New York in 100 Songs - # Marianne Faithful
29 minutes ago
Thursday, 15 September 2011
Humans and Neanderthals had sex, but not very often
The discovery was a vindication for some and a surprise to others. For decades, palaeontologists had fought over different visions of the rise of early humans. Some championed the “Out of Africa” model, which says that all of us descend from a small group of ancestors who came out of Africa, swept the world, and replaced every other group of early humans. The most extreme versions of this model said that these groups never had sex, or at least, never bred successfully. The alternative – the multiregional model – envisages these prehistoric groups as part of a single population that met and mated extensively.
To an extent, these are caricatured versions of the two models, and there are subtler variants of each. Still, early evidence seemed to support the extreme Out of Africa version. When scientists sequenced the mitochondrial genome of Neanderthals (a small secondary set of genes set apart from the main pack), they found no evidence that any of these sequences had invaded the modern human genome. The conclusion: Neanderthals and humans never bred.
The full Neanderthal genome disproved that idea, but it also shifted the question from whether humans had sex with Neanderthals to just how much sex they had. As I mentioned in New Scientist earlier this year, modern humans were spreading into areas where Neanderthals existed. “It doesn’t necessarily take a lot of sex for genes from a resident population to infiltrate the genomes of colonisers. When an incoming group mates with an established one, the genes they pick up quickly rise to prominence as their population grows.”
Now, Mathias Currat from the University of Geneva and Laurent Excoffier from the University of Berne have weighed into the debate. They simulated the spread of modern humans from Africa and their encounters with Neanderthals throughout Europe and Asia, to work out the levels of sex that would have transferred Neanderthal genes to modern genomes at their current level.
The duo concluded that sex between the two groups was somewhat of a fringe activity. Fewer than 2 percent of the possible sexual encounters at the time happened between a human and a Neanderthal and produced a fertile, healthy hybrid child. That’s a conservative estimate – the true odds might have been even lower. “Such interbreedings were strongly prevented or very rarely successful,” says Excoffier...
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Ed Yong @'Discover'
Frida
I used to think I was the strangest person in the world, but then I thought, there are so many people in the world; there must be someone just like me who feels bizarre and flawed in the same ways I do. I would imagine her, and imagine that she must be out there thinking of me, too. Well, I hope that if you are out there and read this and know that, yes, it’s true, I’m here, and I’m just as strange as you.Via
- Frida Kahlo
Drop Out Orchestra - Mix Session September 2011
01. Gredit - Ben E Slow
02. Lou Teti - Shake (Drop Out Orchestra Reload)
03. Honom - Bedcat
04. Rambla Boys - Cocomero
05. Lou Teti - Love It (Dublin Aunts Rework)
06. Mary Mary - Shackles (Praise You) Drop Out Orchestra Rework
07. Drop Out Orchestra - Ego (Black Strobe Remix)
08. Tronik Youth - Toke-Yo
09. Katzuma - Life In The City
10. Dub On Film (Drop Out Orchestra Rework)
11. Ajello ft Hard Ton - Chocolate Black Leather (Tempelhof Remix)
12. Fabmayday - Disco Verme (Drop Out Orchestra Remix)
13. 3io - Born Slippy
02. Lou Teti - Shake (Drop Out Orchestra Reload)
03. Honom - Bedcat
04. Rambla Boys - Cocomero
05. Lou Teti - Love It (Dublin Aunts Rework)
06. Mary Mary - Shackles (Praise You) Drop Out Orchestra Rework
07. Drop Out Orchestra - Ego (Black Strobe Remix)
08. Tronik Youth - Toke-Yo
09. Katzuma - Life In The City
10. Dub On Film (Drop Out Orchestra Rework)
11. Ajello ft Hard Ton - Chocolate Black Leather (Tempelhof Remix)
12. Fabmayday - Disco Verme (Drop Out Orchestra Remix)
13. 3io - Born Slippy
Botulism Turning Up In King County Heroin
“In late August, a King County woman with a history of ‘black tar’ heroin injection arrived at a hospital with slurred speech, double vision and drooping eyelids, according to a statement issued Wednesday by Seattle & King County Public Health. About a week later, a man with a similar history of injection drug use was admitted with similar symptoms.
“Both saw their conditions worsen and were admitted to an intensive care unit. Botulism – a life-threatening but rare illness caused by a toxin produced by Clostridium botulinum bacteria – is strongly suspected in both cases, and testing to confirm the diagnosis is pending at a state laboratory.”
