Sydney at Christmas

Some sights I have seen in the last couple of weeks in Sydney:

And this was the "Lights of Christmas" on St Mary's Cathedral in Sydney:


Have a Happy Christmas.....

Human lawyers

I see that a US court has decided not to recognize chimpanzees as humans.

I wonder if the Australian, Peter Singer, was involved in this attempt? He is a professor at Princeton University which is not too far away. He was involved in a The Great Ape project to include the rights of apes in the Spanish legal system, so he might have been involved in the US case.

Oh well, better luck next time. Meanwhile I'm going off to the chimpanzee court to be recognized as a monkey. I've always liked bananas.

German language and song

Of the European languages, I find the romance languages such as Italian, French and Spanish very attractive in the way they express thoughts and the way they sound when spoken. In contrast, German can sound a little formal and excessively precise.

However, I much prefer to listen to songs in German.  For some reason, the language  seems to fit musical rhythms and sounds.

More than that, I prefer German tenors, especially in romantic songs. I can't explain this, but I think it has something to do with the fact that many classical German singers resist the temptation to "express themselves" and oversell the song, but instead they hang back a bit and let the song itself carry the emotion. The only way I can express this is by a few examples of tenor arias in German operetta.

For example, a famous tear-jerker "You are my heart's delight" from the Operetta "Land of Smiles" by Franz Lehar.

Here is the version by Luciano Pavarotti:



And by the Mexican tenor Rolando Villazon:



Both very good, but here is Richard Tauber singing this, which became his signature song.
This is an old, scratchy recording with poor sound. Tauber is wearing a ridiculous costume and he, poor fellow, is physically slightly ugly.
But I defy you not to be moved by this song, about a nobleman saying goodbye to the only love of his life, because of duty to his country:






and finally, just because I like it, here is Joseph Schmidt singing his signature song:




Poor Joseph Schmidt looks so cheerful here, but his life was a stressful tragedy, as you can guess from the year of his death, 1942.

Colours of Sydney

This is a video of some sandstone near Balmoral beach in Sydney Harbour. I think these colours of brown, green and blue are very typical of Sydney harbour.

But yesterday I accidentally someone here eating his breakfast who actually knew about the geology of Sydney harbour. According to him, the harbour is a "sunken valley". 7,000 years ago, the coastline was several kilometres East and the harbour was a valley. (note, this is not long ago. I have reached an age where I feel I know some people who were around then!!!). There would have been Aboriginal settlements in this valley. Then over time the sea level rose and flooded the valley, creating Sydney Harbour. That is why the harbour is not like a normal river estuary, which might have a wide mouth surrounded by sand dunes. The mouth of Sydney harbour are cliffs only a couple of hundred metres apart. There are places in the upper reaches of the harbour which are deeper than the water at the mouth of the harbour. Of course the sandstone of this river valley is a sedimentary rock, which was at one time at the bottom of a sea, but this happened millions, not thousands of years ago. So the colours of the harbour are not only beautiful, they have an interesting history.

Just because it's cute

It was a sunny day today, so I had a good walk.
Halfway through I had some breakfast, but a couple of cockatoos were watching...