Everything about this band called the JAMS

Have you ever the JAMS? They're a pretty good band, these two British guys who make music. Wikipedia calls it alternative hip-hop, but that misses the point. In 1987, they put out an album called 1987 (What The Fuck Is Going On) that was remarkable for its unlicensed sampling. One song, The Queen and I, sampled Dancing Queen by ABBA, whose management eventually forced them to withdraw the album from sales and hand over the masters. Dick move, right?

The JAMS, being the nice guys that they are, responded by traveling to Sweden to appeal to ABBA's sense of artistic decency to allow the album to live. They couldn't, because its fucking ABBA, so instead they blasted The Queen and I outside the window of ABBA's management's office's window. The album was destroyed, but you can still torrent the thing. If you do torrent it, make sure you get the right version of the album, because in the aftermath they re-released the album without the samples. Evidently, it's mostly silence and drum machines.

If you're not sold on this album already, you should know about their brief foray into art. So these guys released another album, this time one that wasn't mired in legal battles, and made a ton of cash. They didn't know what to do with it, so they set up the K Foundation. They did some cool things, like give an award to some lady for being the worst artist in Britain the day she won some award for being the best artist in Britain. (It was some high concept shit that they hated for some reason.) Anyway, they still had a million quid left, and they made a piece of art with it, but the whole thing was getting out of hand, so one of these guys says to the other, "how about we burn it?" so they did. They made a movie of it:

BONUS MATH IS FUN WIKILITERACY

Okay, so I found* something delightful. It has to do with number bases, and if you're not familiar with the concept, the delightful concept won't be particularly delightful, so a primer on that first.

The way we count has ten digits: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9. When we need to describe an amount greater than nine, which happens fairly regularly, we need to employ two or more digits at once, so we use 1 and 0 to render 10. We put two digits side by side because we are describing a number so great that no single digit could possible describe its enormity! That we manage to parse it so unconsciously is a testament to the effectiveness of the standard. (Compare that to XML, kids!)

But, there are other ways of counting, ways that use more or less digits. You might be familiar with binary, which has but two digits to represent the values of zero to infinity: 1 and 0. If you want to count higher than 1, which I find happens all the time, you need to bring out two digits. So we count 1, then 10. Now, if we count one higher, we go to 11. Still with me? Suppose we need to add one to 11 in binary: we can't just put 12, can we! Heaven forbid! Binary knows nothing of this 'two' you speak of. No, we have to use yet another digit! Go straight to 100! And then 101, 110, 111, 1000, 1001, and so on.

Your numbers get long a bit more quickly this way, but that's just life for people in binary. It's not without it's benefits, either: if you feel like you'd be more satisfied with your life or more accomplished if you earned a large sum of money**, you could describe your wealth in binary. You only need 64 dollars (or whatever your local currency is) to be a [binary] millionaire!

Obviously, you can describe numbers with any other base. Back in the hunter-gatherer day, people would just count to five. Those were simpler times, and you didn't need to describe big numbers all that much. "One buffalo, two buffalo, three buffalo, four buffalo, ten buffalo," you'd say. And sometimes people count bases greater than ten, like hexadecimal, where the sixtenth number is 10. You count 1, 2, 3 ... 8, 9, A, B, C, D E, F, 10.

Anyway:

In mathematical numeral systems, the base or radix for the simplest case is the number of unique digits, including zero, that a positional numeral system uses to represent numbers. For example, for the decimal system (the most common system in use today) the radix is ten, because it uses the ten digits from 0 through 9.

*I mean found as 'felt', more than 'discover' or 'encounter'.

** This joke was originally about penis size, but then it occurred to me that...

• ...even a remarkedly small penis's length converted to binary would be gargantuan. According to Wikipedia***, a penis that is of at least 2.5 standard deviations smaller than the mean human penis size is described in medical contexts as a micropenis. Some person good with figures worked out that means that the cut off for micropenishood is 7cm, which converts to 111. That's about three and a half feet.

... and ...

• ...for Christ's sake, my mom reads this blog. I can't be talking about dicks all day.

*** Also, about that micropenis article, it has one of those little breaks of style that inexplicably persist on some pages. Just read this wonderful bit of uncited prose:

Most eight- to fourteen-year-old boys referred for micropenis do not have the micropenis condition. Such concerns are usually explained by one of the following:

1. a penis concealed in suprapubic fat (extra fat around the mons pubis).
2. a large body and frame for which a prepubertal penis simply appears too small.
3. delayed puberty with every reason to expect good future growth.

I like to think that the reason the above section remains is that even the most -- and I mean this in the best possible way -- zealously pedantic editors of Wikipedia were once eight-to-fourteen-year-olds who felt uncomfortable about their awkward, growing bodies, and who feel that if they had read something like this in their adolescence, maybe the whole thing would have been a tiny bit easier. God, I love to see that: when someone is encumbered by a system, for better or worse, and to see some twitch of anarchy empower them to act as they feel. You see it in dogs, sometimes, who, despite being bred more self-sacrafice, still sometimes act on their own behalf and stand up for themselves. It's very encouraging, somehow.

