Catherine Zeta Jones - Zeta-jones Backs Welsh Film Festival & other

Stir over chicken from T rex theory

2008-08-27T18:25:00.001-07:00

Almost 70 million years after the
Tyrannosaurus rex strode the earth, a arguing over whether the modern
chicken is the fearful dinosaur's descendant is rampaging through the
scientific populace.

In a letter to the journal

Science

published on Thursday,
University of California, San Diego, scientists attacked methods put-upon by a
Harvard University-led team that proposed the T rex-chicken connexion in April 2007.
The Harvard team responded in a letter to the same journal, saying their
psychoanalysis of the dinosaur's protein is sound.

The original Harvard
study base suspected T rex protein fragments appeared to mate a common
protein, called collagen, in chickens, encouraging a long-suspected link betwixt
birds and dinosaurs. Critics of the study say the findings may be random, and
there isn't enough information about other species' proteins to say whether the
match with chickens is definitive.

"The statistical signification is unvoiced
to judge without a lot of additional information," said Michael Hofreiter, an
evolutionary scientist at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, Germany, in a
telephone interview on Friday.

"Personally, I doubt that the link is
real." The Harvard study's findings have preoccupied scientists world Health Organization study
ancient tissue and molecules believed to have been preserved for thousands to
millions of eld, said Hofreiter, who isn't part of either team. Without more than
data on other species'' proteins it's not possible to suppose whether the match with
chickens is better than it mightiness be with reptiles, he said.

Harvard
approached the trouble like a boy wHO finds that his monkey's random typewriting
matches some words in a dictionary, researchers light-emitting diode by Pavel Pevzner, music director
of the center for algorithmic and systems biology at the University of
California, San Diego, said in a sting letter in the Science
journal.

"The boy is so surprised that he writes a paper called
�My monkey can spell out!' the UCSD researchers wrote in their letter. "Some
scientists are not convinced."

The Harvard team sooner came under
fire in September when Enrico Cappellini, an archeologist who studies ancient
proteins at the University of York in the U.K., suggested they had unmarked
other possible interpretations of their data. Cappellini's letter of the alphabet also was
published in

Science

, just weeks after
the Harvard researchers had volunteered a correction of some of their
ferment.

"I'm not surprised that other people have set up issues in these
results," Cappellini aforementioned Thursday in a telephony interview.

John
Asara, a Harvard pathologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston
who lED the 2007 dinosaur study, said that while his group's methods are
unconventional, they are scientifically valid. Collagen is one of the few
proteins that has been well studied in many species, and is highly similar from
one to the adjacent, he said.

Subsequent studies have too shown strong
matches between T male monarch protein and ostrich collagen, he said.

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Charlotte Higgins: Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel brings a 2500-strong audience to its feet

2008-08-17T18:31:00.001-07:00

In the polite world of British classical music, a standing ovation - indeed any show of emotion - is rare. And as audiences go, that of Edinburgh's Usher Hall sits on the restrained end of the spectrum. But all that was thrown to the winds on Tuesday, when 27-year-old Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel lED the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra in a programme of Copland, Ravel and Berlioz, on a tour that also took the orchestra to the Proms

DJ Z-Trip

2008-08-07T20:35:00.001-07:00

Artist: DJ Z-Trip

   Genre(s):
Electronic

Discography:


Shifting Gears

   Year: 2005
Tracks: 1


Live In Los Angeles, CA (2003)

   Year: 2003
Tracks: 18


Uneasy Listening

   Year: 2001
Tracks: 23


The Unknown

   Year: 2001
Tracks: 2

DJ Z-Trip already had a few mixes out -- including unitary in the esteemed Next Primitive Soundsession series -- when his quislingism with DJ P, Uneasylistening, Vol. 1, showed up in 2001. The unorthodox coalesce made many music fans adopt notice, if only to mystifier o'er improbable pairings like Del tha Funkee Homosapien with Phil Collins and Bruce Hornsby with Run-D.M.C.. A native of Queens, NY, Z-Trip (born Zach Sciacca) spends often of his time touring and traveling, merely has roots in Phoenix, AZ, where he's persona of the Bombshelter Crew with DJ Radar. Shifting Gears from 2005 marked Z-Trip's major label debut. Released on Hollywood Records, the album featured guest artists Murs, Aceyalone, Chester Bennington, and Soup from the Jurassic 5.

