HOSS You Get Nothing 1992
1 hour ago
Monday, 20 June 2011
'Hackers Wanted' – An Unreleased American Documentary Film (Directed by Sam Bozzo, Narrated by Kevin Spacey & Featuring Adrian Lamo)
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The Big Business of Synthetic Highs
From the outside the place looks abandoned. The only sign of life is a lone security camera. Inside, two flags hang above a makeshift assembly line. One shows a coiled snake and reads "Don't Tread On Me." The other has a peace symbol. The work space consists of a long, foldout table containing a pile of lustrous, green vegetation, a pocket-calculator-size electronic scale, a stack of reflective, hot-pink Mylar foil packets, and a heat sealer. Each packet has the brand name, Bombay Breeze, and is decorated with a psychedelic logo featuring a cartoon elephant meditating among abstract-looking coils of smoke and stars.
Upchurch supervises as Harness weighs out portions of the crushed foliage, dumps it into a packet, and slides the top through the heating machine to create an airtight, tamper-proof seal. He finishes about a dozen in 10 minutes, topping off what they will need for their deliveries: two shipments of more than 1,000 packets each. Upchurch points to a disclaimer near the bottom right-hand corner of each package that reads, in all caps: "NOT FOR CONSUMPTION." Says Upchurch: "That's to discourage abuse."
His protests and disclaimers to the contrary, Pandora is getting smoked—it's being packed into bongs and reviewed on sites such as YouTube (GOOG)—for its ability to alter the mind. Like many others, Upchurch is repackaging experimental medical chemicals for mainstream store shelves, most often with some clever double-entendre in the branding. He says he sells about 41,000 packets a month, delivering directly to 50 stores around the country and shipping the rest to five other wholesalers, some of whom use Pandora's products to create their own brands. Upchurch says he ships mostly in bulk orders for larger discounts. He projects his company will earn $2.5 million in revenue with $500,000 in profits this year, depending on what federal and state laws pass. "I think my business model is based less on charts than it is on guts, or something," he says.
"Incense" such as Upchurch's, along with "bath salts" and even "toilet bowl cleaner," have been popping up at gas stations, convenience stores, "coffee shops" that don't sell much coffee, and adult novelty stores. Today, Upchurch's shipments—he uses UPS (UPS)—are headed to places called Jim's Party Cabin in Junction City, Kan., and the Venus Adult Superstore, in Texarkana, Ark. Instate, Upchurch sells to Coffee Wonk, a coffee shop in downtown Kansas City, Mo. There, 28-year-old owner Micah Riggs writes the names of his offerings in multiple colors on a dry erase board near the register. The packets themselves are kept beneath the counter. While Riggs doesn't mind his customers talking about how they will use the incense, he's as circumspect about what he is actually selling as Upchurch. Nearly everything he says is in code. He'll say things like, "Is this your first foray?" and "There are different potencies of aroma..."
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Ben Paynter @'Bloomberg Businessweek'
Rhythm from Within (Photographs by Michael Philip Manheim)
Michael Philip Manheim has been a professional photographer since 1969. A chance encounter with photography, at the age of 13, locked him onto a life-long pursuit.
Intrigued with the themes of change and transformation, Manheim developed a signature style of layering whole phases of movement onto a single frame of film. This approach transcends a literal interpretation. He calls this series the "Rhythm from Within".
Michael Philip Manheim's work has been exhibited throughout the United States and in Germany, Greece and Italy. His work has been featured in magazines such as Zoom (U.S. and Italy), Photographers International (Taiwan), La Fotografia (Spain), Black and White magazine, and numerous other publications.
He has been Artist in Residence at Bates College in Lewiston, ME and Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, NH.
Manheim's photographs are held in public and private collections, including the Library of Congress, the International Photography Hall of Fame & Museum, the Danforth Museum of Art and the Bates College Museum of Art. He has had over 15 solo exhibitions.
Julian Cox, curator of photography at Atlanta's High Museum of Art, noted that Manheim's photographs "have passion and beauty, and clearly considerable skill has gone into their execution."
Music by Budd/Foxx, 'Here and Now'
Intrigued with the themes of change and transformation, Manheim developed a signature style of layering whole phases of movement onto a single frame of film. This approach transcends a literal interpretation. He calls this series the "Rhythm from Within".
Michael Philip Manheim's work has been exhibited throughout the United States and in Germany, Greece and Italy. His work has been featured in magazines such as Zoom (U.S. and Italy), Photographers International (Taiwan), La Fotografia (Spain), Black and White magazine, and numerous other publications.
