Restoration of Rivera Murals Underway in Mexico

Anyone with even a passing interest in Latin American art and culture will be familiar with Diego Rivera, the Mexican painter and muralist. Rivera, who is credited with being one of the founders of the Mexican muralist art movement, was also an active communist and husband of the equally famous Mexican artist Frida Kahlo.

Between 1922 and 1953, Rivera painted murals in Mexico City, Chapingo and Cuernavaca here in Mexico, as well as in San Francisco, Detroit and New York City. Mexico City's Palacio Nacional, or National Palace, is home to some of the paintings that Rivera did under government commission, and those works are currently the focus of a restoration project by the government.

Diligent specialists are touching up missing color with watercolor paints, and using a weak alcohol solution to wash away dust and grime that the murals have collected. The restoration is expected to be completed in September.

link: Mexico's Diego Rivera murals get restoration treatment | La Plaza | Los Angeles Times

Israel's White Phosphorus Munitions

Israel has admitted to using white phosphorus during its war on the Gaza Strip earlier this year, but says it did so in accordance with international law.

The admission came in a 163-page document published by the Israeli foreign ministry on Thursday ahead of a UN report next week.

The Israeli army "used munitions containing white phosphorus" in Gaza, the document said, but it denied violating international law, saying it had not fired such weapons inside populated areas.

Al Jazeera's Sherine Tadros, reporting from Jerusalem, said the Israeli army had initially denied using white phosphorus, a chemical agent that causes severe burns.

"During the war, when we first started seeing the white phosphorous, the Israeli army said that everything it was using was in compliance with international law; it would not tell us whether or not it was using it," she said.

link: Al Jazeera English - Middle East - Israel admits white phosphorus use

O Arizona: What's Our Most Abundant Natural Resource Besides Human Stupidity? Sunlight!

First Solar Inc. posted record net income and revenue again in the second quarter, despite what officials describe as a tightening market because of the lack of credit.

Credit markets loosened in the second quarter slightly, helping push First Solar net income to $181 million, or $2.11 per share. That’s well ahead of the $69.6 million it garnered in the same quarter of 2008.

Revenue hit $525 million for the quarter, almost doubling the $267 million it earned in the second quarter of 2008.

Credit markets started to unfreeze in the second quarter, but it was still difficult getting money into projects First Solar has ongoing throughout the world, said Mike Ahearn, the company’s chairman and CEO.

“If we compare where we sit today, where we are now, to where we were last quarter, it’s more favorable, but we’re looking at driving a lot more demand in the second half of the year,” he said.

link: First Solar sees record income, revenue despite tight markets - Phoenix Business Journal:

Deterrence Policy: Rachel Bone

Paintings by Rachel Bone.

link: Rachel Bone - BOOOOOOOM! - CREATE * INSPIRE * COMMUNITY * ART * DESIGN * MUSIC * FILM * PHOTO * PROJECTS

Guillotine from Ikea

rebel:art » Blog Archive » Sokkomb: Die Ikea-Guillotine

Moldova: Last Communist Govt. in Europe Falls

Europe’s only Communist government was toppled from power this week by a collection of pro-Western forces, after a bitter parliamentary election that both sides portrayed as crucial in determining the country’s future.

Officials from the winning four-party coalition hailed their victory in the July 29 contest. Together, they seized 53 of the legislature’s 101 seats, or some 50 percent of the vote.

Moldova matters little in U.S. foreign policy, but plays a role that outstrips its diminutive size — just over 4 million citizens — in European politics. It is viewed as a potential source of instability on Europe’s periphery and is wedged between two major players, Ukraine and Romania. Its breakaway region of Trans-Dniester — a “frozen conflict” in official parlance — is also a potential source of black market goods and narcotics, since it possesses no officially recognized borders.

Some commentators compared this election to other popular uprisings, the so-called “color revolutions,” in which questions about election returns eventually dislodged entrenched political elites.

link: Moldova remains calm, for now | GlobalPost

Won't be Comets that Kill Us--At Least Not Simulated Ones

Crashing comets probably won't cause the end of life as we know it, a study said Thursday.

Astronomers at the University of Washington used computer simulation to model the evolution of comet clouds in the solar system over the past 1.2 billion years.

The simulation allowed them to peer into the Oort Cloud, a remnant of the nebula from which our solar system was formed.

"For the past 25 years, the inner Oort Cloud has been considered a mysterious, unobserved region of the solar system capable of providing bursts of bodies that occasionally wipe out life on Earth," said study author Nathan Kaib.