Schnappi

Galgenberg

2008-07-01T09:28:00.001-07:00

Artist: Galgenberg

   Genre(s):
Metal: Death,Black

Discography:

Galgenberg

Year: 1998
Tracks: 5

Stephan Micus

2008-06-26T08:15:00.000-07:00

Artist: Stephan Micus

   Genre(s):
New Age
   Ethnic
   Easy Listening
   Folk
   Other
   Jazz
   Avantgarde

Discography:


Life

   Year: 2004
Tracks: 10


Towards The Wind

   Year: 2002
Tracks: 8


Desert Poems

   Year: 2001
Tracks: 9


Behind Eleven Deserts

   Year: 1998
Tracks: 7


The Garden of Mirrors

   Year: 1997
Tracks: 9


Athos

   Year: 1994
Tracks: 8


To The Evening Child

   Year: 1992
Tracks: 1


Darkness and Light

   Year: 1990
Tracks: 3


The Music Of Stones

   Year: 1989
Tracks: 6


Twilight Fields

   Year: 1987
Tracks: 5


Ocean

   Year: 1986
Tracks: 4


East Of The Night

   Year: 1985
Tracks: 2


Wings Over Water

   Year: 1982
Tracks: 6


Koan

   Year: 1981
Tracks: 6


Listen to the Rain

   Year: 1980
Tracks: 4


Implosions

   Year: 1977
Tracks: 5


Till The End Of Time

   Year:
Tracks: 2


Retrospective

   Year:
Tracks: 1

The well-thought-of German composer and multi-instrumentalist Stephan Micus made his number one journey to the Orient at the eld of 16. He has since travelled around the populace. He fagged extended periods of time perusal ancient musical techniques in India and Japan and self-possessed a identification number of cultural instruments previously unknown in the West. His recordings for the ECM judge ar basically solo efforts in which the magic of an ensemble is created by the composer's extensive overdubs. Micus' intention is non to play these instruments according to tradition, merely to compound modes of face from around the populace in exciting new slipway. Though he sometimes creates sounds you'd swear were the outcome of electronic keyboards, Micus is an acoustic purist wHO frequently develops unconventional public presentation techniques on heathen instruments. He released Garden of Mirrors in mid-2000, with Forsake Poems and Koan both undermentioned a year afterward. Micus continued to stay busy, cathartic Towards the Wind in 2002, Life in 2004, and On the Wing in 2006, all of which kept his multicultural and multi-instrumental manner intact.

Steve Angello vs. Metallica

Aurosonic Vs. Kirsty Hawkshaw feat Tenishia

2008-06-26T03:38:00.001-07:00

Artist: Aurosonic Vs. Kirsty Hawkshaw feat Tenishia

   Genre(s):
Other

Discography:

Missing Outsiders

Year: 2007
Tracks: 1

Tandu

Pete Doherty - Doherty To Set Up Record Label

2008-06-26T02:51:00.001-07:00

Troubled rocker PETE DOHERTY is in talks to set up his own record label with the help of a millionaire British businessman.

The Babyshambles frontman is reportedly in talks with internet tycoon Andrew Michael, who is worth an estimated $100 million (GBP50 million), about forming their own company.

The move would pave the way for Doherty to have complete creative control over his music career.

A source tells British newspaper the Daily Star Sunday, "Pete's thinking the sky's the limit. He's getting some good advice and he can't wait to get going.

"A record label would be good to start with but he's got a whole host of other ideas to make money."

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LiveDaily Song of the Day: Alejandro Escovedo - "Always A Friend"

2008-06-25T23:59:00.002-07:00

Today's Song of the Day is by Alejandro Escovedo [ tickets ]. His featured cut is "Always A Friend," which appears on his long-awaited new release, "Real Animal."

Futurama: The Beast with a Billion Backs - 6/24/2008

2008-06-25T23:59:00.001-07:00

After Matt Groening's dystopian vision of the future was given a welcome revival with Bender's Big Score, Groening and company have delivered the second of four direct-to-DVD Futurama movies. With the triumph and novelty out of the way, the adventures of unfrozen twentieth-century human Fry (voice of Billy West), the unrequited one-eyed mutant love of his life Leela (voice of Katey Segal), and his miscreant robot best friend Bender (voice of John DiMaggio), among others, can continue with its typical invention. The Beast with a Billion Backs isn't precisely the same as a sequel -- these DVD movies occupy a strange netherworld between supersized episode and full-blown saga -- but if it was, it'd be one of the good ones, like an even-numbered Star Trek movie.

Beast picks up on a dangling plot thread from Score and runs with it; when the Planet Express crew ventures out to investigate a tear in the space-time continuum, they and the rest of Earth (eventually) encounter an encompassing, tentacle-heavy alien life form called Yivo (voiced -- also eventually; Futurama movies offer plenty of skillful digressions -- by David Cross). Yivo's methods are reminiscent of Invasion of the Body Snatchers; its motivations, though, have the murky mix of creepiness and hope more akin to a particularly odd Twilight Zone episode.

