Listverse – Things that are not what they seem
I often make lists – where would we be without them:
1. No where dude.
2. Well confused man.
So I love the listverse. It’s full of lists of things – including lists of lists both relevant and irrelevant to my life and yours.
So enjoy 25 Things That Are Not What They Seem (including a debate about Panda Bears).
TED 2009
TED 2009 is on this week. Expect more wonderment, interest and fascination to burst forth in what has to be the best broadcast expo out there. There are updates via the TED BLOG, check out the TED prize winners or watch the brilliant video streams piling up every week.
pearls before breakfast
A wonderful experiment conducted in a Washington DC Metro station. Playing some of the greatest music the human race has created, one of the finest violinists in the world anonymously busks: will his art cut through the rush and bustle of the commuters’ morning? Will a crowd form?
I love this article and find it very moving. It’s a splendid modern demonstration of the question of context and presentation in art, and what is required to form aesthetic appreciation. And it’s a fun stunt too. (I’m tempted to try a similar thing in London to see how it works with Europeans.)
At one point, the journalist talks about infants having an innate delight in the rhythms of music and poetry which is ‘choked out of us’ as we grow up. A similar thought has been raised concerning magic by a great magician called Paul Harris: that a baby is constantly surprised at his world, and that as we grow up and learn about our environment, we experience astonishment less and less. Harris sees the work of the magician as a way of taking people back to an almost primal state of wonder. Which may be true, though in both cases, clearly much depends upon the quality of the performance.
Apropos of such things, I recently read a terrific book called This is Your Brain on Music which is an extraordinary insight into music and how it works upon us. Well worth a read – it celebrates all types of music, so there’s no need for specialist classical knowledge.
If any of you were at the filming for the first episode of The Event last night, then thank you for coming and I hope you enjoyed yourselves. Good morning.
x
FBI Investigates $9 Million ATM Scam
A Fox 5 investigation exposes a worldwide ATM scam that swindled $9 million and possibly jeopardized sensitive information from people around the world. Law enforcement sources told Fox 5 it’s one of the most frightening well-coordinated heists they’ve ever seen.
Photos from security video (see photo gallery at left)obtained by Fox 5 show of a small piece of a huge scam that took place all in one day in a matter of hours. According to the FBI , ATMs from 49 cities were hit — including Atlanta, Chicago, New York, Montreal, Moscow and Hong Kong.
“We’ve seen similar attempts to defraud a bank through ATM machines but not, not anywhere near the scale we have here,” FBI Agent Ross Rice told Fox 5.
These people in the photos are believed to be “cashers,” low-level players, in a scheme devised from some mastermind — a dangerous computer hacker or hacking ring authorities fear could strike again. So far, the FBI has no suspects and has made no arrests in this scam. An attorney in Atlanta has filed a class-action lawsuit against RBS WorldPay for allegedly failing to protect personal information.
Link (Sorry Michelle)
Eddie Izzard 7 February 1962
Edward John “Eddie” Izzard is an Emmy Award-winning British stand-up comedian and dramatic actor. He is also known for his transvestism. His comedy style is expressed in rambling, whimsical monologue and self-referential pantomime. In addition to touring, he is also a television, stage and film actor and is active in charity work.
On 18 March 2007, Izzard was listed as number 3 of the 100 Greatest Comedians (just behind Peter Kay at number 2 and Billy Connolly at number 1) as part of Channel 4′s ongoing 100 Greatest… series. In a 2005 poll to find The Comedian’s Comedian, Izzard was voted amongst the top 20 greatest comedy acts ever by fellow comedians and comedy insiders. He was number 75 in Comedy Central’s 100 Greatest Stand-ups of All Time.
Often describing his “breast envy,” Izzard, after shooting the film The Avengers, occasionally wears a pair of false breasts, reputedly[citation needed] modeled upon co-star Uma Thurman’s own breasts. These had been intended for Thurman’s body double to use.
The above painting by Derren will be available from the new art store (hopefully launching soon) – or from the old smelly site. 
Happy birthday Eddie.
Benedict XVI appoints bishop who is clearly insane
Hard on the heels of lifting an excommunication from a schismatic bishop who denies that the Nazi Holocaust occurred, Pope Benedict XVI has appointed as auxiliary Bishop of Linz in Austria another ultra-conservative prelate who described Hurricane Katrina as God’s punishment for sin and sexual excess in New Orleans.
Father Gerhard Maria Wagner, 54, parish priest at Windischgarsten in Austria since 1988, said in the parish newsletter four years ago that the death and destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina was “divine retribution” for excessive sexual permissiveness, including tolerance of homosexuality.
Other views include holocaust denial, the US government planned and carried out 9-11, the Jews are planning world domination and that women can “be distracted by having their own ideas”.
GETTING READY (re-posted after update)
… For ‘The Event’. The show will consist of a mixture of pre-recorded location pieces and theatre-based bits hanging it all together, and then each one if the four one-hour programmes leads up to a major stunt at the end (which will be done in September when it all goes out). It’s fun and really ambitious (at least compared to what we’re used to. Probably Obama has more on his plate).
Any of you coming to the recordings will be forming a small, on-screen audience for the theatre sections, being taken through the story-so-far and the pieces we’ve already filmed.
And while you have nothing better to do, here are some pictures of Westminster I took in the snow from the office. x
The Creation Museum
Aw bless em! They have a whole “museum” dedicated to their own kind of special “science”.
http://www.creationmuseum.org/ (Thanks Rob)
Humans Can “See Into the Future”
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A new study from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute suggests that the human visual system is equipped with the ability to foresee the future.
Assistant Professor Mark Changizi says that it takes nearly one-tenth of a second for the brain to perceive what the eyes see.
To compensate for such neural delays, he claims, the visual system has developed the ability to generate perceptions of what will occur one-tenth of a second into the future. Changizi says that it is due to this quality of the visual system that when an observer actually perceives something, it is the present rather than what happened one-tenth of a second ago.
Born believers: How your brain creates God
WHILE many institutions collapsed during the Great Depression that began in 1929, one kind did rather well. During this leanest of times, the strictest, most authoritarian churches saw a surge in attendance.
This anomaly was documented in the early 1970s, but only now is science beginning to tell us why. It turns out that human beings have a natural inclination for religious belief, especially during hard times. Our brains effortlessly conjure up an imaginary world of spirits, gods and monsters, and the more insecure we feel, the harder it is to resist the pull of this supernatural world. It seems that our minds are finely tuned to believe in gods.
New Scientist (Thank Helen)
