Obama and Netanyahu Are Facing a Turning Point

HA!

JPBarlow John Perry Barlow

If the Rapture does happen tomorrow, DC will be spared. Not for its virtue. But for its ability to ignore all external events

Eight New Yorkers sue Baidu for $16m

Baidu is being sued by eight New York residents, who filed a lawsuit yesterday against the company accusing the search engine of censoring internet information in collusion with the People's Republic.
According to Reuters, the complaint claims violation of the US Constitution. It names Baidu and, unusually, the Chinese government as defendants in the case.

The suit was filed in the US District Court in Manhattan, New York. It claims that Baidu operates as an "enforcer" to Beijing policies by censoring pro-democracy content on the internet.

An example cited is China's military action against protesters in Tiananmen Square in 1989.
The plaintiffs, described in the complaint as pro-democracy activists, allege that their writings and videos have been suppressed by Baidu.
"We allege a private company is acting as the arm and agent of a foreign state to suppress political speech, and permeate US borders to violate the First Amendment," the plaintiffs' lawyer Stephen Preziosi told Reuters. The idea is that as Baidu searches conducted in the States do not show the pro-democracy materials, US law has been violated.
"An internet search engine is a public acommodation, just like a hotel or restaurant," Preziosi argued.
The complainants are seeking total damages of $16m. However, there are no demands for Baidu to tweak its search engine policies.
"It would be futile to expect Baidu to change," said Preziosi.
Kelly Fiveash @'The Register'
Only in America!
(Thanx Robin!)

The End Is Nigh (Only one more day...)

Oslo Davis

Cannes deal for Gibson's Neuromancer: pre-production underway

Illustration: John Coulthart

WikiLeaks: The Pakistan Papers
Putting together The Pakistan Papers

Andy Kaufman - Midnight Special (1981)

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Simply brilliant!

Did Obama Say Something So Different From Bush?

First Listen: Joseph Arthur - 'The Graduation Ceremony'

Joseph Arthur's 2006 album Nuclear Daydream was the last full-length release under his name alone, but we've been treated to the singer-songwriter's work in other incarnations since then. He's made two albums with his band The Lonely Astronauts, as well as a series of four solo EPs released across four months in 2008. Just last year, he put out an album with the trio Fistful of Mercy, featuring Arthur, Ben Harper and Dhani Harrison.
That varied span of work mirrors the career Arthur has built as a "triple threat" artist since the mid-'90s, bridging music, poetry and painting with prolific creativity and unyielding inventiveness. He's even opened a gallery, the Museum of Modern Arthur (now online only). None of those endeavors suggest that "restraint" is part of his vocabulary.
But if there ever was a Joseph Arthur project to dispute that claim, it's his new album, The Graduation Ceremony, out May 24. From the first finger-picked notes of "Out on a Limb," it's clear that Arthur's goal is to keep things simple in both process and sound. Even with full orchestration (guitars, bass, strings, keys, Jim Keltner on drums and Liz Phair on backing vocals), there's an intentional sparseness at work. As with much of Joseph's musical and visual work, layers — however delicate — create depth, not excess.
Restraint in subject matter is another story, as Arthur adds no filter to reflections on a relationship's ebb, flow and end. With his vocal range in fine form, moving from Greg Brown-esque growl to winding falsetto, listening is an almost tactile experience. (Try to not react to the opening line of "Watch Our Shadows Run," in which Arthur sings in full falsetto, "You betrayed me.")
Still, dark ruminations aren't the only color in the album's musical palette. "Midwest" invites listeners to clap along, dream and turn up the distortion, and the sun appears repeatedly throughout The Graduation Ceremony, including in the soaring chorus of "Over the Sun." (That said, the tune also features the line, "When I cheat on you, you're still all I see.")
Whether "Over the Sun" is a sequel to his 2000 hit "In the Sun," only Arthur knows for sure. But his catalog rarely treads the same ground twice, and The Graduation Ceremony proves it by exploring another artful dimension entirely.
Sarah Wardrop @'npr'

Hear 'The Graduation Ceremony' In Its Entirety

HA! (I take it that's NOT a good review then?)

"...Because, if you like this film, you are a cunt."

Fripp & Eno - The Heavenly Music Corporation

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Top Five Fripp Collaborations

ADHD Drugs Less Likely Than Prescription Painkillers to be Diverted, Survey Finds

WebGL: The Technology Behind '3 Dreams of Black'

Experience "3 Dreams of Black" at http://www.ro.me/
"3 Dreams of Black" is Chris Milk's new interactive film, created in WebGL with some friends from Google, for Danger Mouse & Daniele Luppi's ROME, featuring Jack White & Norah Jones. The project is a Chrome Experiment (http://www.chromeexperiments.com/) that showcases some of the latest web technologies in modern browsers like Google Chrome.
In building "3 Dreams of Black", we've had the opportunity to build many tools, libraries, and models. We've fully opened up the source code and made it available for web developers to tinker with us at http://www.ro.me/tech. In addition to the code, a few other highlights include eight WebGL demos, a fun model viewer for interacting with some of the animals from the web experience, and the Three.js 3D library used for building the experience. In addition, a big part of the project was to define a good pipeline for getting all the animals and environment models right in WebGL -- for this, we extended Blender with custom plugins so we could manipulate and export the data with ease.
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