Folk v The Observer

Subject: Folk v Observers
From: GUEST,The Observer
Date: 12 May 08 - 03:52 AM

Yet again, I'm interested in sucking the very life blood from your system and reducing your will to live.

Should Observers be wasting the time of mudcat Folk? And if so how much would be reasonable? Would Observers survive without singers and musicians? Should the best and most popular be given more time than the less popular?

Has observing lost its way? Should everything be reduced (or elevated) to a situation where all Observers bring their own beer and sandwiches and create their own forum to gaze at each others navels in wonderment? Do observers want to be recognised by the general public or should they remain an underground movement, a home for the chattering classes?

Subject: RE: Folk v The Observer
From: the button
Date: 12 May 08 - 03:56 AM

There's an Observer Guide to British Folk (1st edition) going on EBay for around £50 at the moment, so clearly someone somewhere values your input.

Subject: RE: Folk v The Observer
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 12 May 08 - 05:06 AM

Forgive my ignorance, but what do you mean by observer?

Subject: RE: Folk v The Observer
From: TheSnail
Date: 12 May 08 - 05:31 AM

Observer effect

Subject: RE: Folk v The Observer
From: glueman
Date: 12 May 08 - 05:37 AM

Anything that increases quality is a good thing. The mother of invention is self criticism, the father of mediocrity is unquestioning self regard and received wisdom.

Subject: RE: Folk v The Observer
From: GUEST,VOlgadon
Date: 12 May 08 - 05:41 AM

You can bet that the observer effect was highly influential, look at Walter Pardon, for instance.

Subject: RE: Folk v The Observer
From: Leadfingers
Date: 12 May 08 - 05:53 AM

If you read the Guardian or the Telegraph , where does THAT leave the Observer ?

Subject: RE: Folk v The Observer
From: Paul Burke
Date: 12 May 08 - 06:28 AM

It leaves him where he always was, in the seat behind Biggles.

Subject: RE: Folk v The Observer
From: GUEST,buspassed
Date: 12 May 08 - 06:34 AM

Got a guitar tutor in the weekend Guardian/Observer. How many vouchers do you need for the guitar?!

Subject: RE: Folk v The Observer
From: Nick
Date: 12 May 08 - 07:10 AM

I think it might be a bit of mild ribbing at the expense of the originator of the Money v Folk, Entertainment v folk etc threads

Subject: RE: Folk v The Observer
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 12 May 08 - 07:49 AM

Personally the Hysenberg phenomenon has confused me with being an observer.

I think we're all more like whelks who have attached ourselves to the underside of a ancient pier. Skegness for example.

The question is how do we break with the whelk tradition and climb up onto the pier itself and get ourselves a stick of rock, so to speak.

There are times when being a molusc encrusted with seaweed never really fulfils me, as it once did.

Subject: RE: Folk v The Observer
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 12 May 08 - 12:13 PM

I thought the mother of invention was necessity... do we need more observers?

LTS

Subject: RE: Folk v The Observer
From: artbrooks
Date: 12 May 08 - 12:36 PM

Personally, I don't need a folking observer...can't a guy get a little privacy?

Subject: RE: Folk v The Observer
From: Amos
Date: 12 May 08 - 12:50 PM

The ramifications of quantum entanglement and the Heisenberg phenomenon are discussed in this very interesting interview.


Folk phenomena only exist in the presence of observers.


A

Subject: RE: Folk v The Observer
From: glueman
Date: 12 May 08 - 01:29 PM

Folk Philomena exists independently. Frank Zappa was the Mother of Invention.

Subject: RE: Folk v The Observer
From: Peace
Date: 12 May 08 - 01:43 PM

Is this another pornography thread?

Subject: RE: Folk v The Observer
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 12 May 08 - 01:48 PM

well if it has that effect on you , do help yourself.......

Subject: RE: Folk v The Observer
From: GUEST,The Mole Catcher's unplugged Apprentice
Date: 12 May 08 - 03:09 PM

with obviously more time and space to waste, "observer" strikes again *Yawn*

Charlotte R

Subject: RE: Folk v The Observer
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 12 May 08 - 03:55 PM

well if it has that effect on you , do help yourself.......

