Off-topic Thread

Ah, cool, I was wondering if that was the case.

Inspirational concept. Bothered a little bit by the emphasis on America. (It wouldn't be an issue if it wasn't so typical). Love the song.

Given that this is already a thread for mildly but not completely off-topic remarks, I'm curious as to why Mblume's remark was downvoted.

Here's an anti-death one (in French) by the same artist. Not quite as beautiful as Baba Yetu, but still nice. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpnxbiUw_VM

Wei Dai did this thing: http://www.ibiblio.org/weidai/lesswrong_user.php But it won't load arbitrary numbers of comments.

I remember there being some string you could paste into a URL that would take you to a given user's first page of submissions, but I can't find where it's specified.

I keep trying to make music. My musicianly dexterity is around the level of "would have difficulty playing a police siren." I have 400kg of vinyl records.

I sing and play guitar and guitarish instruments fairly well. (There was a while when I made more than half of my meager income teaching and playing bass guitar). I can also play a bit on other instruments. Examples: lead voice and electric guitar; cittern and composition; organ. (Not counting this sentence, I'm resisting the urge to point out the flaws in these!)

I've had an intensive experience in music in my late teens - early 20's, culminating in recording an album with friends where I did most of the sound engineering (the whole project took about a year and a half, excluding the years that before when we were writing the songs as a band), and a few albums after that. After briefly considering a career in sound engineering and/or production, I dropped everything and came to the UK to continue my studies in computing. The only music I've done since is to practice singing alone with a guitar and get to the level where I could feel comfortable playing at an open mic night. I've been dreaming about writing rationality-themed songs recently, but I never could write lyrics...

I play recorder at what I'm guessing is a fairly skilled amateur level.

I took piano lessons until I went off to college. I have continued to play for my own enjoyment and relaxation often enough (once a week or so). It's helped that every place I ever rented from just happened to have an in-tune piano.

Some of us write music.

I would say I am a low-professional-level pianist: I have many years of training and graduate degrees, and am capable of making a living at it and have done so in the past. But I never had the degree of aptitude or ability for obsessive focus such that I could have been a major professional performer (recordings, international concert schedule, teaching job at a top music school), so I turned more toward music scholarship, which suits me as a career very well. I still do play some in various personal/professional settings.

I have taken piano and flute lessons in the past, and was in choirs in school. I pick up my flute very occasionally, and fool around on pianos that I encounter, but am no longer serious about making music, nor very good at it.

You can get questions answered at Physics Stack Exchange and have discussions at Physics Forums.

I have a degree in it. My curiosity is mostly satisfied.

I was planning on revisiting some topics and try to gain mastery of things like ballistics, spring dynamics, and wave equations. If it comes as a part of my RSS feeds, I would probably up that as a priority.

I'm currently studying physics at my university.