The Guild of Scientific Troubadours

“Our Place in the Cosmos” by Symphonies of Science.

So. They’ve done it again. Carl Sagan (and a host of other cosmologists) now have soul. I mean, they had soul all along, but thanks to the miracle of modern vocoders, you can now sing along.

More at Symphonies of Science.

The Guild salutes you!

Entered on 30 November 2009 at 22:10 in the Music file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Science Art: Mantis Shrimp by R.A. Lydekker.

The mantis shrimp, Stomatopoda, is one of the most terrifying sea creatures under three feet long. At least to me. They move exceptionally fast and have lots of spiky, sharp parts that are just long enough to do some serious damage before you even realize what’s happening. You can watch a TED video of them being one of the fastest animals in the world – fast enough to vaporize water until it glows. And they’re tough, too. Ahem: Although it happens rarely, some larger species of mantis shrimp are capable of breaking through aquarium glass with a single strike from this weapon, Wikipedia says.

Richard Lydekker, on the other hand, was somewhat less frightening. He was a British naturalist who created lots of lovely illustrations of strange creatures in the late 1800s – especially fossils from South Asia. He wrote a couple books, including a six-volume natural history encyclopedia and The Wild Animals of India, Burma, Malaya, and Tibet.

Entered on 29 November 2009 at 6:34 in the Science Art file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

And now, a robot plays Patsy Cline.

If I tried to tell this as a story, you’d think I was making it up.

A sound artist wired together an old floor lamp, some motors and a couple microprocessors to create this:

I don’t know why it’s always songs named “Crazy” that attract this sort of automata attention, but I’m not complaining.

[via]

Entered on 27 November 2009 at 6:18 in the Music file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Clara Rockmore plays “The Swan,” Saint-Saens.

Dreamy.

Entered on 26 November 2009 at 6:57 in the Music file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Prez sends science schooling rocketing.

Discover’s Bad Astronomy blog celebrates a new effort to teach more science:

I was particularly excited to hear Obama announce an annual science fair to be held at the White House! As he said, it’s time that people who have made extraordinary achievements in science stand beside athletes and others honored at the White House.

And as if he were channeling my brain, President Obama said this:

“We’re going to show young people how cool science can be.”

Ah, hearing that is like a symphony to my ears. To which I’ll add: damn straight.

My optimism is more guarded, but yeah. Astronaut Sally Ride is involved along with some NASA administrators, and the Mythbusters guys were in evidence, so, well. Yeah. (Plus robot competitions!)

You can read the official announcement’s transcript here.

Entered on 25 November 2009 at 6:40 in the Science file | 1 Observation |  Print

Note: Improved mix of “A Strong Enough Lie.”

It’s 11 p.m. Eastern, so I’m claiming this as still the 23rd, and I’m submitting a vastly improved mix of“A Strong Enough Lie.” Drums are now matched to beats, extraneous things have been cut away and that saz part makes more sense.

Sometimes, even coffee isn’t enough to make it all make sense the night before. If you’ve already listened to it and cringed (and who wouldn’t?), give another try. It’s safe now. I promise.

Entered on 24 November 2009 at 4:14 in the Guild Affairs file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

SONG: A Strong Enough Lie

SONG: “A Strong Enough Lie” _{(To download: double right-click & “Save As”)}

ARTIST: grant.

SOURCE: “Vanished Persian army said found in desert”, Discovery News, 9 Nov 2009, as used in the post “Like a wolf on the fold. Like an ocean of choking sand.”

ABSTRACT: It’s hard to get more poetic than an invading army swallowed by an angry desert. Even if, as may be the case here, it’s only a story. Yes, there’s a good chance the found army might be a stunt pulled by a couple of exploitation filmmakers. But I’ve built a career on not letting the facts get in the way of a good story, which is kind of apropos to the deaths of the notional army, too, since, after all, they were following orders (a kind of story) and attacking an oracle (who’d been telling the wrong kinds of stories).

