SXSW coverage/mosquito-killing lasers
March 24, 2009
I originally planned to resume posting yesterday, but we encountered some traffic issues on the way back from Austin which resulted in us not getting back till 6am monday morning. I had to be at work at 7. Needless to say, I did not feel like blogging yesterday. More on that later…
Mostly quick links today:
First of all, be sure to check all my slideshows of pics from SXSW over at Nashville Cream. I had a blast, even if I did catch the SXSW Cold Virus of Death on saturday.
Also on the Cream, round one of the Mercy Lounge’s Road to Bonnaroo 8 off 8th contest happened last night, and apparently the Features won by one single vote, edging out Kindercastle. Phew. I do like Kindercastle, but I have to say that the Features deserve it more, even if they do get stuck in some tiny side tent playing at noon while everyone’s still nursing their hangovers. They’ve been at this since 1994, and are probably the tightest, best live act in this city.
The New York Times has an interesting article about the extreme branding/marketing/advertising involved with SXSW.
Those Darlins did a Daytrotter session back in January. I guess they don’t always post these right after they’re recorded… I honestly never paid that much attention before though.
Local bloggers Janet Timmons (Out the Other) and Glenn Peoples (Coolfer.com) were both mentioned in a Reuters article about the blogging panel held on Thursday of SXSW.
Ok enough SXSW junk….
Kottke.org highlights a survey that reaveals the average American citizen’s ignorance of basic science. I find it absolutely pathetic and appalling that only 53% of Americans know how long it takes the earth to complete one revolution around the Sun. But it doesn’t surprise me.
Alaska’s Redoubt volcano finally erupted last night after weeks of rumbling. Seismologists have been expecting an eruption for at least a month now. It’s good to see that our prediction methods are at least somewhat accurate.
The entire Cosmos Series, hosted by Carl Sagan, is now available on Hulu. I will be watching them soon. It’s sad that I can only recall seeing one or two episodes…
I hate mosquitoes. They are the bane of my existence. In my opinion, the world would be a better place if they did not exist at all. They do nothing but reproduce uncontrollably and bite people… and animals. That’s why I was very pleased to read this article about a high-tech laser system that targets and kills them. Yes, you heard right- a mosquito-killing laser weapon. This will probably only be used in areas where mosquito-spread disease is a major problem, but we can hope for it, right?
The Space Shuttle Discovery has been attached to the ISS for several days now, and the astronauts have successfully attached the final set of solar panels, which will give the station enough power to support the new crew size of 6-7 astronauts. You can watch live coverage, including footage from onboard the shuttle and the space station, on NASA TV.
Finally, I have some sad personal news to report. My cat Sherman had to be put to sleep this morning. I know it seems lame, but to avoid having to explain the whole story over and over again, I posted a facebook note about it that read as follows:
I’m sad to say that my cat Sherman had to be put to sleep this morning. I’m telling this story on here so that I don’t have to do it 100 times for everyone I know.
We arrived back in nashville from my SXSW trip at 6am monday morning, just barely in time for me to get ready for work at 7. I found him lying on the floor unable to move. He was still yowling, however, so I rushed him to the vet. We discovered that he had a urinary blockage and had been unable to urinate for at least a few days. (Probably since friday, because that’s the day Megan checked on him & he was ok.) This caused his kidneys to malfunction and thus his body was unable to get rid of toxins. He was so near death when I found him that the vet told me there was little hope for him, but I had to at least try to save him. They put him on an IV, relieved the blockage, and put him on a heating pad. His condition improved slightly, but this morning he was unable to control his bladder, showed no interest in food or water, and was still unable to walk or stand. It was obvious that the odds of him recovering were too small for it to be worth the continued suffering it would put him through. So I made the decision to end his suffering. It was a hard choice but it gives me relief to know that he’s no longer suffering.
If you have a male cat 3 years or older, be wary of their urinary habits. This only occurs in male cats, and it’s due to the chemical makeup of cat urine and its tendancy to crystallize. When that happens in their urethra, it causes a blockage. When you can’t pee, it causes major problems VERY quickly. Can you imagine not being able to pee even for 12 hours? If your male cat constantly goes to the litter box but seems to just scratch around a lot, or you notice him squatting but not really doing much, that’s a sign that he might have a blockage problem, and it needs to be treated FAST.
