800,000 messages opposing Keystone XL | 350.org

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“The Senate should consider this one day of action as a warning," said Michael Kieschnick, President of CREDO. "The American people are watching very closely whether the Senate represents Big Oil or the public health. If the Keystone XL pipeline is forced through, we will do much, much more until it is permanently blocked.”

WASHINGTON, DC -- Over the last 24-hours, environmental and progressive groups flooded the Senate with more than 800,000 messages opposing the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. The surge in online activism came as Senate Republicans tried to saddle the transportation bill with an amendment that would reverse President Obama’s decision to block the controversial project.

“The voice of three quarters of a million Americans is a force that the Senate will ignore only at great peril," said Michael Brune, Sierra Club Executive Director. "Big Oil is spending millions on political influence to force approval of this dangerous and unnecessary pipeline. But Congress shouldn’t be in the business of permitting oil industry projects, and they shouldn’t be promoting oil profits above the health and safety of Americans.”

The petition drive was organized by a group of over 30 organizations and businesses with the goal of sending the Senate half a million messages in under 24 hours. The online drive quickly went viral, powered in part by blogs and online advertising, tweets from celebrities (including the founder of Twitter, Evan Williams), and a shout-out from Stephen Colbert, who interviewed 350.org founder Bill McKibben on Monday night.

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more > Over 800,000 Americans Tell the Senate: Stop Keystone XL | 350.org

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350.org



350.org is building a global grassroots movement to solve the climate crisis. Our online campaigns, grassroots organizing, and mass public actions are led from the bottom up by thousands of volunteer organizers in over 188 countries.

350 means climate safety. To preserve our planet, scientists tell us we must reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere from its current level of 392 parts per million to below 350 ppm. But 350 is more than a number—it's a symbol of where we need to head as a planet.

350.org works hard to organize in a new way—everywhere at once, using online tools to facilitate strategic offline action. We want to be a laboratory for the best ways to strengthen the climate movement and catalyze transformation around the world.

We operate at a large scale to take on the world's greatest challenge. In October of 2009 we coordinated 5200 simultaneous rallies and demonstrations in 181 countries, what CNN called the 'most widespread day of political action in the planet's history.' On 10/10/10, we organized a day of climate solutions projects--from solar panel installations to community garden plantings--and changed communities from the bottom up with over 7000 events in 188 countries. And at the end of last year, we coordinated a climate art project so large it had to be photographed from a satellite in outer space.

In 2011, we are building people power in every corner of the planet. With a huge mobilization planned for September and a series of bold campaigns in strategic countries around the world, we've got big plans. With the help of millions of people, we'll create a wave a hard-hitting climate activism all over the world that can lead to real, lasting, large-scale change.

We think we can turn the tide on the climate crisis--but only if we work together. If an international grassroots movement holds our leaders accountable to realities of science and principles of justice, we can realize the solutions that will ensure a better future for all.

Or to put it another way...
With over 4000 languages spoken around the world, words don't always get the point across.

To transcend the language barrier we made this wordless animation that explains 350.org in 90 seconds:

Watch "Because the World Needs to Know": 350.org's first animation
What's the best way to introduce the world to 350? With over 4000 languages spoken around the world, it's probably not with a bunch of words. We did our best to boil down the science of global warming and vision of the 350 Campaign in 90 seconds--and with no words. - 350.org Animations and Videos | 350.org

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AMAZON WATCH - URGENT: Chief Raoni and the Kayapo under attack!

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A shocking crisis unfolded last week on the Kapot Nhinore ancestral territories of the Kayapo people in the Xingu River Basin in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso – the birthplace of legendary Kayapo Chief Raoni.

Crooked ranchers and illegal settlers have sent armed thugs to try to intimidate Kayapo and Juruna communities in attempts to encroach upon their lands. However, rather than being intimidated, armed Kayapo warriors have gathered in a nearby village, heightening the specter of violence and bloodshed. Yet legendary Chief Raoni and his people want to avoid violent confrontation at all cost. He has called for support from people around the world to pressure the Brazilian government to respect their rights and protect their lands.

