Random Monday: On Display, Shocking News, a New Kid in the Block and Nerds Who Play French Horn

Time to pause and navel-gaze.

• 

  On display

  A web site project from last year — Esyst.org — was recently translated into a large booth display. It came out very nice!

  [Click on the image for a larger view.]

  This project had a very simple mission — a top-down approach to technology education — that inspired a  Horndog post proposing the same approach in music education.

• Shock Me Amadeus

  It’s a good thing I don’t live in China. They might have given me electroshock therapy for Internet addiction.

• Oopsie

  A big thanks to Robert Berger — author of The Horn blog — for pointing out weirdness on this blog.

  I may have gotten carried away with too many JavaScripted goodies. They sometimes impede or hangup the download speed of the blog. A few of these gizmos — redundant items in the Featured Items menu at left — have been removed. I hope this helps.

• New kid on the block

  Through John Ericson’s Horn Notes, I found Horn Insights, a new blog by University of Iowa horn professor Jeffrey Agrell.

  Mr. Agrell performed with the Lucerne Symphony and Opera for 25 years, has been a professor at the U of I for 10 years. He is a regular contributor to the International Horn Society‘s publication, The Horn Call.

  Chalk up another victim of the blogging bug.

• That nerdy French horn player

  At The Galloping Skirt there is “When Nerds Express” — a funny little diatribe on the stigma of being a dork on a dorky instrument.

  Ah … it brought back memories of being picked on as a kid for taking my horn home every day on the school bus.

  “WHAT IS THAT?” they would always taunt, “A PORT-O-LET?”

  Good grief.

• Mind over matter

  From “Can Your Brain Fight Fatigue?” at the New York Times.

“Training is no longer simply an act of getting the muscles used to lactate or teaching the lungs how to breathe harder.” It’s also about getting your brain to accept new limits by pushing yourself, safely. “Once your brain recognizes that you’re not going to damage yourself,” Foster says, “it’ll be happy to let you go.”