F*** My Life/1st extinct animal cloned
February 11, 2009
My coworker Jordan sent me a link to this amazing website today-
http://www.fmylife.com/
Just go. My favorite so far- “Today, I had just gotten over the flu and thought I was better. So me and my boyfriend decided to have sex. As I was about to orgasm, I puked all over his face. He was so disgusted that he ended up throwing up on me as well.”
You may have heard about the issues that some Nashville venues/nightclubs are facing with the new city sprinkler ordinance that went into effect about a year and a half ago. Well, luckily the ones still unable to comply have been granted an 18 month extension. Furthermore the whole thing might change altogether because the council’s codes committee is voting on a bill that looks to shift Nashville buildings to an International Fire Code, which would dissolve the retroactive fire sprinkler requirement. Read more in the NewsChannel5 article.
In other local biz news, we might be getting wine in our grocery stores soon! This is something for which I’ve been hoping for a long time. I remember as a teenager growing up only minutes from the VA state line, my mom would take me with her on wine trips to grocery stores in VA because it was much cheaper than liqour stores in TN. Part of that was that VA has a lower alcohol tax than TN (because TN has no income tax) but still, grocery stores will likely have lower prices than wine stores. There’s a flip side to this, however…. Small local wine shops may suffer due to the price war induced by bigger chains such as Kroger, which will inevitably have much lower prices due to their size. My friend Courtney Wilder works at an awesome small wine shop in east Nashville called Woodland Wine Merchant. I’ll be interested to hear her opinion on this. I know that I will not stop shopping at wine stores such as hers for quality wine because I would rather buy from a small local store where the people who work there are actual wine experts. But your average Joe probably doesn’t share that sentiment.
Enrique Aguirre/Getty Images
Scientists in Spain have successfully cloned a species of ibex that went extinct in 2000. The Pyrenean ibex died out due mainly to overhunting. However, the calf died only minutes after birth. The team plans to try again in a year or so. This is amazing and scary all at the same time. We are NOT close to creating a real-life Jurassic Park, however. In order to clone something that’s extinct, you have to grow the embryo in some sort of currently living creature. We don’t have anything living right now that is a close enough analog to a dinsaur for that to work. Maybe we’ll find a way around that problem one day, but not anytime soon.
New Camera Obscura/Hipster Runoff
February 10, 2009
My love for Camera Obscura is endless. You can imagine my delight when I found an email from their listserv in my inbox yesterday containing info about their brand-spanking new website and FREEEEE mp3 of the title track from the new album, My Maudlin Career. Oh thank you Tracyanne & Co. for finally giving me something new to latch onto. If this song is a good indication of what the rest of the album will sound like, then it will be everything I hoped for. This track is full of fluttering piano runs drenched in cavernous reverb that flirt with Tracyanne’s beautiful Scottish croon in the most perfect way. GET IT. LOVE IT.
Camera Obscura-My Maudlin Career
I don’t know how I missed out on Fruit Tree Music, the blog of my old college friend Jon Arnold for this long…. He does a lot of great audio production work with one of my all-time favorite electronic musicians, Matt Pusti, as well as the Protomen and many other great locals. The cool thing about it is that he posts clips from almost everything he works on. Check it out.
I’ve recently discovered the blog Hipster Runoff. Their coverage of the Grammys is priceless. Just go. Apathy and snark. Snark and apathy.
Looks like Abe decided to get a punk rock hairdo not long before his assassination. The image links to the Library of Congress’ flickr stream. Yes, the Library of Congress has a flickr. How cool is that? Via Kottke.org.
Speaking of politics, unless you’ve been living under a rock, or aren’t from TN, then you know that the TN House of Representatives has been through some turmoil lately. Well, the Republicans finally decided to kick out Kent Williams, the guy who upset their plans for Jason Mumpower to become Speaker of the House, and an extreme conservative takeover. So we now have 49 democrats, 49 republicans, and Kent Williams. It could be worse? Via Nashville Is Talking.
