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black holes might occur

February 11, 2008 by jjosh

Well, apparently there’s a possibility of black holes appearing in Switzerland this May as a result of the upcoming Large Hadron Super-collider work that’s coming up.

In this huge machine (the LHC), in Cern, near Geneva, they’re going to collide two counter-rotating proton beams. Hmmm, wonder what that means. Anyway, basically they don’t know what will happen when they do this. Black holes might appear.

There might also be strangelets and monopoles; unfortunately, only brainiac scientists know what they heck those things are, so they don’t seem like such a big deal.

Black holes on the other hand are sexy, very sexy.

You can read the whole paper that assess the risks here, if you dare (thanks, Pat!).

Or I can just quote you the money part of the paper here (liberally *snipped*):

"It is important to notice that: The study for the [previous collider] had concluded that no black holes will be created. For the [LHC super super collider] the conclusion is very different: "Black holes could be created!" !

The main danger could be the complete destruction of our beautiful planet. Such a danger shows the need of a far larger study before any experiment !

If we add all the risks for the LHC we could estimate an overall risk between 11% and 25%!.

We cannot build accelerators always more powerful with interactions different from natural interactions, without risk. Our desire of knowledge is important but our desire of wisdom is more important and must take precedence. The precautionary principle indicates not to experiment. The politicians must understand this evidence and stop these experiments before it is too late!"

Well, come May some scientists are going to be eating their words. Maybe the guys who wrote this paper, or maybe the rest of the world.

I find it hard to worry about this stuff though…there’s enough going on at the ground level to be worried about without some shmancy sci-fi fears of black holes appearing.

Still, I’m gonna track when they’re switching that thing on…

Category science | Tags: | 3 Comments
curious cat steals a sacred laptop

February 11, 2008 by jjosh

if you listen carefully, at one point the computer/witch doctor says "when you come to church on palm sunday, come in your birthday suit."

video for kid 606 – the illness[flv:/video/kid606.flv 320 240]

Category music | Tags: | No Comments
tokyo 1 & 2

February 10, 2008 by jjosh

All I can remember about this is that Mark sent it to me ages ago and I’ve had it on my desktop ever since. I would check it out every now and then and think "I’ve gotta do something with this!" And now I have.

Without further ado…

"Tokyo 1 & 2"

[flv:/video/tokyo.flv 320 180]

Category net | Tags: | 2 Comments
The Corporation

February 10, 2008 by jjosh

The Corporation – A

A massive documentary that is so full of amazing stories, facts and characters, it probably has about 8 full-length documentaries lurking within it. From the Bolivian riot in Cochabamba over water privatization to the attempt to destroy Roosevelt after the creation of The New Deal to the public indifference over biological patenting. Holy mackerel this film was full of ideas.

Told very simply, in classic talking-head style, this doc sets out to define what a corporation is, a bit of the history, and how modern-day corporations are functioning in today’s world. Needless to say, most of what it has to tell us is pretty harrowing stuff. But it’s full of fascinating, stimulating, outraging, depressing, invigorating stuff as well.

Mostly what this film made me do, (as have several other films, or books, or discussions about the state of the world today) was question: what has to happen for people to start caring about this stuff and really absorbing it? Because to a certain extent this film is preaching to the choir (I imagine). I expect most people who are willing to rent/buy/download a 2 and a half hour documentary called The Corporation are probably already interested in social issues.

So what has to happen, what kind of story has to be told to get an "average" person to connect to some of these difficult truths. I am somewhat heartened by the success of a film like Michael Clayton, but as far as generating social outrage, it’s a bit of a softball. And it’s not enough to show some astounding facts and leave the audience to get mad. I suppose Inconvenient Truth really affected some people, and Michael Moore’s had great success with his style of "I am the everyman and I can’t believe the world is like this!"

Maybe it’s wrapped up in Maslow’s pyramid of needs, and people can’t face these issues that exist outside of them while they still have so many current, direct issues to face on a daily basis, i.e., where am I going to find the money for that housing payment. But no matter what situation people are in, there’s always a need and connection to stories…

So maybe there’s some way to tell these stories so that people get them, the way The Beatles made music that people couldn’t help but get, the way Shakespeare wrote plays that people couldn’t help but get, the way great leaders stimulate action through speeches that people can’t help but get.

I’m glad Maxine and I are doing the small things we’re doing to contribute to the solution — recycle-mania, buying local food, getting humanely raised meats, limiting consumption, some of our work projects.

Not sure where I’m going with this, or what’s coming out of it, but that’s a powerful film to get me so charged up.

Especially as hung over as I was this morning.