“Both saw their conditions worsen and were admitted to an intensive care unit. Botulism – a life-threatening but rare illness caused by a toxin produced by Clostridium botulinum bacteria – is strongly suspected in both cases, and testing to confirm the diagnosis is pending at a state laboratory.”
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Wednesday, 14 September 2011
All Hail jail to star tale
Courtin-Wilson, a young Melbourne filmmaker, who has won accolades with the documentaries Chasing Buddha and Bastardy, met Jones while working with Plan B, a Melbourne theatre group founded to help rehabilitate former prisoners through performance.
Hail tells the story of a prisoner who is released from a Melbourne jail and tries to return to a normal domestic and working life. It is based on the experiences of former prisoners like Jones, who allowed a film crew into the flat he shares with his girlfriend Leanne to film his family and former criminal associates.
Jones explained in Venice that he had already been in Cannes with Courtin-Wilson's short film, Cicada. Strangely enough he had dreamt he was coming to Venice this year - just like with Cannes in 2009.
Jones said he planned to marry his girlfriend soon "so the festival is like a honeymoon in advance".
Jones explained his first crime was being born. "After my mother and father separated, my mother became seriously ill and I was raised in a boys' home," he said. "So at the age of 12, I was exposed to all the things that happen in the criminal world."
Empire magazine film critic Damon Wise described Jones' performance as "brilliant in the moments when you really got inside his mind and he was articulating his rage. When his eyes glazed over and he was in the zone it was really frightening".
Helen Barlow @'The West Australian'
Venice Press Conference
The Responsive Eye | USA, MoMA, 1965
The Responsive Eye, MoMA Catalogue (1965) [PDF, 80mb]
In 1965, an exhibition called The Responsive Eye, created by William C. Seitz was held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. The works shown were wide ranging, encompassing the minimalism of Frank Stella and Ellsworth Kelly, the smooth plasticity of Alexander Liberman, the collaborative efforts of the Anonima group, alongside the well-known Victor Vasarely, Richard Anuszkiewicz, and Bridget Riley. The exhibition focused on the perceptual aspects of art, which result both from the illusion of movement and the interaction of color relationships. The exhibition was enormously popular with the general public, though less so with the critics. Critics dismissed op art as portraying nothing more than trompe l'oeil, or tricks that fool the eye. Regardless, op art's popularity with the public increased, and op art images were used in a number of commercial contexts. Bridget Riley tried to sue an American company, without success, for using one of her paintings as the basis of a fabric design.
The Op Art movement got a new lease of life in the first decade of the twenty-first century as new forms started once again emerging. In 2005, Indian artist, Devajyoti Ray started a new genre of art called Pseudorealism. Though the concept and the name of the movement was brought from the film-world, much of Pseudorealism depends on the intuitive use of colours and understanding the relationships between them. -- Wiki
Via
Thursday September 15 is R U OK? Day.
Every day, 8 Australians take their own lives; that’s more than 2,100 a year.
According to Lifeline, for each person that dies in this way, another 30 attempt to end their life. R U OK? Day aims to inspire all Australians to help reduce our suicide rate by reaching out and making contact with others. Connect with someone you care about, and help stop little problems turning into big ones.
Staying connected with others is crucial to our general health and wellbeing. Feeling isolated or hopeless can contribute to depression and other mental illnesses, which can ultimately result in suicide. Regular, meaningful conversations can protect those we know and love.
Tomorrow, R U OK? want everyone across the country, from all backgrounds and walks of life, to ask family, friends and colleagues: “Are you OK?”.
It’s so simple. In the time it takes to have a coffee, you can start a conversation that could change a life. Visit the R U OK? Day website | Twitter | Facebook and join in tomorrow.
If you read no further than this and know you’ll join in tomorrow, that’s wonderful. Thank you! But if you have a few more minutes we’d like to tell you a little more about R U OK?Day and why it’s so important...
(BIG thanx Stan for the heads up!)
Collateral Damage: Robin Rimbaud
Robin Rimbaud aka Scanner hails the new community spirit of social networking sites that encourage direct communications between artists and listeners.
