MORE REASONS TO FIGHT CBC's CHANGES

Just look at this list (kudos to Peter McGillvray for compiling this list on Facebook):

1. The CBC Young Composers Competition has not been held since March 9, 2003. It, as well as the CBC Young Performers Competition, have been suspended for the past four years. The Canada Council provided the funding for the $10,000.00 grand prize

.2. CBC erased the classical music budget for CBC Records in February 2008, precisely on the eve of their first Grammy win by Canadian violinist James Ehnes and the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra under Bramwell Tovey on the CBC Records label. Many artists, such as Measha Brueggergosman, launched their careers on a CBC Records label recording.

3. The commissioning budget previously devoted to commissioning new works from composers is now spread out to cover jazz, pop musicians, and some unspecified amount of contemporary music.

4. CBC cancelled Two New Hours, a multiple-award winning program that was aired for two hours a week in the incredibly prime time slot of Sundays 10pm to midnight. This program was dedicated to the music of living Canadian composers. It was cancelled in March 2007 in its 29th year.

5. CBC cancelled The Arts Report. The late Val Ross, an arts columnist for The Globe and Mail, lamented the loss of this particular radio segment, saying that it kept her in touch with important cultural developments across the country.

6. CBC cancelled Music For A While, which aired classical music daily from 6pm to 8pm. It has been replaced by Tonic, a jazz program which also features hip-hop, soul and world music.

7. CBC cancelled In Performance the flagship Classical concerts program. It was replaced by Canada Live, which has an uneven and unpredictable offering of funk and R and B bands, jazz, Middle eastern fusion music, throatsinging...

8. The proposed cuts for the Fall of 2008 represents further reductions in classical music content, eliminating classical music 6am to 10am and 3pm to 6pm.

9. The new hosts are not musicologists and have little depth of knowledge to share with radio listeners. Howard Dyck, for example, who is no longer hosting Saturday Afternoon at the Opera, is an Order of Canada recipient, a conductor and the recipient of numerous honourary degrees for his contribution to music in Canada. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Dyck Larry Lake, former host of Two New Hours, is a Toronto composer, performer and broadcaster. He is Artistic Director of the Canadian Electronic Ensemble, the oldest active live electronic music group in the world, now in its 35th season. Other hosts whose, such as Tom Allen, Eric Friesen, Rick Phillips are also giants in the field of music broadcasting.

10. The axing of the CBC Radio Orchestra: North America's 70 year old last remaining radio orchestra and platform for countless premieres of new Canadian compositions

11. Gone are Music & Company - Tom Allen's morning show, Here's to You - Catherine Belyea's (Formerly Shelley Solmes') all-request show, Studio Sparks - due to the venerable Eric Friesen's "retirement", and Disc Drive - Jurgen Gothe's popular drive-home show after almost 30 years. These changes come on the heels of last years round of cuts to vital programs such as Danielle Charbonneau's much-loved Music for Awhile; Larry Lake's new composer showcase Two New Hours; Symphony Hall - Canada's live orchestra recording showcase; The Singer and the Song - Catherine Belyea's excellent Classical vocal program; Northern Lights - the overnight Classical program beloved by Night Owls everywhere; The reformatting of In Performance- a primarily classical live performance show into the much-reviled Canada Live - a uniformly non-classical and completely unfocused hodge-podge of World music, soft pop, and sort-of Jazz; and the controversial replacement of veteran Howard Dyck from Saturday Afternoon at the Opera after many years of great service.

12. The CBC axing the Radio Orchestra one day citing lack of resources, and the next day buying hugely expensive full-page ad in the Globe and Mail to convince us how wonderful everything is going to be in their Brave New World

SAVE CLASSICAL MUSIC AT THE CBC

When I was younger, I always looked up to the CBC as a symbol of Canadian culture. From Hockey Night in Canada to the Passionate Eye, it was an organization of journalistic integrity, a place to find solace from the nonsense known as CNN, and a hub of the arts.

When I was younger, I loved CBC Radio 2. It was dominated by classical programming, with an enormous amount of Canadian content, reflecting the diverse and potent Canadian classical scene. It was a nice little refuge from Classicalk 96.3, which really, gets bland after you listen to the same stereotypical (pun intended) selections of classical music, like Fur Elise, Chopin Nocturne 1 and Beethoven's 5th Symphony.

