E.T. detected by 2019/my 8 off 8th
April 28, 2009
One prominent NASA scientist believes that we will find life on Mars by 2019. Peter Smith, who led NASA’s Phoenix Lander Mission, made that prediction at a recent presentation at the University of Delaware. I used to think that Mars was probably dead, but used to harbor life millions of years ago. But due to recent findings of the Phoenix mission and the twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity, I do think there’s a chance that we’ll soon find microbial life beneath the soil surface. I certainly hope he’s right… more at Fanboy.com.
President Obama recently further confirmed his promises on boosting science funding and “restoring science to its rightful place.” But unfortunately NASA has not been mentioned nearly as much as other government science organizations. Phil Plait over at Bad Astronomy expresses his worries about this and the fact that Obama still hasn’t appointed a new NASA Chief Administrator. I’m inclined to agree… though I should make a point that overall this is a huge win for science and reality in general, and we’re already making vast improvements over the last 8 years of putting politics and ideology before scientific truth.
Oddee has a great post today about 10 amazing and fascinating natural phenomena. I’ve seen a few of these myself, including mammatus clouds, but none quite so dramatic as those pictured.
If you’re Nashvillian reading this, you’ve surely heard about the recent carjackings and robberies in East Nashville. Unfortunately 3 close friends of mine were victims of one of the carjackings, 2 of which received gunshot wounds. They are all fine and recovering, but these people were all heavily involved in our great local music scene and instantly the scene has rallied around them to help with their medical expenses. Jeremy Ferguson of Battletapes has volunteered to put together at least one, if not several benefit shows for these guys. I’ll post more info as soon as dates and lineups are confirmed. It’s possible that there may be a silent auction at these shows, and if there is I will probably put some framed prints in it. Thankfully, it seems that all 3 suspects have been caught.
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m curating an 8 off 8th at Mercy Lounge on May 11th. It’s gonna be a great one, and I urge you to mark your calendars and plan to attend. As always, it’s free and 21+. Here’s the awesome flier, created by Alicia and Drew at Monkey Ink Design. Spread the word!
Monkey Ink Design!
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.
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 