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Sunday 4 July 2010
The Male Pregnancy
Couvade syndrome, the popular name is 'sympathetic pregnancy'. And here's the surprise, more expectant fathers experience this than you might think, everything from weight gain to cravings.
Early research in Australian shows around one in four men experience at least some of the symptoms of pregnancy.
Reclaiming Phil Spector's troubled genius
For many people, the name Phil Spector is now more synonymous with murder than with a long and illustrious music career. Famously labeled "the first tycoon of teen" by Tom Wolfe, his recording methods and innovations produced the type of songs that shaped the way we understand music: "Be My Baby," by the Ronettes, "Then He Kissed Me," by the Crystals, and "You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling" by the Righteous Brothers. From his role in creating "Wall of Sound," the dense and layered music production technique that characterized an era, to salvaging the Beatles' "Let It Be" and producing John Lennon and George Harrison’s solo records, no history of pop music can be written without him.
Most of that work, however, took place before his spectacular and bloody fall from grace. After decades of isolation and several incidents involving brandished firearms, Spector was charged (and convicted in 2009) for the murder of actress Lana Clarkson. Vikram Jayanti's new documentary, "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil Spector," however, focuses less on his downfall than on the man's charms and his position in the musical pantheon.
Salon sat down with Jayanti and spoke about Spector's guilt and the reasons for his spectacular decline.
It’s been over a year since Phil Spector went to prison. How do you think people perceive him?
Unfortunately, the general sense out there is that he’s kind of a freak. Stories of him and guns have been running for 30 years. I don’t think in the general public’s mind he’s a big factor; it’s not like Paul McCartney went to jail. But if you stack up his 21 hits in a row, everyone of every age group has been hearing this their whole life and I wanted to remind people what an incredible artistic achievement it was.
Mick Brown’s "Tearing Down the Wall of Sound" discusses that paradox: those sweet pop songs coming from such a damaged soul.
When you’re listening to "River Deep, Mountain High" with that swirling chaos in the background, you begin hearing madness. When I hear "Be My Baby," I hear the Wall of Sound trying to push away the void. The yearning is not innocent, teenage yearning, it’s existential chaos. The man who ended up in the courtroom is the same man who made this hits and that’s sort of an abstract mystery to me.
I think that what a lot of artists do are acts of self-medication, in the chaos, disorder and anguish of the world, the moment you have some control, that you can make something beautiful, for a moment: You’re free. The problem is that if you have pathologies of various sorts, you also use it as an instrument of revenge.
Do you think he lost that ability to get to that moment of creative bliss -- and that contributed to his decline?
I think the music moved on. What’s amazing to me is that the Beatles put him out of business in 1965 and yet four years later he’s producing "Let It Be," so I think it’s incredible that he even had a second act. And it’s a fantastic second act. But I think the world moved on and that's hard for people who have been fantastically successful. I think he retreated into his castle and stopped drinking.
Stopped?
He had been sober for 10 years before the night of the death. As far as I understand it, that was the first day he had fallen off the wagon in 10 years.
What do you think happened that night?
I have to hedge my bets on that. Phil kept saying she killed herself. Leonard Cohen told a friend of mine a story of Phil pulling a gun on him and Leonard said: “Oh, Phil, you pull guns on everyone, you haven’t shot anyone yet. You’re not gonna start now.” I can't see that Phil pulled the trigger, even though he's pulled a gun on people all over the place.
It would seem that he introduced the gun in the proceedings that night.
He told me that whenever he had a date come to the house he let them know that there was a loaded gun in the drawer of every room and if they weren’t comfortable, the chauffeur would take them home. It's a perfect "Hollywood Babylon" story. Old, past his prime, legend producer takes home 40-year-old aging starlet. He popped a Viagra while she was in the bathroom taking off her false eyelashes and underskirt, and then she was dead. None of us were surprised. It was something we all assumed would happen one day. Which is why it was so easy for the court of public opinion to convict him. It just seemed another piece of how he lived.