When I was younger, I always liked the CBC Radio Orchestra, in Vancouver. The only remaining radio orchestra in North America, it had a mandate to perform classical music with a large percentage of Canadian conductors and soloists, as well as being responsible for premiering numerous numbers of newly commisioned compositions.

But you know what, the CBC has decided to change. Gone are the interesting shows and innovative programming, replaced with horrible and tasteless dramas about hockey wives and scnadals and bad reality TV shows. And they are removing most of CBC Radio 2's classical content, and replacing it with gar-bage. Oh, did I mention they are destroying the CBC Radio Orchestra, even after they WON A GRAMMY over other well-funded and better managed orchestras in the United States (even beating the almighty Boston Symphony)?

Now, if we take CBC's side of the issue, they will say promoting classical music so much is not reflective of the Canadian cultural demographic. But how can they be so blind, with so much talent (and I do not over inflate this term) coming out of this country. There are so many youth in this country who listen to Classical music. How is tommorow's youth going to hear classical music in the future? Those CD's, or (insert name of new device replacing CD's in 3 years) are very very expensive. Specifically, how is tommorow's youth going to hear the music of today's youth. How are we going to have new works commisioned by Canadian composers, when private interests (orchestras such as the TSO) can only include so much Canadian music, when they are catering to a paying and general audience?

So I ask you, PLEASE help us (the movement who are trying to stop them) to avert this disaster. I know many of you think these email initiatives don't accomplish anything, but sometimes, SOMETIMES, they do. A similar thing happend with Hockey Night 3 years ago, when they didn't want to renew Ron McLean's contract (the semi bald guy working with Don Cherry). Fans were outraged, did a similar thing, and got him back with a 6 year contract.

The addresses below are of IMPORTANT people! Richard_Stursberg@cbc.ca; mark_steinmetz@cbc.ca; jennifer_mcguire@cbc.ca; ht.lacroix@cbc.ca; AND NOT by commas as listed below. So, if you click on send and it doesn't work, try using the ; sign instead)1) copy the list of e-mails / copiez cette liste d'adresses2) add the e-mail of a local and/or national newspaper / ajoutez l'adresse d'un journal local ou national3) Copy one of the messages provided (if you don't have time to write your own) copiez un des message suivants (si vous n'avez pas le temps d'ecrire un vous-memes)3) click send / cliquez sur le button "send"Richard_Stursberg@cbc.ca, mark_steinmetz@cbc.ca, jennifer_mcguire@cbc.ca, ht.lacroix@cbc.ca, richard_stursberg@cbc.ca, Verner.J@parl.gc.ca, Min_Verner@pch.gc.ca, Harper.S@parl.gc.ca, Belanger.M@parl.gc.ca, angusc@parl.gc.ca, liaison@cbc.ca, auditoire@radio-canada.ca, liaison@radio-canada.ca, ombudsman@cbc.ca, ombudsman@radio-canada.ca[And here are some e-mails of journalists and big newspapers. Send me more contact information of CBC officials, newspapers, journalists and I will post it!opinions@metronouvelles.com, info@metronouvelles.com,letters@globeandmail.com, mlederman@globeandmail.com, jadams@globeandmail.com, scormier@ledevoir.com,ppapineau@ledevoir.com, fdoyon@ledevoir.com,sunletters@png.canwest.com, sunopinion@png.canwest.com, tabtips@png.canwest.com, provletters@png.canwest.com, smeurice@nationalpost.com, mhiggins@nationalpost.com,sstinson@nationalpost.com, wmoriarty@png.canwest.com, rguggi@png.canwest.com,submit@theherald.canwest.com, calgaryherald@reachcanada.com, letters@thecitizen.canwest.com, psimpson@thecitizen.canwest.com, letters@thegazette.canwest.com]

***To whom it may concernI am writing to express my immense dissatisfaction and anger with your decision to dismantle the CBC National Radio Orchestra.The National Radio Orchestra is the last remaining broadcasting ensemble in North America. Its mandate to commission and perform Canadian music makes it an invaluable resource for Canadian musicians and performers. Your decision to terminate it reveals an incredible shortsightedness and disrespect to the Canadian cultural values. I am outraged that this decision was taken without any consultation with the musical and cultural community and that the players and other concerned parties were deliberately left in the dark and wouldn’t have even known about this decision beforehand hadn’t it been a leak of information.I am extremely disappointed and enraged that you have decided to terminate one of the most important Canadian musical traditions.I ask you to show responsibility and respect to Canadian culture and to reverse your decision immediately.

