Ice Cream/Ray Kurzweil/NASA embarks on biggest delay ever
April 21, 2009
Today is the annual free cone day at Ben & Jerry’s. From what I’ve heard, they’ve gotten the issue of long-line-management down to a science, and it shouldn’t take as long as you think it will to get through. Good luck! I honestly don’t know if I’ll do it or not…
The Protomen won last night’s Road to Bonnaroo 8 off 8th. They join The Features, who won the first installment of this 3-part series. The final one happens Mon. May 18th.
The 2009 Lollapalooza official lineup has been announced. Headliners are: Depeche Mode, Tool, the Killers, Jane’s Addition, Beastie Boys, and Kings of Leon. It takes place August 7-9 in Grant Park, as always.
Diplo and Switch have a new Jamiacan dancehall-inspired project called Major Lazer. It’s pretty much exactly what you’d expect when you mention those two and dancehall in the same sentence. Stereogum has 2 free mp3’s.
The new Zooey Deschanel film 5oo Days of Summer screened at the Nashville Film Festival this past weekend. Not exactly sure of the Nashville connection to this film, but Nashvillest has a nice guest blog review by Winston Hearn.
A documentary film on renowned inventor and thinker Ray Kurzweil has been made. It’s called Transcendent Man. According to my NetFlix, a release date has not been announced, but it’s in the Tribeca Film Festival. Kurzweil theorizes that humanity will reach a technological singularity in the next 30 years, and that the only way for us to survive is to learn how to become literal cyborgs- meld our minds with computers. Here’s the trailer.
Space.com reports that the lightest exoplanet thus far has been discovered in the famous Gliese 581 system. This latest planet is called Gliese 581 E and is the 5th planet found in this system. It’s only 1.9 times the mass of earth, but unfortunately it’s VERY close to its host star, orbiting it in a mere 3.15 days. That means it’s way too hot to support life. The only planet (that we’ve discovered) in this particular star’s habitable zone is Gliese 581 D, but it’s 7 times the mass of Earth, and though it’s thought to have a rocky core, it’s probably completely covered by a vast deep ocean. In other words, it’s a waterworld. So that would preclude any land-based life forms, but there certainly could be life in those oceans!
Finally, the Onion reports that NASA has officially embarked on the biggest, most epic delay in history. Indeed.
Magic Wands & JEFF get blog love/unexplained stuff
April 20, 2009
Via Bre Pettis
Today’s post will have a lot of quick links. Let’s get right to it:
First of all, Kottke.org had some great stuff this morning. The image to the left is from a hilarious set of vintage 1930’s German illustrations about various ways to get electrocuted. Please do visit the flickr set and read the rollover comments. SERIOUSLY… read them all, you will laugh quite loudly at the very least, if not fall out of your chair. He also linked to this pretty interesting article on 13 things that science has yet to explain. I say “yet” because I’m confident that eventually we will be able to explain everything through science. That is, if we last long enough as a species. Some of these have been pretty well explained, however… especially the alleged “WOW signal” from a radio telescope in 1977. SETI scientists see signals very similar to this all the time, and all of them have been declared to have terrestrial origins.
Universe Today has an interesting article explaining the procedure of a rescue mission in the event that Atlantis is badly damaged on its mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen.
Locals JEFF the Brotherhood and Magic Wands got some blog love today. JEFF was mentioned in this Brooklyn Vegan post about their upcoming dates in NYC with Screaming Females and Sisters. Then I found a post on RCRD LBL featuring a download of the Magic Wands’ Black Magic. Good to see these Nashville bands getting major blog love… though I’m pretty sure Chris and Dexie (Magic Wands) moved to L.A. a year or so ago. I would still argue that they have Nashville “roots” since Chris spent so much of his musical career here. Apparently they’ve got an EP coming out soon.
Tonight is the 2nd installment of the 3-part series, “Road to Bonnaroo” at Mercy Lounge. It’s a special version of the famous 8 off 8th series where audience votes, combined with a panel of judges, will determine which of the 8 bands will get to play at Bonnaroo. Tonight’s lineup and more info can be found on the Mercy Lounge website. I suggest you come on out and help decide the winner!
Finally, major kudos to Grimey’s for making the top 10 of SPIN’s 15 best indie record stores. They came in 8th out of 15. Awesome!
New mix/edge of space/honey bees
April 14, 2009
DJ Burgers (me) has posted a brand new mix for your dancing/listening pleasure. Click here to download the official DJ Burgers Spring MIXXXX 2009. Here’s the tracklist:
Leif-Timbs
Le Castle Vania- Trouble in Daylight (LA Riots Remix)
KUDU- 4 Let’s Finish (Sinden Remix)
All-American Rejects-Gives You Hell (Bloody Beetroots remix)
La Roux-In For the Kill (the Twelves Remix)
Jensen Sportag- Jackie
PNAU-Baby (Breakbot remix)
Daft Punk- One More Time (Radio edit)
Black Kids- Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance (Twelves Remix)
The Presets-Girl and the Sea (Cut Copy Remix)
Rye Rye- Bang (ft. M.I.A.)
If you want me to DJ at a party or something, email me at djburgers@gmail.com. Also I’m hosting another 8 off 8th at Mercy Lounge on May 11th. Mark your calendars, it’ll be a good one. Lineup is mostly confirmed but I’ll wait until I hear from everyone to post it here.
Ok now that the shameless self-promotion is out of the way, on to some music news… and there’s really only one thing that sticks out to me today. Phil Spector was found guilty of murder and could face life in prison.
From the department of “OMG THAT’S DISGUSTING!!!”…. A man in Russia had a 5 cm. fir tree removed from inside his lung. I don’t understand how it grew without any light…. In fact, I question the legitimacy of this story. Gross, nonetheless.
Scientists in Spain have discovered one potential cause of Honey Bee Colony Collapse Disorder, Science Daily reports. No, it’s not lethal tree farts as M. Night Shyamalan would have us believe. They found a bacteria that was infecting a colony and successfully treated it with anitbiotics. This may or may not be the main cause of CCD. Let’s hope it is, because if they keep dying, it could be devastaing for the world’s food supply.
Scientists at the University of Calgary have come up with a new definition for the edge of space. According to them, it’s 73 miles above the Earth’s surface. But the definition is still pretty unclear, becuase technically an astronaut is said to have been to space after travelling only 50 miles above the ground. Furthermore, for the space shuttle the edge of space is defined as 76 miles becuase that’s where it switches from thrusters to using air surfaces (the wings) for control. But the atomsphere at that altitude is still negligible, the only reason the space shuttle can use air surfaces that high-up is becuase at that point it’s just beginning re-entry and thus is travelling at 16,000-17,000 mph. If it were travelling much slower than that it would still have to use thrusters.
On this day in 1970, the famous words “Houston, we have a problem” came across the radio from Apollo 13. If you’re interested, you can read the details of the incident on the National Space Science Data Center website.
Update to yesterday’s post- the tornado that hit northern Murfreesboro was upgraded to EF4 intesity. It briefly reached EF4 status around Highland Park Drive and again near Tomahawk Trace, but was at EF3 strength for most of its duration. The total path length was also extended to 23 miles.
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 