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Post by Deleted on Feb 5, 2013 16:32:02 GMT -5
You can all help! Join us on The Third today! In particular, I should like to extend a special welcome to Parva Porcus! The original BBC Third Programme was a national radio network broadcast by the BBC. The network first went on air on 29 September 1946 and became one of the leading cultural and intellectual forces in Britain, playing a crucial role in disseminating the arts. It was the third national radio network broadcast by the BBC, founded in 1946 and finally incorporated into BBC Radio 3 in April 1970. The other two were the Home Service (mainly speech based) and the Light Programme, principally devoted to light entertainment and music, usually cover versions of popular music of the day played by the BBC's own orchestras. The Home Service is now known as Radio 4 and the Light Programme has become Radio 2. As for The Third Man, who knows? Sydney Grew, Neil McGowan or even kleines c? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_ManIf you fancy a coffee, too, or something else, whether online or even off, in London, Vienna or wherever you currently happen to be, it would, as ever, be a pleasure to join you. www.coolcapitals.com/content/1680/KleinesViennese architect Hermann Czech, who sees his mission as the "architecture of the background", refurbished the Kleines Café three times until everything seemed as if it simply had to be that way. It is an invisible architecture that forms the backdrop for lively guests and hosting roles. Join us all, whether online or offline, in Vienna, for something to drink, or even something else entirely. www.yelp.at/biz/kleines-caf%C3%A9-wien-5Vienna retains the top spot as the city with the world’s best quality of living, according to the Mercer 2012 Quality of Living Survey. Zurich and Auckland follow in second and third place, respectively, and Munich is in fourth place, followed by Vancouver, which ranked fifth. Düsseldorf dropped one spot to rank sixth followed by Frankfurt in seventh, Geneva in eighth, Copenhagen in ninth, and Bern and Sydney tied for tenth place. uk.mercer.com/press-releases/quality-of-living-report-2011In the United States, Honolulu (28) and San Francisco (29) are the highest-ranking cities, followed by Boston (35). Chicago is ranked 42nd, while Washington, DC, is ranked 43rd. Detroit (71) is the lowest-ranking of the US cities that Mercer surveys. Globally, the cities with the lowest quality of living are Khartoum, Sudan (217); N’Djamena, Chad (218); Port-au-Prince, Haiti (219); and Bangui, Central African Republic (220). Baghdad, Iraq (221) ranks last. For the record, London ranks as the United Kingdom's top city for quality of living, ranked thirty-eighth (38). It is worth noting that although Europe dominates the rankings, it is Asia which is increasingly dominating the global economy. The top Asian city is Singapore (25). So the Kleines Café could, indeed, be in the world's best city. Any other contenders?
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Post by neilmcgowan on Feb 5, 2013 23:53:15 GMT -5
I am rather sceptical about these ranking surveys.
For example, the popular 'most expensive city' survey, which fills newspaper columns every year, is in fact compiled by the very same management consultants whose expense-accounts for living in these cities must be justified by some allegedly 'objective' proof.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 6, 2013 4:30:01 GMT -5
We cannot but agree, Neil. Nevertheless, it is sometimes interesting to attempt to match such rankings against personal experience. London (#38), for example, is arguably the greatest city in the world, but as a place to live, it can be anything but, particularly if you do not have much money. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LondonMoscow is actually slightly bigger than London, in terms of population, but is it a good place to live, Neil? Some of the cities in Austria (Vienna), Germany (Munich) and Switzerland (Zurich), for example, which top the survey, are, in my opinion, more comfortable places to live in than British cities, let alone anywhere in Africa, the Americas or Asia. Apparently, the Danes are the happiest people on Earth. denmark.dk/en/meet-the-danes/work-life-balance-the-danish-way/happy-danes/A community, whether it is a household, hamlet, village, city, nation or world, is not just a collection of houses and atomised individuals. It is a web of human relationships balancing personal freedom and collective action. Even The Third is a virtual community, Sydney Grew. Some of us know each other offline. If people do not find happiness in their community, Neil, however we choose to define it, for sure they will one day find misery.
