The Omniscient Mussel

Wednesday Links

After a lengthy battle with a persistent and rather sneaky malware infection, Miss Mussel is happy to say that things are back to normal around here. MarciaAdair.com has also fended of its invasion by Chilean internet hackers. Thanks to everyone who wrote to tell Miss Mussel about the overtake.

Those of you on WordPress who have not been hit yet are advised to change your password, or even better, upgrade to 2.8.5 immediatement.

And now, for some fresh links from around the interwebs:

• From Boston, an excellent and refreshingly lengthy piece by Jeremy Eichler about the conducting appointments in LA and NYC and what that means for his local orchestra. “Levine began his Boston tenure in 2004 with his own sustained shot of adrenaline at Symphony Hall, arriving with two-plus seasons of bold and visionary ideas. Things these days tend to be a lot sleepier.”
• The idea of alt.classical is nearing critical mass. Anne Midgette discussed it at length last week at her place and CBC Radio 2 has three mini-docus about NonClassical in London, Le Poisson Rouge in NYC and the Yellow Lounge in Berlin. None of these are new for those of us who make it our business to know about such things but you can bet most of the 1,000,000 listeners it’s an entirely novel concept. The first in the series, NonClassical – reported by yours truly, is available here. (scroll to bottom of post)
• While in high school, Miss Mussel used to watch a cooking show from Vancouver called the Urban Peasant. As she remembers it, the Peasant was a 60 year old man whose cooking style was guided by the maxim, “When In Doubt, Add More Booze.” Two other Canadians are now carrying the torch at CookingWithBooze.com
• One of the reasons why Twitter can be such a delight: @MargaretAtwood points to this very amusing piece in the New Yorker about marketing your book. “We use CopyBuoy via Hoster Broaster, because it streams really easily into a Plaxo/LinkedIn yak-fest meld. When you register, click “Endless,” and under “Contacts” just list everyone you’ve ever met. It would be great if you could post at least six hundred words every day until further notice.”
• Science and art need not be strangers. Miss Mussel has been thinking quite bit about this idea lately, the reason for which shall be revealed shortly. As someone who took five years of French, Music, Science and Math in high school and enjoyed every bit of it [except for the graphing...ugh], somehow it seems a bit tragic that our culture values hyperspecialization so much.
• The story is a bit stale, seeing as the announcement was made at the beginning of September. Miss Mussel’s tardiness aside, the British Library has released 23,700 rare audio tracks online. This coupled with their online newspaper archive should make for many a happy hour of archive diving.
• Standardized tests in schools are terrible. For Miss Mussel, there really is no debate. The joy of learning, of independent discovery and the importance of time spent doing nothing of immediately apparent value are well…invaluable. Now, it seems that science is backing up what many of us have intuitively known for years. Huzzah!