- Lazarus 1.8.4 has been released. Bug-fix release but still worth having. Go get it!
- From the Questions-I-Never-Thought-to-Ask Department: How was sheet music written after quill pens but before computers? With a music typewriter, of course.
- How to become a morning person. Yes, there are benefits. The larger question of whether circadian orientation is born or made remains unanswered. Carol and I both lived at home during college. We’re both morning people. My sister and I had the same parents, grew up in the same house and obeyed the same rules (bedtimes were set from above and were not negotiable) and she went away to school. She is a night person. Proves nothing, but I find the correlation intriguing. (Thanks to Charlie Martin for the link.)
- Here’s a long-form, highly technical paper on why human exposure to low-level radiation is more complex than we thought (hey, what isn’t?) and that some data suggests a little radiation experienced over a long timeframe actually acts against mortality. I’d never heard of the Taiwan cobalt-60 incident, but yikes!
- Sleep, exercise, and a little wine may help the brain’s glymphatic system clean out unwanted amyloid waste products within the brain, preventing or staving off Alzheimer’s. This process may be the reason that anything with a brain sleeps, and why humans (who have more brain matter per pound than anything else I’m aware of) should get as much sleep as we can.
- An enormous study on the benefits of the Mediterranean diet was found to be profoundly flawed, and has been retracted. The data was supposedly re-analyzed and the original results obtained again, but if the researchers made the mistakes they did originally (assuming that they were in fact mistakes and not deliberate faking) I see no reason to trust any of their data, their people, or their methods ever again.
- How faddism, computerization, national bookstore ordering, a court case, and New York City cultural dominance destroyed (and continues to destroy) traditional publishing of genre fiction. The good news is that with indie publishing it matters far less than it otherwise would.
- If you’ve followed the nuclear energy industry for any significant amount of time, you know that fusion power is always 30 years in the future. Now, I’ve also been hearing about thorium reactors for almost 30 years, and I got to wondering why we don’t have them yet either. Here’s a good discussion on the problems with thorium power, which intersect heavily with the problems plaguing ordinary uranium reactors.
- Long-held myths die hard, especially when governments beat the drum for the myth. Eggs are good food. I eat at least two every day, sometimes more. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition published a study indicating that people on a lots-of-eggs diet lost weight and suffered no cardiac consequences of any kind. Good short summary here.
- I don’t see a lot of movies, but I’m in for this one, crazy though the concept is. After all, spectacle is what the big screen and CGI are for. Mad Max meets Cities in Flight? Sold.
- The contrarian in me has long wondered how much of what I put out on the street every week in the recycle can is actually recycled. The answer is very little, especially since single-stream recycling became fashionable. Almost all of it goes into landfills. The reasons are complex (there’s not a lot you can do with scrap plastic, for example) but apart from aluminum cans, the cost of sorting it far exceeds the value of the reclaimed materials.
- The antivax movement has always boggled me for its indomitably willful stupidity. Having stumbled upon a research paper on who the antivaxers are I boggle further: They are almost all members of the educated elite in our urban cores. This was always a suspicion of mine, and now we have proof.
- Here’s a fascinating piece on the effects of water vapor and continental drift on global temperatures. The topic is complex, and the piece is long and rich, with plenty of graphs. The comments are worth reading too. The primary truth I’ve learned in researching climate for the last ten or fifteen years is that it’s fiendishly complex.
- Brilliantly put: “But anger isn’t a strategy. Sometimes it’s a trap. When you find yourself spewing four-letter words, you’ve fallen into it. You’ve chosen cheap theatrics over the long game, catharsis over cunning.” –Frank Bruni, NYT.
- A few days back I got Leonard Bernstein’s quirky, half-classical, half-klezmer “Overture to Candide” stuck in my head all afternoon. One listen to this was all it took.
- I got there by recovering an old memory, of a chap who came to SF cons in the 70s with a strange keyboard instrument that he blew on through a hose, which as you might expect sounded like a piano accordion without a bellows. He was a filker and played interesting things, and I always assumed that he had somehow built the device himself. (It was much-used and taped up in several places.) But no, the chap is Irwin S. “Filthy Pierre” Strauss, and the instrument is a melodica.