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Post by neilmcgowan on Feb 6, 2013 8:29:38 GMT -5
Moscow is actually slightly bigger than London, in terms of population, but is it a good place to live, Neil? Once again, kleines, the figures can be stacked however the user wishes. I didn't realise London was 'officially' smaller than Moscow - but these differences can be endlessly tweaked by adding/subtracting the adjacent boroughs, districts, administrative regions etc that lay alongside the 'official' borders. Drive southwards from Moscow's city centre along Kashirskoye Highway - the main raid leading to Moscow's Domodedovo International Airport - and you will not even notice as you leave "Moscow" and cross into the next county - the rows of housing don't even hiccup at the border, and there even buildings which lay on both sides of the border, and have different postal indexes at each end of one single building. Moreover the infrastructure denies that such a boundary exists. Try finding the South Moscow Driving Test Centre? Well, errr, it's actually in neighbouring Podolsk. The same is true in London. In Ealing, where I lived for a while, the local press was always whingeing about the fact that the London Borough Of Ealing didn't have an Arts Centre. In fact there is an Arts Centre in Ealing, and you can walk to it in 15 minutes from Ealing Broadway - but it's 150 yards inside the neighbouring borough of Brentford, (Brentford Watermans Arts Centre). This 150 yards is apparently so frightfully important, that people in Ealing shun the (excellent) performances at the Watermans More parochial than this it doth not get. I find Moscow an extremely rewarding and pleasant place to live, despite the bad press which Britain's cold-warrior media feel obliged to ladle upon it. London has two professional opera theatres - ENO and the ROH. In Moscow we have six - the Bolshoi, Stanislavsky, Helikon, Novaya Opera, the Moscow Operetta, and the Moscow Chamber Opera. All present a year-round repertoire of professional full-scale performances. There are hits and duds in these repertoires, as there are in London - but the shows sell well, and audiences are plentiful. Except at the Bolshoi, 20 quid will get you into almost any of these performances, and very often you might pay as little as 10 pounds. I exclude from the list above the 'periphery' circuit of occasional performances in non-operatic venues (quite a lot of new opera goes on at arts centres like Winzavod, Garage or Fabrika), or semi-pro companies like Arbat Opera, Moscow Classical Opera, or at the Vishnevskaya Opera Studio. Or indeed the Summer Baroque Opera Festival at the Ostankino Palace, where I've staged several of my own shows. (It's a historic palace, built as a rococo theatre in the 1780s by Count Sheremetyev. It's so authentic that the cast and audience have to use privies at the end of the garden path - there are no toilets in the C18th building). A similar situation applies in the other performing arts, as well as in the spheres of museums, galleries, photo-exhibitions, cinemas and so on.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 9, 2013 3:57:49 GMT -5
According to Wikipedia, Neil, Moscow is the capital city and the most populous federal subject of Russia! The city is a major political, economic, cultural and scientific centre in Russia and in Europe. According to Forbes 2011, Moscow has the largest community of billionaires in the world. Moscow is the northernmost megacity on Earth. By its territorial expansion on July 1, 2012 southwest into the Moscow Oblast, the capital increased its area 2.5 times; from about 1,000 square kilometers (390 sq mi) up to 2,500 square kilometers (970 sq mi), and gained additional population of 230,000 people. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MoscowAs for other megacities, for almost five hundred years, Rome was the largest, wealthiest, and most politically important city in Europe. Its population passed a million people by the end of the 1st century BC (BCE). Rome's population started declining in 402 AD (CE) when Flavius Honorius, Western Roman Emperor from 395 to 423, moved the government to Ravenna and Rome's population declined to a mere 20,000 during the Early Middle Ages, reducing the sprawling city to groups of inhabited buildings interspersed among large areas of ruins and vegetation. Baghdad was likely the largest city in the world from shortly after its foundation in 762 AD until the 930s, with some