Trivia Thread!

[Erestor Arcamen]

Organ2/ASLSP, ‘As Slow as Possible’ is a keyboard work written by American avant-garde composer John Cage in the mid-1980s. The score consists of eight pages of music, to be played on the piano or organ, as the name suggests, very slowly.

When performing the piece, musicians observe the composer’s instruction. The eight pages of music are taken very slowly, and it often takes over an hour to complete the work. In 2009, organist Diane Luchese gave a rendition that lasted for 14 hours and 56 minutes. A couple years ago in 2022, Dr. Christopher Anderson from Southern Methodist University gave a 16-hour performance of the monumental work.

But all is eclipsed by a performance on a custom-built organ at St. Burchardi Church in Halberstadt, Germany. The Halberstadt performance began in 2001 with a scheduled duration of 639 years, ending in the year 2640.

The next scheduled note change will be on 5 August 2026.

Project's homepage:

Home - John-Cage-Orgel-Kunst-Projekt

www.aslsp.org

 

[Ent]

Organ2/ASLSP, ‘As Slow as Possible’

Yes, I had done a report on this earlier someplace, and for my 'trivia' bit at work at our Friday morning meeting.
Now here's the kicker to add to it....

The 649 year program is programmed and played on a specially built manual type organ. (As though the mechanics etc. will last 649 more years... or even the world itself.) The writer of ASLSP, Gage, generated the piece itself as a concept to challenge thinking in concert, but others took it up as a challenge to see if they could do it for real.

BUT:
Not to be outdone, a digital piece called Longplayer was created, and launched in Dec. 1999, scheduled to play until Dec. 2999, intended to last 1,000 years. (As though computers and their components can last 1,000 years - or even the world itself.)

Just more positive proof man simply does not have enough stuff of the right sort to keep himself busy from an Ent's point of view. (Though we really enjoy pondering a note for so very "long" from a human perspective, before the next note plays.)

You can read a bit about both here:

This is How You Perform a Piece of Music 1,000 Years Long

The Long Now Foundation fosters long-term thinking. Our work encourages imagination at the timescale of civilization — the next and last 10,000 years — a timespan we call the long now.

longnow.org

p.s. - though the article is titled "this is how you perform - " do be advised it's only one way to do it. there are, frankly, countless ways. better to say "this is one method for performing...." I just hope humanity spends its time at more fruitful pursuits.

 

[Erestor Arcamen]

Sharks are older than the rings on Saturn. Sharks are around 450 million years old, dating back to the Late Ordovician Period, while Saturn's rings are estimated to be 10–100 million years old.

 

[Erestor Arcamen]

Sharpshooter Annie Oakley had a stage act where she would shoot a cigarette out of someone's mouth. While she was touring Europe, Kaiser Wilhelm Il of Germany surprised everyone on a whim and insisted on holding the cigarette.

Ever the professional, Oakley shot the cigarette without harming the Kaiser.

Several years later WWI is underway and the US goes to war against Germany.

Oakley wrote a letter to Kaiser Wilhelm asking if she could have another try at that shot.

He didn't reply.

 

[grendel]

Swedish astronomer Anders Celsius died in 1744 aged 43, although his rival Daniel Fahrenheit was convinced he was 109. 😃

 

[Erestor Arcamen]

The California Highway Patrol once had an open offer of a full prime rib dinner at Lawry’s Beverly Hills and a case of scotch for any patrolman that could bust Steve McQueen for speeding in “The Green Rat”, his barely street legal 1956 Jaguar XK-SS. The specifics were to catch him speeding, pull him over, and issue a ticket.

The problem here was The Green Rat was so fast, nothing in the Highway Patrol could equal its speed.

McQueen did get busted once after a cop managed to sneak up on him because his wife was in the car, but he used his wife Neile beside him as an excuse telling the cop she was in labor (she wasn’t but he said it was a false labor after the cop left)

 

[Deimos]

With hurricane season in the Northern Hemisphere almost upon us, a look at the Atlantic 2020 season...

"The 2020 Atlantic hurricane season was the most active Atlantic hurricane season on record, in terms of number of systems. It featured a total of 31 tropical or subtropical cyclones, with all but one cyclone becoming a named storm." (from the NOAA website)

Gulf States, lower coastal states and Caribbean got absolutely hammered that year.
Notice the residual effects of one storm traversed the middle US making it all the way to Hudson Bay.
Another's effects held long enough to make it to England.

By way of comparison I've shown the map of the 2023 Season, the 4th most active season.
Notice those same areas in 2023 had almost no hurricane activity at all.
Nature can be sooooo destructively capricious.

2020 Season

2023 Season

 

[Erestor Arcamen]

Dum Dum Pop mystery flavors aren't specific flavors. They just add the next flavor to the batch and the mix of two in-between becomes the mystery flavors. So they're always different.

 

[Squint-eyed Southerner]

In the areas of this year's cicada overlap, you can expect up to one and a half million to emerge per acre.

 

[Erestor Arcamen]

The CIA attempted to use cats to spy on members of the Soviet Union. The cat was put through an hour long surgery to put a radio transmitter in the cat’s ear canal. This was known as Operation Acoustic Kitty. The plan did not work. The cat got run over by a car.

