Singing in the Light: Community Singing for Everyone

An ongoing benefit for 50 Lanterns, a local non-profit that brings solar lanterns to people in need around the world.

Sunday, September 21, 2008
4 to 6 p.m.
Hennepin Ave United Methodist Church
- art gallery, 2nd floor
511 Groveland Ave.
Minneapolis, MN 55403

Suggested donation: $10-$20
Please don’t let money keep you away!
Come and give whatever you can.

All ages and abilities are welcome!
No music to read …
Just nourishing songs, rounds and chants from around the world
and here at home.

Future 2008 Dates:
October 5
November 9 (choir room)
November 23
December 7

Barbara McAfee: barbaramcafee.com

“There’s one wavelength that gets everybody … the evil color.”

The Department of Homeland Security is funding the creation an LED flashlight that uses powerful flashes of light to temporarily blind, disorient and incapacitate people.

… The tool could be scaled up to make a light bazooka that could subdue a crowd, but the company [Intelligent Optical Systems] is focusing on miniaturizing the device to make it resemble a traditional D-cell Maglite. Right now the prototype is a non-svelte 15 inches by 4 inches wide.

But first the company’s chief scientist Vladimir Rubtsov wants to discover more powerful patterns and colors, which he’ll get this fall with tests on volunteers at Penn State University’s Institute for Nonlethal Defense Technology.

“There’s one wavelength that gets everybody,” [Bob] Lieberman said …. “Vlad calls it the evil color.”

- Wired: Homeland Security Funds LED Light Saber.

An evil wavelength is only the beginning. Next step, evil patterns — for example, certain rates of flashing light can trigger epileptic seizures in susceptible people. (Perhaps similarly, shamans use drumming at certain rates to facilitate altered states, e.g. journeys to the spirit world.) I suppose that a variety of mental states — confusion, hypnosis — might be triggered via magical flashing patterns.

I’m reminded of Michael Crichton’s LOOKER … I remember the movie as B-material (I haven’t read the book), but it did have a plausible veneer of science, psychological research into flashing lights and hypnotic states, and a cool light-flash pistol.

Rainbows and other atmospheric optics phenomena — very nice site, photographs and explanations.

Link

Glass Bead Bows:

This almost complete bow was produced by glass beads remaining on a dry road surface after resurfacing and painting. The bow is only about 21° in radius, half that of a rainwater bow because glass is more strongly refractive. The inside of the glass bead bow is brighter than the surroundings as is the rainbow. Glass bead bows can sometimes be seen on traffic signs - but take care if driving.

[Link]

Via Fark.

The art and science of colour theory, at Colour Museum:

Do you know Isaac Newton’s Theory of Colour? Or maybe Goethe’s? We present you with a total of 59 easy-to-understand, richly illustrated colour theories from the Antiquity to modern times: in short, a complete cultural history of colour written by Prof. Narciso Silvestrini and Prof. Ernst Peter Fischer.

Via Proceedings of the Athanasius Society
Whence via BibliOdyssey

sean michael ragan posts this ingenious algorithm: combine twin-bulb adapters into neuron-like structures:

The first manifestation of this idea was as a table lamp, incorporating only 15 adapters and using pink bulbs and a commercially-bought lamp base. The fractal arrangement of the adapters in space suggested nerves innervating tissue to me, and so I chose the pink color to suggest (hopefully) a brain. The lamp was called “Brainiac” and was dated 9-18-2001. It was, in fact, quite ugly, and the light it gave off was fit only for a whorehouse. It was eventually dismantled, and the adapters cannibalized to make the much-more-successful fractal chandelier.

Ingenious indeed — it lights my neurons, for sure!

He continues:

The chandelier is essentially a binary tree in 3-space. It is symmetrical, with each adapter, except the top one, being positioned at a 90-degree angle relative to the axis of its parent. After assembly, a drop of cyanoacrylate glue was applied to the junction of each pair of adapters to keep the structure from deforming if the chandelier is moved or jostled.

Via BoingBoing.