Train man, Angela Fanche
38 minutes ago
Tuesday 17 November 2009
Monday 16 November 2009
Sebbo/Moritz von Oswald - Watamu Beach 12"
Catalog#: Desolat 003
Format: Vinyl 12"
Country: Germany
Released: Mar 2008
Mastered at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin.
Side A - Sebbo - Watamu Beach (45 rpm)
Side AA - Moritz von Oswald - Watamu Beach Rework (33 ⅓ rpm)
Format: Vinyl 12"
Country: Germany
Released: Mar 2008
Mastered at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin.
Side A - Sebbo - Watamu Beach (45 rpm)
Side AA - Moritz von Oswald - Watamu Beach Rework (33 ⅓ rpm)
How green is your pet?
Should owning a great dane make you as much of an eco-outcast as an SUV driver? Yes it should, say Robert and Brenda Vale, two architects who specialise in sustainable living at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. In their new book, Time to Eat the Dog: The real guide to sustainable living, they compare the ecological footprints of a menagerie of popular pets with those of various other lifestyle choices - and the critters do not fare well.As well as guzzling resources, cats and dogs devastate wildlife populations, spread disease and add to pollution. It is time to take eco-stock of our pets.
To measure the ecological paw, claw and fin-prints of the family pet, the Vales analysed the ingredients of common brands of pet food. They calculated, for example, that a medium-sized dog would consume 90 grams of meat and 156 grams of cereals daily in its recommended 300-gram portion of dried dog food. At its pre-dried weight, that equates to 450 grams of fresh meat and 260 grams of cereal. That means that over the course of a year, Fido wolfs down about 164 kilograms of meat and 95 kilograms of cereals.
It takes 43.3 square metres of land to generate 1 kilogram of chicken per year - far more for beef and lamb - and 13.4 square metres to generate a kilogram of cereals. So that gives him a footprint of 0.84 hectares. For a big dog such as a German shepherd, the figure is 1.1 hectares.
Meanwhile, an SUV - the Vales used a 4.6-litre Toyota Land Cruiser in their comparison - driven a modest 10,000 kilometres a year, uses 55.1 gigajoules, which includes the energy required both to fuel and to build it. One hectare of land can produce approximately 135 gigajoules of energy per year, so the Land Cruiser's eco-footprint is about 0.41 hectares - less than half that of a medium-sized dog.
The Vales are not alone in reaching this conclusion. When New Scientist asked John Barrett at the Stockholm Environment Institute in York, UK, to calculate eco-pawprints based on his own data, his figures tallied almost exactly. "Owning a dog really is quite an extravagance, mainly because of the carbon footprint of meat," he says...
Australia 'sorry' for child abuse
Australian PM Kevin Rudd has apologised to the hundreds of thousands of people, some British migrants, who were abused or neglected in state care as children.Mr Rudd said he was "deeply sorry" for the pain caused to the children and their extended families.
He said he hoped the national apology would help to "heal the pain" and be a turning point in Australian history.
Some 500,000 "forgotten Australians" were abused or neglected in orphanages and children's homes from 1930 to 1970.
The Canberra ceremony was attended by hundreds of people forced to migrate to Australia when young, some 7,000 of whom still live in Australia.
Some wept openly and held each other as Mr Rudd shared stories of survivors he had spoken with - children who were beaten with belt buckles or sexually violated.
Kevin Rudd also offered an apology to child migrants taken from the UK to Australia after the war, often without their parents' consent.
On Sunday, the UK government said the British prime minister would apologise for the forced migration policy next year...
Koalas may be extinct in 30 years
Australia's koalas could be wiped out within 30 years unless urgent action is taken to halt a decline in population, according to researchers.They say development, climate change and bushfires have all combined to send the numbers of wild koalas plummeting.
The Australian Koala Foundation said a recent survey showed the population could have dropped by more than half in the past six years.
Many have been killed by the sexually transmitted disease chlamydia.
Previous estimates put the number of koalas at more than 100,000 - but the latest calculations suggest there could now be as few as 43,000.
The foundation collected field data from 1,800 sites and 80,000 trees to calculate the numbers...
