RIP Billy Lee Riley, Sun Records Artist

Billy Lee Riley, Rockabilly Singer and Sun Records Artist, Dies at 75 - Obituary (Obit) - NYTimes.com

Billy Lee Riley, a rambunctious performer who helped develop the Sun Records sound as a studio musician for other headliners, died here on Sunday. He was 75.

The cause was cancer, his wife, Joyce, told The Commercial Appeal in Memphis.

Mr. Riley’s singles included “Red Hot” (with its memorable lyric, “My gal is red hot, your gal ain’t doodly squat”) and “Flyin’ Saucers Rock & Roll,” the song that led him to call his band the Little Green Men for a time.

Mr. Riley was one of the early performers who recorded at the legendary Sun Records in Memphis, but he was overshadowed by his associates, including Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis. Among many songs, Mr. Riley and his band played on the original Sun recording of Lewis’s “Great Balls of Fire.”

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Nancy Davenport, Photographer

i heart photograph: nancy davenport

nancy davenport

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Bill Clinton in Pyongyang to Negotiate for Imprisoned Journalists

BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Bill Clinton arrives in N Korea

Former US President Bill Clinton has arrived in Pyongyang, North Korea's state news agency KCNA reports.

He travelled there to discuss the fate of two jailed US reporters, South Korea's Yonhap news agency says.

It says Mr Clinton will try to negotiate the release of Laura Ling and Euna Lee, who were sentenced to 12 years hard labour in June.

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Fake Essay Goes Undetected for Years

What If You Pull a Literary Hoax and Nobody Notices? - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education

Peter Monaghan writes:

Perpetrators of literary hoaxes often like to be discovered, if only for recognition of their cleverness. But for someone or someones at the literary-studies journal Modernism/Modernity, that gratification has been a while coming.

In 2004 the journal, which is the quarterly of the Modernist Studies Association, ran a review essay of the writer David Foster Wallace's story collection Oblivion. The essay was a put-on, a leg-pull, a sham, in ways that take some explaining for nonspecialists in recent American fiction. But no one publicly called attention to the con until last month.

Mark Sample, an assistant professor of contemporary American literature and new-media studies at George Mason University, blew the whistle on his blog, Sample Reality. The review essay that provoked him, "An Undeniably Controversial and Perhaps Even Repulsive Talent," was attributed to a certain Jay Murray Siskind, in the department of popular culture at Blacksmith College. No such institution exists, nor does Siskind, other than as a rather Mephistophelean character (as Sample puts it) in the acclaimed novel White Noise, by Don DeLillo.

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A Farmer Fights Back (What He Says About Turkeys Is Absolutely True)

Read the whole essay here: The Omnivore’s Delusion: Against the Agri-intellectuals — The American, A Magazine of Ideas

The biggest environmental harm I’ve done as a farmer is the topsoil (and nutrients) I used to send down the Missouri River to the Gulf of Mexico before we began to practice no-till farming, made possible only by the use of herbicides. . . .

Young turkeys aren't smart enough to come in out of the rain, and will stand outside in a downpour, with beaks open and eyes skyward, until they drown.

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Swiss Particle Collider A Disappointment So Far

Large Hadron Collider Fizzles, Adding to the Mysteries of Life - NYTimes.com

The biggest, most expensive physics machine in the world is riddled with thousands of bad electrical connections.

Many of the magnets meant to whiz high-energy subatomic particles around a 17-mile underground racetrack have mysteriously lost their ability to operate at high energies.

Some physicists are deserting the European project, at least temporarily, to work at a smaller, rival machine across the ocean.

After 15 years and $9 billion, and a showy “switch-on” ceremony last September, the Large Hadron Collider, the giant particle accelerator outside Geneva, has to yet collide any particles at all.

But soon?

This week, scientists and engineers at the European Center for Nuclear Research, or CERN, are to announce how and when their machine will start running this winter.

That will be a Champagne moment. But scientists say it could be years, if ever, before the collider runs at full strength, stretching out the time it should take to achieve the collider’s main goals, like producing a particle known as the Higgs boson thought to be responsible for imbuing other elementary particles with mass, or identifying the dark matter that astronomers say makes up 25 percent of the cosmos.

The energy shortfall could also limit the collider’s ability to test more exotic ideas, like the existence of extra dimensions beyond the three of space and one of time that characterize life.

“The fact is, it’s likely to take a while to get the results we really want,” said Lisa Randall, a Harvard physicist who is an architect of the extra-dimension theory.

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The "Episodics vs. Narrative" False Dichotomy, For Fiction As For Life (And Where Does Poetry Fit?)

Lee Siegel on the End of Episode Books and Novels - WSJ.com

Lee Siegel writes:

[E]pisodic fiction has been dealt a sorry hand of late. Our most popular critically acclaimed novels are pure narratives. Their straightforward storytelling style connects events together in one continuous thruline whose fundamental purpose is to reveal the Big Fated Meaning of life. In the war between Narratives and Episodics, the former are winning hands-down.

