Modest Mussorgsky is no doubt a-rollin’ in his grave…
a-rockin’ and a-rollin’ that is!

Not much to say. For most beauteous effect, set the rez to 1080p (gear icon) and watch it Full Screen (far right [ ] icon) [w/ ear goggles!]

I’m embarrassed for us. Good people are being herded by psychopaths, the lie worshipped as truth, the truth sneered at roundly.

The Ryan Budget that murders Medicare. Mitt Romney, the homophobic bully vulture capitalist sociopath surging in polls. The fact that most voters want Obamacare repealed, for whatever reason.

Mr. Green once told me that a line drawn through history from the beginning always rises, but in a jagged fashion. In recent years, I’ve seen some reason to hope that the less rational elements might grow somewhat, through experience, or some exposure to new information. We do seem to be evolving somewhat on certain issues that were treated very differently in my childhood.

But Republicans torture. They create chaos. They steal, defame, twist, demonize, lie, and betray their nation for personal gain, again and again and again. Anyone with the slightest ability to think critically should have this all figured out by now, and indeed I have heard reformed Republicans confess that they were Republican purely by rote habit and infantile obsession, but then explained that the ideology finally, FINALLY, revealed itself to them in any one of the crystal-clear moments from the past few years, those moments when conservatism truly reared its ugly primal face, and was perfectly revealed to be an insect philosophy, and threw them out of its orbit and into the land of the Conservative Democrat.

And I read about the coming swell of disaffected young liberal voters, the one that the Republican Party fears so intensely. And in these moments I am lifted up, and believe for a time that we might make it past these days without some sort of terrible and bitter lesson that excises the cancer of conservative crap from the American body.

But then there are days like today, when I realize how close the margin is between people that think we should work together, and care for each other, and help each other become our Greatest Selves, and the other people who think we need to feed the poor to the rich, because the rich are hungry, and they must eat the poor, because that is what they have always done in this the Thirteenth Century.

So embarrasingly close. Criminals and dullards, clawing at backs of the more sensible as they are carried against their will into the future. The bent backs and dull eyes of the average decent American who are immediately and obviously wiser than the used car salesmen that make up the majority of the Supreme Court. The scars and PTSD and lost potential that must be laid at the altar of Democracy, all because the Lord Of The Flies Tribe demands it in its March Of Folly.

Thus has it always been, here in the Thirteenth Century.

Sigh.

I’ll just admit it straight out: I love the music of Burt Bacharach:

(there’s more to that 1968 Broadway overture, but this was the best I could find)
[blows Andrew Lloyd Webber's insipid junk completely AWAY]

I’ve cleared rooms at parties by insisting on playing my stash of Burt’s many recordings… and ya know what? Fuck ‘em! Oh YES, this is cheese all right, but it’s GOOD cheese! ‘Hipsters’ will often roll their eyes, but I submit to you that they just don’t ‘get’ what’s really going on here. It’s just good old ‘Tin Pan Alley’ pop songwriting at its finest. Songs you associate with loves past and present and find yourself humming at the oddest times… and even making you weep sometimes. And all served up with real expertise, style and panache. To really touch a human heart is no small trick. And Burt’s been doing it for 50+ years now, most of it in partnership with lyricist Hal David.

There is hardly a popular songwriter or performer who hasn’t been influenced by Mr. Bacharach (The Beatles did ‘Baby It’s You’). The rhythms and time changes are often subtle as well (eg: ‘Promises, Promises’, ‘Anyone Who Had A Heart’ & many others)…

Here are a couple of examples from a wonderful 2000 tribute show “A Night To Remember” + a treat at the end, which I hope helps prove my point. So take off your cynical shoes and just listen…

Dionne Warwick, of course. A medley of her greatest hits. Her high end’s not what it was, but she’s still great. Wonderful phrasing!

The late Luther Vandross. “The Windows of The World” + “What the World Needs Now”. This just breaks me down every fuckin’ time I hear it.

Signify Philly! They played this at the 2012 Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame Induction the other night… Todd Rundgren, Darrl Hall & Co. doing “I Saw the Light”. You can hear NYC’s ‘Brill building’ in this and other Rundgren numbers. Carol King, Neil Sedaka, Neil Diamond, Ellie Greenwich… and Burt Bacharach. A fun jam at Darryl’s ‘lanai’ in Hawaii (lucky bastard! ). Note the chord changes and all those major and minor 7^th’s. I rest my case.

