The petaflop barrier has been broken...

Military supercomputer sets record
By John Markoff
The New York Times Published: June 8, 2008 8:45 PM PDT

An American military supercomputer, assembled from components originally designed for video game machines, has reached a long-sought-after computing milestone by processing more than 1.026 quadrillion calculations per second.

The new machine is more than twice as fast as the previous fastest supercomputer, the IBM BlueGene/L, which is based at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.



The new $133 million supercomputer, called Roadrunner in a reference to the state bird of New Mexico, was devised and built by engineers and scientists at IBM and Los Alamos National Laboratory, based in Los Alamos, N.M. It will be used principally to solve classified military problems to ensure that the nation's stockpile of nuclear weapons will continue to work correctly as they age. The Roadrunner will simulate the behavior of the weapons in the first fraction of a second during an explosion.

Before it is placed in a classified environment, it will also be used to explore scientific problems like climate change. The greater speed of the Roadrunner will make it possible for scientists to test global climate models with higher accuracy.

To put the performance of the machine in perspective, Thomas P. D'Agostino, the administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, said that if all 6 billion people on earth used hand calculators and performed calculations 24 hours a day and seven days a week, it would take them 46 years to do what the Roadrunner can in one day.

The machine is an unusual blend of chips used in consumer products and advanced parallel computing technologies. The lessons that computer scientists learn by making it calculate even faster are seen as essential to the future of both personal and mobile consumer computing.

The high-performance computing goal, known as a petaflop--one thousand trillion calculations per second--has long been viewed as a crucial milestone by military, technical and scientific organizations in the United States, as well as a growing group including Japan, China and the European Union. All view supercomputing technology as a symbol of national economic competitiveness.

By running programs that find a solution in hours or even less time--compared with as long as three months on older generations of computers--petaflop machines like Roadrunner have the potential to fundamentally alter science and engineering, supercomputer experts say. Researchers can ask questions and receive answers virtually interactively and can perform experiments that would previously have been impractical.

"This is equivalent to the four-minute mile of supercomputing," said Jack Dongarra, a computer scientist at the University of Tennessee who for several decades has tracked the performance of the fastest computers.

Each new supercomputing generation has brought scientists a step closer to faithfully simulating physical reality. It has also produced software and hardware technologies that have rapidly spilled out into the rest of the computer industry for consumer and business products.

Technology is flowing in the opposite direction as well. Consumer-oriented computing began dominating research and development spending on technology shortly after the cold war ended in the late 1980s, and that trend is evident in the design of the world's fastest computers.

The Roadrunner is based on a radical design that includes 12,960 chips that are an improved version of an IBM Cell microprocessor, a parallel processing chip originally created for Sony's PlayStation 3 video-game machine. The Sony chips are used as accelerators, or turbochargers, for portions of calculations.

The Roadrunner also includes a smaller number of more conventional Opteron processors, made by Advanced Micro Devices, which are already widely used in corporate servers.

"Roadrunner tells us about what will happen in the next decade," said Horst Simon, associate laboratory director for computer science at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. "Technology is coming from the consumer electronics market and the innovation is happening first in terms of cell phones and embedded electronics."

The innovations flowing from this generation of high-speed computers will most likely result from the way computer scientists manage the complexity of the system's hardware.

Roadrunner, which consumes roughly three megawatts of power, or about the power required by a large suburban shopping center, requires three separate programming tools because it has three types of processors. Programmers have to figure out how to keep all of the 116,640 processor cores in the machine occupied simultaneously in order for it to run effectively.

"We've proved some skeptics wrong," said Michael R. Anastasio, a physicist who is director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. "This gives us a window into a whole new way of computing. We can look at phenomena we have never seen before."

Solving that programming problem is important because in just a few years personal computers will have microprocessor chips with dozens or even hundreds of processor cores. The industry is now hunting for new techniques for making use of the new computing power. Some experts, however, are skeptical that the most powerful supercomputers will provide useful examples.

"If Chevy wins the Daytona 500, they try to convince you the Chevy Malibu you're driving will benefit from this," said Steve Wallach, a supercomputer designer who is chief scientist of Convey Computer, a start-up firm based in Richardson, Tex.

Those who work with weapons might not have much to offer the video gamers of the world, he suggested.

Many executives and scientists see Roadrunner as an example of the resurgence of the United States in supercomputing.

Although American companies had dominated the field since its inception in the 1960s, in 2002 the Japanese Earth Simulator briefly claimed the title of the world's fastest by executing more than 35 trillion mathematical calculations per second. Two years later, a supercomputer created by IBM reclaimed the speed record for the United States. The Japanese challenge, however, led Congress and the Bush administration to reinvest in high-performance computing.

"It's a sign that we are maintaining our position," said Peter J. Ungaro, chief executive of Cray, a maker of supercomputers. He noted, however, that "the real competitiveness is based on the discoveries that are based on the machines."

Having surpassed the petaflop barrier, IBM is already looking toward the next generation of supercomputing. "You do these record-setting things because you know that in the end we will push on to the next generation and the one who is there first will be the leader," said Nicholas M. Donofrio, an IBM executive vice president.

By breaking the petaflop barrier sooner than had been generally expected, the United States' supercomputer industry has been able to sustain a pace of continuous performance increases, improving a thousandfold in processing power in 11 years. The next thousandfold goal is the exaflop, which is a quintillion calculations per second, followed by the zettaflop, the yottaflop and the xeraflop.

Entire contents, Copyright © 2008 The New York Times. All rights reserved.

