Remove seal to enjoy.
Remove seal to enjoy.
No, when people see a UFO, I do not believe they say "Dude..." I will not fly with any airline whose planes make thumping noises, even if they use unintelligible slogans such as "It's on". I do not need to hear about the supposed benefits of expensive medications with made-up names such as azylgno or beelzebub tartrate. I do not wish to receive unimportant information in the mail, clearly labeled as "Important Information!" In short, I'm tired of being misled and gamed by the marketing department of the likes of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation. Douglas Adams, may he rest in peace, was prescient to a point, but I think even he would be astonished to see how far the tendencies he observed could progress in only a few years, and without any particular encouragement. To enjoy real language today, one has to block out almost every sound and retreat into the realms of literature and the few practitioners of the dying art of conversation. How grateful I am when I receive a thoughtful message from a friend!
Almost 40 years ago, I learned an important lesson about science. Or rather, about scientists. It was an unpleasant experience. I was in graduate school, and that afternoon I happened to attend a lecture by a visiting molecular biologist who studied bacterial viruses. He started off by explaining how inept was the work of another scientist, and how his own work was so much better. This rankled—I had been present when the earlier experiments were performed, and I knew very well how difficult it had been to isolate enough of the hitherto unknown transcription factor even to begin to characterise it. It was those early results that paved the way for this man. Without the work that had come before, he wouldn't have been at the podium now.
Thus I learned the art of the Straw Man, a way of putting words into the mouths of your predecessors and then demonstrating them wrong, thus making yourself appear brilliant. After making this specious argument, the next step is to put on a humble but optimistic face and explain how much is not known, paint the future in glowing terms, and make the case that the continued funding of your own experiments is of vital importance. I spent just enough time around molecular biologists to see that most of them spent a great deal of time denigrating each other's latest publications and generally trampling on each other. There was no better environment for learning what is meant by "ad hominem." Then, disgusted, I went elsewhere.
I was reminded of this lesson when I sat through a new Nova episode on PBS this week, "What Darwin Never Knew". It didn't take long to detect the mentality behind the show: echoes of those molecular pitchmen so aptly characterised by Erwin Chargaff as Eager Beavers: "The eagerness was gone; only the beaverness remained."
What was it that Darwin never knew, and that mattered most? As far as I could tell, this show missed the mark. The one absolutely most important thing that Darwin did not know was the mechanism of heredity: chromosomes, genes, meiosis, etc. He already understood that random variations arise spontaneously, and that at least some of them could be inherited. He already understood that some of these heritable variations must confer a reproductive advantage, and that as a result, their frequency would tend to increase in a population over a span of generations. But without an adequate description of how heredity works, he had to write in generalities on this specific, necessary part of the explanation of evolution by natural selection.
Darwin also recognized that the rise of the angiosperms was an "abominable mystery".
The Nova show paid little attention to these points. Instead, it spent about an hour attempting to lay the groundwork for a story about how "junk DNA" was miraculously discovered to have a function. The groundwork, unfortunately, failed to define what is meant by natural selection (e.g., the key concept of reproductive fitness), in favor of describing something of the molecular mechanics of DNA. But, the groundwork was apparently going to be too complicated, so the process of turning DNA into RNA and RNA into proteins was not described. Instead, we were told that genes produce "stuff", and that parts of the DNA outside the coding regions (the regions that produce stuff!) contained "switches". I waited in vain for information about transcription factors or any other details that would explain what sort of "switches" they were talking about. With the story "dumbed down" to this extent, how could anyone be expected to understand it? What sort of education is that?
It is fortunate for mankind that the concept of "junk DNA" was only a sort of cute, ironic shorthand used to describe the great part of the DNA of most organisms that does not code for proteins. It was immediately obvious to almost everyone in the field, I think, that the part of the DNA that had no obvious function must nevertheless be important (and thus have some yet undiscovered function) because it was highly conserved. So I was appalled when the idea of "junk DNA" was now trotted out as another Straw Man! The implication was clear: in the ancient past (say, a few years ago! — how I wish the formerly eager beavers had a better sense of history!) scientists actually believed that most of the DNA was unimportant "junk", while our modern, enlightened scientists have, through their greater insight, discerned that "junk" DNA is not junk after all. And, by the way, everyone of any importance agrees that all the previous difficulties in understanding how evolution works have been overcome. However (can you see the pitch coming?), we have now reached the point where we can work out all of the wonderful details, and with more work (meaning, fund my laboratory) in this same direction, we will at last be able to explain why we are human and cure all the world's diseases. Good luck with becoming human, by the way!
