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Below are 25 friends' journal entries, after skipping by the 250 most recent ones.
| Friday, May 26th, 2006 | ||
| thenulldevice | 4:39p | The egg came first Philosophers have solved one of the great conundra, the question of which came first: the chicken or the egg. The answer: the egg came first, even if you implicitly exclude non-chicken eggs: Genetic material does not change during an animal's life. Therefore, the first bird that evolved into what we would call a chicken, probably in prehistoric times, must first have existed as an embryo inside an egg. Professor John Brookfield, a specialist in evolutionary genetics at the University of Nottingham, who was put to work on the dilemma, said that the pecking order was perfectly clear: the living organism inside the eggshell would have the same DNA as the chicken that it would become.Of course, the conclusion is not entirely indisputable, especially in the non-reality-based community: Creationists, for example, will argue that if God created Adam and Eve, he probably had a spare five minutes to knock up a chicken as well. |
| thenulldevice | 12:27p | C30 C60 C86 Go! Another article on C86, the lo-fi indie compilation that's 20 years old this week, this time on the Sweeping The Nation blog. Meanwhile, Berlin C86-influenced indiepop label Firestation Records, or perhaps Firestation Tower Records, (they're the ones who released the "Sounds of Leamington Spa" compilation CDs of late-1980s British indie-pop single releases, as well as various album rereleases from the same milieu) have released a compilation that could well be C06. Of course, they didn't have the gall to call it that, so it just has the rather generic title of "New British Invasion", and includes bands like The Pipettes and Vincent Vincent and the Villains, rather than the more generic and commercial Carling-indie that NME would have filled up any official C06™ with. |
| thenulldevice | 10:11a | UK to legalise FM transmitters The British government is finally considering legalising low-power FM transmitters, of the sort used to transmit sound from MP3 players to FM radios. In the UK, anything that transmits on licensed frequencies (such as those used for FM radio), at any power level whatsoever, requires a licence from the Secretary of State; (In contrast, in the US, it is legal to use transmitters below a certain power level without a licence.) With the popularity of iPods and their ilk, the law hasn't been enforced as rigorously as it might be; the devices started appearing quite openly in shops on Tottenham Court Road a year or two ago, with the retailers, when questioned, hemming and hawing about the legality of using them. Any change in the law to legalise the devices will require them to "meet strict technical standard to minimize interference to other radio users". Presumably these will include making them robustly unmodifiable to prevent them from being adapted into high-power FM transmitters, which are in demand by the large numbers of pirate radio stations across the UK. |
| Thursday, May 25th, 2006 | ||
| thenulldevice | 4:03p | Japanese war tubas Japanese War Tubas. I repeat, Japanese War Tubas: 
Seen on this page. The war tubas look like a musical instrument (some kind of Dadaist/Futurist sound-art device, or perhaps a super-loud military-band instrument designed to strike terror into the hearts of enemies, much as bagpipes were), but they were actually devices for acoustically locating incoming aircraft. I wouldn't be surprised if the photograph in question has graced at least one CD of experimental music/noise-art. (via The Athanasius Kircher Society) ¶ [no comments] |
| thenulldevice | 11:43a | Dual-use technologies The street finds its own uses for ultrasonic teenager repellants; now some enterprising hoodie-wearing troublemakers have apparently sampled them into mobile phone ringtones inaudible to teachers and authority figures, allowing them to text each other and organise happy-slapping parties and such in class with the teachers remaining none the wiser. Or so the Metro (a throwaway tabloid given out on public transport in the UK) says: Schoolchildren have recorded the sound, which they named Teen Buzz, and spread it from phone to phone via text messages and Bluetooth technology. A secondary school teacher in Cardiff said: 'All the kids were laughing about something, but I didn't know what. They know phones must be turned off during school. They could all hear somebody's phone ringing but I couldn't hear a thing.I'm somewhat skeptical about this. Wouldn't the MP3 format's psychoacoustic compression algorithms wreak havoc with subtleties such as ultrasonic tones? Anyway, I wonder how long until the Teen Buzz sound is heard in grime records, making the first form of teenage music that's actually (partly) inaudible to elders. (via Boing Boing) ¶ [1 comment] |
| Wednesday, May 24th, 2006 | ||
