You are currently browsing the monthly archive for January, 2008.
Best 1970s science documentary ever. This should be required viewing for anyone who needs to know their place in the universe - which happens to be everyone. It’s under ten minutes long, so start watching, cadets!
And a Powers of Ten / Monty Python mash:
The last missive from Fighter Command was a bit on the heavy side, so I’ve asked the press monkeys to steer us clear of anything heavy today. I do have a heck of a segue to guide us along our new directive. I featured an MC Hawking song in the last post, and I’m quite certain that if you enjoyed everyone’s favourite wheelchair-bound nerdcore / quantum physics superstar, you’ll like the digitized gems I’ve dug out of the archives today.
Mr Hopkinson’s Computer
I heard Mr. Hopkinson’s Computer in the covers & mashes segment of the Not Your Usual Bollocks podcast. The Mr. Hopkinson’s Computer cover of ‘Fool’s Gold’ blew my pants clean off like I’d been hit by a mad scientist wielding some kind of pulp science de-pantsifying raygun. I ran out the next day, still pantsless, to place an order for a Mr. Hopkinson’s Computer record, which now has pride-of-place in my vinyl collection.
Benny Benassi presents The Biz
Italian prog-house wizard Benny Benassi was on every DJ’s setlist in the early ’00s, it seemed. His 2002 album Hypnotica introduced The Biz, who although were not computers, they certainly sounded like it. And Benassi’s inability to come up with anything that sounds different than what he was doing in 2002 should lead us all to conclude that he’s actually a piece of dodgy Italian software written specifically to churn out only one song.
Benny Benassi vs Beastie Boys - Intergalactic Satisfaction | download
HAL 9000
In Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, batshit mental computer HAL 9000 winds down its digital existence with a chilling rendition of ‘Daisy Belle’ (click on image to listen).
Daft Punk
Okay, fine, so they’re actually just a couple of French guys. If you’ll direct your optics to the following text from the liner notes to Musique Vol 1: 1993 - 2005, however, you will soon agree that you’ve been schooled by yours truly.
First they had to make the machines sing. Bend them around as much as possible. Not let mechanical purrs set in, but always, as if they opened up the hood to divert the connector industry, try to play with the unexpected improbabilities of an implacable mechanical creation. This way, by the time the Asimov robot theory gets under way, the robots will be very human-like.
They had to forget about faces in order to create the artwork, erase the human on the plastic coated paper, the supposed star duet, refute the easiness of celebrity…
…This way, on Asimov’s day, we’ll see the human underneath the robot without judging the hood.
DJ Payroll - Daft Prayer (Daft Punk vs Bon Jovi) | download
MC Hawking
He’s so good I’ve come back for more. If Wikipedia can be believed (and while I’m no quantum wizard myself I’m fairly certain that at the subatomic level there are elements of Wikipedia which are true as long as they’re not being observed (or some similarly retarded application of the stupid way the laws of physics behave at that scale)), Stephen Hawking himself is a fan. What higher praise do you need?
MC Hawking - Entropy | download
A moment for something serious: evolution, bitches.
You might think whole evolution debate doesn’t concern you, as it’s just a war of words between some lab rats and a pack of rabid baptists - but the truth is far more sinister than you could possibly believe. With our current understanding of evolution, our puny species has concocted a whole bucketload of medicines to combat various diseases. With our current understanding of creationism / intelligent design, the church has had a lovely bakesale. So, consider carefully now what you want every future biologist being taught in school.
Since most of my readership is outside the USA (and those that are within the USA weren’t retarded last time I met them), odds are I’m preaching to the choir. But it’s still an important message to reiterate every once in a while - hands up, those of you who knew that a lower percentage of Americans considers evolution to be true than do the populations of most Middle Eastern countries!
What’s brought this short tirade on is a recent push from the National Academy of Sciences to help educate the public about what evolution exactly is. The NAS has released a book which explains all the crunchy bits, and you can view an 8-page PDF summary which I highly recommend for anyone who needs a refresher (you can read the full 72 page book online as well, but even I’ll be damned if I devote that kind of time to the subject).
Anyhoo, this all gives me an excuse to drop some MC Hawking. Stay tuned to the next post for a killer segue.
MC Hawking - Fuck the Creationists | download
PS Divshare seems to have fixed up the direct links, so the embedded media player is a go (for now). Read Some Important Contributions Invertebrates Have Made to Science Fiction and finally be able to revel in the joy of my Mothra audio-gag!
The results are in, and it’s clear now that we should restrict political franchise to citizens over the age of 25.
