126 Replies to “July 21, 2020: Reader Tips”

  1. So Moderna, AstraZeneca, and Pfizer are all reporting positive Phase I results for their vaccines. Other major pharmaceutical companies are due to follow suit.
    The United States, Japan, Great Britain, the EU, all are securing dosages of these vaccines for their citizens
    So…where are the useless twits that run this joke of a country?
    Has someone not purchased enough plain brown envelopes to be slid across tables at dimly lit Italian restaurants in Montreal?
    Perhaps the liarberals haven’t figured out how to line their own pockets from this yet

    1. Canada has the Chinese version of a vaccine no need to look any where else.

    2. I have no more knowledge on this subject than any man on the street but I don’t think a vaccine for this will ever work. Flu vaccines aren’t all that useful and we haven’t got a vaccine for the common cold, which is also a corona virus. Given those facts, I’d bet money that this won’t work.

    3. Realistically, it was going to take years to develop a vaccine for this. What happened? I think this is an example of science by wishful thinking.

    4. “useless twits that run this joke of a country”

      Sorry to be a spelling Nazi but that should be spelled the “useless Twats that run this joke of a country.”

  2. Contrary to the play and movie Amadeus, Antonio Salieri did not help Mozart with this piece. The two of them disliked each other.

    1. There are many legends about that composition.
      When Mozart composed that was he thinking about his own impending death that same year at age 35?

          1. That’s what many scholars believe. He lived during a time in which infections and pestilence were common.

            I guess he should have worn a mask and practiced social distancing, eh?

          2. LMAO BA…good one.
            Mind you that infection could not have been ANY kind of fun…

            There are many times I would have preferred the simplicity of the 1700 to late 1800’s….with modern day medicine.

      1. Were they buddies? No. Did Salieri attempt to murder Mozart? No. Did they praise and honour each other? Certainly not.

    1. They don’t want reparations.

      They want Whitey’s blood, Whitey’s whiskey and Whitey’s daughter.

      Nothing will satisfy the thugs short of a replay of the Haitian revolution, which ended in the first white genocide in the history of the Americas—with all Frenchmen still in Haiti and unable to escape murdered by order of the black dictator, their wives ending their days as the sex slaves and punching bags of former field hands.

      That, I submit to you, is why American patriots are determined that anybody who wants an American’s gun must be prepared to take it from their cold dead hands.

      They are not as stupid as the thugs are, or as their masters think “rednecks” are.

      They know what the ultimate goal of emancipation of American blacks really was—the end of “capitalism” and of Christian civilization in North America.

    2. Diversity means white genocide, sooner or later they will try it. White people better realize that they reject individuality, both their and ours. They define us and themselves by skin color and have no intention to stop until they trigger a race war.

      The biggest irony is that, had not been for white people those worthless savages would still be enslaving and eating each other. Their culture has never created anything of value, their science has never advanced humanity.

      They should be grateful that we insist on treating them as individuals, that is much more than they have ever treated each other as…

      1. Please, Colonialista. This is not about race at all – it’s about religion, specifically it’s about holier-than-thou virtue signalling. And ultimately it’s about money, free stuff (preferably somebody else’s) and power.

        Almost all the BLM’s are white – and most blacks in America despise BLM, if for no other reason than that BLM has a real ‘thing’ for looting and burning black-owned businesses and pulling-down statues of men who helped abolish slavery. In that I suppose, BLM is perfectly diverse – they’ll loot and burn-out anybody. But blacks have long suffered predatory hypocrisy and they know it well, and it’s obvious that BLM could give a flying fvck about them – all BLM cares about is having a virtuous logo to march under and justify themselves doing whatever they want, to whoever they want. They wave “AntiFa” and “BLM” banners just like the commies waved the hammer-and-sickle, and for the same reason. “SEE??? We’re making things BETTER!!! ( – for us, at any rate…)”

        As noted, the “Black Lives Matter” logo Bill deBlasio (a white) had painted on the street in front of Trump Tower has been sabotaged several times – most publicly by a black woman. And she went-on to sabotage two other BLM logos in New York that afternoon, and boasted about it.

