ΧΩΡΑ ΤΩΡΑ ΤΩΡΑ

microtera

2011-03-23T06:24:00.000-07:00

Telepsychiatry

2011-03-23T05:35:00.000-07:00

Telepsychiatry, or telemedicine, is a specifically defined form of video conferencing that can provide psychiatric services to patients living in remote locations or otherwise underserved areas. It can connect patients, psychiatrists, physicians, and other healthcare professionals through the use of television cameras and microphones. Telemedicine currently provides an array of services, including but not limited to diagnosis and assessment; medication management; and individual and group therapy. It also provides an opportunity for consultative services between psychiatrists, primary care physicians and other healthcare providers. Telepsychiatry is also being used to provide patients with second opinions in areas where only one psychiatrist is available.

Telepsychiatry has been shown to improve collaborative services between professionals. Studies indicate that healthcare professionals feel telepsychiatry has given them an opportunity to work more effectively as a team. Patients surveyed say they felt that the communication between their physicians had improved their outcomes. There are a few barriers to providing telepsychiatry services. Reimbursement is still difficult to receive, especially through third-party payers, and licensure can be difficult to obtain.

Overall, telepsychiatry provides increased access to services and has helped enhance the provision of services to families with children and other patients who are homebound. Patients participating in telepsychiatry say they are satisfied with the care they are receiving and that they feel telepsychiatry is a reliable form of practice.

ok........

म.स.

2010-11-21T07:24:00.000-08:00

starry night

2010-11-09T13:26:00.000-08:00

Starry, starry night
Paint your palette blue and gray
Look out on a summer's day
With eyes that know the darkness in my soul
Shadows on the hills
Sketch the trees and the daffodils
Catch the breeze and the winter chills
In colors on the snowy linen land

Now I understand
What you tried to say to me
How you suffered for your sanity
How you tried to set them free
They would not listen they did not know how
Perhaps they'll listen now

Starry, starry night
Flaming flowers that brightly blaze
Swirling clouds in violet haze
Reflecting Vincent's eyes of China blue
Colors changing hue
Morning fields of amber grain
Weathered faces lined in pain
Are soothed beneath the artist's loving hands

Now I understand
What you tried to say to me
How you suffered for your sanity
How you tried to set them free
They would not listen they did not know how
Perhaps they'll listen now

For they could not love you
But still your love was true
And when no hope was left in sight
On that starry, starry night
You took your life as lovers often do
But I could have told you Vincent
This world was never meant for one as
beautiful as you

Starry, starry night
Portraits hung in empty halls
Frameless heads on nameless walls
With eyes that watch the world and can't forget
Like the strangers that you've met
The ragged men in ragged clothes
A silver thorn on a bloody rose
Lie crushed and broken on the virgin snow

Now I think I know
What you tried to say to me
How you suffered for your sanity
How you tried to set them free
They would not listen they're not listening still
Perhaps they never will

ολεολεολε

2010-05-15T15:08:00.000-07:00

Nosferatu

2010-05-02T11:08:00.000-07:00

?

2010-04-16T05:54:00.001-07:00

John Whitney

2010-04-13T03:05:00.000-07:00

Computers were originally developed as part of the British and American World War II defense efforts. They were first known as "Turing Machines" after Alan Turing who invented them to break Nazi codes -- the film of Andrew Hodges' biography was recently broadcast as Breaking the Code with Derek Jacobi portraying the inventor. The young John Whitney worked in the Lockheed Aircraft Factory during the war and while he was working with high-speed missile photography, he was technically adept enough to realize that the targeting elements in such weapons as bomb sites and anti-aircraft guns calculated trajectories and produced finely-controlled linear numerical equivalents, which could potentially be used for plotting graphics or guiding movements in peacetime artistic endeavors. A decade would pass before he was able to buy some of these analog computer mechanisms as "war-surplus" and construct with them his own "cam machine," which pioneered the concept of "motion control."

In the meantime, Whitney had made about two dozen films in more or less traditional animation. Among these were: in 8mm, a time-lapse of an eclipse and several drawn Variations, in 16mm two Film Exercises accompanied by electronic music composed by Whitney with a system of pendulums he had invented, and about 10 abstract musical visualizations using an oil-wipe instrument he had also invented as well as three 35mm cartoons for the UPA studios. He also did various commercial assignments including the title design for Hitchcock's feature Vertigo (in association with Saul Bass), and the preparation (in association with Charles Eames) of a seven-screen presentation for the Buckminster Fuller Dome in Moscow.

With his computerized motion-control set-up, Whitney could produce a variety of innovative designs and metamorphoses of text and still images, which proved very successful in advertising and titling of commercial projects. By 1960 Whitney prepared a sample reel of these and other effects he could produce, and solicited work for his Motion Graphics, Inc. company. This company kept him so busy he did not have time to make personal films using the computerized motion-control set-up. His sample reel was artfully edited and ended with a lovely final image of a lissajous curve multiplied dozens of times, to appear twisting in waves, suggesting the time-lapse of a blossoming flower. The reel was released as Catalog and became a popular classic of 1960's psychedelica. John Whitney's younger brother James, who had collaborated with him on the early Variations and Film Exercises, used John's cam machine to shoot his fabulous film Lapis. By multiplying the hundreds of dots in his hand-drawn original artwork into thousands of dots he described the most complex mandalas writhing with life.

Not all of the motion-control effects business for Whitney's "cam machine" ventures went in his favor, however. One of the possibilities demonstrated in Catalog is the slit-scan effect. Someone else duplicated the effect for the feature 2001. Ironically, Whitney had submitted to them a proposal for a monolith as a computer-generated effect that would have looked different from anything else in the film. He was turned down.

Whitney had an opportunity to work on the new high-powered digital computers between 1966 and 1969, when he was awarded a fellowship as artist-in-residence at IBM. Jack Citron programmed the IBM 360 Digital computers for him. His first computer generated film is rarely seen, but delightful. Whitney titled the film Homage to Rameau not only because Rameau wrote the baroque music heard on the soundtrack, but also to reference Rameau's book Treatise on Harmony. This text focused the direction of Whitney's aesthetic strivings, culminating in his 1980 book Digital Harmony.

At approximately the same time that Whitney worked at IBM in California, other artist-in-residence programs in the East allowed Stan Vanderbeek and Lilian Schwartz to work with Ken Knowlton at Bell Labs. Vanderbeek's Poem Fields mainly uses his clever texts as subject matter, and Schwartz's abstract music films, though colorful and well-paced, seem too similar, hampered by the limitations of the Beflix program. By contrast, John Whitney's computer films grew continually more intricate in their exploration of a genuine aesthetic goal: the establishment of a secure basis for harmonic events in audio-visual presentation.

In each of John's next five films [Permutations (1968), Osaka 1-2-3 (1971), Matrix I (1971), Matrix II (1971), Matrix III (1972), Arabesque (1975)], he demonstrated the principle of "harmonic progression." For example, in Arabesque (programmed by Larry Cuba), Whitney experimented with the eccentricities of Islamic architecture, which, though ultimately harmonic, contain many characteristic reverse curves in its embellishments. Whitney also made three documentary films on the subject of digital harmony. In 1979 he completed Experiments in Motion Graphics. His 1973 Hex Demo for a lecture at Cranbrook was included on a laserdisc of his works issued by Pioneer in 1984.He also completed in 1993 A Personal Search for the Complementarity of Music and Visual Art which is available through Pyramid Film and Video.

In the later 1980s, Whitney concentrated on developing a computerized instrument on which one could compose visual and musical output simultaneously in real time. His first piece on this new instrumentation, which was improved and updated constantly, appeared as Spirals in 1987. Although the compositions were linked to the particular computer set-up, and defied many attempts to copy them onto film and video, Whitney continued to compose new visual-music pieces until his death in 1995. The Moon Drum series in 12 sections based on Native American ceremonial art was most notable. Although less brilliant than the original computer monitor display, a satisfactory video version of Moon Drum was released.

John Whitney's active filmmaking career endured over 55 years, and 40 of those years were devoted to computer work. This is a remarkable record for any independent filmmaker, but particularly astonishing for the continued quality and vision of Whitney's films.

καταστροφολογία και το νησί του Πάσχα

2010-04-11T11:12:00.000-07:00

Κάθε φορά που έπρεπε να έρθει το τέλος του κόσμου...
31/12/999
Χίλια χρόνια μετά τη γέννηση του Χριστού, το τέλος σύμφωνα με τα απόκρυφα Ευαγγέλια.
20/2/1524
Ένας κατακλυσμός θα αφάνιζε τον κόσμο σύμφωνα με τον Γερμανό Γιόχανες Στέφλερ.
19/5/1719
Ο Ελβετός μαθηματικός Ζακ Μπερνούλι προέβλεψε τη σύγκρουση ενός κομήτη με τη Γη.
1732
Το τέλος του κόσμου που προέβλεψε ο Νοστράδαμος.
19/10/1814
Η Τζοάνα Σάουθκοτ προέβλεψε ότι εκείνη την ημέρα θα γεννούσε τον «δεύτερο Μεσσία» (και θα ερχόταν το τέλος του κόσμου).
3/4/1843, 7/7/1843, 21/3/1844, 22/10/1844
Ο Αμερικανός Γουίλιαμ Μίλερ ανακοίνωσε το τέλος του κόσμου σε όλες αυτές τις ημερομηνίες.
2/10/1914
Η Ημέρα της Κρίσης σύμφωνα με τον Τσαρλς Τέιζ Ράσελ, τον ιδρυτή των Μαρτύρων του Ιεχωβά. Δε συνέβη τίποτα. Οι οπαδοί του προέβλεψαν το τέλος του κόσμου το 1925, το 1941, το 1975 και τέλος στις 2/10/1984.
17/12/1919
Ο σεισμολόγος και μετεωρολόγος Αλμπέρτο Πόρτα προέβλεψε μια μοιραία σύνοδο 6 πλανητών.
24/5/1954
Στις 18 Μαΐου εμφανίστηκαν ρωγμές στο Κολοσσαίο (κάτω). Σύμφωνα με μια αρχαία δοξασία, «Η Ρώμη και ολόκληρος ο κόσμος θα είναι ασφαλείς όσο το Κολοσσαίο είναι όρθιο». Κάποιοι προέβλεψαν την ημερομηνία, και χιλιάδες προσκυνητές πήγαν στον Πάπα, για να ζητήσουν άφεση αμαρτιών.
28/10/1992
Ο αιδεσιμότατος Λι Γιανγκ Λιμ, της ιεραποστολικής εκκλησίας του Τάμι, στη Νότια Κορέα, ανακοίνωσε ότι ο Χριστός είχε ζητήσει να συγκεντρωθούν 144.000 πιστοί τα μεσάνυχτα εκείνης της ημέρας, για να τους σώσει από τον Αρμαγεδδώνα (την τελική μάχη ανάμεσα στο Καλό και το Κακό). Περισσότερα από 100.000 άτομα παρουσιάστηκαν σε περίπου 200 φονταμενταλιστικές εκκλησίες. Όμως ο Λι Γιανγκ Λιμ συνελήφθη, γιατί καταχράστηκε 4 εκατομμύρια δολάρια που συγκεντρώθηκαν από δωρεές των πιστών.
7/1999
Ένα δεύτερο τέλος του κόσμου που προέβλεψε ο Νοστράδαμος.
11/1999
Διατυπώθηκε η εικασία ότι ένα πείραμα ατομικής φυσικής στα Brookhaven National Laboratories των ΗΠΑ θα μπορούσε να οδηγήσει στη δημιουργία μιας μαύρης τρύπας που θα καταβρόχθιζε τον κόσμο.
31/12/1999
Η ημερομηνία του Millennium bug (τα συστήματα πληροφορικής θα έπρεπε να κρασάρουν).
19/1/2038
Στις 05:14:07 ώρα Ελλάδας προβλέπεται ένα καινούριο Millennium bug (που αυτή τη φορά θα έχει να κάνει μόνο με το λειτουργικό σύστημα Unix)

Η Νήσος του Πάσχα

Πριν από χίλια χρόνια, σε ένα απομονωμένο νησί 3.600 χλμ. ανατολικά της Χιλής, στη Νήσο του Πάσχα, άκμασε ένας πολιτισμός που σκάλισε εκατοντάδες γιγαντιαίους ογκόλιθους σε σχήμα ανθρώπινου κεφαλιού. Έπειτα, ξαφνικά, αυτός ο πολιτισμός εξαφανίστηκε.
Γιατί; Θα μπορούσε να συμβεί και σε εμάς; «Η Νήσος του Πάσχα είναι το τέλειο παράδειγμα της κοινωνίας που αυτοκαταστρέφεται, γιατί εκμεταλλεύεται υπερβολικά το περιβάλλον», λέει ο Τζάρεντ Ντάιαμοντ στο βιβλίο Κατάρρευση. «Ο παραλληλισμός με το σύγχρονο κόσμο είναι πολύ ισχυρός. Χάρη στην παγκοσμιοποίηση, όλες οι χώρες της Γης μοιράζονται σήμερα τους ίδιους πόρους και αλληλοεπηρεάζονται, όπως έκαναν οι φυλές στη Νήσο του Πάσχα. Αυτό το νησί ήταν ένα απομονωμένο κομμάτι γης στη μέση του Ειρηνικού Ωκεανού. Όταν οι κάτοικοι του νησιού άρχισαν να αντιμετωπίζουν δυσκολίες, δεν υπήρχε άλλο μέρος για να πάνε ούτε κάποιος δίπλα τους που θα μπορούσε να τους βοηθήσει. Το ίδιο μπορεί να συμβεί και σε εμάς, στη Γη. Η κατάρρευση της κοινωνίας της Νήσου του Πάσχα είναι ένα παράδειγμα, η χειρότερη εικασία για αυτό που μπορεί να μας επιφυλάσσει το μέλλον»

tik

2010-04-10T11:13:00.000-07:00

MOON

2010-03-28T06:25:00.000-07:00

Moons may bow to planets in terms of size, but in character they often outshine their stolid parents. The named moons of the solar system outnumber planets by more than 20 to 1, and they display a remarkable diversity. There are fully fledged worlds such as Titan, as complex as any planet. There are possible havens for life, such as the ice-crusted water world Europa. New mysteries surround even the smallest satellites, most recently the apparent flying saucers orbiting Saturn.

This year it will be four centuries since Galileo discovered Jupiter's four large satellites, at a stroke quintupling the number of moons then known to humanity.

1. IO
Pockmarked with sulphurous pits, bathed in intense radiation and shaken by constant volcanic eruptions, Io is the fiery hell of the solar system.

2. Iapetus
Even a cursory glance at Saturn's moon Iapetus reveals it to be an oddball. For one thing it is two-toned: one half is black, the other shining white.

3. Europa, Enceladus and Triton
The seemingly bleak icy surfaces of Europa, Enceladus and Triton are in fact among the most active landscapes in the solar system. They may even contain cosy habitats for living creatures.

4. Pan and Atlas
Pan and Atlas come straight from a 1950s B-movie. With a central bulge set inside a disc-like ridge, they bear an uncanny resemblance to your stereotypical flying saucers.

5. Nereid
An otherwise undistinguished satellite of Neptune, moderately lumpy and middling in size, Nereid travels on the most eccentric orbit of any moon in the solar system.

6. Titan
It is perhaps the strangest of all moons because it is so eerily familiar. The newly revealed face of Titan has the same weather-beaten features as Earth.

7. Earth's MOON
Scores of moons have been discovered within our solar system, yet Earth's companion still stands out as one of the most remarkable.

iF OUR solar system holds so many remarkable moons, then what strange satellite worlds might we find among the billions of planetary systems in the Milky Way? Perhaps there are temperate, habitable moons orbiting some giant exoplanets. We shouldn't expect to find them inhabited by intelligent life such as the furry Ewoks of Endor in Star Wars, but such moons may be among the most likely habitats for life in the universe.

On the face of it, detecting a moon around a planet orbiting a distant star seems like a spectacularly difficult task, but with a bit of luck today's technology may be able to do it. The best approach is to look for transits, in which an orbiting planet passes in front of its star, dimming the amount of light we detect on Earth. This method has already been used to find several planets, and it could indirectly reveal exomoons. As a moon orbits a planet, its gravity makes the planet move, speeding it up and slowing it down and so changing the timing and duration of transits.

The bigger the moon in relation to the planet, the bigger this effect. In one simulation, a planet with the mass of Neptune situated in the habitable zone of a star - not too hot, not too cold - was given a moon the size of Earth. This weighty moon would change the timing and duration of its planet's transits enough to be detectable by the Kepler planet-finding satellite, or even by ground-based telescopes. Such a large moon would also be able to hold onto a thick atmosphere, making it a prime spot for life.

READ MORE_____ http://www.newscientist.com/special/weird-worlds-solar-system-strangest-moons

Seven theories of everything

2010-03-16T13:02:00.000-07:00

The "theory of everything" is one of the most cherished dreams of science. If it is ever discovered, it will describe the workings of the universe at the most fundamental level and thus encompass our entire understanding of nature. It would also answer such enduring puzzles as what dark matter is, the reason time flows in only one direction and how gravity works. Small wonder that Stephen Hawking famously said that such a theory would be "the ultimate triumph of human reason – for then we should know the mind of God".

But theologians needn't lose too much sleep just yet. Despite decades of effort, progress has been slow. Many physicists have confined themselves to developing "quantum gravity" theories that attempt to reconcile quantum mechanics with general relativity – a prerequisite for a theory of everything. But rather than coming up with one or two rival theories whose merits can be judged against the evidence, there is a profusion of candidates that address different parts of the problem and precious few clues as to which (if any) might turn out to be correct.

