Two other good soundtrack songs…’Time to Pretend’ from MGMT & ‘Hold My Hand’ from UNKLE

28. July 2008 by admin.

The soundtrack to the movie ‘21′ yields several godo tracks, particularly these two: "Time to Pretend" from hot young Brooklyn band, MGMT, and "Hold My Hand" from UNKLE.  MGMT came recommended from my man, Ken, who runs a great music site called "BetterPropaganda"–you should check it out.  Ken listens to a lot of music, and has good taste, so no surprise that he pegged this group.  Not only is the tune good, but the lyrics are as well, juxtaposing the joyous synths with cynical ideas about making music, making money and finding models for wives…  UNKLE is not a new group and has been cranking out good tunes for quite a while. 

"Time to Pretend":

 

"Hold My Hand"

http://vodpod.com/watch/749551-unkle-hold-my-hand

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Some good music you may not have heard…

27. July 2008 by admin.

(remember, any Amazon purchases you make through my site cost you nothing extra, but make me money).

My last lists had to do with funky music you might not have heard.  Now, I’m going to suggest some tunes that may or may not be funky, but are great tunes that never got the exposure they deserved…usually because they were on soundtracks for movies that didn’t do that well.

Peter Gabriel

Peter Gabriel is one of my favorite recording artists.  He consistently does interesting things, often on movie soundtracks or compilation albums.  For instance, he collaborated on a song for the Pixar movie, ‘Wall-E’.  Though the song isn’t one of my favorite by him, he does do a lot of good songs and scores for movies: "Rabbit-proof Fence", "Virtuosity", "Strange Days" and "The Last Temptation of Christ" are some of the films that have benefited from Gabriel’s touch.

Here are a couple of soundtrack or compilation album contributions that are great tracks by him that you may not have heard:

1. "While The Earth Sleeps (Extended Mix)": Peter Gabriel & Deep Forest, from the film "Strange Days". 

Try and figure out what language is being spoken in the song without Googling it…

2. "Party man":

Peter Gabriel & the World-Beaters, from the film "Virtuosity" (not a bad film, by the way, starring a young Russell Crowe and Denzel Washington).

3. "No More Apartheid":

A b-side to "Biko" single and also on a compilation album made during the anti-apartheid movement. The track includes Little Steven (from the E-Street Band, as well as Ravi Shankar).

 

Other tunes you may not have heard:

Also from the "Virtuosity" Soundtrack:  "Fallen Angel" and "Samurai"

A great tune by Juno Reactor and Traci Lords–yes, the former porn star.  Your first reaction is probably ‘of all the songs you could pick, why would you pick one that Traci Lords sings?’  Because it’s a good tune.  The Youtube video below is for a different version of the song–you need to hear the mix that’s on the "Virtuosity" soundtrack.  By the way, Juno Reactor has a number of good songs, including another one from this soundtrack, "Samurai".  Try to find the ‘Golden Remix’ version–it’s the best by far.

 

"Fallen Angel"

 

"Samurai"

 

Here are some other cool tunes that you may not have heard:

Daniel Lanois, "The Maker". 

This is a great gentle song by someone who is far more known for his production prowess than his performance skills.  In all fairness, though, he’s a very good performer and musician.  The song was later covered by Dave Matthews, but I think Lanois did a much better job.

 

Death in Vegas + Iggy Pop, "Aisha" (from the Continuo sessions). 

Death In Vegas is known for "Days Go By", but I think this is a better tune.  Iggy Pop adds a lot to the song and the song takes on a character very different from what it would have been if some Euro-ponce with a feathered haircut sang the vocals.

I don’t want to link to the video of this song (it’s kind of disturbing), but you can find the album at Amazon, via my shopping link at the top of the blog.

 

The Cure, "To the Sky". 

This song never appeared on a Cure album, but I think it’s one of the group’s best songs if not THE best song.  You be the judge.

 

Banda Sonora, "Guitarra G". 

I don’t remember how I found this song, I know nothing about the group who performs it, and I don’t know if the people who did this ever did anything else. What I can say is that this is a very pleasant instrumental.  If you know anything about it, please enlighten me.

 

Oran Juice Jones, "The Rain".  This is an oldie but a goodie.  I bet if you listen to this song, it will stay in your head for a couple of days.

Link to Oran Juice Jones "the Rain"

 

Syntax, "Bliss".  This is one of my favorite songs. 

 

I can’t tell you how I came across it, but it may be one of the best songs by a group that I’d never heard of.  I include a link to the video so you can hear the song, but the video itself is risque and, frankly, not really expressive of the song itself IMO.  So, play the video to hear the song, but keep in mind that I am only endorsing the music.

