Alaskan Sportsman, Life on the Last Frontier: Statehood Issue, June 1959, pp. 2-3
click for larger
via
Wednesday 23 March 2011
Fun With Guns!
Alaskan Sportsman, Life on the Last Frontier: Statehood Issue, June 1959, pp. 2-3
click for larger
via
Pregnant Woman Who Attempted Suicide Now Charged With Murder
Robin Marty (who you may know from Care2) wrote a great short piece for RHRealityCheck, dissecting the situation. "Was the poisoning really just an attempt at a do it yourself abortion, as the prosecution appears to be claiming?" she asks. If these charges are successful, as she points out, this could easily lead to a slippery slope, where women who experience any kind of harm during pregnancy can be accused of trying to abort (or "murder") their fetus.
Indiana is poised to pass a "fetal pain" law which would prohibit abortion after 20 weeks, claiming that after that point, the fetus can feel pain. And in 2009, the Indiana legislature passed a bill that imposed harsh penalties on crimes that lead to the death of an unborn child at any stage of development. This law was passed after a bank teller was shot during an attempted robbery and her unborn twins died, so it looks like this is the first application of the feticide bill to a pregnant woman who tried to kill herself.
The issue is that we don't know why Shuai tried to ingest rat poison - it seems more like she was simply trying to end her life than to willfully kill her fetus. Either way, as Robin points out, the prosecutor is deciding the motive - talk about taking away women's agency. Let's hope that Shaui's attorney is successful in her attempts to get the charges thrown out.
Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux @'Care2'
Neil Young - Red Rocks Live (19./20. September 2000)
1. Intro 2. Motorcyle Mama 3. Powderfinger 4. Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere 5. I Believe In You 6. Unknown Legend 7. Fool For Your Love 8. Buffalo Springfield Again 9. Razor Love 10. Daddy Went Walkin' 11. Peace Of Mind 12. Walk on 13. Winterlong
14. Bad Fog Of Loneliness 15. Words 16. Harvest Moon 17. World On A String 18. Tonight's The Night 19. Cowgirl In The Sand 20. Credits 21. Mellow My Mind
* Neil Young - guitar, piano, vocals
* Ben Keith - guitar, lap slide, pedal steel, vocals
* Spooner Oldham - piano, Wurlitzer electric piano, Hammond B3 organ
* Donald "Duck" Dunn - bass
* Jim Keltner - drums, percussion
* Astrid Young - vocals
* Pegi Young - vocals
recorded @ Red Rock Amphitheater in Morrison, Colorado
Tuesday 22 March 2011
Video: Time Lapse Mapping the Global Protests and Uprisings
John Caelan from the website The Swamp Post has created a couple of time-lapse videos that map protests from December 18 to March 7, 2011, where the protests and uprisings can be seen spreading out into different countries.
On a comment on his website in response to a reader's question he explains how he got the data by searching results of protest and uprising reports from mainstream media.
Generally, the methodology was to sift through the first 1000 results of a news search on any given day and mine the unique events. All of that was copied into Excel by day–the locations were mined from the articles manually, and the icons were the chosen by the best average of reporting, as reporting the actual count of people at any gathering is both intrinsically difficult, regardless of skew involved parties tend to apply. Each day’s sheet was turned into a .csv, and imported into the mapper, which is a free thing from Zee Maps, ’cause I’m poor. The day would be copied, new events added, events older than 5 days deleted, events older than 2 days turned to gray. Each event remains in color for two days, mostly to account for the crossover of timezones.Mr Caelan, however, is aware of the unreliability of these results in showing worldwide trends, as he explains in a comment on this page. Because protests have caught the attention of mainstream media, he says, this map shows how reporting on uprisings or protests has increased, although not necessarily the quantity of protests themselves.
To find out more about the uprisings shown on the videos, there's also an interactive map where you can click on the different icons and read information on the protest that was recorded at that point.
Via
Charles Mingus Cat Toilet Training Program
First, you must train your cat to use a home-made cardboard litter box, if you have not already done so. (If your box does not have a one-piece bottom, add a cardboard that fits inside, so you have a false bottom that is smooth and strong. This way the box will not become soggy and fall out at the bottom. The grocery store will have extra flat cardboards which you can cut down to fit exactly inside your box.)
Be sure to use torn up newspaper, not kitty litter. Stop using kitty litter. (When the time comes you cannot put sand in a toilet.)
