Accessing Universal Intelligence.
Human Ingenuity and Creativity. Our Cultural Heritage.
Favourite things. Music and Movies. Nature. Items that interest me on any topic.
A century after Ada Lovelace, Rear Admiral Grace Hopper became one of the first to program computers in WWII. She invented the compiler — an English to computer translator — and popularized “computer bug” after a moth shorted out a Mark II.
Annie Easley didn’t have a college degree when she started working at NASA in 1955, but that didn’t stop her from creating programs that measured solar winds, optimized energy conversion, and controlled rocket boosters in a 34-year career.
Marie Curie
Of course, we couldn’t forget Marie Curie, the chemist and physicist
whose groundbreaking work on radioactivity won her two Nobel Prizes —
the first awarded to a woman. Today she remains one of the most famous female scientists of all time.
Mária Telkes
Not satisfied with developing saltwater stills, solar ovens, and “coolness”-storing air conditioners, Mária Telkes helped build the first solar-heated house in the 1940s — which managed to keep a cozy temperature through a “cold Massachusetts winter.”
The first woman
to earn a Ph.D. in physics from Cambridge University, Blodgett invented
non-reflective glass in 1938 — which would later find use in cameras
and windows. If you’re wearing glasses, you can partly thank Blodgett
for the lenses.
Ida Henrietta Hyde
A champion for women scientists, Hyde invented a microelectrode capable of stimulating cell tissue, a device that later revolutionized her own field of science. In 1902, she became the first female member of the American Physiological Society.
Virginia Apgar
If you’re a nurse, you might know the Apgar score — a system for assessing the health of newborns. It came from Virginia Apgar, an anesthesiologist who did “more to improve the health of mothers [and] babies … than anyone in the 20th century.”
Ever wanted to see the Leaning Tower of Pisa? It is certainly worth going if you can. The white marble buildings are beautiful. However if you can't - this is almost as good.And you can spend as much time there as you wish. Aerial Photo Panorama has a great site!
The Rolling Stones have decided to record a new album in what would be their first in a decade, guitarist Keith Richards says. Richards, at an event to promote his latest solo album, said that
the Stones planned to return to the studio after a hitherto unannounced
tour of South America in early 2016. “Actually, I was in London
last week and the boys and I got together. And, yeah, there are now
definite plans to record,” Richards told a forum in New York organised
by internet radio station iHeartRadio. The now septuagenarian
rockers have toured actively in recent years, recently completing a
summer swing through North America, but have not released a new album
since A Bigger Bang in 2005. That album, in turn, was the first by The Rolling Stones in eight years. The Rolling Stones are widely regarded as one of rock’s defining acts, producing classic albums such as Sticky Fingers and Exile on Main St, and feuding with The Beatles for the crown of Britain’s top band. Richards, known for his hard-living and cantankerous public comments, on Friday releases Crosseyed Heart, his first solo album in 23 years. The
album — featuring Richards, rather than Stones frontman Mick Jagger, on
vocals — brings in a range of collaborators including the jazz and
blues singer Norah Jones. With many thanks to The Australian
From You Tube: A Day in Pompeii, a Melbourne Winter Masterpieces exhibition, was held
at Melbourne Museum from 26 June to 25 October 2009. Over 330,000 people
visited the exhibition -- an average of more than 2,700 per day --
making it the most popular traveling exhibition ever staged by an
Australian museum.
Zero One created the animation for an
immersive 3D theatre installation which gave visitors a chance to feel
the same drama and terror of the town's citizens long ago, and witness
how a series of eruptions wiped out Pompeii over 48 hours. [...] Many thanks to Lidka for sending me this.
