Today President Obama will speak at the Kennedy Space Center and unveil his updated vision for space exploration to the public and to NASA. The original plan he put forth in Feb. was met with harsh criticism because it canceled the entire Constellation program and left the job of getting astronauts to the International Space Station and low-earth orbit entirely in the hands of private industry after the scheduled termination of the Space Shuttle program in 2015. A few days ago intentionally-leaked information hit the blogosphere and rumors abound about what his updated plan will look like. The biggest rumors are that he’ll be injecting an additional $6 billion over the next few years specifically targeted at development of a heavy-lift launch vehicle. This rocket would primarily be for getting parts of a larger spacecraft into orbit, and no doubt that larger spacecraft will be intended to take humans to Mars and other solar system destinations. The other big rumor is that he wants to bring back one component of the gutted Constellation program- the Orion crew capsule. Instead of being the primary method of getting US astronauts to the ISS, however, it will simply serve as a US escape capsule attached to the ISS. This would alleviate the problem of US astronauts relying on the Russian Soyuz capsule as an escape pod. More on these rumors can be found at Universe Today and Space.com.
I will be watching the live coverage of Obama’s speech on NASA’s website. The streaming video starts at 12:30pm CDT, and Obama’s speech is scheduled for 1:40pm CDT. I’m looking forward to seeing just what he has in mind and how well he sells the idea to the skeptics and naysayers.
For the record, as I’ve said before, I’m totally behind his plan, and not just because I’m a liberal and I voted for him. NASA has gotten into a rut ever since the Apollo era, mostly due to political bullshit. They’ve done some awesome stuff, but the drive to explore new horizons has largely been lost. With the budding new private spaceflight industry there’s no reason why NASA can’t utilize them to do the simple, routine tasks of getting us to the ISS and low-earth orbit. NASA would be spinning its wheels and wasting money to focus on that task. To fulfill its original purpose, NASA need to focus its efforts getting us further into our solar system- Mars, asteroids, and robotic explorations to places like Saturn’s moons Titan and Enceladus, and Jupiter’s moon Europa, all of which have exciting potential as homes for microbial extraterrestrial life.
So tune in to Obama’s speech at 1:40 today, and in the meantime, check out astronomer Neil Degrasse Tyson’s comments on NASA’s future, from a recent Q & A session at the University of Buffalo.
(Via Bad Astronomy)
New Coach mixtape/some gadget musings
April 13, 2010
One of the most well-kown DJs in Nashville’s dance/electronic music scene right now is DJ Coach (aka Jeremy Todd). He formed the now huge weekly Sat. dance night “Coach Vs Kase” (now called Y2K) with Ke$ha live DJ Justin Kase at 12th and Porter, and has kept that going strong for over a year. He also spins regularly at Mai, Happy Valley, and Swag in Murfreesboro. He just released his summer mixtape “Take-Out Vol. 2” to the masses, and you should grab it now. It’s smooth and warm, just like a summer night…
Download: Coach- Take-Out Vol. 2
In my post yesterday about Treasure Fingers, I made the horrible mistake of forgetting to mention that he’ll be coming through Nashville on tour later this month. On Fri. April 30th he’ll be spinning at Mai, with Coach, Hands off Sam, and Potamus opening. Tickets can be purchased here. I may be mistaken, but I think the last time he played here was a Buddytown party at the Trace. My how things have changed…
While all the early-adopters are creaming over the iPad, Google is apparently prepping it’s own tablet PC, which could prove to be formidable rival for the iPad. It will likely run the Android OS but little else is know about it. (Via Gizmodo)
In other gadget news, Microsoft is about gain some ground in the battle against Apple… if their new Windows phone 7 and “Kin” phone are as awesome as they appear to be. The new Windows mobile platform is a total overhaul of their lame older versions, and is a VAST improvement. It’s expected to be out on mobile devices late this year. (More on Windows 7 phone at Engadget) The Kin phone is a version of Windows 7 phone that is centered specifically on social media. Basically it’s aimed directly at hipsters who have iPhones. Stealing hipsters away from Apple products seems like a futile endeavor, but it just might be possible. More on the Kin at Live Science)
Credit: NASA
Universe Today is currently running a pretty cool blog series called “13 Things That Saved Apollo 13.” They talked to NASA engineer Jerry Woodfill who came up with 13 key things that led to their survival. Yesterday’s post was part 2 of the series, focusing on the hatch between the Command Module and lander that wouldn’t shut initially. This malfunction actually turned out to be a blessing, because if they’d been able to shut it, it would’ve slowed down the later efforts that were vital to their survival. I look forward to the rest of this series.
