So struck by Salvador, the opening track on Sonny Rollins’ This Is What I Do album. Read a all.about.jazz review of the album here.

This is what Jazz critic Whitney Balliett had to say about Sonny Rollins:

Rollins…has been praised estatically for much of his forty-year career. He has been called the greatest living tenor saxophonist, the greatest living improviser, and the greatest of all tenor saxophonists. Almost everything about him attracts attention. A tall, V-shaped, eagle-faced man, he has appeared over the years with a shaved head, a Mohawk, an Afro, and Vandkykes of various heft. He wears brilliant-colored caftans, or crisp white double-breasted suits, and an occasional large hat…He is prone to heavy moods of self-examiniation…If he is really upset, he takes a sabbatical…During a later sabbatical, in the early seventies, Rollins went to India and played by himself in a cave.

...Rollins’ style reflects a complex, indefatigable attitude toward life, one which he once summed up for the critic Gary Giddins: “Don’t ever shrink from the belief that you have to prove yourself every minute, because you do.” His playing coalesced in the early fifties, and by 1956, when he recorded his serene, classic blues “Blue 7”, with Tommy Flanagan, Doug Watkins on basss and Max Roach, it had become magisterial. It was an ingenious mingling of the styles of Coleman Hawkins and Charlie Parker, overlaid with hints of Dexter Gordon and Don Byas. His tone was big and hard and aggressive, and he used no vibrato. His attack was clipped, even abrupt – more percussive than melodic. He placed his notes just so, between beats, or ahead of the beat. His phrasing suggested a boy crossing a stream on jumping stones.

See here also for Stanley Crouch’s profile of Sonny Rollins in the New Yorker.

Sonny Rollins ROCKS! Woo Hoo!

Reading this reminded me of a friend, who left academia and a good pay so that he can solve philosophical problems full-time, without having to worry about teaching, grading, marking or producing papers for journals:

But once he was excommunicated, he said, “Well, good, now I can what I want to do, which is to figure out the nature of reality for myself.” He attracted a small group of disciples, and he moved three times, and always tried to be quite isolated. He was offered a professorship in Heidelberg, but turned it down because he wasn’t sure they would give him the freedom to think, unconstrained by any requirements aside from logical necessity. That’s all he lived for.

From a NextBook interview with Rebecca Goldstein, author of Betraying Spinoza.

Definitely Cannot Rest Until Zing, you have a predecessor in Spinoza!

Just ran 2.4 km again. Timing not so good. A bit of a struggle too. But at least I got off my procrastinating ass.

Something interesting happened today. I bought a guitar.

Why is a purchase interesting? Well, I’ve been shopping around half seriously for a Fender guitar for a long time. I’ve played quite a few models over the past few months at several shops in Excelsior Hotel and Peninsula Shopping Centre. But I didn’t come across any guitar that really connected with me, well maybe except for two Telecasters, one from LutherMusic and the other from Guitar Connection.

This evening I went with Chloe to try another Fender Telecaster that caught my eye a few days ago. Since I laid eyes on it, I kept thinking of it. But it was a disappointment when I played it. No connection. Strangely, Chloe’s intuitions proved right again.

We went to Guitar 77 and she suggested a Fender Strat, which looks like the Eric Clapton “Blackie” model. As was my usual self, I was skeptical and almost ignored her suggestion. Luckily, I didn’t and I tried out the guitar. I lost myself when I played it. My heart kept pounding while I was playing it and it kept pounding long after I finished playing it. This pounding later reminded me of the first time I saw Chloe, reminded me of how I felt whenever she walked past me in the office or while I was in her presence or while I talked to her.

For once, I listened to her and I didn’t regret. From now on, I’ll make a point to listen more to those who are close to me (that includes my best friend, his wife and Chris). She had an uncanny sense that I would connect with the guitar and that it was “me” and that I would grow into it and develop with it. I was so engrossed I did not notice it but Chloe told me that my playing attracted people to come into the shop. For some reason (hopefully not just to close a sale), the shop guys were really nice to me. They kept wanting me to play the guitar and gave me lots of freebies with the purchase. One of them seemed quite disappointed I didn’t complete a song I was playing.

One of the guitar shop guys gave me a compliment when he said not everyone can make a Strat sound like that, for example, no matter how he played he would never get that kind of sound. One of the folks in the shop heard me play a few months back and commented to his friend that it’s not the guitar but the fingers behind the tone (that time I heard cos I was not so engrossed in playing). I’m light years from being a good guitarist and musician. But someday I will be and I’m working towards that now. Still, I would like to say that the tone comes from the heart. I will post pictures of the guitar in due course.

