A Guide to Navigating NPR's top 100 Sci Fi & Fantasy Books

find the original here

This makes me incredibly happy -- a helpful guide to picking the perfect scifi/fantasy book.

Dock Ellis & the LSD No-No

A friend shared this last night and I died laughing. The illustrations are incredible, and the audio is Dock Ellis himself giving a play-by-play of one of sports greatest achievements... on acid. 

No Mas explains "In celebration of the greatest athletic achievement by a man on a psychedelic journey, No Mas and artist James Blagden proudly present the animated tale of Dock Ellis' legendary LSD no-hitter. In the past few years we've heard all too much about performance enhancing drugs from greenies to tetrahydrogestrinone, and not enough about performance inhibiting drugs. If our evaluation of the records of athletes like Mark McGwire, Roger Clemens, Marion Jones, and Barry Bonds needs to be revised downwards with an asterisk, we submit that that Dock Ellis record deserves a giant exclamation point. Of the 263 no-hitters ever thrown in the Big Leagues, we can only guess how many were aided by steroids, but we can say without question that only one was ever thrown on acid.

Sadly, the great Dock Ellis died last December at 63. A year before, radio producers Donnell Alexander and Neille Ilel, had recorded an interview with Ellis in which the former Pirate right hander gave a moment by moment account of June 12, 1970, the day he no-hit the San Diego Padres. Alexander and Ilels original four minute piece appeared March 29, 2008 on NPRs Weekend America. When we stumbled across that piece this past June, Blagden and Isenberg were inspired to create a short animated film around the original audio."

This reminds me of Vice Magazine's "On Acid" series where they send hallucinating "reporters" out to explore abandoned military bases, cover London Fashion week or interview Kevin Smith. 

Amy Shackleton

Here's a goody via Reddit. Toronto-based artist Amy Shackleton doesn't use paintbrushes -- instead she uses squirt bottles, gravity and a rotating canvas. It's incredible to watch her work -- here is 30 hours of painting sped up to 3 minutes. That's 800x speed for anyone counting. 

Aurora From ISS Orbit

NASA has posted this awesome video shot from the International Space Station as it crossed the Indian Ocean September 17th.

They explain: 

The sped-up movie spans the time period from 12:22 to 12:45 PM ET.

While aurora are often seen near the poles, this aurora appeared at lower latitudes due to a geomagnetic storm – the insertion of energy into Earth's magnetic environment called the magnetosphere – caused by a coronal mass ejection (CME) from the sun that erupted on September 14, 2011. The storm was a moderate one, rated with what's called a KP index of 6 on a scale that goes from 0 to 9, caused by just a glancing blow from the CME.

How are aurora generated?

As solar particles from an incoming CME move into Earth's magnetosphere they travel around to its back side -- or night side, since it is on the opposite side from the sun -- along the magnetic field lines. When these magnetic field lines reconnect in an area known as the magnetotail, energy is released and it sends the particles down onto Earth's poles, and sometimes even lower latitudes. As the particles bombard oxygen and nitrogen in the upper atmosphere, the atoms release a photon of light that we see as the beautiful colors of the aurora.

Music Monday

Deep Chatham - Carnival

Deep Chatham - Carnival from Alex Loops on Vimeo.

For the inaugural version of Music Monday I thought I'd share my newest favorite-band-of-all-times, Deep Chatham. The folk/bluegrass trio hails from Pittsboro, North Carolina -- just 10 minutes from my hometown. The group is composed of two NC natives -- Julian Sikes on guitar and Jeff Loops on upright base, and their newest addition to the group Matt Heckler on banjo/fiddle. 

The harmonies and rhythm they belt out are simply incredible, and reminiscent of much, much more experienced musicians (Julian & Jeff are in their early 20s). I had the great fortune to catch them two weeks ago at Mojo Cafe in San Francisco -- straight from arriving at SFO from NC -- they had the entire audience captivated -- stomping, clapping & banging silverware together with the beat. 

Deep Chatham just released their first album, a sampling of which is available to stream on their Myspace Page. I highly suggest The Cursed & Change Direction in the Blue, along with their hit Carolina Rain. 

Time-Lapse San Francisco

Wesley Townsend Kitten (ahah, Kitten) of WTK Photography spent a year and over 300 hours on this incredible time lapse video of San Francisco. It's truly beautiful. 

The City from WTK Photography on Vimeo.

Take that, Einstein.

 First use of a hydrogen bubble chamber to
detect neutrinos, November 13, 1970

Today, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), the largest physics lab in the world,  claimed to have clocked a subatomic particle that travels faster than the speed of light.

If we all remember high school physics, Einstein's 1905 special theory of relativity -- E = mc² -- Where E is energy, m is mass and c represents the speed of light) -- stated that nothing travels faster than the speed of light. It boils down to if an object is traveling really fast (say, near the speed of light), it cannot go faster, regardless of how much energy it absorbes or how much its momentum increases. And for the past 106 years it's remained unquestioned. If verified, this could be huge. Like, fundamental-laws-of-nature-changing huge.

CERN measured a neutrino beam (an electrically neutral weakly interacting elementary subatomic particle) that traveled from a particle accelerator in Geneva to another lab 454 miles aways in Italy 60 nanoseconds faster than the speed of light.

The European lab is asking others to replicate their test just so they can be sure, Chicago-based Fermilab is the first to take up the challenge, and I can't wait to see what they come up with.

Source: Lab Claims Faster-Than-Light-Particle -- AP Press

All photos via Wikimedia Commons

Desktop Decorating

My friend Steven turned me on to L.A. artist Bobby Solomon's design blog The Fox Is Black a while back when I was admiring his expansive collection of awesome desktop backgrounds.

Bobby has been curating The Desktop Wallpaper Project since 2008 -- he collaborates with artists to produce and distribute free-for-personal use wallpapers and posts computer, iPhone, iPad & PSP versions.

That's Interesting..

The Battle of Magenta by Adolphe Yvon

The color magenta was named after a 1859 battle in Magenta -- a town near Milan in northern Italy. The color was "discovered" that year, and was compared to the hue of the blood-soaked ground in the battle's aftermath.


In more recent times, T-mobile has been attempting to copyright the color magenta in the Netherlands as it's used in the company's logo. Free Magenta websites have popped up protest the copyrighting of a color.

When Patents Attack!

A few weeks ago This American Life aired a great show about Patents gone wrong. It's an interesting look at patent trolling, and Intellectual Ventures, one of the biggest, baddest patent offenders.

The program "tells the fascinating story of how an idea enshrined in the US constitution to promote progress and innovation, is now being used to do the opposite."

The entire program can be streamed or downloaded it for free here. 

AI v. AI

That is one cranky chatbot.

From Apparatjik's "We Are Here" album. Apparatjik is a supergroup made up of Jonas Bjerre of Mew, Guy Berryman of Coldplay and Mange Furuholmen of Ah-Ha. Seriously. 

Interesting fact: Apparatjik is Swedish for apparatchick, which is derived from Russian and is used to describe someone who "causes bureaucratic bottlenecks in otherwise efficient organizations."

Hello, world

Today is a fine day to start blogging about the varied facts, projects and people I bookmark in my "That's Interesting!" folder.