Don't talk dirty!

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: Folk v The Observer
From: Darowyn
Date: 13 May 08 - 01:03 PM

I'd apply Heisenberg's principle of uncertainty to the situation thus.

An observed performance may be perceived to be Folk, but you can never determine whether it is entertainment. (Someone will always say it isn't and never should be.)

or

An observed performance may be perceived to be entertaining, but you can not determine whether it is folk. (Someone will always say it isn't and never should be.)

Cheers
Dave

Subject: RE: Folk v The Observer
From: astro
Date: 13 May 08 - 03:42 PM

Well, perhaps virtual entertainment and folk can be observed simultaneously, (or the reverse, though time reversal will only get us back to that old question of what is folk), but to observe is to affect and to affect leads us to new effects which in the end must be questioned if it is folk.

Astro in LA

Subject: RE: Folk v The Observer
From: Don Firth
Date: 13 May 08 - 03:58 PM

If a folk singer falls over in the woods and there's no one there to hear him or her say "Ouch!" do they really—

(I can't go on with this. . . .)

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Folk v The Observer
From: M.Ted
Date: 13 May 08 - 04:21 PM

Don, I think it would go "If a folksinger sings in the woods, and there are no folk, does he really sing?"

Subject: RE: Folk v The Observer
From: Herga Kitty
Date: 13 May 08 - 06:18 PM

M.Ted - is that another way of saying that the singer isn't folk?

Kitty

Subject: RE: Folk v The Observer
From: glueman
Date: 13 May 08 - 07:02 PM

There must be some money in taking an untutored child of nature, say Tess of the Dormobiles with buzzsaw voice, and giving bucolically inclined men a fantasy to project on to? Observers aren't as daft as they look.

Subject: RE: Folk v The Observer
From: GUEST,Chicken Charlie
Date: 14 May 08 - 06:49 PM

I'm sorry, guys/chaps, I really don't get it.

Yes, I can sit around all day playing folk music to my golden retriever. (Who is 17 and deaf.) While I am doing this, I can tell myself all kinds of solipsistic things about preserving the tradition. But I'm only preserving it until the rapidly approaching limit of my three-score years and ten.

If I admit "observers" to the phenom--goshes! someone might like it. Whether or not that someone can return the favor is totally immaterial, IMO. (Background track: "Make just .... one someone happy ....") That would be a gain.

Or, an observer might say, "Cripes, you bleep, you sing flatter than a pancake. Why the Hell don't you take voice lessons before inflicting yourself on the public." That would be a gain too. I very well might either work on my act or stop frying people's brains.
That would be a gain.

So I don't get it. "Should Observers be wasting the time of Mudcat Folk?" I don't know how you meant that; to me, if taken seriously, it just comes off arrogantly. The only other explanation that occurs to me so far is that this is an exercise in re-phrasing THE PERENNIAL THREAD so it seems new, exciting, and something Obama followers who are on fire for change would vote for.

Are "Observers" (what's the diff between them and "audience" anyway?) out to corrupt the process? That's a risk we have to take. Me, I learned to say, "You want to hear Rap Crap? I'll defend your right to go home and play it to your heart's content, as loud as you want until the neighbors call the cops, but right now I'm doing my thing, and if you listen, you may learn to like it. Or not. Ideas compete in the marketplace, so let 'em compete."

We're down to two possibilities: this is an ersatz pseudo-question, or ..... I don't get it. :)

CC

Subject: RE: Folk v The Observer
From: George Papavgeris
Date: 14 May 08 - 07:54 PM

Yep. That was it. A little esoteric for some, but Nick did spell it out, so no excuses.

Subject: RE: Folk v The Observer
From: GUEST,Chicken Charlie
Date: 14 May 08 - 08:15 PM

Frankly, I don't feel the least bit sorry if Schroedinger can't keep track of his own goddam cat. Shouldn't be allowed to own one anyway, if he's going to treat it like that. Cats are people too, ya know.