Neon Judgment, "Chinese Black". 

I don’t know much about this group, and don’t care for most of the group’s other songs, but I like this song.  It’s got something going on that keeps me interested over the years of listening to it every couple of weeks.

 

Talking Heads, "Houses In Motion" (Live)

While I’m sure you have at least heard of Talking Heads, you may not know about some of the group’s less well-known songs like this one.  It’s a great cut in the studio, but, like many Talking Heads songs, takes on a different (and in this case, I think even better) character on stage.  The version I recommend is from the "Name of this Band is…" live album.  This album wasn’t issued on CD until a few years ago.  The video below is probably not the same as the track on the album but is close enough to give you the idea.

 

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Dr. Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14 Moon mission astronaut and longest continuous moon-walker: We have been visited by aliens and the government has covered it up for 60 years.

26. July 2008 by admin.

Pretty stunning on-the-record discussion.  Dr. Edgar Mitchell, who holds the record for the longest continuous moonwalk, and was a member of the Apollo 14 moon mission, said in an interview  on 07/23 on Kerrang Radio in Midlands region of England recently, that he has been briefed by government agencies that there has been visitation by aliens, and that many of the UFOs we see in the sky are in fact, aliens. Mitchell has a PhD in Astronautics and Aeronautics from MIT.  He claims that the visitations have been covered up for 60 years.  He says that the visitations aren’t hostile, because if they were, we would be gone already.  Finally, he says that different governments, including the U.S. will disclose what they have been covering up imminently (not clear if that means in the next month, year or 5 years, but seems to be within the next 1-2 years).

 

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Sega + Hasbro = Dancing Robot

23. July 2008 by admin.

What is an automated music personality?  It’s the new robot from Sega and Hasbro, that should be available worldwide in 18 months, at a cost of $745.

This is a two-wheeled dancing robot that can be hooked up to your MP3 player or iPod, and has speakers to play back music as it dances.  You can see the full story here. 

"The 73-centimetre (2.4 feet) tall black robot can bob its head and dance while LED lights on its head flash red.
It has stereo speakers and turntable-shaped hands that can be used for volume control, sound effects and DJ-style scratching.
"The Ampbot is for men who like robots and who as children dreamed of living one day with robots (italics added by me)," Osamu Takeuchi of Sega Toys, part of the Sega Sammy Group, said at the launch at the Tokyo Toy Show. "

I don’t know about you, but of the many things I dreamed of when I was a kid, living one day with robots wasn’t one of them.  Though, scientists have yet to prove that Ronald Reagan wasn’t a robot (a possible Disney experiment to advance the state-of-the-art in the animatronic Hall of Presidents?), and I lived with him for 8 years…

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Some recent photographs I shot

21. July 2008 by admin.

Here are two recent pictures I shot with my new D-SLR.  Let me know what you think.

Nautical decay 1

"Untitled" 07-2008-1

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Xobni: if you use Outlook, you should try this

20. July 2008 by admin.

Xobni is a widget that runs within Outlook. It bills itself as enabling you ‘to find people, e-mail and attachments instantly’, and pretty much lives up to its billing.  All it has to do is index your outlook e-mail one time.  I’ve been running it for a week or so and it’s very stable and useful. It indexes your e-mail and then provides analytics and some summary data about the individual who sent you the e-mail, such as: amount of mail sent and received, frequency with which you interact, an automatic listing of e-mails and documents exchanged, contact info, and who that person’s circle of people includes.  It does this all in one interface and does it automatically.  I think the interface, though not perfect, is quite good and usable.

You can download the component for free at www.xobni.com/download.  By the way, in case you haven’t figured it out yet, ‘Xobni’ is ‘inbox’ spelled backwards.

Recommended.

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I bet Microsoft + Netflix succeed where Apple Failed…yeah, that’s right, I’m talking to you, my Apple fanboy friends!

19. July 2008 by admin.

Now, don’t get me wrong– I admire the Mac, Apple & Steve Jobs as much as anyone.  Jobs is one of those rare execs, like Andy Grove, who transcends silos and disciplines.  But, I predicted that Apple TV would be a bust, and I was right.  It was a closed-system, too expensive, and the functionality just wasn’t compelling enough to warrant widespread adoption.  Plus you had to use iTunes to gather your content.

