Random Thoughts

We've been getting kids involved in classical/symphonic music by sending them to the movies where the symphony performa the score live over the movie playing. LW #3 and a friend went to see... Jurassic Park, I think, a few weeks ago.
 
We've been getting kids involved in classical/symphonic music by sending them to the movies where the symphony performa the score live over the movie playing. LW #3 and a friend went to see... Jurassic Park, I think, a few weeks ago.

Wonderful.
 
We've been getting kids involved in classical/symphonic music by sending them to the movies where the symphony performa the score live over the movie playing. LW #3 and a friend went to see... Jurassic Park, I think, a few weeks ago.

When I was 8 or 9 my mom bought me a set of LPs. They were full of music and biographies of the great composers. I listened to them over and over. I fell in love with with Bach, whom my mom didn't like at all for having a terrible time learning him as she was taking piano lessons when she was a kid. She was a great pianist and eventually learned to appreciate Bach.

I fell in love with Chopin, Palchebel, Albinoni, Mozart and more all for different reasons.

I've attended performances of the BSO and Boston Pops many times at Symphony Hall over the years under different conductors. I loved the Pops under John Wliiams, Fiedler and Keith Lockhart. The last live performance my mom attended was a number years ago when I got us tickets to see The Pops under Lockhart at the wonderful Meadobrook outdoor venue up here in Gilford, NH near Lake Winnipesaukee. Interestingly it was a week after I took her to see The Australian Pink Floyd which blew her away. The Pops show had her in tears of joy as they touched her Red, White and Blue heart.

What incredible memories.

But the one that struck my soul the deepest was when my ex wife and I went out to Western MA to the insane magnificence of Tanglewood to see Seiji Ozawa conduct one of my favorite pieces.

I mean, just fucking wow.

Anyone who knows me even a little bit knows my deep affection for rock and metal. But I embrace anything which moves me and symphony music is close to the top of the list.
 
My friend Buck just posted this on Facebook. My response follows.

FB_IMG_1668051253446.jpg

Hmm. I expect a great deal from my fellow man for I know what they are capable of. That they often fall short of those expectations in no way blunts the clear view of what is possible which is why I never lose faith in humanity.

 
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Just a bit ago posted on Book of Faces. The responses have been brilliant. Especially by those who were there for the destruction.

Never forget and understand as Joe does that ones circumstances play a part but are far from what makes a great life.

Now let's rent hotels and tear out the walls. I've been there, done that and some of you were there in the 90s with me too. What a fucking party. :)

No, really, don't do that. 😂 That's someone else's property. But the principle underlying it all stands.

Live life on your terms, make sure they are good terms which will lead to your happiness, but dammit, live life on your terms.


View: https://youtu.be/BXWvKDSwvls
 
Hedy was indeed and incredible woman.

A human which so sadly many fail to see is imossible to even approach being like.

The ability is there within us to approach or surpass such a human.

Take a good hard, honest look at yourself and tell me the laundry is a daunting task.

KILLER COSMONAUT (11/9): Remembering Austrian-American actress, inventor, and film producer Hedy Lamarr on her birthday (November 9, 1914 – January 19, 2000), whose film credits include Algiers (1938), Lady of the Tropics (1939), Boom Town (1940), H.M. Pulham, Esq. (1941), White Cargo (1942), Samson and Delilah (1949), and The Female Animal (1958).

At the beginning of World War II, she and composer George Antheil developed a radio guidance system for Allied torpedoes that used spread spectrum and frequency hopping technology to counteract the threat of jamming. Although the US Navy did not adopt the technology until the 1960s, the principles of their work are incorporated into modern Bluetooth and GPS technology.

FB_IMG_1668122618862.jpg
 
Hedy was indeed and incredible woman.

A human which so sadly many fail to see is imossible to even approach being like.

The ability is there within us to approach or surpass such a human.

Take a good hard, honest look at yourself and tell me the laundry is a daunting task.

KILLER COSMONAUT (11/9): Remembering Austrian-American actress, inventor, and film producer Hedy Lamarr on her birthday (November 9, 1914 – January 19, 2000), whose film credits include Algiers (1938), Lady of the Tropics (1939), Boom Town (1940), H.M. Pulham, Esq. (1941), White Cargo (1942), Samson and Delilah (1949), and The Female Animal (1958).

At the beginning of World War II, she and composer George Antheil developed a radio guidance system for Allied torpedoes that used spread spectrum and frequency hopping technology to counteract the threat of jamming. Although the US Navy did not adopt the technology until the 1960s, the principles of their work are incorporated into modern Bluetooth and GPS technology.

