Hello gorgeous friends, I hope all’s well. Judging by the replies, last week’s email touched many nerves. I’m comforted that I’m not alone in my struggle against blight-emitting diodes. Squares of duct tape are popular, but I still think you can do better. This week, by contrast, we’re not touching anything.
š§ Analyzing the Design of Unusual Japanese Butter Tableware: Butter was never a part of the traditional Japanese diet, and was treated with disgust when introduced by Europeans in the 19th century. Today Japan has accepted butter, particularly as a baking ingredient, and as implemented a range of elegant implements to work with it.
š How Miss Shilling’s Orifice Helped Win the War: Engineer Beatrice Shilling defied all norms to help turn the tide of war. That a solution came from a woman circa 1940 was improbable enough, but perhaps as improbable was the simplicity of her solution.
š¤ Are All White People Automatically Racist?: Straightforward questions about race tend to have big, hairy answers. Writers Vince Fakhoury Horn and Greg Thomas correspond at length to pull it apart.
š¦ The True Story of the Married Woman Who Smuggled Her Boyfriend Out of Prison in a Dog Crate: She wanted to escape her marriage. He wanted to escape his life sentence.
š„ James O’Brien: ‘I saw everything as a fight’: Interesting interview with the highly combative star of talk radio, who is adopting a mellower approach. O’Brien talks about trust, therapy and knowing when you are wrong. Incidentally even if talk radio isn’t your thing I heartily recommend getting into Mystery Hour.
š§¼ It’s Time to Talk About Covid-19 and Surfaces Again: In the early days, we furiously scrubbed, afraid we could get sick from the virus lingering on objects and surfaces. But this is now not thought to be common means of transmission.
š¤ Singing Against the Grain: Playing Beethoven in the #BlackLivesMatter era: The dilemmas faced by black classical musicians, who have been “held up as symbols of racial advancementā¦ or denounced as Uncle Toms.”
š° Contradictory goods: One of the cardinal rules of microeconomics is that as the price of a good goes up, demand goes down. But Veblen goods and Giffen goods do the opposite.
š¤ What If Climate Change Isn’t as Polarizing as We Think?: It benefits politicians to portray the issue as deeply divisive, but most voters don’t see it that way.
Wave your hands in the air
Invented a hundred years ago, the theremin is a fascinating thing. Named after its inventor, even though that wasn’t his name. Often called the first electronic instrument, even though it wasn’t. And it’s commonly known for appearing in the chorus of the Beach Boys’ Good Vibrations, even though it didn’t.
Nevertheless, the appeal of its eerie, melancholic, other-worldly tone endures: as familiar as a violin, while also as distant as the static from a detuned radio.
The theremin remains noteworthy for being played without physical contact. It is therefore very easy to play while also fiendishly difficult to play well. You could probably count the people who’ve truly mastered it on the fingers of two outstretched hands.
Pioneering musicians like Clara Rockmore, who took to the Theremin to perform classical pieces in the 1920s, are now properly celebrated along with the instrument they mastered. Longtime theremin manufacturer Moog has even named its latest in Rockmore’s honour: the Claravox Centennia. You can hear and watch it in action with piano accompaniment in a style echoing Rockmore’s own recitals with her pianist sister Nadia Reisenberg.
More handwavy goodness comes from this month’s Electronic Sound magazine whose title feature examines the instrument and some of its greatest players.
