Thursday 30 June 2011

♪♫ Little Feat - Long Distance Love

For all who have shown the love XXX

Miles Davis (Berlin 1973)


For all who have sailed with SS Exile XXX

Zola Jesus - Vessel

Wednesday 29 June 2011

Gram Parsons & Emmylou Harris Live

Big Mouth Blues

Streets of Baltimore


Gram Parsons on meeting Emmylou Harris

The Odds of That

Ad break # 28

(Thanx Stan!)

The story of Northern Soul

Michele Bachmann's Holy War

Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and, as you consider the career and future presidential prospects of an incredible American phenomenon named Michele Bachmann, do one more thing. Don't laugh.
It may be the hardest thing you ever do, for Michele Bachmann is almost certainly the funniest thing that has ever happened to American presidential politics. Fans of obscure 1970s television may remember a short-lived children's show called Far Out Space Nuts, in which a pair of dimwitted NASA repairmen, one of whom is played by Bob (Gilligan) Denver, accidentally send themselves into space by pressing "launch" instead of "lunch" inside a capsule they were fixing at Cape Canaveral. This plot device roughly approximates the political and cultural mechanism that is sending Michele Bachmann hurtling in the direction of the Oval Office.
Bachmann is a religious zealot whose brain is a raging electrical storm of divine visions and paranoid delusions. She believes that the Chinese are plotting to replace the dollar bill, that light bulbs are killing our dogs and cats, and that God personally chose her to become both an IRS attorney who would spend years hounding taxpayers and a raging anti-tax Tea Party crusader against big government. She kicked off her unofficial presidential campaign in New Hampshire, by mistakenly declaring it the birthplace of the American Revolution. "It's your state that fired the shot that was heard around the world!" she gushed. "You are the state of Lexington and Concord, you started the battle for liberty right here in your backyard."
I said lunch, not launch! But don't laugh. Don't do it. And don't look her in the eyes; don't let her smile at you. Michele Bachmann, when she turns her head toward the cameras and brandishes her pearls and her ageless, unblemished neckline and her perfect suburban orthodontics in an attempt to reassure the unbeliever of her non-threateningness, is one of the scariest sights in the entire American cultural tableau. She's trying to look like June Cleaver, but she actually looks like the T2 skeleton posing for a passport photo. You will want to laugh, but don't, because the secret of Bachmann's success is that every time you laugh at her, she gets stronger.
In modern American politics, being the right kind of ignorant and entertainingly crazy is like having a big right hand in boxing; you've always got a puncher's chance. And Bachmann is exactly the right kind of completely batshit crazy. Not medically crazy, not talking-to-herself-on-the-subway crazy, but grandiose crazy, late-stage Kim Jong-Il crazy — crazy in the sense that she's living completely inside her own mind, frenetically pacing the hallways of a vast sand castle she's built in there, unable to meaningfully communicate with the human beings on the other side of the moat, who are all presumed to be enemies.
Bachmann's story, to hear her tell it, is about a suburban homemaker who is chosen by God to become a politician who will restore faith and family values to public life and do battle with secular humanism. But by the time you've finished reviewing her record of lies and embellishments and contradictions, you'll have no idea if she actually believes in her own divine inspiration, or whether it's a big con job. Or maybe both are true — in which case this hard-charging challenger for the GOP nomination is a rare breed of political psychopath, equal parts crazed Divine Wind kamikaze-for-Jesus and calculating, six-faced Machiavellian prevaricator. Whatever she is, she's no joke...
 Continue reading
Matt Taibbi @'Rolling Stone'

Bachmann's had her share of government aid

Michele Bachmann sets record straight: 'I'm a substantive, serious person'

JAMA on 60s Psychedelic Drug Culture

Image and video hosting by TinyPic
An amusing semi-anthropological study was published in JAMA by Ludwig and Levine in 1965. It was based on extensive interviews with 27 "postnarcotic drug addict inpatients" who were treated at a hospital in Lexington, Kentucky. The specific drugs of interest included peyote (from the peyotl cactus plant), mescaline, LSD, and psilocybin. The current availability of each drug, most popular methods of intake, slang terms, psychoactive properties, and subcultural norms were discussed. Hallucinogens were sometimes combined with narcotics, barbituates, amphetamines, or marijuana, depending on the specific demographic group. Basically, there were the junkies, the potheads, and the psychonauts...
 Continue reading

Will the Revolution Begin in London?

