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Ok, this is a new one on me. I guess sellerz gotta sell.

I'm sure we'd all concede that jazz was always less popular than vocal music, but instrumental singles were still feasible in the 60s and perhaps even the early 70s. Jazz would have been heard on the radio, feature prominently in soundtracks (whereas it is quite an anomaly nowadays) and successful record labels could be launched dedicated to jazz. I don't think any of these things is true any more, except in the narrowest technical terms. Yes, you can launch a boutique label and have some CDs pressed, yes, there are some internet radio stations with jazz, etc. While I think it is extremely foolish for anyone to go to college to study jazz or jazz studies or however it is labeled, I also have pity on these kids. They are longing for a world that ended when Gen X was growing up. And either they will be labeled as mere imitators of the legends of the past, shameful sellouts who try to merge jazz with hip-hop, rap or some other populist genre, or (most likely) soul-less innovators in esoteric, anti-populist free jazz.

I think everyone knew this day was coming soon, but what a shame. CBC obit: http://www.cbc.ca/news/trending/terry-pratchett-best-selling-fantasy-author-dead-at-66-1.2992120 Guardian obit: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/mar/12/terry-pratchett-author-of-the-discworld-series-dies-aged-66 I've read a large number of the Discworld books, though I probably missed out on the last 4 or 5. I will try to correct that, sooner rather than later.

I see an awful lot of wishful thinking and outright denialism in the comments to the article. It reminds me of the folks that talk about gigs in New York being full of young people, when that is an absolute outlier compared to the rest of the country. Obviously it is great that New York remains this outlier, but it is irrelevant for most people.

Well, the jury has spoken and found Thicke and Pharrell Williams guilty of plagiarism: http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/music/2015/03/10/pharrell-robin-thicke-owe-marvin-gaye-heirs-73-million-for-blurred-lines.html I find this pretty disappointing and one more indication that jury trials are an increasingly lousy way of settling lawsuits or anything frankly.

Not trying to argue that Excel is great math software, but if you poke it (or nearly any other software) there will be something that was programmed differently from the way a math professor would do it. In this case it has to do with exponentiation. I found this an interesting (if long) exchange on the issue: http://mathforum.org/library/drmath/view/69058.html Basically, I would still argue that you ought to start throwing brackets around once you get past 3 or 4 terms and operations.

Every year it seems that this order of operations stuff crops up. The odd thing is that it turns out at least some software is not programmed with the proper order of operations (or it might lose track after 4 or 5 operations). I find it is an important reminder that you really ought to use brackets to ensure the program is doing what you intend it to do.

Hey, Mac users. Welcome to the club (of getting unwanted bloatware): http://money.cnn.com/2015/03/06/technology/security/java-mac-ask-com/index.html Granted it isn't that hard to turn this off and opt out, but this is just a sign of things to come, I suspect.

Oops - Angela Lansbury. She really was quite good. It turns out Simon Jones (of Hitchhiker's Guide fame) is also in the cast, though his role is a minor one. I'd say of the cast members not named Lansbury, the woman playing Elvira (the first wife) is the strongest. The play is a fun romp, never too serious. This is apparently going to be Lansbury's last tour (she is 89 after all!), so if you want to see her, it will have to be mid-March at the National Theatre in DC. I'm just back from seeing an adaptation of Master's Spoon River Anthology. I'd guess they covered 20-30 of the epitaphs, so only a small slice, but it gives you a pretty good sense of the work. They actually turned quite a few of the poems into songs, some melancholy, some upbeat. It was well done, though I do prefer a bit more of a coherent through-line in a play. I'm going to see the same company do Of Human Bondage in May, so I guess I should read that first (it's longer than I recalled!). Also, I'm trying to sneak in a performance of Garcia Lorca's Blood Wedding.

Yeah, I hear you. Incredibly, the IT department at work is forced to use IE, which causes them (and us) no end of grief. I really don't understand why that order came from the top, whereas normally the IT folks make a ruling and that's pretty much it.

