hang drum

check out this hippie play this cool drum.

Trojans Were So Funny

Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

15 step

the winner for the fan create-a-video contest for radioheads "15 step".

Radiohead - 15 Step - by Kota Totori

ACG B-Pack

nike teamed up with wool maker Pendleton to make this sick Aztec style ACG backpack. wear this bad boy to class, and all the hot bitches will be asking for your calculator in class.

TFOT

just as a follow up to the new demo by The Fall of Troy, The Vomit Winter, heres a nice quality clip of them rehearsing the instramental to the song. It really lets you see how sick they are as musicians when you watch them play it up close. Their guitarist shreds, their drummer rages, and the bassist grooves oh so tightly. amazing.

Strandbeesten

i just want to start off by saying this must be one of my favorite posts ever. Dutch kinetic artist Theo Jansen has been working for 16 years to create what he calls "strandbeesten" or sand beast, out of plastic tubes and lemonade bottles. However, the idea behind what he has created transcends its materials. Jansen's sand beasts move, and survive beach conditions, completely on their own, using only the power of the wind. His mission is to create hundreds of them to roam the beach in packs for as long as they survive, which theoretically could be forever (although eventually they would probably breakdown). Jansen's imagination, and driven intelligence is almost as fascinating as his creation, and for some reason his ideas captivate me. I guess my point is, watch the video and enjoy.

Football Destiny

WATCH THIS BEFORE READING


the reason i feel the video should be watched before reading, is that i think the idea behind the video is best experienced when you go into it not knowing exactly what the video is building towards. When i first watched the video it wasn't until i saw each player in their college uniforms that i realized the two children in the beginning of the video were supposed to be ladanian Tomlinson and my favorite NFL player, Troy Polamalu. The video makes an interesting statement on the idea that becoming a star professional athlete is a predetermined destiny, and players are honing the skills needed for their exact positions in their sport since birth. Maybe that is what it takes to become a professional athlete, and maybe thats why professional sports can be so fascinating to so many people.

kanye/reckoner

As a follow up to my previous post about radiohead's reckoner remix-a-thon, id like to drop this lil tasty treat for you all. About a week ago Kanye West released the instrumental and vocal stems from "Lockdown Love" tempting everyone with garage band to rip it up and piece it back together as their own lil remix, satisfying their DJ fetishes. Well as you might have figured out by now, some genius (DJ earthworm) decided to mash Kanye's jam with radiohead's ambient rock ballad creating something you can both chill and party to. He even made this sweet video to go along with it.

Guns and Ammo

Minus the Bear has released a new song for download off their upcoming ep Acoustics. The song "guns and ammo" can be downloaded here for free for a limited time. The album Includes songs from old and new albums being played acoustically obviously. the track list is as follows.

1. Guns & Ammo (new track)
2. We Are Not a Football Team (from the album, Highly Refined Pirates)
3. Burying Luck (from the album, Planet of Ice)
4. Knights (from the album, Planet of Ice)
5. Pachuca Sunrise (from the album, Menos El Oso)
6. Throwin' Shapes (from the album, Planet of Ice)
7. Ice Monster (from the album, Planet of Ice)

the album art:

Reckoner

for all you Radiohead and remix fans out there, Radiohead has announced that they are again offering up spliced pieces of one of their songs, reckoner, off their newest album in rainbows, and holding a contest for people to remix it. In case you werent aware they had done this previously with the nude remix contest, and although they got tons of responses they were generally disappointed with the outcomes because they thought they would get more creative responses due to the fact the song was in 7/8 timing. However this time they simplified it for all you wannabe DJ's and picked a song in 4/4. you can check out some of the remixes or upload your own amateur masterpiece here radiohead remix. the song has already been remixed by semi-well known remix artists James Holden, and Diplo so make sure to check their versions out on the website.

TFOT

The Fall of Troy released a new demo to some radio stations, and its what you would expect, mathematical precision polyrhythms, neck breaking breakdowns, killer screaming, and rediculous guitar shredding. The song is therefore appopriately titled the Vomiting Winter. If your a TFOT fan your gonna want to check this out. This band definitely still rocks out with new bassist frank black. There isnt a video, this was jsut the easiest way for me to upload the song, you can download it yourself here in the replies:Vomiting Winter.