The results now coming out of laboratories around the world are really stunning. Perhaps you can't argue with success. But I wish we could do a better job of communicating.
The news is now public, FamilySearch.org and the Archives Cantonales Vaudoises (ACV) have announced a joint project. The enormous collection of terriers at the ACV will be digitized and posted on the internet. The scope of his project is vast. The collection is believed to number at least 4300 separate volumes covering the 13th through the 18th Century. The records are mainly in Latin before 1536, and mainly in French after that date. The largest of these volumes is believed to be one that weighs in at about 35 pounds. The total number of images is estimated at 1.6 million.
The content of the terriers, roughly speaking, is feudal tax records. Specifically, these volumes were intended to record the money, produce, and other obligations that were owed by each vassal to the next higher seigneur in the feudal pecking order, for each specified parcel of property. Sometimes the seigneur was a person; in other cases, it was a city, a hospital, a religious institution, a confrérie, etc. The usual practice in recording this information was to trace the obligations of the vassal to one or more agreements that had been recognized in the past, rather like the way we summarize a real estate title today. In the course of describing the successive holders of the feudal obligations, genealogical information is often listed, sometimes extending back several generations.
For areas and periods where there are no church records, and often even when the corresponding church records exist, the terriers are likely to be the best available sources for genealogical information. They are not infallible; however, as a consequence of the crazy-quilt of land ownership in the Pays de Vaud, a single family frequently had obligations to several seigneurs, each of them compiling terriers at different times. By casting a wide net, and facilitated by the fact that most terriers have an index or table of contents, it is frequently possible to compile an extensive list of dated citations describing a single family, suitable for analysis.
We will have more to say about the terriers and how to make use of them. For now, here are two accounts of the project:
Every few weeks there is a new recording of a great choral masterpiece of the Baroque era. The Vivaldi Gloria, Bach's B-minor Mass, the various oratorios and anthems of Handel, all of these are on the short list of works that every new ensemble has to record. Unless my ears deceive me, most of these new recordings are going to have a short shelf-life. They will make most listeners cringe!
The thing that distinguishes these works is the presence of the chorus, and thus the text. It was not enough, apparently, that all sorts of odd theories were advanced for the performance of instrumental music of the past. The next step has been taken, the other shoe has fallen: now we have odd theories about choral diction that are so obtrusive that they get in the way of the meaning of the words.
Without naming names, we heard a recording of the Vivaldi Gloria in which the choral director apparently thought that the beat should coincide with the vowels of each syllable. Initial consonants should fall before the beat. Now, in normal speech, or even normal singing, the question of where the "ictus" falls is a matter of milliseconds or less. The theoretical question of whether the "ictus" should be on the G, the L, or the O or the word Gloria should not matter very much. But in the hands of one director, we hear the word Gloria turned into something like Go-loria, which is just silly! A theory of diction has become so exaggerated that it makes the entire piece a parody of itself.
Another example of this sort of meddling turned up in a new recording of Bach's B-Minor Mass. The director in question, with a French ensemble, somehow convinced his tiny chorus (about 10 not very strong voices, if I counted right) to terminate many repeated syllables abruptly between notes (Ele, e-e, e-e, e-e, Ele-e-e, e-e, e-e-i-son). Not only is the use of the glottal stop highly suspect in terms of the "cantabile style" advocated by Bach, as well as in vocal technique in general, it clearly gets in the way of the text of the mass. The same director managed to put two syllables in the word Pax: Pa-, ks ! On the other hand, he also managed to make some of the choruses sound like abstract exercises in counterpoint, as if there was no text and no meaning at all, by de-emphaisizing all of the natural accents and the superb prosody that Bach achieved by the adroit combination of the setting of the words with such contrapuntal devices as fugue, stretto, and so forth. (The director may have been led astray by the way Bach marked the instrumental parts at several places in the Kyrie, assuming that those markings should also apply to the choral parts when they sing the same motifs. The idea of parallelism in articulation is sometimes justified, but not when it disrupts the sense of words. A glance at the middle movement of the double violin concerto will prove that Bach sometimes required different articulations of the same motifs in order to clarify instrumental voices, even when the voices are imitating each other. Bach seldom marked articulation, and when he did, it is often in a context that makes the parts more distinct.)
Another effect of adding so many obtrusive details—so many that we have reached the realm of mannerism—is that the flow of the work is disrupted. By breaking the legato, by emphasizing the individual syllables, by de-emphasizing the meaning and the natural arch of each textual and musical phrase, the performance becomes "beaty". Attention is drawn away from Bach's wonderful architecture. It is no surprise that such a performance fails to move us!