Anarcho-Communist

What kind of Anarchist are you? created with QuizFarm.com

You scored as Anarcho-Communist Anarcho-communists seek to build a society based upon a decentralised federation of autonomous communes and a moneyless 'gift economy'. The movement first emerged in the late 19th century and has had a large influence particularly in Spain, Italy and Russia. Key thikers include Peter Kropotkin and Errico Malatesta. Anarcho-Communist 75% Anarcho-Capitalist 50% Anarcha-Feminist 45% Anarcho-Primitivist 45% Anarcho-Syndicalist 40% Christian Anarchist 40%

The Time is Now!

This is a cute little gadget I found just randomly perusing the Blogger blogs. Who said aimless surfing was a waste of time?? =p

Cosmic Voyage

Thank you!~: Shari




Cosmic Voyage is a 1996 short documentary produced in the IMAX format, narrated by Morgan Freeman..

The film takes viewers on a journey through forty-two orders of magnitude, beginning at a celebration in Italy to zoom to the outer limit of human visibility. The view descends back to earth, and later zooms in upon a raindrop on a leaf, to the level of sub-atomic particles ("quarks").the film is truly fascinating with great graphics..

In addition, the film offers some brief insight on the Big Bang Theory, black holes, and the development of our Solar System. It also simulates a journey through Fermilab's Tevatron particle accelerator in Chicago, where an atom collision is depicted..

Cosmic Voyage was nominated for a 1997 Oscar Award under the category of Best Documentary Short Subject..

Here comes the sun: Unique photos of the Beatles in the summer of 1963 before worldwide fame

By SIMON CABLE - 21st April 2008

Four weeks later their lives were to change forever.

But in this photograph the Beatles can still enjoy a quiet few hours sunbathing without, it appears, a care in the world - or being swamped by fans.

It was taken in July 1963 during a week when the group had packed out the Odeon cinema in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset.

Scroll down for more...

Pictured from the left: George Harrison, 20, Paul McCartney, 21, John Lennon, 22, and Ringo Starr, 23, relax in the sun in Weston-Super-Mare during a week's appearance at the local cinema

The band had already had three top ten hits - Love Me Do, Please Please Me and From Me To You.

But it was to be August of that year, when She Loves You shot straight to number one, that saw Beatlemania unleashed and the transformation of the four young Liverpudlians into global stars.

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In the deckchairs pictured from the left: Management organiser Tommy Quickly, George Harrison, John Lennon and a waving Ringo Starr

In the calm before the storm, the band was captured in a scene typical of an English resort of that era.

The lack of response to their presence from the holiday crowds can be judged by the dozing sunbather in the picture who lies there in his underpants without a flicker of interest in the soon-to-be superstars.

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Famous bands: The Beatles chat with Gerry and The Pacemakers in the Weston-Super-Mare hotel in July 1963

The unknown photographer who took this shot was persuaded to part with the copyright-by Beatles publicist Tony Barrow.

The picture has remained unseen since.

Mr Barrow, who worked with the group between 1963 and 1968, said: "This is before the pressures of the Beatles got to them, they are not putting anything on for the camera.

Scroll down for more...

Tea time: The Beatles and Gerry and The Pacemakers enjoy a drop of tea at the hotel

"They just wouldn't be able to do this again in a month's time, there's a real innocence here."

The picture is from a collection Mr Barrow aims to publish in a book about the Beatles.

Source:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/showbiz/showbiznews.html?in_article_id=560961&in_page_id=1773

UFO sighting, 1974 ~ John Lennon

Click here to view source




..With this being my first contribution to The Researcher and considering this publication originates in the great city of Liverpool, I thought I'd write about John Lennon's August 1974 UFO experience. I had first-hand knowledge of this event because I knew May Pang, Lennon's assistant and companion during his infamous "lost weekend". May was with John Lennon when the UFO sighting occurred. And maintained a vivid recollection of it. Over the years I've seen Lennon's sighting misrepresented by writers in various books and magazine articles (either because of the writers ignorance of the facts or unease with the subject matter). I have also experienced the same thing as have many other high-profile UFO witnesses, and look forward to the day when many UFO researchers and writers become a bit more professional in their work. For now, let's set the record straight on this event...





In the summer of 1988 I had an opportunity to speak with May Pang about her and Lennon's experience while sitting in her New York city apartment, surrounded by artifacts of May's time spent with one of the most famous people of this century. Over the apartment door hung the old style New York City street sign that John found and brought home. On a table, a silver-framed photograph that May had taken of Lennon, lying in bed with his two cats called "Major and Minor". The ceiling to floor mirrors he bought to make their East 52nd street apartment living room look larger. Most notably, I saw the gold record presented to John Lennon for his introspective album "Walls and Bridges", and it was this record that Lennon was recording when he had his amazing UFO sighting. Fourteen years had passed since the event, however, to May Pang, it was as if it had happened yesterday...

It was a typically repressive late summer evening in New York City, with air so heavy you could almost cut it with a knife. John Lennon and May Pang had just returned home to their east 52nd street apartment building, after spending a long day at the Record Plant East recording studio, where John was immersed in the final mix down of the Walls and Bridges album. Lennon loved the 52nd street address as it was only one building removed from the East River, and the view from their top floor apartment over to the docks of Brooklyn and the navy shipyard reminded him of Liverpool. Another point of interest for John Lennon was the fact that the reclusive actress Greta Garbo also lived on the block and he hoped to catch sight of her...