Once your cat is trained to use a cardboard box, start moving the box around the room, towards the bathroom. If the box is in a corner, move it a few feet from the corner, but not very noticeably. If you move it too far, he may go to the bathroom in the original corner. Do it gradually. You've got to get him thinking. Then he will gradually follow the box as you move it to the bathroom. (Important: if you already have it there, move it out of the bathroom, around, and then back. He has to learn to follow it. If it is too close to the toilet, to begin with, he will not follow it up onto the toilet seat when you move it there.) A cat will look for his box. He smells it.
2
Now, as you move the box, also start cutting the brim of the box down, so the sides get lower. Do this gradually.
Finally, you reach the bathroom and, eventually, the toilet itself. Then, one day, prepare to put the box on top of the toilet. At each corner of the box, cut a little slash. You can run string around the box, through these slashes, and tie the box down to the toilet so it will not fall off. Your cat will see it there and jump up to the box, which is now sitting on top of the toilet (with the sides cut down to only an inch or so.)
Don't bug the cat now, don't rush him, because you might throw him off. Just let him relax and go there for awhile-maybe a week or two. Meanwhile, put less and less newspaper inside the box.
3
One day, cut a small hole in the very center of his box, less than an apple-about the size of a plum-and leave some paper in the box around the hole. Right away he will start aiming for the hole and possibly even try to make it bigger. Leave the paper for awhile to absorb the waste. When he jumps up he will not be afraid of the hole because he expects it. At this point you will realize that you have won. The most difficult part is over.
From now on, it is just a matter of time. In fact, once when I was cleaning the box and had removed it from the toilet, my cat jumped up anyway and almost fell in. To avoid this, have a temporary flat cardboard ready with a little hole, and slide it under the toilet lid so he can use it while you are cleaning, in case he wants to come and go, and so he will not fall in and be scared off completely. You might add some newspaper up there too, while you are cleaning, in case your cat is not as smart as Nightlife was.
4
Now cut the box down completely until there is no brim left. Put the flat cardboard, which is left, under the lid of the toilet seat, and pray. Leave a little newspaper, still. He will rake it into the hole anyway, after he goes to the bathroom. Eventually, you can simply get rid of the cardboard altogether. You will see when he has got his balance properly.
Don't be surprised if you hear the toilet flush in the middle of the night. A cat can learn how to do it, spurred on by his instinct to cover up. His main thing is to cover up. If he hits the flush knob accidentally and sees that it cleans the bowl inside, he may remember and do it intentionally.
Also, be sure to turn the toilet paper roll around so that it won't roll down easily if the cat paws it. The cat is apt to roll it into the toilet, again with the intention of covering up- the way he would if there were still kitty litter.
It took me about three or four weeks to toilet train my cat, Nightlife. Most of the time is spent moving the box very gradually to the bathroom. Do it very slowly and don't confuse him. And, remember, once the box is on the toilet, leave it a week or even two. The main thing to remember is not to rush or confuse him.
Good luck. Charles Mingus
Court-Martial Set for Soldier Seen Posing With Body of Afghan Victim
Der Spiegel published three photographs said to show two U.S. soldiers accused of being part of a rogue "kill team" last year during their tour in Afghanistan. Perhaps the most damaging image appears to show Army Spc. Jeremy Morlock smiling as he lifts the head of a dead, bloodied Afghan maThe U.S. Army, which issued a statement of apology Monday, plans to investigate the release of the photos. Spokesman Col. Thomas Collins said the photos had been "sealed under a protective order" as part of the trial at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, the base near Seattle hosting the trial.Spc. Morlock, 22, of Wasilla, Alaska, is one of 12 soldiers charged with an array of offenses stemming from an incident last year when the Army says three Afghan civilians were murdered by members of the 5th Stryker Brigade operating in the Maiwand district of Kandahar Province.
He has agreed to plead guilty to murder, conspiracy and other charges and to testify against his co-defendants in exchange for a maximum prison sentence of 24 years, the Associated Press reported.
Der Spiegel also published a photo that displayed the corpses of several Afghan civilians believed to have been killed by U.S. soldiers despite no indications they were combatants.
As the Army apologized, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton worked the phones to her counterparts in Kabul to limit the damage of a potential public-relations debacle. Although different in kind than the dozens of images from Iraq's Abu Ghraib penitentiary in 2004, the photos of U.S. soldiers grinning with a corpse are certain to offer enemies of the Kabul regime a propaganda coup.
"The photos appear in stark contrast to the discipline, professionalism and respect that have characterized our Soldiers' performance during nearly 10 years of sustained operations," the Army said in its statement.
Earlier this month, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Gen. David Petraeus, commander of allied forces in Afghanistan, apologized after American helicopters killed nine Afghan children who were mistaken for insurgents in Afghanistan's Kunar Province. The U.S. military is investigating another incident in which Afghan officials said two Afghan civilians were killed by U.S. helicopters in the same province.
