Fine Art Photos of People by Mark Hemmings
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Tuesday, July 14, 2009
It's NOT a Cannibal, It's an Anthropophagite: Robot Could Eat Soylent Green
A Maryland company under contract to the Pentagon is working on a steam-powered robot that would fuel itself by gobbling up whatever organic material it can find — grass, wood, old furniture, even dead bodies.
Robotic Technology Inc.'s Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot — that's right, "EATR" — "can find, ingest, and extract energy from biomass in the environment (and other organically-based energy sources), as well as use conventional and alternative fuels (such as gasoline, heavy fuel, kerosene, diesel, propane, coal, cooking oil, and solar) when suitable," reads the company's Web site.
Mali
Abbie Trayler-Smith writes:
“A dark wind is coming” says El Mehdi, our local Tuareg elephant expert and as I turn around the sky is literally coming at us. Within minutes we are lost in a sea of dust, the world has morphed into an orange, hazy whirlwind and I feel as if I’ve just been transported onto the set of a science fiction movie.
link: They call it mellow yellow – Timothy Allen. Photographer, Human Planet
Ceramic Knives a la Obsidiian
New York designer Matthias Kaeding has designed a pair of ceramic cooking knives inspired by Stone Age tools.
The NeoLithic project is the result of Kaeding’s research into archaic forms and low-tech design.
Kaeding claims the caveman-inspired knives are just as good at chopping, cutting, scraping, mincing and scooping as contemporary knives.
Obama's Coalition Holds Up Through Rough Times
An examination of recent Gallup Poll data shows that Americans’ opinions about the job Barack Obama is doing as president closely mirror the results of the 2008 election. The President's 58% approval rating in the July 6-12 Gallup Poll is slightly higher than the 53% share of the vote that he received last November, but his approval rating among various demographic groups correlates almost perfectly with his vote share among the same groups.
link: Democratic Strategist
O Arizona: Senator Kyl, Tear Down That Stimulus Money Wall
The Obama administration is firing back at Sen. Jon Kyl for calling for an end to economic stimulus spending, and it's aiming where it hurts the most -- at home in Arizona.
The White House on Tuesday released letters from four cabinet secretaries to Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, a Republican, citing Kyl's comments and outlining transportation, housing, Indian education and other projects in his home state they said would be eliminated if the senator has his way.
Kyl, the No. 2 Senate GOP leader, has said the stimulus spending hasn't succeeded in boosting the economy and that it's adding to the deficit. He's suggested on his Senate Web site and in interviews that spending not already allocated be halted.
Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, one of two Republicans in Obama's cabinet, made no attempt to conceal his needling.
Kyl "publicly questioned whether the stimulus is working and stated that he wants to cancel projects that aren't presently under way," LaHood wrote Brewer. "If you prefer to forfeit the money we are making available to your state, as Senator Kyl suggests, please let me know."
Responding to the letters, Kyl charged in a statement that the White House was resorting "to coordinated political attacks with the Democratic National Committee and the politicization of departments of government by using cabinet secretaries to issue thinly veiled threats to the governor and the people of Arizona." He also urged the president to "consider whether the unallocated stimulus money could be put to better use."
LaHood noted in his letter that at least $520.9 million of the $48 billion for transportation projects under the economic recovery act are intended for Arizona projects, including transit projects in Phoenix.
link: White House Turns Up Heat On Kyl - Phoenix News Story - KPHO Phoenix
Spider Pizza Does Not Look Tasty Even Disregarding The Spider
Spider pizza was featured on a Japanese TV show recently — it's a real dish that you can order at a pizzeria in Okinawa, owned by the guy who runs an association that promotes insect-eating. I bet if you can get over your arachnophobia it's crunchy and delicious. He makes beetle pizza, too.
Implantation Device for OCD Treatment Approved
Medtronic Inc said on Tuesday it received regulatory approval in Europe for an implantable brain stimulator to treat patients with severe obsessive-compulsive disorder.
The Minneapolis-based company said the approval marks the first time a deep brain stimulation device has gained CE Mark approval for treatment of a psychiatric disorder.