Category films | Tags: | No Comments
up against the mini bar

February 10, 2008 by jjosh

This is so great. I read somewhere that it’s "all over the net", but you know, I mean, my sister hasn’t seen it yet, so I guess it’s not ALL over the net…

It’s on youtube, but the person who posted it somehow turned off embedding, which I didn’t know you could do…if you want to go to the original youtube posting, it’s here.

[flv:/video/ssmattdamon.flv 320 240]

Category net | Tags: | 2 Comments
the future

February 9, 2008 by jjosh

as I get ready to sell my CDDJ decks and move on to another system that’s more digital, I begin to find exactly how many options are out there these days. For instance, what exactly is happening here?:

[flv:/video/reaktor_scratch.flv 320 240]

Category DJ | Tags: | 1 Comment
FEVER!

February 9, 2008 by jjosh

I love the way Nicholas Cage will do a long string of major studio crap and then drop an indie gem on you. He’s so great. Leaving Las Vegas, Adaptation, Wild at Heart.

A week and a half ago I was over at M Devito’s and just wanted to crash on the couch and watch something on his absurdly large tv…National Treasure was just starting, so I figured I’d give a try. All I wanted to do was veg out. And I don’t think I even made it a half hour. It was so bad! Atrociously bad! The dialogue, story, acting…the sets were weak for crying out loud. For a moment I thought Christopher Plummer would be able to hold me in, but no. I changed the channel and watched the middle hour of Titanic.

And I guess National T made scads of $$$, as has the sequel, right? Let’s have a look…ah yes…box office for National Treasure 1 worldwide gross is estimated at 347 MILLION DOLLARS! Yikes. National Treasure 2 is still out and it’s already made 383 MILLION DOLLARS. Wow.

And then there’s this (thanks, Malcolm!):

[flv:/video/cage_fever.flv 320 240]

and

[flv:/video/cage_song.flv 320 240]

Category films, net | Tags: | No Comments
femi kuti is adored

February 8, 2008 by jjosh

Over the spring of 2007 I did a bunch of promos for a movie night at Sundance Channel called Sonic Screen. It was pretty fun, the films were mostly great (Gimme Shelter, the Flaming Lips doc) and there was a really interesting one on Femi Kuti called Femi Kuti Live at The Shrine.

Femi Kuti is a mega mega star in his home of Nigeria, and he has a small concert venue there called The Shrine which he plays frequently to packed sweaty crowds. He’s also extremely political, and his songs are often about social issues or Nigerian policies that need to change.

I admit, his music doesn’t really do it for me, although it was amazing to see how much he practiced, what a talent he is (singing, guitar, keyboards, sax), how lithe and pumped he is, and how much energy he has. He’s also totally adored. This is a clip from the film that I pulled out because it was so amazing. For the first minute he’s explaining how he’s letting people vote on the best songs for him to perform, and then a devotee walks by. Kuti’s face is great, and the devotee is so full-on. Amazing.

So fierce.

Category films, music | Tags: | No Comments
isla de no encanta

February 8, 2008 by jjosh

Enchanted – F

Having sounded off previously about how I couldn’t believe that Enchanted was Oscar-nominated for 3 songs(!!) while Once only got one, I then noted that some part of me secretly wanted to see Enchanted. This was due to the fact that I like Patrick Dempsey, had read an interview with him about how this was his return to the big screen, and then had seen some review that liked the film. Also I’m a story geek and was interested as to how they were going to tweak classic fairy tales.

Last night after a tough day at work, Maxine just wanted to crash on the couch, order out and watch something girly, so we got fish n chips (and mushy peas! amazing Park Slope Chip Shop) and watched Enchanted.

Or tried to.

We only made it about ten minutes before we both realized that as we weren’t 6 year-old girls, we weren’t going to enjoy this film.

Luckilly we had 35 Up to get us out of our fairy tale slump.

Category films | Tags: | 3 Comments
mc trebek

February 8, 2008 by jjosh

I love Alex Trebek, he’s so classy and brainy-seeming without being obnoxious. He seems like he has a good sense of humor and who doesn’t love a dry dry wit. Usually he’s really straight-faced without being super-serious, but every now and then (apparently) he can’t resist dropping into silly mode. But then it’s even funnier because he’s still sort of…straight…

Trebek with no pants

Trebek is morally outraged

Trebek goes to a rave

A young Trebek starts swearing (very Casey Casem style)

And a couple of YTMND’s:

MC Trebek

Trebek in Funky Town

I don’t understand how people find all these little moments when there are like 5000 episodes of Jeopardy out there…but the internet has its ways…

Category net | Tags: | No Comments
pirate cartels have dark bidding

February 8, 2008 by jjosh

One of my favorite blogs, and the first "portal" (a la boingboing, metafilter, etc) I ever came across is waxy.org. It’s a bit tech-y perhaps, but I kind of love that…over the years he’s been pretty consistent with updating his links to interesting stuff, but not so consistent at posting blog entries. Fair enough, the links are great fun, and the blog posts would be fun when they showed up.