View attachment 13657
It's Hedley!
 
If things had gone as planned, I should’ve been in Cincinnati right now after surprising the girls with a trip great wolf lodge. Elizabeth started getting sick on Saturday. I rescheduled that trip for the week after school ends not knowing if Elizabeth would be better. Good thing, she is still sick likely with rsv.
 
My friend Scott just posted this question and his answer was quite practical given current economics. The grocery store.

My answer follows in full honestly. 😂

"U got 30 min to spend $100,000 in one store where u going?"

JL:

My personality as explained by the Briggs-Meyers test I took in psychology class my first year of college says that I will have best of things I love yet no essentials. How right they are. I'm going to a good high end electronics store and buying a new $100,000 home theater system.

I will do so with the rationale that if I'm going to starve to death I'm doing it my way in total enjoyment of passions. 😂 ♥ ✌
 
My friend Scott just posted this question and his answer was quite practical given current economics. The grocery store.

My answer follows in full honestly. 😂

"U got 30 min to spend $100,000 in one store where u going?"

JL:

My personality as explained by the Briggs-Meyers test I took in psychology class my first year of college says that I will have best of things I love yet no essentials. How right they are. I'm going to a good high end electronics store and buying a new $100,000 home theater system.

I will do so with the rationale that if I'm going to starve to death I'm doing it my way in total enjoyment of passions. 😂 ♥ ✌
Agreed. Back in the day in the Boston area it would have been Tweeter.
 
Agreed. Back in the day in the Boston area it would have been Tweeter.

Without question. I used to have subscriptions to various audio magazines when I was a teen like Stereo Review and such. Every Sunday when my mom would do the grocery shopping near a Tweeter she would take me there afterwards so I could sample, revel in the great sound and plan my next purchases for the maximum quality to fit my budget.

What a great store.

My first pieces of that system was a Christmas present from my mom and dad, a Nakamichi reviever to power the Infinity speakers I had recently purchased.

Mind blown.

The last time I was in Burligton, MA there was a Tweeter right off the highway by the mall. Don't know that it's still there but I most definitely made a stop.
 
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How are these for some random early morning thoughts with big implications.

I have a friend Felix. He was born and raised in Germany and now lives in Arizona.

We share a philosophy. He has always stuck me as very German in his thinking. By that I mean very rigid, strict and not much capable or interested in outside of the box original thinking which appears to be a part of my nature. I have an inkling this has something to do with the German language he is native to. I've seen the same rigid and strick thinking in many who speak German as a 1st language. Very good engineers for this reason.

My friend Silvia who I've mentioned elsewhere I'm helping to emigrate to the States and will be staying with me grew up in Switzerland speaking German. She has this same rigid thinking which I find off-putting as she pursues a romantic relationship with me for all the right reasons and understanding of me. I feel little of the deep love she has for me currently and I find it's that rigidity which my absolute free spirit seems to reject. A free spirit she seems to be craving.

As Felix grows in fluidity of the English language his mind is, which is brilliant is becoming far less rigid and freer.

This gives me something to ponder about, not only this great and original thought of his but also my view of whats possible with Silvia.

" (On unusual articulation)

[coffee rambling]

TL;DR I have a theory on how a genius who cannot explain themselves to themselves or others actually stores their knowledge: by adding an unlabeled concept-relationship layer

The rational faculty is the inherent ability of rational agents to form statements and questions.

A statement is an expression of a premise.

All your premises make up the whole of your knowledge.

All premises are stored as relationships of concepts - which are rooted in percepts, which are automatic combinations of sensations - which are detected by the senses - which are your only link to existence.

We understand the world primarily in terms of questions and statements.

To gain deeper or more explicit understanding - we articulate our knowledge - and contemplate the gaps, if any.

With that introduction out of the way, to the point:

Steve Jobs was legitimately good at designing products - but was unable to articulate why.

This bothers me a lot.

I first thought that this means he held all his relevant knowledge implicit - and could not explain himself, even to himself.

It occurred to me that there's another possible explanation:

There is not just one way to articulate your thoughts.

There are not just words, grammar and sentences to structure thoughts.

Fundamentally, thoughts are conceptual relationships - and word-statements are just symbolic ways to utilize them in a structured way.

Word-statements make it possible to communicate thoughts to yourself and others.

However, they are not the only way to utilize conceptual relationships.

There are tons of ways humans can symbolically articulate their thoughts:

1. Diagrams

2. Code

3. Sculptures

4. Music

5. Math

6. Braille

...



...and these are primarily for communicating ideas.


There's yet another symbolic way of articulating - but only internally, without being able to communicate it to others:

New conceptual relationships - themselves.

