text:
Much Ado About Nothing
It's endlessly astonishing how some people have the capacity to make something out of nothing.
In yesterday's Bees game at Fresno, manager Bobby Mitchell started Brandon Wood at first base and Sean Rodriguez at center field.
And hilarity has ensued.
Several fan sites have concluded that these changes must be of cosmic significance. And Los Angeles Times sportswriter Steve Bisheff has chosen to fuel the supernova.
Bisheff wrote in today's blog:
Something is stirring in the Angels' front office.
How else do you explain the startling news that in Salt Lake City's game last night, Brandon Wood started at first base and Sean Rodriguez in center field?
Wood is a shortstop/third baseman by trade, and never had made a professional start at first base. Rodriguez is a versatile sort who has played some outfield, but he is projected as a second baseman.
You don't experiment like this for no reason. Clearly, the Angels are thinking about making a move, maybe for the second half of this season.
Oh, puh-leeze.
It's very common for the Angels to have their Triple-A players enhance their résumés by playing occasionally at other positions. It gives the player a little more experience at a position he might have to play should he be called up to the majors.
One recent example is Howard Kendrick. When he was called up in 2006, it was as an emergency to play first base. Howie had been a second baseman his entire career, but the Angels gave him a little time at first base in Salt Lake anticipating a need for him to play first in Anaheim. It got his bat in the lineup while keeping Adam Kennedy at second base.
Sean Rodriguez has played center field before, with Double-A Arkansas in 2007. The Angels have always envisioned him as a utility player — there was a time when some wanted to convert him into a catcher — so time in CF is entirely normal. With the recent injury to Chris Pettit, it makes sense that Sean would see more time in the outfield.
The bottom line is not to read anything into last night's box score. It's routine for Triple-A.


text:
International Seminar on
Bhagavad-Gita: Holistic Life Management and World Harmony Tourism Motivation
6th - 9th December 2016
Kurukshetra University, Kurukshetra (Haryana), India
"Indian psychology is an approach to psychology based on the Indian ethos, the characteristic spirit of the Indian civilization. One could also say that it is a psychology rooted in Indian philosophy, yoga and their life-affirming spirituality." It is about 5000 years old discipline and developing day by day. Copyright© Desh Raj Sirswal
Posted by Desh Raj Sirswal at 10:07 AM Links to this post
Labels: Seminar, Teaching Indian Psychology

subset: commoncrawl


text:
From Jazz & Pop Magazine, 1970.
(Booker died in 1961, just a few months after this piece was originally published in Metronome.)
Booker Little, twenty-three-year-old composer, arranger and trumpet player (the order is arbitrary, each role has equal importance to him), has lately come to demonstrate, in recordings and as the musical director of the Max Roach group, a talent that promises size.
As is true of many jazz players of his generation, Booker is a product of the conservatory. He's found that experience to be "invaluable," but has discovered that it can tend to bind one to conventional concepts and result in an excessive emphasis on the technical aspects of making music – at the cost of the emotional aspects.
"My background has been conventional," he says, "and maybe because of that I haven't become a leftist, though my ideas and tastes now might run left to a certain degree. I think the emotional aspect of music is the most important. A lot of guys, and I've been guilty of this too, put too much stress on the technical, and that's not hard to do when you've learned how to play in school. I think this goes along with why a lot of trumpet players have come up lately sounding one way – like Clifford Brown. They say everyone's imitating him now and that's true in a way and in a way it isn't. Clifford was a flashy trumpet player who articulated very well. He started a kind of trumpet playing that's partly an outgrowth of Fats Navarro – insofar as having a big sound, articulating well all over the instrument and having an even sound from top to bottom. Most of the younger guys, like myself, who started playing in school, they'd have the instructor driving at them, 'Okay, you gotta have a big sound, you gotta have this and that.' Consequently if they came in sounding like Miles, which is beautiful for jazz, they flunked the lessons. They turned toward someone else then, like Clifford. Donald Byrd is a schooled trumpet player and though he's away from that now he'll never really be able to throw it out of his mind."
