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Recently

So I know you’re all wondering how I’ve been spending the 4th decade of my life, since it began a little over a week ago. Mostly, I’ve been behaving in accordance with the maturity becoming somebody of my age and feeling sorry for myself because I didn’t get into grad school. But that got boring, so I spent a lot of time working on a sound collage thing Les Radios Francophones which is a burning, wrecked hulk of a piece. I have no idea how to fix it.

My dad blew through town yesterday morning. He’s on an airplane for California by now, after spending last night in London. And last night, I talked with my conversation partner for the first time in a long time. I’ve been working actively on trying to understand more french, so I was a little disappointed when I was as confused as ever during our chat. Alas.
There are some french podcasts which I listen to which I find to be somewhat helpful: Les Journaux français facile, France Blue L’horoscope, Arte Radio and Les bulletins Nouvelles de Radio Canada, which covers some US news. There are others. In fact, there are too many. But those are the best, I think. The Easy French one is great because I can understand almost all of it and I can figure out the rest from context. I think it’s much more helpful than the jumble of words I get when listening to normal news on RFI.
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Podcast: Play in new window | Download

what to do next year?

I’m 30 years old, I should have a bit more of an idea of what I’m doing. On the other hand, I was in the midst of posting “tried the american dream – house, wife, car, two cats and a dog – and it sucked (well, except for the dog)” when I found my rejection note in my inbox, so I can’t say I haven’t welcomed some sort of instability. Or perhaps realized that stability is all pretend anyway.

Many or most universities in the US want their new professors to have PhDs. 10 or 15 years ago, this was not the case. Statistically speaking, since women need more education to be considered equal to their male peers, women especially must need PhDs.
So there is a new demand for PhDs. Universities are responding by adding PhD programs. Since these are new, their reputation has not been established. Berkeley, however, has a fairly solid reputation AND it is a funded program. Meaning that unlike most other schools, instead of paying them, they pay you. Of course, no true artist would let such petty concerns dictate their choice of studies, but, uh, Berkeley gets a lot of applicants, I’m sure. They take one electronic music person every year. therefore, out of hundreds of applicants, there only needs to be one person better than me, which apparently, was the case.
Eh, so applying to schools on another continent is really even more annoying than doing it in your home country. Like 2 or 3 times more annoying. So I only applied to Berkeley, even though it would have been wise to also apply to Stanford. I don’t want to move outside of the Bay Area in the US, not that it matters because all the deadlines for American schools have passed. There’s always next year.
There’s also Europe. Sophie tells me that the schools are easier to get in to. However, I’m not so hot on IRCAM, so I’d be looking at some schools in England or maybe the new center in Marseilles or McGill (Canada is practically Europe) or I could, you know (gasp) get a job and join the legions of MA-degreed musicians toiling away in the Leap Frog audio department. bah.
I’m too old to get another student visa. Nicole needs to be doing something wherever I go. Moving any place outside of Paris or Berkeley means doing the whole making new friends, figuring out the city, learning the local dialect thing AGAIN, which, yikes, but on the other hand, who wants to live in America? Do I need a PhD to get a job at GRM?
I’m taking suggestions.
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Using the Scientific Method to Improve Your Life

Problem: I don’t understand very much French

Hypothesis: If I read a lot of French blogs and news and also listen to varions French-language news podcasts, I will learn a lot of French.

Method: Read News in English to figure out what’s going on. Then Read news in French to figure out french vocabulary and grammer for terms like “hunger strike.”

Observations

Day 2

Augh!! Everything in the world is fucked up!!!!! Bird Flu! Hunting accidents! Toxic ships! Sarko! Prison Torture! Hunting accidents! Anti-democratic sabotage! Racism! Censorship! Evil evil evil!!!!!

