ZoukOut is an annual dance music festival held on Sentosa Island, Singapore by the famous club Zouk. Martin, a friend in Singapore is a founder of Midlifecrisis Productions who has been involved with the video promotions of the festival for the past few years. Martin and his crew has recently completed the trailer for the recent edition.

A good trailer makes you want to be there and I think Martin and his crew has succeeded. It also makes me envious of the fact that they get to do this as a living and the fancy cameras and editing tools that they get to play with. I’m sure it’s not an easy job but you guys make it look so cool. Oh and hot chicks. Gotta love the hot chicks.

I’ve wrote about this topic multiple times now …

• I’ve said that it can be possible if there is minimal or no sexual tension. Note I used the word “tension” and not “attraction” because I believe that you can find someone physically attractive without lusting after them.

  “Men and Women Can’t Be Friends”

• I’ve said that there’s nothing wrong being platonic friends with a girl, unless you happen to like them.

  Being the platonic friend is not that bad.

• I’ve also wondered about what if I liked men and there were no friend zone bullshit to deal with.

  Sexual frustration leads to gay talk.

And then this clip comes along and summarises it more succinctly than I can, by posing this very question to college guys and girls. If you don’t know it already, the difference in the way guys and girls think of this is HUGE.

Short answer: if they don’t mind boinking you, it’s not really a friendship anymore. And well, what’s so wrong about that?

If you are a fan of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report living in Australia, you can either watch it by subscribing to Foxtel or you can watch the clips online after it has aired on Foxtel. This was a fair situation I thought. But this appears to have changed. Now, you can only catch the shows on Foxtel – the online clips are no longer available to Australian fans and from what I read on the show’s forums, to all fans outside of the United States.

This is not the first time that it has happened either. It does not make sense that they would do this once, reverted back to the status quo and then revoke access again. What has changed? They are not saying. Currently the thread on the forum about this issue runs 15 pages long.

“Video unavailable from your location”? – The Daily Show Forum.

However a fan had posted a good workaround on page 3. And this is it:

1. Use Firefox and install an add-on called “Modify Headers“.
2. Using the add-on, add a header of “X-Forwarded-For” with a value of “12.13.14.15″ or any IP that you know is an IP address in the US.
3. Set the add-on to be “Always on” in the Options.
   On the Firebox button (big orange one) click on Options – Add-On Bar, then click on the Modify Headers icon in the Add-On Bar (bottom-left corner) and select “Start”. (thanks to helpful comment from Annoyed below)

And say goodbye to this …

I heard Dean Martin’s rendition of “Memories Are Made Of This” used in an RAC insurance TV ad and loved it. It was apt and they don’t make songs like these anymore. I couldn’t find the TV spot so the above will have to do.

I then got thinking of how vintage songs have been used in my one big love: video games. And here are my favourites.

Polly Scattergood’s cover of “New York New York” in a trailer for Crysis 2.

B.o.B’s take on the same song, in the launch trailer for Crysis 2.

“Ain’t That A Kick in The Head” by Dean Martin, used in a trailer for Mafia 2.

Johnny Cash’s cover of the folk song “God’s Gonna Cut You Down”, used in the launch trailer for Splinter Cell: Conviction. Bang bang.

And my top 2 are both from the two Bioshock games released so far.

“Dream” by the Pied Pipers, used in the Sea of Dreams trailer for Bioshock 2.

“Somewhere Beyond The Sea” by Bobby Darin used in the launch trailer for Bioshock. <3

I can tell by your face
That you’re leaving me again
You don’t know what you want
But you just need some time to think

I know it’s over
But I’m still waiting for another chance
One more change of heart

Love is darkness when you leave
Under cover of the night
To find another place underneath the morning light

Love is darkness when you leave
Under cover of the night
To find another place underneath the morning light

Oh, love is darkness, darkness

(via besttrancelyrics)

Sander van Doorn started out in the DJing scene in 2006 and this is one of his rare tracks with vocals. It kinda makes you wonder if all trance DJs are inherently emo because almost all vocal trance tracks have that tinge of sadness in them.