The night of August 23 was no different from any other that month for John and May. John made and received phone calls, watched TV and listened to the day's recorded work while making notes. May Pang recalls that the apartment was hot that night, but by 8 O' Clock the night air had cooled off enough for her to have turned off the air conditioning and opened the windows to get a breeze off the river. Just off the apartment's living room was a part of the building's roof which also acted as a private observation deck, with a great view of east New York. Access was only granted by climbing out of a window, which Lennon often did. The haze had now cleared over New York's skyline. At about 8:30 p.m., May decided to take a shower, leaving Lennon alone in the living room reviewing mock-ups of his new record's cover. The cover art on the final product would be a painting by a 12 year old John Lennon. A short time later, as May was drying off, she heard John yell to her from the outside roof, "May come here right now!" Startled, she ran to John's aid finding him standing on the roof nude and pointing wildly southeastward. As May remembered, finding John Lennon nude on the roof was not a surprise, as he had no aversion to wallowing around in that condition. What did surprise her was what he was pointing at. Just south of the building now was a brightly lit "classic" circular UFO, floating silently and less than 100 feet away from the couple. As John Lennon would later describe, "I wasn't surprised to see the UFO really, as it looked just like the spaceships we've all seen on the cinema growing up, but then I realised this thing was real and so close, that I could almost touch it!". As they watched, the UFO moved silently away. May told me that the lighting on the thing left them awe-struck, as it would change its configuration with every rotation. The object made no sound. The main structure of the craft could also be clearly seen for the duration of the event, due to the last remnants of the still setting sun. May ran back into the apartment and grabbed a 35mm camera, and once back on the roof both she and John took numerous pictures of the craft. May remembers John's arms outstretched as he yelled at the UFO to come back and take him away! "He was very serious and I believe he really wanted that thing to take him with it back to wherever it came from, but then that was John Lennon, always looking for the next big adventure". Soon the object passed the United Nations building and slowly veered left, crossing over the East River, then over Brooklyn and soon the UFO simply blended in with the heavy commercial air traffic in southern Long Island. John Lennon and May Pang, both shaken by the experience, climbed back into the apartment. John picked up the phone and called up his friend and noted rock photographer Bob Gruen. Lennon told his friend to come over as soon as possible as he had some film he needed developed urgently! As they waited for Gruen to arrive, John began making sketches of the object he had seen, noting its size and distance. Then John called Yoko Ono at the Dakota apartments to tell her about the UFO and as May remembers it, Yoko became upset at John, because she hadn't seen it too, and felt that he had "left her out of all the excitement"...




Finally Bob Gruen arrived and John told the photographer what had transpired. Gruen later recalled "I took the film home and put John's roll between two rolls of film I'd taken earlier that day and developed them". "My two rolls of film came out perfectly but John's roll was blank. Later I asked him " did you call the newspaper?" and he said "I'm not going to call up the newspaper and say, This is John Lennon and I saw a flying saucer last night"… So Bob Gruen called up the local police precinct and asked if anyone had reported a UFO or flying saucer. The police responded with "where? Up on the East Side? You're the third call on it". Then Bob called the Daily News and they said, "On the East Side? Five people reported it". At last, Bob called the ultra conservative New York Times and asked a reporter if anybody had reported a flying saucer? The reporter hung up on him...

Neither John Lennon nor May Pang would ever forget their UFO experience, but then again, how could they? This very real phenomenon changes and effects everyone touched by it, whether rich, poor, famous or not, it effects us all. Though John Lennon was hesitant to report his sighting to the media, he nevertheless took a stand concerning the sighting. When his album, Walls and Bridges, was released in the Autumn of 1974, any fan would see the notation on the booklet that accompanied the record. On the bottom right of the back cover it reads "On 23 August 1974, I saw a UFO J.L.". That simple statement meant a lot to many of us who read it. Most "flavour of the week celebrities" would never have had the nerve, but John Lennon was different, he had substance and was not afraid to take a stand. He was an inspiration to many people and perhaps that is why we still feel the sadness and loss due to his murder in 1980....




After speaking with May Pang about the UFO sighting with John, reading his extensive notes and studying his drawings, I was left with no doubt that John Lennon would have made one hell of an objective, thoughtful and professional UFO researcher. God knows, we need him now more than ever. May pang played an audio tape for me that John had recorded a few weeks after his experience. On the tape he discusses his thoughts on the UFO subject in general. I took notes and fully agree with his conclusions. In brief, Lennon states that he had no doubt that the craft he saw was from another world and discounted that it could have been a secret government test plane. That argument was stupid in 74 and it's still stupid now in 99. John Lennon also felt that the craft he saw was part of a much larger fleet stationed just north of New York city, up in the area of the nuclear power plant at Indian Point. A side note: that area is and has been for many years a UFO hot bed, see the book "Night Siege". This area is the heart of the Hudson Valley "giant triangle" sightings and some have been described as being the size of three football fields. Government experimental craft? I think not. The people who promote these ideas should stand under one of these monsters, I'm sure they would be humbled...




John Lennon went on about his theory of how these craft use the earth's gravitational field and take energy form nuke plants to counter the earth's gravity. In the book I co-authored with Peter Robbins called "Left at East Gate", I also write about some amazing sightings I had while living in New York. In fact, it is a rather common occurrence for many people, (not just farmers)… Lennon also voiced his opinion and suspicion of a high level conspiracy to cover up verifiable UFO sightings and close encounters with aliens. He continued that "if the masses started to accept UFO's, it would profoundly affect their attitudes towards life, politics, everything". John explained, "It would threaten the status quo". "Whenever people come to realise that there are larger considerations than their own petty little lives, they are ripe to make radical changes on a personal level, which would eventually lead to a political revolution in society as a whole"....