Sunday 15 November 2009
Wikipedia sued by German killers in privacy claim
Two German men who killed an actor in 1990 are suing the charity behind the online encyclopaedia Wikipedia, claiming that its inclusion of detail of their crimes infringes their right to privacy.
The case has become an instant online cause celebre – with one lawyer saying that the integrity of history itself is at stake – because it ranges the US's First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of speech, against German privacy and criminal laws, which dictate that after a certain period a crime is "spent" and cannot be referred to. The UK has similar rules on the reporting of lesser crimes.
The two men, who cannot be named here because the Guardian is available in Germany, became infamous for the killing, for which they were sentenced to life in prison in 1993. They were released in 2007 and 2008. But Alexander Stopp, the lawyer for the two men, noted that Germany's courts allow a criminal's name to be withheld in news reports once they have served a prison term and a set period has expired.
"They should be able to go on and be resocialised, and lead a life without being publicly stigmatised" for their crime, Stopp told the New York Times. "A criminal has a right to privacy, too, and a right to be left alone."
German editors of Wikipedia, which is available in multiple languages around the world, have already removed the killers' names from the German-language version about the victim, Walter Sedlmayr. But Stopp has also filed suit in German courts to demand that the Wikimedia Foundation, which funds and runs Wikipedia, remove their names from the English-language article...
Cymatics Scientist Says Sound is a Bubble, Not a Wave
John Stuart Reid proposes that sound is not actually a wave, as has been thought for centuries, but a “bubble” and that this is what creates the amazing patterns we see captured with cymatics. In his article, The Physics of Sound, Reid says that sound has previously been thought to travel as a wave because of the graphical, wave-based representation we have used to capture sound visibly in the past…
“The graphical representation of sound ‘waves’ in the past is why the term ’sound waves’ is used, causing the false impression that sound travels as a wave.”
…but that cymatics allows us to realize that the true form of sound is actually spherical, or bubble-like, in nature:
“Sound in air is the transfer of periodic movements between adjacent colliding atoms or molecules. This sonic energy typically expands away from the site of the collisions as a spherical or bubble-shaped emanation.”
In this fascinating article he also discusses the nature of light, and why his studies in cymatics have led him to believe that in certain cases, sound could actually “create visible light.”
To read more about John Stuart Reid’s studies in cymatics, sound bubbles and the connection between sound and light, go here.
To start conducting your own cymatics experiments using 3 common household items, download your free video instructions here.
Julian Cope - Krautrocksampler: One Head's Guide to the Great Kosmische Musik - 1968 Onwards, (PDF)
Krautrocksampler: One Head's Guide to the Great Kosmische Musik - 1968 Onwards, written by former The Teardrop Explodes singer, Julian Cope, is a book describing the underground music scene in Germany from 1968 through the 1970s. The book was first published in the United Kingdom in 1995 by Head Heritage, and was later translated into German and French. It is now out of print with original copies exchanging hands for surprisingly large amounts.Krautrocksampler gives a subjective and very animated account of the phenomenon of krautrock from the perspective of the author:
"I wrote this short history because of the way I feel about the music, that its supreme Magic & Power has lain Unrecognised for too long."
The book comprises a narrative of the rock and roll culture in post-WWII West Germany, along with chapters focusing on individual major artists, including Faust, Tangerine Dream, Neu!, Amon Düül I and II, Ash Ra Tempel, Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser and the Cosmic Jokers and advocate of psychedelic drugs Timothy Leary. It also has an annotated appendix of "50 Kosmische Classics." Some chapters appeared previously in the UK music magazine The Wire and in the German music magazine Spex.
(PDF)
See also HerrB's post of the recent BBC documentary on Krautrock
HERE
Saturday 14 November 2009
Satellite Found Water on Moon, Researchers Say
This artist's rendering released by NASA shows the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite as it crashed into the moon to test for the presence of water last month.There is water on the Moon, scientists stated unequivocally on Friday.
“Indeed yes, we found water,” Anthony Colaprete, the principal investigator for NASA’s Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, said in a news conference. “And we didn’t find just a little bit. We found a significant amount.”
The confirmation of scientists’ suspicions is welcome news to explorers who might set up home on the lunar surface and to scientists who hope that the water, in the form of ice accumulated over billions of years, holds a record of the solar system’s history.