Have you been in touch with him since he’s been in prison?
No, I’m gearing up to try to see him. I want to go pay my respects. Part of him is bound to hate the film because he's naked on-screen and he's weird. Part of him really ought to love the film. If he's feeling rational, he’s got to see that in many ways, however complicated the film is in its view of him, it's also a love song to his legacy, and that it's probably the best thing that will ever be out there about him in terms of humanizing him and celebrating his genius, and also, frankly, the film leaves the impression that I believe there’s a reasonable doubt. And I can't exonerate him, but I would like it to be 100 percent clear he killed her before I’m willing to believe he's guilty.
How do you feel about creating a "love song" to the legacy of someone many people think is a murderer?
I am going to be criticized for seeming to roll over and let him say anything, but I was interested in finding out what it felt like to be Phil, so to that extent, I let him be Phil. It wasn't my interest to evaluate him; it was literally an act of empathy. That’s something you can do with film that’s hard to do with another medium. You cannot discount the amazing soundtrack he gave a generation. I don’t want his legacy to be completely obscured, so I’m just trying to add to the stuff that's out there, and add a little balance. It doesn't excuse what he’s done or not done, but people are complicated, and life is complicated, I'm interested in the complexity.
Do you think there are still any Phil Spector-like mercurial genius characters working now?
James Cameron has that kind of control freak genius on a vast scale. And a lot of people come out of working with him hating him. But you have to hand it to him. "Avatar" is an act of megalomania, which happens to enrich our culture. And the same thing happened with Phil; he’s in the studio, he’s a megalomaniac and it enriches our culture. And I don’t know Cameron, but why do you have to be a nice guy if after you're dead, people are going to talk about "Avatar" in 100 years? The question is: What’s the difference between the art and the artist, what’s the difference between dancer and dance. And Phil is the most extreme example of that.
Besides offering the songs, what do you think Phil Spector’s legacy is?
He elevated the idea of production. He created the idea that there’s more than just recording a song and putting it out. It’s about how you record it. That's stayed with the business. He pushed pop music to where it could be argued that it was art. And obviously the Beatles took it further, and a whole slew of brilliant people have taken it further. But it was a big shift: It wasn’t disposable anymore.
And the Beatles only pushed it further when they began to utilize the recording studio.
He calls himself a revolutionary, and we do think of the music between Elvis and at least the end of the Beatles as a revolutionary movement, and he was one of the big warriors.
Do you think that sort of revolutionary aspect can exist now? Or that things can still be pushed forward?
I think things come in waves. I believe in music, I look for new artists who give me a sense that my life depends on listening to it. The stuff that picks you up by the neck and swings you around the room. Like the way that there's nothing so profoundly truthful as that moment when you know your lover's "lost that loving feeling." It’s so horribly raw and true. I believe that popular music is the achievement of the human experiment. We've found something that’s not possible for anyone else to make. It goes somewhere that humans can't articulate without music.
And Phil Spector is central to that?
Yeah, for his own contorted reasons.
Justin Sullivan @'Salon'
Twilight Zone / A night in Hebron
The scars speak for themselves: a scorched hole in the middle of his forehead, like a mark of Cain, two more burn holes on his right hand and one on his left arm. The scratches on his face and arm have already healed. That's what remains from the night on which soldiers decided to have a little fun with Salah Rajabi, a student in the 12th grade at the Tareq School in Hebron.
It's not the first time soldiers have beaten him up. There have been no fewer than 12 previous attacks. The most serious of them occurred in 2006, when soldiers broke the boy's shoulder and he was hospitalized. In December 2008, he was arrested with his two brothers on suspicion of stone throwing and released after 10 days. On another occasion he was arrested and released on bail of NIS 1,000. But this was the scariest attack of all, with the burning cigarettes on his flesh, the penknife that cut into his face and a mysterious pill the soldiers made him swallow by force, which frightened him more than anything else.