Photo mouse trap/Twitter/Lesbian Vampires
March 16, 2009
Lot’s of quick-hitters today. I have too much crap to do at work and a bunch of preparation for SXSW. The main thing to note today is that I’ve finally joined the Twitter party. Follow me and I’ll follow you!
Strobist has a cool post about a fascinating mouse trap devised by PocketWizard inventor/engineer Jim Clark. It first captured images of the mouse in action, then captured the mouse’s descent into the humane trap devised by Mr. Clark. He then kept the mouse as a pet during the winter months, and freed it in the spring. Awww…
For some more “awwww-ness,” check out Oddee.com’s post about 10 amazing dogs.
Hipster Runoff tells you exactly what SXSW is gonna be like. SRSLY.
THE MCGANGBANG. Enough said.
Apparently a bat tried to hitch a ride on the Space Shuttle’s external fuel tank just before launch Sunday. It posed no threat since it was on the side opposite the shuttle. In case you live under a rock, Discovery did finally blast off Sunday night and is now on its way to the ISS to put the final major US component in place.
And finally…. LESBIAN VAMPIRE KILLERS!!!!
Hallucinations without drugs/M.I.A.’s baby
March 10, 2009
Image via boston.com
Boston.com, website of the Boston Globe, has an interesting article on how to create hallucinogenic effects without taking drugs such as LSD. These are pretty interesting, and I want to try them. I’ll let you know how it goes…
I wonder why M.I.A. hasn’t told anyone what she named her baby… It’s probably hard to pronounce, but seriously, does it really need to be a secret? Hipster Runoff muses about what it might be.
Earth, Wind & Fire are teaming up with Chicago for a huge US summer tour. It’s RETRO, people!
Scientists have finally confirmed that reality, is in fact, real. Like, the world actually exists when someone is not observing it. Phew… I’ve always been worried that reality doesn’t really exist… Seriously though, even the scientist who headed this experiment called the results “preposterous.” Something about this whole thing is perplexing to me though… basically what they’re claiming is a paradox; that they observed something without actually observing it. We are, though, talking about quantum mechanics here. The quantum world is probably the hardest thing in science for our brains to comprehend. Trying to visualize or understand the quantum world from our large, worldly perspective is simply impossible, so me trying to wrap my feeble mind around this experiment is futile in the first place. No matter how hard to understand, this could be a major scientific breakthrough… as long as the results can be duplicated and further analyzed.Via Kottke.org.
Now for a bit of debunking. Everyone has heard the claim that water going down a drain spins opposite directions in opposite hemispheres, the same way that large cyclones and storm systems rotate clockwise in the southern hemisphere instead of counter-clockwise as in the nothern. It’s not true. The Coriolis Effect is responsible for the rotation of large-scale storm systems such as hurricanes, but it simply does not affect something so small as water going down a drain. It only applies to large masses over long distances. The only thing that determines how water spins down a drain is the surface of the basin and/or the direction the water was poured. Unfortunately everywhere along the equator one can find rigged demonstrations that do nothing more than suck money from gullible tourists and contribute to the spread of ignorance.
New Robert Schneider project/drawing sound on film
March 3, 2009
Megan and me with Rob at the Brian Wilson show last November.
After hearing the song “Energy” on the last Apples in Stereo album, I thought to myself “man, Robert Schneider could easily follow in the footsteps of They Might Be Giants and make children’s educational albums.” Well, turns out he’s doing just that. Billboard reports that he’s started a side project called “Robbert Bobbert and the Bubble Machine,” and released a self-titled album last week through kiddie label Little Monster. I have a feeling the songs will still be enjoyable to us grown-ups, just like the TMBG kids’ songs are.
Another little tidbit from Billboard- that big Jonas Brothers 3D movie event that was supposed to be huge, turned out to be a bit of a flop… Ha. Ha ha.
& I took a picture of u & U took a picture of me. He really should turn this into a short film or something. I would hope it would come out feeling a bit like an SNL skit… but maybe with the irony a little less obvious.
The Strobist is a great blog for photographers. The guy knows lighting very well, and if you’re even remotely interested in photography I highly recommend checking it out. Today I had complete jealous-gasm when I saw his post about traveling to the Large Hadron Collider to do some photos of the engineers and scientists there. I can’t even imagine what it was like to get to shoot in there. Just to be inside it…. I would probably just freeze up in utter awe & amazement.