Electribe 101 - Lipstick On My Lover (The John Peel Session)

Maybe he could lend us a few quid....Prince Charles's income from taxpayers rises 18%


The Prince of Wales received £1,962,000 from taxpayers last year, up from £1,664,000 the year before
@'TheGuardian'

Tuesday 28 June 2011

monoskop
~ : Eli Pariser: The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You

The English Disease


Monica Ocampo scores Mexican goal @ Women's World Cup 2011 Mexico - England 1-1

Alien encounters 'within twenty years'


A top Russian astronomer say he expects humans to encounter extraterrestrial civilisations within the next two decades
@'The Guardian'

Israeli officials contradict each other over Gaza flotilla "extremism" claims

♪♫ Deepchord - Electromagnetic

General Petraeus Comes Out in Favor of Torture: A Few Helpful Hints from William S Burroughs

The day the drug war really started

♪♫ Bon Iver - I Can't Make You Love Me / Nick of Time

Google data removal requests down for Oz

AnonymousIRC

Cheb I Sabbah Cancer Treatment Fund


If you can help...
go HERE

Citi Cards Hackers Stole $2.7 Million

The Journalists Who Just Might Get Rich Off of WikiLeaks

Cancel Lord Monckton's university lecture, say academics

The climate sceptic Lord Christopher Monckton should not be invited to lecture in universities, say academics. Photograph: Alan Porritt/EPA
Academics in Australia are calling for the University of Notre Dame in Fremantle to cancel a lecture due to be given by the prominent climate sceptic Lord Monckton on Thursday.
In a letter seen by the Guardian, which is currently being circulated among academics, the undersigned say that Monckton "stands for the kind of ignorance and superstition that universities have a duty to counter" and "Notre Dame has a responsibility to avoid promoting discredited views on an issue of public risk". Signatories already supporting the open letter include professors and lecturers across Australia, but also academics in the UK and US.
The letter, which is addressed "from the Australian academic community" to Notre Dame, a Catholic university in Western Australia, was originally drafted by Natalie Latter, a political science postgraduate student at the University of Western Australia. The letter says Monckton's lecture is particularly unwelcome in light of recent death threats made against Australian climate scientists.
"Lord Monckton propounds widely discredited fictions about climate change and misrepresents the research of countless scientists," says the letter. "With zero peer-reviewed publications, he has declared that the scientific enterprise is invalid and that climate science is fraudulent … Over the last month there has been a great deal of coverage in the Australian media of the death threats and abusive emails that have targeted Australian scientists working on climate change. These threats are fuelled by misinformation spread by figures like Lord Monckton and the distorted coverage that they receive in the Australian media. As academics, we expect our universities to support us against this kind of abuse. We expect our universities to foster academic standards of conduct and argument."
The letter continues: "We all support academic freedom and the freedom to express our ideas and beliefs … [However] Notre Dame's invitation to Lord Monckton makes a mockery of academic standards and the pursuit of evidence-based knowledge."
Monckton, the deputy leader of the UK Independence party, apologised over the weekend for remarks he made this month during a lecture in Los Angeles in which he likened Prof Ross Garnaut, a climate change adviser to the Australian government, to a Nazi, while showing a slide of a large swastika next to one of Garnaut's quotes. In online footage of the speech, Monckton can be heard saying in a mock German accent, "Heil Hitler, on we go" when referring to Garnaut.
The comment drew criticism from across the Australian political spectrum last week. Julia Gillard, the prime minister, condemned the comments as "offensive and grossly inappropriate". Tony Abbott, the opposition leader who is fighting to stop the government's proposed carbon tax and who is scheduled to attend a mining conference in Perth at which Monckton is due to speak, described the comments as "over the top".
During a television interview on Sunday, Monckton apologised to Garnaut "for having made the point I was trying to make in such a catastrophically stupid and offensive way". He added: "I have written to him to withdraw that unreservedly."
It is not the first time Monckton has been criticised for making such remarks. In 2009, at the Copenhagen climate summit, he described a group of young climate activists as "Hitler youth".
Monckton is scheduled to begin a three-week lecture tour of Australia on Thursday when he addresses the annual conference of the Association of Mining and Exploration Companies in Perth. The organisers have
confirmed that Monckton is still scheduled to speak, despite the controversy over his remarks. Later that day, he will deliver the Lang Hancock lecture at Notre Dame, a lecture series sponsored by Hancock Prospecting, a mining company owned by Australia's richest person, Gina Rinehart.
Chris Doepel, the university's dean of business, has confirmed some invited conference guests have also called for Monckton's speech to be cancelled, but he insisted the event will go ahead. "The university will hold it because we have a commitment to academic freedom," he told local media over the weekend. "I think Lord Monckton is coming into this country with a clear understanding of the boundaries around polite discussion." Doepel added that there is no plan to censor Monckton's presentation and that the 200-strong audience will be free to ask questions.
Not all of Australia's academic community believes Monckton should be censored or barred from speaking, however. Prof Ian Chubb, Australia's chief scientist, told the Guardian: "I think that we have to put up with deplorable people if we value our democracy. And we do. So I couldn't argue that action should be taken, though I find his comments as outrageous as his abuse of science. I don't think making him some sort of victim would serve any purpose, other than to add to the weight of his wallet. There will always be people somewhere in the world who will pay to hear people like him; and enhancing his celebrity through censorship will encourage more of them to pay. He just needs to be exposed for what he is."
Anna-Maria Arabia, the CEO of Science & Technology Australia, which recently organised the Respect the Science event in Canberra in which 200 scientists marched to show solidarity for climate scientists receiving death threats, also feels that Monckton should be free to speak: "Everyone is entitled to their views, but it is important that personal views are differentiated from the scientific evidence that has been through the rigorous peer-review process. The challenge for Lord Monckton is to have his ideas tested through the peer review process."
She added: "The misinformation campaign designed to create fear and uncertainty will not intimidate climate scientists who dedicate their lives to the pursuit of knowledge and know the importance of placing their results in the public domain so that fair and democratic debate can ensue. Critical decisions about making the world we live in a better and safer place must be informed by the best possible information we have, not by fear. The best possible information we have is the peer-reviewed science."
After visiting Fremantle, Monckton is scheduled to speak at venues across Australia, including the German Club in Adelaide. Last week, Elke Pfau, the club's president said she was "looking into" the booking following Monckton's "unfortunate" remarks about Garnaut. In April, a private school near Brisbane cancelled a business event due to feature Monckton next month after the head teacher deemed his participation to be "too controversial".
Monckton's lecture tour is being co-ordinated by the Climate Sceptics party, a political party set up in 2009 by an Australian farmer to "expose the fallacy of anthropogenic climate change".
Leo Hickman @'The Guardian'