One day over the weekend my girlfriend pointed me to an article about an east TN father who asked the Knox County schoolboard to remove a biology textbook that uses the phrase “the biblical myth that the universe was created by the Judeo-Christian God in 7 days” (regarding creationism) from its curriculum. That sounded like just the type of thing Dr. Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy would pick up, and sure enough he did. Thankfully the board and review committee is standing behind the book and it will remain in the curriculum. Let me re-iterate how important it is that creationism stay out of public school curricula- IT IS UNCONSTITUTIONAL. These are public schools! The separation of church and state is crucial to our democracy and teaching anything from the Bible as a viable scientific theory in public schools is a clear violation of that. This book states that the story of creation in the Bible is a myth, and by strict definition that is completely true. I would even say that the statement doesn’t go far enough. It should go on to say that creationism is simply not true. Decades of research and cold, hard scientific evidence have proven beyond any and doubt that our planet and solar system is roughly 4 billion years old. The stories in the Bible are parables that have absolutely no scientific basis. Let’s keep them out of scientific discourse in the classroom, because they are NOT SCIENCE.
New Treasure Fingers/De Novo Dahl artwork
April 12, 2010
I’m a little behind in blog-time on posting about this new Treasure Fingers track, but I have to mention it because it’s AWESOME and right up my alley style-wise. The track is called “What am I supposed to do?” and is stuffed with funky disco bass lines, cut up soulful vocals, and everything else that satisfies my appetite for disco-house. It originally popped up at the Fader blog on Friday afternoon, after I had already gone into my weekend mode of basically ignoring the internet, thus why I’m posting now. Joseph at Nashville Nights tweeted Mr. Fingers directly and got permission to post as well, so be sure to point your browser his way too, cuz he kinda needs the traffic more than those Fader folks do.
Also, be sure to check out Fool’s Gold’s recap of all their SXSW shenanigans (at least one of which Treasure Fingers was involved), most of which I unfortunately missed.
De Novo Dahl have been on the move again recently with an almost completely new lineup. The only original members are the husband/wife frontman/frontwoman duo of Joel J. Dahl and Serai Zaffiro. They are back on their old label Theory 8, and Mr. Hartley has done a fine job of leaking selected tracks and creating some hype about their next release Tigerlion. The artwork is now out, and the album hits shelves May 25th. You can stream the track “Love Is the Healer” at Hartley’s Tumblr. What’s ridiculous is that until recently, I went on thinking the album was called “Tigerloin” not “Tigerlion.” I have no idea…
Weekend stuff/the return of Nashville Nights
April 9, 2010
In my humble opinion, Nashville Nights is one of the best dance music blogs out there, and I was elated to find out that he finally re-launched yesterday with a new look and his own domain- nashvillenightsblog.com. Bookmark it, subscribe to the feed, etc… Welcome back, Joseph, we missed you!
NN was one of many music blogs hosted by blogger that got inexplicably deleted with no warning. Let that be a lesson if you run a music blog, GET AWAY FROM BLOGGER AS FAST AS YOU CAN! Even if you post fully legit, artist/management approved mp3s (as Joseph always did) they will probably still delete your blog.
This weekend is a bit dry in terms of awesome shows… but here are some interesting things:
Tonight Denny & The Jets return to the stage at Springwater along with Aquariums, Vermicious K’nids, and Fuck Show.
Saturday Bad Cop, Ill Patriot, Look What I Did, and Modern Hell will be at the End, and Zeitgeist is happening at University School of Nashville. This year’s Zeitgeist will feature a TON of bands, culminating with De Novo Dahl, Daniel Pujol, the Looking Glass, How Cozy!, and some other prominent names in the local scene. The End show sill start at Rock O’Clock as usual, but Zeitgeist starts at 7pm sharp!
Have a great weekend!
Blended iPad/Iceland Volcano
April 8, 2010
I’d forgotten that the Blendtec blender existed. Of course they had to do a demo with an iPad. Sure enough, it blends….
Be sure to check all the other blendable things on their channel.
In case you’ve been under a rock, the Eyjafjajokull (don’t even begin to try to pronounce that…) volcano has been erupting in Iceland for well over a week now. Coincidentally, the sun decided to send a rather strong geomagnetic storm our way last weekend. We all know what happens during geomagnetic storms- aurora borealis. Since Iceland is at such a high latitude, it almost always gets to see these aurorae, and when you combine that with a rather docile volcanic eruption, you get photographers hanging out there and taking eye-gasm photographs like this: (Via Live Science)
Photo by Albert Jakobsson
I haven’t posted any real mind-benders on here in quite a while, so here goes:
An Indiana University theoretical physicists is proposing that our universe might actually exist inside a wormhole, inside a black hole that exists in a much bigger universe. If that isn’t a total mind-fuck, I don’t know what is. But it’s really cool to think about if you can wrap your brain around it. The only way I can do that is to reduce our space-time to 2 dimensions and visualize like they do in all those discovery channel shows that talk about black holes and wormholes. You know- the old bowling ball on a sheet analogy. If you dare, read the full article at Universe Today. And see the 2D visualization.
