Pioneering sound artist Maryanne Amacher died yesterday. May she rest in peace.
From the Chicago Reader:
“Back in October 2000 the local experimental music presenters at Lampo brought her to Chicago. As Monica Kendrick wrote in the Reader then, “Amacher’s most impressive works are her massive installations, in which she occupies a space for days or even weeks if possible, learning every possible permutation of its acoustic properties, then creates ’sound shapes’ augmented by lighting and sometimes sculptural elements—a complete multisensual environment. She’s very interested in the physical process of hearing, too, and the effects created by the human ear itself—the resonance of one’s own tympanum and ossicles and pinna—which she ‘plays’ using certain frequencies.”
The folks at GQ have placed one of our favorite Betty’s on the cover of their latest issue, none other than the stunning January Jones perhaps better known as Betty Draper from Mad Men. Aside from the great photo spread shot by Terry Richardson, Jones gives a candid interview on overcoming her thick Fargo accent, drinking twenty-six beers in one night and her love of Queso.
Recently I had a conversation with a friend about why people are attracted to one another and what factors come into play, and while we idealistically like to think love, from what one could call a more realistic perspective, it all comes down to hormones, genetics, and building up a stronger immune system for our offspring. Along this vein, I found an article stating that science has found that the most attractive people tend to be those with Eurasian features, obviously this is a generalized statement, what an individual prefers is to each their own.
“In the first study of its kind, Caucasians and Asians rated average Eurasian faces as more attractive than average faces of either race. They also judged Eurasian faces to be healthier, giving credence to theory that beauty is not solely determined by culture and the media, but has biological origins.”
“In prehistoric times, humans would have encountered few mixed-race individuals, so evolutionary forces were unlikely to have led to a preference for a mixed-race appearance per se, said Professor Rhodes.
‘They could, however, have shaped perceptions of attractiveness to favour cues to health.’
While the health of the Eurasian people used in the study is not known, there is evidence that having parents from very different ancestries may reduce the chances of inheriting two copies of harmful genetic mutations.”
This video alone might just be catalyst of me moving to New York.
If I could see something like this every morning I’d become the happiest morning person ever.
After a recent trip to Amoeba Records and remembering the joy of flipping through 12s and album artwork, it became apparent that after all this time I have never stumbled upon anything that explained how vinyl was made. I remembered there was a process where a master is created and used to stamp other vinyl, but the process in creating that master, how grooves are made and vinyl is cut wasn’t anything I ever understood.
There is a pretty cool article in the latest De La Soul issue of Frank 151 that has an interesting interview with Tom Silverman, founder of Tommy Boy Records. He describes the cutting the first three groove record on the “Me, Myself and I” US 12″. I didn’t really understand what he meant the first time round, but this cool YouTube video gave me a cool overview of the vinyl making process and what the hell Silverman was speaking about when it comes to continuous grooves.
More on Tom Silverman, De La Soul’s experimentation with phonograph records, and part 2 of the vinyl making process after the jump.
Vozrozhdeniye Island. Also known as Rebirth, Renaissance, or Anthrax Island.
Want to be reborn? Then I definitely recommend making a little trip to this Kazakh/Uzbek owned little paradise. Maybe “island” isn’t the proper term anymore, since the body of water it was surrounded by, the Aral sea, dried up in 2002.
“In 1936, Vozrozhdeniye Island was transferred to the authority of the Soviet MOD for use by the Red Army’s Scientific Medical Institute. The first expedition of 100 people, headed by Professor Ivan Velikanov, arrived on the island that summer. The researchers were provided with special ships and two airplanes and reportedly conducted experiments involving the spread of tularemia and related microorganisms. In the fall of 1937, however, the expedition was evacuated from the island because of security problems, including the arrest of Velikanov and other specialists.
In 1952, the Soviet government decided to resume BW testing on islands in the Aral Sea. A biological weapons test site, officially referred to as “Aralsk-7,” was built in 1954 on Vozrozhdeniye and Komsomolskiy Islands. The MOD’s Field Scientific Research Laboratory (PNIL) was stationed on Vozrozhdeniye Island to conduct the experiments. Military unit 25484, comprising several hundred people, was also based on the island and reported to a larger unit based in Aralsk. The PNIL developed methods of biological defense and decontamination for Soviet troops. Samples of military hardware, equipment, and protective clothing reportedly passed field tests at the island before being mass-produced. During the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, military protective gear developed for Afghan conditions was tested at the PNIL.”
(from GlobalSecurity.org)
This place, and places like this, are sick, in every true meaning of the word.
“A Maori legend about a giant, man-eating bird has been confirmed by scientists.”
and:
“With a wingspan of up to three metres and weighing 18kg, the female was twice as big as the largest living eagle, the Steller’s sea eagle. And the bird’s talons were as big as a tiger’s claws. “It was certainly capable of swooping down and taking a child…”
Fellow Canadians have one more week before the release of this in your country. Americans may expect to wait a while before joining in on the Trailer Park shenanigans. It might be worth the trip to Vancouver though.
Three key words here, future, immortal, and jellyfish.
Most of us don’t want to accept death, but the concept of immortality just seems like too much of a fairytale, like the fountain of youth, one of those things that will never be possible. As we’re poking and prodding our way into outer space, so many answers are being answered right here, on our planet, in our oceans. Immortality does exist, in the name of Turritopsis Nutricula.
According to Wiki:
“Turritopsis nutricula is a hydrozoan with a life cycle in which it reverts to the polyp stage after becoming sexually mature. It is the only known case of a metazoan capable of reverting completely to a sexually immature, colonial stage after having reached sexual maturity as a solitary stage. It does this through the cell development process of transdifferentiation. Theoretically, this cycle can repeat indefinitely, rendering it biologically immortal until its nerve center is removed from the rest of the body.”
Essentially, Turritopsis Nutricula can somewhat “go back in time” by returning itself to an earlier stage. If it continuously reverts back, it will never age to death, thus making it immortal.
Some scientists are saying that this jellyfish doesn’t yield any great secret about aging or immortality, while others beg to differ. However, at the least it does have other promising uses:
“..the jellyfish just might help fight one of human health’s greatest threats—cancer—according to biologist Stefano Piraino of the University of Salento in Italy.”
More on the immortal jellyfish: National Geographic