Conclusions

Il y a un grave danger pour la sante d’esprit si on lit trop de nouvelles

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cross-posted do to blogger problems

Uncoming Concert in SF

Daniel Bernard Roumain joins Del Sol String Quartet and special guest DJ Scientific for A Civil Rights Reader for Strings, Laptop & DJ

Other Minds, although not having a festival this year, is producing a bunch of smaller individual concerts. This is the next one on March 6 at 7:30 PM at Kanbar Hall, Jewish Community Center, 3200 California Street, San Francisco. Sure wish I could go.
If the name Daniel Bernard Roumain is ringing a bell, but your memory is fuzzy, he’s a New York violinist/composer. The New York Times and NPR and other places have profiled him. Infuriatingly, the coverage tends to be, “oh my god, a black violinist! with dreds!” Quoting NPR, now, “Daniel Bernard Roumain doesn’t fit the image of a classical musician. The Haitian-American violinist and composer sports a silver nose ring and dreadlocks that reach to his waist.” Roumain, however, embraces this, “Roumain has coined a name for his style: ‘dred violin.'” After hearing a bit of Anthony Braxton’s difficulties being taken seriously as a black man who composes opera, it’s very clear why Roumain allows and encourages this kind of coverage. Being black and a classical musician is more than the liberal media can usually manage to wrap its’ tiny brains around.
The NPR article is a lot better than the NYT one I saw several months ago. Maybe the novelty of a black classical violinist is wearing off enough that Roumain is being taken seriously for his art, rather than his improbability. His art, by all accounts, certainly merits interest. It’s exciting that Other Minds was able to book him for this event. Lots of tickets are still available, get them while they’re hot.
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Blog Against Gitmo

Guantanamo Bay has been in the news again recently. Some of you may recall that a large percentage of inmates were participating in a hunger strike. That number has dropped to four. Why? The New York times reports it’s because US Soldiers have been strapping inmates into chairs, shoving feeding tubes down prisoner’s noses so forcefully that they faint and then pumping the prisoners so full of food that it causes them pain and to soil themselves and then harshly yanking the tube back out of the noses, so hard it comes up bloody.

Fellow, Americans, these are our tax dollars at work. This is our government. This is our country. The Pentagon’s own estimates say that only 45% of prisoners at Gitmo were involved in opposing the US. We have become the sort of regime in which people just disappear and then are tortured outside of judicial oversight. This violates every law and principle that the US is supposed to stand for or at least follow.

What to do?

  1. Blog about or talk about Gitmo.

    2. We must call attention to this situation.

  2. Protest – take it to the streets.

    3. Your city may have a group that protests once a week or once a month. Join them and carry a sign. Protesting is not grim or doomed. It’s actually a kind of fun way to meet some people and those in power do headcounts and notice if numbers of protesters are growing or shrinking.

  3. Write letters

I wrote my two senators and one representative:

Dear Honorable Barbara Lee,

I am writing to ask that you take action to close the Guantanamo Bay prison. Yesterday, I read in the New York Times about cruel methods used to force feed prisoners held in there. These people are being held without trial and many of them are innocent of any crime. The system of extra-judicial prisons and secret gulags being run in the war on terror is contrary to the values that America is supposed to stand for. The risk to our nation now is surely not greater than during the cold war or the world wars and we were able to obey international law and maintain our decency during those times. I am proud to be an American but I am ashamed that my government engages in torture. This must be stopped for the sake of our reputation abroad and for the sake of our humanity. If we cannot wage the “war on terror” in a moral way, then we cannot call ourselves defenders of freedom nor can we call it a “war on terror” as we perpetuate terror on innocent people being held without trial in our prisons.

Thank you for your time,

C. Hutchins

Write your rep: http://www.house.gov/writerep/
Write your senators: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
And, of course, Letters to the Editor of your local newspaper are also noted.
For more information on Gitmo, see this recent Gaurdian article and Amnesty International, who also has a What can you do? page.
Spread the word.
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Statuettes and Replication Devices

A few days ago, I blogged about wanting a machine which would create statuettes of me on demand. Such machines exist! They are called Moldaramas. Alas, they are vintage and while it’s possible to purchase them, the listed price is about $10k. Not including custom molds. So without factoring the costs of molds, materials, electricity, etc, I would have to sell 2k statuettes at $5 each, before I would break even. While I would say that $10 or even $20 was a fair price for a made-on-demand piece of art, I’m not sure the public at large would agree.