        1. Yes it is about race. They are explicitly making it about race. BLM is an anti white, anti western civilization movement. And majority of BLMer/protesters/looters/angry mob are black not white. Antifa are mainly white, BLM are not. Both are a part of a well coordinated push to destroy western civilization and white middle class. Huge parts of black society define themselves by their skin color and in opposition to those who have white skin color.

          Also you do not need an active majority for a civil war/revolution. You need an active, aggressive, engaged minority and an apathetic majority. That is today’s black society. Society that refused by and large to embrace civilized norms of behavior/speech/dress code. Society already defined in opposition to civilization.

        2. Yes … it’s about “race”. It’s about all the white kids growing up in broken families who will never pass so much as one centavo onto their children, due to their own selfish decisions throughout their mortal lives. Those white kids are pissed. Pissed at every other white kid who cashes mommy and daddies trust fund checks. Those white kids were born to loser parents who accumulated no wealth … because they wanted it all NOW!

      2. Another racist POS. Loser fuuctard.
        Are you snowflakes going to be upset about my response this time?

        1. I would have to give a shit about your response in the first place, to get upset about it.

    3. I hope everyone understands that piece is supposed to be satire. It was supposed to highlight the absurdity of reparations while underscoring the responsibility each man has to his brother.

      No one has the right to another man’s wealth but we all have a responsibility to each other.

  3. It’s too bad we can’t write music like this anymore. We’ve lost the ability.
    The age of Bach, Handel, Hayden, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, Chopin, Mahler, Tchaikovsky, Shostakovitch, etc are over.
    I blame the media.

    1. You had me up until Shostakovitch (with ** on Brahms and Mahler).

      When I listen to great music I close my eyes. The music draws pictures for me. They are beautiful. The cases that I quoted above are not beautiful pictures. They are disjointed to me. They do not work.

      When I listen to a concerto for accordion and leaf-blower I want to howl like my dog does when I try to sing.

      1. I agree with the composers you mentioned.

        Brahms never really appealed to me very much. There’s something about his music that just doesn’t work aside from his Academic Festival Overture.

        I don’t particularly like Mahler or Shostakovitch, either. But that’s not to say I write off all composers from that era. For example, I like the music of Antonin Dvorak, though I’m not all that crazy about his opera Rusalka. (He lived at about the same time as Brahms and Mahler.)

        Moving ahead a bit in time, there’s the music by Jean Sibelius and Aaron Copland. How about a bit of Aram Khatchaturian? Alan Hovhannes, anyone? Maybe some Phillip Glass?

        Still, my favourite musical period is the Renaissance and baroque era. Bring on composers like Claudio Monteverdi, Jean-Phillipe Rameau, and Michael Praetorius!

          1. To me this is a type of tone poetry. I’d like to hear it without the background nature sounds.
            Don’t get me wrong, I love tone poetry. For me Debussy was the master.

        1. I agree with pretty much everything you said except for Phillip Glass. I find him too repetitive. Perhaps Penderecki? Brahms can be a bit too thick and lush for a lot of people, myself included, but he advanced the art form. If I sat there naming every great composer worth his salt then I’d still be here typing. My point is to be able to write like they did is pretty much dead. Me blaming the media may have been a bit of a joke (or is it?). The real problem is that music has become too saturated now to allow for any real creativity. We’re constantly bombarded with melody everyday. I think for a musician to have any real chance of writing something worthwhile, he would have to lock himself away from any outside stimulus for a few years.
          As an example, when we start to see rock bands suing each other over chromatically descending arpeggio lines, Then you know we have a real problem.

          1. I agree that Glass tends to repeat passages, but many modern minimalist composers tend to do that. John Adams (the composer, not the American founding father) is another one that I don’t mind listening to once in a while.

