Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Biographies “Books of note about music - Olympian” plus 2 more

Biographies “Books of note about music - Olympian” plus 2 more

Books of note about music - Olympian

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 05:16 AM PST

By DAN DELUCA | The Philadelphia Inquirer • Published December 16, 2009

How exactly did the Beatles destroy rock 'n' roll? Why were so many Great American Songbook standouts penned by Jewish tunesmiths? And what exactly is the Tao of Wu?

These and other musical questions are addressed in noteworthy books in a year in which authoritative biographies of Louis Armstrong, Ralph Stanley, and David Bowie compete for attention with coffee-table tomes on the Rolling Stones, Johnny Mercer, and the photographic history of rock-'n' roll.

And, oh yeah, there are a bunch of Michael Jackson books, too. The biggest is "The Michael Jackson Opus" (Kraken, $249), a 400-page, 26 1/2-pound hagiography sanctioned by the Jackson estate, featuring paintings by David Nordahl, including one in which Jackson bears a creepy resemblance to Michelangelo's David.

For a more modest Jackson experience, there's "Michael" (HarperStudio, $29.99), a 224-page, two-pound picture book with essays by the editors of Rolling Stone, plus remembrances by Smokey Robinson, Steve Wonder, and others.

And for the words of the man himself, there's Jackson's oft-touching "Moonwalk" (Harmony, $25), which has been reissued with a new cover wrap making it clear it's "Michael Jackson's One & Only Biography: His Life, His Words."

'Tis the season to be a jazz reader. For starters, there's Terry Teachout's "Pops" (Houghton Mifflin, $30), a highly readable bio of Louis Armstrong. Teachout, a critic who has written books about H.L. Mencken and George Balanchine, argues that Armstrong's importance is not that he was jazz's inventor or first great soloist, but "the first great influence in jazz." As Miles Davis put it: "You can't play nothing on trumpet that doesn't come from him."

Still more thoroughly researched is Robin D.G. Kelley's "Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original" (Free Press, $30). Kelley's book is dense - there are 101 pages of footnotes - but it goes a long way toward demystifying the eccentric jazzman, who suffered from bipolar disorder.

Both Monk and Armstrong, naturally, play major roles in "Jazz" (W.W. Norton, $39.95), Gary Giddins and Scott DeVeaux's impressively erudite and accessible history, which does an excellent job of contextualizing from Bessie Smith to Medeski, Martin and Wood.

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Verizon Business Joins NORAD to Track Santa's Sleigh - Biloxi Sun Herald

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 03:57 AM PST

More than 1,200 volunteers, military personnel from Colorado Springs, their families and friends, and NORAD Tracks Santa corporate sponsor team members - including members from Verizon Business -- will be continuously manning the NORAD Santa tracking hotline to ensure children know the whereabouts of Santa on Christmas Eve. In 2008, nearly 74,000 calls were answered at the NORAD Tracks Santa Operations Center at Peterson Air Force Base.

"For years, NORAD and Verizon have worked together to bring children of all ages a unique experience during the holiday season -- live tracking of Santa along his yuletide journey," said Joyce Frankovis, the program project lead from NORAD. "While we've added many online bells and whistles since its inception, the Santa hotline is at the heart of our program, enabling children to talk to a live operator to find out Santa's whereabouts."

Children, their parents and the young-at-heart also can visit the NORAD Tracks Santa Web site (www.noradsanta.org), which provides real-time information on Santa's exact location. The information is available in English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish and Chinese -- complete with radar maps and streaming SantaCam video images documenting Santa's global journey.

This year, Santa also can be tracked through Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, and TroopTube.tv.

A Tradition for Half a Century

NORAD, the binational U.S. and Canadian military organization responsible for the aerospace defense of both countries, has tracked Santa around the globe on Christmas Eve for more than 50 years. The tradition started by accident in 1955 after a local newspaper misprint prompted children to call the Continental Air Defense Command (NORAD's predecessor) instead of a special Santa hotline phone number.

About Verizon Business

Verizon Business, a unit of Verizon Communications (NYSE: VZ), is a global leader in communications and IT solutions. We combine professional expertise with one of the world's most connected IP networks to deliver award-winning communications, IT, information security and network solutions. We securely connect today's extended enterprises of widespread and mobile customers, partners, suppliers and employees - enabling them to increase productivity and efficiency and help preserve the environment. Many of the world's largest businesses and governments - including 96 percent of the Fortune 1000 and thousands of government agencies and educational institutions - rely on our professional and managed services and network technologies to accelerate their business. Find out more at www.verizonbusiness.com.

VERIZON'S ONLINE NEWS CENTER: Verizon news releases, executive speeches and biographies, media contacts, high-quality video and images, and other information are available at Verizon's News Center on the World Wide Web at www.verizon.com/news. To receive news releases by e-mail, visit the News Center and register for customized automatic delivery of Verizon news releases.

SOURCE Verizon Communications

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New chief rocks Minneapolis Fed - Minneapolis Star Tribune

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 05:16 AM PST

At 15, Kocherlakota enrolled at Princeton University determined to study public policy and become an attorney. But after taking a number of social science courses, Kocherlakota said he found himself drawn to the Math Department, where classes were more intimate, and, he says, "much more fun."

His junior year, Kocherlakota happened upon a book, "A Mathematical Approach to the Social Sciences." It demonstrated how formulas could explain economic behavior. "It was a huge epiphany for me," he says.

He pursued his doctorate at the University of Chicago, which was at the forefront using mathematical techniques to build economic models. Lars Hansen, an economist there, hired Kocherlakota as a research assistant and says he was immediately impressed.

"Most [graduate students], you give them a paper to read, and they'll search for typos," Hansen said. "Give it to Narayana, and he'll find tough conceptual questions. He was not going to be a 'yes' person."

It's clear Kocherlakota won't be a rubber stamp for official government policy. Last year, he was among 270 economists who signed a petition protesting the Obama administration's economic stimulus plan. The petition, published in a number of major newspapers, was paid for by the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.

Kocherlakota said he signed, not necessarily because he was opposed to the stimulus plan, but because he disagreed that economists were unified behind a stimulus as good for the economy. "I didn't view that as being a settled question within the academe," he said.

In his research, Kocherlakota has a history of staking out counterintuitive positions. For instance, in a 1996 study, he poked holes in the widely held belief that young people should own more stocks and gradually rebalance toward less-risky government bonds. He pointed out that the possibility of a disastrous decline in stock prices is exacerbated over time. "Over a 30-year period," he wrote, "the events of 1929 can occur 30 times."

Outwardly mild-mannered, Kocherlakota has said he plans to model his management style after former pro football quarterback Joe Montana, known for his ice-cool disposition. "I don't think anger serves any purpose in life," he said in an internal Fed publication. "I find it a totally wasted emotion."

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