Week Five 1/4 – SCIENCE!
In which science, technology, invention and industry were celebrated

Features this week:
STORY TIME
TEACUP IN A STORM

Music this week:
Tom Waits – Black Box Theme
Juno Reactor – High Energy Protons
The Mars Volta – This Apparatus Must Be Unearthed
Rasputina – Girls’ School
Pierre Scaeffer – Etude aux chemins de fer
Firewater – Psychopharmacology
Einstürzende Neubauten – Tanz Debil
Thomas Dolby – One Of Our Submarines
Nitin Sawhney – Street Guru, Pt 2
Katzenjammer Kabarett – Broken Dolls
Balkan Beat – Feel My Beat
Jeff Wayne – The Red Weed Pt 1
Meat Beat Manifesto – No Echo In Space
Queens Of The Stone Age – Better Living Through Chemistry
King Crimson – Vroom Vroom
Porcupine Tree – Collapse The Light Into Earth
The Velvet Underground – Lady Godiva’s Operation
Flanders & Swann – First and Second Law
The Decemberists – The Engine Driver
Vernian Process – Rust Pt 1
Legendary Pink Dots – Black Zone

Excerpts this week:
“Science must be based in logic, and there is no base more logical than MESMERISM! The discoveries of Franz Mezmer have proved invaluable in the fields of chemistry, biology and especially advertising, where postbills containing purported “Magical Eyeâ€� puzzles invite passing yeomanry to stare into a beguiling pattern of symbols, which then induces their reptilian sub-brain to take out their pocketbook, place it on the ground and run away as quickly as possible.”

“The talk of the [Great Exhibition] has of course been the magnificent automatons created by clever British artisans, people made of brass, leather, steel and science, yet capable of walking, grasping objects, turning to look at a source of light and discussing the theories of Mr Charles Darwin (with footnotes!). You know, the craft of creating these science-men was pioneered by a Parisian called Jacques de Vaucanson, who in the 1730s created a life-sized shepherd which played tunes upon a tambor and, keen do outdo himself, followed with a mechanical duck which flapped its wings and did poos. King Frederick the second eagerly invited him to recreate this task in the Prussian court. Even British ingenuity has yet to live up to the spectacle which followed. ”

“Quiet, spacious, comfortable, even luxurious and with ample room for a string quartet, [zeppelins] should, if right-headedness prevails, dominate the school of flight for centuries to come. Silly, small, sputtering American “air-planesâ€� are unlikely to ever so much as provide comfortable seating, compared with the staterooms and billiards-halls available to a zeppelin passenger. Why, some proponents, such as the reputable Luftkapitan Mors, have claimed to have taken their flying machines beyond earth’s atmosphere and into outer space, and so brought civilizing European influnces to Johnny Otherplanet!”