BLACKBELT The Downfalls of A Modern Society 1996
29 minutes ago
Tuesday 24 May 2011
Tepco confirms extra partial fuel rod meltdown at plant
Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) has confirmed the meltdown of extra fuel rods in reactors at its damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant.
The company said that the rods were in its Number 2 and Number 3 reactors. Tepco has been trying to contain radiation from the plant, crippled by the 11 March earthquake and tsunami.
The company said that it planned to stick to its timetable of getting the radiation under control by January.
Tepco's announcement came on the same day that a team from the United Nations' atomic watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), kicked off a visit in Japan.
100 hours
Earlier this month, Tepco had revealed that rods at its Number 1 reactor melted down. It was thought that a similar problem had occurred in the other reactors but it was difficult to confirm.
"Based on our analysis, we have reached the conclusion that a certain amount of nuclear fuel has melted down," Ken Matsuda, a Tepco spokesman told the BBC.He said the analysis came from a report that Tepco was required to submit to Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (Nisa).
The spokesman added that most of the fuel from the Number 2 reactor had melted approximately 100 hours after the earthquake, which measured 9 on the Richter scale, struck Japan.
The meltdown in the Number 3 reactor took place about 60 hours after the quake.
Mr Matsuda said the new discovery would not alter Tepco's plans.
The company has said that it wants to reach a "cold shutdown" of the power plant by January, and has been trying to cool the reactors and get the unstable fuel rods back under control.
"This result does not change our work," he said.
Earlier in May, Tepco revealed that the damage sustained by the Number 1 reactor immediately after the earthquake and tsunami was far more severe than initially thought.
Professor Nobumasa Akiyama of Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo said Tepco's new revelation reinforces that idea.In an effort to better understand the current situation in Japan specialists from the IAEA are joining other international experts in Tokyo for a fact-finding mission.
They are expected to submit a report on Japan's handling of the nuclear crisis to present to the IAEA's member states.
The group is expected to visit the Fukushima nuclear plant, though details have not been finalised.
Professor Akiyama said that the IAEA had come under criticism for its reaction to the Fukushima crisis.
"First of all, it has not been able to provide the information on what's going on on the ground," he said. "Secondly, it hasn't been able to provide a prescription for the solution of the crisis."
Mr Akiyama said the nuclear agency would be expected to provide more guidelines for nuclear safety after the visit to Japan this week.
He added that it may need to be beef up its funding and staff if it was going to be able to fulfil its mandate.
@'BBC'
David Sylvian - Died in the Wool (2011 - Albumstream)
David Sylvian will be releasing Died in the Wool — variations on David Sylvian's 2009 release Manafon with the addition of 6 new pieces, including collaborations with acclaimed composer Dai Fujikura, producers Jan Bang and Erik Honoré and a stellar roster of contemporary musicians and improvisers.
Small Metal Gods
Died in the Wool
I Should Not Dare
Random Acts Of Senseless Violence
A Certain Slant of Light
Anomaly At Taw Head
Snow White in Appalachia
Emily Dickinson
The Greatest Living Englishman (Coda)
Anomaly At Taw Head (A Haunting)
Manafon
The Last Days of December
Japan: 18th May; UK/RoW (excl. USA/Canada): 23rd May; USA: 31st May
for more: http://www.davidsylvian.com/
ALBUMSTREAM
ebertchicago Roger Ebert
Question for DSK: Did you notice, or care, that the maid was wearing hajib, the Muslim head covering? Did that signal "consent?"
Question for DSK: Did you notice, or care, that the maid was wearing hajib, the Muslim head covering? Did that signal "consent?"
Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou - Live @ The Scala London
Benin’s Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou has been making waves with their afro funk grooves, angular melodies and powerful percussion for decades, embracing traditional Beninese 'Vodoun' rhythms, mixed with funk and soul for a wholly modernised voodoo groove. The band was formed in 1968 and records and plays to this day, although band members have changed over the years, becoming hugely popular in the 70s, and performing alongside Fela Kuti, Miriam Makeba and Angelique Kidjo. Their music output over the years has been extremely prolific numbering upwards of 50 LPs and a hundred 45s, most of which were unavailable outside of their home country. Were it not for enthusiastic record labels such as Strut or Analog Africa, who unearthed their rare recordings over the past years and made them available to record buyers in the rest of the world, they might have slipped into total obscurity. Orchestre Poly-Rythmo also became the subject of a documentary film by French journalist Elodie Maillot which helped to organise their first European tour. To understand what the fuss is all about, immerse yourself in their live performance, recorded at London's Scala. Embrace your inner psychedelic hypnotic afro-beat with Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou!
