35 Replies to “The Loneliest National Park On Earth”

  1. In the interests of saving the planet, I am setting aside all thoughts and intentions of buying a set of bagpipes in 2008. I encourage all SDA readers to do the same. Will you join with me in this noble sacrifice?

  2. Actually, I love the sound of bagpipes, to the point of featuring them on one of the tracks on my CD, played by one of the students at the College of Piping located in Summerside, PEI.
    Had huge discussions on keys, musical scales employed by the bagpipes — they march to the sound of their own drummer.

  3. You’re a saint RB.
    So- do we get to sell our Mpingo credits to someone who can use them?

  4. Neo-con Paul is back. Go, Paul.
    …-
    An Old Face Resurfaces [Wolfowitz Back in Govt.?]
    Don’t ever say the Bush administration doesn’t take care of its own. Nearly three years after Paul Wolfowitz resigned as deputy Defense secretary and six months after his stormy departure as president of the World Bank—amid allegations that he improperly awarded a raise to his girlfriend—he’s in line to return to public service. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has offered Wolfowitz, a prime architect of the Iraq War, a position as chairman of the International Security Advisory Board, a prestigious State Department panel, according to two department sources who declined to be identified discussing personnel matters. The 18-member panel, which has access to highly classified intelligence, advises Rice on disarmament, nuclear proliferation, WMD issues and other matters. “We think he is well suited and will do an excellent job,” said one senior official.
    Wolfowitz, now a visiting scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, will replace former senator Fred Thompson, who quit over the summer to run for president….-
    http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1933684/posts

  5. “In the interests of saving the planet, I am setting aside all thoughts and intentions of buying a set of bagpipes in 2008.”
    I find this particularly amusing since I did fact purchase a set of bagpipes in 2007. African Blackwood too. So now I can take pleasure every time I go out to the garage (wife won’t let me play ’em in the house) and play my pipes, that I in fact warming the environment.

  6. What is a hoser with Scots ancestors supposed to do? First they came for the beer fridges. Now it’s the bagpipes. Is my cherry wood guitar neck next, I wonder? Soon they’ll be telling us that singing “Will ye no come back again?” is plunging the earth into an inferno. If I stick with the single malt and swear off the pipes will they leave me in peace, do you think?

  7. Who? is this foaming socialist with the rabid BDS/HDS? Who? even insults Taliban Jack-NDP, his brother socialist comrade. Not good for party unity.
    Who?, the vampire socialist, rises from the PET cemetery. Who is Who?
    Bammed by Kyoto, hamstrung by Buttcrack Karl, puffined by STOPIGGY, mentored by AdScam Chretien, succored by AdScam Martin, Jr., it’s Who?
    Who? said, “Canada needs more than ever the party of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the party of Pierre Elliott Trudeau,” he declared.
    …-
    “At the next election, there will be this narrow, selfish Conservative idea of Canada, with Stephen Harper’s hidden agenda toward the U.S. Republican ideology,” he said.
    “And there will be our generous, sincere vision of a richer, greener, fairer Canada of the 21st century. There will be a collision between these two conceptions of our country.” […]
    “In the last election, (NDP Leader) Jack Layton asked Canadians to lend him their votes,” said [****].
    “And what did they get? Stephen Harper. Many Canadians will demand their vote back – with interest.”
    He was similarly dismissive of the Bloc Quebecois and what he sees as its waning influence in Quebec. […]
    “Canada needs more than ever the party of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the party of Pierre Elliott Trudeau,” he declared.
    Invoking Trudeau won Dion the first of several spontaneous ovations. But it was something of a departure for the current leader, who has mixed views about the late Liberal icon.
    Dion has gone out of his way in Quebec to explain that, unlike Trudeau, he’s not opposed to recognizing Quebec’s distinctiveness or to decentralizing the federation. …-
    http://tinyurl.com/yw9434
    (canoe news)

  8. There are far more clarinets, oboes and English horns on this planet made from African Blackwood (Grenedilla) than bag pipes.
    Why target the pipes only … think about it.

  9. If I stick with the single malt and swear off the pipes will they leave me in peace, do you think?
    Posted by: felis corpulentis at December 2, 2007 6:45 PM
    Not a hope felis.They want that malt for biofuel,doncha know.

  10. Send me your money. I will plant twice the number of trees and my trees will produce complete bag pipe out fits. For an extra few dollars a tree I will trim them to produce your clan tartan.
    Send me the money. I got carbon offsets at a sweet deal.

  11. Deep sigh of distain…is anyone sick of green commie finger pointing and blame fixing?
    Jock, give ;em the wee middle digit.
    Stiff like this intesifies my loathing of Menshevik politics invading eco science.

