Tuesday, 22 June 2010
Radiohead Electronica Mix
1.) Radiohead - Backdrifts
2.) Radiohead - Pull/Pulk Revolving Doors
3.) Radiohead - Everything In Its Right Place
4.) Radiohead - Kid A
5.) Thom Yorke - The Eraser
6.) Radiohead - Packt Like Crushed Sardines...
7.) Radiohead - Like Spinning Plates
8.) Radiohead - The Gloaming
9.) Thom Yorke - Atoms For Peace
10.) Radiohead - Idioteque
11.) Thom Yorke - Skip Divided
12.) Thom Yorke - Cymbal Rush
download link
via deepgoa
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange breaks cover but will avoid America
The elusive founder of WikiLeaks, who is at the centre of a potential US national security sensation, has surfaced from almost a month in hiding to tell the Guardian he does not fear for his safety but is on permanent alert.
Julian Assange, a renowned Australian hacker who founded the electronic whistleblowers' platform WikiLeaks, vanished when a young US intelligence analyst in Baghdad was arrested.
The analyst, Bradley Manning, had bragged he had sent 260,000 incendiary US state department cables on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to WikiLeaks.
The prospect of the cache of classified intelligence on the US conduct of the two wars being put online is a nightmare for Washington. The sensitivity of the information has generated media reports that Assange is the target of a US manhunt.
"[US] public statements have all been reasonable. But some statements made in private are a bit more questionable," Assange told the Guardian in Brussels. "Politically it would be a great error for them to act. I feel perfectly safe … but I have been advised by my lawyers not to travel to the US during this period."
Assange appeared in public in Brussels for the first time in almost a month to speak at a seminar on freedom of information at the European parliament.
He said: "We need support and protection. We have that. More is always helpful. But we believe that the situation is stable and under control. There's no need to be worried. There's a need always to be on the alert."
Manning is being held incommunicado by the US military in Kuwait after "confessing" to a Californian hacker on a chatline, declaring he wanted "people to see the truth".
He said he had collected 260,000 top secret US cables in Baghdad and sent them to WikiLeaks, whose server operates out of Sweden. Adrian Lamo, the California hacker he spoke to, handed the transcripts of the exchanges to the FBI.
Manning was promptly arrested in Baghdad at the end of last month and transferred to a US military detention unit in Kuwait. He has been held for more than three weeks without charge.
Assange said WikiLeaks had hired three US criminal lawyers to defend Manning but that they had been granted no access to him. Manning has instead been assigned US military counsel.
While WikiLeaks declined to confirm receipt of the material from Manning, it has already released a film of a US Apache helicopter attack on civilians in Baghdad.
It has also posted a confidential state department cable on negotiations in Reykjavik over Iceland's financial collapse and is preparing to disclose much more material, including film of a US attack that left scores of civilians dead in Afghanistan.
The material is believed to derive from Manning, although WikiLeaks does not reveal its sources and its operations are designed to mask the source of the files it receives.
Prominent US whistleblowers and lawyers have advised Assange to stay out of the US and to be ultra-careful about his travel and public appearances. "Pentagon investigators are trying to determine the whereabouts of [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," US web paper the Daily Beast reported 10 days ago.
"We'd like to know where he is – we'd like his co-operation in this," a US official was quoted as saying.
Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers – a top secret study about the Vietnam war – in 1973, spoke to the Daily Beast.
He said: "I would think that [Assange] is in some danger. Granted, I would think that his notoriety now would provide him some degree of protection."
Assange said: "Some fear for my life. I'm not one of them. We have to avoid some countries, avoid travel, until we know where the political arrow is pointing."
He added that WikiLeaks had been trying, "unsuccessfully so far", to contact Manning in Kuwait.
"Clearly, a young man is detained in very difficult circumstances with the allegation he is the whistleblower. We must do our best to obtain freedom for him."
Regarding his own predicament, Assange said the US state department had signalled it was not seeking any WikiLeaks people because the Pentagon's criminal investigations command had assumed the lead role in the case.
Apart from preparing much more material for release, WikiLeaks is planning to publicise a secret US military video of one of its deadliest air strikes in Afghanistan in which scores of children are believed to have been killed in May last year.
