Pixies/Next Big Nashville tix deadline/other weekend stuff
September 10, 2010
Let’s all face it, the big news show-wise this weekend is The Pixies playing two consecutive shows at the Ryman. This undeniably awesome, but I haven’t the money nor the means to go. I halfway missed the Pixies train in high school/middle school, so they will never have the significance to me that they do to some. The bands that cemented themselves firmly into my formative years were Nirvana, Weezer, and Green Day… amongst many others. But those were the main ones. So, yay Pixies?
Some other good stuff going down this weekend (besides the AMA’s):
FRIDAY:
There are a shitload of bands at the 5 Spot- Fly Golden Eagle, The Early Evening, Slow Claw, Chrome Pony and By Lightning are all playing as part of “Family Tree Vol. 2.” 9pm $5
Dozen Dimes, Frank The Fuck Out, and Diarrhea Planet @ The End. 9pm $5 (This is the Dozen Dimes’ album release show… I’m not up to speed on these things but I thought DD’s album came out a couple months ago… but whatevs, this is an awesome lineup regardless!)
SATURDAY:
Well, the 2nd Pixies show (tix still available!) is about it.
SUNDAY:
Whoa, sunday rocks…
Gentleman Jesse & His Men, Strange Boys, Cy Barkley, Natural Child @ Glen Danzig’s House. $5 7pm. I’ll be there.
Best Coast, Cults @ Mercy Lounge. $12, 8pm
The Love Language, Bows and Arrows @ Exit/In. $10, 8pm
MONDAY:
(Because I’ll be gone and not blogging for a week probably)
Keep On Movin’ celebrates their 2-year birthday. The weekly 5 Spot dance party/boogie-fest has been going strong for 2 years, so show ’em some love!
I must also mention that today is the LAST DAY to get early bird discounts on Next BIG Nashville tickets! Wristbands are $40 and VIP badges are $215, and after today the prices go up to $45 and $250, respectively. Act now or pay more later.
Before I leave for a week-long hiatus due to my road stint with Those Darlins, I must share one of the most ridiculously design-nerdy things I’ve ever seen. Apparently some super nerdy graphic designers had waaaay too much time on their hands and decided to figure out how many iterations of the word “helvetica” in 100 point un-kerned type would fit between the earth and the moon. Then they had some more time and decided to see how big, in points, the word helvetica would have to be to fit once between the earth and the moon. As ridiculous as this is, it makes me very happy. Click through to find out the results at kottke.org.
Have a great weekend and week, because it’ll probably be that long before you hear from me again on here.
Sun sends blast of particles due to arrive tonight
August 3, 2010
The above image was taken just as our Sun belched a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) in our direction on sunday night. This blob of charged particles are already beginning to interact with the earth’s magentosphere, and will likely result in some spectacular aurorae for the northern latitudes as the brunt of it arrives tonight and tomorrow morning. This is the first large scale activity the Sun has seen in several years, as it has been at the low-point of its 11-year cycle of sunspot activity. Events like this will slowly become more common over the next 3 or 4 years as the sun reaches its next peak in activity around 2012-2013. This is NOT any kind of major disaster, though it may cause a few glitches with satellites, as any CME event is prone to do. Unfortunately TN is way too far south to see any of the auroral activity, but if you’re in the northern US you might be able to see it. It is possible for aurorae to be seen this far south, but it’s very rare and requires a very powerful solar storm, such as the one from April 2001 (the last solar maximum) which made aurorae visible as far south as Texas. Such an event is possible as we head toward this next solar maximum, but I wouldn’t count on it. This upcoming maximum is expected to be about half as intense as the last one. (Via Space.com and Universe Today.
Here’s a video of the current CME when it first erupted sunday night.
