What! I'm Listening to: (part 4)

Scratch Perverts, June Christy, D-Styles, Lifesavas, Anita O'day, Busdriver, old Steinski, Mac Dre, DJ Eleven, Lena Horne, Bright Eyes, Nas (his latest is 'Hip Hop is Dead')... Common Market is so-so, hyphy?, the Take the Lead Soundtrack has a couple of interesting hits...Billy Jam's got me looking at more MySpace Music...I love Django...

The Most Beautiful Girls in the World...

Like my own girls...
Originally uploaded by snailsone.

My homegirl's lovely daughters...I get to see them in January when I go back to Cali...Haven't been there in a couple of years...Also, I will be going to Brazil for a week in the new year...

8th most dangerous city receives another blow...

But it won't be the same without the A's.

"We lose a team that has so much history with the city," City Councilman Larry Reid said. "The success of the Oakland A's lies within the city. There is a group of die-hard Oakland A's fans that have stuck with the team through thick and thin."

>>The Fremont A's?? There's something wrong with that...I'm gonna spill a little on the curb for the old Mustache Boys and Billy Ball...

Renowned jazz singer Anita O'Day dies

Los Angeles-Anita O'Day, whose sassy renditions of "Honeysuckle Rose," "Sweet Georgia Brown" and other song standards that made her one of the most respected jazz vocalists of the 1940s and '50s, has died. She was 87.

Unshackeled Shit in da AM...Part 12

I spent the early morning (Nov. 23) on the air with Billy Jam and Braintax (UK) for a special Thanksgiving show that I co-hosted...Billy asked me to pick out a few songs, so I got five songs in rotation...including Aceyalone (Find Out), Shadow and Dan the Automator (Ganges A Go-Go), Orishas (Naci Orishas), Propellerheads (Props Got 'Mo Skills) and Nas (One Mic)...Here's to tasty quiches and blintzes and pineapple, coffee with eggnog (a first for me) and OJ...That was probably the oddest Thanksgiving meal I've ever had...Thanks to Billy...A turkey's life is spared today...Gobble Gobble...Special birthday shoutout to my homegirl Mon...

Paint Flu-mes...

Antiviral Paint Kills Flu on Contact
Bill Christensen
from
technovelgy.com
Sat. Nov. 18 2006

A remarkable new anti-viral polymer can be applied like paint and could help reduce the spread of germs in public areas and hospitals. The "biocidal paint" was developed by MIT's Alexander Klibanov.

In a graphic demonstration (see photo), a regular commercial glass slide and another one coated with alkylated PEI "paint" were sprayed with aqueous suspensions of Staphylococcus aureus cells, and then incubated. Some 200 bacterial colonies are seen on the unprotected slide—and only 4 on the protected one...

How does it work? In the case of bacteria, the polymer seems to gouge holes in a microbe's cell wall and then spill out its contents. The polymer molecules stay rigid because they are all positively charged and repel each other; they are like strands of hair standing on end from a static charge. The spikes have sufficiently few charges, however, that they can breach bacterial walls, which repel strongly charged molecules. The polymer probably neutralizes flu because the virus has an envelope around it suitable for spearing, Klibanov says.

From Scientific American via MedGadget.

Banksy's Holidy in Israel...

from barganews.com...Artist Banksy has decorated Israel's controversial West Bank barrier with satirical images of life on the other side. He condemned the wall but described it as "the ultimate activity holiday destination for graffiti writers".

Slimy Robot

from VestalDesign.com...A lab at MIT under Annette Hosoi has developed a small climbing robot modeled after a snail. Using a sticky gel, it can climb on vertical surfaces or even upside down.

The team tested out their snail on a tilting platform, covered with a 1.5-millimetre-thick layer of slime made from Laponite, a type of clay that forms a clear, sticky gel when mixed with water.

The robot is being used to test mathematical models of snail locomotion.

Link at News@Nature

Mickey Mouse is 78 years old today...

Michael "Mickey" Mouse is a comic animal cartoon character who has become a symbol for The Walt Disney Company. He was created in 1928 and voiced by Walt Disney. The Walt Disney Company celebrates his birth as November 18, 1928 upon the release of Steamboat Willie. The mouse has evolved from being simply a character in animated cartoons and comic strips to become one of the most recognizable symbols in the world.

Walt Disney voiced Mickey Mouse from 1928 until 1946, when sound effects man James G. MacDonald took over the role. Mickey is currently voiced by Wayne Allwine.

Disney said he got his inspiration from a rodent at his failed Laugh-O-Gram Studio in Kansas City, Missouri which he had nicknamed Mortimer Mouse.

The origins of Mickey Mouse actually lie in the early 1920s. Paul Terry developed the first mouse cartoon character in what would later be called the "Mickey Mouse" style in the early 1920s. These mice appeared in his Aesop's Fables cartoon series. Walt Disney admitted that his earliest ambitions was to produce cartoons of comparable quality to Paul Terry. Disney told interviewers later that he was inspired to create Mickey by a tame mouse at his desk at Laugh-O-Gram Studio in Kansas City, Missouri:

In 1928 Walt Disney had Ub Iwerks make some drawing for the new cartoon character. During a train trip to New York, Walt Disney showed the drawings to his wife Lillian Marie Bounds and said he was going to call it "Mortimer Mouse." She replied that the name sounded "too dark" and suggested Mickey instead.

Yet a further story, much publicized, has it that a six year old Mickey Rooney was filming the Mickey Maguire series when he was introduced to Walt Disney during a lunch break. Disney showed the Morty Mouse cartoon drawings to Rooney who introduced himself as Mickey Maguire. Rooney states that Disney might first have had the idea to name the character 'Mickey' at that meeting.