Marc Hujer, the Der Spiegel reporter who filed Monday's story, declined to comment on how the news organization acquired the photos. Mr. Hujer said the magazine wouldn't compromise its sources by detailing how the photographs were obtained. He would not comment on whether they could have been received from other soldiers serving in Afghanistan.According to press reports, soldiers have told investigators that such photos of dead bodies were passed around like trading cards on thumb drives and other digital storage devices.
Of 12 defendants, only Spc. Morlock and four others have been charged with premeditated murder. The others faced charges such as assault and drug use; proceedings have concluded for five of those seven defendants, with five convicted and confined, and facing likely discharge.
Joel Millman and Dion Nissenbaum @'WSJ'
"We apologize for the distress these photos cause"
Deadliest drone strike, but not the last
A day after the dramatic release of CIA operative and double murderer Raymond Davis as a result of a complex “blood-money” deal brokered primarily by Pakistani and American intelligence agents, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) attacked a tribal jirga in Dattakhel in a remote part of North Waziristan, killing 48 innocent tribesmen, including children, and causing injuries to 50 people.
This was the deadliest strike by US drones in Pakistan’s tribal areas since June 18, 2004, when the first-ever such attack killed the local Taliban commander Nek Mohammad and sabotaged the first peace deal that Pakistani authorities had controversially made with the militants in South Waziristan. Scores of civilians had already lost their lives in the previous 232 US drone attacks also. But the one in Dattakhel on March 17 was the first time that nobody doubted that those slain, wounded and maimed were all civilians. The victims had gathered to resolve an issue concerning the monetary share of their respective sub-tribes and clans from the lease of a jointly-owned hill containing a chromites mine.
A section of the Western media did try to create doubts about the identity of those present in the jirga, held in the open space near the banks of river Tochi, by pointing out that one Sharbat Khan who died in the attack had links with the local Taliban. However, this claim had no leg to stand on because everyone knew Sharbat Khan, the contractor who had leased the chromites mine for Rs8.8 million and had been summoned by the jirga to explain as to when and how he was planning to pay the lease money to different sections of the Madakhel Wazir sub-tribe that owned the Khar Sangi hill. Even if there happened to be a Taliban fighter or sympathiser in the jirga on that fateful day, no government or military would order bombing a gathering of more than 150 people discussing a mundane issue in the open just to kill one suspected militant. They weren’t doing military training or finalising plans to infiltrate the nearby Afghan border to attack the US-led Nato forces. That kind of gatherings aren’t held in the open, and everyone in South and North Waziristan is aware of the constant overhead presence of drones carrying out surveillance and searching for targets...
This was the deadliest strike by US drones in Pakistan’s tribal areas since June 18, 2004, when the first-ever such attack killed the local Taliban commander Nek Mohammad and sabotaged the first peace deal that Pakistani authorities had controversially made with the militants in South Waziristan. Scores of civilians had already lost their lives in the previous 232 US drone attacks also. But the one in Dattakhel on March 17 was the first time that nobody doubted that those slain, wounded and maimed were all civilians. The victims had gathered to resolve an issue concerning the monetary share of their respective sub-tribes and clans from the lease of a jointly-owned hill containing a chromites mine.
A section of the Western media did try to create doubts about the identity of those present in the jirga, held in the open space near the banks of river Tochi, by pointing out that one Sharbat Khan who died in the attack had links with the local Taliban. However, this claim had no leg to stand on because everyone knew Sharbat Khan, the contractor who had leased the chromites mine for Rs8.8 million and had been summoned by the jirga to explain as to when and how he was planning to pay the lease money to different sections of the Madakhel Wazir sub-tribe that owned the Khar Sangi hill. Even if there happened to be a Taliban fighter or sympathiser in the jirga on that fateful day, no government or military would order bombing a gathering of more than 150 people discussing a mundane issue in the open just to kill one suspected militant. They weren’t doing military training or finalising plans to infiltrate the nearby Afghan border to attack the US-led Nato forces. That kind of gatherings aren’t held in the open, and everyone in South and North Waziristan is aware of the constant overhead presence of drones carrying out surveillance and searching for targets...
Continue reading
Rahimullah Yusufzai @'The International News'
David Rodigan vs Toddla T - On The Floor! - Live at Red Bull Studios
Listen:
Part 1 & Part 2
@'Red Bull Music Academy'
Gaza Strip: Israel launches air strikes
At least 17 people have been injured by a series of Israeli air strikes in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian medics say.
