Pat Metheny - Orchestrion

Half Full Glass — Cognitive therapy on the cheap

For the optimist, affirmation.

For the pessimist, annoyance.

For everyone, $11.95.

Mirrored from Book of Joe

Patrick Stewart

Conversation with Patrick Stewart

Star Trek and Dune's Patrick Stewart just appeared on U.S. television in Hamlet, alongside former Doctor Who star David Tennant. And someone asked Stewart why his training as a Shakespearean actor prepared him to do science fiction.

Via: Io9

Sleep Disorders?

This, of course, was perfectly legal in its time. And note the alcohol content - 74% (148 proof!).

And of course the box should warn against operating heavy machinery or using while standing upright.

Via TYWKIWDBI

Laptop Babbage

Curta Mechanical Calculator

I remember this from Scientific American. They were advertised, usually with a quarter page ad, toward the back of the magazine. Way pricy for a ninth grader, almost as much as the electric guitar I was salavating. Around that time, Texas Instruments was making noise about an electronic calculator that could add and subtract, but the prototype remained a year or two away. Come to think about it, my old slide rule is probably lurking in Mom's attic somewhere. (yeah, I have a picture of that guitar in a scrapbook too) Dark Roast Blend has a set of pictures of the Curta, with a teardown sheet and a video of it in action. The blow-up pictures show why German mechanical engineering, at the time, was considered top-of-the-line. Now, amateur machinests make miniature steam engine reproductions as a sort of calling card into the ranks. I wonder if any would try their hand at a Curta reproduction. It would hold the floor at any gathering.

Tiny Foal

Daily Mail, U.K.

This one is for both my neices. (whom I haven't heard from since Christmas..hint)

At three days old, a pinto stallion at Tiz Miniature Horse Farm in Barnstead, New Hampshire weighted only six pounds and was only 14 inches tall. His was named Einstein.Dr Rachel Wagner, Einstein’s co-owner, claims the Guinness Book of Records lists the smallest newborn horse as weighing just 9lbs. Breeders say that unlike the current record holder, Thumbelina, Einstein shows no signs of dwarfism – he is just a tiny horse.

Miss Cellania in Neatorama

Theresa Andersson

Theresa Andersson

Born in Sweden, working out of New Orleans, Theresa Andersson builds up a song using loops (the equipment at her feet) and looks like she's having a good time doing it. Oh Mary is a song from that huge reservoir called trad, but I think it's Mississippi John Hurt's version that most people remember. Go see her before she becomes a "songbird" (i.e. managed, expensive, artistically important, and featured on Behind the Music)

Department of Departments

The second nice Sunday we've had in a row. I could get to enjoy this. The Comstock (a bar) opened down below us. One more bridge and tunnel trendy spot for the hipsters. "Oh look, Camper, It has a swuf statue of Emperor Norton. OMG - LOL". Back in the old days, we used to..mutter..mutter. And we never..grable...grable... I'll start this week's linkdump with entertainment. We could all use a bit of that.

• Lewis Carroll's surreal poem, which features in Tim Burton's new adaptation of Alice In Wonderland, is read by Sir Christopher Lee at the British Library video.
• I feel real pity for musicians sometimes. I mean, look at this mess. Listen to it. What the heck is left of them and their craft of music? Every aspect of production, distribution, socialization even, has been virtualized and network-distributed. Musicians have really been close to the fire there for a long time. And their troubles aren’t over, either, not by a long chalk.
• Charlie Chaplin was one of the greatest directors and actors the cinema has ever seen, but, like most great artists, his life was filled with controversy and struggle.
• Their stupendous size seemed to fuel dreams of daring-do and glamour... like smoking a cigar on board of a giant flying boat bound for some nameless Central American lake, discussing the odds of finding an ancient treasure with a sultry brunette lady - seemingly a fellow adventurer but, very possibly, a rival spy.

This next one is sure to get the fur flying. There be more than a few folks doin the watusi while they search out cameras and talking heads to expulge this vicious degradation of all we stand for.. and just let me say... shocking.. the history we've been taught to accept.. Or maybe it will just fall back down the memory hole.

• While we are all familiar with the role played by the United States and the European colonial powers like Britain, France, Holland, Portugal and Spain, there is very little discussion of the role Africans themselves played.

The last batch mixes Politics, computer crime and big money, just like in real life.