For several years, Marcio Meira, the President of the Brazilian government's National Indigenous Foundation (FUNAI), has assured the Kayapo that this land would be demarcated as an indigenous territory, but the Kayapo have only seen broken promises and persistent threats to their territory, including land invasions, illegal fishing and logging activities. To make matters worse, government-sanctioned repression has begun: Recent reports have emerged that rather than disarm armed thugs, local police have badly beaten two indigenous Juruna men peacefully demonstrating the land invasions before themselves being driven away by Kayapo warriors.

These tragic events follow an alarming and growing pattern of violations of the rights of indigenous peoples aided and abetted by the Brazilian government, such as its illegal and authoritarian decision to proceed with the disastrous Belo Monte dam on the Xingu River. As is their determined way, the Kayapo have chosen to defend their rights and their land but they need your support today.

Take action now! Send a letter to the President of FUNAI Marcio Meira demanding he act swiftly to restore order and honor his promise to demarcate the Kapot Nhinore territory!

The threat to territory is not a simply an affront to the integrity of the protected areas, forests and rivers, that the Kayapo steward, it's an affront to their enduring physical and cultural survival. Land is life, and the loss of these lands is paramount to a condemnation of cultural disintegration.

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take action > AMAZON WATCH - URGENT: Chief Raoni and the Kayapo under attack!

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The Wren | Hurdy Gourdy | Neil Brook gurdies

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The Wren - a unique hurdy gurdy style by Neil Brook

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more @ hurdy-gurdy.org.uk > The Wren

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gregory jolivet at sidmouth 2010 playing (a) neil brook hurdy gurdy.

gregory jolivet at Sidmouth 2010

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Hurdy Gourdy - more Neil Brook instruments

Hurdy-gourdy.m4v

"This has been gnawing away at me for decades and I finally got round to doing it. The pun on gourd was too much to resist. One thing it's not is a novelty toy. It's got a lot going for it."

- pretty cool, Neil!

Large gourdy.m4v/

A clip featuring a hurdy-gurdy built using a large African gourd as a body. The tune played is "Child Grove," found in Michael Raven's "1000 English Country Dance Tunes" (Tunes published before 1730)

the new gourdy has a great deep and full sound - i really like it, Neil!

- he says "The results are seriously asymmetrical and quirky but I kind of like that after decades of striving for perfect symmetry. The latest one is ridiculously off centre but the small trompette area and the large drone area should make for good bass and treble as required. The overall effect is a gurdy built in a hut in Kenya!"

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Neil Brook, Hurdy Gurdy and Fretted Instrument Maker

site features hurdy gurdy tips, instruction, a great selection of mp3 samples, notation, etc.

Irish music on the hurdy-gurdy.

Here in the north west of England, players of French dance music hard to find. There is much more chance of playing in a session if some of the Irish session tunes can be played. There are many book of such tunes available and all are great sources but they are not compiled with the hurdy-gurdy in mind. I have listed below a selection of good tunes which I find fall reasonably easily out of the gurdy. There are no special techniques involved but a degree of competence up at the dusty end of the keybox is useful. It will quickly expose any poor intonation in the top octave and the correct cotton application is essential...

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see also

whats more: barrel gurdy
- an idea that i've been working on for awhile - now a page at whats more (RC'S ART & STUDIES BLOG)

"it uses a hand-cranked wheel to bow playing strings and drones like a hurdy gurdy, but is played with a slide like a Vichitra Veena (as in video below) - no gurdy keybox."

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24 hours to stop Keystone XL in the Senate

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The Senate could vote as early as tomorrow on a plan to greenlight construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline...

UPDATE 2/14: WASHINGTON, DC -- Over the last 24-hours, environmental and progressive groups flooded the Senate with more than 800,000 messages opposing the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. The surge in online activism came as Senate Republicans tried to saddle the transportation bill with an amendment that would reverse President Obama’s decision to block the controversial project. - Over 800,000 Americans Tell the Senate: Stop Keystone XL | 350.org

Despite President Obama's rejection of the Keystone XL Pipeline a few weeks ago, Republicans in Congress are once again engaging in hostage-taking. Senator John Hoeven (R-ND) is trying to attach a measure to the transportation bill that would force approval of Keystone XL.

