Monday 16 November 2009
Koalas may be extinct in 30 years
Australia's koalas could be wiped out within 30 years unless urgent action is taken to halt a decline in population, according to researchers.They say development, climate change and bushfires have all combined to send the numbers of wild koalas plummeting.
The Australian Koala Foundation said a recent survey showed the population could have dropped by more than half in the past six years.
Many have been killed by the sexually transmitted disease chlamydia.
Previous estimates put the number of koalas at more than 100,000 - but the latest calculations suggest there could now be as few as 43,000.
The foundation collected field data from 1,800 sites and 80,000 trees to calculate the numbers...
Sunday 15 November 2009
Wikipedia sued by German killers in privacy claim
Two German men who killed an actor in 1990 are suing the charity behind the online encyclopaedia Wikipedia, claiming that its inclusion of detail of their crimes infringes their right to privacy.
The case has become an instant online cause celebre – with one lawyer saying that the integrity of history itself is at stake – because it ranges the US's First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of speech, against German privacy and criminal laws, which dictate that after a certain period a crime is "spent" and cannot be referred to. The UK has similar rules on the reporting of lesser crimes.
The two men, who cannot be named here because the Guardian is available in Germany, became infamous for the killing, for which they were sentenced to life in prison in 1993. They were released in 2007 and 2008. But Alexander Stopp, the lawyer for the two men, noted that Germany's courts allow a criminal's name to be withheld in news reports once they have served a prison term and a set period has expired.
"They should be able to go on and be resocialised, and lead a life without being publicly stigmatised" for their crime, Stopp told the New York Times. "A criminal has a right to privacy, too, and a right to be left alone."
German editors of Wikipedia, which is available in multiple languages around the world, have already removed the killers' names from the German-language version about the victim, Walter Sedlmayr. But Stopp has also filed suit in German courts to demand that the Wikimedia Foundation, which funds and runs Wikipedia, remove their names from the English-language article...
Cymatics Scientist Says Sound is a Bubble, Not a Wave
John Stuart Reid proposes that sound is not actually a wave, as has been thought for centuries, but a “bubble” and that this is what creates the amazing patterns we see captured with cymatics. In his article, The Physics of Sound, Reid says that sound has previously been thought to travel as a wave because of the graphical, wave-based representation we have used to capture sound visibly in the past…
“The graphical representation of sound ‘waves’ in the past is why the term ’sound waves’ is used, causing the false impression that sound travels as a wave.”
…but that cymatics allows us to realize that the true form of sound is actually spherical, or bubble-like, in nature:
“Sound in air is the transfer of periodic movements between adjacent colliding atoms or molecules. This sonic energy typically expands away from the site of the collisions as a spherical or bubble-shaped emanation.”
In this fascinating article he also discusses the nature of light, and why his studies in cymatics have led him to believe that in certain cases, sound could actually “create visible light.”
To read more about John Stuart Reid’s studies in cymatics, sound bubbles and the connection between sound and light, go here.
To start conducting your own cymatics experiments using 3 common household items, download your free video instructions here.
Julian Cope - Krautrocksampler: One Head's Guide to the Great Kosmische Musik - 1968 Onwards, (PDF)
Krautrocksampler: One Head's Guide to the Great Kosmische Musik - 1968 Onwards, written by former The Teardrop Explodes singer, Julian Cope, is a book describing the underground music scene in Germany from 1968 through the 1970s. The book was first published in the United Kingdom in 1995 by Head Heritage, and was later translated into German and French. It is now out of print with original copies exchanging hands for surprisingly large amounts.Krautrocksampler gives a subjective and very animated account of the phenomenon of krautrock from the perspective of the author:
"I wrote this short history because of the way I feel about the music, that its supreme Magic & Power has lain Unrecognised for too long."
The book comprises a narrative of the rock and roll culture in post-WWII West Germany, along with chapters focusing on individual major artists, including Faust, Tangerine Dream, Neu!, Amon Düül I and II, Ash Ra Tempel, Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser and the Cosmic Jokers and advocate of psychedelic drugs Timothy Leary. It also has an annotated appendix of "50 Kosmische Classics." Some chapters appeared previously in the UK music magazine The Wire and in the German music magazine Spex.
(PDF)
See also HerrB's post of the recent BBC documentary on Krautrock
HERE