Here's a brief guide to some of the front runners.

String theory
This is probably the best known theory of everything, and the most heavily studied. It suggests that the fundamental particles we observe are not actually particles at all, but tiny strings that only "look" like particles to scientific instruments because they are so small.

What's more, the mathematics of string theory also rely on extra spatial dimensions, which humans could not experience directly.

These are radical suggestions, but many theorists find the string approach elegant and have proposed numerous variations on the basic theme that seem to solve assorted cosmological conundrums. However, they have two major challenges to overcome if they are to persuade the rest of the scientific community that string theory is the best candidate for a ToE.

First, string theorists have so far struggled to make new predictions that can be tested. So string theory remains just that: a theory.

Secondly, there are just too many variants of the theory, any one of which could be correct – and little to choose between them. To resolve this, some physicists have proposed a more general framework called M-theory, which unifies many string theories.

But this has its own problems. Depending how you set it up, M-theory can describe any of 10500 universes. Some physicists argue that this is evidence that there are multiple universes, but others think it just means the theory is untestable.

Loop quantum gravity
Although it hasn't had the same media exposure, loop quantum gravity is so far the only real rival to string theory.

The basic idea is that space is not continuous, as we usually think, but is instead broken up into tiny chunks 10-35 metres across. These are then connected by links to make the space we experience. When these links are tangled up into braids and knots, they produce elementary particles.

Loop quantum gravity has produced some tentative predictions of real-world effects, and has also shed some light on the birth of the universe. But its proponents have so far struggled to incorporate gravity into their theories. And as with string theory, a true experimental test is still some way off.

CDT
Causal dynamical triangulations looks pretty similar to loop quantum gravity at first glance. Just as loop quantum gravity breaks up space into tiny "building blocks", CDT assumes that space-time is split into tiny building blocks – this time, four-dimensional chunks called pentachorons.

The pentachorons can then be glued together to produce a large-scale universe – which turns out to have three space dimensions and one time dimension, just as the real one does. So far, so good, but there's a major drawback: CDT as it currently stands cannot explain the existence of matter.

Quantum Einstein gravity
This idea, proposed by Martin Reuter of the University of Mainz, Germany, takes a rather different tack.

Part of the problem with unifying gravity and quantum mechanics is what happens to gravity at small scales. The closer two objects are to each other, the stronger the gravitational attraction between them; but gravity also acts on itself, and as a result, at very small distances a feedback loop starts. According to conventional theories the force should then become ridiculously strong – which means there's something wrong with the conventional theories.

However, Reuter has come up with a way to generate a "fixed point": a distance below which gravity stops getting stronger. This could help solve the problem, and lead to a quantum theory of gravity.

Quantum graphity
All the theories above assume that space and time exist, and then try to build up the rest of the universe. Quantum graphity – the brainchild of Fotini Markopoulou of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, and colleagues – tries to do away with them.

When the universe formed in the big bang, Markopoulou says, there was no such thing as space as we know it. Instead, there was an abstract network of "nodes" of space, in which each node was connected to every other. Very soon afterwards, this network collapsed and some of the nodes broke away from each other, forming the large universe we see today.

Internal relativity
Developed by Olaf Dreyer of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, internal relativity sets out to explain how general relativity could arise in a quantum world.

Every particle in the universe has a property called "spin", which can be loosely thought of as what happens to the particle when it is rotated. Dreyer's model imagines a system of spins existing independently of matter and arranged randomly. When the system reaches a critical temperature, the spins align, forming an ordered pattern.

Anyone actually living in the system of spins will not see them. All they see are their effects, which Dreyer has shown will include space-time and matter. He has also managed to derive Newtonian gravity from the model: however, general relativity has not yet emerged.

E8
In 2007 the physicist (and sometime surfer) Garrett Lisi made headlines with a possible theory of everything.

The fuss was triggered by a paper discussing E8, a complex eight-dimensional mathematical pattern with 248 points. Lisi showed that the various fundamental particles and forces known to physics could be placed on the points of the E8 pattern, and that many of their interactions then emerged naturally.

Some physicists heavily criticised the paper, while others gave it a cautious welcome. In late 2008, Lisi was given a grant to continue his studies of E8.

from New Scientist 04 March 2010

cult is back

2010-03-12T13:58:00.000-08:00

Karaoke song

2010-02-28T15:34:00.000-08:00

Left Voice (Morrison, Tucker)

Candy screen wrappers of silkscreen fantastic, requiring memories, both lovely and guiltfree, lurid and lovely with twilight of ages, luscious and lovely and filthy with laghter, laconic giggles, ennui fort the passions, in order to justify most spurious desires, rectify moments, most serious and urgent, to hail upon the face of most odious time, requiring replies most facile and vacuous, with words nearly singed, with the heartbeat of passions, spew forth with the grace of a tart going under, subject of great concern, noble origin

Right Voice (Reed, Yule)

Denigrate obtuse and active verbs pronouns, skewer the sieve of optical sewer, release the handle that holds all the gates up, puncture the eyeballls, that seep all the muck up, read all the books and he people worth reading and still see the muck on the sky of the ceiling

Left Voice (Morrison, Tucker)

Please raise the flag rosy red carpet envy english used here is messenger is nervous it's no fun at all out here in the hall

Right Voice (Reed, Yule)

Mister moonlight succulent smooth and gorgeous. Isn't it nice? We're number One and so forth. Isn't it sweet being unique?

Left Voice (Morrison, Tucker)

For screeching and yelling and various offenses, lower the queen and bend her over the tub, against the state, the country, the committe, hold her head under the water please for an hour, for groveling and spewing and various offenses, puncture the bloat with the wing of a sparrow, the inverse, the obverse, the converse,the reverse, the sharpening wing of the edge of a sparrow, for suitable reckonings too numerous to mention, as the queen is fat she is devoured by rats there is one way to skin a cat or poison a rat it is hetero four hear to three forthirightly stated.

Right Voice (Reed, Yule)

relent and obverse and inverse and perverse and reverse the inverse of perverse and reverse and reverse an reverse and reverse and reverse and chop it and pluck it and cut it and spit it and sew it to joy on the edge of a cyclop and spinet it to rage on the edge of a cylindrical minute.

Left Voice (Morrison, Tucker)

Put down that rag simpering, callow and morose who let you in? if I knew, then I could get out the murder you see is a mystery to me

Right Voice (Reed, Yule)

dear Mister Muse fellow of wit and gentry medieval ruse filling the shallow and empty, fools that duel duel in pools.

Left Voice (Morrison, Tucker)

To Rembrandt and Oswald, to peanuts and ketchup, sanctimonious sycophants stir in the bushes, up to the stand with your foot on the bible as king I must order and constantly arouse, if you swear to catch up and throw up and up up, a king full of virgin kiss me and spin it, excuse to willow and wander dark wonders divest me of robes-sutures Harry and pig meat, the fate of a nation, rests hard on your bosoms, the king on his throne, puts his hand down his robe, the torture of inverse and silk screen and Harry, and set the tongue squealing the reverse and inverse

Right Voice (Reed, Yule)

Tantalize poets with visions of grandeur, their faces turn blue with the reek of the compost, as the livig try hard to retain what the dead lost, with double dead sickness from writing at what cost and business and business and reverse and reverse and set the brain reeling the inverse and perverse

Left Voice (Morrison, Tucker)

Objections suffice apelike and tactile bassoon oboeing me cordon the virus' section off to the left is what is not right

Right Voice (Reed, Yule)

English arcane tantamount here to frenzy passing for me lascivious elder passion corpulent filth disguised as silk

Left Voice (Morrison, Tucker)

Contempt, contempt and contempt for the boredom, I shall poison the city and sink it with fire, for Cordless and Harry and Apepig and Scissor, the messenger's wig seems fraught with desire, for blueberry picnics and pince-nez and magpies, the mseenger's skirt, would you plaese hook it higher, for children and adults all thos under ninety, how truly disgusting. Would you please put it down? a stray in this fray is no condom worth saving, as king I'm quite just, but it's just quite impossible, a robe and a robe and a robe and a bat, no double class inverse could make lying worth dying

Right Voice (Reed, Yule)

With cheap simian melodies, hillbilly outgush, for illiterate ramblings for cheap understanding the simple the inverse, the compost, the reverse, the obtuse and stupid, and business, and business, and cheap, stupid lyrics, and simple mass reverse while the real thing is dying

Left Voice (Morrison, Tucker)

Accept the pig, enter the Owl and Gorgeous, King on the left, it on the right and primping adjusting his nose as he reads from his scroll
folksy knockwurst peel back the skin of French and what do you find? follicles intertwinning, succulent prose wrapped up in robes

Left Voice (Morrison, Tucker)

Off with his head, take his head from his neck off, requiring memories both lovely and guiltfree, put out his eyes, then cut his nose off, sanctimonious sycophants stir in the bushes, scoop out his brain, put a string where his ears were, all the king's horses and all the king's men, swing the whole mess at the end of the wire, scratch out his eyes with the tip of a razor, let the wire extend from the tip of a rose, Caroline, Caroline, Caroline, Oh! but retains the remnants of what once was a nose, pass me my robe, fill my bath up with water

Right Voice (Reed, Yule)

jumpsuit and pig meat and making his fortune, while making them happy with the inverse and obverse and making them happy and making them happy with the coy and the stupid, just another dumb lackey, who puts out one thing, while singing the other, but the real thing's alone and it is no man's brother

Left Voice (Morrison, Tucker)

No one knows no nose is good news and senseless extend the wine drink here toast to selfless ten year old port is perfect in court

Right Voice (Reed, Yule)

safety is nice not an unwise word spoken scary, bad dreams made safe in lovely songs no doom or gloom allowed in this room

Left Voice (Morrison, Tucker)

Casbah and Cascade and Rosehip and Feeling, Cascade and Cyanide, Rachaminoff, Beethoven skull silly wagon and justice and perverse and reverse the inverse and inverse and inverse, blueberry catalog, questionable earnings, hustler's lament and the rest will in due cry, to battle and scramble and browbeat and hurt while chewing on minstrels and choking on dirt, disease please seems the order of the day, please the king, please the king, please the king day, Casbah and Cascade and Rosehip and Feeling, point of order return the king here to the ceiling

Right Voice (Reed, Yule)

oh, not to be whistled or studied or hummed or remembered at nights, when the I is alone, but to skewer and ravage and savage and split with the grace of a diamond, bellicose wit, to stun and to stagger with words as such stone, that those who do hear cannot again return home

Left Voice (Morrison, Tucker)

Razzamatazz, there's nothing on my shoulder, lust is a must, shaving my head's made me bolder, will you kindly read what it was I brought thee

Right Voice (Reed, Yule)

Hello to Ray, hello to Godiva and Angel, who let you in? isn't it nice the party? aren't the lights pretty at night?

Left Voice (Morrison, Tucker)

Sick leaf and sorrow and pincers net-scissors, regard and refrain from the daughters of marriage, regards for the elders and youngest in carriage, regard and regard for the inverse and perverse and obverse, and diverse, of reverse and reverse, regard from the sick, the dumb, and the camel from pump's storing water, like brain is too marrow to x-ray and filthy and cutting and peeling to skin and to skin and to bone and to structure to livid and pallid and turgid and structured and structured and structured and structured and structured and regard and refrain, the sick and the dumb, inverse, reverse and perverse

Right Voice (Reed, Yule)

Contempt, contempt, and contempt for the seething for writhing and reeling and two-bit reportage, for sick with the body and sinister holy, the drown burst blue babies now dead on the seashore, the valorous horseman, who hang from the ceiling, the pig on the carpet, the dusty pale jissom, that has no effect for the sick with the see-saw, the inverse, obverse converse, reverse of reverse the diverse and converse of reverse and perverse and sweet pyrotechnics, and let's have another of inverse, converse, diverse, perverse and reverse, hell's graveyard is damned as they chew on their brains, the slick and the scum, reverse, inverse and perverse

Left Voice (Morrison, Tucker)

Plowing while it's done away dumb and ready pig meat sick upon the carpet climb into the casket safe within the parapet sack is in the parapet pigs are out and growling slaughter by the seashore see the lifeguard drowning sea is full of fishes fish's full of china china plates are falling all fall down sick and shiny carpet lie before my eyes eyes lead me to the ceiling walk upon the wall wall tender as the green grass drink the whisky horror see the young girls dancing flies upon the beaches beaches are for sailors nuns across the sea-wall black hood horseman raging swordsman eating fire

Right Voice (Reed, Yule)

Sick upon the staircase sick upon the staircase blood upon the pillow climb into the parapet see the church bells gleaming knife that scrapes a sick plates of dentures full of air holes the tailor couldn't mend straight shoot her full of air holes climbing up the casket take me to the casket teeth upon her red throat screw me in the daisies rip apart her holler snip the seas fantastic treat her like a sailor full and free and nervous out to make his fortune either this or that way sickly or in good health piss upon a building like a dog in training teach to heel or holler yodel on a sing song down upon the carpet

Left Voice (Morrison, Tucker)

Fire on the carpet set the house ablazing seize and bring it flaming gently to the ground ground Dizzy Bell Miss Fortune fat and full of love-juice drip it on the carpet down below the fire hose weep and whisky fortune sail me to the moon, dear drunken dungeon sailors headless Roman horsemen the king and queen are empty their heads are in the outhouse fish upon the water bowl upon the saviour tooothless wigged Laureate plain and full of fancy name upon a letterhead impressing all wheatgerm love you for a nickel ball you for a quarter set the casket flaming do not go gentle blazing

Right Voice (Reed, Yule)

Tickle polyester sick within the parapet screwing for a dollar sucking on a fire-hose chewing on a rubber line tied to chairs and rare bits pay another player oh you're such a good lad here's another dollar tie him to the bedpost sick with witches' covens craving for a raw meat bones upon the metal sick upon the circle down upon the carpet down upon the carpet down below the parapet waiting for your bidding pig upon the carpet tumescent railroad neuro-anaesthesia analog ready for a good look drooling at the birches swinging from the birches succulent Nebraska

tobacco

2010-02-23T01:59:00.000-08:00

Worries

2010-01-26T03:48:00.000-08:00

Physicists’ Dreams and Worries in Era of the Big Collider

By DENNIS OVERBYE
Published: January 25, 2010

A few dozen scientists got together in Los Angeles for the weekend recently to talk about their craziest hopes and dreams for the universe.

At least that was the idea.

“I want to set out the questions for the next nine decades,” Maria Spiropulu said on the eve of the conference, called the Physics of the Universe Summit. She was hoping that the meeting, organized with the help of Joseph D. Lykken of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and Gordon Kane of the University of Michigan, would replicate the success of a speech by the mathematician David Hilbert, who in 1900 laid out an agenda of 23 math questions to be solved in the 20th century.

Dr. Spiropulu is a professor at the California Institute of Technology and a senior scientist at CERN, outside Geneva. Next month, CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, the most powerful particle accelerator ever built, will begin colliding protons and generating sparks of primordial fire in an effort to recreate conditions that ruled the universe in the first trillionth of a second of time.

Physicists have been speculating for 30 years what they will see. Now it is almost Christmas morning.

Organized into “duels” of world views, round tables and “diatribes and polemics,” the conference was billed as a place where the physicists could let down their hair about what might come, avoid “groupthink” and “be daring (even at the expense of being wrong),” according to Dr. Spiropulu’s e-mailed instructions. “Tell us what is bugging you and what is inspiring you,” she added.

Adding to the air of looseness, the participants were housed in a Hollywood hotel known long ago as the “Riot Hyatt,” for the antics of rock stars who stayed there.

The eclectic cast included Larry Page, a co-founder of Google, who was handing out new Google phones to his friends; Elon Musk, the PayPal electric-car entrepreneur, who hosted the first day of the meeting at his SpaceX factory, where he is building rockets to ferry supplies and, perhaps, astronauts to the space station; and the filmmaker Jesse Dylan, who showed a new film about the collider. One afternoon, the magician David Blaine was sitting around the SpaceX cafeteria doing card tricks for the physicists.

This group proved to be at least as good at worrying as dreaming.

“We’re confused,” Dr. Lykken explained, “and we’re probably going to be confused for a long time.”

The first speaker of the day was Lisa Randall, a Harvard theorist who began her talk by quoting Galileo to the effect that physics progressed more by working on small problems than by talking about grand ones — an issue that she is taking on in a new book about science and the collider.

And so Dr. Randall emphasized the challenges ahead. Physicists have high expectations and elegant theories about what they will find, she said, but once they start looking in detail at these theories, “they’re not that pretty.”

For example, a major hope is some explanation for why gravity is so weak compared with the other forces of nature. How is it that a refrigerator magnet can hold itself up against the pull of the entire Earth? One popular solution is a hypothesized feature of nature known as supersymmetry, which would cause certain mathematical discrepancies in the calculations to cancel out, as well as produce a plethora of previously undiscovered particles — known collectively as wimps, for weakly interacting massive particles — and presumably a passel of Nobel prizes.

In what physicists call the “wimp miracle,” supersymmetry could also explain the mysterious dark matter that astronomers say makes up 25 percent of the universe. But no single supersymmetrical particle quite fits the bill all by itself, Dr. Randall reported, without some additional fiddling with its parameters.

Moreover, she added, it is worrying that supersymmetric effects have not already shown up as small deviations from the predictions of present-day physics, known as the Standard Model.

“A lot of stuff doesn’t happen,” Dr. Randall said. “We would have expected to see clues by now, but we haven’t.”

