Occasional Observations

I love it when I find an article that brings together multiple of my favorite topics.  So when I saw this article on the Noise Addicts blog about a mathematician who used numerical analysis to finally solve a problem plagueing the music world about a Beatles song;  well, I just had to publish it!

This first chord that starts A Hard Day’s Night is one of the most recognizable and famous opening chords in rock & roll. It’s played by George Harrison on his 12 string Rickenbacker.

The other reason that it’s famous is because for 40 years nobody knew for sure what it was. Many guitar players have tried in vain to recreate the sound but have usually failed miserably.

Well, someone has figured it out definitively – not a musician, but a Dalhousie mathematician.

Four years ago, Jason Brown was inspired by reading news coverage about the song’s 40th anniversary – so much so that he decided to try and see if he could apply a mathematical calculation known as Fourier transform to solve the Beatles’ riddle. The process allowed him to break the sound into distinct frequencies using computer software to find out exactly which notes were on the record.

What he found was interesting: the frequencies he found didn’t match theinstruments on the song. George played a 12-string Rickenbacker, John Lennon played his 6 string, Paul had his bass – none of them quite fit what he found. He then realized what was missing – the 5th Beatle. George Martin was also on the record, playing a piano in the opening chord, which accounted for the problematic frequencies.”

“I started playing guitar because I heard a Beatles record—that was it for my piano lessons,” says Brown. “I had tried to play the first chord of the song many takes over the years. It sounds outlandish that someone could create a mystery around a chord from a time where artists used such simple recording techniques. It’s quite remarkable.”

The Beatles producer added a piano chord that included an F note, impossible to play with the other notes on the guitar. The resulting chord was completely different than anything found in songbooks and scores for the song, which is one reason why Dr. Brown’s findings garnered international attention. He laughs that he may be the only mathematician ever to be published in Guitar Player magazine.

The original PDF published by Dr. Brown is online here.

National Writing Project

This election season, Google and the National Writing Project invited middle and high school students to make their voices heard by writing letters to the U.S. presidential candidates.

Guided by teachers and mentors, students across the country composed their thoughts on the issues they care about most – everything from gas prices and the economy to education and the war in Iraq.

Using Google Docs, a free online writing tool, the students wrote and published their letters for the entire world to see.

My friend Paul sent me this tonight.  I like it.

A brief summary of a life’s learnings:

Age 5: I learned that things are easier when someone is holding your hand.

Age 10: I learned to never blow in a cat’s ear.

Age 15: I learned that although it’s hard to admit it, I’m secretly glad my parents are strict with me.

Age 20: I learned that if you want to cheer yourself up, you should try cheering someone else up.

Age 25: I learned that if someone says something unkind about me, I must live so that no one will believe it.

Age 30: I learned that there are people who love you dearly but just don’t know how to show it.

Age 35: I learned that if I want to do something positive for my children, I should work to improve my marriage.

Age 40: I learned that the greater people’s sense of guilt, the greater their need to blame others.

Age 45: I learned that I can never allow life’s disappointments to steal my enthusiasm.

Age 50: I learned that I can tell a lot about a person by the way they handle these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.

Age 55: I learned that keeping a vegetable garden is worth a medicine cabinet full of pills.

Age 60: I learned that life sometimes gives you a second chance.

Age 65: I learned that I shouldn’t go through life with a catcher’s mitt on both hands. I need to be able to throw something back.

Age 70: I learned regardless of your relationship with your parents, you miss them terribly 

after they die.

Age 75: I learned that children and grandparents are natural allies.

Age 80: I learned that even suffering has its gifts.

Age 85: I learned that whenever I decide something with kindness, I usually make the right decision.

Age 90: I learned that even when I have pains, I can live without being one.

During this time of campaining, we’re asked to make choices.  The candidates tell us who they are and what they’ll do.  It’s very easy to just be cynical and say that it doesn’t matter who’s elected, but it does.  The next president will be faced with many tough choices, and the direction of his choices will affect us for a long time.

How about the choice of spending $1,000,000,000,000 of cash (certainly of less value than the lives of 4,500 US Soldiers and thousands of others) in the Iraq war?  What could we have done with that TRILLION dollars?  A writer provides a few choices…..

When the Sunday morning political pundits began talking last year about the tab for the war in Iraq hitting $1 trillion, Rob Simpson sprang from his sofa in indignation.

“Why aren’t people outraged about this? Why aren’t we hearing about it?” Simpson said. And then it came to him: “Nobody knows what a trillion dollars is.”

The amount — $1,000,000,000,000 — was just too big to comprehend.

So Simpson, 51, decided to embark “on an unusual but intriguing research project” to put the dollars and cents of the war into perspective. He hired some assistants and spent 12 months immersed in economic data and crunching numbers.

The result: a slim but heavily annotated paperback released, “What We Could Have Done With the Money: 50 Ways to Spend the Trillion Dollars We’ve Spent on Iraq.”

Simpson is no geopolitical, macro-economic, inside-the-Beltway expert. He’s an armchair analyst and creative director for an advertising agency, a former radio announcer and music critic in Ontario and a one-time voiceover actor.

His alternative spending choices reflect his curiosity and wit.

Read the whole article from CNN here.  Access Simpson’s web site here.

