Gustavo Dudamel (born January 26, 1981 in Barquisimeto, Lara, Venezuela) is a Venezuelan conductor and violinist. He became famous as the conductor of the Venezuelan youth orchestra Orquesta Sinfónica Simón Bolívar. Today he is the principal conductor of the Gothenburg Symphony in Gothenburg, Sweden, and music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic in Los Angeles, California. Dudamel is also the artistic director of the Orquesta Sinfónica Simón Bolívar in Caracas, Venezuela.
Dudamel was born in Barquisimeto, Venezuela. His father played the trombone. He studied music when he was quite young, and learned the violin when he was ten. He also studied composition. He became involved with El Sistema, an organization in Venezuela to help children from poorer families to learn musical instruments. He went to the Jacinto Lara Conservatory and then the Latin-American Violin Academy, learning the violin.
He began to study conducting in 1995. In 1999, he became music director of the Orquesta Sinfónica Simón Bolívar, the national youth orchestra of Venezuela, and toured several countries.
Dudamel won many prizes for conducting. He soon became well-known and conducted the Philharmonia, the Israel Philharmonic, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He signed a recording contract with Deutsche Grammophon. He conducted "Don Giovanni" at La Scala, Milan, in November 2006. On September 10, 2007, he conducted the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra for the first time at the Lucerne Festival. In March 2008, he first conducted the San Francisco Symphony.
In 2005, Gustavo Dudamel conducted at the BBC Proms when Neeme Järvi was ill. He became Principal Conductor of the Gothenburg Symphony. He still conducts the Simón Bolívar National Youth Orchestra
Dudamel first conducted in the U.S. with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl in 2005. In 2009 he became their Musical Director.
On April 16, 2007, Gustavo Dudamel conducted the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra in a concert to celebrate the 80th birthday of Pope Benedict XVI, with Hilary Hahn as solo violinist. The Pope was at the concert.
A documentary film "Tocar y Luchar" was made about Dudamel and El Sistema.
Dudamel is married to Eloísa Maturén, a Venezuelan ballet dancer and journalist.
William James
William James (1842–1910) was an American psychologist and philosopher. He was an original thinker in physiology, psychology and philosophy. His major work was a twelve-hundred page book which gave us such ideas as the "stream of thought". William was the brother of the novelist Henry James.
James was a pragmatist. He defined true beliefs as those that prove useful to the believer. Truth is verifiable (can be tested) when thoughts and statements correspond with actual things, and also "hang together," or cohere, as pieces of a puzzle might fit together. These 'truths' are confirmed by the observed results putting them into practice.
James held a world view in line with pragmatism, declaring that the value of any truth depended on its use to the person who held it. The world is a mosaic of diverse experiences that can only be understood through "radical empiricism". Radical empiricism, not related to the everyday scientific empiricism, asserts that the world and experience can never be halted for an entirely objective analysis. The mind of the observer and simple act of observation will affect the outcome of any empirical approach to truth. The mind, its experiences and nature, cannot be separated. James's emphasis on diversity as the default human condition has kept a strong influence in American culture, especially among liberals. James's description of the mind-world connection, which he described as a "stream of consciousness", had a direct and significant effect on avant-garde and modernist literature and art.
In "What pragmatism means", James writes that the central point of his own doctrine of truth is, in brief, that "Truths emerge from facts, but they dip forward into facts again and add to them; which facts again create or reveal new truth (the word is indifferent) and so on indefinitely. The 'facts' themselves meanwhile are not true. They simply "are"</u/l>. Truth is the function of the beliefs that start and terminate among them".
Headlamp
A headlamp is a light bulb mounted on the front of a machine. Normally it is mounted on a car. It shines forward. It can be turned on and off. It is used to see ahead of the machine so it wouldn't drive into trees or telephone poles. Incandescent bulbs and a variant known as halogen bulbs are the most common types. They are normally bright.
Shawn Horcoff
Shawn Horcoff (born September 17, 1978 in Trail, British Columbia, Canada) is a former Canadian professional ice hockey centre. He played for the Edmonton Oilers of the National Hockey League (NHL) and is the captain of the team. He also played for the Dallas Stars and Anaheim Ducks.
Horcoff played college hockey at Michigan State University where he drafted by the Edmonton Oilers in the 1998 NHL Draft.
Brouwer also played in the AHL with the Hamilton Bulldogs and also played in the Swedish Elite League with the "Mora IK" team.
Dan Hamhuis
Daniel Hamhuis (born December 13, 1982 in Smithers, British Columbia, Canada) is a Canadian professional ice hockey defencemen. He currently plays for the Nashville Predators of the National Hockey League (NHL).
Hamhuis formerly played for the Vancouver Canucks for 6 seasons.
Hamhuis played in the WHL for the Prince George Cougars for 4 seasons and played for the Milwaukee Admirals in the AHL.
V6 engine
A V6 engine, often just called a V6, is an internal combustion engine with six cylinders. The engine has three cylinders on each side called banks. The two banks form a "V" shaped angle. In most engines, the two banks are at a right angle (90°) or less to each other. All six pistons turn a common crankshaft. It is the second most common engine design in modern cars after the inline four. It can be powered by different types of fuels, including gasoline, diesel, natural gas and alcohol.
The V6 is a very compact engine design. It is shorter than the straight-4. Many V6 engines are narrower than the V8 engine. They work well and are well suited to the popular transverse engine front-wheel drive cars. It has largely replaced the inline-6, which is too long to fit in many modern cars. It is more complicated and not as smooth as the inline-6. The V6 is more compact, and more rigid, but also more prone to vibrations. It is also becoming a high performance engine. It has high power and torque output like the classic V8, but has good fuel economy.
Some of the first V6-cars were built in 1905 by the Marmon Motor Car Company.
Delahaye's design-engineer Amadee Varlet came up with a twin-cam V6, that went into series production as the Type 44, in 1911. It was not successful enough to remain in production after 1914, when the first World war interrupted French automobile manufacturing. (Information obtained through Club Delahaye, the recognized global authority and permanent holder of the registered Delahaye trademark).
The first series production V6 was introduced by Lancia in 1950. Other builders soon started using V6 engines. In 1959, General Motors built a heavy-duty 305 in (5 L) 60° V6 for use in their pickup trucks and Chevrolet Suburban. The engine was later enlarged to 478 in (7.8 L) for heavy truck and bus use.
In 1962, the Buick Special offered a 90° V6 with uneven firing intervals. Consumers did not like this engine because of the vibration.
Due to the odd number of cylinders in each bank, V6 designs are unbalanced, whatever V-angle they use. Each bank in a V6 has an odd number of pistons. The V6 has an end-to-end rocking motion. Counterweights on the crankshaft and a counter rotating balancer shaft compensate for some of the rocking motion.