Paul Wright uses just the brushstroke in Photoshop to create these amazing portraits.
Sunday, 20 June 2010
U.S. Testing Pain Ray in Afghanistan
OK, OK. Maybe that isn’t precisely the logic being employed by those segments of the American military who would like to deploy the Active Denial System to Afghanistan. I’m sure they’re telling themselves that the generally non-lethal microwave weapon is a better, safer crowd control alternative than an M-16. But those ray-gun advocates better think long and hard about the Taliban’s propaganda bonanza when news leaks of the Americans zapping Afghans until they feel roasted alive.
Because, apparently, the Active Denial System is “in Afghanistan for testing.”
An Air Force military officer and a civilian employee at the Air Force Research Laboratory are just two of the people telling Danger Room co-founder Sharon Weinberger that the vehicle-mounted “block 2″ version of the pain ray is in the warzone, but hasn’t been used in combat.
[Update: "We are currently not testing the Active Denial System in Afghanistan," Kelley Hughes, spokesperson for the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate, tells Danger Room.
So I ask her: Has it been tested previously? She hems and haws. "I'm not gonna get into operational," Hughes answers.
Hughes also disputes the assertion that Active Denial creates a burning feeling. "It's an intolerable heating sensation," she says. "Like opening up an oven door."]
For years, the military insisted that the Active Denial System — known as the “Holy Grail” of crowd control — was oh-so-close to battlefield deployment. But a host of technical issues hampered the ray gun: everything from overheating to poor performance in the rain. Safety concerns lingered; a test subject had to be airlifted to a burn center after being zapped by the weapon. (He eventually made a full recovery.) And then there were concerns about “the atmospherics” — how the locals might react — when they learned that the United States had turned a people-roaster on ‘em. “Not politically tenable,” the Defense Science Board concluded.
I pinged Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s staff about the use of Active Denial in Afghanistan. I’ll let you know if I hear anything back. But a few months ago, a source told me that a representative from the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate was in Afghanistan. Did that mean Active Denial was about to be put into action? Nope, the source said. “She’s just out getting some atmospherics on the use of non-lethals.”
Update 2: “The active denial system is in the country,” e-mails Lt. Col. John Dorrian, a spokesman for Gen. McChrystal. “However, it has not been used operationally and no decision has been made at this time to deploy it.”
HA!
The England team visited an orphanage in Cape Town today. "It's heartbreaking to see their sad little faces with no hope" said Jamal aged 6.
ChasLicc Bad news: #Socceroos back to 1-1 against Ghana. Good news: They're still 1-0 up against the Animal Kingdom in the Optus ad.
Saturday, 19 June 2010
Coming soon...
This is the first official poster for The Social Network — David Fincher’s cinematic adaptation of Ben Mezrich’s The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius, and Betrayal.
The film opens on October 1.
The film opens on October 1.
Essay by Naomi Klein
The Deepwater Horizon disaster is not just an industrial accident – it is a violent wound inflicted on the Earth itself. In this special report from the Gulf coast, a leading author and activist shows how it lays bare the hubris at the heart of capitalism
‘Obama cannot order pelicans not to die (no matter whose ass he kicks). And no amount of money – not BP’s $20bn, not $100bn – can replace a culture that’s lost its roots.’ Photograph: Lee Celano/Reuters
Gulf oil spill: A hole in the world
SageFrancisSFR Warner Music Group had my "Best of Times" video blocked from Youtube. No proper cause. We'll fix that
“Kill Switch” Would Give Obama Power To Turn Off The Internet
Why doe it seem like it’s always Joe Lieberman who thinks of these great ideas? From the Sydney Morning Herald:
US President Barack Obama would be granted powers to seize control of and even shut down the internet under a new bill that describes the global internet as a US “national asset.”
The proposed legislation, introduced into the US Senate by independent senator Joe Lieberman, who is chairman of the US Homeland Security committee, seeks to grant the President broad emergency powers over the internet in times of national emergency.
Titled “Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act,” the bill stipulates any internet firms and providers must “immediately comply with any emergency measure or action developed” by a new section of the US Department of Homeland Security, dubbed the “National Centre for Cybersecurity and Communications.”
Lobby group TechAmerica told ZDNet it worried that the bill would give the US “absolute power” over the internet and create “unintended consequences.”
Jacob Sloan @'Disinfo'
Tilda Swinton
Tilda Swinton is a brainy actress who swings easily from passion indie projects (The Deep End, Julia and the upcoming I Am Love) to studio fare, from arch-villains to objects of desire, and from mother in the Scottish highlands to glamourous globe-trotting movie star. She won an Oscar as George Clooney’s nemesis in Michael Clayton, made love to Clooney in Burn After Reading and Brad Pitt in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and keeps turning up in Narnia as ice queen Jadis. (After her cameo in The Limits of Control, she’s committed to star in Jim Jarmusch’s next, whatever that turns out to be.) She’s as beautiful without makeup as she is with it. The next passion project she is developing is in collaboration with this year’s Cannes Palme d’Or winner Apichatpong Weerasethakul. They’ve known each other for years. (UPDATE: He talks about her at Cannes.)