But the simulation found the Earth has likely only sustained two or three significant hits from comets in the past 500 million years.

link: Comets probably won't cause the end of life as we know it: study - Yahoo! Asia News

Go to Montessori, Grow Up, Calm Down, and Don't Get Arrested

Jehmu Green writes:

The Director of Athena Montessori Academy is a close friend, and when needed I have been thrilled to serve as a substitute teacher for her adorable students. Throughout the day toddlers learn that yelling, screaming, and making threats are not socially acceptable ways of dealing with conflict. Problem solving, conflict resolution, and critical thinking are at the core of Montessori teachings. On the surface it may seem simplistic, but it actually takes courage to initiate conflict resolution and see it through.

Cambridge Police Officer Jim Crowley, Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, activists, bloggers, and commentators could all learn from the problem solving lessons designed for three year-olds. It cannot be denied that the world would be a better place if adults learned to communicate more intentionally, instead of reacting out of emotion.

link: Jehmu Greene: Everything Professor Gates and Sergeant Crowley Needed to Know, I Learned at a Montessori School

National Geographic Photos

National Geography Photos | Demonicious!

Street Dance

I have nothing to say for myself.

link: I have nothing to say for myself.

It's Alive! The Headless Woman

ZORIAH - A PHOTOJOURNALIST AND WAR PHOTOGRAPHER'S BLOG: Coney Island New York - Headless Woman!

Police Overreaction? You Be The Judge

Arthur Delaney writes:

Pepin Tuma, 33, was walking with two friends along Washington's hip U Street corridor around midnight Saturday, complaining about how Gates had been rousted from his home for not showing a proper amount of deference to a cop. "We'd been talking about it all day," said Tuma. "It seems like police have a tendency to act overly aggressively when they're being pushed around," Tuma recalled saying.

Then the group noticed five or six police cruisers surrounding two cars in an apparent traffic stop on the other side of the street. It seemed to Tuma that was more cops than necessary.

"That's why I hate the police," Tuma said. He told the Huffington Post that in a loud sing-song voice, he then chanted, "I hate the police, I hate the police."

One officer reacted strongly to Tuma's song. "Hey! Hey! Who do you think you're talking to?" Tuma recalled the officer shouting as he strode across an intersection to where Tuma was standing. "Who do you think you are to think you can talk to a police officer like that?" the police officer said, according to Luke Platzer, 30, one of Tuma's companions.

Tuma said he responded, "It is not illegal to say I hate the police. It's not illegal to express my opinion walking down the street."

According to Tuma and Platzer, the officer pushed Tuma against an electric utility box, continuing to ask who he thought he was and to say he couldn't talk to police like that.

"I didn't curse," Tuma said. "I asked, am I being arrested? Why am I a being arrested?"

Within minutes, the officer had cuffed Tuma. The charge: disorderly conduct -- just like Gates, who was arrested after police responded to a report of a possible break-in at his home and Gates protested their ensuing behavior.

link: Disorderly Conduct: Conversation About Gates Arrest Precedes Arrest

Hmm . . . Could Rove Be Lying? Naaaaah. . . .

According to documents and e-mails reviewed by The Washington Post, Karl Rove played a more integral role than previously known in the firing of U.S. Attorneys that lead up to the U.S. Attorneys scandal.

“The e-mails emerged as Rove finished his second day of closed-door-testimony Thursday about the firings to the House Judiciary Committee,” the paper reported. “For years, Rove and former White House counsel Harriet Miers had rejected efforts by lawmakers to obtain their testimony and their correspondence about the issue, citing executive privilege. The House of Representatives sued, igniting a court fight that was resolved this year after discussions among lawyers for former president George W. Bush and President Obama.”

link: Raw Story » Emails reveal Rove misleading about role in attorney firings

Court Orders Mohammed Jawad, "Held Illegally," Freed from Guantanamo

A US judge has ordered the release of a person detained at the naval prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, after declaring that he is being held illegally.

Judge Ellen Huvelle on Thursday granted a "writ of habeas corpus" concerning Mohammed Jawad, whose lawyers say he was 12 years old when arrested in Afghanistan in 2002.

She gave the US government until August 24 to complete a report to congress about any national security risks that Jawad may present, as well as to finalise diplomatic arrangements for his release.

Ian Gershengorn, the US deputy assistant attorney general, told the judge that the US will negotiate with the government in Kabul with a view to sending Jawad to his home country.

link: Al Jazeera English - Americas - US orders Guantanamo inmate freed

Build Your Own Ghost

Hollow Man | Vision02

Pieter Hugo: Nollywood

Nollywood by Pieter Hugo.

