Sunday 27 February 2011

The Funky President Mixtape by KRAZ


Funky President - James Brown 03:26
Apache - The Incredible Bongo Band 02:15
Africa - Earth, Wind & Fire 01:54
Lavell Kamma - Soft Soul 01:13
Afro Sheen - Neal Evans 02:28
Sam Huff's Flying Raging Machine - Lettuce 03:15
Since You've Been Gone Interlude - James Brown 01:37
Let A Woman Be A Woman - Dyke & The Blazers 02:39
Nobody's Baby - Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings 02:17
People Say - The Meters 01:45
Ride - Q-Tip 03:37
It's My Thang - Marva Whitney 02:16
The Last Suppit - Lettuce 02:08
Rock Creek Park - The Blackbyrds 02:28
Funky For You - Common 03:21
The Love You Left Behind - Syl Johnson 02:20
Everlasting Light - The Black Keys 02:46
Play Dis Only at Night - Pete Rock 01:49
Move Somthin' - Talib Kweli 01:47
Funkify Your Life - The Meters 03:42
Empire State of Mind - Jay-Z feat. Alicia Keys 02:55
Knockin' - Ledisi prod. by Fyre Dept. 03:25
Pass the Mic - The Beastie Boys 02:09
Fever - Fyre Dept. 02:20
Workin' On It - J. Dilla 02:26
Flashing Lights - Kanye West feat. Dwele 02:20
Lost & Found - Fyre Dept. 02:07
99 Problems - Jay-Z 02:44
People Get Up & Drive Your Funky Soul - James Brown 02:57

KRAZ presents his 1st mixtape "The Funky President" Kraz (from Soulive/Royal Family) mixes and remixes everything from James Brown (title track) and rare soul cuts to Jay Z and The Black Keys while throwing in exclusive original tracks from Fyre Dept and Lettuce to create an ultra funky soundtrack.
Mixed & Mastered by Eric Krasno
Art Direction by Root Down. Illustration & Design by Charley Robinson III
credits
released 24 March 2011

FREE DOWNLOAD (with e-mail address)

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Carl Craig presents Tribe @ Jazz à la Villette, Paris 10 September 2009


Marcus Belgrave - trumpet
Doug Hammond - drums
Harold McKinney - piano
a.o.

01:47:51

Saturday 26 February 2011

Earth - Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light 1 (Albumstream)


When Dylan Carlson resurrected Earth after a five-year break, he also reinvented their sound. Gone were the crushing, devastatingly slow, blown-out guitar and bass drones that essentially created the entire post-rock genre. The new Earth create a more atmospheric music with more arid soundscapes; they explore skeletal yet pronounced layered melodies inside their trademark drones, creating the aural equivalent of vast, utterly empty desert landscapes. It began on 2005's Hex: Or Printing in the Infernal Method, and attained maturity on 2008's Bees Made Honey in the Lion's Skull. With Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light, Vol. 1 -- the first of two thematic albums proposed for 2011 -- that's still the case, but Carlson and longtime drummer Adrienne Davies have succeeded in opening up Earth's soundscape texturally and pushing beyond what was achieved on Bees. The contributions of new members cellist Lori Goldston and bassist Karl Blau make this possible. "Old Black" opens the set with Davies playing a kick drum, snare, and cymbal, with trancelike precision. Carlson pursues a series of chord changes one note at a time; Goldston creates a counter-melody just outside his frame. Blau pushes harder and slower, creating tension and a slightly shifting dynamic as the music intensifies but intentionally never breaks loose; it reveals its considerable power with restraint. "Father Midnight" commences with a two-chord vamp, played by all three string players. Carlson finds just enough extra notes to create a melody. Blau and Goldston assert themselves against this ever-so-slowly evolving lyric statement and one another; harmony and dissonance coexist without antagonism, creating a heaviness and tension that are aesthetically beautiful and emotionally resonant. The title track, a 20-plus-minute mindwrecker that closes the set, allows that dissonance in from the jump as Goldston and Blau explore the lower registers of their instruments in a counterpoint that is bridged by Carlson's low-end guitar only minutely at first. The trio gains traction in minute increases that up the dynamic tension. This creates a sinister brooding resonance that is underscored when Davies enters five minutes later. What takes place for the remainder is an exploration of intonation, space, and melody based on a minor-key blues that transcends the form. Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light, Vol. 1 represents a further shift in Earth's evolution. It is darker -- even sinister -- and undoubtedly heavier than Bees, but it is more seductive with its mantra-like droning repetition and more elegantly detailed in its textural dimension. (Thom Jurek - allmusic; 4,5/5)

