♪♫ Serge Gainsbourg - Aux Armes Et Caetera

Capturing the Plastic Vortex

Project Kaisei is a non-profit organization based in San Francisco and Hong Kong, established to increase the understanding and the scale of marine debris, its impact on our ocean environment, and how we can introduce solutions for both prevention and clean-up.

Our main focus is on the North Pacific Gyre, which constitutes a large accumulation of debris in one of the largest and most remote ecosystems on the planet. To accomplish these objectives, Project Kaisei is serving as a catalyst to bring together public and private collaborators to design, test and implement break-throughs in science, prevention and remediation.

Kaisei means “Ocean Planet” in Japanese, and is the name of the iconic tall ship that was one of the two research vessels in the August expedition. The other was the New Horizon, a Scripps Oceanography vessel that was arranged via a new collaboration between Project Kaisei and Scripps to provide additional research on the impacts of debris in the gyre. Each vessel obtained a wide variety of samples from this part of the ocean which are now being analyzed. What was evident was the pervasiveness of small plastic debris that was found in every surface sample net that was used for regular sampling over 3,500 miles between the two vessels.

In the summer of 2010, Project Kaisei will launch its second Expedition to the North Pacific Gyre, where it will send multiple vessels to continue marine debris research, and in particular, to test an array of marine debris collection systems. Debris collected will be used to further study the feasibility of converting this to fuel or other useable material. As a collaborative action program, Project Kaisei is seeking sponsors, participants and leaders in their respective industries who can help to make a difference, on land, or at sea, in reducing marine debris.
@'Kaisei'

For Gas-Drilling Data, There’s a New Place to Dig

Starving for data about natural gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale? A new website hopes to feed your need. A couple of environmental and public health groups have teamed up to create FracTracker [1], a web tool that brings together different data sets and presents the information on a map.

Launched in late June, FracTracker allows users to upload their own data on all-things-gas-drilling, from lists of drilling permits or incident records to maps of air monitoring stations. Others can then go to the site and either look at the data in map form or download it raw.

The site is run by the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Healthy Environments and Communities [2] (CHEC), which is funded by the Heinz Endowments [3]. It is hosted by the Foundation for Pennsylvania Watersheds [4], an environmental group that funds local projects aimed at protecting the state’s waterways.

The center’s director of operations, Charles Christen, said CHEC came up with the idea while working with communities in western Pennsylvania, which along with much of West Virginia, New York and Ohio sit atop the Marcellus Shale, an extensive rock formation that holds vast quantities of natural gas.

As we’ve been reporting [5] for two years, people in those communities have become increasingly concerned about the environmental impacts of gas drilling. But they’ve often found it difficult to come up with the hard data they need to make informed decisions – or even to know what’s happening on a neighbor’s property. The site is designed to fill that gap, Christen said.

FracTracker allows people to search by topic [6] or select a specific area on a map. It also shows who uploaded the specific data set and whether other people have downloaded it or found it helpful. Since anyone can upload a data set, this transparency is critical to determining whether the information is reliable. CHEC will remove irrelevant data, but it doesn’t vet everything for accuracy. CHEC is counting on users to police the data themselves and to distinguish the good from the bad.

Christen said the site may be difficult for the average person to use, so the center has set up a blog [1] to serve as a forum for learning more about the tool. Over the next couple of months, it plans to reach out to various groups that not only may benefit from the site but also may be able to provide the data that FracTracker relies on.

“The success of this network, this information-sharing tool, really depends on the quality of the data we get,” Christen said. “I think we’re going to see really quality data up on this site and a lot of snapshots being used in a lot of different ways.”

Nicholas Kusnetz @'ProPublica'

Five Dials (Festival issue)

Five Dials is a free monthly online literary magazine courtesy of London publisher Hamish Hamilton. The upcoming Festival issue of the PDF mag features a host of music luminaries doing their best with just words. In it, LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy writes a piece about his song "Losing My Edge", Ryan Adams writes a poem, Bloc Party's Kele Okereke writes a short story, and Mike Watt tells the story behind his contribution to Sonic Youth's song "Providence".

Other contributors include Dean Wareham (Galaxie 500/Luna), onetime Guided by Voices member James Greer, Iggy Pop, and artist Raymond Pettibon (artist for Black Flag, Sonic Youth's Goo), as well as pieces on seminal festivals including Woodstock and Burning Man.

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@'Pitchfork'

HA!

(Click to enlarge)

Oh yeah!

So the kid didn't speak to her mom about sex education and doesn't tell her she's getting married! Hmmmm!!!