P2P Is Scary Kids, Don’t Use It!

Folder Rock: The Unintentionally Hilarious World of Band PR

'The Writing Ball' - the world's first typewriter (1870)

Via

John Eden - Shake The Foundations vol 1

Elliott Sharp - Solo Guitar (2003)


This footage of Elliott Sharp improvising on guitar in his NYC apartment was shot by Steve Elkins in June 2003 for what eventually evolved into the feature documentary 'The Reach Of Resonance,' though this footage was not actually used in the film.
Composer, multi-instrumentalist, sound artist, and instrument builder, Sharp has devised innovative ways of applying fractal geometry,chaos theory and genetic metaphors to musical composition and interaction, as well as pioneering use of computers in live improvisation.
elliottsharp.com
reachofresonance.com

Brothers In Arms


Romanian President Nicolae Ceaucescu and his wife, Elena, meeting with Pol Pot, his wife, Kien Samphan, and Khmer Rouge cabinet members.(28-30.V.1978).

source:wikipedia

Monday 27 June 2011

Hand-hacking lets you pluck strings like a musical pro


Want to learn a musical instrument, but can't find the time to practise? A device now under development can take control of your hand and teach you how to play a tune. No spirits of dead musicians are involved.
PossessedHand, being developed jointly by the University of Tokyo, Japan, and Sony Computer Science Laboratories, also in Tokyo, electrically stimulates the muscles in the forearm that move your fingers. A belt worn around that part of the subject's arm contains 28 electrode pads, which flex the joints between the three bones of each finger and the two bones of the thumb, and provide two wrist movements. Users were able to sense the movement of their hands that this produced, even with their eyes closed. "The user's fingers are controlled without the user's mind," explains Emi Tamaki of the University of Tokyo, who led the research.
Devices that stimulate people's fingers have been made before, but they used electrodes embedded in the skin, which are invasive, or glove-like devices that make it hard to manipulate an object. Tamaki claims that her device is far more comfortable. "The electric stimulations are similar to low-frequency massage stimulations that are commonly used," she says.
Having successfully hijacked a hand, the researchers tried to teach it how to play the koto, a traditional Japanese stringed instrument. Koto players wear different picks on three fingers, but pluck the strings with all five fingertips, so each finger produces a distinctive sound. A koto score tells players which fingers should be moved and when, and from this Tamaki and her team were able to generate instructions telling their device how and when to stimulate the wearer's muscles.
PossessedHand does not generate enough force to pluck the koto strings, but it could help novice players by teaching them the correct finger movements. Tamaki and her team found that two beginner players made a total of four timing errors when using PossessedHand, compared with 13 when playing unassisted. After prompting from the device, the players also made one less mistake about which finger to use.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the players found it unsettling to have the device move their hand by itself. "I felt like my body was hacked," said one. Tamaki is confident that people will get used to the idea once they see how useful it can be: "We believe convenient technology will overcome a feeling of fear."
As well as helping would-be musicians, PossessedHand could be used to rehabilitate people who have suffered a stroke or other injury that impairs muscle control. Therapists already use electrical muscle stimulation to help these people, but existing non-invasive devices can only achieve crude movements such as contracting the entire arm.
Henrik Gollee, who researches rehabilitation devices at the University of Glasgow, UK, says PossessedHand could help patients train a wider range of movements. "I was surprised by the level of fine movement they can actually achieve," he says.
Simon Holland, director of the Music Computing Lab at the Open University in Milton Keynes, UK, points out that there is a big difference between learning to play one song and being a competent musician. "You might learn a fingering and be able to reproduce that performance, without necessarily being able to perform simple variants," he says.
Jacob Aron @'NewScientist'

Among The Costs Of War: $20B In Air Conditioning

Skype’s Worthless Employee Stock Option Plan: Here’s Why They Did It

Skype mess: How far will this go?

