Tuesday, 15 March 2011

1% of all Americans...

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Brian Cox says BBC is wrong over show music

Physicist Professor Brian Cox has said the BBC made a mistake by agreeing to turn down the music volume for his scientific series Wonders of the Universe.

The BBC agreed to lower the sound after receiving 118 complaints about the background music on the first episode being too loud and/or intrusive.
Speaking on Radio 4's Start the Week, Cox said he thought it was an error.
"We can sometimes be too responsive to the minority of people that complain."
"It should be a cinematic experience - it's a piece of film on television, not a lecture," he added.
In the BBC Two series, Cox reveals how the most fundamental scientific principles and laws explain the story of the universe and humanity. Each show this series has been watched by more than 3m people.
Pop career The four-part series tackles life's big issues, such as what we are and where we come from, as well as how gravity sculpts the entire universe.
The BBC has yet to respond to Cox's comments.
Cox began his career as a rock star, when his band Dare signed a deal with A&M records in 1986. Dare recorded two albums and toured with Jimmy Page, Gary Moore and Europe before breaking up in 1992.
Cox then joined D'Ream, whose song Things Can Only Get Better was famously used by Tony Blair as the Labour Party election song in 1997.
He studied at Manchester University while he was in the band, and in 2009, he became a professor of particle physics at the same university.
He has since gone on to become a radio and TV presenter. His credits include BBC Two's Stargazing and Wonders of the Solar System.
@'BBC'

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Obama Owns The Treatment Of Manning Now

By firing PJ Crowley for the offense of protesting against the sadistic military treatment of Bradley Manning, the president has now put his personal weight behind prisoner abuse. The man who once said that forced nudity was a form of torture, now takes the word of those enforcing it over a distinguished public servant. Money quote:

A little-known factor in Crowley's comments about Manning was revealed Saturday by April Ryan, a White House correspondent for American Urban Radio who covered Crowley in the Clinton White House. Ryan wrote on Twitter that Crowley "dislikes treatment of prisoners as his father was a Prisoner of War."
While it's true that Crowley's father was imprisoned during World War II, people close him downplay that as a major factor in his comments about Manning, saying the biggest factor is simply that Crowley believes what he said.

Yes. It is not necessary to have had a father as a prisoner of war to see the evil of prisoner abuse, and the stain it places on everyone enforcing it. And in the military, as with Bush, so with Obama. As commander-in-chief, Obama is directly responsible for the inhumane treatment of an American citizen. And Crowley's firing will make it even less likely in the future that decent public servants will speak out against such needless sadism.
Andrew Sullivan @'The Daily Dish'

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Monday, 14 March 2011

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Psychedelic icon leaves 'lasting legacy'

Psychedelic icon Owsley 'Bear' Stanley in 1969 with the Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia. (Rosie McGhee)

Owsley "Bear" Stanley, who fuelled the 1960s flower power generation with LSD and worked closely with the Grateful Dead, has been remembered as a man of "enormous influence".

Stanley worked as a sound engineer for the band and is remembered for the millions of LSD doses he manufactured at his lab in San Francisco, which helped to kick off the psychedelic era.
The 76-year-old died on Sunday in a car crash close to his home near Cairns, in far north Queensland. His wife Sheilah was also injured in the crash but has now been released from hospital.
Former Rolling Stones and Grateful Dead tour manager, Sam Cutler, says Stanley leaves behind a "long lasting legacy".
"Before LSD was legal he was one of the chemists in San Franciso who made it, and he made a lot of it. So he certainly had an influence on our times, as it were, on that level," he told ABC News Online.
"The psychedelic era is still with us. It's still out there happening, on one level or another.
"But that's just one aspect of the man - there are other things that he needs to be remembered for as well."
Cutler says his "brother, teacher and friend" developed music technology which is now taken for granted.
"When you go to a rock and roll concert, what you listen to is something in stereo sound. The person who invented that, and first brought it up, was the Bear," he said.
"The Grateful Dead were the first people to have a stereo sound system.
"Another thing he was responsible for were on-stage monitors, so you could actually hear what you were singing, or saying.
"Just those two things alone are major, major contributions to how popular music was presented to people."
Cutler says Stanley was a "rare and very special man" who was also a great artist.
"He was an alchemist, a wonderful man, a great thinker," he said.
"A very rare man, and very special. He's just an amazing man on all kinds of different levels.
"He made the most wonderful enamel sophisticated artworks - a kind of renaissance man of the 20th century. A bit of a Leonardo da Vinci for his time.
"He had enormous influence, in what he said and what he wrote - a huge amount of influence for just one individual.
"He affected the Grateful Dead but that was only one of the bands he had an influence on. Jimi Hendrix wrote Purple Haze as a result of the Bear's activities - there was an LSD of the Bear's called Purple Haze."
The guitarist, however, has denied the song's title takes its name from the drug.
Stanley is survived by his wife Sheilah, four children, eight grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
Cutler says many more will mourn him following the fatal crash, which happened "on a terribly bad stretch of road that has killed lots of people".
"He has a large extended family in Australia and America," he said.
"He will be sorely missed by a great deal of people - including lots of people who loved the man dearly, who never met him but whose lives were radically altered by him."
Monique Ross @'ABC'