The battery-powered device, implanted near the collar bone or abdomen and connected by wire to electrodes placed in the brain, received U.S. approval in February through a humanitarian device exemption. The designation allows treatment of a condition affecting fewer than 4,000 people a year.
link: Medtronic brain device for OCD approved in Europe | Science | Reuters
Khmer Rouge Interrogator's "Only Regret"
Ed Madra writes;
A former interrogator at the Khmer Rouge's notorious S-21 prison on Tuesday expressed no remorse for the deaths of thousands of Cambodians who he said had all committed crimes.
Appearing as a prosecution witness in the trial of Duch, Pol Pot's head jailor, Mam Nay, also known as Chan, denied any part in torture or killings of prisoners and blamed the United States and Vietnam for undermining his country.
An estimated 1.7 million people died during the Khmer Rouge's four-year "killing fields" reign of terror, which ended when Vietnamese forces invaded in 1979.
Asked by the judge if he regretted what happened at the Tuol Sleng prison, where more than 14,000 men, women and children were killed, Chan showed no remorse.
"My only regret was our country was invaded," he told the joint Cambodian-U.N. tribunal. "Frankly speaking, the Americans invaded us then Vietnam invaded us. That is my regret."
link: Khmer Rouge interrogator says no regrets about deaths | International | Reuters
A Life as Exhibit
The Museum of Modern Art’s multistory atrium seems designed to hold monuments. But at the moment it’s filled with the distinctly ungrand contents of one person’s everyday life.
The person is, or was, Zhao Xiangyuan. She was born in China in 1938 and died in Beijing in January. For nearly 60 years she lived in the city with her husband and two children in a tiny house crammed with domestic odds and ends — clothes, books, kitchen utensils, toiletries, school supplies, shopping bags, rice bowls, dolls — which were used, then recycled, then indiscriminately hoarded. Now the entire cache, every odd button and ballpoint pen, is at MoMA, along with Ms. Zhao’s fridge and bed.
How did it get here? Ms. Zhao was the mother of the artist Song Dong, one of the most inventive figures in contemporary Chinese art. He is often referred to as a Conceptualist, meaning an artist who trades as much in ideas as in materials. And it was he who had the idea of turning the contents of his mother’s home, which was also his childhood home, into the installation titled “Waste Not.” It is at once a record of a life, a history of a half-century of Chinese vernacular culture and a symbolic archive of impermanence.
Rehearsal
Who knew the Fred French Building was home to so many dance studios in 1928?
link: New York in Black and White - Page 11 - Wired New York Forum
Charlie the Cab Driver, Meet Sal the Grocer
Shorpy comment of the day: "My great-grandfather was a grocer in the Bronx at this time. I'm not sure if he had a shop like this or if he was more of a distributor to larger markets but this photo made me think of stories my grandma used to tell. Especially the title 'Sal the Grocer.' She would describe people in terms like that: 'Charlie the Cab Driver,' 'Georgie the Milkman' etc." - Read more of the comment by Anonymous Tipster on Sal the Grocer: 1936
link: Anonymous the tipster - Vintagraph -
Rove on Transparency
Think Progress reports:
ROVE: Look, it’s interesting. The CIA briefed Congress to this, I guess, in June. And the Congress immediately leaks it. That, itself is, a violation, I think, of several statutes and indicative of why it is so dangerous to give Congress information.
To clarify, Congress did not “leak” details of the secret program. The Wall Street Journal cited “former intelligence officials familiar with the matter” in its report. But Rove’s comment seems to confirm the Bush administration’s motives for routinely attempting to hide information from Congress.
Bumper Crop of Moon Trees
Don't run for the plant dictionary yet because they won't be in it. Moon trees is the name given to the trees grown from seeds that were taken to the moon on the Apollo 14 mission in 1971.
Astronaut Stuart Roosa had worked for the U.S. Forest Service and was passionately interested in trees. Each astronaut was allowed to take something personal, so he took 500 tree seeds. If Alan Shepard could play golf on the moon, what's a few hundred seeds by comparison? Roosa wanted to see what would happen to them in a zero-gravity environment.
He took 5 species of tree seeds with him: the Loblolly Pine, Sycamore, Sweetgum, Redwood, and Douglas Fir. He wanted to figure out how to "bridge the gap between space science and environmental science."
