| posts tagged ‘local’ |


The truth about the de-evolution band

12 Aug 2010 23:18 EDT

I saw a man on a stage scream “Put me back in my cage!” / I saw him hang by his tie / I saw enough to make me cry…
-”Planet Earth”, Devo

Last Wednesday I finally performed my duty and attended my first ever concert performance by DEV-O, the De-evolution Band of Akron, Ohio (What’s round on the end and high in the middle?). Mark Mothersbaugh, Gerald V Casale, Bob1, Bob2, and the new boy Josh played for a large troupe of primates at the Ohio State Fair, where people also sell deep fried Snickers bars, sculpt unironic cows of butter, and fatten themselves on fattened pigs.

The condensed review: It’s a Good Thing.

The whole big mess: I have waited all my futile, repetitive ‘life’ to attend a performance by these spuds. Now that I have done so, I am happy to report that I have nothing further to live for but the dictates of my genetics. The grotesque, yet fully satisfying, spectacle of videos, lights, and calisthenics was accompanied by a throbbing beat, clamorous guitars, and victorious analog synthesizers. The analog tones produced by the vintage synths spoke with a raw-edged perfection that straddled the uncanny line between natural sounds and the noise of machinery. Modern digital synthesis is pathetic, weak, and bloodless in comparison.

Bob1 on the psycho-surf guitar tore shreds in the amps throughout the night; in the second half of the show his bandmates gave up their own synths for guitars themselves as they switched from new songs to old favorites. In lieu of a drum machine, the boys from Ohio recruited Mr Freese, the very man who is used as the calibration to ensure drum machines keep proper time. He closed his eyes and beat the skins like a man barely aware of anything but the insistent rhythm. Mark Mothersbaugh gave a consistently hyperactive performance, although for the last song he deserted us and left poor Booji Boy to sing the lead on “Beautiful World”  –  while images of the Deepwater Horizon flowed jarringly before us. And the brothers Casale on the bass and the rhythm laid down a texture not heard since our ancestors were hooting in caves.

A thing to remember: Devo are essentially two pairs of brothers, two of whom are suspiciously named Bob. These are men who have never grown up and make their livings still playing around with their brothers. This gives these sexagenarians a fount of youthful energy. They did not stop moving. Truth be told, the opening band were twenty-something hipsters who lolled lackadaisically about in their chairs making adequate music. In stark contrast, Devo understood that performance requires action. They simultaneously played instruments, sang, and ran frenetically to and fro, all while showing videos on a high-technology transparent LED screen behind them and three enormous displays around them.

The video entertainment was highly ironic. No, Gen Y, I do not mean ironic like a goatee or a Where the Wild Things Are t-shirt. Devo are dead serious about their irony. The videos taught us that our pheromones and hormones rule our minds, and yet our primitive culture subsumes french fries and donuts for sex.

In no reasonable order, I will now list for you the tunes they barraged us with: Whip It / What We Do / Uncontrollable Urge (featuring the original choreography!) / That’s Good (of Square Pegs infamy)/ Smart Patrol/Mr DNA (for die-hard devotees) / Secret Agent Man (a tour de force by Bob1) / Satisfaction (the original and best)/ Planet Earth / Peek-a-Boo! (scary) / Mongoloid (thoughtful, actually) / Jocko Homo / Going Under (a personal favorite) / Girl U Want / Gates of Steel / Fresh / Freedom of Choice / Don’t Shoot (I’m A Man) / Devo Corporate Anthem / Beautiful World. I should note that What We Do (the finest performance of the night), Uncontrollable Urge, Mongoloid, and Don’t Shoot were particular favorites of the feverish crowd.

