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@vaughanbell
(Thanx Keith!)
They Started a Joke
1 hour ago
Monday, 16 January 2012
(21st 'Holy' Shroud (inna JG Ballard stylee!)
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@vaughanbell
(Thanx Keith!)
Sunday, 15 January 2012
PressPausePlay
The digital revolution of the last decade has unleashed creativity and talent in an unprecedented way, with unlimited opportunities.
But does democratized culture mean better art or is true talent instead drowned out? This is the question addressed by PressPausePlay, a documentary film containing interviews with some of the world's most influential creators of the digital era. presspauseplay.com @presspauseplay Facebook: on.fb.me/y4gEK1
But does democratized culture mean better art or is true talent instead drowned out? This is the question addressed by PressPausePlay, a documentary film containing interviews with some of the world's most influential creators of the digital era. presspauseplay.com @presspauseplay Facebook: on.fb.me/y4gEK1
What a tragic wasted opportunity to present a true portrait of the Iron Lady
llustration: David FoldvariLee Ranaldo - Off The Wall
Matthew Shipp On Piano Jazz
At the beginning of the session he tells Marian McPartland, "I like to be felt. If I'm successful ... it hits people on many different levels."
There are many different emotional strands in Shipp's music, and one can hear his roots quite clearly, ranging from his interest in the organ music played at the Episcopal Church of his youth, to the classical lessons he began at age five, the diverse jazz recordings his parents collected (which Shipp started devouring when he was 12) and his studies at the New England Conservatory of Music.
The session features three of Shipp's compositions. He solos on "Module," as well as "Patmos," a tune that paints a very clear scene for McPartland: "I actually get a picture of some people in a forest, walking through the trees." Their duet on "Gamma Ray" is something of a departure from Shipp's often dramatic style, with its playfulness and Thelonius Monk-like angularity.
When Shipp plays the standards he offers startling revelations. "Angel Eyes" expands with thick chords and rumbling arpeggios, creating dramatic tension and release. He inspires McPartland to take a page from his notebook when she plays Duke Ellington's "Warm Valley," her solid left hand often providing counterpoint to the melodic inventions she hangs on what Shipp calls Ellington's "rock-solid backbone."
McPartland's "Portrait of Matthew" also incorporates some of Shipp's style, painting a complex and thoughtful portrait of him. Afterwards, she tells him, "It's inspiring to hear someone like you play, because it does make me sort of think differently."
McPartland and Shipp play three other duets, including the Gershwin classic "Summertime," which transforms into a classically-inspired fantasia, as well as John Coltrane's "Naima." They close with an inspired "C-Jam Blues," an almost baroque, bluesy fugue that alternately walks, skips, strolls and struts.
Originally recorded March 7, 2006.
Alfred Turner @'npr'
Listen Now
Architeuthis Rex - Spacemetal #1
From "Urania" (Utech, 2011)
Video excerpts from "Cosmos War of the Planets" by Alfonso Brescia (1977)
Montage by Crisne
Video excerpts from "Cosmos War of the Planets" by Alfonso Brescia (1977)
Montage by Crisne
India: obscene pics of gods require massive human censorship of Google, Facebook
It's hardly the sort of Internet policy statement one hopes to hear from judges in major democracies. "Like China, we can block all such websites [who don't comply]," Justice Suresh Cait told Facebook and Google lawyers in India yesterday. "But let us not go to that situation."
No, let's not. But it's what the government wants if Internet companies won't start screening and censoring all user-generated material on social network and user-generated content sites. And they'd better do their screening by hand, not with machines.
The New York Times reported last December that India's Telecommunications and Human Resources Development Minister, Kapil Sibal, has been battling hard with Internet companies on pre-emptive screening and censorship.
About six weeks ago, Mr. Sibal called legal representatives from the top Internet service providers and Facebook into his New Delhi office, said one of the executives who was briefed on the meeting.The Internet companies insist that they can't possibly pre-screen everything that goes up. If something truly is illegal under local laws, they are generally willing to take it down when a court rules.
At the meeting, Mr. Sibal showed attendees a Facebook page that maligned the Congress Party’s president, Sonia Gandhi. “This is unacceptable,” he told attendees, the executive said, and he asked them to find a way to monitor what is posted on their sites.