A massive grin sprawled across my face as I read this Nashvillest post about the upcoming “Way Late Play Date” nights at the Adventure Science Center. “Best idea ever” is an understatement. It’s been at least 15 years since I’ve been to that place- then it was called Cumberland Science Museum I believe- and I’ve wanted to go back ever since moving to middle TN in 2000. I’m quite sure I’m not the only one who’s wanted to go but felt like I’d get in the way of all the kids if I went without having my own kids. Some genius in their event planning dept. must’ve realized this and come up with the idea for this event. It’s a 21+ event, which will include 2 alcoholic drinks in the $15 ticket price. Booze+science is a winning combination in my mind. I just really hope some dumbass doesn’t get wasted and then hurl while in the moonwalk simulator. Oh, and you can also get a discount by buying 2 tickets together for only $25. The dates are June 24th and July 27th. Embrace your inner nerd and get tickets here before they sell out! (Megan & I will be there June 24th.)
I’ve written many blog posts about NASA’s Kepler Mission here early last year around the time it launched, but it’s been a while since I mentioned it. The spacecraft has been silently staring into the heavens looking for minuscule dips in stars’ brightness which may indicate a transiting planet orbiting said star. Now that it’s been over a year since its first observations, NASA is obligated by law to release the data to the public for further scrutinization. Astoundingly, Kepler has produced a list of 750 candidates for exoplanets. This is a massive list, considering the current list of known exoplanets is at about 450. I say “candidates” because these are not confirmed exoplanets yet, they are data sets that could indicate exoplanets, but those stars need further review and observation by other telescopes to confirm that the dips in their brightness was definitely caused by a transiting planet. This could take years, because in some of the cases, another transit will have to be observed to confirm that it’s indeed a planet. Nevertheless, this is very exciting news, and I have absolutely no doubt that at least one of these candidates will turn out to be the holy grail of planet-hunting: an earth twin. Read more about this at Universe Today, and even more at the NY Times.
Now behold the most badass kid ever. He had his tooth pulled by a rocket. (You may think this is a bit cruel, but I’m positive that the tooth was a baby tooth that was on the verge of falling out anyway.) (Also via Universe Today)
NASA updates/Chile earthquake shortens day length
March 2, 2010
It’s been a minute since I mentioned the NASA budget/direction controversy, so here’s a bit of an update:
Lots of NASA employees and contractors in the vicinity of Cape Canaveral have launched a campaign against Obama’s budget cuts/change of direction for NASA. They are doing this because when the shuttle program winds down later this year, and the Constellation program gets ousted altogether, there won’t be nearly as many jobs in the area. That’s a legitimate concern, but in the big picture, I say it’s a necessary evil. Besides, these people are engineers, scientists, etc… they are all very smart and quite capable of finding work in other areas, maybe even for the private companies like SpaceX that will take over the duties of getting cargo and astronauts to the International Space Station. I am all for Obama’s plan, because it pushes NASA to look ahead into exploring the rest of our solar system. That’s where the REAL science/discoveries happen. In reality the space shuttle is a dinosaur- it’s expensive to maintain, and it’s not safe. It has no bailout system whatsoever, so if something goes wrong (see: Challenger and Columbia), the astronauts inside are screwed. It is most definitely an impressive piece of engineering, but it’s time to move on. NASA can NOT continue spinning its wheels, never getting us past the ISS and/or low Earth orbit. NASA needs to focus its efforts/money on projects like the VASIMR plasma rocket engine, which could cut a spacecraft’s trip to Mars from 6 months to roughly 40 days. The new commercial spaceflight companies will be more than capable of handling NASA’s cargo and low Earth orbit needs much sooner than NASA could on its own via the Constellation program. End of rant.