The following quote about their new record was taken from wikipedia:

"...It’s going to be going back to the avant-garde feel of the band that the first two records had. Manipulator was an experiment on how many different directions we could go on one record. This one is going to be a cohesive, challenging, and for lack of a better word, epic record from our band. It’s going to bring us to a whole new level. I think there is going to be lots of chaos in the music, but definitely I think the vocals are going to be stepped up – probably times five or ten. [...] We’re getting older. I think we’re kind of getting over screaming a little bit. I know I’ve become a lot more confident of a singer in the last year of my life. My girlfriend is a jazz singer from Stockholm, so being around her a lot in the last 6 months has really lifted me to a new level with singing. I’m trying to learn as much as I can from her about it. She went to the LA Music Academy for a year and was like a really high-ranked singer. [...] Frank sings, too. Tim never sang. Tim was just a jet engine, and he was great for that. Frank has got a great scream, too. I mean, I’m not saying that we’re turning our back on screaming and that aspect of our band at all. I think the idea of song structure will be a little more prominent now. I think we’ll actually have things that will be able to get stuck in your head or maybe be around for five years instead of five minutes."[3]"

sounds awesome if you ask me.

also little known fun fact, lead singer and keyboardist Nouela Johnston from the band Mon Frere contributed on their last album Manipulator, so if you havent heard of Mon Frere you should give some of their stuff a check, its rock heavily influenced with keyboard parts.a few of their songs rock out pretty good but i suggest taking a look at RVDGS(fighting mad) and Real Ultimate Power first. good luck getting your hands on their album.

More MuteMath Vlogs

so if you saw the last vlog i posted in anticipation of the MuteMath album....you should probably watch this one, cause its better.

Acapella

If your close enough to me to read my blog then you prolly already know about Asher Roth. Either way here is a tasty little clip of him and Mos Def preforming acapella at a clothing extravaganza at the magic in Las Vegas. enjoy.

MuteMath

One of my favorite bands MuteMath, home of outstanding drummer Darren King, is currently working on their new untitled album. Recently they have been posting a web vlog from the studio giving you small tastes of what the new album is sounding like as well as some interesting street reactions to their demo tracks. lead singer, keytarist, and pianist of the band Paul Meany was quotes saying this about the new album in works"Anyone who thinks first album is perfect will hate this [new] record. If you heard the first record and liked some stuff about it [but] think things could improve, you may like it. It's important for us to change up the formula. We thought we were writing [the new album] for the last 2½ years on the road, but found out we weren't. We just started three months ago." its quotes like that and videos like this that have me amped for the hopeful late septmeber release, although Meany says hes not sure the album will be released until 2009. Be sure to check out the other videos in the series as they all give interestingly mysterious tidbits.

hype beastin

some tasty new air max 1's droppin in 2009.

do you wanna go with me to mystic aquariam now bitches?

Playground Badasses

i dont have anything to say other than, this is fuckin awesome.

See more funny videos at CollegeHumor

Punch

not quite as funny as british punch, but just as addicting to watch. this kid swings on his boy with no regard for their friendship. Gotta be one of the best knockouts around, he hits him a solid three times before he goes down, and the way his head moves is just silly.

See more funny videos at CollegeHumor

Droplifting

I found this video after reading a little about an interesting new form of activist art called shopdropping. Basically the idea behind this very banksy-esque art form is based on the opposite of shoplifting. In other words people go into grocery stores and department stores LEAVING items such as cans and bottles, that have altered labels or stickers. The point behind the art form is usual a political message, against traditonal marketing schemes, an attempt to connect the product to the exploitation behind its creation. The video does a decent job of explaining and giving an example of shopdropping, however i cant really say the video is fantastic. Interesting none the less. The video would not imbed for some reason, but the video can be found here

Shopdropping

Language Specific madness

Just some quotes from an article i found on a psychology blog. The article covers some evidence linking certain mental disorders such as bipolar disorder, to specific languages in bilingual individuals. Im not sure of the deeper implications of this study, but the findings are interesting none the less.

I've just found this fascinating study on language and psychosis that found that multilingual psychotic patients can present with either different or less psychotic symptoms depending on the language they use.

This is from the introduction, which outlines some of the curious effects:

Zulueta’s (1984) review article on the implications of bilingualism in the study and treatment of psychiatric disorders showed that certain psychotic fluent bilinguals, who had learnt their second language during or after puberty, could present with different psychotic phenomena depending on which language they used. Most of these patients tended to present as more disturbed in their primary ‘mother tongue’ and as less disturbed in their second language (Castillo, 1970; Hemphill, 1971).

