July 30th is the birthday of Regnier de Graaf (1641 – 1673), a Dutch anatomist who made several important contributions to reproductive biology. He was the first to describe the reproductive function of the Fallopian tube and its role in infertility, and he also invented the syringe.
- Does Pop Sound Louder, Dumber, and More and More the Same? One Study Says So – I wonder if someone has done a study on that thing where pop singers have to sing 5o notes in rapid succession in every song?
- 5 Medical Innovations of the Civil War
- Mars Curiosity rover success depends on ‘crazy’ landing
- An Ant That Protects Herself with Venomous Butt Foam – The pictures are actually beautiful, in a gross way.
- Greenland Ice Melt Rate From 40% to 97% in 2012
- The Kennecott Mines: Abandoned Alaskan Boomtown – Haunting photos of a ghost town built in the 1900’s on a massive copper ore.
- Prominent climate-change denier now admits he was wrong
Well, the obviously the answer to the first story is “Get off my lawn!”
The axis of awesome demonstrated that a good deal of pop songs use the same 4 chords.
The play the same 4 chords and sing like 50 pop songs:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pidokakU4I (forward to 1:05)
Ooo! If you’re interested in civil war medical innovations and you happen to be in the Philly area, the Mütter Museum (College of Physicians building) has a great exhibit on it, that’s becoming part of the permanent collection. And! In September (9/22) they are turning the museum into a civil war hospital for the day complete with re-enactors and the museum director, Dr. Hicks, portraying the role of a Union Army surgeon.
I love the Mütter Museum- and the Civil War hospital would be awesome to check out. Thanks for the heads up!
That sounds neat! I wish I lived closer, I would totally check that out.
My oh my that is a big pile of stupid in the comments section of the climate-denier story.
The way you can tell that global warming denial is like a religion is, just like any religion, when reality shows your point of view to be wrong you just yell your ignorance louder and believe that you have won.
Unbelievable.
The Kennecott Mines are beautiful. Not only do I love abandoned sites but I found out that there are new national parks that I didn’t know about. My list was frozen in 1978 when I memorized it in 5th grade, how dare they add more without informing me much less consulting me. :)
” Does Pop Sound Louder, Dumber, and More and More the Same? One Study Says So ”
Oh please, this is a conspiracy that those damn elitists who dare to listen to more than 2-3 genres at a time and music that was made more than 20 years ago thought up so they can say “suck on that” to everyone else. :P
Anyway, what uncle Zappa had to say about the state of music is still relevant today i think: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZazEM8cgt0
“Greenland Ice Melt Rate From 40% to 97% in 2012”
We’ll be fine, as long as the companies can mitigate production costs by polluting the environment in order to make more profit and then theoretically return it to us via taxes that they don’t pay because they’re allowed to tax evade in various ways. When ALL the ice melts we’ll just replace it with dollars or move to a colony in Mars, until then it’s all leftist (communist even) propaganda that aims to stop economic growth and end the american dream. :P
Mary,
Thanks for alerting us to that important story about the Greenland Ice Melting. We aren’t doing enough to fight global warming.
Mary
That abandoned Kennocott mining facility looks like an excellent place to film a very scary horror movie. I bet it didn’t look like that when people were still using it.
Music is the one tribalism that even progressives tend to feel very strongly about. It saddens me that so many people can’t get past their bias and miss out on entire decades of music. But if you refuse to listen to certain music, then just enjoy your own quietly and stop trying to pretend you’re superior because of what you listen to. And it especially irritates me when people criticize music they’ve never even heard.
But don’t you realize that all pop culture ended when the baby boomers say it did, right around 1969?
They say that music just isn’t the same but I say there has always been a load of crap and the greats aren’t as great as we remember.
It’s funny, everyone says they love jazz and blues but I don’t know anyone who actually listen to them.
True, I think the bad stuff tends to get filtered out and forgotten with time. And I do in fact like some modern pop music. But I have to admit, I can’t watch American Idol or Glee.
My favorite stations are still the independent/college stations, but I’ve noticed that some pop music (especially from when I was a teenager) is starting to sound easier on my ears. Age, I guess?
Wait, lots of people listen to jazz and blues! I listen to jazz vocalists (Nina Simone is a favorite) and have close friends who groove to jazz. Ditto for blues.
I’m not saying nobody ever listens to them, just that everybody I know insists that they love it but never listen.
I think it’s an expectation thing, you are expected to like jazz, blues, and classical if you love music so everyone says they do even when they don’t pursue it. In the same vein you are not supposed to like country (especially current country), disco, pop, etc. It’s posturing really and everyone needs to just unclench and enjoy what they really enjoy instead of what they are supposed to enjoy.
@Mary> Pop music IS easier in the same way as watching “Armageddon” is easier than watching Tarkovski’s “Sacrifice”. Pop music is made easier in order to be appealing to a larger audience.
@DebGod> No offence but listening to some vocalists associated to a genre(for example: Nina Simone) isn’t really listening to that genre.
@mrmisconception> Many hardcore music listeners including myself simply think that the true music lover should listen to everything without limiting himself/herself by the labels that people put on the music. There’s just the endless sea of wonderful music for me, and labels are a way to navigate around it not a way to limit my music experience.
Actually i have found that relatively many people listen to jazz and blues, and classical. What people don’t listen to so much is non-western music and traditional, ethnic music things like: Islamic and persian music, Fados, tropicalia, afrobeat, rempetika, anadolu-rock, Indian classical, polish jazz, Japanese-psych (for example: ja seazer), zeuhl etc etc (there are many genres and scenes).
Wasn’t Venomous Butt Foam opening for Pussy Riot?