July 23, 2011
Retrotronics is the making of electric circuits or appliances using older electric components, such as vacuum tubes, Nixie displays, relays, uniselectors, analog meters, etc. These are usually chosen for their aesthetic qualities, rather than their utility. Retrotronics is a popular strand within the steampunk movement. At the Oxford exhibition of Steampunk art, many of the works had a strong retrotronic influence, from light fittings of period components to computer keyboards and webcams of burnished copper and brass. Outside steampunk, similar influences are found amongst the retro-futurist scene.
A recent musical trend has sought to recapture early 1980s 8-bit game and synthesizer sounds, often referred to as Chiptune. Artists such as Kid Carpet perform entire sets on children’s toys or pocket synths of the period. Other artists, such as Nullsleep, perform using only period video game hardware. DJs offer dance music events built from samples of period games or gadgets.
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July 23, 2011
A death pool (or dead pool) is a game of prediction which involves guessing when someone will die. A typical pool might have players pick out celebrities who they think will die within the year. There are also several scoring variants. For example, a player might be rewarded few, if any, points for predicting the death of someone who is over 80 years old or is known to be suffering from a terminal disease. Another common method to calculate score is subtracting the celebrity’s age from 100. Other pools require participants to form a list ranked on how sure they are that a person on the list will die, with points given based on how high a person on their list is ranked, and others award points based on how many other contestants selected the deceased celebrity. Another variant on the game has a single point awarded for each correct prediction, regardless of the celebrity’s age or medical condition. The advantage of this scoring method is that there is more scoring, and it rewards research (learning which celebrities are experiencing failing health) rather than luck.
Definitions of celebrity vary from contest to contest. Smaller pools may rely on consensus of the players as to who is famous. Others require an obituary to appear in a recognized newswire such as the Associated Press or Reuters. The Lee Atwater Invitational Dead Pool employs a Fame Committee consisting of non-contestants who assess ahead of time the name-recognition of each celebrity. The Rotten.com Dead Pool, the largest in the world, uses the Notable Names Database (NNDB) as its source of qualified celebrities, and as arbiter of their life status.
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July 21, 2011
Watch the Throne is a collaborative studio album by Jay-Z and Kanye West, set to be released August 1, 2011. Production began in Bath, England and continued during available times in Jay-Z’s and West’s respective schedules at recording locations in Australia, Paris, New York City, and Los Angeles. Parts of the album were recorded at the Mercer Hotel and Tribeca Grand Hotel in New York City.
In an interview, Jay-Z discussed their insistence on recording in person, stating ‘If we were gonna do it, we were gonna do it together. No mailing it in.’ The album features guest appearances by Beyoncé, Frank Ocean, and Mr Hudson, with production by Kanye West along with The Neptunes, The RZA, Q-Tip, Swizz Beatz, and others. The album’s cover and artwork were both designed by Italian fashion designer Riccardo Tisci.
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July 20, 2011
Dippin’ Dots is an ice cream snack, invented by Curt Jones in 1987. The confection is created by flash freezing ice cream mix in liquid nitrogen; consequently, Dippin’ Dots contain less air than conventional ice cream. The resulting small spheres of ice cream are stored at temperatures ranging from -70 to -20 °F (from -57 °C to -29 °C). The marketing slogan is ‘Ice Cream of the Future.’ The company, headquartered in Paducah, Kentucky, United recently began selling its product in supermarkets in the United States. Dippin’ Dots are sold in individual servings at franchised outlets, many in theme parks, stadiums, shopping malls, and in vending machines.
Several competing beaded ice-cream lines have been introduced in recent years. Some of these competing brands are similar to Dippin’ Dots in shape or size, yet differ in that they use dairy stabilizers and artificial sweeteners, in an effort to keep the beads from adhering to one another. Dippin’ Dots, made from conventional ice cream ingredients, are held at sub-zero temperatures to keep the beads separate and free-flowing.
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July 20, 2011
El Bulli is a molecular gastronomy restaurant near the town of Roses, Spain (near the French border), run by chef Ferran Adrià. In early 2011, management announced that the restaurant would close that summer to reopen as a creativity center in 2014. Its main objective is to be a think-tank for creative cuisine and gastronomy and will managed by a private foundation. The former restaurant accommodated only 8,000 diners a season, but received more than two million requests. The average cost of a meal was €250. The restaurant itself operated at a loss since 2000, with operating profit coming from El Bulli-related books and lectures by Adrià. The location was selected in 1961 by Dr Hans Schilling, a German, and his Czech wife Marketta, who wanted a restaurant for a piece of land he had purchased. The name ‘El Bulli’ came from the French bulldogs the Schillings owned.
The first restaurant was opened in 1964. Ferran Adrià joined the staff in 1984, and was put in sole charge of the kitchen in 1987. In 1990 the restaurant gained its second Michelin star, and in 1997 its third. Menu items have included melon with ham, pine nut marshmallows, steamed brioche with rose-scented mozzarella, rock mussels with seaweed and fresh herbs, and passion fruit trees. Texturas is a range of products by Adrià and his brother Albert. Texturas include products such as Xanthan and Algin. Xanthan gum allows the user to use a very small amount to thicken soups, sauces and creams without changing the flavor. Algin is a key component of the ‘Spherification Kit’ and is essential for every spherical preparation: caviar, raviolis, balloons, gnocchi, pellets, and mini-spheres.