The Afghan government said about 140 civilians were killed in Garani, including 92 children. The US military initially said that up to 95 died, of whom about 65 were insurgents.
US officials have since wavered on that claim. A subsequent investigation admitted mistakes were made.
In April WikiLeaks released the Baghdad video, prompting considerable criticism of the Pentagon.
The film was edited and produced in Iceland where Assange spends a lot of his time and which last week prepared the most radical and liberal freedom of information legislation anywhere in the world.
Birgitta Jonsdottir, an Iceland MP and anti-war activist who led the drive for the new laws, co-produced the WikiLeaks version of the Baghdad video.
"I worked on it 18 hours a day through the Easter holidays," she said.
Jonsdottir, a close associate of Assange, said the WikiLeaks founder "went into hiding when the story of Manning's arrest was published".
Ian Traynor @'The Guardian'
Hot Kristeva Rap
A musical rendering of the philosophies of psychoanalyst and theorist Julia Kristeva.
DJ Finny – This Is Massive Attack (4 hours and 43 minutes)
Tracklist:
0:00:00 | Danny the Dog // Danny the Dog OST – {2004}
0:08:02 | Dissolved Girl // Mezzanine – {1998}
0:13:23 | Man Next Door // Mezzanine – {1998}
0:18:23 | You’ve Never Had a Dream / Danny the Dog OST – {2004}
0:19:48 | One Love // Blue Lines – {1991}
0:23:57 | Bumper Ball Dub (Karmacoma) [vs. The Mad Professor] // No Protection – {1994}
0:29:38 | Karmacoma // Single – {1995}
0:34:19 | Special Cases // 100th Window – {2003}
0:38:51 | False Flags // Single – {2006}
0:44:13 | Live With Me // Single – {2006}
0:48:25 | Backward Sucking (Heat Miser) [vs. The Mad Professor] // No Protection – {1994}
0:54:23 | What Your Soul Sings // 100th Window – {2003}
1:00:44 | Heat Miser // Protection – {1994}
1:04:09 | Teardrop // Mazzanine
1:08:43 | Everywhen // 100th Window – {2003}
1:15:28 | Montage // Danny the Dog OST – {2004}
1:17:06 | Incantations // Collected – {2006}
1:20:09 | Sweet is Good // Danny the Dog OST – {2004}
1:21:19 | Eurochild // Protection – {1994}
1:25:55 | A Prayer for England // 100th Window – {2003}
1:31:15 | Risingson // Mezzanine – {1998}
1:35:49 | Safe from Harm / Blue Lines – {1991}
1:40:29 | Red Light Means Go // Danny the Dog OST – {2004}
1:42:13 | Five Man Army // Blue Lines – {1991}
1:47:53 | Weather Storm [with Portishead & Tricky] // Straight Outta Bristol – {1995}
1:50:42 | Silent Spring // Collected – {2006}
1:53:37 | Cool Monsoon (Weather Storm) [vs. The Mad Professor] // No Protection – {1994}
2:00:11 | One Thought at a Time // Danny the Dog OST – {2004}
2:04:17 | Weather Storm // Protection – {1994}
2:08:27 | Inertia Creeps // Mezzanine – {1998}
2:13:30 | Moving Dub (Better Things) [vs. The Mad Professor] // No Protection – {1994}
2:18:50 | Radiation Ruling the Nation (Protection) [vs. The Mad Professor] // No Protection – {1994}
2:26:50 | Protection // Protection – {1994}
2:34:09 | Better Things // Protection – {1994}
2:37:29 | Black Milk // Mezzanine – {1998}
2:43:11 | I am Home // Danny the Dog OST – {2004}
2:46:33 | Future Proof // 100th Window – {2003}
2:51:08 | Lately // Blue Lines – {1991}
2:54:49 | Collar Stays on // Danny the Dog OST – {2004}
2:55:54 | Face a la Mer [with Portishead & Tricky] // Straight Outta Bristol – {1995}
3:00:54 | Eternal Feedback (Sly) [vs. The Mad Professor] // No Protection – {1994}
3:06:39 | Sly // Protection – {1994}
3:11:35 | Everything About you is New // Danny the Dog OST – {2004}
3:13:12 | Be Thankful for what you’ve Got // Blue Lines – {1991}
3:17:14 | Group Four // Mezzanine – {1998}
3:24:44 | Milk (Garbage) [with Portishead & Tricky] // Straight Outta Bristol – {1995}
