Grand Theft Audio Jacked

DJ Prefect filled in for DJ David Downs on August 10, 2009.

HERE IS THE PODCAST (2 hours, mp3, 82.5 MB)

Evolution and Biology:

• 
  extinction runs in families. [ScienceDaily]

Physics and Computing:

• quantum computers ain't half bad, probably. [physorg]


• self-assembling DNA makes nano-machines. [WIRED]

Food/Health:

• melatonin supplementation may activate SIRT1 (as CR does) (from The Longevity Meme blog)


• blueberry leaf phytochemicals to combat Hepatitis C [ScienceDaily]


• bacon versus tilapia: bacon wins???


• UMAMI - the essence of pure FLAVR [Wikipedia]

At PCR: tonight's No Reservation viewing in honor of Anthony Bourdain's visit to PCR (bacon fest!)

Playlist

BT / The Last Moment Of Clarity / Emotional Technology
Imogen Heap / Headlock / Speak for Yourself
Sloan / All I Am Is All You're Not / Parallel Play
Drew Neumann / Monican Jam / Eye Spy
Bis / Starbright Boy / The New Transistor Heroes
Frank Black / I Switched You / Pistolero
Drew Neumann / Time Pretzel Paradox / Eye Spy
Nine Inch Nails / God Given / Year Zero
Beck / Milk and Honey / Midnite Vultures
Depeche Mode / Blasphemous Rumours / Catching up with Depeche Mode
Flock of Seagulls / I Ran
And One / My Warrior / Nordhausen
Ladytron / International Dateline / Witching Hour
Yoko Kanno / Cats on Mars (DMX Krew rmx) / Music for Freelance
Sloan / Living with the Masses / Never Hear the End of It
The Damned / Diamonds / So, Who's Paranoid?
And One / Creatures / Nordhausen

LATER THAT DAY, THIS HAPPENED:



DJ Prefect quote of the day: HOLY SHIT IT'S 2009

The Periodic Apocalypse: Extermination of the Human Host???

On July 31st, 2009, The Periodic Apocalypse brought Daniel Coffeen, PhD, to perform an rhetorical diagnosis of the ways in which Parasitic Capitalism Consumes, Confines, and Controls.

DJ Prefect (that's yours truly) came prepared with sources, dropping doses of science on the discussion to widen the frame. Find links to the books and articles referenced below.

A PODCAST of this event can be downloaded here. (1hr 45mins)

The Pirate Cat Radio Cafe was packed! Representatives from Berkeley, Noisebridge, Pirate Cat Radio, and many independents made their appearance.

Many thanks to all who gave donations, which go to support having more shows like this in future.

REFERENCES:

The End of Overeating Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite by David Kessler (from whence the Cinnabon example in this discussion).

Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely - watch the author's talk at TED 2009 about "our buggy moral code".

Culture Code by Clotaire Rapaille, expert marketing consultant to Fortune 500 companies.

Coffee versus Naps:

• Skip the Coffee, Power-Nap for 20 Minutes to Combat Afternoon Fatigue


• Naps, Learning, and REM by Jonah Lehrer PhD


• Naps FTW!!!

Food and/or Drug:

• Exorphins - opioid compounds created upon digestion of certain foods like wheat and dairy


• Don't be a Latte Fatty - the awful truth about your daily caffeine hit [UK Mail] (maybe it's time to start thinking of those lattes as meals in themselves...)


• Just Anticipating a Tasty Food Stimulates Brain Reward System [ScienceDaily]

SciBarCamp Palo Alto coverage

Wednesday and Thursday of this week, I attended the SciBarCamp Palo Alto un-conference, generously hosted and deliciously catered for by the IFTF.

Pictures of the event shared via PicasaWeb

I did my best to record as much of this amazing conference via ustream using the hodgepodge of tools that happened to be in my car at the time. (When I produce films I hire cameramen, and I'm not also trying to be an active participant in what I'm filming -- bit of a conflict of interest, heh.)

There were challenges in keeping the stream going, due to the limited wifi network for guests at the IFTF. I'd love to work with the organizers next time around and arrange more technical stuff in advance, and increase the success and quality of these streams.

Keynote speech (broken up into 3 parts due to connection drops):








I did a panel w/ Dr. Kirsten Sanford on "Spinning Science", which was great fun, well-attended and well-debated. (cuts off at 50mins due to connection issues)




Matt Baggott did a "Psychedelics WTF" presentation that I wished I could have hung out more for, but I was still trying to set up capture devices for as many presentations as possible.



I took some audio of some other rooms that I wasn't in -- I'll edit and post that later.

Reverend Billy on the Dance of Capitalism and Creativity

Introduced to me by Pirate Cat's own DJ Spider of the League of Pissed Off Voters, here's a bit from Reverend Billy (The Church of Life After Shopping is his website and movement) remarking on the "freezing" effect that the capitalist progression from initial creativity to gentrification has on the production of art and music.

Rev. Billy is presently running for mayor of New York City and has almost achieved enough donations from independent sources to acquire a $120,000 campaign matching fund from the state. He will be visiting San Francisco on Tuesday, July 21st...

Apocalypse SOW! May 22, 2009 - a pandemic success

Our Swine Flu and Mass Hysteria discussion with Dr Kirsten Sanford and Brian Malow marked the first science cafe event at Pirate Cat Radio Cafe, which went down smooth with plenty of maple bacon lattes for everyone.

As promised, here's the PODCAST of this event.

It starts off with some music as we are setting up, and then our usual news and public service announcements (even we pirates hafta follow a code!), but we get right into the discussion after that.

This was also our first use of Ustream as a live video feed of the cafe. There were audio issues in the first 15 minutes but we got 'em worked out during a music and drinks break... which I hear from certain vocal critics were TOO LONG. But wanting more talk and less rock is a problem you want to have on a talk show, right?

The listener feedback so far has been amazing. Please go to Dr Kiki's website and Brian Malow's website and let them know how much edutainumental fun they were to have in conversation at the Pirate Cat Radio Cafe.

The next one's sure to be even better!

Next topic: Water Crisis
Next date: June 23

The Periodic Apocalypse: Occasional Lectures on the End of the World
a science cafe at Pirate Cat Radio
presented by DJ Yuri Gee and DJ Prefect

The Friday Apocalypse Series begins!

Just got confirmation from both Dr Kirsten Sanford of This Week in Science and Brian Malow, the Science Comedian, that they are on board for the first Friday Apocalypse discussion series. Woo hoo!

The first event happens on May 22nd -- that's less than 2 weeks away.

Excitement! Will post Facebook event soon.

nthmost on Mannequin Factory

Listen to nthmost (aka DJ Prefect ...?) drop a little science on the Mannequin Factory with DJ Dragonslayer May 10, 2009

Stories:

Bee Flight Based More on Brute Force Than Aerodynamics - just flap those wide flat arms REAL HARD!

Mammoth DNA fully sequenced as of Nov 2008 - can haz clones now?

U.S. Obesity Comes From Eating Too Much, Study Finds. - do we really need to comment?



ps. holy hell, Imogen Heap is amazing, and I had no idea of her existence until I linked up with Thomas Dolby on Twitter and saw who he was friends with. That's just WEIRD. My new music discovery system needs help!