- Finally, one of the creepiest articles I’ve seen in a couple of years. I considered and set aside a plotline in my upcoming nanotech novel The Molten Flesh that involved sexbots, real, fully mobile AI sexbots enlivened (if that’s the word) by the Protea device. Maybe I should bring it back. The original 1959 Twilight Zone episode “The Lonely” has always haunted me. Maybe sex is a sideshow. Maybe it’s about having something to care about that cares back, and therefore gives your life meaning. I could work with that.
music
Odd Lots
Trouble with the Messiah’s Handle
On the 10th of December, I declared Christmas Music! I yanked the general music mix thumbdrive from my car’s USB port (a car with a USB port…there’s something I didn’t predict back in high school!) and replaced it with the Christmas Mix thumbdrive. I know some of the stores have been playing Christmas music since Labor Day, but I don’t do that. 30 days and that’s it. Two weeks before Christmas is plenty soon enough, and we don’t end Christmas celebration on December 26th. Why constrain Christmas music time? Easy. I don’t want to get tired of it. I’ve talked about this before: Do Christmas too much or too long, and it ceases to be special.
And there’s that wonderful first few days when you hear songs you haven’t heard for almost a year (at least if you stay out of Target and Wal-Mart) that have in some wonderful fashion become new again. Loreena McKennitt’s “The Seven Rejoices of Mary” brought tears to my eyes, which can be an issue when you’re trying to merge onto the 101 beltway. And that wonderful cover of “I Heard the Bells” by Ed Ames, especially the kicker line, which in Ames’ bottomless canyon of a voice gives me chills and then makes me want to cheer: “God Is Not Dead Nor Does He Sleep.”
I added one this year, as I do most years. John Rutter’s “Angel’s Carol” came on our classical station, and I instantly liked it. Zoomed over to Amazon, paid 99c, and it was mine. That’s how music is supposed to work. Shame it took us so long to get there.
Not all Christmas music appeals to me. Jazzy stuff, well, no. Santa Claus stuff, yuck. Frank Sinatra, don’t get me started. “I Wonder As I Wander” has always troubled me. Not sure why. There seems to be a back-current of despair in it, and I absolutely cannot abide despair. Ditto “The Coventry Carol,” with a melody like something you’d sing at a bad funeral.
And so to my big sort-of-a-complaint for today. KBAQ plays classical Christmas music and does a good job of it. They’re particularly fond of “For Unto Us a Child Is Born” from Handel’s Messiah, and I like it too, especially the cover by Glad. When it comes up on my Christmas mix thumb drive I sing along. Good, high-spirited, affirming, all the stuff I really really like. Until we get to this part:
…and his name shall be Wonderful;
His name shall be Counselor;
His name shall be Mighty God;
The Everlasting Father…
BZZZZT! Hold on there. We’re talking about Jesus here, and I’m a Trinitarian. Jesus is not “the Everlasting Father.” Yes, I know, the verse is taken from Isaiah, written long before we had a clear handle on the Trinity. It still sticks a little, especially in a Christmas context. Ahh, well. Prophecy is hard. Isaiah was doing the best he could, and nailed all the rest of it. I’ll give him that bit, and assume God the Everlasting Father won’t be annoyed if Handel’s Messiah gets the Messiah’s handle a little mixed up.
Nor will I. I save my annoyance for those insufficiently infrequent moments when I’m in a store somewhere and they start to play “Santa Baby.” Please take that song and stuff it up the chimney tonight. Then light a nice fire, the hotter the better.
It’s turning out to be a marvelous Christmas. Don’t forget the Geminids tonight. And sing along with those Christmas songs. That’s what they’re there for.
Odd (Musical) Lots
- Today we have a first: an all-music Odd Lots. The idea is to make a few worthy songs (worthy in my view; YMMV) more visible. Where they can be purchased online, I’ll provide a link. Some are only on CDs. And a few may well be unobtainium. Not sure what to suggest about that. I’ve mentioned a few of these before and even linked to some. Where relevant, I’ll mention why I think they’re worthy.