The satellite, known as Lcross (pronounced L-cross), crashed into a crater near the Moon’s south pole a month ago. The 5,600-miles-per-hour impact carved out a hole 60 to 100 feet wide and kicked up at least 26 gallons of water...
@'NY Times'
Dirty Three + Laughing Clowns play Don't Look Back Australia 2010
Arguably the stand-out performers at this years inaugural All Tomorrow's Parties Festival at Mt.Buller, the Dirty Three return to Australia this summer for a national tour - their first in almost four (4) years - performing their magnum-opus Ocean Songs, in its entirety. The tour will take in an appearance at Sydney's month long arts event, Sydney Festival and also the Perth International Arts Festival. In addition the Dirty Three will perform Ocean Songs at headline shows in Brisbane and Melbourne.
But that's not all... joining Dirty Three for the Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney performances will be long time Dirty Three favourites, Laughing Clowns, performing their early 'hits' package 'History of Rock n' Roll Volume One', also in its entirety. Yep, the same line-up that emerged after a 25 year hiatus to perform at this years inaugural Australian All Tomorrow's Parties Festivals - Kuepper, Wegener, Elliott, Miller and Spence - will join forces once more time to put new life into old classics such as Holy Joe, Sometimes (I Just Can't Live with Anyone) and Everything That Flies.
Full dates as follows.
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2010
Thursday 21st: Melbourne, Forum *
Monday 25th: Brisbane, Tivoli *
Monday 25th: Brisbane, Tivoli *
Tuesday 26th: Sydney Festival, Enmore Theatre *
Thursday 11th: Perth Festival, PIAF - A Don't Look Back performance of Ocean Songs (on sale now)
* Plus Laughing Clowns performing 'History of Rock n' Roll Volume One'
Friday 13 November 2009
New warning on 'perfect vaginas'
Women are undergoing surgery to create perfect genitalia amid a "shocking" lack of information on the potential risks of the procedure, a report says.Research published in the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology also questions the very notion of aesthetically pleasing genitals.
Operations to improve the appearance of the sex organs for both psychological and physical reasons are on the rise.
But surgeons said the report overplayed the risks of an established procedure.
Researchers from University College London reviewed all the existing studies on cosmetic labial surgery - which generally involves reducing the amount of tissue that protrudes from the lips which cover the vagina. They found there had been little work to document any longer-term side effects.
Labioplasty, as it is known, costs about £3,000 privately and is offered for a variety of reasons: some women complain that wearing tight clothes or riding a bike is uncomfortable, while others say they are embarrassed in front of a sexual partner...
Beck covers 'Oar'
Beck's Record Club: Can it get any more awesome? Yes it can. And it just did. As you know, Record Club works like this: Beck rounds up a revolving cast of guests to cover an entire album's worth of songs in a day. The results are then posted in weekly installments on Beck's website.The latest entry in the series? Beck, Wilco, Feist, and Jamie Lidell teaming up to cover the 1969 cult fave Oar by onetime Moby Grape/Jefferson Airplane member turned acid casualty Skip Spence. The album's leadoff track, "Little Hands", is up on Beck's site right now.
We had previously reported that Beck and Wilco had teamed up to cover this album, but hey-- added Feist and Lidell? We'll take it! Sitting in on drums was James Gadson, who has drummed with Bill Withers, while Spencer Tweedy, son of Wilco's Jeff Tweedy, pitched in on drums as well.
The two previous entries in the Record Club series were a cover of The Velvet Underground & Nico with producer Nigel Godrich and actor Giovanni Ribisi and Songs of Leonard Cohen starring MGMT and Devendra Banhart.
@'Pitchfork'
@'Pitchfork'
Letters from Van Gogh
Read through hundreds of Vincent van Gogh’s revealing letters online, now translated into English with a drawings appendix.
The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam commissioned the ambitious Vincent van Gogh: The Letters project, an extensive and richly annotated archive searchable by chronology, place, and correspondent. Interactive tabs on the letter-viewing screen allow scrolling between the original text, facsimile images of the letters, and English translations.
