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In Soviet Russia, audience plays you!
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During a visit to Moscow in the 80′s, Dave Brubeck met the faculty and students in Moscow Conservatory. While he was improvising on a “Ei, uhnem”, a Russian folk song, a young man downstage stood up to play Stéphane Grappelli-style violin jazz with him. .
Never underestimate 1500 horse power turbine engines
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Why isn’t Dodd in jail?
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Okay. But why doesn’t that NYT news story have the word “Dodd” in it? This story the NYT put up last night had “Dodd” in it. Have you noticed the role of the former Senator in the SOPA fight? He’s kind of a lobbyist (for the movie industry), except that he can’t actually be a lobbyist, because it’s illegal for a former Senator to lobby Congress in his first 2 years out of office.
Hired as the consummate Washington insider to carry the film industry’s banner on crucial issues like piracy, Mr. Dodd ended up being more coach than player.
He’s more of a coach, less of a player, because it’s illegal to be a player — if in this ridiculous sports metaphor, a “player” is a lobbyist — so he’s less of a player.
Former BP boss earns £12m from Iraqi oil venture
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Former BP boss, Tony Hayward will pocket more than £12m in a first tranche of payouts less than a year after he set up his own company and then bet on Kurdistan being the next big province for the oil industry.
But remember: all those soldiers and civilians died in Iraq because we had to disarm those WMD’s.
And spread democracy.
And regime change.
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Rule #1
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Investment Firm Y Combinator Goes on Offensive Against Hollywood
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Y Combinator, an early stage investment company, announced on its Web site that it planned to finance start-up companies that would go after Hollywood and the movie industry.Referring to Hollywood, Y Combinator wrote: ”The people who run it are so mean and so politically connected that they could do a lot of damage to civil liberties and the world economy on the way down. It would therefore be a good thing if competitors hastened their demise.”
The blog post, which was titled “Kill Hollywood,” also offered advice to start-ups and entrepreneurs who wanted to help to hasten its demise. Suggestions included developing start-ups that created new ways to produce and distribute shows, and games that were similar to traditional shows but were more interactive.
The ability to recreate an entire movie is insignificant next to the potential of the Force.
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Back in 09′, Star Wars Uncut (previously) asked people to recreate 15 second chunks of Star Wars: A New Hope however they wanted, using live action, animation, text adventure screens, SCUMM interfaces, costumed pets, and more. Now they’ve been edited together to recreate the entire movie as a homemade, constantly shifting media experiment. (Vimeo link)
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SOPA Is Dead: Smith Pulls Bill
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Lamar Smith, the chief sponsor of SOPA, said on Friday that he is pulling the bill “until there is wider agreement on a solution.”
“I have heard from the critics and I take seriously their concerns regarding proposed legislation to address the problem of online piracy,” Smith (R-Texas) said. “It is clear that we need to revisit the approach on how best to address the problem of foreign thieves that steal and sell American inventions and products.”
Yes, because only american thieves, like MPAA and RIAA, are allowed to steal and sell American inventions and products.
Anyway, let me translate: “we will try again once people have forgotten these silly protests”
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Students’ math scores jumped 20% with iPad textbooks, publisher says
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On the heels of Apple’s e-textbook announcement in New York City this week, publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt announced the results of its “HMC Fuse: Algebra I” pilot program at Ameila Earhart Middle School in California’s Riverside Unified School District. The Algebra I digital textbook is touted as the world’s first full-curriculum algebra application developed exclusively for Apple’s iPad.
In its test run, the “HMH Fuse” application helped more than 78 percent of students score “Proficient” or “Advanced” on the spring 2011 California Standards Test. That was significantly higher than the 59 percent of peers who used traditional textbooks.
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Wonderful! Brubeck was obviously getting a kick out of the interaction. It probably made his day!
Anyway, jazz musicians are mostly always open to improvisational sessions with musicians they don’t yet know. I imagine that Brubeck and the young violinist kept in contact for as long as Brubeck was still with us. My sister, a classical violist, did a lot of jazz session work in Europe with such as Toots Thielemans and Stéphane Grappelli (she has credits on a number of their albums). One of the stories she told me was that at a dinner one evening with Grappelli after a day of recording sessions she told him some day she would like to be known as the “Stéphane (or Stéphanie) Grappelli” of the viola, and he replied (paraphrased – I don’t remember the exact words) simply, “You CAN!”…
A funny story.
One day some years ago I was browsing the web and decided to Google my sister to see what the net knew of her. One of the things it came back with was a link to the credits on a Thielemans album (available at Amazon.com – I bought a copy for me and one for her) where she was credited as the trumpet player! I chuckled, and called her (she lives in Mexico now) about the credits, asking her, with tongue somewhat in cheek, “Hey Barb, when did you learn to play the trumpet?”. “Trumpet?” she said. I replied, “Well here it is in black and white!”, mentioning the Album. She remembered the recording session for the album, back in the early 80′s, and said, “Well, unless you play a trumpet with a bow and it has 4 strings on it…”. On the album itself she is properly credited as the violist. When it was transcribed the mistake was made. Now, forever, she will be known as the trumpet player with Toots Thielemans!