Booker was born into a musical family in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 2, 1938. His father was a trombonist in a Baptist church band and his mother was a church organist; an older sister sang for a time with the London Opera Company. Booker began playing trumpet in his high school "classical" and marching band. "At first I was interested in the clarinet, but the instructor felt trumpet would be best – because he needed trumpet players. Jazz records were very scarce in Memphis at that time, but there were a lot of guys who were interested in it. George Coleman was one. He was probably one of the most progressive people around town at the time, and there was also Louis Smith, who is my cousin. They were listening. I was rather close to George because he was in the same high school. He was sharp enough to take things off records. I was fourteen or fifteen then, and he sort of got me started. I played with some groups around town and then, when I graduated, I went to the Chicago Conservatory. Being in Chicago gave me greater exposure to things, because guys were always coming through."
At the conservatory Booker majored in trumpet and minored in piano. He also studied theory, composition and orchestration. In his third year, when he was nineteen, he met Max Roach through Sonny Rollins, and not long afterwards Roach called him for a record date. About that time he decided to quit school. "I gave it up because I realized there wasn't much I could do as a far as being a 'classical' musician was concerned." The record date eventually resulted in a regular working association with Roach's quintet, an association that continued through 1958 when Booker took a leave of absence to freelance in New York. During the latter period he gigged and/or recorded with John Coltrane, Sonny Stitt, Slide Hampton, Ed Shaugnessy, Teddy Charles, Mal Waldron and Abbey Lincoln, among others. He also recorded an album for United Artists and another for Time. In early 1960 he rejoined Roach.
Of late, however, Booker has been considering the possibility of forming his own group. Its repertoire would consist exclusively of his own compositions.
"I think I've found the way I want to play on my instrument and now I want to concentrate on the sound I'd like to build around it." Currently, Booker has a working agreement with Candid Records, for whom he's already made an album (with Eric Dolphy) comprised entirely of his own writing. At the time we spoke, he was working on the orchestrations for an album that will feature Coleman Hawkins "in a modern setting."
"I don't think there's very much of my work prior to these Candid albums that expresses how I feel now about what I want to do."
What Booker wants to accomplish as a composer involves drawing on his knowledge of what he terms "the legitimate aspects of writing" without being confined by them.
"Those who have no idea about how 'classical' music is constructed are definitely at a loss – it's a definite foundation. I don't think it should be carried to the point where you have to say this is this kind of phrase and this is that kind of development. Deep in your mind though you should maintain these thoughts and not just throw a phrase in without it answering itself or leading to something else. Say I know the chord I want the piano player to play and I give it to him. But the other instruments won't necessarily be playing that chord. Most of the guys who are thinking completely conventionally, they'd say, 'Well maybe you've got a wrong note in there.' But I can't think in terms of wrong notes. In fact I don't hear any notes as being wrong. It's a matter of knowing how to integrate the notes and, if you must, how to resolve them. Because if you insist that this note or that note is wrong I think you're thinking completely conventionally – technically – and forgetting about emotion. And I don't think anyone would deny that more emotion can be reached and expressed outside of the conventional diatonic way of playing which consists of whole notes and half steps. There's more emotion that can be expressed by the notes that are played flat. Say it's a B flat, but you play it flat and it's not an A and it's not a B flat, it's between them. And in places you can employ that and I think it has great value. Or say the clash of a B natural against a B flat.
"I'm interested in putting sounds against sounds and I'm interested in freedom also. But I have respect for form. I think sections of a piece can sometimes be played, say, on a basic undersound which doesn't limit the soloist. You wouldn't necessarily tell him how many choruses to take. You say 'You blow awhile. You try and build your story and resolve it.' One thing I wrote for [producer] Nat Hentoff on the Candid date is like that completely. The undervoices were playing a motif and I just improvised on the sound. It had a definite mood, and the mood didn't warrant my running all over the trumpet.
"There are a lot of people who think the new direction should be to abolish form and others who feel that it should be to unite the 'classical' forms with jazz. The relationship between 'classical' and jazz is close, but I don't think you have to employ a 'classical' technique as such to get something that jells. I think the main reason a lot of people are going into it is because jazz hasn't developed as far as composition is concerned. It's usually a twelve-bar written segment and then everybody goes for themselves. Personally, I don't think it's necessary to do either of these things to really accomplish something different and new. And I think sometimes a conscious effort to do something different and new isn't as good as a natural effort.
"In my own work I'm particularly interested in the possibilities of dissonance. If it's a consonant sound it's going to sound smaller. The more dissonance, the bigger the sound. It sounds like more horns, in fact, you can't always tell how many more there are. And your shadings can be more varied. Dissonance is a tool to achieve these things."