3:29:07 | Blue Lines – {1991} // Blue Lines – {1991}
3:33:04 | Hymn of the Big Wheel // Blue Lines – {1991}
3:38:47 | Confused Images // Danny the Dog OST – {2004}
3:40:07 | Everybody’s Got a Family // Danny the Dog OST – {2004}
3:41:07 | Two Rocks and a Cup of Water // Danny the Dog OST – {2004}
3:43:00 | Mezzanine – {1998} // Mezzanine – {1998}
3:48:19 | Daydreaming // Blue Lines – {1991}
3:52:08 | I Spy (Spying Glass) [vs. The Mad Professor] // No Protection – {1994}
3:56:18 | Spying Glass // Protection – {1994}
4:01:05 | Right way to hold a Spoon // Danny the Dog OST – {2004}
4:03:49 | The Dog Obeys // Danny the Dog OST – {2004}
4:05:34 | Butterfly Caught // 100th Window – {2003}
4:11:36 | Angel // Mezzanine – {1998}
4:17:02 | Trinity Dub (Three) [vs The Mad Professor] // No Protection – {1994}
4:20:52 | Three // Protection – {1994}
4:24:05 | P is for Piano // Danny the Dog OST – {2004}
4:25:33 | Sam // Danny the Dog OST – {2004}
4:28:08 | Unfinished Symphony // Single – {1991}
4:32:37 | Atta’ Boy // Danny the Dog OST – {2004}
4:33:41 | nnnn [with Portishead & Tricky] // Straight Outta Bristol – {1995}
4:42:00 | Simple Rules // Danny the Dog OST – {2004}
direct download
(left click to play, right click to download)
via kfmw
Capello: Terry has made a 'big mistake'
England boss Fabio Capello has hit back at John Terry after the former captain questioned the manager's methods and team selection during a press conference.
The Chelsea captain complained on Sunday that the players were bored at the amount of time they have to spend hanging around at their training camp, and also called for Joe Cole to be picked in the starting XI for the game against Slovenia on Wednesday.
Terry also used his audience with the press on Sunday morning to say that players would address their concerns in a team meeting that evening.
But the Italian disciplinarian has said Terry's decision to go public with his concerns was a "big mistake".
Capello: Terry has made a 'big mistake'
Capello told ITV.com: "No-one spoke to me about any problems. My door is open always. If a player wants to speak with me, he can speak with me.
"At every meeting I ask the captain, 'any problems, do you want to say something'? Nothing. Then I read that John Terry had said this. I don't understand why he didn't speak with me.
"When you speak, you have to speak privately, not to the media. That is a mistake, a very big mistake."
Monday, 21 June 2010
Aurora Australis as seen from the International Space Station
A breath-taking masterpiece being painted in the sky over the South Pole. ‘The Southern Lights’…like brush strokes from the Master’s hand… (via Astro_Wheels on Twitpic)
Soccer's Lost Boys
As South Africa hosts the 2010 World Cup, the focus will be on many of the continent's brightest stars in soccer, including Chelsea's Didier Drogba and Inter Milan's Samuel Eto'o. In "Soccer's Lost Boys," correspondent Mariana van Zeller explores the dark side to the sport's global popularity, what has been called "the new slave trade."
As more and more money flows into professional European soccer leagues, the demand for young West African players has skyrocketed -- and so has the number of unlicensed agents, illegitimate soccer academies, and shady middlemen looking to exploit these players. For a very small percentage of these West African youngsters, their dreams of playing professionally in Europe come true.
The rest face a litany of horrors: deadly Mediterranean crossings, broken promises, vanishing agents, brutal living conditions, and families torn apart. It's estimated that 20,000 young African soccer players are now stranded in Europe. Many more never even make it that far and remain stuck in transit, in port towns across Africa.