I must admit that I draw the attention of my children (who, with my mate, accompanied me to the concert) to the lyrical teachings of Devo. Devo’s music can be beautiful, but their lyrics are, strictly speaking, not. Instead of focusing on Beauty, they focus on Truth. The Truth is only sometimes beautiful. It is often harsh, unwanted, and painful. Yet it is true, and we ignore Truth at our peril. It comforts us not to confront our descent from the apes; our slavery to our uncontrollable biological urges; our existence which repeats itself mundanely, day after day, generation after generation. These are Devo’s topics, set atop catchy jingles with danceable beats: “the fittest shall survive, yet the unfit may live“; “freedom of choice is what you’ve got, freedom from choice is what you want“. But Devo are never subjugated by the Truth. They don’t mope. Instead they also tell us how we must embrace our destinies and strive for success within the time and space we are given: Whip It! Step Up!

The evening was itself a success. Devo have been travelling minstrels for 37 years, but show few signs of flagging and little evidence of rot. They are still loud, brash, deliberate, annoying, fun, bright, stupid, and brilliant. Having felt their presence I can now spread the word as it has been ordained. If they invade your town, do not fail to heed the call. They have something for everybody.

BUY THE ALBUM.

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Training 10-year-old CEOs and CFOs

21 Oct 2009 22:19 EDT

Today I had the pleasure of working as a volunteer for Junior Achievement‘s JA BizTown. BizTown is a program where elementary-age children simulate the economy of city. In organizations such as City Hall, a bank, retail businesses, media, utilities, even a health insurer.  They worked in assigned (or elected) roles in each business, including CEOs, CFOs, sales, a mayor, and so forth.

To run a successful business, the kids need to apply for a business loan from the bank, and then earn enough money from customers during the day to pay back their loans. They have to learn to price their goods and services appropriately with this goal in mind — too high, and the other kids won’t buy from them with their limited paychecks; too low, they can’t pay back their creditors.  The CFO keeps books on computers networked to the bank, with accounts payable and receivable functions and check-printing capabilities. There’s even overhead like utilities, rent, and taxes. Those are just some of the elements in a complex economy. It’s a very realistic simulation, and the children thoroughly enjoy it.

Junior Achievement of Central Ohio and the national organization deserve great accolades for bringing this experience to thousands of 5th graders. Education in entrepreneurship and business operations is sorely lacking from most school curricula in the US; this program is wonderful for the gap it fills. It’s not just this program, of course; JA leads the world in promoting and educating in entrepreneurship among the youth.  It is not a cliché to say that this is where tomorrow’s startups and business leaders come from.

I certainly wish I’d had this opportunity mumble-mumble years ago when I was 10. I encourage all readers to support JA and to consider volunteering or sponsoring entrepreneurial education. Central Ohio folks, Junior Achievement is located in a new building now: the repurposed Second Avenue Elementary School in Columbus’s Italian Village. It’s a beautiful neighborhood, and it’s nice to see that the former school has found a use.

It was a great experience, and I’m glad to have helped in a small way to train the next generation of entrepreneurs and capitalists!

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Topics: Onyx, Proteolix, and an Autoimmune Fix?

20 Oct 2009 16:07 EDT

I read with interest yesterday of Onyx Pharmaceutical‘s acquisition of Proteolix. (Thanks to VentureLoop for the tweet that tipped me to this.)  Onyx specializes in cancer therapies, and Proteolix has drug therapies that are useful in treatment of both cancer and autoimmune disorders. Among the products in the Proteolix pipeline are immunoproteasome-selective inhibitors.

Proteasomes are barrel-shaped  complexes found in every cell of our body. They are cellular recyclers – their job is to break down old or unwanted proteins and turn them in to peptide building blocks that can then be recycled to make new proteins. An immunoproteasome is the form this structure takes in cells of the immune system. Normally, they play a role in fighting infections, by breaking down proteins from invaders and using the broken-down pieces as a sort of signal for infection-fighting cells. But increased activity of the immunoproteasome has been implicated in many autoimmune disorders, like rheumatoid arthritis and lupus, where the body attacks itself instead.

