Happy 50th birthday, Sputnik!

I was flipping through the fantastic Mental Floss blog this morning, and I found a link to a pretty interesting article over on Wired about the scientists who were responsible for the development of Sputnik, which was launched 50 years ago Thursday.

Apparently it wasn't a very meticulously planned scientific instrument. Rather, the Soviets designed an intercontinental ballistic missile with the goal of being able to hit the US with a hydrogen bomb, and just happened to notice that the result was a rocket with enough thrust to put something into orbit. Some dude pointed this out, and said "Hey, we should use this to launch something into space".

They then proceeded to cobble together a satellite in three months, and blasted it off into orbit. Three months! I prefer not to itemize what I have achieved in the last three months, but it falls somewhat short of putting the world's first artificial satellite in orbit.

One more interesting tidbit: Sputnik had no scientific instruments on board at all. Just 2 radio transmitters and four antennae. All it did was beep.

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.