Back in those good ole days of cinema, they used an optical track on the side of film to record the sound. It was literally an optical representation of the waveform, painted in a black stripe alongside the picture. Nowadays that analog waveform has been replaced by either DTS or Dolby Digital. In the case of DTS it’s a timecode of dots and dashes to sync up with a separate CD containing the audio. In the case of Dolby Digital it’s a gray area between the sprocket holes that, when magnified, shows millions of tiny dots in a pattern, which is read by a digital optical sensor, converted into a digital signal of 1’s (represtented by a dot) and 0’s (represented by a clear space), representing the actual audio. This is a very simplified explanation, and I’m also recalling all this from my Audio for Media class waaaaay back in 2000, so if you’re reading this and you know I’ve mis-stated something, please leave a comment correcting me! Anyway… this all leads to the following video from 1951 showing film artist Norman McLaren, who literally draws sound by painting a series of dashes and shapes on the film, then running it through and optical audio reader. I’d love to try this sometime… it would be fascinating…. Via Clusterflock.
Attack of the drunken birds/Kepler mission launch
March 2, 2009
This past Friday I was alerted to the presence of 6 dead birds outside the Starbucks that’s located in the lobby of the building in which I work at Vanderbilt- the Student Life Center. Low and behold, there were indeed 6 dead birds of the same species lying outside the window. I’m used to finding one or two dead birds every now and then… obviously victims of a recent cleaning of the large pane windows along one of our hallways. But SIX at once? I just dismissed it as a strange coincidence and that they were just flying in a tight flock at night. But this morning I noticed a story link on Nashvillest about drunken Cedar Waxwings causing minor chaos in Memphis, and I had a slight “eureka!” moment. These Memphian birds had ingested fermented holly berries and were literally drunk from the alcohol in the pulp. The berries were fermented because of the recent roller-coaster temperatures; the warm snap caused the berries to begin to bud, then the cold snap froze the individual cells which causes them to rupture, allowing yeast to ferment the sugars in the pulp, resulting in alcoholic berries. I looked up photos of Cedar Waxwings, and sure enough the birds outside my building were all Cedar Waxwings. After a quick call to Nashville Metro Public Health, my suspicions were confirmed, and I conclude that we did indeed have a case of drunken birds in Nashville. Kind of funny in a sick, twisted way…
Copyright Steve Cross
Check out the Nashville Cream/Spin review of the super-secret Features/Lambchop/Cortney Tidwell house show last friday. Sorry I couldn’t post anything about it, it was a very secret show intended mainly for the attendees of the Alliance of Independent Media Stores (which apparently has no website) conference that was being hosted by Grimey’s last week. You can see the awesomeness vicariously through me via my pics in the slideshow.
As you may remember, last week NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory failed to reach orbit after a launch malfunction, dooming it to crash into the ocean somewhere near Antarctica. Well, (thankfully) NASA is being extra careful and taking another day to inspect the Delta V rocket that is scheduled to carry the Kepler Observatory into orbit this friday. Thank GOD! The LAST thing we need is for the expensive and extremely important Kepler mission to fail. As I’ve reported before, the Kepler mission is VERY VERY likely to discover an earth-twin orbiting another star, hopefully in the next 3 or so years. Its goal is to stare at a large swath of sky with its incredibly sensitive instruments and look for the miniscule dimming caused by a planet crossing in front of one of those stars it’s looking at. This mission is IMPERATIVE to the search for an earth-like exoplanet, and eventually the discovery of extraterrestrial life. Losing it would be DEVASTATING. I applaud NASA for taking extra precautions to make sure the Kepler mission does not see the same fate of the OCO. Check my friday post for an update on the status of the launch. Happy Monday!
V-day/Exploding eggs
February 13, 2009
This is the cover art for the new Yeah Yeah Yeah’s album, It’s Blitz! which is coming out sometime in April. I think this is pure genius. This has to be one of the best album covers I’ve seen in a long time. I don’t normally get REALLY excited about cover art, but this is AWESOME. (And not just because it’s a photograph and I’m a photographer.) I’ve never been good at explaining in words why I really like or dislike anything…. but YES. Click the image to see a larger version on the Stereogum post about it.
Your daily dose of WTF?!?… Two German gay men who worked in a metal factory decided it would be fun for one of them to poke an unloaded air rifle up the other one’s ass and pull the trigger. The result? His intestines exploded. Via Vice Magazine.
I’m officially ashamed of my state after hearing that FOUR state representatives from TN have agreed to be plaintiffs in a future lawsuit by a California man who is challenging Obama’s citizenship. Come on, people. We understand, you’re pissed off that you lost the election AND lost majorities in the Congress and Senate, but for fuck’s sake this is PATHETIC.
