Scientists Create Electronic “Second Skin”

A team of US scientists led by John A. Rogers, the Lee J. Flory-Founder professor of engineering at the University of Illinois, has developed an “electronic tattoo” that could make a huge difference in monitoring patients’ heart and brain. The tiny electronic sensor can be attached to skin like a temporary tattoo; it can bend, stretch and wrinkle and not break, says the BBC. The skin-like circuits could replace bulky equipment like wires, cables, monitors, pads coated with sticky gel, are much more comfortable to wear and “give the wearer complete freedom of movement,” says Science Daily.
Electrical and computer engineering professor Todd Coleman notes that these “wearable electronics” can connect a person “to the physical world and the cyberworld in a very natural way that feels very comfortable”:

The patches are initially mounted on a thin sheet of water-soluble plastic, then laminated to the skin with water — just like applying a temporary tattoo. Alternately, the electronic components can be applied directly to a temporary tattoo itself, providing concealment for the electronics….

Skin-mounted electronics have many biomedical applications, including EEG and EMG sensors to monitor nerve and muscle activity.

One major advantage of skin-like circuits is that they don’t require conductive gel, tape, skin-penetrating pins or bulky wires, which can be uncomfortable for the user and limit coupling efficiency. They are much more comfortable and less cumbersome than traditional electrodes and give the wearers complete freedom of movement.

“If we want to understand brain function in a natural environment, that’s completely incompatible with EEG studies in a laboratory,” said Coleman, now a professor at the University of California at San Diego. “The best way to do this is to record neural signals in natural settings, with devices that are invisible to the user.”

What’s more, the tiny electronic sensors can be placed on the throat and are able to recognize differences in words such as up, down, left, right, go and stop. Researchers were able to use them to control a simple computer game but someone with muscular or neurological disorders, such as ALS, could potentially wear one of them circuits and use them to interface with computers...

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Kristina C. @'Care2'

Way To Blue - The Songs of Nick Drake (Live Barbican January 2010)

Filmed at the Barbican in January 2010 and curated by Joe Boyd, producer and general champion of Nick Drake, 90 minutes of performance highlights from a diverse but renowned cast of modern day troubadours. Presenting their own interpretations of Drake's songs are Vashti Bunyan, Green Gartside, Lisa Hannigan, Scott Matthews, Teddy Thompson, Krystle Warren, Robyn Hitchcock, Kirsty Almeida and Harper Simon. A celebration of the songs of Nick Drake, the concert features the original orchestrations of Nick's friend, the late Robert Kirby. It includes a house band anchored by Danny Thompson, the legendary bassist who played on Drake's first two albums. Highlights include Teddy Thompson's version of the timeless River Man, Lisa Hannigan's haunting and compelling version of Black Eyed Dog, Krystle Warren's bluesy take on Time Has Told Me, Robyn Hitchcock's psychedelic spin on Parasite and Neil MacColl's accomplished rendition of the classic Northern Sky. During his lifetime Nick Drake found little mainstream success, but since his death at the untimely age of 26 in 1974 he has been revered as one of the most influential and important English songwriters of his era.
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Really looking forward to the Melbourne performance...

William S. Burroughs & Brion Gysin interview 1974 (French)

Fresh 'social justice' protests in Israel

Tens of thousands gathered for fresh demonstrations outside Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, after leaders of a hugely popular social movement called for rallies across Israel in protest against high prices and living conditions.
At 10pm local time about 70,000 people were mobilised throughout the country, according to police estimates, which did not give a breakdown of numbers in every city or town.
Protest leaders said they were hoping for a turnout larger than last Saturday's, when more than 300,000 people demonstrated in Tel Aviv and other cities calling for "social justice" and a "welfare state".
"The key for us is to show that the people are united, that we live in a single country and that everything must be done to bridge social gaps," said Stav Shafir, a protest leader.
The largest crowds were in the northern city of Haifa, where more than 30,000 protesters turned up, and just over 10,000 gathered in Beersheva in the south, less than the numbers expected by protest leaders.
"We finally hear the voice of the people of the south, not just Tel Aviv," said Adar Meron, a Flamenco dancer and among the first to pitch a protest tent in Beersheva, the capital of the
impoverished Negev region.
At Beersheva's main square, a huge banner read "The Negev awakens". Demonstrators carried banners and placards that read "the south is angry", and "toward a welfare state - now".
Crowds chanted "the people demand social justice", the slogan of the protests since they began a month ago with the appearance of the first protest tent along Rothschild Boulevard in Tel Aviv's upscale district.
Smaller crowds also gathered in Afula in the north, in Galilee, in Modiin in the centre, and in Eilat in the extreme south.
The goal of the latest protests, organisers said, is to expand the geographic and demographic scope of the movement, as so far the middle class has been the driving force behind social justice rallies.
Rapidly growing protest movement
Israel has been gripped since mid-July by the rapidly growing protest movement demanding cheaper housing, education and health care.
An opinion poll released by Channel 10 television on Tuesday showed that 88 per cent of respondents said they supported the movement, with 53 per cent saying they are willing take part in protests.
Under pressure from the protests, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was willing to alter his approach to the free-market economy and meet the demands of the demonstrators. He created a commission to propose reforms and present recommendations to the government within a month.
@'SBS'

Le Révélateur - Bleu Nuit

‘Bleu Nuit’ is made using video feedbacks as basic material. Through various processes of image manipulations, colors emerged from electronic light to create improbable landscapes.

Rick Scott getting low-cost health insurance from state

It's 'Prog Rock Sunday' here at Exile Towers. Not 'arf...

