divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/78946?ns=guardianpageName=Music%3A+Under+the+radar%2C+over+the+topch=Musicc3=The+Guardianc4=Electronic+music%2CAlexis+Petridis+on+pop%2CCulture+section%2CClubbing+%28Music%29%2CMusicc5=Pop+Music%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CElectronic+and+Dancec6=Alexis+Petridisc7=2008_12_05c8=1128673c9=articlec10=GUc11=Musicc12=Electronic+musicc13=c14=h2=GU%2FMusic%2FElectronic+music" width="1" height="1" //divpChristine looks about 15. She is wearing a pair of vertiginously heeled ankle boots that make her both tall and a little wobbly and which form the basis of a pretty remarkable ensemble. She is also wearing fluorescent tights, a clashing fluorescent tutu, a T-shirt that she appears to have accessorised by snapping a glowstick in two and splashing its luminous contents over herself, a pair of lens-less glasses that also glow in the dark, and an expression of profound suspicion. The suspicion is aimed in my direction. "You," she says, narrowing her eyes, "don't look like a raver. What are you doing here?"/ppThis is a question I started asking myself the moment I walked into Aberdeen's AECC Exhibition Centre, where the second Clubland Live arena tour of 2008 is in full swing. Ignored or derided as the apotheosis of cheesy, worthless pop by the mainstream media, Clubland is nevertheless Britain's "biggest-selling dance brand" - Clubland and its parent label, All Around the World, have spawned 21 No 1 albums, millions of record sales, sellout tours, and their own TV channel - and the place is accordingly thronged with kids: primary school children accompanied by parents wearing weary expressions, gangs of adolescent girls striding around arm in arm, boys playfighting and getting each other in headlocks, and older teenagers whose unsteady gait suggests Grampian police's rigorous attempts to stop underage drinking before the event have met with only partial success. /ppRegardless of age, everyone is going berserk. The uproar is continuous. Everyone screams at everything all the time - the performers onstage who do their 20 minutes and scuttle off; the DJs who fill in between them playing thumping hardcore remixes of Katy Perry's I Kissed a Girl, the Sugababes' About You Now and, most startling of all, Cascada's unlikely cover version of Patti Smith's Because the Night. At one point, an announcement about the venue's regulations regarding flash photography comes over the PA, and goes down like the Beatles at Shea Stadium. When the fans really like something, they express their approval by pelting the stage and each other with glowsticks. The really big acts appear to be performing under a kind of neon hailstorm./ppIf Clubland's audience isn't discombobulating enough to an outsider, there are Clubland's stars to contend with. If you're over 21, it seems highly unlikely that any of their names will ring much of a bell, unless you've been paying very close attention to the album charts or glued to Clubland TV: Kelly Llorenna, September, Eyeopener, Cascada, N-Force, Darren Styles. You won't have heard them on Radio 1 - the station will have little to do with them. Clubland's architects, Matt Cadman and Cris Nuttall of All Around the World, claim that at one juncture they were told by a station representative that they weren't interested because All Around the World released "music for kids who live on council estates". "That was one of our favourites," Cadman says. "In fairness, the people at Radio 1 have changed since then, so you can't really pin that one on them, but I think that statement still has an underlying truth to it. It's perceived Clubland doesn't reach the kind of people Radio 1 wants to attract." Clubland TV, meanwhile, was set up in response to the lack of interest other music channels showed in playing that kind of music./ppTellingly, Cadman says All Around the World began in the early 90s, releasing big northern rave anthems like Love Decade's Is This a Dream? and Control's Dance With Me (I'm Your Ecstasy) - "records that no one else understood, that were popular in the north-west, but no one knew about in London and that remains true to this day"./ppCertainly there's still a noticeable regional bias to Clubland's appeal (this tour goes no further south than Birmingham, although the cancellation of a date in Plymouth apparently had more to do with logistics than a lack of demand). And since the release of the first Clubland compilation album in 2002, Cadman and Nuttall do seem to have constructed a genuine youth phenomenon out of the most unlikely ingredients: a selection of thunderingly uncool sub-genres of dance music that seem to have a peculiar appeal to teenagers too young to go clubbing - bouncy scouse house, happy hardcore, pop trance - and a stable of artists that you suspect wouldn't get past reception at any other record company. /ppThere is Ultrabeat, two Liverpudlian DJs called Chris and Mike. Chris and Mike are funny, friendly and charming and have a string of hits to their name, notably the 2003 smash Pretty Green Eyes, but, with the best will in the world, more closely resemble plumbers than pop stars, a fact rather underlined by their videos. These usually feature Chris and Mike looking a bit lost while women in suspenders lasciviously gyrate around them. "We've had things before where channels have gone, 'Oh, we don't want to play the Ultrabeat video, I don't like the guy in it.' But I'm slightly bored with the celebrity thing where everybody's got to look a certain way," Cadman says. "We're going, 'This is the guy who made this record,' and I think people relate to that, rather than some good-looking faccedil;ade." As if to prove his point, no sooner do I sit down with Matt and Chris than a lady asks for their autographs for her teenage daughter. "Nice to be nice, innit?" says Chris when she departs. "We're all normal people, everyone's the same, aren't they?"