| thenulldevice | 11:56p | MC Dicko in da hizzouse! MC Dicko could be the next Icy Hot Stuntaz. He's an 8-year-old gangsta rapper from Chester (that's in the north of England), who busts rhymes (in a very loose sense of the word) about how "bitches and ho's" have been fucking him over (which, I imagine, is wigga-speak for "girls have cooties" or something), between recounting the occasional ghetto gunfight (which may have happened in his imagination, or be a true story from the X-Box ghetto) and thugged-up versions of primary-school arguments. Sample lyric: "Shoot the fuckin' wannabe wiggas bitch". Listen to the first two songs. Then, when you've picked yourself up from the floor and stopped laughing, listen to the third track, "Biscuits Skit", a rap about eating biscuits, and behold a world of improvement (for one, he actually bothers to rhyme rather than just rant angrily about fantasy battles, and does a very competent job). I imagine that when he drops the derivative gangstaisms and develops his own voice, he could go a long way. (via Bowlie) ¶ [1 comment] |
| thenulldevice | 7:18p | Daniel Gilbert on happiness More on the subject of happiness and its exact nature: Edge.org talks to Daniel Gilbert, a researcher on the subject (he is director of Harvard's Hedonic Psychology Laboratory): My research with Tim Wilson shows that when people try to simulate future events -- and to simulate their emotional reactions to those events -- they make systematic errors. Modern people take the ability to imagine the future for granted, but it turns out that this is one of our species' most recently acquired abilities -- no more than three million years old. The part of our brain that enables us to simulate the future is one of nature's newest inventions, so it isn't surprising that when we try to use this new ability to imagine our futures, we make some rookie errors. The main error, of course, is that we vastly overestimate the hedonic consequences of any event. Neither positive nor negative events hit us as hard or for as long as we anticipate. We're all told that variety is the spice of life. But variety is not just over-rated, it may actually have a cost. Research shows that people do tend to seek more variety than they should. We all think we should try a different doughnut every time we go to the shop, but the fact is that people are measurably happier when they have their favorite on every visit -- provided the visits are sufficiently separated in time. Those last four words are the important ones. If you had to eat 4 donuts in rapid succession, variety would indeed spice up your experience and you'd be wise to seek it. But if you had to eat 4 donuts on 4 separate Mondays, variety would lower your overall enjoyment. The human brain has tremendous difficulty reasoning about time, and thus we tend to seek variety whether the doughnuts are separated by minutes or months. Even in a technologically sophisticated society, some people retain the romantic notion that human unhappiness results from the loss of our primal innocence. I think that's nonsense. Every generation has the illusion that things were easier and better in a simpler past, but the fact is that things are easier and better today than at any time in human history. Our primal innocence is what keeps us whacking each other over the head with sticks, and it is not what allows us to paint a Mona Lisa or design a space shuttle. It gives rise to obesity and global warming, not Miles Davis or the Magna Carta. If human kind flourishes rather than flounders over the next thousand years, it will be because we embraced learning and reason, and not because we surrendered to some fantasy about returning to an ancient Eden that never really was. (via Mind Hacks) ¶ [no comments] |
| thenulldevice | 3:36p | Linux on Palm T3 These people are porting Linux to the Palm Tungsten. Apparently they now have it running on the T3 and showing a graphical environment (Qtopia or KDE, at a guess, though they don't say). (via lshift) ¶ [no comments] |
| thenulldevice | 12:15p | General Wellbeing In an attempt to shed the image of being "the Nasty Party", Britain's Tories have been bending over backwards to espouse un-Tory-like positions, without going so far as to make any concrete promises that might actually adversely affect profits. First they attempted to greenwash themselves with their "go green, vote blue" campaign, and had their charismatic new leader, David Cameron, very publically cycle to his office (with a staffer following discreetly in a car, carrying paperwork); and now, they're borrowing an idea from Bhutan (or at least borrowing its overall appearance) and promising to make national happiness a priority: In the first of several speeches on families and community, Mr Cameron told a conference organised by Google: "It's time we admitted that there's more to life than money, and it's time we focused not just on GDP but on GWB - General Wellbeing. "It's about the beauty of our surroundings, the quality of our culture and above all the strength of our relationships. There is a deep satisfaction which comes from belonging to someone and to some place. There comes a point when you can't keep on choosing; you have to commit." Mr Cameron's speech, seen as an attempt both to distance the party from its Thatcherite past and to underline its portrayal of the chancellor as obsessed with work and