Most ISPs will filter Interpol list this year: IIA

Libya: ICC issues arrest warrant for Muammar Gaddafi

The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi.
The court had accused him of crimes against humanity and of ordering attacks on civilians after an uprising against him began in mid-February.
The Hague-based court also issued warrants for two of Col Gaddafi's top aides - his son Saif al-Islam and intelligence chief Abdullah al-Sanussi.
Thousands of people are believed to have been killed in the conflict.
ICC presiding judge Sanji Monageng said there were "reasonable grounds to believe" that Col Gaddafi and his son were "criminally responsible as indirect co-perpetrators" for the persecution and murder of civilians in Libya.
The warrants had been requested by chief ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo in May, who said the three men bore responsibility for "widespread and systematic attacks" on civilians.
Mr Moreno-Ocampo said the court had evidence that Col Gaddafi had "personally ordered attacks on unarmed Libyan civilians and was behind the arrest and torture of his political opponents.
The Libyan authorities have previously said they do not recognise the court and were not concerned by the threat of a warrant.
On Sunday, government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim said the court was overly preoccupied with pursuing African leaders and had "no legitimacy whatsoever".
The arrest warrant was welcomed by UK Foreign Secretary William Hague, who said it further demonstrated "why Gaddafi has lost all legitimacy and why he should go immediately".
Mr Hague called on people within the Libyan regime to abandon Gaddafi and said those responsible for "atrocities" must be held to account.
@'BBC'
(PDF)

Zé Otavio: Dark Side

 (Click to enlarge)
Flickr
Blog
www

The Rise and Fall of Pseudonyms

Hollywood Force ISP To Use Child Abuse Filter Against File-Sharing Site

Outcry in America as pregnant women who lose babies face murder charges

Rennie Gibbs is accused of murder, but the crime she is alleged to have committed does not sound like an ordinary killing. Yet she faces life in prison in Mississippi over the death of her unborn child.
Gibbs became pregnant aged 15, but lost the baby in December 2006 in a stillbirth when she was 36 weeks into the pregnancy. When prosecutors discovered that she had a cocaine habit – though there is no evidence that drug abuse had anything to do with the baby's death – they charged her with the "depraved-heart murder" of her child, which carries a mandatory life sentence.
Gibbs is the first woman in Mississippi to be charged with murder relating to the loss of her unborn baby. But her case is by no means isolated. Across the US more and more prosecutions are being brought that seek to turn pregnant women into criminals.
"Women are being stripped of their constitutional personhood and subjected to truly cruel laws," said Lynn Paltrow of the campaign National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW). "It's turning pregnant women into a different class of person and removing them of their rights."
Bei Bei Shuai, 34, has spent the past three months in a prison cell in Indianapolis charged with murdering her baby. On 23 December she tried to commit suicide by taking rat poison after her boyfriend abandoned her.
Shuai was rushed to hospital and survived, but she was 33 weeks pregnant and her baby, to whom she gave birth a week after the suicide attempt and whom she called Angel, died after four days. In March Shuai was charged with murder and attempted foeticide and she has been in custody since without the offer of bail.
In Alabama at least 40 cases have been brought under the state's "chemical endangerment" law. Introduced in 2006, the statute was designed to protect children whose parents were cooking methamphetamine in the home and thus putting their children at risk from inhaling the fumes.
Amanda Kimbrough is one of the women who have been ensnared as a result of the law being applied in a wholly different way. During her pregnancy her foetus was diagnosed with possible Down's syndrome and doctors suggested she consider a termination, which Kimbrough declined as she is not in favour of abortion.
The baby was delivered by caesarean section prematurely in April 2008 and died 19 minutes after birth.
Six months later Kimbrough was arrested at home and charged with "chemical endangerment" of her unborn child on the grounds that she had taken drugs during the pregnancy – a claim she has denied.
"That shocked me, it really did," Kimbrough said. "I had lost a child, that was enough."
She now awaits an appeal ruling from the higher courts in Alabama, which if she loses will see her begin a 10-year sentence behind bars. "I'm just living one day at a time, looking after my three other kids," she said. "They say I'm a criminal, how do I answer that? I'm a good mother."
Women's rights campaigners see the creeping criminalisation of pregnant women as a new front in the culture wars over abortion, in which conservative prosecutors are chipping away at hard-won freedoms by stretching protection laws to include foetuses, in some cases from the day of conception. In Gibbs' case defence lawyers have argued before Mississippi's highest court that her prosecution makes no sense. Under Mississippi law it is a crime for any person except the mother to try to cause an abortion.
"If it's not a crime for a mother to intentionally end her pregnancy, how can it be a crime for her to do it unintentionally, whether by taking drugs or smoking or whatever it is," Robert McDuff, a civil rights lawyer asked the state supreme court.
McDuff told the Guardian that he hoped the Gibbs prosecution was an isolated example. "I hope it's not a trend that's going to catch on. To charge a woman with murder because of something she did during pregnancy is really unprecedented and quite extreme."
He pointed out that anti-abortion groups were trying to amend the Mississippi constitution by setting up a state referendum, or ballot initiative, that would widen the definition of a person under the state's bill of rights to include a foetus from the day of conception.
Some 70 organisations across America have come together to file testimonies, known as amicus briefs, in support of Gibbs that protest against her treatment on several levels. One says that to treat "as a murderer a girl who has experienced a stillbirth serves only to increase her suffering".
Another, from a group of psychologists, laments the misunderstanding of addiction that lies behind the indictment. Gibbs did not take cocaine because she had a "depraved heart" or to "harm the foetus but to satisfy an acute psychological and physical need for that particular substance", says the brief.
Perhaps the most persuasive argument put forward in the amicus briefs is that if such prosecutions were designed to protect the unborn child, then they would be utterly counter-productive: "Prosecuting women and girls for continuing [a pregnancy] to term despite a drug addiction encourages them to terminate wanted pregnancies to avoid criminal penalties. The state could not have intended this result when it adopted the homicide statute."
Paltrow sees what is happening to Gibbs as a small taste of what would be unleashed were the constitutional right to an abortion ever overturned. "In Mississippi the use of the murder statute is creating a whole new legal standard that makes women accountable for the outcome of their pregnancies and threatens them with life imprisonment for murder."
Miscarriage of justiceAt least 38 of the 50 states across America have introduced foetal homicide laws that were intended to protect pregnant women and their unborn children from violent attacks by third parties – usually abusive male partners – but are increasingly being turned by renegade prosecutors against the women themselves.
South Carolina was one of the first states to introduce such a foetal homicide law. National Advocates for Pregnant Women has found only one case of a South Carolina man who assaulted a pregnant woman having been charged under its terms, and his conviction was eventually overturned. Yet the group estimates there have been up to 300 women arrested for their actions during pregnancy.
In other states laws designed to protect children against the damaging effects of drugs have similarly been twisted to punish childbearers.
Ed Pilkington @'The Guardian'

