Here is someone who really doesn't like 'Naked Lunch'
Musick that Needed Work T: Terminal Cheesecake
3 hours ago
Thursday, 22 April 2010
'Commom Sense' by Scurvy Bastard
To the Young Britons, dissatisfied with years of a failed New Labour and considering voting Tory for a change. Back in the 80s the contents of your diapers was the same thing that Thatcher was feeding the country, smirking all the while as her party idolized her. Things haven't changed and won't until you figure out how to change them. Repeating the same mistake over and over again is the definition of insanity.
Illustrations by Ralph Steadman
Birthday Party - Junkyard
(Thanx Michael!)
(I was very lucky enough to see the Birthday Party's second gig in London due to the fact that Tracey Pew (and Nick Cave?) were staying with friends of mine when they first came across to the UK.)
One of the greatest live bands of all time...
Guru's family deny authenticity of final words
The family of rapper Guru, who died earlier this week, have issued a statement refuting the former GangStarr man's ability to write down or communicate any final words in the run-up to his death.
As previously reported, immediately after Guru's death on Monday, his producer Solar issued a statement and a letter purporting to be the rapper's final wishes, which included the desire for Solar to bring up his son KC and run his charitable organisation, and a particularly vitriolic rant against his former GangStarr partner, DJ Premier.
However, the rapper's family say that they were not aware of any such charity being in operation, and claim that Guru had been in a coma since suffering a heart attack in February, so could not have written, or even dictated, the letter. Nor could he have issued the statement released via Solar in March assuring fans that he was recovering well.
The family's statement revealed: "Guru suffered from multiple myeloma for over a year. Accrued complications from this illness led to respiratory failure and cardiac arrest. As a result, Guru was in a coma from mid-February until his death and never regained consciousness. Early on the morning of 19 Apr, he became hypertensive due to low blood pressure. He again went into cardiac arrest and slipped away from us. Guru died far too young but he was, and we are, proud of all his many legendary musical contributions. The family is not aware of any foundations established by Guru".
Numerous members of the hip hop community, plus fans and critics were already questioning the validity of the letter supposedly written by Guru on his deathbed, and this statement will only fuel the animosity towards Solar. The producer himself said earlier this week that those who do not believe that the note was written by Guru have a "wicked agenda".
Meanwhile, DJ Premier issued his own statement yesterday, though refused to be drawn into the controversy surrounding Guru's death (although a few lines could be seen as subtle digs at Solar). Premier wrote: "I've been asked to comment on a letter speaking ill of me, which was supposedly written by Guru in his dying days. All I will say about it is that our time together was beautiful, we built a hip hop legacy together, and no one can re-write history or take away my love for him. One thing I would never do is play around with the truth about his life"
Who cares?
Melbourne Storm stripped of premierships for salary cap breaches
(...but it is nice to see that a sporting body actually has punished a club a little more than a slap on the wrist!)
(...but it is nice to see that a sporting body actually has punished a club a little more than a slap on the wrist!)
A Picture of 9/11 Is Not a Thing to Put on Your Truck
"14" and "88" are significant #s in the white power movement. "14" refers to the "white words" (we must secure the resistance of our race for the future of our children); and the "88" refers to "heil hitler."
But! The state of VA encourages anyone to report an offensive license plate....and you can do it online here:
[www.dmv.virginia.gov]
But! The state of VA encourages anyone to report an offensive license plate....and you can do it online here:
[www.dmv.virginia.gov]
Those naughty boys
Revolution Muslim taken down after posting this picture of Theo van Gogh and asking if Matt Stone & Trey Parker had forgotten it...
Pop stars branch out into graphic novels
It was autumn 2007 and I was surveying the queue outside Forbidden Planet, which was spiralling round the block
The cult entertainment department store just off Covent Garden was normally a quiet place: geeky adult males wrapped around Star Trek paraphernalia, engrossed in the latest Garth Ennis tome or eyeing up the limited edition Street Fighter figurines. But that day was different. A sea of figures dressed in black threatened to engulf the whole building. It was a blur of skeleton hoodies and faces hidden beneath layers of kohl eyeliner and hennaed hair, as scores of scowling teenagers lined the pavement. They were waiting for a chance to meet their hero. “OH. MY. GOD. I can’t believe I’m going to TOUCH HIM!” screamed the excited tween girl beside me, half-Avril Lavigne, half-Emily the Strange. Her friends squealed with delight.
The “him” she was going to touch? My Chemical Romance’s Gerard Way, who was there to sign copies of his first graphic novel, The Umbrella Academy. My Chemical Romance were the band responsible for taking the musical genre “emo” into the mainstream, via the bedroom walls of millions of adoring fans. The same decadent storytelling that saw MCR sell 2m copies of their third album, The Black Parade, was seen in The Umbrella Academy. The tale of former superheroes struck a chord with many of those who found solace in Way’s outcast lyrics. The six-part series of comics also managed to persuade the snootier echelons of the comic book world – who were sceptical about a singer-turned-comic book author – that Way was the real deal. The singer attended the School of Visual Arts in New York as well as interning at DC Comics before he formed MCR.
The success of the series has also opened the door for musicians to utilise graphic novels as never before. “I’m pretty sure it got into the hands of people who had never read comics before, or who just had a passing interest,” says Shawna Gore, an editor from Dark Horse Comics who published The Umbrella Academy. “It was a bridge between pop music and comics.”
That bridge has become more apparent in 2010 with two significant album releases set to feature graphic novel tie-ins. In pop culture terms, the timing seems right, with music fans still craving big aesthetic experiences in spite of the downsizing of the music industry. The evidence is everywhere, from Lady Gaga’s headline-baiting frocks to musicians turning to the outré world of opera to fulfil their creative needs (Björk is the latest pop star to announce that she is penning a libretto, a 3D “science musical” with French director Michel Gondry). “As well as this aesthetic need that comics fulfil, they play another role,” Gore says. “Musicians are able to tell the same stories they tell in song via the medium of comics. It’s a natural extension of songwriting.”
The link between comic books and pop music stretches all the way back to the 1960s with the Archies and Yellow Submarine but, in recent years, alternative musical genres and the graphic novel have been bedfellows, peaking with Tank Girl artist Jamie Hewlett’s collaboration with Damon Albarn on the virtual Gorillaz project. “Historically it’s been tied to punk rock and heavy metal,” says Gore. “Kiss had a range of comics in the 1970s, Alice Cooper did a graphic novel with [author] Neil Gaiman and Danzig’s Glenn Danzig was a comics publisher for a couple of years in the 1990s. So I think there’s always been that attraction. As people become more confident in their creative endeavours, they grow legs and they are open to other possibilities creatively.”