Another "Clockwork Orange" night in Hebron, in Israeli-controlled Area H2, which has been almost totally abandoned by the Palestinian residents for fear of the settlers and the Israel Defense Forces. Another display of wildness by soldiers, who thought that undercover of darkness they could do as they pleased. The IDF Spokesman made do this week with an appallingly laconic response: "The complaint that was filed with the police will be transmitted to the office of the military advocate general and after it is examined a decision will be made on how to proceed." Whatever.
Rajabi, 19, is trying to complete his matriculation exams. He comes from a poor family of 19 children, from two mothers. Every day after school he goes to his sweets stand, peddling cheap baklava in front of his house. He was there on June 14, too. There was no school that day, because of the exams. In the afternoon he went to his stand and by 10 P.M. he had sold all his wares. He then set out to visit his sister, who, like her husband, is deaf and muteHe is a hefty young man, muscular but shy, his voice soft. His older brother, Kaad, sits next to him, to support him. His sister's home isn't far from where he lives. As he walked up the street, which is partially lit and partially dark, an IDF Jeep, coming from the direction of the stonemasons' industrial zone, suddenly pulled up next to him. The soldier sitting next to the driver opened the door and asked to see his ID card.
The driver recognized him immediately. "Is it you?" he asked. Maybe he's considered a troublemaker, though he has never been convicted of anything. Two other soldiers, who were sitting in the back seat, got out of the Jeep and moved toward him. They pushed him forcefully into the vehicle. Rajabi says he did not resist. He was frightened. They made him sit on the floor of the Jeep, in the back, but did not tie his hands or blindfold him, which is standard procedure in making an arrest.
The soldiers lit cigarettes: four soldiers and four cigarettes in one military Jeep with a Palestinian detainee on the floor, driving through the streets of Hebron, which overnight turned into Marlboro country. The Jeep kept moving, when suddenly one of the soldiers sitting in the back placed the burning cigarette against Rajabi's forehead. While Rajabi was trying to recover from the pain and shock, the soldier sitting next to the driver pulled Rajabi's arm forward and stuck his cigarette twice into the palm of the youth's right hand. Here are the holes. The soldiers cursed him; he's ashamed to repeat what they said. Then the other soldier in the back seat grabbed his left arm and jabbed his burning cigarette deep into it. Here is the hole. Only the driver puffed away tranquilly and did nothing.
Like all games, it's not over till it's over. Now the soldier in the back who was the first to brand Rajabi with a cigarette took out a penknife, one of those with which soldiers pierce the plastic handcuffs of their prisoners, and held it against Rajabi's right cheek. Rajabi was deathly afraid. The soldier cut his cheek across its whole length and then worked on his left arm as well. Not a very deep cut, but blood flowed from his face. He wiped it away with his shirt.
Throughout, the Jeep kept going. They reached a dark, empty lot in the Jebel Juhar area. The driver stopped and turned off the engine. The four soldiers got out and ordered their victim to kneel on the ground. He did as they commanded. They grabbed his head and forced his mouth open, Rajabi relates. One soldier took out a pill and stuffed it into Rajabi's mouth. They held his mouth open until they were certain he had swallowed the bitter pill. Then they threw him to the ground, got into the Jeep and sped off.
Rajabi lay there in the dark, exhausted and in a panic, blood on his face and arm. In a few minutes he pulled himself together, got up and made his way to the home of relatives about 300 meters from the empty lot. It was midnight. He knocked on the door. His shirt was dirty from the ground and stained with his blood. Opening the door in his pajamas, Ahmed Rajabi was appalled to see his distraught relative. He later testified that this was what happened to Musa Abu Hashhash, a fieldworker of B'Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories.
"What happened to you?" Ahmed asked Salah Rajabi, and he told him how the soldiers had stopped him, burned him with cigarettes, cut him with a knife and forced him to swallow a pill. The two called Kaad, Salah's brother, who lives close by.
