25 Jul 2008

Everything burns





So I wasn’t prepared for this at all. I mean I had read some reviews and the general consensus was along the lines of: ‘We don’t want to build up expectations, BUT it’s the best thing ever.’

Basically, it’s so good, on so many levels I won’t even bother to explain it here. Just go and see it. And yes – everyone is good, Bale, Eckhart, Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine… but Heath Ledger pretty much owns this film.

20 Jul 2008

More mags


The depths of my wardrobe just keep on giving. Here’s what I'm pretty sure is the first issue of R.A.D, from 21 YEARS AGO!! (note the BMX Action Bike logo still in the corner):



And finally, one of my Favourite Transworld covers ever:

 

Cement Fun

Apart from unsuccessfully navigating the holes, I had a pretty good day at Stockwell last week. Then in a moment of great coincidence - while clearing out even more drawers - found this little beauty:


Shane Obrien and Jason Jessee at Brixton Beach.

Heres the cover (feat: the 'heaviest guy at the park'):



Also dug this up: Classic Rbt Williams:

 

18 Jul 2008

‘This means something… this is important…’

Grunting fish have helped scientists to date the origins of vocal sounds to about 400million years ago. US researchers have found that the area of a fish's brain that drives vocalisation is extremely primitive. Writing in the journal Science, they say it suggests that the ability to communicate through sound emerged very early in the evolution of vertebrates.

The closely related toadfish and midshipman fish are nocturnal, living along the north-west coast of the US and Canada. Professor Bass said: "They make different kinds of sounds in different social contexts. Just as birds will use one call to attract a mate and another call to scare a rival off, the fish do exactly the same thing." A deep hum lures females to a male's nest; a sharp grunt is used to defend territory.

To investigate the origins of vocalisation, the team looked at the area of the fish's brain that was responsible for controlling the pitch and duration of the calls, which is known as vocal patterning.
Professor Bass told BBC News: "We identified where this pattern generator developed in the brains of these fishes, and then we looked at where it was in frogs, birds and primates."
The team discovered that the neural networks for vocalization were all situated in the same region.

"We stood back and said: 'Oh my god, this is all in the same place'. "It was astonishing how similar it was."

The team compared this information with the evolutionary "family tree" for vertebrates. Because the evolution of the fish can be traced back further than that of amphibians, birds and primates, the team was able to deduce when the ability to vocalise came about: "You could see that was a very ancient part of the nervous system shared by all vertebrates.
"We came to the conclusion that it must have evolved early in time before these different groups emerged from the evolutionary family tree - around the time when bony fishes evolved about 400 million years ago." Click title for link to BBC article.

 

10 Jul 2008

It has just been discovered that SYZURRRP – is Latin for ‘Stop making records’.



So, TIME magazine have compared Lil Wayne to Bob Dylan. Yes you read that right – TIME magazine.

Anyway, I’m not a huge fan of Wayne or that whole steez, and not too schooled in that area of Hip Hop , as it holds no interest for me. But, even I know well enough that those 2 names shouldn’t be in the same sentence. Was Eminem the Hip Hop Woody Guthrie? No.

The reason I think they shouldn't over-emphasise the greatness of ‘Tha Carter’ is that these retard little gangsta wannabes already know more about Wayne than about Dylan, or even Hendrix. They'll know more about his whole crew, mix tapes, rhymes, and life stories of those rappers – than about Tommie Smith or John Carlos, Miles Davis or Donald Byrd.

These children have yet to realise that, as has been said before, ‘The world is not your block. The world is bigger than your block.’ Get on a bus – get on a train and go see what the world is about before you form an opinion, or start talking with such certainty about your bitch-ass 15 year old ‘life’.


1 Jul 2008

Whimper / bang...




To quote Stephen Hawking: ‘Some have asked if turning on the LHC could produce some disastrous, unexpected result. Indeed, some theories of spacetime suggest the particle collisions might create mini black holes. If that happened, I have proposed that these black holes would radiate particles and disappear. If we saw this at the LHC, it would open up a new area of physics, and I might even win a Nobel prize. But I'm not holding my breath.’

Excellent. Too many people on the bloody planet anyway. And if it all goes wrong, at least I won’t have to worry about paying my credit card off…