estimates putting its population at over one million. Chinese capital cities Chang'an and Kaifeng also experienced huge population booms during prosperous empires. According to the census in the year 742 recorded in the New Book of Tang, 362,921 families with 1,960,188 persons were counted in Jingzhao Fu, the metropolitan area including small cities in the vicinity of Chang'an. The medieval settlement surrounding Angkor, the one-time capital of the Khmer Empire which flourished between the 9th and 15th centuries, could have supported a population of up to one million people. In 1950, New York City was the only urban area with a population of over 10 million. Geographers had identified 25 such areas as of October 2005, as compared with 19 megacities in 2004 and only nine in 1985. This increase has happened as the world's population moves towards the high (75–85%) urbanisation levels of North America and Western Europe. At the turn of the third millennium, the largest megacity is the Greater Tokyo Area. The population of this urban agglomeration includes areas such as Yokohama and Kawasaki, and is estimated to be between 35 and 36 million. This variation in estimates can be accounted for by different definitions of what the area encompasses. While the prefectures of Tokyo, Chiba, Kanagawa, and Saitama are commonly included in statistical information, the Japan Statistics Bureau only includes the area within 50 kilometers of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Offices in Shinjuku, thus arriving at a smaller population estimate. A characteristic issue of megacities is the difficulty in defining their outer limits and accurately estimating the populations. Based on the population criteria, the world's ten largest megacities are, in rank of population: For the record, Moscow is currently listed sixteenth, Istanbul twenty-third and London twenty-sixth, with a population of merely 12,600,000. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megacity In 2012, when all eyes were on London, BBC Radio 3's Night Waves explored London's place as a world city, and Matthew Sweet asked if London really is the centre of arts and culture it claims to be. At the top of Tower Bridge, Matthew looked down on the city with Neil O'Brien of the think tank Policy Exchange and Aditya Chakrabortty of The Guardian and asked why they believed London is now so different from the rest of the United Kingdom (UK) that it has effectively become another country - and what they think should be done about it. www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01kkp1gAt the Southbank Centre Matthew met with its artistic director Jude Kelly, the novelist Lesley Lokko and the culture editor of Monocle Robert Bound to debate London's claim to be the world's greatest city of culture. Strolling through the streets of the capital, Radio 3 New Generation Thinker Nandini Das reflected on the long history of immigration to London and argued that newcomers have profoundly affected the English imagination. And Matthew Sweet joined the 'Gentle Author' of the Spitalfields Life blog on a tour of the East End of London to meet a new immigrant artist as well as some characters who have been part of life on Brick Lane since they were born. spitalfieldslife.com/In 2013, London is still The Third largest megacity in Europe. The United Kingdom (UK) is still The Third largest economy in the European Union (EU), after Germany and France. The European Union (EU) is, however, the largest economy in the world, followed by the United States of America (USA) and China. In terms world history, the Industrial Revolution started in Britain some three hundred years ago. In a sense, the British can seriously claim to have created the modern world, Sydney Grew! Ours has been an astonishing run! As the centre of gravity of the global economy moves inexorably westwards across the Pacific Ocean at the turn of the third millennium, welcome to the dawn of the Asian century!
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Post by Deleted on Mar 1, 2013 3:36:15 GMT -5
Cyfarchion o c bach. Hapus Dydd Gwyl Dewi! Greetings from little, or even kleines c. Happy St David's Day! I trust that all is well with everyone reading The Third this morning.
If I may ask you directly, Sydney Grew, after having completed the test transmissions, when are you considering launching your web-wireless in the spirit and style of the once great BBC Third Programme? Is there any way in which we can help?