But now he’s trying to post daily(?!) and he’s turning out some good stuff. For instance, he’s got a great post crunching some data concerning Academy award screener DVD’s and pirated copies of movies that show up online. The graphs are fun, but the gist of the post is that more of the Oscar-nominated films than ever are available as DVD-quality pirate downloads, but that they don’t tend to be Academy screeners.

Interesting. Mark, Laura and Lila were visiting last weekend, and when, in the name of research, we downloaded No Country For Old Men, the quality was pretty amazing, and the film seemed to be all over the net. Lila loved it.

Waxy mentions that a lot of the pirate copies are due to overseas Region 5 DVD’s, or R5’s…as Waxy says:

These DVDs transferred directly from the film source were intended to help them compete with pirates by providing high-quality retail copies of films at the time of the film’s release. Instead, it’s created a huge new method of acquiring films before screeners are even released.

check the definition of R5’s here, at Afterdawn. This sure seems like a weird way to try and defeat the pirates, doesn’t it? Seems like it would help them more than hinder them. I wonder if some massive pirate cartel has a man on the inside at the MPAA, doing their secret, dark bidding.

In the future where anything that can be copied will be stripped of value, anything that cannot be copied will become more valuable. I can see how this will work with music, where the performance will become something to pay for, something that can’t be replicated. But what’s going to happen to films? I suppose the cinema experience can’t really be replicated…although giant tv’s and surround sound are doing a pretty good job.

Also microwave popcorn.

Category copyfight, net | Tags: | No Comments
lil wayne samples whomever he wants

February 6, 2008 by jjosh

I have this hazy memory of New Year’s Day 2008 and it’s about 3 in the morning and we stumble back to 1806 Lamont St, and Gillanders asks me if I’ve heard of Li’l Wayne. And I have, but just what I’ve been reading online about how he puts out a ton of material, and people like Sasha Frere Jones are geeking out over him. I haven’t actually heard any of his stuff.

Gillanders plays me some tracks, and some are just o.k., but some are mind-buggling.

li’l wayne – la la la

[audio:lil_wayne-lalala.mp3]

So basically Li’l Wayne is a kid rapper, and then gets mad skills, gets pumped, grows dreadlocks and starts dropping masses of tracks on the internet, do I have the story right? He has some quote somewhere about how "they’re always leaked anyway so I figure I’d do the leaking"…kind of like Radiohead with In Rainbows. He hasn’t released an official album in 2 years, but he’s flooded the net with tracks to download. And I guess if you’re just giving the tracks away for free (and aren’t Danger Mouse making some kind of Grey Album) no one minds who you sample?

li’l wayne – help

[audio:lil_wayne-help.mp3]

I’ve been downloading his stuff, and there’s so much! I need someone to go through it all and pick out the really great tracks for me, but I realize that the only person who can find the Li’l Wayne that I like is me. But there’s so much…Vulture tries to help, but I don’t know if I agree with them…even if they do contribute the best description of his voice, saying he sounds like he "just crawled out of a bong"…

Category music | Tags: | No Comments
Juno + Oscars < good

February 5, 2008 by jjosh

Juno – C

How exactly did Juno get nominated for an Academy Award? I know everyone keeps talking about the "Little Miss Sunshine" effect, but c’mon! Was anyone else as underwhlemed by that film as Maxine and I were? Indie by the numbers. Some good stuff in there, but sort of underwhelming overall. Maxine really didn’t like the character of Juno — said her (the character’s) voice and tone seemed very unreal.

There’s a good piece in the Voice about a new Romanian film that just came out, and the writer uses it as a jumping off point to discuss the recent spate of pregnant films (Juno, Knocked Up, Waitress) and talk about them as very basic fantasies…

I’m not doing the piece justice, you can read it here.

Before Juno came out, when the buzz started and all that Diablo Cody stuff was floating around, I thought it was really going to be something special, but yikes. I just don’t think Jason Reitman has a good sense for comic timing, or for interesting directing. Though he’s been nominated too, hasn’t he. Don’t get me wrong, there were some funny moments, but overall the film fell flat.

Far funnier were the Michael Cera and Jason Bateman press junkets for Juno (they get better as you move down the page). Why wasn’t the movie as funny as these small pieces of improv?

I confess I did like the Kimya music though. How come those songs weren’t nominated? Nothing for Kimya, one song for Once (which had some amazing songs) and 3 for Enchanted? Well, to be fair, I haven’t seen Enchanted. Yet. I kinda want to, not sure why, and can’t help myself. We’ll see how it goes.

Every year I like the Oscars less. At least this year there were lots of fantastic films they couldn’t ignore like No Country and TWBBlood…

Category films | Tags: , films, oscars | 2 Comments

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