The first was from Bizet’s Carmen — the “Habanera”. Even if you’re not an opera buff, you have to know this aria, because of the distinctive chromatic glide down the scale as the cello plays “ba ba ba bum ba ba ba dum.”

And for those who can’t read music, here’s an Old School video of Maria Callas singing it in 1962.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fZRssq7UlM

That one wasn’t so hard, but the second, a duet, was a mystery. I knew the tune well enough to sing the man’s part (not the lyrics, though), but why did I know the tune? And who wrote it?

This is the kind of thing that can keep me up at night.

The program was not all that helpful, since it only provided the title in Chinese and the names of the performers. The Chinese title is “让我们携手同行 rang women xie shou tong hang” or “Let’s walk hand in hand,” which was my loose translation into English.

If you are a real opera buff, you probably have already guessed the correct title and the source, but my spotty musical education left me perplexed. So, off to the Internet I went after I came home.

First, I went to baidu.com and entered the Chinese title, and found videos of singers performing the song, such as this one by Cecilia Bartoli and Bryn Terfel (the best part is about halfway through this clip). From there, I worked backward to find the English — and the Italian — title.

Got it yet, opera fans?

Là ci darem la mano (“There we will entwine our hands”), from Mozart’s Don Giovanni.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4I-VtGKgvr4

[Did you know Sheryl Crow once sang it with Luciano Pavarotti? There's a match I would have never even guessed.]

Big confession here. For most of my life, I hated opera. Sure, I knew some bits and pieces of opera, largely from Looney Tunes parodies (OK, laugh, I don’t mind), but no way can I rattle off composer, opera, aria/duet title, like a real opera maven can. I’ve never even watched or listened to Don Giovanni. How did I recognize the melody of tonight’s duet well enough to sing along?

Memory is a funny thing. Here’s my suspicions. When I was a kid, hanging out in my dad’s TV repair shop on Saturdays, his best friend, Barney, would come by also to hang out. (And no, Dad’s name was not Fred, thank you.) Now, every Saturday there would be a radio broadcast of that day’s Metropolitan Opera performance, and Barney was a real opera buff.

So, he subjected Dad and me to opera every Saturday he came by. My father, being a good friend, bit his tongue when Barney was there, but privately he told me opera reminded him of someone stepping on a cat’s tail. Perhaps that subconsciously colored my opinion of opera.

Anyways, years of hearing opera out of the corner of my ear must have planted that melody somewhere way way back in my very random access musical memory (VRAMM). Hearing Wang Hui (my friend) play the piano and her students sing the duet stirred up the VRAMM, but not the memory containing the name of the composer, opera or the duet’s title. That’s assuming it was ever there in the first place.

And while I’m showing off my spotty cultural education, I did recognize the composer of a German lied sung by one of the baritones. The Chinese title is 春之梦 (chun zhi meng) or Frühlingstraum — “Dream of Spring.” That’s by Franz Schubert, although I mistakenly assumed it was part of his Die Schöne Müllerin. I owned that Deutsche Gramophone LP at one point, though I guess I didn’t play it often enough.

The rest of the night’s musical repertoire was Chinese, and I’m even more of an ignoramus when it comes to classical Chinese music. I wish I had a recording of the work for piano, erhu, xiangqin, six guzheng, and percussion to share here. It was damn good.

Republican candidate Mike Huckabee’s says we should amend the Constitution to be more in line with Biblical principles. That’s right, Rev. Huck believes we need to change the bulwark of our nation’s existence as a free republic to reflect religious principles. Theocracy, anyone?

What’s more alarming is the effort it took to find any mention of this seditious remark in the mainstream media on-line. Only MSNBC excerpted Huckabee’s suggestion from a campaign speech he made in Warren, Michigan, yesterday. All the other commentary has come from bloggers.

That Huckabee would even suggest amending the Constitution — a deliberately secular document — to bring it in line with Biblical laws seemed so fantastical to me that I could not believe the blogosphere had it right. After all, the Internet is infamous for spreading all kinds of false information.

But said it, he did. From MSNBC:

“[Some of my opponents] do not want to change the Constitution, but I believe it’s a lot easier to change the constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God, and that’s what we need to do is to amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards rather than try to change God’s standards,” Huckabee said, referring to the need for a constitutional human life amendment and an amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman.

Now, Huckleberry no doubt has faith-based reasons for insisting abortion is evil and marriage excludes gays and lesbians. He’s entitled to his beliefs, even if I think they’re wrong. But has he bothered to actually read the Constitution, particularly the Bill of Rights?