At this stage, Rajabi felt himself losing consciousness. He was certain it was because of the pill. Kaad arrived immediately and took his brother to Aliya Hospital in the city. On the way, he relates, his brother passed out. In the hospital his stomach was flushed, but the physicians told Kaad they did not have the equipment to determine what the pill was. When his brother woke up in the morning, Kaad relates, he began to attack everyone in sight in a fit of rage or fear.
Rajabi was injected with a tranquilizer and sent home. Since then he has not taken any more exams or returned to his baklava stand. Last week he filed a complaint with the Hebron police, complaint no. 230003/2010. The IDF, as we saw, is looking into it.
Gideon Levy @'Haaertz'
Johann Hari: How Goldman gambled on starvation
By now, you probably think your opinion of Goldman Sachs and its swarm of Wall Street allies has rock-bottomed at raw loathing. You're wrong. There's more. It turns out that the most destructive of all their recent acts has barely been discussed at all. Here's the rest. This is the story of how some of the richest people in the world – Goldman, Deutsche Bank, the traders at Merrill Lynch, and more – have caused the starvation of some of the poorest people in the world.
Saturday 3 July 2010
Indigenous Ecuadoreans Share Oil Spill Experiences with Gulf Coast Communities
Last night, four Indigenous and community leaders from Ecuador arrived in very steamy New Orleans to share their experiences with the long-term impacts of oil pollution with communities dealing with the tragic BP oil spill that continues to gush into the Gulf of Mexico.
As the Chevron in Ecuador blog reports:
Four very different people arrived last night in New Orleans on a late flight from Quito, Ecuador. One is a quiet but fierce 71-year-old grandmother with 27 grandchildren. Another is a gentle, soft-spoken man who is a leader of his Indigenous tribe from the Amazon. Another is a serious and sober man who has won worldwide acclaim for his unique work. And the last is another Indigenous man from the Amazon, who is more sharp-tongued than his traveling companion, but shares his good humor and dignified demeanor.
The four Indigenous and community leaders from Ecuador’s Amazon rainforest are on the front-lines of the nearly two-decade struggle to demand oil giant Chevron clean up the massive contaminate the company left behind in their lands. I’ve written profiles of two of them here before; Cofan leader Emergildo Criollo was in the U.S. in early March to help deliver 350,000 letters of support for cleanup in Ecuador to new Chevron CEO John Watson and campesina activist Mariana Jimenez was in Houston just a few weeks ago to speak out at Chevron’s 2010 shareholder meeting.
Continue reading
Much as Big Oil would like us to believe they are all operating within the law and to the benefit of the people, time and time again we are made aware of the enormous sacrifices made by communities around the globe in order to feed the world's obssession with oil and its products. This might be acceptable if there were no serious calamities to speak about, but instead, like broken records the same tune is dished out to our increasingly benumbed aural orifices on the quality of technology utilised by the industry. Unfortunately, there is no quality about these industries' technologies, and the short road for the fast buck is the only road to be travelled, the profits speak for themselves. I will reiterate, management and shareholders must be held accountable for the travesties that have occurred in their search for greater profits. There can be no profits when people are denied their homes, the health of their families and the destruction of their vital environments. It is time for the message to get through, that ecoterrorism as practised by Big Oil is driving the planet to extinction, and full compensation to the people affected and full regeneration of the environments decapitated is essential. To label management and shareholders as just bloody-minded and greedy is too generous, these people are daily murdering people by their actions for a fistfull of dollars, and should be facing court for their deadly, daily malevolence...........beeden
David Bowie details Station To Station reissue
It took a bit longer than expected, but David Bowie is finally ready to relive his iconic 1976 album Station To Station.
The reissue will be available in two different configurations, both of which will be highlighted by a remastering of the album and a live recording of Bowie’s March 23rd, 1976 concert at the Nassau Coliseum, Uniondale, New York.