Now for some national political humor…. Clips taken out of context from Obama’s self-narrated audiobook version of Dreams From My Father. Via Yewknee.
Just in case you didn’t know how incredibly unhealthy soft drinks are, read this article from Mercola.com. I don’t agree with everything this guy posts… in fact some of it is a little too “conspiracy theory” for me. And he’s somewhat of an antivaxxer (people who claim that vaccines cause autism- read more about them here), which is appalling, but some of the stuff on his website is good.
Good news on the Large Hadron Collider. They expect it to be operational again in September and hopefully will start collisions in October. I really hope some ground-breaking discoveries happen as a result of this enormous and fascinating piece of technology.
New comet/Fairey arrested
February 9, 2009
Science first today, people.
A new comet has been discovered and will be visible at least with binoculars and maybe even the naked eye for people in rural areas over the next few weeks. It was discovered by a 19 year-old student named Quanzhi Ye at the Lulin Observatory in Nantou, Taiwan on July 11, 2007. Be on the lookout for it over the next few weeks. I’m sure Universe Today or Bad Astronomy will post something about the exact location in the night sky, and when they do I’ll be sure to post it here. Via Live Science.
Space Shuttle Discovery’s launch has been pushed back again, to no earlier than Feb. 22nd. Engineers are still testing those new hydrogen flow valves to make sure they’re safe.
Do you own a cat? Do you know if it’s plotting to kill you in your sleep? Here’s a quick quiz to find out…
Shepard Fairey has been arrested for tagging property with graffiti. He was on his way to a kickoff event for his first solo exhibition. Shitty timing!
Did you you know the grammys were this past weekend? Yeah, me niether. I actually did know, I just forgot about them. They seem to be pretty forgettable these days. Brooklynvegan has a listing of all the awards.
Various people in London decided to use the opportunity nature gave them in the form of recent snowfall to make a bunch of giant snow-penises around town. Reminds me of a few years ago when Nashville got a few inches of snow and some Vandy kids made several snow phalli around campus. The final button in the dailogue box to post a photo on this blog is “insert into post.” Huh… huh huh…. Via Vice Magazine blog. (I promise I’m not really this immature…)
Shepard Fairey copyright infringement/Beatles last performance
February 5, 2009
Everyone is quite familiar with Shepard Fairey’s iconic adaptation of a photograph of Barack Obama. The photograph was taken by well-known photographer Mannie Garcia for the AP. Apparently the AP is claiming a copyright infringement, but technically the image belongs to Garcia because he was not on the AP staff, he was just a hired temporary fill-in when he took the photo. John Harrington has a great interview with Garcia on his blog Photo Business & News Forum, in which you can learn more of the gritty details of this situation. I agree that in fact the issue is not whether it is infringement, it’s whether the term “fair usage” can be applied. I also agree that the copyright owner is entitled to some sort of settlement. Fairey has made A LOT of money off of this image. I find it very honorable that Mr. Garcia is concerned more about recognition than monetary compensation.
Recently I’ve been getting into a new band from New York called The Pains of Being Pure at Heart. I highly encourage fans of The Smiths, Jesus & Mary Chain, or the Raveonettes to check them out. These days it seems like the music world is completely overrun with stupid indie rock bands with beards and animals in their names, who make the same fucking album over and over again. But every now and then a new band will stick out to my ears and I’ll actually latch on and add them to my “bands I officially LIKE” list.
I officially am excited to see Coraline. They Might Be Giants did a song for the movie, which is used in one of the tv trailers, and it was directed by Henry Selick, who also directed Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas. It’s also awesome that it was done with REAL stop-motion animation, not CG. Henry Selick+Stop-motion+They Might Be Giants= Awesome. Even cooler is that the filmmakers made 50 customized homemade boxes containing unique items from the movie, and sent them to their favorite bloggers.