Mariana retraces the journey that these West African players often take in their quest to make it big in Europe. On the dirt fields of Ghana, she spends a week with a youth coach hungry to sell his players. In the slums of Morocco, she meets a growing community of West African players abandoned by agents who promised them professional contracts with European teams. And in Paris she witnesses how these trafficked players get forced underground, living illegally and putting their last hopes in shady, black market games where the best players compete for the attention of the agents and managers in attendance. The journey is full of heartbreak but along the way Mariana also meets a handful of individuals fighting for change, most notably the director of a soccer academy in rural Ghana called Right to Dream.
As more and more money flows into professional European soccer leagues, the demand for young West African players has skyrocketed -- and so has the number of unlicensed agents, illegitimate soccer academies, and shady middlemen looking to exploit these players. For a very small percentage of these West African youngsters, their dreams of playing professionally in Europe come true.
The rest face a litany of horrors: deadly Mediterranean crossings, broken promises, vanishing agents, brutal living conditions, and families torn apart. It's estimated that 20,000 young African soccer players are now stranded in Europe. Many more never even make it that far and remain stuck in transit, in port towns across Africa.
Mariana retraces the journey that these West African players often take in their quest to make it big in Europe. On the dirt fields of Ghana, she spends a week with a youth coach hungry to sell his players. In the slums of Morocco, she meets a growing community of West African players abandoned by agents who promised them professional contracts with European teams. And in Paris she witnesses how these trafficked players get forced underground, living illegally and putting their last hopes in shady, black market games where the best players compete for the attention of the agents and managers in attendance. The journey is full of heartbreak but along the way Mariana also meets a handful of individuals fighting for change, most notably the director of a soccer academy in rural Ghana called Right to Dream.
(Thanx Stan!)
FIFA buys South Africa for R750 million
Local World Cup organisers admitted last night that they have sold South Africa to FIFA in exchange for an extra R750 million in World Cup funding. Outlining plans for the transition of power, Danny Jordaan announced that Sepp Blatter will be inaugurated as President during the closing ceremony on July 12th, with the country’s name to be changed to The Bureaucrats’ Republic of Fifania®.
Danny Jordaan confirmed at a press conference last night that the R750 million contributed by FIFA to plug gaps in World Cup funding was given in exchange for the complete handover of South Africa to the soccer governing body.
“It actually makes a lot of sense,” Jordaan confided to journalists. “Previously, if you think about it, the relationship between South Africa and FIFA has been quite a lot like a cheap one-night stand between one of Lolly Jackson’s Eastern European ladies and some Moroccan gangster, where the Russian flossie just has to lie there and submit to a humiliating series of sexual procedures involving leather restraints and a lot of rectal action.”
“Now, with this new agreement, it’ll be more like a very, very expensive one-night stand between one of Lolly Jackson’s Eastern European ladies and a Moroccan gangster, where she steals his wallet but he gets to keep her house and family and passport and immortal soul.”
“Basically, everybody wins,” he explained. “The gangster gets a nice new home, and the prozzie gets some cash to spend on lipstick and the English team’s training facility at the Royal Bafokeng Sports Campus.”
The ANC government has greeted the news of their imminent expulsion from power with “quiet relief”.
“Let’s not kid, we were in a lot of kak anyway,” said spokesperson Tribalist Mfecane. “And a lot us feel that Sepp Blatter will provide the kind of confident, authoritarian leadership this country is crying out for.”
“Also, we are all already accustomed to a president dogged by allegations of corruption and financial mismanagement, so President Blatter won’t be hearing any chirps about that,” he added.
FIFA officials are already hard at work with the blueprints of what their new country will look like.
The governmental seat of power in Fifania® will be transferred from Pretoria to Camps Bay, where Blatter is building a “cosy little lock-up-and-go President’s crib” spanning 17 blocks. All current governmental departments will be disbanded except for the Ministry of Defence. The armed forces are to be expanded to accommodate the 44 million men, women and children over the age of seven who will be conscripted to serve in Blatter’s elite defence corps, the Soccer Soldiers (SS). The SS’s primary function will be to “seek out and destroy” people infringing FIFA copyright the world over.
