New Radiohead Album (!!!)

Radiohead's had a new album in the works for quite a while, but their cryptic blog never made mention of any sort of official release date, which meant people were expecting it sometime next year, at the earliest. Of course, if you're Radiohead, you've got the artistic and financial leverage to do whatever the hell you want, so on Saturday they announced that their latest (and seventh) full-length album, "In Rainbows", is coming out in 10 days, and will be available online only for the first 2 months of its release.

The physical album itself will actually be released as a "discbox" featuring an extra CD of music, as well as two 12" vinyl LPs, a lyrics booklet and an art booklet. How much? Not cheap. Including shipping anywhere in the world, it's a flat rate of 40 pounds ($81CAD as of Sunday night), which is a lot for an album, but consider the fact that it also comes in an attractive slipcover. Also consider the fact that I am a rabid Radiohead fan, and would pay for the album with a tooth if I had to.

Now, you may be saying "$80 is way too much to ask, damn those greedy musicians!", but if you read a little further, you'll notice that the asking price for the digital download is anything. They are willing to accept ANY PRICE. Whatever you think is fair.

Radiohead is awesome.

The download becomes available on October 10th. It's a good thing that's the same day as the provincial elections, otherwise I would probably just sit in my room all day listening to Radiohead. I am excited. Radiohead.

New Music!

I just picked up a copy of the new Band of Horses album, "Cease to Begin", and it is awesome.

I was a big fan of their last album "Everything All The Time", which was sort of split between full-out indie rockers and big, folk-ish ballads. It's one of the most listenable albums, from start to finish, that I've heard. It's the perfect album to put on when you want a hour of consistent music that's not so bland it just sits in the background, but not so in-your-face that it demands all your attention. They're not shattering new musical territory or anything, they just write really, really good songs.

According to the band, the new album leans a little more towards the folk than the rock, but after giving it one listen it sounds like there's lots of both. Like the first one, it sounds like the kind of album that grows on you until you can't get it out of your head.

Techniques for Consumption

I was reading about the recently passed Mid-Autumn Festival, the holiday which celebrates the full moon of the 8th month of the Chinese lunar calendar, which then got me reading about Mooncakes, which are the official pastry of Mid-Autumn Festivals, and also sound like they should be sort of supernaturally delicious.



Judging by some of the ingredients on the Mooncake Wikipedia entry (mung bean paste, watermelon seeds, salted egg yolks), I'm not sure their real-life deliciousness can stack up to my imagined deliciousness, but I did notice another interesting thing on the Mooncake page. Some of these cakes are flavoured with jujube fruit.

Wait, you're telling me jujubes are a real life thing, and not just a gummy confectionary? No way.

Well, as it turns out, yes way. The jujube plant produces a small, red fruit which can be dried and used in Mooncakes, among other things. I assume it is also the inspiration for Jujubes (the candy), but I haven't been able to find anything online to verify my hunch.

I did, however, find some great suggestions on the Wikipedia entry for Jujubes (confectionary). Specifically, the "Techniques for Consumption" section offered some sage advice:

"Due to the hard, dense, and resinous nature of Jujubes, the candies are often consumed as a type of hard candy - "sucked on" rather than chewed with one's teeth. If multiple Jujubes are placed in the mouth at once, saliva will congeal the candies into a single mass. Individual Jujubes can be allowed to gradually rehydrate in the mouth with gentle chewing. It is due to their density that the 1996 Gummi Reviews published by NewTimes, Inc., stated that Jujubes are "a nearly inedible delicacy that has less in common with gummis than with those prehistoric amber droppings that were always trapping insects."

It should be noted that these consumption techniques refer to the harder "American-style" jujubes (pictured below), and not our soft, yielding Canadian ones. Usage of American-style jujube consumption techniques on Canadian jujubes should be pursued at your own risk.



Also, I'm not sure how one goes about getting a copy of the 1996 Gummi Reviews (Google Scholar?), but I want one.

Adventures in Typography

Fonts are pretty neat. I've had a few conversations about fonts over the last few days, which seemed a bit high when compared to my average number of font conversations per week (zero), but the more I learn about them, the more I'm interested by them.

The cool thing about fonts is that they can really significantly affect your perception of a message without you even realizing it. The obvious typographic tricks like bold and italics can add emphasis, but the REALLY sinister typographic tricks can manipulate your interpretation of a message in much subtler ways.