  12. “But Scottish mariners who travelled to Africa in the 18th century returned with supplies of African Blackwood, which proved to be far more resilient and produced a sweeter sound.”
    I can’t imagine what they might have sounded like before!
    And no, I am no Scot… I be a Welshman

  13. “Not a hope felis.They want that malt for biofuel,doncha know. Posted by: Justthinkin at December 2, 2007 7:00 PM”
    May I paraphrase what others have said on these threads?: they will tear my malt from my cold, dead, drunk hands. And that’s after they enjoy the “biofuel” pumped out of my holding tank.

  14. All of which goes to show that the Irish have a sense of humour that the Scots lack.
    The humorous Irish gave the dour Scots the pipes as a joke and the Scots haven’t caught on yet.

  15. I predict a new Scottish Diaspora, as the English seem bent upon driving out anyone with even half a brain and one ball to go with it.
    Bagpipe trees. I’m scunered.

  16. Here’s a video of a Canadian soldier playing the pipes while standing on a tank with the Canadian flag flying in the background:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TT-BpXIWnc
    Here’s young Andrew, performing his solo at bagpipe camp:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKQIdqjY9nI
    and here’s a production by the Army School of Bagpipe Music and Highland Drumming:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNC0WhwNf9E
    What’s that you say? Why yes, I have spent the last couple hours listening to videos found by entering “bagpipe” at video.google.com – what made you guess? Sadly, I have not yet found a version of a melancholy solo played upon the moors with decent micing. On the other hand, I did find this bagpipe and didgeridoo duet:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsNfNF8n7qA
    I also found this lass playing the Bulgarian kaba gaida bagpipe:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mu-Mw6j3RWw
    You heard it here first; yet another SDA multicultural moment.
    What I’d like to hear is a bagpipe and hurdy-gurdy duet.
    On the wood thing, if it’s really a problem, just get in touch with some materials engineers and they’ll come up with a fine replacement. Seriously, they’re really good at that sort of stuff now-a-days. If it’s not a problem, if it’s just someone else fearmongering, then it will pass as fashions do.
    Either way, lasses & laddies, the pipes shall not go mute!

  17. Hmm, it occurs to me that I left a dangling reference in my previous comment. For those of you who are not familiar with the hurdy-gurdy, here’s a lad playing one of the first hurdy-gurdy’s made by the renowned Viennese luthier Richard Jenner. It sounds in A with the melody string tuned in e’, the snare in a, and the drone in A. This particular piece is a dance played around 1820 by the Viennese hurdy-gurdy duet The Fat Boys (in Viennese, “De Bladn Buam”):
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkhBEsoypZk
    Perhaps, based on that, you can see how I might imagine that the bagpipes might get along with the hurdy-gurdy, is it not? I mean, if you could sync the drones to produce a beat frequency, and then have the melodies riff off each other, it could be a new day in jazz. The question is, who will we get to play base, drums, and sax?

  18. Thanks for the link Vitruvius.
    A massed pipe and drum band or a single piper can make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up or bring tears to my eyes. Some whiskey helps as well.

  19. Indeed, Doug, I have found my lacrimation experience to be similar to yours. And while I’m more of a beer and port man myself, I am as I post this comment hoisting an honorary Belvenie to the pipes. After all, two of my most favourite historic figures are James Clerk Maxwell and John Stuart Mill.
    What’s that you say? They were born 1,800 years after Vitruvius died? Oh danm!

  20. Anyone who has been to Tanzania in the dry season has been struck by the amount of smoke in the air. It is fashionable there to set the bush on fire, and the fires keep burning until the next rainy season. I would imagine that for every blackwood cut and turned into a bagpipe hooter, fifty are torched, putting carbon into the air.
    But it doesn’t have to make sense, does it?

  21. as one of scots ancestry, i say they could make them out of plastic and they would sound the same.

  22. The PC poppycock comes to show how utterly rediculous its getting before long the eco-wackos will be getting the asian folk to quit using chop sticks becuease their made of wood AND REMMEBER THE INDIANS CHOPPED DOWN TREES TO MAKE THEIR TOTEM POLES

  23. And all this time I thought the perfect musical pitch was when you threw the accordian into the dumpster and it landed on top of the bagpipes.

  24. This story makes me even prouder to have been piped in at my nuptuals a few weeks ago!
    Never has been heard a sweeter sound than a good piper. Although never has there been a more painfull sound than it done badly!

  25. “as one of scots ancestry, i say they could make them out of plastic and they would sound the same.”
    As one who plays (though admittedly not very well as yet) plastic doesn’t sound the same as blackwood. The wood has a much warmer sound.
    Even if you did make them out of plastic, how much carbon does that put in the atmosphere? I don’t think the envirowackos could be satiated here.

Navigation