Record Labels Sue Over Use of Music on Adult Sites

♪♫ Hey Champ - Cold Dust Girl

Shocklee Old Music industry take notice---> Nintendo Doesn't Want To Criminalize Obsessed Fans http://ow.ly/2b6x8 #music #IP 12 minutes ago via HootSuite

Regaining Sexual Enjoyment After Sexual Trauma

Studies of violence toward women tell us that one in every four women will be the victim of rape during her lifetime. Whether perpetrated by a stranger or by someone known to her, the emotional consequences of sexual assault usually persist long after the victim’s physical traumas have healed.

Rape is not a sex act. It is an act of violent criminal assault during which a sexual organ is used as a weapon to humiliate, degrade, and inflict pain. This unusual weapon of choice, combined with the intimate nature of the violation, oftentimes leads to a post-traumatic stress disorder known as Rape Trauma Syndrome. Symptoms of RTS are profound because rape is not only a crime of life-threatening terror, but it’s a devastating violation of one’s personal power and dignity. Effects of RTS may include altered concentration and unexplained illness; sleep disturbances and eating disorders; depression and anxiety. One especially common expression of RTS surrounds changes in a victim’s perception of her sexuality and her ability to feel pleasure.

In talking about rape, it’s very important to underscore the fact that rape has nothing to do with consensual sex. It doesnt feel like sex; it feels like being battered. Nevertheless, the experience of rape is sometimes emotionally internalized and then generalized to cloud future sexual experiences. A survivor may feel persistently on guard or may find that any sexual contact rekindles the anger, fear and shame associated with her rape trauma. In the worst situations, all sexual partners and sexual interludes seem like further violations. When rape trauma affects a woman’s capacity to desire or enjoy sex with her partner, then their relationship is a victim of violence, too...

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Joy Davidson @'Love & Health'

It's been fun following this...

Pseudoscience's "Awful Poo Lady" can't flush twitterings
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Julian Assange: the whistleblower

Photograph: Graeme Robertson for The Guardian

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(LOL! A subbie w/ a sense of humour captioned the file name of that photo!)

Reds!!!

Boris Johnson and the Veronica Wadley affair: an open letter to David Cameron and Nick Clegg

Spiritualized's Jason Pierce Talks Ladies and Gentlemen Shows

After reissuing Spiritualized's 10.0 masterpiece Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space and playing the album in full on European stages last year, Jason Pierce (aka J. Spaceman) will bring a choir, strings, and horns to New York City's Radio City Music Hall for one more Ladies and Gentlemen show July 30. It's being touted as the last gig of its kind-- which makes sense since Pierce is well on his way toward a new album, as he told us in a recent interview. He said we could expect a new Spiritualized LP "early next year, if I'm lucky."

Pitchfork: How did these Ladies and Gentlemen shows originally come about?
Jason Pierce: We did an All Tomorrow's Parties show in Australia with Nick Cave. We did one show on top of Mount Buller and played down the mountain-- the crowd sort of comes down the slope with you. We stayed up all night and the guys from ATP asked if we'd ever play Ladies and Gentlemen live, and I said, "Yeah." It was a decision made at altitude-- they got me at the right time. It could've been any album. If they'd asked for Pure Phase or Let It Come Down, we would've wound up doing that.
As much as an audience wants to hear new stuff, they're rarely receptive to hearing a whole new record as a live show. But with Ladies and Gentlemen, they've had 13 years to sit with it and they've got these ideas about where the songs take them. We did the shows in England, and I wasn't going to do this for the rest of my life, so we wound it down. And then we got talking, like, "If we don't take it to America now, we ain't never gonna take it." New York is as far as we could go, unfortunately.
Pitchfork: It doesn't seem like you're somebody who looks back a lot. Has it been hard for you to dedicate your time to this 13-year-old album?
JP: Well, I'm making a new record right now. But, for a lot of bands, it seems like these kinds of shows with all old songs are the best thing they can do. I'm not saying that with any disrespect, but I don't think that's the case with what we're doing. I don't even want to chance it.
And, with Ladies and Gentlemen, I don't think that the band that made that record could've played it when it came out. It's like it's taken this amount of time to do it real justice live. Now we can play it from beginning to end and it's going to make real fucking sense. I think the album I'm working on now is already more important.
Pitchfork: How far along are you with the new album?
JP: Quite a ways. I'm all over the place when I make a record; I don't even know what I'm doin'. As soon as things start to work, that's when a lot of problems start because you have to start raising everything to that level.
Pitchfork: Has revisiting Ladies and Gentlemen inspired you to do more of those types of big arrangements on the new material?
JP: Yeah, I'd be lying if I said it wasn't influencing the music I make now.

Ryan Dombal @'Pitchfork' 

Was lucky enough to be at that ATP Mt Buller gig, I do hope that ATP returns to Australia in the not too distant future (with The Pop Group in tow???)