The new project doesn't have the emotional heft of Score's best moments -- in fact, the Fry-Leela romantic angle is curiously absent from a story with plenty of musings on sex and relationships (the story finds room for a marriage and Fry's brief attempt at a polyamorous human relationship). It does, though, continue to fulfill the promise of long-form Futurama. Though the show's approach to science-fiction is more freewheeling -- subject to the flukiness of comedy rather than, say, the solemn rules of Star Trek -- its conceptualizing is often brilliant. The characters are hurtled through an alien invasion-slash-romantic dilemma that eventually considers the global logistics of religion, heaven, and hell. Or religion and heaven, anyway. Hell, as we see, may be other robots.

The science may be shaky-to-nonexistent, but the fiction is sound; The Beast with a Billion Backs has a spoofy title but boasts a more imaginative vision of mankind's collective follies than roughly 90 percent of theatrically-released science-fiction movies. The movie's incorporations of its subplots are more fleeting and less episodic than before; initially, Bender's entrance into the secret and apparently quite slothful League of Robots seems like a leftover from the series, but it snakes around to form clever ties with the fate of Earth's population.

Beast's laughs are frontloaded -- the mysterious endangerment of Earth, a frequent occurrence in the Futurama universe, always leaves room for brilliant throwaway gags with characters like the belligerent alien newscaster Morbo and the cocksure space captain Zapp Brannigan. Once the plot is up and running, there's less time to cut away for a left-field sequence of "Deathball," best (if incompletely) described as a futuristic decision-making sport -- though the creative team does save space for callbacks.

But unlike certain other once-canceled Fox animated series, Futurama can actually sustain a story and develop its characters without cutting away to a meaningless pop-culture reference or slapstick gag. These DVD movies may lack the enclosed elegance of the best 22-minute episodes of the series, but quasi-cinematic releases still make sense; Futurama in any form is almost better than TV deserves.

See Also

Electrypnose

2008-06-25T23:58:00.001-07:00

Artist: Electrypnose

   Genre(s):
Trance: Psychedelic

Discography:


Unreleased Promos

   Year: 2006
Tracks: 19


Le Tireur Des Ficelles

   Year: 2006
Tracks: 11


17 Unrelesed Tracks

   Year: 2006
Tracks: 15


Reve De Neige

   Year: 2003
Tracks: 8


Perdu au milloeu de nulle part

   Year: 2003
Tracks: 1


Alienation

   Year: 2003
Tracks: 6

Bohse Onkelz

2008-06-25T23:57:00.001-07:00

Artist: Bohse Onkelz

   Genre(s):
Pop

Discography:

