Mystery solved. 16-year-old Nicholas Harrington takes credit for the grand piano that showed up on a sandbar in Miami’s Biscayne Bay. The stunt is somehow meant to beef up his resume to get into Manhattan’s Cooper Union college. The piano was set on fire twice, once by partygoers as part of a New Year’s Eve prank, and once again as it was set on the sandbar.

With TV shows and movies throwing around words such as anti-matter, quarks, and space-time as casually as you might say “What’s for lunch?” It’s hard to distinguish credible theoretical physics versus true science fiction stuff. The matter is worsen by the apparent back and forth in how stuff is supposed to work. Remember the ether?

Old houses tend to be uniformly creepy, with their unique swishes, groans and clangs. A decade’s old collection of withered girders in an abandoned factory, or the wind swishing through abandoned hallways can create acoustics which make your hair stand on end, praying that whatever it is in there, it won’t be following you. But the dynamics of sound in these large buildings can be manipulated a little creatively, to unleash some marvelous creations of sound and melody.

In the last week or so, music blogs – at least those that weren’t deleted by Google for posting copyrighted content – have exploded over “zef”, an energetic hybrid of rave and hip-hip with a self-consciously white-trash aesthetic [the word itself refers to the South African redneck subculture] typified by bands such as Cape Town collective Die Antwoord.

On December 4, 2009, a user going by the name “iamamiwhoami” uploaded a video to YouTube. The video featured images of trees with writhing limbs, a metallic-skinned woman in the foetal position in what appears to represent the womb, and – most disturbingly – a goat giving birth; its soundtrack was a haunting trip-hop piece, completely devoid of vocals and led by quivering high-pitched synths. Links to the 55-second clip, titled “Prelude 699130082.451322”, were sent to various music blogs and the video quickly went viral, with over 122,000 views to …