Only three of Viper Pilot’s choices made it to the top 100:
#7: Daft Punk - Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger (live)
#14: Muscles - Ice Cream
#35: Justice - D.A.N.C.E
My choices that didn’t make the cut (as chosen by the almost certainly unwashed masses):
Battles - Atlas
Digitalism - Digitalism In Cairo*
Dizzee Rascal - Flex (Dave Spoon Remix)
Eagles Of Death Metal - Cherry Cola
LCD Soundsystem - North American Scum
Modest Mouse - Fire It Up*
Riot In Belgium - La Musique
*Digitalism and Modest Mouse had other songs make it into the top 10.
Every year on Australia Day (today!), radio network Triple J does its Hottest 100 countdown. The Hottest 100 is the largest music poll in the world, with over half a million votes entered in each of the last few years’ polls. For those subscribing to this sub-etha netcast from outside of the Australia local cluster, Triple J is a national government owned youth radio network, focusing on music for the 15-35 age group. More specifically they claim ‘new music’ as their tagline, so you won’t find any Matchbox 20 clones (I’m looking at you, Nickelback) or retarded pop divas (kindly fuck off, Fergie).
It ws quite the challenge only picking ten tracks from what I’ve found to be a very good year for music (as long as you’re flying off the radar). I could have voted for the entirety of LCD Soundsystem’s Sound of Silver, but there were a lot of other deserving artists. Viper Pilot’s choices this year are as follows, in no particular order other than alphabetically by artist:
Battles - Atlas
Daft Punk - Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger (live)
Digitalism - Digitalism In Cairo
Dizzee Rascal - Flex (Dave Spoon Remix)
Eagles Of Death Metal - Cherry Cola
Justice - D.A.N.C.E
LCD Soundsystem - North American Scum
Modest Mouse - Fire It Up
Muscles - Ice Cream
Riot In Belgium - La Musique
I could have chosen a lot more, but they only allow ten picks, so there you are.
Tune in later today to see where my choices fared in the poll (and see how potentially stupid the youth of Australia are).
Short post today - busy fighting evil monotonous record empire.
Fourth nova-bomber squadron leader Murray mentioned to me, upon first hearing this band “I’m getting the same vibe I got the first time I heard ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’. Like this is the start of something.’” And Murray has been working sound for music gigs (and fighting his own covert war against shitty music) for a long time.
Battles - Atlas
Hunt around for concert footage on Youtube if you’re interested in the technical details of just what the hell is going on. You’ll get a much better idea of the kind of (and amount of) crazy gear Battles use to create their unique kind of noise seeing them work guitars and keyboards at the same time (one hand on each, guitar picking being modulated by the keybaord) or pumping a wah-wah pedal attached to the vocal microphone.
Ever heard of Bigelow Aerospace? Nope, me either. Until reading the most recent issue of Wired, that is. So it’s one of the big players in the commercial space race, it turns out. The guy who owns the company is certified loony (and retardedly rich, having made a ton of bucks in the hotel industry), spending his fortune on not only Bigelow Airspace, but on funding research into researching alien abductions and UFO sightings.
But here’s the catch… owner Robert Bigelow is the only guy to steer his company to getting a payload into orbit. And his competition include the likes of Richard Branson and Microsoft’s Paul Allen. Oh yeah, he was born in Vegas, so of course it makes perfect sense that he’s putting a game of bingo into into orbit.
No music today. I’m still cranky about Divshare.
Atomique and I couldn’t help ourselves - we were offered kittens and took two. And, being geeks, we’ve named the noisy one Laika (Russian for ‘barker’) after the first animal in outer space, and the quiet one Malla after Chewbacca’s wife. We may have crossed the line from geek to dork, there.
This gives me the perfect opportunity to drop a video that is actually both science fiction and music at the same time, rather than usual trick of tenuously connecting a sci-fi factoid to a song or two.
The Cat - Tongue Tied
British space-sitcom Red Dwarf usually openned with something other than a musical number. Like, you know, something in space. Not the start of this particular episode, thanks to a dream sequence courtesy of The Cat.
In 1993 those lovable Brits, stalwart fans of novelty music, propelled a rerecorded single of Tongue Tied to #17 in the UK pop charts.
(Okay, so maybe it hasn’t aged well, but I sure did love this the first time I saw it. I give it points for nostalgia value.)
Scope, the e-newsletter for the Australian Science Communicators Group (thanks, Atomique!) recently ran an excellent article that debunked a lot of the negative poppycock that the soap-dodgers throw at us to make us turn away from a much cleaner source of energy than coal and oil.
