Anytime there’s an exodus of talent from a major player like Disney (Pixar, Dreamworks), or in this case, Google, it gets a lot of attention because it usually means someone’s going to make something good. The internet story du jour (and discussed during a picnic at work today, too) is the new search engine Cuil, pronounced cool. After checking it out, I have decided that although it has a few nifty features, it seems almost useless compared to the Big G. Read More…

Like send death threats to public personas, or anyone for that matter. It turns out that one of the death threats sent to PZ Myers has resulted in a swift firing of the 1-800-flowers.com employee who owns the account, Melanie Kroll. Apparently it was her husband who sent the threatening email from her computer. You could hem and haw about whether or not she is liable for the email since her husband sent it, probably without her knowledge. (Hey honey, can I threaten the life of someone with your business account?? OK Thanks!) But the short answer is that she’s out of a job, and he confessed to the crime.

Upon reflection, and reading many of the comments made, I feel that no matter how mad I was, it did not make it right for me to use the language or tone I used. In fact, I think there would have been many more constructive things I could have done, the angry email was just the simplest way.
And I’m sorry.

But then his confession turns bizarre and he starts talking about Muslims… who ever mentioned Muslims in this issue? Read More…

Due to a recent scuffle over sacred sugar free cookies, science blogger PZ Myers has received a ton of hate mail and calls for his job. Of course, no one surrenders the freedom of speech when they become an employee of the government. You just don’t get to claim that the government institution that you work for supports your statements. Nevertheless, there’s been a lot of intolerance coming in the name of tolerance.

In addition to all this, several emails PZ has received contained death threats, and he has just posted two of those emails to his blog, including full IP addresses, headers, email addresses, and everything. Apparently, one of them sent this email through their work email, so now we know that they work for 1800flowers.com! Doesn’t look like they will be working there much longer. Read More…

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’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?

Chris Hallquist at The Uncredible Hallq infected me with a blog meme! Here are the rules:

1. Link to the person who tagged you

2. Post the rules here.

3. Share 7 random or weird facts about yourself. Read More…

You simply have to check out this video. Stop what you’re doing right now and click play. If you’ve been following all the stuff about the Expelled film coming out, you’ll really appreciate how the video artist makes fun of the claim that scientists are “Expelling” religious people. Jeez, literally. A lot of scientists are religious, and have no truck with their brand of pseudoscience and pseudo-philosophy.

And I’m trying to see if I can get a higher quality audio clip of the song being used. Hilarious!

This is one of those occasions where I think “Great Darwin’s Galapagos” is warranted. Go ahead, try it on, and spread this thing around! No really, start clicking on those pretty buttons below the post. They’re not there for looks!
(Mind nod to Reed Cartwright at The Thumb)

Last week I posted my interview with Sheril Kirshenbaum, and we joked about what’s the coolest marine invertebrate - Cephalopods or Echinoderms? (Squids and such or Sea Cucumbers, Starfish, etc?) Well it turns out it’s the big Buzz in the Blogosphere at scienceblogs.com. (Mind nod to Sheril)

 

Invertebrate Wars

the buzz in the blogosphere

03.23.2008

Who knew spineless creatures could cause such a stir? On Thursday, the Intersection’s Sheril Kirshenbaum claimed that sea cucumbers “would eat squid for breakfast,” prompting a lively debate among sciblings over the “coolest” class of marine invertebrates. Read More…