Points of Interest

1)  Nancy is going on a missions trip to Haiti.  It is an exciting time and a remarkable opportunity.  She's pretty pumped.  Please pray for her, if you feel so led.

2)  As we get older, we all wage our own personal war against Gravity.  This particular law of physics is relentless, insidious, and certainly no respecter of age.  However, here is an interesting article from Popular Science about a man who declared war on Gravity and even won a couple of battles.  Check out this story about Roger Babson's Gravity Research Foundation.

3)  Here's a great article by Michael Ruhlman about cooking dried beans.  It's really interesting.  Really.  Go read it and thank me later.  Preferably a couple of days later, if you know what I mean.

4)  I bought one of these for some beloved family members.  I think you should consider it, too.  Especially if you or someone you care about lives in a city.  Because, if/when we see TEOTWAWKI, it's going to be drastically worse in the cities than it is in the country.  Here's the link, check it out.

I was considering doing this even before the current horrific disaster in Japan.  Yet, the need for this kind of preparedness, and even for much, more more, cannot possibly be highlighted with any greater clarity.  It is foolish...no, just plain abject stupidity...to think that such a disaster could not happen here.

California, I'm talking to you.  Scientists tell us, with near unanimous certainty, that it is not a matter of if, but when, there will be a catastrophic earthquake on the West Coast.  And, guess what...there is no truly safe place.  The second largest earthquake in North American history chose New Madrid, Missouri as it's epicenter.  Remember New Orleans, after all, and then consider even the difficulties suffered by many people during the harshest days of this past winter.  And while it is certainly true that, at the appointed hour, we are all going to face our earthly demise, it is my belief that for as long as we are able, we should choose life.  In the future, I believe it is not the strongest who will have the greatest chance of survival but, rather, those who planned well.

5)  What you believe is important.  Not merely that you believe something deeply or with great sincerity, but that you believe the right things, the true things.  It is important to remember, too, that just because you don't believe something, it doesn't mean that it is not true.  And so, with that in mind, here is that sad, interesting, and unfortunate interview of Rob Bell by journalist Martin Bashir:



-----

Personal VTOL - Almost as good as a Rocket Pack

I'll take one...for sure.




--------

Body Mass Index = Junk Science

In the news last week, among other things, was the new report from the Trust For America's Health describing how America continues to grow fatter, with nearly 2/3 of the states showing adult obesity levels of 25% or more.

Here's a link to an interesting (and humorous) NPR story on why the Body Mass Index (BMI), which is a significant component in this new study, is a completely bogus and useless tool to judge whether or not you truly are as lardamous as you think you are. Now, I'm not saying that it wouldn't hurt for you to drop 5 lbs. But I am saying that it is stupid for us to allow the politicians and bureaucrats to use bad science to push through more useless and expensive government regulation and legislative control.

You can read the story, or click on the "LISTEN NOW" button in the article to listen to it if you need both hands free to finish off that last piece of leftover blueberry pie from Saturday's July 4th cookout.




In other health news, here is a happy story telling how (5) cups of coffee a day can possibly stave off the symptoms of Alzheimer's Disease.

Points of Interest

Here is an article, a book review, actually, in Slate, that tells of some very recent, fascinating scholarship on the relationship between President Thomas Jefferson and his slave, Sally Hemings. Research shows that Jefferson's young concubine was also the half-sister of his deceased wife, Martha. A "Gordian-knot of family relationships."

Interesting, if somewhat unsettling news, from Discovery.com describes a brewmeister/mad-scientist who is brewing beer using yeast extracted from microbes harvested from a weevil encased in amber some 45 million years ago (sic). It is described as having a "smooth and spicy" flavor. Beer always finds a way.

Bacon Cinnamon Rolls. I haven't tried this recipe yet, but that is only because it is Sunday night, half-past nine, and the nearest roll of cinnamon rolls is sitting on a refrigerated shelf about 15 miles away. But count on it happening very soon.

Water Striders

This website has some gorgeous photography and covers a fascinating scientific study. It documents research done recently by a couple of students at MIT on insects who walk on water. Among the amazing things that they've done is design and build a tiny robotic insect to mimic and simulate the movements of various insects.

Ruminating on Red

This post by Sharon on, among other things, the color red and featuring her beautiful work "Petals", got me thinking again about something interesting that I recently read and reminded me of a book that I can wholeheartedly recommend if you are looking for a Christmas present for a musician or artist.

In Daniel Levitin’s book, “This Is Your Brain On Music”, in his discussion of the biology of how the brain organizes and categorizes the things we perceive into prototypes he tells how researchers used the color red in an interesting study. There is a tribal group in New Guinea, the Dani, who have only two words in their language to designate color, and those words really, essentially, only correspond to light and dark.

The researchers showed the Dani subjects chips with dozens of different shades of red and then asked them to pick out the best examples of this color, the chips that most effectively represent the definitive examples of the color red. Overwhelmingly, and in spite of the fact that their language does not allow for descriptive discrimination, the Dani selected the same red that Americans select in the same study. The results were the same for other colors that they couldn’t name, like green and blue.

From this work, it is theorized that there is a class of prototypical information that the brain categorizes, such as the principal color groups, that “are a consequence of our retinal physiology; certain shades of red are universally going to be regarded as more vivid, more central than others because a specific wavelength of visible light will cause the “red” receptors in our retina to fire maximally.”