The Founders crafted our system of government to avoid the possibility of a state religion. After all, many colonists fled the old country to avoid religious persecution. The founders of Huckabee’s own religion, the Baptists, fled Massachusetts for Rhode Island for the same reasons. With the taste of state-imposed religions still in their mouths, the designers of the Constitution avoided bringing any expressly religious wording into US law.

Under different circumstances, if someone suggested amending the Constitution to say, allow the wholesale slaughter of puppies and kitties, the mainstream media would be all over him (or her) in a New York minute. We’d think him (or her) a crackpot.

Yet, a presidential candidate, a presidential candidate, tells a cheering audience that we have to merge Bible and Constitution and the mainstream media gloss over it! There’s something wrong with this picture.

Huckabee is a religious nutcase. He proposes a radical departure from what has been the basis of our Constitution for the last two centuries. The media is failing to do its job if it’s not challenging Huck’s seditious ideas. Huckabee needs to be discredited, not pandered to.

My connection to Sagan, who died on this date 11 years ago, is pretty convoluted, so bear with me while I try to explain it.

First, some background. In 1972 Sagan and his colleague at Cornell University, Frank Drake, helped devise a plaque for the Pioneer 10 and 11 probes to Jupiter and Saturn. The plaque depicted the nude bodies of a man and a woman, the location of the Sun relative to prominent stars, and other basic details about the origin of the probes. The idea was to leave a calling card on the probes, in case any intelligent life “out there” should find them.

Later in the decade, Sagan and Drake repeated the exercise, making it much more elaborate, for the Voyager probes to the four gas giants. The Voyager Golden Record was a metallized phonograph record, with greetings in 55 languages (including one from Sagan’s son), music from across the globe and 115 photographs.

One of the photographs is by the famous landscape photographer, Ansel Adams, depicting in his signature style the Snake River weaving its way across the high prairie with Wyoming’s Grand Teton Mountains in the background.

At the time (1978), I was a young reporter working for the Casper (Wyoming) Star-Tribune. I proposed to my editor that I write a story about the Voyager missions and the Golden Record, highlighting Wyoming’s connection to the erstwhile communication to extraterrestrials. He agreed, and so I hit the phones.

Unfortunately, I did not get to talk to either Adams, Drake or Sagan, but I came very close. I talked to one of Adams’ assistants, who explained that Adams, normally fiercely protective of reproductions of his work, released the image to the Cornell team for posterity.

Amahl Shakashiri Drake, Frank’s wife, was my contact at Cornell. She graciously gave me the lowdown on why the image was selected, why the record was being mounted to the probes, and other details. Since Amahl was Sagan’s friend and colleague, I figure that puts me two degrees away from Sagan, three if you place Frank Drake as an intermediary.

Like other SF/space nuts, I loved the whole idea of the golden record, and the Voyager mission, which returned some of the most spectacular images of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune available then or now. That real scientists like the Drakes and Sagan thought there was a remote possibility that life existed outside our solar system was just fantastic. It validated my unfounded hope in the same possibility. I was not so weird after all.

The Drakes and Sagan were intellectual kin to Gene Roddenberry, the Star Trek creator. (Yes, I am a trekker). All three saw that human existence transcended national borders, that the universe was not necessarily hostile or untrustworthy, and that we humans belong “out there.” Science, technology and logical thought benefit human existence, not threaten it.

Hot on the heels of the Voyager record project, Sagan hosted one of the most influential, well respected science series on US television, Cosmos. Aired in 1980, the 13-week series was a personal account by Sagan of his own journey through and our place in the universe.

[The Science Channel will air the digitally remastered 25th anniversary version of Cosmos beginning Jan. 8. You should watch it.]

Sagan was affable, confident and plain spoken. His delivery, tinged with a Brooklyn accent, was that of a slightly eccentric, but loveable, professor explaining to his students the “way things are.” His turtleneck shirt, corduroy jacket with leather elbows, and explosive “b” were in today’s terms, geeky. Sagan wasn’t stylish. He didn’t speak like a TV actor. And he didn’t mind that he was a geek. In fact he was proud of it.

I was geeky then, and I still am now. Watching Sagan on the TV, and having that however remote connection with him, enabled me to accept the geeky side of me. If this guy from Brooklyn could end up on TV, well then, there was hope for me.