This is certainly the case with Amanda Palmer. The former Dresden Dolls chanteuse has just released an album under the pseudonym Evelyn Evelyn, and the album/graphic novel allowed her to stretch her wings creatively. “I achieved a lot of success with The Dresden Dolls and solo, but now I’ve hit a place that’s sort of a midlife artist crisis, where I’m really re-assessing what I’m doing and why. Creating an album and graphic novel seemed like a logical step,” she says.
The Evelyn Evelyn project finds Palmer and musical partner Jason Webley donning the guise of a pair of conjoined twin sisters. “They are joined at the side and share three legs and a liver,” she says. The girls’ story also provided perfect fodder for the graphic novel treatment. “The material on the record is very visual. The songs are like mini radio plays.”
It also provided Palmer with something that other creative outlets could not. “It opens up one’s imagination with certain types of images and art in a way nothing else does.” On disc, their disturbing tale (filled with tales of entrapment and hinting at abuse) is told with gallows humour, but translating it on to paper was more challenging. “The story is told from the point of view of innocent children but it’s really dark. You’re telling the facts as kids see them but you’re also including adult perspectives, that was what we had to think about.”
The album might be released soon but the Evelyn Evelyn graphic novel will not be out until October. The lavish two-book package, which will feature an introduction from Palmer’s fiancé Neil Gaiman, seems like a relic of a time gone by. For Palmer, this is the products’ unique selling point. “It’s going to be a beautiful, tangible piece of art itself. In today’s world it was important for us to create something you could hold in your hands and not just watch on a screen,” she says. As Shawna Gore says, “graphic novels allow musicians to have more autonomy over the formats in which they work.”
It’s a sentiment that musician Melissa Auf Der Maur agrees with. She is set to release Out Of Our Minds, a multimedia project (album, film and graphic novel) that deals with “an eternal female force on a hunt for the heart and it’s in all of us, and it’s lived for all time”. For Auf Der Maur, former member of Smashing Pumpkins and Hole, she saw the graphic novel as a perfect way to expound on these themes. “I was attracted to the graphic novel because it allowed me to explore the language of fantasy; of the subconscious and dreams.” The rock world and comic world, she says, have similar mindsets. “There’s a huge crossover in terms of people who are comic book fans and rock music fanatics.”Indeed the iconography Auf Der Maur uses to tell her non-linear tale (vikings, blood and witches) are ones that are common to the world of rock too. “Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath referred to [that imagery] because the original ‘heavy metal’ was mysticism, so I returned to the original route.” She asked Jack Forbes, a recent graduate from the School of Visual Arts, to create the wordless, comic accompaniment to her album. “I didn’t use words because it was all about the power of the visual that we wanted to communicate. Like music, the comic form transcends words,” she says, echoing Amanda Palmer’s comments.
“I showed Jack the fluid movements, the ‘frames within frames’ form of graphic novels which appealed to me and we used that. It was a very peaceful process compared with being on the film set recreating a car crash or being in a studio with loud music.”
Is the pairing up of the graphic novel and the album the future? Palmer isn’t so sure. “As artists are getting cleverer about capitalising on their releases, some will do some groundbreaking stuff with graphic novels. But for others, it won’t make sense. Sure you may see the pop star du jour putting one out but that doesn’t mean it’s this great new thing. I’d love to read what a brilliant mind like Robyn Hitchcock would do in the genre but, to be honest, I don’t know if I’d want to see the Beyoncé graphic novel.”
The cult entertainment department store just off Covent Garden was normally a quiet place: geeky adult males wrapped around Star Trek paraphernalia, engrossed in the latest Garth Ennis tome or eyeing up the limited edition Street Fighter figurines. But that day was different. A sea of figures dressed in black threatened to engulf the whole building. It was a blur of skeleton hoodies and faces hidden beneath layers of kohl eyeliner and hennaed hair, as scores of scowling teenagers lined the pavement. They were waiting for a chance to meet their hero. “OH. MY. GOD. I can’t believe I’m going to TOUCH HIM!” screamed the excited tween girl beside me, half-Avril Lavigne, half-Emily the Strange. Her friends squealed with delight.
The success of the series has also opened the door for musicians to utilise graphic novels as never before. “I’m pretty sure it got into the hands of people who had never read comics before, or who just had a passing interest,” says Shawna Gore, an editor from Dark Horse Comics who published The Umbrella Academy. “It was a bridge between pop music and comics.”
That bridge has become more apparent in 2010 with two significant album releases set to feature graphic novel tie-ins. In pop culture terms, the timing seems right, with music fans still craving big aesthetic experiences in spite of the downsizing of the music industry. The evidence is everywhere, from Lady Gaga’s headline-baiting frocks to musicians turning to the outré world of opera to fulfil their creative needs (Björk is the latest pop star to announce that she is penning a libretto, a 3D “science musical” with French director Michel Gondry). “As well as this aesthetic need that comics fulfil, they play another role,” Gore says. “Musicians are able to tell the same stories they tell in song via the medium of comics. It’s a natural extension of songwriting.”
The link between comic books and pop music stretches all the way back to the 1960s with the Archies and Yellow Submarine but, in recent years, alternative musical genres and the graphic novel have been bedfellows, peaking with Tank Girl artist Jamie Hewlett’s collaboration with Damon Albarn on the virtual Gorillaz project. “Historically it’s been tied to punk rock and heavy metal,” says Gore. “Kiss had a range of comics in the 1970s, Alice Cooper did a graphic novel with [author] Neil Gaiman and Danzig’s Glenn Danzig was a comics publisher for a couple of years in the 1990s. So I think there’s always been that attraction. As people become more confident in their creative endeavours, they grow legs and they are open to other possibilities creatively.”
This is certainly the case with Amanda Palmer. The former Dresden Dolls chanteuse has just released an album under the pseudonym Evelyn Evelyn, and the album/graphic novel allowed her to stretch her wings creatively. “I achieved a lot of success with The Dresden Dolls and solo, but now I’ve hit a place that’s sort of a midlife artist crisis, where I’m really re-assessing what I’m doing and why. Creating an album and graphic novel seemed like a logical step,” she says.
The Evelyn Evelyn project finds Palmer and musical partner Jason Webley donning the guise of a pair of conjoined twin sisters. “They are joined at the side and share three legs and a liver,” she says. The girls’ story also provided perfect fodder for the graphic novel treatment. “The material on the record is very visual. The songs are like mini radio plays.”
