Saturday, June 6, 2009

CIRQUE DU ROMEO AND JULIET


A timeless tale of star crossed love told like never before...
With a dramatic mix of aerial circus acts, contemporary dance and classical ballet.

Featuring choreography by Brice Mousset, Francois Perron, Ivo Gueorguiev, Deborah Wingert, Matt Baker, and Jehan

June 13 at 8 pm
June 14 at 2 pm
at
Manhattan Movement & Arts Center
248 West 60th St.
(between Amsterdam & West End)

Call 212.787.1178 for to make a reservation
$10 in advance
$15 at the door

Visit manhattanmovement.com for more info

Friday, June 5, 2009


BBC NEWS
Tickled apes yield laughter clue


WATCH APE LAUGHTER--CLICK HERE

New research has given credence to the idea that laughter evolved in a common ancestor of the great apes and humans.

Researchers tickled 22 young apes and three humans and acoustically analysed the laughing sounds that resulted.

Though the vocalisations varied, the team found that the patterns of changes fit with evolutionary splits in the human and ape family tree.

The research in Current Biology also suggests that gorillas and bonobos have some control over their breathing.

Primate researchers have long guessed that many of the social behaviours that are seen in humans have a basis in our primate lineage.

Studies have noted that vocalisations that some apes make while being tickled are similar to those made when they are playing, and acoustically they share some characteristics with human laughter.

"We have various findings showing that human laughter is deeply rooted in human biology, because, for example, it's present in various cultures, in deaf and blind children," explained Marina Davila-Ross of the University of Portsmouth, the lead author of the study.

"So there have been many claims that these vocalisations have a pre-human basis."

To put the idea on a firmer footing, Dr Davila-Ross made more than 800 recordings of the tickle-induced laughter of the apes and infants.

Many of the characteristics of the actual frequencies in the recordings - such as the central and peak frequencies, and the variability of the frequencies within each laugh - were similar across all the subjects.

The differences among the subjects, however, showed how they may indicate a common ancestor. Chimpanzees and bonobos - our closest relatives of the group tended, like the humans, to have longer series of laughs, each made up of shorter calls.

Another component is in the role that the voice plays in the sound of a laugh.

"When humans laugh, they voice stable sounds: that means the vocal folds are moving in a very regular synchronised way," Dr Davila-Ross explained. "We found these acoustic properties also in bonobos."

Orangutans, by comparison, had fewer "vibration regimes" - meaning they could get fewer tones from their vocal cords.

Because the sounds of the most closely related apes matched most closely in the analysis of the laughter, the researchers believe the work is proof of laughter's shared evolutionary origin, followed by adaptation to its form in the species we see today.

"There's a lot of research that has been going on, but this is the first study that has conducted the phylogenetic approach to measure these acoustics and relate them to one another," Dr Davila-Ross.

ANOTHER CLIP--CLICK HERE

One surprising finding was that gorillas and bonobos had bouts of laughter that lasted as much as three times the length of their breathing cycle - suggesting that they exerted some control over their breathing in the process.

Robert Barton, an evolutionary anthropologist at the University of Durham, called the research "fun, but not all that surprising". He said that there have long been suspicions of a shared evolutionary basis for laughter, in a concept researchers call homology.

"It's widely accepted that these emotional expressions are homologous - people have looked at laughter in social contexts in terms of play faces and vocalisations, but no-one has worked specifically on tickle-induced laughter before.

"It's certainly less surprising than the alternative, which would be that it evolved separately and independently in each group," he told BBC News.

"What I think is the interesting question is the function of the behaviour in the different species, and whether it's functionally the same - that would be fascinating," he said.

Dr Davila-Ross said that the answer to that question interested her group as well, and that she is conducting further experiments to address the question.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/8083230.stm

Published: 2009/06/04 16:56:07 GMT

© BBC MMIX

Thursday, June 4, 2009

Imagination is dead.


What happens to kids? Teaching I get to see lots of little kids. They are funny imaginative, unafraid, and they speak their minds... well most of them. Then what happens? Because I look at these kids and then I look at my peers and older human beings most of whom are unimaginative, afraid, and barely ever voice an original thought (assuming they have them).

So what happens? It could be the parents, it could be society, which includes the educational system coupled with whats portrayed on the media. What kills a child's sense of wonder and the absurd. Is it just manufactured toys and stories? The need to play with certain characters from certain movies means all kids start telling the same stories the same way killing imagination. JIM HENSON IS DEAD. Bummer.

"Dad, What's a Muppet?"
"A creature with wit, social commentary, and positive messages"
"Are you a muppet?"
"I wish."

Anyway this isn't a thing about the positive messages in the muppets its about something that makes kids mindless drones who stop making up their own stories to consuming the mindless stupid crap that is easily marketed and merchandise. I'm sorry but highschool musical and hannah montana and the jonas bros can all go--- well let's just stop there and say they can all go.

Long story short if you get the chance to play with a kid or be near a kid who's playing (that you know) encourage them to make up their own games to tell their own stories. Maybe or just notice their lack of imagination and weep for dead muppets.

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

U.S. Releases Secret List of Nuclear Sites Accidentally




U.S. Releases Secret List of Nuclear Sites Accidentally
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
Published: June 2, 2009 in THE NEW YORK TIMES

The federal government mistakenly made public a 266-page report, its pages marked “highly confidential,” that gives detailed information about hundreds of the nation’s civilian nuclear sites and programs, including maps showing the precise locations of stockpiles of fuel for nuclear weapons.