Tragically, some moderate Democrats appear to be playing along - so this bill could have enough votes to pass.

No evaluation process. No National Interest Determination. No new route identified through Nebraska.

To demonstrate a massive, urgent, grassroots backlash, our friends at 350.org have organized a 24-hour petition drive to the Senate. Nearly three dozen groups are emailing their members right now, and 350's Bill McKibben will announce the effort tonight on the Colbert Report.

Help us get 500,000 signatures in 24 hours against Keystone XL.

Republicans and some Democrats in Congress are so owned by Big Oil, that they are willing to bypass the pipeline review process designed to protect Americans from its very real danger.

Our grassroots pressure forced President Obama to reject the pipeline when Republicans tried to force a decision in 60 days. He said it wasn't enough time for the thorough evaluation process we need.

Republicans are claiming that incomplete process was enough. But just last week the State Department Inspector General released a report finding a lack of technical and scientific expertise at the State Department to evaluate the impacts of the pipeline.1 So clearly, this pipeline hasn't been adequately evaluated.

We need to show the Senate the huge opposition to Keystone XL. Please sign the petition.

Our Congress should be in the business of acting in America's interest. Instead, their business appears to be Big Oil's business.

Please help make a big statement today to remind our Senators who they really work for, and show huge opposition to this ill-conceived, disastrous pipeline. And please share it widely so we make as large an impact as possible over the next 24 hours, and Bill McKibben has a large number of signatures to announce tonight on the Colbert Report.

1. "Investigation reveals flaws in State Department's Keystone XL review process, raises fresh concerns," Friends of the Earth, February, 9 2012 (see below)

Sign the petition

We've reached 12% of our goal of 500,000 signers! (64,774)

The petition reads:
Senators: Don't go around President Obama and the evaluation process needed to protect Americans. Block any efforts to revive the dangerous Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.

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24 hours to stop Keystone XL in the Senate

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Investigation reveals flaws in State Department’s Keystone XL review process, raises fresh concerns

Posted Feb. 9, 2012

Department’s Office of Inspector General recommends reforms after finding procedural lapses and previously undisclosed financial relationship between TransCanada and Cardno Entrix, as well as insufficient scientific expertise within department

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Multiple flaws in the State Department’s review of the proposed Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline were revealed today in a report released by the department’s Office of Inspector General.

The report raised fresh concerns about the process by which the department produced a widely criticized environmental impact statement for the pipeline — a statement that independent experts said dramatically downplayed the harm the pipeline was likely to cause. The pipeline is now in limbo given that President Obama rejected it on January 18.

“The report reveals that the department failed to follow even its own flawed procedures. It also contains the striking revelation that the contractor Cardno Entrix, which the department entrusted to manage much of the environmental review process, had a previously undisclosed financial relationship with pipeline firm TransCanada,” said Damon Moglen, climate and energy director at Friends of the Earth. “It’s no wonder that the result was a deeply flawed environmental review, and that the department ended up understating the significant risks posed by pipelines that carry dirty and corrosive tar sands oil. The evidence contained in this report must disqualify the State Department’s Keystone XL environmental impact statement from being used in any shape or form when future proposed pipelines are reviewed.”

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more > F.O.E. News releases

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cello strings, harmonics & spectograms

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thinking about how to set things up... things to consider for barrel gurdy...

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cello strings

Strings on a cello have cores made out of gut (sheep or goat), metal, or synthetic materials, such as Perlon. Most modern strings used today are also wound with metallic materials like aluminum, titanium and chromium. Cellists may mix different types of strings on their instruments. The pitches of the open strings are C, G, D, and A (, unless alternative tuning (scordatura) is used. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cello

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harmonics & spectograms

A vibrating string subdivides itself into many parts vibrating at the same time. Each part produces a pitch of its own, called a partial. A vibrating string has one fundamental and a series of partials. The most pure combination of two pitches is when one is double the frequency of the other.

