The Guild of Scientific Troubadours

Beautiful (Have A Unique Ringtone).

Because I know that what the internet really needs is more people putting sad, hungry monkeys* on their cellphones, here’s my latest attempt to sell out: ringtones sampled from “Beautiful (Have Another Plum)”.

Even low-fidelity home recordists can make our own ringtones now. Download the format you need here, and enjoy your calls in a way that’s bound to not sound like whoever’s standing next to you.

*Yeah, apes. I know.

Entered on 30 April 2008 at 6:05 in the Guild Affairs file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Drip. Drip. Drip.

The BBC has us imagining that sound as New Zealand researchers thaw a colossal squid:

“They’re incredibly rare – this is probably one of maybe six specimens ever brought up,” said Carol Diebel, director of natural environment at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa centre.

“It’s certainly the one that we’re being really careful about, completely intact and in really fantastic condition.”

My favorite thing about colossal squid is the etymology of their Latin name, Mesonychoteuthis hamiltonii. The second part is the name of the person who named them, someone named Hamilton. I don’t really know who that is. But the first part literally means middle-claw-squid. Because not only are they twice as long as city buses, but they have swiveling, razor-sharp hooks in the middle of their tentacles!

More on this project (and a photo showing the arm-hooks) over yonder, and more facts (and more hook close-ups) at Tonmo.

Entered on 29 April 2008 at 6:07 in the Science file | 1 Observation |  Print

Pioneer Anomaly: A Long-Distance Bill

Scientific American closes in on the “Pioneer Anomaly” – the strange fact that the Pioneer deep space probes aren’t traveling at exactly the right speed. Researchers now think it might be a problem with plutonium:

A group of some 50 researchers, including Turyshev, is now trying to match the data to a detailed computer model of the craft’s inner workings. The model is designed to mimic the flow of heat and electricity produced by the craft’s generators, which harnessed the heat from radioactive plutonium and turned a fraction of it into electricity to power the craft. The remaining heat [see note below] was lost to space or spread to other parts of the craft such as the antenna, which influenced each probe’s overall momentum.

So far the model accounts for about 30 percent of the observed anomaly for Pioneer 10 at a single distance of 25 astronomical units (2.3 billion miles, or 3.7 billion kilometers) from the sun, Turyshev reported. The group still has to extend the model to other distances and to Pioneer 11. The full verdict may not be in for some time.

Why does this matter? Well, the Pioneer Anomaly might also have something to do with the way gravity shapes the universe, and the way interstellar craft can travel over very long distances.

Entered on 28 April 2008 at 17:41 in the Science file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Science Art: “Asian Types,” The New Students Reference Work (1914)

^{Click to embiggen}

A dicey bit of racial taxonomy from The New Students Reference Work (1914), edited by Chandler B. Beach, associate editor Frank Morton McMurry.

I’m not sure how I feel about my children seeing this, but it’s a part of the history of anthropology. Somebody definitely seemed to have it in for the Mangune.

Scanned by Wikimedia Commons user LA2.

Entered on 27 April 2008 at 6:28 in the Science Art file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Flammable Ice

New Scientist has a gas with the latest alternative energy source, flammable ice.

…[I]t could be the world’s last great source of carbon-based fuel – assuming we can mine methane hydrates, crystal lattices of ice that trap methane beneath ocean beds and permafrost.

Apparently it’s really tricky getting the gas out without either melting all the ice or somehow triggering massive, tsunami-causing blowouts.

Entered on 25 April 2008 at 6:37 in the Science file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

SONG: After the End.

SONG: “After the End” _{(To download: right-click & “Save As”)}

ARTIST: grant.

SOURCE: “Arctic ‘Doomsday’ Seed Vault Opens”, Science Friday, 7 Mar 2008, as used in the (April Fools) post Doomsday Seed Vault Cooked and Eaten .

ABSTRACT: So, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. Somebody somewhere said this would be a good source for a song, and I thought somebody was exactly right. This project, after all, could be the future of Earth’s agriculture, and it’s being stored in a Norwegian mountain vault like some kind of dwarf treasure, by jiminy. There’s a lot of weird stuff going on with farming now, have you noticed?

Anyway – I kind of wanted this to sound like Clem Snide or Son Volt. The melody was pretty easy, but for some reason, I couldn’t get the lyrics exactly where I wanted them to go. If I ever return to these monthly songs, I’ll probably be switching around some words in the second verse here. But it’s got the ukulele and the toy piano, and the solo bit right after the second verse fell together just the way I wanted it to.

EDIT, 22:22, 23 April 08: Because it’s still the 23rd, and because 1:30 am on a work night was no time to be mixing vocals, I’ve uploaded a fresher, better song file. No new performances, just some muddiness removed.

Entered on 23 April 2008 at 6:49 in the Songs file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Bebe Barron, R.I.P.

Electronic music pioneer Bebe Barron has passed away.

She’s best known for composing the score to Forbidden Planet with her husband, using living circuits – electronic components that were designed to grow and gradually burn out and die as the recorders rolled. She was also buddies with John Cage and Anais Nin.

Entered on 22 April 2008 at 6:20 in the Music file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

A City Older than Moses.

EurasiaNet reports on archaeologist Klaus Schmidt’s excavation of Gobekli Tepe, a 12,000-year-old city that could rewrite human history:

“Everybody used to think only complex, hierarchical civilizations could build such monumental sites, and that they only came about with the invention of agriculture”, says Ian Hodder, a Stanford University Professor of Anthropology, who, since 1993, has directed digs at Catalhoyuk, Turkey’s most famous Neolithic site. “Gobekli changes everything. It’s elaborate, it’s complex and it is pre-agricultural. That fact alone makes the site one of the most important archaeological finds in a very long time.”

With only a fraction of the site opened up after a decade of excavations, Gobekli Tepe’s significance to the people who built it remains unclear. Some think the site was the center of a fertility rite, with the two tall stones at the center of each circle representing a man and woman.

It’s a theory the tourist board in the nearby city of Urfa has taken up with alacrity. Visit the Garden of Eden, its brochures trumpet, see Adam and Eve.

Schmidt is skeptical about the fertility theory. He agrees Gobekli Tepe may well be “the last flowering of a semi-nomadic world that farming was just about to destroy,” and points out that if it is in near perfect condition today, it is because those who built it buried it soon after under tons of soil, as though its wild animal-rich world had lost all meaning.

But the site is devoid of the fertility symbols that have been found at other Neolithic sites, and the T-shaped columns, while clearly semi-human, are sexless. “I think here we are face to face with the earliest representation of gods”, says Schmidt, patting one of the biggest stones. “They have no eyes, no mouths, no faces. But they have arms and they have hands. They are makers.”

Entered on 21 April 2008 at 6:27 in the Science file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Science Art: Doppler Effect

Diagram from Wikimedia Commons.

It’s like op art.

Entered on 20 April 2008 at 6:35 in the Science Art file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

A Lighter Shade of Wallpaper.

TechRadar.com brightens our day with the story of a Dutch designer who has created illuminated wallpaper.

Delving deeper, Samson revealed that the wallpaper is constructed by “sandwiching” a number of layers together that combine to produce light:

“The back layer is a silver-based solution that conducts electricity, while the layer above this contains phosphorous pigments that light up. On top of this is a flexible, transparent ITO conductor layer, with regular wallpaper placed on top to act as the final, outwardly visual layer,” he explained.

The result, when it’s switched on, is a visually stunning wall-of-light that can be turned off and on, just like a regular light.

He expects the starting price to be $6,000 Euro.

Entered on 18 April 2008 at 6:52 in the Science file | Care to make an observation? |  Print