When British pop singer John Miles trilled, “Music was my first love and it will be my last/Music of the future and music of the past”, he could well have been celebrating the role music still plays in many of our lives today, despite the transformative impact digital technologies have had upon the means of both listening and production.The conversation regarding the digital economy of music tends to bypass many of the more constructive aspects that have been born from this radical reworking of the traditional models. The fiery debates continue to burn, so let’s sidestep those for a moment, look forwards not backwards, and explore the possibilities of engaging with these systems – colluding rather than quarrelling.
I have been professionally engaged in producing and performing music for the last 20 years, though my enthusiasm for all types of music stems from a much earlier age, having been exposed to both John Cage and Suzi Quatro at the very same time: one at school, one at home – no prizes for guessing which one had more influence upon me. (I don’t live on Devil Gate Drive.) Very early on, I was conscious that music has always centred on a social engagement, commonly in performance, and quite unlike the solitary pursuits of writers or visual artists, working independently in their studios to create unique objects.
However, there has always remained a distance between listeners and the musicians themselves, often maintained via bombastic management companies and unresponsive record labels. But nowadays artists can mediate the experience themselves using networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Ping and (in dwindling cases) MySpace. Social networking has erased some of these boundaries controlled by the music industry, enabling fans, consumers and the artists themselves to develop an emotional relationship.
It’s impossible to underestimate the value and impact of this direct line of communication, and personally I’ve felt more of a connection than ever with people who follow my work, or those with whom I’ve collaborated or respected. Indeed, countless times I’ve written ‘fan’ emails to musicians I’ve heard on The Wire Tapper CDs, for example, and receiving a personal response still gives me a thrill. Which is why I still try to respond to every email I receive, whether it’s from commissioners of new work or a curious student asking a technical question, or a request for yet another signed photo (but that’s inevitably my mum asking for those)...
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E-petitions: MPs to debate riots and Hillsborough
MPs are to debate two e-petitions which have gathered the support of more than 100,000 people.
The first debate, on 13 October, will consider calls to remove benefits from people found guilty of taking part in this summer's riots.The second debate, four days later, is on a petition demanding the full release of documents relating to the 1989 Hillsborough Stadium disaster.
The government introduced the e-petitions website this summer.
Any petitions gaining the support of more than 100,000 people can be considered for a full debate, if an MP suggests it to the backbench business committee, which controls about 35 days a year of parliamentary time.
At Tuesday's committee meeting, Conservative MP Gavin Barwell proposed a wider debate on the government's response to the riots, after a petition calling for those involved to lose entitlement to benefits gathered more than 244,000 signatures.
'Maximum disclosure' Liverpool Walton MP Steve Rotheram suggested the petition calling for the release of government papers on the 1989 Hillsborough disaster, in which 96 Liverpool Football Club fans died.
In 2009, the then Labour government set up the Hillsborough Independent Panel, whose task was to "oversee the maximum possible public disclosure of governmental and other agency documentation relating to the Hillsborough tragedy and its aftermath".
The Information Commissioner Christopher Graham ruled in July this year that some files should be released, ahead of the usual 30-year rule, following a BBC freedom of information request, which was made before the panel was established.
'Process is working' However, the government is appealing against that ruling, and has said it wants the documents to be released to the panel first rather than all at once to the public.
It is understood the panel may put forward its recommendations on which papers should be released as early as the spring of next year.
The petitioners, however, are demanding that the information given out is not pre-filtered.
A third topic considered for debate - that of a referendum on the UK's membership of the European Union - was not selected by the backbench committee, which had set aside two time slots in October.
The EU referendum call had gathered 80,000 signatures on a paper petition, and more than 20,000 on an e-petition.
A spokesman for the House of Commons leader, Sir George Young, said: "We welcome the decision of the backbench business committee to propose debates in the House on the subjects of the first two eligible e-petitions through the new government website.
"This shows that the new e-petition process is working, and demonstrates that it can achieve the aim of better connecting the public with Parliament."
The government announced last week that MPs could get more time to debate issues raised on the e-petitions website.
@'BBC'
It's Not Plagiarism. In the Digital Age, It's 'Repurposing.'
It seems an appropriate response to a new condition in writing: With an unprecedented amount of available text, our problem is not needing to write more of it; instead, we must learn to negotiate the vast quantity that exists. How I make my way through this thicket of information—how I manage it, parse it, organize and distribute it—is what distinguishes my writing from yours.