I’m all for saving the whales, having an ozone layer, and clearcut logging pisses me off. I pay for green power, I do my best to recycle and do all the little things like use rechargeable batteries and am replacing my lights with those new whiz-bang fluorescent badboys whenever one of the old evil ones dies (and let me tell you, my rag-tag fleet of audio refugees needs to conserve in any way it can - it’s not easy to just pull over for a supply stop when you’ve got a BMG or EMI-class capital ship following you).
That all being said: smarten up, hippies. I’ll echo the author’s sentiment here - I’m not saying nuclear power is the best thing ever, but stop advancing outright lies about it in order to fulfill your crazy agendas.
I’ll pull some choice quotes from the article here, forwarded by things vegans might say.
“It’s a stop-gap solution!” shouts a skinny old guy selling hemp wristbands at a folk festival.
Some claim there’s only 60 years of uranium left, but this depends on a lot of assumptions about geology and how easy it is to extract. There could be a lot more of it, and its a gross distortion.But, this limited supply is just one isotope of uranium. The other uranium isotope could be converted into plutonium using breeder reactors, or “fourth generation nuclear reactors”. Using breeder reactors would mean we have about 60,000 years of fuel left.
“The waste will contaminate the earth forever!” shouts a group huddled around a drum circle, an aroma of feet and moss emanating from their general direction.
It’s claimed that nuclear waste is radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years, but calculations are that the waste will have greatly decreased radioactivity after 1,000 years, and will be the same as the original uranium in 10,000 years - hardly the picture the propaganda paints, where it seems they like to add zeros for nothing other than dramatic effect.
These calculations have been criticised as “speculative”, but it is everything but. Individual atoms decay at known rates - it is what is behind carbon dating - and we can know how radioactive the waste will be in 10,000 years with as much accuracy as we can radioactively date something 10,000 years old.
Surrounded by cats, a hairy woman who practices rune-casting and makes her own mead shouts: “You’re polluting the air just by building this reactor!”
There’s the claim that nuclear plants generate lots of CO2 during construction. Well, in fact I’d suspect no more than anything else which takes a while to construct. It doesn’t assemble itself. Things have to be moved to the right location, welded, drilled, bolted, sealed, cabled, tested and so on. Just like a regular skyscraper - there’s a certain amount of material involved, but it does not just construct itself - this takes time and effort - but does not generate a particularly large amount of CO2 along the way. Merely taking a long time to construct does not mean something must therefore generate lots of CO2 in the construction process.
It’s also worth noting that wind farms for generating the same power, they need about ten times the metal (and CO2) load as nuclear power plants to generate the same electricity.
I could go on, but I think you get the picture.
You can read the full article here.
Coldcut - Atomic Moog 2000(Post Nuclear Afterlife Lounge Mix) | download
Electric Six - Nuclear War (On the Dance Floor) | download
I coded my links just fine, it’s just that it turns out Divshare sucks ass. So, the embedded music players still don’t work. They worked fine for a second, I swear.
Expect a new URL and working bits and pieces once the fleet’s technicians cobble together a new broadcast module for the C3 ship. That should happen soon.
The Bravery - An Honest Mistake (Superdiscount Remix) | download
Looking out the window at the golf-ball sized golden orb spider which has anchored one end of its metre-wide web to the awning of my house, I can’t help but for a second consider just how mindboggling alien the creepy bastards are. For a second, it’s quite easy to picture myself as the heroic Viper Pilot, stranded inside an abandoned research station somewhere on one of the many poorly-surveyed worlds of the Third Imperium, low on supplies and unsure if the Giant Arcturan Webspinnner outside will ever decide there’s easier prey to be found elsewhere.
I grew up in rural Canada, where large spiders and cockroaches are non-entities, while in Australia one is assaulted by large, primal, predatory skeleton-wearing-on-the-outside badasses on a daily basis. Coupled with my superior hyper-reflexes (read: skittish), finding them alien comes easily.
Aside from the many near-death frights the invertebrates have given me, they have also given us some fine moments in science fiction:
Mothra
Okay, so I’ve never actually seen Mothra in a film. But I have played her in Godzilla: Monster of Monsters on the NES.
With her first appearance in 1961, however, she is the grandmother of the entries on this list. She’s a psychic reincarnating moth, the figurehead for an Indonesian earth-worship cult and Japan’s greatest defender, besting Godzilla more often than any other giant piece of molded theatrical foam. Whatever she doesn’t stop, her larvae will. Ewww.
Mothra
Listen to Mothra’s 1989 hit single “Lullaby”:
‘The Bugs’
In two classic science fiction novels, ‘the bugs’ have made for perfect, unstoppable, inhuman antagonists.