These are exciting times, she concluded, but the answers physicists seek might not come quickly or easily. They should prepare for surprises and trouble.

“I can’t help it,” Dr. Randall said. “I’m a worrier.”

Dr. Randall was followed by Dr. Kane, a self-proclaimed optimist who did try to provoke by claiming that physics was on the verge of seeing “the bottom of the iceberg.” The collider would soon discover supersymmetry, he said, allowing physicists to zero in on an explanation of almost everything about the physical world, or at least particle physics.

But he and other speakers were scolded for not being bold enough in the subsequent round-table discussion.

Where, asked Michael Turner of the University of Chicago, were the big ideas? The passion? Where, for that matter, was the universe? Dr. Kane’s hypothesized breakthrough did not include an explanation for the so-called dark energy that seems to be speeding up the expansion of the universe.

Dr. Kane grumbled that the proposed solutions to dark energy did not affect particle physics.

The worrying continued. Lawrence Krauss, a cosmologist from Arizona State, said that most theories were wrong.

“We get the notions they are right because we keep talking about them,” he said. Not only are most theories wrong, he said, but most data are also wrong — at first — subject to glaring uncertainties. The recent history of physics, he said, is full of promising discoveries that disappeared because they could not be repeated.

And so it went.

Maurizio Pierini, a young CERN physicist, pointed out that the tests for new physics were mostly designed to discover supersymmetry. “What if it’s not supersymmetry?” he asked.

Another assumption physicists have taken for granted — that dark matter is a simple particle rather than an entire spectrum of dark behaviors — might not be true, they were told. “Does nature really love simplicity?” Aaron Pierce of the University of Michigan asked.

Neal Weiner of New York University, who has suggested the existence of forces as well as particles on the dark side, said that until recently ideas about dark matter were driven by ideas about particle theory rather than data.

“Ultimately we learn that perhaps it has very little to do with us at all,” Dr. Weiner said. “Who knows what we will find in the dark sector?”

At one point, Mark Wise, a theoretical physicist at Caltech, felt compelled to remind the audience that this was not a depressing time for physics, listing the collider and other new experiments on heaven and on earth. “You cannot call this a depressing time,” he said.

Dr. Randall immediately chimed in. “I agree it’s a good time,” she said. “We’ll make progress by thinking about these little problems.”

On the second day, the discussion continued in an auditorium at Caltech and concluded with a showing of Mr. Dylan’s film and a history talk by Lyn Evans, the CERN scientist who has supervised the building of the Large Hadron Collider through its ups and downs over 15 years, including a disastrous explosion after it first started up in 2008.

Dr. Evans, looking relaxed, said: “It’s a beautiful machine. Now let the adventure of discovery begin.”

Dr. Spiropulu said it had already begun. Her detector, she said, recorded 50,000 proton collisions during the testing of the collider in December, recapitulating much of 20th-century particle physics.

Now it is the 21st century, Dr. Spiropulu said, and “all that has been discussed these last few days will be needed immediately.”

smoke

2010-01-07T09:32:00.000-08:00

alone

2010-01-05T17:53:00.000-08:00

From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were; I have not seen
As others saw; I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I loved, I loved alone.
Then- in my childhood, in the dawn
Of a most stormy life- was drawn
From every depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still:
From the torrent, or the fountain,
From the red cliff of the mountain,
From the sun that round me rolled
In its autumn tint of gold,
From the lightning in the sky
As it passed me flying by,
From the thunder and the storm,
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view.

Edgar Allan Poe 1829

soul train

2009-12-28T06:10:00.000-08:00

Soul Train, the first black-oriented music variety show ever offered on American television, is one of the most successful weekly programs marketed in first run syndication and one of the longest running syndicated programs in American television history. The program first aired in syndication on 2 October 1971 and was an immediate success in a limited market of seven cities: Atlanta, Cleveland, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and San Francisco. Initially, syndicators had difficulty achieving their 25 city goal. However, Soul Train's reputation as a "well produced" and "very entertaining" program gradually captured station directors' attention. By May of 1972, the show was aired in 25 markets, many of them major cities.

The Soul Train format includes guest musical performers, hosts, and performances by The Soul Train dancers. Set in a dance club environment, the show's hosts are black entertainers from music, television and the film industries. The dancers are young women and men, fashionably dressed, who dance to the most popular songs on the Rhythm and Blues, Soul, and Rap charts. The show includes a game called "The Soul Train Scramble" in which the dancers compete for prizes. The program's focus on individual performers, in contrast to the ensemble dancing more common in televisual presentation, has been passed down to many music variety shows such as American Bandstand, Club MTV, and Solid Gold.

day is done

2009-12-20T06:05:00.001-08:00

take over the asylum

2009-12-15T09:51:00.000-08:00

s.E

2009-12-14T15:08:00.001-08:00

Brightness Variations of Sun-Like Stars: The Mystery Deepens

2009-12-14T10:44:00.001-08:00

ScienceDaily (Dec. 9, 2009)
An extensive study made with ESO's Very Large Telescope deepens a long-standing mystery in the study of stars similar to the Sun. Unusual year-long variations in the brightness of about one third of all Sun-like stars during the latter stages of their lives still remain unexplained. Over the past few decades, astronomers have offered many possible explanations, but the new, painstaking observations contradict them all and only deepen the mystery. The search for a suitable interpretation is on.

"Astronomers are left in the dark, and for once, we do not enjoy it," says Christine Nicholls from Mount Stromlo Observatory, Australia, lead author of a paper reporting the study. "We have obtained the most comprehensive set of observations to date for this class of Sun-like stars, and they clearly show that all the possible explanations for their unusual behaviour just fail."

The mystery investigated by the team dates back to the 1930s and affects about a third of Sun-like stars in our Milky Way and other galaxies. All stars with masses similar to our Sun become, towards the end of their lives, red, cool and extremely large, just before retiring as white dwarfs. Also known as red giants, these elderly stars exhibit very strong periodic variations in their luminosity over timescales up to a couple of years.

"Such variations are thought to be caused by what we call 'stellar pulsations'," says Nicholls. "Roughly speaking, the giant star swells and shrinks, becoming brighter and dimmer in a regular pattern. However, one third of these stars show an unexplained additional periodic variation, on even longer timescales -- up to five years."

In order to find out the origin of this secondary feature, the astronomers monitored 58 stars in our galactic neighbour, the Large Magellanic Cloud, over two and a half years. They acquired spectra using the high resolution FLAMES/GIRAFFE spectrograph on ESO's Very Large Telescope and combined them with images from other telescopes [1], achieving an impressive collection of the properties of these variable stars.

Outstanding sets of data like the one collected by Nicholls and her colleagues often offer guidance on how to solve a cosmic puzzle by narrowing down the plethora of possible explanations proposed by the theoreticians. In this case, however, the observations are incompatible with all the previously conceived models and re-open an issue that has been thoroughly debated. Thanks to this study, astronomers are now aware of their own "ignorance" -- a genuine driver of the knowledge-seeking process, as the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates is said to have taught.

"The newly gathered data show that pulsations are an extremely unlikely explanation for the additional variation," says team leader Peter Wood. "Another possible mechanism for producing luminosity variations in a star is to have the star itself move in a binary system. However, our observations are strongly incompatible with this hypothesis too."

The team found from further analysis that whatever the cause of these unexplained variations is, it also causes the giant stars to eject mass either in clumps or as an expanding disc. "A Sherlock Holmes is needed to solve this very frustrating mystery," concludes Nicholls.

Timber Timbre

2009-12-11T15:47:00.000-08:00

Timber Timbre is a Canadian folk rock band, whose sole core member is singer-songwriter Taylor Kirk.His stage name is a play on the sound of his beat-up guitar (timbre) and the noise his father would yell (timber) when trees crashed on the farm where he was raised, an hour north of Brooklin, Ontario.

Electric Light Orchestra

2009-12-10T10:48:00.000-08:00

Electric Light Orchestra (ELO) was a very successful rock music group of the 1970s and 1980s, formed in Birmingham, England.
They incorporated the sounds of string ensembles, vocoders and dub echos into rock songs, thereby creating a very sophisticated studio version of rock. The musical content of ELO songs often went far beyond usual chord structures, mixing pop songwriting with classical romanticism and synthesized sounds. The band claim that their music “picks up where The Beatles’ 1967 song I Am the Walrus left off.”

iva bittova

2009-12-01T16:33:00.000-08:00

caravan

2009-11-23T03:54:00.001-08:00

Caravans have served both as a significant cultural icon and symbol of the nomadic Gypsy people. Until the early 19th century, Gypsy caravans served primarily as a means of transportation and not as a domicile. At the beginning of the 19th century, more Gypsy people began to live in their caravans instead of sleeping in tents. The caravan offered greater protection from weather conditions and could be outfitted with modern amenities such as wood burning stoves. Often, caravans were commissioned to be built at the request of newlywed couples and their families. The small-scale, pre-industrial methods of the builders and the labor-intensive nature of the building process meant that a family's caravan could take up to a year to build.

PES

2009-11-06T09:09:00.000-08:00

Strait Old Line

2009-11-03T07:04:00.000-08:00

changing seasons

2009-10-13T08:47:00.001-07:00

yeeeeehaaaa

2009-09-29T02:55:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-29T02:51:00.000-07:00

«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

2009-09-25T04:22:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-22T02:07:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-22T01:53:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-16T06:34:00.000-07:00

YMO

2009-09-11T09:57:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-04T04:41:00.000-07:00

full moon party

2009-09-03T09:51:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-02T05:03:00.000-07:00

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.

skin alley

2009-08-31T05:27:00.000-07:00

Skin Alley was a progressive British-American rock combo, that existed from 1969 to 1974

Bring Me Coffee or Tea

2009-08-25T02:13:00.000-07:00

Tago Mago's closing track, 1972

paper pup

2009-08-19T04:55:00.000-07:00

bloody twins

toki

Interstellar Ark

2009-08-18T03:34:00.000-07:00

The concept of star travel, from planetary system to planetary system, is at the same time completely familiar and completely uncharted. Familiar, as we have certainly all heard of science fiction stories set on a far galaxy, where planets are nations or provinces of an empire. The characters usually move from one planet to another during intervals of time consistent with the story. The actual travel appears just like a formality, which the future advancements of a Triumphant Physics will put within reach.

This is what I’ll call the “strategy zero” (S0) : here travel is “instantaneous” or at the very least quicker than one year, eg. comparable to the durations of terrestrial travels or manned missions to the moon or other solar system’s bodies.

The way toward stars becomes however quite unfamiliar if we consider that such Triumph of Physics could possibly not happen, and that the famous constant of Einstein c, the speed of light (3E8 m/s), represents an horizon speed which is impossible to exceed and which is even extraordinarily difficult to approach, so that we would begin to see outer space like it is seen by astronomers: a vastness compared to which that of terrestrial oceans is nothing.

It is not without reserve that our mind adapts to the true dimensions of interstellar space. The insanity of these distances is not the only reason: in a sense, one could say that the “strategy zero” is enracined in a child’s desire of space. Not of a space-distance, of a horridly naked space, speechless and fearless, but of a space-treasure, and of the worlds which roll within its vastness. All these worlds whose reach should not suffer any delay and whose discovery turns on our imagination.
Realism helping, we leave with some regret the green paradise of “strategy zero”, but we can still consider a little more “teenager” strategy, within the framework of Special Relativity, which we will name “short strategy” or SI, which promises a travel duration within a man’s lifetime.

Short strategy : the relativistic rocket

In SI, which is specifically relativistic, one benefits from the contraction of traveller’s proper time () when its velocity approaches c. If t is the time for a stationary observer,

where is the Lorentz factor,

When v/c approches one, tend toward infinite and tend toward zero. In other words, by approaching the speed of light the traveller’s time runs slower and slower so as one light-year may be traversed in less than one year of traveller’s proper time. This is the principle of the relativistic rocket. The only theoretical limit is the acceleration, which should be kept within physiologically acceptable limits for a human, that is to 1 g or 9,81 m/s².¹

The table below gives an idea of the travel durations and the reachable distances depending on the v/c ratio, by constraining acceleration to a constant value of 1 g (this constraint is extremely demanding as we will see):

ly = light-years (1 ly ~ 10 000 billions km)
1 g = acceleration of 9,8 m/s per second, measured in the traveller’s reference frame
and t in years, d in light-years, v/c and dimensionless

Thus, in just 12 years of proper time (but 113 243 years for the stationary observer), which is a long time but still bearable in a comfortable spaceship, one could traverse the whole Galaxy, whose diameter is 100 000 light-years. But this still requires to approach very closely the speed of light. It should also be considered that, if one wants to arrive at destination at zero speed, it is necessary to reverse the direction of thrust at midway in order to slow down; so that the travel duration is appreciably twice longer, which still remains reasonable. The total travel time (proper time of the traveller) to arrive at zero speed on a target located at D years light, while accelerating and decelerating at the constant rate of 1g in its reference frame is:

= 1,94 arccosh (d/1,94 + 1) years

For d = 100 000 ly (Galaxy extent), = 22.4 years. Thus, if we consider travel duration, SI allows to reach targets as remote as wanted within durations not exceeding human lifespan. It is on this basis that we define this strategy : duration of terrestrial travels (1 year) < <>

Energy considerations

The difficulty of SI is about energy. All happens as if one must pay on the side of energy what one did not spend on the side of travel duration. Let us consider the most favorable case. The propulsion is more effective when one ejects behind oneself the lightest possible projectile at the highest possible speed. The absolute optimum is thus reached when all the fuel is converted into photons (zero mass) collimated behind the spaceship. The only reaction allowing 100% conversion of fuel into photons is the reaction matter-antimatter. It would be then needed to collimate the photons in a gamma laser beam (“graser”) in the ideal case. Neither the antimatter fuel, neither its combustion, nor the gamma laser collimation are within reach of our current technology, but this sets the theoretical maximum. The ratio of the total fuel mass (matter + antimatter) M₀ on the spaceship mass M is in this case :

with a = 9,8 m.s^-2 = 1,02 ly.year^-2
c = 3e8 m.s^-1 = 1 ly.year^-1
in years

To reach the other end of the Galaxy ( = 22.4 years) it would be needed to take 10 million tons of fuel for each kilogram of spaceship structure. This is the absolute theoretical minimum, based on a propulsion efficiency of 1 (which cannot never be reached, as the reaction would produce neutrinos carrying part of the impulse in all directions) and which does not take into account the energy costs of the antimatter production. Antimatter must be produced in particle beams accelerated by classical means. For fundamental reasons (conservation of the baryon number), the maximum theoretical conversion rate is 1/2. In practice in current accelerators it is much lower, about 4E-8 (that is, one antiproton produced every 400 million collisions). One can reasonably hope to gain 3 to 4 orders of magnitude but nothing more can be foreseen beyond such technological horizon.

The SI strategy, realistic on the level of travel durations, quickly ceases to be realistic on the level of energy requirements. Of course, when considering the alternate “long” strategy (SII), one should keep in mind that SI-SII form a continuum, and that what is required is to find the intermediate optimum. In particular, the above scenario is a limiting one which would be not considered, as requiring a constant acceleration of 1g throughout the way is an extremely expensive condition in term of fuel consumption.

In a more general case, where a period of non-accelerated flight is allowed before decelerating, and without reaching the limiting case of an ejection of photons, the ratio of the departure mass M₀ (structure + fuel) on the arrival mass M (structure alone) is calculated as follows:

with c the speed of light
v the coasting flight velocity (which is also the maximum velocity)
v_e the fuel ejection speed (v_e <>

Scarcity of planetary systems

There is another aspect than energy to take into account, which pertain not to astronautics (rockets, engines…) but to astrophysics and exobiology. It is the planet-target or rather the entire stellar system target, including its small gray bodies (asteroids, comets).

One can only accelerate small structures at relativistic speeds, given the magnitude of the M₀/M ratio allowing to reach such speeds. Small structures which should nevertheless accommodate as more human beings as possible, so as to ensure sufficient genetic diversity, that is at least 1,000 people.

It would be possible to lower the structure requirements in the relativistic case by hibernating an appreciable fraction of the occupants.

But this would imply the strong requirement to find a target planet immediately habitable without terraforming.

On at least a few hundreds contiguous km², one should ensure of the following minimal environmental conditions:
- Gravity: 0,5 - 2 g
- Annual amount of radiation: <>2 partial pressure: 0,1 - 0,5 atm
- Temperature : -50 and +50°C
- Presence of water at surface or sub-surface
- Absence of pollutants

To reach Earth’s standards, we should add:
- diversified climatic systems based on the water cycle
- liquid water oceans
- stellar spectrum at ~6000°K
- lenient ecosystem

In addition, planning a short strategy to reach a very distant body implies to reach a target which one knows only remotely. Because if it is question of sending automatic probes to explore the system beforehand, then they should also move at relativistic speeds while the future travellers would be at rest, waiting for information to return by radio transmission. But since the target is located beyond a few light-centuries, the latent period (a millennium for a target located at 500 ly) exceeds the travel duration to a closer system in the long strategy, even if the target is less viable, we will see why.

Concerning the frequency of livable planets in the stellar systems, next decades should bring much information which we await with much impatience. But it does not seem presumptuous to me to predict that this frequency will be found low, when considering the requirements enumerated above. Consequently there could be very little chances to find some in the vicinity, say to less than 20 light-years. The number N of stars located at a distance R from the Sun is:

N = bR³
with:
b ~ 0,017 stars.ly^-3 for R<250>

The star spectral type (i.e. its surface temperature) should be similar to that of the Sun (G2), which restricts the potential targets to types F, G or K, accounting for approximately 20% of nearby stars. We may add that about half stars belong to a multiple system, which is less likely to host stable planetary orbits.