>>Even though Mickey is not my favorite animated character, he is a monster...the best-known icon for a monster corporation...I guess I have to appreciate his humble beginnings...not to mention that he was in the first sound cartoon...

from Slick at Dissizit...

Burning New York...

The release party for the book by James T. Murray and Karla L. Murray at Bowery Tatoo was chill...Free beer and altoids...Met some nice people, Poem from FX and NicOne (YNN)...The book is a good compilation of murals, quotes, interviews, 208 full glossy pages, hardcover...Shoutout to Connecticut...

Greg "Craola" Simkins

from juxtapoz.com show: Ima Monsta...

snails for what ails...

Snail Venom may Hold Possible Cure for Pain
AP-from Yahoo.com Nov. 14 2006

SALT LAKE CITY - University of Utah researchers have harvested a substance from the venom of a cone snail that shows promise in treating some human pain.The findings were published in Tuesday's edition of the journal "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences."

...The Conus regious cone snail is tiny worm-hunting sea creature found in coastal waters between Georgia and Brazil. The snails produce poisonous venom to paralyze prey.

Previous studies of cone snails found compounds from venom effective in treating pain in terminal cancer patients. This new research shows other venom-derived compounds may ease pain associated with nerve damage from diseases like diabetes or traumatic injury.

The discovery is important in part because scientists have found a previously unsuspected molecular target for painkillers. It's that receptor — one not previously thought to be involved with pain — that when bound with the cone snail substance seems to reduce pain by preventing the body from triggering inflammation. That's the opposite effect of most drugs, which prompt the body to release natural substances in response to injury or pain.

The compound worked when tested on laboratory animals at Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, N.C., McIntosh said.

Now that researchers have identified the mechanism they hope pharmaceutical companies will be able to use it to make a synthetic form of the medication in a pill form, McIntosh said. But it could be 10 years before any drugs reach the market, he said.

On a Friday night in Chinatown...

On a Saturday night in Chinatown...
Originally uploaded by snailsone.

Here's to Depeche Mode, Vietnamese and busting moves
on street corners with Kabuki theater, beatnik poetry,
bad bad rapping...bakery goods and milk tea...All in
all, not a bad night..These are shots of Mister Never across the platform...

mathilarity...

from Fun and Jokes with Morals...This blog is full with funny anecdotes...

Education is Politics...

City Reaches Early Tentative Deal With Teachers' Union
by David Herszenhorn
NYTimes.com Published Nov. 7, 2006

The Bloomberg administration and the New York City teachers’ union reached a tentative deal last night on a contract that would increase pay by 7.1 percent over two years and essentially forge a peace agreement between Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and the union from now through the end of his term in 2009.

The surprisingly early agreement will, for the first time, lift base pay for the most senior teachers above $100,000 a year, an important and symbolic threshold that brings salaries for city educators closer to those in the suburbs...“This proposed contract was not negotiated retroactively,” Mr. Bloomberg declared at a news conference last night at City Hall. “Rather, it is an agreement we’ve come to nearly a year before the current contract expires, the earliest date before expiration that we have ever reached a new collective bargaining agreement.”The mayor spoke just hours before New Yorkers headed to the polls with Eliot Spitzer leading widely in the race for governor. Mr. Spitzer has promised to comply with a court order mandating at least $4.7 billion more a year in aid for the city’s schools, but insists that the city contribute...

>>The mandated money is a 13-year battle between the State of NY and the city NY regarding the lack of funding compared to the rest of NY...

Jesus of the Week...And Germany's Neck.CNS

I was listing some apartments in the East Bay for my Mom and I came across this...Jesus of the Week...

Germany's Neck...

Butterfly fossils...

Butterfly fossils are rare. The earliest butterfly fossils are from the early Cretaceous period, about 130 million years ago (EnchantedLearning.com. I got curious in honor of Ali....

Oldest Bee Fossil Creates new Buzz

by Sara Gourdarzi
LiveScience.com
posted October 25, 2006

The discovery of the oldest bee fossil supports the theory that bees evolved from wasps, scientists reported today.

The 100 million-year-old fossil was found in a mine in the Hukawng Valley of Myanmar (Burma) and preserved in amber. Amber, which begins as tree sap, often traps insects and plant structures before they fossilize.

"This is the oldest known bee we've ever been able to identify, and it shares some of the features of wasps," said lead author George Poinar, a researcher from Oregon State University. "But overall it's more bee than wasp, and gives us a pretty good idea of when these two types of insects were separating on their evolutionary paths."

The quarter-inch fossil shares traits of the carnivorous wasp such as narrow hind legs while exhibiting branched hairs on its leg, a characteristic of the modern bee that allows pollen collection.

Around the same time the bee was trapped, plants that rely on mechanisms other than the wind to spread their seeds, started expanding and diversifying. Prior to that, the world was mostly green with conifer trees that depended on the wind for pollination.

"Flowering plants are very important in the evolution of life," Poinar said. "They can reproduce more quickly, develop more genetic diversity, spread more easily and move into new habitats. But prior to the evolution of bees they didn't have any strong mechanism to spread their pollen, only a few flies and beetles that didn't go very far.

The study is detailed in Oct. 27 issue of the journal Science.

He whispered in my ear, "I'm going to start a company..."

Here's an interesting interview with Ease...

Miguel Angel

Miguel Angel
Originally uploaded by snailsone.

Fragments...

June 13: DR Romanelli x Jose Parla