            Try listening to his Short Ride In A Fast Machine without thinking of a rocket launch:

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPzNzlNW6ms

      2. You really need to listen to Shostakovich before you opine. May I suggest symphonies 5, 6, 7 and 11. Plus piano concerto No.1 for starters.

        Anyone who would compare Shostakovich’s music to a “concerto for accordion and leaf-blower” is not only a musical illiterate, but a fool for making the statement in the first place, and is in need of some serious musical re education.

          1. Violins shrieking in pain at 5:45. No thanks. The horrors my imagination fills in when listening (eyes closed) there and at 13 minutes are enough for me to confirm my earlier thoughts.

            Many thanks for trying. I do agree that there were moments of brilliance there, but they are drowned out within what it (to me) a repulsive whole.

        1. The works of Shostakovich to which I was lead in the past were dreadful. I’m fond of Greig, but didn’t see him in your list at all. I’ll look at a couple of the pieces you’ve mentioned, but he’s been listed as a musicians composer. I’m not a musician, so beauty of melody is more important to me than elegance of composition (though if it sounds good, much is forgiven).

          The listing of Shostakovich as the source of the leaf-blower medley is your comparison, not mine. I treat atonal melodies as leaf-blower symphonies. The worst of the modern composers (as the more modern artists) is not art to me.

          Separate paragraphs to act as separators.

          1. Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suite is superb!

            The mention of the leaf blower reminds me of a part early in the movie Auntie Mame in which she describes a certain modern composers symphony as “simply devastating” because he uses “real airplane motors and live sheep”. Hmmmmm……

          2. WZ:

            Apparently Gyorgy Ligeti sued Stanley Kubrick for using his music in 2001: A Space Odyssey, though it appears they settled out of court:

            https://pascalvdl.wordpress.com/2013/02/18/stanley-kubrick-and-gyorgy-ligeti/

            While many viewers were impressed by the use of classical music in the movie, that wasn’t the soundtrack that was originally intended by MGM:

            https://www.ascap.com/playback/2012/12/wecreatemusic/fmf-alex-norths-lost-score-for-kubricks-2001

            I’ve heard some of it and, although it’s good, I think Kubrick made the right choice for what was shown on the screen.

          3. B A Deplorable Rupertslander
            Yes I’m aware. 2001 is my all time favourite film. Kubrick took Ligeti’s “Adventures” and reverbed the hell out of it for the rooms he was in at the end. LOL!! I guess to imply the beings that placed him there. He almost got away with it.

          4. Miner and Warren, my classical tastes ru from early Baroque up through Mozart and Beethoven. Like some of the later impressionists, but not modern atonal music. Love nearly all of Handel.

          5. C_Miner

            Try Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5.

            And realize that most of his compositions have an ironical angle (yes comrades I love and celebrate the commie paradise on earth you’ve created).

    2. Thoughts on Borodin and Rimsky Korsakov? “Schaherazade” is my favorite, but “Capriccio Espaniol” is right up there. I only have a couple of Borodin’s pieces in my archive, but they’re delightful (and they’re adoptions in western music surprised me).

      Also, I’m used to hearing Flight of the Bumblebee as a brass piece rather than a piano. Favourite instruments/versions, anyone?

          1. I bought a few CDs as a tourist in Australia a couple of decades ago. “The best of Donau”. They were in a $5 (AUS) bin.

            I’ve almost worn them out, they’re standard orchestral backgrounds when I’m working. Beautiful music!

            Greig- yes, among his best. His Piano concerto is marvelous, but I’m not as fond of his cello work. (Piano #1 follows)
            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhBZ9LLgAr8

        1. Yes, some delightful versions. Brass (lots of tuba) still sounds best to me. Piano sounds rushed, and doesn’t seem to have the full depth of the music to me. Po-TAY-to, Po-TAH-to.

