The development of jazz as art is a fascinating one! For many, especially in the early years, it was a rough and tumble sort of a thing — street music. But there were always people who wanted to "elevate", for lack of a better word, the material. Ellington, using classical forms in his writing and moving towards…

Hi! I play music, I understand music theory, and I'm a trained jazz musician.

Parts of OK Computer were recorded at her mansion in Bath. What a weird fact that is!

The real lesson is: never try.

That's a great header photo.

I think everyone is being a liiiiiitle bit on the killjoy side about this. This obviously isn't him actually trying to start a relationship with Emma Stone, it's him making a short movie and trying to get it to go viral. Obnoxious? Maybe, but it's just some kids having fun. Not everything is a microaggression.

This isn't Rwanda. The US has spent over a billion dollars funding rebels in the region, and nothing has convinced me that a punitive bombing campaign against Assad will do anything but escalate tensions. Make no mistake, direct US involvement will only bring more misery on a country that has experienced enough misery…

Quick response here: I don't support the US intervening in Syria, at least not in terms of a military campaign. Full stop.

The addition of the internet is an interesting point, too. Even if the (sigh) "mainstream media" was pretty solidly pro-war, you could seek out new media people online who, even then, were doing solid journalism.

And Vietnam was hugely important to those generations, I'm not diminishing that! It's the specificity of the lead up to the Iraq War, especially in regard to how young people view the Democrats that supported the war and the eventual fallout.

Consistent, serious journalists aren't on cable news.

I can't remember who said it, but it was during the Democratic Primary: baby boomers and even Gen Xers can't really understand how formative the Iraq War was in shaping the political beliefs of many millennials. It's something we'll never forget.

No comfort for the Rooskies, O'Neal!

The big national controversy over O, Canada is the line "In all our son's command", which is sometimes changed to the originally written lyric "In all of us command" in the interests of inclusivity.

I think some people had difficulty getting rid of it, but overall it was pretty painless. It was a dumb controversy, stirred up by the idea that U2 are washed-up hacks.

It's a good point. Anthems are usually based on hymns (4/4) or marches (2/4). Star Spangled Banner is closer to a dance of some kind — lots of dance forms use 3/4 or 6/8 time.

It's in the same time signature as "Happy Birthday".

Yeah, that came to mind, but I was like…three years old when that happened so it doesn't resonate in the same way for me. Oddly enough, I remember a Doonesbury comic that skewered the US media for its patriotic dry-humping during the first Gulf War, especially CNN playing the bombing footage over and over and over…

Williams has a nasty fastball, it's true.

Oh, it hasn't ended, but the American media doesn't rapturously cover it anymore.