Have you upgraded to the latest Firefox? There are a few things that definitely irritate me about it (no compatibility with some key extensions) but I haven't had any problems with core stability (yet anyway). Probably you should try out Chrome and see what you think, as Scott suggests.

Congratulations on making Jane's acquaintance. Additional pleasures await. I had a mind to read through her novels (it's been a while) after "Clarissa," since Austen was a fan of Samuel Richardson's writings, and I thought it would be fun to trace connections or influences. I may still do that, especially as I picked up a set of Austen's Oxford Illustrated pb edition of the novels at a library sale. I believe I've read 3: Pride and Prejudice, Northanger Abbey and Sense and Sensibility (probably). I plan on reading or rereading all her novels, more or less in order, though I would recommend Northanger Abbey to be read first. It is in many ways her first novel, which she later re-edited and improved after the success of her intervening novels. I actually don't care that much for Northanger Abbey, and think the pleasures of the later novels far outweigh it, so you probably don't want that to be the last Austen novel you read. I have never read Austen for pleasure, but always on academic courses, both as learner and teacher. I recall that passages from her novels were masterpieces (if I can use that term in the context) of perfectly judged prose and it's at this level that I most appreciated her. As for her plots, I found it difficult to remember the tiny (trivial) details and only managed to teach her with the aid of a (carefully concealed) plot summary. I found some support for my misgiving from a university tutor of mine who pointed out that the biggest event to happen in Austen's oeuvre was a fall from a wall a few feet high. He also found her prissy and said that after reading her, he felt like "taking a bath in Rabelais." I much prefer her forerunners in the development of the English novel, in particular Fielding. Joseph Andrews is marvellous. I think there is room for all, especially Austen, but that quote about Rabelais is hilarious! I probably did not get around to Joseph Andrews, but I did read Tom Jones in my salad days. Would be nice to get through it again (and Joseph Andrews), but I'm not making any such commitments at the moment...

Congratulations on making Jane's acquaintance. Additional pleasures await. I had a mind to read through her novels (it's been a while) after "Clarissa," since Austen was a fan of Samuel Richardson's writings, and I thought it would be fun to trace connections or influences. I may still do that, especially as I picked up a set of Austen's Oxford Illustrated pb edition of the novels at a library sale. I believe I've read 3: Pride and Prejudice, Northanger Abbey and Sense and Sensibility (probably). I plan on reading or rereading all her novels, more or less in order, though I would recommend Northanger Abbey to be read first. It is in many ways her first novel, which she later re-edited and improved after the success of her intervening novels. I actually don't care that much for Northanger Abbey, and think the pleasures of the later novels far outweigh it, so you probably don't want that to be the last Austen novel you read.

In the Netherlands, three radical imams recently had their visa's rescinded. They were going to speak at a benefit, not preach in a mosque as far as I'm aware. If next year they plan to come over again as the Great Oud Trio, should we let them enter? If they are legitimate musicians, then yes. But we both know they aren't. Your straw man argument is absurd. Even if they were legitimate musicians, no. The point is we refuse such people any platform because of, among other things, their holocaust denials, dangerous lies we should not tolerate. And this is where Americans (and generally Canadians, though there is more tolerance for censorship and staying within "reasonable" bounds) and Europeans differ. There is no point in my continuing this debate. All that said, I probably will go and see Atzmon if he turns up here.

In the Netherlands, three radical imams recently had their visa's rescinded. They were going to speak at a benefit, not preach in a mosque as far as I'm aware. If next year they plan to come over again as the Great Oud Trio, should we let them enter? If they are legitimate musicians, then yes. But we both know they aren't. Your straw man argument is absurd.

