science Archives ⋆ Brett Ryback

I remember in college walking down the hallways of UCLA’s Schoenberg Hall and hearing the ethnomusicology majors practicing their bizarre semi-tones. These “notes in between the notes” left me fascinated and a little unsettled. I preferred my more easily digested 12-tone scales, based comfortably around middle-A being tuned to the frequency of 440hz.

But according to an interesting article in The Daily Beast, it turns out that’s a relatively recent standardization of Western music, and – according to musical conspiracy theories (yes, there really is such a thing) – was propagated by the Nazis in order to move people towards “greater aggression, psycho social agitation, and emotional distress predisposing people to physical illness.”

Whaaaaa!? Continue reading Does This Sound Out of Tune to You?

robot-actor — “Alas poor humanity, I knew it well…”

I’ve always been fascinated by the intersection of Science and Art. (Had I not turned out to be an actor and composer, I sometimes think I might have been an astronomer .)

Great scientists always seem to have a touch of the artist inside of them, and similarly artists often think analytically, the way a scientist might. Especially when it comes to pushing the boundaries on what we think we know.

This article from Singularityhub.com is pretty mind-blowing in regard to just that. Ray Kurzweil (inventor, author, and artificial intelligence expert) has frequently made predictions on the progress of computers, and has often been dead on.

But his predictions for the NEXT 25 years, oscillate between awe-inspiring-ly imaginative and science-fiction/horror-movie like creepy. Continue reading What Will You Do When the Future Comes?