Fast forward two years to today–earlier this week, actually.  At the Electronic Entertainment Expo or ‘E3′ for short (I wasn’t there this year, though I went in the late 1990s, to the LA shows, when they still had beautiful spokesmodels, and tech company employees making fools of themselves because of the spokesmodels and people handing out free pens, foam dolls and logo-ed frisbees), Microsoft announced a deal with Netflix (I’ve been a happy member since 2001) to offer movies on demand via the Xbox 360.  Now this is a natural fit.  Why? I’ll tell you:

1. Netflix is offering many instantly viewable movies anyway, with or without Microsoft. You can watch a streaming film on your laptop any time if the movie is available for instant viewing–not all are.

2. Microsoft has an IP-enabled, high-definition media-center PC, better known to the world as ‘Xbox 360′ which can easily receive an IP-based high-definition video stream over a network connection (wired or wireless, though MS stupidly charges $70-90 for a wireless dongle–here’s an idea, Microsoft–if you want people to pay for Xbox Live, why don’t you give away the Wi-Fi dongle at cost?).  This box already sits (most likely) in your entertainment center, and is hooked up to a large-screen HD display.

3. Netflix has about 5M subscribers and there are at least 10M Xbox 360 owners in the U.S.  I don’t know the overlap between Netflix subscriptions and Xbox 360 ownership, but I’m willing to bet that at least 500K to 750K have both, if not more.

So, you have a marriage of an appliance that is already in your living room waiting for content to display with a source of content, and the only thing that is needed for the two to work together is for MS to agree to feature Netflix on its system–which happened this week.

What, you say is the downside–because, of course, with MS there always is one (and I say that as a shareholder for well over a decade)?  The downside is that, in addition to being a Netflix subscriber (I am) and an Xbox 360 owner (I am), you have to be an Xbox Live gold member (I am not).  Why am I not an Xbox Live Gold member, you might ask (you would have to be pretty bored to wonder about this, granted)?  Because I don’t need to pay to play games with strangers.

Now I can understand why MS wants people to be Xbox Live Gold members, since it’s the only way the company can profit from featuring Netflix on Xbox.  However, I am unlikely to pay more to save Netflix shipping costs–so, while I still think that this partnership is going to succeed where Apple TV failed, there is still more money involved in making the service work than I have a taste for.

The key is though that I think Microsoft will finally succeed where other more pure–play video-over-IP companies have failed.  Essentially, Microsoft is and will be offering a very capable box that can play back any video content, plus serve up webpages, plus play back state-of-the-art games.  I used to work as a VC, and supported the digital set top box group at Intel.  The head of engineering, a guy named Mike Richmond had a great saying–"interactive television is the future and always will be".  I thought for a long time that he was right, but now believe that Microsoft, Sony and possibly Nintendo will succeed where John Malone, Jim Clarke, Rupert Murdoch, and others failed: trojan-horsing IP TV via the game console. 

What if Microsoft were to make a deal with LiveNation and show simulcasts of concerts in real-time or for later playback and charge $20-25 per Xbox 360 per show?  Could be interesting, and it’s something that Steve Jobs can’t really compete with.

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If you want to watch YouTube videos without the latencies…

19. July 2008 by admin.

I don’t know if it’s just my broadband not being quite so broad as I think or whether it’s Google not paying its electrical bills–but I do know that, more often than not, when I try to watch a video on YouTube, it plays for 10 seconds, pauses, plays for 10 seconds, pauses, etc.  This is not what I expect in the vibrant always-on no-latency world of tomorrow. 

So, I found a tool that lets me download YouTube videos to my hard drive and then play them back as .FLV files.  This is obviously not something you want to do for any random video you might watch, but for videos you know you want to see, like one I just downloaded about ‘web analytics’, it’s a lifesaver.

Anywho, you can find the tool to do the conversion at http://www.techcrunch.com/get-youtube-movie/ 

You type in the URL of the YouTube video you want to download, and it asks you where you want to save it. You then let the tool work its magic.  You will need a video player like VLC to playback FLV files, though.  You can find this free player (which also plays back .mkv files) at www.videolan.org/vlc

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Transfer Jet: wirelessly transmit across short distances without all of the bulls***t inflicted by BlueTooth

19. July 2008 by admin.

There’s a new wireless data transfer protocol called "Transfer Jet".  It wirelessly transmits data at very close ranges at a frequency of 4.8Ghz like so:

 

It has a faster transfer rate than USB 2 (560 Mbps vs. 480) and doesn’t require Wi-Fi.

You can find out more here.

Phone-to-camera, PC-to-Phone, Camera-to-TV, Cheney-to-Bush, you get the picture…

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Interesting interactive chart on use/popularity of baby names

18. July 2008 by admin.

I know this isn’t consistent with my other postings, but I came across a really interesting

use of real-time graphing: a chart that tracks the popularity of baby names by decade and use per million babies.