Lykke Li - I Follow Rivers (The Oos & Ahhs Remix)

Top 10 best and worst things about the LulzSec attacks

Operation Anti Security

New campaign will use 'manspeak' to help men deal with suicidal thoughts

Suicide rate up for white, middle-aged men

N Korean children begging, army starving

Footage shot inside North Korea and obtained by the ABC has revealed the extent of chronic food shortages and malnutrition inside the secretive state.
The video is some of the most revealing footage ever smuggled out of the impoverished North Korean state.
Shot over several months by an undercover North Korean journalist, the harrowing footage shows images of filthy, homeless and orphaned children begging for food and soldiers demanding bribes.
The footage also shows North Koreans labouring on a private railway track for the dictator's son and heir near the capital Pyongyang.
Strolling up to the site supervisor, the man with the hidden camera asks what is going on.
"This rail line is a present from Kim Jong-il to comrade Kim Jong-un," he is told.
The well-fed Kim Jong-un could soon be ruling over a nation of starving, impoverished serfs.
The video shows young children caked in filth begging in markets, pleading for scraps from compatriots who have nothing to give.
"I am eight," says one boy. "My father died and my mother left me. I sleep outdoors."
Many of the children are orphans; their parents victims of starvation or the gulag.
But markets do exist - private markets that stock bags of rice, pork, and corn. The state no longer has any rations to hand out.
But the state wants its share of this embryonic capitalism.
In the footage, a party official is demanding a stallholder make a donation of rice to the army.
"My business is not good," complains the stallholder.
"Shut up," replies the official. "Don't offer excuses."
It is clear that the all-powerful army - once quarantined from food shortages and famine - is starting to go hungry.
"Everybody is weak," says one young North Korean soldier. "Within my troop of 100 comrades, half of them are malnourished," he said.
Jiro Ishimaru is the man who trained the undercover reporter to use the hidden camera.
"This footage is important because it shows that Kim Jong-il's regime is growing weak," he said.
"It used to put the military first, but now it can't even supply food to its soldiers. Rice is being sold in markets but they are starving. This is the most significant thing in this video."
Kim Jong-il's grip on power depends on the military and if some of its soldiers have growling, empty bellies, it is bad news for the dictator and his hopes for a smooth transition to his son.
"The priority for Kim Jong-il is the succession," said Mr Ishimaru.
"But Kim Jong-un is still very young, just 27 or 28. He doesn't have any experience and hasn't achieved anything. So opposition to a third generation of the Kim family taking over is growing."
But this dynasty of dictators has proven that it is more than capable of keeping its wretched population in line through gulags, hunger and a total control over every aspect of life.
But as this footage shows, occasionally, a crack of light emerges from this dark, dark place.
Mark Willacy @'ABC'

