Monthly Archives: February 2023
Conductors Who Died on the Job
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 28th February 2023I must have arisen on the morbid side of the bed today hence the subject of this ghostly tale – all of it true. The typical picture of an elderly maestro is that of a baton waver merrily leading the band as he proceeds through his ninth decade. In truth, many of them overcome with…
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Cav & Pag – Corelli and Tucker Alternate Roles
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 23rd February 2023Pietro Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana and Ruggero Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci have been paired more often than Southwest Airlines has had recent on time flights. The two leading Italian style tenors at the Metropolitan Opera who sang the leading roles in these operas during the 1960s were Franco Corelli and Richard Tucker. Both had virile spinto tenors that…
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Brno Filharmonie Visits Lubbock
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 21st February 2023The Brno Filharmonie under the direction of their American conductor Dennis Russell Davies concluded their 12-day tour of America with a concert last night at Buddy Holly Hall. The renowned Czech band began in New York’s Carnegie Hall followed by appearances in Michigan, California, Kansas, and culminating in Texas. Its program is below. The all-Czech…
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Another Failure of AI – Man Beats Best Computer Go Program
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 20th February 2023This is a flow up to the article I wrote here five days ago in which I described the failure of Open AI’s ChatGPT to handle medical material. Obviously, the AI program has not had much exposure to medicine accounting for its poor performance in that field. Specialized AI programs have done as well or…
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Presidents Biden’s Annual Physical
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 19th February 2023President Biden just received his annual physical exam. Like everything else in today’s world the result was engulfed in political controversy. I do not want to do anything but state a few simple facts about the exam and its reception. The President is 80 years old, young by comparison to this author. Virtually all American…
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The Perils of AI
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 15th February 2023I’ve recently read several articles describing the incredible output of openai. Samples of its work were presented as equivalent to the columns of newswriters or the advice emails by writers with large numbers of readers. So I decided to try it out. I asked for the biographies of a number of well known and important…
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Fauci Says Vaccines against Flu and COVID Work Poorly if at All
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 12th February 2023Rethinking next-generation vaccines for coronaviruses, influenzaviruses, and other respiratory viruses is a paper by Anthony Fauci and two colleagues. It examines the reasons that vaccines against flu and COVID don’t work very well. This is a startling statement after all the public and repeated admonitions from Dr Fauci that everyone be vaccinated repeatedly. The summary…
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Shostakovich Symphony No 15
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 10th February 2023Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-75) wrote 15 symphonies. His valedictory effort in the genre was composed in 1971 and premiered the following year under the baton of his son Maxim. The interval was filled with illness. The composer died of a combination of heart disease and lung cancer, brought on by lifelong heavy smoking, three years after…
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Cannabis and Cognition
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 6th February 2023In a world where reason has been suspended in favor of lunatic fads, the use of cannabis has gained more traction than a football field sized stretch of flypaper. It has been used for a variety of medical conditions such as nausea, as an appetite stimulus for patients with AIDS, and for pain relief. Twenty…
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More on Masks For COVID and Flu
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 2nd February 2023The Cochrane Library just published an analysis of the effect of wearing mask, using N95 respirators, and hand washing on the spread of respiratory viruses like flu and COVID. Cochrane has long set the standard for data analysis. Their lay summary is below. The complete analysis can be viewed here. The response to the COVID…
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