- New, weird scientific discoveries always excite me. Scientists foraging in the far reaches of the globe uncovering a new species reminds us just how diverse and cool this world is. So big up to the scientists who discovered a new species of fish living almost 4 1/2 miles below the surface of the Pacific Ocean, in the Peru-Chile trench in the South Pacific. The international team of marine biologists led by Alan Jamieson of the University of Aberdeen in Scotland found the ghostly white snailfish Sept. 10 along with cusk-eels and crustaceans living in the trench off the west coast of South America. Neither of the latter two creatures had ever been observed at such depths due to a lack of sunlight and water pressure measuring almost 10,000 pounds per square inch. “Our findings, which revealed diverse and abundant species at depths previously thought to be void of fish, will prompt a rethink into marine populations at extreme depths,” said Jamieson. His team, comprised of researchers from Japan and New Zealand, discovered the creatures during a three-week expedition during which they took more than 6,000 photographs at depths between 15,000 and 26,000 feet. This was the seventh such mission in three years by a collaborative research project among the University of Aberdeen’s Oceanlab, the University of Tokyo’s Ocean Research Institute and New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric research. One of the group’s previous expeditions had identified another species of snailfish in deep-sea trenches off Japan and New Zealand. “To test whether these species would be found in all trenches, we repeated our experiments on the other side of the Pacific Ocean off Peru and Chile, some 6,000 miles from our last observations,” Jamieson explained. “What we found was that indeed there was another unique species of snailfish living at 7,000 meters — entirely new to science, which had never been caught or seen before.” Another cool discovery on the trip was the decidedly American qualities of cusk-eels, which could be observed engaging in a “feeding frenzy that lasts 22 hours.” The next time anyone tells you that nothing new is out there in the world and everything that can be seen has been, remind them of this story and then kick them in the shin………
- Hope you enjoyed Game 1 of the National League Championship series on Fox tonight, baseball fans in New York and Philadelphia, because the d-bags who run Fox may soon be looking to rip their channels from your local cable provider and leave you scrambling for a way to watch the remainder of the postseason. Not long after getting all pissy and petulant in a dispute with Dish Network and yanking its 19 regional sports networks, FX and the National Geographic Channel for some 14.3 million Dish subscribers, Fox pulled its channels off Cablevision early Saturday after the companies' programming deal expired and negotiations for a new one died. That asinine decision put broadcasts of the National League Championship Series in jeopardy for some 3 million Cablevision subscribers in the two metropolitan areas. The blackout impacts Fox 5 and My9 in New York and Fox29 in Philadelphia and not only will Cablevision subscribers lose Fox, they will also lose access to cable channels Fox Business Network, NatGeo Wild and Fox Deportes. Muy malo, Fox, muy malo! The affected channels went dark when the programming deal expired just after midnight Friday. Fox wants everyone to believe that it’s the cable and satellite providers that are being unreasonable, but when all of these separate entities are having a beef with you and your business practices, then maybe the problem isn’t them. The deal between News Corp., parent company of Fox, and Cablevision is like any other contract between a media conglomerate and a cable or satellite provider; it lays out how much a cable TV system pays the broadcaster to carry its signals over the cable lineup. Cablevision responded to the outage quickly by calling on News Corp. to put Fox5 and My9 back on Cablevision immediately and submit to binding arbitration under a neutral third party. "News Corp.'s decision to remove Fox programming from 3 million Cablevision households is a black eye for broadcast television in America," Cablevision spokesman Charles Schueler said. Fox, able to remove its head from its ass long enough to issue a statement, sent out the following gem: "In an effort to avoid this very situation, we started this process in May and made numerous reasonable proposals to Cablevision," said Mike Hopkins, president of Fox Networks Affiliate Sales and Marketing. "However, we remain far apart and Cablevision has made it clear that they do not share our view regarding the value of Fox's networks." Dude, no one shares your views and you and the suits you work with don’t seem to realize that. If I come up with a new car I think is great, slap a $55,000 price tag on it and no one buys, then the problem is probably with me and my new whip, not with everyone else. But Cablevision customers should be used to blackouts by this point, as they’ve suffered through short-lived losses of The Walt Disney Co.'s ABC broadcast signal and Scripps Networks Interactive Inc.'s Food Network and HGTV already this year. Like Dish Network, Cablevision Systems Corp. has alleged that News Corp.'s Fox is making "outrageous fee demands" for the right to carry the signals of the three cable channels and three TV stations. If Cablevision is to be believed, Fox is looking to raise its payment from the cable provider from $70 million to more than $150 million a year for the same programming. Some lawmakers have spoken out on the issue and Rep. Steve Israel, D-N.Y., and Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., both called for arbitration so viewers wouldn't have their TV programming disrupted. Israel also released a statement calling upon the Federal Communications Commission to intervene in the dispute. At least now Dish Network subscribers have company after losing several of their Fox channels to a similarly moronic dispute on Oct. 1………..
