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I throughly enjoy this violin sonata by Carl Philip Emanuel Bach, one of J.S. Bach sons. The Sonata begins with a flowing 3/4 movement on the keyboard soon joined by the violin in a lightly syncopated manner. I believe 'to syncopate' means to use a rhythm with displaced beats or accents so that the strong beats are weak and vice versa. I'm still learning how to listen to baroque music and break down what they are presenting. When I first heard this, it reminded me of another composition that was written about 100 years after this sonata. I thought of...

As the death toll mounts in Ukraine - where at least three children have died since Vladimir Putin ordered the country invaded - a tone-deaf Russian TV host is fuming about how the conflict has cost him access to his Italian luxury villas. Proponent pro-Putin television personality Vladimir Soloviev publicly lamented Friday losing access to his multimillion-dollar vacation homes due to Italian-imposed sanctions spurred by Russia's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. 'Is this the Iron Curtain?' Soloviev opined on the set of his late-night program. 'I was told that Europe is a citadel of rights, that everything is permitted, that’s what...

It’s time for Weekend at Biden’s, the Ukraine edition. Let us begin with breaking news from the Eastern Front, which Dementia Joe is monitoring closely from his getaway assisted-living facility in Delaware. His stirring call to arms Thursday will be remembered for generations. All dialogue guaranteed verbatim. “Now the entire world sees clearly what Putin and his kreminite and and and his Kremlin allies are all about.” Fortunately, aid is on the way — not. “NATO came together and authorized and activated an activation response plans. This’ll enable NATO’s high-readiness forces to deploy and when and where they’re needed.” But...

For years, a global choir of right-wing politicians has sung the praises of Vladimir Putin. They looked up to the Russian strongman as a defender of closed borders, Christian conservatism and bare-chested machismo in an era of liberal identity politics and Western globalization. Fawning over him was a core part of the populist playbook.

The below is a comment that FReeper ‘Owen’ posted a bit ago. The link he posted was to a short discussion by a man (Gonzalo Lira [aka ‘Coach Red Pill’]) who is “on the ground” and has, IMHO, a very OBJECTIVE VIEW of what’s ACTUALLY happening in Ukraine. ************************************************ This is believable and only an hour old: This was livestreamed a while ago. He is in Kiev, recently arrived from Kharkiv. Ignore his opinions but listen to what he says about his first hand conversations with colleagues and friends and his own observations. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mbgjjEnbKc&t=3103s

Kosovo has asked the United States to establish a permanent military base in the country and speed up its integration into NATO after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Kosovo's Defence Minister Armend Mehaj said on Sunday. The United States has already 635 soldiers in the Balkan country to maintain the fragile peace as part of a NATO peacekeeping mission. read more Kosovo's 2008 independence is recognised by more than 110 countries, mainly Western nations, but not by Serbia or its traditional ally Russia. Four NATO members also refuse to recognise Kosovo's independence.

ORLANDO, Fla. – Other than former President Donald Trump’s address on Saturday evening, Sunday’s results of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) straw poll are the most anticipated moment at this weekend’s gathering in Florida. Voting among registered attendees has been underway since Thursday among the thousands of people taking part at the confab in Orlando, which is the oldest and largest gathering of conservative leaders and activists. "CPAC is a good barometer of the most active grassroots of the party," veteran Republican pollster and political consultant Frank Luntz told Fox News. "I expect Trump to win the straw poll...

Next month, California’s first-in-the-nation reparations task force is set to debate who should be eligible for direct payments proposed as a way to compensate African Americans for slavery and its lingering effects.

Kevin uses one word to describe the first days of the protests in downtown Ottawa: torture. "Literally there was trucks right underneath me," said Kevin, who did not want to provide CBC a last name for fear of reprisal. "It was one thing for me, but I've got animals. I've got three cats, two dogs. So yeah, it was torture." That "torture" is the reason behind an ongoing class-action lawsuit, which sought an injunction prohibiting any participants in the convoy protest from using vehicle horns in the vicinity of downtown Ottawa. The trucks have since been removed, with police pushing...

ORLANDO, Fla. – Former President Donald Trump easily won the 2024 GOP presidential nomination straw poll at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) gathering this weekend in Florida. Trump, who’s repeatedly flirted with making another presidential run in 2024 to try and return to the White House, captured 59% of ballots cast in the anonymous online straw poll, according to results announced by CPAC on Sunday afternoon. The former president, who remains the most popular and influential politician in the Republican Party as he continues to play a kingmaker's role in GOP primaries, won 55% support a year ago in...

