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Sunday, August 2, 2009
Who's Taking Bets on the Existence of a Poison-Spitting, Lightning-Farting Mongolian Worm?
Journalist hunts for acid-spitting Mongolian death worm | News.com.au Top stories | News.com.au
ARMED with explosives, two men are heading to Mongolia's desert to find the fabled acid-spitting and lightning-throwing Mongolian death worm.
The worm- allegedly found in the country's Gobi Desert- has never been documented but locals strongly believe it exists.
The worm- about 1.5m long- apparently jumps out of the sand and kills people by spitting concentrated acid or shooting lightning from its rectum over long distances.
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Government Considers Locations for an All-Purpose "Terrorist" Detention Center/Court
Michigan prison may hold Guantanamo Bay detainees | Freep.com | Detroit Free Press
Sen. Carl Levin confirmed today that Obama administration officials are considering the soon-to-be-closed maximum security prison in Standish as one of several possible locations to hold suspected terrorists now being detained at the much-maligned Guantanamo Bay camp in Cuba.
A White House official said no decisions have been made about how to house terror suspects in the United States once Guantanamo closes in January and declined to comment on whether the Standish prison -- marked for closure in a recent round of consolidations and budget cuts by Gov. Jennifer Granholm -- was under consideration.
The Associated Press reported today that Standish and its 604 beds in a maximum security setting was being considered as was the 134-year-old military penitentiary at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. The AP cited several senior level U.S. officials as its sources; Levin, a Michigan Democrat, said through his office today that he had heard Standish was a consideration.
The senator said through his spokeswoman that such a plan should be considered -- as a means toward keeping jobs in the state which would otherwise be lost -- if state and local officials are supportive.
The governor’s office did not immediately respond to the report.
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Cottage Industry Farm Trucks from Thailand
Incredible Thai Etan Trucks - Boing Boing
Jason Torchinsky writes:
I've been fascinated by these for quite a while, and I'm gathering information on them for a future book project: "These" and "them" are Thai Edan trucks-- possibly the only cottage-industry motor vehicles in the world.
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Would You Put 45-Million-Year-Old Yeast In Your Mouth? Here, Have A Beer
Gallery: The Making of a Prehistoric Brew | Wired Science | Wired.com
This isn’t your dad’s beer. Or even your grandpa’s. It’s your distant prehistoric mammalian ancestor’s. And you’ve never tasted anything quite like it.
There are only four ingredients in most beer: Malted barley, water, hops and yeast. But on the banks of northern California’s Russian River, Stumptown Brewery’s Peter Hackett is cooking up a different kind of brew. His unique ale is made with a special ingredient: 45-million year old Saccharomyces cerevisiae (aka brewer’s yeast) rescued from a piece of amber formed during the Eocene epoch and reanimated in the lab of microbiologist Raul Cano.
The single-celled yeast, unsurprisingly robust for something that has lived 45 million years in dormancy, is shockingly good at making beer, though it’s not without its quirks. After all, modern brewer’s yeast has evolved in the anaerobic environment of a fermentation tank, while the ancient yeast hasn’t had the benefit of adapting to the harsh world inflicted by beer makers.
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Complexities of Intellectual/Artistic Ownership: When the Song Gets Played, Who Gets Paid?
Artists hope bill will make radio stations pay - Entertainment News, Music News, Media - Variety
When the Senate Judiciary Committee convenes Aug. 4, it will take up an issue that has emotions running high, where lobbying has sunk into innuendo, personal attacks and racial politics, and where the economic future of giant industries is at stake.
No, it's not about healthcare reform.
The dispute centers on a bill that would require radio stations to pay artists when songs are played over the airwaves.
Hundreds of millions of dollars each year could be at play, so the debate over details of the bill has been fierce. But those battles pale in comparison to the PR methods used to fight for or against it.
Adding a sense of urgency to the war is the fact that the two combatants -- diskeries and radio stations -- are megabucks operations suffering from plummeting returns.
The bill has long been a dream of singers, musicians and record labels, but long opposed by broadcasters.
Proponents have pulled out the big guns, including the nearly deified music vet Tony Bennett.