It also provided Palmer with something that other creative outlets could not. “It opens up one’s imagination with certain types of images and art in a way nothing else does.” On disc, their disturbing tale (filled with tales of entrapment and hinting at abuse) is told with gallows humour, but translating it on to paper was more challenging. “The story is told from the point of view of innocent children but it’s really dark. You’re telling the facts as kids see them but you’re also including adult perspectives, that was what we had to think about.”
The album might be released soon but the Evelyn Evelyn graphic novel will not be out until October. The lavish two-book package, which will feature an introduction from Palmer’s fiancé Neil Gaiman, seems like a relic of a time gone by. For Palmer, this is the products’ unique selling point. “It’s going to be a beautiful, tangible piece of art itself. In today’s world it was important for us to create something you could hold in your hands and not just watch on a screen,” she says. As Shawna Gore says, “graphic novels allow musicians to have more autonomy over the formats in which they work.”
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“I showed Jack the fluid movements, the ‘frames within frames’ form of graphic novels which appealed to me and we used that. It was a very peaceful process compared with being on the film set recreating a car crash or being in a studio with loud music.”
Is the pairing up of the graphic novel and the album the future? Palmer isn’t so sure. “As artists are getting cleverer about capitalising on their releases, some will do some groundbreaking stuff with graphic novels. But for others, it won’t make sense. Sure you may see the pop star du jour putting one out but that doesn’t mean it’s this great new thing. I’d love to read what a brilliant mind like Robyn Hitchcock would do in the genre but, to be honest, I don’t know if I’d want to see the Beyoncé graphic novel.”
Priya Elan @'Financial Times'
All we are is bust in the wind...
I'm tempted to say that this research is full of hot air. But that would be giving in to the easy pun.
(It would indeed Audiozobe, so I am so glad you didn't LOL! - Mona)
(It would indeed Audiozobe, so I am so glad you didn't LOL! - Mona)
Environmental psychology studies have found evidence that wind speed has a strong influence on mood and comfort. This study investigated the relationship between wind speed and daily stock market returns across 18 European countries from 1994 to 2004. A significant and pervasive wind effect was found on stock returns. This finding was supported by psychological literature claiming that mood affects judgement and decision-making in situations involving uncertainty and risk, and coincides with the argument of misattribution. This investigation also found strong seasonality effect and temperature effect in European stock markets. Specifically, the influence of wind on stock returns is demonstrated to be more significant than that of sunlight, indicating that wind might exert a stronger impact on mood than sunshine and hence be a better proxy for mood than sunshine. Above all, our findings contradict the rational asset-pricing hypothesis and contribute to the behavioural finance literature.
Hui-Chi Shu & Mao-Wei Hung'@'Informaworld'
(via @'Improbable Research' of course)
Cooking with your TV: germs, microbes, ad nauseam!
Hmm. Don't know who they watched for this study, but I know someone who's had some experience with a local TV cooking host, and she was not too well received when she pointed all the sanitary failures of the show to the producer she contacted. I wonder why?
“Television food and cooking programs were recorded and reviewed, using a defined list of food safety practices based on criteria established by Food Safety Network researchers…. When negative food handling behaviors were compared to positive food handling behaviors, it was found that for each positive food handling behavior observed, 13 negative behaviors were observed. Common food safety errors included a lack of hand washing, cross-contamination and time-temperature violations.”
Marc Abrahams @'ImprobableResearch'
Skinjet your way into the future.
Apart from the medical applications which are obviously plentiful, this device has another neat advantage: suddenly, the Lovecraftian ideal of an evil book bound in human leather doesn't seem quite as repulsive...
Via @'Bioephemera'
No Blood For Opium
It was common during the opening of the Iraq war to see slogans proclaiming “No blood for oil!” The cover story for the war – Saddam’s links with Al Qaida and his weapons of mass destruction – were obvious mass deceptions, hiding a far less palatable imperial agenda. The truth was that Iraq was a major producer of oil and, in our age, the Age of Oil, oil is the most strategic resource of all. For many it was obvious that the real agenda of the war was an imperialistic grab for Iraqi oil. This was confirmed when Iraq’s state-owned oil company was privatised to western interests in the aftermath of the invasion.
Why then are there no slogans saying “No blood for opium!”? Afghanistan’s major product is opium and opium production has increased remarkably during the present war. The current NATO action around Marjah is clearly motivated by opium. It is reported to be Afghanistan’s main opium-producing area. Why then won’t people consider that the real agenda of the Afghan war has been control of the opium trade?
The weapons of mass deception tell us that the opium belongs to the Taliban and that the US is fighting a war on drugs as well as terror. Yet it remains a curious fact that the opium trade has tracked across Southern Asia for the past five decades from east to west, following US wars, and always under the control of US assets.
In the 1960s, when the US fought a secret war in Laos using the Hmong opium army of Vang Pao as its proxy, Southeast Asia produced 70% of the world’s illicit opium. After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Afghanistan production, controlled by US-backed drug lords, took off, till it rivalled Southeast Asian production. Since 2002, Afghan opium production, encouraged by both the Taliban and US-backed drug lords, has reached 93% of world illicit production, an unparalleled performance.
The graph below from the UN World Drug Report 2008 shows the astonishing increase in Afghan opium production that followed the US invasion.
In the 1980s the US supported Islamic fundamentalists, the Mujahideen, against the Soviets in Afghanistan. To pay for their war, the Mujahideen ordered peasants to grow opium as a revolutionary tax. Across the border in Pakistan, Afghan leaders and local syndicates, under the protection of Pakistani Intelligence, operated hundreds of heroin labs. As the Golden Crescent in Southwest Asia eclipsed the Golden Triangle in Southeast Asia as the centre of the heroin trade, it sent rates of addiction spiralling in Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan and the Soviet Union.
To hide US complicity in the drug trade, Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) officers were required to look away from the drug-dealing intrigues of the US allies and the support they received from Pakistan’s Inter Service Intelligence (ISI) and the services of Pakistani banks. The CIA’s mission was to destabilise the Soviet Union through the promotion of militant Islam inside the Central Asian Republics and they sacrificed the drug war to fight the Cold War. Their mission was to do as much damage as possible to the Soviets. Knowing the drug war would hasten the collapse of the Soviet Union, the CIA facilitated the operation of anti-Soviet rebels in the provinces of Uzbekistan, Chechnya and Georgia. Drugs were used to finance terrorism and western intelligence agencies used their control of drugs to influence political factions in Central Asia.
The Soviet army withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, leaving a civil war between the US-funded mujahideen and the Soviet-supported government that raged until 1992. In the chaos that followed the mujahideen victory, Afghanistan lapsed into a period of warlordism in which opium growing thrived.
