CBC - Global Warming Doomsday Called Off

CBC - Global Warming Doomsday Called Off
A very informative documentary about the real cause of global warming. It clearly discuss about the fact that CO2 is not cause of global warming. Take a look also at the Great Global Warming Swindle and Green House Conspiracy in google video. This documentary discusses many topics that are not covered in the Swindle such as the hockey stick graph, from the viewpoint of Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas.

The Voyage of Bran

The Voyage of Bran: "???TWAS fifty quatrains the woman from unknown lands sang on the floor of the house to Bran son of Febal, when the royal house was full of kings, who knew not whence the woman had come, since the ramparts were closed.

"This is the beginning of the story. One day, in the neighbourhood of his stronghold, Bran went about alone, when he heard music behind him. As often as he looked back, ???twas still behind him the music was. At last he fell asleep at the music, such was its sweetness."

THE old-Irish tale which is here edited and fully translated 1 for the first time, has come down to us in seven MSS. of different age and varying value.

My Photos - Fahrenheit 451

My Photos - Mobile Uploads: He's here to burn our books.

Bullfrog Power: “Taxing our Guilt”

Bullfrog Power: “Taxing our Guilt”: "mrG left a a very interesting comment on the Nelly Furtado Earth Hour concert which is sponsored by Bullfrog Power. I think he raises a very important point and we shouldn’t be blindedly falling for everything that claims to be “Green”."

Jeremiah was a bullfrog, and although often unintelligible, we were friends nonetheless. Nelly will draw throngs of litter-prone party-mood commuters to see a massive stagecraft show of self-promo underwritten by a ruse to sneak a subsidy, but she will play 'unplugged' (sic).

The Earth will be SO relieved.

wow ... I got cited by smartcanucks ... hope there's not a bullfrog fatwa out on me now :).

January 2008 - 4 sources say “globally cooler” in the past 12 months

January 2008 - 4 sources say “globally cooler” in the past 12 months: "January 2008 was an exceptional month for our planet, with a significant cooling, especially since January 2007 started out well above normal.

January 2008 capped a 12 month period of global temperature drops on all of the major well respected indicators. I have reported in the past two weeks that HadCRUT, RSS, UAH, and GISS global temperature sets all show sharp drops in the last year.

Also see the recent post on what the last 10 years looks like with the same four metrics - 3 of four show a flat trendline."

Baby, it's COLD outside!

The brief love of John Cage for Pauline Schindler, 1934-35

Letters: the brief love of John Cage for Pauline Schindler, 1934-35: "These letters were found among materials left by Pauline Gibling Schindler, the wife of the architect Rudolph Schindler. At the time of these letters, the Schindlers were separated. He continued to live in his own house in Kings Road, Los Angeles (now West Hollywood), and she was most frequently in Ojai, a small settlement some seventy miles north-west of Los Angeles, where she stayed with her young son Mark. When this correspondence starts, John Cage is 22 and Pauline Schindler is 41."

"This is an antidote. If one is necessary. It is love and hope and health and all 'good things'. It is a flowing over of wanting for your happiness."

The myth of food miles

How the myth of food miles hurts the planet: "Ethical shopping just got more complicated. The idea that only local produce is good is under attack. There is growing evidence to suggest that some air-freighted food is greener than food produced in the UK. Robin McKie and Caroline Davies report on how the concept of food miles became oversimplified - and is damaging the planet in the process"

"A game? A game?! This isn't a GAME! This is SCIENCE!!
It has numbers and EVERYTHING!!"

So spoke the unstoppably psychotic planet-razing sociopath mad-scientist in an 80's era 'Dr. Who' Episode.

Easter Parade

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hspjArtIPU&hl=en]

A 1935 recording of Leo Reisman's Orchestra "Stop Press" version of Irving Berlin's elegant society jazzband number from the 1933 review "As Thousands Cheer". Berlin's tune was later cemented into our collective psyche by the silver screen duet with Fred Astaire and Judy Garland in their first and only film together ... "Easter Parade!" (of course! :)

And if the high-society groove isn't your scene, you can croon it smooth like Bing, or you can jazz it up or not. Its still a hit. Happy Easter!