- Rayburn Wright’s “Shaker Suite” (here, by the Canadian Brass) is a short compendium of three Shaker melodies: The well known “Simple Gifts” plus two very obscure tunes: the somber “We Will Walk with Mother and Mourn” and the marvelously energetic “I’ve Set My Face for Zion’s Kingdom,” which (assuming Carol isn’t in the car with me) I blast whenever it comes up on the mix SD.
- It was never a single, but the Monkees’ cover of “Shades of Gray” is in my view the best song they ever did. I’ve mentioned the song here before, and yes, I’m biased for personal reasons (read the entry) but still: When did 60s pop ever have a lyric that sane and subtle?
- I have always had a fraught relationship with religion, but one thing I discovered when I returned to Catholicism in the ’90s was that there were actually hymns that weren’t 350 years old. Marty Haugen has written quite a few, but none serves my energetic spirit so well as “Send Down the Fire.”
- Energetic? Punch in Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “The Running Set,” dial it up to eleven, and you’ll know what “manic” means.
- Is it a sendup of Fifties political paranoia? Or is it just a silly beer-hall march? Jim Lowe’s “Close the Door” defies analysis…which doesn’t mean it isn’t great fun.
- A lot of people have covered “Sweets for My Sweet,” but I don’t think it’s ever been done better than a local Chicago band called The Riddles. I heard it live at a church Teen Club dance in 1968, and eventually found a slightly crufty 45 rip on the peer-to-peer networks ten years ago. It’s now on YouTube, though you have to either listen to or FF past the flipside.
- One of the best (and perhaps weirdest) soundtrack cuts I’ve heard in the last 20 years is “Building the Crate” from Chicken Run. It’s not available as an MP3 single, but you can buy the full soundtrack CD, or listen to the song on YouTube. Klezmer, kazoos, and a full orchestra with a strong tuba line–what more could you ask for?
- Although rougher than I generally like my music, there’s just something inexplicably likeable about “You Don’t Want Me Anymore” by Steel Breeze, which hit #16 on Billboard in 1982. Energetic, well, yeah.
- This is probably my favorite TV series theme song ever, from what is almost certainly the first steampunk western. Lee Anne down the street had it bad for Artemis Gordon, and I’m betting a lot of other girl geeks did too. Yeah, the giant steam-powered tarantula in the movie was cool, but nothing will ever beat the original series.
- My high school turned down Styx’s bid to play for the 1972 senior prom because they were…too obscure. Heh. Bad call. And this is what I consider their best song, a terrific waltz that is almost a hymn: “Show Me the Way.”
- Another soundtrack cut that I don’t think ever got the recognition it deserved: “Through Heaven’s Eyes” from Prince of Egypt.
- From the same soundtrack, the item that gave me the idea for the scene in The Cunning Blood where Sahan Grusa destroys Sophia Gorganis’s pirate colony by simulating the biblical plagues using nanotech.
- Well. This was fun. I have to remember to do another one at some point. Let me know what you think.
I Should’ve Been a Jedi
Hey, country music fans, find yourself an overripe banana (or in Sarah Hoyt’s universe, a ten-pound carp) and get your swingin’ arm ready. I used to write a lot of filk songs but got out of the habit twenty or thirty years ago. Well…guess what?
Just in case you’re not familiar with the original, it’s on YouTube.
I Should’ve Been a Jedi
(By Jeff Duntemann; to Toby Keith’s “I Should’ve Been a Cowboy”)
I’ll bet you never heard ol’ Luke Skywalker say:
“Princess Leia, have you ever thought of runnin’ away?
Settlin’ down, would ya marry me?
(or at least get me the hell away from Tatooine..)”
She’d’ve said “yukkh!” in a New York minute;
Incest’s against the law; there’s no future in it.
She just stole a kiss as they swung away;
Luke never let his hormones…get out of place.
Refrain:
I should’ve been a Jedi
I should’ve learned there is no “try…”
Wavin’ my light saber, knockin’ the arms right off some ugly guy.
