Entries from June 2005 ↓

A hedgehog’s heart beats 190 times a minute on average and drops to only 20 beats per minute during hibernation.

An average beaver can cut down two hundred trees a year.

An average pig squeals at a range from 100 to 115 decibels. =continued=

Stare at the centre of the figure for a while. Some scintillating activity will build up in the violet and blue annuli. Some observers also report a circular rotation within these regions; things will begin to “run around in circles”.

This image “The Enigma” is by Isia Leviant (1984).

Mechanism currently unknown.

Sources:

Zeki S, Watson JD, Frackowiak RS (1993). Going beyond the information given: the relation of illusory visual motion to brain activity. Proc R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 252: 215–22

Barch D, Kumar T, & Glaser DA (2003) Modeling the illusory motion of Enigma with an excitable neuronal array [Abstract]. Journal of Vision, 3(12), 72a

Zanker J (2004) Naturwissenschaften 91:149–156

“Breakfast”
24″ x 36″
Oil on canvas
Gift
2004

Baseball is different from any other sport. Very different. For instance, in most sports you score points or goals; in baseball you score runs. In most sports the ball, or object, is put in play by the offensive team; in baseball the defensive team puts the ball in play, and only the defense is allowed to touch the ball. In fact, in baseball if an offensive player touches the ball intentionally, he’s out; sometimes unintentionally, he’s out.

=continued=

3 medium size bananas weigh approximately 1 pound.

A cluster of bananas is called a hand and consists of 10 to 20 bananas, which are known as fingers.

As bananas ripen, the starch in the fruit turns to sugar. Therefore, the riper the banana the sweeter it will taste. =continued=

Met a steel drum player at a party this weekend and had an enlightening shop conversation involving the tuning and layout of notes on the instrument. Found some great information from A Handbook For Steel Pan Making And Tuning:

The layout of the notes in the pan is, of course, important for the ergonomy of the player. But there are also important acoustical considerations in the positioning of the notes in a good pan. As the whole pan vibrates every time a note is struck, it is important that the notes that are vibrating the most sounds well together.

To understand the theoretical foundations for a good note layout it is useful to know the musical relations of the partials of a harmonic tone, see the chapter about partials above. The intervals that have the most harmonic relationship are the octave, the fifth, the fourth and the third. If notes at these intervals ring together with the struck note, they will support its harmonic spectrum. Therefore, a favourable design is to put these notes close to each other.

The general idea for a good note layout in steel pans is to position notes with a harmonic relationship as close to each other as possible, while placing notes with a non-harmonic relationship as far apart as possible. A design notion that is valid for all steel pans is that the octave counterparts always are placed close together. Fifths, fourths or thirds are also consequently placed close to each other in some pans, as in the fourths-and-fifths tenor and the quadrophonic pan with their ingenious designs.

Notes with a non-harmonic relationship - as the minor or the major second - are usually placed as far apart as possible, preferably in separate drums. If the notes with semitone intervals are spread consistently over different drums, pans with different numbers of drums will have correlated minimum intervals that have to be placed in the same drum: Two drums - a major second, three drums - a minor third, four drums - a major third.

Principle for a harmonical distribution of notes.

If notes with a dissonant harmonic interval - one or two semitones apart - have to be placed in the same drum, they are usually placed on opposite sides of the drum. On the other hand, if the smallest interval between the notes that have to be placed in the same drum is harmonic, the notes are put close to each other to support each other’s harmonic spectra.

The acoustical implications of a good layout are that it will make the pan sound better and make it easier to tune. A pan with more octave notes will be harder to tune due to the interaction of the notes. But it will also be easier to get a good tone in the end, because the notes in the upper octave will support the lower ones with higher partials. This is very easy to demonstrate; just put a finger on a high note while playing on its lower octave counterpart - this will usually make the brilliance of the lower tone disappear.