Amazon: Easter Parade

Amparito Roca

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqngm76MUPo&hl=en]

We're some days into a chilly spring today, and with half our band away to warm and exotic places, I had traveling shoes in mind. So we're off on the wings of the music, and nothing really trips us off to Spain like Jaime Teixidor's 1925 pasodoble, the always popular Amparito Roca.

The pasodoble! It's so flexible, so fluid and maleable, I had real trouble today choosing the definitive performance. It's a two-step proud bravado march, a tune to take to the streets, a fanfare to usher in your toreadors, or as your prelude to the kill ...

or, if you prefer, as captured here above, as a romantic dance for two :) Your choice.

Amazon: Amparito Roca

On The Edge of Now

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cbQHkrRS3M&hl=en]

By way of a teaser, the opening scenes from "Passing It On", Derek Bailey's 'Improvisation' entries in the BBC's On The Edge - - dmtls tips us to the full episodes one and three which we can watch over at at UBU Web.

And they are quite a trip. From school children spontaneously engaged (without instruction) in a real participation to Zorn's social-noise to Eugene Chadbourne being, well, Eugene, to a master class in Indian vocal music and elementary bebop drums, to the performance strategies of one of the greatest improvisational ensemble composers of all time, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

As Derek Bailey explains, and as Mozart scholars Christopher Hogwood and Robert Levin explain, as the Hebridean gaelic psalm singers and Indian Raga singers explain, the fragile and precious moment of the music of any 'now' is impossible to capture, package and sell. Sure, we can learn from recordings, we can learn technique and the method and gesture, but when it comes right down to it, the essential essence of the the music escapes. It is too immediate, too entangled in the present place and context, too intimately personal to the performers and to the audience.

Amazon: based on the book Improvisation by Derek Bailey

Sir Arthur C Clarke: 90th Birthday Reflections

The world's best known writer of science fiction, Sir Arthur C Clarke was the first to propose satellite communications in 1945. One of his short stories inspired the World Wide Web, while another was later expanded to make the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, which he co-wrote with director Stanley Kubrick. He has lived in Sri Lanka since 1956.

The Nine Billion Names of God

The Nine Billion Names of God: "'This is a slightly unusual request,' said Dr. Wagner, with what he hoped was commendable restraint. 'As far as I know, it???s the first time anyone???s been asked to supply a Tibetan monastery with an automatic sequence computer. I don???t wish to be inquisitive, but I should hardly thought that your --ah-- establishment had much use for such a machine. Could you explain just what you intend to do with it?'

'Gladly,' replied the lama"

MacNamara's Band

A bit of fun to pipe you out of St.Patrick's season, a vintage sing-along cartoon that wades through some other tributes to the annual stereotype festival before it settles into a bouncing-shamrock rendition of Shamus O'Connor's war-time hit.


And what a hit it was too, solid gold for Bing Crosby back in 1945, you can hear (and sing along) that one over at Brownie-locks.


Apropos to our band-book, this song is (a tad satirically) about a community band, from the famed St. Mary's Fife and Drum Band out of Limerick, the four featured McNamara brothers emigrated to the US in the 1900's to form an ex-pat musical unit immortalized here by Bing's hit, and which, after some lyric edits and clensings, begat today's rollicking repertoire anthem to St.Patrick's.


Amazon: MacNamara's Band

Smells Like Teen Spirits

In honour of last Friday's Conan feature on the always deep-thoughtful and harmolodically charged The Bad Plus, and considering the U-vid of said gig was yankedrepatriated by the NBC, here they are in a dark but lively den somewhere in Argentina. But that's not what I wanted to talk about. I wanted to talk about Oscar Peterson.


I'll tell you about my close encounter with Peterson someday, but what I wanted to tell you is about the show just prior to that, it was at the Winnipeg concert hall and I had my pair of decent-view jazz-DJ comps and took my then-girlfriend to see pure genius in action.

Irish Tune Redux

Ok, I couldn't leave you hanging on that last rendition without resolving the cadence into the real thing, and here it is, with Anthony Parnther teasing the Derry air out of the Tennessee Brass.


It's perfect for St. Pat's, it's the perfect Irish song and here's why: It's the juiciest tune in the repetoire! First off, it is an Irish tune, an ancient Irish tune, so it has that bit of street cred to start, but before you get any farther than the name, you're already embroiled in a particularly Irish problem wincing between the Derry's and the Londonderry's. Who says concert band music isn't political.