ALBUMSTREAM

Did Frank Zappa Come Up With A Business Plan For File Sharing In 1983?

♪♫ Bright Eyes - Jejune Stars 2/24/11 Letterman

Blake Hounshell
U.S. clearly waited to announce sanctions until it got its people out

It's the Inequality, Stupid


The truth about Twitter, Facebook and the uprisings in the Arab world

RSA 2011: Winning the War But Losing Our Soul

Libya's 'Love Revolution': Muslim Dating Site Seeds Protest

Philip K. Dick, the sci-fi writer who fires Hollywood's imagination in film after film

The White Stripes – Seven Nation Army (The Glitch Mob Remix)

I am pretty sure everyone is familiar with The White Stripes’ famous and Grammy winning single “Seven Nation Army.” In honor of the band’s recent demise, the Los Angeles based electronica group The Glitch Mob has remixed the popular song and given it some of the dirtiest electro synths possibly imaginable. While the remix doesn’t necessarily depart too heavily from the original arrangement that The White Stripes’ set up, it’s a fantastic, dirty, and electric remix, and an amazing tribute to a band that will surely be missed.
Did I mention it’s dirty?
Download
@'The Music Ninja'

HA!

Via

Billie Ray Martin - Sweet Suburban Disco (Vince Clarke Remix)

    

Sex Addiction: A Real Disease or a Convenient Excuse?

Model predicts 'religiosity gene' will dominate society


In the past 20 years, the Amish population in the US has doubled, increasing from 123,000 in 1991 to 249,000 in 2010. The huge growth stems almost entirely from the religious culture’s high fertility rate, which is about 6 children per woman, on average. At this rate, the Amish population will reach 7 million by 2100 and 44 million by 2150. On the other hand, the growth may not continue if future generations of Amish choose to defect from the religion and if secular influences reduce the birth rate. In a new study, Robert Rowthorn, emeritus professor of economics at Cambridge University, has looked at the broader picture underlying this particular example: how will the high fertility rates of religious people throughout the world affect the future of human genetic evolution, and therefore the biological makeup of society?
 Continue reading
Lisa Zyga @'PhysOrg'

Informed?


@ 'USuncut'

♪♫ Muammar Gaddafi - Zenga Zenga Song (Noy Alooshe Remix)

#1 w/ a bullet?