Blowin’ them Empire ships
Right out of the sky;
Nukin’ those Death Star cores;
Oh, I shoulda been a Jedi.
I mighta had a sidekick with a fuzzy mane,
Flyin’ blind by the Force, just like Ben explained.
Takin’ potshots at a Tusken Raider;
Givin’ a hand to your daddy Vader…
Blast off, young man, ain’tcha seen them flicks?
Outer space is full of rayguns, wookies, and chicks!
Sleepin out all night inside a tauntaun’s guts,
With my dreams in the stars instead of freezin’ my butt…
(Refrain X2)
I should’ve been a Jedi!
I should’ve been a Jedi!
Odd Lots
- This stuff has been piling up. And I’ve been tired and perhaps a little grouchy. It’s just a phase I’m going through.
- From the People-Whom-I-Had-Once-Known-About-But-Then-Forgot Department: Annie Jump Cannon, who mostly eclipsed Edward Pickering while helping to complete the Harvard Classification Scheme for stars. Annie made it into the slightly snotty but very entertaining Rejected Princesses site. (Thanks to R. K. Modena for reminding me of Annie and pointing me to Rejected Princesses.)
- Alas, it sounds a lot like Nook is circling the drain.
- Huh? A scientific expedition to the Arctic to study how global warming is melting Arctic ice had to be postponed because…there’s too much ice in the Arctic.
- And you wondered why we just bought a house in Arizona.
- Here’s how NASA keeps “new telescope smell” from destroying new space telescopes. (Thanks to Frank Glover for the link.) One can only speculate what garlic breath would do to them.
- A half-klick diameter radio telescope is under construction in China.
- The Supreme Court just ruled that the Feds can’t just take a raisin farmer’s raisins and give them to other people. That would be, like, theft or something. Government wouldn’t do that, right?
- So you can now keep your raisins. But watch out for your kids: The National School Lunch Program bans whole milk from school lunches but allows sugar-sweetened skim milk. Government always knows best, even if it kills you.
- Cool optical hack: Project the image of the full Moon from a telescope onto a ping-pong ball and get a 3-D model of the Moon.
- This has been around for awhile, but it’s worth bookmarking: a very big list of all the things (supposedly, if often ludicrously) caused by global warming. Science journalism makes climate science look silly and dishonest, and science generally look bad. I used to think I should have gone to journalism school. Now I’m glad I didn’t. It’s starting to sound like a dumping ground for failed Polly Sigh majors.
- Evidence? A scientist hoaxed the media by inventing a study showing that you can lose weight eating chocolate bars…and the media bought it.
- Here’s a database of POP songs used in TV commercials. It does not list (as best I can tell) commercials that were later morphed into pop songs, like “She Lets Her Hair Down” and “Come to the Sunshine,” both originally hair product ads.
- In the new film Pixels, Pac Man attacks Manhattan. The concept reminds me of a very old and really bad TV movie in which an airplane gets stuck between two days of the week, and its passengers have to confront titanic Pac-Man like monsters that eat each expired day’s reality so that the new day can be constructed on a clean backdrop. (Or something.) But damn if I can remember what movie that was.
Odd Lots
- Sony is shutting down its ebook reader business. Note the line that says with a straight face: “…the Librie was the first to use the e-ink display that makes long sessions headache free…” Headache-free? Headaches were why I stopped using the PRS-500.
- Here are the best shots I’ve seen of the first comet we’ve seen really close up. Y’know, I’ll bet we could make that into two comets if we really wanted to.
- According to Wired, there are Type 1 and Type 2 sockpuppets. I’ll bet there are others.
- Is luck really luck? Or is it some combination of skills and attitude?
- Here’s a detailed description of how rifle barrels are made. It’s a much more subtle business than I thought. (Thanks to Pete Albrecht for the link.)
- In case you were too young to actually be part of the 60s muscle car culture and wondered what all the jargon was in the old Beach Boys’ song “Shut Down,” here’s a detailed discussion. I was crushed: The mighty Corvette was going up against a “413,” which was in fact a…Dodge Dart.