Only, it gets better.

Irish Tune (from County Derry)

Seeing as it's St.Patrick's day, and in recognition both of how one of the all-time repetoire favourites is Percy Aldrich Grainger's beautiful Irish Tune from County Derry and how concert bands so rarely include vocalists, here's a special Irish treat, Grainger's Irish Tune lovingly rendered here by the fabulous Leprechaun Brothers! Top o' th' Mornin' to you.

Amazon: The Muppet Show

Ben/Gerry

Happy St. Pats! And yes, I did look about for something Irish to post and pondered a few but settled on stretching the genre just far enough to include Gerry Mulligan.


His Father was Irish :)


And in keeping with the fathers and sons, here's a rare clip of Gerry Mulligan with Ben Webster, another evolution in the making that lets you compare the outside Basie-sound put out by Ben with the emerging new sound of Gerry Mulligan backed by Mel Lewis and Leroy Vinnegar on bass, and Jimmy Rowles on an unseen piano.


And that's apropos too because the claim to fame for Gerry's sound was rooted in the piano-less small combo, a session innovation brought about ten years earlier by Red Norvo taking over from Earl Gardner at The Haig club. This was coincidentally the same spot where Mulligan and his group with Chet Baker were fixing up their chops; to make room for the feature vibraphone, and since the feature pianist was gone, the grand was shipped out leaving Gerry to not only craft a new sort of sound, but also, being the ever masterful ensemble arranger, prompted his contributing to that art in a very clever use of widely spaced harmonies among the horns to fill out newly available sonic spaces. Just goes to show: Sometimes improvisation is as much a part necessity and resourcefulness.


Oh, and did I mention? About 'Jazz', it's an Irish word. Tis true as true can be. It means "the breath of life" or some such. Perhaps.


Amazon: Gerry Mulligan / Ben Webster ... and both, too

Be Thou My Vision

"Riches I heed not

Nor man's empty praise"


For a Sunday aprè St.Pat's, a common Irish hymn, rendered here in Russell Powell's first ever arrangement and I hope he kept doing those because it is the making of this music ourselves that is the thing. It is in the here are we together where the mystic magic lurks and taunts us to unlock it, and no amount of post-production edits and 'corrections' can really change that. Music is fundamental to the human species, and like our other staples of fresh air and sunshine, for all its flickrs and faulters, standing before any widest-screen surround-sound plasma is still a plastic flower by comparison.


Amazon: Be Thou My Vision

The Eternal Braid

From 1969 or maybe a bit before, a german tv clip featuring Roy Haynes on drums, Steve Swallow on bass, Jerry Hahn on guitar with the four-hand vibraphone played by the old master Red Norvo fronting Gary Burton's band. I love these sessions where you can catch the evolution live, like the Bird vs the Hawk or Count Basie and Monk, there's a raw awe and appreciation in this conversation that goes both ways, and you really can't tell who is having more fun.

Acoustic Laptops

Acoustic Laptops, Charles Hayward and Ergocracy: "Bored, bored, bored of people making electronic music 'on their laptops'? Then welcome to the iFolk, the new generation of acoustic laptops."

These are the invention of Norwegian noise musician Tore Boe, and essentially the sound comes from a contact mic placed inside. Touch any item on the laptop and it will make a noise.

Colonel Bogey March

Wikipedia tells us the Col. Bogey is the number one all-time top money-making march, and maybe only narrowly since the author had to slip out of the barracks on the sly and publish it nom-de-plume to keep his royalties. You can read all about it over there on the wiki page, fascinating story.


But I think the REAL story here is that here we have this one scratchy take by the famous Yorkshire Black Dyke Mills band, conducted by Arthur Pierce I'm not exactly sure when (it is similar in spirit and quality of sound to a Henri Miro I've heard from 1920) and the really wonderful thing to note for our opener-post here in the band-book is that here's that march then, and if you flip over to www.blackdykeband.co.uk you'll see that same band today, an unbroken tradition of over a 150 years.


And that, as they say, is what being a community bandsman is all about! It's a thread that weaves through time. From a small private corporation band (many corporations had concert bands back then) to an outfit fit to cut a disk for Paul McCartney and sit in sessions with Peter Gabriel!