Booting Up Is Related To The Phrase "Pull Yourself Up By Your Bootstraps"

"A computer cannot run without first loading software but must be running before any software can be loaded." This predicament parallels the causality dilemma of the chicken and the egg, and, you may know, is solved by a eency weency bit of software called the BIOS, who is an Alice (from The Brady Bunch) -type that wakes up the video card and mouse and everyone else and tells them to get ready for another fine day of computing.

This process is called booting up, because it is akin to a person pulling themselves up by their bootstraps, which is only possible with magic. Computers ostensibly operate on magic as well, because Christ, how else are you going to explain the pane of glass that you're staring at which is rendering colored light in such a way as to communicate the thoughts of a young man (i.e. me) living in Los Angeles.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booting

Bonus Wikiliterate:
Today, I learned that The Brady Bunch isn't called The Brady Brunch because that is not actually a thing.

Also, Wikipedia is home to the definitive primer on road accident deaths in Bulgaria. Thank God.

List of anarchist communities

Wikipedia has some so-called design flaws that are essential to its design, such as the total lack of fact-checking. Obviously, there are parallel benefits to this (which don't need describing here) but sometimes the benefits are closer still. For example, because there is no fact-checking on Wikipedia, people can use it for a totally uncensored platform for personal reporting, and despite Wikipedia's policy against this, sometimes erroneous information may stay online for years, propped up only by the strength of its own personality.

Consider the following section in the List of anarchist communities:

Christiania was founded in 1971, when a group of hippie squatters occupied an abandoned military barracks in Copenhagen, Denmark. One of the more influential people involved was Jacob Ludvigsen, who published an anarchist newspaper which widely proclaimed the establishment of the free town. The people of Christiania developed their own set of rules—independent of the Danish government—which include the prohibition of cars, stealing, guns, bulletproof vests and hard drugs. Cameras are not allowed, and locals will wave their hands and shout "No photo!" if they see a picture being taken. Famous for its main drag, known as "Pusher Street" as hash was sold openly from permanent stands until 2004. Such commerce is controversial, but cannot be removed without complete community consensus. For years the legal status of the region was in limbo, as the Danish government attempted, without success, to remove the squatters.

The neighborhood is accessible only through two main entrances, and cars are not allowed. Danish authorities have repeatedly removed the large stones blocking the entrance, which have been replaced each time by residents. The authorities claim that the area must be accessible for safety concerns, but the residents suspect that it will instead be used by the police. The town negotiated an arrangement with the Danish defense ministry, the legal owners of the location, in 1995, resulting in resident taxation. The future of the area remains in doubt, as Danish authorities continue to push for its removal.

The inhabitants fight back with humour and persistence—for instance, when authorities in 2002 demanded that the hash trade be made less visible, the stands were covered in military camouflage nets. On January 4, 2004, the stands were finally demolished by the owners themselves (without stopping the hash trade as such, which continued on a person-to-person basis) as a way of persuading the government to allow the Free Town to continue to exist. Before they were demolished, the National Museum of Denmark was able to obtain one of the more colourful stands, and now includes it as part of an exhibit.

Now, I'm interested in the affairs of northern Europe's intoxicated-class as much as anybody, but how else would I find out about a cheeky hippie commune in Denmark? Answer me that, and I'll get you a blog.


BONUS FUN FACT FOR THE POST:
David Bowie is good at being on the cover of good albums.

Busking

One time me and my friend went busking. We had this telemarketing job in '09, and there was no one left to telemarket, with the economy being in the shit state of affairs it was in those days, so we both brought it our guitars and started playing. Both of us were too shy to play alone, but as there was no song that was in both our repertoires, we had to make songs up. Most of them were me playing one of two riffs, recorded below for your convenience:




My friend Kurt would then play the other part at the same time. We earned one dollar and five cents in two hours, including travel time.

Wikipedia has a nice article on the subject of busking. The best part is in an antiquated style, the Wikipedia free-form list. It's something that is out of vogue because the people at Wikipedia who do 90% of the work figure that its where any bumpkin can add lots of trivial information, which doesn't really look that encyclopedic. That list is Famous Examples of Busking, the best items of which have been reproduced here for posterity. You're welcome, future generations.

