Dear diary, I have been meaning to tell you to watch the latest short film by my good friend Tem. He works as a 35mm film projectionist about London, and he has made this delightful piece about his job.
Facts About Projection from Studiocanoe on Vimeo.
It's very sad that proper film seems to be endangered now, and with it the craft of projection...
Tem has made a bunch of other films as well as tunes and fine illustrated books, all marvellous, so have a poke around.
Researchers find a way to precisely date the Dead Sea Scrolls.
After a decade of intense laboratory tests, a Danish archaeochemist has found a way to enable scientists to precisely date the Dead Sea Scrolls, the ownership of which is currently a bone of contention between Israel and Jordan, according to videnskab.dk.
The Dead Sea Scrolls and other ancient documents were discovered between 1947 and 1956 in caves near the Qumran Wadi northwest of the Dead Sea.
Treatment of the rolls has included them being spread out using plant oil, which in turn made precise carbon dating of the scrolls almost impossible.
A Danish archaeochemist and an international team of researchers, have, however now found a chemical method to remove the oil without harming the parchment of the scrolls, and thus allowing precise carbon dating.
“For more than a decade we’ve been saying that there was no point in dating the scrolls before we found a method to remove the oil. Now we have found just such a method,” Associate Professor and Archaeochemist Kaare Lund Rasmussen of the University of Southern Denmark tells videnskab.dk.
Carbon dating tests of the scrolls were carried out in the 1990s by the Zurich Institute of Technology and the University of Arizona, but precise dating has remained controversial.
It is not yet clear when a new set of carbon dating tests will be carried out.
Edited by Julian Isherwood
Ripped off by Ian Butterworth
This Monday Ian and I went along with some mutual friends to The Lexington to take part in the weekly Rough Trade pub quiz. It was a lot of fun and we finished somewhere in the top 10 so we were chuffed.
The question that scuppered our chances of doing better was a mammoth-6-pointer: name all Guns N' Roses' LPs. Between six people we could collectively name two of their records. I think we were all secretly proud of this fact.
Is this from an album? I honestly don't know.
Quiz team names are a difficult art to master, we opted for the 'bad pun' option and attempted to get the right balance for a truly tenuous pop culture reference. Having decided that Quizzy Rascal and Quiz This It were too obvious, we opted for the clumsy beauty of 'Limp Quiz Kit'.
The best name of the night was undoubtedly 'Hate Music Love Racism'. We're going to have to be less PC next week to keep up with that kind of effort.
The Cross Kings, London, 16th December 2009
The Dead Sea Scrolls
Unknown Forces
A Feeling Of Health
New song
The Shortest Distance
They Already Know
As the blankets of snow that had festooned London all day turned into grim oceans of slush, we played our last show of the year near Kings Cross, boasting terrible cracker jokes, paper crowns, and a tentative new song, but very nearly not featuring a hi-hat. Thank-you eARmusic for putting a top evening together.
We're about to complete our first batch of recordings, and then we shall resume such live appearances in February. See you then, then!