“Roads” between notes

The acoustic function of the “roads” - the space between the notes - is to damp the acoustic waves coming from the vibrating note before they reach the surrounding notes. This means that an increased distance (or a double groove) reduces the interaction between two adjacent notes.

The more dissonant the relation between two notes, the more they need to be separated. On the contrary, the better the acoustic separation between the notes, the less the need will be to keep the dissonant tones apart.

Sometimes, ergonomic or construction considerations are judged to be more important than the acoustical ones. The double tenor is an example of this. A double groove has been introduced to make it possible to put dissonant notes close together and still have a well-sounding instrument with many notes in it.

Pans that are designed with harmonically sounding notes close to each other, as the fifths-and-fourths tenor, may have adjacent notes put close together, with just a single groove between them. Octave counterparts should always be put as close together as possible, to enable positive feedback.

Played this for hours. I can’t remember what my record was.

To see this classic commercial, download the following .wmv file (1mb) to your computer and open it:

>> Really Cheesy ’80s Simon Commercial

Abraham Lincoln, who invented a hydraulic device for lifting ships over shoals, was the only US president ever granted a patent.

According to the Gemological Institute of America, up until the 1730’s, India was the only source for diamonds in the world.

Antarctica is the only continent without reptiles or snakes. =continued=

“Don’t cover it. Discover it.”

To see this classic commercial, download the following .wmv file (1mb) to your computer and open it: A.1. Steak Sauce Commercial

A penguin swims at a speed of approximately 15 miles per hour.

A person uses approximately fifty-seven sheets of toilet paper each day.

An adult porcupine has approximately 30,000 quills on its body, which are replaced every year. =continued=

An 8-bit color video game for the Atari 2600 which tapped into a role-playing vibe. The first of its kind in a time of shoot ‘em up staples like Asteroids and Missile Command, paving the way for countless others. Hop over the cobra. Cross the swamp via alligator heads. Get the chalice!

To see this classic commercial, download the following .wmv file (1mb) to your computer and open it: Pitfall Commercial

Picking up a couple vintage BDP Slingerland bongos this year gave me the opportunity to mount a flat skin to a drum for the first time. What an experience; it’s a task man has been doing for thousands of years. =continued=

The Seven-Up Company’s roots go back to 1920, when C. L. Grigg banked on his 30 years of experience in advertising and merchandising to form The Howdy Corporation in St. Louis, Mo. Although he named the company after the Howdy Orange drink he pioneered, his goal was to create a wholesome and distinctive soft drink that would prove irresistible to the nation’s consumers.

Grigg spent more than two years testing 11 different formulas of lemon-flavored drinks. He settled on one that fulfilled the characteristics he sought: refreshing and thirst-quenching. Grigg introduced his new soft drink two weeks before the stock market crashed in October 1929. It was a caramel-colored, lithiated lemon-lime soda, which he positioned as a drink with a “flavor wallop” to market alongside the already-successful Howdy Orange drink.

It cost more than its competition. It also carried the burden of an unwieldy name, “Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon-Lime Soda,” and it competed against more than 600 lemon-lime soft drinks already in the marketplace. In spite of all the obstacles, the new brand sold well. Shortly afterwards, Grigg changed the brand’s name to 7UP.

The earliest 7UP advertising featured a winged 7UP logo and described the soft drink as “a glorified drink in bottles only. Seven natural flavors blended into a savory, flavory drink with a real wallop.” Acknowledging the success of the 7UP trademark in 1936, Grigg changed the name of The Howdy Corporation to The Seven-Up Company. By the late 1940s, 7UP had become the third best-selling soft drink in the world.

In 1967, The Seven-Up Company introduced the UNCOLA advertising campaign, which sent 7UP sales rocketing nationwide. Consumers endorsed 7UP as a viable, thirst-quenching alternative to colas. The UNCOLA tag immediately joined the nation’s vernacular and remained synonymous with 7UP, despite subsequent campaigns that featured new slogans. =continued=