Some patients were thought disordered in one language and less so or not at all in their other language; some complained of having delusions in one language and not in their other language, and some experienced auditory hallucinations in one language and not in another. Moreover, some patients who were fluent bilinguals lost their linguistic competence in their second language during their psychotic illness (Heinemann & Assion, 1996; Hughes, 1981).


all snipets taken from mindhacks.com

Video Navigation

and interesting program that makes scrolling through videos a lot easier and more interactive. Technology is getting sweet these days.

1996 Dunk Competition

i stumbled across some kobe highschool all american dunk competition clips while surfing the web, which is sweet cause i love the way kobe has been tearing up the spurs recently. He puts down some pretty nice dunks, however the real gem i discovered here are the dunks by highschool all american and eventual kansas bench warmer lester earl. Make sure and check his dunks out, kid dunks like hes pissed at the world because he already knows hes gonna blow his potential and never become and NBA star.

fresh out the water

with my linda farrow goggles.

The Game of Life

this may be one of my most interesting posts if you take the time to really explore this program. The program is called "the game of life" and it was created by john conway ( not the son of me and melanie conway, just some dude). Basically the program shows how the self automaticity of simple cellular life could work. The program runs on simple rules, which you can change if youd like, but i recommend leaving the rules the same unless your experienced with the program. The rules are similar to representations of how neuron activation might work in your brain or how single cells might live in a cimple organism. the rules are as follows

Any live cell with fewer than two live neighbours dies, as if by loneliness.
Any live cell with more than three live neighbours dies, as if by overcrowding.
Any live cell with two or three live neighbours lives, unchanged, to the next generation.
Any dead cell with exactly three live neighbours comes to life.

these rules make it so the program will continue to run once you hit go and evolve on its own without any later input. This shows how a small living organism can do things like move without a real brain or intention, just based on a principle called self organization.

so basically if you want to mess around just click a few boxes adjacent to eachother or diagonal to each other and hit go to see how it grows. start at zoom 4 until your being gets too big, although it probably wont. change the speed from 20 to 1 so u can see whats going on. I also suggest trying some of the pre-formatted starting shapes that you can find on the website which evolve into some really cool shapes. The program is a lot cooler if you understand the theory behind it, and how it relates to our brains and small organisms work. i didnt do the best job explaining it so if you interested i suggest reading something on wikipedia or a more qualified source.

heres the link to a good program the game of life. click enjoy life in the upper left corner to start, make a few shapes and explore while you ponder the implications of whats going on.

Biotech Crops

im posting this because it would make my pops happy.

Here is a link to the article BIOTECH PROPAGANDA MEETS SCIENTIFIC REALITY

and here are some important quotes in case your too lazy to read about how our government is corperatized lying jerks.

"In its mad bid to privatize and control the world’s agriculture and food supply with its patented biotech seeds and cushy revolving door within governmental regulatory agencies, Monsanto cannot be very happy with a recent Soil Association report that shows GM crops decrease yields, whether it’s cotton or soybeans or corn."

"A 2007 study from Kansas State University that showed Roundup Ready soy (biotech soy) has suffered “yield drag” since it was introduced, producing an average of 9-25% less per acre than conventional soy."

“Since 1996 more than a billion acres have been planted with biotech crops in the U.S. We don’t really know what are the pros and cons of this important new agricultural technology.”

i thought that studies showing that biotech bioengineered crops produced less yield would be something we would look into before we deployed the mass use of them. Not to mention we havent thoroughly looked into the effects of the DNA expressed pesticide bioegineered into all of our cotton....

Mexican Blanket

Very interesting new pair of air max lights dropped by nike, dubbed the mexican blanket because of the aztec like pattern on the heel. You know how i love my air max.

Sand Art

this might be one of the most unique forms of art ive seen in a while. what i like about it is its almost a show the way the artist transitions from piece to piece with the music in the background. This particular video is by accomplished sand artist llana yahav. guess this is what you learn when you grow up in the desert. if you like the video and want to check out more there are a bunch on youtube.

Ben Folds is still alive

Ben folds forgets that he is supposed to cover a popular song live on this australian tv show, so he finds the most recent song played on his ipod, grabs some drummers from the studio, gives them some random shit to play on...and this is what he creates, utter badassness.

Goggles

Stunna shades meets phantom of the opera. I want these.


fresh out the water with my linda farrow goggles.

