Obscene climate scientists' rap

Your humble correspondent was brought up to like the classical music and to play the piano but I actually like pretty much all genres and my tastes are arguably close to the mainstream.




However, let me admit that I consider rap to be an inferior genre specifically produced for consumers whose IQ is mostly between 70 and 80.

[I'm not a climate scientist]
[I'm not a climate scientist]
[I'm not a climate scientist either]

[Yo, we're climate scientists]
[and there's no denying this]
[Climate change is real!]

Who's a climate scientist...
I'm a climate scientist...
Not a cleo finalist
No, a climate scientist

Droppin' facts all over this wax
While bitches be crying about a carbon tax
Climate change is caused by people
Earth Unlike Alien Has no sequel

We gotta move fast or we'll be forsaken,
Cause we were too busy suckin' dick in Copenhagen: (Politician)

I said Burn! it's hot in here..
32% more carbon in the atmosphere.
Oh Eee Ohh Eee oh wee, ice ice ice
Raisin' sea levels twice by twice

We're scientists, what we speak is True.
Unlike Andrew Bolt our work is Peer-Reviewed... ooohhh

Who's a climate scientist..
I'm a climate scientist..
An Anglican revivalist
No, a climate scientist

Feedback is like climate change on crack
The permafrosts subtracts: feedback
Methane release wack: feedback...
Write a letter then burn it: feedback

Denialists deny this in your dreams
'Coz climate change means greater extremes,
Shit won't be the norm
Heatwaves bigger badder storms
The Greenhouse effect is just a theory sucker (Alan Jones)

Yeah so is gravity float away mother fůčkéř

Who's a climate scientist..
I'm a climate scientist..
A Penny Farthing Cyclist?
No, a climate scientist.

A Lebanese typist
No
A Paleontologist
No
A Sebaceous Cyst
No! a climate fůčkíňg scientist! Yo! Freaks!

Unfortunately, the obscene rap by the self-described climate f*cking scientists only reinforces my viewpoint. By the way, Natalie Portman is also a climate scientist.

They just look so stupid and obscene. Because of their inability to include a single intelligent sentence into the lyrics, you may say that there is probably not a single person among the "musicians" who should be a scientist in a properly functioning system of institutionalized science.

Still, the names of the people are genuine and they're various kinds of climate graduate students and similar stuff. These obscene imbeciles are actually being paid as climate scientists. It is not hard to predict the quality of the scientific results that these "climate scientists" are capable to produce.

Poor Australia. And it's not just Australia.

If you look at the actual scientific output of all the people in the rap, it's, of course, poor or non-existent. For example, the blonde chick Ailie Gallant (a postdoc) is showing a paper, claiming that unlike Andrew Bolt, their work is peer-reviewed. But what she's showing is actually a paper that none of the people in the rap co-authored. For example, Ailie Gallant only has one 2007 paper co-authored with 2 more people that has 29 citations. Otherwise her work has been non-existent. But she surely looks attractive in a stupid rap video.

Climate science vs particle physics

Just compare the content of the rap with a rap produced in another discipline, particle physics.



Sung by Kate McAlpine and L.M. although the latter had to speed up his singing by a factor of 1.5; this was just sssooooo fffaaassssttt :-), especially in a language that I only learned as an adult.

Among other things, the 2008 rap above explains the LHC proton-proton collisions, their speed, the size of the experiment, the differences between the four detectors, LHCb, ALICE, CMS, and ATLAS and their main purpose, the fact that the device will either detect the Higgs boson or a serious reconstruction of the particle physics theories will have to be done, the method of finding new particles via missing transverse energy, the characteristic locations of black holes, the role of dark matter in cosmology and the differences between the astrophysical and terrestrial detection, fundamental weakness of gravity, the method how large extra dimensions may explain it and how the corresponding Kaluza-Klein modes may be detected, among other things.

And the bad rapper doesn't even claim to be an expert. AlpineKat is a self-described science journalist. Still, her video couldn't be recorded by a generic rapper - unlike the climate rap - and it is something I am ready to call a self-evident exception from the rule the rap is addressed to audiences with IQ between 70 and 80. In her case, it is not an actual rap; it may be viewed as a parody of rap.

But what about the rap from the "climate scientists"? It is the real thing. It is composed by the same kind of people who are dumb as soup which is why they listen to rap and produce rap. The "climate scientists" are not just pretending to be mentally limited idiots; they are idiots.

