via http://kinderschnitzel.blogspot.com/

Funniest project seen at the RCA show. You won't need my explanation, just have a look at the video:

Signs of Life was created by Freddie Yauner (of the highest popping toaster in the world fame) a graduate of the Design Products department, Platform 11 . Because it was exhibited where you'd expect to see an emergency exit sign i did believe that it was a real one for a moment.

(AP) -- Two teenagers who drove to Oniontown after a series of YouTube videos portrayed the hamlet as a run-down, backwoods dump were pelted with rocks by an angry group of young residents, authorities said.

A flexible water-filled cylinder that produces electricity as it is hit by waves is very efficient and offers benefits over other sea-energy devices

via Gord:
"I was recently in Halifax and was able to catch the last day of the 'arena: the art of hockey' show at the art gallery. One piece of synth-trest was this - link - that I thought you would get a kick out of.

The sk1 somehow had each key hooked up to each player (eg: A=goalie, C#=right winger etc...) and when the keyboard was played they would move around and such.

I tried to sample my own voice but forgot how to store and loop on the sk1 (I haven’t played with mine since I got it – stupid ebay impulse purchase/attempt at re-living my childhood)… but all the internal voices were still accessible." The device itself, and just the thought of leaving your own samples for others is absolutely hillarious. :)

John Cage - 4:33 (2004, 47MB, 9:23 min)

Wonderful video of the BBC Symphony Orchestra under
Lawrence Foster giving a performance of John Cage’s
notorious/ provocative/seminal/epoch-making 4:33.

via http://activate.us/_popups/issue050/w2.php

Marshall Kirkpatrick reports on the ReadWriteWeb that the Iranian parliament is set to debate a draft bill that would add a number of crimes to the list of those that can result in execution, among them “establishing weblogs and sites promoting corruption, prostitution and apostasy.” Apostasy means the abandonment of a religion. The official Iranian news agency reports that the bill is intended to “toughen punishment for harming mental security in society.”

Thousands of years later, we can view stone-age art on cave walls, but we can't listen to the stone-age music that would have accompanied many of the pictures. Researchers report that the most acoustically resonant place in a cave -- where sounds linger or reverberate the most -- was also often the place where the pictures were densest. In many sites, flutes made of bone are to be found nearby.

The head of the UN's Nobel-winning panel of climate scientists on Friday said only seven years remained for stabilising emissions of global-warming gases at a level widely considered safe.

YouTube via TomEllard (of Severed Heads)
"Video made by Stephen R Jones using home brew video synthesiser + oscilloscope + Fairlight CVI + vision mixer. I did some of the clouds and a bit of Fairlight. You can tell when the CVI is used - the image gets smaller. As requested. This is on the Palaeolithic DVD"

Filed under: Culture

Rock star and noted media violence expert Noel Gallagher used a recent public appearance to speak out against the influence of violent video games, according to the BBC. While accepting an award at London's Silver Clef Music Awards, Professor Emeritus Gallagher mentioned games as one possible cause for the prevalence of youth-oriented knife violence throughout England.

"People say it's through violent video games and I guess that's got something to do with it," said Gallagher, whose wide-ranging, cross-cultural sociological studies on the relationship between media exposure and real-world violence have changed the way we all look at this complex problem. "If kids are sitting up all night smoking super skunk [cannabis] and they come so desensitised [sic] to crime because they're playing these video games, it's really, really scary," he added while adjusting the Amalfi Prize hanging around his neck.

Gallagher is the best-selling author of Burning the Razor's Edge: How Super-Skunk Smoking and Our Knife-Obsessed Media Landscape are Turning Our Kids to Crime.

[Thanks, GunForHire]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

3 of 7(2002, 74.7MB, 4:00 min)

4 of 7(2002, 105MB, 4:00 min)

Two (from a series of seven) heartbreakingly beautiful, lump-in-the-throat
evocative lyric poems about being young, disguised as music video/documentaries.
Dan Canyon is a natural filmmaker. He so is.
What more to say, except nice to see Blackheef pronounced correctly?

See all seven.

A

Nebraska Firm Expands Recall of Beef Products Due To Possible E. coli O157:H7 Contamination, USDA

Another example of the questionable state of food safety in the USA.

Related: USDA’s failure to ensure safe beef supply - Mad-cow testing gets scathing review - Scientists Knock-out Prion Gene in Cows

A long-lost original cut of the sci-fi classic Metropolis has been unearthed and shown to journalists for the first time in decades.

The first street theater tricksters – the forefathers of today's culture jammers such as The Yes Men and Billionaires For Bush – appeared on the political stage in the 1960s. At the time, the possibility that activists could spread subversive messages through the mainstream media was a counter-intuitive, even revolutionary notion.

read more

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

via http://www.flickr.com/photos/frank-sparrow/2620270964/

(AP) -- This doesn't sound good: The nonprofit agency in charge of the Internet's addresses recently lost track of its own.