map_of_humanity.jpg (JPEG Image, 2587x1728 pixels) - Scaled (38%)
Recent Posts
Friday, July 3, 2009
"Magical Soul of Popular Spain": Photography of Cristina Garcia Rodero
Cristina Garcia Rodero writes:
I tried to photograph the mysterious, true and magical soul of popular Spain in all its passion, love, humor, tenderness, rage, pain, in all its truth; and the fullest and most intense moments in the lives of these characters as simple as they are irresistible, with all their inner strength, as a personal challenge that gave me strength and understanding and in which I invested all my heart. – Cristina Garcia Rodero
link: A new member of Magnum, Cristina Garcia Rodero | [EV +/-] Exposure Compensation
Pragmatic Existentialism: Gotcher Husband AND Your Soul
ADELAIDE schoolteacher Ginetta Rossi remembers feeling nauseous when told by authorities that she no longer officially existed.
Rossi, a primary school teacher of 20 years, was renewing her teacher's registration in Adelaide when she discovered that both her identity and her career qualifications had been stolen.
"They told me that their teaching records showed Ginetta Rossi had moved to Victoria the previous year," Rossi recalls.
"I told them I was Ginetta Rossi but they wouldn't believe me."
To make matters worse, when Rossi investigated further, she found that the woman who stole her identity was Renai Brochard, the partner of her former husband.
"I felt sick," says Rossi, who has agreed to speak publicly about her case for the first time.
"It would have been bad enough for someone off the street to steal my identity but this was my ex-husband's partner.
"I thought, 'who is going to believe me?"'
link: The sick feeling of finding out you don't exist | The Australian
O Arizona: Count Your Chickens
A chicken trying to cross Interstate 17 just south of the Carefree Highway backed up northbound traffic for over an hour Friday morning, the Arizona Department of Public Safety said.
DPS units were finally able to conduct a traffic break and retrieve the chicken by about 11:40 a.m.
Traffic was backed up from the Carefree Highway to the junction of S.R. 101 partially due to the incident, officers said. Traffic is now clearing out in the area.
link: Chicken To Blame For I-17 Backup - Phoenix News Story - KPHO Phoenix
Evil Comic Book Villiain from Before the Flood: SuperRacist
A new specimen from Ethan Persoff's "Comics with Problems" archives: Early NAACP Comic Book History - Your Future Rests In Your Hands and The Street Where You Live (1960 and 1964)
link: NAACP comic from early 1960s - Boing Boing
The Devil Lives in Riga: Pledge your Soul for a Loan
RIGA (Reuters Life!) - Ready to give your soul for a loan in these difficult economic times? In Latvia, where the crisis has raged more than in the rest of the European Union, you can.
Such a deal is being offered by the Kontora loan company, whose public face is Viktor Mirosiichenko, 34.
Clients have to sign a contract, with the words "Agreement" in bold letters at the top. The client agrees to the collateral, "that is, my immortal soul."
Mirosiichenko said his company would not employ debt collectors to get its money back if people refused to repay, and promised no physical violence. Signatories only have to give their first name and do not show any documents.
"If they don't give it back, what can you do? They won't have a soul, that's all," he told Reuters in a basement office, with one desk, a computer and three chairs.
link: Would you pledge your soul as loan collateral? | Lifestyle | Reuters
Bees v. Hornets: If You Could Last 10 Minutes Inside a Giant Bee Ball, Raise Your Hand
Honeybee hordes use two weapons - heat and carbon dioxide - to kill their natural enemies, giant hornets.
Japanese honeybees form "bee balls" - mobbing and smothering the predators.
This has previously been referred to as "heat-balling", but a study has now shown that carbon dioxide also plays a role in its lethal effectiveness.
In the journal Naturwissenschaften, the scientists describe how hornets are killed within 10 minutes when they are trapped inside a ball of bees.
Japanese giant hornets, which can be up to 5cm long, are voracious predators that can devastate bees' nests and consume their larvae.
link: BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | Honeybee mobs overpower hornets
The Coldest Object in Space: Planck Orbiting Observatory
Europe's Planck observatory has reached its operating temperature, making it the coldest object in space.
The observatory's detectors have been chilled to a staggering minus 273.05C - just a tenth of a degree above what scientists term "absolute zero."
Launched in May, Planck will survey the "oldest light" in the Universe.