The content, focusing on childish attacks against "deniers" (who are 10 times more educated in the climate science than the rappers) and cruelly making fun of the fact that the politicians who attended the insane Copenhagen conference are homosexuals, is not a parody of raps; they're actual rappers driven by the same hormones and using the same primitive content of their brains that drives most other rappers.

When I am listening to this rap, I can't fail to recall my shopping in a supermarket in New Brunswick. I had no problems to visit the black neighborhood but I was always feeling more pleasant when there were cops on a nearby sidewalk. ;-)

Well, when it comes to similar genres focusing on free-minded teenagers enjoying some wild life, punk rock bands such as Horkýže Slíže (Slovakia) would be more likely to be my choice.



Horkýže slíže: Brďokoky

Nerdy girls need love too

Amy Lee Radigan (British Columbia) has recorded a song that became a kind of hit.



160,000 views in three weeks is not bad. Sheldon Cooper and sonic screwdriver are among the guys she has a crush on. ;-)




She's recording a CD that will be available in April via amyleeradigan.com.

Via Vancouver Sun

---

Watson vs human in Jeopardy: tie



Humans are no longer needed for knowledge TV contests. IBM's artificially intelligent device, Watson, was as good as his better human opponent - despite the fact that Watson has made a mistake that would be silly if it were made by a human: repeating a wrong answer of his foe.

However, computers have clearly become good enough to, for example, write papers on loop quantum gravity. Apple whose products are made in China is already preparing a competing machine. Each iWatson will have a compressed Chinese worker in it. ;-)

Stephen Wolfram has explained differences between Watson and Wolfram|Alpha on his blog.

Merry Christmas

New articles are being posted below this one, so don't stop reading...



Merry Christmas to the TRF community!

Needless to say, I am not wishing any good Christmas to the environmentalists because it would be insulting for them. According to environmentalists, Everything that is wrong with humanity [...] is summed up in Christmas. Among other things, it is a turkey genocide day, we heard from Ethanol Greenfart, before he recycled his granny and wrote a book about it. ;-)




Yes, I mean a White Christmas. In 2010, global warming caused exactly the same winter as we have always been used to. So enjoy it. ;-)

Neutralino Records at CERN publish Resonance

No, sorry, the LHC hasn't yet announced the discovery of a neutralino, the most likely "lightest supersymmetric particle" (LSP) that could constitute most of the dark matter.



The ATLAS Boogie (blues). The video may appear on the individual page only. Links to extra audio snippets are below.

Instead, the Neutralino Records is the trademark under which music DVDs and CDs recorded by the CERN physicists working for the ATLAS experiment are being released. So far, they have released Resonance, a double CD with 36 tracks in total, and a DVD:

ATLAS Resonance Music (main web page)

---

CD 1 (country, pop, includes audio snippets)
CD 2 (classical music, includes audio snippets)

---

DVD (with two trailers, lots of footage from CERN; the ATLAS Boogie is blues music about the Higgs etc. at ATLAS embedded above)

---

Buy it from December 6th (on iTunes and elsewhere)

---

Fundraising (happy kids)
contact (with a trailer with interviews)

When we talk about the symbols of the ATLAS' search for supersymmetry, here is George Redlinger:



He is a co-coordinator of the ATLAS supersymmetry group. Yes, his plate says "SUSY DM" - or "supersymmetric dark matter". ;-) See the Symmetry Magazine (copied from Brookhaven Today).

I'm a denier: a song

Go to the individual page if you see no video above.

Via Dagmar G.

A newer version of the same parody of "I'm a Believer" by Neil Diamond (which was performed by the Monkees in the original edition) was recorded by the Minnesotans for Global Warming and their drummer Michael Mann.




Sorry, I am still a bit overloaded after a short but fun trip to Belgrade.

The anthem of ATLAS collisions

Go to the individual page of this blog entry or to YouTube if you see no video above.

Your humble correspondent is proud to have been the community organizer who has convinced the Canadian musician Don Garbutt to compose the candidate anthem of the ATLAS collisions. It wasn't so hard to convince him. ;-)

However, if your music taste is as conservative as mine, you should listen to the clip about 10 times before you decide whether you love it or not. :-)




Yes, variations on the French and Swiss anthems appear in the composition, near the French-Swiss border. If you don't understand the words, the video says:

The ATLAS experiment, studying the LHC collisions at seven teraelectronvolts.

