A Special DO or DIY Radio Show on WFMU

DO or DIY radio show – Vicki Bennett fills in for Ken on WFMU If you are by the radio or internet on Wednesday 21 December between 9am-noon New York time then tune in to a mega 3-hour DO or DIY with People Like Us on WFMU with your radio host Vicki Bennett and 20,000 mp3s. Listen on the live link at http://wfmu.org/ at the time, and join us on the Comments Board and follow the live playlist at https://wfmu.org/playlists/shows/70069 Irene Moon and friends have contributed to this show with a new segment called "encounters with Nature." Don't miss it!

Unknown Territories Wednesday July 13, 2016

Optimized on WFMU now archived

If you missed it, Optimized on WFMU is now archived and you can stream those archives. Be sure to listen to our Champagne Jam as part of the Tuesday June 7 program. Curated by People Like Us

Unknown Territories Tuesday April 12, 2016

This week on the Unknown Territories we will talk Who's Up Next! How species are officially recognized as endangered or...
Posted by Irene Moon on Monday, April 11, 2016

Unknown Territories Friday February 19, 2016

Listen to the Unknown Territories this Saturday, February 19th, 7-830am for our fund drive science...
Posted by Unknown Territories on Friday, February 19, 2016

Unknown Territories Saturday February 13, 2016

Oh The Gravity! What else could we talk about this week on Unknown Territories but the announcement that Gravitational...
Posted by Unknown Territories on Friday, February 12, 2016

Unknown Territories February 6, 2016

Next Saturday on Unknown Territories we will interview Jonathan Platkiewicz, Post Doctoral Researcher at City College of...
Posted by Unknown Territories on Sunday, January 31, 2016

From the Radio Archives: Entomelodical Opportunities

Between 2002 and 2006 Irene was a DJ on WRFL 88.1fm. A great student run radio station at the University of Kentucky. Entomelodical Opportunities were segments from her weekly radio show, often co-hosted with Robert Beatty (Hair Police, Three-Legged Race).
Entomelodical Opportunities continued after leaving Lexington as a podcast titled Irene & Rosa's Pupal Cast once she moved to Tallahassee, Florida.

These show segments are now available through the Free Music Archive.

• Robert and Irene Christmas Special - a special Robert and Irene show. One for the holidays!
• Telemitry - The first of the Pupal Casts.
• Persimmoween - Halloween and a cast of characters from Auk Theater sing along with some of the best music from October, 2007. Interview with Irene's father about the persimmon tree in the backyard.
• Telekinesis - A tribute to Uri Geller. Discussion on the math of eating turkey.
• Breakfast - Little light piano, dad wants to save a box, and its time to eat the most important meal of the day.
• Fanatical - Irene and Rosa have found themselves down in a well.
• Peep Show - Its talk of chickens.
• Easter - Another holiday show and another rabbit.

From the Radio Archives: Radio Interviews of Let's Talk Science

Let's Talk Science is a series of factual conversations with people working either as scientific researchers or in popular scientific media. The episodes of Let's Talk Science below were pre-recorded for Radio Boredcast from the 2012 A/V Festival, curated by People Like Us. These interviews are now available on Free Music Archive.

• Let's Talk Science - The Ice Show - in conversation with Chris Watson

• Let's Talk Science - Sleep - A conversation with Dave Armitage, University of California, Berkley

• Let's Talk Science - Rust - A conversation with John Selegue, University of Kentucky

• Let's Talk Science - Human Evolution - Part 1- A conversation with Andrea Lucky, North Carolina State University

• Let's Talk Science - Human Evolution - Part 2- A conversation with Jiri Hulcr, North Carolina State University

• 
  

From the Radio Archives: Special Recorded Guest Appearances on WFMU

Scott Williams Show
March 9, 2001
Friday afternoons 3PM - 6PM

Live Nude Lepidopterae w/ special guests IRENE MOON and CHRIS JOLLY

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People Like Us and Irene Moon
Sunday, January 12th, 2003
Nickel and Dime Radio with $mall ¢hange

This week on Nickel and Dime radio we're happy to have both People Like Us and Irene Moon invade the airwaves. The UK's People Like Us (aka Vicki Bennett) has been a long time favorite of FMU's with her audio cut-ups of oldball music, spoken word, and sound effects that's equal parts crack and laughing gas. Based out of Atlanta, Irene Moon's 'learning experiences' combine sound collage and surreal (but quite real) science. Who says you can't trip and learn? Who knows what these audio terrorists will do together?

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Dave Soldier and Irene Moon
September 22, 2010
on Do or DIY with People Like Us

On Do or DIY With People Like Us, local classical composer Dave Soldier provides a live performance of his new collaboration with electronic musician Sean Hagerty (and the late Frederic Chopin): a slow version of the Minute Waltz that lasts half an hour. Also, Irene Moon and a cast from the Auk Theater will perform a musical whodunit about insects, in which each insect is a suspect in a serial murder. Wednesday, 9/22, from 7 to 8 PM.