/ppThen there is Blackout Crew, Bolton's faintly terrifying tracksuit- and hair-gel- heavy progenitors of a genre called donk, whose last video, Put a Donk On It, has thus far racked up more than 3m hits on YouTube. There is Darren Styles, a former happy hardcore producer who finds himself, at 34, a slightly baffled teeny pin-up, purveying music that, on the basis of his Clubland live set, often sounds not unlike a Coldplay piano ballad sung in an Essex accent and inexplicably retooled with thumping 160bpm beats. "It's a bit daunting for me, to be honest," he says. "I enjoy it, but you spend 12 years standing behind the decks then you're put out in front of a huge crowd in a spotlight with a microphone, and it's completely out of my comfort zone." /ppAnd, most successful of all, there is Scooter, a novelty German rave act who emerged in the early 90s and managed to spin out their expected 15 minutes of fame into 14 years. Imagine if the people who made Sesame's Treet had gone on to release 13 albums and sell more than 14m records worldwide, and you get some idea of the sheer improbability of Scooter's career, although to really grasp how bizarre it is, you need to be conversant with their oeuvre, which is nuts. Scooter have variously released rave versions of Soft Cell's Sex Dwarf, Marian by the Sisters of Mercy, Hava Nagila, and the theme tune to Miss Marple. /ppThey've also recorded a medley of Shut Up and Dance's 1991 hardcore hit Raving I'm Raving with a bagpipe rendition of Scotland the Brave, and not one but two songs inspired by the work of forgotten mid-80s John Peel favourites Stump. Their current big thing is jumpstyle, a sort of synchronised hopping dance popular in the Netherlands, which Scooter have promoted with singles called Jumping All Over the World and Jump That Rock, a collaboration with Status Quo. If you feel like sniggering at this as precisely the kind of thing that causes British music fans to feel vastly superior to their clueless continental counterparts, it's worth noting that, with minimal radio play or media coverage - though there was a video clip shown on Zane Lowe's MTV show Gonzo, which the excitable Kiwi claimed was evidence that "music is finally dead" - Scooter's last album entered the British charts at No 1, knocking Madonna off the top spot. /ppBackstage in Aberdeen, their dressing room features plenty of rock star trappings, including a cooler full of vodka, a watchful manager there to ensure I don't overrun my allotted 15 minutes of face time, an immense PA system that apparently forms part of their pre-gig ritual - "for one hour, very loud music, a few drinks to get you in the mood" - and a certain bullishness about the derision their music attracts. They have, they tell me, recently been the subject of a series of paintings by a German artist called Albert Oehlen, who on his website claims to be "fascinated" by Scooter, "because they have no content, only form". Nevertheless, questions about Scooter's longevity are met with a shrug from frontman HP Baxxter, resplendent in skull rings and Black Sabbath T-shirt. "We never stop," he offers. "Nearly every year there is a new album. Maybe that's the reason why we've lasted so long." /ppThen again, bafflement at your own success is very much a Clubland trademark. Despite the success of the albums and the TV channel, Cadman and Nuttall managed to convince themselves the first Clubland tour would be a disaster: it sold out. Darren Styles says he thought his debut solo album would sell around 20,000 copies. It sold 22,000 in a week and entered the charts at No 4. "Coldplay were No 1, then Duffy, then Neil Diamond, then me. It was absolutely bizarre."/ppPerhaps their surprise stems from the fact that everything about Clubland seems somehow wrong: it's as if it exists in a hermetically sealed bubble, apart from the rest of the music industry, where all the usual rules are turned on their heads. The artists are clearly huge stars despite the media blackout. (Styles actually thinks they might be successful because of the media blackout: "Maybe the fact that it's not so in your face, it's not all over TV and radio accounts for it's appeal - it seems a bit underground, it's not something that your mum and dad are listening to.") The TV channel is a huge success, despite disobeying the most basic principles of a music channel. "If the video's a bit average, music channels in general go, we love the track, but video's a bit cheap, so we're not going to show it," says Nuttall. "We would have a completely different view from that because if the track's brilliant and the video's a bit average, not big budget, who cares? Kids don't sit there watching TV going, 'Oh, they must have only spent a hundred grand on the video, I'm not watching it.' They like the tune, pure and simple."/ppAnd the All Around the World label sells vast quantities of CDs to precisely the audience that everyone assumes never buys CDs. "If you're a 15-year-old and you can work a computer, you can go and get a track you want in 30 seconds, it's really not that difficult," Cadman says. "So singles have become less valuable because people just steal them or Bluetooth them to each other in the playground. The value then becomes in the album. If the album genuinely is good, if there's not one tune and nine fillers, if there's three or four singles on it, the pound;8.99 in Asda or Tesco starts to seem like a bargain. For pound;8.99, I'm not going to download it all, I might as well pay for it. You've just got to encourage the value for money, and then records will sell physically. Clubland compilations have 60 tracks on them, take us months to compile, and sell for 10 quid. People trust us, because me and Chris genuinely love the music. It's not cool or perceived to be cool, but it's what we love. We'll sail with it and no doubt we'll go down with it when it stops selling."/ppBut there's no sign of that happening for the foreseeable future. The crowd in Aberdeen don't look like they'll be changing their allegiances any time soon. As Scooter take the stage, the hail of glowsticks grows denser than ever: HP Baxxter never flinches or falters, despite the surprising number of them that hit him squarely in the face. They play their medley of Raving I'm Raving and Scotland the Brave, but no one other than me seems bemused. They play Jumping All Over the World, and a crowd of boys at the back of the hall break into a delighted synchronised jumpstyle routine. Christine wobbles past again on her high heels: "You still here?" I ask her if she's having a good time. "Are you kidding?" she grins. I start to ask her what she likes about Clubland, but but she doesn't hear - the screaming again -and she wobbles away into the crowd./ppa href="http://www.clubland.fm/"Clubland.fm/a/pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/electronicmusic"Electronic music/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/alexispetridis"Alexis Petridis on pop/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/clubs"Clubbing/a/li/ul/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/M0rCGLsKbCYwSjNC2am_vyeOyZI/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/M0rCGLsKbCYwSjNC2am_vyeOyZI/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

