Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

I borrowed a viol.

A double-bass looks a lot larger in my dining room than it did in it's owner's basement.

My fingers are sore, especially my right index (plucking) finger, but they'll toughen up.

Let's see how long it takes me to get the hang of using a bow.

Hmm. When I get tired and want to sit down ... it's hard to do that while playing a double-bass. OTOH, carrying a pair of guitars seems like less of a big deal now than it did before ...

(And yeah, viol. Like a gamba. The double-bass isn't a member of the violin family. But a bunch of you already knew that, right? Someone did make violins that large, but for some reason they didn't catch on.)

"While economists' models traditionally regard humans as rational beings who always make intelligent decisions, econophysicists argue that in large systems the behaviour of each individual is influenced by so many factors that the net result is random, so it makes sense to treat people like atoms in a gas." -- Jenny Hogan, explaining the work of Victor Yakovenko et. al, "Why it is hard to share the wealth", New Scientist, 2005-03-12