Ever see that crappy 90’s scifi movie Anaconda? Ok, maybe not, but it had a big ass snake. Turns out that snakes that big actually did exist a long time ago. They were as long as a school bus, and their body was “so wide that if it were moving down the hall and decided to come into my office to eat me, it would literally have to squeeze through the door.” Whoa.
A company has come up with a way to channel sunlight from a collector on your roof into a light fixture in your house or office using fiber optics. Why didn’t someone think of this a long time ago? Like, when fiber optics were first commercially viable?
And I’ll leave you with the first of three video segments of the Beatles’ last live performance- on the rooftop of the Apple Records building in London on Jan. 30th, 1969. As I said this is segment #1, and here’s segment #2 and segment #3.
Smallest exoplanet thus far!
February 4, 2009
Today the science is the top story! You can only imagine how giddy I was to hear about the French COROT satellite’s latest find- an exoplanet only twice the size of earth! That’s UNPRECEDENTED, people. Unfortunately, we don’t know much about it besides its size. COROT looks at other stars and watches for the slight dimming by a planet transiting in front of it. It’s sensitive enough to detect the miniscule dimming caused by this comparatively tiny planet, but that’s all it can do. In order to know what it’s made of, we have to know its mass, and the only way to know that is to watch how much the planet tugs on its parent star as it orbits, and since the planet is so small, the tug is also VERY small. We just don’t have anything capable of detecting such a tiny doppler shift…. yet. This planet is also orbiting so close that it’s practically touching the surface of its parent star, so it is VERY HOT, and thus completely uninhabitable. In fact, it’s very possible that if it has a rocky or metal surface (which is almost certain given its size), then its surface is molten. All this and more info can be found on the Bad Astronomy post from which this information was taken. Dr. Plait even goes so far as to say that we might find an earth twin (a planet roughly the same size as earth, in roughly the same orbit around a sun-like star) in the next few years. But again, we won’t be able to know much about it for several more years, until we get more sensitive telescopes operational.
Space Shuttle Discovery’s launch got delayed until at least Feb. 19th due to issues with a control valve that regulates the flow of hydrogen from the external tank into the orbiter’s engines during liftoff.
Credit: Jared Lazarus/Miami Herald
The economic slump has claimed its first music festival victim of 2009, the Langerado Festival, which is normally held in southern Florida. (This year it was slated to take place in Miami.) According to this Billboard.com article, artists confirmed to play included Death Cab for Cutie, Broken Social Scene, Ryan Adams & the Cardinals, The Faint, The Pogues, Girl Talk, Black Kids, and many others. The promoters cited poor ticket sales as the sole cause of the cancelation. I have a sick feeling this may happen to some of the other smaller festivals that have popped up in recent years. People are much more hestiant to spend money on entertainment right now. The sticker shock of $100 or more for a ticket to your favorite yearly music festival is hard to overcome in times like these. More details can be found in this Miami Herald article.
In my last post I listed the Bonnaroo lineup for 2009. Bonnaroo is arguably the nation’s biggest outdoor music festival, and I definitely don’t think it will suffer the same fate as Langerado. It’s in a different class altogether. I also think that the inclusion of Phish in the lineup pretty much makes it recession-proof. If there’s any band out there that can bring in thousands of obsessively dedicated fans who will literally scrape the bottoms of their wallets to see them, it’s Phish. If you know me, you know that I hate jam bands and can’t stand most of their fans, but I think getting Phish to headline (along with Springsteen of course) was probably the smartest thing they could’ve done to counteract the dismal economy’s influence on ticket sales. I can hear the hippies now…. “duuuude… the economy like, totally blows… but duuuude, PHISH is rockin’ two nights at the ‘roo this year! We GOTTA find the money! Even if it means buying less weed!”
Bruce’s epic crotch collision
February 2, 2009
So there it is. Enjoy it. The look on his face right after it is priceless. Overall, though, he rocked the house like only he could. In my opinion, one of the better superbowl halftime shows in recent history. GIF image via You Ain’t No Picasso.