Children under the age of seven are expected to be put to work in state-of-the-art production facilities manufacturing FIFA-branded clothing, pens and cups.
“By ‘state-of-the-art production facilities’ we mean all those big stadiums that will just be lying around empty after the World Cup,” explained Blatter’s henchman Hermann Ubermensch. “We’ll get in some conveyor belts, headhunt a few of those friendly factory supervisors Nike uses in Thailand, stick some nice smiley Zakumi posters around to make the kids feel safe, and we’ll have this economy booming in no time!”
South Africa will not be the only territorial acquisition FIFA makes this year. In late Spring, FIFA also intends to add Greece to its shopping basket. “They don’t have any money and Sepp Blatter loves tzatziki,” confirmed Ubermensch. “It’s a bloodless coup made in heaven.”
from hayibo
HA!
Heard on Australian TV this morning in reference to New Zealand:
"Our Australasian neighbours"!!!
Sunday, 20 June 2010
Neville Brody gets graphic in Ginza
Receive a New Year's card from the Royal Family of Jordan last year? No? Perhaps you recently opened a bottle of Dom Perignon, or read a copy of the U.K.'s Times newspaper, or saw the Johnny Depp film "Public Enemies"?
If so, then you have been exposed to the work of one of the most important graphic designers of our time, Neville Brody. And if not, then you have a chance to rectify the situation this month, by getting along to the Briton's solo exhibition at Ginza Graphic Gallery, in the upmarket Tokyo district.
Brody swept to fame in the 1980s for his bold designs for The Face magazine (a 1983 cover featured a photo of New Order's Stephen Morris — cropped to show only the musician's right eye and fringe) and album covers (Cabaret Voltaire's "Don't Argue," from 1987, has just its title superimposed on a red cross).
But don't go to "NB@ggg" expecting any of that work. The designer's first show in Japan since 1999 focuses on more recent jobs. The font and masthead he and his office, Research Studios, made for The Times in 2006 is included, as is the font he developed for "Public Enemies."
The real treats, though, are Brody's self-expressive posters. His "Free Thought" work is digital, but looks like it was made with a calligraphy brush.
And, if you want to see the New Year's card Brody did for the Jordanian king, you're going to have to just try to get on the list for next year. There's still six months left, and when the card comes, celebrate with a bottle of Dom Perignon — Brody did their label revamp in 2007.
"NB@ggg" continues at Ginza Graphic Gallery until June 28. For more information, visit
http://www.dnp.co.jp/gallery/ggg_e/index.html
http://www.dnp.co.jp/gallery/ggg_e/index.html
Edan Corkill @'The Japan Times'
More photos at Neville Brody's Flickr stream
HERE
Research
HERE
If anyone reading this is in Japan - I would love to get hold of a copy of the book published to coincide with this expo...
Please contact me at the e/mail address to the left or leave a comment.Research
Me want...
The man flying it is Chen Zhao Rong a farmer with only a primary school education who had always dreamed of flying.
He made and welded all the body parts himself, checking his design against photos on the internet and bought a second hand motor. Overall the cost amounted to about RMB70,000 (less than US10,000).
He made and welded all the body parts himself, checking his design against photos on the internet and bought a second hand motor. Overall the cost amounted to about RMB70,000 (less than US10,000).
Unfortunately after a few months of flying, when flying to another village, the engine stopped while doing 70km/h and he crashed into a field. While unhurt his wife threatned to leave him unless he stopped flying and the police made him sign a document stating he will never fly it again. He sold the chopper to a friend for RMB20,000.
Soul Of A Man
"A simmering gumbo of hypnotic beats, wailing voices and shivering guitars" Uncut
Skip ‘Little Axe’ McDonald, the legendary blues guitarist, might not have sold his soul at the crossroads, but he’s looked both ways down the road of the old blues, up the highway of the future before proceeding. After a series of studio-based albums, Little Axe have returned to their roots on Bought For a Dollar, Sold For a Dime. For the first time in seventeen years the original crew came together in the Big Room at Real World for this rare and privileged session, with McDonald and his co-producer, British dub maestro Adrian Sherwood.