The Taliban emerged from the chaos, dedicated to removing the war lords and applying a strict interpretation of Sharia law. They captured Kandahar in 1994, and expanded their control throughout Afghanistan, capturing Kabul in 1996, and declaring the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.
Under the policies of the Taliban government, opium production in Afghanistan was curbed. In September 1999, the Taliban authorities issued a decree, requiring all opium-growers in Afghanistan to reduce output by one-third. A second decree, issued in July 2000, required farmers to completely stop opium cultivation. Ordering the ban on opium growing, Taliban leader Mullah Omar called the drug trade “un-Islamic”.
As a result, 2001 was the worst year for global opium production in the period between 1990 and 2007. During the 1990s, global opium production averaged over 4000 tonnes. In 2001, opium production fell to less than half this amount. Although it was not admitted by the Howard government, which claimed the credit itself, Australia’s 2001 heroin shortage was due to the Taliban.
Following the attack on the Pentagon and the World Trade Centre on 11 September 2001, the armies of the northern alliance, led by US Special Forces, supported by daisy cutters, cluster bombs and bunker-busting missiles, shattered the Taliban forces in Afghanistan. The opium ban was lifted and, with CIA-backed warlords back in control, Afghanistan again became the major producer of opium. Despite the official denials, Hillary Mann Leverett, a former US National Security Council official for Afghanistan, confirmed that the US knew that government ministers in Afghanistan, including the minister of defence in 2002, were involved in drug trafficking.
After 2002 Afghan opium production rose to unheard of levels. By 2007, Afghanistan was producing enough heroin to supply the entire world. In 2009, Thomas Schweich, who served as US state department co-ordinator for counter-narcotics and justice reform for Afghanistan, accused President Hamid Karzai of impeding the war on drugs. Schweich also accused the Pentagon of obstructing attempts to get military forces to assist and protect opium crop eradication drives.
Schweich wrote in the New York Times that “narco-corruption went to the top of the Afghan government”. He said Karzai was reluctant to move against big drug lords in his political power base in the south, where most of the country’s opium and heroin is produced.
The most prominent of these suspected drug lords was Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of President Hamid Karzai. Ahmed Wali Karzai was said to have orchestrated the manufacture of hundreds of thousands of phony ballots for his brother’s re-election effort in August 2009. He was also believed to have been responsible for setting up dozens of so-called ghost polling stations — existing only on paper — that were used to manufacture tens of thousands of phony ballots. US officials have criticised his “mafia-like” control of southern Afghanistan. The New York Times reported that the Obama administration had vowed to crack down on the drug lords who permeate the highest levels of President Karzai’s administration, and they pressed President Karzai to move his brother out of southern Afghanistan, but he refused to do so.
“Karzai was playing us like a fiddle,” Schweich wrote. “The US would spend billions of dollars on infrastructure development; the US and its allies would fight the Taliban; Karzai’s friends could get richer off the drug trade. Karzai had Taliban enemies who profited from drugs but he had even more supporters who did.”
But who was playing who like a fiddle?
Was it the puppet President or the puppet masters who installed him?
As Douglas Valentine shows in his history of the War on Drugs, The Strength of the Pack, this never-ending war has been a phony contest, an arm wrestle between two arms of the US state, the DEA and the CIA; with the DEA vainly attempting to prosecute the war, while the CIA protects its drug-dealing assets.
During the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries, European powers (chiefly the UK) and Japan used the opium trade to weaken and subjugate China. During the Twenty-First century, it seems that the opium weapon is being used against Iran, Russia and the former Soviet republics, which all face spiralling rate of addiction and covert US penetration as the Afghan War fuels central Asia’s heroin plague.
John Jiggens @'Disinformation'
Wednesday, 21 April 2010
yakawow Have you considered a PhD in Yaka-Wow studies? You appear to be a nuanced appreciator of #yakawow RT @exilestreet: Yaka-Wow just IS!
Security Brief: Radical Islamic Web site takes on 'South Park'
"South Park" showed the Prophet Mohammed
disguised in a bear suit.The radical Islamic Web site Revolutionmuslim.com is going after the creators of the TV cartoon series "South Park" after an episode last week included an image of the Prophet Mohammed in disguise.
Revolutionmuslim.com, based in New York, was the subject of a CNN investigation last year for its radical rhetoric supporting “jihad” against the West and praising al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Its organizers insist they act within the law and seek to protect Islam.
On Sunday, Revolutionmuslim.com posted an entry that included a warning to South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone that they risk violent retribution – after the 200th episode last week included a satirical discussion about whether an image of the prophet could be shown. In the end, he is portrayed disguised in a bear suit.
The posting on Revolutionmuslim.com says: “We have to warn Matt and Trey that what they are doing is stupid and they will probably wind up like Theo Van Gogh for airing this show. This is not a threat, but a warning of the reality of what will likely happen to them.”
Theo van Gogh was a Dutch filmmaker who was murdered by an Islamic extremist in 2004 after making a short documentary on violence against women in some Islamic societies. The posting on Revolutionmuslim.com features a graphic photograph of Van Gogh with his throat cut and a dagger in his chest.
The entry on Revolutionmuslim.com goes on to advise readers:
“You can contact them [the makers of South Park], or pay Comedy Central or their own company a visit at these addresses …” before listing Comedy Central’s New York address, and the Los Angeles, California, address of Parker and Sloane’s production company.
Contacted by CNN, the author of the post, Abu Talhah al Amrikee, said that providing the addresses was not intended as a threat to the creators of South Park but to give people the opportunity to protest.
Over still photographs of Parker, Stone, van Gogh and others, the Web site runs audio of a sermon by the radical U.S.-born preacher Anwar al-Awlaki, who is now in hiding in Yemen. The sermon, recorded some time ago, talks about assassinating those who have “defamed” the Prophet Mohammed – citing one religious authority as saying “Harming Allah and his messenger is a reason to encourage Muslims to kill whoever does that.” U.S. officials say al-Awlaki is on a list of al Qaeda leaders targeted for capture or assassination.
The clip ends with a warning on a graphic directed at Parker and Stone, saying “The Dust Will Never Settle Down.”
Al Amrikee said the purpose of including the al-Awlaki sermon in his posting was to remind Muslims that insulting the prophet is a severe offense for which the punishment in Islam is death. He said RevolutionMuslim may hold protests about the show.
Calls to Comedy Central were not returned.
The Case of the Cursed Bread
A funeral cortege for the village's victims passes in front of a local bakery.
