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Forget 'What are your strengths and weaknesses?' If you want to get the real dope on prospective employees, ask job candidates these seven questions.

Jo-Ann Stores is posting impressive sales and earnings numbers and is an example of a retail sector on which Walmart doesn't have a steel grip.

Even smart people make financial moves that are downright illogical. Emotions and superstitions have a sneaky way of keeping you from rational financial decisions. But dumb choices can have serious, real-world consequences. Here are some of the biggest blunders we all make, plus tips from the experts on how to keep cool.

Charles Petzold
Books and other writings by Charles Petzold

Re-Infection with Recurrent Ear Worm
I've been re-invected by an extremely nasty ear worm. It has gotten inside my head and plays in a continuous loop. This particular strain of ear worm has been mostly dormant for several months, ever since the movie based on a musical based on a song based on an Italian expression of surprise arrived in theatres and then left — I hesitate to mention the title because that alone is capable of touching off a vicious outbreak that can last for hours — but now the DVD has been released, and again the culture is awash with that song and several others from the same source.
I wouldn't complain if I had brought this on myself. But I have never sought out this music. It has instead oozed out of the environment into my ears. Without my permission, it has attacked my central nervous system and burrowed deep into my brain, stealing essential neurons to forever preserve the memory of those silly lyrics and insipid tunes.
Of course there's no legal recourse. If instead of playing music, a quartet of Swedes were following me around on the streets and knocking me on the back of my head, I could probably find a way to make them stop. Even if they had no physical contact with me but were instead flashing images in my eyes of apple-cheeked adolescents joyously dancing with arms waving above their empty heads, I might be able to make a case for legal restraint.
But music falls into a whole other category. Apparently there's nothing you can do to prevent insidiously tuneful music from leaking out of speakers located in public places, or interrupting otherwise innocent television programs.
I guess what bothers me most is that I'm not learning anything new from this music. Anything that could possibly be known about these songs was totally assimilated the first time they were ever heard, even before the songs had concluded. Repeat performances convery nothing new, only the placental comfort of a security blanket. With each replay, the brain dies a little more.
You would think that with all the music pumped into the aural environment these days, people would have an increased knowledge of a wider range of musical forms and ideas. But this is not the case. The massively destructive commercialization of music has required that it be immediately accessible and persistent. There is no room for hesitation or doubt. In the commercial marketplace, the ear worm is the ultimate sign of success.
And thus, few people these days even understand the concept that good music might be deliberately lacking in toe-tappable beats or hummable tunes, that it might be "challenging" or "difficult" or even "unlistenable" on first encounter, and that maybe a little effort might be required, and that this work might have a delayed pay-off of gratification.
To quote the concluding line of another famous musical ear worm from four decades back — this one based on characters from a well-known Victorian children's book —
Elliott Carter's Birthday Bash
It would have been a wonderful concert regardless. It began when James Levine and Daniel Barenboim came out on the Carnegie Hall stage, sat down side-by-side at a piano, and played Schubert's sublimely heartbreaking Fantasy in F Minor for Piano Four Hands, D. 940. They were then joined by the members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra for Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 3 with Levine conducting and Barenboim at the piano. Following intermission, James Levine and the BSO treated us to a rip-roaring head-bouncing brass-smacking performance of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring.
It would have been a wonderful concert regardless. But between the intermission and the Stravinsky was the New York premiere of Elliott Carter's sweetly subversive Interventions for piano and orchestra, which Carter composed specifically for James Levine and Daniel Barenboim to play on his 100th birthday. (It was actually premiered a couple days ago in Boston.)
In Interventions, the piano and orchestra (augmented with tons of percussion) seem to want to play two different kinds of compositions entirely, and so they keep intervening in each other's progress. The orchestra led by Levine concentrates mostly on long majestic string lines, while Barenboim plays some of Carter's jazziest piano writing ever, but the orchestra finally gets into the festive spirit for a (uncharacteristically for Carter) loud crashing finale.
After Interventions, Carter was helped on stage, a cake was rolled out, the orchestra played "Happy Birthday," and the crowd went wild.
The choice to close the concert with Stravinsky's Rite of Spring was very deliberate: It was the American premiere of Rite of Spring by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in Carnegie Hall in January 1924 that caused the 15-year old Elliott Carter to want to become a composer.
I left Carnegie Hall hoping there was another 15-year old in the audience suitably blown away by what she heard tonight.
Elliott Carter Music on YouTube (a Selection)
Recent Interview from NewMusicBox.org
Sonata for Violoncello and Piano (1948)
Norman Fischer, cello; and Jeanne Kierman, piano; at Rice University
Enchanted Preludes (1988)
John McMurtery, flute; and Craig Hultgren, cello; at Birmingham Southern College in August, 2006
Luimen (1997)
Joseph Brent, mandolin; Oren Fader, guitar; Megan Levin, harp;
Steven Merrill, vibes; Patri

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