You can create a conceptual relationship - that symbolically stands for another conceptual relationship - without having any audiovisual, tactile or otherwise sensory-relevant representation.

As evidence, consider "the way from your home to the airport".

There's no statement or "video" in your head for this - but you have explicit knowledge of it - that you can choose to further articulate in an audiovisual way.

The "way to the airport" itself however, is stored as a sequence of conceptual relationships.

If you attempt to imagine it, you will likely think of home location linked to the next location until you reach the airport location.

Until I asked you to label this thing as "way to the airport" you probably did not explicitly store this under "way to the airport" - but held it implicitly, unlabeled in your mind.

I think Jobs did something similar.

He did articulate the design principles - but only in the form of unlabeled concept-relationships.

These principles were highly available to him - but they were not stored in a way that he could have communicated them to others.

It's similar with blind people who get to see for the first time and are asked to describe the contrast of seeing to not seeing to another blind person.

The formerly blind person cannot do it - because the blind-knowledge and the seeing-knowledge are not stored in mutually articulable ways."
 
How are these for some random early morning thoughts with big implications.

I have a friend Felix. He was born and raised in Germany and now lives in Arizona.

We share a philosophy. He has always stuck me as very German in his thinking. By that I mean very rigid, strict and not much capable or interested in outside of the box original thinking which appears to be a part of my nature. I have an inkling this has something to do with the German language he is native to. I've seen the same rigid and strick thinking in many who speak German as a 1st language. Very good engineers for this reason.

My friend Silvia who I've mentioned elsewhere I'm helping to emigrate to the States and will be staying with me grew up in Switzerland speaking German. She has this same rigid thinking which I find off-putting as she pursues a romantic relationship with me for all the right reasons and understanding of me. I feel little of the deep love she has for me currently and I find it's that rigidity which my absolute free spirit seems to reject. A free spirit she seems to be craving.

As Felix grows in fluidity of the English language his mind is, which is brilliant is becoming far less rigid and freer.

This gives me something to ponder about, not only this great and original thought of his but also my view of whats possible with Silvia.

" (On unusual articulation)

[coffee rambling]

TL;DR I have a theory on how a genius who cannot explain themselves to themselves or others actually stores their knowledge: by adding an unlabeled concept-relationship layer

The rational faculty is the inherent ability of rational agents to form statements and questions.

A statement is an expression of a premise.

All your premises make up the whole of your knowledge.

All premises are stored as relationships of concepts - which are rooted in percepts, which are automatic combinations of sensations - which are detected by the senses - which are your only link to existence.

We understand the world primarily in terms of questions and statements.

To gain deeper or more explicit understanding - we articulate our knowledge - and contemplate the gaps, if any.

With that introduction out of the way, to the point:

Steve Jobs was legitimately good at designing products - but was unable to articulate why.

This bothers me a lot.

I first thought that this means he held all his relevant knowledge implicit - and could not explain himself, even to himself.

It occurred to me that there's another possible explanation:

There is not just one way to articulate your thoughts.

There are not just words, grammar and sentences to structure thoughts.

Fundamentally, thoughts are conceptual relationships - and word-statements are just symbolic ways to utilize them in a structured way.

Word-statements make it possible to communicate thoughts to yourself and others.

However, they are not the only way to utilize conceptual relationships.

There are tons of ways humans can symbolically articulate their thoughts:

1. Diagrams

2. Code

3. Sculptures

4. Music

5. Math

6. Braille

...



...and these are primarily for communicating ideas.


There's yet another symbolic way of articulating - but only internally, without being able to communicate it to others:

New conceptual relationships - themselves.

You can create a conceptual relationship - that symbolically stands for another conceptual relationship - without having any audiovisual, tactile or otherwise sensory-relevant representation.

As evidence, consider "the way from your home to the airport".

There's no statement or "video" in your head for this - but you have explicit knowledge of it - that you can choose to further articulate in an audiovisual way.

The "way to the airport" itself however, is stored as a sequence of conceptual relationships.

If you attempt to imagine it, you will likely think of home location linked to the next location until you reach the airport location.

Until I asked you to label this thing as "way to the airport" you probably did not explicitly store this under "way to the airport" - but held it implicitly, unlabeled in your mind.

I think Jobs did something similar.

He did articulate the design principles - but only in the form of unlabeled concept-relationships.

These principles were highly available to him - but they were not stored in a way that he could have communicated them to others.

It's similar with blind people who get to see for the first time and are asked to describe the contrast of seeing to not seeing to another blind person.

