Correcting my wrong learned vocal notes. Xeno sings some Beatles, etc. for ya.

I’ve been singing for many years, and I enjoy it, but I  usually don’t like to hear my voice. Too nasally and my pitches are off at times.

The “nase” is genetic, but I’m just now working on hitting my pitches correctly in terms of absolute pitch.

This weekend I recorded me singing a bunch of songs so I can use the free Windows AP Guitar tuner software to find out if I’m consistently flat or sharp on certain notes.

Just working on “Hey Jude” by the Beatles, for example, I notice that when singing a capella, when I get to the word “bad”  (in “Hey Jude, don’t make it bad”, which is a “G” note) what sounds “right” to me, is actually 15 cents flat. Hmm!

If I correct the pitch using the tuner as a bio-feedback device, it does sound more “positive” to my ear, less sad. Interesting.

Recall that in between any two adjacent notes there are 100 cents and humans can detect differences of about 7 cents. Therefore, if I’m 15 cents flat, people could definitely tell on some level.

Just for fun I’ve uploaded 16 cover songs– just me and a guitar (box on the left)–as the “BEFORE photo” and then post the corrected ones after my accuracy has improved. (Free Windows WMA to MP3 converter here, but virus software complained about it.)

My tone wavers as I sing, more than I’d like, not from natural vibrato, but from what seems to be knots and bumps in the path of my outgoing breath. One factor is my heartbeat but there is something else too, some warble I experience when trying to blow a smooth steady stream of air. Have any of you singers fixed this kind of problem?

Listening to my Christmas song examples, I definitely want less Glissando than I have now. Pitches these days can be corrected to be perfect in the studio. This gives that robotic sound that is very popular on the radio these days. The more robotic it sounds, in fact, the worse the actual singer’s pitch was in the studio and the more they had to correct the notes with software.

The songs I’ve posted are raw, just me and a guitar, uncorrected, sung into a little hand held Olympus DS-30 Digital Voice Recorder, converted to MP3, and uploaded.

Bin Laden in Disguise

… intelligence analysts at the National Counterterrorism Center … In their popular annual desk calendar… a page about the al Qaeda leader features an altered photograph, showing a neatly trimmed bin Laden in a dark suit and tie, looking more like a used-car dealer than a guerrilla fighter. – usnews

Bin Laden Nose Conspiracy. Bin Laden is dead, but they need a boogie man, so they create confessing impostors in blurry videos. The problem with that is, the actual Bin Laden has an unusually long high thin nose:

LEFT: PENTAGON’S “CONFESSION” VIDEO BIN LADEN

RIGHT: KNOWN IMAGE OF BIN LADEN

Five years later and bin Laden has not been charged as having any association with the 9/11 attacks. By the FBI’s own guidelines, they have found or been provided with no evidence to connect bin Laden to the events of that day. This includes the alleged “confession tape” which was miraculously ‘discovered’ in a house in Jalalabad by US troops and features a bin Laden doppelganger with a rotund frame and absent the real bin Laden’s slender nose. According to the FBI bin Laden is left-handed, yet the tape shows him writing a note with his right hand. – propmatrix

Osama denied involvement and speculated on who might be to blame. Professor Flagg Miller, whom I spoke to, was given 1500 audio tapes by the FBI, the Bin Laden audio  library. He told me there is nothing in the tapes that indicated Bin Laden was involved. Therefore, the Sacramento Bee is guilty of falsely forming a connection between Bin Laden and 9/11 using the audio tapes.  Dick Cheney himself said they never tried to make the case that Bin Laden was directly involved in 9/11 and the FBI says there is no hard evidence linking him to the attacks.

Finding mister short nose and arrest him for the attacks of 9/11. He confessed, after all!

PS. Here is a rare shot of Bin Laden from the side… is this the real Bin Laden?

Update: Correctly identifying Osama Bin Laden is relevant because of the following:

… Cheney conceded he is disappointed that al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden remains at large. He said intelligence reports indicate that bin Laden is still alive, but he said it was not clear if he is still running al-Qaeda operations. “Capturing Osama bin Laden is something we clearly would love to do,” Cheney said. “There are 30 days left.” – ( Sunday, December 21, 2008, Washington Post)

Breast cancer gene-free baby due

A woman from London will give birth next week to the first British baby screened to be free of an altered gene which causes breast cancer.

Women in three generations of her husband’s family have been diagnosed with the disease in their 20s.

Without the embryo screening, any daughter born would have a 50-80% chance of experiencing breast cancer.

But one expert warned the technique would not be suitable for all couples with this disease in their family. …
Mr Serhal said: “The whole objective of this exercise is not just to make sure the child doesn’t have the gene, but to stop the transmission from generation to generation.”