Self-propelled gut camera swims in your colon

If you have to get your insides examined, there are few alternatives to the unpleasant experience of having a tube shoved into your throat or backside.
But a team of researchers in Japan recently successfully tested a remote-controlled, self-propelled capsule camera that can examine the human stomach and colon.
Developed by researchers at Ryukoku University, Osaka Medical College, and a private-sector firm, the fish-shaped Mermaid is a 1.7-inch-long, electromagnet-powered capsule with a fin-like tail.
That's longer than a conventional endoscopy capsule, which isn't maneuverable and takes a brute-force approach to capturing images, snapping as many as possible as it descends.
The Mermaid can be precisely maneuvered following oral or rectal insertion, and can take two images per second.
German researchers previously managed to remotely control an endoscope capsule in the stomachs of healthy volunteers. The Japanese team, however, claims to be the first to have moved a remote-controlled capsule inside the colon and captured images there.
The team believes the device could be used to image the entire digestive tract, including the small intestine.
Naotake Otsuka, professor emeritus at Ryukoku University's Faculty of Science and Technology, said he tested the Mermaid himself and had no problems swallowing it.
Now open wide and say "ahhh."
(Via Mainichi Daily News
Tim Hornyak @'cnet'

To Construct 'Museum of Tolerance', Israel Bulldozes Muslim Historic Cemetery In Jerusalem

Cymbal Struck At 1000 Frames Per Second

Via

Don't Go The F*ck To Jail: An Illustrated Guide To Your Drug-Related Rights

Illustrator Ricardo Cortés (who you may recall from projects like this) is back with a new, very different project about an issue near and dear to him: America's war on drugs. Inspired by a Time article by the creators of The Wire, Cortes has released Jury Independence Illustrated, a booklet explaining (in an easy to understand fashion) how jurors can use their power of nullification to fight the problems of "skyrocketing" nonviolent drug convictions. The best part? It's totally free, and you can even get a copy from Cortés himself. We spoke to the Brooklyn-based artist about this latest project and the time he verbally smacked down Mayor Bloomberg.
"I've always been interested in drug policy," Cortés explains. "I did a stint on jury duty about two years ago and was actually really impressed with my fellow jurors and their critical thinking about the case. Then I saw that Time article saying 'we will not participate in the machinery of drug war,' and I thought it was amazing. I wanted to keep the ball rolling and talk about this issue more. Particularly in New York, where Bloomberg has had a record number of marijuana arrests, despite his own admittance that he's used and enjoyed the drug..."
Cortés then recounts this tale, which is found in an "author's note" footnote in the pamphlet:
I confronted Bloomberg once at a Gracie Mansion BBQ, where I asked him to reconcile his administration of record marijuana arrests with his own admission of personal use and enjoyment. He hemmed and hawed. I asked why he wouldn’t arrest himself for the past use, and he said “That’s not how the law works.” I said, “So, really you’re just saying ‘I got away with it.’” At that point he said, “You and I have nothing in common,” and walked away from me. True story.
Earlier this week, Cortés handed out copies to jurors outside of the Brooklyn Supreme Court, which he plans to do periodically over the next few weeks. The book is available as a free download on Cortés's site, and he'll also be distributing copies of it at this event next month.
Jamie Feldmar @'gothamist'

Hmmm!

Wilco - I Might

Björk - Crystalline


“Crystalline” is the first single from Bjork’s Biophilia, the iPad-inspired multi-media LP that will celebrate “how sound works in nature, exploring the infinite expanse of the universe, from planetary systems to atomic structure.”



via

Sunday 26 June 2011

Israel warns foreign journalists: Joining Gaza flotilla is illegal

Glenn Greenwald
The mind of an oh-so-patriotic sociopath: -asked by a journalist covering it if it applies to him:

How hackers' spiteful squabble ended in a Scotland Yard raid

Ryan Cleary, LulzSec and the culture of the otaku

Buju Banton comes out the closet!


Via

As someone pointed out human rights belong to 'humans' NOT Britons!

Mark Fisher
92% in BBC 1 text poll say immigrant criminals shouldn't have human rights. Ye gods

The Brain on Trial

The Cloud That Ate Your Music

Josh Osho ft Ghostface Killah - Redemption Days (Mensah Remix)

