Here’s a chance to get on Pulse of the Planet! In March, we’ll be launching a call for Signature Sounds.  We want you to send us a recording of a sound that’s unique to where you live – either your household or your neighborhood.  It could be an old music box, a really vociferous creaky door, a church bell, a “natural” sound of some kind – but one that signifies the place where you live.   Or, you could suggest a sound that you’ve heard – or heard about – from another part of the world.  If your sound is chosen, we’ll play it on a future Pulse program and send you a copy of our CD.  Check out our website in March for details of how to submit sounds, and listen to Pulse during the week of March 19 – 23 for some of my favorite Signature Sounds.

All the Best;

Jim

A typical dream scenario for me is heading somewhere (Gym Class -  back in high school!) and I lose my way or can’t find my locker and next think you know, I’m wandering clueless in a strange land.  So it was a pleasant surprise to experience two recent dreams of another sort – a new genre of movie on the old inner projector, oddly enough – a comedy!

Dream #1: There’s some kind of competition; you have to get from point A to point B, and there are lawn sprinklers along the way –  the kind of sprinklers that spritz in a circle one way and then turn back and circle the other way.  They’re all timed slightly differently.  The competition is to get from the start to the finish without getting wet and you have to study the sprinklers, which have a definite tempo, to figure that out.  OK, it’s not a belly laugh, but the idea that there was a musicality, a rhythm to finding the solution had me smiling in the dream.

Dream #2: I’m at an event, a symposium that is quite unique: a panel of remarkable older women are speaking about their lives.  I’m trying to record it or make sure the PA is working, when I realize no one is photographing this event. So I duck down and head to the front of the room and ask anybody for a camera and someone in the aisle sends down a device that’s about two feet long and maybe a few inches high and deep.  It’s covered with switches, buttons,  levers and knobs and resembles, if anything, the instrument panel of a stealth bomber.  It bears no relationship to what I would call a camera.  I ask for another camera and get something smaller but equally arcane and inscrutable; a third camera? more of the same.  My dream was scripted by Woody Allen in collaboration with Franz Kafka, and however incongruous, it was funny – at least to the dreamer.

So here’s  my question: is anybody else laughing in their sleep?  Friends, radio listeners, countrymen and women: lend me your dreams, the funny ones.

Jim

The story goes that a sound man working for a movie studio was asked to provide “jungle sounds” for a Tarzan-type film.  He went out and recorded Pacific Tree Frogs in the backlot of a Hollywood studio. For years, they became the generic “sound of the jungle” in many Hollywood films, by virtue of being in the sound archive – categorized as “jungle”.  The irony is you won’t find any Pacific Tree Frogs in an African Jungle.

There are many libraries of sound effects, most of the sounds being of phenomena (door slam, barking dog), not places. It begs the question: are sounds generic or specific?  Is a recording a unique moment in time, or can it be treated as a rote, generic icon?  True, we can sell and buy generic sounds like hamburgers, but are we missing the subtle reality that a fine recording can convey?  That tree frog  was telling us something about the conditions where it was recorded: there being a relationship between the number of croaks/second and the ambient temperature.  No doubt there are other messages hidden in the recording as well.  Perhaps  every recording carries levels of information and meaning, waiting to be decoded.

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In case anybody thought I was making up the story about Steve Jacobs’ (aka Wizard IV) staff – see my last post; here it is.  Each of the wizards  (Farraday, Alyea, Herbert, Jacobs) have contributed an object embedded in the staff – a crystal, a fossil, a shark’s tooth….

Some of you may recall Don Herbert, aka Mister Wizard, whose TV show was the first to turn kids on to science.  I remember it vividly, though in black and white.  Mister W was visited weekly by a couple of clean cut kids and they did cool science experiments.

Don Herbert - Mister Wizard

Well, it turns out that Don was following in the footsteps of Michael Faraday.  Faraday, along with his engineering and science accomplishments, was much beloved in England as a science ambassador to children and the world at large.  He was dubbed a “wizard” in Queen Victoria’s time and he had, believe or not, a “Wizard’s staff”.  That staff was passed down to Herbert and then to Herbert’s protege, Steve (Jake) Jacobs, aka Wizard IV.

Steve (Jake) Jacobs - Wizard IV

Steve, Chief Scientist from Faraday Studios,  is – among other things – the science consultant for MythBusters on Discovery Channel, and a board member and judge for our Kids’ Science Challenge competition – which launches its latest season tomorrow!

I’ve seen Jake in action, working his science magic with kids and adults – it’s fun and ingenious – lots of smoke, no mirrors! Many of the experiments he does – like the air cannon – date back to Faraday’s demonstrations.  And he’s got Faraday’s wizard staff, too!

Jake and Astronaut Michael Massimino preparing to blow something up for a science demonstration.

Check out http://www.kidsciencechallenge.com where you’ll with some videos which feature Jake and our latest group of scientists.