Thursday, December 21, 2006

Bianca Ryan - America's Got Talent - Christmas

I know it's a little bit weird...
It might be the fact that she's from the world's musical capital, it might be due to David Hasselhoff being in the jury, or it might even be the Christmas spirit-- I just can't help acknowledging her talent: An 11-year old girl from Philly won "America's Got Talent" in August-- her name is Bianca Ryan. Check out the following videos (in temporal order) and have a Merry Merry Christmas.



Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Mos Def's Tru3 Magic Coming Soon

Mos Def's new album has been advanced and supposedly it will still appear in 2006 (Dec 29th).

Watch his interview with Al Gore at myspace and listen to some tracks of Tru3 Magic on mosdefmusic.com.

(Actually this quick post serves also as a test for the new blogspot format-- finally including tags)

Monday, December 18, 2006

"Mein Blog" -- Berlin Märkisches Viertel Worldwide

Lovin' the "Visitor - Geo Map Overlay" that google analytics gave me today.
MV (Märkisches Viertel) is with me.

This reminds me of two things I've been wanting to post for a long time (sorry, for German speakers only):
  1. There is a great comedian from Berlin (originally from MV) called Fil and his partner Sharkey. Whenever you're in Berlin, try to catch one of their shows. They're incredibly funny.
  2. Sido, the MV rapper who was big with his MV track "Mein Block" some time ago, has taken off his mask and released his new LP. It's not really my kind of music, but it's nevertheless interesting to follow his development. Watch him at the show of Berlin's own Kurt Krömer (a link by Janna).

Thursday, December 14, 2006

Gilles @ Paris (thanks, Steffi) and Neurotree

Just two titbits:
Gilles Peterson is finally gonna come to Paris on February 1st, 2007. Screw the exam on February 3rd...

Neuroscientists spend a lotta time in front of the computer anyway, so they engage in weird activities, such as the Neurotree, a scientific pedigree that answers who was educated by whom.
Not for nothing it's called Doktorvater/-mutter ("doctor father/mother") in German.

I guess Paul Broca must be something like the neuroscientific pendant to biblical Adam.
Or who can find a more historical neuroscientist?

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Old School /New School: Newcleus - Jam on it!

Recently, I've been to this Old School Detroit Techno concert and I really didn't feel the music. I think to enjoy it to the full extent, you must had stored feelings in it back in the days.

It's funny how music acts as a repository of emotions. And the retrieval of these feelings is usually as immediate as the one related to olfactory stimuli-- which, as you know, doesn't have to take the subcortical detour.

So I myself stored feelings in OldSkool Rap music. Although I am not old enough to have really savored this track when it came out, I sure loved it back in the nineties:
Newcleus - Jam on it (1984).
Check out the incredibly cool video (.mov - ca. 25mb)

There was also a cool remake by Mos Def in 2001 to which you can listen here. His new album Tru3 Magic, by the way, has been delayed once more and is supposed to be released on January 9th, 2007.

Sunday, December 10, 2006

DJ Mehdi - Somebody is a Lucky Boy

It's a pity that blogspot doesn't support tagging of blog entries, cause then it would be easier to connect posts that belong together-- like this one that's in a row with previous posts on the topic of Chromeo.
To sum up I hope you did check out the gorgeous Needy Girl track and the respective video.

Now there is a friend of Chromeo based in Paris who goes by the name of DJ Mehdi and who has just released his new album Lucky Boy.
There are two nice videos: The one from the first single "I am somebody" even features Dave from Chromeo in the final scence.



And there is a second one, a fan video called "I is sumbuddy":

Monday, December 04, 2006

CiteULike Social Academia Online

Recently, there has been a hot post on well-formed-data.net on Social Tools for Academic Papers. I wanted to wait for a couple of days to check out the service myself, but I really think it's a useful tool for everybody having to do with scientific publications: In line with Mo's decision, I registered at CiteULike, a private online academic library with a nice social networking component. You can match your academic consume profile with those of others to get ideas of what to read next.
I don't want to repeat Mo's contemplations-- I just wanted to add that it's a neat service with a handy simplicity but still lots of power.