In some happier science news, Google is developing a new thermal mirror energy system that could cut the cost of electricity to 5 cents per kWh. This would make solar thermal energy much cheaper than coal. These stations are made up of a huge array of mirrors arranged so that they create one gigantic parabolic mirror. The parabolic shape reflects all the sunlight into one point, at which a heat-collecting device is mounted (on top of a tower), which in turn heats water into steam that runs a turbine to generate power. Naturally this system is only good for areas which receive a lot of sunlight such as deserts, but if Google can make them cheap to build, they could play a big part in getting the world weened off of fossil fuels for energy production. As I’ve said before, we shouldn’t be fiddling with ways to cleanup our use of fossil fuels, we should be focusing eliminating our dependence on them altogether. (Via EcoGeek)
Finally, the earthquake that rocked Chile over the weekend may have actually shortened the length of a day. Granted the current estimate is that our day was shortened by only 1.26 milliseconds, but that’s still pretty amazing. Not only did the day shorten, but the figure axis was also offset by about 3 inches. Think of how big this planet is… that earthquake had to release an unfathomable amount of energy to actually alter its axis! (Via Space.com)
WalMart begins redeeming itself/Endeavour docks with ISS
July 17, 2009
Just about everyone hates WalMart for various reasons. At least everyone with half a brain. BUT they’re beginning to redeem theirselves in my eyes with this new initiative to instate a universal carbon footprint rating for all retail stores to use. Different environmental groups have attempted to do this for years but failed repeatedly because it’s such a an enormous undertaking. But hopefully not too enormous for WalMart. If anyone has the power to get this kind of research done, it’s WalMart. Let’s hope this is a case of the giant with superpowers using them for good, not evil. This could have a huge effect if successful, because it will put real pressure on manufacturers to “green” their processes and products. More at the New York Times. (Via EcoGeek)
Credit: NASA TV
Space Shuttle Endeavour did a fly-around of the ISS today and then successfully docked. They took many detailed photographs of the heat shields and will inspect them in the days to come. The shuttle engineers are intrigued by the 12-ish pieces of foam seen falling off the external fuel tank late in the launch footage. This is mainly because of how late it occurred. It happened at a time/height when atmospheric pressure is very low and thus there’s much less stress on the foam to cause it to fall off, so they aren’t really sure why it happened. Nonetheless, initial opinion is that the heat shield did not suffer any major damage that would threaten safety of the crew on re-entry, but that opinion can always change. (Via Space.com)
Today I found a smattering of random links worth posting.
Google announced that they’re going to be developing a “Google Chrome OS”… basically a whole new open-source operating system for notebooks. As a Mac user I’ve yet to experience the Google Chrome web browser (it’s not available for Mac), so I don’t really know what to expect here. (Via Yewknee)
Nashville brewers Yazoo are going to be re-locating to the Gulch neighborhood next year. The new facility will allow the company to produce 4 times as much beer, which means they’ll be able to expand distribution to several neighboring states. They’ll also have a taproom at the new location, with the same hours they have now plus the possibility of opening a full-on pub if the demand is there. I must say I’ll miss the charm of the current taproom in the old Marathon Motor Works building, but it’s good to see a local brewery doing so well. (Via Bites/Nashville Scene)
In other local news, Nashvillest has a sexy new look to their website. Go check it out. I also found some disturbing news while exploring said new look- even though GM rid itself of Hummer, the brand still exists and it was bought by a Chinese machinery manufacturing company, and thus the Hummer executives need a new HQ. Unfortunately it looks like Franklin could be it. Honestly though, they’d fit right in, what with Nissan HQ there and the GM plant just down the road in Spring Hill. Why won’t these things just die? More at the Tennessean article.
Science is getting closer and closer to making invisibility possible. A new breakthrough in metamaterial technology may soon allow one to see through solid steel, or even become invisible. Furthermore, one could make one object look like another. The example they use is making a cup look like a spoon. The cup is sitting there, but when you look at it through a layer of the special metamaterial, you would see a spoon. One of the biggest applications that I can see with this technology would be in spaceships. The scientists behind this research say that it would be possible to make an otherwise opaque material transparent. This would eliminate the need for traditional windows on a spaceship- you could just install one of these devices made of metamaterials on a solid aluminum (or other metal) hull, which is much safer than cutting a hole in the hull to install a glass window, which is much more susceptible to the inevitable impacts from micro-meteors and other space junk. (Via NewScientist)
It’s pretty obvious that hydrogen is fuel of the future. It’s the most abundant element in the universe, and when it’s burned the only byproduct is pure water. Even though it’s abundant, it’s still hard to make here on earth. Up until now the best way was through electrolysis of water, but that’s very expensive, so unfortunately most of it today is made from fossil fuels, which kind of defeats the whole purpose (to get away from fossil fuels!). But that may be changing. Researchers at Ohio University found a way to make it from urea, which is the main compound in urine. Crazy eh? It’s not the most practical idea, but it could be made practical eventually… (Via EcoGeek)
This is really one of the most random/bizarre things I’ve seen in a while. Apparently Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin joined with Snoop Dogg and some other rappers on a song called “Rocket Experience.” No, that’s not a typo. Buzz Aldrin collaborated with Snoop. On a song in which he actually raps. Well… I guess you could call it rapping… The video is up on Funny or Die. Be sure to watch the “making of” video too. I don’t even know what to make of it, but it’s entertaining to say the least. Grab the song off iTunes, because they’re donating part of the sales to the ShareSpace Foundation. Today’s kids need a lot more science in their lives. Via Universe Today.
