Sean Markey |

YOU SHALL BUILD A TURTLE FENCE!!!

new Autotune the News number 10 is *FINALLY* out today. Check it out:

ATtN 10

Seriously, this is why the internet was invented.

The Discovery Gateway Children’s Museum is a really cool place for 3-12 yr. olds to explore science and other very cool subjects. There are news cameras and green screen there for kids to try their hand at being the weather man/woman, a miniature wind-tunnel to test your paper airplane design, and even a retired medical helicopter for kids to explore.

That’s the organization I work for, but I don’t actually work AT the museum.

The Utah legislature funds a program at the museum that takes science, specifically chemistry, to 5th graders around the state. The program is called reaction time, and it focuses on the difference between physical changes (ice to water), and chemical reactions (say… cabbage juice mixed with lime juice). The program that I (and four other instructors) teach is directly in line with, and compliments, the Utah state core curriculum for 5th grade science. The goal of this particular program is, essentially, to bring really cool science to 5th graders around the state, and to help them succeed on the science portion of the yearly standardized test.

I usually travel to two different schools a day, bringing with me a car full of chemicals and test-tubes. At the school, I do a 50 minute presentation filled with cool experiments that illustrate key concepts. I then do a 30 minute hands on session with each class (usually there are 3-5 classes at each school) where the students get to work with six different substances (cabbage juice, fertilizer, milk, vinegar, road salt, and baking soda), mixing the chemicals together and observing the different reactions.

That’s pretty much it. Then I clean up, load up the car, and hurry off to the next school. It’s a pretty awesome gig, and I feel lucky to have it.

This week I am traveling for work, taking my chemistry kit far from Salt Lake (am currently 3 hours south in Richfield, Utah).

So that’s the job, and now it’s time to go get breakfast before I teach today’s group.

Oh yeah, did I mention I get to wear a tie-dye lab coat?

So one of my best pals, Clayton, is in a band  called Say Never.  They recently came out with their first record.  It’s extremely good.  They have a full time cellist, and male and female vocalists,  so there’s a lot of dynamics, a lot of range with the song writing and vocals that really comes through.

You can listen  to a few songs here (links to myspace), including one called September.  A little story about that:

Back when I lived in Florida, before I wrote stories, I wrote lyrics.  I played drums in whatever the band of the month was that I was in (with Clayton), and wrote songs.  This particular song just kept being good, which is why, all these years later, it made it on to his album.  If you can’t guess, it’s mostly about September 11th.  I read a news article about a man who called his wife from one of the planes, but she didn’t answer, so he left a message.

What do you say to someone in a situation like that?  What words are good enough to convey everything you’ve ever wanted to say, knowing it will be the last thing you say?

Check out the song here

Check out the lyrics here

So my awesome  wife, Beth, has created a site for writers (of any kind).   It’s called the Fiction Writing Directorate,  but I am certain the site can help writers of non-fiction, term papers, blogs, etc.  The Directorate is part motivation, part community, part story, and part role playing.  There are regular exercises (geared toward fiction  writers) and places where you can discuss your weekly writing goals, and get support from the various characters at the directorate, as well as the other agents (a.k.a. other writers playing along).

Check it out.  It’s really a lot of fun.  And tell a friend.  This is a “more the merrier” kind of situation.

I just started reading the fairly new (and much loved) Cherie Priest book “Boneshaker.”  So far?  It’s definitely good (and I haven’t even gotten to any of the zombies or pirates and what not that the back cover and the blurbs promise me.  *happy*).

But with all the ebook talk lately, I figured I’d mention this.  First, a disclaimer.  I love ebooks.  I love reading them on my iTouch.  For me, ebooks are much more convenient and easier to read than tradition books.  I bought “Boneshaker” from Barnes and Noble with a giftcard, so I have the actual physical book.

“Boneshaker” is Completely Gorgeous.  The layout, the font, the covers… just everything about it is lovely.  If you don’t already have a copy, you should probably go buy one.  Just looking at it will make you happy, and that’s not even speaking to the awesome story you will surely embark upon.

So, good job, Tor art department.  Consider me impressed.

happy Today, world.

Here is a very powerful message put to music.  I hope it hits you right there (you know where).  <3

My pal (and super artist) Aaron Deyoe has whipped up a little pdf of Shatter Shatter, a story about doing bad things and being exiled to Ohio.  Also a story whose title comes from a Tori Amos song.

Check it out here, or DOWNLOAD it here.