Setche We Djo Mon - Albarika Store
Ose
Ma Vie
Assou Yoyo
Gbeti Madjo
Pardon
Passi
Tougbedgé
Houé Towé Houn
Ne Te Fâches Pas
Ou C’est Lui Ou C’est Moi
Holonon
@'RBMA'
Simon Sellars: Postcards from the Edgelands (for Marion Shoard)
37° 37′ 54S, 144° 55′ 22E In the built environment, the ‘edgelands’ describes the interfacial interzone between urban and rural, a mix of rubbish tips, superstores, office parks, rough-hewn farmland, gas towers, electricity pylons, wildlife and service stations. The term was coined by the environmentalist Marion Shoard, who has uncovered the hidden dynamics at work in this ‘apparently unplanned, certainly uncelebrated and largely incomprehensible territory’.[1] She maps a symbiotic relationship between the waste product, both physical and psychological, of the human world, and its co-dependency with an emergent version of the natural realm that defies all preconceived, ‘rational’ notions of sustainability and environmental care. As such, her work can serve as an instructive metaphor for architects who are willing to approach the question of infrastructure as a crucial new phase in the development of their profession.
In the edgelands, the functionalism of warehouse sheds, sewage farms and switching stations is at the same time an interlocking network of essential services. Architecture and infrastructure are inseparable, a special relationship that moves beyond what the architect Sam Jacob has described as ‘the way in which infrastructure is perceived as inert structure which exists outside of cultural significance’.[2] For Jacob, infrastructure, held within the complexity of the 21st century, must take on a new role as the ‘architecture of the global age’, a physical manifestation of the networked reality that increasingly underscores and dictates our lives. He makes the McLuhanesque suggestion that if electronic media can be thought of as an extension of our senses, then infrastructure can be seen as the projection of our corporeal reality onto physical coordinates. If Jacob is right, then architecture, traditionally at a remove from this corporeal projection (that is, removed from infrastructure’s ‘inertness’), must radically reassess its relationship to the natural world if it is to engage with the problem of infrastructure as a viable extension of architectural practice.
It is here that the ‘problem’ of the edgelands, as defined by Shoard, can help. For in the edgelands, to make such a move as Jacob’s is really just a matter of perception...
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All about Melbourne...
Also if you are on Twitter, do follow Simon @Ballardian
Junger says he’s done covering wars after Hetherington’s death
Famed author of “War,” Sebastian Junger told “Morning Joe” on Monday that he was supposed to go to Libya with photojournalist Tim Hetherington, who was killed there last month along with Chris Hondros.
Junger did not go to Libya because of “some family issues, and Vanity Fair got cold feet because it looked so dangerous. Tim came back, then decided he wanted to do it anyway. He went back again with his own money,” he told the Globe and Mail.
On MSNBC Monday morning, Junger told co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, “I’m out.” He won’t cover any more wars.
Julie Moos @'Poynter'
Junger did not go to Libya because of “some family issues, and Vanity Fair got cold feet because it looked so dangerous. Tim came back, then decided he wanted to do it anyway. He went back again with his own money,” he told the Globe and Mail.
On MSNBC Monday morning, Junger told co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, “I’m out.” He won’t cover any more wars.
“I’m pretty okay taking risks with my own life, but having seen the aftermath of Tim’s death among many people he loved very deeply, and the incredible pain they’re still going through, you can’t love someone and subject them to that.”In the June issue of Vanity Fair, Junger wrote about Hetherington: “You and I were always talking about risk because she was the beautiful woman we were both in love with, right? … And in the end, you were the one she chose.”
Julie Moos @'Poynter'
If I Take Down Fox, Is All Forgiven?