photo by julia Krash

The bit-blissful sights and sounds get going tonight and continue through Sunday @ The Tank, NYC - Archaic game and home computer hardware is recast into the unlikely role of musical instrument and motion graphics workstation in the BLIP FESTIVAL 2008, a four-day event showcasing nearly 40 musicians and visual artists occupying the international low-res cutting edge. The Blip Festival takes place DECEMBER 4—7, 2008 at The Bell House, and is presented by Manhattan art organization THE TANK and NYC artist collective 8BITPEOPLES.

Highlighting the chipmusic phenomenon and its related disciplines, the festival aims to showcase emerging creative niches involving the use of legacy video game & home computer hardware as modern artistic instrumentation. Devices such as the Nintendo Entertainment System, Commodore 64, Atari ST, Nintendo Game Boy and others are repurposed into the service of original, low-res, high-impact electronic music and visuals — sidestepping game culture and instead exploring the technology's untapped potential and distinctive intrinsic character. When: Friday, December 5, 6-8p
Where: 149 7th Street, Brooklyn, NY 11215
2008 Blip Festival

a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/12/blip_festival_is_bleeping.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890" /Read more/a | a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/12/blip_festival_is_bleeping.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890" / Permalink/a | a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/12/blip_festival_is_bleeping.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890#comments" /Comments/a | a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/events/?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890" /Read more articles in Events/a | a href="http://digg.com/submit?url=blog.makezine.com%2Farchive%2F2008%2F12%2Fblip_festival_is_bleeping.htmltitle=Blip%20festival%20is%20bleeping%20this%20eve%21bodytext=%20photo%20by%20julia%20Krash%20The%20bit-blissful%20sights%20and%20sounds%20get%20going%20tonight%20and%20continue%20through%20Sunday%20%40%20The%20Tank%2C%20NYC%20-%20Archaic%20game%20and%20home%20computer%20hardware%20is%20recast%20into%20the%20unlikely%20role%20of%20musical%20instrument%20and%20motion%20graphics...topic=tech_news" /Digg this!/a

via Computer and Video Games


Konami will bring an all-new Suikoden to DS next March titled Suikoden Tierkreis. Here are the first batch of shots.