He has been Artist in Residence at Bates College in Lewiston, ME and Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, NH.
Manheim's photographs are held in public and private collections, including the Library of Congress, the International Photography Hall of Fame & Museum, the Danforth Museum of Art and the Bates College Museum of Art. He has had over 15 solo exhibitions.
Julian Cox, curator of photography at Atlanta's High Museum of Art, noted that Manheim's photographs "have passion and beauty, and clearly considerable skill has gone into their execution."
Music by Budd/Foxx, 'Here and Now'
Eisenhower's worst fears came true. We invent enemies to buy the bombs
Joe Magee: Guardian
Why do we still go to war? We seem unable to stop. We find any excuse for this post-imperial fidget and yet we keep getting trapped. Germans do not do it, or Spanish or Swedes. Britain's borders and British people have not been under serious threat for a generation. Yet time and again our leaders crave battle. Why?
Last week we got a glimpse of an answer and it was not nice. The outgoing US defence secretary, Robert Gates, berated Europe's "failure of political will" in not maintaining defence spending. He said Nato had declined into a "two-tier alliance" between those willing to wage war and those "who specialise in 'soft' humanitarian, development, peacekeeping and talking tasks". Peace, he implied, is for wimps. Real men buy bombs, and drop them.
This call was echoed by Nato's chief, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who pointed out how unfair it was that US defence investment represented 75% of the Nato defence expenditure, where once it was only half. Having been forced to extend his war on Libya by another three months, Rasmussen wanted to see Europe's governments come up with more money, and no nonsense about recession. Defence to him is measured not in security but in spending.
The call was repeated back home by the navy chief, Sir Mark Stanhope. He had to be "dressed down" by the prime minister, David Cameron, for warning that an extended war in Libya would mean "challenging decisions about priorities". Sailors never talk straight: he meant more ships. The navy has used so many of its £500,000 Tomahawk missiles trying to hit Colonel Gaddafi (and missing) over the past month that it needs money for more. In a clearly co-ordinated lobby, the head of the RAF also demanded "a significant uplift in spending after 2015, if the service is to meet its commitments". It, of course, defines its commitments itself.
Libya has cost Britain £100m so far, and rising. But Iraq and the Afghan war are costing America $3bn a week, and there is scarcely an industry, or a state, in the country that does not see some of this money. These wars show no signs of being ended, let alone won. But to the defence lobby what matters is the money. It sustains combat by constantly promising success and inducing politicians and journalists to see "more enemy dead", "a glimmer of hope" and "a corner about to be turned".
Victory will come, but only if politicians spend more money on "a surge". Soldiers are like firefighters, demanding extra to fight fires. They will fight all right, but if you want victory that is overtime...
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Sunday, 19 June 2011
FookyMcFookerty Fooky McFookerty
@campbellclaret Oh and btw #TonyBlairIsaWarCriminal - That 1 was for Mr Brian Haw :)
@campbellclaret Oh and btw #TonyBlairIsaWarCriminal - That 1 was for Mr Brian Haw :)
Why We Need to Take Magic Mushrooms Seriously
A team from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine recently published results from a roughly year-long experiment. The researchers worked with 18 volunteers who were given pure psilocybin to measure how it affected people and how different dosages changed the experience. The subjects were screened for psychological health and given the drug in a pleasant environment, after preparatory guidance. They even had a soundtrack consisting of "classical and world music chosen to complement the arc of the psilocybin action, from onset, through the peak of the effects, and subsiding back to baseline."
The results? At high dosages people occasionally experienced fear, anxiety, or delusions. But the negative effects of those "bad trips" were easily mitigated by the reassuring researchers and didn't outlast the session. At more moderate doses, the results were almost unambiguously positive. Moreover, people didn't just appreciate the experience as fun; they found it spiritually meaningful, with lasting benefits.
As a piece on Newswise explains:
Looking back over a year later, most of the experiment’s 18 volunteers (94 percent) rated a psilocybin session as among the top five most or as the topmost spiritually significant experience of his or her life. [...] Most volunteers (89 percent) also reported positive changes in their behaviors, and those reports were corroborated by family members or others, the researchers say. The behavior changes most frequently cited were improved relationships with family and others, increased physical and psychological self-care, and increased devotion to spiritual practice.Reading the volunteers' first-hand reports of how the experiences affected them is a testament to their value. "More and more, sensuality and compassion and gratitude continue to unfold around me." "I try to judge less and forgive more." "I feel that I relate better in my marriage. There is more empathy." "I need less food to make me full. My alcohol use has diminished dramatically."