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Post by Deleted on Mar 1, 2013 7:34:58 GMT -5
What did St. David do, kleines c? Well the success of the tests done hitherto has been limited rather than resounding. Mr. McGowan was able to connect up twice, and I am most grateful for his efforts. But after I announced the test broadcast at the Art-Music forum, and left it running overnight, only two attempts to connect were logged, neither successful. The failures to connect may be due to inadequate modem settings. So is this the sort of thing that people really want in our age? I wondered. And - an unrelated question - is it really a worthwhile enterprise? Perhaps the only way to find out is to test over a longer period - a week or a fortnight say, changing the items every three days - and to "stick to" the plan through thick and thin whether any one is listening in or not. In fact that is a little like what our local omnibus service did: they introduced a new route, and for the first six months hardly any passengers availed themselves of their new opportunities, yet three years later there are great crowds on the 'busses daily.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 1, 2013 9:15:11 GMT -5
Good afternoon, Sydney Grew. If I may address your question below directly: What did St. David do, kleines c? St David founded a monastery in the inhospitable area known as ' Glyn Rhosyn' in Pembrokeshire in the middle of the sixth century AD (CE). St David and his followers lived a simple life; they refrained from eating meat or drinking beer. David's symbol, now a national symbol of Wales, is the leek. St David rose to become a bishop in the church and made several pilgrimages, including one to Jerusalem during which, tradition states, he brought back with him a stone which now sits in an altar in the south transept of the cathedral. The best known miracle associated with St David is said to have taken place when he was preaching in the middle of a large crowd at the Synod of Llanddewi Brefi. When those at the back complained that they could not hear him, the ground on which he stood is reputed to have risen up to form a small hill so that everyone had a good view. A white dove settled on his shoulder, a sign of God's grace and blessing. www.stdavidscathedral.org.uk/fileadmin/Rebecca/Shrine/WhatsOnPatronalWeek.pdfAs for The Third, Sydney Grew, perhaps you are being a bit ambitious. What I would suggest is that you make one brilliant radio programme, and then distribute it as a podcast. If I can be of any help, please do not hesitate to let me know! More later ...
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Post by Deleted on Mar 1, 2013 10:10:31 GMT -5
. . . The best known miracle associated with St David . . . How remarkable, kleines c - for to-day, St. David's day, I did experience a small but definite miracle. Having broken a tooth while gardening, I have just been to see an Indian dentist about it. Beyond repair I was certain. He - who has his diploma from Bangalore prominently displayed, but no other - pulled it out, but then much to my surprise put it back again, as good as new. I think he is a rather better bet than the Scotchman whom he replaced. In fact I told him in so many words that he had worked a miracle, but later wondered, whether Indian religions have miracles?
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Post by Deleted on Mar 1, 2013 10:20:33 GMT -5
Have you ever heard of the Hindu milk miracle, Sydney Grew? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu_milk_miracleGardening can be dangerous, but I am relieved that you are no longer toothless! As long as the roots are not severed, Sydney Grew, all is well, and all will be well, in the garden.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 2, 2013 5:52:07 GMT -5
As for The Third, Sydney Grew, perhaps you are being a bit ambitious. What I would suggest is that you make one brilliant radio programme, and then distribute it as a podcast. If I can be of any help, please do not hesitate to let me know! ... To-day as I passed over the bridge I happened to hear something put out by the B.B.C. - or "Shop-keepers' Broadcasting Corporation" as we should term it, since Britain is best known as a shop-keeping nation. The transmission consisted in fact of a discussion between three shop-keepers, during the course of which one of them expressed his principal principle, namely that when it came to the "customer's" experience, " the whole should amount to more than the parts." That could well be applied to the new Third Programme "pod-casts" [ thank you kleines c] and/or transmissions could it not. But how exactly, that is the question. It is in fact Hegel's principle of the "Aufheben" (sublation) - or at least it is always referred to as "Hegel's," even though Schelling was the one who discovered it. So how may the Third Programme pass over into nothing, go into unity with the impossibility of its absolute negation, and rise again in a higher state? Something of a poser. Mere imitation will not suffice, of that we can be certain. We are already able to provide three extensions of the usual broadcasting model: 1) the listener may by way of this forum freely and immediately comment upon the speech and music being transmitted; 2) the listener may request the transmission of anything selected from a range of thousands of items; and 3) the listener may "listen again" as often as he likes. But some as yet mysterious fourth extension is missing - what can it be?