• The Effectiveness of Political Assassinations: I wouldn't have believed you if you'd told me 20 years ago that America would someday be routinely firing missiles into countries it’s not at war with.
• Who’s got the biggest cloud in the tech universe? Google? Amazon? Lots and lots of servers, but not even close. Their capacity pales to that of the biggest cloud on the planet, the network of computers controlled by the Conficker computer worm.
• I can’t seem to get the Orwellian thought of a “National Department of Bigness” out of my head – where everything is kept small and local…except the Department.
• Goldberg’s salary depends on his not understanding your point; surely you didn’t expect anything else: epistemic closure
• They throw their double-foam latte in the faces of their aides when it isn’t perfect, and they’re not afraid to return a martini four times until it is just right.

Henry's Words of Wisdom

Click to Enlarge

Error Level Analysis

Hacker Factor

The above image was photoshopped. (purse strap still in her hand, botched background) We've come to expect this in advertising, albeit with a little more attention to detail. In a court of law, however, obvious problems arise. Neal Krawetz shows how he dissects a picture. (link below picture)

In this case, the ELA shows a couple of things. First, the entire dress was modified. If you visit their web site, you have the option to select a dress color and they digitally add in the color. So the color of the dress is not original. The ELA also has high values on her eyes and mouth. Those were digitally enhanced. This coloring also shows up in the 2nd and 3rd principal components. Basically, the artist brightened her teeth and tweaked her eye color...

This Link gives you access to a image error level analyser. (the program remains on the authors site, it renders the picture, you do what you want with the information) Another tool to go with that big grain of salt in your work-kit.

It's True

BoingBoing

Home-brew

Homemade Snowmobiles

This bulky machine constructed by one enthusiast retiree from the Russian city of Kirov is powered by the old Yamaha motorcycle engine and is entirely made of scrap. Fiberglass seat was formerly a part of a small carousel, gear shift lever was a part of an unidentified old Coca-Cola souvenir. The front skies are covered with fluoroplastic, a material with extremely low friction factor. The main distinctive feature of this snowmobile is a big wheel instead of a regular for such kind of transport rubber heavy caterpillar made of metal and rubber. For this reason this monster is very light which allows it to drive on fresh crumbly snow.

I realize that factory made machines might go faster, or be more reliable (at least until the warranty expires), but they dont have the "thats so /****/ing cool" factor.

Found in: Neatorama

Know This Person ?

Eyjafjallajokull

The Doubtful Guest

Here’s another excellent fan-made video syncing print to music via Michael Mantler’s wonderful 1976 LP The Hapless Child and Other Inscrutable Stories. It’s a collection of delightful and dark children’s verse by Edward Gorey set to music by a stellar cast including Wyatt, Carla Bley, Jack Dejohnette and Terje Rypdal.

Via: Dangerous Minds

Terje on guitar, Gorey on lyrics. The sound of fiords meets gothic romanticism with Dejonette keeping everyone from wandering off.I'll bet Manfred Eicher spun this one more than once.

Big Carnie

Modeled Behavior

"This is Chauncy Morlan, and around 100 years ago his obesity was so shocking that people would pay money to see him as he toured the country as a circus “fat man”. I find the unremarkableness of his size to be a telling sign of how we’ve pushed the limits of obesity in the past 100 years."

Mirrored from: Tywkiwdbi Blog

Some Faraway Beach

On Some Faraway Beach

I just got through reading On Some Faraway Beach (Life and times of Brian Eno) by David Sheppard. Good bio all told, albeit with a slight tendency to gush. On the other hand, access was granted via Eno's wife / manager Anthea, so a bit of politic phrasing was probably in order. The Briticism, swish, substituting for the American adjective posh, caused a few sentences to read oddly until you sorted the syntax, but that was more fun than anything else. Most reviewers have focused on Eno's horndog habits, (English rocker, early '70s, whoda thunk it) but I wish more time had been spent on his visual output. Whole installations get a single sentence while a single night backstage get pages. Maybe another author, if one comes along, will chose to shift focus. I stayed up way past my bedtime on this one.

Cherry Blossom Festival

Cherry Blossom Festival

The SF /Japantown Cherry Blossom Festival has been on for the last two weekends, but Sunday was both the grand parade and no rain on the horizon. There isn't that many cherry trees in the area, so a little one at Sutter and the J-town walkway briefly became the most photographed object in San Francisco. (and she did a fine job of it too) During the parade, I was sandwiched next to an Indian lady who had a child in the parade. We developed a sort of dance trying to keep each others head and hands out of our respective pictures. The exhibits were the usual roll your own sushi kits, sumi brushes, t-shirts,and japanese tchotchkes of various provenance.(tradition is rather relative at a street fair) Great fun and some of the best weekend weather we've had in quite some time.

