The first annual Montgomorey Burns award for outstanding achievment in the field of excellence

The best thing i've heard since the last post.

Whores. – Ruiner (2011)

A superb example of how a video becomes a huge utube success regardless of the music. Don't get me wrong, this is a great tune, but would it get 2.5 million views w/o the help of Assassins creed (to which this video and song are an obvious reference) and/or Agyness Deyn? This is a clear ripoff from These new puritans' We want war, yet they have only 0.8 mil and their video is over a year old. I guess product placement is the name of the game.

Woodkid – Iron (2011)

Kym Amps - You don't know my name (1980)

Antimagic – Bang (2011)

Psychologist - Out, damned spot! (from: Propeller EP, Not even 27/07/2011)

Gross magic - Sweetest touch (from: Teen jamz EP, The sounds of sweet nothing, 08/08/2011)

Red, white & blue (Simon Rumley, 2010)

Enno Poppe - Holz (2000)

This has been a horrible weekend for science, both theory and praxis. On the experimental side, the all mighty journal Science didn't flinch, hesitate or felt a fraction of shame to publish these two papers: the first studied the effect of aircrafts on clouds and rain and has reached the whopping conclusion that "Global effects are minimal, but regionally near major airports, additional precipitation can be induced". Wow! That definitely merits a publication in Science and not, let's say, Annals of the Irish Society for Aeronautics and Bullshit. This scientific gem was eclipsed, however, by the amazing piece of interdisciplinary science (that can only brew in the Miami heat), which states that "We uncovered a simple dynamical pattern that may be used to estimate the escalation rate and timing of fatal attacks. The time difference between fatal attacks by insurgent groups within individual provinces in both Afghanistan and Iraq, and by terrorist groups operating worldwide, gives a potent indicator of the later pace of lethal activity."

On the other side of the fence, a workshop held near Vienna tried to elucidate the meaning of theory in biology. Clearly an important topic, especially given the two horrendous examples just published in science, yet the only thing the workshop was successful at was demonstrating the unfathomable, huge rift between philosophers and practicing biologists, as if the two were species of different kingdoms. Both theory and praxis proved to be this weekend in a dreadfully impoverished state, which cannot rely be mended since theory and science practice have clearly taken different paths by now.

Heymsfield AJ et al. 2011. Formation and spread of aircraft-induced holes in clouds. Science. 333 (6038): 77-81

Johnson N et al. 2011. Pattern in escalations in insurgent and terrorist activity. Science. 333 (6038): 81-84