It’s time! The squid dissection is underway. In case you haven’t heard yet, a 500 kg (1,100 pound) giant squid was caught by a fishing ship, and it is being dissected today. Well, tomorrow, but tomorrow in Australia is today. (It’s a crazy, mixed-up upside-down world) Right now, they’ve got the cameras on, and are streaming the footage live via webcast. You can point your media programs at it by clicking here. Right now they’ve got the lights off and they are pointing a blacklight at the thawed squid. I’m keeping Ariela entertained by playing some crazy disco music from the original Battlestar Galactica along with the Blacklight scene! It’s a party!

It’s so big, yet so cute! Are those little swim floats on the tentacles of the squid like those you put on the arms of little kids?

Anyway, get off ye bums and have a lookie. Crikey!

(I have now moved on from the bad BSG music and am playing something more mature and fitting, like SeaQuest DSV by John Debney.)

(Cross-posted at Sociologique)

Yesterday morning, Ariela and I were up at the crack of, no, actually we were up before dawn, racing down to WORT 89.9 fm in downtown Madison for a show of Other Voices. from 5-8 AM Ariela was playing some classical music performed by and/or conducted by women. This was, after all, a show intended to highlight the contributions of women to classical music.

You can listen to the show online here at this link, but it is not available to be downloaded as an MP3. (This will be available from now through May 4th 2008 - on May 5th next week’s show will record over it)

For the first hour and forty-five minutes, Ariela went solo, playing music performed by women, and its good stuff if you want to listen to it. At the 105 minute mark (you can skip ahead if you want to), Ariela cut the music that was playing to introduce the next topic: Holst’s The Planets, and some of its influence on science fiction film music. Let me tell you a little about its genesis, and what happened off the air during the show. Read More…

I was wondering why Abbie Smith’s blog, Endogenous Retrovirus, had no new posts for a week. Her blog went down, and she decided to abandon blogspot for something better. That’s right, you can now find her in her new home on ScienceBlogs.com.

Also, T. Ryan Gregory’s blog, Genomicron, has also just moved to a new home, at ScientificBlogging.com.

Take a moment to check out their new blog homes, and congratulate them for leaving the restrictive (although free) blogspot system. My blogroll links on the right have been updated.

As you may know, I moved too, but you don’t have to change anything!

I just got an email from Jeff Shaw, my friend back in Davis who I got to know because he is the station manager for KDRT LP-FM, a low-power community radio station where I got my start on the air.

There’s been trouble brewing for quite a while about the status of low-power fm stations, which are currently considered second-class citizens next to full-power stations. A full-power commercial station can just up and sit on an LPFM station and take its spot on the radio dial if it feels like it. KDRT was at risk for being run out of town by a station called KMJE that was going to move close enough to Davis to interfere with KDRT’s signal - they are both 101.5 fm. It didn’t matter that KMJE was the one moving, KDRT would have had to shut down or be legally an “encroacher.” Fortunately, there has been such an upwelling of support for Davis’s community station that KMJE realized that they were about to piss off the new market they were trying to reach, and has backed off with intent to negotiate KDRTs continued existence. But not every LPFM station will be that fortunate.

Fortunately, the FCC is cluing into the inequities involved, and the value that small local stations have for their communities, and is looking to change the rules to give LPFM stations more security. Many media reform groups such as Prometheus Radio and The Future of Music endorse this plan, but they have one big obstacle, one enemy, that will stop at nothing to prevent LPFM stations from having a means to prevent being overrun by bigger stations that just feel like doing it. Who, might you ask? Is it the conglomeromegacommercial stations? An FCC dissenter? Rush Limbaugh?

No, it’s NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO.

Oh, they don’t just think that the FCC shouldn’t decide in favor of the low-power community stations, they claim that they have the laws of physics on their side. What? Oh get ready for some Monday Madness! Read More…

I’m currently preparing to go on the radio tomorrow morning for a little spot on a classical music show. The radio station is WORT 89.9 fm, and the show is called Other Voices. It’s a show that focuses on women in classical music. Then why the heck am I going to be on it?