In Robert Heinlein’s golden-age Starship Troopers, the bugs are a perfect anvil for the Mobile Infantry to throw their troops at again and again. Heinlein’s book is a poignant exploration of politics (particularly meritocracy) and social responsibility. The film captured the ‘let’s go fight some insects in space!’ backdrop of the novel but none of the commentary, which is where Heinlein’s novels (before a stroke turned him into a dirty old man) always shone. He was never a master of dialog, but his novels always had a theme he was exploring and a clear vision to them, a substance not captured by the film.
In 1960, Starship Troopers won the Hugo Award; in 1997 Starship Troopers hit cinemas and tricked me with its pretty special effects and earth-shattering explosions, but eventually I came to and often now wake up crying.
In John Steakley’s Armor, a computer error leads to protagonist Felix being sent to the same planet again and again to fight the same endless horde of insectoid aliens. Similar only in that both novels contain soldiers in powered armor fighting buglike aliens, Armor focuses on the effects of warfare upon the individual rather than using the war as a platform for discussing other issues.
The Fly
Dude invents teleporter. Dude accidentally teleports himself and a fly at the same time, and dude ends up degenerating into a half-man/half-fly monster as a result. By the end of the film, he’s vomiting on his own food to dissolve it before he can eat it. What’s not to like?
Oh, yes, it’s also a warning about messing with technology.
Alien & Aliens
- Colonial marines
- Aliens (thank you, HR Giger!)
- Flamethrowers
- Miniguns
- Sigourney Weaver in an exo-suit delivering a beatdown
Need I say more?
Doctor Octagon - Aliens (Sub Focus Remix) | download
Spice
The sandworms of Arrakis are the source of the fictional drug ’spice’ in Frank Herbert’s Dune. The larval form of the sandworm excrete the near-mystical substance, which when taken by humans has a variety of effects: it can extend your lifespan, let you see the future, enable you to fold space in upon itself or turn you into a ninja.
While I’ve only managed to get through the first book (and that’s enough for me, thanks) it is an influential and important work. The Dune series is a monstrous entity, the original series having six books, which have been added to with a zillion sequels and prequels written by Frank Herbert’s son, a film by David Lynch, a handful of video games and a couple of television miniseries.
From Wikipedia (this bit’s for Ian):
Dune inspired the Iron Maiden song “To Tame A Land.” However, when songwriter Steve Harris requested permission from the author to name the song “Dune,” his request was met with a stern refusal — backed up with a legal threat — which noted that “Herbert doesn’t like rock bands, particularly heavy rock bands, and especially rock bands like Iron Maiden.” The song was renamed “To Tame a Land” and released in 1983.
Naked Lunch
David Cronenberg’s second entry on this list (the first being The Fly) could only be very loosely coined science fiction. In fact, it isn’t, being more of a surrealist romp through substance abuse and handjobs delivered to alien typewriters (yes, I said ‘alien typewriters’ - as Nelson Muntz said after viewing Naked Lunch: “I can think of at least two things wrong with that title”). But if I had to see it, so do you. I can’t UNwatch it!
I admit it’s worth watching, but you may not be the same person afterwards. Mentioning this film, however, gives me a chance to drop a killer track. “Bug Powder Dust” is based entirely upon Naked Lunch, containing many references to the film. The Kruder & Dorfmeister remix is a downtempo classic.
Bomb the Bass - Bug Powder Dust (K&D Session) | download
Pepe Deluxé - Salami Fever
These guys are easily my favourite Finnish band. Everyone should have a favourite Finnish band.
Ah, I nearly forgot - I released a neural bomb of a mashup featuring a Pepe Deluxé track with some early 60s pop-country in July last year. They’re still talking about it in the spinward colonies of the French Arm. I’m posting it again because I’ve sorted out my hosting and the link should remain active now.
Viper Pilot - Big John Pass Me By (Pepe Deluxé vs Jimmy Dean) | download
Love Cats is etymologically very similar to locats. I bet you didn’t know that.
team9 vs Stereogum - Young Cats (Peter, Bjorn and John vs The Cure) | download
Also, there’s an upgrade to the Hubble Space Telescope planned for shuttle mission STS-122. The improvements will make the orbiting telescope about 90 times more powerful than it currently is. Given that it can already see objects about 10 billion light years away, that’s a shitload. And I’m talking a metric shitload.
Now that’s fulla starz.
The Monks - Skylab | download
Above: Outlander. Coming soon to a theatre near you. Spaceship crashes in Norway in ~500CE, leaving an alien psychopath monster on the loose. Fuckoff awesome fight scenes ensue. The excitement is so great I can barely keep my pants on.
