Elgar: The Dream of Gerontius (DG)

Elgar: The Dream of Gerontius (DG)

(out of five)

The first thing you need to know about Daniel Barenboims live performance with the Staatskapelle Berlin is that it is the best-sounding Gerontius on record. No British string section has ever played the work with such sweet serenity. No British winds ever breathed with such deep assurance. Strange as it may seem, the Berlin musicians and chorus singers feel this most English of works in their fingers and bones. There is something akin to love in their playing.

This is not to disparage past recordings, all by English forces, notably the Halles with John Barbirolli and two-thirds of a dream team in Janet Baker and Richard Lewis; or the LPO with Adrian Boult and Nicolai Gedda, Helen Watts and Robert Lloyd. Nor would I want to be without Sakari Oramos recent Birmingham selfie release. All three are passionate accounts. This one just sounds lovelier, less effortful. The critical faculty of disbelief is suspended for the duration.

Daniel Barenboim shares with the composer a breezy agnosticism and a love for English moderation. His approach to the oratorio is broadsided, utterly secure, without shocks or fancy gestures. The intended soloists were Jonas Kaufmann, Sarah Connolly and Thomas Hampson. The first two called in sick, to be replaced by Catherine Wyn-Rogers and Andrew Staples. Their voices are, perhaps, a shade less full but the cohesion of soloists, orchestra and chorus is admirable. Never a huge devotee of post-Handel English oratorios, I dont think Ive enjoyed a Gerontius this much before.

Elgar: The Dream of Gerontius (DG) is available atAmazon.co.uk.

Norman Lebrecht is one of the most widely-read commentators on music, culture and cultural politics. He is a regular presenter on BBC Radio 3 and a contributor to the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Standpoint, Sinfini and other publications. His blog, Slipped Disc, is among the most widely read cultural sites online, breaking exclusive stories and campaigning against human abuse and acts of injustice in the cultural industries.

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LEBRECHT LISTENS | Barenboim Assembles A Dream Team - Musical Toronto

Long ago when I was a mutual fund analyst, I would tell the brokers that if they let me pick the beginning and end dates for performance history, I could prove both that it was a great buying opportunity and it was among the worst funds in its category.

Take Mackenzie Financials Cundill Value Fund (a fund I liked a lot in my previous life) as an example. To prove it was a great buy, it would be easy to emphasize the 2016 returns where the funds 10.5 per cent appreciation outpaced the average global equity fund by more than 700 basis points. To argue the fund was mediocre, Id point to the three year average annual return that was worse than 95 per cent of the competition.

So is it a good or bad fund? Neither, at least based on this cursory look at performance.

Each fund, and by extension each investing style, is best suited to specific market conditions.

The momentum investing strategy, with its agnosticism on valuations and emphasis on stock price and earnings strength, has been the top performer in the past five years. Momentum-based managers have been comfortable holding the extremely expensive FANG stocks that were leading global equity markets higher, as long as their prices and earnings continued to climb.

Im not suggesting history is about to repeat itself but momentum investors were also riding high in the late 1990s, with a similar dependence on the technology sector, before getting obliterated in the 2000 to 2002 period.

For mutual funds and individual investor portfolios, all performance data must be taken in context. An investor with strong trailing portfolio returns over the past five years has every right to be proud of themselves, but they also have to make sure that their holdings are also positioned to benefit from the next five years.

Are the same growth drivers that drove returns in the past in many cases technology stocks and dividend paying companies benefitting from declining interest rates sustainable?

-- Scott Barlow is The Globe's in-house market strategist

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Stocks to ponder

Air Canada. The airline demonstrates just how fickle the business can be. The carriers gains this week take its stock back only slightly beyond the $21 a share it went public at in 2006. For investors, the past 11 years have been one long round trip. Ian McGugan examines the industry.

BSM Technologies Inc. The Toronto-based company, whose equipment and software help owners of truck, rail and other fleets track their vehicles, has grown through acquisition and could be a takeover target, according to David Barr, president of PenderFund Capital Management Ltd. in. Vancouver. Shirley Won looks at six budding stocks that trade for less than $5 a share.