Right on John! Peter Robbins and I have been trying to promote that point of view for the last ten years and I personally have been doing it for nearly eighteen, but I often wonder if anyone is paying attention?





The following day May Pang asked me to help her organise many of John Lennon's personal effects that she still retained, as a rep' from Sotherby's auction house was coming over that week to assess the value of the items for insurance purposes.













In a box I found numerous dated copies of the British UFO journal "Flying Saucer Review"(FSR). All were addressed to John Lennon. I was surprised because I thought the 1974 sighting was John's first introduction to the world of UFO's, but the FSR's dated back to the late 60's. I asked May if John had an earlier sighting he might have mentioned?… As she carefully folded the black velvet suit he had worn on stage with Elton John in November 1974 at Madison Square Garden, May replied "Oh no, 74 wasn't John's first sighting". "In fact he told me that more than once he suspected he had been "abducted" as a child back in Liverpool!" "And he felt that experience was responsible for making him feel different from other people for the rest of his life". "Abducted" I said. "You mean by aliens?" May Pang answered. "Yes, but John didn't go into detail about it".










I was stunned, but that's another story…


December 8th 1998, late evening and I've managed to finish the first serious attempt at writing I've made since I wrote the last chapter of Left at East Gate, and it's great to be back at it...
Two days ago, an auction house offered an autographed copy of John Lennon's last record "Double Fantasy" for sale. I don't know if it was sold or not. Christ, it was estimated to go for 1.4 million US dollars. I have to say that the sale of this particular piece of memorabilia makes me sick to my stomach, as the album was signed by John Lennon to a fan whose name he would never know, but we all do. The date was December 8th 1980 and the fan was Mark David Chapman. Maybe something good will come from the sale of the record, I keep telling myself, perhaps the owner of the damned thing will donate a portion of the profits to benefit stronger hand gun control via the spirit foundation, John Lennon's charity. What the hell am I thinking? In America in the 1990's, money rules, and the heart has no place to call home, and that's the flipping truth...


Two and a half weeks after John Lennon's assassination, I briefly thought of him while blindly walking through a pitch black forest in southeastern England, and eighteen years later his final words to reporter David Sholin of RKO radio spoken only hours before his death still cross my mind. "Who knows what's going to happen next?" Well folks, none of us do and that's why I hate December...


Larry Warren is a well-known lecturer on the international UFO conference scene and has co-authored a book called Left at East Gate. The book covers many of his UFO experiences along with the associated government and military cover-ups...

The Leader of the Band Steps Down

Dan Fogelberg, one of the most popular singer/songwriters of the '70s and '80s, died Sunday at home in Maine at age 56. He had battled advanced prostate cancer since being diagnosed in 2004. The most apt summation of his life's work likely comes from Fogelberg himself, when he said, as quoted in his online biography, "You've got to just follow your heart and do your best work … There is no doubt in my mind or heart that everything I've done is exactly what I intended to do."



http://www.usatoday.com/life/music/news/2007-12-16-fogelberg-obit_N.htm?csp=34

http://danfogelberg.com/news.html

Shopping in 1999 A.D. [video from the '60s]

Year 1999 A.D.


Video clip shows a mid-1960s imagining of what technology would be like in the year 1999.

This is a clip of online shopping as envisioned from the 1960's, called "Shopping in 1999 A.D.".

The video shows online bill paying and PC desktops with flat screen monitors, including a multi-screen display.

Origins: Many visionaries who tried to forecast what daily life
would be like for future generations made the mistake of simply projecting existing technologies as being bigger, faster, and more powerful. They often failed to anticipate that future technologies might take very different forms, might be put to previously unconsidered uses, and might accompany (or even help bring about) significant social changes.

The video clip shown above — an excerpt from a 1967 Philco-Ford production entitled "Year 1999 A.D.," starring a young Wink Martindale — did a fairly good job of anticipating some ways (if not the specific forms) in which technology might be used in daily life more than three decades in the future. Concepts such as "fingertip shopping," an "electronic correspondence machine," and others envisioned in this video anticipate several innovations that became commonplace within a few years of 1999: e-commerce, webcams, online bill payment and tax filing, electronic funds transfers (EFT), home-based laser printers, and e-mail.

As noted, although the technological concepts expressed in the video may be familiar to us, the specific forms used to realize them are somewhat different than their common modern implementations:

* The "fingertip shopping" the wife engages in imagines the shopper remotely controlling cameras placed in stores to scan merchandise rather than working with virtual representations of stores (i.e., web sites).

* The "household monitor screen" isn't so much a webcam as it is a simple closed-circuit video security system.

* The bills and tax forms the husband works with are scanned images of paper forms rather than electronic forms.

* The "electronic correspondence machine" (e-mail) depends on the user's writing messages by hand with a pen and a stylus rather than typing them with a keyboard and monitor.

The concepts are nonetheless relatively well-expressed, even if they don't quite match up with some of the finer points of modern technologies. However, the video exemplifies the common flaw of anticipating technological changes but not societal changes — the daily life it depicts is firmly rooted in the mid-20th century American model of women as stay-at-home child rearers and shoppers, and men as breadwinners and heads of household. Apparently women in 1999 still wouldn't be deemed to be up to handling tasks such as banking, bill-paying, and tax preparation, even with the help of electronic devices.