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Post by Deleted on Mar 2, 2013 6:50:40 GMT -5
If I may address your final question directly, Sydney Grew: " ... But some as yet mysterious fourth extension is missing - what can it be?" There is a philosophical question to be addressed, I suspect, Sydney Grew. If no one listens to a particular sound, whether a radio broadcast or anything else, it is questionable whether it actually exists. For example, if no one listened to BBC Radio 3, it would lose its raison d'être. This is the real argument as to why ratings always matter, in my opinion. If no one is listening, or reading, or perceiving, it is questionable whether anything exists in the first place. As far as The Third is concerned, therefore, I suspect that you have to find an audience, Sydney Grew. Of course, one can be very specific. One can decide, for example, that kleines c and Neil McGowan is one's audience. What do they think of The Third? This is, in my opinion, a good place to start!
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Post by Deleted on Mar 4, 2013 7:37:09 GMT -5
After several days' pondering of the question, I believe I have now discovered the vital fourth extension. In the '-forties and '-fifties of the past century, the announcers would read scripts prepared for them by the learned. Such scripts would consist of an analysis of the form of a work, descriptions of its first subject, second subject, etc., its thematic relationships, the names of any striking harmonies or progressions, points of instrumentation worthy of note, and of course a statement of anything known about the composer's purpose in having written it.
In those days we heard hardly anything about composers' wives and lives. In other words the work of Art was the subject, not the mere gossip current to-day.
So I feel that the presence of such learned announcements in the traditional style will be the key to the consummation of our New Third. One of those ideas which - once it has come to one's mind - seems obvious.
Another point is that the transmission should be flexible:
1) Listeners should be able to begin listening at any given point in the programme - the 22 minute 30 second point, for example. This makes the lately tested Shoutcast system impossible.
2) It should be possible for listeners - many of whom will be inexpert - to begin listening in a simple straightforward way: just click and listen. This makes Mediafire impossible.
3) So my thoughts turned to something like You-Tube, but for audio only. But very soon after, my thoughts turned to You-Tube itself, the possible sound quality and the possible duration of which have of late greatly improved. And there is the great advantage that the You-Tube is very likely to be something with which the humblest of users will already be familiar. The video aspect can in fact be put to good use: it can scroll and display the above-mooted learned announcements precisely as the work of Art progresses. And You-Tube items can be a) played beginning from a particular point of time, and b) easily down-loaded to one's hard disc.
The latest plan for The Third is thus:
1) Programmes - to be produced at regular intervals - consisting of four or five items of music and - later - of the spoken word (talks and series of lectures).
2) Each programme to be put onto You-Tube as it becomes available (as well as - later - "pod-casted" as a second outlet, if we can find a host).
3) The You-Tube programmes to consist of a general introduction to each item, followed by the item itself (with a detailed analysis and commentary upon what we hear appearing simultaneously via video in the form of text and musical illustrations), and each item followed of course by a closing announcement.
4) The learned analysis and visual commentary which appear on the video will naturally also be made available in a thread of this forum.
No more waffle, no more improvised wittering; away with the Corporation's vulgar otiosities of the present day! I trust this plan will prove both educational and truly popular. Perhaps the schools will pick it up. Thousands of simultaneous listeners! A turn-around in the educational standards of the youth of Britain, and a new direction for the whole Nation!
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Post by Deleted on Mar 4, 2013 8:30:08 GMT -5
Of course, one key advantage of YouTube, Sydney Grew, is that it is the third most popular website on the world wide web. Alexa - Top SitesAlmost everyone online is familiar with links to YouTube, so it makes a good choice to get your videos to the people who matter to you. Upload, tag and share your videos worldwide! Alexa - YouTubeOf course, you can always opt for audio only, but then there is the question of what image to insert. In the link below, you can watch BBC Radio 3 Video on YouTube. www.youtube.com/user/Radio3Video
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Post by Deleted on Mar 5, 2013 8:18:40 GMT -5
Of course, you can always opt for audio only, but then there is the question of what image to insert. . . . I attempted to explain above that the image will consist of the text of a learned commentary, scrolling to keep time with the parts of the music (audio) to which it has reference. Indeed, if I do not add any information here for a few days it is because I am experimenting with ways of incorporating scrolled (or at least changing) text (and occasional images from the score) into the You-Tube business, and not because I have lost interest.
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