Official blurb reads: Suikoden Tierkreis casts the player as a member of a tightly knit security force in a remote setting called 'Citro Village'. During an ongoing task to get rid of the land's fearsome creatures, players uncover a mysterious phenomenon... a light emits something inexplicable at the top of the tower in the old ruins. From then on, the player and their comrades' destiny begins to change...

The Nintendo DS title boasts a cast of 108 fully interactive characters. Each will work independently of the others, but can be recruited to make a four-person party, ideally suited to the tasks ahead. Each character enjoys a detailed history which is unfurled as the game progresses, with voice-overs and animated sequences fleshing out their many stories. From these, players than assemble their team to utilise the various skills on offer, while weapons such as swords and bows can be equipped and customised. Together, they are then pitted in turn-based battles against the many hostile creatures that lurk within Suikoden Tierkreis.

In addition to running battles, players and their parties will also be given specific quests during the course of the adventure. Suikoden Tierkreis is set in a series of parallel worlds, wherein users play in their own bespoke locale, while other players inhabit their own. This system will introduce the user to even more characters and the opportunity to make friends, while the Wi-Fi or Wireless communication capabilities of the Nintendo DS also allow users to send characters to these other worlds to receive missions from other players. Extra items such as money and items are offered as rewards, and ensure that the game is capable of constantly surprising the player.


Screenshots here

With the recession and the collapse of the housing market, more and more couples who have broken up are continuing to live under the same roof, according to judges and divorce lawyers. Some are waiting for housing prices to rebound; some are trying to get back on their feet financially. nbsp; nbsp; The phenomenon is being felt around the country but most keenly in areas hit harder by foreclosure, such as the Sun Belt. nbsp; nbsp; When the real estate market was booming, couples would promptly sell their home, split the profits and go their separate ways. nbsp; nbsp; These days, Florida Judge John C. Lenderman said, about a third of his cases involve homes that are in foreclosure or that a family is struggling to sell. Lenderman said he has never seen anything like it in 40 years as a lawyer and judge.

Just as we're coming to grips with the entire netbook phenomenon, low end manufacturer Coby comes up with something even lamer. "[Midget PCs] are smaller than a netbook but not THAT small." Midget...

pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/12/poqet.jpg" width="200" height="100" /Just as we're a href="http://gizmodo.com/5042814/why-i-hate-netbooks"coming/a to a href="http://gizmodo.com/5042815/why-i-love-netbooks"grips/a with the entire netbook phenomenon, low end manufacturer Coby comes up with something even lamer. "[Midget PCs] are smaller than a netbook but not THAT small." Midget PCs. Lovely./p pWhat's makes a midget PC different than a netbook? If you listen to Coby's marketing director, they're a whole new category of computer meant for leaner times. As far as I can tell though, the PoqetMate-7 and PoqetMate-9 emare/em just netbooks, albeit extremely cheap ones. Coby hasn't offered many specs to ponder, but the models, primarily differentiated by screen size (7in and 9in) will run Linux atop a Chinese Longsoon processor. Past that, I wouldn't expect much more than a Wi-Fi adapter and a few ports, bringing the PoqetMate in line with low-end netbooks like the Asus EeePC 701./p pCoby plans to bring these to discount retailers, including traditionally computer-averse stores like Kroger and Rite-Aid, by March, making the PoqetMate-7 the first $100 computer to be widely available in the US. [a href="http://arkansas.indymedia.org/newswire/display/23048/index.php"AKIndi/a via a href="http://thegadgetsite.blogspot.com/2008/12/coby-to-release-9995-netbook.html"TheGadgetSite/]a/p /a br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=a83cf9b1e82b13c1074040313010323bp=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=a83cf9b1e82b13c1074040313010323bp=1"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=a83cf9b1e82b13c1074040313010323b" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=mvAh3mTb"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=120" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=B0CmoSV4"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=ASYJ1a7K"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=ASYJ1a7K" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=5qdnPeQN"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=5qdnPeQN" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~4/B_LVop22OWQ" height="1" width="1"/

