The classical world is more diverse than people seem to think. Most string players I know play on modern instruments, made within the last hundred years. Likewise actual musicians don't idolize young prodigies – both of these things are marketing phenomena that the actual artists generally oppose.
That said, the idea that there's no difference between a great old instrument and a modern one is just as fallacious. Perhaps as a not great violinist you never got to the point where you got to find out, but there are qualities of an instrument that have nothing to do with sound. The fact that a Strad costs $5 million and an Iizuka costs $27,000 is ludicrous, yes. But the great old instruments are still around for a reason.
30k for a hand-crafted instrument that you'll use professionally is quite reasonable. A skilled laborer spent somewhere between building that instrument for ranging between ~3 -> 18 months. Every stroke of his chisel was dedicated to the production of that instrument. Every pull of his rasp. As a (subpar for the time I've spent in the shop, but acceptable compared to the average bear) woodworker, I can respect the labor that went into it. I'm not saying that everyone should buy at that level (e.g 30k), but if you're going to pay $150k for an education at Julliard or Berklee, $30k isn't unreasonable for something you're professionally going into. (For the hobbyist or student, you can "almost-there" apprentice-crafted string instruments for under 10k that will have proper action which won't contribute to bad-form habits.) I'd imagine most people here have spent well over that on Macbooks and iPhones alone, which are hobby purchases that have lost 80% of their value within 3 years. You can retain most of the value on a good instrument[1] and if you're lucky it might even appreciate in value[2].
I think it's commonly accepted amongst collectors that you're buying a Strad because it's a Strad. They're not buying it for it's sound any more than one would buy an 1894 Patek Philippe because it keeps time. (A 20 dollar quartz Timex does just as well.)
You're buying a piece of history. A piece of art. In the case of a watch, you're buying a piece of a combination between history/art and engineering. Watch this[3] to see the engineering beauty in it all. If you're further interested, watch this traditionally trained German[4] to see how delicate[5], how precise, how intricate his movements are, despite having lost the steady hand he had at 35, he regains the fluid motion in certain strokes.
[1] Humidity control, minimize temperature fluxuation, peg maintenance, etc. Just the basics - you don't have to baby it, but obviously don't neglect it either.
[2] I don't know what the current scene is like, but take the 1960s Yamaha FG180's which were basically thought of "junkers" you'd buy your 8 year old for Christmas. A mint Red Label with no neck warpage can get 3 or 4k easily.
Plus, it has the Airsoft/Laser tag bug - it relies on people being honest. I can just place the phone under my shirt if I'm moving around and never die. So you can immediately scratch the "massive multiplayer" part off the slogan - if it's going to get popular, people are mostly going to play in small communities.
Just like you, I was about to write a rather pessimistic comment about how obsolete this will be as soon as VR goes mainstream, but I hate being the nay sayer so I will just go along and assume this would be great as a cheaper "hybrid" alternative to join the fun?
Honestly, it does look like fun. But also like a lawsuit waiting to happen? Like a future source of broken noses and arms and what-have-you when people trip or run into walls. Which, that's fine, if that's a risk you choose to take. But I think "what could go wrong?" is justified.
I don't see why they couldn't add VR headsets once they gain traction. If they started out requiring hardware that was expensive and almost none had then it would be difficult to reach critical mass. It would be even better I'd they didn't need anything but a phone to get started.
It is deeply conservative, possibly even royalist. Do you think propaganda has to be unsubtle? This is just appealing to a different audience than Rosie the Riveter.
Would it help if you think of it as a form of literature, rather than a means of devouring information by the most efficient means possible? It may still not be for you, and this may not be a good example of it, but it is a genre with purposes other than what you are assuming.
I'm probably a bit old-fashioned, but I think that the set 'literature' does not intersect with the set 'bounces a giant angled magenta byline in my face' (the "find a $100 smartphone" bit)
Actually, one question I used to like to ask people: "In bookshops, what qualifies a book to move from 'fiction' to 'literature'?" (yes, you can get poetry and whatnot in the literature section, but it's primarily fiction-based)
Well, sure. 'Literature' is used for all kinds of things, from classic novels to poetry to scientific papers. But in (non-specialist) bookshops, it's primarily 'classic/good fiction' with some other stuff thrown in. Those shelves are usually marked 'Literature', not 'Literary Fiction'...
Yes, that's true, one definition of literature can be anything that is written. I'm not trying to have a semantic argument with you though. Use whatever words you want, but if you think of this long form journalism as a form of... let's call it art writing, then maybe it would make more sense. If you want to say that having magenta pull quotes makes it not art then I can't help you.
What an excellent idea. My first thought was that it must have something to do with speech or expression – maybe having a protruding bone bobbing up and down somehow makes speech more comprehensible? The idea of it contributing to facial expressions seem more likely though. Hopefully someone here will take up this line of inquiry.