Of Montreal does a lot of cover songs live, but this time they’ve taken it to the studio covering Prince’s “Computer Blue.” Grab it over at You Ain’t No Picasso.
The future of architecture is here. It’s extremely hard to believe, but bendable concrete has indeed been invented. Not only is the stuff bendable, but it heals its own cracks too! Basically it’s all in the chemistry- when a crack occurs, the newly exposed dry concrete then reacts with the CO2 and moisture in the air to create calcium carbonate which acts just like scar tissue on skin, and the crack fills. I can see this being used in earthquake-prone areas and literally making the buildings almost completely quake-proof. Absolutely ridiculous. Via EcoGeek.
Mountaintop removal mining is literally a crime. I applaud the 100’s of dedicated citizens who have made their way to the West Virginia and Kentucky mountains to stage civil disobedience sit-ins. Yesterday NASA climate scientist James Hansen was arrested in one of the sit-ins, along with actress Daryl Hannah. I hope more celebrity and other high-profile people are willing to be arrested to help save these beautiful mountains and the planet. This is only one small part of the over-arching coal problem. The sooner we can stop using coal to generate power, the better. It’s absolutely filthy and despite what the commercials tell you, there’s no such thing as “clean coal.” It’s an oxymoron and here’s why. That’s probably the only thing on which I disagree with Obama. No coal-burning plant in America is “clean,” even though lots of research has been done on the technology. That’s because it’s expensive and impractical. Coal is not renewable. We’ll eventually run out of it just like we’ll eventually run out of oil (it’s all dead dinosaurs afterall!), so why the hell waste money and time trying to make it “clean?” We need to be putting ALL of our efforts toward 100% renewable sources of energy NOW, and say goodbye to fossil fuels FOREVER.
Don’t freak out over swine flu/itches explained
April 29, 2009
Got an itch? Ever wondered exactly what the hell an itch is, and why the hell scratching relieves it? Apparently even the best doctors didn’t even know why and how of itch vs. scratch until recently. Science Daily has an interesting report on research that was done to answer this very question. I think it’s funny how the simplest things sometimes are still medical mysteries.
Speaking of medical mysteries, I’ve got one for you- WHY THE HELL IS EVERYONE FREAKING OUT OVER SWINE FLU? I guess it’s actually a media mystery because they’re the ones responsible for the unnecessary freak-out. Chill the fuck out people! From what I can gather, this strain of the flu has caused about 160 deaths, and 2,500 illnesses in Mexico. Guess what? The NORMAL flu kills 36,000 people just in the U.S. every year! Do we see scaremongering about the normal flu? Nope. This is exactly the same kind of bullshit that surrounded the bird-flu. This swine-flu isn’t any more dangerous than the regular flu- basically the same symptoms and same risk of dying (you’ll only die if you have a weakened immune system due to being really old or really young, or have AIDS or other autoimmune disorder). Want more facts about the regular flu? Go to this CNN.com article.
On a happier note… if this doesn’t make you smile then you should have your head examined. A group called Playing For Change recorded the base track of the Ben E. King classic, Stand By Me, then had members of their group from all around the world hit the streets to get random musicians to add tracks to the recording.
