On Mon, 16 Feb 2009, David Tayler wrote: > I only play a toy theorbo in public. > The Lorentz Fitzgerald contractions. Horrible. > dt The theorbo player last night, His fingers much faster than light; He started his play, In a relative way, The fall fell the previous night.
(freely adapted from: There was a young lady called Bright) > > At 07:47 PM 2/16/2009, you wrote: >> And then, since we are in a gravity well, you'll need to account for the >> local curvature of space... >> >> -----Original Message----- >> From: Robert Clair [mailto:[email protected]] >> Sent: Monday, February 16, 2009 7:29 PM >> To: Lute List >> Cc: howard posner >> Subject: [LUTE] Theorbo Relativity >> >> While I think that Howard has made an excellent beginning on a theory >> of Relativity of Theorbo Toyness, I think it's >> >> incomplete as it stands. To completely specify whether the theorbo is >> toy or not we need to know if the theorbo is >> >> in motion relative to the listener, the speed, whether the theorbo is >> oriented perpendicular of parallel to the direction of motion (if >> parallel, the Lorentz-FitzGerald contraction will affect the string >> length) and whether the theorbo is approaching or receding >> >> (the Doppler effect will modify the pitch standard). >> >> >> You can have hours of fun by guessing exactly what "relatively small >> size" makes a theorbo a "toy" under Martin's criteria, then changing >> the assumed pitch level and doing it again. Martin misses the fun >> because he doesn't acknowledge that pitch is relevant to the question >> of instrument size, which spares him a lot of work with the more >> advanced branches of mathematics, such as multiplication and division. >> >> The part about Martyn's view of what size theorbos I "favor" -- as if >> I actually had theorbo preferences based on size, and there were >> someone else on the planet who cared what those preferences were -- >> is new, I think, and is silly without being funny. As far as I can >> tell, if Martyn thought about such things, he would say my theorbo is >> a toy at A92, definitely not a toy at AD0, and probably not a toy >> at AA5, before realizing that there was something wrong with his >> categorical one-size-fits-all construct. But he doesn't think of >> such things. Hence the joke. >> >> -- >> >> >> To get on or off this list see list information at >> http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html > > the next auto-quote is: The gods can either take away evil from the world and will not, or, being willing to do so, cannot; or they neither can nor will, or lastly, they are able and willing. If they have the will to remove evil and cannot, then they are not omnipotent. If they can, but will not, then they are not benevolent. If they are neither able nor willing, they are neither omnipotent nor benevolent. Lastly, if they are both able and willing to annihilate evil, why does it exist? (Epicurus) /\/\ Peter Nightingale Telephone (401) 874-5882 Department of Physics, East Hall Fax (401) 874-2380 University of Rhode Island Kingston, RI 02881
