Misery Island

Thesis (M.M.)--Boston UniversityMisery Island is a monologue for high soprano and string quartet. The libretto, written by Nerissa Cooney, includes original verse as well as fragments from Henry David Thoreau's Walden Collaboration during the production of the libretto offered an opportunity to pian the emphasis and phrasing of the text; in particular, via our voices, we could each express our own "reading" of the text to each other This process often revealed dynamics and stresses embedded in the text. Being able to volley ideas and rewrite the text established many themes that would be explored as music later on. I refer to the five movements in the piece as a monologue because it is intended as a single dramatic statement. The libretto offered a bounty of opportunities to compose music with the intention of adding a particular perspective to a given text. I specifically tried to keep the performance in mind while composing, attempting to support the vocalist dramatically with the quartet material, in general, I tried to make a piece in which the text and the music are mutually supportive. In a sense, a major goal of mine was to let the text drive the music to places it would otherwise not have gone. The challenge of experimenting with new ideas in composition while striving to best represent a desired dramatic effect or scenario has proved itself to be a fruitful way of finding fresh material with purpose and character Misery Island was premiered at the Boston University Concert Hall on April 8, 2013, with Katrina Galka singing, Nelli Jabotinsky and Hyunji Kim on violin, Evan Perry on viola, Robert Mayes on violoncello, and the composer conducting

Does Skepticism Presuppose Explanationism?

A common response to radical skeptical challenges to our knowledge of the external world has been that there are explanatory reasons (e.g., simplicity, coherence, explanatory power, conservatism) for favoring commonsense explanations of our sensory experiences over skeptical explanations. Despite the degree of visibility this class of response has enjoyed, it has often been viewed with skepticism [sic] by the epistemological community because of concerns about the epistemic merits of explanatory reasoning. I argue that skeptical challenges that employ skeptical hypotheses presuppose central explanationist tenets and that this fact should raise one’s estimation of the strength of explanationist responses to skepticism

Bank stock performance since the 1970s

Bank stocks

Deposit deregulation

Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act of 1980 ; Depository Institutions Deregulation Committee ; Bank deposits

Long term changes in reflectivity and large scale motions in the atmosphere of Jupiter and Saturn

An observational study was made that used a CCD camera and multicolor filters with a committed f/40 60 cm telescope to image the temporal changes in Jupiter's and Saturn's atmospheres. The intent was to maintain a continuous data base to assist in relating the Voyager data with that of Galileo and Cassini

After three rounds: 2-1

Taxation - California ; Expenditures, Public ; Income tax ; California

Long-term changes in reflectivity and large scale motions in the atmosphere of Jupiter and Saturn

A systematic photographic program, utilizing broad-band UV, blue, green, red and near IR pass-bands were carried out at the 60 cm. Tortugas Mountain Telescope. This is part of an ongoing program that spans two Jovian years (25 yrs). The purpose of this program is to provide an ongoing database to characterize high resolution data from spacecraft and earth-orbiting observatories. The standard observing program was maintained and support was given to other investigators who are carrying out complementary observing programs. The general aspect of the cloud decks were monitored, and reveal an interval that shows little variation in the general aspect of the clouddeck of Jupiter since 1981, when the North Temperature Belt darkened. A charge coupled device (CCD) camera was adapted for low cost operation, utilizing an IBM-AT clone for data acquisition. An RCA frame grabber was modified for encoding the archival images

Capital risk of large banks

Bank capital ; Risk ; Bank stocks