Subject: Science and Technology

• Slender, Smart, Accomplished: It's My New Camera

  Nikon CoolpixAn exposure from the new camera, shot in a dark room by candlelight The quality of photos from cellular telephone cameras is surprisingly good, as I've learned over the last couple of months after the compact family Olympus up and died. Still, cell phone pictures were just a stop-gap measure, and for my birthday, Big Fella gift-wrapped a mighty little Nikon Coolpix, Nearly New In Box, bought from a gearhead upgrading to more video capacity. The owner's manual is 117 pages long, and

  June 5, 2009

• Stuart Brunson and Mike Pigott: Like Totally BFFs

  July 23, 2008

• Soft Sell: New Software Makes Guitarists Obsolete

  August 12, 2008

• David Davis Meets the Press

  August 25, 2008

• Overheard: Bill Frist Muses on the Merits of Nuclear Power vs. Wind Power

  Don't be fooled by this serene image--wind power kills. I went to a dinner party Friday night, and one of the guests, a gifted raconteur, related a recent experience he had while waiting for a table at Park Café in Sylvan Park. Bill Frist and a group of his cronies were also waiting for a table. Apparently, Tennessee's favorite cat-killing former senator (and future governor?) was regaling his attentive hangers-on with musings on the merits of nuclear power, and he expressed his frustration

  December 16, 2008

• Riches of Embarrassment: Accidental Napster Recordings

  Automagical sound recording interface. It really is like a series of tubes! Last week, this post by the New Yorker's Sasha Frere-Jones led me to this post by Joshua Bearman, which led me to this post by David Dixon, who is an audio archivist and has a collection of MP3s that people (most likely) never meant to share: Back around 2001 there arose a "perfect storm" of technological innovations which made possible audio files I call "mic in tracks". This was right around the time that Napster was

  February 3, 2009

• Sign o' the Times: Vanderbilt Offers Master's Program in YouTube Karaoke

  Well, not exactly a master's program. But, my dear Pith readers, yesterday, while you were slaving away in your cubicle (or hoarding assault weapons before the effete liberal pansies succeed in undermining our very way of life through a sinister campaign of calculated girliness), students in Vanderbilt University art department's performance art class were participating in what's being hailed as the first-ever YouTube karoake. Essentially, the students projected viral YouTube videos on a scr

  March 25, 2009

• From MySpace to BlackBerry, there's no shortage of challengers to the hegemony of iTunes

  December 18, 2008

• Condition for a Bearable Summer

  Summertime, and the livin' is freezy

  July 10, 2008

• Episode 140

  July 10, 2008

• Episode 139

  July 3, 2008

• Episode 138

  June 26, 2008

• Episode 137

  June 19, 2008

• Episode 136

  June 12, 2008

• A Woman Apart

  June 5, 2008

• Episode 135

  June 5, 2008

• Episode 134

  May 29, 2008

• Episode 133

  May 22, 2008

• Episode 132

  May 15, 2008

• Episode 131

  May 8, 2008

• Episode 130

  May 1, 2008

• Episode 129

  April 24, 2008

• Episode 128

  April 17, 2008

• Episode 127

  April 10, 2008

• Episode 126

  April 3, 2008

• Episode 125

  March 27, 2008

• Episode 124

  March 20, 2008

• Metro Nashville Schools Block Gay Education Websites; ACLU Threatens Legal Action

  Might've expected this from Knoxville. But Nashville?Roughly 80 percent of Tennessee school districts, including Metro Nashville, use filtering software to bar students from viewing gay education and gay rights websites, according to the ACLU.The organization threatened litigation in a letter to Jessie Jesse Register, director of Metro Nashville schools, and others if the schools don't reverse this blatant and embarrassing violation of students' constitutionally guaranteed rights by April 29.The

  April 15, 2009

• MoveOn Goes After Gordon on Climate Bill

  MoveOn.org is running this TV ad in Rep. Bart Gordon's district to try to persuade him to back President Obama's energy and global warming bill. Gordon, the House Science and Technology chairman, is among conservative Democrats who say they're worried the bill pushes too fast to curb greenhouse gases and could hurt their regions' economies. The truth, of course, is that they're afraid to vote for the bill because it'll be used against them in their reelections. Here's a New York Times story on

  April 27, 2009

• To Tweet or Not to Tweet: A Moral Dilemma

  OK. So with the title of this post alone, I've already outed myself as being eons behind all the cutting-edge bloggers, hipsters and alt-bros that compose the ever-growing Twitter tapestry. I don't tweet. There's something about being privy to the eating habits, whereabouts and other various minutiae of my friends' and acquaintances' daily lives that sketches me out and makes me feel like we're about six months away from adopting Newspeak and burning all our books. (Yes, I know I'm mixing fict

