Fools
3 hours ago
Tuesday, 15 March 2011
kodenine kode nine
Don;t get it twisted. I don't hate genres. My genre is called bubble'n'squeak, and your genre is shit.
The front page of the People’s Daily newspaper, March 14, 2011
The front page of the People’s Daily newspaper, March 14, 2010
People’s Daily: Two Years, Two Editions, One Front Page?
How much of Japan's suffering can people comprehend?
The American author Annie Dillard summed up well the difficulty of empathising with hordes of other people. "There are 1,198,500,000 people alive now in China," she wrote. "To get a feel for what this means, simply take yourself – in all your singularity, importance, complexity, and love – and multiply by 1,198,500,000. See? Nothing to it."
I came across that honest, wise remark this weekend, while watching the footage from Japan. The two did not sit well with each other. When a big disaster strikes, either here or abroad, politicians and journalists alike work on the basis that the greater the misery, the more they, and we, should care. David Cameron was working to that logic when he said yesterday that "our thoughts are with the Japanese people". And after reading the reports of 10,000-plus deaths and nuclear warnings, or seeing the photos of submerged towns and stranded survivors, who could disagree?
Yet the uncomfortable truth is that the academic research suggests Dillard is right. However horrifying the pictures, however moving the reports, there's a limit to how much suffering people can take on board – and it's extremely low.
The bigger the numbers of fatalities and injuries, the harder it is for audiences to comprehend them. This law of diminishing returns doesn't just apply to natural disasters, but to other varieties of misery – from oil spills to famines and genocides.
"Psychic numbing" is how the University of Oregon psychologist Paul Slovic refers to this. To illustrate what he means, he sometimes sketches two graphs. The first shows how we might believe we value human lives, with the line going straight up along a diagonal: the more lives at stake, the more attention we pay. The second shows the reality, as Slovic sees it. Here the line starts off very high, but then drops all the way down: we get very worked up when one or two lives are at stake, but then the numbers begin to blur and we tune out.
The result is that humans will often throw money at one sad story – even when it doesn't involve a human. Researchers sometimes quote the story of how more than $48,000 was raised in 2002 to save a dog stranded on a ship adrift near Hawaii. Charities know this impulse too, which is why they often put a single child on their envelopes and posters...
I came across that honest, wise remark this weekend, while watching the footage from Japan. The two did not sit well with each other. When a big disaster strikes, either here or abroad, politicians and journalists alike work on the basis that the greater the misery, the more they, and we, should care. David Cameron was working to that logic when he said yesterday that "our thoughts are with the Japanese people". And after reading the reports of 10,000-plus deaths and nuclear warnings, or seeing the photos of submerged towns and stranded survivors, who could disagree?
Yet the uncomfortable truth is that the academic research suggests Dillard is right. However horrifying the pictures, however moving the reports, there's a limit to how much suffering people can take on board – and it's extremely low.
The bigger the numbers of fatalities and injuries, the harder it is for audiences to comprehend them. This law of diminishing returns doesn't just apply to natural disasters, but to other varieties of misery – from oil spills to famines and genocides.
"Psychic numbing" is how the University of Oregon psychologist Paul Slovic refers to this. To illustrate what he means, he sometimes sketches two graphs. The first shows how we might believe we value human lives, with the line going straight up along a diagonal: the more lives at stake, the more attention we pay. The second shows the reality, as Slovic sees it. Here the line starts off very high, but then drops all the way down: we get very worked up when one or two lives are at stake, but then the numbers begin to blur and we tune out.
The result is that humans will often throw money at one sad story – even when it doesn't involve a human. Researchers sometimes quote the story of how more than $48,000 was raised in 2002 to save a dog stranded on a ship adrift near Hawaii. Charities know this impulse too, which is why they often put a single child on their envelopes and posters...
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Aditya Chakrabortty @'The Guardian'
Will Congress Push Google To Tweak Its Algorithm To Punish Pirate Sites?
Judging by today’s hearings, some members of Congress are willing to consider radical measures to rid the internet of “rogue” websites accused of piracy. Among them: getting search engines like Google (NSDQ: GOOG) to tweak their search results, and ordering ISPs to block certain websites from U.S. viewers altogether. Until several months ago, Congress had never even discussed taking steps like these. The fact that they are now on the table is probably a function of several factors, including aggressive lobbying by the entertainment industry and a proliferation of illegal content online.
Congress first started considering the idea of allowing federal law enforcement to block websites in September, when Sen. Patrick Leahy introduced the controversial COICA bill in the last Congress. Now the House of Representatives is considering a similar proposal, although no bill has yet been introduced...
Congress first started considering the idea of allowing federal law enforcement to block websites in September, when Sen. Patrick Leahy introduced the controversial COICA bill in the last Congress. Now the House of Representatives is considering a similar proposal, although no bill has yet been introduced...