http://www.diamondalignment.com Diamond Alignment Founder, Jacqueline Joy, speaks about how the accelerated times we live in make it difficult for us to connect inside and hear the “inner whisper” of the Soul. Diamond Alignment has been specifically designed for this new millennium and answers this great need for Soul Alignment and Spiritual Connection. When we don’t have time for a yoga, Reiki or Transcendental Meditation session, we can now powerfully alter our state of Consciousness right where we are. in just 6 minutes. Jacqueline Joy is a demonstration of the power of Diamond Alignment’s ability to help us maintain Connection and Alignment with Higher Consciousness while fully engaging in our fast-paced demanding world. Diamond Alignment is a Sacred Technology for the 21st century…a new tool in the field of Mind-Body connection, offering high-speed connection and alignment with the Divine Power Within through a revolutionary online phenomenon: the Diamond Alignment Experience. Convenient yet profound, this exclusive multi-sensory energy experience delivered via the Internet clears the mind, relaxes the body and creates a sense of Inner Peace in just six minutes.... whenever it is needed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week by subscription.

Auteur : DiamondAlignment
Tags : meditation relaxation relationship spiritual love sexuality religion life
Envoyé : 04 décembre 2008
Note :0.0
Votes :0

http://www.diamondalignment.com Diamond Alignment Founder, Jacqueline Joy, speaks about how amazed people are that they could experience such deep relaxation and regeneration in just 6 minutes. The Diamond Alignment Experience allows us to rest into our Divine Being quickly and come back refreshed and renewed…an invaluable service in these accelerated times. Jacqueline Joy, herself, emanates the youthful vitality and relaxed Presence that comes from living in the expansive energy flow of Diamond Alignment. Diamond Alignment is a Spiritual Technology for the 21st century, offering high-speed connection and alignment with the Divine Presence Within through a revolutionary online phenomenon: the Diamond Alignment Experience. Convenient yet profound, this exclusive multi-sensory energy experience delivered via the Internet brings mental clarity, deep body relaxation and a sense of Inner Peace… all the benefits of meditation and more… in just 6 minutes whenever it is needed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week by subscription.

Auteur : DiamondAlignment
Tags : meditation relaxation relationship spiritual love sexuality religion life
Envoyé : 04 décembre 2008
Note :0.0
Votes :0

Physorg.com: "Zipf's law is a testament to the order in our world, showing that the same patterns emerge in a wide variety of situations. The linguist George Kingsley Zipf first proposed the law in 1949, when he noticed that the distribution of words in a newspaper, book, or other literary article always followed the same pattern."

Gary Gipson was inspired by the Magbot Pendulum project in Dave Hrynkiw's wonderful Junkbots, Bugbots & Bots on Wheels. Greg made a few changes. He put the electronics package on a little swinging bot and made the permanent magnet stationary to the base. The bot's LED eyes light up when he first starts out over the magnet. Nifty!

Gary has some other really nice BEAMbots on his YouTube channel, including a Photopopper driven by a 1381J voltage trigger-based solar engine. We used the 1381 in the two BEAMbots featured in MAKE, Volume 06 (reprinted in The Best of MAKE).

More

The Best of MAKE MAKE has become one of most celebrated new magazines to hit the newsstands, and certainly one of the hottest reads. If you're just catching on to the MAKE phenomenon and wonder what you've missed, this book contains the best DIY projects from the magazine's first ten volumes -- a surefire collection of fun and challenging activities going back to MAKE's launch in early 2005. Our Price: $22.75

a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/12/magbot_solar_pendulum.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890" /Read more/a | a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/12/magbot_solar_pendulum.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890" / Permalink/a | a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/12/magbot_solar_pendulum.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890#comments" /Comments/a | a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/robotics/?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890" /Read more articles in Robotics/a | a href="http://digg.com/submit?url=blog.makezine.com%2Farchive%2F2008%2F12%2Fmagbot_solar_pendulum.htmltitle=Magbot%20solar%20pendulumbodytext=%20Gary%20Gipson%20was%20inspired%20by%20the%20Magbot%20Pendulum%20project%20in%20Dave%20Hrynkiw%26apos%3Bs%20wonderful%20Junkbots%2C%20Bugbots%20%26amp%3B%20Bots%20on%20Wheels.%20Greg%20made%20a%20few%20changes.%20He%20put%20the%20electronics%20package%20on%20a%20little%20swinging%20bot%20and%20made%20the%20permanent%20magnet...topic=tech_news" /Digg this!/a