He said it was “an exciting new era,” adding that it would be possible to screen for any mutated gene which had been linked to a specific cancer.

But he said that, in this case, not carrying an altered BRCA1 gene would not guarantee any daughter born to the couple would be unaffected by breast cancer because there are other genetic and environmental causes. …

Josephine Quintavalle, of the campaign group Comment on Reproductive Ethics said: “The most important thing is that people realise this is not a cure for breast cancer.

“In addition, we must not forget the embryos which were discarded because they did carry the gene.

“Moving to screening embryos for susceptibility genes, rather than inherited conditions, has broken through a barrier.

“What next? It is going further along the line which ultimately ends in designer babies.” – bbc

Yes, like it or not, we will get better and better at hacking our biology. Designer babies are inevitable. We are on the threshold; we are about to set a new course, to take control of our own evolution.

Obama names strong science team

US president-elect Barack Obama on Saturday signaled climate change and genetic research will be among his top priorities when he takes office as he named four key members of his administration.

“It’s time we once again put science at the top of our agenda and worked to restore America’s place as the world leader in science and technology,” said Obama in a weekly radio address.

Leading his list of nominees is John Holdren, who would become director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and co-chairman of the president’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

The professor of environmental policy at Harvard University led the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, an international organization of prominent scientists that won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1995.

Holdren is no stranger to Washington, having served as President Bill Clinton’s science and technology adviser in the 1990s.

Obama called Holdren “one of the most passionate and persistent voices of our time about the growing threat of climate change”. …

Obama expressed the confidence that together the two men will “remake” the group “into a vigorous external advisory council” that will shape his thinking on scientific aspects of his policies. …

The president-elect made no direct reference to a controversial 2001 decision by President George W. Bush to limit federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, despite pleas by many scientists who believe it could offer promise in fighting degenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

The decision had been made under pressure from religious conservative groups that argued such research could violate the sanctity of human life. …

“It’s about ensuring that facts and evidence are never twisted or obscured by politics or ideology,” the future president noted. “It’s about listening to what our scientists have to say, even when it’s inconvenient — especially when it’s inconvenient.”

Its about time the country was lead by realists.

Judge says shoe-hurler was beaten

A judge announced Friday an investigation into the beating and bruising of an Iraqi journalist moments after he hurled his shoes at President George W. Bush, and said investigators destroyed the shoes in their search for explosives.

The statement by Dhia al-Kinani, the investigating judge, was the first official word that the journalist, Muntadhar al-Zeidi, was hurt after his outburst during a news conference by Bush and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Sunday. According to the judge, al-Zeidi suffered a bruised face and eyes.

Al-Zeidi has been in custody since the attack and hasn’t been seen by relatives or a lawyer.

One of his brothers, Uday, alleged Friday that the isolation indicates he was abused.

“Until now, neither an attorney nor anyone from his family has seen him, and this is clear evidence that Muntadhar was under intense torture,” he said at a demonstration by about 20 family members just outside the Green Zone.

Al-Zeidi was wrestled to the ground seconds after throwing his shoes and shouting insults at Bush, and the judge said videotape of the scuffle would be studied carefully.

White House press secretary Dana Perino also suffered an eye injury when she was hit in the face with a microphone during the melee. – startelegram

Bottom photo: A pile of shoes, seen, dumped in a box outside the US Embassy by demonstrators in London, Friday, Dec. 19, 2008. Stop the War coalition are calling for the guaranteed safety and release of Iraqi journalist, Muntadhar al-Zeidi, who threw his shoes at US President George Bush during a press conference in Baghdad – huffingtonpost

What? They didn’t search the journalist’s shoes for explosives during the several hours they were detained before being allowed into the room with Bush?

What we need to do to stop human cruelty is to physically connect all of our nervous systems.  I’d set it up so only the person inflicting the pain feels it. Instant Karma. That would be a beautiful freaking day. Instant hell for  all scum who enjoy inflicting pain.

Movie Idea: Aliens watching our stupidity decide to help us out. For three months they hover over the planet enforcing the Golden Rule. They arrive in a gold space ship for symbolic reasons.

India off line. Massive internet disruption after 3 undersea cables fail within 27 min.

Millions of people across the Middle East and Asia have lost access to the internet after two undersea cables in the Mediterranean suffered severe damage.

Huge numbers in Egypt and India were left struggling to get online as a result of the outage, when the major internet pipeline between Egypt and Italy was cut. …  International telephone calls, which have also been affected, are being rerouted to work around the problem.

Industry experts told The Times that two sub-sea cables went down just off Alexandra, causing the mass disruption. It happens to a single cable typically once a year, and companies have developed the fail-safe of redirecting traffic to a second cable should this occur.