In November, a researcher at Media Matters for America, the liberal press-watchdog group that Brock founded seven years ago, noticed that the website Charitybuzz was auctioning a “friendly lunch” with Murdoch to benefit the Global Poverty Project. That one of Brock’s worker bees would be keeping tabs on the News Corp. chairman’s calendar should not be terribly surprising. At Media Matters’ headquarters in Washington, D.C., scores of headphone-wearing staffers spend their days (and nights) staring into their television screens and computer monitors, waiting for the latest bits of “conservative misinformation” to emerge from the Fox News Channel and other corners of the right-wing media landscape, all of which are saved on “the big TiVo”—270 terabytes’ worth of hard drive that store over 300,000 hours of TV shows—so that the offending clips can be uploaded to Media Matters’ website. Are you in need of a compendium of the “50 Worst Things Glenn Beck Said on Fox News”? Fear not, Media Matters’ site has one.
But in the past few months, the group has begun to do more than merely monitor Fox’s programming. “What happened after the Obama election, I think, is that Fox morphed into something that isn’t even recognizable as a form of media,” Brock recently told me. “It looks more like a political committee than what it looked like pre-Obama, which was essentially talk radio on television. It’s more dangerous now; it’s more lethal. And so as Fox has doubled down, we’ve doubled down.” In practice, that means no longer just pointing out inaccuracies. Instead, Media Matters is going on the offensive...
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Jason Zengerle @'NY'
Barack Obama stuck at US Embassy Dublin
Obama's car gets stuck on the ramp while trying to leave the car park of the US Embassy in Dublin.
Dylan tapes reveal heroin addiction
A previously unheard interview with Bob Dylan has revealed that the singer was once addicted to heroin.
After a concert late one Saturday night in March 1966 Bob Dylan, while on tour in the US, boarded his private plane in Lincoln, Nebraska bound for Denver with his friend Robert Shelton.
Over the next two hours Shelton taped an interview with Dylan which he later described as a "kaleidoscopic monologue".
At one point, the singer, who turns 70 this week, admits he had been addicted to heroin in the early 1960s.
"I kicked a heroin habit in New York City," he confesses. "I got very, very strung out for a while, I mean really, very strung out. And I kicked the habit. I had about a $25-a-day habit and I kicked it."
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After a concert late one Saturday night in March 1966 Bob Dylan, while on tour in the US, boarded his private plane in Lincoln, Nebraska bound for Denver with his friend Robert Shelton.
Over the next two hours Shelton taped an interview with Dylan which he later described as a "kaleidoscopic monologue".At one point, the singer, who turns 70 this week, admits he had been addicted to heroin in the early 1960s.
"I kicked a heroin habit in New York City," he confesses. "I got very, very strung out for a while, I mean really, very strung out. And I kicked the habit. I had about a $25-a-day habit and I kicked it."
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Monday 23 May 2011
The Israeli reality that Obama doesn't understand
You can't blame him: It really is impossible to understand this reality. It's impossible to understand why a country and a people continue to refuse to do the right thing, something that could have been done a long while back, and prefer to continue to bang their heads against the wall until blood flows, with absolutely no logic, literally amok, like someone who has gone insane. It's hard to understand a reality in which a prime minister sits and, contrary to all logic and every code of conduct, arrogantly lectures his host, the president of the United States. It's hard to understand a reality in which a day before their scheduled meeting, a prime minister responds to the speech of the U.S. president, who is about to host him, with an announcement that is as good as spitting in his face.
So President Obama, here is the reality: The reality is that in the prime minister's own reality show, he is "the leader of a persecuted people" and he likes being "the leader of a persecuted people." That is why no reality in the world has ever convinced our leaders to stop being a persecuted nation. Even Abe Foxman, the chairman of the Anti-Defamation League, who can't be accused of being a leftist, says that Obama's speech is not against Israel and is not bad for Israel and that it includes many things that are good for Israel, but that doesn't make any impression on Bibi Netanyahu and his friends.
But it's not only you, Mr. President. Nine years ago, the 22 Arab League countries submitted a proposal for ending the conflict with the Palestinians and for full normalization with them. The leaders of the people that insist on being persecuted chose not to confuse themselves with the fact that 22 Arab countries were recognizing Israel and accepting its right to exist in peace alongside them. That is why our leaders simply ignored it. To the point where barely 15 percent of the Israeli public is even aware of the existence of the Arab initiative. That is why on Thursday, when we, members of the Israeli peace initiative delegation, presented the Egyptian foreign minister with the initiative that for the first time responds to the Arab peace initiative, he rightly said: For nine years the initiative has been on the table. Now you remembered?
