alocispepraluger102

a fine thought, at that. thanks everyone. this gannelin trio music sounds sweeter than ever.

the alocster was felled by a mild stroke this time last week and is now doing well and is out and about. hospital music really sucks.

reserve a front row seat for the alocster.

awesome, seemingly there is no end to bley's stellar recordings.

Beer for flooded Australian town A flood-isolated Australian town was in danger of running out of beer this week until emergency volunteers came to their rescue. Residents of Hinton, New South Wales, were stranded following the severe storms that hit the region on Sunday. There was concern that their pub would run dry before a rugby league match which was due to be played between New South Wales and Queensland. But the State Emergency Services boated in a huge beer delivery just in time. Close community The pub has become a meeting point for stranded residents, Matt Turner, the owner of Hinton's Victoria Hotel, told the Australian Associated Press news agency. "It's a very close community and everyone has been having a great time at the pub just catching up." The State Emergency Services (SES) have been using two flat-bottomed boats to deliver essential supplies to the town, which is expected to be cut off until Friday. In total, 12 kegs and three crates of beer were delivered. "There was some extra room on a boat after the essentials were loaded this morning," said SES spokesman Philip Campbell. "So they will be able to watch the game and have a cold one tonight." Story from BBC NEWS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/asia...fic/6748785.stm Published: 2007/06/13 14:28:34 GMT © BBC MMVII

http://msn.foxsports.com/nascar/story/6919572?print=true

http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=25563

a 4some of sam smiths imperial stout.

the way i read the article was that more concerts should be like those mentioned,including some rock stuff.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/hank-shteame...html?view=print

June 8 | Research MEDIA CONTACT: Pat Vaughan Tremmel at 847-491-4892 or p-tremmel@northwestern.edu Study Offers Provocative Comparison of Selling a Home EVANSTON, Ill. --- A provocative new study shows that sellers who joined a for-sale-by-owner (FSBO) Web site got at least as much for their homes as sellers who did their real estate business through the use of an agent and the Multiple Listing Service (MLS). Houses sold through the MLS were more likely to sell faster. The recent study shows that the FSBO sellers ended up with a significantly enhanced net sale price because they didn't have to pay the brokerage commission that real estate agents charge sellers, generally six percent of a house's sale price -- $12,000 for a $200,000 home. There was no gain in price in selling a home through MLS vs. by owner, at least when it comes to Madison, Wis., during the relatively strong housing market in the period analyzed, the study concludes. (Though the research suggests national implications, the findings, at this point, cannot be generalized beyond the specific Madison housing market.) While the MLS does not deliver a higher price, it does offer a higher probability of a quick sale, within 60 or 90 days. In addition, roughly 20 percent of FSBO listings end up re-listing in the MLS, which translates into a longer time on the market, roughly 68 more days. Thus, one of the advantages of MLS is a shorter time to sale, which translates into savings (on mortgage, taxes and insurance). “For most people, the sale of a home is the largest financial transaction of their lives, and, accordingly, the question of whether or not to use a realtor is of great concern,” said Igal Hendel, professor of economics at Northwestern University. “Realtors undoubtedly can offer value, saving sellers time and helping them through a stressful and sometimes difficult period,” said Aviv Nevo, professor of economics at Northwestern. They provide expertise with setting the listing price, preparing the house, checking potential buyers' qualifications, showing the house, bargaining the terms of the deal and handling the paperwork. But the realtor cost is significant, compared, for example, with using FSBOMadison.com, which charges $150 for its no-frills services and listings for six months. Hendel, Nevo and François Ortalo-Magné, Robert E. Wangard Chair in Real Estate, University of Wisconsin-Madison, are co-investigators of the study and co-authors of the paper, titled “The Relative Performance of Real Estate Marketing Platforms: MLS versus FSBOMadison.com.” The study was made possible because of rich data provided by the South Central Wisconsin Realtors Association and FSBOMadison.com, as well as data from the City of Madison and Dane County. The merging of these data sets provided a complete history of events that occurred for virtually every single family home listed in Madison between January 1998 and December 2004. FSBOMadison.com started in 1998, and by 2004 it had a 25 percent share of Madison's listings, by attracting listings from both the MLS and from other more traditional for-sale-by-owner channels. The data offer an unparalleled opportunity to compare outcomes for selling a home by owner vs. through a real estate agent and the MLS. The outcomes compared include price, time on market and probability of sale within a given period after initial listing. In computing the differences across platforms, the study controls for changes in market conditions over time, differences in house characteristics, differences across neighborhoods (FSBO is much more popular in some areas) and differences across sellers. The research suggests that some sellers seem to be better at getting a favorable price. They might be better at marketing and bargaining or are more patient; they also are more likely to choose to use FSBO. “Sellers in Madison appear to sort themselves as expected across platforms, the more patient and astute ones going to FSBO, and those who need more help or a quick transaction going to MLS,” said Ortalo-Magné. “Our results are good news for buyers,” he said. “The price buyers pay appears to be driven entirely by the characteristics of the property and of the seller. Whether the property is sold through FSBOMadison.com or a realtor appears to make little difference in terms of purchase price.” “Realtors undoubtedly can provide value to sellers,” Nevo concluded. “But our research shows that for-sale-by-owner Web sites increasingly are making selling your own home more appealing and offering a viable alternative to realtors.” Academics | Admissions | Athletics | Business and Industry | Computing and Technology | Diversity | Giving Jobs | Libraries | Life at Northwestern | Offices and Departments | Research | Visiting Campus Students | Faculty and Staff | Alumni Association | Prospective Students Northwestern University 633 Clark Street Evanston, IL 60208 Evanston: 847-491-3741 Chicago: 312-503-8649 E-mail: webmaster@northwestern.edu Last updated 06/08/2007 World Wide Web Disclaimer and Policy Statements © 2007 Northwestern University