Bet you a quid they still kick up a mean Col. Bogey too.


Amazon: Black Dyke Band - Colonel Bogey's March

Carla Bley Big Band

There is a telling interview with Carla Bley also on YouTube, but this clip is really the most direct example of her strategy: First, you have to get the listeners on your side, and once you do that, once you've real'ed them in, they'll very likely discover that all this free jazz stuff is really quite beautiful.

Amazon: Carla Bley Big Band

Direct Note Access

Direct Note Access: "Direct Note Access is a technology that makes the impossible possible: for the first time in audio recording history you can identify and edit individual notes within polyphonic audio material. The unique access that Melodyne affords to pitch, timing, note lengths and other parameters of melodic notes will now also be afforded to individual notes within chords."

This is either the threshold of a new world, or the end of music as you've come to know it. Personally, I think it is both, and I'm happy to say Sun Ra had prepared me in advance so I don't find it the least bit frightening -- I'd never expected to record a platinum platter anyway -- but I do wonder now just who it is they should actually HAND the next Junos to ...

An addendum footnote to this, Dave Liebman writes:

talking to one of my students about the ???old days??? of recording just ten years ago before the computer where although we did cut and splice tape, musicians had to self correct mistakes of timing, intonation and assorted other tasks mostly on their own. I have to think that without the reliance on machines, one???s musicianship was well tested, consequently leading to general and continual self improvement.

Series of blunders turned the plastic bag into global villain - Times Online

Series of blunders turned the plastic bag into global villain - Times Online: "Scientists and environmentalists have attacked a global campaign to ban plastic bags which they say is based on flawed science and exaggerated claims.

The widely stated accusation that the bags kill 100,000 animals and a million seabirds every year are false, experts have told The Times. They pose only a minimal threat to most marine species, including seals, whales, dolphins and seabirds."

For four years the ???typo??? remained uncorrected. It was only in 2006 that the authors altered the report, replacing ???plastic bags??? with ???plastic debris???....

In a postscript to the correction they admitted that the original Canadian study had referred to fishing tackle, not plastic debris, as the threat to the marine environment.

Diggin' in the Dirt: I, Patrick

Diggin' in the Dirt: I, Patrick. (Puke the First): "Blather.Net's Archaeologist of the Damned and Resident Graverobber, Ender Wiggan, unearths the truth behind the blow-in from Britain; in whose honour the annual national stereotype perpetuation festival is held. The first of a six-part series, 'I Patrick' is a vast, sprawling epic tale of war, slavery, religious fundamentalism, rape, murder and dying empires. Or, it could just be a load of begorra, begob, musha man divil alive paddywhackery."

Nowadays he comes with a title before his name, a national day of drunkenness, a feast day of obligation, a green pint of Guinness in his honour and a plethora of paddywhackery. But back in the fifth century, he wouldn't have ever dreamed it would be so. He wouldn't even recognise the name actually....

The social network for social entrepreneurs

UnLtdWorld: "UnLtdWorld is an online platform that connects social entrepreneurs and empowers the way information is exchanged within the social entrepreneurship market."

If you do a google on "actionable sense" you will find some writings of mine that even prompted my colleagues to found a whole website on the term; unfortunately that website never really amounted to much other than the registration of the domain and the layout of the page and that leads me right back to square one and my question, "Can the blogosphere actually cause meaningful change?" On a tip from Daev Walsh, and a challenge to crank our facebooking up a notch ...

Ken's Virtual Drumkit

Ken's Virtual Drumkit

Go ahead, go all John Henry Bonham bonzo on us, just find some quiet cybercafe, crank up the vol on the laptop, and tune in to Ken's Virtual Drumkit.

The Science of Peace

The Science of Peace: What if ... it worked?

Teo Macero, 82

AstroNation: Teo Macero, 82, Record Producer, Dies: "Teo Macero, a record producer, composer and saxophonist most famous for his role in producing a series of albums by Miles Davis in the late 1960s and early 1970s, including editing that almost amounted to creating compositions after the recordings, died on Tuesday in Riverhead, N.Y. He was 82"

The Beach Boys had Brian Wilson, the Beatles had George Martin, Coltrane and Miles Davis had Teo Macero, wild-man with a razor-blade, genius mix-master spin-doctor of the 8-track console.