In the second meeting with the same executives in late November, Mr. Sibal told them that he expected them to use human beings to screen content, not technology, the executive said.
The main concern is obscenity (though criticism of government officials appears to touch a sore spot, too); in the current case against Facebook, Google, and others, the obscenity involves pictures of gods, goddesses, and Mohammed.
"At present it's obscene images of Gods and Goddesses, tomorrow it can be an image of someone in your family posted online. There has to be some control," Justice Cait said at yesterday's hearing. He allowed the case against the Internet companies to proceed.
Who's pressing for the court case? A journalist. NDTV has a new interview with him, in which the man presses for quick action. (Note: the actual interview portion is not in English.)
Can we censor dissent while we're at it?
Between January and June 2011, India requested that Google remove 358 bits of content by filing 68 different complaints. One was from Google Maps (for "national security"); almost every other was from YouTube, social network Orkut, and Google's Blogger platform. Almost none came with a court order.
"We received requests from state and local law enforcement agencies to remove YouTube videos that displayed protests against social leaders or used offensive language in reference to religious leaders," Google explained.
"We declined the majority of these requests and only locally restricted videos that appeared to violate local laws prohibiting speech that could incite enmity between communities. In addition, we received a request from a local law enforcement agency to remove 236 communities and profiles from Orkut that were critical of a local politician. We did not comply with this request."
This is hardly an inspiring track record. While in public the companies are criticized for obscenity, Google's most recent records show only 3 requests to remove pornographic material. Government criticism and defamation were actually the two largest categories of requested material.
As the Financial Times "beyondbrics" blog notes, the Internet companies are coming under increasing attack for content they host, despite the vagueness of the demands for censorship. For instance, "Last month, a lower court had ordered the sites to remove all 'anti-social' or 'anti-religious' content by February 6. As Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet & Society, told beyondbrics last month, it’s difficult to establish exactly what is anti-religious: for example, the Hindu profession of belief in multiple gods is blasphemous to Muslims, Christians and Jews."
Nate Anderson @'ars technica'
Saturday, 14 January 2012
abumuqawama Andrew Exum
Man, the degree to which the CIA hates Israel's security services leaves nothing to the imagination. http://t.co/TA0PnJFw
Man, the degree to which the CIA hates Israel's security services leaves nothing to the imagination. http://t.co/TA0PnJFw
Israeli spies wooing U.S. Muslims, sources say
HA!
steve_wing Steve Wing
#Brixton police round up illegal cars on Atlantic road, load onto car carrier & then crash into bridge. Classic pic.twitter.com/orfduuJc
Iraq War Veterans Fill Iraqi Restaurant After Hate Crime
Late last week, an unidentified man threw a 20-pound rock through the window of an Iraqi restaurant in Lowell, New Hampshire. The owners, Leyla Al-Zubayd and Ahmed Al-Zubaidi—both American citizens—were unsettled by the apparent hate crime.
Turns out they had little to fear. The following week, more than 100 veterans of the Iraq war and their friends and familes staged an "Eat-In," filling the seats of the restaurant. The mood was celebratory, and the gesture of goodwill made national news. One can only assume the coward who threw that rock heard about it.
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Turns out they had little to fear. The following week, more than 100 veterans of the Iraq war and their friends and familes staged an "Eat-In," filling the seats of the restaurant. The mood was celebratory, and the gesture of goodwill made national news. One can only assume the coward who threw that rock heard about it.
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Smoking # 120 (Bloody tabac/bloody advertising!)
Why don't you make your own film?
http://www.cutfilms.org/badstuff.aspx
Download supporting activity and teacher resources at
http://www.cutfilms.org/resources.aspx
DonalConaty Donal Conaty
Haven't looked at the Indo in a while. They want to know if I have the rear to pull off the Pippa dress. Hmm.
The only published interview with Nick Drake in his lifetime
Last week I spoke to Nick, and eventually discovered that it has been precisely these kind of gigs that had hung him up - the reason why he has shied away from public performances almost without exception.
"I think the problem was with the material, which I wrote rather for records than performing. There were only two or three concerts that felt right, and there was something wrong with all the others. I did play Cousins and one or two folk clubs in the north, but the gigs just sort of petered out," Nick explained.