There were reports of up to nine explosions in Gaza City, and in the north and south of the territory.Witnesses say militant training camps operated by Hamas were targeted, as well as a workshop and cement factory.
On Saturday, Palestinian militants fired dozens of mortars into southern Israel in what was reportedly their heaviest such barrage in two years.
Among those wounded in Monday's air strikes were seven children, Palestinian medical officials said.
The BBC's Jon Donnison in Gaza City says warplanes could be heard over the Gaza Strip for more than an hour.
Many buildings belonging to Hamas, the Islamist group that controls Gaza, had been evacuated in anticipation of strikes, he says.
Air strikes in Gaza are not uncommon, but this seems to be one of the heaviest since Israel's major military offensive between December 2008 and January 2009, our correspondent adds.
More than 1,300 Palestinians as well as 13 Israelis were killed.
@'BBC'
Fighting Gaddafi - BBC Panorama 2011-03-21
As the world unites against Colonel Gaddafi, Panorama reveals the real story behind the country's revolution. Using remarkable new footage, it tells how a group of young professionals bravely stood up to 42 years of dictatorship.
Reporter Paul Kenyon travels across the front line to uncover how the Libyan military fired on unarmed protestors and tracks down the man accused of ordering the shooting - Colonel Gaddafi's son, Saadi.
Why Fukushima made me stop worrying and love nuclear power
Illustration: Daniel Pudles
You will not be surprised to hear that the events in Japan have changed my view of nuclear power. You will be surprised to hear how they have changed it. As a result of the disaster at Fukushima, I am no longer nuclear-neutral. I now support the technology.
A crappy old plant with inadequate safety features was hit by a monster earthquake and a vast tsunami. The electricity supply failed, knocking out the cooling system. The reactors began to explode and melt down. The disaster exposed a familiar legacy of poor design and corner-cutting. Yet, as far as we know, no one has yet received a lethal dose of radiation.
Some greens have wildly exaggerated the dangers of radioactive pollution. For a clearer view, look at the graphic published by xkcd.com. It shows that the average total dose from the Three Mile Island disaster for someone living within 10 miles of the plant was one 625th of the maximum yearly amount permitted for US radiation workers. This, in turn, is half of the lowest one-year dose clearly linked to an increased cancer risk, which, in its turn, is one 80th of an invariably fatal exposure. I'm not proposing complacency here. I am proposing perspective.
If other forms of energy production caused no damage, these impacts would weigh more heavily. But energy is like medicine: if there are no side-effects, the chances are that it doesn't work.
Like most greens, I favour a major expansion of renewables. I can also sympathise with the complaints of their opponents. It's not just the onshore windfarms that bother people, but also the new grid connections (pylons and power lines). As the proportion of renewable electricity on the grid rises, more pumped storage will be needed to keep the lights on. That means reservoirs on mountains: they aren't popular, either.
The impacts and costs of renewables rise with the proportion of power they supply, as the need for storage and redundancy increases. It may well be the case (I have yet to see a comparative study) that up to a certain grid penetration – 50% or 70%, perhaps? – renewables have smaller carbon impacts than nuclear, while beyond that point, nuclear has smaller impacts than renewables.
Like others, I have called for renewable power to be used both to replace the electricity produced by fossil fuel and to expand the total supply, displacing the oil used for transport and the gas used for heating fuel. Are we also to demand that it replaces current nuclear capacity? The more work we expect renewables to do, the greater the impact on the landscape will be, and the tougher the task of public persuasion.
But expanding the grid to connect people and industry to rich, distant sources of ambient energy is also rejected by most of the greens who complained about the blog post I wrote last week in which I argued that nuclear remains safer than coal. What they want, they tell me, is something quite different: we should power down and produce our energy locally. Some have even called for the abandonment of the grid. Their bucolic vision sounds lovely, until you read the small print.
At high latitudes like ours, most small-scale ambient power production is a dead loss. Generating solar power in the UK involves a spectacular waste of scarce resources. It's hopelessly inefficient and poorly matched to the pattern of demand. Wind power in populated areas is largely worthless. This is partly because we have built our settlements in sheltered places; partly because turbulence caused by the buildings interferes with the airflow and chews up the mechanism. Micro-hydropower might work for a farmhouse in Wales, but it's not much use in Birmingham.
And how do we drive our textile mills, brick kilns, blast furnaces and electric railways – not to mention advanced industrial processes? Rooftop solar panels? The moment you consider the demands of the whole economy is the moment at which you fall out of love with local energy production. A national (or, better still, international) grid is the essential prerequisite for a largely renewable energy supply.