So, this song is a story told in the voice of a ghost. It’s supposed to be a little discombobulated because, after all, he’s been dead for more than two millennia. What does he remember? Wanting moist things – red wine, oranges, the fountains of Isfahan, the cloths that she laid on his forehead and arms. And he remembers old fishermen’s tales about weather, and the competing lies of his leaders and their enemies. I guess that much never really changes.

I recorded this with a kid’s guitar tuned to an open C-sharp minor (looow) and some vaguely Middle Eastern soundfonts, to sound like the kind of ghosts you’d find in the Sahara. And I decided to leave my charming daughter’s complaints on the end because, well, how could I resist? Damn grownups with their loud music….

Entered on 23 November 2009 at 6:30 in the Songs file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Science Art: Light-Toned Deposits in Noctis Labyrinthus (ESP_014353_1685)

^{Click to embiggen}

Image courtesy of NASA/JPL/University of Arizona. It’s part of their project called HiRISE in which they’re taking photographs of Mars. High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment. I suppose they could also have gone with “HiRISEx” as an acronym, but it’s just as well they didn’t.

Noctis Labyrinthus – the Mazes of Night – is a system of rifts or ditches called grabens that lie between the volcano-torn Mariner’s Valleys and the Tharsis Plateau. From this perspective, it looks like the scales of a colossal sleeping reptile.

I bet the skiing’s really great there.

Not that I’m trying to imply those white deposits are snow – they’re supposedly likely to be clay or sulfates or something. (I’m no geologist – don’t ask me.) It’s just a way to put the thing in a human scale.

Entered on 22 November 2009 at 6:30 in the Science Art file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Test-tube T-bones.

They’ll change the world, says H+, an online magazine that can’t get enough of the fake steak concept:

In-Vitro Meat… will appear in 3-10 years as a cheaper, healthier, “greener” protein that’s easily manufactured in a metropolis. Its entree will be enormous; not just food-huge like curry rippling through London in the 1970′s or colonized tomatoes teaming up with pasta in early 1800′s Italy. No. Bigger. In-Vitro Meat will be socially transformative, like automobiles, cinema, vaccines.
…

In-Vitro Meat will be 100% muscle. It will eliminate the artery-clogging saturated fat that kills us. Instead, heart-healthy Omega-3 (salmon oil) will be added. IVM will also contain no hormones, salmonella, e. coli, campylobacter, mercury, dioxin, or antibiotics that infect primitive meat. I’ve noted above that IVM will reduce influenza, brucellosis, TB, and Mad Cow Disease. Starvation and kwashiokor (protein deficiency) will be conquered when compact IVM kits are delivered to famine-plagued nations. The globe’s water crises will be partially alleviated, due to our inheritance of the 8% of the H2O supply that was previously gulped down by livestock and their food crops. We won’t even choke to death because IVM contains no malicious bones or gristle.
…

I imagine passionate lovers literally eating each other, growing sausages from their co-mingled tissues overnight in tabletop appliances similar to bread-making machines. And of course, masturbatory gourmands will simply gobble their own meat.

Of more value than the text itself is the comprehensive bibliography at the bottom. There’s your vegan-vitro butcher’s list right there.

Entered on 20 November 2009 at 6:09 in the Science file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

The Crocodile Goat of Majorca

Discovery tells the strange story of the island-dwelling goat that was more like a reptile than a mammal:

The tiny goat, which stood about 19 inches tall at the shoulder, took on characteristics of cold-blooded reptiles, a first for a mammal, in order to survive life on the island of Majorca, where food sources were few and far between.

In doing so, the Plio-Pleistocene goat left behind at least five attributes associated with many warm-blooded mammals: relatively fast movement, high growth rates, keen senses, high metabolism and fairly big brains.

“(Myotragus) not only decreased aerobic capacities and behavioral traits, but also flexibly synchronized growth rates and metabolic needs to the prevailing resource conditions as do ectothermic reptiles,” researchers Meike Kohler and Salvador Moya-Sola wrote in a study published in the latest Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

They’ve been extinct for millennia, so I don’t think Alpine mountaineers need to worry about being savagely ambushed and tucked away in one of the tiny creatures’ crevice meat lockers. I don’t think so, anyway.

Entered on 19 November 2009 at 6:37 in the Science file | Care to make an observation? |  Print