> And there is essentially no discussion of music theory in other cultures (middle eastern, african, east asian, indian)...
To me, that above ^ looks like the biggest gap.
To be fair, the book doesn't claim to demonstrate theory of the "world music" (sic, a phrase as bad as it sounds).
My (brief and shallow) understanding is that most scholars of music in the western world just do not have enough knowledge to talk intelligently about non-western genres. Exceptions exist, of course, but they are quite rare.
[Other reason is that there is a lot of gate-keeping. I've seen that in Hindustani/Carnatic classical studies, FWIW, which is one my areas of interest]
I don't understand why this standard is always applied to westerners. When we go to other countries, are they explaining all the fundamentals of western music in addition to the theories of their own? "Yeah our students in Boston don't know anything about Carnatic rhythm, but over in Bengal they all learn counterpoint and fugue before they learn the traditional ornaments"
I suspect given western dominance in economics others have exposure to western music traditions. I wouldn't expect exposure to traditions other than their own and western.
Indeed, the musical traditions of western Europe and Africa, forged together in the Americas, dominate world culture. Turn on the radio anywhere in the world and you will hear the influences of jazz, rock, funk, samba, hip-hop, etc.
Hindustani (and Carnatic) music indeed do not denote pitches for a very sound (pun intended) reason: They let singers choose the root note (Sa), and thereupon the melody is built. Most (all?) of Hindustani music is melody-based, not harmonic based (like Western music). And the melodies are themselves created within the Raga framework. Raga is like a mode (but not exactly that), and is hard to explain within the constraints of Western music theory precisely because that concept does not exist in western music per se. Which is why most Indian classical theorists call a raga a "melodic framework", and leave it at that (or expound on it, as the case may be).
A great reference for Indian classical music is [1] and and more recent one [2]
Let’s not forget the new new wunderkind who was hailed as the new financial genius and whose AI fund got trash sold to Citadel for 20% of its value (after rising 450% of course)
> The Telluride Film Festival turned its mystery Sunday slot into a phone-free event, unveiling Nathan Fielder’s surprise Elizabeth Holmes documentary “You Can See Everything.”
Filmed largely in secret over three years, the nearly three-hour doc is an inside view of Holmes’ final weeks before going to prison, then mutates into reenactments and mind-bending twists that meld reality and performance.
> Dan Ariely, professor of business administration in the Fuqua School of Business, is once again under scrutiny after an article released Monday found evidence that he likely tampered with or fabricated data in an influential 2002 research paper on procrastination.
> The findings — published in Data Colada, a blog run by three esteemed behavioral science professors that investigates and replicates academic research — identified four key “red flags” in the study’s data, which suggested the results were not possible without interference.
> “We are unable to generate a benign explanation for all of the anomalies presented here,” the professors wrote. “Based on this evidence, we believe the data for Study 2 of Ariely and Wertenbroch (2002) were severely tampered with or fabricated to produce the desired results.”
"Three California college students had to be rescued from Mount Shasta on Monday during a poorly planned summit climb in which they overshot their itinerary, meandered off-route and ran out of food and water."
and
"Then in August, while hiking in Shasta's popular Bunny Flat area, a man stopped rangers to ask for directions. He showed them a print-out map he'd been following and explained that he'd prompted ChatGPT to produce it for him.
"It was terrible — terrible — not even close to accurate," Meyers said. "It had route lines and place names that were totally off — just ridiculous. We were like, dude, you gotta throw that away." "
Sorry I LOL'd. Too funny.
More serious though:
"On Saturday, the trio of climbers, all from California, left from the Clear Creek Trailhead on Shasta's southeastern side with a plan to camp partway up before making a summit push early Sunday morning, according to a forest service report. They'd asked ChatGPT for specific guidance, researched the climb on YouTube, and planned to use the AllTrails phone app to navigate the giant peak, the report said.
Clear Creek is a popular late-summer route because, when it melts out, it offers climbers a non-technical way up the peak — it can be done in hiking boots without ice axes or crampons. However, it's an 8-mile journey that gains 6,500 feet in elevation, and guides caution that it is not to be taken lightly.
The climbers reached the summit Sunday evening — far later than the mid-afternoon turnaround time recommended by Shasta climbing experts. They'd clumsily navigated the mountain's rugged volcanic terrain by following the line of a digital map in the AllTrails phone app, misreading it as the way of an established trail."
Archive: https://archive.is/20260910112856/https://www.bloomberg.com/...
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