The Clash - London Calling

Vocals

Guitar

Bass

Drums

♪♫ Leftfield - Release The Pressure


Release the fugn pressure...
A Hole In The Head

Billy the Kid portrait sells for $2.3 million

What is believed to be the only surviving authenticated portrait of Billy the Kid went up for auction in Denver on Saturday and sold for $2.3 million.
The tintype on Saturday evening went to private collector William Koch at Brian Lebel's 22nd Annual Old West Show & Auction, where auction spokeswoman Melissa McCracken said the image of the 1800s outlaw was the most expensive piece ever sold at the event.
A 15 percent fee was added to the bidding price, making the selling price more than $2.6 million. Organizers had expected it could fetch between $300,000 and $400,000.
The tintype is believed to have been taken in 1879 or 1880 in Fort Sumner, N.M. It shows the outlaw dressed in a rumpled hat and layers of clothes, including a bulky sweater. He's standing with one hand resting on a Winchester carbine on his right side and a Colt revolver holstered on his left side.
Tintypes were an early form of photography that used metal plates. They are reverse images, and the Billy the Kid tintype led to the mistaken belief that Billy the Kid was a lefty. The myth inspired the 1958 movie "The Left Handed Gun", starring Paul Newman as Billy.
Billy the Kid gave the image to a friend, Dan Dedrick, and the tintype has been owned by his descendants, the Upham family, ever since. It has only been publicly displayed during the 1980s at a museum in Lincoln County, N.M.
McCracken said it's recognizable around the world as a classic image of the Old West.
"There's only one photo of Billy the Kid, and I think that's why it captivates people's imagination," she said before Saturday's auction.
The tintype was auctioned off along with more than 400 other Western-themed items, including documents from Buffalo Bill's aborted divorce, Native American antiquities, and a painting from Andy Warhol's "Cowboys and Indians" series depicting a Navajo woman with a baby on her back.
Via

Slow Train To Dawn


Sex, Drugs, Violence & Gore are what's in store for your 30min video mixtape lunch date with IndoorFin, Burroughs, and Cronenberg in the nude.
1. Two Hours Time - Cinnamon Chasers
2. Dreamboat (RAC Remix) - Psychic Powers
3. Climbing Walls - Strange Talk
4. Static On The Wire (RAC Remix) - Holy Ghost!
5. Young Blood (Dave Sitek Remix) - The Naked And Famous
6. Old Age - 13 & God
7. The Truth (Jump Jump Dance Dance Remix) - PNAU
indoorfin.tumblr.com 

50 days of Lulz

Friends around the globe,

We are Lulz Security, and this is our final release, as today marks something meaningful to us. 50 days ago, we set sail with our humble ship on an uneasy and brutal ocean: the Internet. The hate machine, the love machine, the machine powered by many machines. We are all part of it, helping it grow, and helping it grow on us.
For the past 50 days we've been disrupting and exposing corporations, governments, often the general population itself, and quite possibly everything in between, just because we could. All to selflessly entertain others - vanity, fame, recognition, all of these things are shadowed by our desire for that which we all love. The raw, uninterrupted, chaotic thrill of entertainment and anarchy. It's what we all crave, even the seemingly lifeless politicians and emotionless, middle-aged self-titled failures. You are not failures. You have not blown away. You can get what you want and you are worth having it, believe in yourself.
While we are responsible for everything that The Lulz Boat is, we are not tied to this identity permanently. Behind this jolly visage of rainbows and top hats, we are people. People with a preference for music, a preference for food; we have varying taste in clothes and television, we are just like you. Even Hitler and Osama Bin Laden had these unique variations and style, and isn't that interesting to know? The mediocre painter turned supervillain liked cats more than we did.
Again, behind the mask, behind the insanity and mayhem, we truly believe in the AntiSec movement. We believe in it so strongly that we brought it back, much to the dismay of those looking for more anarchic lulz. We hope, wish, even beg, that the movement manifests itself into a revolution that can continue on without us. The support we've gathered for it in such a short space of time is truly overwhelming, and not to mention humbling. Please don't stop. Together, united, we can stomp down our common oppressors and imbue ourselves with the power and freedom we deserve. So with those last thoughts, it's time to say bon voyage. Our planned 50 day cruise has expired, and we must now sail into the distance, leaving behind - we hope - inspiration, fear, denial, happiness, approval, disapproval, mockery, embarrassment, thoughtfulness, jealousy, hate, even love. If anything, we hope we had a microscopic impact on someone, somewhere. Anywhere.
Thank you for sailing with us. The breeze is fresh and the sun is setting, so now we head for the horizon.
Let it flow...
Lulz Security - our crew of six wishes you a happy 2011, and a shout-out to all of our battlefleet members and supporters across the globe
Our mayhem: http://lulzsecurity.com/releases/
Our chaos: http://thepiratebay.org/user/LulzSec/
Our final release: http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/6495523/50_Days_of_Lulz
Please make mirrors of material on the website, because we're not renewing the hosting. Goodbye. <3
Via

Cronenberg's 'A Dangerous Method' coming soon...