The publication of the document was revealed Monday in an online newsletter devoted to issues of federal secrecy. That publicity set off a debate among nuclear experts about what dangers, if any, the disclosures posed. It also prompted a flurry of investigations in Washington into why the document had been made public.

On Tuesday evening, after inquiries from The New York Times, the document was withdrawn from a Government Printing Office Web site.

Several nuclear experts argued that any dangers from the disclosure were minimal, given that the general outlines of the most sensitive information were already known publicly.

“These screw-ups happen,” said John M. Deutch, a former Director of Central Intelligence and deputy secretary of defense who is now at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “It’s going further than I would have gone but doesn’t look like a serious breach.”

But David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a private group in Washington that tracks nuclear proliferation, said information that shows where nuclear fuels are stored “can provide thieves or terrorists inside information that can help them seize the material, which is why that kind of data is not given out.”

The information, considered sensitive but not classified, was assembled for transmission later this year to the International Atomic Energy Agency as part of a process by which the United States is opening itself up to stricter inspections in hopes that foreign countries, especially Iran and other states believed to be clandestinely developing nuclear arms, will do likewise.

President Obama sent the document to Congress on May 5 for Congressional review and possible revision, and the Government Printing Office subsequently posted the draft declaration on its Web site.

As of Tuesday evening, the reasons for that action remained a mystery. On its cover, the document attributes its publication to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. But Lynne Weil, the committee spokeswoman, said the committee “neither published it nor had control over its publication.”

Gary Somerset, a spokesman for the printing office, said it had “produced” the document “under normal operating procedures” but had now removed it from its Web site pending further review.

The document contains no military information about the nation’s stockpile of nuclear arms, or about the facilities and programs that guard such weapons. Rather, it presents what appears to be an exhaustive listing of the sites that comprise the nation’s civilian nuclear complex, which stretches coast to coast and includes nuclear reactors and highly sensitive sites at weapon laboratories.

Steven Aftergood, a security expert at the Federation of American Scientists in Washington, revealed the existence of the document Monday in “Secrecy News,” an electronic newsletter he publishes on the Web.

Mr. Aftergood expressed bafflement at its disclosure, calling it “a one-stop shop for information on U.S. nuclear programs.”

In his letter of transmittal to Congress, Mr. Obama characterized the information as “sensitive but unclassified” and said that all the information that the United States gathered to comply with the advanced protocol “shall be exempt from disclosure” under the Freedom of Information Act.

The report details the locations of hundreds of nuclear sites and activities. Each page is marked across the top “Highly Confidential Safeguards Sensitive” in capital letters, with the exception of pages that detailed additional information like site maps. In his transmittal letter, Mr. Obama said the cautionary language was a classification category of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s inspectors.

The agency, in Vienna, is a unit of the United Nations whose mandate is to enforce a global treaty that tries to keep civilian nuclear programs from engaging in secret military work.

In recent years, it has sought to gain wide adherence to a set of strict inspection rules, known formally as the additional protocol. The rules give the agency powerful new rights to poke its nose beyond known nuclear sites into factories, storage areas, laboratories and anywhere else that a nation might be preparing to flex its nuclear muscle. The United States signed the agreement in 1998 but only recently moved forward with carrying it out.

The report lists many particulars about nuclear programs and facilities at the nation’s three nuclear weapons laboratories — Los Alamos, Livermore and Sandia — as well as dozens of other federal and private nuclear sites.

One of the most serious disclosures appears to center on the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, which houses the Y-12 National Security Complex, a sprawling site ringed by barbed wire and armed guards. It calls itself the nation’s “Fort Knox” for highly enriched uranium, a main fuel of nuclear arms.

The report lists “Tube Vault 16, East Storage Array,” as a prospective site for nuclear inspection. It said the site, in Building 9720-5, contains highly enriched uranium for “long-term storage.”

An attached map shows the exact location of Tube Vault 16 along a hallway and its orientation in relation to geographic north, although not its location in the Y-12 complex.

Tube vaults are typically cylinders embedded in concrete that prevent the accidental formation of critical masses of highly enriched uranium that could undergo bursts of nuclear fission, known as a criticality incident. According to federal reports, a typical tube vault can hold up to 44 tons of highly enriched uranium in 200 tubes. Motion detectors and television cameras typically monitor each vault.

Thomas B. Cochran, a senior scientist in the nuclear program of the Natural Resources Defense Council, a private group in Washington that tracks atomic arsenals, called the document harmless. “It’s a better listing than anything I’ve seen” of the nation’s civilian nuclear complex, Mr. Cochran said. “But it’s no national-security breach. It confirms what’s already out there and adds a bit more information.”

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Seven reasons to stop listening to Coldplay


Seriously just stop listening to coldplay... just stop try some of these on for size





God - The Gents



HENCHMEN







Monday, June 1, 2009

More eyecandy of coming celluloid gems



Sunday, May 31, 2009

Not enough good naturing maiming in today's entertainment media

Seriously they just don't make em like they used to

 

" "The difference between a madman and a professional is that a pro does as well as he can within what he has set out to do and a madman does exceptionally well at what he can't help doing.” ― Charles Bukowski