Is there nothing that Obama can’t do?
Reader Tips
Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation, here is the great John Scott Whiteley performing Johann Sebastian Bach‘s Wedge Fugue in E minor, BWV 548 (8:24), on the Zacharias Hildebrandt organ in the Wenzelskirche in Naumburg, Germany (which Bach played and probably helped design).
The Wenzelskirche organ was Hildebrandt’s largest, featuring three manuals and pedal, fifty-three stops, and a thirty-two foot Posaunenbass pipe with a principal harmonic frequency of sixteen hertz. It was built in 1746 and restored from 1993 to 2000.
There a multiple cameras located inside the organ in this performance, some good shots of the thousands of pipes hidden inside the organ, and some, how shall we say, interesting visual wedge effects. Mmm, mmm; thanks, John.
Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.
What Would We Do Without Peer Review?
The Scientist; (free registration required)
Two researchers conducting animal studies on immunosuppression lied about experimental methodologies and falsified data in 16 papers and several grants produced over the past 8 years, according to the Office of Research Integrity (ORI).
The scientists, Judith Thomas and Juan Contreras, formerly at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), falsely reported that they performed double kidney removals on several rhesus macaques in experiments designed to test the effectiveness of two immune suppressing drugs — Immunotoxin FN18-CRM9 and 15-deoxyspergualin (15-DSG) — in preventing rejection of the a single transplanted kidney.
The experimental protocol was to remove one intrinsic kidney, replacing it with a transplant and starting the monkeys on immunosuppresants, and then remove the other intrinsic kidney a month later, according to Richard Marchase, UAB’s vice president of research. “What occurred in a good number of these animals was that [Contreras and Thomas] never performed the second surgery,” Marchase told The Scientist. In a statement emailed to The Scientist Marchase called the misconduct “a very serious offense.”
Thomas’s and Contreras’s research was funded with more than $23 million in grants from the National Institutes of Health. UAB officials learned that Contreras and Thomas had left one native kidney intact in at least 32 animals — which allowed those animals to live and inflated the apparent effectiveness of the drugs — on January 27, 2006, when Thomas reported that she found an experimental monkey with one of its native kidneys intact and blamed Contreras for the mistake.
Had they only had the good sense to channel their energies into climate research, all of this unfortunate “research integrity” wiffle piffle might have been avoided…
Y2Kyoto: Once Upon A Time
It was the colour of money…
People briefed on its plans say [General Motors] is looking into changing the background color of its corporate logo from blue to green in an effort to show consumers that it is leaner and greener, more focused on fuel efficiency and better able to make quick decisions.
CIA Head Kills Secret Plot To Kill Bin Laden
Jules Crittenden examines the explosive revelation;
So killing al-Qaeda leaders is not only a big controversial hush-hush secret, it’s also wrong.
OK, I’m confused. I thought that was what they were supposed to be doing. I’m pretty sure that’s what Bill Clinton had in mind when he was lobbing cruise missiles onto assorted patches of desert and rocky crags in Afghanistan. I know that is pretty much was George Bush was talking about with his “dead or alive” speech. In fact, when the U.S. military blew up Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and the CIA started lobbing Hellfires into Yemen and Waziristan, I thought that was the basic idea. Kill al-Qaeda leaders.
What Was Their First Clue?
Montreal investment adviser vanishes…
Brook Hamilton said his mother, who lives in Beaconsfield, west of Montreal, has invested about $350,000 and even refinanced her home after Jones persuaded her to do so.
Kim Jong, ill.
Faster, please.
Reader Tips
Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation and pursuant to our Take Five show yesterday, here are Al Jarreau, Tom Canning, Jerome Rimson, and Nigel Wilkinson, performing Take Five ¤, in Germany, in 1976 (8:03). By the way, tonight’s SDA LNR cheese selection is Hawes’ Wensleydale. There’s something about this cheese, like the Lancashire that we previously featured, that just says, never mind the bubbles or the blue veins: this is cheese.
Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.