I made it through the first chapter, which was a very tedious retelling of the Noah and the Ark story. I realize there is no way to tell the story literally in a way that doesn't sound absurd, but somehow the tone was so off and Barnes kept layering on one thing after another -- that's why there are no basilisks and no unicorns and so forth. Maybe what really killed it for me was the combination of the Ark legend with Kipling's Just So Stories (how Noah's beatings gave the zebras their stripes; how hiding from Noah caused chameleons to change their color; etc.). See Timothy Findley's Not Wanted on the Voyage for tackling the same legend/myth (including an on-board unicorn!) but somehow done in a far superior manner. I'll probably slog through, but this generally reinforces my opinion that Julian Barnes is a writer who thinks he is far cleverer than he actually is. While it's been a long, long while since I read it, I am actually revising my opinion of Flaubert's Parrot somewhat downwards in retrospect. I'm probably going to strike him (Barnes) off the list and not read anything further by him. I am looking forward to the reread of Nightwood, however. Pretty sure I will find that a lot more rewarding.

And that's fine. There are actually a few artists I no longer support and will refuse to pay to see any more. But I don't go out of my way to prevent other people from seeing these artists if they so choose. I really don't think that adults need to be protected from themselves or from hearing views that third parties disagree with.

Not sure how much interest there would be in this, but I have had a chance to read through Levine's last 5 collections and listed what I thought are the strongest poems in each: http://erics-hangout.blogspot.ca/2015/03/late-levine.html Perhaps of more interest are links to some poems - "The Simple Truth": http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/silence-amidst-crowd-reading-philip-levines-simple-truth-and-call-it-music The Return": http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/unbound/poetry/antholog/levine/return.htm "The Lesson": http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2003/10/the-lesson/378566/ "The Music of Time": https://thefridayinfluence.wordpress.com/2013/01/18/phil-levine-the-friday-influence/

Sounds interesting. Quite a long queue at the library, so I may get it in a few months. I'm nearly done with Somerville's The Universe in Miniature in Miniature. Quirky. A lot like reading early Jonathan Lethem, which is good and bad.

Many of these sets are great, but I would definitely urge someone to pick up the Tal Farlow and the Farmer-Golson Jazztet sets.

While I appreciate Dan's tip, it turns out their shipping to Canada is quite expensive (and apparently shipping/customs is getting worse across the board -- so I'll probably pass on getting any more Mosaics from here on out). But there was a pretty decent deal on Amazon.ca, so I decided to check the CD out.

I guess the only good news is that most hackers are too lazy to take full advantage of these exploits. At this point, probably most Americans have had their credit cards compromised more than once with Target and Home Depot just being among the more prominent examples. But most of us are pretty boring and not worth going after, but still the horror stories are pretty chilling.

The laptop is probably fine, but it is still pretty shocking. All these companies (Acer, Asus, Lenovo) put an unbelievable amount of crap on the system that takes a while to kill. And of course you don't even know what the government is doing...

Wow -- a breathless expose, huh. When reputable people have pointed out that the issues here are far beyond what a simple malware exposes users to, that the security certificates have been compromised at the very core of the machine. Anyway, it is too early to know if there will be lawsuits and that IT departments are probably just finding out what the problems and compromises were. Frankly, if my company had Lenovo machines, I would be very worried indeed unless one's IT department was very, very good, and most are only middling to good.

I don't see any upside whatsoever for the subscription model. It is pure greed on the part of these software companies, and it will ultimately push middle-of-the-road people like myself to extreme measures (shareware, piracy, etc.) I used to really like the IBM ThinkPad. I realized that when Lenovo took it over there were some real problems and quality control had suffered greatly. I was negatively impacted, mostly related to how badly they implemented System Restore, and they caused me to lose a huge amount of data. At that time, I swore off Lenovo never to return. I'm glad I did, as the last 6 months or so of Lenovo computers have been intentionally infected with some of the worst adware ever to be installed on a personal computer (certainly the worst intentionally):http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/bitwise/2015/02/lenovo_superfish_scandal_why_it_s_one_of_the_worst_consumer_computing_screw.html People are pretty uninformed on the whole. In a perfect world, this abuse (and very poor reaction when being caught) would ensure that Lenovo went out of business. That probably won't happen, however. But I guarantee you I will never buy Lenovo again -- to the point that if my job moved us in that direction, I would start looking for another place to work.