Tag: science

I felt I needed a chatty, rather useless post

4

Quantum Computer may debut next week.

My room looks like it was hit by a bomb from the wrong side of the gypsy tracks. Dominique came over, brought me valentine chocolates1, and finished off the bottle of wine that Michael2 left while I was packing. Evil, it was all evil, and delightful, and delicious. We didn’t pillow-fight in our underwear, but she flashed her panties, which were so rock-star that she broke my webcam.

Things discovered whilst packing: I have significantly more knives than I remember, but considerably fewer movies.
Whosoever has my films, this is the time to return them.

I’m beginning to think I can pack my entire collection of belongings into less than eight boxes. I’m going to try and slim it down to six, so if there’s ever been a non-essential oddment in my room that’s caught your fancy, this might when you want to say so. Guests are having small gifts pressed upon them, random possessions coming to light that I no longer have a use for – music, books, movies, bins of sidewalk chalk, small ceramic squirrels3… The list continues. I’ve started a free-box that I’m going to put in my hallway for people to paw through. It may even eventually move to the lobby.

Merry Lupercalia!

1 my first in two years, but they’re lindt, so worth the wait
2 worst picture ever, he’s rather more attractive
3 my relatives back east were under the misapprehension that I was stuck at age 6 until I went back to live there in 2000. all gifts that arrived previous to that either had pink, kittens, or both in prodigious quantity. now I simply don’t get any.
4 here’s her x-mas video.

paging Dr. Jane Tiptree (of Carnosaur)

Scientists see the softer side of Tyrannosaurus rex:

When scientists found a massive Tyrannosaurus rex thigh bone in a remote region of Montana a few months ago, they were forced to break the bone in two in order to fit it into the transport helicopter. This act of necessity revealed a startling surprise: soft tissue that had seemingly resisted fossilization still existed inside the bone. This tissue, including blood vessels, bone cells, and perhaps even blood cells, was so well preserved that it was still stretchy and flexible.

A scanning electron microscope revealed that the dinosaur blood vessels, which are 70 million years old, are virtually identical to those recovered from modern ostrich bones. The ostrich is today’s largest bird, and many paleontologists believe that birds are the living descendants of dinosaurs. Scientists may be able to confirm this evolutionary relationship if they can isolate certain proteins from the recently discovered T. rex tissue. These proteins could also help solve another puzzle: whether dinosaurs were cold-blooded like other reptiles or warm-blooded like mammals.

Does this discovery of soft dinosaur tissue mean that scientists will soon be able to clone a Tyrannosaurus rex? Probably not — most scientists believe that DNA cannot survive for 70 million years. Then again, before this discovery, most scientists believed that soft tissue could not survive for 70 million years either.

more here

why didn’t anyone remind me that kissing’s really nice?

There’s something about discovering vast amounts of Laurie Anderson on someone’s computer that garners them points of my instant approval. It’s the silliest thing, I know, especially as I’m not even a particular fan, but it kicks in my admiration without fail. Anyone with a sensitivity for Laurie Anderson much be an intelligent and sophisticated person. Somehow.

  • Will Eisner’s re-telling of Oliver Twist that explores the anti-Semitism that ran rampant through Dickens’s England.

    I blame the same place in my brain that was flattered when a new friend mistook me for thirty-three while we at Oliver’s on Sunday. (I’d hijacked his after-Illuminaires party into an impromptu front-yard slumber party, tying sheets to microphone stands to fake a pavilion). Over the years, I have skimmed off an almost misappropriated appreciation of culture from my much older partners that’s given me enduring soft spots for people like Captain Beefheart or Rickie Lee Jones, groups like King Crimson, and abiding, almost naughty, things for Frank Zappa and Kate Bush. (Though I may never really like Joe Jackson, it’s true, no matter how many of his albums I track down for people). Rarely do they surface, spending time with people my own age, but oh, when I find these respected troves of taste, I instantly smile.

  • Protein-Nanoparticle Material Mimics Human Brain Tissue.

    Not that my music taste has ever been particularly disliked. Even when I’ve got mainstream stuff playing, it’s usually of significant quality. Today Graham wanted to know what my music was, “That’s catchy,” and was shocked at my answers of OutKast and Nelly Furtado. “Do you have the one magical good song Kid Rock did too?”

  • New OK GO video, this time with treadmills.

    Which reminds me, I used to use an incredible program/website all the time that I really miss. It intricately mapped bands based on genre with lines between them, showing how complex the ties can be between musicians. Does anyone have any idea what I’m talking about? It’s not music-maps.com, it was much shiner, smoother too, and simply a treat to use. Had a name with the word Audio in it maybe. Anyone? Help?

    EDIT: Ed has been heaven-sent. The fabulous site is http://www.liveplasma.com/ (previously musicplasma). Now they do movies too. I am impressed. You are impressed. Go tell everyone you know already.

    An apartment in my building is coming up for rent. It’s a one bedroom on the ground floor, which means it has a garden space, for $700/month.

