Reader Tips

Reader Tips 32 Comments

Tonight, an unidentified Ural Russian women’s folk choir on a Soviet studio set, circa 1962, provides us with a lamentation about something or other.
Any Russian speaking commenters/readers out there who can tell us what they’re singing about? I’m curious.
The comments thread is open, as always, for your Reader Tips.

32 Replies to “Reader Tips”

  3. Your vote, your booze: Voters who skew strongly Democrat and score highest on the Voter Turnout index prefer to drink…
    What odds? Too funny.

  5. Mathew O’Brien in The Atlantic: “Is China’s Historic Credit Bubble About to Pop?

    As you can see in the chart below from Credit Suisse, total credit shot up from around 120 percent of GDP in 2008 to 190 percent today—most of it from so-called “shadow banks” that aren’t regulated. In comparison, U.S. credit “only” went up 40 percentage points of GDP in the five years before the housing bubble popped.

    Nobody knows how much we should worry about China’s shadow banks, because nobody knows much about them. Not even the people buying their bonds. Reuters, for example, looked into one shadow bank product called “Golden Elephant No. 38” that promises a 7.2 percent return, but doesn’t say what’s backing the security. After some digging, Reuters found out it was an almost-abandoned housing project in a rural province. This might sound like a scare story, but it’s actually a fairly typical one. They looked at 50 other products, and didn’t find much better—or any—disclosure.

    The whole thing here.
    h/t

  7. That was actually very beautiful. I love choral music. However, due to the language barrier I was not certain of the meaning.
    Possibility 1. Ah, those sheep a-gamboling in the spring make me sing, and the shepherd can do me with his thing.
    Possibility 2: Oh great leader who designs the machines in Tractor Factory #5, we salute you as we wash the grit and grease from our fingernails in the virgin waters of the Volga.
    Possibility 3. I’m here on stage hoping to get out from under my apparatchik boss in his secretary’s office. Please buy our music and I am free of a Stalinist.

  9. From Neil Young’s Letter to the Editor of The Globe and Mail:

    Both pipelines would necessitate great expansion of Alberta’s tar sands, destroying the homeland of the First Nations guaranteed under treaties and creating CO2 emissions most of the world’s scientists agree would practically guarantee a temperature rise on Earth of 2 degrees..

    That’s just from the oil sands. If you factor in the rest of the world — China, India, Europe — it’ll rise by 174 degrees.
    Drugs are bad.

  11. Sorry EBD. My Russian language skills are as follows, Я не говорю по-русски. My wife’s and my grandfathers were very proficient in the Russian language even though their mother tongue was German.
    Sharia in Belgistan. Here’s a jolt that will run chills down your spine. (It seems to be only a matter of time……..Everywhere!)
    http://www.cbn.com/tv/embedplayer.aspx?bcid=1509282970001

  13. My co-worker is from Russia, and her first job was working as a translator…I’ve sent a link to her and will ask her what its about….

  14. Re: Russian video.
    Whatever they were singing about, the video is not conducive to some of the anti-communist propaganda that we were fed in high school during the Cold War. Things like ”they were prohibited from owning radios, books and newspapers.” Looks like a pretty high quality recording to me.
    Thanks!

  16. This effort by Mr. Young, coupled with Warren Z’s link @ 12:29a.m. to Ezra’s commentary, would be a good thread on its own.
    Mr. Young’s letter refers to the same contradictions that Ezra dissects, but there are a couple of other things I’d note:
    – Ezra doesn’t seem (so far as I noticed) to specifically pinpoint Mr. Young’s opposition to the pipelines, which opposition appears in the latter’s letter. Mr. Young makes an unreasonable causal assumption about pipelines and oil sands production: the proposed expansion of the pipeline network (all three of them, including East Coast, taken together) is a market efficiency mechanism, which, in the absence of any increase in oil sands production whatsoever, stands to get all of North America (and probably beyond) much closer to market equilibrium than we are today. And that would make everybody better off, even at extant production levels.
    In this regard, I’d again note the bi-partisan support that Keystone XL has in the US Senate, particularly from Senators from potential producing states along the route: they don’t seem to think that Keystone XL is a dedicated transporter of Canadian bitumen, nor do they seem too worried about their producers having to compete for market share against us; and,
    – Mr. Young seems to be arguing in his last paragraph that CO2 (assuming it’s important at all — and that would be a very tough sell this morning to me and George the Rottweiler, who are about to go out walking in -21C temps here is southwestern Ontario) produced by the oil sands and CO2 emissions from Canadian automobiles are to be added together to assess total Canadian impact on the “climate”. Which is totally bogus, in light of the market efficiency point above.
    To expand on Ezra’s point: what is Mr. Young against, exactly? Treatment of the First Nations? The oil sands? Or the pipelines (and therefore Canadian opportunities in a competitive environment)? None are causally linked; I personally think it’s the latter, and he’s given his game away in his letter. That is, of course, assuming he’s that clever…

