From the snowy, moody, and sometimes sunny city of Washington, DC.
My name is Jue, and this is my blog. Please feel free to browse the archives or drop me a line at jue at jueseph dot com.
Meditation, Caution: addendum to Monday’s news
I’m proud to announce my journalistic debut this Monday, a news report on a study which claimed to show that transcendental meditation decreases the risk of death due to heart disease. On Wednesday, my article earned a (mostly) positive nod from Paul Raeburn of the Knight Science Journalism tracker, a blog that “peer reviews” science reporting on the web.
Mr. Raeburn wondered why news outlets didn’t give this study very much attention, considering how dramatic–more to the point, how publicly funded–its results were. He also criticized what little coverage there was for being too credulous and not asking a few obvious methodological questions. I know this is old news now, but since I was one of the reporters who dropped the yoga ball (so to speak) with this story, I’ll try to clear up a few facts that were lost in Monday’s deadline shuffle. Info that wasn’t previously reported is in bold.
(You may want to read my original article and the study’s press release to get a few basic details. Don’t worry, both are short.)
TED video ad puzzler redux
Previously on this blog I wondered about the origins of a striking electric string quartet piece in an Autodesk ad at the end of a TED video. Thanks to the magic of the Internet, I found some people looking for the same thing on another blog. After a brief discussion in the comments, Sharon Jennings of APM Music gave us the answer: the mystery piece was “Cyclorythmique” by French composer Jerome Coullet. The design house who made the inspired decision to pair that piece with their ad is Remedy Editorial of San Francisco.
Anyway, that was resolved about two months after I started looking, more than a year ago, and the only reason I even remember to bring it up now is a new mystery tune.
Today I was watching TED videos again–surprise!–and spotted another ad with a sparse, modern, electric string soundtrack, this time for Barclays Wealth. It was at the very end of Devdutt Pattanaik’s talk, “East vs. West,” and unfortunately, this time I don’t even have a YouTube video for the spot. Assuming TED won’t randomly switch the ads after its videos, you should be able to see the Barclays ad by watching (which I recommend, because it’s a great talk) or simply skipping to the end of the video.
UPDATE 11/26/2009: I’ve ripped the track from the ad on the Ted site so you can listen here.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Let me know if have any ideas about the music. Generic instrumental compositions, especially when they’re not intended for popular consumption, are very hard to pin down!
NASA Launches “LCHEESE” Impactor Mission to Find Life-sustaining Lunar Cheese
NASA's L-CHEESE spacecraft, a state-of-the-art space exploration vehicle made from unleavened dough.
On Friday morning, scientists will finally have an answer to a question that has plagued mankind for millenia: is the Moon made of cheese?
Many experts say that finding the fermented dairy delicacy is the first pre-requisite to future colonization of Earth’s natural satellite.
This is why NASA launched the LCHEESE mission, which will culminate tomorrow morning when a spacecraft propels a 2-ton saltine cracker into a frigid crater on the south pole of the moon. In the tremendous explosion that results, scientists hope to detect the spectroscopic signature of at least 10 kinds of semi-soft cheese.
“It’s too soon to tell what’ll come up, but we’re keeping our fingers crossed,” said a senior NASA official. “It might be a cloud of dust, or some pieces of pork paté. But what we’re really hoping for is a nice triple-cream brie, and maybe, just maybe, with a few slivers of manchego mixed in.”
After LCHEESE, NASA’s next step will be operation KMILK, a probe that will search for traces of milk ice hidden in lunar craters, according to the official. “Thirst will be a big problem for our astronauts. Cheese is well and good, but astronauts won’t be able to enjoy colonizing the Moon if there’s nothing to wash it down with.”
More info about LCHEESE can be found here