Let's set to 10% the ratio of FGK systems tolerating the presence of a telluric planet in a stable orbit at the right distance from the star.

N_hab = 0,1 N

That gives a series of sample values for N and N_hab for increasing distances in light-years from the Sun:

We can see for example that if less than 1% of stellar systems include a planet of terrestrial morphology, then there is little chance of finding one at less than 40 light-yearsl.

Even by assuming exponential advances in observational astrophysics, when one can expect that a purely radioelectric observation of a remote system, located at hundreds, thousands or tens of thousands light-years could deliver completely satisfactory information allowing to predict the possibility to colonize it “right from landing”? And this, particularly with regard to its ecosystem. There is undoubtedly not much to fear from the very large (wild animals…) or nano (viruses, requiring compatibility of genetic systems). But mico-organisms of bacterial or fungic type require a simple organic substrate to develop. Such risk remains reasonable, but it counts in the total incurred risk. Everything can happen, and everything should be considered by the travelers, in a much more dramatic way than this reflection may do. A colony reduced to the minimum in a vessel itself minimal, is delivered feet and fists tied to the slightest unforeseen, without hope of any terrestrial help, not even moral. How can one imagine more unforeseen than such a first way out of the solar system? What would happen if the 20 planned years would result in 200 years of confined life?

From this, one may conclude that humankind cannot reasonably venture in the surrounding immense spaces without being rigorously autonomous and detached of any calendar, with the only exception of the energy requirements.

The long strategy aims this autonomy. The energy needed for propulsion at “low” speed (0.015 c) and for the maintenance of a large structure, comparable to a micro-planetary body of gigaton mass, for a duration close to a millennium is comparable with that necessary to the propulsion of a thousand times less massive body at relativistic speed (0.9 c), which supposes ejection of great amounts of fuel at a speed very close to c (say 0.99 c), which is at the borders of our technological horizon. The long strategy constitutes the more “classical” of the solutions, thus the least technologically demanding. S0 strategy is based on theoretical advances, even more than technological ones, located outside of our horizon, and supposing that such solutions do actually exist. It can neither be evaluated nor discussed. SI is based on a well established relativistic physics, but whose practical application demands energy sources which are not available when aiming a very distant target in a lifetime duration. Technologically, it needs to achieve an ejection velocity at the borders of our technological horizon. It also implies a small structure which cannot stand a long term autonomy. SII is both safer and located within our horizon of possibility, even if it is not one of this century.

Long strategy: the Ark

The most effective propulsion which may be achieved within our technological horizon is nuclear fusion. The principle is to confine light nuclei at very high temperature to produce their fusion in a very hot plasma, with electric power allowing ejection of plasma in a magnetic conduit.

This principle would allow to reach ejection velocities of 20,000 km/s. In order to be used as a source of energy, a nuclear fusion reaction must satisfy several criteria. It must:

be exothermic, which limits reagents to the part of the binding energy curve corresponding to light nuclei, with few protons, making helium-4 (more rarely deuterium and tritium) the headlight reaction product because of its strong binding energy,
imply nuclei with few protons because of the need to overcome the coulombic repulsion so that nuclei may approach sufficiently to achieve fusion,
have no more than two reagents: for densities lower than those of stars, the production of three simultaneous collisions is too improbable. It should be noted that in inertial confinement one both exceeds stellar densities and temperatures, which makes it possible to compensate for the weakness of the third parameter of Lawson’s criterion, the very short duration of confinement,
have at least two products of reactions allowing the simultaneous conservation of energy and impulse,
conserve at the same time the number of protons and neutrons. Cross sections for the weak interaction being too small, the reaction p + p -> D is unusable, even if it is the one which takes place in the Sun and is constantly flooding us with energy. Proton half-life (the average time needed by a proton to react with another proton to form Deuterium, starting the feedback chain leading to helium-4) under the extreme conditions of temperature and density in the nucleus of a star (density: 150 g/cm3, temperature: 13 millions degrees Kelvin) is about 10 billion years. This as in order to occur, the reaction requires a beta decay, that is the spontaneous conversion of one of the two reactional protons into a neutron (a purely “weak” phenomenon), and this, at the very moment of the interaction p-p.

Nuclei (or isotopes) available for the reactions are:

(01) ¹H or p, light hydrogen or proton, the most usual,
(02) ²H or D, heavy hydrogen or deuterium, present in small quantity (0.0015% in terrestrial water that is 15 ppm), and maybe 10 times more in some small bodies of solar system, primarily as heavy water HDO),
(03) ³H or T, tritium, instable, with period 12.3 years, therefore absent in natural materials,
(04) ³He, He₃, helium-3 present as a trace in the lunar ground and the atmosphere of giant planets,
(05) ⁶Li, Li₆, lithium-6,
(06) ⁷Li, Li₇, lithium-7,
(07) ¹¹B, B₁₁, boron-11,
the latter 3 elements being present as a trace (estimated 6-7 ppm) in the small bodies of solar system.

The fusion reactions concerning these isotopes are:

n represents neutron (in bold when it can breed deuterium).
1 MeV : 1 million electron-volts (eV). 1 eV = 1,602E-19 Joules

We may distinguish two kinds of reactions:
- those producing neutrons and gamma radiation: (02), (04), (06), (07), (09). The reaction (12) produces a neutron but should be put aside because it is endothermic. However coupling the two ways of Li-7 (11) + (12) is exothermic (balance: +2,2 MeV) and this reactional way could be interesting.
- those which produce only charged nuclei: protons, deutons, alpha particles (4He) : (01), (03), (05), (08), (09), (10) (11), (13), (14), (15).

The reactions of the first kind may seem at first unfavorable, as neutrons and gamma photons are not sensitive to electromagnetic fields, and so cannot be ejected by a conduit: their contribution to propulsion is zero whereas they carry the majority of the impulsion. Moreover they are very aggressive and “activate” the metal structures. On the other hand, the reactive nuclei are relatively abundant: these reactions imply deuterium in (3). The reactions of the second kind are ideal for propulsion but tritium is not naturally available and helium-3, lithium-6-7 and boron-11 are much more rare than deuterium in the small bodies of the solar system. However the required fuel mass is considerable, about 21 Gt (gigaton, 1 Gt = 1 billion tons) on the hypothesis adopted hereafter.

One possibility is to use the neutron produced to breed deuterium in a fertile layer of hydrogen ¹H.

The D-D reaction has two equiprobable ways, (2) and (3). In the first, pn+pn produces pnn+p (a tritium nucleus and a proton), in the second ppn + n (a helium-3 nucleus and a neutron). The produced tritium is then likely to react in (5) pnn+pnn -> ppnn + 2n (a helium-4 nucleus and 2 neutrons). The two neutrons produced in this second stage of reaction may in their turn breed deuterium by reacting with the fertile layer of light hydrogen.

The great technical difficulty consists in -amongst other- not “wasting” impulse when passing from the first reactional stage (D-D) to the second (T-T, or He3-He3). The ejection velocity is the key parameter in determining the engine efficiency, and it is primarily allowed by the high temperatures of the reactions products. A proton at 20,000 km/s has a kinetic energy of about 4 MeV, which well represents the magnitude of the reactions described above. The second fusion reaction must thus occur within the jet of plasma. Whatever is the difficulty, a complete breeding (at 1:1 rate), even with a very slight surplus, represents an absolutely crucial factor to judge feasibility. The fusible isotopes are only present at the state of traces in the small bodies. A complete breeding only requires to take on board small initial quantities, since each gram undergoing fusion breeds one gram in the fertile layer. If breeding is only partial, it is needed before departure to distil enormous quantities of hydrogen so as to take on board a fuel already strongly enriched in deuterium or other fusible nuclei. The mass needed to provide fuel vary between 1 to 5000 between the two.

Another concept which may be interesting to consider, given the vast surface of the engine to be manufactured, is that of the ice rocket:² frozen hydrogen and deuterium are used at the same time as reactor, conduit of fuel and screen against the products of the reaction.

Choice of the target: small bodies first

Paradoxically, the fact of travelling in a vessel-world makes it possible to be much less selective on the choice of the stellar target, and to get more chance to find one at short distance (on an astronomical scale). It is not indeed necessary to find a livable planet but simply a system including a star of a spectral type not very far away from the solar type (K, G or F) and abundance of small bodies. Of course, the presence of a planet offering a “practicable” surface, of Martian type for example would be very appreciable.

Among close systems, Epsilon Eridani (the system gravitating around the star designated epsilon in the constellation of Eridan) can be most interesting. It has been, by the way, the subject of research with the Green Bank radiotelescope in 1960, to seek signs of intelligent life, with negative results of course.

The system is a close neighbor of the Sun, which is its first criteria of choice. It is located at only 10.5 light-years (3.2 parsec). Ironically, Eridan is the name of the river where fell Phaeton after its disastrous race too close to the Sun. Let us wish to fall there while moving away from the Sun! The orange color star is rather close to the solar type (0.82 solar mass, spectral type K2 V).

The infrared observation satellite IRAS detected much dust around the star, a possible indication of a planetary system in formation. It is thus very probable that the system abounds in small bodies. In august 2000, a planet of the size of Jupiter was detected at a distance of 3.2 UA (480 million km) from the star, in a strongly eccentric orbit (e=0.702) which makes it inside the ecosphere on a little more than 10% of its short orbital period (2502 days).

Energy and travel time: the Tsiolkovski equation

The way to Epsilon Eridani will serve as a textbook case to evaluate SII strategy. We will consider a mean ejection velocity of 15,000 km/s. The fundamental Tsiolkovski equation, in its non-relativistic version (v/c<<1)>e :

with:
M₀ : total departure mass.
M : mass of the structure without fuel
M₀ = M + M_c, with M_c the fuel mass
v_e : fuel ejection velocity
v : final velocity at the end of the acceleration period
After the acceleration phase, there is a period of coasting flight at constant velocity, then deceleration to arrive at destination at zero velocity. This implies more fuel since we need to accelerate in the first phase a mass of fuel which will only be consumed during braking, which translates into the squaring of the exponential:

The quantity of fuel determines final velocity and so, travel duration.

We note:
D_a : acceleration and braking distances (cumulated)
D_l : coasting flight distance

We define k, the ratio fuel mass/total mass:

We set:

We have T_a, the acceleration and braking durations (cumulated):

T_l, the coasting flight duration:

One wishes the acceleration and braking duration the shortest possible, so as that most of the travel is at the maximum speed. But on the other side an intense acceleration implies a strong thrust and so more massive engines and reinforced structure, to resist the thrust without deformation.

A technology being given, defining the fuel ejection velocity (v_e = 15,000 km/s) it remains two free parameters to calculate the travel duration (t), the average acceleration (a) and the thrust (f) : the fuel mass M_c and the acceleration distance D_a (it is supposed that acceleration and braking are totally symmetric). In the graph below, we represent the variation of the three output variables (t, a, f ) as a function of the two input (M_c and D_a).

Click the image to zoom

We cannot yet carry out a reasoned choice of the input values. We know simply that we should if possible maximize M_c and minimize D_a. M_c consists of fusible substance, a rare material (undoubtely deuterium for the most part). Of all the parameters which condition the feasibility of a gigaton-mass Ark, the mass of the fuel to be extracted from small bodies is undoubtedly the one which poses the most acute problems. The illustration below represents an alternative solution, a photonic sail, making it possible to reduce the structure.⁴ Propelled by fixed laser of very great power, for example installed on the Moon, the Ark would only take on board the braking fuel. Even with its immense surface, the sail insolation reaches more than 1000 times the solar constant in terrestrial orbit (1400 W/m²) : surface must be perfectly reflective in order not to be evaporated by the receiving power. Also, the Ark would depend on an external source which it does not control.

Click the image to zoom

For the following, we will adopt the solution of a completely autonomous acceleration with the illustrative ratio M₀/M necessary to reach 1.5% of c, that is 4500 km/s. This requires a total departure mass of 46 Gt (25 for structure and 21 for fuel). For a cumulated acceleration and braking distance of 0.5 ly, one obtains an accelerated flight duration of 67 years (34 years for the acceleration and as much for braking), and a coasting flight duration of 667 years, that is a total travel duration of 734 years, to traverse 10.5 ly separating us from Epsilon Eridani.

The Ark structure, its philosophy in brief

The long strategy is based on the construction of a structure, the Ark, within which a small population, the Space Nation, could live an independent existence. This structure must allow a life at the same time completely free from Earth, organized as a whole nation and with enough diversity on all plans of interaction under which we consider the individual life.

When one wants to represent oneself physically what the Ark would look like, three preliminary constraints prove strong enough to define its general architecture.

a) Artificial gravity
The Ark must allow a normal life, according to terrestrial standards, and the first requirement relates to gravity. The acceleration of gravity results from the enormous mass of the Earth (5.97E24 kg) and it is obviously impossible to recreate it in this manner. The only alternative solution is to circularly accelerate a cylindrical surface inside which the habitants take place. The acceleration g is then:

with:
g the acceleration in m.s^-2
the angular velocity in rad.^-1
R the cylinder radius in m

The acceleration g is set equal to Earth’s, that is 9.81 m/s². Ark radius, discussed below, is 5 km. So:

= 0.044 rad.^-1, that is a revolution period of 2 min 22 s.

The structure being of kilometric dimensions, the concerned mass, both for structure and fuel, will be important. Subjecting a mass to an acceleration produces a force, so as the structure needs to be reinforced so that it resists its own weight. Concerning the habitable structure, there is no choice, but concerning the fuel and the engine, one may find it very beneficial not to make them turn with the structure, so as they remain in weightlessness. The cylinder axis offers naturally a space of weightlessness: acceleration depends linearly on distance from center. For R=0, g=0. So, all the engine part should take seat in the center, or Hub of the Ark cylinder.

b) Thrust surface
However, doing a preliminary calculation of the necessary surface of the engines (as each engine is only able to provide a finite and small thrust) we find that is must be far higher than the section of a 5 km cylinder. It is thus necessary to couple to the Ark cylinder a vast thrust surface which should not rotate in order to avoid a structure overweight, while transmitting its thrust to the whole structure.

A first solution would be to place this corolla in the form of a vast ring and to connect it with cables to the cylinder hub. In this approximate version, the Ark would be drawn like princess Elisa by her eleven brothers transformed into swans in the Andersen’s tale of the “Wild Swans”.

Click the image to zoom

But if the eleven brothers had all softness for their young sister, it would emanate from the corolla a plasma blowing to ten thousands km/s as well as a flood of gamma photons, all very aggressive and extremely detrimental to any structure located under the flow.

The corolla will thus be placed behind. One should imagine the Ark as a motionless disk, the corolla, connected to a turning cylinder, the livable structure, located in front.

The architectural challenge is to transmit to the cylinder the thrust of the disk, without this coupling implying the rotation of the disk. Without also making the cylinder ‘dance’, which would occuper by gyroscopic effect if the thrust axis does not strictly merge with the revolution axis. The coupling of the two elements can only be done in one point, and this point must be located at the exact geometrical center of the Ark. Application of thrust in a single point of small surface, the central stage (diameter ~ 25 m), makes it possible to limit friction which would insidiously transmit the rotational movement of the cylinder to the corolla.

It should be added to that that the disk is not made of very rigid elements. It is essentially made of not very cohesive hydrogen ice. Such a surface cannot work in shearing. It would be the case if the corolla were to directly push on the cylinder by its center. A structure doubling the corolla, rigid enough to collect the thrust on all surface and to work directly in shearing should be extremely massive. The general rule for structures of very long range it is that a load-carrying element working in compression (as the walls of a house) is much more massive than a load-carrying element in traction (such as a cable), for an equal stress. And this more especially as the range increases. This is why it is difficult to build very high towers on Earth. Here, there are no other choices that to make the corolla work in traction, according to fasteners regularly laid out along its perimeter and its rays, by staying it to a beam which will transmit the thrust to the center of the Ark, via a bearing. This beam becomes the only element to work in compression.

At midway, we remember to reverse the thrust, so as to arrive at destination at null velocity. To turn around a structure of this size is as much less easy if its moment of inertia perpendicular to the axis of rotation is large, which is the case. It is simpler to have a second corolla, symmetrical with the first, on the front side, so as the braking jet may be correctly directed to the target when needed. The tick cushion of hydrogen ice which would form on the behind would secure the Ark from collisions with small interstellar bodies, which is very rare but devastating at a velocity of 4,500 km/s.