Bennett performed on the Hill, proclaiming that radio stations "don't want to give up one penny." He's just one of the many stars to appear at press conferences and rallies on behalf of MusicFIRST, the coalition of musicians and performers' orgs, record labels and unions.
The NAACP passed a resolution at its annual convention on July 14 that characterized the bill as the "civil rights for musicians act," while praising the bill's chief sponsor in the House, Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), and chiding his critics.
The org said the bill is about "ending the exploitation of African-American musicians and paying them a fair wage for their work."
The bill's supporters characterize it as correcting an inequity that has long existed: Radio stations pay songwriters, but not performers, when their music is played.
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Your Worst Culinary Nightmare?
Newest Fair Food: Deep-Fried Coca-Cola - Food News Story - WFTV Orlando
DALLAS -- There are fried Twinkies and even fried candy bars.
Now, vendor Abel Gonzales Jr. has come up with a new artery-clogging concoction for the State Fair of Texas. It's fried Coke.
Gonzales deep-fries Coca-Cola-flavored batter. He then drizzles Coke fountain syrup on it. The fried Coke is topped with whipped cream, cinnamon sugar and a cherry. Gonzales said the fried Coke came about just from thinking aloud.
Gonzales' diet-buster wins the creativity honor at the second-annual Big Tex Choice Awards Contest.
Judges for the contest chose Shirley London's Fried Praline Perfection as the tastiest fried delicacy.
The two won out among 26 entries such as fried macaroni and cheese and a deep-fried cosmopolitan.
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Myanmar Going Nuclear?
Defectors tell of Burma's secret nuclear reactor - Asia, World - The Independent
Two of Asia's most oppressive regimes may have joined forces to develop a nuclear arsenal, according to strategic experts who have analysed information supplied by a pair of Burmese defectors.
The men, who played key roles in helping the isolated military junta before defecting to Thailand, have provided evidence which suggests Burma has enlisted North Korean help to build its own nuclear bomb within the next five years.
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Disturbing, but Impressive: Fake ATMs For ID Theft
Ghost In The ATM - Forbes.com
What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas--unless of course, somebody steals your identity.
At Defcon, numerous presentations discussed various cybersecurity threats. But one of the biggest scams wasn't happening in the conference--it was happening in the casino at the Riviera Hotel.
On Thursday, a Defcon attendee spotted a fake ATM nestled in a security blind spot at the hotel. The machine had an unbranded shell with a PC located inside. It's believed that the setup was designed to skim ATM cards. It is unknown how long the machine was there, or whether there are other fake ATMs in other casinos.
"This is a very common scam," says "Priest," a senior staff member for Defcon. "At gas stations, this happens a lot."
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Gentlemen of Bacongo
CONSTANT SIEGE - Daniele Tamagni, cover image for ‘Gentlemen of...
Daniele Tamagni, cover image for ‘Gentlemen of Bacongo’, his book on the Sapeurs of Brazzaville, Congo. (via)
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Timothy Allen, Photographer: Mali, The Heavens Open
The heavens open – Timothy Allen. Photographer, Human Planet
Timothy Allen writes:
Yesterday it rained. Our campsite is no more. Fortunately for us, our Dogon guides foresaw this potential predicament and packed up our tents about half an hour before said storm came upon us. We’ve now taken up residence in some mud houses just round the corner. Great timing! I’m due to leave Mali in two days. Next stop Mongolia… back to witness these amazing grasslands during their summer months.
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Music's Dark Side: Why Giant Car Stereos are Evil
Musicophilia: Six Questions for Oliver Sacks—By Scott Horton (Harper's Magazine)
Scott Horton: Anthony Burgess in A Clockwork Orange tells the story of a young Beethoven fanatic who is “programmed” to be physically ill on hearing Beethoven played. More recently, we have learned that the use of music played a key role in the Bush Administration’s torture program. For instance, this weekend the Washington Post reports that psychologist James E. Mitchell directed that one prisoner be subjected to bombardment by music—he specified the Red Hot Chili Peppers. What is it about music that makes it suitable for use as part of a torture regimen?