From the article by Scott Berkun:

It’s nowhere to be found in major coverage, but smart folks have studied what traits led to more successful presidencies. Sure, these things are subjective, but they offer a better framework, based on history, for making our next big bet.

Fred I. Greenstein, Professor of Politics Emeritus at Princeton University, calls out 6 attributes most related to success in office, a veritable scorecard for our use:

1. Effectiveness as a public communicator
2. Organizational capacity
3. Political skill (well duh, but he explains specific traits)
4. Vision
5. Cognitive Style
6. Emotional Intelligence

Read the whole article here: http://www.scottberkun.com/essays/how-to-pick-a-president

This is what politics is to me. Someone tells you all the trees on your street have a disease. One side says give them food and water and everything will be fine. One side says chop them down and burn them so they don’t infect another street. That’s politics. And I’m going, Who says they’re diseased? And how does this sickness manifest itself? And is this outside of a natural cycle? And who said this again? And when were they on this street? But we just have people who shout, “Chop it down and burn it” or “Give it food and water” and there’s your two choices. Sorry, I’m not a believer.

- John Malkovich, Esquire Magazine, Nov 2008

My friend Al Friebe sent this one in:

In the spirit of the WWF, I’d like to offer my script for the next presidential debate …

Moderator: In the corner to my liberal left, the Democratic candidate, Barack Obama! And in the corner to my reactionary right, the Republican candidate, John McCain! All right, gentlemen, I want you to shake hands, fist bump, and come out fighting!

McCain: Good evening, and thanks for inviting me. I’d like to open tonight by pointing out that my opponent’s middle name is “HUSSEIN”, as in “Saddam HUSSEIN”!

Obama: Good evening. My opponent’s name is “John”, as in “John Wilkes Booth”!

McCain: Have you heard that Obama can’t account for two years of his life? Could it be that he spent it at a madrassah or terrorist training camp?

Obama: And McCain can’t account for five years of his! POW … maybe! Or maybe he spent the time at the Kremlin, consorting with his comrades and political masters!

McCain: My opponent pals around with terrorists!

Obama: And mine pals around with Barbie!

McCain: My friends, did I mention that that one is black? That his wife is black? And that his kids are black, my friends?

Obama: After five years allegedly spent in a torture chamber, my opponent might be schizophenic, paranoid or both!

McCain: He’s a terrorist!

Obama: He’s a racist!

McCain: Traitor!

Obama: Codger!

Moderator: Thank you, gentlemen! And good night from the Mainstream Media!

Sam Harris, in an article for Newsweek, defends the concept of being elite and questions our political system where mediocrity is rewarded.  From the article:

Ask yourself: how has “elitism” become a bad word in American politics? There is simply no other walk of life in which extraordinary talent and rigorous training are denigrated. We want elite pilots to fly our planes, elite troops to undertake our most critical missions, elite athletes to represent us in competition and elite scientists to devote the most productive years of their lives to curing our diseases. And yet, when it comes time to vest people with even greater responsibilities, we consider it a virtue to shun any and all standards of excellence. When it comes to choosing the people whose thoughts and actions will decide the fates of millions, then we suddenly want someone just like us, someone fit to have a beer with, someone down-to-earth—in fact, almost anyone, provided that he or she doesn’t seem too intelligent or well educated.

Harris echos my thoughts that the idea that Governor Palin might have input to, or even one day direct US foreign policy is very scary.  It’s not the inexperience that worries me — it’s the experiences she has had up to this point.

I want to see our “best and brightest” get into politics, but unfortunately, there is no motivation for them to do so.

A big city lawyer went duck hunting in rural Tennessee. He shot and dropped a bird, but it fell into a farmer’s field on the other side of a fence. As the lawyer climbed over the fence, an elderly farmer drove up on his tractor and asked him what he was doing. The litigator responded, ‘I shot a duck and it fell in this field, and now I’m going to retrieve it.’ The old farmer replied, ‘This is my property, and you are not coming over here.’ The indignant lawyer said, ‘I am one of the best trial attorneys in the United States and, if you don’t let me get that duck, I’ll sue you and take everything you own.’

The old farmer smiled and said, ‘Apparently, you don’t know how we settle disputes in Tennessee. We settle small disagreements with the ‘Three  Kick Rule.” The lawyer asked, ‘What is the ‘Three Kick Rule’?’ The farmer eplied, ‘Well, because the dispute occurs on my land, I get to go first. I kick you three times and then you kick me three times and so on back and forth until someone gives up.’ The attorney quickly thought about the proposed contest and decided that he could easily take the old codger. He agreed to abide by the local custom.

The old farmer slowly climbed down from the tractor and walked up to the attorney. His first kick planted the toe of his heavy steel toed work boot into the lawyer’s groin and dropped him to his knees.  His second kick to the midriff sent the lawyer’s last meal gushing from his mouth. The lawyer was on all fours when the farmer’s third kick to his rear end, sent him face-first into a fresh cow pie.

The lawyer summoned every bit of his will and managed to get to his feet.  Wiping his face with the arm of his jacket, he said, ‘Okay, you old fart.  Now it’s my turn.’ The old farmer smiled and said  ‘Nah, I give up. You can have the duck.