Try it.  I think you’ll find it’s pretty cool stuff.

http://www.babynamewizard.com/voyager#prefix=&ms=false&sw=f&exact=false

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Cool Radiohead video that uses 3-D plotting: "House of Cards"

17. July 2008 by admin.

This video was made with state-of-the-art 3-D plotting technologies.  It’s very cool and different from anything

I can remember seeing.

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The elderly love ‘cane-fu fighting’

17. July 2008 by admin.

One of those things you can’t make up:  one of the most popular if not the most popular activity among elderly residents of nursing or assisted living homes is cane-to-body combat.  Martial Arts instructors are teaching people with canes how to fight off an attack using their canes as weapons.  Apparently, the best canes to use are those made from hard-woods like hickory or oak.  Old people love this because a) carrying a cane is legal, so they have the weapon in plain sight at all times; b) it’s good exercise and c) they can whack people for fun while practicing.

You can read the full article at the Wall Street Journal online, here.

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Why the Economy Went South

17. July 2008 by admin.

I recently was listening to a podcast of "Democracy Now"–by the way, IMO the best and only accurate newscast I can find, esp. when it comes to American Foreign Policy–and there was an interview with Nomi Prins, who wrote this article for Mother Jones on the the five ways we were set up for the biggest economic downturn in decades, if not longer. While I knew some of the basics from previous interviews I had heard, this article gave me some very useful additional insights.  You should definitely check it out if you have a chance. 

Here is an excerpt:

Why the Economy Went South

News: A reformed Wall Streeter explains where Congress went wrong on lending. Plus, a timeline of the mortgage crisis.

By Nomi Prins

July 7, 2008

After months of housing-market debris, Congress is still grappling with temporary solutions. One question they should be asking this week: How could these problems have been avoided?

Below, five ways Wall Street and Washington set us up for the crash.

Newt Gingrich and Home Ownership

There were myriad calls in the early ’90s to usher in banking controls on the precipice of the GOP "contract with America" revolution. In response, the House battled for the Home Ownership and Equity Protection Act of 1994 to cap the most outrageous predatory loans.

HOEPA’s passage had dire consequences. First, it left a huge gap between the most egregious rates and fees a lender could charge and the next most egregious. If lenders didn’t want to hit the new caps, they could still extend loans with rates and fees just beneath the HOEPA triggers. Since they would make less money off of each loan due to reduced rates and fees, they’d have to find more borrowers to make the same profits.

Voila, the quiet birth of subprime lending.

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Very recent Chomsky interview

17. July 2008 by admin.

Anyone who knows me knows of my great admiration for Noam Chomsky.  Chomsky operates at a whole other level of thought when it comes to his analysis of American Foreign Policy and his ability to remember key facts, dates, political philosophies, books on various specialized topics, etc.

Chomsky recently was interviewed by Stuart Alan Becker for the "Bangkok Post", and had some interesting things to say about Vietnam, Burma & the greatest threats facing us today.  Definitely worth a read:

Resonant and unwavering

Noam Chomsky interviewed by Stuart Alan Becker

Bangkok Post, July 14, 2008

BECKER: You opposed the Vietnam War long before it was fashionable. When and why did you make that decision? Do you feel you made a difference?

CHOMSKY: I opposed the Vietnam war from the mid-1940s, when the French invaded, a few years later receiving direct US support. But I did not do much beyond signing statements and the like until 1962, when the back pages of the New York Times casually reported that the US Air Force was flying a large proportion of the bombing missions against South Vietnam, with the planes disguised with SVN markings. At that point I realised that I had better learn more about this, began to look into it more carefully, and had to make a hard decision. I had enough experience with political activism to know that if I became involved, it would soon grow to be a major undertaking, with few limits, and I would have to give up a lot that meant a great deal to me. I decided to plunge in, not without reluctance. It took years of hard and painful work of protest and resistance before a real anti-war movement developed. There is no doubt that it made a difference. One illustration comes from the Pentagon Papers, the final section, dealing with the immediate reaction to the Tet revolt; in imperial terminology, it is called the "Tet offensive", on the tacit assumption that a revolt against our military occupation is aggression. The government considered sending several hundred thousand more troops to South Vietnam, but decided not to because of concern that they would need the troops for civil disorder control at home in the likely event of a mass uprising of unprecedented proportions. We also know that by then 70 per cent of the US population felt that the war was "fundamentally wrong and immoral", not "a mistake" - while intellectual elites debated whether Washington’s "bungling efforts to do good" were a "mistake" that was becoming too costly to us (Anthony Lewis of the New York Times, at the outer limits of dissidence within the mainstream).

