Liquid Sculpture

Alright, so I found this delightful little place where this one guy, Martin Waugh, takes photos of something that you probably see couple times a day and never take note of, though the magic of high-speed photography. Enjoy.

100 Greatest Guitar Solos

Disclaimer: Okay, ninety-nine.

Way back in 'ought seven, a little periodical known as Guitar World published a definitive piece called "The 100 Greatest Guitar Solos". Anyone with a passing interest in ripping solos from the Eighties will be pleasantly surprised by the selection (all chosen by Guitar World readers, no less), and will no doubt have heard many of the songs before. Here's the kicker: I found them all. Right here, man. Go ahead, drink it in. Well, almost all of them. I'll get to that later. First I'll take you on a tour of what seems to be the most face-melting of riffs; the solo. First thing apparent on a cursory glance at the list is that it contains such classics as Led Zepplin's Stairway To Heaven, Lynyrd Skynyrd's Freebird*, The Eagles' Hotel California, Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody*, Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit*, Guns 'N' Roses' Sweet Child O' Mine, Metallica's Master Of Puppets*, Aerosmith's Walk This Way, Pink Floyd's Comfortably Numb, Jimi Hendrix's Voodoo Child, Chuck Berry's Johnny B. Goode, Eric Clapton's Layla*, Jimi Hendrix's Little Wing*, Dire Strait's Sultans Of Swing, The Beatles' While My Guitar Gently Weeps*, ZZ Top's Sharp Dressed Man, and Jimi Hendrix's redition of The Star Spangled Banner* (anyone wishing to get along in this society must know all of these songs at least by name, and anyone wishing to curry favor with me must know all of the starred ones by heart). So anyway, the list contains not only these beauties, but it introduced me to numerous songs and artists I would have otherwise never heard. Like for instance, the two songs I have been constitutionally incapable of NOT listening to every chance I get for the past three days; Starship Trooper by Yes and Stash by Phish. Seriously. They're awesome. Anyway, you may have noticed that there are two songs labeled #87, both Highway 61 Revisted and Cult Of Personality. In addition, there is no #98, as the one currently holding that spot is Cliffs Of Dover by Eric Johnson. It's a wonderful song, but it also happens to be #17. What actually should be #98 is "Under A Glass Moon" by Dream Theater, a song I've been unable to locate. Tough for you. That also means that one of the two #87 tracks must be a spare. Highway 61 Revisited actually doesn't belong on this list. Just as well, it's not too good. And because I went through the trouble of listening to every single one of these tracks for you, I know that the song currently filling space #99 is not, in fact, "Cause We've Ended As Lovers" by Jeff Beck (a wonderful instrumental that can actually be found here) but insead a singularly abominable track that goes by Stroke You Up by Changing Faces. I dare you to listen to it out loud and not turn down your speakers for fear that someone with musical taste will walk by. It's impossible. All in all, I can only find one flaw with this musical masterstroke, and that's the fact that they didn't include Through The Fire And The Flames by DragonForce.

P.S.: I also like Van Halen's Eruption*, Ozzy Osbourne's Mr. Crowley, Pantera's Cemetery Gates, Pearl Jam's Alive, Joe Satriani's Satch Boogie*, Nirvana's In Bloom*, Sublime's Santeria, and Smashing Pumpkins' Cherub Rock*. Enjoy.

Soundtracks

Hey, y'all. Sorry I've been tardy. Writing papers and whatnot. To tide you over until the next big post (probably by next Monday), take a smattering of Original Soundtracks (I'd recommend the Pirates Of The Caribbean OST) and a picture of a bear riding a horse. That's what you guys like, right?

