yeeeeehaaaa

Chester Burton Atkins (June 20, 1924 – June 30, 2001), better known as Chet Atkins, was an American guitarist and record producer who created, along with Owen Bradley, the smoother country music style known as the Nashville sound, which expanded country's appeal to adult pop music fans as well.

His picking style, inspired by Merle Travis, Django Reinhardt, George Barnes and Les Paul, brought him admirers within and outside the country scene, both in the United States and internationally. Atkins produced records for Perry Como, Elvis Presley, Eddy Arnold, Don Gibson, Jim Reeves, Jerry Reed, Skeeter Davis, Connie Smith, Waylon Jennings and others.

Among many honors, Atkins received 14 Grammy Awards as well as the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, nine Country Music Association Instrumentalist of the Year awards, and was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.

must _Ταξίδι στα Άδυτα του Σύμπαντος

«Ταξίδι στα Άδυτα του Σύμπαντος»
Ακούστε τη «Μουσική των Πλανητών»
αγγίξτε μια Μαύρη Τρύπα,
δείτε τρισδιάστατη μια Σκουληκότρυπα,
θαυμάστε το αντίγραφο ενός πραγματικού διαστημόπλοιου
και άλλα πολλά σε μια ξεχωριστή βραδιά
στο Μουσείο Μπενάκη
στις 30 Σεπτεμβρίου

Εκλεκτοί επιστήμονες, διάσημοι συγγραφείς και καλλιτέχνες
θα σας κρατήσουν συντροφιά σε ένα Ταξίδι στα Άδυτα του Σύμπαντος.

Μουσείο Μπενάκη, Αμφιθέατρο οδ. Πειραιώς
30 Σεπτεμβρίου 2009, 5μμ-11μμ


ΠΡΟΓΡΑΜΜΑ ΕΚΔΗΛΩΣΕΩΝ

Έκθεση: ώρες 17:00-23:00

Φαντασμαγορικές Εικόνες των πιο απόμακρων αντικειμένων του Σύμπαντος.
Τριδιάστατες μαύρες τρύπες, πλανητικά νεφελώματα και σκουληκότρυπες.
Ακριβές μοντέλο της διαστημοσυσκευής Cassini που στάλθηκε στον Κρόνο και τους δορυφόρους του.

18:00-18:30 Χαιρετισμοί
Εκπρόσωπος του Υπουργείου Εθνικής Παιδείας και Θρησκευμάτων
Εκπρόσωπος της Εθνικής Επιτροπής του Διεθνούς Έτους Αστρονομίας ΙΥΑ2009
Δρ. Ιωάννης Δαγκλής (Διευθυντής ΙΔΕΤ / Εθνικό Αστεροσκοπείο Αθηνών)
Δρ. Διονύσης Σιμόπουλος (Αστροφυσικός, Διευθυντής Ευγενιδείου Πλανηταρίου)


Α’ ΜΕΡΟΣ
Προσκεκλημένοι Επιστήμονες από το εξωτερικό και την Ελλάδα
θα παρουσιάσουν στο κοινό τις προόδους που έχουν σημειωθεί
στην εξερεύνηση του Σύμπαντος.

18:30-19:00 «Από τη Γη στο Ηλιακό Σύστημα»
Jean-Pierre Lebreton (Ευρωπαϊκός Οργανισμός Διαστήματος, Manager της Διαστημικής Αποστολής Huygens στον Τιτάνα, Mέλος Ομάδας Εργασίας της Διαστημικής Αποστολής Rosetta)

19:00-19:30 «Στο Χωνευτήρι της Φύσης»
Arthur Ι. Miller (University College London, Καθηγητής της Ιστορίας και Φιλοσοφίας της Επιστήμης, Συγγραφέας)

19:30-19:45 «Ταξίδι Ανάμεσα σε Δύο Κόσμους»
Fiorella Lavado (Καλλιτέχνης Οπτικο-Ακουστικών Μέσων, Παραγωγός) & Arthur I. Miller

19:45-20:15 «Μηχανισμός των Αντικυθήρων: Ένας Αρχαίος Αστρονομικός Υπολογιστής που δεν Ήρθε από το Διάστημα»
Γιάννης Μπιτσάκης (Φυσικός, Ιστορικός των Επιστημών και της Τεχνολογίας)

20:15-20:45 Συζήτηση των Ομιλητών με το Κοινό
Συντονιστής Κ. Καββαθάς (Δημοσιογράφος, Εκδότης ΠΤΗΣΗ & Διάστημα, 4ΤΡΟΧΟΙ)


Β’ ΜΕΡΟΣ
Η Αστρονομία στην Τέχνη


21:00-21:40 Συναυλία για δύο Πιάνα: Alexandra Papastefanou, Leto Thomou
- Debussy: Pour Que La Nuit Soit Propice
- Ravel: Prelude a la Nuit (from Rhapsodie Espagnole)
- Holst: The Planets:(excerpts) Trancription pour deux pianos par le compositeur
Mars. The Bringer of War
Jupiter. The Bringer of Jollity
Παράλληλη προβολή σε γιγαντο-οθόνη οπτικών εφέ βασισμένων σε εικόνες του Σύμπαντος.

