Picasa Web Albums - Len Layton - 2010-torch-relay

Gabrielle and Lucy went down to Cambie Street near our place to see the torch relay go by today Picasa Web Albums - Len Layton - 2010-torch-relay

YouTube - Symphony of Science - 'The Unbroken Thread' (ft. Attenborough, Goodall, Sagan)

John 'Symphony of Science' Bowman just released a great new video titled 'The Unbroken Thread.'

I had a small hand in this, by suggesting some of the footage he used such as the XVIVO animations and the HD version of Attenborough's Tree of Life video.

From his notes on You Tube:

"The Unbroken Thread" is the fourth video in the Symphony of Science series, and it features David Attenborough, Jane Goodall, and Carl Sagan. The clips used in this installment come from Carl Sagan's Cosmos, David Attenborough's Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life, The Life of Mammals, The Living Planet, BBC Life, XVIVO Scientific Animations, IMAX Cosmic Voyage, Jane Goodall's TED Talk, and a clever Guiness Commercial. The themes present in The Unbroken Thread attempt to explore the wild diversity of life on our planet, the intricacy and origin of its mechanisms, and its close relation to all other life forms.

Book Review – The End of Energy Obesity - Domestic Fuel

I just commented on a review of Peter Tertzakian's excellent book, The End of Energy Obesity.

You might wonder what energy economics has to do with sound technology. Well, dear reader, there is definitely a link, and one that comes out of Tertzakian's thesis that curbing the demand side of the energy equation is where the biggest bang for the buck exists and where the biggest benefits can be realized.

My passion recently has been to enable an expansion of the use of next-generation audio and communication technologies so that travel can be greatly reduced, i.e. wherever possible eliminated. Travel, in our society, currently uses one of the most hard-to-replace, dirty, price-volatile and insecure resources: oil. As Tertzakian points out, this isn't going to change in a hurry, despite all the ruckus about alternative energy sources as well as hybrid vehicles etc. etc. The answer is to use a lot less of the stuff, not just use it slightly more efficiently.

I ask myself Peter Drucker's question, "Why do companies spend so much money transporting a worker's 170lb body into town every day, when all they need is his 3lb brain?"

Most analysts (the reviewer here included) seem focused on the supply side and go around hunting for more energy to feed the beast. Tertzakian says that instead of switching to slightly more energy-efficient lighting technologies, at great cost, simply turn them off when not needed! Turning off coal-fired lighting has 50x leverage up the supply chain to the coal-mine, for example.

Rather than being “off-topic,” travel-avoidance technologies like telepresence, and Mingleverse, have tremendous leverage from the perspective of the oil well because of massive supply-chain inefficiencies. And the less reliance on those oil-wells (mainly located in insecure parts of the world) the better.

I suggest readers read the whole book, and actually focus on the second half where Tertzakian gets down to solutions.

You can read the review and my comments here: Book Review – The End of Energy Obesity - Domestic Fuel

Klipsch Unveils the LightSpeaker - Reviews by PC Magazine

I remember discussing this idea with friends back in around 1991 and then later with an inventor and prolific patenter in around 1998. I wonder what the patent status on this is... Klipsch Unveils the LightSpeaker - Reviews by PC Magazine

I found what appears to be the patent application, but surely this is pre-empted by the prior art?

CBC News - Canada - Body scanners coming to Canadian airports

I think I'd really rather be communicating online in the Mingleverse than being strip searched at the airport by millimetre-wave scanners operated by minimum-wage rent-a-cops. CBC News - Canada - Body scanners coming to Canadian airports

Dengue Viral Fusion « XVIVO

What kind of soundtrack do you create for an animation sequence about a hideous disease without it seeming, ahem, too beautiful? Dengue Viral Fusion « XVIVO

Acoustic Ecology : SEEDMAGAZINE.COM § Ear to the Ground

Acoustic Ecology piece from Seed Magazine. Very nice.

I am trying to remember the last time I was somewhere where the sounds around me were totally natural, with no man made sounds at all. No planes overhead, no lawnmowers or cars in the distance or jet skis on the water. Possibly it was in December 2002 when we went out into the desert (the gibber plain) around Woomera, South Australia. All you can hear is the wind out there.

Natural quiet is a rapidly disappearing resource. According to acoustic ecologist Gordon Hempton, there are only seven or eight naturally quiet places — defined as where the sounds of nature are unbroken for intervals of at least 15 minutes during daylight hours — left in the United States. None exist in Europe anymore. But if you travel far enough to remote corners of the Earth, and listen carefully enough, you can still find them.

Acoustic ecology studies were established in the 1960s by naturalist R. Murray Schafer and his colleagues at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia as an attempt to define the relationship between humans and their environment, as mediated through sound. With a focus that spans both science and art, the continuum of acoustic ecology often attracts individuals who are part researcher, part composer, and part adventurer.

SEEDMAGAZINE.COM § Ear to the Ground