Click the image to zoom

c) The mass of the structure
The dry mass of the Ark as discussed here represents some 25 Gt (gigatons) or 2.5E13 kg. It would be necessary, of course, to discuss the basis of this estimation and the parameters which can intervene to reconsider it. But in any case, one has a presentiment that for a kilometric structure under tension it must be question of “gigatonnic” mass. A take-off of such structure from the Earth would be whimsical. The gravitational well is too deep and the body should be unreasonably reinforced to resist to the departure thrust. Construction will have thus to be done entirely in space. But even then, the contribution of materials neessary for its construction could not realistically come from Earth, because of energy requirements. The extraction would be done preferentially from small bodies of the solar system (asteroids and comets), whose gravity well is tiny, then conveyed in terrestrial orbit. The structure of the Ark is much larger and massive than any human artifact ever considered, and it is also that which should remain intact over the longest duration, with absolute requirements of resistance and sealing. To satisfy only one of these two requirements would require a new reflection. It is a fortiori the case when both are joined. With some exceptions, of which the structure of the first aircrafts in wood and textiles, all aereonautical structures are metalilc. There exist in the solar sytem a rather large abundance of small metallic bodies, the asteroids of type S which account for 17% of all known asteroids : even concentrating on the only light metal elements (Al, Mg, Ti…) abundance is not a problem. But to conceive a structure entirely made of metal by conventional means is hardly possible, for several reasons. Metals at native state are in the form of oxides (combined with oxygen: X_nO_m) and their reduction (to make them pure metals) requires high temperatures or intense amperages, which implies mass production of electrical energy. Their shaping and assembly are also energy-expensive and claim much care. They are dense bodies with a rather modest ratio of resistance in tension over specific mass. They are subjected to a phenomenon of tiredness (dislocations in the crystal lattice) which rigidify them and lead to the formation of cracks. They are oxydable in various ways, while at the same time the Ark’s interior is erosive (seasonal atmospheric cycle, humid air, oceanic layer..).

Considering by contrast that the chemical elements which mainly make the small bodies of the solar systems are lighter than metals, and that one seeks a light structure, and considering in addition that even if we are not the authors, thanks to Evolution we have in Plants an immense natural know-how in the construction of fibrous structures both resistant and self-sustained on the basis of light atoms tied to solar energy available in abundance, we come to imagine that the structure of the Ark could be built by natural growth, rather than by construction, with vegetable fiber walls. The components are as said, lighter and more abundant (CHON), they offer an excellent ratio resistance/weight and are of very safe design (they “prevent” before yielding). Especially: they are regenerated, that of which no traditional structure is able. It may seem iconoclast enough to put a ‘vegetable’ in the spatial vacuum. However, the only thing to ensure is to isolate the living cells from this vacuum, and here too biological operation can take care of it by production of a cohesive skin of dead cells in a rubber-like matrix, over some decimeters. The other advantage relates to the construction: engineering simply resumes to nourish an alive structure with simple elements taken from small bodies: H₂O, CO₂, nitrogen, phosphorus… The structure grows on interior orbit, by using solar energy, from an embryonic stage to kilometric adult dimensions in two or three centuries. During this lapse of time, it is habitable by its host builders. On the interstellar way, it is then necessary to provide the energy of maintenance in luminous form.

The Ark’s biosphere is made of an oceanic film, of a depth of approximately 25m, on which float ballast supporting a thin soil.

An entire life in the Ark ?

Can one seriously consider a normal life, accomplished on all the plans, within an artificial structure far away from the Earth? Could we do it by ourselves and could we imagine without quivering a line of generations living there, which we would be the ancestor? This prospect undoubtedly constitutes the most immediate psychological brake, but not inevitably the deepest, that every normally made human being will oppose first of all to the idea of a life in the Ark.

To approach this central point, we will use of a concept that one could call the individual horizon, which parameter is a radius defined as the depth of action of the individual, on the level considered essential to an existence deserving to be lived. On all these plans, one seeks the minimum radius for which these requirements are satisfied, if it is not fully at least by combining them when it is possible.

Horizon of visual space: Dimension in which the radius is expressed: extent of the land which can be seen at a glance. It is the first signification apperception of the space, and it dimensions the whole project. On Earth, which is the radius of our visual horizon? From 1 to approximately 10 km depending on landscape. This defines the typical dimensions of the Ark. Concretely, the glance goes sufficiently far without giving the impression to feel at narrow. On the ground, a thickness of 1 to 10m of topsoil and rocks is enough.

Physical horizon of circulation: Dimension of the radius: the surface or volume which can be explored by an individual. On Earth the glance goes from 1 to 10 km, but we can move within a far bigger space, like thousands or even millions of km². From this point of view, it appears frankly impossible to reproduce what potentially offers us the whole Earth. However few individuals on Earth realize such potential in their life. A majority of people, considered in the space-time of their existence, their whole horizon of circulation does not exceed a few hundred km².
One can add to this that the radius of this horizon may be appreciably increased if there is great diversity. A thousand km² of desert do not offer the same radius of action, on that level, than a hundred km² in which one would find a city, a forest, fields, a river and any other elements of landscape diversity. One would want to maximize from this point of view the diversity offered by the natural environments of the Ark by reproducing the main part of the great terrestrial ecosystems.

Moreover, an artificial structure as the Ark offers by its design several levels, going from the center towards the periphery, while terrestrial surface is presented as purement bi-dimensional, without thickness to be explored with the exception of sea-beds or cavities. These various levels offer a completely new diversity unknown on Earth: micro-gravity spaces, spacewalk on the central beam or in galleries within the fuel hydrogen ice, oceanic background and other surfaces and volumes which will be detailed when discussing the structure. All places in the Ark, in surface as in volume, can be designed to be accessible at walk. Some will be very diversified, others rather monotonous. Together, they offer a very large radius of circulation. The maximum visual horizon being about 10 Km, one can start to consider on the same basis the habitation area. It would be a cylindric surface of length L=10 Km on a diameter of 10 Km (or a radius of 5 Km). The habitable surface A₀ is:

A₀ = 2πRL

That is A₀ = 314 km², representing the primary radius of the circulation horizon, something like ‘dry land’, offering conditions of existence in all points comparable to terrestrial standards. It is difficult to rigorously quantify what the spaces developed on the basis of this primary radius represent, since surfaces and volumes are concerned at the same time. Without claiming to give anything other than an estimation, one can however ensure that this radius will be multiplied by ten. In magnitude, an Ark whose visual space horizon is set to 10 km should offer a space of circulation comparable to a space on Earth that a horse can traverse during one day.

Of course, even if one does not feel at narrow in such radius of circulation, it could look very thin when one imagines – and how not to do it - about the terrestrial immensities. But two plans are then confused. Terrestrial space, let us repeat it, is only potentially available to us. Only a negligible minority of people happen to travel from one pole to another or through all timezones. And even the great travelers never explore more than what is within reach of their steps. When we go to China, which we explore best is the seat of the airplane taking us there. And it would be specious to affirm to have been “crossing Japan” because one flew over it at 10,000 meters of altitude. And when one visited China, the actual radius of circulation was by no means comparable to the size of this nation. It was summarized to some visited places, some natural curiosities, a city or two, and within these cities a few remarkable places, with our hotel room probably the best explored place of all the tour, said without any irony. The real circulation space is not indexed to terrestrial vastness but to time. That is the actual criterion. The fact of potentially having an immense world is not at all negligible. But that is a moral aspect which should be considered separately. It may seem important that a vast world is available where to carry our steps, but if one adds up over our whole lifetime the spaces where one will have been able indeed to note our presence, it is probable that they will not exceed the radius of circulation under consideration for the Ark.

Horizon of social interaction: Radius dimension: number and diversity of the arkonauts population. The term arkonaut designates the inhabitants of the Ark. To reach the minimal threshold of diversity, it is needed in other words that one can during his whole life meet people who he never met before. It is also what one could call the threshold of anonymity: while walking in the crowd, one meet unknown people in proportion as large as known people. That corresponds to what happens in a small city, that is a population ranging between 10,000 and 100,000 inhabitants, with an average set for the convenience of this article to 50,000 inhabitants.

Comparing to Earth, Ark should carry a maximized human diversity. However, it is undoubtedly necessary to imagine that the settlement is done primarily by natural growth. The initial settlement, carrying out the way Ground-Ark could include as few as 2,000 families or 5,000 people, adults and their offsprings, knowledgeable in fields useful to construction and maintenance of the structure and the engines. And for the successor, a “meritocratic” ascent formed of volunteers selected for their social utility within the framework of the project. The time of acclimatization and demographic balancing, including the possibility of a return to Earth, will undoubtedly be higher than a century.

Horizon of social activities: Radius dimension: diversity and intensity of the activities constituting the reason to act at the collective level of individuals. An Ark carrying a branch of humanity towards a nearby stellar system, on secular durations, would structure around two primary functions: ensure propulsion of the engine, and maintain the life.

Propulsion: it consists of two symmetrical phases, acceleration and braking. Between the two, the Ark is in coasting flight at maximum speed. As one wishes to carry out the maximum of the way at this maximum speed, in ordern to shorten it, one will seek to reduce as much as possible the duration of the phases of acceleration and braking, and the coasting flight will have to represent the major part of it. Also the strictly propelling function should only concern a short segment of a few decades before departure and preceding arrival. However, the competences concerned with the propelling function preserve an essential preroagative during coasting flight: provide the energy needed to maintain the life in the Ark, that is for the main part the solar energy (when the term does not carry confusion, we will use it to indicate luminous energy) diffused within the structure and allowing life of the ecosystems, as well as the maintenance of the “thermodynamic machine” regulating Ark climate. The energy used by the anthropic activities (industry, transportation, domestic activity) is included, representing a negligible sub-total. Physically, this function is achieved in the center of the Ark, in what one will indicate as the Hub, in a microgravity area, as well as in the Beam and within the corolla, in weightlessness (or almost, since the mass of the structure will create a natural gravity of a millionth gram). One will include in the activity of the Hub all the industrial activities which it may be interesting to perform in low weight.

Life: it is at the same time about the interior ecosystem of the Ark (content) and its walls (container). The Ark is a closed system with a short cycle if compared to those known on Earth. Given the immediate cause/effect relationship between the global functioning of the Ark and the existence of its inhabitants, one can predict that those will develop particularly sharpened skills. The Ark being globally, and totally, an alive being, it represents a source of constant interactions for its inhabitants, either if it question of taking care of it or to be looked after from it. The nature of the “propulsion-life” bond represents something philosophically stimulating, because of the “mise en abyme” of the action which it founds. The Ark shelters man, and man injects energy making it possible to the Ark to live. That resembles the endosymbiose joining together the eucaryotes cells and the mitochondries. It is about a relationship of total mutual dependance, in a conscient form at one part (asymmetry founding a total responsibility) and which seals a unity of destiny all the more intensely felt than an alive being is totally master and totally slave of an another. Interesting dialectical. On the level of individual moral construction founding political systems, the small number of the population is an asset to develop an “Athenian” democracy without political representative body, which increases the richness of social interaction of individuals, insofar as a direct and not mediated power is exerted.

Genesic horizon: Radius dimension: capacity to generate. A very delicate question would be that of demographical control. The Ark being a closed world largely optimized, there is no question of leaving the simple natural growth to control demography. One does not need either to set excessive constraints, population being able without any doubt to grow of up to a factor of 3 without consequent damage. However, the question would be obligatorily set for a so long duration that the balance between personal freedom and collective interest should be solved theoretically. Within a democratic framework one can imagine the following social pact. The first child would constitute an indisputable right, that each woman would concretize when she would like it, with the simple duty of declaring it to allow for demographical planning. The extension of the family to two children would then be decided at random depending on the balance requirements formulated by demographic projections. Concretely, each woman would declare each year their “child project” for that year, in yes/no form, and for the whole of their fertile period (I would desire N children in all). That would be a simple declaration, revisable without notice and nonconstraining. One would draw a demographic projection from it, from which an opinion would result, in the form of a random choice. Each troop of women (a troop is defined by individuals of the same age) would be entitled to the random choice. The randomized names would depend on the wish expressed for the year (if a woman desires a child on that year, his name would be in the list to be randomized) and each name would be weighted in proportion of their parental project already carried out (a woman wishing 3 childrens and not having any would have more rights than a woman wishing 4 childrens and already having 3). The remaining question, subjected to the political appreciation of the arkonauts, would be to determine the applicable constraint (if any) when a woman falls pregnant when the random choice had not granted child to her. If the wishes not carried out by other woman in the troop balances it then all is well. The question takes a more delicate turn if the total indiscipline of a troop would burden the procreative right of the youngers. At worst one can imagine a penal sanction, but it is foreseeable that, like all social constraints originating with a very comprehensibile need, education would suffice so that things occur orderly or almost.

Spiritual horizon: Radius dimension: intensity and diversity of spiritual life, intended as the whole of the activities mobilizing cognition. A way of measuring the radius of this horizon could be to evaluate the depth and the richness of the materials available to mind to think about reality and itself.

Compared to what the Past can deliver, the Ark would embark the whole of terrestrial memories which should represent some 1E20 bytes in magnitude, that is the whole of what is currently registered on paper, magnetic or optical media, with or without repetition, everywhere and in all languages. The Ark will also have access to a “differed present” thanks to the radioelectric link with the Earth, all the more differed since the Ark is moving away. A laser link could be imagined, so as to minimize dispersion, in the infrared band which would get less noise from the plasma emissions. For a laser power of 1 MW at lambda = 1 micron, the bandwidth would be of magnitude of 10 MB/s at 1 ly and 100 KB/s at 10 ly, similar to an average internet link.

Compared to the Present, the spiritual horizon is identified to the horizon of social activity previously discussed. Arkonauts live a morally new situation, in lived and in long-term aims. They should develop an original mentality. The need of getting along would come first. The word trajectory reminds of “transient”. But such transient is a whole life and a whole civilization, with the result that the stellar goal will become almost secondary. The majority of individuals populating this travel will belong to a generation “not leaving, not arriving”. For this majority, the end of the way would just appear like a distant future. Certainly, in background the reach of targets will structure the community, but the stake making the happiness of the travellers will remain for the humankind its present.

Compared to the Future, the colonial objective will require a thorough reflection of what will have to be done once arrived at destination.

Either the target planets present conditions of existence allowing a settlement “naked head”, either they require terraformation. With the first case is associated a weak probability, as previously said. It is thus rather necessary to imagine a life of orbital two-ways travels between an Ark forming a comfortable base camp and life on surface in protected conditions. A terraformation represents a long-term task, exceeding individual lifespan, and arkonauts would live again what lived their ancestors who built the Ark, with this only difference that for the ancestors the base was a planet and their future horizon the Ark, while for the newcomers the base will be the Ark and their future horizon, the planet which becomes gradually livable.

To the multi-century duration of the task, there is a real ethical problem, which arises in all cases where the target planet is not deprived of life: what to do with indigenous life ?Of course, one does not imagine to colonize a planet populated by beings morally equivalent to the human being. But if the planet is ready to receive a form of life based on the chemistry of carbon, then it is possible, to differing degrees, that this one already developed at its surface or in sub-surface an original form of life without continuity with the forms of terrestrial lives which contain the Ark. The idea to sterilize a biosphere appears at the very least monstrous. On this assumption, it is necessary to imagine the existence within a mixed ecosystem.

As a conclusion

The travel duration, more than seven centuries on the adopted hypothesis, constitutes the most striking characteristic of an interstellar travel led by classical means. The most immediate objection which comes to the mind is that it would be perhaps wiser to wait that Physics makes sufficient progress to authorize interstellar travel in “decent” durations. And partly, history of physics seems to encourage us there. Few fields of knowledge indeed progressed at a faster rate than physics over the last four centuries. But on another side, in fact precisely the already achieved progress, crystallized in a solid building, shows well and to the point that crossing of immense spaces is expensive, either in time or energy. Perhaps is physics mature enough so that we should take it seriously as of today? To abolish time while spending immense quantities of energy does not cost anything to imagination, but nevertheless, energy keeps a rare good. Would not be time to drop sterile dreams to embrace fertile dreams? It is on this bet that this reflection was carried out. Energy is for humanity an exogenic good which must be extracted to the Universe, it is a conquest. As the fable says, “One fights for everything he swallows”. Humanity however has its time. It renews itself with its generations. It does not require, to last without effort, of nothing else than a reconstituted environment and a modest amount of energy to maintain it. And yet, even in the long strategy, one need an insane amount of energy. 99% of fuel disperse in the Great Outside and propels the Ark, 1% only feeds the sun shining on such a world.

At the scale of the beginning of XXI century, the Ark is a project at the border of fantasy. Everything appears disproportionate, whether it is the amount of fuel or the dimensions of the structure. But to set the real height which is necessary to cross, to set masses, lengths and energies, to determine the level of technological advance of the travellers, draw the broad outline of a society to come, all of this, even if future would not retain nothing of it, may help the birth of a future.

because

2009-07-31T10:16:00.000-07:00

Because the world is round it turns me on
Because the world is round

Because the wind is high it blows my mind
Because the wind is high

Love is old, love is new
Love is all, love is you

Because the sky is blue, it makes me cry
Because the sky is blue

the residents

2009-07-29T07:06:00.000-07:00

The Residents are an American avant-garde music and visual arts group. They have created over sixty albums, created numerous musical short films.Throughout their career, spanning nearly four decades, they have not disclosed their identity.

some summer sum

2009-07-26T08:35:00.000-07:00

Still Wednesday morning

2009-07-15T03:38:00.000-07:00

Wednesday morning

2009-07-14T07:27:00.000-07:00

1.alemayehu eshete - tey gedyeleshem
2.Seyfu Yohannes-Tezeta
3.Gunter Kallmann Choir-Daydream
4.Tommy James-Candy Maker
5.The Hudson Brothers - So You Are A Star
6.flying lotus-tea leaf dancers
7.Lamb - Angelica
8.Lovin' Spoonful-Daydream

I'm a rocket man

2009-07-09T13:18:00.000-07:00

From The Science Fiction Film Awards, William Shatner's unforgettable performance of Elton John's "Rocket Man".