An Air New Zealand Airbus A320 a href="http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1objectid=10546224"crashed in the Meditarreanean last week/a while on an acceptance testing flight at the end of a lease. The tragedy occurred on the 29th anniversary of the airline's worst disaster, a href="http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominionpost/4398336a6479.html"the crash of sightseeing flight TE901 in the Antarctic/a. Beginning in 1977, the a href="http://www.southpolestation.com/trivia/history/anzbrochure.html"popular one-day flights/a took passengers on low level flights over the Ross Dependency, with experienced guides providing commentary. a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_New_Zealand_Flight_901"TE 901/a flew on beautiful, clear day, and yet the DC-10 collided with the side of a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?q=http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/download.php?Number=222036t=kom=1"Mt Erebus/a, killing all 257 on board. The original accident report cited pilot error, but that was only the beginning. br / With no mechanical reason for the crash, and the a href="http://www.airdisaster.com/cvr/anz901tr.shtml"cockpit voice recorder showing no emergency in the cockpit/a, The report blamed pilot a href="http://www.nzherald.co.nz/mt-erebus-crash/news/article.cfm?c_id=1500932objectid=6500438"Jim Collins/a for descending below a minimum safe altitude of 16,000ft. A subsequent Royal Commission of Inquiry was launched, and after 75 days of evidence, Justice Peter Mahon concluded that a href="http://www.investigatemagazine.com/archives/2006/03/investigate_nov_4.html"quot;I am forced reluctantly to say that I had to listen to an orchestrated litany of lies.quot;/a Exonerating the pilots, Justice Mahon found a href="http://www.archives.govt.nz/exhibitions/pastexhibitions/erebus/docs/AntarcticReport.pdf"the computer navigation track of TE901 had been altered just before the flight/a, shifting the flightpath from the safe, flat expanse of McMurdo Sound to a collision course with Mt Erebus, without the pilots being told of the change. The pilots had fallen victim to a phenomenon known as a href="http://www.tc.gc.ca/CivilAviation/SystemSafety/Newsletters/tp185/4-02/427.htm"sector whiteout/a rendering the mountain indistinguishable from the cloud cover. Air New Zealand appealed the decision, and political establishment turned on Mahon, resulting in his eventual resignation. He was posthumously awarded for a href="http://www.stuff.co.nz/4778562a11.html" changing the way air accidents are investigated worldwide/a.br / br / His findings a href="http://www.pprune.org/d-g-reporting-points/152934-erebus-25-years-6.html"remain controversial/a decades later, with a href="http://www.travelmole.com/stories/1121530.php"claims that Air New Zealand employees have attempted to sanitise the Wikipedia entry on the crash/a, the a href="http://www.nzherald.co.nz/mt-erebus-crash/news/article.cfm?c_id=1500932objectid=9002310"original cockpit voice recorder tape missing/a (leaving inconsistent transcripts), and the Prime Minister at the time a href="http://www.nzherald.co.nz/mt-erebus-crash/news/article.cfm?c_id=1500932objectid=3612368"working to counter Mahon's findings/a before they were ever released. The wreckage a href="http://www.archives.govt.nz/exhibitions/currentexhibitions/chch/images/pc-erebus-crashsiteside.jpg"remains on the ice/a. During warm seasons, it can still be seen from the air.

Hugh Pickens writes "Vaughn Bell has written an interesting essay at Scientific American about grief hallucinations. This phenomenon is a normal reaction to bereavement that is rarely discussed, although researchers now know that hallucinations are more likely during times of stress. Mourning seems to be a time when hallucinations are particularly common, to the point where feeling the presence of the deceased is the norm rather than the exception. A study by Agneta Grimby at the University of Goteborg found that over 80 percent of elderly people experience hallucinations associated with their dead partner one month after bereavement, as if their perception had yet to catch up with the knowledge of their beloved's passing. It's not unusual for people who have lost a partner to clearly see or hear the person about the house, and sometimes even converse with them at length. 'Despite the fact that hallucinations are one of the most common reactions to loss, they have barely been investigated and we know little more about them. Like sorrow itself, we seem a little uncomfortable with it, unwilling to broach the subject,' writes Bell. 'We often fall back on the cultural catch all of the "ghost" while the reality is, in many ways, more profound.' "pa href="http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/12/03/023209amp;from=rss"img src="http://slashdot.org/slashdot-it.pl?from=rssamp;op=imageamp;style=h0amp;sid=08/12/03/023209"/a/ppa href="http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/12/03/023209amp;from=rss"Read more of this story/a at Slashdot./p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/x2HHC26TO6UOeqfRejFm0f0UULw/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/x2HHC26TO6UOeqfRejFm0f0UULw/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~4/tj3vwbOj8YQ" height="1" width="1"/