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is winning the social media war. When he appears by the dawn’s early light from Kyiv, the world knows Vladimir Putin hasn't taken down Ukraine yet. Russia's attack on Ukraine is the first major military confrontation of the social media age. The gut reactions brought to you by social media are a whole new factor impacting the war strategy of both Ukraine and Russia. Hint: Ukraine’s doing much better. While armies have used information warfare for ages, the world has never seen this many videos and pictures of a war zone up close and coming at you...

Honk! Honk!Did you just hear "Heil Hitler!" as Canadian Liberal MP Ya'ara Saks hilariously fantasized? Nope! In fact you probably heard nothing at all because there is a new ailment that liberal residents of Ottawa are suffering from, "phantom honking."It has become so severe that the tax-funded Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported on it on Saturday in a most serious manner, "The trucks have left Ottawa, but 'phantom honking' lingers for many downtown."

It doesn't matter where you go: Fast-food hamburgers almost uniformly look like the same round, flat patties. Except for Wendy's, which has square burgers. The reason for the outlier four-sided shape can be traced back to Wendy's founder Dave Thomas. In 1969, he opened the first Wendy's in Columbus, Ohio, because he wasn't satisfied with other options. To make it distinctive compared to Wendy's competitors, he used fresh meat formed into a square. The corners of Wendy's burgers hang over the buns. That way, Thomas believed, customers would see the quality of the hamburger, according to the company's history. The...

William Barr is urging Republicans to put former President Donald Trump in the rearview mirror in 2024 in favor of the political party’s younger leaders, the former attorney general writes in a new book. In his upcoming 600-page book, “One Damn Thing After Another,” Barr says he thinks Trump could’ve beaten Joe Biden in 2020 if he had “just exercised a modicum of self-restraint, moderating even a little of his pettiness,” according to the Wall Street Journal. The conservative lawyer encouraged members of his party to consider “an impressive array of younger candidates” that he did not identify by name...

Dressed in the blue and yellow colours of the Ukraine flag and bearing posters crying "No World War 3", hundreds of thousands of people descended on the streets Sunday in solidarity with Ukraine as it battles the invading Russian army. From Berlin to Baghdad to Quito, demonstrators chanted "shame" against Russian President Vladimir Putin, while others waved banners with slogans like "Putin murderer" or "stop the monster". In the German capital, police estimated turnout at at least 100,000, while Prague drew 70,000 and Amsterdam 15,000. Organisers of the Berlin protest put the numbers at five times the police estimate, with...

Live from American trucker convoy (courtesy Oreo Express), They are rolling through Oklahoma!

ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos said Sunday on “This Week” that a new ABC News/Washington Post poll shows 54% of Americans do not believe President Joe Biden is mentally sharp during his interview with White House press secretary Jen Psaki. Stephanopoulos said, “The president is approaching his State of the Union in a pretty difficult political position right now, 37% approval rating, Democrats trailing badly in the midterm polling. A majority in our recent poll out this morning even question the president’s mental capacity. How is he going to turn that around on Tuesday night? And how much has his State...

WASHINGTON (AP) — In good times or bad, American presidents come to Congress with a diagnosis that hardly differs over the decades. In their State of the Union speeches, they declare “the state of our union is strong” or words very much like it. President Joe Biden’s fellow Americans, though, have other ideas about the state they’re in and little hope his State of the Union address Tuesday night can turn anything around. The state of the union is disunity and division. It’s a state of exhaustion from the pandemic. It’s about feeling gouged at the grocery store and gas...

One of my kids sent me this video. It purports that there are many (dozens? hundreds?) of historical accounts/reports of giants, tribes or giants, encounters with giants, etc. The video seems to be well made and plausible. However, I remain skeptical. Supposedly many of the giant skeletal remains made their way to the Smithsonian. There are plenty of snopes articles debunking stories of this sort, but who knows what to believe from snopes? Like any other topic of this sort their are supporters & detractors. The trick of course is sorting through the BS. Before I dig further into this,...

It is a story of one man’s heroic struggle against the elements and often viewed as a metaphor for life itself. But Ernest Hemingway’s classic novel The Old Man And The Sea is the latest victim of today’s woke standards, with students warned that it contains ‘graphic fishing scenes’. Successive TV and film adaptations of the 1952 classic have been awarded U and PG certificates, suitable for children, but a content warning has been issued to History and Literature students at the University of the Highlands and Islands in Scotland, an area renowned for its fishing industry. Mary Dearborn, the...