Though I believe that if you embrace the low, you can appreciate the highs even more. And this characterises trance music: lots of dips and crescendos, with beats and bloops, with or without the usually melancholic female vocals.

It’s a part of real life represented in a musical form (ups and downs with repeated cycles) that one can dance to. And that’s why I love trance so much.

I’m sadden by what I read and what I see on the TV screen. As the number of the dead rises exponentially – 1000 to 2000 to 10000 – as tragic and devastating as it is, one can’t help by feel numbed by it all. That’s when I started seeking out the relative comfort of scientific facts. If you have young children traumatised by it all, teaching them a bit of science can help. Here’s some good articles.

So, there’s no rhyme or reason to these things but there’s a how. The New York Times has a great graphic explaining how the tectonic plates underneath Japan rammed into each other, causing the earthquake and the subsequent tsunami.

How Shifting Plates Caused the Japan Earthquake – Interactive Feature – NYTimes.com.

The troubled nuclear reactors at Fukushima Daiichi survived the big earthquake but they got swamped by the tsunami. The reactors shut down as the quake happened, but the nuclear rods still generated heat and still needed cooling, but the backup generators may have been damaged in the flood and the batteries ran out. That led to the water in the cooling tank boiling and turning into steam faster than it can be replaced.

That exposed the nuclear rods to air, generating gases in the tank which probably led to the explosions. They tried pumping in sea water but it’s a constant race against time before the water starts boiling and evaporating again.

Why doesn’t a nuclear generator power its own cooling system? Good question. This and more is explained in this article on MSNBC, and the comments within.

Cosmic Log – Clearing up nuclear questions.

The New York Times did something similar with a graphic and explains what would happen if the nuclear fuel rods melt down. Indications are that they will be contained but radioactive steam will be vented out for an extended period as they strive to control the heat build up.

The Crippled Japanese Nuclear Reactors – Interactive Feature – NYTimes.com.

And this last article does not have any science in it but it is a great collection of photos, which will surely put your petty problems into perspective.

Japan – Vast Devastation – The Big Picture – Boston.com.

There’s a popular theory that women who are on their period are more flirty, dress more provocatively, and are more prone to cheating. Oh, and men supposedly find them more attractive too even if the women are not being overtly sexy. And it’s all because of all these subconscious cues that guys sense and pick up.

There are countless studies about it (google “ovulating women attractive”), probably because they can’t quite get the science of it down pat. It’s all very speculative but as pop psychology, it’s one of the more interesting ones to read about.

Anyway, there’s an article in The New York Times reporting on yet another study about this topic.

Findings — The Threatening Scent of Fertile Women – NYTimes.com.

I’ll summarise some of the hypotheseses that it puts forth.

1. Single men rate ovulating women more attractive.

   Ok ….

2. However, men in long term relationships rate them less attractive . They play a mind trick on themselves by thinking that she’s not that hot anyway – in order to supress the natural instinct to stray.

   I call bull on this. An attractive woman is an attractive woman. If I’m in a long term relationship, I’d will myself not to stray but I would still find her attractive. Willpower, yes. Mind-tricks, no. A beautiful woman is a sight to be enjoyed. Just try to be discreet about it. Heheh.

3. Women who are ovulating are more prone to cheat, especially when they are with men whom they are not sexually attracted to. And these men are more prone to bouts of jealousy and “mate-guarding”.

   Yeah, I can see this happening. But whether or not you can attribute this to a woman’s menstrual cycle is another thing. A girl would have more of a wandering eye if she’s not that sexually attracted to her current guy. And her guy will naturally get more jealous if he sees her acting more flirtatiously.

The article cited a related finding from another study: when you prevent your partner from checking out attractive members of the opposite sex, it makes them even more curious and makes them think about infidelity even more. Yup, that’s logical, can’t fault that.

Anyway, if these theories are true then every women that I know must be on their periods all the time because y’all are so damn beautiful.

Heheh. For more reading and counter-theories:

Jezebel – Faithful Men Fight The Threat Of Ovulating Ladies.
Slate – What the New York Times gets wrong about ovulation studies..

This is where the hot chicks hang out right?
(ma neeks @ flickr)