Featuring soul singer Bernard Fowler, drummer Keith LeBlanc, bassist Doug Wimbish, all of whom made up the seminal British outfit, Tackhead, a band whose pioneering devices are now integral aspects of rap and pop. LeBlanc, Wimbish and McDonald had previously blazed a trail as The Sugarhill Gang, house band of the famed early ‘80s rap label Sugar Hill Records; they were, quite probably, the most important rhythm section on the planet.
Real World’s state-of-the-art facilities opened its arms to other collective regulars, and the result is a live album, Little Axe-style.
Skip ‘Little Axe’ McDonald, the legendary blues guitarist, might not have sold his soul at the crossroads, but he’s looked both ways down the road of the old blues, up the highway of the future before proceeding. After a series of studio-based albums, Little Axe have returned to their roots on Bought For a Dollar, Sold For a Dime. For the first time in seventeen years the original crew came together in the Big Room at Real World for this rare and privileged session, with McDonald and his co-producer, British dub maestro Adrian Sherwood.
Featuring soul singer Bernard Fowler, drummer Keith LeBlanc, bassist Doug Wimbish, all of whom made up the seminal British outfit, Tackhead, a band whose pioneering devices are now integral aspects of rap and pop. LeBlanc, Wimbish and McDonald had previously blazed a trail as The Sugarhill Gang, house band of the famed early ‘80s rap label Sugar Hill Records; they were, quite probably, the most important rhythm section on the planet.
Real World’s state-of-the-art facilities opened its arms to other collective regulars, and the result is a live album, Little Axe-style.
“Soul of a Man”Your brain sees your hands as short and fat
Knowing something like the back of your hand supposedly means that you’re very familiar with it. But it could just as well mean that you think it’s wider and shorter than it actually is. As it turns out, our hands aren’t as well known to us as we might imagine. According to Matthew Longo and Patrick Haggard from University College London, we store a mental model of our hands that helps us to know exactly where our limbs are in space. The trouble is that this model is massively distorted.
To keep track of where your various body parts are, your brain maps your posture by processing information from your muscles, joints and skin. Close your eyes and move around a bit, and you’ll still have a good idea of what position you’re in even if you can’t see or touch yourself. But there’s no such direct signal that tells your brain about the size and shape of your body parts. Instead, your brain stores a mental model with those dimensions mapped out.
To visualise this model, Longo and Haggard asked volunteers to hide their hand under a board and use a baton to indicate the position of ten landmarks – the tip and base knuckle of each finger. Their answers were surprisingly inaccurate.
They underestimated the lengths of their fingers by anywhere from around 5% for their thumb and over 35% for their ring and little fingers. In contrast, they overestimated the width of their hand by around 67%, and particularly the distance between their middle and ring knuckles. Our mental hand is a shorter, wider version of our real one. Longo and Haggard found the same thing if they asked the recruits to angle their hands at 90 degrees under the board, and if they tested the right hand as well as the left.
These distortions actually reflect how sensitive each part of the hand is. The skewed mental map is remarkably similar to another map called Penfield’s homunculus, which charts the areas of the brain’s somatosensory cortex (the bit that processes touch information) that is devoted to each body part. Regions that have a more acute sense of touch correspond to larger parts of the homunculus, but they also loom bigger in our mental map. Regions that are less sensitive are smaller on both charts.
As we move from the thumb to the little finger, our digits become less sensitive and the mental map increasingly underestimates their true size. The back of the hand is more sensitive to movement across it than movement along it; accordingly, our mental map depicts a wider, shorter hand.
And we have no idea about this. Consciously, the volunteers had a pretty good appreciation of the size and shape of their hands. When Longo and Haggard showed them a selection of hand images and asked them to select the one that best matched their own, they did so very accurately. But even though they passed this test, they still failed to place the baton in the right place when their hands were hidden.
If we hold such a distorted depiction of our own hands, how is it that we ever grasp things successfully? It’s possible that our motor system uses a different model but Longo and Haggard put forward two more plausible ideas: that cues from vision are strong enough to override the warped map; and that we learn to correct for the misshapen model. Only by removing both of these factors did they finally reveal how skewed our perceptions actually are.
Reference: PNAS http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1003483107
Image: Hands by Toni Blay
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