The [?] of the Standard Model for gauge fields, gluon fields [?], the Higgs, Yukawa couplings.

[Boom.]

Dark matter, neutralino, Higgs bosons, CP-violation, extra dimensions.

An exciting prospect. ;-)

The music features tracks individually imaged in "3-D Sound", using hrtf signal processing algorithms to simulate a "virtual surround" effect. Mr Garbutt had to dig up his old "Higgs Field" Logic session, to remix it minus the vocalizations. The 3-D is most evident in headphones. Maybe someday these animations will be output in 3-D, and then we will really be rocking!

I am not sure what happened with the contest trying to find the right sound for the LHC collisions that ATLAS organized some months ago. But if Don Garbutt could have been beaten by someone else, I would indeed love to hear the winner.

What I watched as a kid

When it comes to modern, classically sounding music that will always be connected with science in my ears, I can't fail to mention Vangelis' "To the Unknown Man" which was the theme music of "Wide Open the Windows of the Universe" (Okna vesmíru dokořán), a 1981 Czechoslovak popular program on astronomy and astrophysics that featured (and made famous) top Czech astrophysicist Dr Jiří Grygar who was also the main person behind the technical content.

The script for the program - about celestial bodies, cosmology, but also relativity in general etc. - was written by Dr Vladimír Železný, the founder and long-serving director of TV NOVA, the commercially most successful private TV station in the post-socialist Europe. As Dr Jiří Grygar told me three weeks ago, no person in the Czech TV industry has yet matched Železný's ability to become accurate about the science yet transform it into a mainstream piece of TV art.

The two Gentlemen ceased to be friends at some point because of some TV-related politics. It's sad, of course, because I have a respect for both of them.

The particle physics song, by CERN choir

Via CERNTV.

So far, the CERN choir cannot be found at the top of the hitparades, and when I listen to the performance, it seems likely that they will stay out of these hitparades for some time. But when it comes to the scientific content, they may already be ahead of Britney Spears and many others.




The Particle Physicists’ Song

Some particle physicists were standing one day
At the Hadron Collider in CERN
They gazed at the buttons and the output display
Thought of projects they’d had to adjourn…

They dreamt of new papers, new grants and new chairs
A thirteenth dimension and more –
Those physics professors were no idle guessers
And answers there’d be they were sure…

     Higgs, Higgs, glorious Higgs
     The theory told them these thingumajigs
     Were so fundamental
     And not accidental

     They got sentimental
     When thinking of Higgs.

The key to the origin of mass they supposed
Was the boson they hoped would be found
By hard-working scientists who rarely reposed
And constantly rushed round and round…

Inventing, designing experiments new
To answer deep questions that seek
Where most anti-matter’d gone off to and scattered
And why gravity is so weak.

     Higgs, Higgs, glorious Higgs
     The theory told them these thingumajigs
     Were so fundamental
     And not accidental

     They got sentimental
     When thinking of Higgs.

They all thought of SUSY with love in their eyes
And hoped things would work out this time
Exploring the Big Bang – the ultimate prize
And a mountain of knowledge to climb.

They switched on the LHC, hoped it would start
And the data would help them decide
What actually goes on when hunting a boson
And protons with protons collide.

     Higgs, Higgs, glorious Higgs
     The theory told them these thingumajigs
     Were so fundamental
     And not accidental

     They got sentimental
     When thinking of Higgs.

© Danuta Orlowska, 2009.

• With thanks to Philip Harris of the University of Sussex for his enthusiastic response to the song and for his fine-tuning suggestions; also thanks to Martin Gatehouse and Mary Stuttard of the CERN Choir for their hospitality.

Waldemar Matuška: 75 years

On July 2nd, Waldemar Matuška will celebrate his 75th birthday: he was born in Košice, Slovakia - however he is Czech. Congratulations!

Since the 1960s, this bearded mannish tenor has been one of the stars of the Czechoslovak pop music, country music, and folk music. Let me choose his duet with Eva Pilarová, "Oh, This Heavenly Love":

Watch a Waldemar Matuška playlist with 30 songs or so.

Around 1964, these two people together with Karel Gott got drunk in Carlsbad and were probably pissing on a communist delegation from a balcony on the first floor. Matuška was the only one who was punished. He couldn't perform for one year. ;-)

His songs about love and life have always had a patriotic accent in them. That's why it was so shocking when he decided to emigrate to the U.S. in 1986. The official propaganda immediately dismissed him as a traitor and his songs were banned.