Mute Math

so this is a pretty old song of mute math's, it was their first single called typical off their self titled album. The video is pretty old too but its pretty cool, and i recently learned something interesting about it. the whole video is backwards, which is a pretty neat idea, but what makes this video even cooler is the fact that alot of the video had to be preformed backwards in order for it to match up to the song when played in reverse. Check out the video first (top one), then check out the making of the video ( second one). The drummer actually learned his parts in reverse in order to play them for the video, complicated stuff. Their drummer is beginning to be one of my favorites, although i think its impossible for anyone to reach erin tate status. if you don't know who erin tate is, dont worry about it, your probably a nerd.

court force

nike just dropped a new line of sneakers inspired by some old air max colors. These court force highs are lookin pretty tight.

spinning lady?

PLEASE READ BEFORE LOOKING!: supposedly which way you see the lady spinning is an indication of which hemisphere of your brain is dominant. After thinking about it for a while im not sure this is true, but its interesting none the less. If you see her spinning clockwise you are supposedly right brain dominant and vice versa. I swear to you that the image is ambigous, and its not actually spinning one way, nor does the spinning ever actually reverse. After watching it for a while you can learn to switch the direction of her spinning, and its pretty mind blowing when you learn to do it becuase when it happens it seems so natural for her to spin that way and u cant imagine how u saw her spin the other way before. After some practice you can get her to flip back and forth easily. There might be some truth the the hemisphere dominance theory because i forced myself to breathe out of one nostril (the one i wasnt breathing out of at the time) which is thought to change the activation of one of your hemispheres, and i saw the figure switch for the first time shortly after. hemisphere specialization is a Pretty interesting topic that i am going to be conducting an experiment in for my psychology class if anyone wants any more information on it. anyways, try it out.

Vampire Weekend

Vampire Weekend may be the most popular band you havent heard of. They have been what i consider all over magazines and tv considering their indie style, and they debut self titled album was up to the third most downloaded albums on its release date on itunes. They're music is pretty interesting, while at first you might just consider it chill indie music youve heard a million times, after a second listen you can really hear the african style guitar rifts and uses of percussion. This african vibe gives it a really groovy yet chill vibe. definitely give their album a few listens, because although they may seem simple at first, vampire weekend has a really nice sound. this is their single A-Punk, which has a fairly interesting yet pretty typical indie style video directed by the director of the hitchikers guide to the galaxy. Definitely give a few of their other songs a listen as well, namely cape cod kwassa, and bryn, to name two of a handful.

planet earth

if you watch planet earth u might find this somewhat humorous.

Ha

Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

Time Elapse Painting

some pretty creative art. you have to watch the whole video to really get the full effect because it gets more interesting as it goes.

Aaron Spears

just wanted you guys to check this cat Aaron Spears out, he won modern drummers up and coming award in 2006, and trust me he is more than up and coming now, this guy is one of my favorite drummers right now. He plays for usher, so he has some hip hop influences, but this guy really combines it all, he has amazing grooves, rediculous fills, and more than enough style and soul. watching this guy really inspires me to stick with drumming. i dont need to say any more about, this guy just watch.

Art is Cool

you may have already caught this on high snobiety, but in case you didnt artist chuck anderson released a new set of prints, some available in t-shirt form. i chose two of my favorites but there are a few others i really liked. i wouldn't mind having of of those in my dorm room at school. you can see the rest here: chuck anderson

Mario

if mario had a drum set this is what it would sound like. gets good around half way through.

invisible

basically the article says its possible to make an acoustic invisibility cloak that when worn would keep you from being detected on radar.

But another race is underway - to make an acoustic invisibility cloak. Sounds waves behave enough like light waves to be manipulated in similar ways, if you can make the 'metamaterials' that make cloaks possible. Metamaterials can bend - refract - waves in the opposite direction to natural materials, allowing physicists to play new tricks with them.

No one has yet made an acoustic metamaterial, but simulations points to possible ways of doing it. Chinese researchers last year suggested embedding rubber-coated gold spheres and water-filled pockets containing air bubbles in an epoxy resin. And this week a team in the UK showed that carefully sculpted silica and a few carbon nanotubes could make acoustic metamaterials for perfect sound proofing or even protection against earthquakes.

Today a group at Duke University in North Carolina, US, went one better. They have worked out that it should be possible to make a 3D acoustic invisibility cloak - something that had still been in doubt.