She packed my bags last night pre-flight
Zero hour nine a.m.
And I'm gonna be high as a kite by then
I miss the earth so much I miss my wife
It's lonely out in space
On such a timeless flight

And I think it's gonna be a long long time
Till touch down brings me round again to find
I'm not the man they think I am at home
Oh no no no I'm a rocket man
Rocket man burning out his fuse up here alone

Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids
In fact it's cold as hell
And there's no one there to raise them if you did
And all this science I don't understand
It's just my job five days a week
A rocket man, rock it____________man

Six men getting sick (six times)

2009-07-07T06:22:00.000-07:00

1966 - David Lynch`s very first short film

abyss

2009-07-06T07:40:00.000-07:00

BBC documentary about the creatures of the Abyss...

M.J.

2009-07-01T03:07:00.000-07:00

Pas de Deux

2009-06-21T04:21:00.000-07:00

ballet film by animator Norman Mclaren, using an optical printer.

The Return to Reason

2009-06-17T01:22:00.000-07:00

Le Retour A La Raison (The Return to Reason) is a black and white film by Man Ray from 1923.

The World First Time Machine

2009-06-12T04:17:00.000-07:00

Mallett was born in Roaring Spring, Pennsylvania, on March 3rd, 1945. He lived in the Bronx, New York City. When he was 10 years old, his father died at age 33 of a heart attack. Inspired by a Classics Illustrated comic book version of H.G. Wells' The Time Machine, Mallett resolved to travel back in time to save his father. This idea became a lifelong obsession.

For quite some time, Ronald Mallett has been working on plans for a time machine. This technology would be based upon a ring laser's properties within the context of Einstein's Theory of Relativity. Mallett first argued that the ring laser would produce a limited amount of frame-dragging which might be measured experimentally, saying:

"In Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, both matter and energy can create a gravitational field. This means that the energy of a light beam can produce a gravitational field. My current research considers both the weak and strong gravitational fields produced by a single continuously circulating unidirectional beam of light. In the weak gravitational field of a unidirectional ring laser, it is predicted that a spinning neutral particle, when placed in the ring, is dragged around by the resulting gravitational field."

In a later paper, he argued that at sufficient energies, the circulating laser might produce not just frame-dragging but also closed timelike curves, allowing time travel into the past:

For the strong gravitational field of a circulating cylinder of light, I have found new exact solutions of the Einstein field equations for the exterior and interior gravitational fields of the light cylinder. The exterior gravitational field is shown to contain closed timelike lines.
The presence of closed timelike lines indicates the possibility of time travel into the past. This creates the foundation for a time machine based on a circulating cylinder of light.

Funding for his program, now known as The Space-time Twisting by Light (STL) project, is progressing. Full details on the project, Mallett's theories, a list of upcoming public lectures and links to popular articles on his work can be found at the Professor's UConn web page,and an illustration showing the concept on which Mallett has designed the time machine can be seen on a Geocities webpage.

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video:

A 2003 BBC Documentary chronicling the work of Dr Ronald Mallett, a physicist on the brink of making time travel a reality. This documentary covers: Traveling to the past, the future, alternative universe and paradoxes that come with time travel.

Dreams That Money Can Buy

2009-06-12T02:40:00.000-07:00

Dreams That Money Can Buy is a 1947 American experimental feature color film written, produced, and directed by surrealist artist and dada film-theorist Hans Richter.

Collaborators included Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Alexander Calder, Darius Milhaud and Fernand Léger. The film won the Award for the Best Original Contribution to the Progress of Cinematography at the 1947 Venice Film Festival.

Sesame Street President

2009-06-12T02:08:00.000-07:00

TIME , Monday, Jun. 15, 2009
Tickle Me Obama: Lessons from Sesame Street
By NANCY GIBBS

Most presidents are easy to pin down on our cultural maps. Ronald Reagan was raised in Dixon, Ill., but we placed him in Hollywood, telling America's story on the big screen. Bill Clinton may have been the Man from Hope, Ark., but the mischief of nearby Hot Springs was in his blood. George W. Bush was practically born on the Yale campus, yet Texas was his true terroir.
Which brings us to Barack Obama, who belongs ... where exactly? Kansas? Kenya? Hawaii? Harvard? None of these quite fit our blender in chief, but it struck me recently that Obama does have a cultural home: he's the first President from Sesame Street.

When Sesame Street founder Joan Ganz Cooney met Obama at a fundraiser last year, she was prepared to hear what she always does. "I'd have bet you a million dollars," she says, "that [Obama] would tell me how his kids watched Sesame Street." But instead the President-to-be told her that he and his little sister watched the show. "I realized that this is the first President young enough to say that."

The Obamas clearly have a deeper personal connection to the show than their White House predecessors did; it was aimed, after all, at kids like them. (Full disclosure: I have a personal connection too; some of my friends work on Sesame Street, and they aren't furry.) When Michelle Obama visited the set in Queens, N.Y., to talk about "healthy habits" a few weeks ago, she was practically fizzing. "I'm on a high," she said. "I never thought I'd be on Sesame Street with Elmo and Big Bird." Let it be noted that this visit came after she'd met the Queen of England at Buckingham Palace and welcomed Stevie Wonder to the White House and enjoyed all kinds of other not-too-bad perks of being First Lady. "I think it's probably the best thing I've done so far in the White House."

The President is every bit as much a product of the show, but it's not just his age and mastery of the alphabet that make Obama the first Sesame Street President. The Obama presidency is a wholly American fusion of optimism, enterprise and earnestness — rather like the far-fetched proposal of 40 years ago to create a TV show that would prove that educational television need not be an oxymoron. Unlike Captain Kangaroo and Mr. Green Jeans in their idyllic Treasure House, or the leafy land of the suburban sitcom, Sesame's characters were colorful, their milieu was urban; there was noise and grime and grouches, and they hung out on the stoop, not the porch. Parents who were not white, not rich, not able to afford a fancy preschool knew this show was designed for them. Maybe it would level the playing field a little.

It wound up doing much more. Sesame Street is now the longest street on the planet. It runs from Harlem to Honolulu; on to Obama's childhood home in Indonesia, where Jalan Sesama celebrates unity through diversity; through South Africa, where one Muppet is HIV positive; through Israel and Palestine and Egypt, where girls are told how important it is that they keep reading and learning. It creates citizens of a highly globalized, post-racial world. "The only kids who can identify along racial lines with the Muppets," genius puppeteer Jim Henson observed, "have to be either green or orange."

And yet for all its empathy, Sesame Street has been highly cerebral as well, the perfect hatchery for the Empirical Presidency. It is the most heavily researched children's show ever, conceived by an experimental psychologist, incubated in a Harvard seminar room, vetted by linguists and nutritionists and child-development experts (who once vetoed a segment in which Elmo crawled inside the letter O because they feared that a toddler might see it as permission to climb into a toilet). Obama famously prizes intellect over instinct; he says he wants to see the data and for the data to drive the decision. Sesame writers test-drive their skits on focus groups of young children to see how long they can hold the kids' attention and how well the writers deliver their desired message; if the kids drift, the segment dies. The same can be said of any number of Obama's dreamier campaign promises.

Sesame Street's genius lies in finding gentle ways to talk about hard things — death, divorce, danger — in terms that children understand and accept. The polls can tell a President what the American people want to hear, but after so many years of sandbox politics and childish games, there comes a time to grow up. Given the hard choices, does the President think we're ready to handle complexity and delay gratification? If not now, when? Professor Obama has at least talked to us like we're adults. The question remains whether President Obama will govern as though he believes it.

M

2009-06-04T03:13:00.000-07:00

M is a 1931 German drama-thriller directed by Fritz Lang and written by Lang and his wife Thea von Harbou. It was Lang's first sound film.

A group of children are playing a game involving a song about a child murderer...

Day The Earth Stood Still

2009-06-04T02:42:00.000-07:00

The Day the Earth Stood Still is a 1951 black-and-white science fiction film that tells the story of a humanoid alien visitor who comes to Earth with a warning.

Time and Again

2009-06-04T01:48:00.000-07:00

TIme and again, however well we know the landscape of love,
and the little church-yard with lamenting names,
and the frightfully silent ravine wherein all the others
end: time and again we go out two together,
under the old trees, lie down again and again
between the flowers, face to face with the sky.

Rainer Maria Rilke

1875-1926

No.2

2009-06-03T04:38:00.000-07:00

Prokofiev Concerto No. 2
Sergei Prokofiev set to work on his Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Op 16 in 1912 and completed it in 1913. Performing as solo pianist, he premiered the work on August 23 the same year at Pavlovsk.

The work is dedicated to the memory of Maximilian Schmidthof, a friend of Prokofiev's at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, who had committed suicide in April, after having written a farewell letter to Prokofiev.

Rachmaninoff Concerto No. 2
At its 1897 premiere, Rachmaninoff's first symphony, though now considered a significant achievement, was derided by critics. Compounded by problems in his personal life, Rachmaninoff fell into a depression that lasted for several years. His second piano concerto confirmed his recovery from clinical depression and writer's block. The concerto was dedicated to Nikolai Dahl, a physician who had done much to restore Rachmaninoff's self-confidence.

Shostakovich Concerto No. 2
Piano Concerto No. 2 in F major, Op. 102, by Dmitri Shostakovich was composed in 1957 for his son Maxim's 19th birthday. Maxim premiered the piece during his graduation at the Moscow Conservatory. It is an uncharacteristically cheerful piece, much more so than most of Shostakovich's works.

Brahms's Concerto no.2
The Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat major, Op. 83 by Johannes Brahms is a composition for solo piano with orchestral accompaniment. It is separated by a gap of 22 years from the composer's first piano concerto. Brahms began work on the piece in 1878 and completed it in 1881 while in Pressbaum near Vienna. It is dedicated to his teacher, Eduard Marxsen.

Liszt Concerto No. 2
Franz Liszt wrote drafts for his Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 2 in A Major, S.125, during his virtuoso period, in 1839 to 1840. He then put away the manuscript for a decade. When he returned to the concerto, he revised and scrutinized it repeatedly. The fourth and final period of revision ended in 1861. Liszt dedicated the work to his student Hans von Bronsart, who gave the first performance, with Liszt conducting, in Weimar on January 7, 1857.

Saint-Saëns Concerto no.2
The Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Op. 22 by Camille Saint-Saëns, was composed in 1868 and is probably Saint-Saëns' most popular piano concerto. It was dedicated to Madame A. de Villers née de Haber.

Chopin concerto No.2
Frédéric Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 2 in F minor, Op. 21, was composed in 1830, before he had finished his formal education — he was around 20 years old. It was first performed on March 17, 1830, in Warsaw, Poland, with the composer as soloist. It was the second of his piano concertos to be published and so was designated as "No. 2," although it was written first.

sleeping silver saxophones

2009-06-03T03:59:00.000-07:00

Bringing Star Power to Earth

2009-06-01T02:22:00.000-07:00

THE NEW YORK TIMES, May 26, 2009

In Hot Pursuit of Fusion (or Folly)

By WILLIAM J. BROAD

LIVERMORE, Calif. — Here in a dry California valley, outside a small town, a cathedral of light is to be dedicated on Friday. Like the cathedrals of antiquity, it is built on an unrivaled scale with unmatched technology, and it embodies a scientific doctrine that, if confirmed, might lift civilization to new heights.

“Bringing Star Power to Earth” reads a giant banner that was recently unfurled across a building the size of a football stadium.

The $3.5 billion site is known as the National Ignition Facility, or NIF. For more than half a century, physicists have dreamed of creating tiny stars that would inaugurate an era of bold science and cheap energy, and NIF is meant to kindle that blaze.

In theory, the facility’s 192 lasers — made of nearly 60 miles of mirrors and fiber optics, crystals and light amplifiers — will fire as one to pulverize a fleck of hydrogen fuel smaller than a match head. Compressed and heated to temperatures hotter than those of the core of a star, the hydrogen atoms will fuse into helium, releasing bursts of thermonuclear energy.

The project’s director, Ed Moses, said that getting to the cusp of ignition (defined as the successful achievement of fusion) had taken some 7,000 workers and 3,000 contractors a dozen years, their labors creating a precision colossus of millions of parts and 60,000 points of control, 30 times as many as on the space shuttle.

“It’s the cathedral story,” Dr. Moses said during a tour. “We put together the best physicists, the best engineers, the best of industry and academia. It’s not often you get that opportunity and pull it off.”

In February, NIF fired its 192 beams into its target chamber for the first time, and it now has the world’s most powerful laser, as well as the largest optical instrument ever built. But raising its energies still further to the point of ignition could take a year or more of experimentation and might, officials concede, prove daunting and perhaps impossible.

For that reason, skeptics dismiss NIF as a colossal delusion that is squandering precious resources at a time of economic hardship. Just operating it, officials grant, will cost $140 million a year. Some doubters ridicule it as the National Almost Ignition Facility, or NAIF.

Even friends of the effort are cautious. “They’ve made progress,” said Roy Schwitters, a University of Texas physicist who leads a federal panel that recently assessed NIF’s prospects. “Ignition may eventually be possible. But there’s still much to learn.”

Dr. Moses, while offering no guarantees, argued that any great endeavor involved risks and that the gamble was worth it because of the potential rewards.

He said that NIF, if successful, would help keep the nation’s nuclear arms reliable without underground testing, would reveal the hidden life of stars and would prepare the way for radically new kinds of power plants.

“If fusion energy works,” he said, “you’ll have, for all intents and purposes, a limitless supply of carbon-free energy that’s not geopolitically sensitive. What more would you want? It’s a game changer.”

NIF is to fire its lasers for 30 years.

Like the dedication of a cathedral, the event here on Friday at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is to be a celebration of hope. Officials say some 3,500 people will attend. The big names include Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Energy Secretary Steven Chu (whose agency finances NIF) and Charles Townes, a Nobel Laureate and laser pioneer.

In preparation, workmen here last Thursday washed windows and planted flowers on the lush campus, the day auspiciously sunny.

Dr. Moses, who runs science programs for high school students in his spare time, broke from his own preparations to show a visitor the NIF complex.

In its lobby, he held up a device smaller than a postage stamp. This is where it all starts, he said. From this kind of tiny laser, beams emerge that grow large and bright during their long journey through NIF’s maze of mirrors, lenses and amplifiers.

The word laser is an acronym for light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation. And each particle of light, or photon, is amplified, Dr. Moses said, to “around 10 to the 25th” photons. Or, “10 million, million, million, million.”

A nearby stand held a thick slab of pink glass about the size of a traffic sign — an example of an amplifier. NIF has 3,200 in all. Dr. Moses said the big step occurred when giant flash tubes — like ones in cameras but six feet long and 7,680 in number — flashed in unison to excite the pink glass. Laser photons then zip through, stimulating cascades of offspring, making the beam much stronger, such amplification happening over and over.

Photons moving in step with one another is what makes laser light so bright and concentrated and, in some instances, so potent.

Dr. Moses picked up a mock capsule of hydrogen fuel. It was all of two millimeters wide, or less than a tenth of an inch.

“It heats up,” he said. “It blows in at a million miles an hour, moving that way for about five-billionths of a second. It gets to about the diameter of your hair. When it gets that small, that fast, you hit temperatures where it can start fusing — around 100 million degrees centigrade, or 180 million degrees Fahrenheit.”

Hair nets, hard hats and safety goggles were donned before entering NIF proper. Repeated steps on sticky pads pulled dirt from shoes. Dust is NIF’s bane, Dr. Moses said. It can ruin optics and experiments. He said the 33-foot-wide target chamber was evacuated to a near-vacuum, much the same as outer space — a void where light can zip along with almost no impediments.

Dr. Moses said the team fired the laser only at night and did maintenance and equipment upgrades during the day. “This is a 24/7 facility,” he said.

The previous night, he said, the laser had been fired in an effort to improve coordination and timing. The 192 rays have to strike the target as close to simultaneously as possible.

The individual beams, he said, have to hit “within a few trillionths of a second” of one another if the fuel is to burn, and be pointed at the target with a precision “within half the diameter of your hair.”

The control room, modeled on NASA’s mission control in Houston, was buzzing with activity, even though some consoles sat empty. Phones rang. Walkie-talkies crackled. The countdown to firing the lasers, Dr. Moses said, took three and half hours, with the process “pretty much in the hands of computers.”

The operations plan for NIF, he added, is to conduct 700 to 1,000 laser firings per year, with about 200 of the experiments focused on ignition. There is no danger of a runaway blast, he said. Fusion works by heat and pressure, not chain reactions. Moreover, the fuel is minuscule and the laser flash extraordinarily short. During a year of operations, Dr. Moses said, “the facility is on for only three-thousandths of a second,” yet will generate a growing cascade of data and insights.

Next on the tour, after more sticky pads, was the holy of holies, the room surrounding the target chamber. It looked like an engine room out of a science-fiction starship. The beam lines — now welters of silvery metal filled with giant crystals that shifted the concentrated light to higher frequencies — converged on the chamber’s blue wall. Its surface was dotted with silvery portholes where complex sensors could be placed to evaluate the tiny blasts.

“When it’s running,” Dr. Moses said, “there’s a lot of stuff at the chamber’s center.”

Despite the giant banner outside and its confident prediction, it is an open question whether NIF’s sensors will ever detect the rays of a tiny star, independent scientists say.

“I personally think it’s going to be a close call,” said William Happer, a physicist at Princeton University who directed federal energy research for the first President George Bush. “It’s a very complicated system, and you’re dependent on many things working right.”

Dr. Happer said a big issue for NIF was achieving needed symmetries at minute scales. “There’s plenty of room,” he added, “for nasty surprises.”

Doubters say past troubles may be a prologue. When proposed in 1994, the giant machine was to cost $1.2 billion and be finished by 2002. But costs rose and the completion date kept getting pushed back, so much so that Congress threatened to pull the plug. Today, critics see the delays and the $3.5 billion price tag as signs of overreaching.