          All listed are far better than this claiming-to-be-bagpipes version. Yes, it’s a real bagpipe. No, it’s not Flight of the Bumblebee. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90Z3e2mLLKc

      1. If you want an example of Russian grand opera, try Borodin’s Prinz Igor. You’ll likely recognize many of the tunes as they were borrowed for the musical Kismet.

        1. My cassette tape version of Prince Igor wore out and I keep forgetting to look for the CD. Listening to it in the background now.

  4. Your Moral and Intellectual Superiors:

    AP says it will capitalize Black but not white
    https://apnews.com/7e36c00c5af0436abc09e051261fff1f

    “The AP said white people in general have much less shared history and culture, and don’t have the experience of being discriminated against because of skin color.”

    And there I always thought that Somalis had about as much in common with Jamaicans as Ukraiians had with Irish… Guess to our betters from AP all them darkies look the same.

    1. Like the racist Canada Arts survey of a few days ago, where cultural origins were present except for “white”.

        1. So white American culture and black American culture are the same thing? Who knew?

          1. Does the fact that they are both white make a Pole the same as an Englishman? A Jamaican the same as a Nigerian or Ethiopian? Someone who just got off the boat from Russia shares the same culture as someone descended from the Puritans?

    2. Surely when they reference shared history and culture, they intend to refer to the Black experience in the US. In which case, new comer blacks– Somalis etc. don’t really count as Black. So small letter black should still be used to refer to the broader race of blacks. I wonder if they will make that distinction.

    1. Just the good stuff, one would hope? 😉

      And here comes the fist fight over what comprises the good stuff. 🙂

    2. Isn’t is all just a little too white? (sarc) Not funny really, they now have started to complain about not enough “people of colour” in the classical music realm. Chinese don’t count.

  5. Hellooooooo???

    Where’s the screaming headline for the 73 year old man SHOT DEAD BY POLICE IN ONTARIO FOR NOT WEARING A MASK?

    1. Look beyond the click-bait headline.

      Assault, dangerous driving, confronting officers with firearms, etc, etc………

      This story is exactly where it belongs.

      1. So kind of like the black people who get shot by cops and trigger the end of the world?

      2. Well just to satisfy my curious nature…Where’s the Police Body cam footage.??
        That article simply uses what the CBC printed. They may as well have asked BLM or AntiFa for their versions…..FFS.

        Theres more here than is being told.

    1. Link blocked by malware protection.

      Check Sun newspapers from day after, good description from witnesses to the event.

    2. You don’t have to wear a mask for a bunch of reasons. Breathing difficulties, hearing impairment and “religious objections” let you off the hook. I haven’t worn a mask anywhere, when asked I tell them I’m hearing impaired and they leave me alone. I have never been hassled, only asked, and I have never worn a mask.

      1. So they asked about the mask and you (probably) lie to them. Whatever. They met their requirement to ask and you give an acceptable answer.

        You didn’t assault them. (witness accounts in news items)

        You didn’t drive away in hazardous manor causing property damage, officers identifying the vehicle and plate and not chasing and probably causing even more damage or injury. (Witness reports in news items)

        You didn’t meet the officers who came to your house with a firearm and acted in a way that officers felt threatened enough to shoot. (Firearms reported located in yard in news items) No witness reports of sequence of actions at the house, but firearms outside the house points to some very disturbing probabilities.

        he didn’t die for not wearing a mask, he died from being an idiot.

        The media tried to make it about the mask and bad cops, but it just didn’t fly when the witness statements came in. There was no way to massage the message beyond click-bait headlines.

        1. Already went through this days ago. Some people here are just too stupid to read more than the headline.

        2. Wonder if the newspaper had a Unabomber headline like:
          Ted Kaczynski arrested for trying to pursue his hobbies

        3. Some folks are too stunned to see the big picture beyond what the useless main stream media wants them to see – There are some people who are obviously criminal thugs and assholes who resist arrest, violently attack the police officers and then end up dead and are celebrated by the media as heroes who should be nominated for sainthood. And then there are some other people who act badly and get killed by police who then are vilified and ignored and written off. Stunned is too kind a word to describe people who think this is OK.