> Others have suggested that the chin is an adaptation for chinwags: It resists the forces we create when speaking. After all, speech is certainly a feature that separates us from other living animals. But there's no good evidence that the tongue exerts substantial enough forces to warrant a thick chunk of reinforcing bone. “And any mammal that also communicates vocally or suckles or engages in complex feeding behaviors that involve the tongue are probably experiencing similar stresses and strains, and they're not getting chins,” says Pampush.
Nor should we think that extra structure for complex sounds are needed for a language or comprehensibility. Consider the Silbo Gomero Language, which is "a whistled form of a dialect of Spanish." It "has only 2 vowels and 4 consonants, according to the official nomination document submitted during the UNESCO convention." (Quotes from Wikipedia.)
Verbalized Morse code is another example of how simple vocalizations are all that are needed for a comprehensible language.
> Nor should we think that extra structure for complex sounds are needed for a language or comprehensibility
A language which evolved from an earlier language, e.g. Italian, or is based on another language, e.g. Silbo Gomero, doesn't need complex sounds to get started, and often replaces "words" in the source language with rules, i.e. replaces lexical and phonological complexity with inflectional and grammatical complexity. But perhaps the very first language to ever be invented will rely on many different sounds and on many different words made from those sounds, but have a simple grammar. A recent study showed the likely dispersal of language from an initial point somewhere in Africa by counting the phonemic diversity, i.e. number of different speech sounds, in various languages around the world. [1] Perhaps the very first language had over a hundred different sounds to compensate for lack of grammar rules.
Perhaps a chin is needed to speak that very first language. Perhaps it had far more clicks than Khoisan, as well as the usual array of consonants, vowels, and tones. Maybe a chin helps with many of the clicking-like sounds.
What does "the very first language to ever be invented" mean?
We know that other primates communicate with each other. This form of communication includes different sorts of warning calls, and perhaps also vocalizations for identification.
Any human language would have developed from a similar sort of proto-language, without an a-ha moment when two humans finally invented the language. (And if there was such a moment, then the chin would have had to evolve first, for some other reason.)
Therefore, I don't think it makes much sense to say "very first language" or "invented."
Let's suppose it's meaningful to talk about the first truly human language. In that case, the population of the original speakers would be small. According to the paper you gave, "phoneme number decreases as a population gets smaller." Thus, it would suggest the first language had a low phoneme count.
The problem is, that guideline isn't useful for the timescale we're talking about. It's believed there was a genetic bottleneck some 50,000 to 100,000 years ago (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_bottleneck#Humans ). All living humans come from a relatively small and relatively recent population, which means all of the diverse languages of Africa come from an originally quite small population, which therefore would have had a lower phoneme number.
Thus, on the flip side, what happens when populations get larger and isolated? Proto-Indo-European shows that it only takes a few thousand years to develop German and Celtic from the same language, and we know modern language can have sounds that weren't in the parent languages.
So while the principle might be useful for migrations within the last 10,000 years, that's still quite recent in the evolution of humans.
how can we keep the system running with the atrociously-limited amount of money we get from the state
I've been saying for a while that NYC should cecede from New York State. We send more money Upstate than they send down, and in return we still aren't allowed to run the socialist utopia most city residents actually want. Make the mayor a governor, and we'll have a noble experiment on our hands.
From Vancouver to Ancient Rome, every city in the world thinks it is somehow better managed than its hinterlands. City dwellers forget their urban lifestyle relies on a constant stream of resources from elsewhere. New York sends money upstate. Upstate sends water. You cannot drink money. If the economic and political ties were cut I know where I'd rather be.
The Cannonsville and Pepacton reservoirs (on the west and east branches of the Delaware River) also provide water for New York City. The land is owned by the city of New York, although not technically part of the city.
Until NJ decides it is willing to pay more. Having both the city and the hinterlands under the same political structure ensures the hinterlands aren't going to go find a better city willing to pay a higher price. If you look at the old maps, that seems to be how the eastern states were laid out. Each of the large port cities were given their own hinterland to form a state.
I'd imagine any deal to separate the city from the state (and it would have to be a deal, there would be no forcible exit) would include the city's purchase of that reservoir.
Again, this is not about thinking we're better managed, it's about the fact that Albany won't allow us to meet our own needs.
The city already owns those reservoirs, as well as the water tunnels that deliver the water into the city (which require little maintenance, as they run on gravity rather than pumps).
I'll admit to ignorance here. A poster above suggested NYC does not own the Rondout reservoir, another one said they do own two other reservoirs. If the city owns all of them, great. If there are some needed for the water supply, then they would have to be purchased.
Of course, all of this is on the level of fantasy, because it's not going to happen.
When it comes to natural resources, ownership /= control.
The city may have ownership, but the local/state/national governments still have say on things like environmental protection. Owning a forest doesn't give you the right to clearcut every tree. Owning a reservoir does not give you control over where that water comes from (the watershed) nor any of the environmental or safety rules governing water.