A Big UPS

National Geographic

The four-megawatt sodium-sulfur (NaS) battery system consists of 80 modules, 8,000 pounds (3,600 kilograms) each, constructed by the Japanese firm NGK-Locke. They were shipped to Long Beach, California, in December and transported to Texas aboard 24 trucks.

Presidio, Texas is isolated and dependent on a single transmission line for its electricity. Conditions are such that outages and interruptions are common. Solution: build a really big UPS. I'm willing to bet that the electrical engineers are having a grand time. "Heck with that virtual stuff, we're going analog and we're goin' big. You guys with the six cell flashlights got nothin." Maybe, if this proves to be a working solution, America might consider building (manufacturing) things at home. Or maybe we'll be content to let our financial engineers make paper money while we invent more facebook apps.

Manufactured Predilections

I had dinner with my friend Geri and found myself struggling to define an idea that had been inchoate. Almost everyone senses that polls and trends are manufactured to order. Taking this a baby step further, is there any real difference between announcing a foiled subway terror plot on the eve of the patriot act vote and the sudden appearance of a Goldman Sacks lawsuit on the eve of a bank regulation vote? Are events in the world made to happen by a hidden cabal of mysterious overseers? I doubt it, the world's a big place. Is our view of events squeezed, directed, edited, and sanitized, with an eagle eye for profit by a few public media corporations and their advertisers? Rhetorical question. The news is made to fit an entertainment ideal, a sort of distraction or frame to the real business of selling eyeballs to advertisers. It is made to fit the predilections of the target audience, leaving no room for critical thinking that might leak over to the advertising, and deposits a small amount of unease and powerlessness that the advertiser promises to cure. Sophomore stuff, to be sure, but there it is. Keep a large grain of salt in your work kit and use it often.

Here are some links that I found interesting in the last few days. The first set is media related.

• For 30 years, conservative commentators have persuaded the public that conservative judges apply the law, whereas liberal judges make up the law.
• As soon as we move away from the pure private good paradigm, either because our good is non-rival or non-excludable or both, the market ceases to look like a good idea.
• Today, men of the Right such as Andrew Bacevich and Bill Kauffman publish volumes in the American Empire Project edited by progressives Tom Englehardt and Steve Fraser, while antiwar left-wingers such as Norman Mailer and Ralph Nader appear in the pages of TAC.
• Corruption in the Catholic Church

The next pair are Economic in nature. The China one is a bit odd. The idea that they might be more concerned with their own welfare and dismissive of the legitimate needs of a few currency speculators is just ..

• However, economists remain divided both on whether the yuan is undervalued and how to best influence Chinese policy on the issue.
• Were the big banks all knowingly running Ponzi schemes? That's the question that arises from the stunning hearings held this week by the Senate Permanent Committee on Investigations, chaired by Senator Carl Levin, on the collapse of Washington Mutual, the largest thrift failure in the U.S.

The last three are the good ones. Fun stuff. The first is a short story by John Kessel about Buffalo, N.Y. I put it in for Scott (hometown). Tom Waits is a collection of pictures, with a supprise guest, and the last one has the biology folks scratching their collective heads.

• Buffalo by John Kessel
• The piano has been drinking: featuring Cassandra Peterson, aka Elvira, Mistress Of The Dark.
• Metagenomic studies have identified viable Pepper mild mottle virus (PMMoV), a plant virus, in the stool of healthy subjects Note: Jump-to clickspace in blue to the right of abstract

I'd Prefer the Flying Car

ElectricFoxy

Ping is a garment that connects to your Facebook account wirelessly and from anywhere. It allows you to stay connected to your friends and groups of friends simply by performing natural gestures that are built into the mechanics of the garments we wear. Lift up a hood, tie a bow, zip, button, and simply move, bend and swing to ping your friends naturally and automatically. No phone, no laptop, no hardware. Simply go about your day, look good and stay connected.

I'm fairly sure I don't want my clothes telling tales out of school to the net at large. And I'm very sure I don't have any interest in what my friends' clothes are doing. The powers that be have quite enough ways to keep track of our respective butts without any assistance. Paying high fashion prices to help the surveilance state just isn't in the cards this recession .

Found In: Neatorama

Brucecorp

Oh boy, the Bay Guardian's green issue.

