Random knowledge

List of NC-17 rated films. Pulp Fiction, La Grande Bouffe, Eyes Wide Shut and Last Tango in Paris. But also Emmanuelle and Inside Deep Throat.

I’ve read dozens of reviews and it’s still not entirely clear to me why I should install Vista and kick XP out. Can anyone tell me why I should spend money on Gates’ new pet ?

Update: reading this, you’ll have to be pretty convincing. Bill Gates limits access to the Codex Leicester to Vista users. Something that should be freely available for everyone, has now become a commercial asset and the British Library is playing along. Am I the only one to protest ??

3 is the only integer between e and pi

9474 = 9⁴ + 4⁴ + 7⁴ + 4⁴

Behind on your car payments? Need to pay rent? Digital Charity may be your answer. Digital Charity gives you a list (sorted by category) of people who are looking for donations via PayPal. Each person looking for a donation can create a page with their situation and a PayPal link. Anyone interested in giving them money can then click on that link.

Random Knowledge sez: all donations are welcome for my Jazz club ;-).

Via MF

Air Routing International maintains a multitude of data on airports and airways around the world, including time and distance calculations.

Mr Michael Write tries to explain why one should say no to French art films. I’m very disappointed with the Guardian that they allow such uninformed views in their paper.

Dear Mr Write, I can understand that you don’t like certain movies, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they are bad. You are confusing personal taste with professional criticism.

Casa Vicens is a family residence in Barcelona (Spain), designed by Antoni Gaudí and built for industrialist Manuel Vicens. It was Gaudí’s first important work. It is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site “Works of Antoni Gaudí“.

More pictures

Moore’s Law (link to an exellent article at Wikipedia) is the empirical observation made in 1965 that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit for minimum component cost doubles every 24 months. It is attributed to Gordon E. Moore (born 1929), a co-founder of Intel.

Now Intel Corp. and IBM have announced that they have overcome some frustrating obstacles by ensuring microchips can get even smaller and more powerful. See

Some researchers say that men can have ‘women’s brains’ and that women can think more like men.

Find out more about ‘brain sex’ differences by taking the Sex ID test, a series of visual challenges and questions used by psychologists in the BBC One television series Secrets of the Sexes:

• Get a brain sex profile and find out if you think like a man or a woman.
• See if you can gaze into someone’s eyes and know what they’re thinking.
• Find out why scientists are interested in the length of your fingers.
• See how your results relate to theories about brain sex.

Results for Random Knowledge: 78% male -22% female (+/-).

A collection of other illustrations in this series

The imposing Transylvanian castle, where, legend has it, the model for Dracula once lived and was imprisoned, is about to go up for sale. But it’s probably already too late for you to get your bid in.

Dominic Habsburg, 69, an architect from Westchester County, N.Y., and the son of Romanian Princess Ileana, said his family hopes to finalize the $78 million deal with the government of Brasov County later this month to buy Bran Castle.

Via

“Decasia” was originally conceived of as a live environmental multimedia performance with a full size orchestra. The Europaischer Musikmonat (European Music Month) commissioned Michael Gordon to write a symphony that would be performed by the 55-piece basel sinfonietta, and staged by Ridge Theater. The film was created as part of this production. A three story scaffolding structure was built in the shape of a large triangle. The orchestra members were positioned on the various levels, with the conductor standing on a raised podium in the center. Draping the three walls were large pieces of scrim, on which the film and slides were projected from the opposite corners. Surrounding the conductor on the floor was the audience, who looked up through the projections to see the musicians illuminated from behind the scrim.

Now Bill Morrison’s award-winning film, Decasia: The State of Decay, combined with an experimental symphony composed by Bang on a Can’s Michael Gordon, appears on stage at the Angel Orensanz Foundation for the Arts, New York. The music is performed live, behind a scrim on which the film is projected.

Turkey’s strict penal code has repeatedly marked writers, journalists and publishers out as targets for attack, but how many more will pay for their convictions with their lives?

Comments by Lucy Popescu

You can’t stop the rain by complaining.

Airport passenger figures 2005 :

1. ATLANTA, GA (ATL) — 85 907 423

2. CHICAGO, IL (ORD) — 76 510 003

3. LONDON (LHR) — 67 915 403

4. TOKYO (HND) – 63 282 219

5. LOS ANGELES, CA (LAX) — 61 489 398

6. DALLAS/FT WORTH AIRPORT, TX (DFW) — 59 176 265

7. PARIS (CDG) – 53 798 308

8. FRANKFURT (FRA) — 52 219 412

9. AMSTERDAM (AMS) — 44 163 098

10. LAS VEGAS, NV (LAS) — 43 989 982

11. DENVER, COLORADO (DEN) — 43 387 513

12. MADRID (MAD) — 41 940 059

13. NEW YORK, NY (JFK) — 41 885 104

14. PHOENIX, ARIZONA (PHX) — 41 213 754

15. BEIJING (PEK) — 41 004 008

Via

A novel whose narrative consists entirely of mobile phone text messages has been published in Finland.

“The Last Messages” tells the story of a fictitious information-technology executive in Finland who resigns from his job and travels throughout Europe and India, keeping in touch with his friends and relatives only through text messages

Some time ago I posted some simple examples illustrating the beauty of mathematics. Greg posted another example.

Feel free to add others.

See previous post here. Here’s a public announcement for the upcoming Robert Anton Wilson Memorial.

Via BB

Scientists at the University of Bergen, Norway have deduced how bony fishes conquered the oceans by duplicating their yolk-producing genes and filling their eggs with the water of life — the degradation of yolk proteins from one of the duplicated genes causes the eggs to fill with vital water and float. This is the major solution realized by extant marine teleosts that showed an unprecedented radiation during the late Cretaceous and early Paleogene Periods. The work is a unique hypothesis that integrates the cellular and molecular physiology of teleost reproduction with their evolutionary and environmental history.

Via

You can read the study here

As a teacher, trombonist Jimmy Cheatham paid homage to the past by preparing young music students at UC San Diego to take jazz into the future.

On stage, performing with the band he and his wife formed, he demonstrated why the music needed to live on. The band’s style of playing incorporates blues and jazz. It was, the Cheathams said, “unrestrained, exuberant, soulful, rollicking, growling, howling, roaring, wicked, virtuous wild and truthful.”

And a Cheatham solo was often the other half of a conversation started by his wife, vocalist and pianist Jeannie Cheatham. Using a plunger to cover and open the bell of the horn, creating an effect known as wah-wah, Cheatham played with a lyrical quality.

“It’s almost like he’s talking to her,” longtime friend and jazzman Buddy Collette said in an interview last week. The audiences “love it because it takes a real talent to do that. He’s one of the best at that.”

More here