Take FedEx, for example. Their logo is pretty well known, and easily recognizable, but it also contains a subliminal message. The font used in the logo is spaced and stretched exactly enough so that the negative space between the "E" and the "x" forms an arrow. If you haven't looked at the FedEx logo and seen an arrow before, prepare to have your mind blown.



The idea is that the arrow implies forward motion and speed. It's debatable how much of an effect the arrow actually has on their business, but I definitely do get a very business-oriented, efficient vibe from their logo.

Another company that's used typography pretty prominently to reshape public perception is the old British Petroleum, now known as BP. Here's their old logo:



Gah, the big capital letters and shield-ish crest basically scream "old, rich white guy smoking a cigar and burning rainforests". BP figured this out too, and came up with this new logo to replace it:



Aah, much better. The lowercase, sans serif bp says "We're so hip and environmentally friendly, we don't waste time or unnecessary ink on capitalization of letters", and the green thing says "Here at BP, we mine sunflowers, and our main industrial byproducts are sunshine and happiness". Keeping in mind that it's exactly the same company, look at those two logos and tell me the second one doesn't make you feel just a little bit better about BP as a company. Such is the power of typography (and graphic design, I guess).

As a final note, I came across a huge article about a guy who spent several years of his life trying to design a new, superior font called "Clearview" for American highway signs, to replace their old, not-so-great "Highway Gothic" font. It's pretty shocking just how much thought can be put into letter shapes.

Dipping into the emergency bacon

Lately, China has been in the grip of a chronic pork shortage, brought on by increases in consumption as well as outbreaks of pig disease around the country. This has contributed to China's already significant inflation issues (sitting at around 6.5% as of August).

The government, acting in an attempt to curb some of this inflaton, did what any responsible government would do - they dipped into their strategic pig reserve.

...

China has a strategic pig reserve.

Invasion of the super bugs from space!!!

Well, this is terrifying.

It seems a bunch of scientists decided to determine the effect of space travel on salmonella bacteria. They packaged a bunch of them up, launched them into space for a few days, and studied their effects on mice when they came back.

The result? The space-germs were THREE TIMES DEADLIER than salmonella that remained on earth. Not only did they kill more mice than the non-space strain, they also killed them faster. The article doesn't mention anything about why the increase in deadliness occurred, but my money's on gamma rays. Or solar flares.

I think the moral of the story is clear: bacteria do not make good astronauts. Not only do they become freakish space mutants, they're also way too small to operate the instruments.

Gels and foams and... dehydrated oil? Is that even possible?

Last February, I had the chance to head down to Chicago with some of my favourite people in the world, with two missions:

#1) Run around and play in big museums and historic architecture
#2) Eat at Alinea.

Alinea, for those of you out there who don't spend unhealthy amounts of time reading about food, is a Chicago restaurant that specializes in molecular gastronomy. Molecular gastronomy is essentially the marriage of haute cuisine super-fancy cooking, and mad scientist laboratory experiments. To give you an idea of the kind of food served at Alinea, I have included a picture of their bacon trapeezes.

That's a single strip of applewood-smoked bacon, wrapped in butterscotch, dehydrated apple ribbons and thyme. It is every bit as delicious as it sounds, times a million. I highly recommend Alinea to anyone in the Chicago area who wants to eat the most interesting meal of their life, and is OK with the idea of spending half a month's grocery budget on a meal. It's not exactly an everyday kind of thing, especially on a student budget, but even with the somewhat extravagant pricing, I still feel like it was a spectacular value. Best dish of the night: olive oil ice cream, with orange sorbet and dehydrated olive oil powder. How do you dehydrate an oil?! There's no water to dehydrate! Madness!

Now, onto the important, self-serving part of this post. Alinea is releasing a cookbook next year, which I would give my left arm to read. Preorders are already being taken, and by preordering, you get access to a website with all sorts of extras, including video lessons on how to do some of the wacky stuff they do in their kitchen. I'm pretty sure elves are involved in most of it. In any case, they're only accepting preorders from the US, which brings me to my request: if anyone out there has a permanent US address they'd be willing to let me use to preorder the book, please let me know. In return I will make you dinner, featuring some sort of ham foam, cooked with a laser beam.

Corporate Problem Solving

This is, hands-down, my favourite news story of the week.

It seems Nepal Airlines ran into some electrical troubles with one of their planes, and had to delay several flights over the last few weeks as a result. Understandably, they wanted the problem fixed, and, being a major state-run airline, they pursued the most rational, efficient method at their disposal: goat sacrific.