In other words, there is a physiological component to how we understand color, in addition to such cultural notions as “fire engine red” or “candy apple red” that, uhm, color our perceptions. It is part of our design.

How does the way we perceive color relate to music? Until you read the book, you'll just have to trust me, it does.

My apologies to the color-blind. And the left-handed. And anyone else feeling neurologically disenfranchised this Christmas…the baby Jesus came to earth for you, too.

Dore's, "The Nativity"

(click to enlarge)

World's Smallest Radio

This is a picture of what is no doubt the world's smallest radio.

"The nanotech device is a demodulator, a simple circuit that decodes radio waves and turns them into audio signals. By hooking the decoder up to two metal wires, University of California at Irvine professor Peter Burke transmitted music via AM radio waves from an iPod to speakers across the room."

You can tune a piano, but you can't tune a fish

This is an interesting notion, that perfect pitch is genetic, traceable to a rare and specific gene possessed by 1 in 10, 000 people. There is still research to be done, but it is a fascinating subject.

I do not possess this gene, but in my musical life I've known a handful of people with perfect pitch. More than one of them mentioned that it is both a blessing and a curse. One of them, a friend who is a gifted bass player, said that it can be maddening at times, living in a world that wheezes, whistles, bellows, and mutters as it does. Because most sounds are no where near perfectly pitched, he would often find himself obsessively noting that this sound or that sound was almost right, but off by just so much, clashing abrasively with some other sound. The upside, though, was that he never, ever played out of tune, he could readily play numerous instruments surprisingly well without practice, and he could easily recall and analyze in detail complex melodies and chord progressions. He is a successful commercial real estate agent.

There are, in fact, teaching methods for sale that claim to be able to teach people to have perfect pitch. While that may well be possible, it is far more common among musicians to develop a heightened sense of relative pitch which, I've always believed is based on memory. My wife and son both have excellent pitch memory. When they sing a song, spontaneous and unaccompanied, they almost always nail it in the original key. I am not as good a singer as they are, but I am usually in the ballpark. These are handy skills and, while not intrinsically difficult to attain, typically come only with practice and experience.

A related skill that I have is that I can tune my guitar, both electric and acoustic, with out a pitch standard, even without being able to really hear the instrument. It is not "perfect", but it is usually close. I can sense by the way the strings feel, especially the A string. And once the A feels right, it is pretty easy to get the rest close. What my brain is doing in this case is responding to the tension of the string and the way it feels under my fingers when it vibrates, so it is more like muscle memory and less like an aural experience. I don't think this is an unusual skill, per se, and there are probably many guitarists who can do this. I developed it in my 20's when I worked in a couple of different music stores in Texas for several years. I have restrung and tuned many more guitars than most people, and I'm sure that is the source of this peculiar ability. It is all about familiarity and conditioning and I'm sure many other people in other disciplines have similar experiences.

The way we process and experience musical information and respond to sound is a never ending source of wonder and fascination, though. And it never ends. It is science, it is emotion, it is spiritual, and it is experiential. We will never figure it all out or reach the end of what there is to hear. There is infinite variety in musical expression...it is a glimpse into something beautiful, something personal, and something eternal. I understand only a few very small pieces of it, but I can't put it down. And I don't want to.

Color My World: Mauve

In the course of my job today, I found myself researching multi-colored microphone windscreens for a client. In reviewing the possibilities, I realized I really wasn't sure what the color Mauve looked like.

So, naturally, I did a websearch to see what came up and I was astonished at the amount of mauvelogical information that abounds.

Mauve has played a surprisingly influential role in science, history, culture, architechture, literature, fashion, film & TV, meterology, folklore, the occult, and, of course, art. Wikipedia has a very detailed article and all kinds of interesting referential links.

Mauve was discovered in 1856, by an 18-year old English chemist named William Henry Perkins, whose recent biography is entitled "Mauve". Fascinating. Who knew?

Robots for Everyone!

My friend, Scott Price, sent me a very enjoyable article about robots from WashingtonPost.com. I liked this quote:

Joseph W. Dyer, the retired three-star admiral who heads iRobot's government and industrial division, says, "The androids in the movie 'I, Robot,' who are projected to exist in 2030? We think that timeline is about right."

I still want a personal rocketpack like we were all promised back in the 1970's. But, I'll take a robot for now.

Dogs in Space

This is excerpted from the Space Today Online website:

"Korabl-Sputnik-2 (Spaceship Satellite-2), also known as Sputnik 5, was launched on August 19, 1960. On board were the dogs Belka ( Squirrel) and Strelka (Little Arrow). Also on board were 40 mice, 2 rats and a variety of plants.

After a day in orbit, the spacecraft's retrorocket was fired and the landing capsule and the dogs were safely recovered. They were the first living animals to survive orbital flight. Strelka later gave birth to six puppies, one of which was given to Caroline Kennedy, daughter of U.S. President John F. Kennedy, by Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev.

Today, the bodies of Strelka and Belka remain preserved at the Memorial Museum of Astronautics in Moscow. Belka sits in a glass case in the museum while Strelka is part of a traveling exhibit that has visited the U.S., China, Australia, Israel and other countries."

The photograph is from a Library of Congress photograph collection. Stumbling over one of the cutest dog pictures I've ever seen inspired me to do a little research on it's subjects.

Why you should keep practicing

Here is a fascinating article about learning and virtuosity from this month's Scientific American.