August 26, 2011
The Venus Project is an organization that advocates American futurist Jacque Fresco’s visions of the future with the aim of improving society by moving towards a global sustainable social design that they call a ‘resource-based economy.’ Such a system incorporates sustainable cities and values, energy efficiency, collective farms, natural resource management and advanced automation, focusing on the benefits they claim it will bring to humanity.
The name of the organization originates from Venus, Florida, where its research center is located, near Lake Okeechobee. Within the center are ten buildings, designed by Fresco, which showcase the architecture of the project.
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August 26, 2011
Père Lachaise Cemetery [peyr /luh-shez] is the largest cemetery in the city of Paris, France, and is reputed to be the world’s most-visited cemetery, attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors annually to the graves of those who have enhanced French life over the past 200 years. It is also the site of three World War I memorials. Notable residents include Georges Bizet, Maria Callas, Frédéric Chopin, Marcel Marceau, Jim Morrison, Marcel Proust, and Oscar Wilde.
The cemetery is on Boulevard de Ménilmontant. The Paris Métro station Philippe Auguste is next to the main entrance, while the station called Père Lachaise, on line 3, is 500 meters away near a side entrance. Many tourists prefer the Gambetta station as it allows them to enter near the tomb of Oscar Wilde and then walk downhill to visit the rest of the cemetery.
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August 18, 2011
Michael Nyman (b. 1944) is an English composer of minimalist music, pianist, and musicologist, known for the many film scores he wrote during his lengthy collaboration with the filmmaker Peter Greenaway, and his soundtrack album to Jane Campion’s ‘The Piano.’ He has composed operas, concertos, string quartets, and many other chamber works, many for his Michael Nyman Band, with and without whom he tours as a performing pianist. Nyman has stated his preference for writing opera to other sorts of music.
In 1969, he provided the libretto for Harrison Birtwistle’s opera, ‘Down by the Greenwood Side’ and directed the short film ‘Love Love Love’ (based on, and identical length to, The Beatles’ ‘All You Need Is Love’) before settling into music criticism, where he is generally acknowledged to have been the first to apply the term ‘minimalism’ to music (in a 1968 article in The Spectator magazine about the English composer Cornelius Cardew).
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August 14, 2011
The batter’s eye is a solid-colored, usually dark area beyond the center field wall of a baseball stadium, that is the visual backdrop directly in the line of sight of a baseball batter, while facing the pitcher and awaiting a pitch. This dark surface allows the batter to see the pitched ball against a sharply contrasted and uncluttered background. Its primary purpose is the safety of the batter.
The use of a batter’s background has been standard in baseball (as well as cricket) since at least the late 19th century. The Batter’s Eye performs the same role at a baseball venue as the sightscreen does at a cricket venue, except that a cricket sightscreen is usually white in order to contrast with the dark red cricket ball. Alternatively a black screen is used to contrast the white Kookaburra Limited Overs cricket ball.
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August 14, 2011
Cow tipping is the purported activity of sneaking up on a sleeping, upright cow and pushing it over for fun. As cattle do not sleep standing up, cow tipping is a myth. Cattle only rest while standing up, rather than sleeping that way, and they are easily disturbed.
Additionally, they represent over a half ton of weight that would easily resist a lesser tipping force. Horses, however, do regularly sleep standing up due to a locking mechanism of their stifle joint, a trait cows do not possess.
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August 14, 2011
‘Real-Life Superheroes‘ are men and women who, using the thematic device of the costumed superhero, perform services that benefit the community in a variety of ways. Some Real-Life Superheroes (RLSH) hand out supplies to the homeless, while others seek to directly combat crime through community patrols in which suspicious activity is identified and reported to the proper authorities, and some physically confront suspected perpetrators themselves.
Real life super heroes wear masks or otherwise disguise themselves in order to perform ‘heroic deeds’ like community services or fighting crime when they come across it. They are often similar to neighborhood watches or militias. Examples include Phoenix Jones and a team of nine others in the Rain City Superhero Movement.
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August 9, 2011
Taqwacore [tok-wah-kor] is a genre of punk music dealing with Islam and its culture, originally conceived in Michael Muhammad Knight’s 2003 novel, ‘The Taqwacores.’ The name is a portmanteau of hardcore and the Arabic word Taqwa, which is usually translated as ‘piety’ or the quality of being ‘God-fearing,’ and thus roughly denotes fear and love of the divine. The scene is composed mainly of young Muslim artists living in the US and other western countries, many of whom openly reject traditionalist interpretations of Islam.