22:00-23:00 Προβολή Ταινίας: «Titan–A Place Like Home?»
Βραβευμένη στο 3ο Διεθνές Φεστιβάλ Επιστημονικών Ταινιών (Αθήνα 2008)
Ευγενική προσφορά του Κέντρου Επιστήμης Κοινωνίας και Τέχνης (CAID)

things behind the sun

Please beware of them that stare
They'll only smile to see you while
Your time away
And once you've seen what they have been
To win the earth just won't seem worth
Your night or your day
Who'll hear what I say.
Look around you find the ground
Is not so far from where you are
Don´t too wise
For down below they never grow
They're always tired and charms are hired
From out of their eyes
Never surprise.

Take your time and you'll be fine
And say a prayer for people there
Who live on the floor
And if you see what's meant to be
Don't name the day or try to say
It happened before.

Don't be shy you learn to fly
And see the sun when day is done
If only you see
Just what you are beneath a star
That came to stay one rainy day
In autumn for free
Yes, be what you'll be.
Please beware of them that stare
They'll only smile to see you while
Your time away
And once you've seen what they have been
To win the earth just won't seem worth
Your night or your day
Who'll hear what I say.

Open up the broken cup
Let goodly sin and sunshine in
Yes that's today.
And open wide the hymns you hide
You find reknown while people frown
At things that you say
But say what you'll say
About the farmers and the fun
And the things behind the sun
And the people round your head
Who say everything's been said
And the movement in your brain
Sends you out into the rain.

cosmic flash

Invading Black Holes Explain Cosmic Flashes

ScienceDaily (Sep. 19, 2009)_ http://www.sciencedaily.com/

The flashes, known as gamma ray bursts, are beams of high energy radiation – similar to the radiation emitted by explosions of nuclear weapons – produced by jets of plasma from massive dying stars.

The orthodox model for this cosmic jet engine involves plasma being heated by neutrinos in a disk of matter that forms around a black hole, which is created when a star collapses.

But mathematicians at the University of Leeds have come up with a different explanation: the jets come directly from black holes, which can dive into nearby massive stars and devour them.

Their theory is based on recent observations by the Swift satellite which indicates that the central jet engine operates for up to 10,000 seconds - much longer than the neutrino model can explain.

Mathematicians believe that this is evidence for an electromagnetic origin of the jets, i.e. that the jets come directly from a rotating black hole, and that it is the magnetic stresses caused by the rotation that focus and accelerate the jet's flow.

For the mechanism to operate the collapsing star has to be rotating extremely rapidly. This increases the duration of the star's collapse as the gravity is opposed by strong centrifugal forces.

One particularly peculiar way of creating the right conditions involves not a collapsing star but a star invaded by its black hole companion in a binary system. The black hole acts like a parasite, diving into the normal star, spinning it with gravitational forces on its way to the star's centre, and finally eating it from the inside.

"The neutrino model cannot explain very long gamma ray bursts and the Swift observations, as the rate at which the black hole swallows the star becomes rather low quite quickly, rendering the neutrino mechanism inefficient, but the magnetic mechanism can," says Professor Komissarov from the School of Mathematics at the University of Leeds.

"Our knowledge of the amount of the matter that collects around the black hole and the rotation speed of the star allow us to calculate how long these long flashes will be – and the results correlate very well with observations from satellites," he adds.

The research is published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society and funded by the Science and Technology Facilities Council in the UK.

just in case

Brain Scans for Schizophrenia?
By Michael Torrice
ScienceNOW Daily News
8 September 2009

If you're at risk for heart disease, doctors can monitor your cholesterol. But psychiatrists don't have an analogous test for mental illnesses. That may change with a new discovery: Scientists have pinpointed a small spot in the brain that has a 71% chance of predicting whether high-risk patients will develop schizophrenia.
About 75% of diagnosed schizophrenics show early, fleeting signs of the disease before they fully develop it. These so-called prodromal symptoms include mild hallucinations, such as hearing your name in the wind, or a sudden, unfounded suspicion that your friends are talking about you behind your back. Some patients may even experience a full psychotic episode--similar to what schizophrenics experience chronically--which lasts only a couple of days. Not all prodromal patients develop psychotic disorders: Two-and-a-half years after first experiencing these symptoms, only 35% receive a schizophrenia diagnosis. Predicting who gets that diagnosis is "a little better than flipping a coin," says Scott Schobel, a psychiatrist at Columbia University.

To help understand how these patients progress from mild hallucinations to schizophrenia, Schobel and his colleagues compared brain activity between 18 schizophrenic and 18 healthy patients. The scientists used a high-resolution version of functional magnetic resonance imaging, which measures brain activity through changes in blood volume, to take detailed snapshots of the subjects' brains while they lay in the scanner.