Pieter Hugo was born in 1976 and grew up in Cape Town. He underwent a two-year residency in 2002-3 at Fabrica in Treviso, Italy.

In the Nollywood series, Hugo explores the multilayered reality of the Nigerian film industry. Photographs from the series were included on the exhibition Disguise: The art of attracting and deflecting attention at Michael Stevenson in May 2008.

Hugo has subsequently returned to Nigeria to extend and deepen this body of work, and the series will be published in book form by Prestel in October 2009. Nollywood is the third largest film industry in the world, releasing between 500 and 1 000 movies each year. It produces movies on its own terms, telling stories that appeal to and reflect the lives of its public: it is a rare instance of self-representation on such a scale in Africa.

The continent has a rich tradition of story-telling that has been expressed abundantly through oral and written fiction, but has never been conveyed through the popular media before. Stars are local actors; plots confront the public with familiar situations of romance, comedy, witchcraft, bribery, prostitution. The narrative is overdramatic, deprived of happy endings, tragic. The aesthetic is loud, violent, excessive; nothing is said, everything is shouted.

link: \\\: Pieter Hugo

BibliOdyssey: Palm Illustrations

"The author of over 150 botanical titles, including the great flora of Brazil, Karl Friedrich Philipp von Martius also wrote the still-definitive three-volume treatise on the palm family, one of the first plant monographs. He developed his life-long fascination with palms during an expedition through Brazil [map] from 1817 to 1820, and he worked nearly 30 years to prepare this grand summation, including palms found only as fossils." [source]

link: BibliOdyssey

Dunce Prisoner?

adski_kafeteri: TOM THUMB n/d

Cuomo: Bank Revenues and Bonuses Don't Balance

Several financial giants that received federal bailout money in the last year paid out bonuses to employees in 2008 that greatly exceeded the amount of profit generated by the banks, according to a study on executive compensation released by New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo Thursday.

Despite claims by bank executives that bonuses are tied to the company's performance, the report states that "there is no clear rhyme or reason to how the banks compensate or reward their employees."

Cuomo's investigation "suggests a disconnect between compensation and bank performance that resulted in a 'heads I win, tails you lose' bonus system."

link: Study: Bank Bonuses Far Exceeded Profits - CBS News

Best of All Possible Worlds? Top Ten Evolutionary Screw-Ups

Wired prioritizes:

1 Sea mammal blowhole. Any animal that spends appreciable time in the ocean should be able to extract oxygen from water via gills. Enlarging the lungs and moving a nostril to the back of the head is a poor work-around.

2 Hyena clitoris. When engorged, this "pseudopenis," which doubles as the birth canal, becomes so hard it can crush babies to death during exit.

3 Kangaroo teat. In order to nurse, the just-born joey, a frail and squishy jellybean, must clamber up Mom's torso and into her pouch for a nipple.

4 Giraffe birth canal. Mama giraffes stand up while giving birth, so baby's entry into the world is a 5-foot drop. Wheeee! Crack.

5 Goliath bird-eating spider exoskeleton. This giant spider can climb trees to hunt very mobile prey. Yet it has a shell so fragile it practically explodes when it falls? Well, at least it can produce silk to make a sail. Oh, wait — it can't!

6 Shark-fetus teeth. A few shark species have live births (instead of laying eggs). The Jaws juniors grow teeth in the womb. The first sibling or two to mature sometimes eat their siblings in utero. Mmm ... siblings.

7 Human stomach. People can digest a lot — except for cellulose, the primary component of plant matter. Why don't we have commensal bacteria in our guts to do it? They're busy helping termites.

8 Slug genitalia. Some hermaphroditic species breed by wrapping their sex organs around each other. If one of said members gets stuck, the slug simply chews it off. What. The. Hell?

9 Quadrupeds. Let's say you're a four-footed animal. Now let's say you get a wound on your back, or an itch, or a bug wandering up there. Tough luck, kid. You probably can't do much about it. Hope there's a low branch around.

10 Narwhal tusk. The unicorn-like protuberance on a male narwhal's head is actually a tooth that erupts through the front of the jaw and keeps on growing, up to 9 feet. Narwhal: "Doc, I have a toothache." Dentist: "Indeed."

link: 10 Worst Evolutionary Designs

Where's Genghis? And Who's Buried in His Tomb?

Eight hundred years after the death of Genghis Khan, ruler of the Mongol Empire, the largest contiguous empire in history, scientists are searching to locate his lost tomb using advanced visualization technologies. The iconic ruler was buried with great secrecy in 1227 in an unmarked grave in Mongolia.