    • Here’s some fine examples of where I’ve been wasting my time on-line

    I am wretchedly tired. Come to my party tomorrow. Instead of writing, you’re getting a tab-dump. (Has anyone formalized that term yet? We should get on that.)

    blue
  • Fairwood Press currently publishes Talebones, a magazine that has been publishing science fiction and fantasy short stories for eleven years. Yesterday they sent out a plea for subscriptions, saying that they are in financial distress and without new subscriptions, they’ll have to quit putting the magazine out. Click here to see what you can do.
  • European Honeybees commonly imported to Japan fall prey to the Japanese giant hornet. The local bees do not, instead they have evolved a fascinating and wierdly wonderful defense. National Geographic News has a video.
  • An audio recording made on November 18, 1978, at the Peoples Temple compound in Jonestown, immediately preceding and during the mass suicide and/or murder of over 900 members of the cult, has been put on-line by someone who got the audio tape in 1979. This means that for your auditory indulgence, an alarming bit of educational history is vicerally available.
  • The Steam Powered Internet Machine, by Turner-prizewinning artist Jeremy Deller and his collaborator Alan Kane, links a steam engine to a computer, allowing visitors to surf the net, powered by one of the driving forces of the Industrial Age. Although mischieviously impractical, (click to see the picture, it’s neat), the machine does work.
  • Gez Fry decided in 2002, without any experience whatsoever, that he wanted to make a living out of Japanese style illustration. After studying artists like Masamune Shirow, he emerged with an astonishing enough portfolio to break into the big market, in only two years. Pingmag has an essential interview that follows why he decided on his excellent life-changing decision and how he went about it.

    • living in the wrong part of the world for what sustains me


    sultans elephant
    Originally uploaded by nickestamp.

    The Secret Machines didn’t really kick in until a third through their set, but when they kick in, they’re kicking in more than just the front door, they’re kicking in your entire cellular system. They sure do love their lights. It’s a first class show, only a little below Metric or the Arcade Fire with Wolf Parade. Duncan took a great little video of glasses dancing off a table from the thump and pull of the music. I was farther forward, in the front against the stage. It was both a tragedy and a shame that there weren’t more people, but it meant that I could move back and forth in front of the stage as much as I wanted, trying to get the perfect angle for my fan-slavish photography.


    Sultans Elephant 12
    Originally uploaded by Mr Hyde.

    Two found ads that taste great together: Campari & Choco.

    And here I am, glad to be on-line again because a friend is building a spaceship that’s going to fly with NASA and a 43-tonne wooden elephant took over London and Burrow has a new boy and they’ve discovered the oceans on Titan are actually sand. I felt horribly cut off without my pretty little window screen into the rest of the world. Trapped in my own head, unable to push out my miseries with keeping busy, is a wretched place indeed. I don’t recommend visiting. As I said to a friend earlier today, my posts this week have been the written equivilant of my computer catching me in the middle of a crying jag. I would apologize if what I had written wasn’t also true, however, so that’s that.

    Especially the awesome bit about the elephant.

    sort of too worn out

    Ed found me a video of Will Wright talking at the Game Developer’s Conference about ‘Spore’, the Next Amazing Thing to happen to video games. James was at this talk and constantly bubbled up about it while I was in Montreal with him. Now that I’ve seen it, or practically all of it, I entirely understand. Will Wright might be showing us the next evolution. If it’s required, I’m going to upgrade for this when it’s available, and some people I know have sworn that they’ll be switching from Mac to PC.

    It’s understandable. When even Science!!* is awesome, something like this is above proper description.

    Science!! of course, being more along the lines of World Jump Day. link found thanks to sophie. The basic idea is that if the people on earth all jump at the exact same time, a time specially choreographed, we can change the orbit of the planet into one with more hours of daylight, a more homogenous climate, and stop global warming. I’m signing up, aren’t you? I even vaguely would like a t-shirt for the amusement value.

    we hold these truths to be self evident

    Samorost 2, the sequel to one of the best flash art games ever made, has been released into the wild and is now devouring small portions of the earth that thought it couldn’t hurt to just look.

    I was slowly taking over this apartment in tiny hesitant increments. My toiletries were all in one tidy corner of the counter, my clothes were heaped only inside my suitcase, but now? Now my coat is on the floor, drawing a playful tangled line with my scarf between where I took off my shoes and where I landed to spread out newspapers with entertainment listings and determinately scribble all over them with a bright pink marker. Now my book and cell phone have marked an X spot on the chair I was leaning against, the one spilling over with comic books, my increasingly sick camera is lying as if dead, hinges open, while its card takes up a slot in the computer, and there would be dishes if I wasn’t expecting at any minute to jaunt off into the darkness to find dinner with James.

    Obviously, I have landed.

    Once again, Couchsurfing and Global Freeloaders came to my rescue, immunizing me against the rough-edged bicarbonate feeling of going stir crazy, sprouting social wings from my failing backbone. In half an hour, I’d received four invites to the same party, and another three to hang out on Sunday. Now I’m hooked up for the rest of my time in Montreal. However, this is practically just in time for my glass bone departure to Toronto. A rather telling example of apolitical timing, to be sure, and annoyingly typical of my life in general. Laugh-Cry moment. Shake fists at sky/self. Friday’s going to be interesting.