A 60-year-old French medical mystery concerning hallucinogenic bread and mass hysteria has now been blamed on undercover operations by the CIA. According to American investigative journalist Hank Albarelli, the agency spiked French baguettes with LSD in secret experiments just after World War II. Citing anonymous US Army and CIA sources, Albarelli claims that members of the US Army’s Special Operations Division contaminated “local food products” with diethylamine – the D in LSD – to gauge the effect of the newly synthesised drug on French civilians.
The CIA connection is the latest in a number of possible explanations for a series of tragic events that unfurled at Pont-Saint-Esprit, a small town on the banks of the River Rhône in southern France, in August 1951. After an outbreak of food poisoning, upset stomachs, vomiting and diarrhœa soon gave way to mass folly and collective hallucinations. Victims imagined themselves to have copper heads, stomachs full of writhing snakes or bodies engulfed by flames. One girl thought she was being attacked by tigers. A patient undergoing treatment thought he could fly and threw himself from the second floor of a hospital, breaking both legs. In a fit of madness, a young boy tried to strangle his mother.
Within days, almost 300 people had reported poisoning symptoms, more than 30 had been hospitalised and at least five had died. Many of the victims were found to have shopped at the same bakery and suspicion soon fell on Roch Briand’s baguettes. The tragedy became known as the affair of the pain maudit (‘cursed bread’).
One of the first to come up with a possible explanation for the tragedy was local physician Dr Gabbaï, who had treated some of the victims. Writing in the British Medical Journal, he suggested that the symptoms indicated an outbreak of ergotism, caused by the parasitic mould ergot affecting grain. The disease was thought to have died out in France during the 18th century, but could it have resurfaced again in the Rhône Valley in 1951? Not all were convinced by the ergot diagnosis. The judge responsible for the enquiry suggested a possible criminal connection and referred to contamination by a very toxic form of synthetic ergot.
The Case of the Cursed Bread drew the attention of foreign experts as well. Dr Albert Hofmann, who first synthesised LSD-25 from ergot in 1938, travelled to Pont-Saint-Esprit and confirmed the hypothesis of ergot poisoning. But once back in Basle, the Sandoz Laboratories, where Hofmann worked and which had introduced LSD as a drug for various psychiatric uses four years earlier, rejected the connection. Experiments with ergot-infected bread in the US also suggested that the effects seen in Pont-Saint-Esprit were unlikely to be due to ergotism.
The possible causes of the affair were taken up again by American historian Steven Kaplan more than 50 years later. Kaplan, a professor at Cornell University and expert on the history of bread, examined all the possible explanations for the cursed bread: ergotism, infected water or contamination by fungicides or other toxins. None, he concluded in his 1,000-page tome Le Pain Maudit, published in 2008, could adequately explain the events of Pont-Saint-Esprit in the summer of 1951.
Then, at the end of 2009, came Hank Alberelli’s CIA allegations published in A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olsen and the CIAs Secret Cold War Experiments. “The most shocking thing to me was the CIA experiment in France,” he told the American Geek Entertainment TV after the publication of the book. “I didn’t want to believe that my government could do that.” But he is adamant he has proof that the CIA is behind the horrifying events at Pont-Saint-Esprit, and that these were part of a wider secret experimental programme. Between the late 1940s and the 1970s, he claims, the CIA tested LSD and other drugs on foreign civilians in Germany and Russia, as well as in France, and on 5,000 US servicemen.
Alberelli asserts that there was a lot of excitement in the CIA at the time about the possible uses of LSD in warfare. It was hoped that the drug could eliminate violence; the idea was that enemies could be bombarded with LSD, which would engender mass hallucinations and acts of madness. The US army would then be free to march into enemy territory with little opposition.
The latest ‘revelations’ have been received with a mixture of disbelief, amusement and shoulder-shrugging by the French media and the population of Pont-Saint-Esprit. Albarelli’s evidence appears flimsy at the very least. And some, including Kaplan, have dismissed the idea on clinical grounds. It’s highly unlikely, they say, that an LSD-like substance would have affected the villagers in the way the pain maudit did. And why, after all, should the CIA have targeted this quiet corner of southern France?
The CIA connection is the latest in a number of possible explanations for a series of tragic events that unfurled at Pont-Saint-Esprit, a small town on the banks of the River Rhône in southern France, in August 1951. After an outbreak of food poisoning, upset stomachs, vomiting and diarrhœa soon gave way to mass folly and collective hallucinations. Victims imagined themselves to have copper heads, stomachs full of writhing snakes or bodies engulfed by flames. One girl thought she was being attacked by tigers. A patient undergoing treatment thought he could fly and threw himself from the second floor of a hospital, breaking both legs. In a fit of madness, a young boy tried to strangle his mother.
Within days, almost 300 people had reported poisoning symptoms, more than 30 had been hospitalised and at least five had died. Many of the victims were found to have shopped at the same bakery and suspicion soon fell on Roch Briand’s baguettes. The tragedy became known as the affair of the pain maudit (‘cursed bread’).
One of the first to come up with a possible explanation for the tragedy was local physician Dr Gabbaï, who had treated some of the victims. Writing in the British Medical Journal, he suggested that the symptoms indicated an outbreak of ergotism, caused by the parasitic mould ergot affecting grain. The disease was thought to have died out in France during the 18th century, but could it have resurfaced again in the Rhône Valley in 1951? Not all were convinced by the ergot diagnosis. The judge responsible for the enquiry suggested a possible criminal connection and referred to contamination by a very toxic form of synthetic ergot.
The Case of the Cursed Bread drew the attention of foreign experts as well. Dr Albert Hofmann, who first synthesised LSD-25 from ergot in 1938, travelled to Pont-Saint-Esprit and confirmed the hypothesis of ergot poisoning. But once back in Basle, the Sandoz Laboratories, where Hofmann worked and which had introduced LSD as a drug for various psychiatric uses four years earlier, rejected the connection. Experiments with ergot-infected bread in the US also suggested that the effects seen in Pont-Saint-Esprit were unlikely to be due to ergotism.
The possible causes of the affair were taken up again by American historian Steven Kaplan more than 50 years later. Kaplan, a professor at Cornell University and expert on the history of bread, examined all the possible explanations for the cursed bread: ergotism, infected water or contamination by fungicides or other toxins. None, he concluded in his 1,000-page tome Le Pain Maudit, published in 2008, could adequately explain the events of Pont-Saint-Esprit in the summer of 1951.