TIME's Best Inventions Of 2008

Well, it's almost here. The end of 2008. In the coming months, we have many things to look forward to, primary among these the inevitable "Best Of 2008" lists from almost every single media facet on Earth. Kicking it off in style was TIME Magazine, with their annual "Best Inventions" list (to be honest, last year's list was, like, a billion times better). I'm here to be your guide to what some editors somewhere determined to be the top breakthroughs of the year. In the number one slot, we have The Retail DNA Test, as deserving an invention as any. The $400 home package presents itself as a saliva test that can apparently determine your predispositions to disease and genetic aberrations to a fairly accurate degree. The inventor of the test (pregnant at time of press) trusts the analysis enough to tell TIME that her unborn son has about a 50% chance of developing Parkinson's Disease. The reason that the test is so controversial is the unexpected avenues that it may open up. If the test becomes common practice, thousands will be unable to secure health insurance, as many companies would be able to instantly determine your predisposition towards costly illnesses. Why would they insure you if they know that they'll end up paying for a tumor to be removed? The article goes into this with a bit more depth, check it out. The remaining 49 inventions on the list range from the innovative to the downright wacky, often times causing me to go "Best invention? More like worst invention." (I was sleepy, cut me some slack). I think they just got lazy after doing so much work on the number one spot. That's the only reason I can come up with to explain the presence of three electric cars (four if you include the futuristic MonoTracer), which are apparently not just for gay people anymore. If TIME Magazine is to be believed, they're making a comeback.

The list also has the baffling inclusion of the following: a creepy-ass robot (not to be confused with the creepy ass-robot), the new Mars rover, Obama's campaign, the camera work that made Speed Racer possible, that invisibility cloak they've been working on for over a decade now (nice photo, guys), the newest prime number, a "new" ping-pong serve, instant replay for umpires (as if baseball didn't go on long enough already), and easily the weirdest inclusion on this list, a piece of pretentious art.

Among the cooler things on there, we can find The Doomsday Seed Vault (when I was doing research for this, I stumbled across the phrase "biopiracy". Much cooler-sounding than it is), the Memristor (trust me, it's cool), the Synthetic Organism, bionic contact lenses, cheap solar panels, cement that cleans the air while it just sits there, and a new way to eat food. Honorable mention goes to Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, just because I believe in my geeky, geeky heart that Joss Whedon is a god. There are a bunch more, but these are the ones that stick out, so go ahead and read the rest if you want. That's about it, except for this freaking awesome John Coltrane rendition of "My Favorite Things" from The Sound of Music. Righteous.

Copper

It's always a shame when a good thing comes to an end. In the case of serials (webcomics, podcasts) that can only be found online, it gets even worse. People have "other projects" and will occasionally just stop posting new stuff. In this particular case, I don't mind too much, as the man is still creating new comics. I just have to pay for them. The comic in question is Copper, the creation of Kazu Kibuishi. While he hasn't updated Copper in about a year (with one recent exception), the man's been releasing graphic novels and contributing to the exceptional comic art anthology Flight (I know for a fact that his art's been in Volumes One and Two, but the newer stuff might not have him). He's also released a solo graphic novel, Daisy Kutter. She's essentially a female Clint Eastwood set in some whacked out future Wild West (buy it). But before all that, he started out with that little webcomic. It's still one of my favorites. Try out this one. And this one, selected solely for the last panel's sadly pathetic snail. Enjoy that while listening to The Ghost At Number One by Jellyfish.

Brains Are CRAAAAAZY

In the rare cases of extremely severe epilepsy, a surgery may be considered to alleviate the pain. This procedure involves severing the corpus callosum, an area of the brain allowing cross-hemisphere communication. A side effect of this is best described in the form of an experiment. A woman with a severed corpus callosum was told to focus on the center of a monitor where images would briefly flash. She was then asked to identify these images. If the images appeared to the right of the screen, she was able to identify them with no problem. This is because images on the right were registered in the left hemisphere of her brain (where speech centers are). Therefore she was able to say aloud "cat", "dog" or "sailboat" depending on what images were shown to her. But when images were flashed on the left side of the screen, she was unable to vocalize what it was she had seen. The right side of her brain was unable to communicate to the left side what it was she was seeing, so her speech centers couldn't verbalize anything. Here's where it gets AWESOME. When asked to write down what it was she had seen, she couldn't, because she was right-handed. The right hand is controlled by the left hemisphere, and since the left hemisphere still had no information, the right hand could not write down the image. When she picked up the pen in her left hand, she was able to write it down with no problem. Brains Are CRAAAAAZY.

Dub Incorporation

While I normally don't much care for reggae, a new phenom has been sweeping my iPod for the past several hours, and you deserve to hear about them. Dub Incorporation is a French outfit that has been mixing it up hardstyle since 1997. And I was lucky enough to find their first album, Diversité. All you have to do is listen to it. Try out the first track, My Freestyle. It's my favorite.

Also, I'm getting back into advertisements. Stay tuned.