  17. AGW-Neo Progress Report.
    Neigh is ended.
    “*And of course not far behind the ambulance, is our usual suspects of Flannery, Steffen, Karoly and Lewinsky with their usual ‘end is nigh’ pronouncements.”
    …-
    “*Australian heatwaves are nothing new”
    http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/01/20/australian-heatwaves-are-nothing-new/#more-101794
    …-
    “Propane shortage adds to winter woes”
    “As meteorologists on Monday added up to 10 inches of snow to their frigid forecasts for the Northeast and Midwest this week, the regions are struggling with a lack of the essential resources residents need to keep warm.”
    http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2014/01/20/22372040-propane-shortage-adds-to-winter-woes

  19. According to my better half (who, incidentally grew up not far from Tyumen) says its about love.
    It is difficult to translate word-by-word without losing a lot in the translation. But, basically its a lament where a girl gets attention from a man who she knows loves her (there’s a reference to receiving flowers from him). She is unable to openly return his love because she is too bashful and feel ashamed of her inability to openly return his affection.

  23. EBD … the last place I worked started buying Chinese alternators and starters for their heavy agricultural equipment. The smart ass in the front office thought he was getting an exact copy of the AC Delco hardware that was offered and recommended (spec) of the OEM engine provider at half the cost. Not even close. The physical dimensions were exact (being exactly copied) the internal parts were all substandard material and assembly quality and tolerances were a joke.
    The “front office smart ass” also failed to have the engineering groups properly test any of the hardware.
    Put directly into the production stream … 1 in 2 starters failed on the assembly line … 2/3 failed in the first two weeks in the field. The alternators had something like 80% failure to meet spec and all failures were found in the field.
    The combination of incompetent management on our end and the sleazy business practices of the Chinese cost a LOT of money.
    Every manufacturing manager I know (outside of mr. front office smart ass) has sworn off Chinese source parts.

  24. A young woman phones her childhood abuser, and records the conversation in which the teacher, now a vice principal, doesn’t deny the abuse. Will the teachers unions circle the wagons? Will they apologize for their past malfeasance? When a monetary settlement is offered, will it come from the future taxpayers debt, or from the already somewhat funded pension funds? Will the BBC tackle this with the gusto they’ve taken on the Catholic Church with? or wait until the perps are dead like they did with Jimmy Savile?
    http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/sunnews/world/archives/2014/01/20140121-065500.html
    Who was Jimmy Savile?
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Savile_sexual_abuse_scandal

  25. Reminded me of the female a cappella quartet – Anonymous 4.
    To my mind the human voice is the ultimate musical instrument; the human form is ultimate art.
    Regarding the Moose Limb clip – be very afraid. What’s happening in Belgium is the canary in the coal mine.

  29. AGW-Neo PR: First with the AGW Killer news.
    February’s outlook looks better.
    Don’t forget Big AlCO2 is carousing in Davos, Switz, with what’s-her-name from AB.
    Part II: Yes, we have no bananas.
    …-
    “Propane shortage adds to winter woes”
    “Kasich followed the lead of officials in 17 other U.S. states — mostly in the Midwest and North — who declared energy emergencies and loosened rules for propane transportation from other states, most of which are effective until the end of January.
    In many of these states, residents are also being urged to cut down on propane usage since supplies are limited.”
    http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2014/01/20/22372040-propane-shortage-adds-to-winter-woes
    …-
    “Winter storm set to ‘go bananas’ across Northeast”
    ““Every once in a while these little winter storms go bananas, and we think this might be the one,” said Kevin Roth, a lead meteorologist with the Weather Channel.”
    http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2014/01/21/22381468-winter-storm-set-to-go-bananas-across-northeast

  30. Ich Bin Ein Berliner Wrong Brownshirt Turn.
    “Yet this turn towards green energy has produced a browner energy landscape.”
    …-
    “An Economist Post Mortem on Germany’s Late, Great Green Plan”
    “Germany’s turn towards green energy—its energiewende—cost consumers nearly $30 billion last year without actually making the country any greener. What exactly is this polysyllabic mess of an energy policy? The Economist explains:…”
    http://www.the-american-interest.com/blog/2014/01/20/an-economist-post-mortem-on-germanys-late-great-green-plan/

  31. Kate, bryceman(above) answered the same as my co-worker had determined it. Love, and yet ashamed…you had to grow up in that time period and type of society.

  32. has anyone researched how long it took to get the last trans-border US-Can pipeline approved?
    probably before desktop computers, you know, when they put guys on the moon, and flew supersonic planes designed with slide-rules….

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