 

[Tyelkormo the Fair]

View this content on Instagram

View this content on Instagram

This man's got the widest vocal range in the world.

 

[Glorfindel Goldtress]

The CIA attempted to use cats to spy on members of the Soviet Union. The cat was put through an hour long surgery to put a radio transmitter in the cat’s ear canal. This was known as Operation Acoustic Kitty. The plan did not work. The cat got run over by a car.

Operation Tevildo was not a go.

 

[Erestor Arcamen]

The BTK-killer (BTK = bind, torture, kill) installed home security alarms at several people’s houses because of their fear of the BTK-killer.

 

[Matthew Bailey]

Trivia…

Hmm…

In the 1970s, later-1970s, a technological marvel was revealed by Birdseye Frozen Foods:

Microwave Pizzas that could produce a “Browned” and even “Crisp” crust, with a new ingenious material called the “Microwave Browning Foil.”

Birdseye purchased or licensed this technology from a VERY UNLIKELY Seller:

Northrop and Lockheed Aircraft, and Texas Instruments (the latter being a co-owner of the “Microwave Browning Foil”).

It was the Skin of the Have Blue and Tacit Blue Stealth Technological Demonstrators.

I was friends at the time with the VP of R&D at Texas Instruments (although NO ONE who knew him knew this was his job at TI. He offered little when asked what he did there but “Product Testing” or “Research on Applications”), who later told me about it.

They had a Radar testing Facility in North Texas (now within the City-Limits of Dallas, Richardson, and Plano) where the Skin was developed and tested. One day, he and some of his minions were doing testing of the Radar-Absorbing Skin with the newer Microwave Radars being developed, and they ALL burned their hands upon touching it, after they discovered that the boards and metal bits the skin was coated on were either burned or vert hot (in some cases glowing hot).

Northrop and Lockheed, being pressed for money to develop these Aircraft into the F-117 and B-2 Bomber, thought “You know…. If we use a shell company to market this stuff, and license it to a frozen foods company to allow people to make things in the Microwave they currently cannot make (Crisp Bacon, Pizza Crusts, Cookies, etc…), this could provide an income stream that the US Gov’t doesn’t need to know about, given our contract says that we cannot sell or license technologies for the project to other Tech or Aviation-Related companies. But Swanson, Birdseye, and other major Frozen Food companies are neither “technology” nor “Aviation-Related.”

And thanks to the wonders of Cold War paranoia and ingenuity, we can now cook things in the Microwave that previously prevented the widespread adoption of the Microwave oven as more than a “gimmick kitchen appliance.”

This is not a surprising relationship, given the Microwave Oven Itself is the Product of WWII Research into Microwave Radar (which at the time was really cm-range Radar, a “Real” Microwave Radar has a wavelength of .000001m, or 1,000,000 cycles per meter).

The actual “Microwave Radar” that gave rise to today’s Microwaves, and the built-in methods of Microwave Browning that no longer always require the Foil, did not really come about until the 1970s/80s, when it also produced the first Digital Communications methods in connection with the Maser (A Laser using Microwaves rather than the Lower Frequency Visible Light Spectrum).

Tolkien would have HATED that it required war (or the threat of it) to produce such technologies. It was why he hated airplanes so much.

MB

 

[Erestor Arcamen]

Recent studies have shown that coffee consumption can have several health benefits, from enhancing brain function to reducing the risk of certain diseases.

• Regular coffee drinking has been linked to a lower risk of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases.
• A study by Harvard Health Publishing suggests that coffee drinkers have a reduced risk of type 2 diabetes.
• According to the American Heart Association, moderate coffee consumption can be part of a healthy lifestyle, potentially lowering the risk of heart failure.

 

[Squint-eyed Southerner]

moderate coffee consumption

I think I see where my problem is . . . 🤔

 

[Deimos]

Recent studies have shown that coffee consumption can have several health benefits, from enhancing brain function to reducing the risk of certain diseases.

• Regular coffee drinking has been linked to a lower risk of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases.
• A study by Harvard Health Publishing suggests that coffee drinkers have a reduced risk of type 2 diabetes.
• According to the American Heart Association, moderate coffee consumption can be part of a healthy lifestyle, potentially lowering the risk of heart failure.

Black Tea has the same benefits, and then some.
From UCLA Health (UCLA has a Medical Research School) November 14, 2022
(I drink at least a quart of hot black tea --with milk-- per day)
Black Tea Benefits

Promotes heart health
Reduces the risk of stroke
Improves focus
Lowers blood sugar levels
Decreases the risk of some cancers
Lessens the risk of death from all causes

 

[EdenDelacroix]

View this content on Instagram

View this content on Instagram

This man's got the widest vocal range in the world.

I've listened to this guy about 4 years ago, simply fantastic!! I've never heard a male whistle register before him.

 

[Ent]

THE TERMITE:
There are over 2,000 species of termite.
The termite does over 5 billion dollars in damage each year.
Workers and soldier termites generally live only 1 or 2 years after reaching maturity. Reproductives can live for up to 4 years. Queen termites typically survive for over a decade, with some species living as long as 20 – 25 years if the conditions are optimal.

 

[Erestor Arcamen]

There used to be a radioactive energy drink called "Radithor" that was in the US market for a decade from 1918-1928. Some of the more prominent users had to be buried in lead coffins.