Dr. Moses, who was put in charge of NIF a decade ago in an effort to right the struggling project, said that a decade from now, as NIF opened new frontiers, no one would remember the missteps. He compared the project to feats like going to the Moon, building the atom bomb and inventing the airplane.

“Stumbles are not unusual when you take on big-risk projects,” he said.

Dr. Moses added that the stumble rule applied to cathedrals as well.

Having grown up in Eastchester, close to New York City, he noted that the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, was still under construction after more than a century. Is it worthwhile, despite the delays?

“Of course it is,” he said. Taking on big projects that challenge the imagination “is who we are as a species.”

Solar Beats

2009-05-27T05:34:00.000-07:00

Patrick Bokanowski's 2008 short film Battements Solaires or "Solar Beats."

Voyage to the Moon

2009-05-27T04:17:00.000-07:00

A Trip to the Moon (French: Le Voyage dans la lune) is a 1902 French black and white silent science fiction film. It is loosely based on two popular novels of the time: From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne and The First Men in the Moon by H. G. Wells.

The film was written and directed by Georges Méliès, assisted by his brother Gaston. The film runs 14 minutes if projected at 16 frames per second, which was the standard frame rate at the time the film was produced. It was extremely popular at the time of its release and is the best-known of the hundreds of fantasy films made by Méliès. A Trip to the Moon is the first science fiction film, and utilizes innovative animation and special effects, including the iconic shot of the rocketship landing in the moon's eye.

Jan Švankmajer

2009-05-26T08:19:00.000-07:00

Jan Švankmajer (born 4 September 1934 in Prague) is a Czech surrealist artist.He is known for his surreal animations and features, which have greatly influenced other artists such as Tim Burton, Terry Gilliam, The Brothers Quay and many others.

Sukumar Ray

2009-05-26T08:03:00.000-07:00

Sukumar Ray (1887-1923) was a Bengali humorous poet, story writer and playwright. His works such as the collection of poems "Ab, novella "HaJaBaRaLa" short story collection "Pagla Dashu" ("Crazy Dashu") and play "Chalachittachanchari" are considered masterpieces equal in stature to Alice in Wonderland, and are regarded as some of the greatest treasures of Bangla literature.

More than 80 years after his death, Ray remains one of the most popular of children's writers in both West Bengal and Bangladesh.

Thames tv

2009-05-25T03:43:00.000-07:00

Thames Television was a licensee of the British ITV television network, covering London and parts of the surrounding counties on weekdays from 30 July 1968 until 31 December 1992. It was both a broadcaster and a producer of television programmes, making shows both for the local region it covered and for networking nationally across the ITV regions.
Thames covered a broad spectrum of commercial public-service television, with a strong mix of drama, current affairs and comedy. The company's logo remains widely recognisable and was accompanied by a fanfare called "Salute To Thames", composed by Johnny Hawksworth.

rocky raccoon

2009-05-25T01:37:00.000-07:00

Now somewhere in the black mountain hills of Dakota
There lived a young boy named Rocky Raccoon
And one day his woman ran off with another guy
Hit young Rocky in the eye Rocky didn't like that
He said I'm gonna get that boy
So one day he walked into town
Booked himself a room in the local saloon.

Rocky Raccoon checked into his room
Only to find Gideon's bible
Rocky had come equipped with a gun
To shoot off the legs of his rival
His rival it seems had broken his dreams
By stealing the girl of his fancy.
Her name was Magil and she called herself Lil
But everyone knew her as Nancy.
Now she and her man who called himself Dan
Were in the next room at the hoe down
Rocky burst in and grinning a grin
He said Danny boy this is a showdown
But Daniel was hot-he drew first and shot
And Rocky collapsed in the corner.

Now the doctor came in stinking of gin
And proceeded to lie on the table
He said Rocky you met your match
And Rocky said, Doc it's only a scratch
And I'll be better I'll be better doc as soon as I am able.

Now Rocky Raccoon he fell back in his room
Only to find Gideon's bible
A Gideon checked out and he left it no doubt
To help with good Rocky's revival.

Space 1999

2009-05-25T01:22:00.000-07:00

Space: 1999 is a British science-fiction television series. In the series, nuclear waste from Earth is stored on the moon. The waste explodes in a catastrophic accident on 13 September 1999, which knocks the moon out of its orbit and sends it and the 311 inhabitants of Moonbase Alpha hurtling uncontrollably into outer space. The series was the last produced by the partnership of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, famous for the TV series Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, Fireball XL5, and UFO.

powers of 10

2009-05-21T08:00:00.000-07:00

"Powers of Ten" is a 1977 short documentary film written and directed by Ray Eames and her husband, Charles Eames. The film depicts the relative scale of the Universe in factors of ten. The film is an adaptation of the 1957 book Cosmic View by Kees Boeke, and more recently is the basis of a new book version. Both adaptations, film and book, follow the form of the Boeke original, adding color and photography to the black and white drawings employed by Boeke in his seminal work.

day is done

2009-05-21T07:05:00.000-07:00

When the day is done
Down to earth then sinks the sun
Along with everything that was lost and won
When the day is done.

When the day is done
Hope so much your race will be all run
Then you find you jumped the gun
Have to go back where you began
When the day is done.

When the night is cold
Some get by but some get old
Just to show lifes not made of gold
When the night is cold.

When the bird has flown
Got no-one to call your own
Got no place to call your home
When the bird has flown.

When the games been fought
You speed the ball across the court
Lost much sooner than you would have thought
Now the games been fought.

When the partys through
Seems so very sad for you
Didnt do the things you meant to do
Now theres no time to start anew
Now the partys through.

rubaiyaas

2009-05-20T01:50:00.000-07:00

Omar Khayyam ,(born 1048 AD, Neyshapur, Iran—1123 AD, Neyshapur, Iran), was a Persian polymath, mathematician, philosopher, astronomer and above all poet.

He has also become established as one of the major mathematicians and astronomers of the medieval period. Recognised as the author of the most important treatise on algebra before modern times as reflected in his Treatise on Demonstration of Problems of Algebra giving a geometric method for solving cubic equations by intersecting a hyperbola with a circle. He also contributed to calendar reform and may have proposed a heliocentric theory well before Copernicus.

His significance as a philosopher and teacher, and his few remaining philosophical works, have not received the same attention as his scientific and poetic writings. Zamakhshari referred to him as “the philosopher of the world”. Many sources have also testified that he taught for decades the philosophy of Ibn Sina in Nishapur where Khayyam lived most of his life, breathed his last, and was buried and where his mausoleum remains today a masterpiece of Iranian architecture visited by many people every year.

Outside Iran and Persian speaking countries, Khayyam has had impact on literature and societies through translation and works of scholars. The greatest such impact was in English-speaking countries; the English scholar Thomas Hyde (1636–1703) was the first non-Persian to study him. However the most influential of all was Edward FitzGerald (1809–83) who made Khayyam the most famous poet of the East in the West through his celebrated translation and adaptations of Khayyam's rather small number of quatrains (rubaiyaas) in Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.

some rubaiyaas of Omar Khayyam:

The Worldly Hope men set their Hearts upon
Turns Ashes -- or it prospers; and anon,
Like Snow upon the Desert's dusty Face
Lighting a little Hour or two -- is gone.

Come, fill the Cup, and in the Fire of Spring
The Winter Garment of Repentance fling:
The Bird of Time has but a little way
To fly -- and Lo! the Bird is on the Wing.

They say the Lion and the Lizard keep
The Courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep:
And Bahram, that great Hunter -- the Wild Ass
Stamps o'er his Head, but cannot break his Sleep.

Now the New Year reviving old Desires,
The thoughtful Soul to Solitude retires,
Where the White Hand of Moses on the Bough
Puts out, and Jesus from the Ground suspires.

Aelita

2009-05-14T06:12:00.000-07:00

Aelita: Queen of Mars, is a silent film directed by Soviet filmmaker Yakov Protazanov made on Mezhrabpom-Rus film studio and released in 1924. It was based on Alexei Tolstoy's novel of the same name. Mikhail Zharov and Igor Ilyinsky were cast in leading roles.

Though the main focus of the story is the daily lives of a small group of people during the post-war Soviet Union, the enduring importance of the film comes from its early science fiction elements. It primarily tells of a young man where he leads a popular uprising against the king, with the support of Queen Aelita who has fallen in love with him after watching him through a telescope.

Probably the first full-length movie about space travel, the most notable part of the film remains its remarkable constructivist Martian sets and costumes designed by Aleksandra Ekster. Their influence can be seen in a number of later films, including the Flash Gordon serials and probably Fritz Lang's Metropolis. While very popular at first, the film later fell out of favor with the Soviet government and was thus very difficult to see until after the Cold War.

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bacK & white

2009-05-14T05:02:00.000-07:00

and

Meetings With Remarkable Men

2009-05-12T05:57:00.000-07:00

BOOK

Meetings with Remarkable Men is the second volume of the All and Everything trilogy written by the Greek-Armenian mystic G. I. Gurdjieff. A book of autobiography, it was originally published in 1963 and tells the tale of the young Gurdjieff growing up in a world torn between his unexplainable experiences and the developing modern sciences.

The book takes the form of Gurdjieff's reminiscences about various "remarkable men" that he has met, beginning with his father. They include the Armenian priest Pogossian; his friend Soloviev, Prince Lubovedsky, a Russian prince with metaphysical interests, and a couple of others.

In the course of describing these characters, Gurdjieff weaves their stories into the story of his own travels, and also into an overarching narrative which has them cooperate in locating spiritual texts and/or masters in various lands (mostly Central Asia). Gurdjieff calls this group the "Seekers of Truth".

Most of them do in fact find "truth" in the form of some suitable spiritual destiny. The underlying philosophy, especially as articulated in an appendix, amounts to the assertion that people generally live their lives asleep, are unconscious of themselves, and accordingly behave like machines, subject to outside causes and pressures. Also, one of the chief assessments of the novel is that the people of the past epochs lived in more suitable outer conditions and at higher inner levels than the people today.

FILM

Filmed in 1979 by Peter Brook. A classic spiritual movie of G.I. Gurdjieff struggles beginning with his childhood until his discovery of The Fourth Way, an ancient spiritual tradition that used sacred movements as meditation. The story in this film is based on Gudjieff's book with the same title, which is the second book of his trilogy: "All and Everything".

During his long career, director Peter Brook has conducted a wide range of theatrical experiments, pushing audiences and performers well beyond their typical experience of theater, in an effort to achieve not a temporary catharsis but a transcendent, transformative event. As the narrator of THE MAHABHARATA says, "If you listen carefully, at the end, you'll be somebody else."

This interest in transformation that has characterized the latter part of Brook's career continues with this adaptation of the autobiography of famed mystic G.I. Gurdjieff, which stars Dragan Maksimovic. Driven by a sense of unwavering dedication to unraveling the meaning of human existence, he journeys throughout the most unattainable areas of the East, encountering an array of Hindu fakirs, Buddhist monks, whirling dervishes, and gurus of every stripe.

In search of enlightenment, he climbs the Himalayas, walks across the desert on stilts, and uncovers evidence of an ancient order, guards of an arcane wisdom. Most fascinating, perhaps, is the form of dance he created as a form of meditation and later taught in the West. A film that may be best appreciated by those already familiar with the work of Gurdjieff, MEETINGS WITH REMARKABLE MEN features spectacular photography and a highly evocative score, incorporating various indigenous musics.

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i saw you

2009-05-12T05:30:00.000-07:00

The summer had inhaled and held its breath too long
The winter looked the same, as if it never had gone
And through an open window where no curtain hung
I saw you, I saw you, comin' back to me
One begins to read between the pages of a look
The shape of sleepy music, and suddenly you're hooked
Through the rain upon the trees, that kisses on the run
I saw you, I saw you, comin' back to me

You can't stay and live my way
Scatter my love like leaves in the wind
You always say you want to go away
But I know what it always has been, it always has been

A transparent dream beneath an occasional sigh
Most of the time I just let it go by
Now I wish it hadn't begun
I saw you, yes I saw you, comin' back to me

Strolling the hills overlooking the shore
I realize I've been here before
The shadow in the mist could have been anyone
I saw you, I saw you, comin' back to me

Small things like reasons are put in a jar
Whatever happened to wishes wished on a star?
Was it just something that I made up for fun?
I saw you, I saw you, comin' back to me

After all, it’s been seven years

2009-05-12T05:18:00.000-07:00

Shuttle Lifts Off for Trip to Telescope

By DENNIS OVERBYE , THE NEW YORK TIMES, May 12, 2009

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. — Seven astronauts blasted off for one last dance with the Hubble Space Telescope on Monday.

The space shuttle Atlantis, commanded by Scott D. Altman, bolted through the sky on a pillar of smoke and fire just after 2 p.m. Monday. Atlantis is carrying 22,000 pounds of custom-designed tools, replacement parts and new instruments to slice and dice starlight as well as the hearts of scientists and stargazers everywhere. It is rushing toward a Wednesday rendezvous with the telescope, which happened to be floating about 350 miles directly above Cape Canaveral at launching time.

If all goes well, in five spacewalks starting Thursday morning, the crew members will revamp and refresh the telescope, which has dazzled the public and the science community with its iconic cosmic postcards. Then they will say goodbye on behalf of humanity forever. Sometime in the middle of the next decade, the Hubble will run out of juice, and it will eventually be crashed into the ocean.

Besides Commander Altman, the crew includes Gregory C. Johnson, as pilot, and John M. Grunsfeld, Michael J. Massimino, Michael T. Good, Andrew J. Fuestel and K. Megan McArthur, as mission specialists.

The Atlantis astronauts will spend Tuesday examining the shuttle with cameras looking for any dings or nicks or holes caused by flying debris during the launching. The shuttle Columbia was doomed in 2003 because a hunk of insulating foam broke off the external fuel tank and damaged the tiles that protected the spacecraft from the searing heat of re-entering the atmosphere.

The astronauts carry a tool kit for fixing small holes or cracks in the fragile tiles. If there is something they cannot fix, they will hunker down and await the shuttle Endeavour, which is sitting on another launching pad, ready to blast off with a four-man crew and retrieve the Atlantis astronauts from danger.

“The sad thing is if we get to orbit and see something bad and get waved off and don’t get to fix Hubble,” Dr. Grunsfeld said. “That would be the saddest.”

Among other things, Endeavour would have to bring a spacesuit for Commander Altman, who takes an extra-large that is not stocked on Atlantis. The two most experienced spacewalkers on Atlantis, Dr. Grunsfeld and Dr. Massimino, would then escort their shipmates along a rope to the Endeavour in a two-day dance of swapping spacesuits that would include a sleepover for Dr. Grunsfeld on the Endeavour.

Because of changes to the design of the fuel tank that make it less likely to sustain major damage during launching, the bigger risk this time around comes from micrometeoroids and space junk, which is more prevalent at Hubble’s altitude and orbit than at the lower space station. There is about a 1 in 229 chance of a catastrophic collision, so the astronauts will take another close look at their craft at the end of the mission.

The flight comes as NASA is once again at a crossroads. The agency lacks a permanent administrator; Christopher Scolese has been acting administrator since Michael D. Griffin stepped down in January, and the White House is said to have been having trouble finding a candidate who can pass various forms of muster.

The agency has begun laying off workers as part of the decision to retire the shuttles next year. Last week, President Obama ordered a review of the agency’s long-heralded plan to return humans to the Moon and of the Constellation spacecraft that are to succeed the shuttle.

So if it is the beginning of the last act for the Hubble, the flight Monday also marks the beginning of the end for the space shuttle, whose greatest legacy might very well be the role it played in the repair and maintenance of the Hubble, what Commander Altman recently called “an incredible example of how humans and machines can work together.”

Dr. Grunsfeld, who has earned the sobriquet of “Hubble repairman” for his previous exploits in space with the telescope, said: “The only reason Hubble works is because we have a space shuttle. And of all things we do, I think Hubble is probably the best thing we use it for.”

As Mario Livio, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute, put it, “It’s not just a telescope, it’s the people’s telescope.”

Atlantis is scheduled to rendezvous with the Hubble on Wednesday, latch it down in the shuttle cargo bay and take a good look at it with the robot arm and cameras. The engineers say they will not be surprised to find flapping insulation blankets or micrometeorite hits.

After all, it’s been seven years.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/05/01/science/space/20090505-Hubble.html

28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes, and 12 seconds.

2009-05-08T02:07:00.000-07:00

Donnie Darko, receives a disturbing vision that the world will end in 28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes, and 12 seconds.With the help of various characters, including a 6 foot rabbit called Frank, he slowly discovers the mysterious physical and metaphysical laws that govern his life and that will lead up to the destruction of the universe.

p_atari

2009-05-05T03:48:00.000-07:00

parts from article...Business Week, June 15, 1981 :

Atari's bet on home computers

Because the home computer still does not have much of a market-despite the initial wave of enthusiasm three years ago over its huge potential-nearly all of the personal computer makers are concentrating their development and marketing efforts, on where the action is: the business and professional customers who are responsible for U. S. microcomputer sales soaring ahead at more than a 40% clip this year. But Atari Inc. is absolutely committed to the consumer business, and despite the fact that it is almost alone in believing that now is the time to do it, the Warner Communications Inc. subsidiary is betting its future on the home computer and ignoring today's high-flying markets. A senior Warner executive admits that Atari seems to be ignoring the conventional wisdom, "but sometimes you've just got to go with your gut feeling," he says, "and home computers will be one of the most important consumer electronics products of the 1980s."