Well, my extensive science fiction soundtrack collection has shown me consistent patterns and themes running throughout the SciFi film/TV genre. Not only have my ears picked these things out, but my lady-love Ariela has been sprinkling musicology terms in my midst and it’s hard not to think about them. Consequently, I have come to notice and understand the pervasive influence of Gustav Holst’s The Planets in science fiction music.

So Monday the 28th of April, I’ll be talking about Holst and SciFi music and the composers that wrote that music. All men. On a show about women. Actually, the feminine focus of this portion of this week’s show will be Read More…

Hello everyone, it’s great to be back.

Previously, I mentioned that my website was getting transferred to a new system, and that I would be able to do a lot more with the site, bigger capacity, host more domains, etc. Well, the transfer didn’t happen, and after a week, all of our sites went down as our old accounts were closed.

And our emails were inoperative.

And people were unable to download my podcast.

And every time I called them, I was told that someone would be working on it and have it done in a couple days. A couple days later I got the same story. After repeated calls to Startlogic, I finally got someone to move their butt on Tuesday and start moving things from my old accounts to my new one. Then, bit by bit, things moved over during the last couple days, amidst frequent status update calls from me.

Needless to say, I’ve been pissed off. It was so easy for them to charge me extra money for this new service, and yet so hard for them to deliver on their promises. Whereas I would have recommended Startlogic to people before, now I’m not in an amicable mood about it.

Add to this the fact that I’m having to learn the new system, and learn how to set up Domain Name System (DNS) entries with little help from my website host. I finally got some of the information I was looking for today, and within half an hour, voila! Back online.

Sociologique and Meet The Composers are still offline, so I’m still pissed. Two databases have not been moved, and one site hasn’t been moved at all. I can restore it from my own files, but the database has some info that I cannot.

Over the phone, I was told that I would get an in-person explanation as to why my account was sat on, however, to this date I have not received this explanation.

Meanwhile, I was able to learn enough about the virtual private server’s system to be able to set up a new domain on my own. In a snap, I give you Bee Lovely Candles - a project of Ariela’s. I can’t tell you more about it until this weekend, because I’m in quite a time crunch right now. Suffice to say that when I set it up it worked perfectly, and when they transferred it over it didn’t. Nyaa nyaa! (Keep in mind, I have no training in any of this stuff. It’s all been learn as I go)

So, here I am, didja miss me?

This weekend, the “documentary” Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed comes out. Actually, if I wanted to skip my midterm this morning and see a showing, I could. Hah. I expect that sometime this weekend I will be finding the time to attend a showing of this film, for pure journalistic reasons. I imagine that many of you may also be tempted to go see it, just to see what arguments are being made first-hand, but a quick look at the reviews online shows that unless it’s a religious news source, Expelled flunks out big time.

Some of you may be thinking, why you should give them your money and not wait until it appears on DVDs in thrift stores? Wouldn’t paying $10 for a ticket help undermine science education somehow? Well, if you’re conflicted about that, there’s no need to be. Originally proposed by blogger Alonzo Fyfe, you can buy “Truth Tickets” to offset the negative effect of sending the Expelled folks your money. Send ten bucks to the National Center for Science Education and you can feel good about counterbalancing the situation. It’s like carbon offsets - planting a seed for science education that could grow to become a fruitful tree! Head on over to the NCSE Donation page if you plan on visiting the Box Office. I’ll be pledging a little extra.

Also, check out Michael Shermer and Ed Brayton on Expelled.

Must… Obey… Not… Strong… Enough…
Expelled
Expelled
Expelled
Expelled
Expelled
Expelled
Expelled

Previously, I addressed the give and take of food prices. Pam Ronald at Tomorrow’s Table also adds to the discussion:

In an editorial this week in the NYT, Paul Krugman places part of the blame for rising food prices on biofuels: “We need to pushback against biofuels that turns out to have been a terrible mistake.” But this conclusion is premature and overly simplistic.

Whether biofuels offer carbon savings depends on how they are produced. If we destroy rainforests and grasslands to plant food crop–based biofuels, then Krugman is right. This would be a terrible mistake. (…) Read More…

A few days ago, I received an email from a former professor of mine in Davis, Dr. Pamela Ronald. She’s the director of the Plant Genomics Program at UC Davis, a rice geneticist, swell person, and as of last week, a blogger! And I’m on her link list! Read More…