Wisconsin Assembly Rams Through Walker's Budget Bill

It was an ugly end to 61 hours of debate and deliberation. After days of Democrats attacking Republicans and Republicans attacking Democrats, hundreds of amendments being offered, and Democrats using every move in the book to delay a vote, the Wisconsin state Assembly finally voted on Republican Governor Scott Walker's controversial "budget repair bill," which would gut collective bargaining rights for most public-sector unions, among other things. In the end, the final vote was 51 to 17, with 28 members—25 Democrats, two GOPers, and one independent—not even voting.
Why? Here's how it went down. A shade after 1 a.m. on Friday morning, the Assembly speaker pro tempore suddenly cut off the debate and demanded a vote. Then the voting window was opened for just a few seconds, long enough for a GOP majority to cast its votes and approve the bill. The moment the vote ended, the Republicans picked up and headed for the door. The move stunned the Democrats in the Assembly, leaving them livid. Some Democrats yelled "Shame!" and "Cowards!" at their Republican counterparts; others hurled papers into the air; one even threw a drink.
The whole thing caught Assembly Democrats by surprise. For one, they still had 15 speakers on deck to debate the bill. Republicans also failed to invoke the traditional motion and roll call used when signaling that the debate is over and it's time to vote.
The post-vote comments by Democrats hid none of their anger. "What a sad day for this state when we are willing to ignore the traditions that people died for in this state, that people fought bitterly for," said Rep. Peter Barca, a Democrat. "We ignore our forefathers who made this a great state." Said Democratic Rep. Kelda Helen Roys: "We never imagined they would do it as they did, not even properly using the nuclear option."
Republicans saw nothing wrong with the move, which they say brought an end to days' worth of delay. "In the end, we're going to head the state in the right direction," said Rep. Scott Fitzgerald, the speaker of the Assembly.
Of course, the fight is only half over. The state Senate now takes up the bill. But with that chamber's 14 Democrats still in hiding—their "filibuster on feet," as one senator called it—it's unclear if or when the senate will take up the bill. Democrats say they have no plans to return anytime soon, not until Gov. Walker relents and throws out his ban on collective bargaining. "I'm not paid to be their rubber stamp," Sen. Chris Larson, a Democrat, told me last night. "I'm not elected to be their rubber stamp."
Andy Kroll @'Mother Jones'

#Libya

File 10356
Twitter user Abukhit in Tripoli reports gun fire outside his house. He reports that he had to run back into the house after witnessing a shoot out, and someone being shot in the head. He continues to give running commentary of the events outside his home. Here is a picture of a bullet hole in the wall.
@'Al Jazeera'

The DOJ's creeping war on whistleblowers

Libya's divided capital: Face to face with Gaddafi's militiamen

The Mummy Returns

Lim Heng Swee

Are you free?

Via

Damaged Goods: The 10 Best Abused Artworks Ever

Art is both a precious commodity and a significant cultural symbol of our time. The museums and art centers that display the works are public domains, in which anything is likely to happen. Throw a bunch of publicity loving crackpots, wannabe performance artists, youthful vandals, social protesters, and accident-prone eccentrics into the mix and you enter the damage zone, where art gets hurt — or at the very least, publicly humiliated.
After recently reading about a portrait of Mao Zedong getting shot because its hallucinating owner thought it was the actual Chinese despot in his house, we decided to investigate other tales of artful accidents involving works by celebrated artists — ranging from Monet and Picasso to Warhol and Serrano — and bullet holes, crowbars, felt-tip pens, and flying elbows and fists. Click through below to discover our gallery of damaged goods.


Two bullet holes in Andy Warhol’s 1972 screenprint of Mao didn’t deter a collector from buying it for $302,500 — 10 times the high presale estimate of $30,000 — at Christie’s in New York last month. The reason the piece was coveted has to do with the shooter as much as it has to do with the artist and subject matter. During a wild night in the 1970s, Dennis Hopper got spooked by the picture and shot it twice. Warhol loved the results and annotated the holes with circles and the words “warning shot” and “bullet hole,” which made the work an unplanned collaboration.
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Unreal cities: Sohei Nishino's magical photographic maps of London, Tokyo and utopia