Booker has been impressed by the writing of Charlie Mingus. "He's been thinking rhythmically, in terms of breaking up rhythms, and that interests me. He's definitely a giant as far as writing is concerned. He stems from another giant, Duke Ellington. Duke is one of my favorite writers. He's a man who's worked at a sound and never wavered, and his musical personality is always identifiable as his. Slide Hampton has impressed me when he's writing for no other reason than himself. He has a terrific mind. And I thought the Gunther Shuller Atlantic date with Ornette Coleman had some terrific writing."
As a trumpet player, Booker concedes that his major influence, much for the reasons stated earlier, has been Clifford Brown. "Yes, to a degree I'm afraid there was an influence, but I do think I've rid myself of it. I remember when I was living at the YMCA in Chicago. Sonny Rollins was living there too. You had to go down to the basement to practice, and once he heard me listening to a Clifford Brown record. I was playing it over and over again, and I guess I was driving him mad, because he was trying to practice himself. He asked me what I was doing and I told him I was trying to learn the melody. He told me that it was probably best that I go buy a sheet on it, because if I kept listening to the way he played it, it was going to rub off, and I was going to play it the same way. I never forgot what he said, though I did continue listening to Clifford Brown records. Brownie was the easiest guy for me to really get close to, as far as finding out what was going on was concerned. I like the way he played his lines."
Booker is preoccupied with remaining within the mood of a piece when he solos.
"Jazz soloing, as a result of the methods Bird introduced, started a very involved technique, and Bird and some of the others reached a very high degree of emotion, higher than most of the soloists to follow. Sonny Rollins has reached the same height, probably because he was around to hear them. He not only heard them say this is an A major or a D seventh, he also heard, firsthand, what they did with it – the kind of emotion they got out of it. A guy learning as I learned – say, the first chord in the bridge is an A-minor seventh – well, the first thing he had to do was figure out every note in the A-minor seventh, and when it came to playing it, he had to make sure he hit all the right notes. I think this is important, but not half as important as concentrating on staying within the mood. Say you're playing 'Blue Monday.' I don't think it's saying very much if you start to play it and then just rip and run all over the instrument. But again, you can get so involved with the technical aspect of playing that you do that – it's not hard for that to happen. Miles Davis minimized how much trumpet playing you could do as much as anybody could minimize it, But many people have a misconception about him. They say he can't play trumpet. But he's a fantastic trumpet player with a fantastic mind. He was one of the first guys around who didn't have to play every note in an A-minor chord to give you the impression of an A-minor chord and to get the mood that the section needed.
"There's so many areas of trumpet playing that can be employed, and they don't have a lot to do with the 'legitimate' end of trumpet playing as such. There are a lot of notes between notes – they call them 'quarter-tones.' They're not really quarter-tones, but notes that are above and below the 440 notes. This is something Miles employs a lot, and I doubt that he even thinks about it."
As a result of the influence Clifford Brown has exerted on the younger trumpet players, Booker said that he believes there is a serious need for everyone to break away and find his individuality.
"The problem isn't only with trumpet players, and that's why I think it's very good that Ornette Coleman and some other people have come on the scene. Ornette has his own ideas about what makes what and I don't think it's proper to put him down. I do think it's okay to talk about what his music has and what it doesn't have. I have more conventional ideas about what makes what than he does, but I think I understand clearly what he's doing, and it's good. It's an honest effort. It's like a guy who puts sponges on his feet, steps in paint and then smears it on the canvas. If he really feels it that way, that's it. At one end you have a guy who does it from a purely intellectual aspect and at the other a guy who does it from a purely emotional aspect. Sometimes both arrive at the same thing. I think Bird was more intellectual in his playing than Ornette is. I think Ornette puts down whatever he feels. But I think both ways have worth, though I don't believe Ornette himself has the worth of a Charlie Parker. Bird consumed everything, all that has been before and then advanced it all, and I don't think Ornette has consumed everything, though I'm sure he's heard it. I do think what Ornette's doing is part of what jazz will become.
"You know, there are so many things to get to. Most people who don't listen often say jazz is a continuous pounding and this is something I can feel too. I think there are so many emotions that can't be expressed with that going on. There are certain feelings that you might want to express that you could probably express better if you didn't have that beat. Up until now if you wanted to express a sad or moody feeling you would play the blues. But it can be done in other ways."
