R.I.P. Joe Zawinul

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 Joe Zawinul Dies at 75

Joe Zawinul  was an innovative keyboardist and one of the creative leaders of "jazz fusion." A member of Miles Davies' touring band in the late sixties he played an influential role in the production of the groundbreaking albums In a Silent Way and Bitches Brew

He will be best remembered as a founding member of Weather Report, the fusion supergroup. this video shows Weather Report performing their most famous number,"Birdland", on September 28, 1978 at the Stadthalle Offenbach in Frankfurt, Germany.

He was performing almost to the end. He died of cancer in his native Austria.

       Josef Erich Zawinul - July 7th, 1932 - September 11th, 2007.



Talking to Ahmadinejad

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Channel 4 - News - Snowmail: talking to Ahmadinejad
What does president Ahmadinejad make of Britain's withdrawal from Basra? Does he still feel is country is a target for American and Israeli bombardment? Is he seriously interested in opening a high level path towards talks with the Western World?

All this and much more at 7, live with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.




Jon Snow is in Terhan and will be interviewing Ahmadinejad live for Channel 4 News tonight. Should be interesting. I hope to get the interview uploaded to YouTube as soon as I've transcoded it.

Update: Bloody YouTube, the video is 'too long' and is rejected but not until after an age uploading and transcoding the thing. Grrrr! I'm streaming it myself now. It took about 11 minutes to upload the video to BYOAudio and about another 7 or 8 to transcode.

 

getting needled

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China's one-child policy: doctors discover 23 sewing needles in womans head
Luo Cuifen knew something was wrong when she went to the doctor after finding blood in her urine, but nothing could have prepared her for the discovery of 23 sewing needles, which doctors believe were stuck deep into her as a baby by her grandparents. Doctors suspect they wanted to kill her because her family preferred a son. Some of the needles were pushed into the fontanelle, the soft spot on the head all babies have before the bones knit. Ms Cuifen, now 29, was a second granddaughter, leaving the family no chance to produce a treasured boy child.


Turned out nice again!

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George Galloway and his little piece of Blackpool rock
You'll laugh! You'll cry! You'll rage! Know why? Because George is launching the Mother Of All Talk Shows annual convention in Blackpool on Friday, November 9 and Saturday November 10.

There will be a cabaret, competitions, prizes, a late-night disco on Friday, an all-day conference and on the Saturday night his talkSPORT radio programme will be beamed live from the venue - with audience participation.

We might even chuck in a stick of Blackpool rock.

And only £25 a ticket!



Freedom, Peace and Love

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Still feeling low with this bloody virus. A tiny piece of non-living protein and it can fuck up your day (or life in some cases). Grrrrrrrr!   Time for some energising. This Pharoah Sanders track does it for me. If you hate jazz move away now. Even if you like jazz you still might not like Pharoah's overblowing and split reed techniques but to me it is awesome.

"He can coax unearthly sounds from the tenor saxophone, and, according to jazz legend, can cause a saxophone to continue to shriek for minutes after removing it from his mouth." :)




'You've Got to Have Freedom' from Journey To The One



They're the pits

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Grandmother of child killed by pit bull cleared


What was the point of this prosecution? The dog was owned by the child's drug dealer uncle, for whom it was a security accessory. Owning a pit bull terrier is illegal isn't it? The child was often left with her grandmother, even though her parents did not appear to work (unless you call drug dealing work) and the dog was often around. And it was no secret than granny smoked ten joints a day plus booze plus prescription drugs. So who was responsible for this child's death?

Will no social worker do the decent thing and step forward? Ha!

The way this child died was horrendous but had she died after swallowing a wrap of cocaine or a bag of smack or found a loaded gun and shot herself we would all have shrugged and thought...drug dealers...occupational hazard.

PS: Perhaps granny's picture could be used in an anti-drugs/drink campaign. She's only 45!


The Scottish poodle

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The gains of Petraeus only delay hopes of peace for Iraq
Americans may have blundered into the Iraq morass, but they will retreat from it with political guns blazing. And Britain? Its new prime minister crosses the pond to receive private instructions from the White House, allegedly to delay Iraq withdrawal by five months, and returns to sullen acquiescence. Two-thirds of Britons no longer support their government's policy, but do their representatives care? Is parliament even sitting? No. From the moment of the invasion of Iraq, the Commons has shown as much spine as a colonial legislature under the empire. Whipped, bribed, deceived and ignored, the UK parliament has been useless. When it comes to executive scrutiny, thank goodness for the press.


Life, Death, Cancer, and The Pill...yet again.

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The pill: new evidence shows it helps protect against cancer

Using the most reliable dataset this study indicates that the risk of developing any cancer is reduced by 3% which is an almost insignificant amount equating to just one fewer case for every 10,000 women. But the stories about the health risks/benefits of the oral contraceptive will go on. They are just too good as news stories to give up.


M&M

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Comment is free: Backing the bombers

The appalling Michael White on the even more appalling Martin (sorry, make that Marty) Amis. Unbelievable crap. And the MSM moan about bloggers! These twats are getting paid to write this tosh.
Martin Amis...in a new polemic published today. asks provocatively, why do so many westerners on the left - "liberal relativists" he calls them - find themselves on the same side of the line as Osama bin Laden when asked to choose between the al-Qaida leader and George Bush? Or, as Marty puts it in the Times, on the side of appeasing "an armed doctrine that is racist, misogynist, homophobic, totalitarian, inquisitorial, imperialist and genocidal".
What supporters? Who are they? Not a single name, link or reference in the White article or, indeed in the original Amis piece, apart from a vague reference to the 'handclappers of Question Time'. As the commenter 'carlweathers' says: Mummy look! it's an enormous straw man!

This is the problem with failed novelists, they have to write something and, like Rushdie and Hitchens, also being US residents, it pays to be nice to your landlord.


Face the facts

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ID cards 'fundamentally flawed' says face recognition expert
Plans for identity cards are "fundamentally flawed" because people are so bad at comparing mug shots to living people, a scientist has warned. Face recognition expert Dr Rob Jenkins said computers found it just as hard to accurately match photographs of strangers to real people. In tests, volunteers asked to identify faces from a photograph usually fail a third of the time, he said. "These limitations have profound implications for today's surveillance society," Dr Jenkins, a psychologist at Glasgow University, said.


Pimp My Hard Drive

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LaCie lays out 500GB Golden Disk external HDD

Just in case LaCie's LEGO / Porsche-inspired hard drives don't excite you, the firm is apparently looking to snatch your business another way: by gilding an external HDD and waving it in your grille. The Golden Disk itself is an exclusive designed by French designer Ora-Ïto, and includes 500GB of storage, PC / Mac compatibility, a USB 2.0 interface, and LaCie's own 1-Click backup software to boot.