Proteasome inhibitors block the action of proteasomes. Since proteasomes are necessary for the day-to-day life activities of cells, inhibiting them can induce apoptosis (cell death), which sounds bad but which is a great thing when you’re fighting cancer. And immunoproteasome-specific inhibitors are likewise a great thing when fighting autoimmune disorders.

Immunoproteasome inhibitors are being studied as therapies for autoimmune diseases such as RA and psoriasis (where they’ve been shown to be effective in animal models) and potentially many other diseases.

One autoimmune disease that I’d hope was an eventual target for this sort of therapy is Goodpasture Disease. OK, I’m admittedly very biased here: I have that disease. It’s a very rare autoimmune disorder that causes kidney and lung failure; I was diagnosed with the disorder in 1989. It’s a rare enough disease that it’s considered an orphan disease for which there are no specifically-targeted therapies.

Encouragingly, there is good evidence (such as this paper from the journal Proteomics [PDF] and this one from the Federation of European Biochemical Societies) and a good chain of reasoning to indicate that immunoproteasome inhibitors would be effective against Goodpasture Disease as well.

I’m happy to see that this novel kind of research into therapies for autoimmune diseases like Goodpasture’s is bearing fruit. Onyx Pharmaceuticals has been concentrating on cancer therapies. I certainly strongly encourage Onyx to take advantage of Proteolix’s full pipeline and continue the development of proteasome inhibitor-based therapies for autoimmune disorders as well. There are established links between the pathologies of cancers and autoimmune diseases; and there are millions of suffers of  these diseases who could benefit from therapies based on this biotechnology.

Boy, do I love this stuff! The intersection of entrepreneurship, innovation, biotechnology, and the hyper-hyper-local. More, please!

[cross-posted to A Marble Desk]

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Lots of talk about Toobla, and Tech in the Midwest

06 Oct 2009 01:30 EDT

Toobla is in launch mode right now. Toobla is a local (Columbus, Ohio) company working out of the TechColumbus business incubator, on Kinnear Road near Ohio State University. The ether has been vibrating today with Toobla news: tweets upon tweets.  They recently were named one of “The Best Web 2.0 Applications for Education – 2009” by blogger Larry Ferlazzo. They also were featured in Inspired Magazine in a story entitled “10 Amazing Tools for Sharing Visual Inspiration through Screenshots“.  Their rolling thunder continued with an interview of Toobla CEO Brian Link (formerly of Digg) on local station 10TV.

Toobla offers a service, currently in beta, that they say allows you to “collect and enjoy your favorite stuff in visual containers that can be shared anywhere.” It ostensibly is a bookmarking service with a visual metaphor, allowing you to manage your favorite content with channels, services, and subscriptions. I haven’t used the service yet (although I’d like to), so I can’t comment any more than that. In the future I hope to be able to take a deeper technical dive and learn what they’re all about. Seems quite intriguing and potentially useful at first glance.

First off, let me send kudos to their marketing team for creating what appears to be effective buzz and getting Toobla noticed. Let’s hope the noise can continue.

Then, let me send even more kudos to the whole gang, especially the founders, for starting this venture in Columbus. This is a great decision and I’m very pleased to see another high-profile startup here.

Columbus is a great city that is gaining more and more respect as a technology center.  There is a great depth of talent … in my own experience, for example, when we founded SmartPipes (a decade ago this month) there was already an incredible population of bright, talented, educated technical folks to come aboard.  In the decade since then, tech has become a growing and increasingly significant part of the Columbus economy. In fact, Columbus’s economy has not suffered the ill effects that the rest of the Midwest is unfortunately succumbing to. Tech companies in Columbus can be found in diverse segments from nanotech to healthcare to web services to security software, and there’s a major university to draw talent as well. I’ve done some work with TechColumbus, and I know that they have a thriving incubator culture and are an asset to the community and to the hard-working entrepreneurs they work with.

I haven’t met the guys at Toobla yet, but let me just say: good on ya, Toobla. Keep it up and best of luck.

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