i took it off the air way back when. awesome 2 hours.

really fine coach of 3rd basemen. he tutored many fine major leaguers.

http://www.sptimes.com/2007/06/04/Southpin...aught_off.shtml

The classical staff sould be canned too.

arabia curtis fuller benny golson

June 3, 2007 Fingers That Keep the Most Treasured Violins Fit By IAN FISHER CREMONA, Italy — A violin, it turns out, needs to be played, just as a car needs to be driven and a human body shooed off the couch. In this city that produced the best violins ever made, that job belongs to Andrea Mosconi. He is 75, and for the past 30 years, six days a week, he has finger-fed 300-year-old violins, worth millions, a diet of Bach, Tchaikovsky and Bartok. It is peaceful where he works, in a chapel-turned-museum here, so it jars when he compares his gentle job to the roar of Formula One racing. He is nothing but serious about what he does. “It is not a matter of habit,” Mr. Mosconi said. “When Schumacher gets to 350 kilometers an hour, do you think he ever loses his concentration?” he added, speaking of the retired racing champion Michael Schumacher. “In my case, too, I have to pay attention,” he said. “You have to give your best with these instruments. They make you sweat.” He had just finished playing a few lines of Bach on the most valuable piece in this town’s small but significant collection of locally made stringed instruments: a violin made in 1715 by Antonio Stradivari, whose name itself has come to signify the perfection allowed to man. It was the kind of exercise, at once heroic and the slightest bit melancholy, repeated endlessly around Italy: driven by zeal to keep the nation’s superlative past alive, and dogged by worry that the past may overshadow a less glorious future. That tension is on display at the violin museum at the city hall in Cremona, where the modern violin was born and built, to a standard not yet surpassed, by the families of Amati, Guarneri and Stradivari. Every morning, Mr. Mosconi, the city’s official musical conservationist, stands before pristine, multilocked glass cases and faces three violins by the Amatis (one of the first makers of the modern violin, from the mid-16th century), two by the Guarneris and four instruments — three violins and a cello — by Stradivari. Mr. Mosconi has no favorite: The very question is a mild affront. “It’s as if you were to ask me which of my three children I preferred,” he said. Why these violins sound so much better than others, and so are preferred by the masters who can afford them, has never been fully accounted for. Theories range from the possibility that their wood was fermented in saltwater or somehow affected by the ice age to their having been constructed with special glues, varnishes or metal plates. “It’s unexplainable, how it was able to rise to such heights,” Mr. Mosconi said, dismissing the many who have tried to replicate the so-called Cremona sound. “First it was the Americans, then the Japanese, then the Russians. Then the Americans again. “But no one has ever come close,” he said. “Let them try. But then it is the musicians who make their choices. As scientists they have to try everything because it is their job, even though there are more important things to worry about.” But this mystery of molecules and millimeters, edged one way or another by each master violin maker, comes with another: that to keep fit and sounding their best, violins need to be played. “The wood gets tired,” explained Karl Roy, a German violin maker and one of the rarefied field’s top experts. “It’s the same as with a human being. If you just sit and rest in your comfortable chair, when you get up after a while you will feel crazy.” And so, Mr. Roy said in a telephone interview from Germany, collections of instruments made by Stradivari and other top violins around the world are all played regularly. That, Mr. Mosconi suggested, is the special care he gives to Cremona’s collection, played every morning but Sunday and when he is on vacation in August. He does not play the cello, but he contracts a young musician to work with the single one in the collection, built by Stradivari in 1700. “I think this is the only place in the world where they are treated like we treat them,” he said. Mr. Mosconi — who was born in Cremona, began playing the violin at age 9, studied violin making and went on to teach and perform — starts his work at 8 a.m., an hour before the museum opens. He stores his tools in a tastefully concealed closet: two bows, resin, baby-soft cotton rags and jugs of distilled water for the humidifier that keeps the air at the perfect moisture to preserve the instruments. Getting down to work, he unlocks the cases and carefully removes each instrument. He tunes them, then plays each for six or seven minutes. He starts with scales and arpeggios, then something more substantial, on a recent day one of Bach’s partitas for the violin. Nothing less would do. “A great instrument should get great music and also a great performer,” he said. A multimillion-dollar violin in hand, he paused for a moment to ponder his own place. “Not that I am a great performer,” he said. “But I do my work.” He does it in a jacket and tie, which seems appropriate. He is more business and reverence than poetry when he talks about his privileged job. Most violinists never get near a Stradivarius and still, three decades after he began, he feels the weight of caring so closely for so many. Asked if he liked his job, he said: “It’s a difficult question. I don’t really know. I asked the same question to my son, who is a surgeon. He said, ‘It’s hard, but I wanted to do it.’ “Everyone says I am lucky,” he added. “But every coin has two faces.” Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml.../bmelgar112.xml