Although Muslim punk music dates at least to the 1979 founding of British band Alien Kulture, and in the 90’s, Nation Records act Fun-Da-Mental and Asian Dub Foundation, this is the first example of US Muslim generated punk. Knight’s novel was instrumental in encouraging the growth of a contemporary North American Muslim punk movement. There is not a definitive ‘taqwacore sound,’ and the scene is much more diverse now than the fictional one portrayed in Knight’s novel, with artists incorporating various styles, ranging from punk to hip-hop, and musical traditions from the Muslim world; the Kominas describe their sound as ‘Bollywood punk,’ Sagg Taqwacore Syndicate is rap and techno inspired, and Al-Thawra uses the term ‘raicore,’ based on Arabic Raï music.
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August 9, 2011
Moombahton is a genre of electronic dance music that was created by American dj/producer Dave Nada (aka Dave Villegas) at a high school homecoming ‘skipping party’ for his younger cousin in Washington, D.C., in the fall of 2009.
The specific event that stimulated NADA’s development of the Moombahton genre was his slowing the Afrojack remix of the Silvio Ecomo and DJ Chuckie song ‘Moombah’ to 108 beats per minute. Because that tempo nears that of the reggaeton, Nada created the neologism ‘Moombahton.’
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August 2, 2011
Sky lanterns, also known as Kongming Lantern are airborne paper lanterns found in some Asian cultures. They are constructed from oiled rice paper on a bamboo frame, and contain a small candle or fuel cell composed of a waxy flammable material. When lit, the flame heats the air inside the lantern, thus lowering its density causing the lantern to rise into the air. The sky lantern is only airborne for as long as the flame stays alight, after which the lantern floats back to the ground.
According to popular lore, the Kongming Lantern was the first hot air balloon, said to be invented by the Chinese sage and military strategist Zhuge Liang, whose reverent term of address (i.e. Chinese style name) was Kongming. They were first deployed at the turn of the 3rd century as a type of signaling balloon or, it is claimed, as a type of spy blimp in warfare. Alternatively the name may come from the lantern’s resemblance to the hat Kongming is traditionally shown to be wearing.
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August 1, 2011
Billy Preston (1946 – 2006) was an African American rhythm and blues musician from Houston, Texas, raised mostly in Los Angeles. In addition to his career as a solo artist, Preston collaborated with some of the greatest names in the music industry, including The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Nat King Cole, Little Richard, Ray Charles, Elton John, Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin, and Johnny Cash. He played the Fender Rhodes electric piano and the Hammond organ on the Get Back sessions in 1969.
Preston began playing piano while sitting on his mother’s lap at age three, and he was considered something of a child prodigy on piano and organ. By the age of 10 he was performing in the bands of gospel singers Mahalia Jackson, James Cleveland, and Andrae Crouch. In the 1960s he performed with Little Richard and Ray Charles, and in 1963, aged just 16, he played organ on the Sam Cooke album ‘Night Beat.’ He also began a recording career as a solo artist with the 1965 album ‘The Most Exciting Organ Ever.’
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August 1, 2011
Stephen LaBerge (born 1947) is a psychophysiologist and a leader in the scientific study of lucid dreaming. In 1967 he received his Bachelor’s Degree in mathematics. He received his Ph.D. in Psychophysiology at Stanford University in 1980.
He developed a technique to enable himself and other researchers to enter a lucid dream state at will, MILD (mnemonic induction of lucid dreams), which was necessary for many forms of dream experimentation. In 1987, he founded The Lucidity Institute, an organization that promotes research into lucid dreaming, as well as running courses for the general public on how to achieve a lucid dream.
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July 30, 2011
Max Hattler (b. 1976) is a German video artist and experimental filmmaker best-known for his kaleidoscopic political short films ‘Collision’ (2005) and ‘Spin’ (2010), abstract stop motion work ‘Aanaatt’ (2008), and psychedelic animation loops ‘1923 aka Heaven’ and ‘1925 aka Hell’ (2010).
He also works extensively in the field of audiovisual performance, and has created concert visuals for Basement Jaxx, Diplo, Jovanotti, The Egg, and Ladyscraper.
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