Maxi Single:Kill the Hippies

Year: 1981
Tracks: 3

The BÃ¶hse Onkelz were one of Germany's most successful and to the highest degree controversial rock acts of the Apostles. Despite a series of best-selling LPs, the chemical group was tenacious throughout its career by charges of racism and extremist sympathies, and many retailers refused regular to farm animal their recordings. The BÃ¶hse Onkelz (i.e., "the Evil Uncles") formed in HÃ¶sbach in late 1980. Singer Kevin Russell, guitar player Stephan Weidner, and drummer Peter Schorowsky john Drew their shaping influences from the Sex Pistols and the Ramones, with all the limited technological acumen such inspirations would imply. With the addition of guitarist Matthias "Flakey" RÃ¶hr, Weidner affected to bass and the BÃ¶hse Onkelz quick evolved into nonpareil of the to the highest degree popular bands on the Frankfurt punk circle. In 1981, they made their recorded debut on the compilation Soundtrack zum Untergang 2, merely as German punk began embracing the political leanings of the left field, their music sour in the opposite guidance, or else championing the rising skinhead subculture. The BÃ¶hse Onkelz's 1984 debut LP, Der Nette Mann, is widely considered the first German LP to explicitly celebrate skinhead values. Issued on the right wing label Rock-O-Rama, anthems like "Stolz," "Vereint," and "Deutschland" were cited in the German government's decision to forbiddance the album in September 1986. With the reexamination, BÃ¶se Menschen -- BÃ¶se Lieder, the BÃ¶hse Onkelz shifted away from politics to explore themes of substance ill-treat and violence, only set up it impossible to drop its skinhead ties. Most damnatory were bootlegged demo roger Sessions documenting other Weidner compositions wish "TÃ¼rken Raus" ("Turks Out"), "Deutschland den Deutschen" ("Deutschland to the Germans"), and "SS-Staat" ("SS State"), songs the group repeatedly denounced in the age to espouse. Across the couplet of LPs including 1987's Onkelz Wie Wir... and the 1988 reexamination, Kneipenterroristen, the BÃ¶hse Onkelz abandoned their punk origins in favour of an approach closer to clayey metal. The makeover earned the band its superlative commercial success to escort, thrusting them under regular greater media scrutiny following the events of June 16, 1990, when longtime quaker and associate Andreas "Trimmi" Trimborn was stabbed to end in a Frankfurt prevention by a Bundeswehr soldier. The soldier was time-tested simply establish non shamed. In his opinion, the try presiding o'er the character stated that the members of the BÃ¶hse Onkelz and their inner circle had a history of violence, and that the wounding was an act of self-protection. The resulting press withal brought fifty-fifty greater attention to the BÃ¶hse Onkelz's music, and 1992's Heilege Lieder entered the German Top Ten with minimal promotion and receiving set airplay. Many broadcasters banned the mathematical group from the air, withal, and magnanimous German retail chains including Media Markt, World of Music, and Saturn refused to carry their records. Trimborn's end and the subsequent media backlash inspired the ambitious WeiÃŸ and Schwarz, a double album set released in October 1993 as iI separate LPs. With 1995's Hier Sind die Onkelz, the BÃ¶hse Onkelz signed to major label Virgin. Around the like time, the radical assigned intimate Edmund Hartsch to pen their official life in an effort to drive out the rumors and innuendo that continued to swirl around their politics. Titled Danke fÃ¼r Nichts, the bible appeared in 1997 to strong gross revenue and surprising vital acclaim. No early German band was ever so so "ill-used as a means for simple-minded political tempestuousness," Hartsch wrote in his foreword. The phenomenal retail winner of 1998's Oral exam los Tioz -- which sold more than 300,000 copies in its kickoff 24 hours of exit and debuted atop the German charts -- forced many stores to second thought their ban on the BÃ¶hse Onkelz catalog; their mainstream popularity was now so majuscule that the ring founded its possess mark, rule23, to release the 2000 followup, Ein BÃ¶ses MÃ¤rchen ...aus Tausend Finsteren NÃ¤chten. In the wake of 2002's Dopamin, the BÃ¶hse Onkelz accepted an invitation to open for the Rolling Stones when the veteran British rockers headlined an August 3, 2003, performance at the Hanover Fairground. However, with the release of 2004's Arrivederci the BÃ¶hse Onkelz announced their pending breakup. After a sold-out tour dubbed "La Ultima," the group played its leave dates at the EuroSpeedway Lausitz on June 17 and 18, 2005.

Selena Gomez - Disney Star Gomez Denies Feud With Cyrus

2008-06-25T23:56:00.001-07:00

Disney star SELENA GOMEZ has hit back at rumours she and fellow teen star MILEY CYRUS are feuding.

Gomez, 15, was rumoured to be replacing Cyrus as a more clean-cut star for the family-friendly channel after Cyrus' image was damaged by the release of 'sexy' images of her in June's (08) edition of Vanity Fair magazine.

But despite speculation Disney bosses are lining up Gomez - who has starred alongside Cyrus in her Hannah Montana TV show - as a replacement, she insists there is no tension between the pair.

She says, "We're literally like, 'It's fine. It's all good.' She's Miley and I'm Selena."

But Gomez, who stars in her own Disney show Wizards of Waverly Place, does admit she finds the comparison flattering.

She adds, "It's a little overwhelming, but I think really, it's a compliment. She's obviously extremely successful, and I think she's a wonderful performer... So being compared to her, I was very, very flattered."

See Also

Julian Cope

2008-06-25T23:55:00.001-07:00

Artist: Julian Cope

   Genre(s):
Rock

Discography:


Autogeddon

   Year: 1994
Tracks: 8


Peggy Suicide

   Year: 1991
Tracks: 18

Musician, writer, historiographer, and cosmic shaman Julian Cope was born in October 1957 in Deri, South Glamorgan, Wales. He was embossed in Tamworth, England, and care many a youth artist, suffered through academia as a perpetual outsider. In 1976, upon attendance college in Liverpool, Cope plant himself portion of a biotic community of musicians -- and kindred souls -- including Ian McCulloch, Pete Burns, and Pete Wylie. After versatile incarnations and non so amicable departures (McCulloch went on to fame with Echo & the Bunnymen), the Teardrop Explodes were formed. One of the more influential bands of the late '70s, the chemical group delivered a fickle meld of neo-psychedelic careen and electro-pop. As the band's achiever grew, so did Cope's reputation for debauch, resulting in temperamental, drug-addled stage demeanor that from time to time lED to bloodletting. In 1983, after legion lineup changes and fabled feuds between Cope and Zoo Records figurehead Bill Drummond, the band ceased trading operations.