How much any one individual contributed to the radical change of consciousness and understanding, and the willingness to do something about state crimes, it is hard to say.

BECKER: You have said the US played a significant role in actions that led to the installation of the Burmese junta back in 1962. What’s the subtext, the background we’re not understanding: What are the consequences of the enormous UK investment in Burma, of earlier US weapons sales, of recent Israeli weapons sales to the junta - and of Chevron Oil’s continued supply of millions and millions of dollars in oil money to the junta?

CHOMSKY: Burma had one of the few elected governments in the region in the 1950s, and was intent on pursuing a neutralist course. The Eisenhower administration was carrying out vigorous efforts to enlist the governments in the region into its Cold War crusades. As part of this broad campaign of subversion and violence, Washington installed thousands of heavily armed Chinese Nationalist troops in northern Burma to carry out cross-border operations into China. Burma vigorously objected, but in vain. The China forces began arming and supporting insurgent minorities in that turbulent region. In reaction, power within Burma began to shift to the military, leading finally to the 1962 coup. The matter is discussed by Audrey and George Kahin, Subversion as Foreign Policy. George Kahin was one of the leading Southeast Asian scholars, virtually the founder of the academic discipline in the US. The consequences of the US-UK-Israeli operations you describe are, of course, to strengthen the military junta. These matters are unreported and unknown in the US, apart from specialists and activists, because they interfere too dramatically with the doctrine that "we are good" and "they are evil", the foundation of virtually every state propaganda system.

BECKER: Do you think there’s any chance of a popular uprising being successful in Burma, or do you think those who rise up will only be slaughtered because there’s no advantage for the generals to give up their power?

CHOMSKY: I do not know enough to be able to answer with any confidence, but I suspect that now it would be a slaughter. On the other hand, the military leaders are ageing, and there may be popular forces developing that can erode their power from within.

BECKER: Was the Kingdom of Thailand morally justified to host US military bases during the Vietnam War? What lasting effects did the Vietnam War have for Thailand and the region? Is that part of why Thailand is an island of relative easy life, compared to neighbours with more severe problems?

CHOMSKY: Thailand’s involvement in the US wars in Indochina was a disgrace. I presume Thais, at least some of them, made profit from their participation in the destruction of Indochina. I know that Japan and particularly South Korea gained very substantially. It helped spur their "economic miracles". To evaluate the lasting effects we have to imagine what Southeast Asia would have been without the sadistic Western (mostly US) interventions of the postwar period - not to speak of what happened before. That’s a topic for a carefully researched book, not a brief discussion - and it would still be highly speculative, by necessity.

BECKER: Do you find George W. Bush and his wife Laura calling for change in Burma insincere? Do you think the US president’s action on behalf of the suffering and the marginalised in Burma in the wake of Cyclone Nargis would be more justifiable on moral grounds than the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan?

CHOMSKY: Bush likes to posture as a deeply religious Christian. Perhaps he has even looked at the Gospels. If so, he knows that the famous definition of the hypocrite in the Gospels could have been written with him in mind. One can think of all kinds of ways in which the Bush couple could show their sincerity, were it to exist.

If Saddam Hussein had given some money to hungry children it would have been more justifiable on moral grounds than his gassing of Kurds in Halabja. The same principles hold in the case of Negris vs Iraq-Afghanistan.

BECKER: What do you think China’s reaction would be if an internal uprising in Burma was successful?

CHOMSKY: China would likely tolerate, maybe even welcome, the overthrowing of the junta. There was, of course, a significant US role in actions that elicited the military coup that installed the still-ruling tyranny. But I don’t know how much that bears on the present situation either.

BECKER: Can you offer any insight into the behaviour of the Burmese generals, their motivations and how things are likely to work out for the people of Burma?

CHOMSKY: The rulers have a good thing going for themselves, nothing to gain by yielding power and no major risks in using it violently. So that’s what they’ll probably do, until the military erodes from within. Mass non-violent protest is predicated on the humanity of the oppressor. Quite often it doesn’t work. Sometimes it does, in unexpected ways. But judgements about that would have to be based on intimate knowledge of the society and its various strands.

BECKER: If a regime is so terrible that its generals loot the wealth of the country’s resources for their personal gain, carry out murders, political imprisonment and forced labour, is there a moral justification for an armed uprising of the suffering people?