Paul McCartney of the Beatles donned a disguise to be filmed busking for Give My Regards To Broad Street in 1984:

"They just made me up and dropped me off. [...] So I was standin' there plunkin' chords, doing this silly version of the song, and no one noticed it was me. No one wants to look a busker (street singer) in the eye, of course, 'cus then they get his life story. So they'd toss coins and I'd be going 'Yesterday, all my troubles - thank you, sir - seemed so far away.' [...] After we did it, I made sure the money was donated to the Seaman's Mission."^[16]

Sting has also donned a disguise and gone out busking. He reportedly made £40. "He pulled a hat down over his eyes, but one woman said: 'It's Sting.' The man behind her said: 'You silly cow. It's not him. He's a multi-millionaire.'"^[18]

In a stunt organised by the Washington Post, the classical violinist Joshua Bell played as an incognito street busker at the Metro station L'Enfant Plaza in Washington, D.C. on 12 January 2007. Among 1,097 people who passed by, only one recognized him and only a couple more were drawn to his music. For his nearly 45 minute performance, Bell collected $32.17 (not counting $20 from a passerby who recognized him). He did this using a Stradivarius violin valued at around $2,000,000.^[19]

That's about all that's interesting in the article, with few exceptions.

1. A wildly editorial comment, which seems to illuminate more about the writer's life than busking: "Some people stereotype buskers as being unemployed, homeless or beggars. Most buskers are none of those things. Some people will heckle buskers and stigmatize them as such, regardless of the buskers' social status. When performing in public hecklers can be a real problem."
2. In the great style of internet business of taking something that works in real life and then making an awkward, nonfunctional version online, some people have got into cyber-busking. "Artists post work or performances on the Internet for people to download or 'stream' and if people like it they make a donation using PayPal."
3. This charming picture of a mother-son busking team:
   

BONUS BEGGING FUN:

If you had access to the internet in the late 90's, then you knew about The Amazing "Gimme A Buck (please)" Website. Go check it out.

Haunted houses may be leaking carbon monoxide

Wikipedia says that putative haunted houses may just be leaking carbon monoxide.

Some of the phenomena generally associated with haunted houses, including strange visions and sounds, feelings of dread, illness, and the sudden, apparently inexplicable death of all the occupants, may be attributed to carbon monoxide poisoning

In one famous case, carbon monoxide poisoning was clearly identified as the cause of an alleged haunting. Dr. William Wilmer, an ophthalmologist, described the experiences of one of his patients in a 1921 article published in the American Journal of Ophthalmology. "Mr. and Mrs. H." moved into a new home, but soon began to complain of headaches and listlessness. They began to hear bells and footsteps during the night, soon accompanied by strange physical sensations and mysterious figures. When they began to investigate, they found the previous residents had experienced similar symptoms. Upon examination, their furnace was found to be severely damaged, resulting in incomplete combustion that produces carbon monoxide and forcing most of the fumes into the house rather than up the chimney. After the stove was fixed, the family fully recovered and did not experience any further unusual events.

A report published in 2005 described a 23-year-old female victim of carbon monoxide poisoning, found delirious and hyperventilating, who claimed to have seen a ghost while in the shower. A new gas water heater had just been installed in her home, apparently improperly, which flooded the house with carbon monoxide when the victim closed all the exterior windows and doors and took a shower.

Bonus Wikiliteracy:
In South Korea, they sell fans with timers to turn off because of the fear of fan death, the concern that a fan will somehow mess about the air and cause you to die in your sleep. Just because you forgot to turn off the fan. Serves you right, you lazy bastard.

Remeber that band Jet?

All the way back in 2003, Jet put out an album called Get Born, which was called a derivative of every good band of the past two-thousand years. This may be true, but there is one song where this claim is made more than others. This is Jet's hit, Are You Gonna Be My Girl



The claim is that Jet ripped the dun-dun-dunn-dun-dun-duh-dunnah-dunn-dun beat from Iggy Pop, who did the song Lust For Life. The people who put it up are fucking shitheads, so we can't embed it inside this post. You have to click the link. Here's the link:

The Link.

Now, Chris Cester, who I guess plays with Jet or something, doesn't deny ripping off the beat, but explains that they ripped it from a motown track, and not Iggy Pop. Here's one of those motown songs he compares it to:



BONUS MUSIC VIDEO INFORMATION
The flying text effect in the first video is called kinetic typography. Most examples of this are exhausting, but every now and then there's a fun one. Here's one that's okay:

Turritopsis nutricula, the Immortal Jellyfish

Turritopsis nutricula is a species of jellyfish that is like other jellyfish in that they swim about and look weird and all, but are unique in that they're biologically immortal. After one of these jellyfish grow up into a sexually mature medusa with families and minivans and RNC memberships, they go bloop-bloop-bloop and turn into a little baby polyp all over again, and have to learn to smoke reefer out of a soda can all over again. They are not immortal in the old-fashioned cool way; they can still get eaten or hit by a bus or whatever, but failing that, they don't die so often. It's hard for scientists to check, seeing as scientists don't live forever, themselves, so all anybody can say for sure is that these jellyfish live for a while in captivity.

BONUS IMMORTALITY INFORMATION:
AlexChiu.com

Alex Chiu is a guy who sells immortality bracelets. His website also answers a couple of big questions ("What makes animals crawl, swim, or walk. Why can humans think. Why are there male and female. Must read"). He also describes his vision of world peace, which involves a nuclear war between China and the United States of America. "Only Alex Chiu has the solution to a unified world," he writes, "unless you can think of a better one."