  April 30, 2009

• Your Genes Want You to Smoke

  As does advertising sexpot Don Draper.Smoking, in addition to making you cool and sexy, has a tendency to curb the food cravings. Anyone who's ever had Marlboros and coffee for breakfast (or lunch...or dinner) knows this. Anyone who's ever tried to quit knows this, especially when their oral fixation is transferred from sweet mother nicotine to mountains of cake. Now scientists, using science facts and the scientific method, have found that smoking may also enhance the activity of a gene that

  May 15, 2009

• Bredesen Lays Off 700 Workers, Goes to Europe

  We bet the PhilBot3000 can ski like Jean Claude Keely.After laying off more than 700 state workers and cutting services for the mentally ill, the disabled and many thousands more of our less fortunate citizens, what's Gov. Phil Bredesen doing? Why, he's jetting off on a junket to Switzerland, Germany and Poland! We're so happy for him. The Alps are really nice this time of year. Bredesen is taking off with Matt Kisber and Reagan Farr this weekend, even though it looks like the legislature won't

  June 9, 2009

• Yazoo Launches Green Beer (No, Not That Kind)

  Yazoo Brewing Company is launching a green beer, but not for St. Patrick's Day. The new Summer Ale is Yazoo's first batch brewed with clean energy, through Nashville Electric Service's Green Power Switch. "We've always tried to reduce our impact on the local environment, by conserving water, promoting our 'growlers' as a reusable beer container, recycling all of our cardboard, and donating all of our spent grains to a local farmer for cattle feed," owner Linus Hall said. "Now that we are a par

  June 12, 2009

• The Planning Commission Still Loves the May Town Center Project

  When last we talked about the May Town Center development, Joe Hall of Hall Strategies was Barnes Cemetery is in the heart of the proposed May Town Center.insisting that, "There is in fact a significant - and serious - plan to deal with the three identified arch sites on the 1,500 MTC property."  You will recall, though, that Mr. Hall both refused to tell me who identified these sites for the MTC developers and that my concern, based on what Michael Moore, the State Archaeologist, told me,

  June 15, 2009

• Zada Law's Archaeological Inventory of the Bell's Bend Development

  So, I got my hands on it and I read it.  And I spent all evening trying to think of a song we could all sing.  I could be all "There are over sixty sites in the Bend!" and you could wiggle around and raise your hands over your heads."That we have mapped out."  And some of you would swoon and throw your underwear at me."But there are probably many more..." And now we're all bopping along, some of you are singing, too."We don't know about."  And now the horns come in."I've got

  June 17, 2009

• There's Plenty More Fish in the Sea...Well, Maybe Not.

  Remember when Chilean Sea Bass was the hot new entrée on just about every seafood restaurant's menu? Well, apparently you do because demand for the CSB grew so voracious that they have been overfished almost to the point of extinction. And did you know that in most cases you could substitute Black Cod for your Sea Bass in a dish without changing the dining experience dramatically? That's with the codicil that it's more ecologically sound to use Alaskan Black Cod instead of Californian Black Cod

  June 18, 2009

• Second Saturday at the Sudekum Planetarium

  September 11, 2008

• History-Making History in Bell's Bend?

  Though the fate of the May Town Center project is now in doubt, the value of the land and theLocal dog demonstrates improper archaeological technique on a recent visit to Bell's Bend. future of Bell's Bend is still the subject of much discussion.  I know I've been talking fairly nonstop about the archaeology angle and I'm not done with it yet.  Yesterday, I talked to David Anderson, a professor at UT Knoxville, who was in Bell's Bend this past weekend as a part of a team of archaeologi

  July 1, 2009

• Say My Name, Say My Name

  Let me be clear. I'm just a blogger. I'm not a journalist. I am flattered as all get out and tickled Silverman works for a big, important paper.​every time I go to write an entry here and my log-in still works, because I don't and can't do what the folks here at The Scene do.And the truth is, I don't think it's my job.We were having this argument last week about my post on Ian Shapira. Caleb Hannan thought I was being unfair to Shapira by typifying his whole piece as "Boo hoo, Gawker sent me a

  August 9, 2009

• Lamar's Nuclear Dreams: A Trillion-Dollar Bailout in the Making

  ​Lamar Alexander is leading Republican calls for massive new construction of nuclear power plants. He wants to double the number of U.S. reactors. "It is already far and away our best defense against global warming. So why not build 100 new nuclear power plants in 20 years?" he says. The short answer? It costs too much. As this article in today's Christian Science Monitor explains, the new debate over nuclear power is focused not on worries over meltdowns or radioactive waste but on who w

  August 14, 2009

• Kitchen Equipment for Auction

  At time of publication, an 8-foot stainless steel range hood was going for $2 on the McLemore Auctions site, which is selling off a bunch of restaurant equipment, including sinks, ovens, refrigerators and a pool table. The auction closes Sept. 8 at 2 p.m.

