Ben Franklin Discovers Electricity

On this day in 1752, Ben Franklin's kite-flying experiment proved lightning and electricity were related while flying a kite with a key attached. In Sept. 1752, he equipped his house with a lightning rod, connecting it to bells that ring when rod is electrified. He explained how to perform a kite experiment in the 19 Oct 1752 issue of the Pennsylvania Gazette.

In July 1750 he devised an experiment involving a sentry-box with a pointed rod on its roof, to be erected on hilltop or in church steeple, with rod attached to a Leyden jar which would collect the electrical charge, and thus prove lightning to be a form of electricity. Link

Link

Univac 1 Goes On-Line This Day In 1951

Challengers of the Unknown © DC Comics

In 1951, the Univac1 was unveiled in Washington, DC. and dedicated as the world's first commercial computer. The Univac was manufactured for the U.S. Census Bureau by Remington Rand Corp. The massive computer was 8 feet high, 7-1/2 feet wide and 14-1/2 feet long. It could retain a maximum of 1000 numbers and was able to add, subtract, multiply, divide, sort, collate and take square and cube roots. Its transfer rate to and from magnetic tape was 10,000 characters per second. This was five years after the ENIAC, the first electronic computer in the U.S., was completed. Link

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Oops... Looks like 'meeting mankind halfway' means getting a robo-lobotomy and being turned into a toaster!

Tatooed Nation

FISHER

Cyber-Tatoos

Stephen Hawking Says: "The Stars Our Destination!"

The survival of the human race depends on its ability to find new homes elsewhere in the universe because there's an increasing risk that a disaster will destroy Earth, world-renowned physicist Stephen Hawking said Tuesday.

New Gods © DC Comics; but created by Jack ‘The King’ Kirby!

"We won't find anywhere as nice as Earth unless we go to another star system," added Hawking. Hawking said that if humans can avoid killing themselves in the next 100 years, they should have space settlements that can continue without support from Earth.

"It is important for the human race to spread out into space for the survival of the species," Hawking said. "Life on Earth is at the ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster, such as sudden global warming, nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus or other dangers we have not yet thought of."

One of the best-known theoretical physicists of his generation, Hawking has done groundbreaking research on black holes and the origins of the universe, proposing that space and time have no beginning and no end.

However, Alan Guth, a physics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said Hawking's latest observations were something of a departure from his usual research and more applicable to survival over the long-term.

"It is a new area for him to look at," Guth said. "If he's talking about the next 100 years and beyond, it does make sense to think about space as the ultimate lifeboat." Link

Can - Tago Mago

Can - Tago Mago Spoon - Music - Gema LC 7395
Holger Czukay/bass; Michael Karoli/guitar; Jaki Liebezeit/drums; Irmin Schmidt/keyboards; Damo Suzuki/vocals

“Can formed in 1968, featuring two former students of avant-garde classical composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, a former free-jazz drummer interested in math, a rock'n'roll guitarist 10 years younger than the others, and an American sculptor living in Europe in order to evade the draft. Keyboardist Irmin Schmidt had visited America in 1966, hooking up with the Fluxus musicians (Terry Riley, La Monte Young, et al.) and becoming inspired to form a rock band. He and bassist Holger Czukay (who would issue 1969's Canaxis, which used primitive sampling technology) were keen to incorporate experimental composition and compositional theories into a rock setting, and when Czukay's student Michael Karoli turned them onto Jimi Hendrix and the Beatles, the band's fate was sealed.”

Can in 1972: Holger Czukay, Damo Suzuki, Michael Karoli, Irmin Schmidt, Jaki Liebezeit. Link

“1971's Tago Mago saw Can stretching out into the beyond, and it was their first full-length studio record to feature Suzuki. "Aumgn" and "Peking O" are the most experimental tracks in the Can catalog, sharing more in common with the irreverent electronic music of Stockhausen or Pierre Henry than most anything related to rock-- Ummagumma was a possible exception. Of course, when the epic "Halleluwah" starts with Liebezeit's industrial strength funk pattern before winding through dark, echo-chamber ambience and minimalist drone (while never letting you forget those drums), the detours seem a lot less harrowing. The shorter songs, like the gray, faintly ominous "Paperhouse" or the flawless funk and dark impressionism on "Mushroom", are merely smaller pieces of the band's most exotic pie.” Info from Pitchfork.com and The Freak Zone.

Visit Can & Spoon Records

This week Stuart Maconie’s Freak Zone on BBC 6 presented a 3 hour show on ‘Krautrock’ (or Kosmische Musik if you prefer) and featured an hour with Julian Cope (author of the excellent and highly recommended ‘Krautrocksampler’). Tago Mago by Can was the featured LP, but Faust, Tangerine Dream, Popol Vuh, La Dusseldof, and Eloy all put in appearance, as did a few surprises.

You can still listen to the show for the rest of this week HERE.

Brian Eno made this odd little 60 sec. video to honour Can:

Mad Monster Party(?)

Frank Frazetta poster Link

"From Arthur Rankin Jr. and Jules Bass, the creators of such disturbing "animagic" fare as Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and the unintentionally terrifying Frosty the Snowman comes 1967's Mad Monster Party, a sort of Jay Ward Lite stop-motion revue featuring the vocal talents of Boris Karloff (shudder) and Phyllis Diller (shudder) as well as Allen Swift doing his best Jimmy Stewart, Peter Lorre, and Bela Lugosi."

Francesca by Bruce Timm

"It seems that venerable Dr. Frankenstein (Karloff) has decided to hang up his mad-scientist frock after reaching the pinnacle of his profession: a potion that causes "complete destruction" in a suspiciously nuclear cloud of smoke. Hoping to choose a successor among his Universal Classics brethren, Dr. Frankenstein invites Dracula, the Wolfman, the Hunchback of Notre Dame, the Mummy, the Invisible Man, Dr. Jekyll, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, and his own stable of Igor, Frankenstein's Monster, and some red-headed bombshell [Francesca-above] who does a nice tango with Drac, to Evil Island and the eponymous party."

Quotes from Walter Chaw @ Flim Freak Central

Apparently both Forrest J. Ackerman & Harvey Kurtzman contributed to the 'screamplay'!

Watch the trailer:

Cannibal Polar Bears

Art © Frank Frazetta

Polar bears in the southern Beaufort Sea may be turning to cannibalism because longer seasons without ice keep them from getting to their natural food, a new study by American and Canadian scientists has found. The study reviewed three examples of polar bears preying on each other from January to April 2004 north of Alaska and western Canada, including the first-ever reported killing of a female in a den shortly after it gave birth.

Polar bears kill each other for population regulation, dominance, and reproductive advantage, the study said. Killing for food seems to be less common, said the study's principal author, Steven Amstrup of the U.S. Geological Survey Alaska Science Center.

"During 24 years of research on polar bears in the southern Beaufort Sea region of northern Alaska and 34 years in northwestern Canada, we have not seen other incidents of polar bears stalking, killing, and eating other polar bears,'' said the study's principal author, Steven Amstrup of the U.S. Geological Survey Alaska Science Center.

Researchers discovered the first kill in January 2004. A male bear had pounced on a den, killed a female and dragged it 245 feet away, where it ate part of the carcass. Females are about half the size of males. . Link from LiveScience.com