Matuška explained that he just couldn't breathe in socialist Czechoslovakia anymore. The verb refers both to the lack of freedom and presence of jealousy and other things as well as to his asthma that wasn't terribly compatible with the polluted Czechoslovak air.

Matuška's life in the U.S. wasn't trivial either because he didn't speak English and it is questionable whether he speaks English today. However, he learned how to do shoppings in the supermarket without any need to speak which was great. Sometimes he sang a song for a Czech in the pub for a glass of beer, sometimes he used the fact that his wife earned millions in real estate. ;-)

Of course, after the Velvet Revolution in 1989, his songs regained the glory they deserved and Matuška sometimes performs in Czechia although he lives in Saint Leningrad, Florida - a city that is now called Saint Petersburg again. :-)

A few more well-known songs:

Tereza
Yeah, the cherries were getting ripe and mallowed
Others

Update

Sadly, Waldemar Matuška died on May 30th, 2009.

Jazz and women

Clifford Johnson has complained that a woman considered jazz to be a male sexist genre, if you allow me to simplify his text a little bit. Well, yes, most feminists are sexist. ;-)

Well, I am not sure whether Dinah Washington, Ella Fitzgerald, Carla Bley, Alice Coltrane, Hana Hegerová - one of the people in the 1966 Czech jazz opera "A Walk Worthwhile" (that Miloš Forman is just bringing to the traditionally classical Czech national theater!) -, Vlasta Průchová, Jana Koubková, or a Californian female string theorist whom I know (and who still likes jazz more than I do) would agree that women can't like jazz. I don't think so.

Instead, let me offer you a few compositions.



This is Jaroslav Ježek's 1928 classic, Bugatti Step. I was never good enough to play this one. Ježek was an extraordinary Czech composer, the third friend of Jiří Voskovec and Jan Werich, two eminent Czech comedians from "The Liberated Theater" who became famous in the 1920s.



The composition above, resembling the inner workings of Bugatti, is so difficult that you won't easily find a free copy on the Internet that is flawless; try a string version (...) or YouTube anyway. Be sure that girls like to play Ježek's compositions, too, for example "Heaven on Earth" (Nebe na zemi).

A week ago, when we recalled Yuri Gagarin, we also linked to an MP3 file, "Honor to the Astronaut" (1961).

Try also numerous jazz bands on the streets of Prague.

Finally, Clifford should realize that the Czech president is, among the current leaders, the most enthusiastic fan of jazz - and the organizer of "Jazz on the [Prague] Castle". I hope that this will be enough for Clifford and others to join Klaus' fight against political correctness and against the global warming religion! :-)

Nevertheless, my answer to Clifford's main question is that I don't see any significant signal that would indicate that jazz is more anti-female than other genres. Men dominate the composition and instruments - but that's the case in other genres, too.

Aneta Langerová: Hříšná těla, křídla motýlí

Aneta Langerová won the first Czech "American Idol" in 2004 and became a professional singer. The video above is her "Hříšná těla, křídla motýlí" - "Sinful Bodies, Butterfly Wings." See more videos from Aneta.

Vlastimil Horváth won the second Czech superstar in 2005 and turned into the most popular ethnic Roma in the Czech Republic.

Zbyněk Drda became the third Czech superstar in late 2006.

Yuri Gagarin: 46 years ago

On April 12th, 1961, Yuri Gagarin said "Poyekhali" (Let's go) and became the first person who was liberated from the terrestrial gravity. As the Czech poster below says, "communism has opened the road towards the stars". :-)



Nowadays, the spiritual heritors of the Soviets may create posters saying that "environmentalism has opened the path back to the caves." :-)

As kids, we were always taught to be proud that the first country that Gagarin visited during his world tour after he returned from outer space was Czechoslovakia. Seventeen years after Gagarin, Vladimír Remek who is now a deputy in the European Parliament for the Czech Communist Party became the first non-Soviet non-American citizen in space.




REMEK stands for "Rychle Eééééé Mluvící Eééééé Kosmonaut" which translates as "Quickly Errrrrr Speaking Errrrrr Astronaut" (Qesea).

An official Czech song "Good afternoon, Mr Gagarin" is available in MP3. The official name of the song was actually "Honor to the astronaut". It took some time before Czechoslovakia adopted the Soviet terminology.