CHOMSKY: There certainly is, in my view, with one qualification: An armed uprising would have to evaluate with care the likely consequences for the people who are suffering. I think it’s appropriate for people to rise up, but it’s not for me to tell people to risk mass murder. As for assassinating leaders, the question is very much like asking whether it is appropriate to kill murderers. They should be apprehended by non-violent means, if possible. If they pull a gun and start shooting, it’s legitimate to kill them in self-defence, if there is no lesser option.

BECKER: Would you give any examples of what could happen if the principle of universality were applied in the world today, between nations that are in conflict?

CHOMSKY: One example is that Bush, Cheney, Blair, and a host of others would be facing Nuremberg-style tribunals. And the observation generalises very broadly.

BECKER: What are the greatest dangers facing our human species in the world today and what can we most effectively do about them?

CHOMSKY: There are two dangers that could reach as far as survival of the species: Nuclear war and environmental disaster.

About nuclear war, we know exactly what to do. In fact, the World Court has ruled that it is a legal obligation of the signers of the non-proliferation treaty to live up to their obligation to eliminate all nuclear weapons. And the non-signers can be brought in as well. To give an example that is highly relevant right now, the US population is overwhelmingly in favour of establishing a nuclear-weapons-free zone (NWFZ) in the Middle East, including Iran and Israel. The US and the UK are formally committed to this policy. When they tried to construct a thin legal cover for their invasion of Iraq, they appealed to Security Council resolution 687, which calls upon Iraq to eliminate weapons of mass destruction. The US-UK invaders claimed that it had not done so. Resolution 687 also commits the signers to establish an NWFZ in the region. If the US were a functioning democracy, in which public opinion influenced policy, the exceedingly hazardous confrontation between the US and Iran could be mitigated, perhaps terminated.

Naturally, none of this can be reported or discussed, and it is inconceivable that any viable political candidate would even hint at the stand of the overwhelming majority of the population. One may recall a remark of Gandhi’s when he was asked what he thought of Western civilisation. His response was that it might be a good idea. The same is true of "democracy promotion", which, if sincere, would begin at home.

How to stave off the threat of severe environmental catastrophe is less clear, though some measures are obvious: Conservation, research and development of renewable energy, measures to cut back emissions sharply, and others. What is eminently clear is that the longer we delay in addressing these problems, the more grave will be the consequences for future generations.

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Cyborg animals being developed which will act as spies

6. July 2008 by admin.

So there is a project underway to embed electronics in living organisms like insects and create spies which can be remotely

maneuvered by the military.  They might also be used as bombs.

You can see an article about this here: http://technology.newscientist.com/channel/tech/weapons/mg19726461.800-the-cyborg-animal-spies-hatching-in-the-lab.html

Watch the video below, which is pretty amazing, scary and depressing all at once:

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Microwave ray gun beams sounds directly into people’s heads…can it help George Bush II speak in coherent sentences?

6. July 2008 by admin.

This is the kind of thing I read and I think, "Great.  How much is the government spending on curing breast cancer vs. figuring out how to subdue crowds that are protesting at World Trade Organization conferences?" 

Microwave ray gun controls crowds with noise

• 17:06 03 July 2008
• NewScientist.com news service
• David Hambling

 

A US company claims it is ready to build a microwave ray gun able to beam sounds directly into people’s heads.

The device – dubbed MEDUSA (Mob Excess Deterrent Using Silent Audio) – exploits the microwave audio effect, in which short microwave pulses rapidly heat tissue, causing a shockwave inside the skull that can be detected by the ears. A series of pulses can be transmitted to produce recognisable sounds.

The device is aimed for military or crowd-control applications, but may have other uses.

Lev Sadovnik of the Sierra Nevada Corporation in the US is working on the system, having started work on a US navy research contract. The navy’s report states that the effect was shown to be effective.

Scarecrow beam?

MEDUSA involves a microwave auditory effect "loud" enough to cause discomfort or even incapacitation. Sadovnik says that normal audio safety limits do not apply since the sound does not enter through the eardrums.

"The repel effect is a combination of loudness and the irritation factor," he says. "You can’t block it out."

Sadovnik says the device will work thanks to a new reconfigurable antenna developed by colleague Vladimir Manasson. It steers the beam electronically, making it possible to flip from a broad to a narrow beam, or aim at multiple targets simultaneously.

Sadovnik says the technology could have non-military applications. Birds seem to be highly sensitive to microwave audio, he says, so it might be used to scare away unwanted flocks.

Sadovnik has also experimented with transmitting microwave audio to people with outer ear problems that impair their normal hearing.