The seeds circled the moon 34 times. Scientists were curious as to whether the seeds would germinate and the resultant trees would look normal.
link: Moon Trees Grow Across the U.S. : TreeHugger
Longest Insect Migration
Matt Walker writes:
Every year, millions of dragonflies fly thousands of kilometres across the sea from southern India to Africa.
So says a biologist in the Maldives, who claims to have discovered the longest migration of any insect.
If confirmed, the mass exodus would be the first known insect migration across open ocean water.
It would also dwarf the famous trip taken each year by Monarch butterflies, which fly just half the distance across the Americas.
link: BBC - Earth News - Longest insect migration revealed
History of Violence in Columbia "Horrific"
Colombia’s former militia groups have acknowledged killing 21,000 people in the past 22 years, an Attorney General’s Office report obtained Monday by Efe shows.
The report was compiled by the AG’s office’s Justice and Peace Unit, which is responsible for gathering the statements of the 31,000 militiamen who demobilized in the 2003-2007 peace process.
The unit’s director, Luis Gonzalez, told Efe that as of June 16, “21,000 murders have been confessed to by the paramilitaries. It’s horrific.”
What lies ahead is even more “horrendous” because many killings have still not been confessed to, Gonzalez said.
“We documented around 246,000 criminal offenses in the regions where there was a presence” of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC, militia federation, the official said.
Peruvian Iron Miners Strike
More than 1,000 miners working for Shougang Hierro Peru, the country’s only iron ore-producing firm, on Monday began an open-ended strike demanding pay hikes, union officials told Efe.
The workers at the firm, a subsidiary of China’s state-run Shougang Group, decided to stage the strike to demand, in general terms, an increase of between 18 and 27 percent in their salaries, which range from 34 to 54 soles ($11 to $18) per day.
link: Latin American Herald Tribune - Over 1,000 Miners Strike in Peru
Nigeria: Amnesty for Rebel Leader
The Nigerian government has granted amnesty to one of the country's main rebel leaders, Henry Okah. Okah had been held for more than a year on charges of treason. He was said to be one of the heads of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend), but on leaving jail denied he was the leader.
Mend claims to be fighting for a fairer distribution of Nigeria's oil wealth. The release came hours after it launched a deadly attack in Lagos.
Okah was arrested in Angola in 2007 and charged with treason and gun-running charges. His release has been a key demand of his group.
link: AfricaNews - Nigeria grants amnesty to rebel leader - Articles
Neurodynamics of Honesty
A new study of the cognitive processes involved with honesty suggests that truthfulness depends more on absence of temptation than active resistance to temptation.
Using neuroimaging, psychologists looked at the brain activity of people given the chance to gain money dishonestly by lying and found that honest people showed no additional neural activity when telling the truth, implying that extra cognitive processes were not necessary to choose honesty. However, those individuals who behaved dishonestly, even when telling the truth, showed additional activity in brain regions that involve control and attention.
The study is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and was led by Joshua Greene, assistant professor of psychology in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University, along with Joe Paxton, a graduate student in psychology.
“Being honest is not so much a matter of exercising willpower as it is being disposed to behave honestly in a more effortless kind of way,” says Greene. “This may not be true for all situations, but it seems to be true for at least this situation.”
Torture Photos, Torture Policy
The Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) of Australia revealed several of these photographs, video of the head slamming, and video of prisoners forced to masturbate, as part of a news report broadcast in 2006. But the full collection has not been made available to the public or to a special prosecutor, although it was shown to members of Congress in 2004. When these photos are eventually made public, I encourage you to take a good look at them. After you get over feeling ill, it might be appropriate to consider Congress' past 5 years of inaction. You'll be able to feel sick all over again.
link: Disinfo.com - I've Seen 1,200 Torture Photos
Ladies and Gents With and Without False Moustaches
Circa 1890. "Frances Benjamin Johnston (right), full-length self-portrait dressed as a man with false mustache," posed with two similarly cross-dressing friends. The "lady" is a gent identified in a few other FBJ photos as the illustrator Mills Thompson. Albumen print by Frances Benjamin Johnston.
link: Reverso: 1890 | Shorpy Photo Archive
New Coilhouse Cover
Photography: Gustavo Lopez Mañas Metal Couture & Clothes: Manuel Albarran Stylist: Angel Cabezuelo Hair: Jesus Martos, “Polo Pelo” Makeup: Samanta Falcone Photographer Assistant: Alessia Bombaci Post-production: Gustavo Lopez Mañas Models: Danae Cuesta, Samanta Falcone Posted by Coilhouse on July 13th, 2009 Filed under Coilhouse
link: Coilhouse » Blog Archive » Coilhouse Issue 03 Cover Revealed!