I'm not saying we should all start doing mushrooms. These were carefully measured doses, taken in a setting designed to be comfortable and supportive. There are certainly situations in which it would be dangerous or irresponsible to take psilocybin.
But these results illustrate the artificial dichotomy between medicine and recreational drugs in America. Stateside, Prozac is regarded as medicine, but psilocybin is a schedule 1 controlled substance like heroin. Americans assume that if some substance is made by nature instead of Eli Lilly, it can't be medicine. But if psilocybin has true psychiatric and emotional benefits, what's the difference? Sure, you can have a bad experience with psilocibin, but antidepressents like Prozac have been linked to suicidal thoughts, and it's hard to imagine a worse side effect than that. We also think that if a drug is used for fun, there must be something bad about it. But Vicodin and OxyContin are all still on the market. There are plenty of FDA-approved drugs that get used (and abused) recreationally.
We should aim to evaluate any drug objectively, whether it's made by an enormous pharmaceutical company or grows in the forest. If an engineered antidepressant generated reports like those from the volunteers in this study, it would be regarded as a breakthrough in psychiatric medicine.
Andrew Price @'GOOD'
How Magic Mushrooms Can Improve Your Life in the Long-Term
Virtual Futures 2.0'11 (Livestream NOW)
Virtual Futures - The University of Warwick's Cyber Conference. Bringing together leaders in the field of VR, bio-enhancement, ethics of emerging technologies and cyberculture.
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An Interview Without Words
How does an award-winning children's book illustrator answer questions? With drawings, of course. Australian author-illustrator Shaun Tan recently gave SPIEGEL an interview -- and expressed himself using just pen and paper.
Tan, who was born in 1974 in Perth, Australia, lives and works as an artist and author in Melbourne. His books include "The Rabbits," "The Red Tree," Tales from Outer Suburbia" and "The Arrival," an acclaimed wordless graphic novel about a migrant who leaves his home country for a better life. He has also worked as a concept artist on animated films, including "Horton Hears a Who" and "Wall-E."
Tan is the winner of this year's Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, one of the most prestigious prizes in children's literature. The award, administered by the Swedish Arts Council, comes with an endowment of 5 million Swedish krona (about €544,000 or $777,000).
SPIEGEL: Mr. Tan, you recently won the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, a sort of Nobel Prize for picture book authors. Your success as an an illustrator and author is being celebrated around the world. But you are not yet a household name. Could you please introduce yourself?
Tan, who was born in 1974 in Perth, Australia, lives and works as an artist and author in Melbourne. His books include "The Rabbits," "The Red Tree," Tales from Outer Suburbia" and "The Arrival," an acclaimed wordless graphic novel about a migrant who leaves his home country for a better life. He has also worked as a concept artist on animated films, including "Horton Hears a Who" and "Wall-E."
Tan is the winner of this year's Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, one of the most prestigious prizes in children's literature. The award, administered by the Swedish Arts Council, comes with an endowment of 5 million Swedish krona (about €544,000 or $777,000).
SPIEGEL: Mr. Tan, you recently won the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, a sort of Nobel Prize for picture book authors. Your success as an an illustrator and author is being celebrated around the world. But you are not yet a household name. Could you please introduce yourself?
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Bootsy_Collins Bootsy Collins
We lost another funkin' soldier y'all, Clarence "Big Man" Clemons. the Funkateer Nation will rise to this... http://fb.me/Hvkk51FX
The Amen Break (2004)
This fascinating, brilliant 20-minute video narrates the history of the "Amen Break," a six-second drum sample from the b-side of a chart-topping single from 1969. This sample was used extensively in early hiphop and sample-based music, and became the basis for drum-and-bass and jungle music -- a six-second clip that spawned several entire subcultures. Nate Harrison's 2004 video is a meditation on the ownership of culture, the nature of art and creativity, and the history of a remarkable music clip.
Clarence Clemons RIP
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Fleet Foxes On Piracy – Don’t Make Discs, Make Music
In an interview with Shortlist Magazaine, band leader Robin Pecknold does nothing to undermine that support.
“There’s nothing you can do about technology. When the product leaves the disc it’s not chained to a physical format any more. It’d be different if we were sculptors because you can’t download a sculpture — not yet, at least,” says Pecknold.
“We’re unlucky in that our medium of choice is easily transferable over the internet, but that shouldn’t really matter. You’re not trying to make discs — you’re trying to make music. The medium shouldn’t matter and people will still reward you by buying records or seeing shows if you do something that they like.”
“I’m a music fan and that’s what I do.”
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