Brain damage risk

James Lin of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Illinois in Chicago says that MEDUSA is feasible in principle.

He has carried out his own work on the technique, and was even approached by the music industry about using microwave audio to enhance sound systems, he told New Scientist.

"But is it going to be possible at the power levels necessary?" he asks. Previous microwave audio tests involved very "quiet" sounds that were hard to hear, a high-power system would mean much more powerful – and potentially hazardous – shockwaves.

"I would worry about what other health effects it is having," says Lin. "You might see neural damage."

Sierra Nevada says that a demonstration version could be built in a year, with a transportable system following within 18 months. They are currently seeking funding for the work from the US Department of Defense.

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HDR: The Supermodels of the Photography World.

4. July 2008 by admin.

I am an abstract artist and an amateur photographer.  What little spare time I have that I don’t spend with the family or playing tennis, I spend trying to create aesthetically pleasing images.  So, one of the things that fascinates me is how we perceive the world, and what we will accept as representations of the world–in other words, how abstracted does something have to be before we no longer consider it a realistic representation?

For instance, there is a new(ish) trend in digital photography, called "HDR", for "high dynamic range" imaging.  You can read a wikipedia entry about it here.

If you’re not familiar with HDR, the idea is that in a situation where you are photographing a subject that has a broad range of highlights and shadows, the camera can’t provide detail for all the lights and darks via one exposure. Therefore, you shoot 3-5 photographs, varying the "EV" or ‘Exposure Value’ from one image to the next slightly up or down, so that, ultimately, you get 3-5 photos of the same composition, each covering a different slice of the available light and dark areas.  You then take the images and combine them using special software, and wind up having all the details preserved both for the brightest and darkest areas of the image.

The point I’m making by bringing this up, is that while the human eye is better at resolving lots of gradations of light and dark than the sensors are in Digital SLRs, these HDR images seem too rich and too dynamic compared to what I see with my naked eyes.  They seem, in a way, more real than reality, the supermodels, if you will, of photography.  Which leads me back, perhaps circuitously, to my point: what is the line between what our brains accept as being representations of reality and what we reject?  In the case of HDR, it seems as though the images represent the way reality ought to look if it had any sense.  When I look at black and white, I have no problem accepting these images as reality, even though I know on some intellectual level that I don’t see the world that way.  When I look at images of people frozen in mid-air (gymnasts, long jumpers, football players) I have no problem accepting those as reality, even though in real life, you can’t freeze time and space the way the shutter on a camera can. 

So, in my book, HDR images, when they’re done well, are amazing to look at.  But, to me, they’re idealizations of reality rather than representations of reality.   

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Even more funky goodness

2. July 2008 by admin.

I’m on a roll and can’t help myself…

"Theme from S’Express" by S’Express

One of those tunes that you hear in a club and you say ‘whoa’.  Used to spin this when I was DJ’ing to great effect.  One of the members of the group is Pascal Gabriel, who turned out to be an excellent producer of other groups’  work.

 

"Inside All the People (Deep Dish TaTa 80’s mix)" and "The Switch" by Planet Funk.  This is a group, like Groove Armada and Thievery Corporation, that is almost incapable of putting out funky, catchy songs.  The video for "inside All the People" is not for the mix I’m recommending, but is still pretty good.

"Inside All the People"

 

"The Switch"

 

 

"ReBirth of Slick" by Digable Planets

This is funky in a jazz way.  Lots of imitators but not equaled.

 

"Out of My Mind (perfecto mix)" by Duran Duran.

You’re probably saying "Duran Duran???"  But trust me, these guys have put out some funky songs.

This particular mix of this song is a great tune.  If you were to listen to any other version of it, it wouldn’t be quite the same.

 

"Up Jumps Da Boogie" by Timbaland and Magoo

I was tracking Timbaland long before his recent hits with Justin T. This song, which he did with Aaliyah and Missy Elliott, is better than most of his more recent songs.

 

"My Male Curiosity" by Kid Creole and the Coconuts.

August Darnell was something of a Prince-protege.  This song was the on the "Against All Odds" soundtrack, and is pretty solid.

 

"Player’s Ball" by Mazarati

Yep, another Prince-protege band.  A tune Prince wrote and performed on.

 

"Yeke Yeke (Hardfloor Mix)" by Mory Kante

From "The Beach" soundtrack, among other places.  Afro-funk. Another one of those songs that you can’t resist dancing to.