Its detectors, or bolometers, should see detail in this radiation that offers new insights into the age, contents and evolution of the cosmos.
link: BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | Planck achieves ultra-cold state
The Guardian Would Prefer that Women Keep their Suffering to Themselves
Amanda Fortini writes:
This points to the most galling aspect of the Guardian article: its paternalism and reductionism. Freeman not only frets about the women who write confessional journalism, but she also frets about the women who consume it. These are “vulnerable readers” for whom sentiments about disordered eating “are surely just as dangerous and potentially influential as the photos of the skinny models the journalist professes to abhor,” to quote Freeman. Journalism of this stripe supposedly makes women appear “self-hating” and “self-obsessed.” But why should a female journalist writing an essay be required “to open a window into what life is like for women today?” Why can’t she write a singular account of herself, and expect that readers will recognize it as such? Why not trust that they will perceive what is useful or interesting or even damning about an article? How boring if all pieces of writing were made to meet some standard of exemplary behavior and thought. I say, if some women want to write about their miseries, let them. And let readers judge for themselves.
link: Boobs, bulimia and breakups - Broadsheet - Salon.com
No Consensus on Palin's Motives for Resigning
A Republican source close to her political team told CNN's John King that it was a "calculation" she made that "it was time to move on." The governor's "book deal and other issues" were "causing a lot of friction" in her home state, the source said, adding that he believes she is "mapping out a path to 2012."
Following Palin's announcement, the Democratic Nationanl Committee blasted what it called her "bizarre behavior."
"Either Sarah Palin is leaving the people of Alaska high and dry to pursue her long shot national political ambitions or she simply can't handle the job now that her popularity has dimmed and oil revenues are down," DNC spokesman Brad Woodhouse said.
link: Palin stepping down this month - CNN.com
Report from Alaska: Palin to Step Down
Gov. Sarah Palin will resign her office in a few weeks, she said during a news conference at her Wasilla home Friday morning.
Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell will be inaugurated at the Governor's Picnic at Pioneer Park in Fairbanks on Saturday, July 25, Palin said.
There was no immediate word as to why she will resign, though speculation has been rampant that the former vice presidential candidate is gearing up for a run at the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.
link: Gov. Sarah Palin to resign her office - KTUU.com | Alaska's news and information source |
Palin Resigns Governorship
Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK), the unsuccessful 2008 nominee of the Republican Party for Vice President, has resigned her office, effective at the end of the month.
Initial reports had been that she simply wasn't going to run for a second term in 2010, seemingly setting up a 2012 campaign for the White House. But this sure is something...
link: In Big Shocker, Palin Resigns As Governor | TPMDC
Book Review: The Rise and Fall of Communism, by Archie Brown
Academics pumped out scholarly treatises on the theory and practice of Marxism-Leninism by the yard, and debated the Soviet system's merits and flaws feverishly. Now all those copies of "The Lenin Anthology" and Leszek Kolakowski's "Main Currents in Marxism" are moldering in the garages of former grad students, and our collective memory of the great 20th-century struggle between capitalism and Communism is a series of clichés and blurry newsreel images: Stalin and FDR guffawing as they carve up the postwar world, Kennedy and Khrushchev daring each other to push the button, Soviet tanks rumbling through the streets of Prague, Reagan instructing Gorbachev to "Tear down this wall!"
Archie Brown's whopping study, "The Rise and Fall of Communism," which is modest in tone but comprehensive in scholarship, marks an important effort to dig past those iconic stereotypes and painful memories and figure out what the hell was going on in that 75-year-long failed experiment called Communism. This is still an exceptionally difficult subject for Americans to confront with any clarity, I think. Our political life remains haunted in peculiar ways by the specter of Communism, which has become (to mix metaphors) an all-purpose ideological cudgel to use against one's enemies.
link: The un-American way of life | Salon Books
When I Grow Up I Want To Be A Prison Architect: "Sportsdomes, Not Cages"
"I like to call them Sportdomes, not cages," says prison architect Willem Van der Sluis. Indeed, his unusual 2007 project in the Zaandam industrial zone in the Netherlands consists of conjoined geodesic domes that don't look like cages at all. But, these spaces, designed for playing sports, prevent soccer or basketball players from escaping; the users are inmates.
link: Domecage Prison Yards
W.M. Freeny Co., Washington DC, @1920
Washington, D.C., circa 1920. "W.M. Freeny Co., front." The W.M. Freeny men's clothing store on 14th Street. National Photo Co. glass negative.
link: W.M. Freeny: 1920 | Shorpy Photo Archive
Phoenix Lander Observes Snow on Mars
For starters, it's clear that there's significant subsurface ice in the area where Phoenix operated. One trench, dubbed "Snow White" by mission controllers, had a clear layer of ice within it, and others had slightly more diffuse signs. The white chunks that were observed sublimating from a trench were confirmed to be ice by an onboard experiment that noticed an endothermic transition occurring at about 2°C, after which its instruments picked up indications of water vapor.
Beyond confirming the presence of water, various instruments gave some indication of what that water was doing. Electrical conductivity in soil samples increased at night, suggesting that the water sublimated off in the sunlight and was returning to the Martian soil at night. The cameras detected clouds and low-lying fog, indicating that the water was taking part in normal atmospheric processes; these were forming at approximately -65°C, much too warm for them to be comprised of frozen carbon dioxide.
