The poet and the pendulum

Looking upward, I surveyed the ceiling of my prison. It was some thirty or forty feet overhead, and constructed much as the side walls. In one of its panels a very singular figure riveted my whole attention. It was the painted figure of Time as he is commonly represented, save that, in lieu of a scythe, he held what, at a casual glance, I supposed to be the pictured image of a huge pendulum, such as we see on antique clocks. There was something, however, in the appearance of this machine which caused me to regard it more attentively. While I gazed directly upward at it, (for its position was immediately over my own,) I fancied that I saw it in motion. In an instant afterward the fancy was confirmed. Its sweep was brief, and of course slow. I watched it for some minutes, somewhat in fear, but more in wonder.

- from The pit and the pendulum by Edgar Allan Poe

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After the abandonment of Tarja Turunen, the Nightwish engaged Anette Olzon as a female voice for five years, from 2007 to 2012. Again the separation it was not the best, but the fact is that Anette, despite the apparent sympathy, certainly did not enter the hearts of the fans, evidently still loving Turunen. His place was then taken by the dutch Floor Jansen, who turned out to be a worthy substitute for Turunen, but in the meantime Olzon sang one of Tuomas Holopainen's most interesting and inspired songs, evidently inspired by Edgar Allan Poe and to his mystical story The pit and the pendulum:

Holistic Detective Agency

Have you ever needed a holistic detective agency? And do you know what a holistic detective agency is? If you do not know, don't panic: I am going to say what it is this strange agency.

The term ‘holistic’ refers to my [detective's] conviction that what we are concerned with here is the fundamental interconnectedness of all things. I do not concern myself with such petty things as fingerprint powder, telltale pieces of pocket fluff and inane footprints. I see the solution to each problem as being detectable in the pattern and web of the whole. The connections between causes and effects are often much more subtle and complex than we with our rough and ready understanding of the physical world might naturally suppose.

And what are its secret origins?

Well, some researchers were once conducting such an experiment [Schroedinger's cat], but when they opened up the box, the cat was neither alive nor dead but was in fact completely missing, and they called me in to investigate. I was able to deduce that nothing very dramatic had happened. The cat had merely got fed up with being repeatedly locked up in a box and occasionally gassed and had taken the first opportunity to hoof it through the window. It was for me the work of a moment to set a saucer of milk by the window and call “Bernice” in an enticing voice -- the cat’s name was Bernice, you understand -- and the cat was soon restored. A simple enough matter, but it seemed to create quite an impression in certain circles, and soon one thing led to another as they do and it all culminated in the thriving career you see before you.

Orange Juice

about #RichardFeynman playing #bongo

Here, after a lecture, Richard Feynman plays his signature "Orange Juice" theme with his friend and fellow drum player, Ralph Leighton.

Les Cernettes

posted by @ulaulaman about #LesHorriblesCernettes #music #cern #HardronicMusicFestival

Les Horribles Cernettes is a rock-swing group that started its activity with the... birth of the web!
Indeed the first photo uploaded on web by Tim Berners-Lee was a promotional photoshop by the fab four girl from LHC!

The group is, today, formed by three girls Michele de Gennaro, Anne MacNabb, Colette Marx-Nielsen, and this is the original story from the official web site:

Once upon a summer there was a girl. She was a CERN secretary tired of waiting day and night for her permanently-on-shift physicist boyfriend, and so she decided to attract his attention by stepping on stage during the CERN Hardronic Festival to sing about her lonely nights in front of the entire CERN population. She asked Silvano [de Gennaro, an IT developer who worked with Tim Berners-Lee] to write a song about her life and a couple of girlfriends to back her up on stage. A few weeks later the Cernettes were on stage for the first time, for the delight of thousands of happy Physicists, singing Collider, the song that since that day became the National Anthem of the High Energy Kingdom.

Their first success was Liquid Nitrogen, but today I would share a live version of Mr. Higgs: