Cause and effect?
I've been doing some reading lately and a topic that has come up more than once is that of false causalities. It seems to be human nature to construct causalities that fit our worldview when in fact the only thing that can be objectively demonstrated is co-variation. We can see this when it comes to non-heterosexuality and the relative occurrence of mental health problems. Some people seems to have their interpretation of the fact that some surveys find depression to be more common among non-heterosexuals than in the general population as a direct cause and effect relation. You're depressed because being gay makes you so! Well, I'm not sure about that, in fact I'm sort of convinced that is not the case. But how do you illustrate that interpreting co-variance as cause and effect is often problematic? With colorful diagrams of course!
Alexander sent me a link to this wonderful piece of graphics, from climate sceptic:
In the comments I found the only relevant question to ask: should we struggle to produce more oil, so the quality of the music will increase, or should we attempt to draft better composers and musicians into rock 'n' roll, so we can have more oil? I'm so confused! At least it made me smile.
Filed under Uncategorized | Comments (2)Falling through the sky
The reason that I haven't written here in a while is that I have been busy having my 30th birthday, with associated celebrations. It has been great fun. Thanks to my amazingly thoughtful fiance Alexander I got a gift certificate for a tandem skydive that I had the great pleasure to redeem today. What a rush! Thanks to a whole bunch of friends I got a photograph joining me in the jump as well. Skydiving makes even a geek like me feel like a rock star. Amazing. I got a whole album of pictures.
Choir weekend
Hi there. I've spent this weekend with my choir, singing for many hours. It was hard work, but also lots of fun. The main part of our rehearsal work was focused on a suite of choral pieces written specifically for us by Jazz composer and saxophonist Joakim Milder to be preformed at the 40th anniversary of Umeå Jazz Festival this October.
The music is a quite spectacular mix of modern Jazz harmonics and contemporary classical music. The rhythm and pace is quite fluid, with lots of varying meters and the harmonics doesn't stay in specific keys, but at the same time many of the passages are breathtakingly beautiful. One other common denominator of the music, from a more technical point of view is that is is really difficult to sing. The melodies doesn't follow many of the common presuppositions that we have on melodies as well as rhythms. It is really bends the mind, and right now it feels a bit overwhelming to try to learn to sing it correctly. I have good hopes, however, that this will be spectacular when preformed.
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