The three-disc “Special Edition” version will also include a 16-page booklet with sleevenotes by Cameron Crowe, chronology by Kevin Cann, three period photocards of Bowie in various settings, and a digitial download code. The digital download will feature the same audio content as the psychical release, but with the added bonus of an unedited alternative mix of “Panic In Detroit” that clocks in at 13:09, according to an issued press release.
The five-disc “Deluxe Edition” version will include all of the above as well as 1985 master of the album, a five-track EP featuring Station to Station single edits, a DVD, copies of both the album and the live recording on 12″ heavyweight vinyl, and facsimile copies of David Bowie’s On Stage 1976 press kit folder and 1976 Fan Club Folder.
Prices for the two releases have not yet been disclosed, but both will hit stores on September 20th via EMI. In the meantime, check out the exact specifics for each configuration
Why Did It Take a Rock Magazine to Report the Military's Total Disaster in Afghanistan?
The controversial Rolling Stone profile of General Stanley McChrystal didn't just expose poor judgment on the part of the U.S. military's key leader in Afghanistan. It also illustrates one of the most persistent shortcomings of American corporate journalism.
It's no surprise that a protracted and fruitless military conflict has produced backbiting at the highest levels. That's the expected result of a flawed policy. But it is -- or should be -- curious that David Hastings's piece appeared in a rock magazine whose cover photograph features a G-strung Lady Gaga with automatic rifles jutting out of her brassiere.
Anyone in the Pentagon press corps could have written Hastings' story. So why did it appear in Rolling Stone?
First, let's give Rolling Stone its due; it's not an ordinary music magazine. Before launching it in 1967, Jann Wenner and Ralph Gleason worked at Ramparts magazine, the legendary San Francisco muckraker that ran high-impact investigative stories on Vietnam and the CIA. Despite its healthy circulation, Ramparts lost money and closed its doors for good in 1975. Then as now, no "business model" (i.e., reliable advertising base) existed for political magazines, left or right.
Wenner focused instead on music and the counterculture, but he also hired Hunter S. Thompson as his national affairs correspondent. One result was Thompson's Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72, praised as the least factual and most accurate account of that year's presidential race.
In 2009, Rolling Stone revived the Gonzo tradition by running Matt Taibbi's critical profile of Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street firm with close ties to the Treasury Department. This was another example of an RS irregular scooping beat writers on a huge story. Taibbi's piece drew heat, but most of his critics begrudgingly conceded that his main point was correct.
Hastings has likewise taken criticism from the Pentagon press corps. Lara Logan, CBS's chief foreign affairs correspondent, appeared on CNN's Reliable Sources this weekend to cast aspersions on his methods, to defend the Pentagon beat writers, and to lament the article's effect on General McChrystal's career. "Michael Hastings has never served his country the way McChrystal has," she claimed (as if critical reporting isn't exactly the service journalists are supposed to provide). Responding to Hastings' point that beat writers wrote glowingly about McChrystal to ensure future access to him, Logan labeled that view "insulting and arrogant."...
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Peter Richardson @'AlterNet'
Friday 2 July 2010
Secret millions grease World Cup bid
Two controversial European lobbyists hired to help bring the football World Cup to Australia stand to receive up to $11.37 million in fees and bonuses - one-quarter of the taxpayer-funded bid - according to secret Football Federation Australia files.
The files include a spreadsheet that suggests the federal government was not told specific details about how taxpayers' money was to be spent on the lobbyists and grants to overseas football bodies headed by powerful FIFA officials.
An investigation into Australia's World Cup bid can also reveal how the FFA:
Bought Paspaley pearl necklaces for the wives of many of the 24 FIFA executive committee members who in December will decide which countries will host the 2018 and 2022 World Cups. Pearl cufflinks were also handed out, taking the total value of the gifts to an estimated $50,000.
Offered an all-expenses paid trip to the South American FIFA executive committee member Rafael Salguero and his wife to Australia this year to mark his birthday.
Paid for a Caribbean football team linked to the FIFA vice-president Jack Warner to travel to Cyprus last year.