The prominent literary critic Marjorie Perloff has recently begun using the term "unoriginal genius" to describe this tendency emerging in literature. Her idea is that, because of changes brought on by technology and the Internet, our notion of the genius—a romantic, isolated figure—is outdated. An updated notion of genius would have to center around one's mastery of information and its dissemination. Perloff has coined another term, "moving information," to signify both the act of pushing language around as well as the act of being emotionally moved by that process. She posits that today's writer resembles more a programmer than a tortured genius, brilliantly conceptualizing, constructing, executing, and maintaining a writing machine.
Perloff's notion of unoriginal genius should not be seen merely as a theoretical conceit but rather as a realized writing practice, one that dates back to the early part of the 20th century, embodying an ethos in which the construction or conception of a text is as important as what the text says or does. Think, for example, of the collated, note-taking practice of Walter Benjamin's Arcades Project or the mathematically driven constraint-based works by Oulipo, a group of writers and mathematicians.
Today technology has exacerbated these mechanistic tendencies in writing (there are, for instance, several Web-based versions of Raymond Queneau's 1961 laboriously hand-constructed Hundred Thousand Billion Poems), inciting younger writers to take their cues from the workings of technology and the Web as ways of constructing literature. As a result, writers are exploring ways of writing that have been thought, traditionally, to be outside the scope of literary practice: word processing, databasing, recycling, appropriation, intentional plagiarism, identity ciphering, and intensive programming, to name just a few...
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Kenneth Goldsmith @'The Chronicle'
DRC Music - Kinshasa One Two
An album of Congolese music entitled Kinshasa One Two by DRC Music, a collective gathered by Damon Albarn, is released digitally by Warp Records on 3rd October 2011 with a CD/vinyl release to follow on 7th November, to benefit Oxfam. PREORDER NOW - PROFITS GO TO OXFAM'S WORK IN DRC & DRC MUSICIANS
http://bleep.com/index.php?page=dynamic&module=drc_kinshasa_one_two
Kinshasa One Two was made during 5 days of sessions in Kinshasa this summer when the DRC Music collective teamed up with the best of contemporary Congolese musicians and performers. The collective comprises the eclectic production talents of: T-E-E-D (Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs), Dan The Automator, Jneiro Jarel, Richard Russell, Actress, Marc Antoine, Alwest, Remi Kabaka, Rodaidh McDonald and Kwes, with album artwork by Hardy Blechman and Aitor Throup.
http://drcmusic.org/
Return of the Man Who Used to Rock
But at a stage in life when many of his peers are content to live off past glories, Mr. Lowe, now 62, is enjoying a remarkable second wind. Originally a purveyor of witty subversions of Top 40 confections — his first United States solo album, released in 1978, was called “Pure Pop for Now People” — he has reinvented himself in recent years as a writer and performer of spare, reflective songs rooted in the American country music and rhythm ’n’ blues he imbibed as a child.
At the same time Mr. Lowe has remade his image to align it with the more mature content of his work, the latest example of which is “The Old Magic,” a CD released on Tuesday. Once the prototypical long-haired, insouciant rocker, he now affects an avuncular look, with a shock of snow white hair, à la the older Cary Grant, and a pair of black Buddy Holly specs. That way “I won’t have to continually be pretending, like a lot of my contemporaries sadly have to, that they’re still young and copping this act they used to do and are condemned to do,” Mr. Lowe said during an interview in New York last month. “It’s a sort of unseemly sight, and one which I wish to avoid.”
It’s a remarkable turnabout for Mr. Lowe, who was associated with three of the most important British pop movements of the 1970s: pub rock, punk and new wave. An early band of his, Brinsley Schwarz, was the anchor of pub rock, and as a producer, he shaped and supervised Mr. Costello’s influential first five albums, as well as recordings by Graham Parker, the Pretenders, the Damned and Dr. Feelgood.
“When the punk scene came along, Nick was in the right place at the right time,” said Will Birch, an English musician, songwriter and producer who is also the author of two books about 1970s British rock. “He was Mr. Fixit, the guy who could produce a record,” but also “a sort of headmaster who made sure everything was kept very to the point, short and snappy.” A subsequent rockabilly-inspired group, Rockpile, generated gems like “I Knew the Bride (When She Used to Rock ’n’ Roll)” and “When I Write the Book.” But Mr. Lowe also maintained a skeptical distance from what was going on around him. “I’ve never really liked being in somebody’s gang,” he said. “As soon as I feel like I’m being encouraged to join someone else’s gang, I react rather badly to that.”
