Chuck Jones (1912-2002) was an animation director responsible for some of the best films – animated or otherwise – ever made. He directed many classic Looney Tunes cartoons, where he helped shape the personalities of established characters like Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd and Porky Pig, and created many of his own characters including The Road Runner, Wile E. Coyote, Pepé Le Pew and Marvin the Martian.
The always amazing Zen Pencils pays tribute to Jones in this cartoon. In a video clip, Jones recites a great quote that his art instructor would begin classes with: “All of you have one hundred thousand bad drawings in you. The sooner you get rid of them, the better it will be for everyone.” In his memoir, Chuck Amuck, Jones followed up the quote with: “This was not a discouraging statement to me, because I was already well into my third hundred thousand.”
Released in 1952, the de Havilland Comet was the world’s first commercial jetliner. But engineers did not know at that point that a forgotten feature – square windows – would be a disastrous design.
We often learn the most from our failures, this is particularly true for advancements in the field of engineering. Unfortunately for the engineers in the aviation industry, the prices to pay for failure are high. The flip-side of this unforgiving industry, is that it consistently provides learning opportunities for engineers, because failure is not an option when peoples lives are at risk.
One of the greatest examples of this occurred during the development of cabin pressurisation. The problems caused by cabin pressurisation didn’t develop until the introduction of the first commercial jet powered aircraft, The De Havilland Comet. It entered service in 1952 and initially proved to be a massive success, but just one year into service catastrophe struck. Three Comets suffered fatal mid-flight disintegrations and the entire fleet was grounded until the cause was identified.
The root of the problem was double-edged. The introduction of jet engines required planes to fly even higher in order to make the fuel hungry engines economically viable (less drag in the upper atmosphere means less fuel is needed). As a plane increases in altitude the external atmospheric pressure lowers to a greater extent than the internal cabin pressure. This creates a pressure differential that causes the fuselage to expand ever so slightly. Engineers accounted for this, but the effects of repeated pressure cycles over time were not well known at the time. Over thousands of cycles and metal begins to fatigue and cracks can form at high stress locations.
The effects of stress concentration were also not well understood at the time. Stress concentration occurs when the flow of stress is interrupted. Square windows, in contrast to modern oval windows, provide a significant barrier to the smooth flow of stress. Because of this stress peaks at the sharp corner of the window, and this is exactly where investigators determined the origin of failure to be.
These combined phenomenon proved to be fatal. Today all airliners feature oval windows to avoid this stress concentration and comprehensive fatigue testing is required before a plane can be approved by the FAA. We often learn the most from our failures, this is particularly true for advancements in the field of engineering. These are now two basic concepts that every materials engineer is taught, these events allowed us to further our understanding of materials and prevent further failures.
Schecter Guitar Research and Wylde Audio announce signing a world-wide distribution deal. Schecter will distribute Wylde Guitars, the creation of legendary guitarist Zakk Wylde (Black Label Society, Ozzy Osbourne), via their distributor network covering over 70 countries, which also includes handling fulfillment of the guitars in the USA.
“We are extremely proud to be working with Zakk and Wylde Audio on this endeavor,” states Schecter Guitar Research Executive Vice-president Marc LaCorte. “Zakk has been incredible in recognizing what he wanted in his own brand and bringing the best possible product to the market.”
The first offering from Wylde Audio, including the Odin, War Hammer and Viking models, are set to debut at the 2016 Winter NAMM. Zakk has already been putting the prototypes through their paces at recent Black Label Society shows. “I’m very excited for the launch of Wylde Audio in 2016,” Wylde states. “For me, it’s the next logical step. You start as a player, manager, VP of Team Operations, then Team Owner. I’ve surrounded myself with super talented people to make this vision become a reality and having Schecter on board as our distributor is going to allow me to bring Wylde Audio’s boutique quality of craftsmanship to the next level.”
Here’s the video footage of Zakk Wylde’s January 22 press conference at the NAMM show in Anaheim, California about his latest creation, Wylde Guitars.
With appropriate extraordinary skill, Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones can teach anyone about the art of music production. Dave Grohl — along with some of his rock counterparts — wonders when perfection became so important.
Go into any bookstore, and you’ll be amazed at the amount of different colouring books are on display – for kids and adults. Sugoi Books has released a new, unofficial Drake coloring book, while you’re waiting for your hotline to bling. Did I use that right?
