Hubble Starts to Wake Up
Posted by on under fire hydrant, digg, tiger woods, rear window, golf club, lips, tiger | 
His SUV hit a fire hydrant and a tree; his lips were cut and he had blood in his mouth; his wife smashed a rear window with a golf club to get him out; he briefly lost consciousness.
Posted by on under boing boing, pierre schaeffer, th album, extence, lger, chest voice, vocal chords, anet, comex, tape recording, perfect sense, sgs, two girls, cameroun, co founder, musiques, peoe, senses, sg, lips |
This album from the legenday Ocora label is really one of my favorites on the planet. When I first heard these two girls sing I had to be actively convinced it wasn't just pieces of a tape recording that had been spliced together! (Ocora co-founder Pierre Schaeffer also pioneered the early tape-splicing music movement known as Musique Concrete, so I wasn't totally nuts): Akaheze par deux jeune filles I just wrote about the amazing ability of some birds to sing multiple notes at once. This woman's ability to switch rapidly between her head and chest voice is totally daring anyone to say humans couldn't defy all odds and learn to do it too: Akazehe par une jeune fille The liner notes for these songs say that this woman is using her lips as a reed. If you listen carefully, you can hear the switch over to her normal voice. It's a traditional kind of song for mourning: Ubuhuha 1 Ubuhuha 2 Unfortunately, like many on Ocora, this album is exceedingly rare. Let this be another call for re-issues! The cover of the Musiques du Cameroun album is worth tracking down all on its own... This post is part of a series about music that disorients the senses. I've found that some of the most amazing and jarring auditory illusions are not the usual scientifically distilled or synthesized ones, they're often found in folk music and made by people's voices. Of course, in a way, it makes perfect sense - the vocal chords are some of the most complex and advanced musical instruments in existence. They are ubiquitously available, and we've been experimenting with them for longer than any other sound-making implement....Posted by on under m c escher, aying, lego, lips |
I'm sure a lot of you like the art of M.C. Escher and playing with LEGO, but Andrew Lipson and Daniel Shiu really managed to combine the two into an amazing example of geek art.
Posted by on under grand vizier, pirate bay, china style, internet enforcement, young earth, wikileaks, child pornography, provis, foot soldiers, acta, mpaa, censorship, oddities, lawmakers, leaks, firewalls, tru, piracy, sultan, lips |
The MPAA has updated one of its more ridiculous pro-censorship arguments; five years ago, they were telling lawmakers that blocking P2P would help block child pornography. Now they've presented at an information meeting in Mexico on ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a secret, far-reaching copyright treaty that contains provisions for China-style censoring firewalls for every country. The MPAA wants these national firewalls to block sites like The Pirate Bay, but the case they've made to lawmakers for it is: "Bring in a censoring firewall to block piracy and you can use it to shut off sites that embarrass your government, like Wikileaks." You can almost imagine the MPAA rep dry-washing his hands and licking his lips like a grand vizier manipulating a gullible sultan as he utters these words. During the Bush years, the MPAA recruited a bunch of Republican stalwart, ultra-conservative foot-soldiers (one of them told me that he believed in the Young Earth and Creationism). I can imagine that if you're one of these square-jawed rock-ribbed types, you could believe that the government had the right to cover up murder and torture by blocking Wikileaks. In an open information meeting at the Ministry of the Economy in Mexico about ACTA last week. There were two oddities that they called attention to. The first is that there was an MPAA representative at the meeting, who apparently asked whether or not ACTA could be used to block access to "damaging" sites like Wikileaks. As the Open Acta Mexico people asked, what does Wikileaks have to do with movies? It seems like an interesting question, though, and I'm assuming that the MPAA is using Wikileaks as an example of a site they deem "dangerous" to get the idea across, so that later when they designate other sites (say... The Pirate Bay....) as dangerous, they can use this to make the case it should be blocked. Nice to see the MPAA is so blatant about using copyright for censorship... MPAA Wants To Know If ACTA Can Be Used To Block Wikileaks? ACTA "internet enforcement" chapter leaks The Truth About ACTA: Video US: Concerns over Internet Censorship "central to our foreign ... Secret copyright treaty leaks. It's bad. Very bad. ACTA goes public How ACTA will change the world's internet laws Beyond breaking firewalls: how to fight net-censorship...