- Someone asked me what I think about the EmDrive. Answer: I don’t. And until it’s demonstrated as thrust against gravity rather than thrust against a torsion spring, I won’t.
- Why, Lord? WHY?
- I thought I was imagining it, but evidently not: There really was a book called Science Fun with Milk Cartons . Now, where did I see the line, “Fun with Giant Frogs”?
- This one was real too, and I saw it face-out at eye-level in Bookstar.
- Speaking of real things, there’s a hot drink (tea of some sort, by the looks of it) called Urinal. (Scroll down.) I can guess where that one’s going. (Thanks to Irene Smith for the link.)
- More of the same here, though you’ll have to scroll to the very end to see the can of Unicorn Meat.
Odd Lots
- I’ve been gone for two weeks, and the pile is still pretty high. So let’s get to work:
- There are now three million Raspberry Pi boards in the world, and counting.
- This chap has designed one into a tablet. Not too surprising, as the original SoC device was created for smartphones.
- Here’s Todd Johnson’s solar triple thermoacoustic engine. I immediately asked, “What’s the physics here?” and Todd, being the consummate physicist, provided the link. Spooky cool.
- From Craig’s Lost Chicago: Photos of many extinct Chicago restaurants, some famous, some very obscure. I’m a little surprised that I had been to so few.
- Which led directly to Craig’s Lost Toys. Doesn’t list Mr. Machine, but does have a photo of the Puffer Kite in its original packaging.
- Another look at Chicago’s past: How Chicago Rocked the 60s.
- If you have any interest in the pulps at all, definitely take a look at the Pulp Magazines Project, which has legal scans of a great many pulp mags, including lots in the SFF category.
- Here’s another, similar archive for comics, with the difference that, although free, you have to create an account to access the books. May still be worthwhile if you’re big on comics. (Thanks to Stuart Anderson for the link.)
- Sounds like Facebook echo chambers to me: Groups promote anonymity, diminish personal responsibility, and encourage reframing harmful actions as ‘necessary for the greater good.’ (Thanks to Jonathan O’Neal for the link.)
Odd Lots
- Our new concrete gets its sealer coat tomorrow, and once it dries it’ll be (finally!) done. I’ll post a photo. So far we think it’s gorgeous.
- This article has been shared again and again and again on Facebook, and it caught my attention because it echoes something I wrote about in 2009: That because our stuff is lasting longer, we need less stuff, be it forks or cars. And the cars are piling up…or are they? Alas, the article is nonsense (it did smell a little funny to me) and here’s the point-by-point takedown.
- Here’s the best detailed article on bacteriophage therapy I’ve seen in quite awhile. It’s a hard read, but a good one. Sooner or later, as antibiotics fail us one by one, we’re going to have to go this way. (Phages look very cool, as well.)
- The scientific method wins again: We thought we knew the physics behind same-material static electricity. We were wrong. Doubt really does lie at the very heart of science, in that if we don’t doubt what we think we know, we have no chance of finding our mistakes.
- Now that eggs aren’t evil anymore, it’s worth exploring all the various ways to prepare them. If you like hard-boiled eggs, here’s the best explanation I’ve seen of how to boil them so that they’ll peel easily and without divots.
- Adobe’s Creative Cloud was down for some time. The issue’s been resolved, but it just confirms my ancient suspicion that putting everything on the cloud is a really bad idea. If I can’t access my software, I can’t work. Pretty much end of story.
- Blue light keeps you awake. Staying awake shortens your life. So as the day winds down, Turn the Damned Thing Off. Then read a book until you’re sleepy. I recommend any substantial history book, with a special nod to histories of the Byzantine Empire. (Thanks to Dermot Dobson for the link.)
- This is the company that makes the machines that play the songs on ice cream trucks. Or at least the ones in the UK.
Odd Lots
- Jim Strickland found a site with some of the guldurndest CP/M-80 programming tools from the 80s and maybe earlier. Most of them aren’t familiar to me, and I don’t have a machine to run them on anymore. However, if you want any of the four releases of JRT Pascal, or Turbo Modula-2 for CP/M, well, dinner is served.