The RIAA and Universal Music Group are at it again, claiming that if you’re a music reviewer and you haven’t kept track of every single promo CD you’ve ever recieved, then you’re a pirate. They won’t win the court battle, because if they do then, technically any book publisher could stick a label on their books saying “not for library lending.” When are these assholes gonna learn?
In case you haven’t heard, Flight of the Conchords are playing at the Ryman April 10th.
A new Spoon track has surfaced on Stereogum… and I have to admit it’s kinda strange. Now, I’m far from being a Spoon fanatic, so someone correct me if I’m wrong, but I think this is the first Spoon track to involve an electronic beat. Their new album hits shelves Feb. 17th.
Old 1940’s photographs superimposed on new ones taken in exactly the same location in Russia. The text is all in Russian, but you needn’t read it. The images say it all.
Speaking of Russia, apparently they want to build their own space station. I also had no idea that the current Internation Space Station was scheduled to retire in 2015. It just seems to me that too much money has been spent on the ISS to retire it only 5-6 years after its completion.
Finally, I want to say a few things about science and religion. While I consider myself a person of faith, I don’t follow any one organized religion specifically, and I don’t beleive that we should ever look to religious texts to explain our environment and how it works. The only reliable method of explaining our environment (and by environment I mean everything from our planet to the entire universe) is SCIENCE. My favorite writer from the Daily Galaxy, Luke McKinney, posted a very well worded blurb about evolutionary theory and its unknowns. Let me say this- science and religion are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but they are completely different methods of thought. Science has even supported some of the stories in the Bible, but as Mr. McKinney so eloquently says, “Religious texts can be incredibly positive works, prescribing social support and good rules for a good life if used properly, but declaring one to be a definite depiction of reality is like calling Chicken Soup for the Soul a quantum mechanics textbook.”
Coachella lineup/yellow football line explained
January 30, 2009
I’ve always wondered exactly how they create the yellow 1st down line in football TV coverage. It’s something I always think about while I’m watching a game, but never dig into later. Well, the wonderful kottke.org comes through again with a link to this fascinating explanation. I always knew it had something to with a chroma-key effect, so that it only shows up on the green grass as if it’s actually under the players. What I never could understand though, is how they keep the angle correct as the camera pans, zooms, etc….
This year’s Coachella lineup has been announced, and it’s pretty awesome. I actually really wish I could go this year. But with SXSW, the possibility of covering Bonnaroo again, and another summer trip with Megan, it ain’t gonna happen. Interestingly, it’s Paul McCartney’s 1st festival appearance in the US. Via Pitchfork. Still waiting to see if the big rumor about Phish playing Bonnaroo is true.
If you know me, you know that I absolutely LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE Camera Obscura. You’ve probably heard me get all giddy about the time I saw them in Athens at the 40-Watt and got to meet Tracyanne Campbell (and buy her a drink!). Well, they have a new album coming out soon, and they’re playing SXSW. Of course, since I probably won’t have a badge when I go, I probably won’t get to see them, but who knows what will happen? I’m just really really happy that they worked with the same producer as their last record Let’s Get Out of this Country, Jari Haapalainen. He did wonders with that album, and matched just the right amount of lush production to their style. I’m really anxious to hear what he’s done with them on the new one. I’m also really anxious to see their US tour schedule. I have no clue if they’ll flesh out a bunch more dates around their SXSW appearance and the lone other US date on their current calendar- Mar 24th at the Bell House in Brooklyn. I don’t see why they wouldn’t.
It looks as though Mount Redoubt in Alaska is about to blow its top. The last major eruption for the active volcano was in 1989, and scientists says this eruption could be about the same or a little less intense than the last one. Luckily it’s not close to any heavily populated areas, and the small towns close enough to recieve some of the ash will just have to deal with it, but it shouldn’t cause any huge problems.
Not much to report on this looming winter storm coming monday and tuesday. The weather service hasn’t changed its forecast much, but I can see that the latest model runs show a slightly weaker storm than before, but there’s still a lot of time, and the models will probably change their minds several times. They just aren’t very reliable more than a day or two out, especially when dealing with these fickle winter systems.