Sagan’s contributions to popularizing science did not end with Cosmos, nor did his influence on me. Sagan was warm but logical, tolerant but firm in his beliefs. ET life might exist; UFOs did not. Evolution was valid; creationism was not. Science made sense; religion did not. Humans could not transcend “the demon-filled world,” as he put it, until they set aside their prejudices and antiquated beliefs, and looked to the future and not to the past.

It’s a refreshing view, an anodyne to the religious nuttiness in the US political and social arenas. Sagan’s was a voice of reason in the wilderness, a prophet of science and critical thought.

Sagan died sooner than he should have, at age 62 of a bone marrow disease. We need people like Carl Sagan still. We have the same problems with superstitious and stupid people as we did in 1996. Whether they would listen to Carl, I can’t say, but at least I would be reassured.

Juvenile behavior all around.

McComb, who is now a freshman at a Christian school, Biola University in California, became the darling of conservative Christians looking for more examples of the “war on Christianity” and the pernicious influence of the American Civil Liberties Union. The conservative legal group, the Rutherford Institute, agreed to take her case to the U.S. District Court in Nevada, alleging her free speech rights were violated.

The text of the suit is here — Adobe Reader required.

The case has been stalled in the courts since. The defendants in McComb’s suit filed two motions to dismiss, which the district court judge denied. They have since appealed to the Ninth District Court of Appeals in California, and filed opening briefs earlier this month. Rutherford Institute attorney Doug McKusick says McComb’s lawyers will file their replies in January.

The case raises several issues. Was McComb badgered into deleting the overtly Christian references from her valedictory? Were school officials acting legally when they first told her to delete the references, and then pulled the plug on her speech? Was McComb herself at all culpable, agreeing to tone down the speech then proceeding with the original text? Given that schools cannot favor one religion over any other constitutionally, was McComb a representative of the school and bound by those restrictions, or was she merely speaking her own mind?

Time will tell whether the courts will answer those questions. Appeals take months to proceed, and if the defendants lose their appeal, the case will end up back in District Court to drag on some more. McComb may be a senior before it’s all settled.

Luce’s message, which is tinged heavily with his brand of fundamentalism, is that popular culture is corrupting our youth. He pounds into his young congregants the need to reject all the commercialism, sex, drugs and whatnot rife in secular culture.

He woos impressionable pre-teens and teens with the usual fundie blend of showbiz and pulpit-pounding demagoguery. While telling them to reject pop culture, he uses (Christian) rock music, pyrotechnics, and variety of merchandise to convert his BattleCry event audiences to the Teen Mania way.

Watching adults sway in some kind of hypnotic rapture during a fundie church service is one thing. Seeing kids as young as 10 with their eyes closed and arms upraised, entranced by Luce’s brand of religion by the hundreds is alarming.

Pop culture is evil, kids. It’s poisoning your minds, removing all that is good from your souls. Instead, empty your minds of all free will and follow me instead. That’s the Luce message.

An army of Christian youth robots.

Christiane Amanpour was the CNN correspondent doing the story, part of her series, “God’s Warriors.” A Christian Iranian by birth, Amanpour was clearly drawing parallels between Luce’s Christian militancy and the Islamist extremists she covered in another segment. She questioned Luce point blank about his requirement that students at his Honor Academy follow very strict dress and behavior codes, asking him how those restrictions were any different from conservative Muslims requiring women be veiled. Luce did not provide a substantive answer.

Granted, Luce’s ministry has helped some kids pull themselves out of some pretty nasty circumstances. Some have absentee mothers and fathers, have done drugs, are sexually promiscuous, and are generally just messed up.

But judging from the BattleCry event Amanpour covered, the vast majority of the kids attending Luce’s bombastic arena events are normal middle- to upper-class kids with no clear direction or purpose in life. In other words, normal adolescents.

If you believe the Luce/Teen Mania party line, the majority of young people are sexually active, druggie pop-culture automatons that need to be Saved from a dissipated future. To do it, they just need to subscribe to the Teen Mania belief system.

We believe the Bible to be the inspired, only infallible, authoritative Word of God. We believe that there is one God eternally existent in three persons: The Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We believe in the deity of Christ, in His virgin birth, in His sinless life, in His miracles, in His vicarious and atoning death through His shed blood, in His bodily resurrection, and in His personal return in power and glory. We believe in the resurrection of the saved to eternal life, and the everlasting punishment of those who have rejected God’s forgiveness in His Son. We strive to contribute to achieve greater unity in all that we do within the Body of Christ.