Genghis Khan demanded to be buried without markings, according to the customs of his tribe. After his death, his body was returned to Mongolia to his birthplace in Khentii Aimag, where many assume he is buried somewhere close to the Onon River and the Burkhan Khaldun mountain range. According to legend, the funeral escort executed anyone crossing their path to conceal his burial place, and that a river was diverted over his grave to make it impossible to find (the same manner of burial as the Sumerian King Gilgamesh and Atilla the Hun).

Yu-Min Lin Lin and several colleagues — including Professor Maurizio Seracini, the man behind the search for Leonardo da Vinci's lost "Battle of Anghiari" painting — are hoping to use advanced visualization and analytical technologies available at the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology to pinpoint Khan's tomb and conduct a non-invasive archaeological analysis of the area where he is believed to be buried.

link: Caltech to Zero in on Lost Tomb Of Genghis Khan

Space Elevator Competition

In final proof that sports channels don't know what the hell they're doing, for the last five years NASA and The Spaceward Foundation have been running "The Space Elevator Games" - a competition to build a robot and cable to literally CLIMB INTO SPACE - and TV still shows skateboarding instead. The future is happening, and nobody's watching.

Similar to the X Prize and the Google Lunar Prize, the Space Elevator games are based on offering a big chunk of money to access the incredible inventive potential available outside of established agencies. The games attract university teams of student researchers, the next generation of the field, with a total prize purse of four million dollars. Which is more than you'll get at the average track meet.

link: The Space Elevator Games -Next Big ESPN Series?

The Singularity: After 2020, Your Computer Can Cheat on Your Taxes For You

AI is becoming the stuff of future scifi greats: A robot that can open doors and find electrical outlets to recharge itself. Computer viruses that no one can stop. Predator drones, which, though still controlled remotely by humans, come close to a machine that can kill autonomously.

Real AI effects are closer than you might think, with entirely automated systems producing new scientific results and even holding patents on minor inventions. The key factor in singularity scenarios is the positive-feedback loop of self-improvement: once something is even slightly smarter than humanity, it can start to improve itself or design new intelligences faster than we can leading to an intelligence explosion designed by something that isn't us.

Artificial intelligence will surpass human intelligence after 2020, predicted Vernor Vinge, a world-renowned pioneer in AI, who has warned about the risks and opportunities that an electronic super-intelligence would offer to mankind.

link: NexGen AI -A Threat to Human Civilization?

Dekalb County GA: Checkin' on The Prez

Two DeKalb County police officers have been placed on paid administrative leave after an investigation revealed they ran a background check on President Barack Obama

link: Officers Run Background Check On Obama; Placed On Leave - News Story - WSB Atlanta

Iran: Violence at Neda's Grave; Mousavi Prevented from Leading Prayers

Iranian riot police beat mourners who staged a defiant gathering at a cemetery on Thursday to commemorate protesters killed in post-election violence last month, witnesses said.

Police used sticks, batons and belts on some of the hundreds of people who turned up at the cemetery south of Tehran where the protesters are buried and also forced opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi to leave, witnesses said.

The graveyard became a flashpoint as crowds gathered to mark the 40th day since the death of Neda Agha-Soltan, a young woman who came to symbolise the protest movement against the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Witnesses said about 150 police and some members of the Islamic Basij militia were in and around Behesht-e Zahra cemetery, with a number surrounding the graveyard where Neda is buried.

Witnesses said Mousavi managed to get out of his car and walk up to Neda's grave.

"Mousavi was however not allowed to recite the Koran verses said on such occasions and he was immediately surrounded by anti-riot police who led him to his car," a witness said as people chanted "Ya Hossein! Mir Hossein!".

link: The Raw Story | Iran police 'beat mourners' at cemetery memorial

Chimps Innately Musical -- And Conservative in their Tastes To Boot

Chimpanzees are biologically programmed to appreciate pleasant music.

The discovery comes from experiments showing that an infant chimpanzee prefers to listen to consonant music over dissonant music.

That suggests the apes are born with an innate appreciation of pleasant sounds, say scientists in the journal Primates.

Until now, this was thought to be a universal human trait, but the new finding suggests it evolved in the ancestors of humans and modern apes.

link: BBC - Earth News - Chimps born to appreciate music

Organmeister Gets His: Procul Harum Suit Concluded

Procol Harum organist Matthew Fisher has won his long battle to be recognised as co-writer of the band's hit Whiter Shade of Pale.

link: BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Victory for Whiter Shade organist

Cameroon Program to Aid Street Children

Under a project launched in 2007 the government has helped 119 street children reunite with their families, with 62 of the children returning to school, according to Luc André Bayomock with the Ministry of Social Affairs.