Booker is concerning himself with exploring some of the "other" ways. If his aesthetic remains bound to the conventional precepts in which his education is rooted, he is trying to find out how to make his conservatory education nourish rather than taint or restrain his music. His most recent work both in person and on records is evidence of his certainly growing skill and courage as a composer and instrumentalist who is likely to achieve real stature.


text:
Thursday, April 25
Good morning, TexMessagers! How do we know when the border is secure?
A border security bill requiring the Department of Homeland Security to report progress to Congress twice a year made its first step towards law on Wednesday.
The bill was sponsored by Austin's Mchael McCaul. A bipartisan group of Texans have joined in co-sponsoring the bill: Democrats Sheila Jackson Lee of Houston and Henry Cuellar of Laredo, and Republicans Ted Poe of Humble and Pete Olson of Sugar Land.
The bill mandates that DHS report border crossing rates, including apprehension and repeat border-crossers. DHS would also report narcotics seizures. It would examine port security in addition to border security. The reports would also analyze the use of technology in border security, including unmanned drones and improved scanning and surveillance equipment.
McCaul hailed the bill's passage. The proposal now moves to the full Homeland Security Committee, which he chairs.
"Not knowing who is coming across our borders threatens our economic and national security," McCaul said. "Americans have seen that promises of border security coupled with immigration reform have gone unfulfilled in the past."
Measuring the effectiveness of border security is currently a lynchpin of the debate on comprehensive immigration reform. Earlier this week, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz questioned DHS head Janet Napolitano. Cruz said current border metrics are too subjective to be useful.
A similar bill exists in the Senate, sponsored by Texas Sen. John Cornyn.
Headlines from TxPotomac's top articles
★ Most Americans consider George W. Bush presidency a failure; 80% of Republicans call it a success
★ PolitiFact deems Gohmert's allegation of al Qaeda training camps in Mexico 'FALSE'
★ Rep. Burgess proposes bill to eliminate Obamacare 'slush fund' and 'help sick Americans now'
★ DC court cancels Beaumont school board election, to hear case on Voting Rights Act violations
Reader Comment of the Day
In response to our post, TexMessage: George W. Bush's approval ratings on the rise, Rabbit119, wrote in the comments forum,
"Every point that George Worthless's popularity goes up signifies one point drop in public's collective IQ. This country is headed towards being the plot of Idiocracy."
★ Senate Judiciary Committee will vote on the Electronic Communications Privacy Act and Border Security Economic Opportunity and Immigration Modernization Act at 930 am.
★ Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee will hold a hearing dealing with the effects of drought on energy and water management at 10 am.
★ Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee will vote on the nomination of the Labor Secretary at 10 am.
★ The House Subcommittee on the Environment has a hearing on climate issues at 10 am.
★ The House Subcommittee on Cybersecurity has a hearing on cybersecurity and infrastructure at 2 pm.
Tomorrow and beyond:
★ April 26 Energy Subcommittee of House Science, Space and Technology Committee will hold a hearing titled "A Review of Federal Hydraulic Fracturing Research Activities."
★ April 26 Energy and Mineral Resources Subcommittee of House Natural Resources Committee will hold a hearing titled "U.S.-Mexico Transboundary Hydrocarbon Agreement and Steps Needed for Implementation."
★ April 26 House Subcommittee on Social Security has a hearing on future challenges.
★ May 7 Senate Foreign Relations Committee will hold a confirmation hearing on pending ambassadorial nominations to Chad and Libya.
★ May 8 Rep. Kevin Brady holds a hearing on the role of immigration in the economy.