Diorama Map London, 2010 - Sohei Nishino
Diorama Map London (2010) ... Nishino's maps are 'breathtaking in their amibition and disorienting in their oddness'. Photograph: Sohei Nishino/Michael Hoppen Contemporary/Emon Photo Gallery
"The photographer is an armed version of the solitary walker," wrote Susan Sontag in On Photography, "reconnoitring, stalking, cruising the urban inferno, the voyeuristic stroller who discovers the city as a landscape of voluptuous extremes." Sontag's "voyeuristic strollers" included Atget, Brassai and WeeGee, all of whom were "not attracted to the city's official realities but to its dark seamy corners, its neglected populations". She could also have mentioned Bill Brandt, an often-solitary wanderer on the night-time streets of wartime London, or Cartier-Bresson, forever in search of the decisive moment, as well as all manner of street photographers, from the frantically obsessive Gary Winogrand to the gently observant Helen Levitt.
Interestingly, Sontag also saw the photographer as a kind of flaneur. "Adept at the joys of watching," she wrote, "connoisseur or empathy, the flaneur finds the world 'picturesque'". The term "flaneur", which originally meant "stroller", "saunterer" and, interestingly, "loafer", was appropriated by the poet Charles Baudelaire, to describe "a person who walks the street in order to experience it". That is certainly what street photographers do, though one wonders if the act of taking a photograph, as well as the photographer's need to be constantly on the look-out for a subject, might come between the walking and the experiencing; might, in fact, run contrary to the meandering spirit of flaneurism (flaneurie?).
One also wonders what Sontag, or indeed Baudelaire, would have made of Sohei Nishino, a young Japanese photographer whose work goes on show for the first time in Britain at the Michael Hoppen gallery next week. Like Winogrand, Nishino is an obsessive, one who relentlessly pounds the streets with a camera. Yet unlike Winogrand, and every other photographer mentioned above, Nishino does not go in search of the city's dark seamy corners or neglected populations. What he does is photograph the city in detail, and then construct a composite map from the thousands of detailed images he has amassed on his wanderings. Thus far, he has recreated 10 cities, including Tokyo, Paris, Istanbul and New York. The end results, which he calls "diorama maps", are both breathtaking in their ambition and disorienting in their oddness.
Diorama Map Night (2009-10) - Sohei Nishino
Diorama Map Night (2009-10) ... Nishino's cities are 'familiar yet oddly disjointed'. Photograph: Sohei Nishino/Michael Hoppen Contemporary/Emon Photo Gallery 
Last year, Nishino spent a month walking the streets of London – which, come to think of it, does not seem that long a time for the task in hand. He took over 10,000 photographs, which, on his return to Tokyo, he edited down to 4,000. Then the real work began. Having hand-printed the photographs in his own darkroom, Nishino then set about cutting them up and piecing them together – slowly and meticulously – into a giant composite photographic map of the city of London. It measures 7.5ft x 4ft, and will be shown at Michael Hoppen alongside his other diorama maps.
In the meticulous assembling of these photomaps, Nishino creates epic artworks that, despite depicting many familiar icons of modernity and post-modernity – the Empire State building, the Gherkin, the Pompidou Centre – look oddly old-fashioned. He creates what look like medieval or renaissance maps of modern cities. In them, everything is familiar yet oddly disjointed, nothing seems quite in scale and, here and there, whole areas are missing or seem crushed or out-of-proportion. Some of his photographs are taken from above, some from far below. Buildings loom and tilt, as does the terrain, and sometimes a segment of put-together sky appears.
For Nishino, it would seem, the process is the thing. He has paid homage to the great 18th-century Japanese cartographer, Ino Tadataka, who spent 17 years surveying and mapping the coastline of Japan. (The mammoth project was completed by his surveying team after his death.) But Nishino's obsessive cartography is of a different order: fantastical rather than scientific; imaginative rather than literal. "His images are true to form in a sense, and yet incorrect", notes Seiji Komatsu, director of the Emon Photography gallery in Tokyo. "In other words, he is trying to depict an image that comes from within the memory."
Nishino's imaginative journey has taken a different turn of late. His recent I-Land project, in which the map is even bigger and in colour, depicts an imaginary Japanese city that echoes Thomas More's Utopia, while simultaneously looking like a future-world from a sci-fi film. Here, old and new photographs are used to create a timeless cityscape that is unreal but oddly familiar. Again, the process has been painstaking and obsessive and the end result, like all Nishino's work, seems to fly in the face of Photoshop and digital manipulation. He is a creator of virtual worlds all the same, but what is important here is not just the end result, but the labour and dedication that underpins it.
"This work required a great deal of my passion and energy and entailed a great deal of financial, physical, and spiritual hardship." Nishino has said of the diorama map series. "After completing it I realised that it grew out of my experiences during a Shikoku 88-temple pilgrimage that I went on alone as my high school graduation trip. The pilgrimage for me meant simply walking the route – I had no particular underlying motivation or goal for doing it. I think the spiritual core of my work came from this experience, and I continuously take pictures to emphasise the spirit of going ever forward."
Nishono is a flaneur, then, but one whose motivation is not just to experience the city he walks though, but to memorise, remap and re-imagine it. His composite photographic map of London portrays a city both real and unreal, recognisable but alien. A city you can get lost in all over again.
Sean O'Hagen @'The Guardian'