- Today was an important day. No, I’m not referring to the über-lame, Hallmark-created Sweetest’s Day, wherein you’re expected to do the same trite, clichéd things you do on Valentine’s Day for no reason other than because the calendar told you to. What I’m talking about is World Food Day, wherein the United Nations has attempted to call attention to the issue of hunger around the world with nearly one billion people suffering from food shortages worldwide. “We are continually reminded that the world's food systems are not working in ways that ensure food security for the most vulnerable members of our societies,” UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said in his message for World Food Day. “When people are hungry, they cannot break the crippling chains of poverty, and are vulnerable to infectious diseases. When children are hungry, they cannot grow, learn and develop.” It’s a cogent point and while is not nearly as fun to say as the moniker of former Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Mr. Ki-Moon is correct. A new global hunger index released by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) on Oct. 11 showed that one billion people face hunger this year and worse still, the 2010 Global Hunger Index showed there was significant hunger in 25 out of the 122 countries surveyed. “The present dramatic situation has come about because instead of tackling the structural causes of food insecurity, the world neglected agriculture in development policies, resulting in an under-investment in this sector, in particular in developing countries,” said Kanayo F. Nwanze, the Nigerian vice president of IFAD, a United Nations agency and an international financial institution with the mission of helping rural poor people elevate themselves out of poverty. Just because the number of starving people in the world is slightly lower than last year’s record total, that doesn’t mean the problem is being solved. Just as those depressing infomercials with Sally Struthers remind you, a child dies of starvation somewhere in the world every six seconds………..
- Google may be preparing to release Google TV with all the fanfare, bells and whistles, but fellow online video titan YouTube isn’t just going to sit back and not respond. Before Google gets to its big rollout, YouTube is making noise of its own with the full release of YouTube Leanback, its own made-for-TV experience. The company unveiled Leanback in May and it’s is a core component of its strategy to bring online video to the living room screen. The concept is simplifying the YouTube experience and interface with simple keyboard commands, an advanced search interface and a visual UI for browsing through YouTube clips and shows. Thus far, YouTube’s television experience has been in beta as part of TestTube, but as of now the site will be available to the entire YouTube community. Google may have Google Labs, but YouTube Product Manager Lead Kuan Yong is confident that handing users access to the full catalog of YouTube videos through Leanback will make YouTube competitive with Google TV. With an added focus on improving the user experience, search capabilities and incorporating suggestions users made during the beta, Leanback is aimed at combining the experience of using YouTube while surfing the web on your TV set. To make that easier for you, the first time you select the YouTube bookmark in Google TV, you will be presented the option to make Leanback your default YouTube experience. Users should take quickly to Leanback, as it is quick and simple to personalize and the design is streamlined and much easier to process visually. Thus far, research has shown that users of Leanback watch twice as much video as users of the regular YouTube interface, so perhaps YouTube really has struck gold with this idea……….
- When trying to promote yourself as a new and rising recording artist, doing things that set yourself apart from the pack are vital. The market is flooded with good-looking, mildly talented bands and singers that some label thinks it can make a buck off of, so anything that makes you and your music different is a major plus. A perfect illustration of this point comes from Universal Republic's latest rock fad Atomic Tom, which suffered a setback recently when its instruments were stolen. AT isn’t the first band to have its gear stolen and the story of an equipment trailer going missing after a show or something breaking into a band’s van and making off with their instruments and amps is a familiar one to artists and fans alike, but the band’s response to what had to be a pretty crappy day was unique. Instead of pouting, the band went on Manhattan’s B line train this week and treated fellow passengers to an impromptu electronic concert courtesy of their iPhone apps -- piano, guitars and drums all plugged into a speaker to perform their song "Take Me Out." The video is already going viral and it shows off an energetic, enthusiastic band willing to improvise and adapt. Whether they did it simply as a publicity stunt for their recently released debut album or in the hopes of scoring an endorsement deal with Apple (Atomic Tom music on the next iTunes/iPod commercial, anyone?), there’s no doubt that whoever came up with the idea for a train-based concert deserves credit for being original in an industry full of copycats and rip-off acts devoid of unique thoughts………
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