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Some more funky goodness

2. July 2008 by admin.

In my quest to promote seriously funky songs that you may not have had the pleasure of experiencing yet…

"Come Together", Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson takes a Beatles tune and turns it into a dance tune.  This was originally a B-side to a single (I forget which one). The version I could find on youtube is a live version–equally funky in a different way, esp. in the breakdown.

 

"What Time is Love" by KLF

In the late 1980s, KLF was the biggest chill/trance band in England.  I was at a club for my bachelor party when the DJ put this song on.  I’d never heard it before, and was really taken with it, and have been ever since.

 

"Lebanese Blond" by Thievery Corporation

This is one of my favorites by Thievery Corporation, but virtually everything the group has done is funky and interesting.

 

"It Doesn’t Really Matter" by the Zapp Band & Roger

This is an older tune.  I was at a party when I first heard/saw this video, and it was awesome.  It’s one of the few songs I can honestly say can’t be fully appreciated unless you watch the video.  Once you do, I bet you won’t be able to get the images (portly gentleman with the empty water jug) permanently out of your brain.

"Party Train" by the Gap Band

A great club dance tune. Period. The Gap Band was one of the great funk bands of all time.  If this doesn’t make you want to dance…

 

"We trying to Stay Alive" and "You Sexy Thing (Remix)" by Wyclef Jean

The Bee Gees started it, but it took Wyclef to turn it into an EVEN FUNKIER tune.  Can’t embed this video–record company doesn’t want to allow it.  Wyclef remade "You Sexy Thing" originally by Hot Chocolate, and did a great job.  You can hear it here:

Wyclef Jean & Ivy Queen - You Sexy Thing (Remix) -

 

All for now.  Bye.

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Non-oil company estimates on ‘electrifying’ U.S. autos: not so bad…

2. July 2008 by admin.

Of course, if you listen to the Federal Government or the oil companies, you will hear that converting the nation’s cars from oil to electricity or other non-oil energy source would bankrupt us and ruin the country–vs. the bankruptcy and ruin that we face WITH reliance on oil…but we’re not supposed to think too deeply about that.

Here’s the viewpoint of someone who has a vested interest in converting the U.S. to alternative energy to power our cars. He claims that we can put the infrastructure in place nationally for what 2 months of foreign oil costs us (or equal to what Exxon-Mobil makes in one quarter).

Agassi presents Congress with US electric car figures

"We can put in place the infrastructure needed to power the nation’s cars and end this oil dependence."

Dubi Ben-Gedalyahu 1 Jul 08   13:39

"For the price of two months worth of oil, some $100 billion, we can put in place the infrastructure needed to power the nation’s cars and end this oil dependence," Project Better Place CEO Shai Agassi told the House of Representatives Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming at a hearing last week. He added, "Of that $100 billion, moreover, some $80 billion will go into jobs that, by their nature, can only be performed in the US - the construction of the infrastructure itself."

Agassi added, "For the price of one year’s worth of oil, some $500 billion, we can go even farther - creating fully renewable electrical generation sufficient to power all of the nation’s vehicles. In so doing, we will again create jobs that can only be performed in this country, and we will give a much broader stimulus to the renewables energy market."

Agassi noted that the operating cost of an electric car, including the depreciation of the battery, is cuurently about six cents per mile, while the average American - getting 25 miles per gallon and paying $4 per gallon - is paying 16 cents per mile. He explained that a car getting less than 25 miles per gallon will cost even more - drivers in Europe pay two to three times that amount. He added, "Based on this infrastructure alone, of the average 2.6 cars per US household today, there is no reason that one of them can’t be all electric for use on every trip of 120 miles or less."

Agassi told the committee, "We are in active discussions with more than 30 other countries, and with dozens of regions, provinces, states and large cities. Many of those discussions, both in the US and globally, are well advanced."

Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on July 1, 2008

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Mighty Morphing Chemical robots–soft and squishy

1. July 2008 by admin.

I like tech stories that, at first glance, appear to be parodies written for The Onion.  For instance, when the U.A.E. announced it would forthwith host horse races with robot jockeys, to replace the enslaved children that they had previously used for jockeys, I thought this was all a bad joke.  But–fortunately for the enslaved children–it was true.

Now we have this story, which seems like a ‘Terminator’ movie plot point, but isn’t. 

Tufts to develop morphing ‘chemical robots’ from PhysOrg.com
Tufts University has received federal funding to develop chemical robots that will be able to squeeze into spaces as tiny as 1 centimeter, then morph into something 10 times larger, and ultimately biodegrade. The "chembots" could access urban environments, tunnels, caves and debris fields, and carry out other risky operations in complex environments.
[…]

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