They took two goats out in front of the plane, made a plea to Akash Bhairab (the Hindu god of sky protection), and did whatever it is that large, national corporations do when they want to kill goats. According to airline officials, it worked out great, and the plane is running fine.

My questions are as follows:

#1) What is the mechanism used to determine how many goats are needed for a sacrifice? We now know that two goats are required for electrical faults. Presumably engine troubles would require three, or even four, goats, while broken seat trays might be mended with a single goat. I assume this is all detailed in a procedure manual somewhere.

#2) Really? Goats?

That's it, no more goat-related posts for at least two weeks.

Grand Theft Mountain

Xu Zhen, a visual artist from Shanghai, has just finished a new art exhibit centred around what the exhibit website claims is "the top 1.86 metres of Mt. Everest". Apparently, he climbed the mountain with mountan sawing equipment, sawed off the top of the world's tallest peak, then descended with it and placed it in a special refrigerated case to keep it frozen.

I'm leaning towards "hoax" on this one, but if not, it does raise an interesting question... what are the legal implications of stealing a mountain? If this guy gets away with it, it could lead to a whole rash of uncontrollable mountain thefts. I, for one, have always thought the tip of the Matterhorn would make a sweet ottoman.

Horses and shrimp are natural enemies

Keeping in line with yesterday's tree goat post, I'm going to extend the theme of "things that sound like they are made up, but are actually real, and awesome".

I am a fan of eccentric and/or dying trades. There's something neat about choosing to specialize in a skill that most people have forgotten about. The obvious examples of these trades are things like glassblowers, blacksmiths, mechanical watch repairmen, and candlestick makers (butchers and bakers appear to be safe for now). Some trades, though, are eccentric and rare even by the standards of the eccentric trades.

Take Belgium's horseback shrimp fisherman, for example. These tradespeople, of whom there are less than 12 left in the world, ride their horses through the North Sea dragging specially designed traps behind them to catch the shrimp that live near shore.

The trade itself is bizarre, but I'm even more entertained by the traditional use of the shrimp: fertilizer. I'm mystified as to how the whole arrangement managed to get started.

"Hey Steve, I hear there are shrimp near the shore in the North Sea, we should go catch them"

"Sounds like a plan. Should we use boats, like almost every other fishing civilizaton on the planet?"

"Nah, I was thinking horses."

"Sounds good, let's go."

...

"Well, shockingly enough, that worked. We now have big baskets full of shrimp! Let's cook 'em up and have dinner."

"No, rather than eating the shrimp directly, how about we grind them up and throw them on the ground? Maybe it will provide us with slightly increased crop yields several months from now."

"Sure, why not?"

And thus, Belgian horseback shrimp fishing was born.

Way, way cooler than regular goats

The Moroccan countryside is home to the Argan tree, an evergreen plant that grows to about 25 or 30 feet high, and produces a round fruit that's similar to an olive. It's a pretty unremarkable tree in all respects except for one. It is the only known home of the tree goat. Tree goats. Goats, in trees.

I am not making this up.

Figure 1: Goats in trees. Tree goats.

Apparently the local goats have become quite skilled at scaling the gnarled trunks of the Argan tree to reach the otherwise inaccessible fruit growing on the upper branches. Unfortunately, it seems the goats have become TOO adept at climbing, and are currently eating their way through vast swaths of Argan trees, threatening the future of the dry southwest Moroccan ecosystem. One can't help but wonder what kind of damage would be done if these agile grazers were to escape their current habitat and spread throughout the world, just climbing and eating everything in sight. Would anyone be able to stand up and fight them? It is thoughts like these that keep me up at night.

Figure 2: The Face of Terror

Broken? No.

Broken Social Scene is releasing a new album soon, shining the spotlight on the songwriting skills of Kevin Drew. They've put one song ("Tbtf") from the new album up on their MySpace.

In the absence of more songs from the album, I'm not sure whether or not I should get excited... is it just one incredibly awesome song, or is it indicative of what might be another landmark album of peerless Canadian indie rock?

Either way, it has a sweet flute riff.

Goodbye Arctic Sovereignty

After a few hundred years of searching, the Northwest Passage has finally appeared.

Now, it'll probably close up again come winter, but if temperatures keep rising, odds are it'll eventually be a permanent fixture of northern geography. Canada's been making a lot of noise about arctic sovereignty lately, and most of our claims to the arctic are facilitated by the fact that no one else really cares about it. It's cold, and there are angry, camouflaged bears up there. However, if it suddenly becomes an economically viable route between Europe and Asia, I'm willing to guess there will be a few more interested parties. As for the bears, we are well on our way to solving that problem.