Love - Still the best damn thing we can do.
- Sky

(speaking of ‘deep time’! )

It was 1972. Albik Trizz* was on the final (downhill) leg of its magical musical tour, and I was starting to concentrate on my own stuff. I had an old (even then!) Teac 1230 reel-to-reel tape recorder with ’sound-on-sound’ (and primitive tape echo) capability, so I could do limited ‘overdubbing’ although the tape ‘hiss’ built up fast… and once a track was dubbed, it couldn’t be ‘undubbed’, so the process was a ‘one shot deal’… But that’s what I had to work with, so that’s what I worked with.

I started playing with recording a piece and then chopping the tape up and splicing the pieces back together in more or less random order à la Karlheinz Stockhausen and the European ‘musique concrète’ scene. I also used some ‘found sounds’. The results were mixed but often rather interesting. I also ‘played’ my old C-melody saxophone for all it was worth, and climbed inside more than one piano to do unspeakable things to the poor instrument… I thought I was très avante-garde…

“Vōton Meets the Muzak Monster” was conceived, written and produced by me in 1972 with the invaluable assistance of Ed Pierson… Rick Porter participated on a few, as did Steve Hackney… These are ARTY-FACTS and some tracks have a glitch or two… but I hope they’re still worth a listen…

Now, without further ado and proceeding at your own risk…

* Albik Trizz at YouTube

** Co-written w/ Rick Porter

The Residents of course… Their unique medley of “Land of a Thousand Dances” and “Wipeout” with spacey overtones of “Telstar” wafting in there at the end. This 1976 LP was the ‘commercial’ entry to The Residents amazing oevre.

LP cover: The Third Reich ‘n Roll
(That’s the late Dick Clark as a Nazi.)

(’Icky Flicks’ video © 2008 The Cryptic Corporation)

Prof. Iain Stewart escorts us on another journey through time, using the ancient landscape of Scotland not as only a backdrop, but as Exhibit “A”. Stewart demonstrates that all of the geological processes known today to have formed the world we see around us are in fact in evidence, often spectacularly, across the rocky wilds of Scotland.

We should not be surprised then that most of the pioneering discoveries and insights of geology were made by (often self-taught ‘amateur’) Scotsmen. For the stark but beautiful Scottish landscape often lays bare to the inquisitive eye such weird formations as to demand some explanation for “how’d THAT happen?” or “how’d THAT get here?”.

The first casualty of geology was the Biblical date for the creation of the Earth, then supposed to have occurred in 4004 BC. James Hutton, upon taking a look at one of his famous ‘unconformities’ knew this could not be true. His reason and experience told him that the Earth must be older… MUCH older. He was in fact the first modern scientist to stare unblinking into the abyss of “deep time”:

“(in geology) we find no vestige of a beginning — no prospect of an end.”
- James Hutton (1726-1797)

Max should especially enjoy this 2011 BBC Scotland documentary [3-part playlist] for its gorgeous photography of Scotland and of course for the geology which was his focus in school. Much of the music is pretty cool too. Good stuff!

