Comments by "Theodore Shulman" (@ColonelFredPuntridge) on "The Bell Curve: The most controversial book ever in science | Richard Haier and Lex Fridman" video.

  1.  @domb8448  My favorite recording (including studio and live recordings) is a live one from 1955, featuring Otto Edelmann as Sachs (he was most famous for buffo roles like Leporello and Baron Ochs, but he can also be very serious when the occasion arises) and Hans Hopf, conducted by Hans Rosbaud. Rosbaud pays as much attention to detail, and varies the tempo and volume, as much as anyone - KNA, Karajan, Furtwängler - but he does it subtly, so you don't notice how effective it is. My favorite video is the one with Wolfgang Brendl, Gösta Winbergh, Victor von Halem (RIP), Eva Johansson, and Eike-Wilm Schulte, who absolutely nails his role which is Beckmesser. Although Brendl unfortunately lacks heft and doesn't adequately portray how old and craggy Sachs is.
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  2.  @domb8448  In MEISTERSINGER, he actually makes new shoes. We see him doing it, in Act 2.
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  3. THE BELL CURVE stirred up some outrage, but "the most controversial book ever in science"?!? Not even close. Even today, THE POPULATION BOMB is still more controversial than THE BELL CURVE will ever be, and ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES is so controversial in so many ways that we're still trying to list them all. It inflames controversies between religion and non-religion, and between different religions, and between different variants of one religion, and between different scientific fields, and between different scientists in the same scientific fields, and among non-scientists who read it, and among non-scientists who don't read it and wouldn't understand any of it even if they did read it.
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  4. Or maybe you just did a very poor job of presenting the issue. It's possible, you know.
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  5.  @domb8448  Hey, some of the smartest people in history were shoemakers. Get to know Hans Sachs, the good-guy in DIE MEISTERSINGER VON NÜRNBERG, based on a real person, Hans Sachs the medieval poet and musician whose day-job was making shoes.
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  6.  @domb8448  Some very bad people in history liked DIE MEISTERSINGER VON NÜRNBERG, but it is one of the most beautiful and absorbing things ever composed.
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