Legislators Are Going to Unbelievable Lengths to Gouge Clean Water Laws and Cozy Up to Big Coal


Big Coal's backlash over the EPA crackdown on future mountaintop removal operations went from denial and anger to the outright absurd last week, as state legislatures conjured their own versions of a sagebrush rebellion and the new Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives passed a sheath of regulatory gutting amendments to its budget bill.
On the heels of its Tea Party-backed coal rallies last fall, the dirty coal lobby couldn't have paid for a better show. As millions of pounds of ammonium nitrate fuel oil explosives continued to detonate daily in their ailing districts and affected residents held dramatic sit-ins to raise awareness of the growing health crisis in the central Appalachian coalfields, Big Coal-bankrolled sycophants fell over themselves from Virginia to Kentucky to West Virginia, and in the halls of Congress, to see who could introduce the most ridiculous and dangerous bills to shield the coal industry.
Their breathless message: "The EPA don't understand mining," as Kentucky’s House Natural Resources and Environment Chairman Jim Gooch, D-Providence, declared to his colleagues.
That misunderstanding dates back to last spring's breakthrough announcement by the EPA, following up a memorandum of understanding between the numerous federal agencies, including the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation Enforcement, on finally issuing guidance rules and cracking down on the irreversible and pervasive destruction of mountaintop removal mining operations to waterways. Based on government studies that conclusively demonstrate that "burial of headwater streams by valley fills causes permanent loss of ecosystems," the EPA issued new conductivity levels "to protect 95% of aquatic life and fresh water streams in central Appalachia" and effectively bring an end to the process of valley fills (and the dumping of toxic coal mining waste into the valleys and waterways).
After an eight-year hiatus of enforcement under the George W. Bush administration, in which an estimated 1,000-2,000 miles of the headwater streams were jammed and sullied by toxic coal waste(my emphasis), along with the destruction of hundreds of mountains and tens of thousands of hardwood forests and the depopulation of historic Appalachia communities, the EPA's return to its true role as enforcer of the Clean Water Act made it a convenient target for Big Coal outrage...
 Continue reading
Jeff Biggers @'AlterNet'
Danger Room
In the middle of a recession, Pentagon gives a $35B deal to US firm. Only in Washington would this be called a "surprise".

Outlawing 'Legal Highs': Can Emergency Bans Hinder Drug Development?

As states race to outlaw synthetic drugs sold as "bath salts" or "fake marijuana," there would seem to be little downside to banning these untested and possibly dangerous chemicals. But prohibiting "legal" intoxicants — many of which have exploded in popularity via the Internet — could have the unintended effect of keeping potential cures for diseases like Alzheimer's out of the pharmaceutical pipeline.
Many of the drugs marketed as bath salts and available under brand names like Cloud Nine, Ivory Wave and Blue Silk contain stimulants such as mephedrone and MDPV (methylenedioxypyrovalerone); neither is approved for medical use in the U.S. These chemicals have not been scientifically tested in humans, but users report effects similar to cocaine and methamphetamine. Media accounts have linked the drugs to serious, even possibly fatal, side effects.
(In case you're wondering, no, Calgon and Origins Soothing Sea Salts cannot "take you away" to get you high: legitimate bath salts sold in the soap aisle do not contain psychoactive substances. The "bath salts" with amphetamine-like qualities are sold in head shops and other places that sell drug paraphernalia and are labeled in ways that imply their true purpose.)