A few years ago, the British philosopher Galen Strawson took up those battling world views in an essay that caused quite a stir in philosophical circles—the distinction between Narratives and Episodics is, in fact, his. Mr. Strawson came down heavily on the side of the Episodics. He believes the idea that “human beings typically experience their lives as a narrative or story of some sort” is an insult to the endless possibilities of existence. What really gets his goat is the accompanying notion that you have to be a Narrative to be good, that “a richly Narrative outlook on one’s life is essential to living well, to true or full personhood.” In Mr. Strawson’s eyes, the idea that one’s life is a story is the equivalent of wearing a blindfold and living in a prison cell.

He has a strong point. Episodics do seem to have a firmer grasp of reality’s fluid nature. Rather than experiencing life as a continuous thread of related experiences, Episodics consider their “self” to be in a state of continuous flux. What happened to them a year ago happened to a different person than the person they are now—the past has no bearing on present experience. (“I actually said that? I couldn’t have!”) In this view, Episodics are sober, disenchanted beings, alive to the principle of ceaseless change that drives human existence.

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O Arizona: Angry Mother Pepper Sprays Kids (At Least She Didn't Have a Gun)

Police: Mom Pepper Sprays Daughters - Phoenix News Story - KPHO Phoenix

A Tempe woman was arrested on aggravated assault charges on Saturday after she began pepper spraying her two daughters during an argument, police said.

Michelle Antone, 35, displayed signs of alcohol impairment, officers said.

Police said the incident began as a domestic dispute.

Antone had awoken at about 4 p.m. and was intoxicated, investigators said. Her two daughters, ages 10 and 15, fled the home after Antone became belligerent toward them.

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Rococo Graffiti: The Pandolfo Brothers

Art Review - Os Gêmeos - Os Gêmeos, Brazilian Graffiti Artists, Create a World on a New York Wall - NYTimes.com

With their first public artwork in Manhattan, which went up at the northwest corner of Houston Street and the Bowery on July 17, the Brazilian brothers Otavio and Gustavo Pandolfo, who call themselves Os Gêmeos, bring graffiti art to its Rococo phase. Which is to say that their fantastic, epic mural, on a concrete wall about 17 feet high and about 51 feet long, is light and frothy, a dream of happiness with an underlying chord of melancholy. And everything in it is exquisitely fine-tuned and detailed, a dazzlement of effortless technique that sustains long bouts of close looking. It will remain up until March.

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Chesapeake Oysters Returning to the Bay

Oysters Are on the Rebound in the Chesapeake Bay - NYTimes.com

After decades of overharvesting of oysters in the Chesapeake Bay and many fruitless efforts to replenish them, scientists have re-established a significant population of the shellfish along the Virginia shore.

Researchers from the Virginia Institute of Marine Science at the College of William & Mary say that large experimental reefs created five years ago are now home to more than 180 million native oysters. That is still a far cry from the late 1880s, when the bay held billions of the oysters, Crassostrea virginica, and watermen harvested about 25 million bushels annually. But more larvae have been settling on the new reefs every year, the researchers said.

The results, they added, suggest there is a potential for further restoration in the bay by creating additional reefs where harvesting is prohibited.

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Friendly Dictator Cards: The USA Collected 'Em All

Homo Sum » Blog Archive » Friendly Dictators

Homo Sum writes:

Friendly Dictators

Back in 1989 Bill Sienkiewicz illustrated a deck of cards designed to bring to light some of the sleazier folks that the U.S. government had done deals with. The text on each card was written by Dennis Bernstein and Laura Sydell. I wish there was an updated version covering the last 17 years, but in the meantime I’ve prepared a giant post with the images and text from the pack of cards. (This is an egregious copyright violation, but since these cards have been out of print for more than 15 years, I’m hoping no one will call me on it. If they did, I would–of course–take this down.)

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The End of the USA Will Be Interactive: Slate Makes it Easy

How is America going to end? Slate's "Choose Your Own Apocalypse" lets you map out the death of the United States. - By Josh Levin - Slate Magazine

Scroll through the list of theories for America's demise, then select up to five that you find most persuasive. (If you'd prefer, you can also read all 144 end-of-America scenarios on a single page.) As you're making your picks, you'll get real-time updates on the apocalypse you've chosen—our Apocalypse Matrix reveals if your American end times will be bloodless or violent, and whether you blame man or nature for the country's downfall. You can also compare your choices with those of the average Slate reader. And check back on Friday to see our final "Choose Your Own Apocalypse" report, including the most popular scenarios by age, gender, location, and political affiliation.

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Chinese Seal Plague Town

China Seals Off Town After Second Plague Death - washingtonpost.com

Chinese authorities sealed off a remote town in northwestern China after three people died of pneumonic plague and eight others were infected with the highly contagious lung disease.

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150+ Dead in Sudan, Mostly Women and Children

allAfrica.com: Sudan: More Than 150 Die in Ethnic Violence in South (Page 1 of 1)

Gunmen have killed more than 160 people, mostly civilians, in a pre-dawn attack on a camp in South Sudan, news agencies are reporting.