“It is incredibly rare to experience a dual-break where both cables are down simultaneously,” said a spokesperson for Interoute, the internet networks company.

The Egyptian ministry said it will take “several days” for cables to be repaired and is trying to reroute Egypt’s internet connections.

Indian ISPs said their problems were due to the cable damage off Egypt. Speaking to reporters, Rajesh Chharia, president of the Internet Service Providers’ Association of India, said: “Information technology companies, software companies and call centres that provide online services to the UK or the US east coast are the worst affected.” – tol

Two cables? No, three. All within 27 minutes of eachother.

Developing Story: See related sources below for continued updates. France Telecom has reported today that 3 major underwater cables were cut: “Sea Me We 4” at 7:28am, “Sea Me We3” at 7:33am and FLAG at 8:06am. The causes of the cut, which is located in the Mediterranean between Sicily and Tunisia, on sections linking Sicily to Egypt, remain unclear.

• Saudi Arabia: 55% out of service
• Djibouti: 71% out of service
• Egypt: 52% out of service
• United Arab Emirates: 68% out of service
• India: 82% out of service
• Lebanon: 16% out of service
• Malaysia: 42% out of service
• Maldives: 100% out of service
• Pakistan: 51% out of service
• Qatar: 73% out of service
• Syria: 36% out of service
• Taiwan: 39% out of service
• Yemen: 38% out of service
• Zambia: 62% out of service

How about Iraq?

France Telecom says that it immediately alerted one of the two maintenance boats based in the Mediterranean area, the “Raymond Croze”. This France Telecom Marine cable ship based at Seyne-sur-Mer has received its mobilization order early this afternoon and will cast off tonight at 3:00 am with 20 kilometers spare cable on board. It should be on location on Monday morning for a relief mission.

Priority will be given to the recovery of the Sea Me We4 cable, then on the Sea Me We3. By December 25th, Sea Me We4 could be operating. By December 31st, the situation should be back to normal. – circleID

Is someone sinister secretly sowing seeds of suspicion? Perhaps pirates pilfering.

Diaper Rash Cream gives off Remarkably Bright White Light when heated

Duke University and United States Army scientists have found that a cheap and nontoxic sunburn and diaper rash preventative can be made to produce brilliant light best suited to the human eye.

Duke adjunct physics professor Henry Everitt, chemistry professor Jie Liu and their graduate student John Foreman have discovered that adding sulfur to ultra-fine powders of commonplace zinc oxide at about 1,000 degrees centigrade allows the preparation to convert invisible ultraviolet light into a remarkably bright and natural form of white light.

They are now probing the solid state chemistry and physics of various combinations of those ingredients to deduce an optimal design for a new kind of illumination. Everitt and Liu have applied for a patent on using the preparations as a light source. “Our target would be to help make solid state lighting with better characteristics than current fluorescent ones,” said Everitt, who also works with Foreman at the Army’s Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Ala.

The researchers said they are producing white light centered in the green part of the spectrum by forming the sulfur-doped preparation into a material called a phosphor. The phosphor converts the excited frequencies from an ultraviolet light emitting diode (LED) into glowing white light.

Nanometer-diameter zinc oxide powders are being prepared by Liu’s research group, which focuses on the chemistry of nanomaterials. He is Duke’s Jerry G. and Patricia Crawford Hubbard Professor of Chemistry. They are then being tested at the Aviation and Missile Research, Development and Engineering Center at Redstone Arsenal by Everitt, an Army senior research scientist, and Foreman, an Army research physicist.

The researchers are also exploring using electricity alone to trigger the visible emissions without need for an ultraviolet light trigger.

The Army has selected the project for priority funding through a competitive In-house Laboratory Independent Research program because of its potential advantages as an energy efficient and safe illumination source.

“One of the objectives is to give soldiers efficient lighting that doesn’t run their batteries down,” Everitt said. “They need efficiency, brightness, longevity and ruggedness, and this helps with all of those things.”

Existing commercial LEDs are already rugged enough to be used in bumper-mounted brake lights, Everitt said.

“They are good enough for decoration and for use in traffic lights, but they don’t make good reading lights because they are not of a white color that our eyes use best,” Liu said. White LEDs on the market now are costly, short-lived and not truly white, the researchers added. … – sd

British Scientist warns against robots

Top robotics expert Professor Noel Sharkey, of the University of Sheffield, has called for international guidelines to be set for the ethical and safe application of robots before it is too late. Professor Sharkey, writing in the prestigious Science journal, believes that as the use of robots increases, decisions about their application will be left to the military, industry and busy parents instead of international legislative bodies.