Some greens go even further: why waste renewable resources by turning them into electricity? Why not use them to provide energy directly? To answer this question, look at what happened in Britain before the industrial revolution.
The damming and weiring of British rivers for watermills was small-scale, renewable, picturesque and devastating. By blocking the rivers and silting up the spawning beds, they helped bring to an end the gigantic runs of migratory fish that were once among our great natural spectacles and which fed much of Britain – wiping out sturgeon, lampreys and shad, as well as most sea trout and salmon.
Traction was intimately linked with starvation. The more land that was set aside for feeding draft animals for industry and transport, the less was available for feeding humans. It was the 17th-century equivalent of today's biofuels crisis. The same applied to heating fuel. As EA Wrigley points out in his book Energy and the English Industrial Revolution, the 11m tonnes of coal mined in England in 1800 produced as much energy as 11m acres of woodland (one third of the land surface) would have generated.
Before coal became widely available, wood was used not just for heating homes but also for industrial processes: if half the land surface of Britain had been covered with woodland, Wrigley shows, we could have made 1.25m tonnes of bar iron a year (a fraction of current consumption) and nothing else. Even with a much lower population than today's, manufactured goods in the land-based economy were the preserve of the elite. Deep green energy production – decentralised, based on the products of the land – is far more damaging to humanity than nuclear meltdown.
But the energy source to which most economies will revert if they shut down their nuclear plants is not wood, water, wind or sun, but fossil fuel. On every measure (climate change, mining impact, local pollution, industrial injury and death, even radioactive discharges) coal is 100 times worse than nuclear power. Thanks to the expansion of shale gas production, the impacts of natural gas are catching up fast.
Yes, I still loathe the liars who run the nuclear industry. Yes, I would prefer to see the entire sector shut down, if there were harmless alternatives. But there are no ideal solutions. Every energy technology carries a cost; so does the absence of energy technologies. Atomic energy has just been subjected to one of the harshest of possible tests, and the impact on people and the planet has been small. The crisis at Fukushima has converted me to the cause of nuclear power.
George Monbiot @'The Guardian'
A crappy old plant with inadequate safety features was hit by a monster earthquake and a vast tsunami. The electricity supply failed, knocking out the cooling system. The reactors began to explode and melt down. The disaster exposed a familiar legacy of poor design and corner-cutting. Yet, as far as we know, no one has yet received a lethal dose of radiation.
Some greens have wildly exaggerated the dangers of radioactive pollution. For a clearer view, look at the graphic published by xkcd.com. It shows that the average total dose from the Three Mile Island disaster for someone living within 10 miles of the plant was one 625th of the maximum yearly amount permitted for US radiation workers. This, in turn, is half of the lowest one-year dose clearly linked to an increased cancer risk, which, in its turn, is one 80th of an invariably fatal exposure. I'm not proposing complacency here. I am proposing perspective.
If other forms of energy production caused no damage, these impacts would weigh more heavily. But energy is like medicine: if there are no side-effects, the chances are that it doesn't work.
Like most greens, I favour a major expansion of renewables. I can also sympathise with the complaints of their opponents. It's not just the onshore windfarms that bother people, but also the new grid connections (pylons and power lines). As the proportion of renewable electricity on the grid rises, more pumped storage will be needed to keep the lights on. That means reservoirs on mountains: they aren't popular, either.
The impacts and costs of renewables rise with the proportion of power they supply, as the need for storage and redundancy increases. It may well be the case (I have yet to see a comparative study) that up to a certain grid penetration – 50% or 70%, perhaps? – renewables have smaller carbon impacts than nuclear, while beyond that point, nuclear has smaller impacts than renewables.
Like others, I have called for renewable power to be used both to replace the electricity produced by fossil fuel and to expand the total supply, displacing the oil used for transport and the gas used for heating fuel. Are we also to demand that it replaces current nuclear capacity? The more work we expect renewables to do, the greater the impact on the landscape will be, and the tougher the task of public persuasion.
But expanding the grid to connect people and industry to rich, distant sources of ambient energy is also rejected by most of the greens who complained about the blog post I wrote last week in which I argued that nuclear remains safer than coal. What they want, they tell me, is something quite different: we should power down and produce our energy locally. Some have even called for the abandonment of the grid. Their bucolic vision sounds lovely, until you read the small print.
At high latitudes like ours, most small-scale ambient power production is a dead loss. Generating solar power in the UK involves a spectacular waste of scarce resources. It's hopelessly inefficient and poorly matched to the pattern of demand. Wind power in populated areas is largely worthless. This is partly because we have built our settlements in sheltered places; partly because turbulence caused by the buildings interferes with the airflow and chews up the mechanism. Micro-hydropower might work for a farmhouse in Wales, but it's not much use in Birmingham.