A harmonic of a wave is a component frequency of the signal that is an integer multiple of the fundamental frequency, i.e. if the fundamental frequency is f, the harmonics have frequencies 2f, 3f, 4f, . . . etc. The harmonics have the property that they are all periodic at the fundamental frequency, therefore the sum of harmonics is also periodic at that frequency. Harmonic frequencies are equally spaced by the width of the fundamental frequency and can be found by repeatedly adding that frequency. For example, if the fundamental frequency is 25 Hz, the frequencies of the harmonics are: 50 Hz, 75 Hz, 100 Hz etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonic

Spectogram of a D chord arpeggiated on the cello. Yellow bands at the same level indicate the same harmonics excited by the bowing of different notes. Notes played from left to right: D F# A F# D.

3D spectrum diagram of the overtones of a violin G string (foreground). Note that the pitch we hear is the peak around 200 Hz. - Violin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Many oscillators, including the human voice, a bowed violin string, or a Cepheid variable star, are more or less periodic, and so composed of harmonics.

Most passive oscillators, such as a plucked guitar string or a struck drum head or struck bell, naturally oscillate at not one, but several frequencies known as partials. When the oscillator is long and thin, such as a guitar string, or the column of air in a trumpet, many of the partials are integer multiples of the fundamental frequency; these are called harmonics. Sounds made by long, thin oscillators are for the most part arranged harmonically, and these sounds are generally considered to be musically pleasing. Partials whose frequencies are not integer multiples of the fundamental are referred to as inharmonic. Instruments such as cymbals, pianos, and strings plucked pizzicato create inharmonic sounds.

Spectrogram of dolphin vocalizations; chirps, clicks and harmonizing are visible as inverted Vs, vertical lines and horizontal striations respectively

The untrained human ear typically does not perceive harmonics as separate notes. Rather, a musical note composed of many harmonically related frequencies is perceived as one sound, the quality, or timbre of that sound being a result of the relative strengths of the individual harmonic frequencies. Bells have more clearly perceptible inharmonics than most instruments. Antique singing bowls are well known for their unique quality of producing multiple harmonic partials or multiphonics.

Harmonics and overtones

The tight relation between overtones and harmonics in music often leads to their being used synonymously in a strictly musical context, but they are counted differently leading to some possible confusion. This chart demonstrates how they are counted:

Frequency Order Name 1 Name 2
1 · f = 440 Hz n = 1 fundamental tone 1st harmonic
2 · f = 880 Hz n = 2 1st overtone 2nd harmonic
3 · f = 1320 Hz n = 3 2nd overtone 3rd harmonic
4 · f = 1760 Hz n = 4 3rd overtone 4th harmonic

Harmonics are not overtones, when it comes to counting. Even numbered harmonics are odd numbered overtones and vice versa.

In many musical instruments, it is possible to play the upper harmonics without the fundamental note being present. In a simple case (e.g., recorder) this has the effect of making the note go up in pitch by an octave; but in more complex cases many other pitch variations are obtained. In some cases it also changes the timbre of the note. This is part of the normal method of obtaining higher notes in wind instruments, where it is called overblowing. The extended technique of playing multiphonics also produces harmonics. On string instruments it is possible to produce very pure sounding notes, called harmonics or flageolets by string players, which have an eerie quality, as well as being high in pitch. Harmonics may be used to check at a unison the tuning of strings that are not tuned to the unison. For example, lightly fingering the node found half way down the highest string of a cello produces the same pitch as lightly fingering the node 1/3 of the way down the second highest string. For the human voice see Overtone singing, which uses harmonics.

While it is true that electronically produced periodic tones (e.g. square waves or other non-sinusoidal waves) have "harmonics" that are whole number multiples of the fundamental frequency, practical instruments do not all have this characteristic. For example higher "harmonics"' of piano notes are not true harmonics but are "overtones" and can be very sharp, i.e. a higher frequency than given by a pure harmonic series. This is especially true of instruments other than stringed or brass/woodwind ones, e.g., xylophone, drums, bells etc., where not all the overtones have a simple whole number ratio with the fundamental frequency.