Then, at the end of 2009, came Hank Alberelli’s CIA allegations published in A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olsen and the CIAs Secret Cold War Experiments. “The most shocking thing to me was the CIA experiment in France,” he told the American Geek Entertainment TV after the publication of the book. “I didn’t want to believe that my government could do that.” But he is adamant he has proof that the CIA is behind the horrifying events at Pont-Saint-Esprit, and that these were part of a wider secret experimental programme. Between the late 1940s and the 1970s, he claims, the CIA tested LSD and other drugs on foreign civilians in Germany and Russia, as well as in France, and on 5,000 US servicemen.
Alberelli asserts that there was a lot of excitement in the CIA at the time about the possible uses of LSD in warfare. It was hoped that the drug could eliminate violence; the idea was that enemies could be bombarded with LSD, which would engender mass hallucinations and acts of madness. The US army would then be free to march into enemy territory with little opposition.
The latest ‘revelations’ have been received with a mixture of disbelief, amusement and shoulder-shrugging by the French media and the population of Pont-Saint-Esprit. Albarelli’s evidence appears flimsy at the very least. And some, including Kaplan, have dismissed the idea on clinical grounds. It’s highly unlikely, they say, that an LSD-like substance would have affected the villagers in the way the pain maudit did. And why, after all, should the CIA have targeted this quiet corner of southern France?
Chris Hellier @'Fortean Times'
Jahtari unreleased tracks (Smoking # 64)
Download exclusive unreleased tracks from the Jahtari stable
- Listen to 'Rub-A-Dub Market: Fever Demo (Japanese Version)' (Download)?
- Listen to 'Solo Banton: Kung Fu Master (unreleased)' (Download)? @'The Wire'
King Sunny Adé cancels US tour due to deaths
In late March two percussionists in Mr. Adé’s 17-piece touring band, Gabriel Ayanniyi and Omo Olope, died in a car accident in Nigeria on the way to a music video shoot. With just a few weeks before the tour was to start, attempts to get American visas for replacement members of the band proved unsuccessful.
Andy Frankel, the band’s Philadelphia-based manager, said that the band had applied for visas but that American officials in Lagos “just flat-out failed to respond.” For help Mr. Frankel turned to his Congressional representative, Chaka Fattah, Democrat of Pennsylvania, but there was no luck there, either. “We got a response a week later,” Mr. Frankel said, “saying that unless it is a matter of medical emergency or business emergency they will not respond to any issues out of the normal time frame. I don’t know how this doesn’t constitute a business emergency.”
Finding replacement players in the United States was next to impossible, Mr. Frankel said, for financial, logistical and, especially, musical reasons, given Mr. Ayanniyi’s key role: lead talking-drum player. In Mr. Adé’s juju music — a Nigerian pop style rooted in Yoruba traditions — the talking drum is, Mr. Frankel added, “equivalent to the lead guitar in a rock band.” “After King Sunny, it does everything,” he said.
Ben Sisario @'NY Times'
Cannot believe...
...that I went past the 5,000th post without realising it!
Sorry Audiozobe
(but as you say here's to the 10,000th!)
How to put a little more G in your Earth Day
It will make you all warm and fuzzy. Or not.
Imagine for a moment the amount of batteries that it would take to charge up 15 billion dollars worth of sex toys per year, then imagine the majority of those batteries ending up as toxic waste. Along side that there are the manufacturing processes, most of which go relatively unregulated and continue to use phthalates (pronounced thal-ates), chemical plasticizers that have already been banned from use in children's toys in the U.S. and which Greenpeace has now requested the European Union start banning the use of in sex toys as well. All told, it suddenly seems obvious that the sex toy industry is a great place to start going green.
The manufacturers of the Micro-Kitty, the world's first solar powered sex toy (which is also phthalate-free) were apparently thinking the same thing. Using the popular design of a strap-on clitoral vibrator that can be worn by women solo or with a partner, they made the toy from silicone which a handful of conscientious sex toy manufacturers are now turning toward to create phthalate-free toys. They then took it one step further and made the vibrator solar powered just like the grade school calculators but a apparently a whole lot more fun.
No comment from me...
I will let you make up yr own mind!
Disregard the wanky 'youtoob' headline
Memo to TV producers:
There is a great competition there...
Yirrip blondes VS USA blondes
& who do you think will win?
CAVEAT:
I AM a blonde.
(Happy 4:20 BillT!)
(Happy 4:20 BillT!)
Jah Wobble's top ten Dub trax
1 KING TUBBY MEETS ROCKERS UPTOWN
Augustus Pablo I first heard this as a pre-release in 1976. Love the sound of Augustus Pablo's melodica; I am also kinky for the sound of the dubbed-up timbale drums that feature on this recording. King Tubby was the king of pure, heavy-duty dub at that time. It was released in this country on Island Records. Hearing 'King Tubby' for the first time had a profound effect on me: it was like hearing music from another cosmos. There are any number of good King Tubby compilations now around - Trojan Records and the Blood & Fire label are good places to look.
2 CONCRETE DUB Bob Marley
I no longer have this record... in fact, I have not heard it for probably 25 years, so I hope it does really exist and is not a figment of my imagination. If memory serves me well, it was the dub version B-side of an Island 7" single; probably of the track called 'Concrete Jungle', from the Catch a Fire album. It must have been one of the first ever domestically released dub singles. It was great to hear a dub version of a Marley track - I nearly always preferred the dub version of a tune. There was more space, and the bass and drums were pushed to the fore.
3 MARCUS GARVEY (DUB VERSION) Burning Spear
One of the very first dub versions I ever heard. I heard it in 1975 on a Friday night on the Capital Radio reggae show. I used to listen to that show religiously - Tommy Vance was the DJ. I now occasionally hear him DJing on heavy-rock stations as I channel-hop.
4 PROMISE IS A COMFORT TO A FOOL Trinity/Yabby You
A classic bassline, with a beautiful vocal refrain, and DJ chat. There are some bass lines that contain the whole mystery of creation within them. This is one of them. Other examples are Roy Budd's bass line to the title track of Mike Hodges Get Carter, and Cecil McBee's line on Lonnie Liston Smith's 'Expansions' are two that come immediately to mind. The crediting of reggae musicians is notoriously lax. There are three possible players, re this particular tune. All giants of the bass - Robbie Shakespeare, Aston 'Family Man' Barrett and Clinton Fearon. If I had to put money down on who it is on this track, I would say it was Mr Fearon.
5 TWO SEVENS CLASH Culture
For a while back in 1977, you could not get away from this tune. It still sounds heavenly. It reminds me of walking back from a party in Hackney on a Sunday morning as the sun was coming up. I couldn't get the tune out of my head.