And how do we drive our textile mills, brick kilns, blast furnaces and electric railways – not to mention advanced industrial processes? Rooftop solar panels? The moment you consider the demands of the whole economy is the moment at which you fall out of love with local energy production. A national (or, better still, international) grid is the essential prerequisite for a largely renewable energy supply.
Some greens go even further: why waste renewable resources by turning them into electricity? Why not use them to provide energy directly? To answer this question, look at what happened in Britain before the industrial revolution.
The damming and weiring of British rivers for watermills was small-scale, renewable, picturesque and devastating. By blocking the rivers and silting up the spawning beds, they helped bring to an end the gigantic runs of migratory fish that were once among our great natural spectacles and which fed much of Britain – wiping out sturgeon, lampreys and shad, as well as most sea trout and salmon.
Traction was intimately linked with starvation. The more land that was set aside for feeding draft animals for industry and transport, the less was available for feeding humans. It was the 17th-century equivalent of today's biofuels crisis. The same applied to heating fuel. As EA Wrigley points out in his book Energy and the English Industrial Revolution, the 11m tonnes of coal mined in England in 1800 produced as much energy as 11m acres of woodland (one third of the land surface) would have generated.
Before coal became widely available, wood was used not just for heating homes but also for industrial processes: if half the land surface of Britain had been covered with woodland, Wrigley shows, we could have made 1.25m tonnes of bar iron a year (a fraction of current consumption) and nothing else. Even with a much lower population than today's, manufactured goods in the land-based economy were the preserve of the elite. Deep green energy production – decentralised, based on the products of the land – is far more damaging to humanity than nuclear meltdown.
But the energy source to which most economies will revert if they shut down their nuclear plants is not wood, water, wind or sun, but fossil fuel. On every measure (climate change, mining impact, local pollution, industrial injury and death, even radioactive discharges) coal is 100 times worse than nuclear power. Thanks to the expansion of shale gas production, the impacts of natural gas are catching up fast.
Yes, I still loathe the liars who run the nuclear industry. Yes, I would prefer to see the entire sector shut down, if there were harmless alternatives. But there are no ideal solutions. Every energy technology carries a cost; so does the absence of energy technologies. Atomic energy has just been subjected to one of the harshest of possible tests, and the impact on people and the planet has been small. The crisis at Fukushima has converted me to the cause of nuclear power.
George Monbiot @'The Guardian'
ggreenwald Glenn Greenwald
The big mystery with Bush was why he refused to seek Congressional approval when he easily would have gotten it - same with Obama on Libya.
Caribou Vibration Ensemble Featuring Marshall Allen - Live At All Tomorrow’s Parties Monticello, New York, Sept 13th, 2009
Caribou Vibration Ensemble Featuring Marshall Allen
Live At All Tomorrow's Parties Monticello, New York, Sept 13th, 2009
Marshall Allen plays alto saxophone, EVI
Ahmed Gallad plays drum kit, percussion, vibraphone
Andy Lloyd plays bass and sings
Brad Weber plays drum kit
Brandon Cunningham sings
Colin Fisher plays tenor saxophone
Dan Snaith plays fender rhodes, drum kit, electric guitar and sings
John Schmersal plays electric guitar and sings
Kieran Hebden plays electronics
Koushik Ghosh plays moog, vibraphone and sings
Kyle Brenders plays soprano saxophone and bass clarinet
Luke Lalonde plays guitar and sings
Peter Mitton plays drum kit, congas, woodblocks, gong and percussion
Rob Piilonen plays flute
Ryan Smith plays electric guitar, mood and fender rhodes
Steve Ward plays trombone
Recorded live by Rob Christiansen on behalf of WFMU on Sept 13th, 2009 at Kutshers Country Club at All Tomorrow's Parties festival curated by the Flaming Lips
Live sound by John Rubuliak
Mixed by David Wrench
Mastered by David Wrench
Cover image by Jane Eastlight
Special thanks to The Flaming Lips, Barry Hogan and everyone at ATP Festivals, Jeremy Greenspan, Michael Parker, Adam Notman, Tim Dempsey and Kathryn Bint.
