Tinypliny's Journal

11/10/2008 20:15 #46635

Astor Piazzolla - Maria de Buenos Aires
Category: music

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

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.

tinypliny - 11/14/08 13:23
Test

tinypliny - 11/10/08 23:42
hahaha... I guess my grasp of "Spanish" is even worse than I thought. But I am determined to learn it some day... :)

Thanks for the linking the real Spanish version! Actually, it makes sense that Milva would sing in Italian. She is originally Italian. Isn't she the awesomest???!?? They sometimes play her albums at Guercio's and then I recklessly waste time just wandering down the aisles listening to song after song.

Her voice drives me to distraction. hmmmm.. so does MarÃa Dolores Pradera's voice. Together, they are the super-melodious representation in my mind of 40s-70s Spain and Italy. Someday, when I go to Barcelona to see Gaudi's work, Dolores Pradera and Milva will be my soundtrack. :D

libertad - 11/10/08 22:50
Your a true renaissance woman Tiny! I believe this version of the song is Italian. Here is a Spanish version....http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZLflVp-lGc

gardenmama - 11/10/08 21:25
Well - it must just be your lucky day. How nice of someone to leave that for you.

11/08/2008 23:32 #46609

What next: Bailout the oil-guzzling SUV?
Category: whine

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.

libertad - 11/09/08 22:45
I am NOT happy with these bailouts. Here we are getting F'd again because of fear.

Why should we give these lousy companies any money? It wasn't a big secret that gas is a limited resource. Fuel efficiency standards should have become more stringent, however, Biden and others rejected raising fuel efficiency standards.

I know that these jobs are necessary but maybe these people (auto workers) should be given opportunities in new sectors of a greener economy. This would include the building of a new infrastructure that focused on public transport.

We are in big trouble and it has been made that much worse by the bailout of the banks. The auto industry will be no different. My hope is that Obama will choose the right Treasure Secretary that can properly advise him. This is a very crucial moment.

tinypliny - 11/09/08 17:27
That's actually a good suggestion. But when AIG executives could easily blow the bail-out money and go to a collective spa treatment, you can't really expect any better of any other industry; especially the auto industry.

The US auto industry has been actively blocking all the efforts to improve the public transport infrastructure for the past so many decades and is dead against developing alternative-fuel vehicles because its hand in glove with the oil industry. The idea is to make inefficient oil-guzzlers so that people would keep on buying oil no matter what the price.

metalpeter - 11/09/08 10:05
But it on the side of the people who want the bailout it gets more complicated (wow double comments I feel like (e:tinypliny)). I know that chevy is working on and has some cars that are highly fuel efficent and I think a sports car then runs on all batery power. If they don't have money to stay open how will these cars ever come into being. What I suggest is not a bail out but to put money to these companies that would be ear marked or to be used for Gas Alternatives. Maybe that would be a fair compromise.

metalpeter - 11/09/08 09:59
I see this a little bit differently. Most automakers because of the unions pay their workers pretty well. Some who has a family and a house and a car or maybe 2 lives off how much money they make. That person can't all of a sudden then live off $4 less an hour. Did the unions get greedy over the years, yeah sure but cutting peoples pay isn't an option for them. It isn't only the unions though the big bosses want there money also, so they will fire workers to keep there bonuses and stock pay outs. I do understand where the car companies are coming from though. They think hey it isn't our fault the banks screwed everything up and now no one can pay for cars. But see that isn't true really. The bottom line is that the Japanese can make cars generaly cheeper, better, and more gas efficant. It is true that there is no such thing as an American car any more. None of the electonics are made in america and some other parts are also. Then You have Toyota who has some models (trucks I think ) built in the united states. I think it is crazy to bail out the automakers, I also think it isn't fair why only GM and not everyone who sells cars in America.

james - 11/09/08 00:04
The conservative perils of the American far left agenda...

11/08/2008 22:15 #46608

Nostalgia: Its a Beautiful Life [Or Not]
Category: music

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.

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.

tinypliny - 11/09/08 17:19
^the (Today is the typo/mispost day. Arrrrgh)

tinypliny - 11/09/08 17:19
To tell you truth, I just grabbed the first video I could lay my hand on from youtube. I had no idea about Much Music! You learn something new everyday!

metalpeter - 11/09/08 10:30
:::link:::

This might give you the answers you seek.

I liked ace of base and never saw this video. I like that you got it from much music. I don't know if it is still true but it used to be that videos on there would be different versions then when I band blew up and got on MTV. Just as a point of interest there where two Much Musics and the American one got Bought got renamed Fuse and Moved to Times Square in NYC.

james - 11/09/08 00:28
To be honest I can't stand Ace of Bass and did not make it more than forty seconds through that video in deference to your impeccable character. I couldn't tell you what happened to the forth member, but I am sure it is a fate far kinder than death.

tinypliny - 11/09/08 00:11
Since you are divulging secrets... did the fourth die because one of the others ate him (as suggested in the video)?

Shudder. Shudder. Renewed Shudder at the video*

james - 11/08/08 23:45
I do believe they just put out a new album and are living fine with only 3 f the 4 original members... and thus concludes my post-"The Sign" knowledge of Ace of Bass

11/07/2008 21:22 #46596

Complexity Atomized
Category: science

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.

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

tinypliny - 11/08/08 22:36
"low-level system call for spawning a process" - LOL. Couldn't ask for a more accurate description of reproduction.

zobar - 11/08/08 22:20
1. The sperm is labeled fork(); which is the low-level system call for spawning a process. I guess it's as good an excuse as any.

2. Brian Greene is the world's preeminent string theorist. I had to look that up.

- Z

tinypliny - 11/08/08 09:38
THAT is AWESOME (e:zobar). I especially <3 the "Brian Greene knitting furiously. Clink Clink" right at the bottom of the complex hierarchy below the DUST and the RUST mites and quite curiously, what appears to be a sperm.

Hmmm...
And I don't have the faintest idea who Brian Greene is. Hahaha

zobar - 11/08/08 08:57
Only stylistically related: Randall Munroe of XKCD put together some vertical-log illustrations of the known universe :::link::: and a computer :::link::: that I thought were pretty keen.

- Z

tinypliny - 11/07/08 22:13
Varied fonts were exactly what I wanted for this post. :)

paul - 11/07/08 22:01
Once again, fantastic use of font size and happy 40k comments!

11/06/2008 20:04 #46578

Mr. Super-Colourful
Category: {dodo}

-- 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