Oliver Sacks: Music’s power does have a dark side. A daily example of this would be musical brainworms, the annoyingly repetitive musical phrases that may run through one’s mind for days on end. And of course music may be seen as dangerously seductive, as much of our literature reminds us. In Greek mythology, it was the bewitching music of the Sirens that lured sailors to their destruction, and Tolstoy brings up a similar theme in his story “The Kreutzer Sonata.” Using loud music as torture draws on these qualities of music, as well as simple sensory overload. I personally find the assault of loud public music—in stores, restaurants, airports–a minor form of torture. One wants to listen to one’s own music, in one’s own way, not to have it force-fed, especially at great volume.
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Zoriah Photojournalist: Reporting from Cuba
ZORIAH - A PHOTOJOURNALIST AND WAR PHOTOGRAPHER'S BLOG
Reporting From Havana, Cuba
A woman passes time in front of her home in Havana, Cuba.
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From the Lost Tradition of Post-Mortem Photography
Mr.Fox: Darker Deeper: Post Mortem
Geplaatst door Parcivalis
Labels: photography, unknown
Geplaatst door Parcivalis
Labels: photography, unknown
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Assaying the Camera: An Editorial Interlude
The camera is unique in the history of human tool-making insofar as it is a tool made specifically and consciously for the purpose of bearing witness. Other tools have evolved into witness-bearing media, but the invention of no other tool is so completely consumed in the function of witnessing. Thus the peculiar, and peculiarly mistaken, authority of the camera: the camera never lies, an assertion we all know is false, but which, in the presence of the camera's production--the strong image--we promptly forget. Photographs are persuasive; they present what seems to be "the world as it is."
That the photograph is thoroughly malleable, subject to and inviting of manipulation, was understood right away by practitioners, who, in the beginning, had to alter reality to make it conform to the limitations of the medium and later learned to alter the medium first to make it conform to ideas of reality, and then to create new realities. The techniques of the darkroom and later of the computer turned the camera, and hence the photographer, from a passive to an active agent, an artist like other artists: except for the fact that the camera has never ceased to appear to limn "reality," so that the photographer must resort to relatively extreme measures to remind (if not actually convince) the viewer that the image is a representation not of "world," entirely, but of some ratio of mind.
All the arts bear this ratio, on a sliding scale from work to work and artist to artist; but no other technology of art projects so thorough a rhetoric of "Truth." Photography, then, is uniquely endowed, intrinsically and culturally, to give rise to previously unknown facets of conscience--both in terms of the things and events exterior to us, and of things and events interior. The x-ray machine and the CAT scan are elaborations of the original large-format camera, as is the electron microscope. And the "manipulated" image (and all products of the camera are manipulated to some degree) brings us that holiest of grails, an authoritative witnessing of the things and events of the imagination. All the arts do this, but the photograph is uniquely convincing, telling us that it "never lies," even while revealing to us just how precisely it does.
--TRH
That the photograph is thoroughly malleable, subject to and inviting of manipulation, was understood right away by practitioners, who, in the beginning, had to alter reality to make it conform to the limitations of the medium and later learned to alter the medium first to make it conform to ideas of reality, and then to create new realities. The techniques of the darkroom and later of the computer turned the camera, and hence the photographer, from a passive to an active agent, an artist like other artists: except for the fact that the camera has never ceased to appear to limn "reality," so that the photographer must resort to relatively extreme measures to remind (if not actually convince) the viewer that the image is a representation not of "world," entirely, but of some ratio of mind.
All the arts bear this ratio, on a sliding scale from work to work and artist to artist; but no other technology of art projects so thorough a rhetoric of "Truth." Photography, then, is uniquely endowed, intrinsically and culturally, to give rise to previously unknown facets of conscience--both in terms of the things and events exterior to us, and of things and events interior. The x-ray machine and the CAT scan are elaborations of the original large-format camera, as is the electron microscope. And the "manipulated" image (and all products of the camera are manipulated to some degree) brings us that holiest of grails, an authoritative witnessing of the things and events of the imagination. All the arts do this, but the photograph is uniquely convincing, telling us that it "never lies," even while revealing to us just how precisely it does.
