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Hello, tsuwm...

I clicked on your link to Fussell and ended up on the first page of this thread... (Makes me think my computer did a bob...three curves and a twiddle. Gosh! Am I going to enjoy dropping that one, if not ironically, certainly whimsically!)

Back to stochastically: wwh, I like hearing terms from science transferred to other fields! Even though I don't understand the physics of the draft effect in racing, its essence is easily transferred to those situations in which the efforts of two bodies are increased to such an extent that neither could have accomplished what the two could have alone. And so on. In Faldage's case, even if stochastic hadn't been used heretofore rhetorically, there's calculated resonance in his application here and even ironic resonance by doing so: definition of what irony isn't by inculcation of a numerical application. At least so it seems to me with my subjective, dull understanding of irony.

Best regards,
WW


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regarding the link: I think i fixed it -- too many windows open I guess.

regarding stochastic - yet more complaining about the transferral of sense, in this case misapplied because the *original* sense of stochastic (from the Greek root meaning "to aim at a mark, guess") is to aim at a mark, guess.
this was "borrowed" for technical use in science and music, only to be claimed anew by the foi-poloi[sic].


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tsuwm: I misspelled stochastic as stochistic, edited my post, but the error will continue forever in your Re:Stochistic response, where your own text is correct. If you want to go back and fix my miss in it, great.

But, more to the point and another pointed point, how do composers use stochasticism (if that's a word)? I, too, in looking up the word, noticed that the root was related to a point. It's ironic, isn't it, that that same point has come to mean a random variable.

Best regards,
WW


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regarding musical use: b. Mus. Applied (orig. by Yannis Xenakis (b. 1922), Romanian-born Greek composer) to music in which the overall sound structure is determined, but internal details are left to chance or are established mathematically by composer or computer (by the laws of probability or otherwise).

regarding 'stochistic': it seems apt that I should leave your random misspell for a spell, wordmiss.


#48571 11/25/01 08:57 PM
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A good illustration of irony is being blessed with a voice like Barbra Streisand, and then being scared to death of going onstage to sing in front of an audience.


#48572 11/25/01 09:27 PM
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Whitman...Could we ever go on and on about professional musicians who've been world class performers, but possessed of performance anxiety to the max. I read somewhere that Melba, the opera diva, threw up before each performance. Then she was fine.

tsuwm: Thanks so very much for your magnanimous gesture of rescuing me from myself (she said ironically with a highly arched eyebrow...)....

WW


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Those are some pretty nice words," he said. "It's good for what it is. It's sardonic, and
very little pop culture is." As for irony, Fussell found some situational irony in the songs but
no rhetorical irony. "Rhetorical irony requires immense intellectual self-respect," he explained,
"you have to be more or less brilliant to get rhetorical irony."

Dear tsuwm: Paul Fussell sounds fuzzled to me.


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I just love it when y'all attempt to impute meaning to my stochastic ramblings. Makes me feel like I'm doing my job.


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I just love it when y'all attempt to impute meaning to my stochastic ramblings
Glad to oblige, F.


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Dear Faldage: You have missed your calling. You should be a CIA disinformation specialist.


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