Dozen Dimes album/Jane Dupree
April 6, 2010
Wow, that was fast. Seems like just a few months ago former Pink Spiders frontman Matt Friction was putting his solo project with the Cheap Shots on hiatus to make room for his new doo-wop project the Dozen Dimes. Last night at midnight marked the official release of their debut album, Get Real Gone with the Dozen Dimes. You can download it now on Bandcamp for $10. I remember asking Matt about the new project when I first heard about it and he said something like, “those are the kind of songs I’m good at, so that’s what I’m doing.” (FYI- that was very paraphrased.) I have to agree- I’m enjoying this material more than the few Cheap Shots songs I heard. They do put on an entertaining live show as well, complete with a blinding “DD” light sign and flashy 50’s style suits. I suggest both the album and live show. And for the record, Bandcamp is basically the greatest thing to happen to music in a long time.
A Nashville DJ that deserves some respect is DJ Jane Dupree. She has a pretty rad blog called Disco Terror Squad, full of mixtapes and individual tracks as well, mostly focusing on twitchy/housey material. She also gave my last mix a blog plug. Be sure to check out any of her “Smoke Break” mixes.
Now enjoy this smooth jazz version of “Enter Sandman” by Metallica:
(Via Kottke)
POWERBRRRD signs to Merge/tours with Superchunk
April 1, 2010
I’m happy to announce that my band POWERBRRRD has signed a deal with Merge Records. We will be releasing our debut album sometime this fall, followed by a tour of the US opening for Superchunk.
In other news:
1. Pithchfork gave MGMT’s new album Congratulations a perfect 10.0, as reported by Hipster Runoff.
2. The Rolling Stones played a secret show last night at the End, as reported by Nashville Cream.
Bekah Cope: photographer/iPhone rumors
March 31, 2010
The blog Nashville’s Dead has been kicking ass overall lately, as chronicled by the Scene in their People Issue from a few weeks back. I want to take a moment, however, to specifically point out the photography work of their main shuttergirl Bekah Cope. The photo to the left is of Turbo Fruits on Saturday night of SXSW at the Mohawk Patio. Not only was it an insane performance, as evidenced by the fact that Jonas is hanging upside-down from the rafters, but it’s the perfect shot to capture the essence of that particular show. Bekah shoots all shows with film and a simple on-camera flash in a way that most professionals try to avoid at all costs. But she fearlessly challenges the norm and as a result, her work has an entirely different aesthetic than what the more seasoned professionals go for. It’s good in a completely different way. Her perspective and style is refreshing and fits perfectly with DIY feel of Nashville’s Dead and the music they cover (a good majority of it is house shows). At times some of her photos almost hit the same spot on my visual palate as William Eggleston’s work does. Check out her SXSW photos at Nashville’s Dead and more of her stuff on her flickr.
I’ll take just a moment to express my opinions about the recent rumors of a Verizon/Sprint/T-Mobile iPhone coming soon. A Wall Street Journal article earlier this week mentioned that the iPhone will likely be opened up to other carriers as early as this summer. While has long been a matter of “when,” not “if,” I’m certainly excited that this is finally happening. I’m very skeptical, however, that a Verizon version of the phone will be on the market before 2011 or even later. Currently there are two main protocols for 3G (3rd generation) wireless networks: GSM and CDMA. I won’t get into the technical details, but basically T-Mobile and AT&T both use the GSM standard, while Sprint and Verizon use the CDMA standard. Obviously the iPhone is a GSM device since it’s currently only on AT&T, thus it would be relatively easy to make one for T-Mobile since they’re GSM as well. Building an iPhone for Verizon and Sprint, however, is a different ballgame because many of the components have to be different. This is why I think it may be a little longer before we see a CDMA iPhone. Though the report did mention that some companies are already building the components for CDMA iPhone, there’s a lot more to it than just building the device. Verizon is known to be cranky about the content delivered through their network, and while I have no idea what they have up their sleeve in regards to iPhone content, I have to say it’ll probably be different than it is on the AT&T network. I hope I’m wrong about that though. Furthermore, Verizon is supposedly going to unveil their new 4G network sometime next year, which will use the new LTE standard, which will supposedly become the universal standard for all wireless networks. So why are they building a CDMA phone in the first place when it’ll just be replaced in a couple of years? The reason this matters to me is that I’m one of the people who would love to have an iPhone, but refuse to switch to AT&T. This is because I constantly see people on AT&T having signal coverage issues. Case in point: the entire floor on which I work which is just slightly below street level is a total dead zone for ALL other carriers except Verizon. If I didn’t have Verizon, I would have no phone service ALL DAY LONG. I’ve seen the same thing happen in other buildings as well. Not to mention Verizon is way ahead of the rest of the pack in customer service ratings. Sorry for the rant.
steve cross loves music and science 