• Self-proclaimed ¾ million in circulation equals how much paper in the wastestream. (in tons)
• Half the issue devoted to advertisements for stuff, stuff, and more stuff, necessary to demonstrate your solidarity with various movements. (no personal effort involved, use your credit card)
• The cars, trucks, and building on Mississippi St. are green how? And I guess those cancer / cell phone articles will have to go now that the new agreement is signed. Or maybe not. We can still read about those other companies that are non-union, or abusing the courts, or sliding on their permit issues.

Yeah, yeah, holding Brucecorp up to its own cant is just picking low-hanging fruit. (and they take criticism so well) If you want a really tough assignment, try explaining the difference between the antics of the progressive Guardian and their polar media counterparts @ Fox to a disinterested third party. (we reported it, so it must be true. Q.E.D.) On the other hand, I can say that they have improved my writing. I can't use the words celebrate, class, progressive, crucial, vision, 'hood, or liberating without an inner voice warning me that I'm descending into facile slogans. Now if I can just address that darn circumlocution habit.

Edisonade

Steampunk Magazine

There are articles on steampunk’s relationship with politics, the future of steampunk fashion and the melting pot of 19th century Europe, poems about Alice in Wonderland, fiction about airships and hot air balloons (how very retro!) and instructions on how to raise your own island out of the deathless oceans. On top of all of that, there are interviews with Sunday Driver and The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing, and a good helping of all the other wonders that you have come to expect from SteamPunk Magazine.

# 7 is in the web,and hopefully will make an analog appearance in the more select bookstores. Download, and if you like it, keep an eye peeled for a hardcopy. Tom Swift approved. (senior, of course) And as far as the word "Edisonade" goes, I found a way to use it.

A lagniappe

My link list seems to be building up quicker than usual. I'll start with culture, or what passes for it this year.

• The William Gibson publicity machine warms up for Zero History
• Hank Williams
• In the Whitewater investigation, the biggest loser was the legal profession.
• Video of Japanese television performer doing magic tricks for a monkey. Monkey prefers treats.
• One of the keynotes of technological advance is its tendency, as it refines a tool, to remove real human agency from the workings of that tool.

Here's a more in depth treatment of last week's coronal mass ejection.

• Our planet is normally protected from CMEs by the terrestrial magnetic field, but the twisted magnetic fields carried by CMEs can break through this protective shield, causing particles to stream down over Earth's polar regions.

And some politics that doesn't involve professional circus performers.

• The argument, from that point on, was and has been a continuing legal, political, and economic tug-of-war, with one side–the side taken by both advocates of a secularist state and supporters of an untrammeled capitalist market–seeing politically organized charitable and church groups as their common enemy.
• "It is in the decision-making process, the evaluation and selection of the many attack responses available, wherein the problem becomes complex."
• More than a decade of rapid economic growth has given India the capacity to act on issues of primary strategic and economic concern to the United States.

Cold Cold Heart

With: June and Anita Carter, and Roy Acuff

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Hank Williams, the country pioneer who is among the most influential singer-songwriters in music, was given a special Pulitzer Prize citation. (AP)

On the other-hand, maybe the powers that be are brazenly hitch-hiking on the man's reputation to restore some gravatas to a prize that's lost a great deal of its luster lately. Cultural theft by a journalistic org? Tiffany Trustworthy responds after a message from our sponsors.

My cognate still itches

Josh Millard

Now, if I can just get this darn ironic distance meme (Ohrwurm - cognitive itch) out of my head.

Olympic Zip Line

Link

It's not everyday that one gets to fly hundreds of feet through the air past San Francisco's Ferry Building. But for the next 10 days, anyone who wants to can cruise along a 600-foot zip line that spans Justin Herman Plaza, watching the Financial District lunch crowd between their dangling feet or leaning backward to check out the Bay Bridge upside down.

The Canadian Olympic folks have set up a free zip line. I went Saturday and ,of course, the line was way longer than I had time for. (but if Monday is sunny ..) How they got this much fun past the liability people must be a story in itself. But don't worry too much, the correct posture of ironic distance will reassert itself toute de suite.

Sunday

Recursive Art

Dang, it's raining again. It seems like every weekend lately. Just a matter of time before the old Gray brothers gravel quarry slides down onto Sansome street and someone decides to paste it up again. Question: does a picture of a picture become art in its own right. If looked at bluntly, the original was stolen. (assuming that the subject isn't a paid model) A look at the purposed copyright law gives no answer short of hire a lawyer, and art theorists can fill 30 or 40 pages that boils down to "don't mess with our gig". Since I had to use an editing program to rotate and trim the above picture, does an Arbus picture become my work? After all, it has a clever title (with requisite ironic distance) and the word art in it. Just asking. Now the usual Sunday stuff.
Politics du jour:

• Varadarajan is just one among many conservatives thrown into apoplexy by basically nothing.
• Why no more 9/11s
• Where conservative intellectuals once had to prove themselves by the strength of their arguments, they could now increasingly get along by repeating not much more than slogans and audience-pleasing half-truths.