--TRH
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Carsten Höller: Birds
Carsten Holler
Carsten Höller
Birds, 2006
10 photogravures couleur sur papier Somerset 300 gr., 75 x 58 cm cq.
édition à 24 ex.
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Les Krim: Crosstar Rat
adski_kafeteri: 3for3
LES KRIMS. Homage to the Crosstar Filter Photograph, 1971
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The Music Business: The NYT Does the Numbers
ArtsJournal: Daily Arts News
What's Wrong With The New Music Biz Model?
"A study last year conducted by members of PRS for Music, a nonprofit royalty collection agency, found that of the 13 million songs for sale online last year, 10 million never got a single buyer and 80 percent of all revenue came from about 52,000 songs. That's less than one percent of the songs." The New York Times
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Pakistan: Arrest in Daniel Pearl Murder Case
Suspect Arrested in Connection to Daniel Pearl Murder - WSJ.com
Police officials said Saturday they had arrested a member of an outlawed al-Qaida-linked group that was suspected of involvement in the 2002 beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.
Rao Shakir, a purported member of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, an offshoot of Sipah-e-Sahaba, was arrested on the outskirts of Islamabad late Friday, a police official said.
[Danny Pearl]
The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information.
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The Poetry of the Tailfin
Design - The Punctuation at the End of the ’50s - NYTimes.com
The poet Robert Lowell was heir to a New England literary tradition that included Herman Melville, a connoisseur of the metaphor and the metaphysics of finned creatures. In “For the Union Dead” in 1960, Lowell saw something sinister, even sinful, in the tailfin:
The poet Robert Lowell was heir to a New England literary tradition that included Herman Melville, a connoisseur of the metaphor and the metaphysics of finned creatures. In “For the Union Dead” in 1960, Lowell saw something sinister, even sinful, in the tailfin:
““....Everywhere,
giant finned cars nose forward like fish;
a savage servility
slides by on grease.”
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Onondaga on the James River, 1864
U.S.S. Onondaga: 1864 | Shorpy Photo Archive
1864. "James River, Virginia. Monitor U.S.S. Onondaga; soldiers in rowboat. From photographs of the Federal Navy, and seaborne expeditions against the Atlantic Coast of the Confederacy." Wet plate glass negative.
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Changing Crews, 1943
Westbound Freight: 1943 | Shorpy Photo Archive
March 1943. "Chillicothe, Illinois. Changing crews and cabooses of a westbound freight along the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad." Medium-format safety negative by Jack Delano, Office of War Information.
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Sarah Engelhard, Photographer
Strange Messenger: Sarah Engelhard at NFM
Sarah Engelhard (1980) photographs the dead animals she finds in the street, especially road kill like buzzards, ducks, hares, mice and foxes, that have been run over.
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Congo: The Sape
CONSTANT SIEGE
Hector Mediavilla, ‘The Congolese Sape’ series.
“Severin Mouyengo, who has been a Sapeur since the seventies, poses in the entrance of his family home in the Bacongo neighborhood. Sandals on the ground are from his family members. In Congo, as in other parts of Africa, people commonly take the shoes off before entering home.”
Papa Wemba, Congolese musician, and the modern godfather of the Sapeur movement, from the BBC Storyville documentary ‘The Importance Of Being Elegant’ “BBC Four: As your documentary shows, the members of La Sape are fiercely devoted to designer clothes. Could you elaborate on the symbolic importance of high fashion for the sapeur? George: The Sape emerged from the chaos that was the Congo during the reign of Mobutu. It was really one way of coping with a society that had broken down. For a young person growing up at that time, there wasn’t much to grasp hold of to help you feel better about yourself. Politics was out, so you found a lot of cargo cult religions in the Congo. The Sape is essentially one of these. The distinctive look of the sapeurs was also a rebellion against one of Mobutu’s dictatorial decrees, which was that everyone was expected to dress in a very traditional, standard African costume - the abacost.Cosima: The sapeurs in Paris and Brussels are using these European status symbols not to integrate into European society but to ‘be someone’ back home in the Congo. This separates them from European fashionistas. They aren’t so much concerned with proving anything to the outside world but rather to one another, among their own community. These people have grown up with no kind of social structure to rely on. The Sape is a mini-state providing its own social strata: president, ministers, acolytes and so on.” In 2004 Papa Wemba was arrested in Belgium on accusation of human smuggling, he was said to have been charging $4,000 per person, and smuggling people under cover of being his musicians.