regulation, said Britain should "move beyond a belief in the Protestant work ethic alone". But he added that regulation could make business less competitive and that the key was to educate companies and encourage good practice.Of course, promises are cheap, and policies are another thing. Whether, when push comes to shove, the Tories would translate all their happy talk of leisure and work-life balance into concrete policies that might adversely affect profits (such as, for example, ending Britain's opting out from the European working time directive, which would limit work week lengths, averaged over a period, to an indolently un-Anglo-Saxon 48 hours), or just borrow New Labour's trick of frantically spinning in one direction whilst legislating in the opposite, is another matter. Meanwhile, the Graun's Nick Pearce argues that focussing on happiness is inherently right-wing and regressive: Happiness also has little to tell us about some of the most difficult issues of our times. Because it places a particular vision of the good life above procedural fairness, it is largely silent on human rights and constitutional government. It struggles to tell us anything useful about what morally to value in life and has little to say about the red-green agenda of marrying ecological sustainability and social justice concerns. Happiness is therefore a flexible friend for the political right. It can provide a veneer of radicalism to a project that eschews difficult trade offs and policy choices. In the wrong hands, it appeals to a stressed out, downshifting middle class but speaks less to those suffering the misery of poverty. |
| Tuesday, May 23rd, 2006 | ||
| thenulldevice | 2:11p | A survey of German humour Writing in the Graun, comedian Stewart Lee examines the foundations of the stereotype that the Germans don't have a sense of humour; he finds that it comes from the structure of the German language making certain types of humorous devices impossible: At a rough estimate, half of what we find amusing involves using little linguistic tricks to conceal the subject of our sentences until the last possible moment, so that it appears we are talking about something else. For example, it is possible to imagine any number of British stand-ups concluding a bit with something structurally similar to the following, "I was sitting there, minding my own business, naked, smeared with salad dressing and lowing like an ox ... and then I got off the bus." We laugh, hopefully, because the behaviour described would be inappropriate on a bus, but we had assumed it was taking place either in private or perhaps at some kind of sex club, because the word "bus" was withheld from us. But German will not always allow you to shunt the key word to the end of the sentence to achieve this failsafe laugh. After spending weeks struggling with the rigours of the German language's far less flexible sentence structures to achieve the endless succession of "pull back and reveals" that constitute much English language humour, the idea of our comedic superiority soon begins to fade. It is a mansion built on sand. The German phenomenon of compound words also serves to confound the English sense of humour. In English there are many words that have double or even triple meanings, and whole sitcom plot structures have been built on the confusion that arises from deploying these words at choice moments. Once again, German denies us this easy option. There is less room for doubt in German because of the language's infinitely extendable compound words. In English we surround a noun with adjectives to try to clarify it. In German, they merely bolt more words on to an existing word. Thus a federal constitutional court, which in English exists as three weak fragments, becomes Bundesverfassungsgericht, a vast impregnable structure that is difficult to penetrate linguistically, like that Nazi castle in Where Eagles Dare. The German language provides fully functional clarity. English humour thrives on confusion.(The last part also nicely demonstrates something else mentioned in the raft of German-themed articles in today's Graun: the English tendency to associate Germany with Nazis. But I digress.) Third, for the smutty British comic writers, it seemed difficult to find a middle-ground between scientifically precise language describing sexual and bodily functions, and outright obscenity. There seemed to be no nuanced, nudge-nudge no-man's land, where English comic sensibilities and German logic could meet on Christmas Day and kick around a few dirty jokes in a cheeky, Carry On-style way. A German theatre director explained that this was because the Germans did not find the human body smutty or funny, due to all attending mixed saunas from an early age.And here is a survey of German television comedy programming. It includes knockoffs of British and American shows, character-driven sketch shows, as well as more conceptual programming, such as the show that once broadcast 20 minutes of silence with the lights out. |
