As sea temperatures have risen in recent decades, enormous sheets of a mucus-like material have begun forming more often, oozing into new regions, and lasting longer, a new Mediterranean Sea study says (sea “mucus” blob pictures).
And the blobs may be more than just unpleasant.
Up to 124 miles (200 kilometers) long, the mucilages appear naturally, usually near Mediterranean coasts in summer. The season’s warm weather makes seawater more stable, which facilitates the bonding of the organic matter that makes up the blobs (Mediterranean map).
It gets worse:
But the new study found that Mediterranean mucilages harbor bacteria and viruses, including potentially deadly E. coli, Danovaro said. Those pathogens threaten human swimmers as well as fish and other sea creatures, according to the report, published September 16 in the journal PloS One.
Synth Britannia, the latest in BBC4’s (excellent) Britannia series airs on Friday October 16. Covering the synthpop explosion of the late seventies and early 80s, Synth Britannia features interviews with John Foxx, MUTE Record’s Daniel Miller, Gary Numan, Neil Tennant, Phil Oakey, Martin Gore, Bernard Sumner, Cabaret Voltaire, Vince Clarke, Martyn Ware, Midge Ure, Soft Cell, Kraftwerk, Throbbing Gristle and Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark. What a great line-up!
“In the late Seventies small pockets of electronic artists such as The Human League, Cabaret Voltaire and Throbbing Gristle were inspired by Kraftwerk and J G Ballard to dream of the sound of the future against the backdrop of bleak, high-rise Britain.
Gary Numan’s 1979 appearance on Top Of The Pops heralded the invention of synthpop, which would provide the soundtrack as Britain entered a new, ruthless era in the Eighties.
Depeche Mode, four lads from Basildon, came to embody the new sound, while post-punk bands such as Ultravox, Soft Cell, Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark and Yazoo took the synth from the pages of the NME and onto the front cover of Smash Hits.
By 1983 the Pet Shop Boys and New Order were pointing to where the future of electronic music lay—in dance.”
I’m looking forward to see this and glad to see that they included John Foxx. I’ve always felt he was unfairly obscure. Despite making some of the most vital electronic music of that time period, few know his music. The first three Ultravox albums, with Foxx on lead vocals, are some of the finest albums of the punk era, yet they weren’t strictly a punk band (violins? synthesizers?) and so undeservedly fell through the cultural cracks. I think Ultravox’s Ha!-Ha!-Ha! is THE great lost album of the punk years and I tell everyone who’ll listen to me they should hear it. It’s nothing short of amazing. When Foxx left the band, his sound became more stripped, down, colder, synthetic—more European than English, if you take my point.
Maybe I say this because Foxx’s solo album Metamatic was in my Walkman as I took a long train journey across Europe in 1983. It was the perfect soundtrack to looking out of a train window. Every time I hear his music it takes me right back to that time, especially this song, Underpass:
One group who probably won’t make it into Synth Britannia for obvious reasons, is Japan’s Yellow Magic Orchestra, although they were most certainly working on a parallel track. Here’s their video for Computer Games, from 1980:
Japanese director Yoshiro Nishimura, who brought you Tokyo Gore Police (won’t the sequel be out soon?) has a new movie, Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl. This time round he’s dropped the social commentary and humorous Cronenbergesque touches in favor of unadulterated hydraulic blood splatter and mayhem. Make sure you watch the trailer to the end, it’s got some real jaw-droppers…
Clever musical chair designs by artist Mikal Hameed: “By toying with the power of music and endless design possibilities I can brings beats, rhythm, and life into painting, furniture, and mixed media sculpture?
The owner of the Marah Land zoo in Gaza City said he had used masking tape and black hair dye, applied with a paint-brush, to disguise the white females.
Trailer for a new documentary film called DMT: The Spirit Molecule, based on the book of the same title by Dr. Rick Strassman MD. DMT or Dimethyltryptamine is one of the strongest hallucinogens known to man and each of us has a small amount of it floating around in our brains and blood stream. You can even make it yourself from a handful of a common type of lawn grass, distilled in a shot glass. The film features interviews with Dangerous Minds friends, author Douglas Rushkoff and visionary artist Alex Grey.
Smoking DMT, as the late Terence McKenna once said, is like getting shot out of a psychedelic canon. I agree. I’ve had some STRANGE experiences on the drug myself. It’s not for the timid, that’s for sure. DMT is not a drug you do for “fun” it’s a means of chemically connecting to an otherworldly “space” inhabited by strange and alien beings. Yes, you read that correctly. Think I’m joking? Smoke some, buster, then we’ll talk…
If you want a really good explanation of what the DMT experience is like, listen to this:
Bonus clip of Fear Factor’s Joe Rogan talking about his experience: DMT Changes Everything
Is Bigfoot a scary, cryptozoological enigma or a crime fighting action hero? Seldom seen Krofft Supershow oddity, Bigfoot and Wild Boy.
Orphaned at a young age, Wildboy was raised in the Pacific Northwest by Bigfoot, a large, hairy man-thing. Together, Bigfoot and Wildboy combated the various forces of evil in their part of the country. Besides being extremely strong, Bigfoot could also use super powered jumps to get to high places or to cover far distances. Helping (and occasionally hindering) Bigfoot and Wildboy were Suzie (first season only), the 12 year old daughter of the Ranger Lucas, and Cindy (second season only), an archeology student.
Crossing a microscope with a camera gives you a micrograph, a tiny photograph that allows artists and scientists to show the beauty inaccessible to the naked eye. Every year the Small World competition run by optics giant Nikon celebrates this hidden world. This year the winners range from an anglerfish ovary to the sex organs of plants via a rusted old coin.