Eleven soldiers from the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) who were guarding the camp were killed. Goi Jooyul Yol, a local leader, estimated that an additional 100 women and 50 children were killed. Twenty-nine people, including three soldiers, were injured.

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Respect My Authoritay: Lawsuit Over "I hate police" Arrest

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The lawyer arrested by D.C. police last weekend for disorderly conduct after chanting "I hate police" plans to fight the charge in court and is putting the city on notice that he might sue.

"We're going to file a notice of claim and we're also going to tell the city and the fire department that they need to preserve all evidence," said Pepin Tuma, 33, an attorney who does commercial litigation for a D.C. firm.

Tuma met with an investigator from the Office of Police Complaints on Thursday. He said that as the investigator questioned him about what happened, based on a narrative from the arresting officer's perspective, it seemed that the city had a version of events far different from his own. Tuma said video evidence from nearby cameras will "absolutely refute the cop's story."

The department declined to comment, but D.C. police spokeswoman Traci Hughes told the Huffington Post that the department is investigating the incident. "Mr. Tuma wrote a letter to the chief complaining about the arrest," she said, "and whenever the chief receives a complaint from any resident she's obligated to investigate."

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Repent: The End of the Oil is Near

Warning: Oil supplies are running out fast - Science, News - The Independent

The world is heading for a catastrophic energy crunch that could cripple a global economic recovery because most of the major oil fields in the world have passed their peak production, a leading energy economist has warned.

Higher oil prices brought on by a rapid increase in demand and a stagnation, or even decline, in supply could blow any recovery off course, said Dr Fatih Birol, the chief economist at the respected International Energy Agency (IEA) in Paris, which is charged with the task of assessing future energy supplies by OECD countries.

In an interview with The Independent, Dr Birol said that the public and many governments appeared to be oblivious to the fact that the oil on which modern civilisation depends is running out far faster than previously predicted and that global production is likely to peak in about 10 years – at least a decade earlier than most governments had estimated.

But the first detailed assessment of more than 800 oil fields in the world, covering three quarters of global reserves, has found that most of the biggest fields have already peaked and that the rate of decline in oil production is now running at nearly twice the pace as calculated just two years ago. On top of this, there is a problem of chronic under-investment by oil-producing countries, a feature that is set to result in an "oil crunch" within the next five years which will jeopardise any hope of a recovery from the present global economic recession, he said.

In a stark warning to Britain and the other Western powers, Dr Birol said that the market power of the very few oil-producing countries that hold substantial reserves of oil – mostly in the Middle East – would increase rapidly as the oil crisis begins to grip after 2010.

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Debate on Robots: Time for the Three Laws?

BBC NEWS | Technology | Call for debate on killer robots

An international debate is needed on the use of autonomous military robots, a leading academic has said.

Noel Sharkey of the University of Sheffield said that a push toward more robotic technology used in warfare would put civilian life at grave risk.

Technology capable of distinguishing friend from foe reliably was at least 50 years away, he added.

However, he said that for the first time, US forces mentioned resolving such ethical concerns in their plans.

"Robots that can decide where to kill, who to kill and when to kill is high on all the military agendas," Professor Sharkey said at a meeting in London.

"The problem is that this is all based on artificial intelligence, and the military have a strange view of artificial intelligence based on science fiction."

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New G.I. Bill Begins

Obama Marks Start of New G.I. Benefits Bill - The Caucus Blog - NYTimes.com

President Obama kicked off a new education benefit program for military veterans Monday with a tribute to American troops who have fought for their country since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and a blast at Wall Street financiers who spent that time trying to turn “the quick buck.”

Mr. Obama traveled to George Mason University in the Virginia suburbs of Washington to mark the start of the Post-9/11 G.I. Bill, which will pay college tuition for those who have served in the armed forces since the attacks on New York and Washington eight years ago. But he also used the opportunity to take a swipe at the financial industry and, by implication, the Bush era.

“We have lived through an age when many people and institutions have acted irresponsibly – when service often took a back seat to short-term profits, when hard choices were put aside for somebody else, for some other time,” Mr. Obama said. “It’s a time when easy distractions became the norm, and the trivial has been taken too seriously.”

He added: “The men and women who have served since 9/11 tell us a different story. While so many were reaching for the quick buck, they were heading out on patrol.”

The new program, co-sponsored by Mr. Obama when he was a senator, was passed by Congress and signed into law by President George W. Bush last year, but only took effect on Saturday. Intended to replicate the G.I. Bill that educated 8 million veterans after World War II, the program pays for undergraduate education for anyone who has served at least 90 days in the military since Sept. 11, 2001.

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Denise Colomb: Portrait of Max Ernst

adski_kafeteri: Denise Colomb, Portrait de Max Ernst, circa 1954

Denise Colomb, Portrait de Max Ernst, circa 1954

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