It was asked in another community about how to keep pigeon's off their fire escape, the pigeon poo has been affecting their lungs, making them very sick.

Someone posted this solution. I laughed my ass off; maybe you will too.

http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/i_video/main500251.shtml?id=4011959n

You really should watch this 60 minutes feature on El Sistema: The National Youth Orchestra of Venezuela and hundreds of others are the brainchild of Dr. José Antonio Abreu.
Abreu, a 69-year-old retired economist, trained musician, and social reformer founded "the system" in 1975 and has built it with religious zeal, based on his unorthodox belief that what poor Venezuelan kids needed was classical music. "Essentially this is a social system that fights poverty," Abreu explained. "A child's physical poverty is overcome by the spiritual richness that music provides." "So, music actually becomes the vehicle for social change?" Simon asked. "Without a doubt," Abreu replied. "And that is what's happening in Venezuela."

Could someone explain this to me? Because on the surface, posting a photo of yourself every day for a year just seems like an overwhelming exercise in vanity.

I'm preparing an edition of an Endler symphony that has a bit of an usual feature:
trumpets in F major, and flutes and strings in D major. The flute parts are marked
very clearly "flauto tranverso" NOT in French clef notation. How unusual is this?

My editor thinks maybe the string parts need to be transposed down a third, but
he's just as baffled by all this as I am; and he said maybe it's another case of
the 2nd Brandenburg concerto. The trumpet parts in this Endler piece are very high,
very baroque sounding.

Any ideas appreciated.

I'm thinking about purchasing the iTouch or iPhone. But paying 70 - 130 bucks a month is absolutely crazy for a cell phone connection, are there lower priced plans available?

What about the Apple music format? Can I burn the music to a CD or do whatever I want with it? The way I look at it: 300 bucks would buy me a lot of CDs that I can rip any ole way I want!

I've had Apple products in the past. My own personal experience has been they break down easily and are very expensive to get repaired or replaced. YMMV. I don't want an expensive paperweight in a years time, with a lot of mp3s in the Apple format that I can't listen to any more.

Any advice suggestions or thoughts greatly appreciated.

A jab-filled post, that includes swipes at nasty socialist England, spineless Brits, Al Gore, global warming, Moslems, and (very wierdly) Richard Gere.

I'll go back to square one on this: We squandered a lot of gifts. Human beings were given a lot of great gifts. We were given the ability to reason, this extra-large brain, walking erect, having binocular vision and the opposable thumb, and all of these things, and we had such promise, but we squandered it on goods and superstition. We gave ourselves over to the high priests and the traders, and they are the ones we allow to control us. I think that's a huge mistake and it's disappointing to me. Now, the corollary is, America was given great gifts, this ideal form of government, this most improved form of self-government that has ever come along up until that time, and we squandered it. And once again, on the same two things: gizmos and toys and gadgets -- goods, property, possessions -- and also this country is far too religious for its own good.

So at some point, I drifted away from feeling any allegiance. Abraham Maslow the psychologist once said, "The fully realized man does not identify with the local group." Boy, when I read that, I said, that's me. I don't identify with city, state, government, religion, association, county, organization or species, even. And what I realized was that this feeling of alienation from all that gave me a kind of emotional detachment that was very valuable artistically. To be able to look at things and not give a fuck. To not have a rooting interest in the outcome. I don't really care what happens in this country. I'll be honest with you. I don't give a fuck what happens. I don't give a fuck what happens to this earth, because it's all temporal and it's all bullshit.

PLEASE retire the word Megalopolis.

It's absolutely meaningless.

Thanks.

I was so whacked from the heat yesterday, I tried using my ATM card three times to get into the MTA yesterday before I caught on (but to be *fare*, the monthly MTA card I get from work is colored gray on the back just like my ATM card so.... ;)

Today I was toying with the idea of taking photos at the Puerto Rican pride march, but a forecast high of 95 degrees kinda killed *that* idea.

Robert Kennedy's victory speech at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles California: June 6, 1968.

I remember my mother walking into my bedroom that early morning and telling me Robert Kennedy had been shot. "No you're talking about President Kennedy, right?" School that morning was so somber, my 2nd grade teacher, Miss Winston asking all of about our reactions. The country seemed as though it was hell bent on self-destruction.

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California Ford Dealership Radio Ad Tells Non-Christians to "Sit Down and Shut Up."


Yanked from sf_drama

HBO's movie about the 2000 Election and the Florida recount was pretty good, but it certainly revived the sadness of Gore's loss. Best scene: at the end of the movie, the Gore lawyer asks the Bush lawyer: "Do you think the best man won?" History has answered that in spades.

If you haven't seen the movie, you should catch it. The acting is great, especially Laura Dern's portrayal of Katherine Harris.

A friend of mine in Germany is wanting to develop an online database/resource of all of Telemann's cantatas-- there's about 2000 of them-- it would include things such as the title, instrumentation, date of composition, sources for the manuscripts, listinig of the movements and keys, all sorts of things. He wants to use WIKI, but I had the impression that is a pretty flat sort of database, it would be a plain HTML code page with a table.

When I inquired about doing the database in MS Access, he wrote back:

now what I want is sort of Wikipedia for this aim. Presumed users are used to work with wikis, so they might have less problems to use it actively as they're supposed to. It is meant for registrated users to make their entries to complete it peu à peu. (Unregistered users read only). It certainly will be and has to be a very long running project so I don't give any Microsoft products enough trust to just keep in the run. And then they are not safe enough and lack portability to other wikis.

And WIKI machines are just made for this. I would prefer to have a MySQL and PHP environment to build the database & it's representation within the WIKI. What is needed is en entry for just each cantata plus additional discussion section. Then all concerning words like "Oratorio cycle = See (linked to) : Oratorischer Jahrgang" must be filled in, so you would have a good moving within the data. Maybe it would be easiest just to take the classical Wikipedia machine to build it. I have not yet decided, there are many a different machines available.

What's so clever is how John Williams uses NBC's traditional three note trademark as the groundwork for the entire piece.

The big bad wolf Steve Ballmer (remember how hideous he was dancing around the stage, or how bellicose the threats to Yahoo if they didn't cave in to the takeover bid) is caught on a video tape hiding behind a podium like a gurly man when a heckler shows up in Hungary:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24740959/

Am I being dense? Being the insecure person I am, I do wonder at times.. I posted about an entry in stupid_free, about a libertarian post in another community, where he defends CEO pay and tries to paint a rosy picture about all of this. You can read all about this on the entire thread I've linked.

I've read Paul Krugman's article about the redistribution of wealth in the United States from the middle class and poor to the very rich , and Krugman provides a LOT of historical context for what's happened in the last 30 years. When I bring up the subject of CEO pay versus average workers jumping from a ratio of 1:30 in 1970 to 1:300 in 2000, all sorts of silly things are stated about "well the poor don't have it off so bad now compared to then," and lots of other non sequitors (e.g. Walmart has done America proud by giving the poor shitty products and jobs!). But am I really missing something?

I know this is a lot of reading for anyone, but I'm curious what some of my friends' take would be on this subject. Thanks!!