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July 20, 2011
The Cessna 172 Skyhawk is a four-seat, single-engine, high-wing, fixed-wing aircraft. First flown in 1955 and still in production, more Cessna 172s have been built than any other aircraft.
Measured by its longevity and popularity, the Cessna 172 is the most successful mass produced light aircraft in history. The first production models were delivered in 1956 and they are still in production. As of 2008, more than 43,000 had been built.
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July 19, 2011
The Bristol underground scene is a term used to describe the culture surrounding trip hop, drum and bass and graffiti art that has existed in Bristol from the early 1990s to the present. The city of Bristol in the UK has spawned various musicians and artists, and is typified by its urban culture. While the city is most associated with a group of artists who emerged during the 1990s, especially the ‘Bristol Sound’, the city maintains an active and diverse underground urban scene.
The city has been particularly associated with trip hop. Trip hop was spawned in ‘the bohemian, multi-ethnic city of Bristol, where restlessly inventive DJs had spent years assembling samples of various sounds that were floating around: groove-heavy acid jazz, dub reggae, neo-psychedelia, techno disco music, and the brainy art rap.’
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July 19, 2011
Teknivals (a portmanteau of ‘tekno’ and ‘festival’) are large free parties which take place worldwide. They take place most often in Europe and are often illegal under various national or regional laws. They vary in size from dozens to thousands of people, depending on factors such as accessibility, reputation, weather, and law enforcement.
The parties often take place in venues far away from residential areas such as squatted warehouses, empty military bases, forests or fields. The teknival phenomenon is a grassroots movement which has grown out of the rave, New Age Traveller and Burning Man scenes and spawned an entire subculture. Summer is the usual season for teknivals.
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July 18, 2011
Kondratiev waves (also called supercycles, great surges, or long waves) are described as sinusoidal-like cycles in the modern capitalist world economy. Averaging fifty and ranging from approximately forty to sixty years in length, the cycles consist of alternating periods between high sectoral growth and periods of relatively slow growth. Unlike the short-term business cycle, the long wave of this theory is not accepted by current mainstream economics.
Russian economist Nikolai Kondratiev (1892 – 1938) was the first to bring these observations to international attention in his book ‘The Major Economic Cycles’ (1925). Kondratiev was a Russian economist, but his economic conclusions were disliked by the Soviet leadership and upon their release he was quickly dismissed from his post as director of the Institute for the Study of Business Activity in the Soviet Union in 1928. His conclusions were seen as a criticism of Joseph Stalin’s intentions for the Soviet economy. As a result he was sentenced to the Soviet Gulag and later received the death penalty in 1938.
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July 14, 2011
Ray Kurzweil (b. 1948) is an American author, inventor and futurist. He is involved in fields such as optical character recognition (OCR), text-to-speech synthesis, speech recognition technology, and electronic keyboard instruments. He is the author of several books on health, artificial intelligence (AI), transhumanism, the technological singularity, and futurism.
Ray Kurzweil grew up in Queens, NY. He was born to secular Jewish parents who had escaped Austria just before the onset of World War II, and he was exposed via Unitarian Universalism to a diversity of religious faiths during his upbringing. His father was a musician and composer and his mother was a visual artist. His uncle, an engineer at Bell Labs, taught young Ray the basics of computer science.
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July 14, 2011
Energy shots are a specialized kind of energy drink. Sold in 59ml (2 fluid oz.) bottles, energy shots normally contain the same amount of caffeine, vitamins or other functional ingredients as their larger siblings, and therefore they may be considered concentrated forms of energy drinks. Also similar to energy drinks, energy shots contain caffeine, vitamins, and herbs such as guarana, ginseng or ginkgo biloba, taurine, maltodextrin, inositol, carnitine, creatine or glucuronolactone. Most energy shots contain sugar; however, many brands also offer artificially-sweetened ‘diet’ versions. The central ingredient in most energy shots is caffeine, the same stimulant found in coffee or tea. The average 50ml energy shot has about 80 mg of caffeine. This is approximately equivalent to a cup of coffee.
The idea of energy shots started decades ago in the Far East, notably in Japan, where small ‘tonics’ became very popular among consumers; they were highly concentrated and without carbonation. In 2004 the first suppliers, like 5-Hour Energy, Nitro2Go, and ZipFizz, took up the idea and launched these energy shots in the US, opening up a sub-segment in the energy drink market. Although originally marketed in the US, energy shots are becoming more popular in other parts of the world, like Europe, Asia and Australia.
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July 14, 2011
Hologram therapy is the pseudoscientific practice of adorning oneself with hologram jewelry for enhancement of athletic performance. Merchants claim it to be a method in alternative holistic medicine that can improve general physical fitness and athletic prowess. It centers around wearing plastic holograms purported to resonate with frequencies that react positively with the putative energy field of the human body.
Promoters borrow from concepts in crystal healing, vibrational medicine, energy medicine, and physics, but provide a sparse and disjointed scientific explanation. The holograms are printed on stickers, plastic wristbands, and pendants. Promoters rely heavily on the ritualistic superstition that often characterizes athletes.
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