July 22, 2011
Nepeta [neh-puh-ta] is a genus of about 250 species of flowering plants in the family Lamiaceae, commonly known as ‘catnip’ because of their attractant effect on cats—the nepetalactone contained in nepeta binds to the olfactory receptors of cats, typically resulting in temporary euphoria. Catmints are also used in herbal medicine for their mild sedative effect on humans.
Nepetalactone is an organic compound, first reported in 1941 after it was isolated by steam distillation of catnip. The compound is also present in the wood of tartarian honeysuckle (Lonicera tatarica), shavings of which are often used in cat toys. Around 80% of cats are affected and susceptibility is gene-linked. The chemical interacts as a vapor at the olfactory epithelium. Nepetalactone has effects on some insects: it repels cockroaches and mosquitoes.
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July 22, 2011
SmartBird is an autonomous unmanned aerial vehicle created by Festo’s Bionic Learning Network. It is an ornithopter modeled on the herring gull. It has a mass of 450 grams and a wingspan of 1.96 meters. Smartbird is constructed of polyurethane foam and carbon fiber and is powered by a 135 brushless motor running at 23 watts.
Flight occurs in a manner very similar to that of real birds. The vertical motion of the wings is provided by an electric motor in the body of the bird. It is connected to two wheels that attach to rods in the wings in a manner similar to steam locomotives. Inside the wings are torsional motors that adjust the wings’ angle of attack to provide forward motion. Directional control is provided by moving the tail.
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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
Spherification is the culinary process of shaping a liquid into spheres which visually and texturally resemble caviar. The technique was originally developed by the creative team at the Spanish restaurant, elBulli under the direction of executive chef Ferran Adrià. There are two main methods for creating such spheres, which differ based on the calcium content in the product to be spherified.
For substances containing no calcium, the liquid is mixed with sodium alginate, and dripped into a cold solution of calcium chloride or calcium carbonate. ‘Reverse’ spherification, for use with substances which contain calcium, requires dripping the substance into an alginate bath. Both methods give the same result: a sphere of liquid held by a thin gel membrane, texturally similar to caviar.
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July 19, 2011
Dubnobasswithmyheadman is the third album by Underworld, released in 1994 after the band made the transition from synth pop to progressive house. It is also the first album to feature Darren Emerson, ushering in the ‘MK2’ phase of the band, which continued until Emerson’s departure in 2001.
Tomato, the art design collective that includes Underworld’s Rick Smith and Karl Hyde, designed the artwork for Dubnobasswithmyheadman. It features black and white type that has been ‘multiplied, smeared, and overlaid’ so much that it is nearly unreadable, alongside a ‘bold symbol consisting of a fractured handprint inside a broken circle.’ The artwork was originally intended for Tomato’s book ‘Mmm…Skyscraper I Love You: A Typographic Journal of New York,’ published in 1994.
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July 19, 2011
The Wild Bunch was a sound system based in the St Paul’s district of Bristol, England from 1983 to 1986. The group was renowned for playing sets that drew large crowds from the club scene and had performed shows as far away as London. They performed against other Bristol sound systems in soundclashes, musical competitions where crew members from opposing reggae sound systems pit their skills against each other. The Wild Bunch’s sound incorporated a wide and disparate variety of musical styles – an unusual thing at the time. Their shows included elements of punk, R&B and reggae, with a focus on slower rhythms and ambient electronic atmospheres that would become a cornerstone of the Bristol sound, more popularly known as trip-hop. They were a key member of what became the Bristol underground scene. The first Wild Bunch record was a cover of Burt Bacharach’s ‘The Look of Love,’ featuring Shara Nelson on vocals, and released in 1985.
The Wild Bunch is perhaps best known for having been the first group of several notable British DJs and performers: Robert Del Naja, Grant Marshall and Andrew Vowles, went on to form Massive Attack in 1987. Tricky, also a part-time member of the outfit, performed with Massive Attack on their first and second full-length releases, Blue Lines and Protection respectively, before pursuing a successful solo career. Nellee Hooper, who moved to London after the group’s dissolution and worked as a producer and remixer for a number of major artists, including Madonna, U2, No Doubt, Björk and others. Miles Johnson, aka DJ Milo, who subsequently moved to New York and released deep house records as Natureboy.
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July 19, 2011
Blue Lines is the debut album by British electronica group Massive Attack, released in 1991. It is generally considered the first trip hop album, although the term was not coined until years later.