In our three-part flip-cam interview, Swinton talks about her long-in-the-works Italian film I Am Love (a trailer is below), which opens limited this Friday. (Erica Abeel writes a rave.) She’s extraordinary as an Italian aristocrat who thinks she knows who she is but falls off a cliff when she falls in love with a young friend of her son. Sensual and erotic, the film is an art house hit in England and Spain (less so in Italy). Next up: the July 23 reissue of Swinton’s breakout role as the androgynous lead in Sally Potter’s movie of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, which I first saw at the Sundance Film Festival in 1992. (The film earned two Oscar nominations, for Sandy Powell’s costumes and best art direction by Ben Van Os and Jan Roelfs.)
Also fascinating to many of us is Swinton’s love life, which is less exotic than it appears: John Byrne, the father of her children, is not her husband and remains married, technically, to a Catholic. Swinton and Byrne broke up six years ago, after fifteen years together, and stayed friendly and for a time under the same roof for the sake of their twins; he now lives in a house nearby. While her boyfriend, painter Sandro Kopp, has occasionally stayed with her in Nairn, for the most part they travel together, and she spends time with her kids when she’s in Scotland. Every three weeks she’s home or the kids come to see her, is the rule.
When she’s not acting or producing or mothering, she has long enjoyed film festivals and performance art and has combined them playfully (in league with film historian Mark Cousins) in a series of events, from the 2008 and 2009 Cinema of Dreams to the upcoming Edinburgh Film Festival’s Flash Mob. As you can see from this interview, Swinton is both serious and great fun.
Find more videos like this on AnneCam
Find more videos like this on AnneCam
Find more videos like this on AnneCam
FuckFonts
Tony Grieger takes the photographic alphabet a step further with some abstraction. The full alphabet was first published in Menschenalphabete (Human Alphabets) by Fritz Franz Vogel. Here's Q:
The French painter Joseph Apoux created an alphabet in the 1880s of decorated capital letters that manages to offend both the general sense of decency and commit blasphemy at the same time. Here, in the C, a nun gives a blow job to a hooded, elderly monk holding a whip.
Peter Flötner's all-caps human alphabet of 1534 is the earliest example, with its classically nude figures (he later added briefs). There are only a few interactions, such as in the A, where two women kiss while holding each other's arms, or the H, which is a man and woman holding hands.
In this dedicational drawing, Salvador Dalí writes the names of two friends, Paul Eluard and his wife (and Dali's mistress), Gala, using explicit poses.
Full story
@'Playboy'
@'Playboy'
Plane ticket: £500, football ticket £150, Wayne Rooney moaning on live TV cos you're booing him for playing shite - priceless
Wayne - they are booing because you are an overpaid pompous, useless fugn wanker and the result was 0-0 against ALGERIA!
Algeria should have won the game...
Algeria should have won the game...
As the mosesman said:
its about time all these idiots who repeatedly say that the premiership is the best league in the world and therefore assume that english players are any good have a look at how many non english players play in that league... and its those non english players who have the basic requirements such as touch technique balance vision awareness control skill etc who make the english players clodhoppery look any good....for as long as i can remember the english game has been run by coaches from school age upwards who regard strength and stamina as more of a requirement than anything else.... you cant coach vision, or to know how to balance to put yourself in position to weight a pass or control a ball etc, you can teach a basic level of ball control but thats it.... and thats the answer why english players can run their friggin arses off but cant friggin pass a ball or with the very odd exception - sheringham - read a game and know when to pass, when to attack space, where to pass etc....
ok rant over..... go watch a group of european kids play football in the park and then go watch english kids... youll see the vast gulf between them..... scary
ok rant over..... go watch a group of european kids play football in the park and then go watch english kids... youll see the vast gulf between them..... scary
Here we go, here we go, here...
Do check out the absolutely wonderful blog:
(Which is where I nicked the image from!)
The Vinyl And CD Release On One Disc From Jeff Mills
For a recent limited edition release, electronic/techno musician Jeff Mills has created a hybrid disc with a vinyl pressing on one side and a cd mix on the other. The Occurrence project merges analog and digital together in one format. The release is part of his ‘Sleeper Wakes’ series which Mills has undertaken to explore new sounds and unique ways to present them. For a performance earlier this year in Japan, Mills had a circular stage specially constructed with all the DJ equipment recessed into the floor. The impression was of just Mills on the stage with no sound equipment visible what so ever.
