What are you listening to this Christmas season? Don't tell me it's Frank Sinatra or Bing Crosby this isn't the 40's anymore. Treat your eyes to this mix of hip-hop, indie rock, 80's and more hot beats than the holidays have seen in 40 minutes since forever.

Get it here(44mb) or stream it with this:

1. Shawn Lee's Ping Pong Orchestra - Do You Hear What I Hear // Santa Claus - A visit! // Major Bill Smith and Nancy Nolte - Happy Birthday Jesus [0:00]
2. Richard Cheese - Christmas in Las Vegas [1:49]
3. King George - Locked Up Fo Xmas (Explicit) [3:50]
4. Berlin Symphony Orchestra - The Nutcracker Suite (Baz Kuts Breaks Mix) [5:20]
5. Tentifour - Christmas In Hollis [6:19]
6. Busy Boys - Funky Fresh Christmas [8:10]
7. Bootsy Collins - Sleigh Ride [9:25]
8. 50 Cent - Straight to the Bank (Instrumental) / Suzannah - Mom & Daddy, Please Don't Steal For Me This Xmas [10:59]
9. The Free Design - Close Your Mouth It's Christmas [13:19]
10. Andrew Dost - Yeah, I Know, It's Christmastime [15:22]
11. Sufjan Stevens - Come On! let's Boogey to the Elf Dance! [17:25]
12. The Knife - Christmas Reindeer [20:06]
13. Johnny Mercer - Santa Claus Is Comin' To Town [22:09]
14. Coldcut - Border (Coldcut vs. Silent Poets) // Supremes - My Favorite Things [24:16]
15. Rich Boy - Throw Some D's Remix (Instrumental) // Little Marcy - Suzy Snowflake [28:00]
16. Kay Starr - I've Got My Love To Keep Me Warm (Stuhr Remix) [29:45]
17. Corporal Blossom - White Christmas [31:15]
18. Cheeky Boy - Biggie's Last Christmas [32:22]
19. Berlin Symphony - Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy (Red Baron Remix) [34:04]
20. Al Green - It Feels Like Christmas [35:15]
21. Waitresses - Christmas Wrapping [37:06]
22. Vince Guaraldi - Linus and Lucy (Pocketknifes's Hark, the Holler Remix) // Allan Sherman - The Twelve Gifts of Christmas [39:50]
23. New Edition - Happy Holidays to You [42:16]

Thanks goes to a LOT of Christmas MP3 blogs for helping me find all this music. Special inspiration was from Pocketknife's Mix from the Peppermint Palace and Peanut Butter Wolf's Badd Santa album, both of which I shamelessly stole tracks from. Cheers!

Sometimes seminars can be a little dry. Don't you find it's easier to sleep in a comfy lecture seat while your monotone-voiced professor is speaking than at home in the quiet of your home? The formula is something like:

(Earliness * Unenthusiasticness of Speaker)^(Interest/Sleep Depravity) = Number of Z's Caught

Although, Feynman's lectures always seem engaging! That's why I wasn't sure if adding backbeats to one of his famous lectures was such a good idea. Well, I thought I would give it a try anyway.

I was careful to mix instrumentals that weren't too heavy on the sampling and keep the volume on the low side so as not to distract from the concepts. Listen for hip-hop classics by DJ Premier, J Dilla, RJD2, Nas, Madlib, Ghostface, and much more.

Download the mix here(48mb) or stream it with this:

Note: Feynman's soul clap pictured above.

Understanding the relationships between species is hard. Usually, its just not clear who evolved from who and when. On top of this, we're not even exactly sure what a "species" is!

Luckly, the information age has made inferring phylogenies easier than ever. Many software packages now exist to help weakling biologists figure out their complex datasets. Unfortunately, many of these otherwise great packages are Windows only! Since I have to do phylogenetic analyses on DNA sequence data all the time, and all I have is a paltry MacBook, I've had to find some alternatives. Here they are:

Read the rest of this entry »

My blogmate just informed me about this street art by Posterchild he saw in Kensington Market yesterday. The Darwin fish chain looks pretty fly, but was Einstein really down with evolution?

Some poorly informed netizens may assume the classic Einstein quote "God does not play dice" implies that Einstein thought evolution is impossible. Quite the contrary!

Einstein didn't say much to show his support for evolution, but a hotter topic was whether or not he said anything to show support for Athiesm. Richard Dawkins quotes Einstein in The God Delusion:

It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.

On the other hand, another well cited quote by Einstein in 1929 said straight-up:

"I'm not an athiest and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist. [...]"

A quote, among many others mentioning God spoken by Einstein, which heroic Christianity defenders like Dinesh D'Souza suggest Dawkins purposefully left out of the God Delusion (Link to Chapter 1 where Dawkins talks about Einsteinian religion).

The lack of proper quotation seems to be scandalous at first glance, but if you've read the God Delusion you'd notice that Einstein or no Einstein, the point is exactly the same. 'Ol Steinster's belief was only used to differentiate between a personal god, which Einstein hated, and his belief in the mysteries of nature as a figurative "God", which Dawkins agreed on.

Anyway, all bling aside, I could definitely see a modern day Einstein rockin' the baggy track suit, 2pac style bandanna and some Jordans. Keep up the good work Posterchild!

A juicy cake-load of short animations were recently released on the National Film Board's HotHouse website. The idea behind Hot House is to showcase imaginative animation techniques across Canada. They are all awesome, but check out the video below, it's like a mini-version of Powers of Ten with a better ending!

Thanks drawn.ca!

Do you ever feel like you want to save the world but then you realize you have to do laundry and take out the garbage instead? Eventually I may get around to it, but until then I figure this mix will be the closest I get.

One can only hope that it may be a theme song for a world changer like Al Gore one day. Thumbs up right back at that dude!

Download the mix here(26mb) or stream it with this:

1. Gorillaz - O Green World // McLeod Landfill - Recycling Ad [0:00]
2. Golden Records: Space Alphabet - E for Earth [2:15]
3. Jamiroquai - Emergency on Planet Earth [3:11]
4. Carole King - I Feel The Earth Move [4:42]
5. Bjork - Earth Intruders (Spank Rock Remix) [5:40]
6. King Biscuit Time - I Walk The Earth (Sampled with Arrested Development - Children Play With Earth) [8:35]
7. Blockhead - Forest Crunk [11:05]
8. Marvin Gaye - Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology Song) // Mobb Deep - Hell on Earth (Instrumental) [11:53]
9. Mobb Deep - Hell on Earth (Instrumental) // Jack Johnson - 3 R's [14:04]
10. Blockhead - Forest Crunk // The Beatles - Mother Nature's Son [15:28]
11. Dr. Octagon - Earth People (Interstellar Time) [17:07]
12. Cannibal Ox - Real Earth (Instrumental) // Buddy Holly - Earth Angel [18:20]
13. Sesame Street - We Are All Earthlings // Urban Tribe - Carbon Based [20:38]
14. Urban Tribe - Carbon Based // Michael Jackson - Earth Song (Sampled with Sounds of Nature - Birds in a Rainforest ?) [22:54]