Subscribe to Blog via Email
Join 296 other subscribers
Archive:
Month: July 2016
What are the best clarinet concertos ever?
Well, this will be an odd response. Clarinet Concerto (Nielsen). Which is a companion piece, to my mind, to Symphony No. 5 (Nielsen). Answered 2016-07-31 [Originally posted on http://quora.com/What-are-the-best-clarinet-concertos-ever/answer/Nick-Nicholas-5]
Is Charlie Chaplin’s “The Great Dictator” a good watch?
This has already been answered by Mark Blanchard in the negative, in: Mark Blanchard’s answer to Do any credible scholars consider the speech given at the end of the “Great Dictator” to be one of the best in history? I put The Great Dictator on Hulu last night, with high expectations: I’d known of the […]
Why is the heliocentric model still attributed to Copernicus?
For the same reason we don’t attribute the Atomic theory to Democritus (or Jain cosmology), but to John Dalton. Democritus came up with a theory that there are indivisible atoms of matter. Heraclitus that fire was the first principle of all things, and Thales that it was water. These philosophers were philosophising; what they were […]
Dimitra in the lab
Dimitra Triantafyllidou’s answer to What’s the most embarrassing thing you have done in your work life? I was in my first year of my PhD. It’s that time when you try sooooo hard to impress your supervisor. You are so eager to prove yourself. You are the first one to get into the lab and […]
Where did you meet your spouse, what were your lives like when you met, and what were the key events and circumstances that led to you being together?
Well, Anon, I was 39. Had had two and a half girlfriends, and had just been dumped by one of them after a six month relationship. I’d pretty much resigned myself that I was going to hit 40 without a partner, and that would be the end of it. People at my workplace heard too […]
Did Henry Kissinger ever usurp the function of Richard Nixon, taking executive decision without assent?
I can’t recall an instance where Kissinger did, though there were plenty of instances where he undermined Nixon or disobeyed instructions. I am reading Dallek’s Nixon and Kissinger right now though, and will update if I find an instance. Haldeman came closer by routinely failing to pass on Nixon’s enraged instructions to fire everybody. In […]
How come there is only one written musical language for western music, when there are so many different spoken languages?
OP, your question appears to be about musical notation (written language), not about the language of music per se. Western musical notation developed out of Mensural notation , which in turn developed out of Neumatic notation. The Byzantine Notation system is an independent development of neumatic notation, used in the Greek church, which looks nothing […]
I want to start a polyamorous/polygamous lifestyle. What are the most important things I need to know/be warned about?
As a monogamous individual (hello, wife!) I’m not well placed to answer; but I’ll add a tidbit of my own limited experience, to corroborate what Claire J. Vannette said at the end of her answer. In my early twenties, I hanged out with a group of poly folk. I was in a brief relationship with […]
How would you describe the dialect and accent of the languages which you can speak?
Ooh! Ooh! All the good people are here! (And if not, they will be, dammit.) The languages I speak or have spoken with some degree of spontaneity: English, Greek, French, German, Italian, Latin, Esperanto, Lojban, Klingon *deep breath* English Australian English, probably General vanilla. Nothing particularly “ethnic” about my accent (the “woggy” accent of my […]
Why do we call 5th century BC Greek the Classical period?
Classics The word Classics is derived from the Latin adjective classicus, meaning “belonging to the highest class of citizens”. The word was originally used to describe the members of the highest class in ancient Rome. By the 2nd century AD the word was used in literary criticism to describe writers of the highest quality. For […]