The reality, Mr. President, is that change - thanks to which you were elected, and in which you believe - is the thing that Israel in general and Netanyahu in particular fear most. The reality is that the State of Israel has become accustomed to the present situation and does not recognize itself without it. Israel has existed longer with the occupation than without it; it has existed for most of its years with no border and is deathly afraid of change.
The reality is that Netanyahu never wanted or thought to initiate change. When he was elected two years ago, he understood that in order not to initiate change, he would have to play at negotiations that lead nowhere. But alas, there was nobody in the White House who would play this nice little game with him, and his true colors were exposed: He wants settlements, he wants occupation, he wants the situation as it is and sees no problem with it. And now, Netanyahu prefers confrontation. Confrontation with you, confrontation with the Palestinians, confrontation with anyone he sees as coming out against the persecuted people. The reality is simply that confrontation we already know, Mr. President, but peace we do not know at all.
Merav Michaeli @'Haaretz'
Ai Weiwei - I think just walking in the other direction is a smart choice
Ai Weiwei: The Numbers Project
Each candle commemorates one victim of the Sichuan earthquake in 2007 and was added to Ai Weiwei's blog when publishing their names as part of his research project.
Ai Weiwei grew up under horrible conditions, living literally underground in a burrow in the Chinese regions of Manchuria and Xinjiang. Born in 1957 in Beijing, Ai Weiwei was the son of Ai Qing, a renowned poet denounced by the Chinese Communist Party and during the Cultural Revolution forced into exile in a labour camp. Under strong political control, his father had to clean public toilets. In 1976, after Mao’s death, Ai Qing was rehabilitated and, two years later, Ai Weiwei enrolled in the Beijing Film Academy and became active as a member of the famous group ‘Stars’. These few self-taught artists made history in 1979 by displaying provocative and subversive works of art right on the steps of the National Gallery in Beijing. Soon after, they were an international sensation.
In order to become ‘another Picasso’, he set out in 1981 for the United States. But once in New York City, he wasn’t producing a particular body of art. He studied at the Parsons School of Design for a short period, lived next to Allen Ginsberg and was working as a card dealer besides other odd jobs. During his 12 years in the US, he documented his life there with thousands of photos.
Ai Weiwei returned to Beijing in 1993, to the bedside of his dying father. Upon his arrival, he became a vital contributor to the new art scene in China. He published a series of books about the up-and-coming generation of artists in China and even co-curated with Feng Boyi the exhibition Fuck Off in Shanghai in 2000, showing his and others’ contemporary works of art within the country. Besides his photography, Ai Weiwei’s work during this period involved experimenting with traditional objects and handcraft. One result of his experimentation with that subject matter was his famous piece Dropping of a Han Dynasty Vase.
In 1999, he completed his house and studio in the suburbs of Beijing without having any prior training in architecture. Weiwei could not have known then that the project would mark the starting point for almost 60 different architectural projects for his office, Fake Design, in the upcoming years, culminating in his collaboration with Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron in designing the Olympic Stadium in Beijing. Shortly after this accomplishment, he refused all architectural work and became instrumental in curating architecture. He curated Ordos 100, a project of 100 villas to be built in the Mongolian desert by 100 chosen architects.
For the Documenta 12 in Kassel, Fake Design selected 1,001 Chinese citizens and invited them to come to Germany for a week. The whole process, from the selection to organization of the project, called Fairytale, was a huge undertaking: For almost every participant, it was the first trip outside of China, and the story behind each visitor was recorded in photos, film and interviews.
Parallel to this first social sculpture and maybe reinforced by what he had learned from it, Ai Weiwei’s role as a cultural and social commentator, as a political activist and critic of the government has only intensified ever since. His blog is his platform for spreading social criticism, discussing ideas and initiating investigations. His constant criticism of the repressive system in China has put him under police observation and led to his arrest on several occasions, but these intimidation tactics seem only to amplify his importance as a spokesman for a new generation.
Mathieu Wellner @'mono.kultur'
Lived next door to Allen Ginsberg? That means that Richard Hell was a neighbour too!
(Thanx Ian!)
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