Miles Davis’ ‘Kind Of Blue’ recently celebrated its 50th birthday. One of the best tributes I’ve come across is an 8-bit version of the legendary album. You can listen to it here:

Kind of Bloop – An 8-bit Tribute to Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue.

Early this year another TED conference was held… so that means there’s a lot of new and interesting talks being uploaded to the TED website. Here’s a few personal highlights to start with…

Elaine Morgan says we evolved from aquatic apes

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This article (“A scruffy dillema”) is something I wholeheartedly agree with.

While she was away, I scanned the form which she’d been completing during the interview. Viewed from upside down it made little sense.

But there was one scrawled comment across the top of the form which was clearly legible. I shifted slightly to the left to bring it into focus. And there it was, the verdict on all my smooth talking, on all my shows of interest, on all my engaging smiles and enthusiastic nods.

It read: “Scruffy. Suggest Stock Room.”

I always wonder if it used to be different. If people could just knock on someone’s door, say I’m looking for a job and get it, based on the fact that they’re capable, looking for a job and thus willing to work… without sitting in a room confronted by people who can’t look past a pose, clothes, beard, hairstyle or glasses. Not even a spotless academic record will save you from them.

These kind of job interviews get old fast, they stifle progress, and are based on the idea that people who look different are inherently different, thus making superficial discrimination okay. It’s human cattle herding. It’s freaking ludicrous.

Someone should’ve stuck Einstein in a storage room.

Why thinking about distant things can make us more creative, or …

The question, of course, is what those situations are: what makes us more creative at times and less creative at others? One answer is psychological distance.

I think this is about blocking your immediate reality to make room for abstract, creative thought. Something a lot of us are already very adept at…

An Easy Way to Increase Creativity @ Scientific American.

Narrated by Academy Award® Winner Forest Whitaker, BEFORE THE MUSIC DIES is an unsettling and inspiring look at today’s popular music industry featuring interviews and performances by Erykah Badu, Eric Clapton, Dave Matthews, Branford Marsalis, ?uestlove and a wide variety of others. The documentary film has built a passionate following as “the most important film a music fan will ever see” (XM Radio) by providing “a balanced overview of the state of the rock scene of America” (The Wall Street Journal) and adding “passion to the eternal debate about the industry” (The New York Times).

Last year, BEFORE THE MUSIC DIES filmmakers Andrew Shapter and Joel Rasmussen walked away from traditional Hollywood distribution to instead pursue a large-scale grassroots release with B-Side Entertainment. Since its release in November 2006, the film has screened over 200 times in over 130 North American markets with hundreds of additional events anticipated worldwide during 2007.

The Gloaming takes office space to an eerie dimension following the misfortune of a worker ensnared by his cubicle and haunted by sinister visitors during the nightshift. A tale of macabre absurdity, The Gloaming plunges this unwitting protagonist into a cycle of nightmares.

Director: Andrew Huang
Starring Randall Rickert

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If you’ll go here you’ll find a very nice drum ‘n bass album, filed under a Creative Commons License.

Your Choice (2009)

Genre:
Jungle, Atmospheric, Drum n’ Bass, Choppage

Info:
First jungle album. Got a lot of influences from artists like Paradox, Seba, J Majik, Photek / The Sentinel and Source Direct, among others. The result ended up as a mixture of both oldskool and nuskool elements.

Tracklist:

1. Voluntary Enslavement
2. Break the Comfortable
3. Smashing Pyramids
4. First Step
5. Cactus Harvest
6. Mindless Thoughts
7. Revelation of Self

There’s more music (ambient, psychedelic dub, etc) from this obviously talented dude, so be sure to check out the rest of his website. If you want to stream the tracks first, that is also possible.

“World world world
I sit in my room
Imagine the future
sunlight falls on Paris
I am alone there is no
one whose love is perfect
man has been mad man’s
love is not perfect I
have not wept enough
my breast will be heavy
till death of cities
are specters of cranks
of war the cities are
work & brick & iron &
smoke of the furnace of
selfhood makes tearless
eyes red in London but
no eye meets the sun”

~ Allen Ginsberg, from “Europe! Europe!”