A Dangerous Method is an upcoming historical film, directed by David Cronenberg and starring Viggo Mortensen, Michael Fassbender, Keira Knightley and Vincent Cassel. The screenplay was adapted by Academy Award-winning writer Christopher Hampton from his 2002 stage play The Talking Cure, itself based on the 1993 non-fiction book by John Kerr, A Most Dangerous Method.
The film marks the third collaboration between Cronenberg and Viggo Mortensen (after A History of Violence and Eastern Promises). This is also the third film British film producer Jeremy Thomas has made with Cronenberg, after together completing the William Burroughs adaptation Naked Lunch and the J.G. Ballard adaptation Crash. A Dangerous Method was a German/Canadian co-production.
PLOT : Set on the eve of the World War I, A Dangerous Method is based on the turbulent relationships between fledgling psychiatrist Carl Jung, his mentor Sigmund Freud, and Sabina Spielrein, the troubled but beautiful young woman who comes between them.
CAST :
Viggo Mortensen as Sigmund Freud
Michael Fassbender as Carl Jung
Keira Knightley as Sabina Spielrein
Vincent Cassel as Otto Gross
Sarah Gadon as Emma Jung

Japan's 'throwaway' nuclear workers

A decade and a half before it blew apart in a hydrogen blast that punctuated the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl, the No. 3 reactor at the Fukushima nuclear power plant was the scene of an earlier safety crisis.
Then, as now, a small army of transient workers was put to work to try to stem the damage at the oldest nuclear reactor run by Japan's largest utility.
At the time, workers were racing to finish an unprecedented repair to address a dangerous defect: cracks in the drum-like steel assembly known as the "shroud" surrounding the radioactive core of the reactor.
But in 1997, the effort to save the 21-year-old reactor from being scrapped at a large loss to its operator, Tokyo Electric, also included a quiet effort to skirt Japan's safety rules: foreign workers were brought in for the most dangerous jobs, a manager of the project said.
"It's not well known, but I know what happened," Kazunori Fujii, who managed part of the shroud replacement in 1997, told Reuters. "What we did would not have been allowed under Japanese safety standards."
The previously undisclosed hiring of welders from the United States and Southeast Asia underscores the way Tokyo Electric, a powerful monopoly with deep political connections in Japan, outsourced its riskiest work and developed a lax safety culture in the years leading to the Fukushima disaster, experts say.
A 9.0 earthquake on March 11 triggered a 15-meter tsunami that smashed into the seaside Fukushima Daiichi plant and set off a series of events that caused its reactors to start melting down.
Hydrogen explosions scattered debris across the complex and sent up a plume of radioactive steam that forced the evacuation of more than 80,000 residents near the plant, about 240 km (150 miles) northeast of Tokyo. Enough radioactive water to fill 40 Olympic swimming pools has also been collected at the plant and threatens to leak into the groundwater.
The repeated failures that have dogged Tokyo Electric in the three months the Fukushima plant has been in crisis have undercut confidence in the response to the disaster and dismayed outside experts, given corporate Japan's reputation for relentless organization.
Hastily hired workers were sent into the plant without radiation meters. Two splashed into radioactive water wearing street shoes because rubber boots were not available. Even now, few have been given training on radiation risks that meets international standards, according to their accounts and the evaluation of experts...


 Continue reading
Kevin Krolicki & Chisa Fujioka @'Reuters'

BBC attacked over coverage of 'misleading' methadone report

The BBC has been drawn into an increasingly bitter row surrounding the merits and costs of treating heroin addicts.
The charity DrugScope has written to the corporation complaining about its coverage of a report by a rightwing thinktank, the Centre for Policy Studies, that warned the prescription of the heroin substitute methadone was "entrenching addiction".
The report, Breaking the Habit, said prescribing addicts with methadone had been an expensive failure and claimed there were 320,000 problem drug users on benefits, costing the taxpayer billions of pounds.
The row has highlighted the increasingly polarised nature of the debate on treatment for heroin addicts. Last year the prime minister, David Cameron, described methadone as "a government-authorised form of opium".
The centre's report claims there are as many addicts today as there were in 2004-05. It notes: "Fewer than 4% of addicts emerge from treatment free from dependency. Drug deaths have continued to rise."
The thinktank suggested that instead of prescribing methadone, greater success would be achieved by funding small rehabilitation units that would encourage abstinence on a payment by results basis. Its hard-hitting claims have attracted extensive coverage and last week provoked a national debate on drug addiction treatment.
While many in the drug treatment industry welcomed the centre's call to reconsider how the UK treats long-term addicts, the thinktank has been attacked over "misleading" figures. DrugScope said that it had written to the BBC to complain that, by giving extensive coverage to the report, the corporation had failed "to check the accuracy of claims made, particularly about the cost of treatment and methadone prescribing".
Martin Barnes, DrugScope's chief executive, asked why the corporation had repeated the report's claim that "methadone prescribing costs £730m a year", saying the figure was for the drug treatment system as a whole.
Barnes outlined a series of further examples where he said the report had conflated the true cost of methadone treatment and benefits paid to drug addicts. He pointed out that last year the National Audit Office concluded that drug treatment represents "good value for money" for the taxpayer.
Barnes said: "Not only are the misleading claims potentially damaging to public confidence in drug treatment at a time of spending cuts and competing priorities, they risk reinforcing the stigma and barriers many people in recovery experience."
A spokesman for the BBC confirmed it had received the complaint.
Jamie Doward @'The Guardian'

LulzSec hackers say disbanding after last data dump

♪♫ Clifton Chenier - I'm a Hog for You

Marko Fürstenberg Live @ Diep Tilburg, Netherlands (11-06-2011)