Monthly Archives: January 2025
The Crash at Reagan Airport – Why Primary Prevention Often Fails
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 31st January 2025An article in the Wall Street Journal offers an instructive example of the failure of primary prevention. Primary prevention in medicine is the attempt to avoid a disease event that has yet to happen. An example is the use of lipid-lowering drugs to prevent cardiovascular disease in a subject who has never suffered from CV…
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Night and Day – Mario Lanza
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 27th January 2025Night and Day Mario Lanza is the title of the latest CD release of Lanza’s singing using Digitally Extracted Stereo to enhance the original mono recordings. The technique is a revelation. Lanza’s great voice sounds like it was recorded yesterday. The two-disc set contains 49 selections ranging from opera to popular songs and a lot…
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Aida in HD – 2025
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 25th January 2025Aida returned to the Met’s stage for the 1199th time today. It was the 4th time Verdi’s masterpiece has been telecast in the company’s HD series. This appearance marked the first telecast of Michael Mayer’s new production that replaced Sonja Frisell’s extravaganza which had survived about 270 mountings at the New York opera palace and…
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Insights from the Supreme Court
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 23rd January 2025Bryan A Gartner writing in the January issue of the National Review had assembled a few pithy comments by Justices of the Supreme Court. Seven of them are reproduced below. Chaos serves no social end. Justice Jackson 1942. Those who begin coercive elimination of dissent soon find themselves eliminating dissenters. Compulsory elimination of opinion achieves…
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Cancer Statistics 2025
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 17th January 2025The American Cancer Society has released its annual report on the incidence and mortality of cancer in the USA. The full report can be downloaded below. I’ll summarize the salient features of the ACS’s data. They come from registries that assembled the information (occurrence, outcomes, and incidence data) through the end of 2021 and mortality…
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Maria – Review
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 14th January 2025Maria is a film depicting the last days of soprano Maria Callas. Streaming on Netflix, the movie directed by Pablo Larraín, is a tour de force for Angelina Jolie who plays the legendary singer. A lot has been made about the accuracy of the events surrounding Callas’ death in Paris at age 53. Similarly, some…
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Report of Florida Grand Jury Vaccine Investigation
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 12th January 2025The Florida Grand Jury appointed by Gov. DeSantis to investigate COVID-19 vaccines has issued its report. The full document can be downloaded below. It is 140 pages. I have excerpted key parts of it to highlight its findings. The report is remarkably thorough and well-written. It reads as though composed by someone with a highly…
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The Met’s New Aida – Brief Review
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 8th January 2025Last night a performance of the Met’s new production of Aida was broadcast over the company’s Sirius channel. It’s always hazardous to make judgments based on a single listen, so I’ll make a fiew tentative comments. I’ll expand these after seeing the production on January 25th as part of this year’s HD series. The vocal…
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The New Pandemic – Very Unique Verbal Tics
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 5th January 2025There’s a current pandemic that no one seems to have noticed. Verbal tics and palsies have always been with us but they have grown to epidemic proportions since the recession of Covid. It has several variants, the most common of which is, you know. So pervasive is the you know variant that it has reached…
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New Years Greetings from Franz Shubert
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 2nd January 2025I can think of no better way to start the new year than with some music by Franz Schubert (1797-1928), the most incandescent of composers. They are presented in no particular order and are selected by no criteria save personnel taste. The Boy Wonder began producing masterpieces when he was just 17 and continued to…
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