  September 2, 2009

• Music and the Internets, Part 247: Illegal Downloaders Buy More Music, Google 'Payola'

  ​You may have already seen that yet another study (this one an independent survey in Britain) concludes that people who steal a lot of music also buy a lot of music. As Cory Doctorow over at Boing Boing put it: "[P]eople who are music superfans do more of everything to do with music: they see more live shows, listen to more radio, buy more CDs, buy more botlegs of live shows, buy more t-shirts, talk about music more, do more downloading -- all of it." Very good. The music industry's respon

  November 3, 2009

• "When Possible, Make a Legal U-Turn"

  ​I spend enough money in local restaurants not to want to spend an extra $100 to upgrade the DVD that Toyota is currently trying to sell me for my in-car GPS system. But I think I might have to. With all the recent openings and closings of new establishments, the dining information is the most obsolete part of my entire navigation system. What was once a very handy way to find places to eat within easy driving distance has turned into a graveyard tour. In actuality, applications like Yelp

  January 12, 2010

• Inquisitive Reporters Spoil Phil's Sunny Day

  Matt Kisber​Damn those pesky reporters. They do know how to spoil a party. The governor threw a little media event today to celebrate landing yet another solar energy company for Tennessee. Economic and Community Development Commissioner Matt Kisber acted as the master of ceremonies, heaping praise on his visionary boss and generally enjoying the moment. "Once again, in spite of the clouds and rain outside, we can say the sun is shining on Tennessee," Kisber beamed, himself just a little

  January 21, 2010

• Corker Missed the Email About Tennessee's Energy Message

  ​While Lamar Alexander was speaking in riddles on the Senate floor today, Bob Corker was brow-beating Energy Secretary Steven Chu about why his department isn't spending more research and development money on one of Lamar's pet causes--nuclear power. During a Senate hearing, Corker said the Obama administration is too focused on more exotic technologies, like solar and biofuels generated from crop waste. "You're slow-walking things that are proven, and wanting to spend lots of money on t

  January 21, 2010

• Has Google Deleted Your MP3 Blog Yet?

  ​As you may have heard, MP3 blogs are disappearing from the Internets. More specifically, they are disappearing from from the Google-owned Blogger platform, which also includes Blogspot. This story in last week's L.A. Weekly touches on the trend: Google, the bloggers believe, has quietly changed the methods by which it enforces its user agreement. Whereas in the past, a blog owner would receive a warning before a post's removal, Google is now simply hitting the delete button. And it's e

  February 10, 2010

• State Rep. Susan Lynn Fires Back at Jeff Woods Over "Mark of the Beast" Comments

  Rep. Susan Lynn​State Rep. Susan Lynn takes issue with Jeff Woods' Pith post last week titled "Christian Right Backs 'Mark of the Beast' Bill in Legislature, which featured quotes from this 2008 Scene story. Pith offered Lynn the opportunity to respond to Woods' story. Here is her letter:I do not very often comment on the work of journalists. However, I've been trying to call a journalist for a couple of days and I've been unable to locate him. I'd like to ask him why he has transferred

  February 15, 2010

• Ramsey, Wamp Throw Snowballs at Science

  Global warming is a myth and Frosty here is the proof.​Zach Wamp and Ron Ramsey, both hoping to nail down the right wing of the Tennessee Republican Party, went heavy on the zany anti-science talk today in the GOP debate. Apparently, they've both been listening to a little too much Rush Limbaugh in their SUVs as they campaign around the state. Asked their views on cap-and-trade legislation, they proudly joined El Rushbo and the rest of the right-wing media in the wacky notion that climate

  February 18, 2010

• Blog Summit Recap: Sean Braisted, Yvonne Smith and Adam Gold at Vanderbilt

  The writing studio at Vanderbilt University had local bloggerAn artist's rendering of the three bloggers.​s Sean Braisted, Yvonne Smith, and our own Adam Gold as the guests at Thursday night's installment of "On Writing." It was really nice. The bloggers were well-chosen. In just three people, the audience got a good sense of the breadth of experiences contained in the term "blogger." You had a political guy who blogs for fun, a vegan activist who blogs in order to raise the profile of h

  February 19, 2010

• Bob O'Dell - The Star Salesman

  March 4, 2010