The formerly blind person cannot do it - because the blind-knowledge and the seeing-knowledge are not stored in mutually articulable ways."

My response to this:

Very wonderfully interesting thought to ponder over my breakfast beer. 😆

Your coffee ramble here "feels" right. Now let me think about it clearly and see if it works.

Thank you for this and good morning. 🍻

Jobs was famously very visual in his thinking. No doubt that he "saw" how things should be in his mind and browbeat engineers and product managers and even Woz to help him implement his vision.

Former top Apple marketer Jean Louis Gassee once counseled that to make an idea come to life, that one should develop a lexicon of unique verbs that described what I was trying to do. The more complete and distinct one can describe this as yet unexplored territory, the better.

I think the only thing that would separate a "genius" from the average person here would be volume, clarity and speed. As in, the length of such a conceptual relationship chain, the amount of detail contained within each, and the speed with which it can all be processed. I suspect there is a relationship especially between speed and volume, as in, the faster you can go, the more context you can fit before you drop it, as focus seems to be time-dependant. The longer you try to focus on something, the harder it gets.

I think everybody does it to some degree, but our ability to do so exists upon a spectrum, with those on the higher end of ability being labelled as geniuses, and those on the low end being labelled as unimaginative idiots.

This suggestion is compatible with rational philosophy -where the idea is that you can create your own concepts (and corresponding words) in your professional context if it makes sense to you

Basically: Terms aren't primarily a social/cultural/communication thing, but something to be invented/used by anyone for their own benefit - by "thinking in those terms"
 
Without question. I used to have subscriptions to various audio magazines when I was a teen like Stereo Review and such. Every Sunday when my mom would do the grocery shopping near a Tweeter she would take me there afterwards so I could sample, revel in the great sound and plan my next purchases for the maximum quality to fit my budget.

What a great store.

My first pieces of that system was a Christmas present from my mom and dad, a Nakamichi reviever to power the Infinity speakers I had recently purchased.

Mind blown.

The last time I was in Burligton, MA there was a Tweeter right off the highway by the mall. Don't know that it's still there but I most definitely made a stop.
I could have spent so much money there, but didn't have it to do so.

A runner up kind of store for the original question might have been Lechmere's.

Anyway, for Tweeter:

In March 2007, Tweeter announced the closing of 49 stores and the layoffs of 650 employees, and shuttered all of its stores in California and most of its stores in the Southeast.[15] In June 2007 Tweeter Home Entertainment filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and its assets were purchased by Schultze Asset Management at auction on July 13, 2007, after a failed reorganization plan.[16] Schultze reformed the company as Tweeter Opco LLC.

After an attempt to revive the company, Tweeter Opco filed for Chapter 11 on November 5, 2008.[16] Prior to filing the company had started going out of business sales in anticipation of the holiday season. However, a dispute among creditors regarding operating cash to continue the sales forced the closure of all stores on December 3, 2008, the firing of all 600 employees and the company filed a conversion of its Chapter 11 reorganization to a Chapter 7 liquidation.[17] Customers reported paid goods and deposits were part of frozen assets[18] which eventually forced them to file as creditors in the liquidation.[19]
 
what were those high end audiophile stores in boston area in late 80s called? my ex was an audiophile, and helped me put together my first system. amp/preamp, turntable, receiver and speakers(used magnaplanar speakers) i believe.
 
what were those high end audiophile stores in boston area in late 80s called? my ex was an audiophile, and helped me put together my first system. amp/preamp, turntable, receiver and speakers(used magnaplanar speakers) i believe.
One was Tweeter which I linked above.

Another one I remember going to in the 80s was Tech HiFi. I want to say it was on route 1 somewhere around Dedham.
 

Sandy Ruby​

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sandow "Sandy" Sacks Ruby (July 23, 1941 – November 22, 2008) was an American mathematician and entrepreneur who helped found the electronics retail company Tech HiFi.[1]

Biography[edit]​

He was born on July 23, 1941 in Orange, New Jersey, to Myron Ruby and Leonore Sacks. The earliest years of his life were spent on army bases as his father served as an officer in the United States Army during World War II but the rest of his childhood was mostly spent in Essex Fells and South Orange. After graduation from Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts he was accepted into Harvard where he studied mathematics, he later attended M.I.T.[1]

While at M.I.T. he and a fellow student by the name of John Strohbeen started selling stereos out of their dorm room, a business which would grow into Tech HiFi, one of the largest consumer electronics chains in the country. Ruby and Strohbeen opened their first store at the corner of Massachusetts Avenue and Vassar street in Cambridge. The business had expanded to more than eighty stores by the time they went out of business during the mid eighties.[2]
 
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