Sincerely,
(insert name)

Thanks guys, I really would appreciate it! And so would the 80 odd musicians who will lose their jobs next year

Hidden brawl music?! (insert interrobang here)

For those who dont know the site The tanooki is a site dedicated to all things nintendo. Today they made a discovery of a number of songs that went unused in brawl on the actual game disc. The link to the mp3s is here: http://www.editorartist.com/album.php?id=smash_brawl_!_lost_tracks . this now brings the total music in the game to some number like 337 songs!

Anyways... till next time,
Aaron

Bump (blogger is dumb)

So I posted, but Blogger randomly ranks posts from when they were created... not from when they were actually posted... so since I started a post yesterday, it is down there somewhere... go scroll to the gameboy-ish pic =)

A quick review...

Brawl is awesome end of story.
















Seriously though, I was playing josh online a few days ago and honestly all I think the game lacks is voice chat. yesterday I looked at his accomplishments and he's done a lot less in the game than I have. This means I am one step closer to having a full accomplishments board than he is. Josh I challenge you (and anyone else willing to accept) to the meta game the first challenge being who can complete their accomplishments board first.

Techno "music" again!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJvM3m2hVzo

Despite Homestar Runner being pretty stupid for the most part, I'm clearly not the only one who thinks that techno music is bad.

Re: Where are all the posts?

As Josh clearly stated Brawl is taking up all of the time the two of us would usually spend at our computers, however since both Josh and I have now posted the others have no excuse. I too was in Israel with Josh and as stated it has a very different look to it than many of us would expect. I'm currently typing and playing brawl so one has to be more important so until next time.

Aaron.

Laminous chassepot

laminous (adj.): laminate, layered, composed of overlapping layers

chassepot (n.): officially known as Fusil modèle 1866, was a military breechloading rifle, famous as the arm of the French forces in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and 1871.

Coincidentally, a lamina in math is simply a closed surface (2-manifold) with a density function that you can integrate over to find the mass - very layerlike.

So, I have not posted since I came back from Indiana. Mainly because there were a bunch of things that I had to catch up with. Some of these things I actually had to catch up with. Some of the things turned out to be playing a lot of Halo 3, Brawl, and even some WoW. And some of the things were completely pointless, like deciding to learn how to read ancient Greek - for some reason that seemed more enticing than posting, at the time. But anyway, I will remedy that now.

I might as well mention Indiana a bit. In short, it was very awesome, much better than expected. For example, they actually gave us good, edible food. Many would be surprised at what a rare occurence that actually is at events like these.

Of particular coolness is all the free merchandise we got there. Sure, we got a lot of standard stuff... t-shirts, mousepads, notebooks, etc. But, for example, they also gave us a Microsoft... gameboy imitation keychain?:

On this one-of-a-kind item you can play 6-by-6 Sudoku (and not the normal kind either - some puzzles that it gave actually had several solutions :P), a Space Invaders game in which you can survive 10 seconds, max, and a Simon Says game, where they give you random arrows, that you have to repeat.

Moreover, it's designed amazingly - since in order to stop playing a certain game, you need to either win at it or lose at it. In either Space Invaders or Simon Says, you're bound to lose very quickly, so this is fine. But you can't really lose in Sudoku... so you have to solve the Sudoku before you can play any other game mode. Resetting it does nothing at all =).

We had some fun with this when we got bored for a bit. Anyway, second up is a really cool... white plastic ball:

But the really cool thing about this white plastic ball is that it can turn inside out! As shown in this very badly recorded video below (try holding a camera phone with one hand and spinning the ball in the air with the other):

We also got some cool stuff, like a frisbee that folds into a wallet sized container and a cool blue ball that turns red when squished. Not to mention three water bottles from different sponsors, and a big yellow bag from Caterpillar. I probably brought back more than I took with me.

Anyway, I'll probably post more later. Until then, ciao.

-squidout

Where are all the posts?