What set Mr. Lowe on the path to his current sound was a run of bad luck in the early 1990s. His record label had dropped him; he was coming off what he described as “the disastrous end to a love affair”; and even a return to producing seem closed to him, since “the general public had become conditioned to hearing a record sound a certain way, with a certain sheen,” rather than with the “scruffy, homemade sound” he prefers.
But then he had an extraordinary stroke of good fortune. Curtis Stigers’s version of “Peace, Love and Understanding” was included on the soundtrack album of the movie “The Bodyguard” (1992), which went on to sell an estimated 44 million copies worldwide and earn Mr. Lowe a windfall in songwriter’s royalties.
“I didn’t buy racehorses or yachts or anything like that,” he recalled, “but it was a big, big payday, and it enabled me to make a break with the past. I didn’t have the pressure to play the game. I could turn stuff down and avoid the slippery slope of me being forever in a ‘Remember those fabulous punk rock days? Well here they are again!’ sort of thing.”
Instead Mr. Lowe followed the advice of two friends whose records he had produced, Mr. Costello and John Hiatt. Touring with Mr. Costello, he began performing solo, and when he got home to London, where he still lives with his wife and 6-year-old son, he emulated Mr. Hiatt’s habit of “going to work every day” to write songs in a sort of office at a performance space in a neighborhood pub.
What emerged from that process was a CD called “The Impossible Bird,” released in 1994, and a new stripped-down and rootsy sound. “The Beast in Me,” written specifically for Johnny Cash, Mr. Lowe’s former father-in-law, emerged from those sessions, and on subsequent recordings like “Dig My Mood,” “The Convincer” and “At My Age,” that approach has been refined.
” A lot of people overproduce records, and in the early days he and I both did the kitchen sink. But now he’s focused on what he really wants to be, and there is no dead wood at all,” the singer-songwriter Daryl Hall said.
In recent years Mr. Lowe’s virtues as a songwriter and performer have been garnering more recognition, especially among younger musicians. Two tribute albums featuring other artists interpreting his songs, “Lowe Profile” and “Labour of Love,” have been issued, and this year he was invited to do performances-cum-songwriting-workshops at both the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville and the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles.
“Nick Lowe is a major, major influence for me,” said the indie rock and alt-country singer Neko Case, who has recorded a pair of his songs. “He’s the most consistent artist I can think of, and there is something about the lyricism and gracefulness of his songs that I just love. Their cadences are unusual and addictive, and the way he sings them, his phrasing, it’s just beautiful.”
This fall Mr. Lowe will tour with Wilco, which just recorded his tongue-in-cheek late-’70s composition “I Love My Label.” But Mr. Lowe will undoubtedly be doing things in his own understated way, even if it costs him: Huey Lewis, a friend for 30 years who credits Mr. Lowe for jump-starting his career, recalls inviting him to join him onstage for “I Knew the Bride” a few years ago, only to be told “Huey, I don’t rock anymore.”
“Obviously success is crowned with some sort of financial reward, that’s what puts the stamp on it,” Mr. Lowe said of his current trajectory. “That sort of stuff comes along, but that’s not really what I’m after. I’m not a greedy man. I’ve lived well, but I’m not really interested in that. I’m more interested in seeing what happens next, what the end of the movie is.”
Larry Richter @'NY Times'
Tuesday, 13 September 2011
James Murdoch recalled by MPs
Murdoch, who oversees News International as deputy chief operating officer of News Corporation, will face fresh questions about whether he knew that phone-hacking at the News of the World went wider than one "rogue reporter".
The date of his appearance has not yet been finalised, but it is understood that he could appear in November.
Murdoch insists he was not told about the existence of an email sent by a News of the World reporter marked "for Neville", which is understood to have been a reference to Neville Thurlbeck, who was the paper's chief reporter. That suggested phone hacking was not the work of a single reporter, as the company claimed until recently.
Colin Myler, the former editor of the paper, and Tom Crone, its head of legal, told MPs last week that they told Murdoch about the email and said that is why he approved an out-of-court settlement of £700,000 including costs to Gordon Taylor, the former chief executive of the PFA.
Murdoch told MPs in July that he did not know about the email and was not shown it or informed of its existence. In a statment last week he reiterated that was the case.
A News Corp spokeswoman said: "We await details of the commitee's request, however James Murdoch is happy to appear in front of the committee again to answer any further questions members might have."
James Robinson @'The Guardian'
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