moon traveller herald

Not long before his passing, Moog synthesizer co-inventor Robert Moog appeared in a documentary. ''Moog'' (2004) shows him as a really nice guy, sort of an old 60s guy in a way, who raises his own vegetables, lectures, and journeys the world to visit some of the illuminant exemplars ( Herb Deutsch , Rick Wakeman, Keith Emerson and others) of the original synthesizer era he forged. A native New Yorker, Moog began building and selling Theremin kits in high school - the Theremin became ''a thread'' in his life story - before heading out for a degree in electrical engineering at Columbia. In the 60s he came up with the synthesizer, in the process creating a ton of phase-lock loops, voltage controlled oscillators and other groundbreaking musical circuits. The film doesn’t dwell on these parts, but there is a lot of good, gorpy and greasy feedback sound scattered in the plot. He recalls the fear of the electronic sound that was rampant in some circles back i...

The passing of blues guitar great Hubert Sumlin has brought forward many tributes. One thing that comes across is that he was kind, sweet, and a unique player, to which I can attest. When the blues came first my way via a Boston visit by Sunnyland Slim and Paul DeMark, I soon met Hubert. When I was a kid of 16 I had a 45 of Killing Floor/Going Down Slow so I knew his playing – if not his name - from early on. Later, in the 1980s he was, together with Sunnyland Slim, Louisiana Red and Sam Burckhardt (see picture above of him and Hubert) a house guest, especially quiet and thoughtful of others. When Slim and Paul arrived in Boston 1979 the talk soon turned to Hubert. It was Paul who told me he was Howlin Wolf's guitar player and that said a lot. The first day Sunnyland and Paul DeMark were in town the first thing they wanted to do was hook up with Hubert Sumlin. How did we find people in those days? It's hard now to imagine. There was a grapevine, not a cellular phone network. ...

MIT researchers have created a semiconductor chip that is said to imitate how the brain’s neurons adapt in response to new information. With about 400 transistors, the silicon chip can simulate the activity of a single brain synapse — a connection between two neurons that allows information to flow from one to the other. The chip could also be used in neural prosthetic device research related to artificial retinas, says Chi-Sang Poon, a principal research scientist in the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology. On my technology blog... http://wp.me/p1UfV-1D

Largely unknown outside of computer circles, the life of 19th Century British mathematician Charles Babbage has long stood as a tableau of the failed visionary. His Calculating Machines were based on the technologies of the time – hard for him to imagine any others. Steam was to power the machine, and the inner cogs and connections, bearing some resemblance to precedent Pascaline and Jaquard loom, were beyond the capabilities of machining of the era. Babbage's work, which began in the 1830s, did not get off the drawing board because the required precision machine was yet to come, and because the very major effort needed lacked funds. He and his wife, Ada Lovelace tried – of course. Babbage died in 1871, willing his papers to his brother. The automation in the turn of the (19th) century's U.S. Census Bureau effort is often cited as reflective of Babbage's work, which found currency in science and technology via this notebooks. Replicas of some Babbage machinery have been b...

Archives When buffers overflow their psychic boundaries, rage is feared by peace lovers. In Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, the simmer and pop of ethnic churn cycles always held the threat of breakout. Jerusalem has had these qualities. In fact, Iraq post Saddham is supposed to be a model. News goes bang in the middle but it happens at the edges too. http://radio-weblogs.com/0115044/2004/04/15.html