Such cloaks could make submarine's invisible to sonar, or improve acoustics by letting sound travel through, say, pillars at a concert hall. What the Duke team has to say about the materials that could achieve that is unknown for now, as the new results will appear in the journal Physical Review Letters on January 11.

While I'm sure there is plenty more theoretical work to be done, the next step is clear. Who is going to physically build an acoustic metamaterial first?

The Mars Volta

just when you thought the mars volta couldn't be any weirder, they stoop to a new level of mind boggling inspiration for their newest album "Bedlam in Goliath". they first full length album "deloused in a commatorium" is based on their friend's dreams during a drug induced comma. Their follow up album "frances the mute" was inspired by the death of the bands sound technician, jeremy ward, after a heroin overdose. The band then wrote the album based on the characters from a diary ward had found in a car while he was a repo car salesman.

Their latest album however is based on their communications with an ancient Ouija board the band purchased in jerusalem. Lead singer Bixler-Zavala and guitarist Rodriguez-Lopez appearantly communicated with the board they named "soothsayer" and used its words directly as the basis for the lyrics to their songs. They also found poetry inside the board, which they had translated, and this too was used as insight for the albums lyrics. The band suggests their communications with the soothsayer were very spiritual, and they claim its energy almost lead to the break-up of their band collectively and individually. Omar Rodrigues-Lopez was quoted saying " it felt like i was fighting for my life, if that makes any sense, for my sanity". the band eventually destroyed the board, to end their struggle.

I find this inspiration for the album very interesting, and at first it almost made me a lil worried about listening to the album, but the band claims the album has a positive outlook on the the experience, a statement of triumph, not a statement of the evil the ouija board carried. The band even released an online game based on the soothsayer that can be played here soothsayer game
Im pretty pumped for the albums release on january 29th, hopefully its a little better than their last album amphutechture.

the song goliath can be heard below.

i knew i hated mosquitos

just read this pretty sweet article about the extinction of dinosaurs. According to the article biting and disease carrying insects may have played a large role in the extinction of dinosaurs. Recent studies have shown that an influx in flowering plants and insects that would pollinate them matches up with the time period of the extinction of dinosaurs better than the idea of asteroids hitting. This growth of flowering plants may have also depleted the amount of fern like plants that dinosaurs were thought to have thrived on. heres an exerpt that sums up the article pretty well.

"In dinosaur feces, we found nematodes, trematodes and even protozoa that could have caused dysentery and other abdominal disturbances. The infective stages of these intestinal parasites are carried by filth-visiting insects."
In the Late Cretaceous, Poinar said, the world was covered with warm-temperate to tropical areas that swarmed with blood-sucking insects carrying leishmania, malaria, intestinal parasites, arboviruses and other pathogens, and caused repeated epidemics that slowly-but-surely wore down dinosaur populations. Ticks, mites, lice and biting flies would have tormented and weakened them.
"Smaller and separated populations of dinosaurs could have been repeatedly wiped out, just like when bird malaria was introduced into Hawaii, it killed off many of the honeycreepers," Poinar said. "After many millions of years of evolution, mammals, birds and reptiles have evolved some resistance to these diseases. But back in the Cretaceous, these diseases were new and invasive, and vertebrates had little or no natural or acquired immunity to them. Massive outbreaks causing death and localized extinctions would have occurred."

dinosaur extinction article

All-Star balloting

there is only 18 days left to vote for the NBA all-star teams so get on it people. Im a little torn on the NBA all star voting process, because i feel the fans get too much say, and quite frankly most fans dont know shit and pick guys who are fun to watch play because they can dunk or shoot from deep rather than guys who are fun to watch because they play the game the way its supposed to be played. This annoys me because it means a lot of deserving players often get left off the rosters. I tried to choose guys who i would want playing on my basketball team if i was a coach. so with out further adue, here is my expertly chosen line-up for the east and west starters. Can you imagine having dwight howard kevin garnett and lebron james on the same team with jason kid running the fast break and chauncy billups running the set offense....WoW

West:
Carlos Boozer
Utah

Shawn Marion
Phoenix

Steve Nash
Phoenix

Deron Williams
Utah

Chris Kaman
LA Clippers

East:
Kevin Garnett
Boston

LeBron James
Cleveland

Jason Kidd
New Jersey

Chauncey Billups
Detroit

Dwight Howard
Orlando

new years

so this is my excuse for new years eve....

Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net