Saturday 14 November 2009
Satellite Found Water on Moon, Researchers Say
This artist's rendering released by NASA shows the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite as it crashed into the moon to test for the presence of water last month.There is water on the Moon, scientists stated unequivocally on Friday.
“Indeed yes, we found water,” Anthony Colaprete, the principal investigator for NASA’s Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, said in a news conference. “And we didn’t find just a little bit. We found a significant amount.”
The confirmation of scientists’ suspicions is welcome news to explorers who might set up home on the lunar surface and to scientists who hope that the water, in the form of ice accumulated over billions of years, holds a record of the solar system’s history.
The satellite, known as Lcross (pronounced L-cross), crashed into a crater near the Moon’s south pole a month ago. The 5,600-miles-per-hour impact carved out a hole 60 to 100 feet wide and kicked up at least 26 gallons of water...
@'NY Times'
Dirty Three + Laughing Clowns play Don't Look Back Australia 2010
Monday 25th: Brisbane, Tivoli *
Friday 13 November 2009
New warning on 'perfect vaginas'
Women are undergoing surgery to create perfect genitalia amid a "shocking" lack of information on the potential risks of the procedure, a report says.Research published in the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology also questions the very notion of aesthetically pleasing genitals.
Operations to improve the appearance of the sex organs for both psychological and physical reasons are on the rise.
But surgeons said the report overplayed the risks of an established procedure.
Researchers from University College London reviewed all the existing studies on cosmetic labial surgery - which generally involves reducing the amount of tissue that protrudes from the lips which cover the vagina. They found there had been little work to document any longer-term side effects.
Labioplasty, as it is known, costs about £3,000 privately and is offered for a variety of reasons: some women complain that wearing tight clothes or riding a bike is uncomfortable, while others say they are embarrassed in front of a sexual partner...
Beck covers 'Oar'
Beck's Record Club: Can it get any more awesome? Yes it can. And it just did. As you know, Record Club works like this: Beck rounds up a revolving cast of guests to cover an entire album's worth of songs in a day. The results are then posted in weekly installments on Beck's website.The latest entry in the series? Beck, Wilco, Feist, and Jamie Lidell teaming up to cover the 1969 cult fave Oar by onetime Moby Grape/Jefferson Airplane member turned acid casualty Skip Spence. The album's leadoff track, "Little Hands", is up on Beck's site right now.
We had previously reported that Beck and Wilco had teamed up to cover this album, but hey-- added Feist and Lidell? We'll take it! Sitting in on drums was James Gadson, who has drummed with Bill Withers, while Spencer Tweedy, son of Wilco's Jeff Tweedy, pitched in on drums as well.
@'Pitchfork'
Letters from Van Gogh
Read through hundreds of Vincent van Gogh’s revealing letters online, now translated into English with a drawings appendix.
The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam commissioned the ambitious Vincent van Gogh: The Letters project, an extensive and richly annotated archive searchable by chronology, place, and correspondent. Interactive tabs on the letter-viewing screen allow scrolling between the original text, facsimile images of the letters, and English translations.
The most in-depth function is filed under Concordance, lists, bibliography on the top right of the screen. Here, hyperlinks lead to historical persons and digital images of the artworks specifically referenced by van Gogh — all the cultural scraps that influenced the artist’s beautiful and tortured inner world.
Learn how to navigate the archive, visit the physical exhibition, cross-reference maps of van Gogh’s travels, and splurge on the six-volume hardback collection.
A Reuters video report by Basmah Fahim posits that van Gogh was a rational man, rather than a mad genius.
A Reuters video report by Basmah Fahim posits that van Gogh was a rational man, rather than a mad genius.
In this missive to his younger brother, art dealer Theo van Gogh, dated July 23, 1890, the artist writes, “Thanks for your kind letter and for the 50-franc note it contained. I’d really like to write to you about many things, but I sense the pointlessness of it.” Six days later, the artist committed suicide by shooting himself in the chest.
A densely worded letter mentioning Pissarro and Seurat to artist fellow Paul Gauguin, sent from Arles on Wednesday, October 3, 1888. “In any event, when I left Paris very, very upset, quite ill and almost an alcoholic through overdoing it, while my strength was abandoning me — then I withdrew into myself, and without daring to hope yet.”
Paul Gauguin to Vincent van Gogh from Pont-Aven, on or about Wednesday, September 26, 1888: “In your letter you seem angry at our laziness about the portrait, and that pains me; friends don’t get angry with each other (at a distance, words cannot be interpreted at their true value).”
To Emile Bernard, from Arles, on or about Thursday, June 7, 1888: “More and more it seems to me that the paintings that ought to be made, the paintings that are necessary, indispensable for painting today to be fully itself and to rise to a level equivalent to the serene peaks achieved by the Greek sculptors, the German musicians, the French writers of novels, exceed the power of an isolated individual, and will therefore probably be created by groups of men combining to carry out a shared idea.”
In this missive to his younger brother, art dealer Theo van Gogh, dated July 23, 1890, the artist writes, “Thanks for your kind letter and for the 50-franc note it contained. I’d really like to write to you about many things, but I sense the pointlessness of it.” Six days later, the artist committed suicide by shooting himself in the chest.
A densely worded letter mentioning Pissarro and Seurat to artist fellow Paul Gauguin, sent from Arles on Wednesday, October 3, 1888. “In any event, when I left Paris very, very upset, quite ill and almost an alcoholic through overdoing it, while my strength was abandoning me — then I withdrew into myself, and without daring to hope yet.”
Paul Gauguin to Vincent van Gogh from Pont-Aven, on or about Wednesday, September 26, 1888: “In your letter you seem angry at our laziness about the portrait, and that pains me; friends don’t get angry with each other (at a distance, words cannot be interpreted at their true value).”
To Emile Bernard, from Arles, on or about Thursday, June 7, 1888: “More and more it seems to me that the paintings that ought to be made, the paintings that are necessary, indispensable for painting today to be fully itself and to rise to a level equivalent to the serene peaks achieved by the Greek sculptors, the German musicians, the French writers of novels, exceed the power of an isolated individual, and will therefore probably be created by groups of men combining to carry out a shared idea.”