So far, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has not banned these substances, but if their popularity continues to increase, they are unlikely to stay legal for long. It's not even certain that any "legal high" is actually entirely legal — a 1986 law bars the use or sale of analogues of prohibited drugs for human consumption, but it's unclear whether it can be enforced against these substances and under what circumstances...
 Continue reading
Maia Szalavitz @'Time'
Shock Doctrine US

Friday 25 February 2011

Dirk Hanson
RT @: Fun fact: UN rates three largest global industries to be oil, arms and illegal drugs, respectively

A call to arms

Smoke Signals


Help Tunisia First

The pros and cons of military intervention in Libya

In The Realm of the Hackers


Via
In 1989, two Melbourne teenage hackers known as Electron and Phoenix stole a restricted computer security list and used it to break into some of the world's most classified and supposedly secure computer systems. So fast and widespread was the attack, no-one could work out how it had happened - until one of the hackers called The New York Times to brag. Ten years after their arrest, this dramatised documentary uncovers not only how they did it but why. It takes us headlong into the clandestine, risky but intoxicating world of the computer underground.

Summary:
http://www.filmaust.com.au/programs/d...
Breaking into The Realm:
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/200...
Zardoz 'Security Digest':
http://securitydigest.org/zardoz/

Peter Biskind: The Rude Warrior

Until five years ago, Mel Gibson was one of the best-loved and best-paid talents in Hollywood, not to mention one of the town’s few real family men. How to explain the foulmouthed, violent bigotry that has since burst into public view, making him an industry pariah, even as his 26-year marriage imploded? With the help of Gibson’s friends—and his movies—Peter Biskind delves into the roots of a star’s divided life.
@'Vanity Fair'

Did David Held, Lord Desai and the LSE Overlook Gaddafi’s PhD Plagiarism?

The world is obsessed with Facebook



Middle East Uprising: Facebook's Back-Channel Diplomacy

The freedom to be who you want to be…

Peter Steiner’s iconic “on the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog” cartoon may have been drawn in jest--but his point was deadly serious, as recent events in the Middle East and North Africa have shown. In reality, as the web has developed--with users anywhere able to post a blog, share photos with friends and family or “broadcast” events they witness online--the issue of identity has become increasingly important.
So, we’ve been thinking about the different ways people choose to identify themselves (or not) when they’re using Google--in particular how identification can be helpful or even necessary for certain services, while optional or unnecessary for others. Attribution can be very important, but pseudonyms and anonymity are also an established part of many cultures -- for good reason.
When it comes to Google services, we support three types of use: unidentified, pseudonymous and identified. And each mode has its own particular user benefits.
Unidentified. Sometimes you want to use the web without having your online activity tied to your identity, or even a pseudonym—for example, when you’re researching a medical condition or searching for that perfect gift for a special someone. When you’re not logged into your Google Account (or if you never signed up for one), that’s how you’ll be using our services. While we need to keep information like IP addresses and cookies to provide the service, we don’t link that information to an individual account when you are logged out.
Pseudonymous. Using a pseudonym has been one of the great benefits of the Internet, because it has enabled people to express themselves freely—they may be in physical danger, looking for help, or have a condition they don’t want people to know about. People in these circumstances may need a consistent identity, but one that is not linked to their offline self. You can use pseudonyms to upload videos in YouTube or post to Blogger.
Identified. There are many times you want to share information with people and have them know who you really are. Some products such as Google Checkout rely on this type of identity assurance and require that you identify yourself to use the service. There may be other times when it’s more desirable to be identified than not, for example if you want to be part of a community action project you may ask, “How do I know these other people I see online really are community members?”
Equally as important as giving users the freedom to be who they want to be is ensuring they know exactly what mode they’re in when using Google’s services. So recently we updated the top navigation bar on many of our Google services to make this even clearer. In the upper right hand corner of these Google pages, you will see an indicator of which account, if any, you are signed into.
We’re also looking at other ways to make this more transparent for users. While some of our products will be better suited to just one or two of those modes, depending on what they’re designed to do, we believe all three modes have a home at Google.

العقيد السعيد Happy qathafy