed specific percentages of the likelihood of each theoretical concept. The interactive versions are available on GoogleDocs.
Compiled likelihoods of several physics theories, based on predictions given by commenters at Cosmic Variance
Compiled likelihoods of several physics theories, based on predictions given by commenters who indicated an educational/professional background in physics at Cosmic Variance
The first things that jump out at me are that pretty much no one believes that large extra dimensions have any chance of existing (average likelihood being 9.08% with a standard deviation of 15.47), while the Higgs particle is considered quite likely to exist (average = 79.52%, std dev = 26.77), with inflation also having a better than 2/3 chance (average = 67.02%, std dev = 28.81). Amongst those who claimed an educational and/or professional background in physics (and astronomy), large extra dimensions are considered similarly unlikely, but the Higgs boson, inflation, and WIMPs are both considered ~10% more likely than by the commenters as a whole.
On the other hand, the chances given to supersymmetry, string theory, and non-cosmological-constant cosmic expansion are all stable in being considered relatively unlikely by both laymen and scientists alike.
It's an interesting little bit of meta-analysis, really, which raises some questions about why certain major theories are accepted both in and outside of those educated in physics, why some of those are more accepted within the subset, and why other theories are considered equally less likely, regardless of education. It is likely that "insiders", as it were, have a firmer basis in the fundamentals of physics and so they are better able to evaluate the theories themselves, which would explain the variation between the insiders and outsiders on certain topics. But I don't think there is anything about the Higgs boson, or inflation, or WIMPs which differentiates them from the other theories that makes them less comprehensible to those with a physics background.
And since this is a non-rigorous, loosely defined survey, I wouldn't really want to try to draw any significant conclusions from it. But it is interesting to get a general picture of how various theories are viewed and accepted within the physics community as a whole, and amongst the larger population of laypeople who are interested in modern advancements in the science.
Update 2/11/2011: Over 100 people have commented now.
| Inflation | SuSy | Strings | Higgs | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Avg | Std Dev | Avg | Std Dev | Avg | Std Dev | Avg | Std Dev | |
| Everyone | 66.79 | 28.63 | 44.07 | 30.24 | 30.52 | 30.47 | 76.96 | 27.41 |
| Physics Background | 71.43 | 22.13 | 45.56 | 27.99 | 25.37 | 26.83 | 85.32 | 20.61 |
| Difference | 4.64 | -6.5 | 1.49 | -2.25 | -5.15 | -3.64 | 8.36 | -6.8 |
| large xtra D | WIMPs | non-CC exp | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Avg | Std Dev | Avg | Std Dev | Avg | Std Dev | |
| Everyone | 11.76 | 20.01 | 58.41 | 29.36 | 27.74 | 28.38 |
| Physics Background | 8.54 | 14.67 | 60.84 | 25.48 | 25.07 | 25.01 |
| Difference | -3.22 | -5.34 | 2.43 | -3.88 | -2.67 | -3.37 |
Compiled likelihoods of several physics theories, based on predictions given by commenters at Cosmic Variance
Compiled likelihoods of several physics theories, based on predictions given by commenters who indicated an educational/professional background in physics at Cosmic Variance
The ebb and flow of battle
For as long as humans have been describing warfare and battles we have described the ebb and flow as first one side and then the other gains the upper hand, pushing their opponent back across the battlefield (or, in the larger picture, across the map.) However, I don't think any accounts of such events have ever really lent themselves to a true understanding of just how battle lines can shift within the duration of a fight.
Prior to the development of the modern firearm and the introduction of armored vehicles, a battle line was very much a line. A mass of men armed with melee weapons and short range projectiles, occasionally aided by archers and/or cavalry. The two sides faced up against each other and bashed each other in the face. Depending on the situation, it might have been tightly formed lines such as the Roman legions or Greek phalanx, where only the first few lines were actively fighting at any one moment, or it might have been more loosely formed, where the two masses became wholly interspersed amongst one another (as seen in Braveheart).
Early modern firearms still relied on massed lines of men, but that was because of the inaccuracy of the weapons and because battles usually still resorted to hand-to-hand combat.
Both of these periods saw tactics in which reserve units were sent to reinforce ones' own weak lines, or to overload weak spots in the opponents. The attacks and counters in this manner are what led to the forward and backwards movement of the fighting across unprepared (lacking significant constructed defenses) battlefields.
Even into the 1900s, hand-to-hand combat was quite common, despite the increase in accuracy of firearms. Bayonet charges were quite common in both WW1 and WW2. However, in WW1, battles were often dependent upon the ability of one side to gain control of prepared defensive positions, making it a much more static environment in terms of what could be gained and lost. Attacks were often made with multiple waves of infantry charges. If an attack failed, the defender had not lost any ground and the attacker had not gained any.
By WW2, the days of inaccurate, low rate of fire weapons were gone. And as a result, so too was the day in which two groups massed on a field and fought face to face (if they could help it). The nature of the war had one side utilizing infantry distributed amongst prepared, static, defensive positions and artillery with mechanized reinforcements, while the other used a combination smaller individual units of infantry supported by armored vehicles, aircraft, and much more accurate artillery and naval fire to help overcome heavily prepared defensive positions. Because of the less solid nature of the lines of combat, the ebb and flow of the battles were much less obvious (to anyone who wasn't actually in the middle of it all).
The modern development of video has given us the ability to record and see just how lines of combat ebb and flow. But because of the shift away from massed front lines, there isn't much chance for us to actually view the ebb and flow of a battle. And most cameras brought to the front lines of a combat zone are usually in the thick of things, not getting a bird's eye view of the larger situation. But the last few days have presented us with something we've never had before. A top-down look at fighting between two large crowds primarily armed with melee weapons and simple projectiles — rocks and molotov cocktails. The clashes between the anti-government protesters and what seem to be government controlled thugs have been recorded and broadcast by several news agencies who have set up their cameras on balconies, high up in nearby hotels.
In the clip below, the government thugs have maneuvered some trucks across the road to provide themselves with some cover, and to force the protesters back into Tahrir Square. However, the protesters attack and push the thugs back. There are numerous similar videos available if you can find them, where you can see first one crowd flowing forward and the other backward, and then the process reverses. At one point the group attacking the protesters sends people up into a nearby building to throw rocks and brickwork down on the protesters. At various points, the attackers pushed the protesters all the way back into the square, but by nightfall the protesters had pushed out to the end of the road and set up makeshift barricades (which I have been calling Mubarricades in my head), to defend themselves from the rocks and molotov cocktails which were being hurled at them. I asked a couple of folks on Twitter who are in the military and/or study military history and didn't get any affirmative responses that there is any video from earlier conflicts which show this back and forth. It's definitely something that might be of interest to the military, riot police and security forces. And anyone who might be contemplating any popular insurrections as well.