One of the biggest selling albums of the last 25 years is the
Beatles compilation 1 and, on November 6, Apple Corps Ltd. and UMG will
release a new version in a number of formats with fifty promotional
films and videos. The 27-track CD/DVD and CD/Blu-ray pairs beautifully restored videos
for each song, with new stereo and 5.1 Dolby Digital and DTS HD surround
audio mixes. The brand new Beatles 1+ celebrates their career in over
200 minutes through 50 promotional films and videos. This includes the
27 No.1s, with the restored videos, along with a second disc of 23
videos, including alternate versions, as well as rarely seen and newly
restored films and videos; all include new audio mixes in deluxe CD/2DVD
and CD/2Blu-ray packages. The 27-track audio CD is also being made
available with new stereo mixes. A 2LP, 180-gram vinyl package will
follow. The new editions of The Beatles 1 have been made possible following
extensive research, and restoration of the original promo films, classic
television appearances and other carefully selected videos spanning the
band’s history. Apple Corps dug deep into The Beatles’ vaults to select
a broad range of films and videos for their rarity, historical
significance and quality of performance. An 18-person team of film and
video technicians and restoration artists was assembled by Apple Corps
to undertake painstaking frame-by-frame cleaning, color-grading, digital
enhancement and new edits that took months of dedicated,
’round-the-clock work to accomplish. The result is a visual rundown of The Beatles’ number one records, as
well as the additional tracks on the bonus disc of Beatles 1+ that show
the band in previously unseen standards of clarity and quality; many of
the films and videos have never before been commercially released, in
whole or in part. The Beatles 1 and 1+ offer the restored films, including 35mm
negatives scanned in 4K and digitally restored with new stereo and 5.1
surround audio remixes, produced from the original analogue tapes by the
GRAMMY® winning team of Giles Martin with Sam Okell at Abbey Road
Studios. For four of the videos, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr have
provided exclusive audio commentary and filmed introductions,
respectively. The 1+ Deluxe Edition is presented in an expanded 124-page
illustrated hardcover book which includes ‘an appreciation’ of The
Beatles’ groundbreaking films and videos by music journalist and author
Mark Ellen and extensive, detailed track/video annotation by music
historian and author Richard Havers. The formats for the release: Single CD
Single DVD
Single Blue-Ray
CD/DVD
CD/Blu-Ray
CD/2-DVD (1+)
CD/2-Blu-Ray (1+)
The track lists and more information can be found here. With many thanks to Noise 11
Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr spruik Beatles ‘experimental’ videos
The Beatles accidentally
revolutionised the music video because they were unable to meet the
demand for live performances, the two surviving members of the band say. Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr suggest that their 1960s promotional
films, including footage of them eating fish and chips while messing
about on an exercise bicycle, were the beginning of an art form that
matured into the slick videos that gave rise to MTV and now dominate
YouTube.
Although the band was not the first to be filmed
performing, its members transformed the music video by appearing without
their instruments while singing to a musical track, and doing novel
stunts such as reversing footage so that McCartney appeared to be
jumping into a tree.
McCartney and Starr’s comments relate to Tuesday’s announcement about the release in November of 50 pieces of footage for 1+, a CD-DVD package that follows on from 1, an album of remastered tracks released in 2000.
McCartney says the Beatles experimented with psychedelic imagery while making a film for Strawberry Fields Forever.
“We thought that kind of surrealist art film was very appropriate for
the times,” he says. “We were great admirers of Swedish art films —
Ingmar Bergman and the like — and we’d met a Swedish director called
Peter Goldmann in a club and said, ‘Could you direct this?’ And here we
were going backwards and now running forwards and now running in slow
motion.”
Starr says it was a turning point in music. “We called
these videos ‘artistic movies’. We came up with the idea of making them
because, suddenly, we were the biggest band in the world and we couldn’t
be in all places at all times. So we thought, ‘Let’s send them the
videos of the tracks’ we were promoting … And it turned into MTV.”
The spontaneous way the videos were made is shown in a video for Hey Jude, which features footage of a homeless man known to the band only as Bill, whom the Beatles befriended in London’s Soho area.
McCartney says he wanted to fill the video, recorded in 1968 for
Frost on Sunday, with as many diverse people as possible.
“There’s a Sikh in a turban and some mods hanging around the piano. And
people with different jobs — there’s a milkman, a sailor, an army cadet
and a nurse.
“And even Bill, this homeless guy who used to hang around outside the studio in Old Compton Street in Soho where we edited Magical Mystery Tour,
always there with his carnation and his bottle. We saw him every day
and became friends. We invited him into the editing suite and,
eventually, to the filming of Hey Jude. You can see him in the video, holding his little bottle up.”