| thenulldevice | 10:34a | Amerivision Song Contest America may soon have its own Eurovision-style song contest. Of course, with America being, in its own eyes, the extent of the world, the contest will be between the 50 states. And since the states don't have their own national broadcasters, it will be run by commercial TV network NBC. In other words, it will probably turn out like American Idol or something, with little of the cross-cultural weirdness that makes Eurovision the kitschfest it is; expect to see big-haired Christians from down south, the odd multiply-pierced freak from San Francisco and a lot of standard saccharine ballads/MTV-style R&B-pop with perhaps a bit of local colour thrown in (that'd be banjo picking or tex-mex or perhaps the odd Celtic Mood, and not Balkan folk melodies or anything quite so leftfield), not to mention an excess of the sort of cloying earnestness America leads the world in. Is anybody else reminded of this Onion article by the idea? |
| thenulldevice | 1:11a | Os Mutantes Tonight, I went to the Barbican to see Os Mutantes. They were brilliant. For those unfamiliar with them, Os Mutantes were a Brazilian psychedelic rock band formed in the late 1960s, combining traditional Brazilian samba styles with electric guitars and rock'n'roll. They were part of the Tropicalía movement, then went vaguely prog before breaking up in the early 1970s. Their music, however, was profoundly influencial on the arty/experimental edge of popular music, influencing the likes of Talking Heads, Stereolab, Beck and Architecture In Helsinki, to name four. The version of Os Mutantes that played at the Barbican was a reformed one, including some 10 musicians, some of whom looked too young to remember the original band, though was fronted by Sérgio Baptista, the original frontman. They kicked off with a song that was a patchwork of chaos; a few bars in one style, then suddenly shifting to another, and so on, with the musicians changing instruments seamlessly. It worked rather well. The remainder of the songs varied between poignant acoustic melancholia, driving samba rhythm, psychedelic rock-outs and Beatles/Beach Boys-style melodic pop (and often combinations thereof); they did Cantor de Mambo (which they introduced as being about Sérgio Mendes in Los Angeles), starting off as a grooving samba and taking it into full rock mode, El Justiciero (with an introduction lambasting Bush and Blair, to the crowd's applause), Baby (the English-language one), a version of A Minha Menina with English lyrics, and quite a few songs, many of which I didn't recognise. The crowd loved it; first the Brazilians stood up and danced and eventually everybody else joined them. They finished off with a version of Bat Macumba (with Devendra Barnhart joining them on vocals, looking like a cross between a university lecturer and a mediaeval portrait of Jesus) and the crowd singing along (which is not hard), followed by a version of their art-pop/musique-concréte piece Panis Et Circenses, complete with the part where the tape slows to a halt. The support band was a more recent Brazilian outfit named Nacao Zumbi, who were somewhere between Not Drowning Waving and Faith No More. They had five drummers on stage, with the expected amount of rhythm, a vaguely heavy-rock aesthetic and lilting Brazilian Portuguese vocals over the top. They sounded a bit murky; I'm not sure how much of that was intentional and how much was bad mixing. Anyway, the overall effect was a bit like a heavily armoured post-apocalyptic samba float. This gig was being filmed as well; there were massive TV-studio-type video cameras positioned all around the auditorium, and as Os Mutantes played, several cameramen scurried around the periphery of the stage, mustering the self-discipline to stand still. I wouldn't be too surprised if this gig came out on DVD at some stage. |
| Saturday, May 20th, 2006 | ||
| thenulldevice | 11:01p | It's Finland Finland's metal monsters ran away with Eurovision, winning it with 292 points; a lead of 44. The runners-up were: Russia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Romania and Sweden.
The bottom 3 were: France, Israel and Malta, with Malta Lordi are taking to the stage, kissing the Greco-American woman, holding up the prize and giving a mighty roar, and getting back on stage with a reprise of their winning song as the credits roll. |
| thenulldevice | 10:35p | Eurovision: the vote And now we come to the voting, a display of national rivalries and political horse-trading set in front of picture-postcard backdrops. Finland's leading the voting handsomely; the screen showed a bunch of fans in KISS-army/monster makeup celebrating. The Cypriot representative was blatantly political, announcing that he's voting from "the only divided capital in Europe", and delivering the 12 points, in song, to Greece. Anyway, we're about halfway through the vote, and I'm calling this one for Finland (leading 163, with Russia following with 137). Eurovision 2007 will be coming to you from Helsinki. |
| Thursday, June 1st, 2006 | ||
dolboeb
