The obituary thread was interesting. I think that we might well be advised to separate categories here. "Arts", "Theater/TV/radio/stage", "Literature", "Academia", "Journalism", and "Religion" may belong in the "Culture and Values" area in the appropriate threads as needed. Politics? I already have one for foreign officials and hangers-on. We will need one fore Americans. Entrepreneurs and business executives go into business and economics. Maybe I could have recognized Ronald Reagan both as a film star and a politician.
Recently I had a dog mentioned as a hero.
Where would I put a sport star, an animal (let us say a winner of a major sporting event), let alone a high-profile criminal (let us say Charles Manson, who can roast in Hell)?
Or maybe we could go back to the original that begins with Johnny Carson. I have no idea of how to load it. I have my own civics lesson on same-sex marriage, and putting it in was tedious.
re Tomita: His synthesizer performances were often derided by musical purists. Tough. Transcription is a stock of trade of performers and even composers. Such composers as Respighi, Schoenberg, and Busoni transcribed works of J S Bach for their own use. Bach did so himself.
If I had the talent for transcribing music, I would have a very different approach to Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition from that of Isao Tomita. I would attempt to catch the spirit of the organ concertos of Georg Friedrich Handel. It is hard to imagine that a period-instrument orchestra would play such an arrangement... but the organ-like sounds would well serve the Promenades and fade into the chamber-like sonorities reminiscent of a period orchestra of Handel's time, with the organ becoming the star of the climactic Great Gate of Kiev. It would be an anachronism -- but if it works -- who cares?
Recently I had a dog mentioned as a hero.
Where would I put a sport star, an animal (let us say a winner of a major sporting event), let alone a high-profile criminal (let us say Charles Manson, who can roast in Hell)?
Or maybe we could go back to the original that begins with Johnny Carson. I have no idea of how to load it. I have my own civics lesson on same-sex marriage, and putting it in was tedious.
re Tomita: His synthesizer performances were often derided by musical purists. Tough. Transcription is a stock of trade of performers and even composers. Such composers as Respighi, Schoenberg, and Busoni transcribed works of J S Bach for their own use. Bach did so himself.
If I had the talent for transcribing music, I would have a very different approach to Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition from that of Isao Tomita. I would attempt to catch the spirit of the organ concertos of Georg Friedrich Handel. It is hard to imagine that a period-instrument orchestra would play such an arrangement... but the organ-like sounds would well serve the Promenades and fade into the chamber-like sonorities reminiscent of a period orchestra of Handel's time, with the organ becoming the star of the climactic Great Gate of Kiev. It would be an anachronism -- but if it works -- who cares?
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.