Incredible

I got to see David Byrne at Massey Hall this wednesday. Suffice to say, I was more than pleased with the show. It was very funky, rythmic and heartfelt performance. He performed a range of material drawn from his collaborative work with Brian Eno both with Talking Heads and in solo outings. The delievery was hot, he can still move for 56. I was especially pleased with the number of pieces from the Remain in Light album, which happens to be in my 'Top 5 All Time Albums'.

There are a number write up, including the national papers:

National Post, Globe and Mail

Act 1:

• Strange Overtones
• I Zimbra
• One Fine Day
• Help Me Somebody
• Houses in Motion
• My Big Nurse
• My Big Hands (Fall Through the Cracks)
• Heaven
• Never Thought
• The River
• Crosseyed and Painless
• Life Is Long
• Once in A Lifetime
• Life During Wartime
• I Feel My Stuff

Act 2:

• Take Me to the River
• The Great Curve

Act 3:

• Air
• Burning Down the House

Act 4:

• Everything That Happens

Block Party - Paris Acoustic - This Modern Love

Bloc Party, 'This Modern Love' - A Take Away Show from La Blogotheque on Vimeo.

Bonobo apes

This is a talk regarding the remarkable abilities of the Bonobos Apes. It's amazing.

Beautiful Music

I've always admired the aesthetics of Audi's cars and as I gather they're not bad in the function department either. I have been told a number of occasions of the 'never-quit' of the Audi 5000 by my father. In any case, the have a new marketing campaign truthinengineering.com. The music for a new ad for the redesigned A4 struck me as very beautiful so I've decided to post it here. It seems this is an orgininal composition that was made for the commericial itself. I had hoped there was more to it but it seems there is not. Still, a striking piece of audio for a beautiful car.

Fascinating

Watch CBS Videos Online

In an interview last night on 60 Minutes, a former Delta Force commander in charge of ground forces hunting for Bin Laden shortly after 9/11. It's quite an interesting and revealing interview. Enjoy. I don't believe an account of this detail has ever surfaced quite yet.

Energy Density - Perspective

(IEEE Spectrum, Image Bryan Christie Design)

I'm reasonably sure that the average person in the modern age has an appreciation for the precious resource that oil is. What I'm reasonably convinced the modern 'joe sixpack' doesn't aprreciate is just how incredibly energy dense oil is. In an effort to better communicate with the public about energy concerns a group of scientists have developed a more easily understood 'currency of energy'. Namely, a cubic mile of oil. There is an article in the IEEE Spectrum magazine outlining their efforts here. How does the cubic mile of oil relate to our current energy consumption? Well, we consume, globally today, roughly 1 cubic mile of oil per year. There is an estimated 45 cubic miles of oil left in the world. So just what exactly would it take to create the equivalent energy of our annual global consumption of oil? Alot.

There are of course a set of reasonable assumptions that go along with this, click the image the source image in greater detail.

"Assumptions: The Three Gorges Dam is rated at its full design capacity of 18 gigawatts. A nuclear power plant is postulated to be the equivalent of a 1.1-GW unit at the Diablo Canyon plant in California. A coal plant is one rated at 500 megawatts. A wind turbine is one with a 100‑meter blade span, and rated at 1.65 MW. A solar panel is a 2.1‑­kilowatt system made for home roofs. In comparing ­categories, bear in mind that the average amount of time that power is produced varies among them, so that total energy obtained is not a simple function of power rating."

What is unfortunately hard to make out from this image is that those equivelencies are for that many dams, nuclear power plants, solar cells or coal plants operating for 50 years.

The human race is in dire need of energy innovation in both generation and consumption. Fortunately, people seem to be finally awakening to this reality. It will be no small task to replace this consumption with alternative sources. The future will be interesting indeed.

Tambourines in an cement mixer.

I haven't posted on here in quite a while so I've decided to remedy that. I think that I need to give recognition to some amazing music I've listened to in the last few weeks and months.

• Beck - Modern Guilt

This is probably his best work since Odelay. The whole album flows together so well. I've probably listened to this album at least 30x through, Beck is frequently the soundtrack to adventures in the Volvo. The music is this odd fusion of sounds, it feels anachronistic, a blend of sounds from the near future and the past.

• David Byrne and Brian Eno - Everything That Happens Will Happen Today

So yes, my previous post was about this album but now I actually have listened to it a bunch. It's beautiful and diverse. At times subtle and soft and at times bright and obvious. If you like the talking heads, you'll like this album. The instrumentals Eno has done up are wondrous. These two were really meant to work together, you can listen to their critically acclaimed 'Remain in Light' Talking Heads collaboration for further evidence of that.