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1:19a | Питер с третьей попытки Первый свой фотонабег на Питер я осуществил в октябре 2003 года, тестируя для некоего фотожурнала свежевыпущенный в ту пору Minolta Dimage Z1 (обзор потом даже где-то вышел, но экземпляра я так и не получил). Поразительно удачная камера, должен заметить, с автофокусом фантастической скорости, и ой каким непозорным зумом. Впрочем, всего 3МПикс. Год спустя, выступая на футурологической конференции в Стрельне (куда меня сосватала  свет очей моих Катюша Т.), я напустил на Северную Пальмиру чуть более продвинутую (и, увы, куда менее волшебную) Minolta DiMage Z2.А вчера и сегодня я улавливал виды Питера в объектив Lumix TZ-1. И окончательный мой вывод, при всей возможной удачности некоторых получившихся фоток, ( неутешителен ) |
rromanov
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12:50a | Френдполитика. Как замечательно. Вообще, я медленно добавляю новых френдов, смотрю их журнал, пытаюсь понять что-то такое. Не всегда сразу понятно, стоит или нет добавлять того или иного юзера. А тут вот меня стали добавлять во френды люди со спонсируемыми аккаунтами. Тут даже и читать ничего не надо, даже в журнал заходить: игнор и все. Простое решение. Человек, заводящий спонсируемый аккаунт, по определению наплевал на всех своих френдов, от такого жди гадостей. Вывод: не френдить. Ом мани. Current Music: KREC - Пойми |
corpuscula
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12:27a | понятная картинка  Современный мосоквский мущщина. Как и положено в этом сезоне - в розовом. |
mordovrat
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12:08a | Вот и лето. Сегодня в Краснодаре было +34. Через месяц мы все сваримся в собственном соку. |
s0tnik
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12:07a | Либерализм и Высшее Образование Вчера и сегодня принимали зачет по ИСАА. Вопросы были на уровне: "кто такой Моше Даян", "какие государства принимали участие в арабо-израильских войнах", "на чьей стороне воевала Япония во Второй Мировой войне". Результаты ужасающи. Из примерно 60 сдающих, специально избравших для себя этот курс (по выбору), 16 человек отправлено на комиссию. То есть с двух попыток не сдали зачет, и, по идее, в случае несдачи, будут отчислены. Отчислены, конечно, не будут - ибо за все уплочено. Есть институт индивидуальных графиков итп. За прошедшие два дня мы узнали, что - В арабо-израильских войнах принимали участие Россия и Англия; - Япония напала в XIX в. на Манчжурию - провинцию Османской империи; - Моше Даян основал Китайскую Народную Республику; - Камбоджа - богатая страна в Африке, а Нигерия - малонаселенная, экспортирующая алмазы; - Страны Персидского Залива имеют в качестве основного дохода экспорт легкой промышленности; - Студент не может расшифровать аббревиатуру СССР; - Студенту, по его собственному признанию, очень трудно запомнить, что в каком веке было (принимали только XIX и XX) - среди студентов бывают настоящие клинические идиоты, которых 20 лет назад не взяли бы даже в ПТУ Все без малейшего преувеличения. Это, товарищи, триумф либерального, капиталистического подхода к образованию. Все, к чему прикасается либерализм, превращается в чудовищную профанацию. В данном случае НАУКА превращается в нормальный такой servis, сфера услуг, educational business, очередной вид получения прибыли. Ломоносов в наше время не дошел бы до Петербурга. Его бы убили по дороге, но если бы даже дошел, то в университет вряд ли поступил. И тихо спился бы в своих Холмогорах. Все мы тихо сопьемся каждый в своих собственных Холмогорах. Current Music: Grup Yorum - Avlaskani Cuneli |
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dolboeb
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12:01a | Спасибо партии Минуту назад в Москве наступило лето. По погоде и не скажешь. |
| Wednesday, May 31st, 2006 | ||
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foto_decadent [ a_valleyofdolls ] 
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11:54p | THE SPLENDID ALLURE Vogue (It), November 2002, Photographer Ellen von Unwerth Natalia Vodianova scans from ironbed  ( +cold+ ) |
| Thursday, June 1st, 2006 | ||
zashtopik
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1:03a | Знаете,бывают в жизни моменты,когда стоит вот хоть чууууточку подумать...и уля-ля-ля ;) |
| Wednesday, May 31st, 2006 | ||
| reincarnat | 11:10p | Финансовый нацизм ну или социальный фашизм, кому как нравится. Вот это действительно существующий социальный феномен, гораздо более опасный и более живучий, чем временное помутнение сознания немцев с 1933 по 1945 год. Избранной расой господ объявляется совокупность человеческих особей с деньгами. Остальные объявляются мусором, генетическим хламом т.е. рыночно неэффективными. Далее - по Мальтусу. Классическая иллюстрация - г-н Ю. Аммосов. |
smitrich
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11:08p | Еще в городе Темникове в кафе "Флагман", которое распложено в соседнем с РОВД здании, таки продают "Боржоми". Думают, раз городу 470 лет, то все можно. Впрочем, в Москве в магазине "Карась" на улице Автозаводской тоже продают. Может, мне тоже чего-нибудь запретить в России? Думаю, мы с Онищенко сможем померится результативностью наших запретов. |
cmart
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11:12p | милый треугольничек волос
Current Mood: альбом ушел на золото Current Music: Iain Ballamy Betrayed! |