6 JUJU MUSIC King Sunny Ade
There was a little-known dub version of this classic album, mixed by an engineer that I worked with, called Groucho. What he did was devastating. I would love to hear it again. It was on Island (again!) and was released around 1982.
7 ROWING Dennis Bovell
One of the great musicians of his generation. I used to watch him perform this with his band Matumbi. As with "Juju Music", I hankered after hearing it again. I'm pleased to say that the label Pressure Sounds has released a compilation of Dennis's dub stuff, which includes this track.
8 THE SAME SONG Israel Vibration
Similar to our own late, and very great Ian Dury, 'Skeleton,' 'Apple' and 'Wiss' [Israel Vibration's three members] were stricken by polio in the fifties. This blend of their vocals within a dub context is wonderful. Yet again, there is a great compilation on Pressure Sounds.
9 CONSCIOUS MAN DUB Lee Perry and the Jolly Brothers
You could not have a dub selection without Lee "Scratch" Perry appearing. This is a great example of his idiosyncratic style.
10 SMILING STRANGER John Martyn
This is taken from his 1980 album One World. It was one of the first records outside reggae to utilise dub techniques. Superb.
Augustus Pablo I first heard this as a pre-release in 1976. Love the sound of Augustus Pablo's melodica; I am also kinky for the sound of the dubbed-up timbale drums that feature on this recording. King Tubby was the king of pure, heavy-duty dub at that time. It was released in this country on Island Records. Hearing 'King Tubby' for the first time had a profound effect on me: it was like hearing music from another cosmos. There are any number of good King Tubby compilations now around - Trojan Records and the Blood & Fire label are good places to look.
2 CONCRETE DUB Bob Marley
I no longer have this record... in fact, I have not heard it for probably 25 years, so I hope it does really exist and is not a figment of my imagination. If memory serves me well, it was the dub version B-side of an Island 7" single; probably of the track called 'Concrete Jungle', from the Catch a Fire album. It must have been one of the first ever domestically released dub singles. It was great to hear a dub version of a Marley track - I nearly always preferred the dub version of a tune. There was more space, and the bass and drums were pushed to the fore.
3 MARCUS GARVEY (DUB VERSION) Burning Spear
One of the very first dub versions I ever heard. I heard it in 1975 on a Friday night on the Capital Radio reggae show. I used to listen to that show religiously - Tommy Vance was the DJ. I now occasionally hear him DJing on heavy-rock stations as I channel-hop.
4 PROMISE IS A COMFORT TO A FOOL Trinity/Yabby You
A classic bassline, with a beautiful vocal refrain, and DJ chat. There are some bass lines that contain the whole mystery of creation within them. This is one of them. Other examples are Roy Budd's bass line to the title track of Mike Hodges Get Carter, and Cecil McBee's line on Lonnie Liston Smith's 'Expansions' are two that come immediately to mind. The crediting of reggae musicians is notoriously lax. There are three possible players, re this particular tune. All giants of the bass - Robbie Shakespeare, Aston 'Family Man' Barrett and Clinton Fearon. If I had to put money down on who it is on this track, I would say it was Mr Fearon.
5 TWO SEVENS CLASH Culture
For a while back in 1977, you could not get away from this tune. It still sounds heavenly. It reminds me of walking back from a party in Hackney on a Sunday morning as the sun was coming up. I couldn't get the tune out of my head.
6 JUJU MUSIC King Sunny Ade
There was a little-known dub version of this classic album, mixed by an engineer that I worked with, called Groucho. What he did was devastating. I would love to hear it again. It was on Island (again!) and was released around 1982.
7 ROWING Dennis Bovell
One of the great musicians of his generation. I used to watch him perform this with his band Matumbi. As with "Juju Music", I hankered after hearing it again. I'm pleased to say that the label Pressure Sounds has released a compilation of Dennis's dub stuff, which includes this track.
8 THE SAME SONG Israel Vibration
Similar to our own late, and very great Ian Dury, 'Skeleton,' 'Apple' and 'Wiss' [Israel Vibration's three members] were stricken by polio in the fifties. This blend of their vocals within a dub context is wonderful. Yet again, there is a great compilation on Pressure Sounds.
9 CONSCIOUS MAN DUB Lee Perry and the Jolly Brothers
You could not have a dub selection without Lee "Scratch" Perry appearing. This is a great example of his idiosyncratic style.
10 SMILING STRANGER John Martyn
This is taken from his 1980 album One World. It was one of the first records outside reggae to utilise dub techniques. Superb.
Tuesday, 20 April 2010
Going out...
OOPS!!!
Actually I am going up to the Northcote Social Club to see The Paradise Motel...
Laterz/
Laterz/
Jah Wobble's top ten Dub trax
1 KING TUBBY MEETS ROCKERS UPTOWN
Augustus Pablo I first heard this as a pre-release in 1976. Love the sound of Augustus Pablo's melodica; I am also kinky for the sound of the dubbed-up timbale drums that feature on this recording. King Tubby was the king of pure, heavy-duty dub at that time. It was released in this country on Island Records. Hearing 'King Tubby' for the first time had a profound effect on me: it was like hearing music from another cosmos. There are any number of good King Tubby compilations now around - Trojan Records and the Blood & Fire label are good places to look.
2 CONCRETE DUB Bob Marley
I no longer have this record... in fact, I have not heard it for probably 25 years, so I hope it does really exist and is not a figment of my imagination. If memory serves me well, it was the dub version B-side of an Island 7" single; probably of the track called 'Concrete Jungle', from the Catch a Fire album. It must have been one of the first ever domestically released dub singles. It was great to hear a dub version of a Marley track - I nearly always preferred the dub version of a tune. There was more space, and the bass and drums were pushed to the fore.
3 MARCUS GARVEY (DUB VERSION) Burning Spear
One of the very first dub versions I ever heard. I heard it in 1975 on a Friday night on the Capital Radio reggae show. I used to listen to that show religiously - Tommy Vance was the DJ. I now occasionally hear him DJing on heavy-rock stations as I channel-hop.
4 PROMISE IS A COMFORT TO A FOOL Trinity/Yabby You
A classic bassline, with a beautiful vocal refrain, and DJ chat. There are some bass lines that contain the whole mystery of creation within them. This is one of them. Other examples are Roy Budd's bass line to the title track of Mike Hodges Get Carter, and Cecil McBee's line on Lonnie Liston Smith's 'Expansions' are two that come immediately to mind. The crediting of reggae musicians is notoriously lax. There are three possible players, re this particular tune. All giants of the bass - Robbie Shakespeare, Aston 'Family Man' Barrett and Clinton Fearon. If I had to put money down on who it is on this track, I would say it was Mr Fearon.