Last updated: 5 December 2007

The URL for this page is http://www.snopes.com/photos/technology/year1999.asp

Free Hugs for a Home

Will anyone help out a serial Free Hugger and professional nice guy?? I certainly hope so. Juan Mann, founder of the Free Hugs Campaign, is destined to be homeless at the end of the month unless some kindness from strangers comes through. He has been a MySpace friend of mine for almost a year, and everything coming from him is always positive, always loving, always respectful and openly honest.

I am not in a position personally to offer a home or financial assistance, but somewhere from out in cyberspace, I'm sure his guardian angel will appear. Miracles are only extraordinary commonplace occurrences -- I expect one daily!

Read the details of his plight here.

Visit his other sites at Free Hugs Campaign HQ, Juan Mann TV, Free Hugs Campaign on MySpace.

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Retro-Future Art: To The Stars!

Rare & Beautiful Vintage Visions of the Future

This is the start of a new series, collection of the most inspiring & hard-to-find retro-futuristic graphics. We will try to stay away from the well-known American pulp & book cover illustrations and instead will focus on the artwork from rather unlikely sources: Soviet & East Block "popular tech & science" magazines, German, Italian, British fantastic illustrations and promotional literature - all from the Golden Age of Retro-Future (from 1930s to 1970s). This is only a sample of a few. There are actually 39 illustrations shown at the link below!












Link

The divine sound of silence

The divine sound of silence

Britain's No Music Day offers a welcome hush over a noisy world. It can't come to America soon enough.

By Kevin Berger



Nov. 22, 2007 | One can dream. What if no music blared from airports, supermarkets, bars, department stores or restaurants? Imagine being able to sit down in your neighborhood cafe and hear your friend talk without having to parse her words through the strains of "Sweet Child o' Mine." My god, that would be something for which to give thanks. On Nov. 21, a surprisingly wide swath of Britain honored "No Music Day." Radio stations, stores, recording studios and scores of music lovers took a laudable vow of musical silence. Should No Music Day come to America tomorrow, it wouldn't be soon enough.

The day of respite was cooked up by musician and conceptual artist Bill Drummond, best known as the mad genius at the controls of the KLF, British progenitors of ambient house music. As Drummond testified in the Guardian last year, his love of music had been rattled out of him by its ubiquity. "I decided I needed a day I could set aside to listen to no music whatsoever," he wrote. "Instead, I would be thinking about what I wanted and what I didn't want from music. Not to blindly -- or should that be deafly -- consume what was on offer. A day where I could develop ideas."

Not being able to hear yourself think, or feel, or escape "Hotel California," is indeed what makes music in public places a nightmare. Your poor senses are crushed every time you step out of the house. By hammering you with pop tunes before a movie, Cineplexes manage to kill your appetite for a film. And can't we just daydream in a market's fluorescent aisles, ruminate over whether we want to prepare salmon or ravioli tonight, without having to hear "once, twice, three times a lady"?

I love the Doors, Otis Redding, the Clash, Public Enemy, Lucinda Williams and Arcade Fire as much as the next music fan. But why do bars insist on pummeling us with their songs at the decibel levels of NHRA drag races? Bars are supposed to be an oasis from work and noise, places to sort out life in conversations with friends and lovers. I don't understand why bar owners insist on undermining their storied and welcome culture with eardrum-splintering music and now panoramic TVs playing "Mission Impossible II." These days, I gauge the sound level before deciding to sit down and have a drink. One blast of "Once I had a love and it was a gas" and I'm on to the next place.

In fact, I know why music is piped into bars, markets, restaurants, department stores and Jiffy Lube waiting rooms. It's based on pop psychology and pseudoscience spouted by marketing and advertising executives. As David Owen informed us in a nifty New Yorker article last year on Muzak, "The Soundtrack of Your Life," the company for 50 years was based on a trademarked concept called Stimulus Progression, which held that "most people really were happier and more productive when there was something humming along in the background." Elevator music probably earned its name from the soothing tunes piped into early skyscrapers, designed to calm people as they rode the claustrophobic new contraptions to top floors.

In the '90s, Muzak reinvented itself with a new philosophy called audio architecture. The company sold music in public places not as a tranquilizer but as a means to enhance the shopping experience, as the marketing jargon goes. As Alvin Collins, a founder of the concept, explained to Owen, he was creating "retail theater." Muzak wasn't about soothing music anymore. "It was about selling emotion -- about finding the soundtrack that would make this store or that restaurant feel like something, rather than just being an intellectual proposition." That's why you now can't escape the Cure in Urban Outfitters or the Gipsy Kings in any Mediterranean restaurant; both are trying to match their wares to the music their target audience supposedly likes. Whether or not a particular business is a client of Muzak's, they are driven by the same concept: Retail theater is all about consumption and music is a star of the show.

That leads to a deeper reason that music in public places gets under your skin. You hear songs that once lifted your spirits employed to sell you a computer. I don't see much difference between using music to make you feel good about a dining experience and using it to sell you a car on TV.

I can easily picture the bright and musically savvy employee who came up with the idea to use Nick Drake's "Pink Moon" to promote Volkswagen's new Cabrio model. Pull an esoteric song out of rock's demimonde to show off Volkswagen's coolness to its college-crowd target. I have never been more disheartened by the use of a song in a commercial, or the response to it.