But the really amazing data came from the LIDAR instrument, which was able to track the formation of the clouds at the atmosphere's boundary layer. Cloud formation became more pronounced as the summer gradually faded and the atmosphere cooled at night, and the scientists were eventually able to detect cirrus-like clouds as they dropped "tilted vertical sheets" of ice particles back to the surface of the planet. In short, they watched it snow.
link: Snowfall on Mars? NASA's Phoenix Lander recorded it - Ars Technica
Beyond confirming the presence of water, various instruments gave some indication of what that water was doing. Electrical conductivity in soil samples increased at night, suggesting that the water sublimated off in the sunlight and was returning to the Martian soil at night. The cameras detected clouds and low-lying fog, indicating that the water was taking part in normal atmospheric processes; these were forming at approximately -65°C, much too warm for them to be comprised of frozen carbon dioxide.
But the really amazing data came from the LIDAR instrument, which was able to track the formation of the clouds at the atmosphere's boundary layer. Cloud formation became more pronounced as the summer gradually faded and the atmosphere cooled at night, and the scientists were eventually able to detect cirrus-like clouds as they dropped "tilted vertical sheets" of ice particles back to the surface of the planet. In short, they watched it snow.
link: Snowfall on Mars? NASA's Phoenix Lander recorded it - Ars Technica
Mood in Southern Afghanistan: There Goes the Neighborhood
The mood of the Afghan people has tipped into a popular revolt in some parts of southern Afghanistan, presenting incoming American forces with an even harder job than expected in reversing military losses to the Taliban and winning over the population.
Villagers in some districts have taken up arms against foreign troops to protect their homes or in anger after losing relatives in airstrikes, several community representatives interviewed said. Others have been moved to join the insurgents out of poverty or simply because the Taliban’s influence is so pervasive here.
link: U.S. Faces Resentment in Afghan Region - NYTimes.com
Fructose and Memory Impairment: Where'd I Put the Splenda?
Neuroscientist Marise B. Parent of Georgia State University and her col leagues fed 11 adolescent rats a diet in which fructose supplied 60 percent of the calories. For 10 other rats, cornstarch took the place of the sweetener. The scientists trained the rats to find a submerged platform in a pool, with the help of surrounding cues.
Two days after the training ended, Parent’s group removed the pool’s platform and recorded where the rats—now adults—swam. Whereas the control group spent most of its time around the platform’s old location, the fructose-fed rats visited this area significantly less often. “They can learn” the platform’s location, Parent notes, “but they just can’t remember it for long periods.”
link: How Fructose Impairs the Memory: Scientific American
Two days after the training ended, Parent’s group removed the pool’s platform and recorded where the rats—now adults—swam. Whereas the control group spent most of its time around the platform’s old location, the fructose-fed rats visited this area significantly less often. “They can learn” the platform’s location, Parent notes, “but they just can’t remember it for long periods.”
link: How Fructose Impairs the Memory: Scientific American
California Budget: Oddsmakers Say 50-50 Chance; Place Your Bets Now, Win an IOU
Top California lawmakers raised hope on Thursday that an elusive budget deal could be at hand, as officials began issuing billions of dollars in "IOUs" to avoid a cash crisis on the second day of a new fiscal year without an agreement to balance the state's books.
"I think there is at least a 50-50 chance that we'll find a solution that is acceptable to all parties within a week," Assembly Republican Leader Sam Blakeslee said after the state Senate's top Democrat said Democrats would no longer hold out for tax increases as part of a budget agreement.
link: Hope for California budget deal as IOUs planned | U.S. | Reuters
Obama Admin Rolls Out New Policies for Illegal Workers
Unlike the approach of the Bush administration, which brought criminal charges in its final two years against many illegal immigrant workers, the new effort makes broader use of fines and other civil sanctions, federal officials said Thursday.
Federal agents will concentrate on businesses employing large numbers of workers suspected of being illegal immigrants, the officials said, and will reserve tough criminal charges mostly for employers who serially hire illegal immigrants and engage in wage and labor violations.
“These actions underscore our commitment to targeting employers that cultivate illegal work forces by knowingly hiring and exploiting illegal workers,” said Matt Chandler, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security.
link: U.S. Shifts Strategy on Illicit Work by Immigrants - NYTimes.com
British Embassy Staff "Face Trial" in Iran
A top Iranian cleric said Friday some of the arrested employees from the British Embassy in Tehran would be put on trial, Iranian Students News Agency reported.
The employees have been accused of helping to incite some of the post-election protests that sweep through Iran.
The British Foreign Office in London reacted strongly to the statement Friday.
"We are very concerned by these reports and are investigating. Allegations that our staff were involved in fomenting unrest are wholly without foundation.
link: Report: UK embassy staff in Iran 'face trial' - CNN.com