AcuityAds Holdings Inc. The Toronto-based technology firm has rallied 89 per cent year-to-date. There are six buy recommendation on the stock with a 46-per-cent price return anticipated over the next year. Jennifer Dowty analyzes at the stock.

Ross Stores Inc. This discount fashion retailer is a seemingly contrarian pick given the pressure on retailers from e-commerce giants such as Amazon.com. But it passes all the criteria Berkshire Hathaway would use. John Reese examines three stocks from a Warren Buffett-inspired portfolio.

Theratechnologies Inc. Shares of the specialty pharmaceutical company have shot up nearly 200 per cent over the past year on the promise of a newer product and some analysts say the run may not be over yet, according to Brenda Bouw.

Cineplex Inc. The industry leader that took a rare tumble on Wednesday, falling over 8 per cent. For patient long-term investors, this pullback may represent a buying opportunity with a potential reacceleration in the share price in late-2017 or early-2018. Jennifer Dowty breaks down the stock.

The Rundown

Investors, heres a case for buying CanadaCanadian investors have been criticized since forever for having too much of a home bias. In that context, the push into international ETFs is laudable. Now, investors seem to have a home aversion to some extent, according to Rob Carrick.

Why investors shouldnt be reading too much into the fear indexPessimists see the decline of the VIX and disappearance of volatility as evidence of investor complacency a dangerous precursor to many of historys most severe corrections. But while an underappreciation of the markets risks is a legitimate concern, many investors are putting too much stock in the VIX index, writes Tim Shufelt.

Its the world, not Donald Trump, thats making the Dow great againWhile the U.S. President may want to make America great again, his countrys major stock indexes are globalized to an extent that surprises many investors. The companies in the S&P 500, a broadly based index of large U.S. businesses, derived 44.3 per cent of their sales from outside the United States in 2016, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices. Ian McGugan explains.

Canada should fight for shareholder rightsAt some point, someone tries to take things just too far, and all hell breaks loose. This is what happened when Snap Inc., owner of the Snapchat messaging app, went public earlier this year in the United States with shares that gave investors no vote at all on virtually all corporate matters, writes David Milstead.

How to make the right choices when investing in REITsReal estate investment trusts should be an integral part of every income investors portfolio. They offer steady income, relative safety, and tax advantages if held outside a registered plan. The question is, how should you hold them? Gordon Pape explores the possibilities.

Others

Rob Carrick: The financial disadvantages of living alone

Charity fund managers navigate difficult second quarter

Fridays Insider Report: Companies insiders are buying and selling

Thursdays Insider Report: Companies insiders are buying and selling

Wednesdays Insider Report: Companies insiders are buying and selling

Number Crunchers

Eight U.S. restaurant stocks that are looking oversold

Eleven Canadian stocks with solid fundamentals that analysts ignore

Fifteen large-cap stocks built to weather the storm

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Keeping pace with momentum investors, ignoring the VIX and why it may be time to buy Canadian - The Globe and Mail

So The alternative to the miraculous answer is always to be preferred because it will always be more probable.

In other words, Miracles are impossible therefore miracles dont happen.

As more and more scientific research is completed on the Shroud of Turin, however, Humes argument becomes more and more strained.

The toss up is this: The Shroud of Turin is either the burial cloth of Jesus Christ on which is recorded evidence of the resurrection OR it is a forgery OR it is just a mysterious artifact for which we do not yet have a natural explanation.

The most stunning evidence from the shroud is the mysterious image itself. The image was not painted. It was not burnt on with conventional heat application processes. According to the latest research by Dr Paolo Lazzaro, the image was seared onto the linen by a super intense blast of ultra violet light. Not only was this impossible in the Middle Ages, but it is impossible today. We dont have the technology to reproduce this kind of image.

Therefore we need to ask, which is more difficult to believethat the Shroud is the burial cloth of Jesus or that some medieval forger was able to blast ultraviolet light on the shroud to produce the image in a manner still undeterminedusing a technology that is still way beyond that available today?

It is actually easier to believe that the Shroud is authentic.

The only other option (and one which an increasing number of Shroud skeptics take) is to shrug and say, Well, it is a mysterious artifact that we cannot explain.

But when you add that the image not only shows a crucified man, but a crucified man with the particular distinguishing marks of Jesus Christ crucifixion (the crown of thorns, the unbroken legs, the spear wound in the side, the flogging) it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain such disinterested agnosticism.