Afterward, many, including Drake's sister, said the singer, who died in 1974, an apparent suicide, benefited from the commercial because it exposed millions of people to his music. That's a pretty specious defense. One of the most extraordinary qualities about Drake's sad and lovely folk music is that it has grown in popularity over the years by being passed between friends like a tender secret. The commercial did help the Drake estate sell records but at a terrible cost to "Pink Moon." The emotionally fragile song, whose central image is a haunting metaphor for encroaching depression, is now forever bound to an automobile. It's an incredible shame and a phenomenon sadly taken for granted, even endorsed.

A few years ago the talented Moby made a splash by licensing his songs to Intel, the teen TV show "Charmed," Nokia phones and Rover SUVs, sometimes before they appeared on albums. Again, he succeeded in introducing his soulful pop grooves to a wide audience, but at the expense of having them associated with other media.

Moby and a new legion of pop fans may be puzzled that I see that association as regrettable. The artist was exploiting new avenues of distribution, and what does it matter whether you hear a song on the radio, a TV show or a commercial? The difference is that today's retail theater, designed to coerce and sell, robs music of its own visual and emotional power. I once admired Moby's album "Play" but never listen to it because of its association with the oppressive drone of consumerism. Is that the legacy a musician wants? Does the human spirit find release in a phone commercial? I can't believe that Bob Seger and John Cougar Mellencamp don't regret the choice that eternally welded their music to Chevy trucks.

The offensive Muzak philosophy that music can condition consumer behavior or create a psychic soundscape shows up in all kinds of public places. I was once talked into going to a rural spa where, after sipping tea in a Zen garden, you are placed in a tub of hot cedar chips to drain the toxins and stress from your body. I must confess I began to relax like Buddha, except for one thing. Once I was in the tub, the whispering attendant asked me if there was anything else she could get me. Yes, I said, could you please turn off the soporific New Age music? Once she did I could listen to the rain outside hitting the spa's roof, and that's when I began to sink into genuine tranquility.

I don't mean to sound crotchety. I can be sitting in a bar and smile in solidarity with the bartender who programmed the wistful and witty Mountain Goats song into the sound system. And I relish the Chopin nocturnes that my corner cafe sometimes plays in the morning. I also don't mean to raise the hoary complaint that music in public is further fraying some grand social fabric, as if life in America in 2007 is supposed to resemble a 1920s Paris salon. I'm in love with the modern world. I am.

Social critics like to bemoan the iPod, complain that society has collapsed into everybody living in their own private Idahos. But in fact listening to music on an iPod, or accumulating songs through file sharing, is a way to reclaim music from the manipulations of the marketers, to escape the claws of the behaviorists. Carving my way through the crowded city, while listening to music on my iPod, allows me to feel in touch with my surroundings. Art that doesn't manipulate is what forms real social bonds.

"We do not like to be pushed around emotionally," the avant-garde composer John Cage once said. "The purpose of music is to sober and quiet the mind, thus making it susceptible to divine influences." I know that sounds high-minded, but it also sounds right to me. I daresay the minimalist piano pieces by Erik Satie and the spare organ works by Arvo Pärt owe their enduring popularity to how delicately they slice through our congested soundscape. They allow us to hear the hum of our own consciousness, to hear something like enlightenment.

Which brings me back to why No Music Day is wonderful and why we should launch the aural holiday in America. What it's really about is not escaping the incessant and unwanted drone of music in public. It's about learning how to listen again.

Salon.com

Bake Before Reading...

Croatian creative agency Bruketa & Zinić have designed an annual report for food company Podravka that has to be baked in an oven before it can be read. "Well done" created by Bruketa & Zinić is the new annual report for Podravka, the biggest food company in South-East Europe.

Called Well Done, the report features blank pages printed with thermo-reactive ink that, after being wrapped in foil and cooked for 25 minutes, reveal text and images.

To be able to cook like Podravka you need to be a precise cook. That is why the small Podravka booklet is printed in invisible, thermo-reactive ink. To be able to reveal Podravka’s secrets you need to cover the small booklet in aluminum foil and bake it at 100 degrees Celsius for 25 minutes.

If you are not precise, the booklet will burn, just as any overcooked meal. If you have successfully baked your sample of the annual report, the empty pages will become filled with text, and the illustrations with empty plates filled with food.

This is the seventh annual report for Podravka designed by Bruketa & Zinić OM. Those seven books won numerous awards worldwide. Bruketa & Zinić OM is a 60-people independent agency based in Zagreb, Croatia. It was established 10 years ago. The agency has been awarded for their projects by many prestigious contests and their work has been presented in many publications, books and exhibitions worldwide.

Read rest of article with Illustrations here.

Chocolate and Beer

The chocolate we love today evolved from an accidental byproduct of ancient breweries, claim researchers. Over 3,100 years ago in Central America the cacao plant was used to make a celebratory beer-like beverage, prized as a status symbol scientists revealed earlier this week.

The researchers identified residue of a chemical compound that comes exclusively from the cacao plant in pottery vessels dating from about 1100 BC in Puerto Escondido, Honduras.

This is 500 years earlier than any other documented use of cacao, which later became and important luxury commodity in Mesoamerica before European invaders arrived, and is now the basis of the modern chocolate industry.

The Cacao seeds were used to make ceremonial beverages consumed by elites of the Aztecs and other civilizations, and were also used as a form of currency. The Spanish conquistadors who destroyed the Aztec empire in the 16th century fell in love with the chocolate beverage made from cacao seeds served in the palace of the emperor. But this wasn’t how chocolate beverages started out the researchers found.