NY Times Columnists Telling Readers How To Get Around The Paywall
As we learned the last time the NY Times blocked its esteemed columnists off behind a paywall, those columnists really don't like being cut out of the conversation. So it's somewhat amusing, in the wake of the new paywall announcement, that star columnist Paul Krugman is already telling readers how to get around the paywall. Since it will be free to visit stories if you come in from elsewhere, Krugman is telling people an easy way to do so:
@'techdirt'
But for those who haven't [subscribed], arriving at this blog via links won't count against your ration of free nytimes.com views. As I understand it, for example, you can come in via my automated Twitter feed; and of course clicking on links at Mark Thoma or other blogs will also work.Of course, in thinking about this, you have to wonder if there are going to be additional unintended consequences for the Times. For example, its home page is going to lose a lot of value, because each click now has a significant "cost." However, if you were to browse another site... say, one some third party set up that linked to the Times' articles, you could click those links without that cost. Your basic economics has to say that this harms the Times' own site while opening up opportunities for third parties to collect that traffic. It would be interesting if a Nobel Prize winning economist... such as Paul Krugman... decided to make that point to the geniuses in upper management at the NY Times.
@'techdirt'
Help For Japan: The Postcard Series
Japan suffered immense heartache and loss after the devastating earthquake and tsunamis that occurred on March 11. Many people have been finding ways to fundraise for the 500,000 plus people now displaced through these events. As a graphic designer, you’re probably not the most useful person around. However, Tokyo-based designer Eloise Rapp has turned a project she was halfway through into a means by which to raise money for the Earthquake Appeal.
This collection of designs reflects her strong connection to Japan, and she is now selling them as a set of six postcards with 100 percent of the proceeds going towards the efforts of the Japanese Red Cross Society.
@'Lost At E Minor'
cshirky Clay Shirky
Beauty in Collapse - student project on the tension between art and fact in disaster photos http://bit.ly/dHs0XN
Trump 2012
Trump brags about accepting money from Gaddafi
There was also this and this from earlier - WTF...??? (Is he combing the hair from his arse over his head now?)
(Thanx Mark!)
How Drug Cops Go Bad
If you browse the website of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), you will notice a conspicuous theme: The war on drugs is corrupting America's cops.
LEAP, a group of current and former cops, prosecutors, and judges who oppose the drug war, lists "police corruption and misconduct" as one of the four main topics covered by its speakers. The profile of former Portland, Oregon, Det. Donald Dupay, for example, says he "witnessed the unintended consequences of the war on drugs that caused some of the officers in his department to become corrupt." The profile of former Oakland, California, prosecutor James Anthony says his opposition to drug prohibition stems in part from observing "the negative impact of the 'War on Drugs' on the integrity of the police force." The profile of Fred Martens, a former undercover narcotics cop with the New Jersey State Police, says he saw the drug war "corrupt innumerable law enforcement officials..."
LEAP, a group of current and former cops, prosecutors, and judges who oppose the drug war, lists "police corruption and misconduct" as one of the four main topics covered by its speakers. The profile of former Portland, Oregon, Det. Donald Dupay, for example, says he "witnessed the unintended consequences of the war on drugs that caused some of the officers in his department to become corrupt." The profile of former Oakland, California, prosecutor James Anthony says his opposition to drug prohibition stems in part from observing "the negative impact of the 'War on Drugs' on the integrity of the police force." The profile of Fred Martens, a former undercover narcotics cop with the New Jersey State Police, says he saw the drug war "corrupt innumerable law enforcement officials..."
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Bright Eyes - Live In Concert SXSW 2011
Setlist
* "Firewall"
* "Jejune Stars"
* "Take It Easy Lover"
* "Four Winds"
* "Cleanse Song"
* "Something Vague"
* "We Are Nowhere"
* "Shell Games"
* "Approximate Sunlight"
* "Arc of Time"
* "Haile Selassie"
* "No One Would Riot for Less"
* "Bowl of Oranges"
* "The People's Key"
* "Cartoon Blues"
* "Beginner's Mind"
* "Poison Oak"
* "Old Soul Song"
* "The Calendar Hung Itself"
* "Lua"
* "Gold Mine Gutted"
* "Lover I Don't Have To Love"
* "Road To Joy"
* "One for You"
Band Personnel: Conor Oberst - Vocals, Guitar; Mike Mogis - Banjo, Mandolin, Pedal Steel, Electric Guitar; Nate Wolcott - Organ, Trumpet, Accordion; Laura Burhenn - Keyboards, Accordion, Vocals
2 hours; 112 MB
DOWNLOAD
(left click to play, right click to save)
'Games Perverts Play'
As Oscar Wilde may have said, ‘everything is about sex, except for sex itself. Sex is all about power’.
How do we experience the power struggles inherent in our sexual encounters and relationships? Who dominates and who submits, and why? How does power seep out of the physical and into the psychological? What happens to power when we get dressed and go back into our ‘real’ lives? Is there pleasure without power? Is there power without exploitation?