The government's ongoing programme to bring children off the streets requires significant time and resources including skilled social services workers and food and shelter for children during the process, Bayomock said. The Social Affairs Ministry is seeking partnerships with humanitarian agencies and with other ministries to boost these resources, he told IRIN.

link: allAfrica.com: Cameroon: Bringing Street Children Back Home (Page 1 of 1)

Homophobia in Burundi

An April 2009 law that criminalizes homosexual conduct threatens to exacerbate the deplorable treatment of gays and lesbians in Burundi, Human Rights Watch said in a multimedia project published today.

The project, "Forbidden: Institutionalizing Discrimination against Gays and Lesbians in Burundi," consists of printed and online narratives, photos, and voice-recorded testimonies of Burundian gays and lesbians that bring to life the daily struggles faced by the small lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community in Burundi. Members of the community talk about how they have been fired from their jobs, beaten by parents and neighbourhood youth, and evicted from their homes.

link: allAfrica.com: Burundi: Gays And Lesbians Face Increasing Persecution (Page 1 of 1)

5000 Palestinian Kites Break World Record in the Gaza Strip

Thousands of Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip have broken a world record on the number of kites flown simultaneously in the same place, UN officials have said.

More than 5,000 children gathered for the event on a beach near the northern city of Beit Lahiya as part of the Summer Games programme, a UN initiative organised to restore hope and normality to the war-torn territory.

Al Jazeera's Ayman Mohyeldin, reporting from Gaza, said the aim was to get about 5,000 kites up in the air to break a previous Guinness world record.

link: Al Jazeera English - Middle East - Gaza kids 'hit kite-flying record'

In Memoriam Sam Phillips, Who Died on This Day in 2003

2003. Sam Phillips, founder of SUN Records died in Memphis, TN, USA. Age: 80 Sam Phillips - Wikipedia

link: Google Reader (607)

Ray Carver Unbound?

James Campbell writes:

For many years, Gallagher, in partnership with William L. Stull and Maureen P. Carroll, the editors of Collected Stories, has been campaigning to get the un-Lished version of What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, which they have called Beginners (the original name of the title story), into print. In Gallagher’s view, Beginners represents the authentic Carver, the writer she knew and encouraged in the composition of his next book of stories, Cathedral (1983), which displays more abundant narrative talents than Carver’s readership had come to expect.

continue reading the extensive essay at the link: Raymond Carver reviewed by James Campbell TLS

Book Review: Thousands of Broadways

Jessa Crispin writes:

Americans love the myth of the small town, while the reality is a little harder to come by. Small town culture is actually in decline, which maybe explains the renewed nostalgia. We are an increasingly urban species. Timothy Clack states in Ancestral Roots that by 2020, 60 percent of the Earth's population will live in cities. We crowd together in our big city centers while the small towns face dwindling populations and increasingly destitute main streets. Kids who grow up in small towns, myself included, talk of "getting out" and "escaping." Those left burdened with running the family farm or trapped by poverty or bad luck are looked upon with pity. When couples decide they'd like a slower way of life these days, they don't move to the small towns — they move to a suburb, many of which try to recreate the small town ideal. Unsuccessfully. The lawns might look the same, but while small towns often painfully feel like they're sealed off from the outside world, suburbs exist in relation to the city. You meet your needs — food, work, entertainment — in the city and retreat to your suburban hideaway. This is why you hear people who live in the Chicago suburbs referring not to "Chicago" or "the city" but to "downtown."

link: The Smart Set: Town Crier - July 22, 2009

Follow the -- errr -- Dancing Sheep?

How To Disappear Completely.

New Species: The Barefaced Bulbul

Despite the ever-spreading imprint of humanity on this small planet, scientists keep discovering new species, even among relatively conspicuous classes of vertebrates like mammals and birds. The latest example is the barefaced bulbul, a songbird with a nearly bald head found in a remote region of Laos by biologists from the Wildlife Conservation Society and University of Melbourne

link: Meet the Barefaced Bulbul - Dot Earth Blog - NYTimes.com

Television is Your Own Personal Flat-Faced Tunable Buddy

Fionnuala Butler and Cynthia Pickett write:

Stomach growling, but have no time for a meal? A snack will do. Drowsy and unable to concentrate? A short nap can be reviving when a good night’s rest is unavailable. But what should you do when you are alone and feeling lonely?

New psychological research suggests that loneliness can be alleviated by simply turning on your favorite TV show. In the same way that a snack can satiate hunger in lieu of a meal, it seems that watching favorite TV shows can provide the experience of belonging without a true interpersonal interaction.

link: Imaginary Friends: Scientific American