Stories tagged music
Pipe down: What's causing all this noise we're hearing down here under the water?
Courtesy Whit Welles“Hey, quiet down up there. We can’t hear a thing down here.”
No, it’s not the lament of some landlord who’s rented out the upper level apartment to a rock-and-roll loving tenant. It’s a case being heard by the U.S. Supreme Court right now pitting whales off the coast of California against the U.S. Navy.
Justices heard oral arguments yesterday on the case. Environmentalists are challenging the Navy’s claim to perform training exercises along the California coast which use extensive and strong sonar transmissions. The sound waves of those sonar blasts can harm whales and other marine mammals, petitioners contend, with sounds that can be up to 2,000 times louder than a jet engine. Some scientists feel that sounds that loud can cause whales to lose hearing loss, bleed on the brain and possibly lead to mass strandings on beaches.
Decision spot: The U.S. Supreme Court is the site of a pending decision pitting U.S. Navy sonar training exercises against the health of marine mammals like whales.
Courtesy Thor CarlsonThe Navy says that strong sonar level is critical to be able to detect submarines that can elude weaker modes of sonar.
Based on justices’ questions and reactions, however, it appears that court is leaning toward siding with the Navy and national security concerns.
Here’s a full report on yesterday’s court session. Justices were pretty upfront in stating their lack of expertise in mammal biology and national defense matters.
So if you had to decide on this conflict, where would you come down on this question? Does the health and a comfort of whales trump national security? Is loud sonar just an unfortunate byproduct of keeping our national interests safe? Share your thoughts here with other Buzz readers.
Tags : We've had a lot of chicken littles weighing in on the Buzz the past few days with their worries about the start-up of the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland yesteday. Here's a link to a Michigan State University student who thinks the whole deal is so cool that she created a rap song on YouTube to celebrate the learning that the LHC will unleash. WARNING: This video does contain footage of scientists dancing.
If you were a scientist, which scientist would you rather be?
The guy who invents and tests new high-powered water guns?
or
The guy who invented the synthesizer guitar?
It’s a really tough call...
Ancient wall art at Cave at Lascaux, France: Was music used here to soothe the savage breast?
Courtesy Thag the cavemanDo you enjoy hearing your favorite rock group perform their ear-splitting music in a huge cavernous concert arena with flashing colored lights and giant video imagery? Or listening to hymns and spirituals bounce off the vaulted ceiling of a church full of colorful stained-glassed windows and religious icons? Well, I’ve got news for you. It could be you’re attracted to such things by a deep-seated urge to mix echoing music and art; a practice mankind has apparently been doing since the Stone Age. At least according to a new theory coming out of the University of Paris.
Professor Iegor Reznikoff, a specialist in the resonance of building and spaces, theorizes that the most resonant areas of prehistoric-era caves are also the locations where most of the cave wall paintings appear.
Reznikoff stumbled upon the idea by accident.
"The first time I happened to be in a prehistoric cave, I tried the resonance in various parts of the cave, and quickly the question arose: Is there a relation between resonance and locations of the paintings?"
Reznikoff tested his theory inside various well-known French caves where prehistoric art adorned the walls. As he moved about each space, singing and humming, Reznikoff measured where the optimum resonance occurred.
To his surprise, the most resonant areas of each cave were usually spots where most of the cave art was concentrated. And where the resonance was the greatest, the artwork was the densest. In smaller spaces, such as narrow passages between larger cavern rooms where painting would have been difficult, the walls were marked with red lines.
Bear Bone Flute: Neanderthal-aged flute made from bear's femur
Courtesy WikipediaIt occurred to Reznikoff that perhaps a cave’s acoustics was important to prehistoric culture, and may be the reason why primitive musical instruments, such as a Neanderthal flute made out of the femur of a bear, have been found in similar caves.
"The [prehistoric] tribes could make sounds with stones, pieces of wood, different types of drums and so on," Reznikoff says. "Of course the Paleolithic tribes did sing, as do all cultural groups from other regions. That they did so in the caves is shown by my studies. The ritual purpose appears very convincing."
This may explain why the popularity of cavernous concert halls, and large arena music performances, or even subterranean music clubs continue to be popular to this day. Perhaps the ancestral effects of long ago cave rituals still resonate in us.