Chris, I know I’m supposed to go and shop for a guitar with you and that you’ll definitely give me sound advice on guitar purchases but despite the imperfections in the guitar I just bought (Beez warned me about the neck warping due to the temperature differences and scared me with his hands mimicking the warping of the neck. But he told me to go back in two weeks’ time and he’ll help me set it up again), it connected with me and I just had to get it, no matter the blemishes. I’ve always wanted a Fender guitar. I love the sound.

As a tribute, my new guitar will be named “Chloe”, after the woman who gave me the guitar by pointing it out to me. Thanks for waiting so long for me even though you were unwell. Love you.

I am now the proud owner of these books:

Extract from an Economist article:

...39 male subjects, selected from a variety of ethnic backgrounds, were shown 20 pairs of pictures, each depicting an adult and an infant. They were asked to signify their preference for either the adult or the child. Some reported no interest in the child at all. The rest expressed a range of interest, including a few who always preferred the pictures of infants. The men also provided saliva swabs to assess their testosterone levels. The researchers then took digital photographs of the men and doctored the images so that their hairstyles were obscured, and could not affect the judgments of the female subjects.

These were a group of 29 women, from equally diverse backgrounds, who were shown the photographs. They were asked to rate the men according to whether they thought the men liked children, and whether those men appeared masculine and physically attractive. They were also asked to say which men they preferred for short-term and which for long-term relationships. The results, which have just been published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, confirm that women are very good at reading faces.

Physiognomy?

From a translated Spiegel Online article on an exhibit on the sunken city of Alexandria :

The pieces that will be on display in the exhibit entitled “Egypt’s Sunken Treasure,” opening to the public on May 13, but ceremoniously unveiled by German President Horst Köhler and visiting Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on Thursday, were flown directly to Germany on board a “Beluga” cargo plane provided by Airbus. The aircraft’s unusual cargo also includes astronomic calendars, jewels, gold coins, penises made of lead and the spout of a baby’s bottle. The statue of Hapi, more than five meters (16.4 feet) tall, is considered the largest freestanding sculpture of an Egyptian god in existence.

The man who discovered all of these ancient artifacts is marine expert Franck Goddio, 58. The Frenchman has spent more than 10 years uncovering the remains of ancient Alexandria off the sunken coast of North Africa. Over the years, Goddio and his team have used hot-air balloons to extract algae-encrusted sphinxes from the waters of the Mediterranean and cranes to lift steles and decaying door hinges, coated with barnacles, from the ancient site.

The artifacts pulled to the surface are the remains of the most astonishing city of the ancient world—a city dubbed the Pearl of the Mediterranean with a population of almost 600,000. It was a magnificent world as much as it was a setting for bloody royal dramas. The lighthouse of Alexandria, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, rose 130 meters (426 feet) into the sky, its wood fires, amplified by mirrors, shining far out into the Mediterranean. In the first century B.C., the writer Diodor raved about Alexandria, whose “beauty, size and riches far surpassed those of all other cities.” The city’s diverse population included Jews and Egyptians, Gallic mercenaries, Nubians and Persians.

A interesting read from the New Yorker on how a Massachusetts psychotherapist fell for a Nigerian email scam:

Mbote’s offer had the hallmarks of an advance-fee fraud, a swindle whose victims are asked to provide money, information, or services in exchange for a share of a promised fortune. Countless such e-mails, letters, and faxes are sent every year, with a broad variety of stories about how the money supposedly became available (unclaimed estate, corrupt executive, and dying Samaritan being only a few of the most popular). Worley, who had spent his adult life advocating self-knowledge and introspection, seemed particularly unlikely to be fooled. He had developed a psychological profiling tool designed to reveal a person’s “unique needs, desires and probable behavioral responses.” He promised users of the test, “The individual’s understanding of self will be greatly enhanced, increasing the potential for a fulfilled and balanced life.” And Worley was vigilant against temptation. Two weeks before the e-mail arrived, he had been the keynote speaker at his eldest granddaughter’s graduation from the First Assembly Christian Academy in Worcester, Massachusetts. He cautioned the students about Satan, telling them, “He’s going to be trying to destroy you every inch of the way.”

Still, Worley, faced with an e-mail that would, according to federal authorities, eventually lead him to join a gang of Nigerian criminals seeking to defraud U.S. banks, didn’t hesitate. A few minutes after receiving Mbote’s entreaty, he replied, “I can help and I am interested.”

Videos of one of my favourite singers, Billie Holiday.

I got goosepimples the first time I heard her.

From a Time article:

The reason we just can’t get comfortable with the idea of medicine as a business is this though: when a ship is going down, they don’t “market” the life jackets.