I suppose the authenticity of the Shroud will never be proven in a completely watertight way, but with the accumulation of evidence it is increasingly difficult to deny.

If, according to Hume, we must choose the most probable answer we would choose the proposal that it is the burial cloth of Christ and the image is supernatural evidence of his resurrection.

In other words, in this one case, the miraculous answer is the most probable.

Read the original here:
David Hume and the Shroud of Turin - Patheos (blog)

When Charles Darwin published his landmark theory of evolution by natural selection in the 19th century, religious leaders were confronted with a powerful challenge to some of their oldest beliefs about the origins of life.

Then evolutionary theory was expanded with the insights of genetics, which gave further support for a scientific and secular view of how humans evolved.

Faith and tradition were forced further onto the defensive.

Now, exciting progress in biology in recent decades may be building up a third new phase in the scientific explanation of life, according to thinkers gathered at a University of Oxford conferencefrom July 19-22.

Although this 21st-century wave has no single discovery to mark its arrival, new insights into developing technologies such as genetic engineering and human enhancement may end up giving another important boost to the belief that science has (or eventually will have) the answers to lifes mysteries.

Some scientists, theologians, and philosophers see in this ever deeper knowledge of how genes work a possible alternative to the more reductive approach to evolution one that brings in a broader view that also considers the influence of the environment.

Unlike the earlier views, which seemed to lead toward either agnosticism or atheism, the theologians see this new biology or holistic biology as more compatible with religious belief.

Weve added definition to the picture of evolution that has deepened and enriched our understanding of biological processes, Donovan Schaefer, an Oxford lecturer in science and religion who co-organized the conference, told the opening session of the July 19-22 meeting.

But he added: It would be naive to imagine that the grander questions about biology, religion, the humanities, and evolutionary theory generally have been put to death.

The achievements on their list include new fields like epigenetics, the science of how genes are turned on or off to influence our bodies, and advances in cognitive and social sciences that yield ever more detailed empirical research into how we behave.

Waiting in the wings are new technologies such as genome editing, which can modify human genes to repair, enhance, or customize human beings. Scientists in China are believed to have already genetically modified human embryos, and the first known attemptto do so in the United States was reported on July 26.

Schaefer compared todays deeper understanding of biology to the higher resolution that photographers enjoy, now that photography has advanced from film to digital images.

Genes once thought to be fairly mechanical in influencing human development leading to the my genes made me do it kind of thinking have been found to be part of complex systems that can act in response to a persons environment.

Since scientists succeeded in sequencing the genome in the late 1990s, they have found that epigenetic markers that regulate patterns of gene expression can reflect outside influences on a body.

Even simpler living objects such as plants contain a complex internal genetic system that governs their growth according to information they receive from outside.

To theologians who see a new biology emerging, this knowledge points to a more holistic system than scientists have traditionally seen, one more open to some divine inspiration for life.

In this view, the fact that epigenetic markers can bring outside pressures to bear on the genome deep inside a human means genetics is not a closed system, but part of the wider sweep of nature in which they, as religious thinkers, also see Gods hand.

Nature is so complex and rich, and that prompts questions about why on earth is this the case? If youre an atheist, how do you explain a universe that seems to have the capacity to produce these things in the first place? asked Alister McGrath, an Oxford theologian who is director of the Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion that hosted the conference.

This in turn opened a space for theologians to augment the discussion about the new biology, he said.

Massimo Pigliucci, a philosopher at New Yorks City College with doctorates in genetics and evolutionary biology, also said scientism the idea that science can answer all lifes important questions was too limited.

Science informs and grounds certain philosophical positions; it doesnt determine them, he said. But the data cant settle ethical questions.

Pigliucci agrees with the trend to use the evolutionary paradigm to analyze fields outside of biology, including topics such as ethics and morality.

The life sciences tell us that the building blocks of what we call morality are actually found presumably they were selected for in nonhuman social primates, he said. Science gives you an account of what otherwise looks like magic: Why do we have a moral sense to begin with? How did we develop it?

Not all present agreed that science could explain religion.