MUST READ: The strange and consequential case of Bradley Manning, Adrian Lamo and WikiLeaks
On June 6, Kevin Poulsen and Kim Zitter of Wired reported that a 22-year-old U.S. Army Private in Iraq, Bradley Manning, had been detained after he "boasted" in an Internet chat -- with convicted computer hacker Adrian Lamo -- of leaking to WikiLeaks the now famous Apache Helicopter attack video, a yet-to-be-published video of a civilian-killing air attack in Afghanistan, and "hundreds of thousands of classified State Department records." Lamo, who holds himself out as a "journalist" and told Manning he was one, acted instead as government informant, notifying federal authorities of what Manning allegedly told him, and then proceeded to question Manning for days as he met with federal agents, leading to Manning's detention.
On June 10, former New York Times reporter Philip Shenon, writing in The Daily Beast, gave voice to anonymous "American officials" to announce that "Pentagon investigators" were trying "to determine the whereabouts of the Australian-born founder of the secretive website Wikileaks [Julian Assange] for fear that he may be about to publish a huge cache of classified State Department cables that, if made public, could do serious damage to national security." Some news outlets used that report to declare that there was a "Pentagon manhunt" underway for Assange -- as though he's some sort of dangerous fugitive.
From the start, this whole story was quite strange for numerous reasons. In an attempt to obtain greater clarity about what really happened here, I've spent the last week reviewing everything I could related to this case and speaking with several of the key participants (including Lamo, with whom I had a one-hour interview last night that can be heard on the recorder below, and Poulsen, with whom I had a lengthy email exchange, which is published in full here). A definitive understanding of what really happened is virtually impossible to acquire, largely because almost everything that is known comes from a single, extremely untrustworthy source: Lamo himself. Compounding that is the fact that most of what came from Lamo has been filtered through a single journalist -- Poulsen -- who has a long and strange history with Lamo, who continues to possess but not disclose key evidence, and who has been only marginally transparent about what actually happened here (I say that as someone who admires Poulsen's work as Editor of Wired's Threat Level blog).
Reviewing everything that is known ultimately raises more questions than it answers. Below is my perspective on what happened here. But there is one fact to keep in mind at the outset. In 2008, the U.S. Army Counterintelligence Center prepared a classified report (ironically leaked to and published by WikiLeaks) which -- as the NYT put it -- placed WikiLeaks on "the list of the enemies threatening the security of the United States." That Report discussed ways to destroy WikiLeaks' reputation and efficacy, and emphasized creating the impression that leaking to it is unsafe (click image to enlarge):
In other words, exactly what the U.S. Government wanted to happen in order to destroy WikiLeaks has happened here: news reports that a key WikiLeaks source has been identified and arrested, followed by announcements from anonymous government officials that there is now a worldwide "manhunt" for its Editor-in-Chief. Even though WikiLeaks did absolutely nothing (either in this case or ever) to compromise the identity of its source, isn't it easy to see how these screeching media reports -- WikiLeaks source arrested; worldwide manhunt for WikiLeaks; major national security threat -- would cause a prospective leaker to WikiLeaks to think twice, at least: exactly as the Pentagon Report sought to achieve? And that Pentagon Report was from 2008, before the Apache Video was released; imagine how intensified is the Pentagon's desire to destroy WikiLeaks now. Combine that with what both the NYT and Newsweek recently realized is the Obama administration's unprecedented war on whistle-blowers, and one can't overstate the caution that's merited here before assuming one knows what happened...
Continue reading
Glenn Greenwald @'Salon'
Friday, 18 June 2010
The world's only immortal animal
(Photo: Peter Schuchert)
The turritopsis nutricula species of jellyfish may be the only animal in the world to have truly discovered the fountain of youth.
Since it is capable of cycling from a mature adult stage to an immature polyp stage and back again, there may be no natural limit to its life span. Scientists say the hydrozoan jellyfish is the only known animal that can repeatedly turn back the hands of time and revert to its polyp state (its first stage of life).
The key lies in a process called transdifferentiation, where one type of cell is transformed into another type of cell. Some animals can undergo limited transdifferentiation and regenerate organs, such as salamanders, which can regrow limbs. Turritopsi nutricula, on the other hand, can regenerate its entire body over and over again. Researchers are studying the jellyfish to discover how it is able to reverse its aging process.
Because they are able to bypass death, the number of individuals is spiking. They're now found in oceans around the globe rather than just in their native Caribbean waters. "We are looking at a worldwide silent invasion," says Dr. Maria Miglietta of the Smithsonian Tropical Marine Institute.
Bryan Nelson @'Yahoo'
(Thanx Annik!)
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