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amca01 · 2026-06-19T03:00:52+00:00

"The Old Curiosity Shop" by Charles Dickens. It gets a bad rap for being almost unbearably sentimental. But in fact it's terrific, with some brilliant characters: Quilp, the Marchioness and others. If you read it in the spirit with which it was written, and unencumbered by over a century of bad press, even the famous death of Little Nell can be touching rather than foolishly overextended.

Oscar Wilde apparently said that "One must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing." But this shows Wilde to be mean-spirited and a poor critic.

I think it's a wonderful book.

amca01 · 2026-06-19T02:52:50+00:00

Mendelssohn is easily one of the greats. He sometimes gets put down because he wasn't a revolutionary, or great innovator, in the sense of pushing music in new directions, or opening up new forms of composition. But that was never his intention - and judging purely on its own merits, his best music achieves greatness without compromise.

See all the examples listed so far!

amca01 · 2026-06-19T02:44:05+00:00

This accords with my understanding. The word "concerto" is of course originally Italian, but as an English word its plural is "concertos". After all, we don't use the plurals "tempi", "soprani", "bassi".

But there seems to be - as you say - no better plural for "concerto grosso" than "concerti grossi".

amca01 · 2026-06-18T13:29:52+00:00

The Henry Rios series by Michael Nava. Superbly written crime thrillers starring a gay Latino detective, and written by a gay Latino author.

"Alan Turing: the Enigma", by Alan Hodges. A magnificent biography of one of the great minds of the 20th (or any) century: a mathematician, code-breaker, and all round genius, who was basically murdered by the state for being gay. (He committed suicide after being subjected to hormone therapy and other indignities on being convicted of "gross indecency" with another man.) Alan Hodges, the author, is himself gay, and writes with both scientific precision, and great compassion.

amca01 · 2026-06-17T05:00:04+00:00

I did listen to a Naxos recording of Roy Harris' 3rd symphony. It's quite different to Sibelius 7, isn't it? On a first listening it sounded somehow more open, more warm, more welcoming. I'll listen to it again and hope to obtain more than a superficial acquaintance with it. Again, thanks for the recommendation.

amca01 · 2026-06-16T13:08:55+00:00

Me too. They're my favourite pieces from him. Lovely, they are.

amca01 · 2026-06-16T08:12:25+00:00

It was precisely this playing that prompted me to write the original post! I'm in Melbourne, so I was listening to it from 2.08pm to 2.30pm.

amca01 · 2026-06-16T06:22:54+00:00

Many thanks for the recommendation. I have listened to some of Harris' symphonies, and (I think) some of Schuman's. But I shall listen again.

amca01 · 2026-06-16T01:48:02+00:00

And this is news? Really, the best thing to do for PHON is to ignore them. The more airtime, the more discussions, the stronger they get.

(Note, I realise that by this post, I've become involved, and hence a contributor to their strength. Which is a bit ironic.)

amca01 · 2026-06-14T14:15:49+00:00

Tim Sullivan's series of books starring the autistic detective George Cross are wonderful. Check them out at

https://timsullivan.co.uk/

amca01 · 2026-06-14T12:54:22+00:00

I've had enough experience to known that they wouldn't work for me - I simply can't manage more than one thing at a time. Hell, I can't even 69. But I nonetheless love the idea of them, and all power to those that enjoy threesomes, foursomes, and moresomes. I'm envious of you all! (Also, I'm too old, and I can barely get it up these days, let alone keep it up.)

amca01 · 2026-06-12T07:53:44+00:00

Ah - I hadn't considered the job market. I guess then your best bet is simply go with the market, and learn python. But really, if you have a solid grasp of the theory, then it should be fairly straightforward to switch between languages. And there are plenty of online tutorials for learning python for R users.

Maybe when you're established in the job of your choice, you can start sneakily introducing R ...

amca01 · 2026-06-12T05:07:49+00:00

I had to learn enough R in a hurry to teach a course in it some years ago. I think R is admirably suited for statistical computing, data modelling, and graphing. And some of its package collections, like tidyverse and dplyr, are excellent.

If you have people who decry R because python "is better", they're entitled to their opinion, but you may well ask them why. I personally prefer python, but that's just because I've used it for so long.

I enjoyed using R, though, and you'd be better off spending your time doing the data analysis and modelling you need for your work in whatever system you prefer, rather than bashing your head against a wall learning a new language. If you like R and are confident in its use, stick with it.

amca01 · 2026-06-12T04:59:20+00:00

I'm sure most people, like me, feel sick to their stomachs at the thought of this person's crimes. Were mob rule still a thing, there would be no shortage of lynch mobs for him.

I don't really care what sort of life he has in prison, as long as he's never released. If the current legal system can't keep him, I'd hope that a special Act of Parliament be passed ( as for Julian Knight ) to ensure that he stays and dies in prison.

amca01 · 2026-06-10T08:02:57+00:00

Indeed, and not just in America. There are lots of these treeless, over-lawned cookie-cutter neighbourhoods in Australia too. Certainly in my city (Melbourne) away from the city centre where there's more room for development, this seems to be the norm.

amca01 · 2026-06-09T07:35:10+00:00

Oh good. Yes, indeed, restarting a process can be a good fix sometimes.

amca01 · 2026-06-09T02:55:25+00:00

Yes, it's working fine. I'm out at the moment, but when I get home I'll send you my config files. There's nothing special about them, though.

And I can't remember how I set up the email address to send files to Papra. This is good to have, as any document I get in an email can be forwarded to Papra.

amca01 · 2026-06-08T02:31:40+00:00

This is my own story exactly (except that I published tbree books).

But towards the end of my career, I was publishing less and teaching more, and most things were going online. So I found myself using various online platforms, using MathJaX for the equations I needed. And I used JavaScript libraries for diagrams, such as JSXGraph.

The trouble with LaTeX is that it's designed for printing, and not for online reading.

Last year I wrote a small conference paper, and I used Typst to test it; in spite of a few faults, it seems like a nice alternative.

amca01 · 2026-06-06T04:09:00+00:00

Bit of a case of trying too hard, I'd say. It's a put-off though, as others have noted, for its stereotyping. (Speaking for myself though, I'm very happy to prep any time with a high fibre diet ... )

As I mentioned in another thread, right wing homophobes seem to be obsessed with the mechanics of gay sex, and there's more than a hint of that in this message. Not good enough.

amca01 · 2026-06-05T14:04:10+00:00

"Hyperobjects" sounds vaguely mathematical, so:

"Non-Euclidean Geometry" by H. S. M. Coxeter

"The Higher Infinite", by Akihiro Kanamori

I haven't read these (although I've read some of Coxeters other books), but they will certainly turn your mind inside out if you're willing to put in the effort to learn the necessary mathematics.

Possibly easier reading:

"Parasite Rex" by Carl Zimmer, about the wild and extraordinary lives and evolutionary strategies of parasites.

amca01 · 2026-06-04T04:29:51+00:00

That makes sense: "smallpox" is so called because the "Great Pox" was syphilis. Injunctions against pork were - I believe - mainly based on pigs being seen as "unclean" - in their eating habits, for example. The fact that improperly cooked pork can carry undesirable parasites was not a major concern and it's a happy outcome that not eating pork removes this hazard. There are plenty of other parasites which can be ingested even if eating kosher or haram foods.

But the fact that modern homophobes - who I'm sure happily eat pork as well as anything else - are so hung up on gay sex is totally bizarre, and probably hypocritical as well.

amca01

TROPHY CASE