The last post reminded me of how much I love this awesome Goddess of voice and passion.

So instead of just listening to me jabbering on and on, I strongly recommend that you take the time machine back to the 60s for 10 golden minutes. :)

From 1968:


From 1966:


This is more recent, but showcases her incredible range and the life she brings to Piazzolla's works. This time, in French!
J'Oublie (Oblivion) (Piazzolla/McNeal)

I got to my department today morning and someone had left this on the general "help-yourself" table at the entrance.



I still can't believe it. Someone actually gave away one of the coolest tango-operas! And not just any tango-opera. A LIVE production* of the oratorio penned in 1968 by none other than the divinity of tango - Astor Piazzolla!

To give you an idea of what Piazzola's operatic works sound like, here's a very dramatic piece "Preludio para el año 3001 - Rinasceró" sung by the awesome Milva. The drama and emotion is sometimes so intense, that even not getting a word of Spanish, I find myself getting the story. That is the brilliance and magic of Piazzolla.

::DOWNLOAD SOUND::

(Orchestra: Astor Quartet, Per Arne Glorvigen (Bandoneon), Gidon Kremer (Violin), Milva (Voice), Vadim Sakharov (Piano), Alois Posch (Double Bass))

Needless to say, I snatched it away in one wild spasmodic movement before anyone could say, Piazzolla. It's now playing full blast and I am virtually dancing on the streets of Buenos Aires.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, dear mysterious benefactor! :D

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• Okay, Okay, the Gidon Kremer version of this Opera is more mind-blowing, if only for the technical precision of his playing as well as the orchestra's. However, as far as live productions go, this one is spot on with all the passion, if not the precision and sound.

From

Two representatives in the congress have written a letter to the Idiot-W urging him to bail-out the makers of the oil-guzzling SUVs and inefficient cars.

Pelosi and Reid:

"A healthy automobile manufacturing sector is essential to the restoration of financial market stability, the overall health of our economy and the livelihood of the automobile sector's workforce."

How can you perpetrate such constant fraud on the public? Can this get anymore outrageous? WHY should more money go into energy inefficient cars and SUVs while bus and metro prices are going up all over the place? For once, can't you just bail out the average population's livelihood by investing a fraction of that $700bn in a healthy PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION system??

Pelosi and Reid also said:

"It is our hope that the actions that Congress has taken, and that the administration may take, will restore the pre-eminence of our domestic manufacturing industry so that it can emerge as a global, competitive leader in fuel efficiency and in new and path-breaking energy-efficient technologies that protect our environment."

Yeah. Right. Fat chance of that ever happening - seeing as how the US goverment, the domestic automobile manufacturers, the oil industry, and the Californian government played key roles in very skillfully murdering the concept of the energy-efficient electric car back in the day.

This is a barefaced effort at siphoning of public money to the oil industry for immediate gains, and it makes me sick.

Whatever happened to this group?! I had an audio cassette of this album back... back... really back in the day and I remember the magnetic tape kind of disintegrated because I rewound it so many times the first month I had it on my Sony Walkman.

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And YIKES. What a freakishly scary video. I had no idea. Thankfully, I never saw this abomination of a video before now! I might have been brain damaged forever. I think the most ghastly bits are when they come to "walk in the park" and "laughing child" bits.

Artist Linda Nye captures the incredible gradient of complexity of circulation in a human being. As you start your trace from your heart and venture deeper and deeper into your vessels and bloodstream, you see the red blood cells, the vessel walls, the members of the immune system - the body's dedicated mafia, down to the biochemistry of Haemoglobin - the oxygen carrying complex with its little oxygen atom.



Here is the same balance of complexity destroyed by unwieldy chunks of flaky lard from those countless beers, triple servings of pasta, humongous bagels for breakfast, random potato fries and all those burgers of abandonment.

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Science 26 September 2008: Vol. 321. no. 5897, p. 1768 DOI: 10.1126/science.321.5897.1768

-- He once sent a 2.5 feet long dead rotting fish to a pollster whom he disliked.



-- He is a classically trained ballet dancer.



-- His brother is a Hollywood agent and he has had movies made about him.



-- His other brother is the head of bioethics unit at the NIH and an oncologist.




-- He once stabbed a steak knife through the table to make a point.




Meet Rahm Emanuel. He is the future chief-of-staff of Obama's White House Team!



Whoever said only Palin could make SNL's life easy??!! Exciting times ahead for the Republicans. LOL :D

The new user sound is an awesome rendition of Maria Carolina - a famous Venezuelan waltz written for the Guitar by the pitch perfect Antonio Lauro.


Its played by the awesome John Williams as part of his perfect,
El Diablo Suelto.


What are you waiting for?? Check it out! Load and play my usersound! :)

I need to keep this short and sweet. This is a message to people who voted against gay marriage in those loony states.

Sexuality is, to a large extent, GENETICALLY determined. There is scientific proof to this effect. DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND THAT? Thus, by voting against rights for people whose sexual leanings are different from yours, not only do you show that you are unscientific, but you are also heartless, discriminating and "racist". Would you deny people rights and dignity because they happen to have a different eye colour or because they had a metabolism that processed fats differently or hmmm.. let's see, lived to a 110 years because their ageing genes kicked in slower?

I am sure many of you wouldn't. And why? Not because these traits are *any* different from sexuality, but because these traits are not linked to a flawed artificially created nonsense "definition" of "marriage" (and by proxy cultural, social, financial and legal rights).

THIS is precisely why science needs to be the new culture of people. THIS is why we need to dissect the flaws of a religion-politics liaison and burn them forever. THIS is why we need forward thinking and tolerant education in schools. THIS is why we need a better appreciation of human evolution, myths and culture. THIS is why we need open-minds and take our mistaken and demented prejudices apart. THIS is why we need to re-learn what respect to our fellow-humans means. THIS is why we need change - at its most basic and pure level. Not an "ad-lib" top-heavy lip-service "change" but CHANGE from the grassroots on how we think about our roles in our society and how we think about others who live in it.

And you know what? Even without the scientific argument, would you deny rights to a person who wore a white shirt to work when a majority of the employees were wearing blue just because the person wearing a different colour happened to have a sense of style different from you???? It's about respect of choice. The bottomline is, scientifically backed up or not, by voting against rights for everyone, you just cast a cloud of doubt over the fact that you even have some of the most human of traits - a sense of justice, equality and tolerance. Additionally, you also proved that you can let others think for you (another herd-like non-human trait, by the way). If you had taken the time to weigh the matter and form your own opinion, instead of letting your rational brain go off into the recesses of unconsciousness, you might have realized how unfortunate this decision has been. :/

This channel would like to triple cheer

Science!
..Choice!..
...Peace!...
....Dreams!....
....Justice!....
.....Courage!.....
.......Evolution!........
..........Rationalism!...........
....................Moderation!....................
.................................Forethought!....................................
.......................................and................................................



Obama!

CONGRATULATIONS!!!!!

I am responsible for the setting up an interactive web portal for a bunch of researchers. I am not doing any of the active coding or programming or any behind the scenes work for actually setting it up but merely giving the web people an idea of what I would like to see.

((e:paul), this is the same project I talked to you about, ages back. Its finally being hosted at the NCI.)

Ideally, I want a forum-like interface online with email functionality. The forum should have the ability to accept emailed posts from researchers (who are disinclined to login and post online) and display these emails in appropriate subject threads - somewhat like Google Groups + Gmail. The forum should also have sections with restricted memberships for say, certain working groups.

The question is, am I making a reasonable request and is this kind of thing do-able on a website? Would I need to provide any extra information?