What I need a is a 3d printer in a large glass case. Apparently, it’s possible to build a 3d printer out of legos. I think that such a machine would require a lot of maintenance. A real 3d printer is probably even more expensive than a plastic molding machine. So, so far, legos are looking like the best bet. Or, perhaps, I just want to do a run of a lot of statues and put them in a more normal vending machine. The “risk” is that at the end of vending machine deployment, I have a lot of extra statues of myself. Fortunately, this isn’t much of a risk. Because, who could resist a statue of me? Not me.
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Socialized Medecine

Every day that I’m in America, I thank god for divinely inspiring congress to avoid the godless Communism of socialized medecine. Imagine if you will the horrors of the french system:

Waiting: Nicole had to wait nearly 36 hours for her appointment with a specialist and after that nearly 16 hours for surgery.
Costs to the taxpayer: As far as I can tell, a French person would have paid 18€ for the whole thing. X-rays, prescriptions and surgery. As a non subscriber to the Social System thingee here, Nicole paid about 100€, maybe a bit more. Of course, we all know that treating a problem that’s minor is much less cost effective than waiting for it to become an emergency and require more extreme treatments.
Bureaucracy: It took nearly 10 minutes to have all of her data entered into a computer, but to be fair, about a third of that was because of language problems.
Invasive government databases: Every time Nicole saw a doctor, they gave her all of her X-rays, forms, etc to take with her when she left. That way, she had control of her file at all times. Fortunately, they told her what to bring to every subsequent appointment.
Smokers get the same medical treatment as everybody else: It’s true. I don’t why this is bad, but Bill O’Reilly keeps brining it up, so it must be terrible.
My major complaint is that I don’t want to go to school at IRCAM and I should probably get the advanced degree to make myself more employable. At least Berkeley has dental. I’m sure it’s just as good as being in France on a tourist visa. Almost. Maybe. Probably not.
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Cola’s Teeth

When I last posted about Cola’s teeth, her normal dentist was stumped. An extra revealed a dark spot below the hurting tooth. He gave her antibiotics which did not stop her face from swelling up and so he reffered her to an (anglophone) specialist.

So I went with Cola to see the specialist because there are anglophones and then there are anglophones. He looked at her xrays for a while and then took a few new ones. Then he started poking her. Does this hurt? He pressed on her swollen gum. Does this hurt? He got out a pointy, stabby thing and started batting it against her cheeks. Does this hurt? Then he got out a ver small hammer and started hitting her teeth with it. Does this hurt?
Indeed, except for the first part, it didn’t hurt. There was numbness. He diagnosed a legion in her jaw. It must be removed or biopsied or something. “I want to emphasize that your life is not in danger.” Finally it was determined that the english word for her condition is “cyst.” There was a cyst growing next to the nerve below her crowned tooth. First, it caused pain, but then it caused numbness and swelling.
The schools have yet another holiday, however, which started friday. The doctor was going on vacation the next day. So he instructed Nicole to come to the hospital the next morning for surgery.
So the next morning, we went to the hospital, where a team of dentists discussed Nicole’s condition and then one of them, not her original specialist, finally operated on her jaw. I waited for her in part of the dental wing of the hospital. I’ve since heard it explained that they do even minor operations in hospitals just in case anything goes wrong there’s a lot of doctors and equipment near by.
In the room in which I read months old celebrity gossip magazines (in French) there was a framed picture on the wall. It was of a mime, with a tear drawn in hir eye. Ze wore a bandana tied around from the top of her head to hir chin. Ze held hir hand to hir cheek and hir mouth formed an “ouch” shape. A mime with a toothache. In america this would be there to mock the patients. No question. But in France, miming is an ancient and respected art. I bet dental patients feel relieved to be around such cultured dentists.
The waiting room I sat in was for anesthesiology. I wasn’t really supposed to be there. They didn’t really have a waiting room. There was no front desk to check in. No “this way” signs. Apparently, when you go to a French hospital, you wonder around until you find your doctor and then you sit in a chair in the hallway until your doctor has time for you.
So a while later, Cola emerged from surgery. Feeling in her jaw is supposed to come back in around a week from then. In the mean time, there’s a lot of soup being consumed in this house. Her face is less swollen at least. Almost back to normal. She gets her stitches out next week, but it’s not strictly speaking necessary because they’re the kind that are supposed to dissolve.
And so far, nobody has mentioned anything about insurance, costs, money or anything. Apparently, in France, if you have a cyst growing in your jaw, dental insurance isn’t an unnecessary luxury. I think I like it here.
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