By 1984, Cope's love of hallucinogenics -- as well as a toy car collection that occupied nigh an entire year of his life sentence -- was at an all-time heights. Despite his altered commonwealth, he released World Shut You Mouth, his solo debut on Mercury Records. An graceful collecting of chamber pop and Teardrop-fueled electricity, the album shared out critics and fans alike, especially upon the release of theater director David Bailey's macabre telecasting for the low individual, "Sunlight Playroom." Not to be deterred, Cope retreated to Cambridge and recorded the followup, Deep-fried, a temperature reduction chronicle of self-oblivion that included continue artistry of the artist in a sandpit wearing zippo only a mammoth turtle shell. It was a try-on figure of speech, as Cope -- despite getting matrimonial -- worn out the following twelvemonth in give tongue to privateness, half-heartedly laying down tracks of Syd Barrett-inspired acoustic indulgence for what would eventually become 1989's Skellington LP.

In 1986 Cope gestural with Island Records and released his most successful record to date, Saint Julian. The album's crisp production and modern rock sensibilities brought the artist out of his shell -- so to speak -- resulting in an thorough tour and legion television system appearances, including a memorable gig on The Tonight Show that plant the isaac Merrit Singer becoming quite intimate with his patented jungle gym mike point of view. The dissatisfactory My Nation Underground followed in 1988, resulting in trey years of supplemental releases that included a collection of Teardrop Explodes B-sides, the aforementioned Skellington, and the highly collectable Droolian -- the latter was released in Austin, TX, as share of a safari to release Thirteenth Floor Elevator Roky Erickson from gaol.

In 1991 Cope released the ambitious double-LP Peggy Suicide. Inspired by a visual sensation the creative person had of Mother Earth throwing herself cancelled a drop to her expiry, the record came as a revelation to many. Gone were the slick arrangements of his premature Island releases, replaced hither by the brooding funk, soul, family line, and cosmic service department careen that would follow him into the young millennium. His refusal to submit to more than one outspoken claim, the comprehension of Michael "Mooneye" Watts on guitar, and the raw production/organ/bass provided by longtime confederate Donald Ross Skinner became the bedrock on which his subsequent work depended. Cope's obsessions with Krautrock and pleasure seeker history -- only briefly hinted at on Peggy Suicide -- were brought to the head on 1992's Jehovahkill, some other creative prevail that unfortunately failed to connect with the public at large, resulting in his forced "difference" from the label.

He released his next deuce recordings, the angular and cautionary ecologic rave-up Autogeddon (1994) and the fatherhood-inspired 20 Mothers (1995) on the Echo judge in the U.K. and on American in the States. Cope spent a gravid deal of this period purge himself of his ostensibly endless creative get-up-and-go through side projects on his mail-order-only judge Ma-Gog, a originative wall plug that finally morphed into the website/community/record label Head Heritage. He released Interpreter in 1996, a return to toss off form that saw the self-described "Arch Drude" tackling both environmental and social issues with renewed vigor. His nigh recent see is Brain Donor, a four-piece, face-painted, triple double-neck guitar-playing service department rock\punk kit that released its debut, Love, Peace & Fuck on Head Heritage in 2001, followed by Overly Freud to Rock 'n' Roll, Too Jung to Die in 2003. 2005 sawing machine the exit of Citizen Cain'd and Dark Orgasm, both of which relied on two discs of sonic rage and pop havoc.

Cope had been compiling his memoirs into playscript descriptor throughout the '90s; Head On, a account of his life up to the demise of the Teardrop Explodes, was published in 1993, followed by its continuation, Repossessed, in 2000. He too trudged all over the nation in search of rock circles patch researching his thoroughgoing coffee tree table rule book, The Modern Antiquarian: A Pre-Millennial Odyssey Through Megalithic Britain, and wrote Krautrock Sampler, a critically acclaimed guide to German space john Rock. He has spoken at legion festivals, museums, and universities on both topics.

Catherine Zeta Jones - Zeta-jones Backs Welsh Film Festival

2008-06-25T23:54:00.001-07:00

Hollywood actress CATHERINE ZETA-JONES has lent her support to a little-known film festival in her native Wales - insisting the event will help breed "local talent".

The Entrapment star has signed up as a patron of the Swansea Film Festival, which kicks off on Saturday (31May08), and she hopes her celebrity status will help raise awareness of young actors in her home country.

She says, "I feel that the possibilities are endless as it gives local talent both in front of and behind the camera the chance to express themselves creatively."

See Also