Bernie Farber
Reader Tips
Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite
Radio. Tonight, for your delectation, here are George Benson
et al performing Take Five ¤, live, in Montreux (8:50).
Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.
The Tolerant Left
Frank Ricci, meet Joe The Plumber.
( I told you to read this for a reason.)
more here…
Distinguished Lecture, Documentary & Interview Symposia
Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this week’s SDA distinguished lecture, documentary & interview symposium. Today, for your delectation, here is The Amazing Randi visiting Australia in order to conduct some scientific experiments regarding the veracity of the alleged phenomenon known as Dowsing ¤ § (1980, 43:53).
The Iran-Syria Alliance
An exerpt from Guardians of the Revoltion: Iran and the World in the Age of the Ayatollahs, at Oxford University Press blog.
“Texas now hosts more Fortune 500 companies than any other American state.”
Via Paul Tingley, who writes;
On a personal note: I went to a mutual fund (sustainable or green funds) seminar this spring put on by TD Brokerage. A young man beside me said that the highly intelligent people from the US coasts were going to lead America to a brighter future now that the red-neck knuckle-dragger states were no longer in power. I suggested that a more likely scenario would be that some of those un-intellectual states, led by Texas, would probably secede after the geniuses in NY and California go bankrupt.
Reader Tips
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Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation and pursuant to our occasional flights of fantasy show, here is episode seventeen from the second year of the classic Hogan’s Heroes series: The General Swap ¤, II ¤, & III ¤, from 1967 (½ hour).
- Just so you know that tonight’s show isn’t ill-considered, folks, I watched over a dozen episodes of Hogan’s Heroes just in order to select one most appropriate to present to you, dear SDA listeners. Well, and maybe a little bit because I like to watch Hogan’s Heroes; I don’t know about that.
- Once you agree to suspend your disbelief for the sake of the exercise, there are a few really brilliant comedic effects in tonight’s show. Of course, I can’t give them away, because that would spoil it for you, so, I guess, you’ll just have to watch the whole thing.
- Notice the production values, in particular in terms of line, colour, contrast, texture, layout, and shadow. It’s quite well done, don’t you think, looking at it as a popular surrealist television show from that era? I mean, consider the still shown by the link in the upper-right, for example.
Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.
Set Aside The Inherent Absurdity
… of banning one beverage, while permitting hundreds of others that differ only in the fact that they have artificial flavour and colour added.
Consider the consequences of this “smart” social policy the next time someone has to airlift thousands of gallons of bottled water into an earthquake zone overnight – and ask yourself just where the hell they’re supposed to get it.
Religions Of Submission
Kathy Shaidle has a point;
“I too have to object to the use of the word “cracker”.
Unlike Protestants, Catholics believe that the communion Host is the actual Body of Christ. We’re touchy about people pocketing the Host because believe it or not, there are weird people into Santeria and stuff who use them in pagan rituals.
Also, er, it’s Jesus.”
It’s just not a very good one.
(Peace Be Upon Him.)
“The solution to perceived market manipulation is overt market manipulation.”
That’s what federal regulators are saying with Tuesday’s announcement that they will consider curtailing “excessive speculation” in energy markets. The move comes in response to last year’s spike in oil prices, which soared to a record $145 a barrel a year ago next week and pushed gasoline prices above $4 at the pump in many parts of the country. Since the start of this year, crude prices have jumped 42 percent, even though the recession has crimped demand and storage tanks are full.
Speculators must be to blame.
No one seems upset about last fall, though, when those same speculators helped drive down prices by more than $111 a barrel in the last five months of the year.
Another good piece at Rigzone.
They Say “Jump”
We ask “how high”?
h/t Mike.
Related: “What jump?”
Blog Notes
Readers may note that the preponderance of items posted here in recent days are decidedly non-Canadian in content.
This is due in no small part to the fact that the number one story in Canadian politics at the moment is a controversy involving the Prime Minister and a cracker.
I mention this, not to invite further debate, but to offer that if you are a Canadian news journalist or pundit who has not yet been launched from a bridge railing in celebration of your complete and utter uselessness, there may still be time.
(Update)