October 29, 2006
Slow news-day filter
This showed up as a headline on Yahoo! News.
Change ringing is, however, centuries old. If you'd like hear/play with the bells, try this.
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The bells — ranging in weight from a few hundred pounds to more than a ton — were cast by pouring a molten bronze alloy into molds that were hand-crafted using a mixture of sand, water, chopped hay and horse manure. I listened... I hear the sounds of thousands of horse manures joyfully pealing in plops.
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church bells are an abomination unto my mattress.
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I have a mattress, you know, & I'm not afraid to fucking use it.
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... molds that were hand-crafted ... Ask not whose dainty hands were those that shaped the molds where the wet bronze flows ...
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*peals joyfully into path's thread* I never knew "ringing in the change" or "ringing in the year" was a literal thing!
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Video about Thomas Anserson and the bell tower at the University of Texas
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The bells swing 360 degrees from their frames as they're rung using 30-foot ropes, producing the shimmering sounds whose patterns change hour after hour. The more bells are involved, the longer they can be rung without repeating a pattern. For instance, six bells have 720 permutations, while 12 can go through 479,001,600. You always gotta work the math, don'tcha.