http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/news.php?id=14000 A benefit concert for the great Mario Rivera will take place Tuesday, June 5 from 7:00 pm-12:00 am at Birdland, 315 W. 44 Street, 212-581-3080. The admission will be $25 and all proceeds will go directly to Mario to help him with his medical and living expenses. Artists performing include The Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra with Arturo O'Farrill, Paquito d'Rivera, Wynton Marsalis, George Coleman, Giovanni Hidalgo, Papo Vasquez, the Tito Puente Orchestra, and many others. Thank you very much for your help in spreading the word about this event.

henri duparc to the stars (about as beautiful as music can be) not jazz, but, what the hell!

No - they simply didn't have an Industrial Revolution and a French Revolution. (Yet) MG another fine MG bullseye...

(how many productivity meetings have many of us endured?) Doomed GM plant is most productive Rankings show GM plant slated to close takes least time of any in North America to assemble a car. By Chris Isidore, CNNMoney.com senior writer May 31 2007: 3:59 PM EDT NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The most productive auto plant in North America is doomed - it's on the list of plants that General Motors is closing as the world's largest automaker slashes capacity in a bid to stem losses. The annual ranking of auto plant productivity by Harbour Consulting found GM's Oshawa No. 2 plant is the most productive in the North American auto industry. That plant is among the plants that GM (Charts, Fortune 500) plans to close in coming years as it seeks to get capacity closer in line with demand. The Ontario plant, which makes the Pontiac Grand Prix and Buick LaCrosse and Allure, took only 15.68 hours on average to build a vehicle in 2006. That's an improvement from the 16.08 hours it took in 2005, and is better than the 16.34 hours it takes to build a vehicle at the neighboring Oshawa No. 1 GM assembly line. The No. 2 plant was originally slated to close when it's done making 2008 models about this time next year. But GM now plans to keep some production going there for an undetermined amount of time as it modernizes the Oshawa No. 1 plant to give that facility a more flexible assembly line. Oshawa No. 2 was the second most productive plant in last year's rankings but the only plant that was more productive, an Atlanta plant that built the Ford Taurus, was closed last year when Ford (Charts, Fortune 500) discontinued production of that model. GM announced in November 2005 that it would close Oshawa 2, as well as a dozen other facilities. A spokesman for GM was not immediately available for comment Thursday. But a year ago when the rankings showed that a plant slated for closure was its most productive, GM spokesman Dan Flores said the decision to close the Ontario assembly line was based on a number of factors, not just productivity. "We obviously do have plants that perform well in the Harbour report being impacted," he said at that time. "We faced a very difficult fact that we have too much manufacturing capacity compared to what the market wants." The rankings also showed that GM has the most productive engine plant in the North American industry in Spring Hill, Tenn., and the most productive transmission plant in Toledo, Ohio. GM put out a statement talking about its gains in productivity, but not mentioning that the Oshawa No. 2 plant is one of those slated for closure. "GM's leadership in three of the four manufacturing categories demonstrates we are transforming the company for sustainable, long-term success," said a statement from Gary Cowger, GM group vice president of global manufacturing and labor relations. "This success is a result of our people being involved in the business like never before." Even with productivity improvements at the traditional Big Three automakers, Toyota Motor (Charts) led Harbour's ranking of productivity for all auto facilities, while Honda Motor (Charts) had the most productive assembly plants, with an average of 21.13 hours per vehicle. But the report showed that GM, Ford and Chrysler Group, which is being sold by DaimlerChrysler, made gains and narrowed the productivity gap with the Japanese automakers' U.S. plants. "Improving productivity in the face of lower production is a huge accomplishment, but none of the domestic manufacturers can afford to let up," said Ron Harbour, president of Harbour Consulting. "General Motors essentially caught Toyota in vehicle assembly productivity." Ford lost an average of $5,234 on every North American-produced vehicle, according to the Harbour study, while GM lost $1,436 and Chrysler lost $1,072. Meanwhile, Japanese automaker Nissan (Charts) earned a pretax profit of $1,575 for each North American vehicle, while Honda earned $1,368 and Toyota, $1,266. The cuts by the U.S.-based automakers mean that they're likely to continue to show gains in productivity. "Considering that they will be building vehicles in 2007 with dramatically fewer hourly employees in the U.S., GM, Ford and Chrysler likely will reduce their hours per vehicle significantly," said Harbour.

http://library.thinkquest.org/18602/histor...n/bgoodman.html

beautiful uncommon natural thoughts. a couple of my friends from india feel the same as you, but no one else i can think of today.