Nick pointed out that he was not happy with the way the gigs were working out and he couldn't get into them properly. Why, then, was he performing at such esteemed venues as the Festival Hall?
"I was under some obligation to them, but it wasn't the end of the world when I stopped. If I was enjoying the gigs it would have made much more sense."
Don't, however, gain the impression that Nick is not a superb artist. Placed in the right context, his songs produce quite a stunning effect over a period of time. He has worked on two albums with Witchseason producer Joe Boyd, the latter having been released only only last week. Entitled "Bryter Layter", it features some of the musicians who contributed to the success of the John and Beverly Martyn albums, notably Paul Harris; and Robert Kirby's arrangements are just as important as Nick Drake's songs.
Says Nick: "I had something in mind when I wrote the songs, knowing that they weren't just for me. The album took a long time to do, in fact, we started it almost a year ago. But I'm not altogether clear about this album - I haven't got to terms with the whole presentation."
What's the next step for Nick? "I think there'll be another album and I have some material for it, but I'll be looking around now to see if the album leads anywhere naturally. For the next one I had the idea of just doing something with John Wood, the engineer at Sound Techniques."
Would there be any gigs to promote the album? "I don't think that would help - unless they were done in the right way. I'm just not very sure at the moment, it's hard to tell what will turn up. If I could find making music a fairly natural connection with something else, then I might move on to something else."
(Jerry Gilbert: Sounds, March 13, 1971)
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Ritam i Zvuk/Rhythm And Sound (Macedonia 1955)
In the superb Macedonian countryside filmed in colour, men and women plant rice, harvest with peace and joy. A vibrant ode to nature rings out. The commentary emphatically praises the simple joys of a life punctuated by the seasons and dances passed down through the history of the Macedonian people. Each traditional dance is performed with beauty and precision. The clarinet, mandolin and violin lead the women's farandoles and the men's circle dances.
The movements have special meaning. The Tikwesh springs like a warrior charge, the Rusalli chases away evil spirits using a well-sharpened sabre. The more ludicrous "rabbit dance" mimics a hunting scene. With Popov's classic direction, the film gives a stylized panorama of Macedonian folk culture. An ethnological lyricism that is difficult to interpret.
Macedonian national folk dances performing by National Folk dance ensamble "Tanec" from Skopje, Republic of Macedonia
Director: Trajche Popov
Grinderman - Bellringer Blues (Nick Zinner Remix)
Taken from the album Grinderman 2 RMX – a collection of remixes, reinterpretations & collaborations released on March 12th (U.S March 13th)
Tracks include “Super Heathen Child” - which teams the band up with legendary guitarist Robert Fripp (King Crimson, David Bowie, Eno); a remix of “Mickey Mouse & the Goodbye Man” by producer/-musician Josh Homme (Queens of the Stone Age); “When My Baby Comes” by Cat’s Eyes (a duo consisting of Horrors’ front-man Faris Badwan and soprano Rachel Zeffira) and “Evil” reinterpreted by Silver Alert (Grinderman’s Jim Sclavunos) and The National’s front man Matt Berninger.
www.grinderman.com
False Flag
The memos, as described by the sources, one of whom has read them and another who is intimately familiar with the case, investigated and debunked reports from 2007 and 2008 accusing the CIA, at the direction of the White House, of covertly supporting Jundallah -- a Pakistan-based Sunni extremist organization. Jundallah, according to the U.S. government and published reports, is responsible for assassinating Iranian government officials and killing Iranian women and children.
But while the memos show that the United States had barred even the most incidental contact with Jundallah, according to both intelligence officers, the same was not true for Israel's Mossad. The memos also detail CIA field reports saying that Israel's recruiting activities occurred under the nose of U.S. intelligence officers, most notably in London, the capital of one of Israel's ostensible allies, where Mossad officers posing as CIA operatives met with Jundallah officials.
The officials did not know whether the Israeli program to recruit and use Jundallah is ongoing. Nevertheless, they were stunned by the brazenness of the Mossad's efforts.
"It's amazing what the Israelis thought they could get away with," the intelligence officer said. "Their recruitment activities were nearly in the open. They apparently didn't give a damn what we thought..."
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Friday, 13 January 2012
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