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Kitchen & Housewares

 Portable Arm-Cuff Blood Pressure Monitor

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            Existir - Madredeus
Incredible fine and contemplative music from Portugal, Europe, Planet Earth

            Enya - The Memory of Trees
The combination of Gaelic, English and Latin lyrics makes listening a one of a kind experience.
"Anywhere Is", "Pax Deorum" and "Hope Has a Place" are just some of her best songs, and all three are on this album. Songs like "China Roses" and "Hope Has a Place" complement the simple elegance of traditional folk music with luxuriantly layered instrumentation and highly crafted studio production.

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Prog rock, underground

          Emerson, Lake & Palmer - Pictures at an Exhibition 

When Keith Emerson (ex-Nice) met Greg Lake (ex-King Crimson) and Carl Palmer (ex-Atomic Rooster), the group ELP was born. ELP debuted at the 1970 Isle of Wight festival where they ripped into their now famous rendition of Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition," an orgasmic moog workout pushing the bounds of anything previously heard by a rock keyboardist. Emerson's sheer mastery of the moog and flamboyant technical ability were incredible; his talent along with the dynamo drumming antics of Carl Palmer, won the band a legion of fans.
Keith Emerson had a penchant for lifting classical pieces without credit and making them his own, e.g., "The Barbarian" is taken from Bartok's "Allegro Barbaro" while "The Knife's Edge" is Janacek's "Sinfonietta." The song "Lucky Man" is often cited as the first use of the moog synthesizer on a rock album. 

Ekseptions (the classics! the real ones!) - Selected Ekseption

 

Exseptions was a Dutch band, famous for arranging classical pieces. What they exactly played was jazz spiced with rock and classical music. They also covered material like Jethro Tull and folk songs. Leader was keyboard player Rick van der Linden, who later formed Trace. Very enjoyable stuff.
 

 

  Brian Eno - After the Heat

 

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Hits

          Tom Petty - Echo
The first song from Echo downloaded on MP3 became a smash hit all over the world. Now you can hear what the fuss was all about with this hard-rocking new release from Tom Petty and the boys. Take off your shoes, crack open a cold one and groove to soon-to-be-classic tracks like "Room at the Top," "Swingin"and "Won't Last Long."

           Eurytmics - Peace

           Everything But The Girl - Temperamental

           English Beat - Special Beat Service

Best books of the 20th Century

"Among journalists, Wolfe is a genuine poet; what makes him so good is his ability to get inside, to not merely describe (although he is a superb reporter), but to get under the skin of a phenomenon and transmit its metabolic rhythm." (Newsweek)

          The Complete Enderby  by Anthony Burgess (4 books in 1)

SF Bestsellers

         EATER by Gregory Benford
A SF-novel full of astronomical pyrotechnics and  intellectual verbal fencing. Will the aliens destroy our planet?

Great Benford (The Martian Race) does it again. Eater is another example that great science fiction has not died.

        Eclipse (A Song Called Youth) by John Shirley

The Eclipse trilogy by John Shirley is perhaps one of the finest examples of cyberpunk "war" novels available. A mesmerizing dark future setting, a really coherent intrigue, heavy-duty warfare and lots of characters you care for (which the author doesn't really do, the way they get kicked around:-) will keep you awake at night.

In the United States ... in FirStep, the vast space colony ... and on the artificial island Freezone - the SA shoulders its way to power, spinning a dark web of media manipulation, propaganda, and infiltration. 

             Eclipse Penumbra (A Song Called Youth - Book 2)

           Eclipse Corona (A Song Called Youth - Book 3)

Essays, Business / Management

          Harold Evans, et al. The American Century

The Electronic Day Trader
by Marc Friedfertig, George West

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Science books

*** The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory by Brian Greene
The book is extremely well written and does not avoid tackling the difficult-to-explain issues of modern physics and string theory. An intelligent reader will learn a lot about one of the great theoretical movements of science. The only drawback is that no one knows whether string theory is correct. For this reason, string theory probably should not be presented to the public at this time.

The End of Time: The Next Revolution in Physics by Julian B. Barbour

Entanglement: The Greatest Mystery in Physics by Amir D. Aczel

Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea by Carl Zimmer

The Extravagant Universe: Exploding Stars, Dark Energy, and the Accelerating Cosmos by Robert P. Kirshner

E = mc²: A Biography of the World's Most Famous Equation by David Bodanis

 

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Movies

 

Eyes Wide Shut (DVD)     

Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, et al. Director: Stanley Kubrick

 

  Easy Rider

Starring: Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, Jack Nicholson, et al.
Director: Dennis Hopper
Edition Details: VHS Widescreen
NTSC format (for use in US and Canada only)

1969. Two motorcyclists (Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper) embark on a coast-to-coast freewheeling journey in search of "real America", encountering along the way the many faces of its big cities and small towns, a hippie commune, drugs, and sex in a New Orleans bawdy house. A young Jack Nicholson poignantly displays an intelligent man living in a simple minded society. Easy Rider is more than just a film, it is a statement of a time and place. It is one of the few American films that encompasses an entire collective viewpoint of the turbulent time period of the 60s. Quite a documentation, with a great rock soundtrack that includes The Byrds, The Band, Steppenwolf and Jimi Hendrix. Academy Award Nominations: Best Supporting Actor Jack Nicholson, Best Original Story and Screenplay.

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franc'O'brain & Transputer Qasar. 2005.
Email: francobrain@angelfire.com.
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