James Franco

Alykassem Aly Kassem 

People used to take LSD to make the world look weird. Now the world is weird and they take Prozac to make it look normal. Bangstrom #2011

Penny Wong: Australia's non-story of the week

Imagine the outcry in America if a senior cabinet member in the Obama administration had announced she was about to have a baby with her gay partner.

I'm thinking protests from the Christian Right outside the Treasury Department. Fiery on-screen denunciations from some leading television evangelists. Perhaps one or two preachers might even have blamed America's demotion from AAA to AA+ status on the moral impoverishment of its financial officials. The unborn baby would have quickly become the latest proxy in America's ongoing culture wars.
In Australia, however, the news that Finance Minister Penny Wong and her partner, Sophie Allouache, are expecting a child has generated a minimum of fuss. Indeed, I can report that it has been the non-story of the week.
They conceived using IVF with the help of an anonymous sperm donor. They underwent the procedure outside of their home state of South Australia because IVF for gay couples there is illegal.
Isolated criticism Ms Wong decided to announce the news earlier this week because she acknowledged there would be interest from the public as a result of her high-ranking position within the government and because she wanted to protect her pregnant partner from any undue publicity.
Though a strong advocate of same-sex marriage - a stance that puts her at odds with Prime Minister Julia Gillard - Ms Wong said she was not making a political point.
''You have a child because you want a family and you want to have the opportunity of raising a child together," she told Phillip Coorey of the Sydney Morning Herald.
"You don't have a child to make a political statement."
Julia Gillard publicly congratulated her friend and trusted colleague, as did Julie Bishop, the acting opposition leader.
The only politician I have seen publicly criticise Ms Wong is the Reverend Fred Nile of the Christian Democratic Party, a member of the New South Wales Legislative Council and a self-styled protecter of public morals. In the upper house of the New South Wales parliament, for instance, he claims to hold what he calls "the balance of prayer".
"I'm totally against a baby being brought up by two mothers - the baby has human rights," said Rev Nile. "It's a very poor example for the rest of the Australian population."
He also criticised Penny Wong's decision to make public the news. "It just promotes their lesbian lifestyle and trying to make it natural where it's unnatural," he said.
But his has been a fairly isolated public voice.
A host of firsts What can we draw from all this? The first point to make is that Australia's culture wars are very different from America's culture wars.
On the other side of the Pacific, the battles tend to focus on moral and faith-based issues, like abortion, creationism and same sex marriage. In Australia, the battleground is history, the related issue of indigenous rights, art and the environment. True, the question of same-sex marriage is starting to loom larger as an issue - the Labor Party national conference will debate it in December, and the emboldened Australian Greens are pressing for reform.
But it generates nowhere near the same passion as it does in the US.
When it comes to personal morality, Australia has moved away from the prudish censoriousness that was such a strong feature of national life until the early 1970s, and perhaps beyond. And though it remains a fairly socially conservative country - the continued influence of the Catholic Church is a key factor - it is also a socially tolerant country.
Again, this explains why Ms Wong's announcement has generated so little controversy.
Finally, Ms Wong is yet another reminder of the changing face of Australia. She is not only the first openly gay federal cabinet minister, but the first Asian-born minister. She came to Australia from Malaysia.
To these firsts, I dare say she would like another: that of being the first Australian politician to take part in a same-sex marriage.
Nick Bryant @'BBC'

David Starkey claims 'the whites have become black'

The historian and broadcaster David Starkey has provoked a storm of criticism after claiming during a televised discussion about the riots that "the problem is that the whites have become black".
In an appearance on BBC2's Newsnight, Starkey spoke of "a profound cultural change" and said he had been re-reading Enoch Powell's rivers of blood speech.
"His prophesy was absolutely right in one sense. The Tiber did not foam with blood but flames lambent, they wrapped around Tottenham and wrapped around Clapham," he said.
"But it wasn't inter-community violence. This is where he was absolutely wrong." Gesturing towards one of the other guests, Owen Jones, who wrote Chavs: the Demonisation of the Working Classes, Starkey said: "What has happened is that a substantial section of the chavs that you wrote about have become black."
An outcry on Twitter began with the Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn asking the BBC: "Why was racist analysis of Starkey unchallenged? What exactly are you trying to prove?" A spokesman for Newsnight said: "I think that [presenter] Emily Maitlis very robustly challenged David Starkey.
"The two guests [Jones and the writer and education adviser Dreda Say Mitchell] that we had also quite clearly took issue with his comments."
Jones told the Guardian he believed Starkey's comments were "a career-ending moment". He said: "He tapped into racial prejudice at a time of national crisis. At other times, those comments would be inflammatory but they are downright dangerous in the current climate.
"I fear that some people will now say that David Starkey is right, and you could already see some of them on Twitter. I am worried about a backlash from the right and he will give legitimacy to those views in the minds of some." On the programme, Starkey said: "The whites have become black. A particular sort of violent destructive, nihilistic gangster culture has become the fashion and black and white boys and girls operate in this language together.
"This language which is wholly false, which is this Jamaican patois that has been intruded in England and that is why so many of us have this sense of literally of a foreign country."
The historian and broadcaster, whose historical documentaries on Channel 4 about the Tudors established him as a household name, went on to name-check Tottenham's Labour MP: "Listen to David Lammy, an archetypal successful black man. If you turn the screen off so that you are listening to him on radio you would think he was white."
He was challenged by Mitchell, who ridiculed his theories about the speech patterns of young people.
"You keep talking David about black culture. Black communities are not homogenous. So there are black cultures. Lots of different black cultures. What we need to be doing is ... thinking about ourselves not as individual communities ... as one community. We need to stop talking about them and us."
Ben Quinn @'The Guardian'
I still can't believe this guy!

England riots: coalition row grows over 'kneejerk' response

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Owen Jones: It was like Enoch Powell meets Alan Partridge