"The earliest cacao beverages consumed at Puerto Escondido were likely produced by fermenting the sweet pulp surrounding the seeds," the scientists wrote in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

One of the researchers, anthropologist John Henderson of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, said cacao beverages were being concocted far earlier than previously believed, and that this beer-like drink started the whole chocolate craze.

"What we're seeing in this early village is a very early stage in which serving cacao at fancy occasions is one of the strategies that upwardly mobile families are using to establish themselves, to accumulate social prestige." Henderson told Reuters. "I think this is part of the process by which you eventually get stratified societies.”

Henderson, says the cacao brew consumed at the village of perhaps 200 to 300 people probably evolved into the chocolate beverage not by design but as "an accidental byproduct of some brewing." Henderson said.

Thanks to that brewery mishap, here are a few of the scientifically backed benefits of dark chocolate that we enjoy today:

1. Chocolate is known to improve blood flow to the brain - a University of Nottingham study found that drinking cocoa drinks rich in flavanols improves blood flow to key areas of the brain for up to two to three hours. Flavanols in the cocoa drink are a key ingredient of dark chocolate. The study also suggested that cocoa flavanols in chocolate may enhance brain function to help fight sleep deprivation, fatigue, and the effects of ageing.

2. Reduce high blood pressure – the flavonoids in cocoa have been found to help balance out blood pressure and reduce clotting. Researchers from Germany’s University Hospital of Cologne found that cocoa consumption lowered blood pressure by an average of 4.7/2.8 mm Hg. The New York Times recently reported on a study showing that dark chocolate is almost as effective at lowering blood pressure as the most commonly prescribed antihypertensive drugs.

3. Boosts mood – It is reported that certain chemicals in dark chocolate can improve your mood and ease premenstrual symptoms.

4. Prevents cell damage—Pure, dark chocolate is loaded with antioxidant chemicals that help prevent cell damage and improve blood sugar levels.

5. Reduces risk of heart attack - a researcher from the John Hopkins University School of Medicine said that eating a few squares of dark chocolate every day may reduce your risk of dying from a heart attack by almost 50%. The study also found that blood platelets clotted slower in people who eat chocolate.

Thanks ancient Mesopotamia!

Posted by Rebecca Sato The Daily Galaxy

Link: http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN1248646820071112

Mr. Whipped Cream Does Facebook

"Queen of Facebook" gets comeuppance

By Michelle Slatalla
Published: November 8, 2007

Last week, I stumbled across a short item at a site called Mashable.com, which described how one of Facebook's most popular programs allowed users to give each other virtual Naughty Gifts.

This raised obvious questions like, what sorts of naughty gifts? I clicked on a link, and on-screen appeared a pair of thigh-high black platform boots along with a statement that the program had 149,421 daily users who send one another digital replicas of foil-wrapped condoms, black thongs and cans of something called Mr. Whipped Cream.

Who were these users whose attraction to furry handcuffs has earned Naughty Gifts a spot among the 50 most popular of the site's programs? I scrolled down. I saw, under the heading "Friends who have added this application," photos of three people I knew.

All three were teenagers.

Two were my offspring.

Continued here

Democratic committee says Colbert cannot run - News

Democratic committee says Colbert cannot run - News

The Stephen T. Colbert presidential campaign was just grounded by the Democratic Party executive committee of South Carolina.

Chairwoman Carol Fowler said that Colbert was not allowed to run because the committee did not believe he was a "legitimate candidate."

Of his campaign promises, he vowed to "crush Georgia," because South Carolina peaches are more numerous and "juiciful." Many fans of the comedian support him because of his mockery of the democratic process and how candidates, of both political parties, cater their message to the audience they are speaking to.

His much-publicized run had grown support from many different groups, including the popular social networking site Facebook. The group "1,000,000 strong for Stephen T Colbert" has amassed over 1,400,000 members, more support than any other candidate has in their group.

Colbert's run at the White House coincided with the release of his book, "I Am America (And So Can You!)" throwing his run under the national spotlight more prominently, and allowing him to publicize both his campaign and book at the same time.

Lock of Lennon's hair to go up for auction

Buy John Lennon's hair!




(Wednesday October 31, 2007 12:29 AM)

A lock of John Lennon's hair is to be sold at auction later this year, it has been announced.

The strands from the dead Beatle's head are being sold by the group's former hairdresser Betty Glasgow.

She worked as a stylist on the Fab Four films "Hard Day's Night" and "Help" and was given the lock along with hand-written note from Lennon.

Worthing auction house Gorringes will be putting the lot under the hammer as part of "The Betty Glasgow Collection of Beatles and Film Memorabilia" in December.

The hair sample is expected to reach between £2,000 and £3,000, although Glasgow admits she will be sorry to see the many items go.

"It was great fun working with the boys on the films. They were always together in a group and having a laugh.

"My job was to keep their hair in order as the film was made over three months, so their trademark, mop-top haircuts had to be regularly trimmed", she explained.

Watch John Lennon's music videos here...

Mel Brooks Starts Nonprofit Foundation To Save Word 'Schmuck'

NEW YORK—Saying he could no longer stand idly by while a vital part of American culture is lost forever, activist and Broadway producer Mel Brooks has founded a private nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving the word "schmuck."

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An emotional Brooks stopped short of kvetching at a schmuck fundraiser Monday.

"Schmuck is dying," a sober Brooks said during a 2,000-person rally held in his hometown of Williamsburg, Brooklyn Monday. "For many of us, saying 'schmuck' is a way of life. Yet when I walk down the street and see people behaving in foolish, pathetic, or otherwise schmucky ways, I hear only the words 'prick' and 'douche bag.' I just shake my head and think, 'I don't want to live in a world like this.'"

