Users of Google’s voice-control features such as OK Google are probably aware that the company stores the voice recordings it receives when they talk to it.  But it’s still a bit of a shock to be confronted with a list of all the recordings the company has ever made of you.  Google’s voice and audio activity page isn’t promoted heavily by the company, and visiting it gives a hint as to why.  If you have (or have ever had) an Android phone with Google’s “OK Google” voice-control system, the page should show a list of every command you have ever given it--replete with a little play button next to it.  The feature is one of a number of attempts by the company to demystify its data-collection service.  Similarly, Google offers a location history, showing users any location the company has tracked them to, through apps such as Google Maps as well as simply using an Android phone.  That’s not to say the company doesn’t have good reasons.  If you use voice control on a Google product, you’ve benefited from the fact that it stores your voice, both in aggregate (the large amount of data it harvests from users allows it to improve recognition) and in particular (by learning your specific voice, it can get better at recognising it).  And if you use the services, you have already opted in to storing your data once (though you may not remember doing so).  Turning voice Activity off doesn’t stop Google storing your recordings, but it means they get kept with an anonymous identifier, and can’t be easily linked back to your account.  If you want to stop Google recording your voice at all, well, there’s only one solution:  stop talking to it.  Alex Hern  http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/oct/13/google-voice-activity-listen-delete-recordings

November 22, 1963 began as an ordinary Friday.  Leonard Bernstein, Music Director of the New York Philharmonic, was at Philharmonic Hall in a script meeting with Jack Gottlieb and producer Roger Englander for an episode of the New York Philharmonic Young People’s Concerts, scheduled to be broadcast the next day.  In the office next door, Howard Keresey, the Philharmonic librarian, heard a news report of the shooting and immediately called in Gottlieb.  Behind the closed door of the meeting room, they could hear Gottlieb say, “Shot!  What do you mean shot?  Shot dead?”  Bernstein tried to maintain order in the meeting by urging his staff, “We must go on . . . life goes on,” but within minutes he realized, “we can’t go on.”  According to Bernstein, everyone then “huddled around the radio to learn whether the shot had been fatal.”  George Szell was scheduled to conduct an all-Beethoven program at an afternoon subscription concert.  The concert had already commenced when the call came through with news of the death of President Kennedy.  Immediately after Beethoven’s Leonore Overture No. 3,  the Orchestra’s manager, Carlos Moseley walked on stage to convey the tragic news to the audience.  George Szell led the audience in a moment of silence and the rest of the program was cancelled.  On Sunday, November 24, 1963, two days after the assassination, Leonard Bernstein conducted the New York Philharmonic and the Schola Cantorum of New York in a nationally televised JFK memorial featuring Mahler's Resurrection Symphony--not the Brahms Requiem.  The performance featured soloists Lucina Amara (soprano), and Jennie Tourel (mezzo-soprano).  This was the first televised performance of the complete symphony.  Indeed, Mahler’s music had never been performed for such an event.  The more common practice would have been to perform a requiem, or, as George Szell did for the remaining Philharmonic concerts that weekend—replace the overture with the funeral march from Beethoven's Symphony No. 3, Eroica and ask that the audience members not applaud after the movement’s final bars.  Here is a small part of Leonard Berstein's remarks:  "This will be our reply to violence:  to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before."  The following month, on December 10, 1963 in Tel Aviv, Bernstein’s next major work, the Kaddish Symphony, had its world premiere performance with the Israel Philharmonic.  Bernstein dedicated his Symphony:  “To the beloved memory of John F. Kennedy.”  The American premiere occurred on January 10, 1964, with Charles Munch and the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Symphony Hall, near Kennedy’s hometown of Brookline Massachusetts.  Ever since Bernstein’s riveting tribute to JFK, Mahler’s symphonies have become a musical symbol for national mourning.  On June 8, 1968, Bernstein conducted the Adagietto from Mahler's Symphony No. 5 at JFK’s brother Robert’s funeral at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral.  Pierre Boulez also performed the Adagietto on March 28, 1969, the day President Dwight D. Eisenhower died.  On September 10, 2011, conductor Alan Gilbert directed the New York Philharmonic in a memorial of the 9/11 terrorist attacks with Mahler's Second Symphony, the same piece performed by Bernstein in memory of JFK.  Bernstein’s powerful antiphon against hatred remained unknown until 1982 when it was published in “Findings,” a personal self-portrait containing essays, letters, and other writings on a variety of subjects.  http://www.leonardbernstein.com/response_to_violence.htm