It's Biblical, It's Political: Euphrates Running Out of Water
Campbell Robertson writes:
Throughout the marshes, the reed gatherers, standing on land they once floated over, cry out to visitors in a passing boat.
“Maaku mai!” they shout, holding up their rusty sickles. “There is no water!”
The Euphrates is drying up. Strangled by the water policies of Iraq’s neighbors, Turkey and Syria; a two-year drought; and years of misuse by Iraq and its farmers, the river is significantly smaller than it was just a few years ago. Some officials worry that it could soon be half of what it is now.
The shrinking of the Euphrates, a river so crucial to the birth of civilization that the Book of Revelation prophesied its drying up as a sign of the end times, has decimated farms along its banks, has left fishermen impoverished and has depleted riverside towns as farmers flee to the cities looking for work.
link: Iraq Suffers as the Euphrates River Dwindles - NYTimes.com
Turkey to China: Stop the Genocide--Armenians to Turkey: Did you Say "Genocide"?
China on Tuesday dismissed Turkey's accusation of genocide in its northwestern Muslim region of Xinjiang, where rioting killed 184 people, mostly majority Han Chinese.
In Xinjiang's worst ethnic violence in decades, Uighurs on July 5 attacked Han in the regional capital Urumqi after police tried to break up a protest against fatal attacks on Uighur workers at a factory in south China.
link: China dismisses accusation of Xinjiang genocide | International | Reuters
The Rise of Robo-Oz
Australia has launched a multi-million dollar competition to build a new generation of military robots.
The winning design must help soldiers fight by remote control in urban combat zones, defence officials say.
link: BBC NEWS | Technology | Australia seeks new army robots
Moon Deniers
Forty years after men first touched the lifeless dirt of the Moon — and they did. Really. Honest. — polling consistently suggests that some 6 percent of Americans believe the landings were faked and could not have happened. The series of landings, one of the greatest gambles of the human race, was an elaborate hoax developed to raise national pride, many among them insist.
They examine photos from the missions for signs of studio fakery, and claim to be able to tell that the American flag was waving in what was supposed to be the vacuum of space. They overstate the health risks of traveling through the radiation belts that girdle our planet; they understate the technological prowess of the American space program; and they cry murder behind every death in the program, linking them to an overall conspiracy.
link: The Vocal Minority - Moon Landing Was a Hoax - NYTimes.com
The Moon is a Homely Mistress
Dennis Overbye writes:
Denton S. Ebel, a rambling, friendly geologist, led me to a display in the hall of meteorites, where three Moon rocks were encased in cubes of plastic. They were about the size of walnuts. The first lesson you learn about Moon rocks is that nobody ever touches them.
The most amazing thing about these rocks was that they looked just like rocks. They weren’t green or twisted in weird shapes or glowing. Two of them were basalts. They looked like gray sponges, the rocks that form ocean basins and that you might pick up in Hawaii or Iceland without thinking twice.
But that’s the point: the Moon rocks look like home because they are home. The Moon, according to theory, was created when a Mars-size object collided with the primordial Earth some 4.5 billion years ago, throwing out a huge cloud of debris, a theory supported by isotopic analysis of the Moon rocks.
link: Essay - 40 Years on, Reflections in a Sliver of the Moon - NYTimes.com
Dept. of Who will Witness the Witnesses? It's For the Birds
A webcam in Szentgotthárd, Hungary captured this curious bird looking into the camera. The webcam is set to shoot only one frame every minute, so what are the chances?
link: accidental mysteries: What’s up?
Geley: Materialization
Gustave Geley. Materialization of a Woman's Face Produced by the Medium Eva C.
link: adski_kafeteri: Gustave Geley. Materialization of a Woman's Face Produced by the Medium Eva C.
