Festivals around the world

An Indian friend of mine passed on this very cute photoset of the Nepalese festival of Tihar, which happens at the same time as Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights. On the second day, which I think is today, Tihar celebrates dogs. roverthedog and browntobydog, this means you! :)

Talk Review: "Unlikely Utopia"

The author of Unlikely Utopia: the Surprising Triumph of Canadian Pluralism spoke here last night.

[...and I'll fill in the details later.]

[and I suck. I didn't get to this until today, Sunday the 18th, and I barely remember any of the talk's details.]

Michael Adams is an engaging speaker (as well as a good writer, judging by Fire and Ice.

The point to the talk was that pluralism has been successful in Canada in the second half of the 20th century in a very different way from in the US or Europe; and it has been surprisingly successful at integrating immigrants in important ways. Case in point: you might judge first-generation Canadian integration by their civic involvement- as a measure of how strongly people feel connected to their new communities.

Measuring foreign-born members of Parliament is interesting- because not only do they need to *want* to run for office, they need to successfully *win* office, and the statistics usually describe highly mixed-ethnicity MP ridings, so they're not winning solely among their own ethnicity of voters. One example was a Toronto riding with a Chinese-Canadian MP, where the majority ethnicity is Italian.

Anyhow: 13% of MPs are foreign born; first-generation Canadian; versus roughly 20% of the population being first-generation Canadian.

Or in the United States, where 4% of the House of Representatives are foreign-born, versus something like 11% of the population are foreign-born.

This review covers a small wedge of the talk's topics. I might've taken more complete notes, but I didn't. I hope to eventually read the book, and I can review it properly then. But don't hold your breath.

Movie Review: "Carefree"

This morning I watched "Carfree" "Carefree", in which Fred plays a psychologist and Ginger plays the Mixed Up Woman Who Can't Commit To Her Man. She falls in love with Fred's character, hilarity ensues. (Police baton through plate window; bouncing dinner-rolls off a judge... In the last 15 minutes, Fred's character makes a play to try and have her *knocked out with a fist* so he can "talk to her subconscious." Erm, yeah.)

The dancing was superb- and the songs are good. And Fred and Ginger do extremely well with what they were given in terms of plot. I think the writers were smoking... hashish, or whatever the good stuff was in 1938. The plot makes no sense, and it's only a small win to see Fred tap-dance with golf-clubs on a green.

One of the extras on the DVD is a wacky short (20min) called Public Jitterbug No. 1. Its premise is that Jitterbug dancing is anti-American, a menace to society, and the G-men go after the "man" at the top of the Jitterbug syndicate. Or something like that. It's sort of funny, in a difficult-to-figure ironic way, and has good tap-dancing as well.

Quickie Game Review: Lego Star Wars for the Wii

This afternoon elbie_at_trig showed off Lego Star Wars for the Wii- it's fun. The entire Star Wars series is turned into sets of puzzles to be solved by your collection of Lego characters. It has wonderful Lego touches: you can use the force on various objects, and either they will move around, or they will burst into constituent Lego bricks. You can run a light-saber through a Protocol Droid, and it will shed Lego-shaped pieces. If you hack its leg off, it will continue following you around at a hop.

The cut-scenes were an appropriate cartoony 2-levels-more-silly than the movies. (Before Darth Vader shows up you see stormtroopers lounging looking bored, spinning around in office chairs.)

The puzzles seemed appropriately difficult- some were hand/eye coordination, and some were logic/exploration. The controls were... less exciting than I'd hoped for; the wiimote controlling a light-saber just has to wave back and forth to use it, or you can press a button instead. :/

Fun diversion, this. :)

Concert Review: Da Capo, "One"

DaCapo played a concert this evening, titled "One: In the Beginning."

The first piece was "Calme" by Leonard Enns, the conductor; it had wonderful dissonances and harmonies, as well as some improvisation.

A Credo by Einojuhani Rautavaara (Finnish) felt overly long (or overly slow), but I liked a quote from him in the program: "music is great if, at some moment, the listener catches 'a glimpse of eternity through the window of time'... This, to my mind, is the only true justification for art. All else is of secondary importance." I can get behind that.

There was an Aaron Copland ("In the Beginning") that I liked less than other of his work, although the soloist mezzo-soprano was very good. And there was an OK Russian piece that also felt long.

After the intermission, there was "The Peacable Kingdom", by Randall Thompson, inspired by the painting of the same name by the Quaker, Edward Hicks. It's a surprisingly violent piece for the painting it was inspired by; lots of woe and howling. But in the 6th section, things pick up and there is a wonderful part from Isaiah 55:12 "the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands" where "clap their hands" turns into a round, very joyful and playful. And it ends with an even more joyful Isaiah 40:21 "Have ye not known? Have ye not heard? Hath it not been told you from the beginning?" Isaiah 30:29 "Ye shall have a song, as in the night when a holy solemnity is kept; and gladness of heart, as when one goeth with a pipe to come into the mountain of the Lord."

The last piece in the program was Holst's "Nunc Dimittis", less joyful but wonderful harmonies.

The encore was a composer I didn't recognize or copy down the name of, so I'll have to only say that I enjoyed it.

The concert was well-sung, as usual- Leonard Enns was a bit chattier than usual, though they started precisely at 8 and the intermission was only 10 minutes, which I think melted_snowball will be happy to hear. :)

Accompanied by the ever-chipper chezmax (even though he somehow has a cold? And was bouncy anyway? I don't get it, but I'm not complaining in the slightest, as he was wonderful company!)