Honor to the Astronaut

(Jaromír Hnilička / Pavel Pácl,
translation L.M., sung by Gustav Brom 4/12/1961)

The whole world heard the news from the Soviets,
the whole world suspended all its chats.
The whole world jumped away from radios,
and it turned all its eyes to the skies.

Good morning, Mr major Gagarin,
we couldn't wait but now it is here.
The whole world drank wine red as your flag,
people were waving all of their hands.

2x Tell the guys who live on the stars,
tell the guys who live on the Moon.
Tell them the message from us humans,
that we will follow your steps soon.

I can't sing this fun song terribly well
because my voice is trembling like mad.
I have heard that you are twenty seven
and the world is as young as you are.

(In the translation, "Soviets" was chosen instead of "TASS", the Press Agency of the Soviet Union. I've exchanged "stars" and "Moon" to make "Moon" rhyme with "soon". Some articles were omitted to fit the syllables.)

When we mention Czech music and astronautics, most people know that Neil Armstrong played Antonín Dvořák's New World Symphony on the Moon. It is much less known that the Discovery space shuttle crew including Don Thomas liked to play Jaroslav Vejvoda's famous polka, Roll Out the Barrels (= Rosamunde in German = Škoda lásky in Czech).

Rae Ann was somewhat surprised that there was jazz in Czechoslovakia. Well, there has been a lot of fun music, movies, and culture. For example, you should see what was probably the #1 hit of the early 1980s. It was nothing else than Girls from our Kindergarten. They enumerate a lot of female names and describe how sexy the girls were and how they were getting older - but when you look back, those girls from the kindergarten were still the most attractive ones. :-) You can clearly see that there's no politics in it.

When they would make a cool fairy-tale, such as Three Wishes For Cinderella, Karel Gott would sing both the Czech version as well as the German version of the title song.

Mandarinka Darinka

Singer: Michaela Pašteková
Composer: Peter Nagy (Slovakia)
Video clip: FrankiePD

A Mr. Orange ... once fell in love
with a mandarine, Miss Darinka,
the whole tree ... has already known about it
that it's the right time for a wedding.

But suddenly someone ... climbed the tree
and picked all ... the mandarines.
And he mailed them ... by the train to us
including Miss Darinka, the mandarine.

She was travelling for 20 days ... and 20 nights
and she was crying all the time.
To leave your love ... is a strange feeling
that she feared since she was a child.

In the morning, a retailer heard a quiet crying
when from the show window, someone bought
for his children, directly from Greece,
Miss Darinka, the mandarine.

At home, there were six children who wanted to eat her
when they suddenly hear ... a tiny voice
Hi kids, I am from Greece, Miss Darinka, a mandarine,
Miss Darinka, a mandarine.

Rf: Let me allow you ... to invite you
to a beautiful wedding at our place.
Pack your luggage ... as long as it's time,
my bridegroom is alone somewhere...

(Music.)

They came there right in time before the orange
was almost transferred to a ranch.
It would no longer be Darinka's man
but rather mere cooled juice.

Rf: The wedding was beautiful and merry
the songs were sung even by the new friends.
The children with Darinka as well as chaps from the ranch
overslept in the morning from the dancing.

A Mr. Orange ... once fell in love
with a mandarine, Miss Darinka,
the whole tree ... has already known about it
that it's the right time for a wedding.

String theory song

I just found some time to start a CD from Melanie. It starts with a string theory song. ;-)

• String theory song: lyrics

It turns out that string theory is a metaphor for the polarity of the male & female natures.

Foxnews on singing cosmic superstrings

Foxnews argues that astronomers have been deaf so far but with LIGO and LISA, they may detect the songs sung by cosmic superstrings: :-)

• Cosmic superstrings might 'sing' in gravity waves

The expected music is 10-20 octaves below the usual pop-music hits. Fair and balanced. We report, you decide. :-)

There are interesting people mentioned in the article but let me still recommend this 2004 review by Polchinski:

• Introduction to cosmic F- and D-strings

Unlike our friends in Foxnews, Joe Polchinski doesn't confuse cosmic superstrings with more general cosmic strings - thin tubes filled with the primordial vacuum. ;-)

Music: Lumo hit 2006

Choose Lumo hit 2006
	Alizee - J'en ai marre
	The Killers - Somebody Told Me
	Talking Heads - Once in a Lifetime
	Jakub Jan Ryba - Czech Christmas Mass
	Another pop-music hit
	Something completely different
Free polls from Pollhost.com

The annual music contest is getting started. After the page is loaded, press ESC to stop the background music.