In 2013, David Bowie shared his 100 favorite books on his official website, ranging from classic novels to biographies of musicians and everything in between. How many have you read?
Interviews With Francis Bacon by David Sylvester
Billy Liar by Keith Waterhouse
Room At The Top by John Braine
On Having No Head by Douglass Harding
Kafka Was The Rage by Anatole Broyard
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
City Of Night by John Rechy
The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
Iliad by Homer
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
Tadanori Yokoo by Tadanori Yokoo
Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Döblin
Inside The Whale And Other Essays by George Orwell
Mr. Norris Changes Trains by Christopher Isherwood
Halls Dictionary Of Subjects And Symbols In Art by James A. Hall
David Bomberg by Richard Cork
Blast by Wyndham Lewis
Passing by Nella Larson
Beyond The Brillo Box by Arthur C. Danto
The Origin Of Consciousness In The Breakdown Of The Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes
In Bluebeard’s Castle by George Steiner
Hawksmoor by Peter Ackroyd
The Divided Self by R. D. Laing
The Stranger by Albert Camus
Infants Of The Spring by Wallace Thurman
The Quest For Christa T by Christa Wolf
The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin
Nights At The Circus by Angela Carter
The Master And Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodieby Muriel Spark
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Herzog by Saul Bellow
Puckoon by Spike Milligan
Black Boy by Richard Wright
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea by Yukio Mishima
Darkness At Noon by Arthur Koestler
The Waste Land by T.S. Elliot
McTeague by Frank Norris
Money by Martin Amis
The Outsider by Colin Wilson
Strange People by Frank Edwards
English Journey by J.B. Priestley
A Confederacy Of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
The Day Of The Locust by Nathanael West
1984 by George Orwell
The Life And Times Of Little Richard by Charles White
Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom: The Golden Age of Rock by Nik Cohn
Mystery Train by Greil Marcus
Beano (comic, ’50s)
Raw (comic, ’80s)
White Noise by Don DeLillo
Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm And Blues And The Southern Dream Of Freedom by Peter Guralnick
Silence: Lectures And Writing by John Cage
Writers At Work: The Paris Review Interviews edited by Malcolm Cowley
The Sound Of The City: The Rise Of Rock And Roll by Charlie Gillete
Octobriana And The Russian Underground by Peter Sadecky
The Street by Ann Petry
Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon
Last Exit To Brooklyn By Hubert Selby, Jr.
A People’s History Of The United States by Howard Zinn
The Age Of American Unreason by Susan Jacoby
Metropolitan Life by Fran Lebowitz
The Coast Of Utopia by Tom Stoppard
The Bridge by Hart Crane
All The Emperor’s Horses by David Kidd
Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess
The 42nd Parallel by John Dos Passos
Tales Of Beatnik Glory by Ed Saunders
The Bird Artist by Howard Norman
Nowhere To Run The Story Of Soul Music by Gerri Hirshey
Before The Deluge by Otto Friedrich
Sexual Personae: Art And Decadence From Nefertiti To Emily Dickinson by Camille Paglia
The American Way Of Death by Jessica Mitford
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
Lady Chatterly’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence
Teenage by Jon Savage
Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh
The Hidden Persuaders by Vance Packard
The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
Viz (comic, early ’80s)
Private Eye (satirical magazine, ’60s – ’80s)
Selected Poems by Frank O’Hara
The Trial Of Henry Kissinger by Christopher Hitchens
Flaubert’s Parrot by Julian Barnes
Maldodor by Comte de Lautréamont
On The Road by Jack Kerouac
Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonders by Lawrence Weschler
Zanoni by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
Transcendental Magic, Its Doctine and Ritual by Eliphas Lévi
The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels
The Leopard by Giusseppe Di Lampedusa
Inferno by Dante Alighieri
A Grave For A Dolphin by Alberto Denti di Pirajno
The Insult by Rupert Thomson
In Between The Sheets by Ian McEwan
A People’s Tragedy by Orlando Figes
Journey Into The Whirlwind by Eugenia Ginzburg
Rock icon Iggy Pop and Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age recorded an album in secret and announced it for the first time tonight on The Late Show With Stphen Cobert.
Joshua tree. …It’s lovely because you have a chance to sort of make mistakes and figure things out and find your own path. When you make a record, nobody is aware you’re doing it, you’re kind of making it for each other and you’re kind of there to excite and dazzle each other.
The pair later debuted the song “Gardenia” from the new album, which will be available March 18, 2016.