No threat. "Perhaps the market doesn't exist today, but we're prepared to make it happen," the Warner executive declares. Atari believes the market is about to explode for two reasons: To the man on the street, the computer is becoming so easy to use that it will no longer represent a technical threat, and enough software is finally becoming available to make the computer attractive for a variety of jobs in the home. Today's home computer market is definitely puny. Sales last year hit 52,000 units worth a mere $38 million. But the outlook for 1985 is a bullish one: 1.5 million computers worth $500 million in retail sales. By then the number of consumer computers sold will match the number of units sold in the commercial marketplace, predicts Roger H. Badertscher, president of Atari's Computer Div. To accomplish this crossover by that time, however, will take some "substantial improvements in software and prices," adds John V. Roach, president of Tandy Corp., one of the industry leaders with its Radio Shack line.
...

Small business market. Nevertheless, Badertscher is hoping that once his computers gain acceptance in the home, they will also find a niche in the very small business computer market where ease of operation is just as important as it is in the home. While he refuses to comment on Atari's plans to move in this direction, insiders say that Atari is currently holding discussions with mainframe and minicomputer manufacturers about teaming up. Atari would concentrate on consumer sales while its partner would go after the business customers. One entree to millions of American households, as far as Badertscher is concerned, is the educational market. He is making a concerted push for this business, which already accounts for 25% of Atari's computer sales. "It's important that kids be weaned on Atari , - Badertscher declares, since his strategy is that any children who use an Atari computer at school would then press their parents into buying one for the home. To get into the schools, Atari is offering a free, 30-day trial offer. "It's going to be hard for any school to give the computers back after the kids and teachers get 30 days to use them," says Stanley H. Goldman, a product marketing manager at Computerland Corp. His San Leandro (Calif.) company operates 166 retail computer stores that sell Atari machines. Atari has tried to make its computers simple enough so that almost anyone can use them. No programming experience is required; users just snap in a program cartridge and type two command words to operate the machine.
...

Software gap. But Atari still faces some major stumbling blocks in its move to open up the consumer market. For one thing, both Commodore Corp. and Radio Shack offer lower-priced machines. And the company cannot churn out software fast enough and has had to turn to independent software suppliers for help. Badertscher acknowledges that the computer will not become a mass consumer product until there are programs for everything from entertainment to home management, and that includes mundane tasks such as deciding which cosmetics to wear with which dress, and choosing the colors of carpets and drapes for the home. But there is an even more important role that the computer can play in the home that could help Atari and the other computer makers to open up this market. "Home information networks will make the home computer market explode," Badertscher says. He brashly predicts as a result that computers will be in 95% of the nation's 70 million homes by 1990. Atari is already getting important support from its $2 billion (in annual sales) parent. At the same time, Warner is counting on Atari's computer to unlock the demand for a whole range of Warner information products and services. The two companies already have joined forces with CompuServe Inc., a subsidiary Of H&R Block Inc., to test an interactive home information system. And subscribers to Warner's QUBE television service will be able to use an Atari computer to call up the latest news, stock market quotations, and information from other data banks, as well as services such as electronic mail and electronic shopping. But Atari and Warner have plenty of competition in this embryonic market. Apple Computer Inc. and Mattel Inc. are working on similar systems-and all computer makers will face stiff competition from TV set makers. The TV manufacturers plan to incorporate terminals in their equipment that can do the job of a computer in home information systems, according to Grant S. Bushee, an industry analyst with Dataquest Inc., the Cupertino (Calif.) market researcher. "It's going to be a battle," he acknowledges, "but Atari has an advantage, since it has shown it understands the home market." It is a battle that Warner is determined to win. "It's a critical part of its' long-term strategy for tying together its various cable, video, and entertainment operations, notes one industry executive close to the company. Both Atari and its parent are thus moving quickly into the home market even though such an early move could mean further short term losses. "We're in this for the next decade," asserts a Warner executive. "We're not in this for tomorrow."

more info... http://www.atarimuseum.com/

SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK

2009-05-03T09:39:00.000-07:00

Theater director Caden Cotard is mounting a new play. His life catering to suburban blue-hairs at the local regional theater in Schenectady, New York is looking bleak. His wife Adele has left him to pursue her painting in Berlin, taking their young daughter Olive with her. His therapist, Madeleine Gravis, is better at plugging her best-seller than she is at counseling him. A new relationship with the alluringly candid Hazel has prematurely run aground. And a mysterious condition is systematically shutting down each of his autonomic functions, one by one. Worried about the transience of his life, he leaves his home behind. He gathers an ensemble cast into a warehouse in New York City, hoping to create a work of brutal honesty. He directs them in a celebration of the mundane, instructing each to live out their constructed lives in a growing mockup of the city outside. Somewhere in Berlin, his daughter is growing up under the questionable guidance of Adele's friend, Maria. His lingering attachments to both Adele and Hazel are causing him to helplessly drive his new marriage to actress Claire into the ground. Sammy and Tammy, the actors hired to play Caden and Hazel, are making it difficult for the real Caden to revive his relationship with the real Hazel. The textured tangle of real and theatrical relationships blurs the line between the world of the play and that of Caden's own deteriorating reality. The years rapidly fold into each other, and Caden buries himself deeper into his masterpiece. As he pushes the limits of his relationships, both personally and professionally, a change in creative direction arrives in Millicent Weems, a celebrated theater actress who may offer Caden the break he needs.

towards the end

2009-04-29T06:01:00.000-07:00

Field of diamonds

2009-04-29T05:09:00.000-07:00

Field of diamonds in the sky
Worlds are whirling right on by
Are you wondering who am I
Field of diamonds in the sky

Am I just a star in some crown
Or someone's live sun going down, down, down

Field of diamonds in the sky
Silent beauty shining high
Are you tears the angels cry
Field of diamonds in the sky

Field of diamonds in the sky
Like the nihgt you pass me by
I could touch you if I try
Field of diamonds in the sky

Am I just a star in some crown
Or someone's live sun going down, down, down

Field of diamonds in the sky
Silent beauty shining high
Are you tears the angels cry
Field of diamonds in the sky

Black Hole Surfing

2009-04-27T02:07:00.000-07:00

The researchers modelled how molecular clouds are sucked into black holes

Astronomers have shed light on how stars can form around a massive black hole, defying conventional wisdom.
Scientists have long wondered how stars develop in such extreme conditions.
Molecular clouds - the normal birth places of stars - would be ripped apart by the immense gravity, a team explains in Science magazine.
But the researchers say stars can form from elliptical discs - the relics of giant gas clouds torn apart by encounters with black holes.
They made the discovery after developing computer simulations of giant gas clouds being sucked into black holes like water spiralling down a plughole.
"These simulations show that young stars can form in the neighbourhood of supermassive black holes as long as there is a reasonable supply of massive clouds of gas from further out in the galaxy," said co-author Ian Bonnell from St Andrews University, UK.
Ripped apart
Their findings are in accordance with actual observations in our Milky Way galaxy that indicate the presence of a massive black hole, surrounded by huge stars with eccentric orbits.
The simulations, performed on a supercomputer - and taking over a year of computing time - followed the evolution of two separate giant gas clouds up to 100,000 times the mass of the Sun, as they fell towards the supermassive black hole.
The simulations show how the clouds are pulled apart by the immense gravitational pull of the black hole.
The disrupted clouds form into spiral patterns as they orbit the black hole; the spiral patterns remove motion energy from gas that passes close to the black hole and transfers it to gas that passes further out.
This allows part of the cloud to be captured by the black hole while the rest escapes.
In these conditions, only high mass stars are able to form and these stars inherit the eccentric orbits from the elliptical disc.
These results match the two primary properties of the young stars in the centre of our galaxy: their high mass and their eccentric orbits around the supermassive black hole.
"That the stars currently present around the galaxy's supermassive black hole have relatively short lifetimes of [about] 10 million years, which suggests that this process is likely to be repetitive," Professor Bonnell explained.
"Such a steady supply of stars into the vicinity of the black hole, and a diet of gas directly accreted by the black hole, may help us understand the origin of supermassive black holes in our and other galaxies in the Universe."

Milky goes black

2009-04-27T01:51:00.000-07:00

There is a giant black hole at the centre of our galaxy, a 16-year study by German astronomers has confirmed.

They tracked the movement of 28 stars circling the centre of the Milky Way, using two telescopes in Chile.

The black hole, said to be 27,000 light years from Earth, is four million times bigger than the Sun, according to the paper in The Astrophysical Journal.

Black holes are objects whose gravity is so great that nothing - including light - can escape them.

According to Dr Robert Massey, of the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS), the results suggest that galaxies form around giant black holes in the way that a pearl forms around grit.

'The black pearl'

Dr Massey said: "Although we think of black holes as somehow threatening, in the sense that if you get too close to one you are in trouble, they may have had a role in helping galaxies to form - not just our own, but all galaxies.

"They had a role in bringing matter together and if you had a high enough density of matter then you have the conditions in which stars could form.

"Thus the first generation of stars and galaxies could have come into existence".

The researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany said the black hole was 27,000 light years, or 158 thousand, million, million miles from the Earth.

"Undoubtedly the most spectacular aspect of our 16-year study, is that it has delivered what is now considered to be the best empirical evidence that super-massive black holes do really exist," said Professor Reinhard Genzel, head of the research team.

"The stellar orbits in the galactic centre show that the central mass concentration of four million solar masses must be a black hole, beyond any reasonable doubt."

Observations were made using the 3.5m New Technology Telescope and the 8.2m Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile. Both are operated by the European Southern Observatory (Eso).

what is love????

2009-04-20T11:00:00.000-07:00

μετά από την βιοψία ενός πασχαλινού αρνννννννιού υπάρχει μια έυλογη αναζήτηση....

Xploding plastix round 2

2009-04-14T01:22:00.000-07:00

Salouna

2009-04-14T00:46:00.000-07:00

Conquest of Space

2009-04-13T04:33:00.000-07:00

Film (1955) directed by George Pal and partly inspired by Ley and Bonestell's book. In a thematic sense, Conquest follows on from Pal's Destination Moon (1950), taking space exploration beyond the Moon to interplanetary space and, in particular, a manned journey to Mars. Although the characterization is poor and the dialogue often inane, there are some memorable scenes, including those of a rocket attempting to outrace a pursuing asteroid and a wheel-like space station, designed along the lines proposed by Wernher von Braun.

Eraserhead

2009-04-13T04:03:00.000-07:00

Eraserhead is a surrealist-horror film written and directed by David Lynch, and released in 1977.

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Metropolis

2009-04-07T03:58:00.000-07:00

Metropolis is a 1927 silent science fiction film directed by Fritz Lang and written by Lang and Thea von Harbou. Lang and von Harbou, who were married, wrote the screenplay in 1924, and the story was novelized by von Harbou in 1926. It is set in a futuristic urban dystopia and examines a common science fiction theme of the day: the social crisis between workers and owners in capitalism. The film stars Alfred Abel as the leader of the city, Gustav Fröhlich as his son, who tries to mediate between the elite caste and the workers, Brigitte Helm as both the pure-at-heart worker Maria and the debased robot version of her, and Rudolf Klein-Rogge as the mad scientist who created the robot.

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Que Sera Sera

2009-04-07T03:39:00.000-07:00

wax tailor

After being a host on a French radio in the Paris suburb of Mantes-La-Jolie, JC Le Saout started the French Rap band La Formule in the 1990's. He created his label Lab'Oratoire in 1998 and produced records from La Formule as well as Break Beat compilations and a collaboration with the Swedish band Looptroop. He began work on the Wax Tailor project in 2001, first appearing on a remix of Looptroop & La Formule's "Breathing Under Water". Wax Tailor's first EP Lost The Way was released in 2004 and features contributions from Charlotte Savary, Marina Quaisse, and Big Dada rapper Infinite Livez. Other musicians who have appeared alongside Wax Tailor include North Carolina Hip-Hop duo The Others, Ursula Rucker, Sharon Jones, Voice and A State Of Mind.

His second album Hope & Sorrow was nominated for "Best Electronic Album" at the 2008 Victoires de la Musique

The monk and the fish

2009-03-30T01:26:00.000-07:00

man with a movie camera

2009-03-26T00:43:00.000-07:00

The film has an unabashedly art film style, and emphasizes that film can go anywhere. For instance, the film uses such scenes as superimposing a shot of a cameraman setting up his camera atop a second, mountainous camera, superimposing a cameraman inside a beer glass, filming a woman getting out of bed and getting dressed, even filming a woman giving birth, and the baby being taken away to be bathed.

Vertov's message about the prevalence and unobtrusiveness of filming was not yet true—cameras might have been able to go anywhere, but not without being noticed; they were too large to be hidden easily, and too noisy to remain hidden anyway. To get footage using a hidden camera, Vertov and his brother Mikhail Kaufman had to distract the subject with something else even louder than the camera filming them.

The film also features a few obvious stagings such as the scene of the woman getting out of bed and getting dressed (cameras at the time were fairly bulky and loud, and not surreptitious) and the shot of the chess pieces being swept to the center of the board (a shot which was spliced in backwards, causing the pieces to expand outward and stand into position). The film was criticized for both the stagings and its stark experimentation, possibly as a result of its director's frequent assailing of fiction film as a new "opiate of the masses."

music by cinematic orchestra (Σάββατο 28 Μαρτίου στο Fuzz club)

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Xploding Plastix

2009-03-18T06:48:00.000-07:00

Xploding Plastix is the musical child of Jens Petter Nilsen and Hallvard Hagen. Both based in Oslo, they started making music together sometime in late ‘98 or early ‘99. After about a year of playing, sampling, programming and focused tune writing; they decided it was time to let the public hear what they’d been up to. This resulted in a 6 track demo in late ‘99. About 22 hours after first shipment, record companies were on the phone, and 4 months later, 5 out of 6 tracks had been released on various labels.

The duos debut album Amateur Girlfriends Go Proskirt Agents was released in 2001 via Norwegian label Beatservice. Subsequently they moved over to Sony and recorded The Doncamatic Singalongs, which was never released outside Scandinavia, despite the announcement of an international release date.

With their momentum taken from underneath them by Sony, Xploding Plastix never acheived their full potential. Though no split has been announced, their website has not been updated since February 2006, when it was announced that the Kronos Quartet sould perform their perform their three movement composition, The Order of Things: Music for the Kronos Quartet.

Xploding Plastix has a very organic sound; throwing saccharine analogue melodies to foreground the acoustic quality; imposing a distinctive live feel. A certain raw edge. An oeuvre of an ear-opener: Zipping and unzipping the beat, a beat-science out-of the ordinary. Emphasizing the flowing warmth and organity of the rhythms. Triggering flailing, skittering, skipping and spinning breaks, makes this pure nigthvision!

Vincent

2009-03-13T02:29:00.000-07:00

Vincent is a 1982 short film written, designed and directed by Tim Burton. It is a stop-motion tale

The Raven

Edgar Allan Poe

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
"'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door-
Only this, and nothing more."

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow;- vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow- sorrow for the lost Lenore-
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore-
Nameless here for evermore.

And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me- filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating,
"'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door-
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door;-
This it is, and nothing more."

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
"Sir," said I, "or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you"- here I opened wide the door;-
Darkness there, and nothing more.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering,
fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, "Lenore!"
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, "Lenore!"-
Merely this, and nothing more.

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.
"Surely," said I, "surely that is something at my window lattice:
Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore-
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore;-
'Tis the wind and nothing more."

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and
flutter,
In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore;
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed
he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door-
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door-
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore.
"Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure no
craven,
Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the Nightly shore-
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!"
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning- little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blest with seeing bird above his chamber door-
Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
With such name as "Nevermore."

But the raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing further then he uttered- not a feather then he fluttered-
Till I scarcely more than muttered, "other friends have flown
before-
On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before."
Then the bird said, "Nevermore."

Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
"Doubtless," said I, "what it utters is its only stock and store,
Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore-
Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore
Of 'Never- nevermore'."

But the Raven still beguiling all my fancy into smiling,
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust and
door;
Then upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore-
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt and ominous bird of yore
Meant in croaking "Nevermore."

This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core;
This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamplight gloated o'er,
But whose velvet violet lining with the lamplight gloating o'er,
She shall press, ah, nevermore!

Then methought the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by Seraphim whose footfalls tinkled on the tufted floor.
"Wretch," I cried, "thy God hath lent thee- by these angels he
hath sent thee
Respite- respite and nepenthe, from thy memories of Lenore!
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!"
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil!- prophet still, if bird or
devil!-
Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted-
On this home by horror haunted- tell me truly, I implore-
Is there- is there balm in Gilead?- tell me- tell me, I implore!"
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil- prophet still, if bird or
devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us- by that God we both adore-
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore-
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore."
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

"Be that word our sign in parting, bird or fiend," I shrieked,
upstarting-
"Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken!- quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my
door!"
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,
And the lamplight o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the
floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted- nevermore!

Ten Days That Shook the World

2009-03-10T07:20:00.000-07:00

Director: Grigori Aleksandrov and Sergei M. Eisenstein.
Music: Dimitri Shostakovich

Eisenstein's montage theories are based on the idea that montage originates in the "collision" between different shots in an illustration of the idea of thesis and antithesis. This basis allowed him to argue that montage is inherently dialectical, thus it should be considered a demonstration of Marxism and Hegelian philosophy. His collisions of shots were based on conflicts of scale, volume, rhythm, motion

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οταν ερχονται τα συννεφα

2009-03-05T01:42:00.000-08:00