Delayed sadness

As I was driving home this evening, I tuned my radio to NPR. I listened for a while and then realized that something was missing. It's the Sunday after the election. There has been turmoil. There has been upset. There has been much bru-ha-ha. What there wasn't was a pithy and insightful "Letter from America" by Alistair Cooke. Though I was sad to hear of his death several months back, I never really felt the lack until this evening. In point of fact, I don't think I've ever before really had this sensation regarding someone I didn't personally know.

Mr. Cooke, I miss you. Rest in peace.

L'Orfeo

In Italy, during the last bit of the renaissance, Claudio Monteverdi was born. At the time, the music of the renaissance had reached a pinnacle of complexity and power that was at once its greatest glory and its downfall. During his life, Monteverdi wrote a number of books of madrigals of haunting beauty and complexity including "Madrigali guerrieri et amorosi," his last. As he was rising to the top of the musical community in Italy, a new form of music was taking shape that was a rebellion against the complexity of the then current musical form. This new style was what we now call baroque. Monteverdi embraced this and, in 1607, wrote what was to be a ground breaking piece of music: L'Orfeo. Commonly recognized as the first great opera (it was a new form,) L'Orfeo set the stage for the great baroque musical dramas that would follow. Reflecting the renaissance fascination with ancient mythology and philosophy, this opera was written to tell the story of Orpheus.
( The story of Orpheus )

It seems somehow suitable that the first great musical drama of the baroque period, from which came some of the greatest musical masterpieces of all time, should tell the tale of the greatest musician ever to have lived.

Monteverdi was, in a sense, both the last great master of the renaissance and the first great baroque composer. He created music that combined the greatest artistry of the renaissance period with the new style and clarity of the emerging baroque form. In the process, he created some of the most heart-rendingly beautiful music ever performed. L'Orfeo is such a masterpiece. It is hauntingly sad and wildly merry, glorious and stately at points, melodic and soulful at others.

I recommend it highly.

"Adventures on OKCupid" or "Why Psychometrics is so cool. "

A while back, I found a web site called OKCupid. For those of you who are unfamiliar with it, it is a dating site that includes a personality and compatibility test with a truly unreasonable number of questions. Being a sucker for personality testing, I just had to try it. One very,very bored night I sat down and answered about 1500 questions. The test measures you along a number of axes and compares you to others to give a compatibility rating both for platonic and romantic relationships.

I've received very little in the way of response from those that I've contacted. I'm not certain why, but I suspect that I am somewhat lacking in the mad personal-writing skillz. It may be that it's a holdover from a hobby I used to have when I lived in DC. The City Paper there (like the Boston Phoenix, but less self-consciously hip and much less sanitized for your protection) offered free personal ads. Every year, I would post a strange, scary ad to see who would respond. An example might be something like:

"Authoritarian fundamentalist Christian burn victim seeks submissive female for repentance and spanking."

Or something of that sort.

The current profile and picture seem to scare people away almost as effectively.

This lack of response notwithstanding, I have discovered something truly fantastic as I've played with the site. Of my top twenty or so matches on the site, several of them I already know. It seems that the testing really works because everyone that I've met that is rated over 80% or so has made my heart-rate increase after only about 10 minutes of conversation. It's almost freakish in its accuracy. On further investigation, I've found that several of my friends have experienced the same thing.

Somehow, this dating site seems to have created a psychological testing method that works better than almost any I've seen. Not only that, but they're applying it to the real world. It is hard to express how exciting this is to me.

Oh, for anyone that would care to examine my oh-so-frightening profile, my username on www.okcupid.com is thrakazog2.