This Week in Texas History:
On this date in 1838, the Republic of Texas and the United States signed the Convention of Limits, setting the boundary between the two countries. More>>>


text: How can Democrats convince Obama to stop implementing practices he once condemned? [GALLO/GETTY]A couple of weeks ago, the Democratic Party officially nominated President Obama for re-election at its national convention in Charlotte, North Carolina. Democrats hailed the three-day event as a triumph for the campaign, and it has led to President Obama opening up a clear, and some say insurmountable, lead over Republican candidate Mitt Romney. But perhaps the week's biggest loser was not Romney, but Americans' civil liberties. For eight years under George W Bush, Democrats excoriated the former President and his administration for their brazen dismissal of many basic constitutional rights, and for much of Bush's second term, it was often Barack Obama who was leading the charge. Instead, Obama has re-enforced many of them, and in the 2012 Democratic platform, most of the party's previous positions were erased all together. Privacy and whistleblowers In 2008, when Democrats nominated Obama for president the first time, the official party platform took a strong stand on civil liberties. The document promised to "revisit the Patriot Act and overturn unconstitutional executive decisions issued during the past eight years". But as president, Obama - who once criticised"federal agents poking around in our libraries" - pushed Congress to re-authorise three of the PATRIOT Act's most controversial provisions without change. As the ACLU's Kade Crawford explained the extension "allowed federal agents to continue secretly poking around not simply in our library records, but also in any other conceivable place where records about us are held - whether at our bank, our credit company, or our internet service provider". US Senate passes 'indefinite detention' bill In reference to George W Bush's unconstitutional warrantless wiretapping programme, the Democrats in 2008 also declared, "We support constitutional protections and judicial oversight on any surveillance programme involving Americans... We reject illegal wire-tapping of American citizens." Yet the NSA's power still largely remains intact, thanks to the FISA Amendments Act (FAA), which legalised much of the programme by weakening privacy protections for Americans communicating overseas. As a candidate, despite voting for the FAA, Obama promised to reform it as president. Now, the White House says their "top priority" is to have Congress renew it with no new privacy safeguards or oversight provisions. All this, despite the fact that a secret intelligence court recently ruled that on at least one occasion, the NSA violated the constitution. In addition, Obama is using the controversial "state secrets" privilege in an attempt to block a lawsuit challenging Bush-era warrantless wiretapping filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (the organisation for which I work). Obama, of course, promised to curtail the use of the state secrets privilege as a candidate, but now uses it frequently. Whistleblowers' rights have also been casualty of Obama's reversals. As the Guardian's Glenn Greenwald documented, in 2008 the Obama/Biden campaign lauded federal whistleblowers who expose government wrong doing, promising to "strengthen whistleblower laws to protect federal employees who expose waste, fraud, and abuse of authority in government". But now, far from protecting whistleblowers, his re-election campaign is boasting that his administration has prosecuted leakers to the press twice as many times as every other administration combined. Due process Listening to Obama's famous keynote address from the 2004 DNC - his springboard onto the national stage - Obama sounded like an entirely different politician. Then he argued, "If there's an Arab-American family being rounded-up, without benefit of an attorney, or due process," he said, "that threatens my civil liberties." Ironically, on the same day Obama gave his latest DNC speech this year, a federal judge in DC issued a ruling excoriating his administration's recent decision to unilaterally restrict Guantanamo detainees' access to attorneys, saying "this country is not one ruled by executive fiat". In fact, his administration's position on due process has been the most controversial of his presidency. Last year, he signed the National Defense Authorisation Act (NDAA), which contains provision authorising the indefinite detention of terrorism suspects that could potentially be used against American citizens. Another federal judge recently blocked the implementationof that law, saying it violated both the free speech and due process clauses of the Constitution. The Obama administration has predictably appealed. When it came to defending US drone strikes that have extrajudicially killed at least three American citizens in Yemen - including a 16 year old who has never even been accused of terrorism - the administration has tried to change the definition of "due process" all together. Attorney General Eric Holder put forth a unique legal theory, claiming "due process" and "judicial process" are not one in the same. Given the executive branch debated and weighed evidence against the victims of the drone strikes internally, due process was satisfied and they didn't need a court, Holder explained. This mangling of the founding fathers' words led to widespread rebuke in legal circles, but it was satirist Stephen Colbert who most aptly summed up the absurdity of Holder's definition: "Due process and judicial process are not one and the same. The Founders weren't picky. Trial by jury, trial by fire, rock-paper-scissors - who cares? Due process just means there's a process that you do." Will Obama ever change course? To be sure, Obama's