I don’t post enough news about green technology and environmental issues on here… which is why I’m linking to this. As usual Europe is way ahead of the rest of the world in environmental legistalation and regulation. According to this report, there’s a proposal in Norway to ban the sale of any new gas-only cars starting in 2015. Even though the proposal is likely to fail because it has very little support, it’s a step in the right direction.
Jack White’s latest side project, The Dead Weather, will be playing their first public show in NYC @ Bowery Ballroom on April 14th. They played a private show right here in Nashville for the opening of White’s new label offices/record store/recording studio/photo studio complex back in early March. In other news via Brooklyn Vegan, AC/DC will be heading back to the US for some extended tour dates. I was under the impression that the Nashville show at Sommet Center was to be their last performance in the US… apparently I was gravely mistaken.
In case you’ve been under a rock for the past few days, Lake Fever has posted a special 5-song issue of their “Lake Fever Sessions” video series starring Superdrag. They play several tracks from their new record Industry Giants, which was recorded at Lake Fever. Pretty effin’ awesome if you ask me. I suggest reading Joe Baine Colvert’s blurb to the right of the videos about his teenage years and first discovering Superdrag. The photo to the left was taken by me when I ran into them at SXSW. Speaking of that… I FINALLY got all my pics from Austin on my Flickr, so go have a look. There are a lot of random candid shots on there that weren’t in the Scene slideshows.
For your daily dose of “awww how cute,” check out this article about a new dog that will be a strong contender for the world’s smallest dog. His owners oh-so-cleverly named him Tom Thumb. Via sister sisyphus.
While we’re on the subject of really tiny animals… might as well mention this new species of tree frog discovered in the Andes Mountains. It’s called Noble’s Pygmy Frog. How cute.
The Boston Globe’s Big Picture blog has a set of amazing photos of Mt. Redoubt, the Alaskan volcano that recently erupted. I knew it was only a matter of time before they had a post full of nice Redoubt imagery. I have a hard to choosing between the aerial shots and the nighttime lightning shots as my fav.
Credit: Josh Wurman, CSWR
This May 10 through June 13, the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are co-funding the greatest tornado chasing effort in history. It’s called VORTEX-2, and in classic scientific tradition, they came up with a really cool acronym, and then figured out words that would work with the acronym and also describe their project. The result- Verification Of Rotation in Tornadoes EXperiment 2 (VORTEX 2). As if we need verification that tornadoes rotate…. No matter how silly the name, I’d still LOVE to be right there with them!
io9’s quote of the day today: “The Best Green Technology is Population Control.” Just read this whole excerpt by author Paolo Bacigalupi. My favorite quote from the interview:
Advertising agencies and PR firms are delighted to sell us any number of “green” gizmos and they’re throwing in some nice self-esteem blowjobs for all of us, using their persuasive talents to assure us that we’re enlightened and forward thinking because we just stuffed a green X into our Prius.
Parking/Privates
March 30, 2009
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve really REALLY wanted to do just this:
Ok, now that’s out of the way. One of my favorite bands from our great local rock scene here in Nashville is The Privates. Their last album Barricades was phenomenal and still recieves regular play in my iTunes despite being over 2 years old now. The guys recently finished up a new EP at Battletapes, which is a departure from their long history of recording at Lake Fever Productions. I’ve written about this before so I’ll say no more about that. Just enjoy the title track “Motion,” and be sure to catch their EP release show at the Basement this Friday April 3rd, along with Hotpipes and the Garland Sisters (Caitlin Rose and Tristen).
If you read this blog or know me at all, you could probably infer that I’m a fan of the History Channel’s series The Universe. Thus I was quite intrigued by this article on io9 that talks about the Discovery Channel’s new rival series, Stephen Hawking’s Universe. Is the Discovery Channel at war with the History Channel?
Today I’ll leave you with this nice bit of space porn from the last space shuttle mission: It was taken as Discovery moved away from the ISS in preparation for landing. Even better than the last pic I posted of the ISS.
Click to enlarge
steve cross loves music and science 