Some suspect that biology has triggered some kind of devotion and there are too many people who practice this cult, said Lluis Oviedo, a theologian at the Pontifical University Antonianum in Rome.

His own research has found at least 75 books and academic articles trying to explain religion through evolution, and he knew of about 20 more on the way, he said.

Although he thinks, the time of explaining through radical reduction is over, he admitted few biologists seemed ready to accept the more holistic new biology.

Even some scientists at the conference, while ready to engage with the philosophers and theologians, showed less interest in discussions about whether a new biology was emerging.

Im pragmatic, explained Ottoline Leyser of the University of Cambridge, whose lecture on plant genetics was one of the conferences highlights.

Theologians in the decades long science and religion debate, which argues the two disciplines complement each other, have also become more pragmatic as their dialogue proceeds.

Oxfords McGrath said the theologians had become more modest in the claims they made about what religion could contribute to this debate. Unlike some more doctrinaire scientists, he said, they did not think they had all the answers.

They dont say These observations in nature prove or disprove God, he said. Our religious way of thinking gives you a framework which allows you to look at the scientific approach to the world and understand why it makes sense, but at the same time also to understand its limits.

Those things need to be in the picture if were going to lead meaningful lives.

Via Religion News Service.

See original here:
Scientists, Theologians Ponder If Latest Biological Findings Are More Compatible With Religion - Sojourners

By Bianca Allery, Communications Manager, 3CXTechnology & InnovationPublished: 1 August 2017

When implementing new technologies, such as a Unified Communications solution, the main concern used to be the underlying infrastructure. However, far more attention is now being paid to the applications themselves instead of the network that underpins tem. This is due to the growth of the cloud, after all why worry about the infrastructure underpinning services when they are being hosted by another business many miles away? Yet even with in-house services, the shift in attention is noticeable.

However, this new way of looking at IT management underlines the many challenges issues that have been tied up in background infrastructure. Companies now expect that any new applications they introduce will be implemented quickly, easily and at a low cost. Yet as CIOs well know, it isnt always that simple. Applications and solutions may have very particular software and hardware demands, from installing the correct hardware PBX, to running software on the right operating system. As the role of the CIO evolves, they no longer have time to manage every detail of IT infrastructure. Instead, they just need to know that software works, whether on the cloud or for part of the 90% of desktop users still reliant on Windows.

Back to the futureHistorically, when organisations have invested in new technology, it has traditionally been brought in alongside its own software. While the software would ideally be fine-tuned for its purpose, it would also have its own demands, such as the need to run on a specific operating system.

Understandably, this caused major headaches for organisations, as they needed to maintain multiple operating systems, all of which are deemed necessary because of the add-on programmes they support. This strategy was both expensive, due to the cost of purchasing and managing these systems, and insecure because of the gaps created when systems are not updated regularly; particularly when developers stop providing security updates for legacy systems.

The advent of cloud has fuelled the ongoing simplification of IT infrastructure. After all, if the organisation can access software on-demand, it no longer needs to worry about the underlying infrastructure. At the same time, there is a growing expectation that applications will work on any operating system, so that a business can access Unified Communications whether it runs Windows, iOS, Linux or even a combination of all three mixture of the three and then some.

Nine to fiveAlong with this change in expectations has come a change in the CIOs role. At one point, CIOs were predominantly concerned with infrastructure and day-to-day IT operations, however modern CIOs now command a more strategic role leading the direction of IT in support of wider business strategy, rather than just focusing on the tech. In this environment, the applications become critical. For example, if an organisation seeks to target expansion in Latin America, it will want to know if its CRM and communication applications can support local languages. It will be less worried about what server and OS those applications sit on. The more time CIOs can spend thinking about how technology supports these strategic initiatives, rather than thinking about what is happening under the hood, the more effective they will be.

One of the simplest ways for CIOs to do this, is by adopting a software agnostic approach. Companies need to be able to add the necessary applications to the operating system used on any desktop, laptop or mobile, without limitation. Software agnosticism will ensure that CIOs can create a simplified, forward-looking and productive environment, which will be able to develop alongside the technical IT changes the future will present. The CIOs that grasp this concept, and adopt this approach to simplify their business for the future, will ultimately be the ones who are successful in the long run.

For more information please visit http://www.3cx.com

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CIO - The C Suite