The top contenders are

• Alizee - J'en ai marre
• The Killers - Somebody Told Me
• Talking Heads - Once in a Lifetime
• Jakub Jan Ryba (demo) - Česká mše vánoční (1796) - Czech Christmas Mass
  

As you can see, some contenders, especially the French and Czech ones, are older than from 2006. But they were mostly discovered by the readers of this blog in 2006 which is why they are legitimate competitors. ;-)

Some of the previous winners were

• 1997: White Town: Your Woman
• 1998: Natalie Imbruglia: Torn
• 1999: Cher: Believe
• 2000: American Pie
• 2001: Tatu: Nás ně dogoňjat
• 2002: Eminem: Without Me
• 2003: Dido: Thank You
• 2004: Karma: Pomalo
  silver: Haiducii: Dragostea din tei
• 2005: Akon: Lonely

The previous polls were

• How to spend 6 billion dollars
• Who is CapitalistImperialistPig

Merry Christmas

Certain traditions have been recycled for centuries. So why couldn't we recycle posts from 2005? :-) Click here:

• Merry Christmas: recycled

Don't forget that the background music can be usually stopped by pressing ESC. ;-)

Smetana and My Country: Alaska

The video has nice pictures from Alaska and exceptional background music by Bedřich Smetana, the Czech national composer. Nevertheless, their combination may be viewed as a manifestation of ignorance and insensitivity because the true message of the symphonic poem Vltava (The Moldau) is entirely lost.

In reality, the composition describes the Czech national river, Vltava, from its two springs to its junction with Labe (The Elbe). Vltava is the national river because it is largest among the rivers whose whole length fits into the Czech lands.

At the beginning, you hear a single flute whose tones are quickly increasing and decreasing and oscillate like the waves on a heterotic string. That's nothing else than Teplá Vltava (The Warm Moldau), one of the creeks that is finding its zigzag path through the hilly meadows of Šumava (The Bohemian Forest) and that is licking its grassy shores in Southern Bohemia.

Another flute joins the first one after a few moments: that's Studená Vltava (The Cold Moldau) that has added its forces to Teplá Vltava near Mrtvý Luh (The Dead Lea). Both of them meander in between the swamps until the melody culminates by the wide and lofty theme of the children song "Kočka leze dírou, pes oknem" (The cat is crawling through the hole and the dog through the window, see 0:25-0:48 of this video) that represents the true pillar of the whole symphonic poem. This theme that has also inspired Samuel Cohen, the author of the Israeli national anthem, is a clear sign that Vltava has spread its molecules into the wide area of Lipenská přehrada (The Lipno Dam) whose construction was apparently predicted by Smetana years before it started.

The river is getting stronger. At 4:00 we hear some Czech countryside themes as the river probes the celebrating villages South of the capital: yes, it is a wedding and the bride seems to like polka. Vltava continues through the forests in between the proud castles and chateaux standing on the hills. During a moonlight scene, water nymphs are dancing around. Vltava is slowly approaching Prague around 9:00. At 10:00, we hear the original C-major theme of the children song.



At 10:20, the old Vyšehrad Castle appears on the right side as you can figure out from the tones of another symphonic poem of Smetana's that belongs to the My Country 6-part package, namely Vyšehrad. In the last minute, the river leaves Prague and slowly joins with Labe that disappears into Germany in the North, and that's the end of the story.

Bedřich Smetana was chosen as a competitive national composer by the Czech intellectual movement even though he (Friedrich Smetana or Frederick Whipping-Cream, if you wish) could only speak German until he was 60 years old or so - and he became deaf soon afterwards. Antonín Dvořák who was 17 years younger than Smetana was a real patriot and while in the U.S., he was genuinely homesick. Nevertheless, the roles had already been decided. I posted this comment because they were just playing Vltava on a Boston's classical music radio station.

Zune vs iPod

See also: Zune ahead of iPod at amazon.com 2007

I have nothing whatsoever against Apple but I never quite understood why the iPod became such a special product, as opposed to any other MP3/WMA player (and the iPod doesn't even play WMA). And it is likely that even with Microsoft's Zune, the iPod will remain its own category. Despite the fact that Zune means the F*** word in Hebrew: thanks, Paul.