So, posting on SG has been fairly low recently. Rather, very low. Considering it has been a vacation for most of our writers, and last time this was the case, we had about two posts each day, it may seem a bit surprising. But, I, at least, have two reasons for not having posted.

The first is a trip to Israel that I went on last week. It was fun, especially because I went with a group of friends and... acquaintances? Well, it's hard to explain. But, Israel is significantly less war-torn than you would expect, especially with the media nowadays. I have to admit, I didn't go to, say, Sderot, during my trip, so I cant be sure that what I am saying is true of all Israel, and I'm fairly sure, in fact, that it isn't, but life in the fair majority of Israel seems to be like that in any European country, in terms of war weariness, and in general, except that they mostly speak Hebrew in Israel. I even saw some people playing soccer a few times! In fact, Tel-Aviv seemed a lot like Bordeau or even Paris to me. Jerusalem, obviously, has some differences, like the conflicting religious quarters of the old city, and fights over the Western Wall, but interestingly enough, even big religious conflicts can be settled by economic means. A few years ago, people from the Jewish quarter of the Old City started digging a tunnel along the buried part of the Western Wall, for religious and archaeological reasons. The wall happens to pass through the Muslim quarter, however, and the Muslims (for some reason) did not like the Jews digging under their territory, so they started throwing bricks at people in the tunnels. Despite the religious value to the tunnel, most people didn't like having bricks thrown at them, and so they stopped digging through and visiting it. However, many people didn't like not being able to visit the tunnel, or dig it any further, and so they came to a compromise: the tunnel was dug so that it ends at a market in the Muslim quarter. As long as the tunnel's visitors brought money with them, the Muslims didn't mind them, and today the tunnel has practically become a museum. Apparently they run summer camps in it too. Oh, the Dead Sea was pretty cool too.

My second excuse is pretty obvious: Brawl. As expected, Brawl is fun. Many feel that it is pretty much the same as Melee, and thus not worth the hype, but, although I agree that it is similar to Melee, I think that the many newer features and rectifications were well worth it. And, the music is much better, but I don't think I need to talk about that any further. I found it interesting that, prior to the game's release, most people who had been keeping up with the almost daily updates had a pretty good idea of what character(s) they were going to be playing as, and for the most part, they seem to have been accurate. For instance, I was sure I'd like Sonic, Meta Knight, and Falco, and aside from Falco being only my fourth-most-used character, with Pit in third, my hypothesis was accurate. I also liked the Adventure Mode more than expected. Most people said something along the lines of: "Subspace Emissary was okay, but considering that Brawl is mainly a multi-player game, it is good enough that they have a real story for single player." I actually liked it, though, and despite the story being slightly hard to follow at times (i.e. the part where they got Game and Watch to join their team was a bit strange...was he supposed to be an enemy before?) it was still good. If only there weren't so many levels where you had to play as Lucas and the Pokemon Trainer, two of my least favorite characters. Some cutscenes were pretty epic, too, like this one.

The other writers might have reasons for not posting too. I imagine that Brawl works for a few of them too. Or maybe they're just lazy. Hopefully we'll get back to our usual posting rate soonish.

On an irrelevant note, apparently not many people liked jPod the t.v. show, as it has been cancelled for next season by CBC. People should develop better taste in television shows. Oh well.

Not much else to say for now, so until next time. Oh, and at pi second, I was in front of Theodore Hertzel's grave =)

Happy Belated Pi Day!

So, long time no post! Been having something like a writer's block, plus March Break has been busier than anticipated.

Anyway, I found out today that March 14th is actually a holiday (for math enthusiasts) called Pi Day, since π roughly equals 3.14. Sometimes it is celebrated on March 14 at 1:59 p.m., also commonly known as Pi Minute. If π is truncated to seven decimal places, it becomes 3.1415926, making March 14 at 1:59:26 p.m., Pi Second.

Incidentally, March 14th is also Albert Einstein's birthday, so there's double the reason to celebrate.

So I've missed it this year, d'oh! Nevertheless, there is always next year, and here are some tips on how to celebrate Pi Day. Number one on the list is creating some "pi ambiance", by doing stuff like wearing a pi shirt or using a pi mug. I happened upon this creative pi shirt:

Get it? Pi-rate? :D

dd

So, yes, mark it in your calendar for next year :)

dd

Until next time,

Cindy