      2. Why are hearing impaired excused from masks? I think it is other people wearing masks that is the problem for them.

  6. Rex Murphy at the National Post writes about Freeland’s response to the WE scandal.

  7. Earlier I made reference to 2001: A Space Odyssey. Guess what’s going to be on this coming Saturday’s edition of The Essentials on Turner Classic Movies?

    1. 2001: A Space Odyssey is a wonderful spectacle but reading the book helps a person understand what the hell is going on.

      1. The novel doesn’t explain everything. The reader never does find out who built the monolith or what they intended with it. The fact that Saturn was the actual objective, and not Jupiter, only adds to the ambiguity.

        Then Clarke insisted on writing 2010, making things even more confusing as it was more, it seemed, a sequel to the movie.

        It wasn’t until I saw Star Trek: The Motion Picture and Contact that some of 2001 finally made sense. In the final scene of STTMP, Kirk says to Spock and McCoy that what had just happened with Decker and Ilia might have been the next step in human evolution.

        In the other movie, Ellie Arroway (played by Jodie Foster) goes through the wormhole and encounters an extraterrestrial who took on the appearance of her father. She asked who built it all and the answer was, “We don’t know.”

        So, coming back to the final act of 2001, Dave Bowman was part of that “next step”. The audience still doesn’t know who’s responsible for it, but I think that was the point that Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke were trying to make. When the time comes that humans will encounter an extraterrestrial civilization (and I believe we probably will), we won’t understand it.

        In a documentary that’s on one of my DVDs of the movie, Kubrick admitted that he wanted to make a movie that people would talk about. More than 50 years after it’s release, it would appear that he accomplished that.

        1. I might be out in left field here but my understanding was the monolith was used as a transmitting device to signal directly to the eye of Japetus; a signal to those of a higher intellect that man-kind had reached the stage in his development for an intervention by ‘God’. At the end of the show Dave ages, dies, and is born again as ‘God’ to be that agent for the coming intervention.

          1. The Tycho monolith did indeed transmit a signal to Iapetus. As it turns out, it was giving a subtle signal by being brighter at one side of its orbit than the other. (The implication in the novel I got was that it was done so deliberately, though the Cassini mission showed that the real reason for that apparent anomaly was that one hemisphere was covered by dust produced by volcanic activity on some of Saturn’s other moons.)

            A monolith appears at critical points in the development of Homo sapiens, though we never really find out who’s responsible. The first time, it teaches Moonwatcher how to hunt and survive. The second time, one is found by excavating inside the lunar crater Tycho. The transmission of the signal indicated that it had been discovered and that mankind had become a space-faring species, ready to begin its next step in its development.

            Some of all that is explained in Clarke’s short story Encounter At Dawn, although The Sentinel (which, I think, is included in his compilation The Nine Billion Names of God, named after the story of the same title) is usually credited for being the basis of 2001.

            Yeah, I read a lot of Clarke when I was younger.

            You might be interested in The Lost Worlds of 2001, in which he goes into some detail as to how the movie was made as well as presenting a version of the story which was close to what he originally had in mind.

            There was another book on the subject, The Making of Kubrick’s 2001, but I never got around to reading it. I think it’s out of print, unfortunately.

  8. One look at possible tax hikes down the road:
    https://www.theglobeandmail.com/investing/globe-advisor/advisor-news/article-advisors-prepare-clients-for-anticipated-tax-hikes/

    My feeling is the Trudeau Liberal government will continue to undo some of the Harper tax breaks, namely raising the GST by 2% points, and eliminating income splitting for seniors. The latter would cost my wife and I $4,000 a year.

    If Trudeau and Morneau do the latter, that would earn brownie points with the corporate media, who detested Harpers tax breaks for ordinary Canadians.

    1. That very point was discussed recently on The John Batchelor Show.

  9. Watching Trudeau ducking pushback for his We scam is like watching evolution – From Little Potato to Dic-Tater to Chicken Fries. The stupidity, arrogance, and corruption remain unchanged.