CC

Subject: RE: Folk v The Observer
From: M.Ted
Date: 14 May 08 - 08:53 PM

We don't know whether the singer is folk or not, or singing or not, because there is no one there. What is needed is some sort of folklorist to go out there with a tape recorder--

Subject: RE: Folk v The Observer
From: Peace
Date: 14 May 08 - 09:05 PM

There WERE no tape recorders in folklore times. The moment you tape them you will have interfered with the process and completely screwed up history. Sheesh . . . .

Subject: RE: Folk v The Observer
From: Nick
Date: 14 May 08 - 09:57 PM

Now all this has made me think.

Say they are all right.

Let's presume there is a fiddle strung with the gut from Schrodingers cat. It is placed in a sealed box. The survival of Mr Heisenberg's wife who is being held captive depends on the note in the box being played in tune. If the note is anything but perefectly in pitch then a poison is released into the box. A note is played but simultaneously the note is in tune and out of tune. (How so? It's a quantum thing). However Mr Heisenbergs presence influences the outcome.

I'm uncertain what happens next

I shouldn't have started this thread. Last time I pretend to be someone I'm not (or am I ... or was he?)

Need to go to bed

Subject: RE: Folk v The Observer
From: glueman
Date: 15 May 08 - 02:26 AM

Occam's razor states that if you buy a 50 pack of blades for £1.99 at Aldi it's no good complaining when you don't have a good shave. Growing a beard does not automatically denote quality. Sometimes it comes with a fresh face.

Subject: RE: Folk v The Observer
From: Nick
Date: 15 May 08 - 05:49 AM

This is an increasingly odd thread.

Bizarrely I have just seen a cat with a piece of buttered bread stuck to it's back drop past the window frantically spinning round and round faster and faster as it gets closer to the ground.

Subject: RE: Folk v The Observer
From: Paul Burke
Date: 15 May 08 - 06:28 AM

Ah well, the cat will be on the buttered side. Lets hope it has a half life of at least 2.

Subject: RE: Folk v The Observer
From: George Papavgeris
Date: 15 May 08 - 06:32 AM

Which way was it spinning? Left or right?

Subject: RE: Folk v The Observer
From: GUEST,Plughole
Date: 15 May 08 - 09:19 AM

If Nick is in the Northern hemisphere, then it would have been spinning clockwise, else anti-clockwise

Subject: RE: Folk v The Observer
From: Snuffy
Date: 15 May 08 - 01:00 PM

But in a horizontal or a vertical plane?

Subject: RE: Folk v The Observer
From: GUEST,Plughole
Date: 16 May 08 - 11:45 AM

Snuffy, actually a changing mixture of both, as observed when you spin a coin and it wobbles faster and faster. For those interested,.....

The physics of a spinning coin

When a spinning coin falls on its side, it rattles with increasing speed until it stops abruptly. The final few seconds of motion are accompanied by a shudder and a whirling sound of increasing frequency. A similar effect is seen in Euler's disk, a toy that would spin for ever in the absence of friction and vibration. Now Keith Moffatt from the University of Cambridge in the UK has analyzed the motion of these systems in detail (Nature 404 833).


Disk movieMoffatt became interested in the problem while looking for Christmas presents for his grandchildren. "I came across the toy in a mail order catalogue and thought it sounded interesting," he says. After playing with the toy he became intrigued with the physics behind Euler's disk. "The disk is continually losing energy throughout the process," he says, "but the rattling movement goes faster." Indeed, according to the equations describing the disk, its angular velocity should approach a 'finite time singularity'. What, Moffatt wanted to know, stopped the angular velocity becoming infinite?

It turned out that the theory broke down when the vertical acceleration of the disk exceeded the acceleration due to gravity. Moffatt calculated that this happened when the coin was rotating at about 100 times per second. He also calculated that a commercially available Euler's disk should spin for about 100 seconds before it stopped - which agreed with observations to within about 20%.