parterre box

119 comments

• Drammy says:

  How does having a advanced degree and the ability to participate in the politicized peer review process qualify such ‘experts’?

  Science takes a too reductive PoV to correctly analyze something as complicated as the climate – I wonder if our computers today even have sufficient memory capacity to model such a thing – and even if they did, humans aren’t bright enough to know what to put in the program. We just don’t understand things quite as well as we would like to… thus making any sort of climate model error-ridden. blahblah nihilism, it’s hip these days.

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Revolutions

  I’m oozing pseudointellectualism but I guess that’s better than oozing intellectualism.

  Should probably stop frothing at the mouth now and get back on operatic topic.

  on April 9, 2010 at 4:46 PM
• Constantine A. Papas says:

  I have my own two-cents theory concerning Netrebko’s voice changes following her prgnanccy: expansion of her diphragm!
  During pregnancy the intra-abdominal pressure increases and the diaphragm stretches. During inhaling, it moves further downwards, allowing a greater volume of air to be stored in her lungs, thus making her voice stronger and her vocal line more sustainable. In others words her lungs’ capacity has increased to retain more oxygen which translates into more energy. Don’t kill me; just a theory!

  on April 9, 2010 at 5:29 PM
• einekleinesopran says:

  Ok, many of you are partially correct. Magda O. AND Bryn T. are making a baby together, but, pregnancy being too risky for Magda, Damrau will carry the gestating Kindchen.

  on April 9, 2010 at 6:15 PM
• PirateJenny says:

  Oh Drammy, Drammy… Kuhn’s intention was to convey the importance of recognizing the paradigm in which one lives and does one’s research, not to say “well, you shouldn’t pay any attention to researchers because they’re all wrong”. Kuhnian paradigm shifts are a recognition that research occurs within a particular ontology of what can be known, or an epistemology of how can we know, and will, over time, progress until a crisis occurs in which we are able to recognize the limits of our knowledge boundaries or methods, and glimpse a new process for going forward.

  Clearly, he did not advocate throwing up our hands and ignoring research. Rather, he delineated the process through which research evolves. And as far as the politics of publishing, well, yes, one’s study will generally be reviewed by researchers in your topic. And if your work contradicts theirs, clearly you need to argue your point really well and run a really convincing study. The only researchers I know who grumble excessively about the politics of peer-review are those who can’t research their way out of a paper bag. And yes, I said it, beeyatches.

  on April 9, 2010 at 6:27 PM
• mj says:

  Less “science” talk, more gossip!

  on April 9, 2010 at 8:58 PM
• mrmyster says:

  Having children hurt a singer’s voice?
  Ernestine Schumann-Heink had numerous children and lived
  a rather stressful life. At once point, WWI, she had one son
  fighting on the German side and three or four on the Allied
  side — yet at age 71 she was still able to sing an Erda
  at the Metropolitan Opera.
  I just be blunt: any singer who aborts a child in order to keep
  an engagement makes a very unwise choice, very! I doubt
  that was Crespin’s real reason – just a hunch, knowing
  something about her. Some singers make wonderful parents;
  some do not. But self-preoccuption can be a all-too-familiar
  characteristic of a singer, let’s call it narcissism, and that does
  not very often make for good parenting. Yet of one of the two
  parents is viable, that can save the day and I know of such in
  the opera world. We must not put too fine a point on any of
  this – it’s all so personal-choice and private.
  I note all the talk on here about Dessay’s “illness.” Is it not
  very well known that her general health is good, but that
  her vocal problem has returned? Am I wong in understanding
  it this way?

  on April 10, 2010 at 12:10 AM
• Drammy says:

  Pirata, o worthy foe, I still think ‘true scientific advance’ occurs when somebody is bonkers. Line between genius [/being right] and insanity is very thin.

  We hopefully get further from wrong as these random madmen pop up and shift dem paradigms but we certainly ain’t /right/ at any given moment in time.

  Seriously somebody please find out the bebe’s daddy plz!

  on April 10, 2010 at 12:45 AM
• PirateJenny says:

  Excuse me a moment while I enjoy the title ” o worthy foe”. Sweet! I’ve never been called that before… feels pretty good.

  I recognize that discourse surrounding the wild, maverick-y genius who doesn’t play by the rules and upends everything with his/her brilliance has been pretty popular since the Romantic era. This is true of art as well as science. But really, (to use Lethal Weapon as a metaphor) it’s the Murtaughs of the world, toiling away, finishing things, collaborating, noticing other people’s work and building on it, that make the great contributions. The Riggs-types are, well, often narcissists who can’t see when they are wrong – or they are the uni-bomber, cut off from reality and the good that comes from collaboration.

  I mean, most of the great inventions we think of as coming from one solitary genius were really invented simultaneously by various people around the world. Sure, Alexander Graham Bell got the patent on the phone, but at least 5 other people invented it around the same time – because prior discoveries were leading in that direction. And Mozart was astonishing, but he was inspired and influenced by earlier composers too, like Gluck and Handel.

  So cut all those lab-coat wearing Murtaughs some slack, and let’s all applaud the painstaking, if often boring, process of scientific discovery.

  on April 10, 2010 at 2:12 AM
• poisonivy says:

  “She has worked very hard to get where she is and to maybe give it up for a child? Callas, Tebaldi, Schwarzkopf and Price seemed to have done ok without one but perhaps the dedication to their careers was greater. If it is her I am not happy with her choice. Surely if it is her she is still early enough to change the outcome.”

  I’m sure she really cares what you think. Maybe you should tell her to get an abortion next time you see her at the stage door.

  on April 10, 2010 at 3:02 PM