    “The narwhal’s single, spiral tusk has always been a mystery. Now a Connecticut dentist has discovered that the eight-foot-long modified tooth has as many as 10 million tiny nerves reaching from its surface to the central core and, ultimately, the whale’s brain.”

    This was last night’s entry. I was whisked out of the house before I got to post it, and then I spent my whole night out. I figure for the hell of it, I won’t delete and instead’ll just leave it here.

    also, we had dinner in a power outage

    Walking into a building draped with a giant inflatable orange octopus to discover that it’s a venue converted from a swimming pool carries a vestige of the same satisfaction as reading the line, “Deep Mix is a nice IDM/minimal internet radio station out of Moscow.” There’s just something inherently beautiful about the context, the message, no matter what the medium is discovered to be. “Scientists announced they’ve created mice with amounts of human brain cells.” Same thing.

    The white tile basin was scattered with inflatable red cloth couches and various forms of francophone hipsters in black clothing and striped retro boots. A table was in one corner of what used to be the deep end, flanked by lava lamps full of silver glitter and loaded down with copies of the trendy magazine the event was supposedly celebrating. Michel found his friend there, a dyke with pretty hair and a nice taste in shirts. She’s an SFX designer, makes amputated limbs for film and T.V. I didn’t catch her name, Veronique, until she gave me her card. It was hard to hear over the the two musician types on stage. Higher than us, even with the walkway where signs might have said PLEASE DON’T RUN, they stood wrapped in christmas lights. One was a good beat boxer with respectably solid work, the other insisted on crooning into a snorkel for the microphone over and over, occasionally dipping the end into a glass of water for atmosphere. The entirety felt like a film, like the two were too improbable to ever be expected to play music anywhere real, and especially not together. I tried saying as much to Yanick Paquette, but I think I was drowned out by the blurry sound.

    Once I was alone, I stood in the dead middle of the drained pool and practically sang “No known human has ever received an injection of embryonic stem cells because so little is known about how those cells will mature once inside the body.” I was loud enough that people standing at the edges looked at me as if I was insane, but I didn’t care. It was just the proper thing to do. These are the sounds that make my world continue spinning.

    Downstairs, found through a hole in side of the pool, was a tiny art gallery lined with pieces that I would have expected to be new in a very cutting edge 1986 or an evenly matched 1993. One wall was photoshopped photographs clumsily layered with pictures of women and digital scribbles, reminiscent of the pages of a wannabe Mondo 2000 magazine. Another was lined with mannequins with baby blue and brown corderouy dress suits appliqued with white flowers. To be fair, the smallest wall had interesting illustration examples in blue gesso, but they were badly mounted. The shine off them was blinding and made the art impossible to see unless you stood at an acute angle to the piece you were trying to examine. I gave up quickly on the basement, though it was quieter there, and went back upstairs to examine the space more. The possibilities of such a venue seem almost endless. If you could properly EQ a swimming pool…

    Damn me for finally leaving my camera at home.

    another day of making busy

    Habit carries with it consistancy, a reliable fall back of behaviour traits, how like all my friends have begun using pet names without even considering it. Darling and Dear falling from lips in accordance to our norm but not the public. Honey, meaningless without the bee-sting of kisses. When such mouths touch, there should be pull from the centre of being. Should the habit. Black robes and white wimples, it’s a thought, an outward exclamation point of my personal state.

    Andrew and Navi are making together a very sweet couple. I’m glad they’ve found each other in the myriad crowding of our friends. I wonder who’s next sometimes, as if my parties are the bouquet thrown by a bride. The upcoming omen of somebody getting laid a bit more regularly. Relationships are topical, a point form reference that I’m beginning to pay attention less to. Stop dominating the conversation. I want to remember that there’s a world out there. That as I sit at my desk, a million people are laughing.

    London had another day of Pfft Terror. The best news quote yet has been, “It was a minor explosion but enough to blow open his rucksack. … The man who was holding the rucksack looked extremely dismayed.” Somehow that sums it up nicely. (Thank you smogo for finding that one).

    In other news, the FDA has approved placing shock treatment implants into peoples brains to combat depression. A generator the size of a pocket watch is implanted into the chest. Wires snake up the neck to the vagus nerve, delivering tiny electric shocks through that nerve and into a region of the brain thought to play a role in mood. I particularly like the last bit, “Deaths have been reported among some epilepsy patients who have a VNS implant, but Schultz said there was no sign of increased deaths in the depression study.”

    sorry, not the same impact if sized down

    found in the journal of nt by ed_dirt:

    These were taken last week “south of Longview and west of Nanton” (about midway between Calgary and Lethbridge).

    if you’re further interested in nifty cloud formations, you may want to look here and here. Also, a video of a tornado eating a house, general tornado damage videos.