That will never happen. We should carefully look at where our tax dollars are going; city resident taxes should be enough to run NYCT, and the city tax paid for non-residents that work in NYC (I think this exists, paid by the employer?) should ensure that the other MTA railroads are funded.
Ultimately, the idea of democracy is to provide equal protection for all, and so NYC's relative prosperity should be funding some upstate initiatives. That said, administrative control of the subway should be entirely in NYC, and if we don't collect enough tax to run it to the standards we desire, we should be able to affect that change locally.
Yes, of course I know it will never happen (or rather, because never is a long time, it won't happen while the current political system is in place).
I'd be perfectly fine with subsidizing upstate if they let us fund our own infrastructure. The fact that we give our tax dollars to them and then they tell us we can't raise enough money to pay for our subway, public housing, etc., is what makes me want to effect massive change.
> I've been saying for a while that NYC should cecede from New York State. We send more money Upstate than they send down,
Much as I'd love for key NYC infrastructure (namely the MTA) to be free from the grips of Albany, this would never work. New York City is so intrinsically dependent on infrastructure from the surrounding areas that it would be a nightmare to try and negotiate that across state lines. Negotiating water rights alone would be an absolute mess.
> we still aren't allowed to run the socialist utopia most city residents actually want
Uh, no, "most" residents of New York City don't want a socialist utopia.
Just because four of the five boroughs voted for Obama in 2008 doesn't mean NYC is some bastion of radical left-wing thought. Let's not forget that the city voted Bloomberg in three times.
(If you really want a deeper analysis, you might want to note that New York City politics is also influenced by people of color to a degree that no other major city in the US is. While they tend to vote reliably for Democratic candidates, black and Latino voters are empirically far less liberal[0] than their white counterparts in the Democratic party).
Sorry, "socialist utopia" in this case is reclaimed from the Republican insanity of the last 8 years, where any government program is "socialism" and ergo synonymous with evil. I'm not suggesting the majority of New Yorkers want a dictatorship of the proletariat, I just mean most of us want to have the public infrastructure necessary to live in the city, and would probably be ok with better social programs. And would you deny that the city is more "liberal" than Upstate?
Okay, though I guess it depends on your definition of 'major city'. D.C. proper doesn't even have 1/10th the population of NYC; it's smaller than even El Paso, TX and Charlotte, NC. It doesn't even break the top 20 largest cities in the country.
Though more importantly, D.C. is unique politically because it's not awarded the rights of a state, and therefore not protected from the federal government the way literally every other city in the US is. (Even San Juan, Puerto Rico, has more autonomy from the federal government in some ways than D.C. does)
That last part is key for this particular tidbit. "People of color" influence DC politics only to the extent that the old white men in the Capitol tolerate it. Case in point, recent efforts to legalize marijuana locally have run into a lot of trouble because certain Congressmen make it their mission to oppose such things.
"The time is comm' and though I'm no youngster, I may see it, when New York City will break away from the State and become a state itself. It's got to come. The feelin' between this city and the hayseeds that make a livin' by plunderin' it is every bit as bitter as the feelin' between the North and South before the war. And, let me tell you, if there ain't a peaceful separation before long, we may have the horrors of civil war right here in New York State. Why, I know a lot of men in my district who would like nothin' better today than to go out gunnin' for hayseeds!
New York City has got a bigger population than most of the states in the Union. It's got more wealth than any dozen of them. Yet the people here, as I explained before, are nothin' but slaves of the Albany gang. We have stood the slavery a long, long time, but the uprisin' is near at hand. It will be a fight for liberty, just like the American Revolution. We'll get liberty peacefully if we can; by cruel war if we must.
Just think how lovely things would be here if we had a Tammany Governor and Legislature meetin', say in the neighborhood of Fifty-ninth Street, and a Tammany Mayor and Board of Aldermen doin' business in City Hall! How sweet and peaceful everything would go on!
The people wouldn't have to bother about nothin'. Tammany would take care of everything for them in its nice quiet way. You wouldn't hear of any conflicts between the state and city authorities. They would settle everything pleasant and comfortable at Tammany Hall, and every bill introduced in the Legislature by Tammany would be sure to go through. The Republicans wouldn't count.
Imagine how the city would be built up in a short time! At present we can't make a public improvement of any consequence without goin' to Albany for permission, and most of the time we get turned down when we go there. But, with a Tammany Governor and Legislature up at Fifty-ninth Street, how public works would hum here! The Mayor and Aldermen could decide on an improvement, telephone the Capitol, have a bill put through in a jiffy and—there you are. We could have a state constitution, too, which would extend the debt limit so that we could issue a whole lot more bonds. As things are now, all the money spent for docks, for instance, is charged against the city in calculatin' the debt limit, although the Dock Department provides immense revenues. It's the same with some other departments. This humbug would be dropped if Tammany ruled at the Capitol and the City Hall, and the city would have money to burn." -- George Washington Plunkett [1]