Below: Outland. Not to be confused with Outlander. Sean Connery enforces the law in a mining colony, tracking down a drug cartel. Still awesome, but not as awesome as Celebrity Deathmatch: Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal vs Berserker Clan.
In no particular order, a recap of five science fiction moments as chronicled in the ship’s logs from 2007. Not all good, not all bad, just five things that happened - with musical accompaniment!
Battlestar Galactica Still Kicks Ass
Don’t look so surprised. Viper Pilot’s my handle, for crying out loud.
Okay, so BSG this year wasn’t up to the standard of seasons one and two, but it’s still some pretty damn good TV. And, if the internet rumors are true, the network meddling that forced a shift to more one-shot stories and less concentration on the bigger story arc has come to an end. To finish things off, we got the movie-length Battlestar Galactica: Razor at the end of the year. Razor chronicled the plight of the Battlestar Pegasus after the Cylon attack and gave us all some very tasty surprises to get us all excited about the upcoming final season.
(Yes, I know season three started late 2006 - Australia has lag)
Viper Pilot - Ballad of the Colonial Roughnecks | download
Season Two of Heroes Cut Short by the Writer’s Strike
Aaaaarrrrrrrgh!
C’mon, people. I’m dying here!
The First Half of Sunshine
It’s not often that hard science fiction (sci-fi with a focus on scientific accuracy) makes its way out of print and on to the big screen. Wired gave me a lot of hope for Sunshine, based on its interview with director Danny Boyle. Sunshine came very close to giving me a very good hard sci-fi movie, but then the second half of the film happened, and we were all left with a horror movie set in space with a melty toasted cheese sandwich for a villain.
A New Alistair Reynolds Novel - The Prefect
Speaking of hard sci-fi… Alistair Reynolds is not only the current reigning champion of the space opera, but his books have a copious collection of science in them that sounds not only plausible, but downright killer.
The Prefect is set in Reynold’s Revelation Space universe, set more specifically in what won last year’s award for Best-Named Group of Orbital Habitats, the Glitter Band. It’s a prequel to his previous works, so ought to be easily accessible to a newcomer to his writing. I have yet to get my hands on the book, but based on how voraciously Atomique is devouring it, I can guarantee that he’s in top form.
Michael Bay Pissed Me Off
I have a photon torpedo loaded in both tubes 1 and 3 for Mr. Bay - that’s what you get for shitting all over my childhood. The movie is called THE TRANSFORMERS, dickface, howabout giving them some screen time? I wanted giant robot movie action, not gung-ho yankee commando action and teen romance #43. I could have seen a swathe of other movies this year if that’s what I was after when I went to see a movie ABOUT A BUNCH OF FREAKING ROBOTS!
Listen, pal, giving a character TWO LINES in the whole movie barely makes them an extra, let alone get their name in the title. Jazz, Ratchet, Ironhide… who the hell are they? I guess I’ll never get to know, because you’re too busy scripting them peeing or lurking in the background ‘in a wicked-kewl pose’. And the Decepticons were lucky if they got that much.
Good for you, twat. I bet you sold a bunch of toys.
Tony Bacala - Let’s Roll (Old School Mix) | download
Some of you with keen eyes may have noticed that I’ve changed the tagline to the blog. I’m going to try and keep my focus this year. Yes, there will still be lots of mashes, and the occasional personal rant, but I’m going to try and fill a gap in the blogosphere by matching music with science. Stay tuned over the next year - I’ll be keeping every ship in the fleet updated with the meeting of mad tunes and killer science (and science fiction!).
With that in mind, I’m going to start the year with a specific mission not only for me, but any other pilots brave enough to volunteer: SETI@Home. The SETI (the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Life) project aims to uncover signals among the background noise of the universe that could prove the existence of life outside our solar system. However, there is an awful lot of sky, which means an awful lot of data to process. You can participate by having your home computer crunch some of the data while you’re not using it! Visit the SETI@home download page to install the BOINC client (a simple process), which then runs as a screensaver and you’re now helping the scientific community without lifting a finger.
SETI recently brought seven new receivers online, multiplying the amount of data they have to process by about five-hundred times! That means they’re desperate for extra processing power, so consider joining up. It’s a small investment of your time which in turn could prove invaluable to humanity. We’re searching for music from the stars here, people!
I’m also extending an invitation to join Spacewing #14, an expeditionary force from the fleet hand-selected by Viper Pilot to find music from the stars! If you sign up for SETI@Home, you can elect to join a team, where the amount of data we’ve all processed will be counted together.
Some music to get you in the mood for finding extra-terrestrial life:
Hexstatic - Robopop | download
Leonard Nimoy - Music to Watch Space Girls By | download
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