5 TWO SEVENS CLASH Culture
For a while back in 1977, you could not get away from this tune. It still sounds heavenly. It reminds me of walking back from a party in Hackney on a Sunday morning as the sun was coming up. I couldn't get the tune out of my head.
6 JUJU MUSIC King Sunny Ade
There was a little-known dub version of this classic album, mixed by an engineer that I worked with, called Groucho. What he did was devastating. I would love to hear it again. It was on Island (again!) and was released around 1982.
7 ROWING Dennis Bovell
One of the great musicians of his generation. I used to watch him perform this with his band Matumbi. As with "Juju Music", I hankered after hearing it again. I'm pleased to say that the label Pressure Sounds has released a compilation of Dennis's dub stuff, which includes this track.
8 THE SAME SONG Israel Vibration
Similar to our own late, and very great Ian Dury, 'Skeleton,' 'Apple' and 'Wiss' [Israel Vibration's three members] were stricken by polio in the fifties. This blend of their vocals within a dub context is wonderful. Yet again, there is a great compilation on Pressure Sounds.
9 CONSCIOUS MAN DUB Lee Perry and the Jolly Brothers
You could not have a dub selection without Lee "Scratch" Perry appearing. This is a great example of his idiosyncratic style.
10 SMILING STRANGER John Martyn
This is taken from his 1980 album One World. It was one of the first records outside reggae to utilise dub techniques. Superb.
Augustus Pablo I first heard this as a pre-release in 1976. Love the sound of Augustus Pablo's melodica; I am also kinky for the sound of the dubbed-up timbale drums that feature on this recording. King Tubby was the king of pure, heavy-duty dub at that time. It was released in this country on Island Records. Hearing 'King Tubby' for the first time had a profound effect on me: it was like hearing music from another cosmos. There are any number of good King Tubby compilations now around - Trojan Records and the Blood & Fire label are good places to look.
2 CONCRETE DUB Bob Marley
I no longer have this record... in fact, I have not heard it for probably 25 years, so I hope it does really exist and is not a figment of my imagination. If memory serves me well, it was the dub version B-side of an Island 7" single; probably of the track called 'Concrete Jungle', from the Catch a Fire album. It must have been one of the first ever domestically released dub singles. It was great to hear a dub version of a Marley track - I nearly always preferred the dub version of a tune. There was more space, and the bass and drums were pushed to the fore.
3 MARCUS GARVEY (DUB VERSION) Burning Spear
One of the very first dub versions I ever heard. I heard it in 1975 on a Friday night on the Capital Radio reggae show. I used to listen to that show religiously - Tommy Vance was the DJ. I now occasionally hear him DJing on heavy-rock stations as I channel-hop.
4 PROMISE IS A COMFORT TO A FOOL Trinity/Yabby You
A classic bassline, with a beautiful vocal refrain, and DJ chat. There are some bass lines that contain the whole mystery of creation within them. This is one of them. Other examples are Roy Budd's bass line to the title track of Mike Hodges Get Carter, and Cecil McBee's line on Lonnie Liston Smith's 'Expansions' are two that come immediately to mind. The crediting of reggae musicians is notoriously lax. There are three possible players, re this particular tune. All giants of the bass - Robbie Shakespeare, Aston 'Family Man' Barrett and Clinton Fearon. If I had to put money down on who it is on this track, I would say it was Mr Fearon.
5 TWO SEVENS CLASH Culture
For a while back in 1977, you could not get away from this tune. It still sounds heavenly. It reminds me of walking back from a party in Hackney on a Sunday morning as the sun was coming up. I couldn't get the tune out of my head.
6 JUJU MUSIC King Sunny Ade
There was a little-known dub version of this classic album, mixed by an engineer that I worked with, called Groucho. What he did was devastating. I would love to hear it again. It was on Island (again!) and was released around 1982.
7 ROWING Dennis Bovell
One of the great musicians of his generation. I used to watch him perform this with his band Matumbi. As with "Juju Music", I hankered after hearing it again. I'm pleased to say that the label Pressure Sounds has released a compilation of Dennis's dub stuff, which includes this track.
8 THE SAME SONG Israel Vibration
Similar to our own late, and very great Ian Dury, 'Skeleton,' 'Apple' and 'Wiss' [Israel Vibration's three members] were stricken by polio in the fifties. This blend of their vocals within a dub context is wonderful. Yet again, there is a great compilation on Pressure Sounds.
9 CONSCIOUS MAN DUB Lee Perry and the Jolly Brothers
You could not have a dub selection without Lee "Scratch" Perry appearing. This is a great example of his idiosyncratic style.
10 SMILING STRANGER John Martyn
This is taken from his 1980 album One World. It was one of the first records outside reggae to utilise dub techniques. Superb.
'Yaka-Wow' hits Boing Boing!
Are you a breezy person who goes, "Yaka-wow!"? Maybe you already were, and just didn't know it. Alice Bell, science communication lecturer at Imperial College, London, explains:
The main reason we've all been saying yakawow is simply because it's a cool word. It should be used more. Try saying it yourself out loud - yakawow, yaka-wow. Doesn't it just make your mouth happy?More specifically, yaka-wow is the accidental brainchild of British neuroscientist Susan Greenfield. In the UK, Greenfield is known for holding the rather controversial position that use of computers and video games irreparably damages children's brains—unless, of course, said children are using her computer games, in which case they will become smarter. You see the problem. Last Thursday, Greenfield gave an interview to the London Times, which led to this fabulous exchange:
She doesn't think computer games are life-threatening, like smoking, but she says that they are as much of a risk to mankind as climate change. [...] She is concerned that those who live only in the present, online, don't allow their malleable brains to develop properly. "It's not going to destroy the planet but is it going to be a planet worth living in if you have a load of breezy people who go around saying yaka-wow. Is that the society we want?"Within hours, yaka-wow had inspired a Twitter stream, poster, T-shirt and burgeoning personal philosophy. But why yaka-wow? Bell says it's probably a fortuitous typo:
As it turns out, Greenfield wasn't just making up an odd phrase. It seems to be a transcription error of "yuck and wow", a phrase Greenfield has often used to describe the way people act online, running quickly from one sensation to another. Greenfield famously refereed to the banality of twitter as, "Marginally reminiscent of a small child saying, 'Look at me, look at me mummy! Now I've put my sock on. Now I've got my other sock on.'"Naturally, that quote inspired mathematician Matt Parker to thoroughly wow the web by pulling both his socks on at the same time.
Image courtesy the brilliant mind of Adam Rutherford.
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