Robots have been used in laboratories and factories for many years, but their uses are changing fast. Since the turn of the century, sales of professional and personal service robots have risen sharply and are estimated to total 5.5 million in 2008. IFR Statistics estimate 11.5 million in the next two years. The price of robot manufacture is also falling. With robots 80% cheaper in 2006 than they were in 1990, they are set to enter our lives in unprecedented numbers.

Service robots are currently being used in all walks of life, from child-minding robots to robots that care for the elderly. These types of robots can be controlled by a mobile phone or from a PC, allowing input from camera “eyes” and remote talking from caregivers. Sophisticated elder-care robots like the Secom “My Spoon” automatic feeding robot; the Sanyo electric bathtub robot that automatically washes and rinses; and the Mitsubishi Wakamura robot, used for reminding people to take their medicine, are already in widespread use.

Despite this no international legislation or policy guidelines currently exist, except in terms of negligence. This is still to be tested in court for robot surrogates and may be difficult to prove in the home (relative to cases of physical abuse).

Professor Sharkey urges his fellow scientists and engineers working in robotics to be mindful of the unanticipated risks and the ethical problems linked to their work. He believes that robots for care represent just one of many ethically problematic areas that will soon arise from the increase in their use, and that policy guidelines for ethical and safe application need to be set before the guidelines set themselves.

He said: “Research into service robots has demonstrated close bonding and attachment by children, who, in most cases, prefer a robot to a teddy bear. Short-term exposure can provide an enjoyable and entertaining experience that creates interest and curiosity.

“However, because of the physical safety that robot minders provide, children could be left without human contact for many hours a day or perhaps for several days, and the possible psychological impact of the varying degrees of social isolation on development is unknown. … -sd

People ‘still willing to torture’

Decades after a notorious experiment, scientists have found test subjects are still willing to inflict pain on others – if told to by an authority figure.

US researchers repeated the famous “Milgram test”, with volunteers told to deliver electrical shocks to another volunteer – played by an actor. Even after faked screams of pain, 70% were prepared to increase the voltage, the American Psychology study found. Both may help explain why apparently ordinary people can commit atrocities. Yale University professor Stanley Milgram’s work, published in 1963, recruited volunteers to help carry out a medical experiment, with none aware that they were actually the subject of the test. A “scientist” instructed them to deliver a shock every time the actor answered a question wrongly. When the pretend 150-volt shock was delivered, the actor could be heard screaming in pain, and yet, when asked to, more than eight out of ten volunteers were prepared to give further shocks, even when the “voltage” was gradually increased threefold. Some volunteers even carried on giving 450-volt shocks even when there was no further response from the actor, suggesting he was either unconscious or dead. – bbc

Contrary to common belief, this is true human nature: 65% of the people around you would kill you if they didn’t know you, just because some random “Scientist” said “the experiment requires that you continue.”

In Milgram’s first set of experiments, 65 percent (26 of 40)^[1] of experiment participants administered the experiment’s final 450-volt shock, though many were very uncomfortable doing so; at some point, every participant paused and questioned the experiment, some said they would refund the money they were paid for participating in the experiment. Only one participant steadfastly refused to administer shocks before the 300-volt level.^[1] - wiki

The same experiment would not be permitted today due to ethical concerns, but a similar experiment shows we haven’t improved a bit. We are mostly blind followers. On the other side of the coin, if the circumstances are right, most of us would risk our lives to save another person. I think. I heard that. Can anyone confirm?

‘Wet’ Early Universe: Water Vapor Detected At Record Distance

A research group led by graduate student Violette Impellizzeri from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy has used the 100 m Effelsberg radio telescope to detect water at the greatest distance from Earth so far. The water vapour was discovered in the quasar MG J0414+0534 at redshift 2.64, which corresponds to a light travel time of 11.1 billion years, a time when the Universe was only a fifth of the age it is today.
The water vapour is thought to exist in clouds of dust and gas that feed the supermassive black hole at the centre of the distant quasar. The detection was later confirmed by high-resolution interferometric observations with the Expanded Very Large Array.

The discovery of water in the early Universe was possible only due to the chance alignment of a foreground galaxy and the distant quasar MG J0414+0534. The foreground galaxy acts like a cosmic telescope, magnifying and distorting the light from the quasar forming four distinct images of the quasar. Without this gravitational lensing effect, 580 days of continuous observations with the 100 m telescope would have been needed instead of the 14 hours used to make this remarkable discovery. “Others have tried and failed to find water, and we knew we were looking for a very faint signal”, says Violette Impellizzeri, “so we thought of using a foreground galaxy like a cosmic magnifying glass to observe at a far greater distance and had to be persistent, and sure enough the line emission of water popped up.” …  – sd