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Pakistan: The Growing Influence of Media
3quarksdaily
From Prospect Magazine:
Ten years ago Pakistan had one television channel. Today it has over 100. Together they have begun to open up a country long shrouded by political, moral and religious censorship—taking on the government, breaking social taboos and, most recently, pushing a new national consensus against the Taliban. One channel in particular, Geo TV, has won a reputation for controversy more akin to America’s Fox News than CNN or Sky News. Some Pakistanis see it and its competitors as a force for progress; others as a creator of anarchy and disorder. Certainly, the channels now wield huge political influence in a country where half the population is illiterate. But their effect is now felt beyond Pakistan’s borders too—revealing an underappreciated face of globalisation, in which access to television news means that immigrant communities, and in particular Britain’s 0.7m Pakistanis, often follow events in their country of origin more closely than those of the country where they actually live.
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Arts Endowments and Money Management in the Recession
The Culture Crash by James Panero, City Journal 20 July 2009
The reductions in arts endowments reported over the past year have been significant, raising the question of how they have been managed. If the investment goal of arts endowments is the preservation of capital, how can they now face decreases of 35 percent, aside from the criminal actions of investors like Bernard Madoff?
For the answer, look to nonprofit money managers and “managers of managers,” such as the Commonfund, which was started with seed money from the Ford Foundation in 1969 and now manages managers for hundreds of nonprofit institutions, with $40 billion in assets under management as of 2007. These managers, now used throughout the nonprofit world, have encouraged arts organizations to seek “total returns,” including capital appreciation, from their endowments, rather than merely preserving capital and accruing dividend income. “In the post–World War II decades,” explained Commonfund in its 2005 report Principles of Nonprofit Investment Management, “the concept of prudence changed from one of avoiding risky investments altogether to one of balancing the risks of various kinds of investments against one another. . . . If you aim to get the most out of your investments long term, you have to own some that have a higher degree of risk.”
Endowment asset allocations thus moved away from the safety of fixed-income instruments, such as high-grade bond funds, to the volatility of domestic and foreign equities and even to “alternative investments,” such as distressed debt and venture-capital equity. This investment strategy paid luxuriantly during the good times, resulting in bloated budgets and massive expansions. Yet with only quarterly meetings, arts boards proved too slow to navigate away from the hazardous investments once the bad times began. In short, arts organizations adopted bad habits.
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Break Out the Sunscreen, Y'all: Civilization Gives Up on Global Warming
Adapting to a warming world | GlobalPost
The world’s leaders officially gave up on stopping climate change. The G8 agreed to limit the warming of the world to no more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, or about four times as much of a global temperature change as the world has seen since the last ice age and the dawn of human civilization.
The decision wasn’t altogether a new one. None of the plans being discussed in Washington, Brussels, or elsewhere, including the Waxman-Markey bill before the U.S. Senate, would mandate cuts deep enough to ensure even that level of warming.
Yet the proposed target does highlight an important fact about the future of the fight against climate change: If we’re no longer committed to heading off a warmer world, we’ll have to adapt to living in one.
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O Arizona: Legislature Take Note: People Who Are Paying Attention Do Not Approve Of What They See
Study looks at Arizonans' Legislature satisfaction
Two-thirds of Arizonans who participated in a research panel are dissatisfied with how the state Legislature is dealing with Arizona's budget and tax issues, according to a June report by the Morrison Institute.
Fewer than half of the respondents said they kept tabs on current public-policy processes, including news about the Arizona state budget.
When researchers narrowed it down to this group, the rate of those dissatisfied with state lawmakers jumped to 80 percent.
"There's a sort of disconnect (with the government) that people are feeling, and that's independent of whether people are tracking the issue," said Dr. Richard Toon, associate director for research for the Morrison Institute.
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