Dirt is good for you/Metallica at SXSW?
January 29, 2009
Well, they played in Nashville at the Basement for their fan club, so why shouldn’t Metallica play another small show at Stubbs BBQ during SXSW? Rumor has it they will. I can’t imagine how painfully crowded that place will be. I’ve never been there, but it holds about 1500. So far my plans to go with Seth this year are holding up. We’ll probably never have a chance of getting into the Metallica show though, if it even happens.
The NY Times is reporting that dirt may actually be good for babies and children. I’ve been saying this for a long time now. Obsessive mothers who keep their babies and everything around them spotless and ultra-sanitized are actually making the child’s immune system weaker, and making him/her more prone to allergies. It’s a little hard to swallow the part about worms being healthy, but I totally believe it. As with everything, common sense rules here. If your toddler boy has been playing with dog turds… yes, I’d say wash his hands before he eats! But if he was just making mudpies, who cares? Via kottke.org.
This is scary to think about, but global warming may be irreversible. According to this Universe Today article, scientists have found that while methane, nitrous oxide, and other pollutants may go away in a few decades, the extra CO2 we’ve expelled into the atmosphere may stick around for a thousand years or more. Unfortunately CO2 is the biggest contributor to the greenhouse effect. I think this simply means that we have to find a way to make gigantic CO2 scrubbers that can actually remove some of the CO2 from the atmosphere. They already have them on the space station and space shuttles. I know- the costs of expanding that technology to a scale that would even make a dent in the overall CO2 levels of the atmosphere are probably unimaginable, but I say it’s worth it. The alternative could be mass famine and major world wars. Another possibility it just planting a shit-ton more trees, and greatly decrease logging to the point that we’re generating more forest than we’re destroying. Trees are the cheapest CO2 scrubbers around. Good luck with that idea though….
So for all you snow lovers out there, this coming monday/tuesday might be Nashville’s best chance at getting a significant snowfall. As always, it’s too early to say anything for sure, but the models are showing a low pressure system forming over LA/MS and tracking east-northeastward across GA, and then up the east coast, turning into a nor’easter. At the same time this low forms, an arctic airmass will be sliding southeastward from Canada. If the low tracks just right, strengthens and becomes “cutoff,” and if the arctic air slides down at the exact same time the moisture is being pulled around the northwest sector of the low, we’ll get a pretty significant snowfall. If the low tracks further north, then the warm gulf air will win-out and we’ll have mostly rain, and a little snow at the tail-end of the system, much like what happened yesterday. If the low stays further south, the moisture will stay south along with it, and we won’t get much precip at all. Stay tuned, this will be an interesting one to watch as the models get more accurate. Below is a graphic of the GFS model run showing precipitation, pressure (where the lows and highs are), and 850 Mb level temps. (That means temps at a few thousand feet up.) Temps are shown in Celsius here, and the key is that blue line that says “0,” meaning freezing line.
And now for a time-lapse video of a baby playing with his toys over 4 hours, condensed down to 2 minutes.
Black Lips escape India/Annular eclipse photos
January 27, 2009
Credit: M.R. Taufik
Yesterday a relatively rare phenomenon occurred over parts of the Pacific Ocean, southeast Asia and Australia- an annular solar eclipse. Solar eclipses aren’t that common to begin with, but what makes it an annular solar eclipse is the fact that the moon’s occultation of the sun coincided with its furthest point from earth in its orbit. In other words, the moon’s orbit is elliptical, so it’s not always the same distance from earth. IF the point at which the moon is farthest from earth in said elliptical orbit happens to coincide with a solar eclipse, the moon’s disc doesn’t fully cover the sun, and it results in a ring of light showing around the black disc of the moon. Pretty cool, and definitely something I’d like to see before I die. For now though, we can just enjoy the photos linked to on the Universe Today post about it.
