Keep New York Clean

Listen to "Keep New York Clean" by Aleke Kanunu (press play below).


I was reminded of this tune yesterday, while biking through Propsect Park.

Aleke Kanonu is a relatively unknown Nigerian musician who played with numerous funk, afro-beat, and jazz artists in the USA and across Europe. What else can we find about him and his music by searching on the internet?
Check out Discogs.com, a great database and marketplace for records: http://www.discogs.com/artist/Aleke+Kanonu

Olympic Considerations/Time for some Campaigning

The Summer Olympics is coming up, wow. Here is one of my favorite logos for the games, made for the Olympics of 1968 in Mexico City:

The Olympics happen once every four years, just like the U.S. presidential elections.
There are 28 sports which athletes from all over the world compete in during the summer games. Check out all the different sports. Mabye there is one you would like to compete in someday?
http://www.olympic.org/uk/sports/index_uk.asp

Sound like something you want to do one day? Check out the Personal Trainer Video to get in shape: http://www.olympic.org/PersonalTrainer/

Peruse http://www.olympic.org to learn more about the games. It starts August 8th!

And about those upcoming elections...

Time for Some Campaignin' | Funny Jokes at JibJab

Octopus vs Rubik’s cube

Scientists have given octopuses Rubik’s cubes in an attempt to determine if they have a favourite tentacle, or if they are octidextrous (a word that seems to have been invented specifically for this story).

According to a number of British papers around 25 octopuses at aquariums across Europe will be given toys and visitors will be asked to record which arm they are using to play with them, using a diagram showing the arms as R1, R2, R3, R4 and L1, L2, L3, L4.

“Uniquely, octopuses have more than half their nerves in their arms and have been shown to partially think with their arms,” says Claire Little, of the Weymouth Sea Life Centre (Independent). “Many animals have been shown to favour a certain arm so we will see if octopuses can be added to that list.”

According to Little, the findings could help make life in captivity more pleasant for these intelligent, (and occasionally shark eating), animals. “They are very susceptible to stress, so if they do have a favourite side to be fed on, it could reduce risk to them,” she says (Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail).

No one has suggested that any of the octopuses will actually solve the puzzle, but there’s a very slim chance they might. At the risk of re-igniting the now dormant ‘Echinoderms or Molluscs’ blog war, show us a starfish that can do that…

Images: Octopus – Corbis / Rubik’s cube – photo by Culture-Culte via flickr and under Creative Commons

Republished from http://blogs.nature.com/news/thegreatbeyond/2008/07/octopus_vs_rubiks_cube.html

Rhyme Scene Police

The Letter 'M'

MAKE YOUR OWN VIDEO GAMES

Have you been in the house playing video games all summer? Perhaps you want to design your own challenge. Do you want to make your own video games? The truth is that you won't be able to easily design any really detailed realistic, movie-like graphics like the games you are probably playing now have. That requires some serious programming.
These programs linked below can be the beginning of your journey in learning how to make such complex games. It is a lot of fun.
There are tutorials which explain how to create a scrolling shooter games, maze games, first person shooter games, and even 3-d games. The program is called Gamemaker 7.0.
Download it and try it out. Check out the wiki for help and support. The tutorials are really good.
http://www.yoyogames.com/make
Here is the manual in Spanish:
http://www.yoyogames.com/wiki/attached/2/man_spanish.zip

Torque Game Designer:
http://www.garagegames.com/products/torque/tgb
Check out the Torque Game Builder. You can download a free trial. The download box is the third box down on the left side. This program is very thorough and the trial is for 30 days, so have fun. You can save your work too, make sure to do that!

Just BEE'ing here

Honeybees have mysteriously gone missing from their hives all over the world. As of Spring of 2008 nearly a third of U.S. 2.4 million bee colonies have been lost — tens of billions of bees, according to an estimate from the Apiary Inspectors of America. Beekeepers report entire hives abandoned by adult bees who uncharacteristically leftbehind food and bee larvae, the young that develop inside the hive. The scientific community has named the phenomenon “Colony Collapse Disorder” (CCD).



The Brooklyn Bee is just John Howe and some of us friends and volunteers. Thats his rooftop and three hives.

Responsible for pollinating over one-third of our food crops, honeybees are an integral part of our ecology. Total bee extinction would mean that fruit, nut and vegetable plants would not be pollinated, thus food would become scarce. The vanishing of such a pivotal species would immediately take its toll on the global economy having grave and lasting repercussions.

(republished from http://www.anewhive.blogspot.com/)