Welcome to where time stands still…

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RAF jets scrambled to intercept Russian planes

Two RAF fighter jets were scrambled on Tuesday to intercept two Russian planes on course for British airspace, it emerged yesterday.

The incident marked the latest escalation of tensions in the standoff between London and Moscow. As Moscow hesitated in its response to Britain's expulsion of four Russian diplomats, two Tornado fighters raced to meet the Tu95 “Bear” bombers that had been dispatched from their base near the northern port city of Murmansk in the Arctic Circle. The planes turned back before they reached British airspace.

The incident, now rare according to the RAF, but once commonplace during the Cold War, may be seen as a show of defiance by the Kremlin. But Moscow said the Russian planes were on a training flight unrelated to the current diplomatic crisis over the murder of Alexander Litvinenko.

Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/07/19/wrussia419.xml

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Music vibes as good as sex and food

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Listening to music releases the same “feelgood” chemicals as eating and having sex, researchers have found.

The neuroscientist and former rock music producer Prof Daniel Levitin said music activates the brain area responsible for feeling pleasure, excitement and satisfaction.

Prof Levitin, an associate professor of psychology at the McGill University in Montreal, Canada, suggests that understanding how different types of music affects the body can help people choose songs or bands that could help them achieve tasks or goals.

He found the brain of someone listening to music reacts in a similar way to that of a gambler when winning a bet, a skydiver about to leap out of a plane or someone who has just taken drugs.

Someone listening to songs or tunes they enjoy experiences a release of dopamine, the hormone linked to reward and happiness. This association has led Prof Levitin, who worked with Stevie Wonder and the Grateful Dead, to claim to have discovered the “sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll” centre of the brain after collating research to be published this year.

He said: “The sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll scenario proves that music is at the heart of creating moods and reactions.

“Research shows that music has specific effects on the body's physiology, including heart rate, respiration, sweating, and mental activity.
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“Music is effective at moderating arousal levels, concentration, and helping to regulate mood through its action on the brain's natural chemistry.

“People who can have music follow them around during their daily lives can use these properties of music effectively, to form a soundtrack for their day and their lives.”

Music has been shown to cause activity in brain circuits associated with physical reactions, such as sweating, sexual arousal, and “shivers down the spine”.

Researchers used a variety of methods to measure the effect of music on the body, including heart rate, blood pressure, sweat response, breathing and brain wave activity.

Scanning techniques have allowed scientists to look at changes in specific parts of the brain.

Dr Levitin found instrumental music such as classical, jazz, techno or bluegrass were better for people studying text to avoid becoming distracted. Energetic tunes with a tempo above 96 beats per minute were best for those cooking, cleaning or doing household chores.

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Now that's interesting…

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I've just had a phone call from a headhunter. Apparently, somebody has given them a glowing referral about my software engineering skills and they'd like to talk to me about opportunities in the London-based banking software engineering field. They're going to call me later on tonight to talk about it.

In a word, buh???

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Why New Music Doesn't Sound As Good As It Did

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An interesting piece I found online. It's true, too.

Never mind that today's factory-produced starlets and mini-clones just don't have the practiced chops of the supergroups of yesteryear, pop in a new CD and you might notice that the quality of the music itselfmaybe something as simple as a snare drum hitjust doesn't sound as crisp and as clear as you're used to. Why is that?

It's part of the music industry's quest to make music louder and louder, and it's been going on for decades, at least since the birth of the compact disc. The key to the problem is that, in making the soft parts of a track louder (in the process making the entire track loud), you lose detail in the song: The difference between what's supposed to be loud and what's supposed to be soft becomes less and less. The result is that, sure, the soft parts of a song are nice and loud, but big noises like drum beats become muffled and fuzzy. But consumers often subconsciously equate loudness with quality, and thus, record producers pump up the volume. Anything to make a buck.

The bigger problem is that this is all unnecessary. Stereo equipment is more powerful today than ever, and last time I checked, every piece of music hardware had a volume knob.

Don't take my word for it: Pop in the first CD you bought and play it at the same volume level as the most recent one you bought. You might be shocked by what you hear.

Anyone still wondering why the music business is suffering?

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Let me fetch my spear and magic helmet!