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Madness and Methods Page 2: The "Stello" (steel cello)

Cello strings attached to a steel drum via crafted wood parts. Tailpiece and tuning machines are from an electric bass.

Used contact mic on "bridge" and XY stereo about 6 feet back from cavity. Played on its side with a horsehair Cello bow.

Produces low resonant tones, quite musical, akin to a waterphone.

Was part of the design recordings done for Gary Rydstrom for AI Artificial Intelligence.

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Apocalyptica at the 2009 Ilosaarirock festival.

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Falasol.net – Free Audio Engineering Software - Audio Experiments - visit pages for sound samples - Sound Of the Month Edition

One sine wave + high speed frequency modulation

Falasol.net – Free Audio Engineering Software - SoME 2010 Aug: Harmonic Burst: 440 Hz harmonic modulated with speed: 0 -> 220 -> 0 [Hz] and amplitude: 0 -> 3 -> 0 [octave]

Falasol.net – Free Audio Engineering Software � SoME 2010 Dec: Prime notes: This idea was on my mind long before starting the whole Falasol project. What kind of cacophony would it be if each note is assigned a prime number and played only on the number’s multiplication beats. Total chaos? Or would the mind be able to recognize some hidden patterns?

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thinking about how to set up everything... things to consider for barrel gurdy...

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Rhino Atrocity | 2012 World Press Photo

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A female rhino that has survived a brutal dehorning by poachers using a chainsaw four months earlier at the Tugela Private Game REserve, Colenso, Natal, South Africa, Nov. 9, 2010. 1st Prize Nature Stories - (Brent Stirton/Reportage Betty Images/National Geographic Magazine) - 2012 World Press Photo Contest Winners - The Big Picture - Boston.com

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2012 World Press Photo Contest Winners - The Big Picture - Boston.com: By the numbers: 5, 247 Photographers, 124 Nationalities, 101, 254 pictures. Three hundred and fifty images by 57 photographers of 24 nationalities were awarded prizes in nine categories.

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2012 World Press Photo Contest Winners
View the entire collection of winning images from the 55th World Press Photo Contest. The winners were selected from over 100,000 images submitted to the contest.

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related

Rhino Accidently Killed In Demo Aimed To Stop Poachers | Care2 Causes

A demonstration to show new anti-poaching techniques developed by an animal reserve in South Africa took a disastrous turn when the rhino used in the procedure accidently died.

The Rhino and Lion Nature Reserve in Pretoria, South Africa invited journalists and animal activists to watch the process where veterinarians inject the horn of a rhinoceros with a neon pink dye and an insecticide as well as a tracking device in order to stop poachers from killing the endangered animals.

The dye is similar to the one used by banks to mark money during robberies. The idea is to help law enforcement to identify rhino horns that may be sold on the black market. The insecticide is used to protect the animals against ticks.

Twenty rhinos have already undergone the procedure at the animal reserve without any problems.

Lorinda Hern, spokesperson for the reserve said the technique was developed to stop poachers from killing the endangered animals and taking their horns. Last year, a record 448 rhinos were poached in South Africa, so their horns could be used in traditional Chinese medicine.

The horns have become popular among middle-class Asians who believe they possess medical benefits.

Tests are underway to determine why the male rhino in his twenties died, but veterinarians think there were complications from either the sedative or the drug used to revive the animal.

Ms. Hern said, “It’s sad for us; it’s the loss of another animal. It’s a death that I still chalk up to poaching.”

Joseph Okori, a wildlife veterinarian and a World Wildlife Fund rhino expert was present for the demonstration. He said, “There is always a potention risk that a sedated animal will die.”

“The whole issue is, we are facing a serious rhino poaching crisis. This is a war. The desperation is quite high for rhino owners, to do whatever it takes to protect their rhinos,” said Okori.

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