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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.

I didn't say I didn't know how to use external I/O. What I don't like is the not-so-subtle push away from physical media and towards the Cloud and/or Apple's various subscription services. But that is also the way Windows is moving, so I'm feeling extremely upset at the moment. I've just found out that Windows 8 has removed all games and some other stuff. Now there are a fair number of decent apps (even free ones) at the Windows "store," but for every single one of them you have to sign up with an email account (that is actually a Windows email account) and to run the apps you have to be signed on and allow MS to track your activity. This is total BS. But a whole generation have gotten so used to putting all kinds of crazy tracking apps on their phones, so it goes on pretty much unremarked. I hate it and I hate the way this is going, both with Apple and MS.

I started on Macs and used them for many years, but then I had many very complex programs at work that had to be run via Windows. At the time Windows for Macs was not acceptable. It's probably closer now, though I'm still not sure if it is for SPSS when processing a few million records for example. I guess the difference is that my work laptop can handle the really detailed, complex programs, but I still need to shuttle reports and presentations and such between home and work. So Open Office is at least theoretically possible, as is Linux. I just don't like the direction Apple is going with almost no optical drives on its machines, as I think it reflects a fetishizing of form over substance that I think far too many Apple designers fall into.

I am sure it is fine for tablets, but what genius forced this system down the throats of us remaining desktop/laptop users? Everyone clearly has said this was a terrible mistake (to only have a single operating system across incompatible devices), but they went forward with it anyway. I have generally stayed on the sidelines of the Mac/PC war (with only some Microsoft-specific grumbling) but this set of changes is so offensive to me that I am going to break away from Office and not look back. In fact, I am so upset, I'll have to investigate whether I really could go over to Linux or if it is just too much of a headache, given what I still need to do in my work life.

I think this is the one that was withdrawn from the box set, perhaps due to rights, but it still is in circulation here and there. I did manage to score a copy just like the one above and slipped it into the big box. Quite nice (for a completest).

I had a full post just eaten. Don't feel like retyping. (Kind of sick of the O board software at the moment.) Saw Amici Chamber Ensemble with special guests, esp. Kim Kashkashian on viola. Programme here: http://amiciensemble.com/event/kim-kashkashian-in-remembrance/

I'm slowly restoring it to something like functionality but there really isn't anything I would count as an improvement and a lot of downsides to this new system. Definitely not a happy camper.

RIP and thanks for facilitating all that music... I've been meaning to pull out the Riverside Monk set for some time, so I have done so, but perhaps even more importantly, I finally tracked down Clark Terry's Serenade to a Bus Seat (the spine is just slightly different from other Riversides) so I will give that a spin now.

It's been coming for a long time now. Many programs are subscription based. I expect a lot of push-back but the problem is too many people like me, that just grabbed the software without really looking and thus already gave them our money. It is going to take a significant uprising to change anything. After all, there were legions of IT folk who steered their mid-sized companies away from Office when this new email verification thing came on board, but it hasn't made Microsoft blink. Still, trying to put this pinch on individuals may be one step too far. I hope so, but I do plan to find a better solution come next March.