You would take this from him too?: The man has a harmonica stuck in his mouth, for God's sake. Leave him at least some of his dignity.
Courtesy aeonfireJust when you think that they've taken all they could...they take some more.
Those horrible robots will not leave us organics be. First they take valuable manufacturing jobs away from young children, and now they've got their horrible metal claws in what we always assumed made us human.
No, not love. Robots claimed love long ago. I'm afraid they've dug even deeper. Robots have taken our music.
No doubt created by some misguided genius, a robot band now exists. Ala House on the Rock, except, you know, functioning*.
The band, called The Trons, doesn't rock very hard, but I'm afraid that it does rock a little bit, and that's troubling, to say the least.
See them do their odd thing here
*Anybody who's down with House on the Rock and its horrifying musical rooms wins the JGordon Certificate of Achievement, by the way.
Robot round-up
Robots are everywhere! So is news about robots. Here are a few stories that caught our eye recently:
A sign of the times: JGordon isn't the only one who knows how to find wacky stuff on the Web!
Courtesy Veronica Belmont
High school students compete in a robot-building competition.
A robot conducts the Detroit Symphony.
A robot dials 911.
And lawyers are beginning to debate the legal ramifications of robots on the battlefield.
Which, inevitably, leads to the society to prevent cruelty to robots
Sean Paul
Courtesy Manuel LinoEpilepsy is one of those diseases that is so poorly understood that I am not surprised when I hear interesting triggers for dangerous seizures. However I was a little taken aback by this woman's story. She was able to help doctors determine the cause of her seizures when she noticed that she could trigger them when she heard the song "Temperature" by Reggaeton/Hip Hop artist Sean Paul. Using this information doctors were able to preform a series of surgeries and she hasn't has a seizure since.
The robotic self-tuning guitar. Only $2,100.
Metal musician: This statue of Ludwig Von Beethoven in his hometown of Bonn, Germany, remembers the great composer. New research is showing that he might have died from medical treatments containing high levels of lead. (Flickr photo by Gauis Caecilius)Beethoven may have had a good ear for music, but he might have had bad judgment when it came to selecting a doctor.
Further forensic tests on hair samples of the classical music giant are showing that he received unusually high levels of lead in his system over the final one-third of a year of his life. And researchers think that lead likely came from treatments from his doctor.
Several years ago, CSI-type studies of Beethoven’s hair and bones revealed that he died of lead poisoning. But new findings this year, based on further samplings of his hair, show that he had huge spikes in lead levels in his system following visits from his doctor.
At the end of his life, Beethoven was suffering from cirrhosis of the liver and other abdominal ailments. To treat him for the stomach ailments, Beethoven’s doctor would repeatedly puncture the abdominal cavity and then seal up the wound with a lead-laced poultice.
Even back in the early 1800s, medical professionals knew lead was a dangerous element to the body. But it was believed that the low dosages in the stomach treatments were non-poisonous for someone in Beethoven’s state. What the doctor’s didn’t know was that the composer’s liver was already reeling from high levels of lead that he consumed in wines and water that he had drank earlier in his life. In effect, the final treatments were just making the problem worse.
My editorial comment: The one thing we can be sure about was that Beethoven wasn’t playing with toys made in China at the time of his death.
Power Point
courtesy Design21
Design 21's design challenge winners, announced a few weeks ago, are delightfully innovative on the theme of design for social change.
My favorites:
From the "Heated issue" category, Jon Ardern's Power Point is a little wall plug-in that measures the amount of power being used and passing it to a database. "Over time," reads the description, "the product is intended to change patterns of power use by creating awareness of how much power individual appliance draws. Leading users to re-evaluate how they consume power."
From the "Child's Play" category, the Baendy, by Dejan Vukadinovic, is a snake-like music maker with series of nodes/notes, reminiscent of some of the activities in the recent Wild Music exhibit. When you bend it to mimic the shape of musical notes on a staff, it plays those tones in a loop, making a hands-on aural experience.
And another from the kid's category: The Yo'play by Barro de Gast. Check out these little creatures made from yogurt cups.
Yo' Play
courtesy Design21
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