Nevertheless, the Zune is probably an interesting product. Its 30 GB hard disk matches my laptop. It plays various formats and unlike the iPod, it can send music files to other Zunes that are up to 15 meters away from you. The video can also be played in the anthropic landscape mode, with automatic switching from the portrait mode, unlike the iPod. Unlike the iPod, Zune also has an FM tuner, preloaded audio, preloaded video, third color (brown), $14.99 of unlimited downloads a month, XBOX integration, flexible background, WMA and WMV playback.



Concerning the design, I would probably prefer the Zune design if I had to decide. The Macintosh-like design of the windows on the display seems somewhat irritating to me which may be a result of my frustrating experience with a very slow and unstable Macintosh in Santa Cruz more than 6 years ago. Also, the relatively bigger display of Zune seems as a clear advantage and a sign of future. Disadvantages are listed in the fast comments.

In 2007, Zune and iPod may become just child versions of the übergadgets that may become the key players. Nokia N95 for $700 is an extended cell phone that will have a five-megapixel camera, integrated GPS, 802.11g Wi-Fi, HSDPA, microSD, 150MB RAM, and an internal computer. Sony Ericsson and Samsung will offer their competitors.

On Friday, Sony started to sell a couple of PlayStation3 units in the U.S. People were waiting in lines throughout the night, resembling the scenes we know from socialism. In Connecticut, two guys attempted to shoot another PlayStation3 fan who had to be hospitalized. However, amazon.com reviews indicate that PS3 doesn't beat Microsoft's Xbox 360 that is already 1 year old and costs $399.

Merry Christmas

Background sound (press ESC to stop): Jakub Jan Ryba's "Czech Christmas Mass" (Hey master, get up quickly); a 41:39 MP3 recording here



Merry Christmas! This special season is also a great opportunity for Matias Zaldarriaga and Nima Arkani-Hamed to sing for all the victims of the anthropic principle who try to live in the bad universes (audio - sorry, the true artists have not been recorded yet):

• WE WISH YOU A TINY CC
  WE WISH YOU A TINY CC
  WE WISH YOU A TINY CC
  SO YOU GET GALAXIES!
  
  GOOD TIDINGS WE BRING,
  FROM FROM VILENKIN
  DON'T CRY IF YOUR WORLD SUCKS
  IT'S MUCH BETTER OUT THERE
  
  WE WISH YOU A TINY HIGGS VEV
  WE WISH YOU THE RIGHT UP QUARK MASS
  WE WISH YOU A GOOD WEAK SCALE
  AND A HAPPY VACUUM.
  
  You can't live until you get stars
  You can't live until you get stars
  You can't live until you get stars
  So bring them right here.
  
  GOOD TIDINGS WE BRING,
  FROM FROM VILENKIN
  DON'T CRY IF YOUR WORLD SUCKS
  IT'S MUCH BETTER OUT THERE
  
  WE WISH YOU A TINY CC
  WE WISH YOU A TINY CC
  WE WISH YOU A TINY CC
  IN A BIG MULTIVERSE!

Yes, your humble correspondent sees it differently (audio).



Single vevs

• Trashing discretuum,
  with a one-choice vacuum.
  Laughing with our boss
  and with David Gross... (( Ha, ha, ha ))
  
  Vevs are 'bout to ring
  Making spirits bright
  What fun it's to determine
  the one background that's right.
  
  Oh, single set [of] single vevs, single all the way!
  Grab all other vacua and throw them right away.
  Single set [of] single vevs, single all the way!
  Oh, what fun it is to thrash anthropic beasts of prey.
  
  Landscape is now gone,
  so let's have some fun
  Take Witten along
  And sing predictive song.
  Begin with the state
  Two-fourty-eight E-eight
  Start to calculate the numbers
  and crack! You won't be late.
  
  Oh, single set [of] single vevs, single all the way!
  Grab all other vacua and throw them right away.
  Single set [of] single vevs, single all the way!
  Oh, what fun it is to thrash an..thropic beasts of prey.

Incidentally, the most famous classical old Czech Christmas carol "Nesem vám noviny" (lyrics, imprecise English lyrics, LM audio) is also sung by those who bring you good news from the landscape of Bethlehem.

The horrible CERN girls (LHC)

Did you know what the LHC stands for?

• Les Horribles Cernettes

which means "the horrible girls from CERN". This high-energy rock band

is famous because these girls appear on the first image on the web. The music (and lyrics) is pretty cool, too! For example, try Liquid Nitrogen. Thanks to Patrick Veverka ("Veverka" means "squirrel" in Czech) for this information.