The Human Genome Project was officially completed in 2003, but our version of the genome is far from truly complete. Scientists are still finishing the last parts, correcting errors in the official sequence, and discovering new genes. These new genes did not go unnoticed because they are useless or insignificant. Some of them may be key players in our evolutionary story.
Two groups led by Evan Eichler and Franck Polleux have found that humans, alone among all animals, have three extra copies of a gene called SRGAP2, which is involved in brain development. The second of these copies, SRGAP2C, is particularly interesting because it affects the development of neurons, and produces features that are distinctively human. It also emerged between 2 and 3 million years ago, during the time when our brains became much bigger.
Genes are often duplicated by mistake when DNA is copied or shuffled around. These duplications provide raw fuel for fast evolution. Suddenly, genes get back-up copies. Either the original or the duplicate can mutate with impunity and take on new roles. But duplications also cause big problems for scientists who are trying to sequence genomes.
Early sequencing attempts relied on ‘shotgun’ techniques that read small fragments of DNA and assembled them into a whole. But this method is blind to genes that have been recently duplicated. “The basic problem is that these newly minted genes are almost perfectly identical to the originals,” explains Eichler, meaning that fragments of the copies are mistaken for parts of their ancestors.
This is why the ‘completed’ human genome still needs editing – it’s missing many duplicated genes. Eichler’s team have spent many years uncovering them. In 2010, they identified 23 genes that have only been duplicated in humans, and not other apes. Among these, SRGAP2 stood out. Working independently, Polleux’s team showed that it controlled the growth and movements of neurons, and seemed to be important for the developing brain. Both teams have since shown that SRGAP2 was incorrectly assembled in the reference human genome, and has many copies that we didn’t know about
Eichler’s team members Megan Dennis and Xander Nuttle found that the original gene was first duplicated around 3.4 million years ago to create SRGAP2B. This copy was itself duplicated 2.4 million years ago to create SRGAP2C, and again 1 million years ago to produce SRGAP2D.
The original gene is incredibly similar across different mammals. It encodes a protein that’s exactly the same in all primates, and just one amino acid off in mice. Whatever it does, it’s probably important. This is not a gene that is lightly tinkered with.
The copies, however, have evolved at breakneck speed. The B and D-versions have probably mutated to the point where they’re genetic junk. But the C-copy is very different. It is activated in the same time and place as the original: the developing brain of a growing infant.
The obvious interpretation is that having two copies of a ‘brain gene’ is presumably twice as ‘good’ as having just one. But that’s spectacularly wrong. Polleux’s team members Cecile Charrier and Kaumudi Joshi found that the C-copy actually neutralises its grandparent, rather than supporting it. It’s an imperfect copy, slightly shorter than the original. This matters because the SRGAP2 protein only works properly as a pair. If one half of that pair is the glitchy version produced by SRGAP2C, the entire duo fails.
When Charrier and Kaumudi added the C-copy to foetal mice, they found that the rodents’ neurons developed features that are typical of human ones. They had more of the spiny projections that allow neurons to form connections (synapses) with one another. The spines had longer stalks and larger heads, which might be important for learning; some people think that neurons with these qualities can process more information before maxing out.
Eichler thinks that all of these changes would have happened right from the moment of the C-copy’s ‘birth’. We usually picture genes changing their roles very slowly, by building up one mutation after another. But SRGAP2C would have instantly changed the way that its grandparent gene functioned.
The timing couldn’t be more intriguing. SRGAP2C was born just about when Homo – the group that we belong to – arose from our Australopithecus ancestors. This was a phase in our evolution when our brains got much bigger, we developed stone tools, and our culture became more sophisticated. “This gene duplication clearly must have played an important role during brain development of the common ancestor of the Homo lineage,” says Polleux.
Eichler admits that it’s “exciting to speculate”, but he sounds a big note of caution. So far, we only have a lot of correlations, and a correlation doesn’t imply a cause.
There is still a lot to learn, and remember that SRGAP2 is just one of more than 30 genes that have been duplicated specifically in humans.

Emphasis mine. From Not Exactly Rocket Science.

Reference: Charrier, Joshi, Coutinho-Budd, Kim, Lambert, de Marchena, Jin, Vanderhaeghen, Ghosh, Sassa & Polleux. 2012. Inhibition of SRGAP2 Function by Its Human-Specific Paralogs Induces Neoteny during Spine Maturation. Cell http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2012.03.034
Dennis, Nuttle, Sudmant, Antonacci, Graves, Nefedov, Rosenfeld, Sajjadian, Malig, Kotkiewicz, Curry, Shafer, Shaffer, de Jong, Wilson & Eichler. 2012. Evolution of Human-Specific Neural SRGAP2 Genes by Incomplete Segmental Duplication. Cell http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2012.03.033

Last evening, the great state of North Carolina passed the first Constitutional amendment in its history: The permanent outlawing of same-sex civil unions or marriages (which had already been banned). Also, no such out-of-state unions will be recognised in N.C. And that doesn’t count the many ‘family’ health insurance policies (including children’s) which are now null and void.

And it wasn’t close. Although the amendment only required a simple majority to pass, the vote was 60% for a return to 1950’s style intolerance and bigotry. I’d expect this from South Carolina, “The Loon State”, but I was a bit more hopeful for N.C. - Oh, well.

Tami Fitzgerald, chairwoman of Votes for Marriage NC, the main group behind the amendment, said: “We are not anti-gay, we are pro-marriage. The whole point is you don’t rewrite the nature of God’s design for marriage based on the demands of a group of adults.”

Well, I hope N.C. can get by on growing tobacco, because no companies will be relocating or opening branches there any more… and many now there will be leaving. But at least the good ‘God fearing’ citizens of North Carolina can sleep easy now, knowing they bask in ‘His’ ‘blessed approval’…

I did my new due diligence this time. Looked through one whole page of returns on search ‘NASA’ and nada. So there. Watch it.