Scientists have mapped 60% of the Neanderthal genome, which will hopefully lead to a better understanding of the common ancestor of them and us moden humans, and why Neanderthals died out about 28,000 years ago. Via Clusterflock.
Speaking of DNA, scientists have also mapped DNA of the common cold (aka the human rhinovirus). This could finally lead to medications that treat the actual cause of the cold rather than just the symptoms. But it’ll still be a while, because there are 99 known strains of the virus, and if a person is infected with 2 strains at once, parts of the virus’ genetic code can get swapped out, resulting a new strain. So there are potentially HUNDREDS of different versions of this thing floating around out there.
I rarely post on weekends, so here’s an early treat for you from XKCD- a Sierpinski Valentine.
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.
I have a theory about Microsoft’s Songsmith software. If you haven’t read this blog in a while, read the last couple of posts, which mention this new software and how awful it is. Click the links, watch the ad, hear the David Lee Roth’s Runnin’ with the Devil run through it, then come back. Ok… I think that Microsoft intentionally made the software sound so cheesy, and the ad so ridiculous and un-ironic, that people like me (and most real musicians) would want to take their dry vocal tracks and run them through it as a joke, just to see how ridiculous it would sound. Just go read the comments in the Nashville Cream post about it. See how everyone is saying, “hey run this song through it!!!” ??? You know I’m right….. Just wait. In a few months some band will re-release a whole album “Songsmith’d.” I can see it now… Metallica’s Master of Puppets… SONGSMITH’D!
Credit: USAF
Obama has asked retired USAF Maj. Gen. Scott Gration to be the new NASA administrator. As mentioned a few posts back, current administrator Michael Griffin will be stepping down on Jan. 20th, as will the rest of the Bush-appointed NASA positions. I learned this from a Space.com post today, and the info contained in that article is all I know about the guy. He’s a decorated fighter pilot, and does have some experience working with NASA, but he’s mostly an outsider. Apparently many former NASA administrators have been outsiders, though, so this is really nothing new. What NASA needs is someone with good leadership skills and who can manage an organization that large and important. He also needs to be very good at managing budgets, as NASA will likely see further budget cuts due to the economic crisis and monstrous national debt.
Microsoft songsmith=the apocalypse, and some vintage ads.
January 12, 2009
This image links to a great flickr set of vintage ads. Just take a minute to peruse through a few. You will enjoy it. Among my faves “Betty’s Gay with Midol“… “I cure women“… “The Miracle of Marlboro.”
Possibly one of the snarkiest local bloggers/writers/music critics is Andrew J. Smithson. He used to write for the Scene, but apparently didn’t like it very much and focused on his own blog. That original blog died, but now he has a new with an incredibly catchy and indicative name- indieocraty. I highly recommend checking it out.
You Ain’t No Picasso posted this new Microsoft ad about their new software Songsmith. Oh. My. God. According to YANP, this is, in fact, the real ad. Maybe Microsoft is trying to make fun of itself? No matter the intent… I too view this as a sign of the apocalypse.
Improv Everywhere is awesome. Check that link for coverage of their latest shenanigan- no pants day. Imagine being in NYC and seeing a bunch of people on the subway and on the streets just walking around with everything but pants on. I love the “freeze” events that they do as well. Nashville has a small group called the Dive-In Theater that does similar stuff. Megan and I participated in the “June Freeze” event in Hillsboro this past June. We met at the dragon park and walked over to Hillsboro Village, and with our phone alarms synced, we all froze up at the same moment, doing random things. It was hard to keep a striaght face while people looked at us curiously, wondering what the hell was going on. I highly suggest checking them out and participating in one of their events. It’s lots of fun.
Anyone who knows me probably knows that I like to do crazy shit like chase tornadoes, go hang-gliding, bungee-jumping (still on my to-do list), etc…. Well, I may have finally found something I wouldn’t do. I wouldn’t call myself an adrenaline junkie by any means… I don’t have the need to get out and do this kind of shit everyday… but I do love it. In my eyes these dudes are totally badass. I’ve actually seen this video once before… about a year ago. But my dad sent it to me today and I thought it would be worth posting. So what do you think? Are these guys totally badass or totally insane?
And finally, I must leave you with the metal band name flow chart: (click image to enlarge, then prepare to laugh histerically)
steve cross loves music and science 