Of course, in the face of challenges to Arctic sovereignty there arises one question of the utmost importance: who will be granted ownership of Santa Claus?

Been talkin' in the break room

Pretty Girls Make Graves are a band from Seattle, Washington got together around 2001 or so. I first heard their stuff 3 or 4 years ago, and remember being not-blown-away. They broke up earlier this year, but not before releasing a new album called Elan Vital, which is a pretty good record all around if you're into indie rock. Debates on what exactly constitutes "indie rock" are omitted here in the interests of brevity. See Whitehead, 2007 for a more thorough consideration of the subject.

More importantly, Elan Vital has one absolute, unequivocally kickass tune on it. "Parade" is a short song, just 2:40 long. The lyrics are nothing stellar, they're certainly no Joanna Newsom or anything (fun fact: Joanna Newsom's "Ys" is the best work of music ever produced by a human), but in any case, the lyrics are secondary because this song is CATCHY. Like, really catchy. If you download this song and tell me you listened to it without bobbing your head up and down just a little, you will be lying.

Elevator Action

Here's my dorky confession of the day: I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about elevators... mostly when I'm in them, or when I see people waiting for them. I'm not sure if anyone else shares this trait, but I've always been curious about how you could design an elevator's behaviour to minimize travel time. Would it be better to pick up people as often as possible, or to prioritize bringing people to their destination floor as quickly as possible once they're in?

It turns out the subject is a whole lot more complex than I thought.

I propose renaming it "moon.google.com"

I'm really trying to be productive, but interesting things keep happening today.

Google just announced it's sponsoring a $30 million prize for the first team to put a privately funded robot on the moon. There are a few strings attached, however, so you can't just hurl a Robosapien at it and cash in. The robot must survive the landing, and "complete certain tasks" to qualify. These tasks don't seem to be fully described in the Associated Press article, but I'm willing to guess it'll probably include the following:

-move around the surface
-collect soil samples
-send data back to Earth
-annex the moon in the name of Google

There's also a $5 million bonus if the robot discovers lunar ice, which seems a little paltry. Lunar ice would be a pretty big deal, Google. You should sweeten the pot a bit. In the interests of advancing the cause of science, I will make the following claim: if someone does land a privately-funded robot on the moon, and it discovers lunar ice, I will personally chip in $20.

Burj Dubai vs. CN Tower

Well, the inevitable finally happened today. The Burj Dubai surpassed the CN Tower to become the world's tallest freestanding structure, thus ending Toronto's 31-year claim to actually having something world class.

I kid, I kid.

Seriously though, I'm a little sad about it. As a structural engineering fan, I was able to take a certain amount of pride in having the world's tallest freestanding structure a mere 2 hour drive away. Alas, such is progress... On the upside, structural engineers love to split hairs when it comes to records, so I'm sure someone somewhere will make a big deal out of the fact that the Burj Dubai, being in a desert, doesn't have to worry about any sort of freeze-thaw issues. For those non-civil engineers out there, freeze-thaw cycles can do some serious damage to concrete over time, as water infiltrates the tiny pores, then freezes and expands, cracking the concrete around it.

With that in mind, I am re-branding the CN Tower, right here and now.

"Come visit the CN Tower! The World's Tallest Freestanding Structure Subject To Seasonal Freeze-Thaw Cycles".

Buttons, t-shirts and commemorative spoons will be available shortly.

US Presidents

When it comes to trivial knowledge, the US presidents are second only to opera and playwrights in the list of "things that are always on Jeopardy that I know very little about". To rectify the situation, I picked up a copy of this month's Mental Floss. Mental Floss, for those who don't read it, is my new favourite magazine. Essentially, it's just a bimonthly compilation of interesting stories, completely unbound by such petty restrictions as "themes" or "genres". The Sept/Oct issue's cover story promises "Presidential Secrets", and there are some pretty good ones within. Here are my favourites:

• The 33rd president, Harry S Truman's middle name was actually just S.
• Fattest president: William Howard Taft. Couldn't tie his own shoes.
• James Garfield (president #22) could write Greek with one hand, and Latin with the other. Simultaneously.
• Richard Nixon ate the same lunch for almost every single day of his presidency: rye crackers, skim milk, a canned Dole pineapple ring, and a scoop of cottage cheese.
• Shortest president: James Madison (5'5", 100 pounds).

Bring it on, Trebek.