  10. Its official. The new name of the Edmonton Eskimos will be “Edmonton White Racist Bastards”.

      1. I was thinking of the Edmonton Trudeaus. That name would past muster with the establishment elites.

      2. CTV Headline:

        Edmonton CFL Team discontinues name. The Club will use the names:
        “EE Football Team and Edmonton Football Team.”

        They’re took questions from ‘accredited’ Reporters.
        (They had to state their name and news organization)

        They are not changing their logo, due to costs, i.e. upwards of a million bucks.
        (Eeeeeeee yeah!)

        Imo they should’ve asked the Eskimos if they were offended. If so, then they could have gone with “Edmonton Eagles” or “Excelsiors,” the latter being a suggestion from the CTV Reporter.

        “Eeeeeee yeah!”

        1. This means the Edmonton Edmonton Trudeaus is out. The Edmonyon Earwigs? Eminems?

          1. For me, they’ll be the Edmonton “So Long And Thanks For The Fish”. I’m done with watching CFL football or any other pro sports, for that matter.

      1. Hehehehaahahahaha!
        You two –FPR and B A
        No kidding, you put me in tears & laughter ha ha hah!

  11. Response to Linda about hearing aid. Your right about it not making sense. What I have experienced is getting masks tangled in my hearing aids, and then you take the mask of and lose them. At about a thousand bucks each it’s a big lose, and I’m glad I don’t have to risk that taking masks off. I assume from experience that is the reason.

    1. I have one of those already. Business expense. Well worn and comfortable. All that is left of my business “office”, well except for the computers, which have all been written off. I wouldn’t get too excited about these clowns having a few write offs. Consider that what their pay and perks, pensions et al are already “publicly funded”, a friggin’ office chair to caress their lily white butts is chump change.
      They “pay taxes” dint ya know? The “taxes” they pay are just returning some of the money we already paid them as salary and perks. If any of you posting here haven’t figured out some creative accounting to feather your nest in your retirement years using the Income Tax Act (I used to do taxes as a sideline once upon a when), then you weren’t paying attention.

  12. Blackie’s CBC reports that Blackie’s choice for Governor General is turning into a nightmare. The G.G. yells at staff, created a toxic working environment, and dozens of staff have quit over her abuse. Well, at least she hasn’t physically assaulted anyone yet. After all she was charged for that in the States. Another Trudeau success story.

    1. Media forget about the assault and battery in the U.S. But, another scandal here. My opinion: there is no excuse for bullying staff-underlings. She should be asked to leave, in disgrace.

  13. When one flies with Czech Air, one lands at Prague to the strains of “The Moldau (Vltava)” by Smetana, one of six tone poems collectively known as “Ma Vlast”. Wanting to obtain a recording, I was directed to the 1990 live recording from the Prague Spring Festival with conductor Rafael Kubelik. Other versions may be better technically, but this version – celebrating the end of communism – has real passion.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzHeEoFtnLg

    1. When the Warsaw Pact countries invaded and occupied the former Czechoslovakia in 1968, apparently opposition radio stations played Ma Vlast as a form of resistance.

  14. Who will be Joe Biden’s Vice-Presidential running mate ? Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

    Because, no one else can make him look youthful and energetic by comparison.

  15. See the poll results:

    Rachel Notley
    @RachelNotley
    When I go out and about, I wear a mask to protect myself and those around me.

    Do you think masks should be mandatory? #yyccc #ableg #yeg #yql
    Yes
    28.7%
    No
    71.3%

    1. C’mon it’s Alberta, what do you do when you git bucked off? Get back on and go ’round agin. When you get tired of the arse kickin’, most people quit. And when chewin’ snoose the mask git’s in the way, ya lefty bint. Sunshine and a stiff breeze, summer or winter will take of of the Chinah Flu outdoors.
      That 28.7% is probably the UNIFOR city vote.

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