The most in-depth function is filed under Concordance, lists, bibliography on the top right of the screen. Here, hyperlinks lead to historical persons and digital images of the artworks specifically referenced by van Gogh — all the cultural scraps that influenced the artist’s beautiful and tortured inner world.
Learn how to navigate the archive, visit the physical exhibition, cross-reference maps of van Gogh’s travels, and splurge on the six-volume hardback collection.
A Reuters video report by Basmah Fahim posits that van Gogh was a rational man, rather than a mad genius.
A Reuters video report by Basmah Fahim posits that van Gogh was a rational man, rather than a mad genius.
In this missive to his younger brother, art dealer Theo van Gogh, dated July 23, 1890, the artist writes, “Thanks for your kind letter and for the 50-franc note it contained. I’d really like to write to you about many things, but I sense the pointlessness of it.” Six days later, the artist committed suicide by shooting himself in the chest.
A densely worded letter mentioning Pissarro and Seurat to artist fellow Paul Gauguin, sent from Arles on Wednesday, October 3, 1888. “In any event, when I left Paris very, very upset, quite ill and almost an alcoholic through overdoing it, while my strength was abandoning me — then I withdrew into myself, and without daring to hope yet.”
Paul Gauguin to Vincent van Gogh from Pont-Aven, on or about Wednesday, September 26, 1888: “In your letter you seem angry at our laziness about the portrait, and that pains me; friends don’t get angry with each other (at a distance, words cannot be interpreted at their true value).”
To Emile Bernard, from Arles, on or about Thursday, June 7, 1888: “More and more it seems to me that the paintings that ought to be made, the paintings that are necessary, indispensable for painting today to be fully itself and to rise to a level equivalent to the serene peaks achieved by the Greek sculptors, the German musicians, the French writers of novels, exceed the power of an isolated individual, and will therefore probably be created by groups of men combining to carry out a shared idea.”
In this missive to his younger brother, art dealer Theo van Gogh, dated July 23, 1890, the artist writes, “Thanks for your kind letter and for the 50-franc note it contained. I’d really like to write to you about many things, but I sense the pointlessness of it.” Six days later, the artist committed suicide by shooting himself in the chest.
A densely worded letter mentioning Pissarro and Seurat to artist fellow Paul Gauguin, sent from Arles on Wednesday, October 3, 1888. “In any event, when I left Paris very, very upset, quite ill and almost an alcoholic through overdoing it, while my strength was abandoning me — then I withdrew into myself, and without daring to hope yet.”
Paul Gauguin to Vincent van Gogh from Pont-Aven, on or about Wednesday, September 26, 1888: “In your letter you seem angry at our laziness about the portrait, and that pains me; friends don’t get angry with each other (at a distance, words cannot be interpreted at their true value).”
To Emile Bernard, from Arles, on or about Thursday, June 7, 1888: “More and more it seems to me that the paintings that ought to be made, the paintings that are necessary, indispensable for painting today to be fully itself and to rise to a level equivalent to the serene peaks achieved by the Greek sculptors, the German musicians, the French writers of novels, exceed the power of an isolated individual, and will therefore probably be created by groups of men combining to carry out a shared idea.”
Transition
"There will come a time in your life when you will ask yourself a series of questions. Am I happy with who I am? Am I happy with the people around me? Am I happy with what I am doing? Am I happy with the way my life is going? Do I have a life? Or am I just living? Do not let these questions restrain or trouble you. Just point yourself in the direction of your dreams. Find your strength in the sound and make your transition. Make your transition. Do I spend too much time thinking and not enough doing? Did I try my hardest at any of my dreams? Did I purposely let others discourage me when I knew I could? When I die, never knowing what I’ve could have been or could have done. Do not let these doubts restrain or trouble you. Just point yourself in the direction of your dreams. Find your strength in the sound and make your transitions. Make your transition. There will be people who will say “you can’t”. But you will. There will be people who will say “you don’t mix this with that”. And you will say “watch me”. There will be people who will say “play it safe, that’s too risky”. And you will take that chance and have no fear. You won’t let these question restrain or trouble you. You will point yourself in the direction of your dreams. You will find the strength in the sound and make your transition. Make your transition."
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