a couple weekends ago i went to a music festival called all tomorrow's parties which was curated by simpsons creator matt groening (pronounced GRAY-ning, apparently).
interestingly, in order to get to the festival, we had to drive by a local power plant which i like to call england's "springfield."
as the curator, matt groening chose and invited all the bands that came and designed the programs. he made four different program covers... the one on the right features the strange-looking and energetic iggy pop and the left shows daniel johnston with his famous hi, how are you character, jeremiah the frog.
one of the most memorable acts for me was definitely daniel johnston.
clocky is an alarm clock that runs away from you and hides after you hit the snooze button. when the alarm goes off again, you are forced to get out of bed and find clocky, therefore making you less likely to snooze indefinitely.
this clever little device was invented by gauri nanda while she was a graduate student at MIT. she published the study and earned herself a 2005 Ig nobel prize! the Ig nobel prizes are awarded each year by an organization called improbable research to "honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think. The prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative -- and spur people's interest in science, medicine, and technology."
so, congratulations gauri... only a few years too late ;)
the rose and crown pub in nottingham offers a plethora of condiments to choose from when eating in their establishment:
ironically, HP sauce, which is commonly called "brown sauce," has a blue packet.
i wondered whether the contents of the packets offered as wide a variety of colors as their containers. the answer is simply, no.
we considered doing a blind taste test in our office to see whether people could identify each condiment by taste alone. in the end, we didnt go thru with this experiment. the results didnt seem to be worth the flavours.
seth shostak is a senior astronomer at the SETI institute, but he used to make films when he was in graduate school. great to see old hobbies of well-known astronomers!
seth writes: "One of the many doubtful activities of my youth was making films. I started doing this at age 11, and by the time I was a teenager, my buddy Jerry Rebold and I had already constructed a sound system that occasionally worked with our wind-up, 16mm camera.
In 1967, while in grad school, fellow student Bob O'Connell, Jerry Rebold and I made a half-hour film entitled "The Teenage Monster Blob from Outer Space, Which I Was." This parody of 1950s sci-fi films starred six pounds of Play-Doh.
The film bombed. It was, as O'Connell called it, "a turkey." This disgusting failure prompted us to change our cinematic strategy in two ways: (1) our next film was just going to be a trailer, rather than a complete film -- that way we could save money and just put in the good parts, and (2) if we were making turkeys, why not make a REAL turkey?
Ergo, this short "preview" film, shot mostly at Caltech and at that school's Owens Valley Radio Observatory. Observant viewers will note then-department chair Jesse Greenstein in the role of Walter Cronkite, and a few other astronomers too (including yours truly).
"The Turkey that Ate St. Louis" was entered in the Baltimore International Film Festival, and automatically inserted into the feature-film category, where it faced competition from major motion pictures from both America and Europe. Despite this uneven playing field, "The Turkey" lost.
"The Teenage Monster Blob" eventually became more popular. Too late."
the sky is blue, the sun is shining, and i´ve been bombarded by birthday besitos already! me gusta mucho.
so far barcelona has proven to be a fascinating city to explore. from getting lost in the gothic neighborhoods to finding the modernista architecture, its certainly not a boring place to be! i´m going to walk around montjuic park today, and then try to think of something interesting to cook for my wonderful hosts for dinner.
i´m staying in the big city until friday, then i head off along the coast for the rest of my trip. happy happy joy joy.
in honor of the world cup next month, a pub near my house is offering sausages from a dozen different countries playing in the tournament. it really made me laugh when i saw the sign, but now i'm curious about what sausages will be featured from various countries like the US, france, and even england. so of course i will be watching at least a few matches there!
i think the sausage variety is a much better idea than the one developed by Walkers crisps (potato chips). they have created 15 new flavours of crisps from different countries in the world cup, including: South African sweet chutney, Spanish chicken paella, Irish stew, American cheeseburger, Japanese chicken teriyaki, etc...
i mean, the british love their crisps and they certainly have an arsenal of unique and interesting flavours already on the shelves (eg. "prawn cocktail" or "smoky bacon"), but i think maybe this has gone too far....?
once i recognized the pattern, i knew it had to be continued: i'm going to try to spend my birthdays in different countries for as many years as i can!