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'What's Opera, Doc?,' a cartoon that would likely never be made today, celebrates golden anniversary

At any other time, the film would not have been made. Imagine the pitch: “Let's steal time and funding from our other projects so we can go way over budget making a cartoon with no jokes, and no real gags. The score will be a German opera. Kids won't get it. Most adults won't get it, but I don't care because I think it's funny.”

Fortunately, the time was 1956, the director was Chuck Jones, and the place was the Warners Bros. backlot animation studio dubbed “Termite Terrace.” The result released 50 years ago this week was “What's Opera, Doc?,” voted by animators in the 1994 book The 50 Greatest Cartoons: As Selected by 1,000 Animation Professionals to be the greatest cartoon of all time.

It is the antithesis of the routine cartoon. In place of snappy one-liners we see Elmer Fudd and Bugs Bunny singing their parts with complete sincerity and commitment. The backgrounds are beautifully textured paintings. The score is powerful and moving. Bugs cuts a striking figure in a metallic brassiere before Madonna was even born. It's audacious and decadent and beautiful and bold and everything the vast majority of cartoons would never dare to be.

Years later, it was my immense pleasure to meet Chuck and spend several hours with him. Never before, and never since, have I encountered someone as smart, funny, passionate and wry, all rolled into one delightful and charming package. I can only imagine the magic at work as he and fellow geniuses Friz Freleng, Bob Clampett, Mike Maltese, Maurice Noble, Mel Blanc, Carl Stalling and a host of others created thousands (yes, thousands) of cartoons featuring history's greatest ensemble cast.

Chuck told me he and his team of writers and animators never saw themselves as making cartoons for anyone but themselves. Months, and sometimes years, passed before their work ended up in theatres, and by then they had made so many new cartoons public reaction just wasn't on their radar. It was because they made cartoons to humour themselves, and because studio executives didn't much care what they did so long as they stayed on time and on budget, that “What's Opera, Doc?” was possible.

The key was placing it between two Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner cartoons in the production schedule. Formulaic by design, those ones could be done fast and cheap. Knock off the Coyote films ahead of schedule and under budget, reallocate the time and money to “What's Opera, Doc?” so the overall budgets remained intact, and voila! A masterpiece created right under the noses of studio executives who would have vetoed the idea long before Elmer Fudd could have raised his spear and donned his magic helmet.

A few years ago, when I staged a tribute to Chuck and his incredible body of work, showing 15 of his greatest cartoons on the big screen as they were originally meant to be seen, it wasn't “What's Opera, Doc?” that got the biggest reaction, initially. The nearly 500 people in attendance gave their most enthusiastic reaction to the opening credits of “One Froggy Evening” featuring Michigan J. Frog, and “Rabbit of Seville,” the famous Bugs Bunny-Elmer Fudd barbershop ditty. Both great cartoons, to be sure, and both on any animation historian's top 10. The interesting thing was that for weeks afterward, people told me how moved they were by “What's Opera, Doc?” Some had never seen it before. Others had seen it on TV, but absent the big screen and big sound, they had failed to fall under its spell. Seeing it that day, the way audiences first saw it in 1957, they were enthralled.

That's what makes “What's Opera, Doc?” the greatest cartoon ever, and that is why a piece of such grandeur will never be repeated.

That's not to say good work hasn't been done in recent years. The laughs are plentiful with The Simpsons in its heyday, Family Guy most of the time, and South Park when they find that sweet spot between satire and absurdity. On the big screen, Pixar tells stories as captivating as the greatest Disney epics of the past, and pulls the viewer into spectacular and compelling worlds.

They are all great in their own way, but they are to be expected. Animated sitcoms are supposed to be funny and irreverent and mildly scandalous. Feature films are supposed to have rich character development, radio-worthy songs, and captivating storylines. Bugs Bunny cartoons are not supposed to feature a lisping Viking rabbit hunter enthusiastically professing his operatic love for a bunny in drag.

These days, cartoons are made for the small screen, for syndication, for licensing, for Happy Meal toys and theme park rides. Gone are the days when someone like Chuck could trick the system and go on a flight of fancy to animation immortality with such a hugely impractical and absolutely beautiful film.

No one who knows and loves “What's Opera, Doc?” will ever hear Wagner's “Der Ring des Nibelungen” without hearing, in their own minds, “Kill da wabbit . . . kill da wabbit.” While classical music aficionados may be offended by that fact, I'm okay with it. More than okay with it.

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