[story originally appeared at Brain Harvest]

Here they are, in order from best to ultra best:

5.) Bjork – Vespertine – 2001 

This is a very delicate album.  It isn’t in your face; it’s very tiny–deceptively so.  It’s the sky with the stars hanging in it.  It’s snowflakes under the microscope, all alien and fragile.  Bjork is very restrained here (for Bjork), except for a few exquisite moments of raw, screaming emotion.

4.) Sigur Ros – ( ) – 2002

Packaged with no information, an album name with no letters, and songs called untitled 1, untitled 2, etc., I bought the album purely for how strange it was.  Call it a gimmick if you must, but the contents of the album strike down any doubts.  It is an album of the underneath and inbetween.  There are no lyrics, just syllables.  The first half of the album is the soundtrack for a rainy funeral, the second half the sound of destruction–epic songs all over 8 minutes long, sweeping crescendos and their ravaged, strung-out aftermath.

3.) Death Cab for Cutie – Plans – 2005

Once upon a time, Death Cab recorded a very interesting, very fresh sounding album called Transaltanticism, which included an 8:00 + minute song   of the same name.  It was a smart album; it was indie with hints of pop goodness.  A few years later they dropped Plans.  Plans is an uplifting album, at times bleak, which manages to distill perfect indie-pop into each of the 11 tracks.  The ballad I Will Follow You Into the Dark is perhaps the best love song of the last 10 years, a dark and honest promise-song for the shoe-gazing, overly earnest kids-these-days of… well, these days.

2.) Mew – Frengers – 2003

Not quite Friends, Not quite Strangers = Frengers.  This mainstream debut from Danish Indie-art-rock band Mew was an event.  The songs structures shift like buildings with quicksand foundations, the lyrics are just strange enough to not exactly make sense.  The album could have been called Not Quite Normal, Not Quite Alien.  The song titles really sum up the album experience.  Some samples:

- Am I wry? No

-Snow brigade

-Eight Flew Over, One Was Destroyed

Frengers was, to my young and callow ears, a doorway to a more complicated world, a little greeting card attached to a larger gift that said “You can’t go home again.”  Or was that Thomas Wolfe?  Either way, this album was an amazing discovery.

1.) A Perfect Circle – Mer de Noms – 2000

First, a story:

Mer de Noms really changed the game for me.  Before I heard this album, I was a Metallica fanatic.  From about third grade on, I only listened to Metallica albums, went to three of their shows, wore Metallica t-shirts… you get the idea.  I was 17 when I first heard this album.  This was back in the early days of online music, and dial-up internet.  I would go to the good old cdnow.com site and listen to the 30 second samples of the songs over and over again.  I didn’t have enough money to buy the album, so I just listened to the samples.  I’m talking for HOURS.

Finally I saved enough for the album, and it just, tore my brain down and rebuilt it.  I know that sounds dramatic, but it’s also true.  I’d hear people talk about the first time they heard or saw The Beatles, or the first time they saw Star Wars IV.  This is like that.

The album is lush, but rough and dark and dirty, like an alleyway blooming with lavender or morning glories.  Each song is a story, an individual epic.  In 2000, when I first heard this album, 3 Libras was the single greatest thing I’d ever heard.  Now, at the end of 2009, it still is.  The soft acoustic guitar, the quiet vocals, the sad violins–even the drums are dripping with feeling and emotion.  Drums.  The ending is huge and sad, a great desperate longing that filled me up.

Aside from graduating college or GETTING MARRIED, one of my best memories from the aughties is going to see A Perfect Circle in Orlando, FL with my pal Clayton in 2001.  It was February, and cold as hell.  We got to the venue 8 hours early to be first in line, and thus right up at the stage (GA admission), and we were.  Not too much compared with getting to sing along with 3 Libras WITH THE ACTUAL BAND.

I was completely changed after this album.

From “The Wrong Grave,” by Kelly Link [From the book Pretty Monsters].

Miles is standing in front of the coffin containing his girlfriend, thinking poetic thoughts:

…Every cloud had a silver lining, except there was probably a more interesting and meaningful way to say that, and death really wasn’t a cloud.  He thought about what it was: more like an earthquake, maybe, or falling from a great height and smacking into the ground, really hard, which knocked the wind out of you and made it hard to sleep or wake up or eat or care about things like homework or whether there was anything good on TV.  And death was foggy, too, but also prickly, so maybe instead of a cloud, a fog made of little sharp things.  Needles.  Every death fog has a lot of silver needles?  Did that make sense?  Did it scan?

You can read the entire story here.

Sagan and Bill Nye gettin Trippy with the universe.

more at:  http;//www.symphonyofscience.com