So I read the stories yesterday about everyone’s favorite Atlanta troublemakers Black Lips getting chased around India on their tour, but I decided to wait until the full story surfaced to post about it. Pitchfork is totally gay for them so I knew they’d post an update the very minute they heard anything. I was right. But the full story can be found on their label Vice’s blog. It’s an interview with the drummer… and it turns out they weren’t actually chased by the cops, and the only people really after them were their tour manager and his production company. Now they’re in Germany hanging out with King Khan, who I can’t wait to see with the Shrines at the Exit/In in March.
Speaking of rock n roll, thanks so much to everyone who came out to my 8 off 8th last night. Unfortunately my band Tigers Con Queso couldn’t play because Seth came down with a serious case of the flu earlier in the day, so it was a 7 off 8th, but it was awesome nonetheless, and people seemed to really enjoy it. Everything was on time and the last band didn’t end up getting screwed & having to play at 1am on a monday. The official door count was 157 people. I also wore this insane sweater that my mom got for my dad back in the 70’s, and apparently it’s the most amazing thing anyone has ever seen, because people were flipping out over it all night. Thanks mom! (You just have to see it to understand.)
The Nashville Cream reported yesterday that guitarist Denis Deck will be leaving How I Became the Bomb soon. The split was amicable, and Deck will continue to play with them until temporary replacement Russell Hanberry from Stories That Live can take over.
Turns out even babies know how to rock out. My mom always said she knew I’d be a drummer even before I was born because I apparently pounded the inner walls of her uterus incessantly.
My 8 off 8th tonight/Deli Party pics
January 26, 2009
Number one priority for your Monday: coming to my 8 off 8th tonight at Mercy Lounge. It’s free, and it’s a great lineup, so you have no excuse. I’m not telling you the order so that you’ll come early because you don’t know if your favorite band (out of the lineup) will be first or last or somewhere in between. The Nashville Cream was kind enough to post a blog entry about it. Also, Courtney from Left Can Dance will be DJing between bands. Click the image to make it bigger.
The Deli Party was a huge success. Home Keys got things off to a great start, I DJed for a while, then Makeup & Vanity Set and Jensen Sportag did a tag-team setlist, trading off songs, which resulted in total awesomeness. The only minor buzz-kill was that it was so hot and steamy in the basement that the speakers kept overheating (and thus cutting themselves off). Thankfully that didn’t happen during my 2 hour DJ set after MAVS & JS finished. I had a total blast, and so did the crowd. Everyone was dancing, and it got pretty full for a while, then it thinned out a little around 2:15am, and I thought it was gonna wind down from there, but then suddenly everyone came back, and it got hot & heavy again at around 2:45! People were still going strong right up to the end when I had to call it quits around 3:20. My last two songs were for fellow photographer Johnny Kingsbury, who was celebrating his birthday that night. His sister let me in on the secret that one of his favorite party songs was You Get What You Give by the 90’s one-hit-wonder New Radicals. They all went crazy. I’m DJ Burgers, and this party should be very good reason for you book me at your next throwdown. For some great photos from the party, checkout Courtney Wilder’s photoset.
Speaking of photography, photographer David Bergman made 1,474 megapixel panoramic image of Obama’s Inauguration. Seriously, click that link! It’s amazing how much you can zoom in on that image and see the details. It was done using a Gigapan imager.
Some science links for the nerds:
We’re one step closer to teleportation. I don’t think we’ll ever be able to actually teleport a human being from one place to another, but instantaneous transfer of information could eventually be possible if we’re able to build upon this discovery/breakthrough. That could be very useful when we eventually send humans to Mars, and even farther. Not having to wait for a radio signal to travel all the way back to earth would be very handy when Val Kilmer lands on Mars and says, “Holy shit! There’s all kinds of glowing algae stuff everywhere, and it suddenly made the atmosphere breathable!”
Earth is being stalked by and asteroid. It’s ok though, it won’t actually hit us. It just follows us around everywhere we go, and calls us to leave cryptic messages, and….
steve cross loves music and science 