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Irene Moon LIVE
August 17, 2011 on Do or DIY with People Like Us

Irene Moon Special Guest show. Irene Moon and the Auk Theater love drama, insects, crime, and examinations. All of these elements make great theater and all occurred at Princess Anne High School documented in the record yearbook created to archive the 1963-1964 school year. Irene found the record in a thrift store in early 2011, but had no idea the demon she uncovered! Of course, these elements could only be discovered in the recording by reading between the lines, backmasking, and interviewing people who know a lot about many things. The new historical drama is filled with music from Nine Fingered Thug, Juules Trakker, Yellow Tears, Secret Boyfriend, Kites, Kevin Blechdom, and, naturally, Lawrence Welk. Irene Moon is an entomologist at North Carolina State University who participates in music and theater. She has the duel focus to advance appreciation of art in the halls of science; as a means of connecting the public to entomology and increasing awareness of the art and creativity intrinsic to the scientific process. Find out more information about Irene Moon, Auk Theater and the Begonia Society at www.begoniasociety.org
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From the Radio Archives: Resonance104.4fm interview December 10th

photo: Jon Wozencroft/Touch

Mike Harding interviews Katja Seltmann with Irene Moon about insect harmonics. Part of the Long Wave radio series, these Begonia Society members will be included in Long Wave 10, on December 10, 2012 at 10.30pm in London (530 New York) . Dont miss it!

Long Wave is broadcast on resonance104.4fm


Track listing of the Interview and Music:
[listen]

1. Backing music behind Irene Moon: Organ, electronics and insects (flies and cockroaches)

2. Darker Florida (Irene Moon and Pax Titania) - For the Cat People
from the album: History of Darker Florida vol. i. [tin cans and twine, cassette, 2008]
instrumentation: Piano, electronics and insects

3. Graeme Revell: The Insect Musicians - Invaders of the Heart

4. Treehopper courtship sounds from Reginald B. Cocroft (treehoppers.insectmuseum.org)

5. Scientifically Speaking with Irene Moon - Fly me to the Blossom
from the album SUPLICO [Gods of Tundra, cassette, 2000]
instrumentation: Organ and crickets.

6. Mika Vainio - Outside the Circle of Fire | Hazard - Debugged
From the album Star Switch On [Touch, CD, 2002]. "The artists were commissioned to use the wildlife recordings of Chris Watson published on Stepping Into The Dark and Outside The Circle Of Fire as source material."

7. Insect Collage - Ants, wasps and other insects...
featuring recordings by Mike Harding, Tom Lawrence & Jana Winderen

From the Radio Archives: Insect Corner on DO or DIY

Irene Moon and friends with Insect Corner on WFMU in 2009 featured on DO or DIY hosted by People Like Us. Below are the links to the archives right to the insect corner selections (not in any particular order)!


1. Pat and Ellen. A rebroadcast of Questions from Pat and Ellen about Spider Mites.

2. Leafhoppers and Frass

3. Insect Diversity

4. Heinz tells tales of New Jersey Insects

5. Heinz tells tales of WWII insects

6. Introduction to Insects from Curator Bill with a Social Insect Focus

7. Aunty Pat and Aunty Ellen fill in for Ken: Insect Corner Branches out on the Phylogenetic Tree with Tapeworms.

The podcasts use the WFMU popup flash audio player...

How (or which) large is it?

Yawn. How did I get to the point where one of my foci is actually one of my greatest weaknesses? I have a really loose relationship with the English language and somehow Ive found myself trying to explore its structure. Particularly Adjectives, Adverbs, Indefinite Pronouns, & Prepositions. What exactly is the difference in meaning between these terms where the word large is the root:

large
enlarged
unenlarged
rather large
largest
larger

All of these terms are used in fairly recent descriptions of new species of wasps. A new published description is required for a new species to be valid. Right now that description, as required by the Zoological Code, must be text. Historically these texts do not adhere to any real rules of language (obviously! Unenlarged is not even a 'real' word according to Websters). A person could be as loose or florid as they desire with their descriptions, creating a lot of variation in word usage in descriptions of species.

Great by Platyscelio striga image by Norman F. Johnson & Charuwat Taekul with enlarged antennal segment

So if a person was describing the antenna in the image above he/she could say:

Antennal segment is rather large.

Antennal segment is enlarged.

Antennal segment is larger than the proceeding segments.

Antennal segment is the largest.

Antennal segment is large.

Proceeding antennal segments unenlarged. (Only one author used this word - lets just push this under the rug and forget it ever happened?).

We may only need the word root. Large. Comparisons seem to be the answer and we can remove all terms except the root terms. If we said: Second antennal segment large compared_to proceeding segments we would know that segment is the largest segment. Lets try an even more detailed example. Second antennal segment large compared_to third antennal segment. Third antennal segment large compared_to proceeding antennal segments. We then would know that the third segment is actually of medium size.

Words like 'rather' are nice but lack any real meaning and could be ignored. Or does 'rather large' actually mean 'its kinda, sorta large compared to all the other wasps but I wouldnt necessarily call it large". That doesnt sound like a word to use in describing a decisively new species.

Who cares? Well only a few people right now but we are moving away from human descriptions of new species. It is a bit sad that we will loose some of the 'authors touch' for the sake of automation. I have the same feeling about it as I did when the NOAA weather radio man in my hometown turned into a robot voice. I was never excited again about a severe thunderstorm warning.