All of which shows that throwing out common sense is not a good approach to performing Bach, a most practical composer.
For some reason, every Baroque specialty group, and nearly everyone else feels compelled to record Vivaldi's Four Seasons. I can't imagine who is buying all of these recordings, but I have noticed everyone tries to put an original "spin" on these well-known pieces. It seems to me that most of these attempts at originality are bound to fail, because they will conflict with the mainstream recordings that so many of us are playing our heads.
A few years ago, one group issued a recording that was widely referred to as the cowboy version, played as if for a barn dance. Yes, it was energetic, but I thought it lacked poetry. Some recordings use smaller forces, others seem to try to be as rough and out-of-tune as possible. Still others try to rework the phrasing, and for such a well-known piece, that is an extremely risky approach.
Among the worst of this legion of recordings are the ones that rely on rearranging the pieces in some way, either by substituting instruments, adding cadenzas and improvised passages, or by elaborate realizations of the continuo parts. The problem is that the original is so effective, even without a lot of historically-informed improvisations, that these attempts at improvement simply clutter up a masterpiece that is perfect the way it is. I would love to see the performing editions of these "improved" arrangements. I expect I would find, in small letters on the title page, the notation "arr. Beckmesser"!
Yet another broadcast concert "featuring" Stravinski. And once again, including the "Apollo" ballet. Please tell me, has anyone ever heard even one person say, "Oh, if only I could hear Stravinski's Apollo"? I'm serious. If you know of anyone who really wants to hear this piece, let us tell the world. Otherwise, if no one wants to hear it, why does it get played so often? Why, especially, when there is so much other repertoire that we would love to hear more often. Personally, I could do without Stravinski entirely, no matter how much dynamism and neo-classicism his music is supposed to contain; no matter how sensational it may have been when it was premiered; no matter how significant to the later near-demise of classical music it may have been. I attend concerts and I listen to classical music on the radio because I like the music, not because it is supposed to be good for me.
When the piece ended, the audience applauded. Presumably because it was over.
If you want to be a minimalist, just don't write anything.
—Richard Hoover, organist
In fact, I'm not entirely sure why I subscribed in the first place. I did most of my American genealogy the hard way, one reel of microfilm at a time, before there were indexes. It was a huge event when the first part of the index to the 1840 census of Ohio arrived at the Seattle Public Library. By the time Ancestry came along, I had already traced most of my American lines back to obscurity. With the exception of one family, still almost a complete mystery, the most recent immigrant in my pedigree arrived in 1805. The next most recent probably arrived about 1785-1790, and before that, all the families in my pedigree seem to be colonial. In other words, Ancestry was helpful for tying up some loose ends, helping other people, and so forth.
At first, I had a US Deluxe subscription, which covered most of what Ancestry had "indexed" at that point. The indexes were frequently terrible. I remember one case in particular: when the Massachusetts vital records (up to 1850) were first added, it was only the headings at the tops of the pages that were indexed! In other words, it was not possible to locate individuals by using the index! Last time I looked, there were several thousand people with the first name of "Jepe" or "Jepee", the result of someone making the elementary mistake of misreading the double S in early handwriting. In response to the terrible indexes, all the genealogy clubs presented seminars about how to find records that were lost in the indexes.
Eventually the immigration records were split off as a separate subscription item. As I was then helping people locate immigrants from France and Switzerland, I added the immigration records to my subscription.
Ancestry lost no time in billing my credit card when my subscription came due. However, a couple years ago the automatic billing failed, possibly because there was a new expiration date on my credit card. There was no notice from Ancestry, and so my "deluxe" subscription lapsed. I didn't discover this until several months later. Investigating further, I was surprised to see that I was still subscribed to the immigration records, but not to anything else. Reasoning that the subscription renewal date for the immigration records package would arrive in a few months, and making no change to my account, I expected that that remnant of the subscription would soon lapse as well.
I was surprised, then, when I spotted a charge for the renewal of the immigration records subscription. I have no idea how they managed to charge me for that, since I had not given Ancestry any additional information about my credit card. No refunds were possible, so I cancelled my subscription then and there.
This is probably not the worst tale of "customer service" gone wrong, but it was enough to dissuade me from ever subscribing to Ancestry again. Besides, I can't swallow the idea that companies such as Ancestry should be charging such a high price for information that is the birthright of every American!
I have to admit, though, that if I were a beginning genealogist with an American pedigree, it would be worthwhile to have access to Ancestry in order to collect all the necessary census records. Eventually, those records should be available for free from FamilySearch and other sources. When that happens, companies such as Ancestry will have to develop better content and do a much better job indexing it, or they will not survive.
—John McCoy
