saturn return to sender

It’s a bit silly to redesign a blog these days. Who actually bothers to visit a blog anymore? Feed readers have killed the blog theme.

But so, nearly a year later, I’ve finally gone and made a change. Not rebooted, this time, since there are some posts in this set which seem to be actually mildly useful to people. But updated Wordpress, did something background-ish with this photo, which I love, and let the font be a little less unreadable … I’m not satisfied with the name or the look, but whatever. Maybe I’ll keep tweaking it. Probably I’ll just let it go.

So here’s wikipedia on saturn return, which is the astronomical fact that Saturn takes about 30 years to orbit the sun interpreted astrologically:

Saturn is symbolically/astrologically associated with time, challenge, fear, doubt, confusion, difficulty, seriousness, heaviness, unwanted burdens and hard lessons, among other more positive things such as structure, significance, accomplishment, reflection, power, prestige, maturity, responsibility and order – this is why astrologers believe that the thirtieth birthday is such a major rite of passage and is considered by many astrologers to mark the “true beginning” of adulthood, self-evaluation, independence, responsibility, ambition, and full maturation.

Now, I’m not sure about astrology, personally. I would not likely use it as a predictor of anything. But as a symbolic tradition, and given the ineffable interconnectedness of things, I think it offers a rich language to think about and talk about things. Or complain.

Like in this case, for example. I think I could just as well have done without Saturn returning for me, thank you very much. And, now that I’m 31 (hello? thirty-one?), I hope that Mr. God of Time will be moving along on his merry way to bother someone else with his “hard lessons” and his “reflection.” And incidentally, where is this supposed “prestige”? and “power”? Hmm? I have chronic lower back pain and my knees don’t always quite work. Is that what it means by “accomplishment?”

Meanwhile, in other music-and-math news, this is pretty impressive: software that will extract individual notes from multitimbral performances. Hrmmm. I’m skeptical about how reliably it will work in practice, but I will believe it when I see it.

Also, who pronounces MIDI like “meaty?”

“Now, we can control the chords with our MEATY keyboard … nom nom nom …”

Crap. Stuff like this makes me I wish I were a mathematician: Scientists make music into mathematical shapes. It’s totally what my still-uncompleted-thesis is about*, except … um, without the actual math part.

Anyone have a subscription to Science? 24 hours will not be enough time for me to absorb the paper.