These kids are the footsoldiers in a battle, Luce says. There is a crisis: “A stealthy enemy has infiltrated our country and is preying upon the hearts and minds of 33 million American teens. Corporations, media conglomerates, and purveyors of popular culture have spent billions to seduce and enslave our youth. So far, the enemy is winning. But there is plenty we can do. We need to take action. We need to answer the Battle Cry.”

If you are of a certain age, you’ve heard something like this crap before. Rock music, comic books, MTV, Beavis and Butthead, cable TV — they’ve all been targets of reactionary campaigns to “protect” our children from corruption and evil.

Yet, the republic still stands. I’ve spent half my life teaching young people. A tiny, tiny minority mess up their lives with drugs, booze and promiscuity. The vast majority survive adolescence to become respectable, useful adults. Luce’s crisis is as non-existent as Bill O’Reilly’s “war on Christmas.”

Luce, whose compensation in 2006 as head of Teen Mania was about $148,000 (from its IRS Form 990), has clearly found a hook. All Christianist preachers have to have a shtick, or they get lost in the crowd. Luce’s ploy is to blame “pop culture” for kids’ troubles and scare the bejesus out of kids and their parents into donating millions of dollars to his ministry.

His religion is the usual doctrinaire, black-and-white theology of fundamentalism. Homosexuality is a sin. Rock-and-roll music is evil. Girls should dress modestly. Premarital sex is dangerous. Muslims are bad people. Non-believers are bad people. Christians should only hang out with Christians. Heaven and Hell are real places. The Bible is inerrant.

And the kids at these events are absolutely entranced by the whole multimedia show. I won’t go so far as to say they are being brainwashed, but some in the CNN segment looked as out-of-their-wits as Deadheads at a smoke-enveloped concert. In that state of mind, a kid could accept anything as right and true.

Talk2action has a report on Teen Mania. Rolling Stone also covered it some time ago. Visit Luce’s sites, then the anti-Luce sites and draw your own conclusions. Me, I think he’s nuts.

The group has challenged O’Reilly and Co. to quit their assault on the so-called assault on Christmas and actually respect the holiday’s meaning.

Details are here.

Eventually entitled “Earthrise,” the December 1968 image was a Christmas greeting from the first humans to leave near-Earth orbit and visit another celestial object. It became an icon of the late ’60s, appearing on T-shirts, posters and greeting cards. Space enthusiasts loved it, since it gave earthlings their first real glimpse of what space travel might look like. Environmentalists loved it, because it showed “this island Earth,” a small blue sphere in the dark of space, the only home to humans (that we’d better not muck up).

A few months later, two members of the Apollo 11 crew actually walked on the Moon. They brought back another iconic photograph:

This one also ended up posters and greeting cards. NASA should have demanded royalty fees on these two; they could have funded another Moon landing!

It’s been a long while since anyone walked on the Moon, or even orbited it. The Apollo program petered out in the mid-’70s, and manned space exploration has receded from the public consciousness. The Space Shuttle program, except for two fatal catastrophes, has made space flight about as exciting as watching Greyhound buses leave the station. The International Space Station meanwhile whirls above our heads with a small crew who do who-knows-what, since the regular media rarely pay them any attention.

Maybe these new images from the Japanese probe Kaguya, which is now in polar orbit around the Moon, will become as popular as the Apollo ones. While no human is on board, the images’ fields of view make Earth seem even tinier and more remote than the Apollo shots. Space is really, really lonely, when the nearest sign of civilisation is 384,000 km away.

Wide-angle Earthrise view:

narrow-angle Earthset view:

To be scientific about it, watching Earth rise and set over the Moon can only happen in orbit. The Moon is tidally locked to Earth, so that one side always faces us. If you were standing on the nearside, Earth would appear to remain roughly in the same spot in the sky. Its elevation above the horizon would depend on your lunar latitude. Farside visitors would not see Earth at all.

In that tidal lock, the Moon takes about 27 days to orbit Earth and the same time to revolve around its own axis. So the sun would spent about two weeks above the horizon and about two weeks below – a long day and a long night, literally. With no appreciable atmosphere on the Moon, sunrises and sunsets would be not be highlighted by pretty colors in the sky, as on Earth. The Sun itself would also not change color.

But, on those occasions when there is a lunar eclipse, lunar residents would see a terran eclipse: Earth interposing itself between Moon and Sun, the sun’s light leaving a red halo around the darkened Earth. Now, that would make a pretty postcard!

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The Planetary Society has a page devoted to images of the earth taken by Apollo crews and several unmanned probes over the decades. You should check it out.