- And for dessert, here’s the x86 DOS collection, including Turbo Pascal 3.02, Turbo C 2.01, and all of the original IBM PC slipcase compilers that I’ve ever seen.
- Very nice if not especially new intro to Flash and SSDs, from AnandTech.
- Another, more recent piece on Flash over there. Remember that it’s a multiparter; read ’em all.
- Pete Albrecht sends word of a Death Star ball camera trending on IndieGogo right now. It’s a little like kite aerial photography without the kite.
- Amtrak has some new muscle: 8600 horses’ worth. I used to take Amtrak between Baltimore and NYC regularly when I worked for Ziff-Davis, and it was a wonderful thing. Now if I could only get a damned train between here and Denver… (Thanks to Bruce Baker for the link.)
- Wonderful volcano photo over at Wired, which again leads me to wonder what the trends are in volcanic activity over the past century or two. Are there really more eruptions, or are we just hearing more about the ones that happen? If you’ve ever seen a chart somewhere, please share.
- Ouch.
- Pertinent to my last Odd Lots: The correct term is “assortative,” according to linguist Michael Covington. “Preventive” and “assortative” are derived from the 4th principal parts of the Latin verbs “preventus” and “assortatus.” That’s actually more interesting, in a way, than assortative mating itself.
- The Great Lakes are now 88% covered in ice. We may not top the 1994 level (94%) nor 1979 (95%) this year, but unless things get a helluva lot warmer out east in the next month or so, we’re going to give them a very good run.
- Great perky guitar piece by Eric Johnson in the $1.29 MP3 pile over at Amazon.
- Also, my fourth favorite pop song evah, for only a buck.
- If you &*!## love science enough to believe the &*!## data, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that sugar will &*!## kill you. (Thanks to my very brilliant wife for the link.)
- The core of loving science, by the way, is questioning authority–and demanding that scientific authority be sane, calm, utterly honest, and absolutely without anger. (And so–need I say?–should the questioners.)
- Either red wine, aspirin, or both could help us beat certain types of cancer. The key may be not too much wine, and not too much aspirin.
- If this Onion piece makes you twitch even a little, well, good.
Odd Lots
- The very first magnetic hard drive had 50 platters, stored 5 megabytes, and weighed over a ton. IBM was so proud of the RAMAC system that included the hard drive that it would take a demo unit on tour, to show it to a skeptical business community. Must have been hard on the truck’s suspension.
- Compare that original hard drive to Intel’s Edison, which is an X86 Quark processor and associated logic in an SD card chassis. The comments to the story are cautionary: There’s not much hard information on Edison right now, and it’s not clear whether it adheres to the full SD card spec or the mechanical spec only. Rumor holds that it runs Linux, though what the connectivity is I’m not sure.
- Edison is targeted at the idiotically named “Internet-of-things,” which, given Bruce Schneier’s cautions, I’m not entirely sure I want to clutch uncritically to my oddly shaped ribcage.
- If Edison’s a little too small, consider Intel’s Next Unit of Computing (NUC) machine, which crams a non-gamer desktop into a box 4 1/2″ X 4 1/2″ X 1 1/2″. $700. As best I can tell, that would do pretty much whatever I do now on my quadcore, minus hard disk mobility.
- I don’t remember when I last saw a sunspot this big. I think 2003. Must … scan … 10… meters…
- If you’re under the illusion that TV news outlets actually write the news stories that they broadcast, well, watch Conan O’Brian’s video mashup of 23 newcasters saying precisely the same thing. And it’s a really dumb thing, too. (Thanks to Pete Albrecht for the link.)
- Calling all pop music fans Of A Certain Age. (Like me.) This may interest you: Forgotten Hits has a collection of top 40 music surveys for various (mostly Midwestern) radio stations from 1956-1980.
- Talk about planned obsolecence. This truck is guaranteed not to rust…but it will melt within six months, tops.
- We could sure use a few of these right now.