                                                               

Almost one of every three Miami-Dade County residents living in poverty is under 18, according to the Department of Regulatory and Economic Resources.  Many schools face high dropout rates, after-school programs are being eliminated and students are failing.  Those at-risk children are ones that Chad Bernstein is trying to help through his nonprofit, Guitars Over Guns.  Bernstein says:  "I've built my life on how important the feeling I get from playing music is.  And I thought that that was the end-all, be-all feeling, that being on stage and performing was the thing for me.  Then I saw a kid have that experience through our program, and it changed everything.  There's an amazing sense of pride when I see a kid experience that feeling on stage, where they've connected with an audience or they get a round of applause because they've worked really hard and have a great performance.  It's an incredible feeling.  I was really fortunate to have the opportunities that I did to learn music.  And part of me feels very responsible to provide those opportunities for other people, because there were people along the way in my path and my musical journey that helped me.  My hopes for the children that we work with are that their vision of the world and their vision of themselves is changed in some way, that they hold themselves to more than other people might, and that they realize there's a whole world out there that they could very much be a part of that isn't necessarily the one right outside their doorstep."  Marissa Calhoun  http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/02/living/cnnheroes-bernstein/

The id, ego, and superego are names for the three parts of the human personality which are part of Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic personality theory.  According to Freud, these three parts combine to create the complex behavior of human beings.  The id is the most basic part of the personality, and wants instant gratification for our wants and needs.  If these needs or wants are not met, a person becomes tense or anxious.  The ego deals with reality, trying to meet the desires of the id in a way that is socially acceptable in the world.  This may mean delaying gratification, and helping to get rid of the tension the id feels if a desire is not met right away.  The superego develops last, and is based on morals and judgments about right and wrong.  Even though the superego and the ego may reach the same decision about something, the superego’s reason for that decision is more based on moral values, while the ego’s decision is based more on what others will think or what the consequences of an action could be.  http://examples.yourdictionary.com/examples-of-id-ego-and-superego.html

A hanger steak is a cut of beef steak prized for its flavor.  Derived from the diaphragm of a steer or heifer, it typically weighs about 1.0 to 1.5 lb (450 to 675 g).  This cut is part of the from the plate steak, which indicates the lower belly of the animal.  Hanger steak resembles flank steak in texture and flavor.  It is a vaguely V-shaped pair of muscles with a long, inedible membrane down the middle.  The hanger steak is usually the most tender cut on an animal and is best marinated and cooked quickly over high heat (grilled or broiled) and served rare or medium rare, to avoid toughness.  Occasionally seen on menus as a "bistro steak", hanger steak is also very traditional in Mexican cuisine, particularly in the north, where it is known as arrachera, and is generally marinated, grilled, and served with a squeeze of lime juice, guacamole, salsa, and tortillas to roll tacos.  In South Texas, this cut of beef is known as fajitas arracheras.  In Britain, it is referred to as "skirt," not to be confused with the American skirt steak.  In French, it is known as the onglet, in Italian the lombatello, in Flanders the kroaie, and in Spanish the solomillo de pulmón.  Its U.S. meat-cutting classification is NAMP 140.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanger_steak

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1374  November 6, 2015  On this date in 1856, Scenes of Clerical Life, the first work of fiction by the author later known as George Eliot, was submitted for publication.  On this date in 1935,  Parker Brothers acquired the forerunner patents for Monopoly from Elizabeth Magie.  Magie (1866–1948) invented The Landlord's Game, the precursor to Monopoly, to illustrate teachings of the progressive era economist Henry George.