The effects of some popular pieces of classical music

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Cardiologists at Oxford University have found in a recent study that when people were played certain classical works, it coincided with a reduction in blood pressure and heart rate. The pieces in question included excerpts from works by Verdi, Beethoven and Puccini that had in common a repeated ten-second rhythm, matching phases in which the body’s blood-pressure control mechanism sends and receives messages from the brain. Faster music such as Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” had no effect, while recordings by the Red Hot Chili Peppers actually increased the heart rate. (Daily Telegraph report)

The secret is in the rhythm, the matching phrases – and the melody. The human ear is attracted to a memorable melody, long enough to register in the memory, and repeated as a close variation.  The great composers have always known this, which is why classical music programs repeat and repeat them, and why most modern music is played (once) in a concert and is often promptly forgotten.

We need music that stirs the soul, relaxes and is memorable.  Like several other branches of the arts, music lost its way about a hundred years ago, and is now painfully having to take stock and find audiences whose money will support the careers of talented young people in serious music making.  

Guns in America

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The House Appropriations Committee has just voted to stop the funding research of gun violence. Mind you, one has to ask why it needs taxpayer money to undertake research on the subject. 30,000 Ameticans every year are killed by gunshots. That fact should be sufficient for intelligent peopke to conclude that the equivalent of a major war cannot be allowed to continue every year of our lives, and that at least some safety measures should be enacted.

But no, the NRA won’t allow it. Brought up on Hollywood Westerns, where real men fight gun battles in the street and the baddies are always dead at the end of it, they really think they are going to defend themselves against crazy gunmen by taking their own loaded guns into churches, bars etc in the expectation of being magically transported to O.K Corral, where, of course, their first shot kills the baddie. I am mildly exasperated, I guess.

Our valuable time is being wasted at airports

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After covert tests revealed major security failures, the acting director of the U.S Transportation Security Administration has been reassigned. The inspector general found that] TSA agents failed 67 out of 70 tests, with Red Team members repeatedly able to get potential weapons through checkpoints, according to officials briefed on the report.

In one case, agents failed to detect a fake explosive taped to an agent’s back, even after performing a pat down that was prompted after the agent set off the magnetometer alarm, according to officials briefed on the report.

In a statement, a spokesman said that the results of the tests were classified (aren’t they always. Ed.) However, he says, the department takes these results “very seriously”. He goes on to issue a series of orders, including the retraining of all transportation security officers and an immediate change in some screening procedures, the testing found to be problematic. (ABC News and NPR. June 3, 2015)

Here are some problematic items for him: taking our shoes off at screening (one single man tried to fly with a bomb in his shoes. It’s called “legislating for exceptions”). Then we travellers have to deal with all the other things they want us to do: get rid of water bottles, take off coats and belts, take out computers and i-pads, fish out money, perfume bottles, keys, money, etc. By the way, during all this don’t even dream of making a joke. Thus have they made flying an unpleasant experience. And Epicureans should search out opportunities for pleasant experiences. Those with metal body parts are now checked in sophisticated new machines, but are still frisked like criminal suspects. Since most people with, say, metal hips, tend to be old, this procedure seems particularly irrelevant. And apparently all this is ineffective and a waste of time. They hardly catch any evil-doers. But the latter have the intense pleasure and excitement of having made the traveller’s life just that little bit more stressful, all in the name of god. Thanks, guys!

An end to e- cigarettes?

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As the number of smokers drops, the remaining smokers actually smoke less and are more likely to quit, according to a study published in the journal Tobacco Control.

The study results suggest that current tobacco control policies already in place are working, partly owing to the clean indoor air legislation, media campaigns that aimed to de-normalize smoking and raised cigarette taxes. It supports the idea that smoking in the United States is heading down a “softening” curve. That means more people are trying to quit, and the number of people quitting compared to smokers is increasing as the number of total smokers declines.

In Europe, the researchers found, things are slightly different. The percentage of smokers who have quit remained constant even as fewer people smoked, while the number of cigarettes smoked per day dropped, as it has in U.S.

Enter “harm reduction”, a way to minimize the exposure of smokers unable or unwilling to quit.  E-cigarettes are part of this policy. People used to believe that nicotine kept people addicted to cigarettes but that it wasn’t dangerous itself. The smoke was thought to be the source of harmful toxins. So the idea was to introduce new ways to deliver nicotine such as e-cigarettes that could give people the nicotine they desired but didn’t involve burning tobacco.  This is the idea behind  e-cigarettes as a replacement for the traditional cigarette.

Now we know better. The 2014 U.S. Surgeon General’s report nicotine is addictive, that a high-enough dosage can be toxic in a short amount of time, and that exposure to nicotine during pregnancy and childhood can have serious adverse consequences. E-cigarettes deliver nicotine and other chemicals to users, but in vapor instead of smoke.
(Based on a Copyright article on the NPR website, 2015)

Exit E- cigarettes? If you subscribe to Epicurean beliefs you might say that if using e-cigarettes makes you happy and relaxed, whose business is it other than your own? On the other hand, smoking these things is apparently extremely bad for those around you who inhale the vapour, sends you to an early grave and is a big burden on public health services. Which side are you on? Ban them, or just let the market decide?

Bank names and shady goings on

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It looks as if the name “HSBC” (the only truly international bank) will disappear in the UK, and the old name, Midland Bank, will be used again in bank branches all over Britain.

I have two reasons for interest in the decision of HSBC to take the bank HQ back to China and re-brand its branches. My family started banking with the Midland Bank in the 1850s, and it was a sad day when that old bank was bought and its name changed to HSBC (which stands for the “Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corp”, and don’t ask about some aspects of its alleged history). I had a love-hate relationship with the Midland, but at least it was a stodgy, predictable, actual bank, not a casino.

Secondly, HSBC has recently been accused of laundering drug and other dodgy money, and, instead of apologising and cleaning ship, the bank is now complaining about British oversight. The sheer gall of it! It is, perhaps, indicative of the attitude of senior management that they think Chinese banking overseers will be more “amenable”.

Be careful what you ask for. At the moment, crooks are ending up in jail in their thousand in China for bribery and corruption. Memo to HSBC Chairman: is this a good time to go? Wouldn’t it be better to re-establish good old ethical banking in the West, and stop trying to make a quick and destructive fast buck?

They never learn because we don’t put them in jail (the excuse has been that the banks involved in corruption had recently been taken over by HSBC, and hadn’t been brought in line. So why buy them? Their due dilgence must be unusually incompetent) Be my guest – go, and with all your MBA’s. We want our money in a straightforward, secure place.