The writers at Games Perverts Play have explored all of these questions and come up with some interesting, arresting and downright disturbing answers.
I am delighted to be presenting work here once again by the talented Mark Simpson, Marc Nash, Dan Holloway , and Penny Goring .It also gives me great perverse pleasure to be sharing new writing from Marc Horne and Robert James Russell. This is the first public showcase for an exciting young voice in North American – what do we call it these days? Literature?- Elliott Deline
Some of the pieces are illustrated with photography by the amazing Caroline Hagood, Chris Floyd, and Steve Zeeland
I don’t much care for power. If ever I come to possess it I just want to drop it immediately, like a hot brick. But thankfully when in the right hands, power can be very exciting indeed. I hope when you have finished reading and looking at the pieces here, you will agree with me.
Your humble editor,
Quiet Riot Girl
‘Language is Power’ – Roland Barthes
HERE
Libya crisis may save Nicolas Sarkozy from electoral humiliation
"The French do like to have their president play world statesman," mused one diplomat in Paris last week, before France's Mirage and Rafale fighter planes had taken to the skies. "A good crisis," he added, might be just what Sarkozy needs.
He certainly needs something. A week ago he was staring at polls so ominous some analysts wondered if he'd even make it into second place in next year's presidential contest. One survey put Sarkozy behind both his most likely Socialist opponent and Marine Le Pen, the new leader of the far-right National Front founded by her father, Jean-Marie. Sunday's cantonal elections were expected to bring more bad news for the president's UMP party...
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Jonathan Freedland @'The Guardian'
What’s in a Name? ‘Odyssey Dawn’ is Pentagon-Crafted Nonsense
Each command within the vast Defense Department apparatus is given a series of two-letter groupings that they can use for their operations’ two-word sobriquets. Under the system, U.S. Africa Command, nominally in charge of the Libya strikes, was given three different sets of words that it could begin the operation with. “These words begin between the letters JF-JZ, NS-NZ and OA-OF, and those three groups give about 60 some odd words,” explains Africom spokesman Eric Elliott. “So the folks who were responsible for naming this went through and they had done recent activities with NS and they went to O.”
Using the O series of letters, Africom officials picked out “Odyssey” for the first word. The second word is picked “as random as possible because that’s the goal of these operational names,” says Elliot. Africom pulled out “Dawn” for its second word and the resulting combination, “Odyssey Dawn,” is devoid of any intended meaning, Elliott insists.
The modern system for assigning names to operations, exercises and the like came out of bad PR experiences in the Korean and Vietnam wars, according to Lt. Col. Gregory Sieminski’s brief history of “The Art of Naming Operations,” published in Parameters in 1995. Nicknames like “Operation Killer” during the Korean war and Vietnam’s “Operation Masher,” Sieminski wrote, caused controversy when reported in the press. As a result, the Pentagon issued its first guidelines restricting how nicknames can be formed in 1972 and created the two-letter system in 1975.
Combatant Commands still have to be careful about what words they pick under the two-letter system. Official guidelines prohibit “well-known commercial trademarks” in operation nicknames, as well as ”exotic” or “trite” choices. Nicknames can’t be spelled similar to or sound like codewords. And in a reflection of the negative impact of “Killer” and “Masher,” Pentagon wordsmiths aren’t allowed to use terms that convey “a degree of aggression inconsistent with traditional American ideals or current foreign policy.” They also mustn’t give offense to American allies, “free-world nations” or any “particular group, sect or creed.”
Mistakes can still happen while following the rules. An Army unit in Honduras once labeled an operation in Honduras “Blazing Trails,” which in Spanish can translate to “Shining Path,” the name of Peruvian terrorist group.
The two-letter system isn’t the exclusive way to pick an operation and exercise names. For larger operations, like the first Gulf War’s operations Desert Storm and Desert Shield, commanders have picked names that sound good to them or influence public opinion — something Sieminski dates to the renaming the invasion of Panama to “Just Cause” from “Blue Spoon.” Some lesser operations, like a 2004 roundup of insurgents in Kirkuk called “Operation Slim Shady,” also don’t seem like they would have passed through the Defense Department’s official guidelines.
Coalition partners in the no-fly zone have their own operation names, as well. Britain’s Defence Ministry labeled its participation in the no-fly zone “Operation Ellamy“; Canada’s efforts are called “Operation Mobile.” Ever a patron of the arts, France seems to be the only coalition partner going for the poetic route. It calls its operations in Libya “Harmattan,” referring to a “hot, dry wind that blows from the northeast or east in the western Sahara.”
Adam Rawnsley @'Wired'
Index of Code Names
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