A fusion of electronic music, hip hop, dub, ’70s soul and reggae, the album established Massive Attack as one of the most innovative British bands of the 1990s and the founder of trip hop’s Bristol Sound. The album also marked a change in electronic/dance music, ‘a shift toward a more interior, meditational sound.
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July 17, 2011
My Neighbor Totoro is a 1988 Japanese animated fantasy film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki and produced by Studio Ghibli. The film follows the two young daughters of a professor and their interactions with friendly wood spirits in postwar rural Japan. The art director was Kazuo Oga, who was drawn to the film when Hayao Miyazaki showed him an original image of Totoro standing in a satoyama (foothills). Oga’s was recognized as ‘updating the traditional Japanese animist sense of a natural world that is fully, spiritually alive.’ ‘Set in a period that is both modern and nostalgic, the film creates a fantastic, yet strangely believable universe of supernatural creatures coexisting with modernity. A great part of this sense comes from Oga’s evocative backgrounds, which give each tree, hedge and twist in the road an indefinable feeling of warmth that seems ready to spring into sentient life.’ Oga’s style became a trademark style of Studio Ghibli.
As is the case with Disney’s other English dubs of Miyazaki films, the Disney version of Totoro features a star-heavy cast, including Dakota and Elle Fanning as Satsuki and Mei, and Timothy Daly as Mr. Kusakabe. ‘My Neighbor Totoro’ helped bring Japanese animation into the global spotlight, and set its writer-director Hayao Miyazaki on the road to success. The film’s central character, Totoro, is as famous among Japanese children as Winnie-the-Pooh is among British ones.
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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 13, 2011
A card sharp (or card shark) is a person who uses skill and deception to win at poker or other card games. The label is not always intended as pejorative, and is sometimes used to refer to practitioners of card tricks for entertainment purposes. The term has also taken on the meaning of ‘expert card gambler who takes advantage of less-skilled players,’ without implication of actual cheating at cards, in much the same way that ‘pool shark’ or ‘pool hustler’ can (especially when used by non-players) be intended to mean ‘skilled player’ rather than ‘swindler.’ A card sharp/shark may be a ’rounder’ who travels, seeking out high-stakes games in which to gamble.
Card sharps who cheat or perform tricks use methods to keep control of the order of the cards or sometimes to control one specific card. Most, if not all, of these methods employ sleight of hand. Essential skills are false shuffles and false cuts that appear to mix the deck but actually leave the cards in the same order. More advanced techniques include culling (manipulating desired cards to the top or bottom of the deck), and stacking (putting desired cards in position to be dealt). Dealing the cards can also be manipulated, by dealing either the bottom card from the deck or the second one from the top instead of the top card. These are called Bottom dealing and Second dealing, respectively. Dealing may also be done from the middle of the deck, known as the middle deal or center deal, but this is not as common.
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July 12, 2011
Façade is a 2005 artificial-intelligence-based interactive story created by Michael Mateas and Andrew Stern, and exhibited at several international art shows. Façade puts the player in the role of a close friend of Grace and Trip, a couple who invited you over for cocktails.
This pleasant gathering, however, is somewhat damaged by the clear domestic confrontation between your hosts. Making full use of the incorporated language processing software, the game allows the player to type sentences to ‘speak’ with the couple, either supporting them through their troubles, driving them farther apart, or being thrown out of the apartment.
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July 12, 2011
Donnie Darko is a 2001 American psychological thriller written and directed by Richard Kelly, starring Jake Gyllenhaal. The film depicts the reality-bending adventures of the title character as he seeks the meaning and significance behind his troubling Doomsday-related visions. In October 1988, teenager Donnie Darko has been seeing a psychiatrist because of his troubled history. Donnie sleepwalks, and he has visions of Frank, a menacing, demonic-looking rabbit. On October 2, Frank draws Donnie out of his room to tell him, in 28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes, and 12 seconds, the world will end. While Donnie is outside, a jet engine crashes through his bedroom. The next morning, Donnie wakes up on a golf course. He returns home to find police and firemen inspecting the wreckage. No one knows where the jet engine has come from, since there were no planes flying in the vicinity, and no airline reported losing an engine.
Music is used heavily in the film. One continuous sequence involving an introduction of Donnie’s high school prominently features the song ‘Head over Heels’ by Tears for Fears, Donnie’s sister’s dance group, ‘Sparkle Motion,’ performs with the song ‘Notorious’ by Duran Duran, and ‘Under the Milky Way’ by The Church is played after Donnie and Gretchen emerge from his room during the party. ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ by Joy Division also appears in the film. The opening sequence is set to ‘The Killing Moon’ by Echo & the Bunnymen.
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