Continue reading
Joe Mullin @'paidContent'
guardian_world Guardian World
#wikileaks cable: Japan govt "obscuring costs and problems" in nuclear industry bit.ly/fbY95t #Fukushima
Ernest Ranglin - Fireside Chat @ RBMAR
Ernest Ranglin's first instrument was the ukulele and his musical hero was the American jazz guitarist Charlie Christian - but he went on to preside over the birth of ska and its mutation into reggae. Without him, Jamaican music from Prince Buster to Bob Marley might have sounded very different. Born in rural Jamaica in 1932, it's an entire half-century has elapsed since Ranglin began his recording career for Chris Blackwell's Island label in 1958. Ernest is respected and renowned the world over and was awarded the Order of Distinction from the Jamaican Government for his contributions to music. He has collaborated with Prince Buster, Mille Small and Monty Alexander amongst innumerable others and career milestones include 'Rivers of Babylon' with the Melodians and playing guitar on 'It Hurts to be Alone' with The Wailers. In recent years he's made some fine records under his own name that have explored reggae's links with African music, including 'In Search Of The Lost Riddim', recorded in Senegal with Baaba Maal's band, and Alextown, a jazzy collaboration with South African township musicians. We were indeed honored when Mr Ranglin agreed to spare some time to come and chat by the Fireside with us.
Ernest Ranglin & Monty Alexander - Confucius - Telarc
Charlie Parker - Bebop - Essence
Ernest Ranglin - Liquidation - K&K
Prince Buster - Madness - Rhino
Millie Small - My Boy Lollipop - Island
Ernest Ranglin - Dr. No Go - K&K
Sound Dimension - Heavy Rock - Soul Jazz
The Melodians - Rivers Of Babylon - Mango
Ernest Ranglin - Surfin - Soul Jazz
Ernest Ranglin & Sound Dimension - Straight Flush - Soul Jazz
Ernest Ranglin - Satta Massagana - Island
Prince Buster - Wash Wash - Sequel
Ernest Ranglin - King Tubby Meets The Rockers - Island
Ernest Ranglin - Below The Bass Line - Island
Ernest Ranglin & Jackie Mittoo - Jericho Skank - Soul Jazz
'Steal your face right off your head' - The making of the Stealie logo
This is the logo that Bob Thomas and I designed for the Grateful Dead in 1969
How it came to be:
In 1969 the Dead were renting a warehouse in Novato, California. I was sound man for the band at the time, and lived in Oakland. Bob Thomas, an old friend of mine had just moved from LA to the Bay area and needed a place to stay, and we needed someone to look after the warehouse, which had had a problem with break-ins.
Bob was a superb graphic artist whose work is now familiar to most Deadheads in the form of the Live Dead album cover and the Bear's Choice cover, on which the popular Dancing Bears appeared.
The Dead in those days had to play in a lot of festival style shows where the equipment would all wind up at the back of the stage in a muddle. Since every band used pretty much the same type of gear it all looked alike. We would spend a fair amount of time moving the pieces around so that we could read the name on the boxes. I decided that we needed some sort of marking that we could identify from a distance.
I was in the habit of driving from Oakland to Novato in a little MGTF which had plastic side curtains, which were not very transparent, due to aging of the plastic. One day in the rain, I looked out the side and saw a sign along the freeway which was a circle with a white bar across it, the top of the circle was orange and the bottom blue. I couldn't read the name of the firm, and so was just looking at the shape. A thought occurred to me: if the orange were red and the bar across were a lightning bolt cutting across at an angle, then we would have a very nice, unique and highly identifiable mark to put on the equipment.
At the warehouse I told Bob the idea that I had, and he made a quick sketch. A mutual friend, Ernie Fischbach, who was visiting with Bob, said "Give it to me, I'll show you an easy way to put it on the boxes." Whereupon he proceeded to cut holes in a couple of pieces of stencil paper. One was a circular hole, about 5 1/2 inches in diameter, and the other was a part of a circle 5 inches in diameter. But it was a half circle with a jagged edge. Then he held the stencil to an amp and sprayed a circle of white paint. Then with one side up, the red half circle went on top of the dried white paint and after wiping off the red and turning the stencil over, the blue was applied. This was the first version, and we put it on to all our gear. It helped make it easier to find our stuff in the crunch. I still have an old toolbox with one of the stencils on it.
A few days later I was talking to Bob and suggested that perhaps the words "Grateful dead" could be placed under the circle, using a style of lettering that would appear to be a skull if you saw it from a distance (I guess I was influenced by too many posters of the time). Any way a few hours later he came down from the loft with the design we know and love.
In 1992, Bob decided to produce hand-pulled prints of the logo as a hardwood block engraving, but first he cut a test block in pine, to see how the design looked as a woodcut. He liked the test block so well that he decided to pull 50 prints, signed, numbered and hand coloured them. He gave the last of the prints to me (a few months before he died) to help sell them. Most have now been sold. Please write if you are interested in getting one of the ones left, the money goes to his family. This was one of the last pieces he did. Here is a scan (trimmed down a little). The print is on heavy, off-white watercolour paper 14" by 17".
Owsley Stanley @'thebear.org'
The logo with lettering by Rick Griffin as used on 'Steal Your Face'
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