Three regions differed: two in the frontal cortex and a 5-millimeter-long part of the hippocampus called the CA1 subfield. The hippocampus, the brain's learning and memory center, is known to be more active in schizophrenics, but this study, which appears in this month's issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, pinpoints the part that's hyperactive. Moreover, the researchers found that among schizophrenics, those with a busier CA1 had worse delusions.

The team next scanned 18 patients with prodromal symptoms and then followed up with them every 3 months for 2 years to evaluate whether their symptoms had worsened. Seven patients eventually developed full-blown psychotic disorders. When the researchers compared these patients' earlier brain scans with those of the other 11 prodromal patients, the only difference in activity was in the CA1 subfield--these seven patients had a 50% greater level of CA1 activity than the others did. Using these measurements, the researchers could retroactively predict 71% of the patients who went on to develop psychosis.

Even if activity in the CA1 subfield proves to be a diagnostic for schizophrenia, Schobel notes that it would only be useful for patients with an elevated risk. "The appropriate analogy would be a patient who already has a known family history of heart disease and they're complaining about chest pain," he says.

The study brings scientists one step closer to a diagnostic marker for schizophrenia, says Paul Thompson, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Los Angeles. Although larger studies are needed to confirm the results, psychiatrist Kristin Cadenhead of the University of California, San Diego, says that "even small studies are important at this point." Thompson and Cadenhead believe that doctors testing new drugs to treat schizophrenia could use a decrease in CA1 activity as a measure of a treatment's effectiveness.

dis feeling

YMO

Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO) is an influential Japanese electropop band formed in 1978, and renowned as a major influence in popular music and for pioneering the electropop music genre.The principal members are Haruomi Hosono (bass), Yukihiro Takahashi (drums and vocals) and Ryuichi Sakamoto (keyboards).

dancing in September

full moon party

Xquic is a mythological figure known from the 16th century Quiché (K'iche') Maya manuscript Popol Vuh. She was the daughter of Cuchumaquic, one of the lords of Xibalba, the Maya Underworld. Noted particularly for being the mother of the Maya Hero Twins, Hunahpu and Xbalanque, she is sometimes considered to be the Maya goddess associated with the waning, post-full moon. However, there is no evidence for this in the Popol Vuh text itself.

In the account told by the Popol Vuh, Xquic went to investigate a calabash tree where the Lords of Xibalba had displayed the severed head of Hun Hunahpu, whom they had sacrificed. Upon arriving she was curious as to the strange fruit that it bore, in the shape of a skull, and the head of Hun Hunahpu instructed the maiden to reach out and take one. As she did so the skull spat upon her hand, and through this act she became pregnant with Hun Hunahpu's twin sons.

When six months had passed and her pregnancy obvious, she was questioned regarding the father. Answering honestly that she had known no man, the fetuses she carried were declared to be bastards, and the Lords of Xibalba sentenced her to be sacrificed in exile. The messengers who had been sent to escort her far from the city and to sacrifice her had pity on the woman, and fashioned a false heart out of tree sap to return to the Lords. They were unable to see through the deceit, and were subsequently tricked into accepting burned sacrifices that were not genuine.

Xquic sought the protection of Xmucane, the mother of Hun Hunahpu, identifying herself as the woman's daughter-in-law. Knowing her sons to be dead, Xmucane demanded proof of the fetuses' lineage, and devised a test for the maiden. If she could go into the garden and return with a sack full of corn she would be accepted. There was however but one stalk of corn to be found. Xquic was able to pass the test by plucking the corn straight from the ear, which constantly regrew in the ear, subsequently filling the sack.

Following her acceptance into the household and the birth of her sons, Xquic's significance in the story is greatly diminished, and while she is mentioned again in a few places in short conversations her role as an active player in the creation myth seems to end.

shhhhhhhhhhhake

The Shake dance is a non-rhythmic specialty eccentric dance that became popular around the time of Little Egypt at the Chicago Worlds Fair in 1893. Its roots can somewhat be traced back to the origins of Raks Sharki (aka: Belly Dancing) and the later African-American Grind. Some people call it the Hootchy-Cootchy dance, but the Hootchy-Cootchy was a catch all name for anything Erotic in dance.

-> The shake dance began as a woman's dance but a few southern males gradually developed their own versions. It's evolution can be seen from Little Egypt in 1893 to Bert Williams doing it with the Mooch dance in 1903, Aida Overton Walker who used the Shake dance in her Salome routine in 1910,

James Barton upset the Broadway critics with it in 1923 and finally Clifton Webb set it on fire when he performed it with the snake hips in 1929.

-> The dance consisted of many undulations of the body with a common step to be known as the Belly Roll, which became common in other dances, it included other movements as well such as the Shimmie, the Mooch, the Grind, etc. but became their own separate dances in time. By the 1920's almost every chorus line had its own Shake dancer on the stage.