Money and Business related

• The answer he arrived at was that they hadn’t collapsed despite their cultural sophistication, they’d collapsed because of it.
• Exciting design interventions in your life of abject poverty

And some this, that and the other. A handy computer trick, a review of Valis, some culture and a sheet for guitar players.

• Some firewall programs may include a self-test feature in the controls or settings. If you want to test the firewall from the outside, one good tool is the Gibson Research Corp.’s free Shields UP! firewall testing service.
• This is the great secret of madness, one obscured by the doctrine of "creative madness": its banality.
• Indian religious muckraking.
• Quartal Voicings

Back in the Day

Photo via: birdofthegalaxy's Flickr

Them Durn Cows

Link to Video

A cow apparently wandered into a culvert in Kaysville, Utah and squeezed through the town’s storm drain system until she became stuck where the drain narrowed just enough. Animal Control officers officers were alerted when a couple heard noises and found a full-grown cow in a street drain.

I can understand how the cow managed to do it. Cows, in plain English, just ain't that bright. My question is about the farmer(rancher?) The article mentions a calf, which means milk, which suggests a stall sitting empty for five days. Cows are kinda pricy to keep around, and a no-show at milking time is usually cause for alarm. (them durn ETs been at my cattle again) Might want to put a cow-grate in front of that culvert while you're at it.

Via Miss Cellenia

Stones of Skiddaw

Link with Video

Around 1785, Peter Crosthwaite, an eccentric inventor, was walking around the area of Skiddaw in North Cumbria, England, and he made a startling discovery. He found 'hornfels' rock that produced sound. He spent months and months looking for more rocks that made the desired sound he was looking for.

Via: The Presurfer

But Will It Break the Internet

A solar storm struck Earth on April 5, triggering auroras and some radio frequency interference.

On 3 April, the SOHO spacecraft spotted a cloud of charged particles called a coronal mass ejection (CME) shooting from the sun at 500 kilometres per second. This velocity suggested the front would reach Earth in roughly three days.

Link and SpaceWeather

RoboGames

Photo: Nissan

RoboGames invites the best minds from around the world to compete in over 70 different events. Combat robots, walking humanoids, soccer bots, sumo bots, and even androids that do kung-fu.

Once a year: April 23 to 25, San Mateo fairgrounds

Link

Bring Your Own Big Wheel

The rain couldn't stop the Tenth Annual Bring Your Own Big Wheel Race that went down today on Vermont Street in Potrero Hill. It looks like the slick pavement provided an additional challenge: sfist.com

Have to say I missed it. The rain in my neighborhood (N. Beach) made staying inside a really attractive proposition.

Easter Sunday

Frabjous 5-fold: by George Hart

Happy Easter. It looks a bit grey outside,but all reports say that it will clear up in time for the Union Street parade. The first batch of links are more or less computer related.

• The House subcommittee on Drone Warfare
• Saving a Windows system with a Thumbdrive
• Impact of the Internet on Institutions
• FCC teardown of the iPad

The remainder of the link list this week is pretty standard political stuff. Perhaps our crew of intrepid scriveners were looking forward to an Easter weekend, and simply quoted the principals, rather than interjecting the usual omniscient newspeak. I've never sussed out how journalists know what someone is thinking when they're on the other side of the world. Creative writing class?

• In a very real sense, the United States has come close to punching itself out since 9/11.
• Frum be Fired
• Middle East Relations: Israel
• North Korea
• William Deresiewicz: Leadership

No Good Lover

This morning I was learning an Intro in G from Mickey Baker's guitar book and I thought it would be fun to search the videos. No wonder the guy's so gruff, some English bands snicked one of his throwaway riffs and made it into a hit. Plenty of cash for the record company, some for the stars, and a better luck next time for the originator.

Andar Electrico

Photo: Dave Nix

John Riley the Shepherd

Nylon strung Gourd Banjo

Eyecandy Blog

Eyecandy Blog

The link is to a blog that covers a lot of food decoration techniques. As an added bonus, there is a clickthrough on her favorites list to a Japanese bento site.