Justice Department has shown admirable backbone on other civil liberties issues. After a series of incidents where local police around the country arrested or interfered with people recording police abuse, the DOJ sent a pointed letter to the Baltimore police department insisting citizens have a First Amendment right to record police activity in public. The Justice Department's civil rights division has been vigilant in challenging so-called "voter ID" laws, which disproportionately prevent poor people and minorities from voting. They also sued to stop Arizona's immigration law SB-1070, which was a thinly veiled attempt to legalise racial profiling. But how can Democrats convince Obama to stop implementing practices he once condemned? One might look towards Obama's evolution on gay rights for the solution. In this area, his actions towards basic civil rights have been the most laudatory. He ended the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy in the military, and even became the first president in history to voice support for gay marriage. It wasn't always this way, however. To the shock of many supporters, Obama's Justice Department initially defended the discriminatory Defence of Marriage Act in court. But when Obama faced an aggressive and coordinated campaign from gay rights groups - who vocally called the president on his misdeeds and threatened to withhold campaign contributions if he did not move the ball forward - Obama changed course and now refuses to defend the law. As the Washington Post's Bernstein pointed out, "Pro-gay marriage groups... refused to drop the marriage issue, even when they scored another victory." While certainly when the all-purpose scare mongering phrase "national security" comes into play, politicians are always more cautious, but as Bernstein said, "Indeed, there's a lesson here for activists and organised groups: liberals tend to get what they want only when they fight effectively for it." After all, in a few months, it could very well be Mitt Romney who will wield the powerful weapons Obama has created. If only for that reason, it's imperative the President's supporters push him to change course as hard as his critics. Trevor Timm is an activist and writer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Follow him on Twitter: @trevortimm SOURCE: Al Jazeera ABOUT THE AUTHOR Trevor TimmTrevor Timm is co-founder and executive director of Freedom of the Press Foundation, an organisation dedicated to supporting cutting-edge transparency journalism focused on bringing transparency and accountability to government. @ trevortimm Politics US & Canada United States Yemen


text: cowdery Posted August 31, 2007 DISCUS (Distilled Spirits Council of the U.S.) likes to have an annual event, about this time of year, at the George Washington Distillery at Mount Vernon in Virginia. This week, whiskey was made for the first time in the reconstructed distillery that officially opened in March. Master Distillers from different DISCUS-member companies made the rye-mash spirit. They were Jimmy Russell of Wild Turkey; Joe Dangler of Virginia Gentleman; Ken Pierce of Very Old Barton; Gerry Webb of I.W. Harper and Dave Pickerell of Maker's Mark. I know everybody expect Gerry Webb. I'm not sure who he might be. I. W. Harper is a Diageo product, but it's made by Four Roses. Although the whiskey has to age for a few years first, they intend to bottle and sell it in the Mount Vernon gift shop. This is good news because the whiskey made there in the past (in a makeshift still while the distillery itself was under construction) was sold at high prices for charitable fund-raising, so most whiskey enthusiasts never got close to it. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites


text:
Cookie crust
- 1/3 cup coarsely chopped pecans
- 1/4 cup sugar
- 1 1/4 cups all purpose flour
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 cup (1 stick) chilled unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
Pecan topping
- 1/4 cup coarsely chopped pecans
- 2 tablespoons sugar
- 2 tablespoons (1/4 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
- 1 large egg white
Nectarines and glaze
- 4 firm but ripe unpeeled nectarines, halved, pitted
- 1
- 1/3 cup apricot preserves
- 1 tablespoon water
Recipe Preparation
Finely chop pecans with sugar in processor. Add flour and salt; process 30 seconds to blend. Add butter; process just until clumps form. Gather dough together; flatten into rectangle. Wrap in plastic; chill 30 minutes.
Line large rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper. Roll out dough on lightly floured work surface to generous 12x10-inch rectangle. Trim edges just to even sides. Cut dough into eight 5x3-inch rectangles. Transfer rectangles to prepared baking sheet, spacing 1 inch apart. Chill while preparing topping.
pecan topping
Preheat oven to 375°F. Combine pecans, sugar, and butter in processor. Process until pecans are very finely chopped. Add egg white and process until well blended. Divide pecan topping equally among dough rect-angles; spread to within 1/4 inch of edges. Bake until pecan topping is set but cookies are still pale, about 10 minutes. Remove cookies from oven; maintain oven temperature.
Meanwhile, prepare nectarines and glaze
Thinly slice nectarine halves, keeping slices from each half together. Arrange 1 nectarine half atop each cookie, fanning slices decoratively. Return to oven and bake until cookies are light golden around edges, about 10 minutes. Transfer baking sheet with tarts to rack.
Bring apricot preserves and 1 tablespoon water to simmer in heavy small saucepan. Strain glaze through sieve set over bowl. Brush glaze over nectarine slices. Cool tarts completely on baking sheet. DO AHEAD Tarts can be made 6 hours ahead. Let stand at room temperature. Rewarm any remaining glaze and brush over tarts before serving, if desired.