The nonprofit, Schmucks For Schmuck, has compiled schmuck-related data from the past 80 years and conducted its own independent research on contemporary "schmuck" usage. According to Brooks, the statistics are frightening: Utterances of the word "schmuck" have declined every year since its peak in 1951, and in 2006, the word was spoken a mere 28 times—17 of these times by Brooks himself. The study indicates that today, when faced with a situation in which one can use a targeted or self-deprecating insult to convey a general feeling of disgust, people are 50 times more likely to use the word "jerk" than "schmuck," 100 times more likely to use "dick," and 15,000 times more likely to use "fucking asshole."

Perhaps more startling, only 23 percent of men know what schmuck means, and only 1.2 percent of these men are under the age of 78. If such trends continue, Brooks estimates that by 2011, such lesser-used terms as "imbecile," "dummy," "schlub," and "contemptible ne'er-do-well" will all surpass schmuck, which is projected to completely disappear by the year 2020 or whenever Brooks dies.

"We must save this word!" Brooks said to thunderous applause as those in attendance began chanting "Schmuck! Schmuck! Schmuck!" "How will we be able to charmingly describe someone who acts in an inappropriate manner? Especially given the tragic loss of the word 'schmegeggie' in 2001. So I urge you: Tonight, when you get home, please, call up your family, your friends, your loved ones, and tell them they're a bunch of schmucks."

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Hundreds turned out at a Boca Raton, FL demonstration to show their support for the dying word.

"I've never told anyone this before," Brooks added, choking back tears, "but my father was a schmuck."

The foundation has already raised more than $20 million, thanks to donations from supporters such as Jackie Mason, Albert Brooks, the Schtupp Institute, Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI), and the Henny Youngman Endowment for the Preservation of Schmekel. The money will go toward projects aimed at reintegrating "schmuck" into the English lexicon, including billboards and flyers plastered with the word "schmuck," the upcoming 5K Schlep for Schmuck Awareness, and a new Mel Brooks film.

"The world cannot afford to lose this valuable and versatile word," Brooks told reporters during a charity auction in Manhattan's Upper West Side Tuesday, where attendees bid for the chance to have a private lunch with Brooks and repeatedly call him a schmuck. "You can be a poor schmuck, a lazy schmuck, a dumb schmuck, or just a plain old schmuck. A group of people can be collectively referred to as schmucks. You can call someone a schmuck, and you can be called a schmuck. You can even call yourself a schmuck."

"Plus, it's just so fun to say," Brooks added. "Schmuck."

Many of the foundation's volunteers say they share Brooks' passion for the word "schmuck," as well as his outrage that it is slowly disappearing from everyday use. They claim that if they do not act now, the trend could create a snowball effect.

"Today it's schmuck, tomorrow it might be toochis," said SFS volunteer Harry Steinbergmann, 82. "What's next, schlemiel? Putz? Schlimazel?"

Steinbergmann went on to classify this scenario as farcockteh.

Brooks will be appearing at Brooklyn's Francis Scott Key Junior High on Nov. 12 to give an informal lecture about his experiences using the word "schmuck," and build grassroots support among a key group of young Americans by explaining that "schmuck" is a Yiddish term for the foreskin on the head of a penis. In addition, he has hinted at the possibility of a reunion with longtime comedy partner Gene Wilder, during which the two will call each other schmucks.

Bring a Yoga Mat - Dress Like a Zombie

The invite said "Bring a Yoga Mat - Dress Like a Zombie." When filmmaker and Boing Boing pal Jason Wishnow set out to create a trailer for Scott Kenemore's new book "The Zen of Zombie : Better Living Through the Undead" (yes, people make video trailers for books!) a vision came to his brrraiiiiinns. Why not gather 100 people in a Brooklyn park, dress them as zombies, and film them all doing yoga? There's no inner peace like undead inner peace.

So today on Boing Boing tv, in honor of Halloween, we've produced a behind-the-scenes look at the making of Jason's Zombie Yoga trailer. Watch out for flying guts when they do "downward decapitated dog" or "corpse pose." (Music by T.bias.)

LINK: http://tv.boingboing.net/2007/10/30/zombie-yoga.html

Portrait - Stuff Found in Jail Library Books

Portrait,
originally uploaded by jumbledpile.

Posted on Boing Boing by Mark Frauenfelder, October 31, 2007
Link: http://www.boingboing.net/2007/10/31/stuff-found-in-jail.html

Jumbled Pile is a volunteer for the Jail Library Group, which provides reading materials to the residents of jails in Dane County, Wisconsin.

Occasionally, he comes across notes and sketches placed between the pages of the books. He scans these and posts them to his Flickr site. (Thanks, Seán in Seattle!)

Happy National Chocolate Day!

Happy National Chocolate Day!

Posted Oct 28th 2007 9:06AM by Bob Sassone

As if anyone needs a holiday as an excuse to eat chocolate!

Today is National Chocolate Day, and I thought that instead of having one post where I mention the day and list some recipes I'd do a bunch of posts that have to do with chocolate the entire day. So expect recipes, facts about the history of chocolate, maybe even some posts on things that you can make out of chocolate. I'll let you know what I find. Tune in throughout the day for more.

Mmmm...chocolate.

Tags: brownies, candy, cocoa, dark chocolate, hot chocolate, milk chocolate, national chocolate day

Slashfood.com