An FFA document contains two budget balance sheets outlining how the $45.6 million World Cup bid government grant is to be spent.
One balance sheet is for the FFA only and is headed ''bid budget management reporting''. The other is for the government and is less detailed and titled ''bid budget government reporting''.
The spreadsheets from mid-2009 suggest the FFA chose not to disclose to the government specific details of the payment structure for its two consultants, Peter Hargitay and Fedor Radmann.
The FFA said its accounting practices were exemplary and independently audited.
''The FFA is completely transparent in its dealings with government and has provided all information regarding the bidding process requested by government,'' said the FFA chief executive, Ben Buckley, who also declined to reveal publicly what Mr Hargitay and Mr Radmann were being paid.
However, confidential documents show the pair - who have been hired to direct Australia's lobbying of FIFA officials - stand to make $11.37 million if Australia wins the right to host the 2022 World Cup. Australia this month withdrew its bid for the 2018 cup.
Mr Hargitay is being paid $1.35 million by the FFA and has a success fee of $2.54 million. Mr Radmann's work for the Australian bid, which the FFA has tried to keep confidential, will earn him up to $3.49 million through a German consulting firm. He is also entitled to a success fee of $3.99 million.
As part of a separate contract, the FFA is paying Mr Radmann's business partner Andreas Abold an additional $3 million for World Cup "bid book production and bid advice''. It is unclear if Mr Abold will also receive some of Mr Radmann's fees.
The mid-2009 spreadsheet also suggests the government was not told details about plans to give $6.5 million in taxpayer funds to football bodies in Africa, Asia and Oceania. The document says the FFA's bid strategy will give large grants to "international football development''.
The government was told by the FFA that $11.37 million was going to ''consultants/agencies''. But the FFA prepared a more detailed spreadsheet for its own executives, specifically outlining how this figure would be divided into fees and bonuses for Mr Hargitay and Mr Radmann's international ''advocacy'' campaign.
Mr Buckley said: ''Consistent with standard management practice, FFA maintains a more comprehensive breakdown of expenditure and forecasts for day-to-day internal management purposes and accountability.''
The necklaces and cufflinks were given at a dinner in 2008 for FIFA officials at the home of the FFA chairman, Frank Lowy, after Australia had announced its World Cup intentions but before formal bidding had begun.
Mr Buckley said: ''It is a widely accepted, common practice, among governments, many business and sporting organisations to provide symbolic gifts, to visiting international delegations.''
FIFA allows "occasional gifts'' of ''symbolic or incidental value''.
It is believed the FFA funded the Trinidad and Tobago under-20 team's travel to Cyprus at the request of Mr Hargitay, who is close to the Caribbean football chief and FIFA vice-president Jack Warner.
In several FFA documents Mr Hargitay refers to his strong ties to "Jack''. Mr Warner has been repeatedly accused of using FIFA status to enrich himself and his family. After an investigation in 2006 FIFA ordered him to repay $US1 million his family earned through the improper sale of World Cup tickets.
Last October Mr Warner returned a $435 luxury handbag - one of 24 given to the wives of FIFA executive committee members - from the English bid team, after media reports in Britain.
FFA documents make it clear that Mr Radmann and Mr Hargitay are managing the international "strategy" on behalf of the Australian bid team. They boast ties to some of football's most powerful men, including Mr Warner, the former German player Franz Beckenbauer and the FIFA president, Sepp Blatter.
Mr Radmann and Mr Hargitay have colourful histories. Mr Radmann, who has worked as an aide to Beckenbauer, has been implicated in:
A scheme in 2000 to allegedly offer financial inducements to key FIFA executive committee officials to get them to back Germany's bid to host the 2006 World Cup.
Conflict of interest scandals in 2003 that forced him to stand down from Germany's cup organising committee.
It is understood Australian bid officials sought to minimise any publicity about Mr Radmann's involvement in the bid.
Mr Hargitay's past includes being acquitted twice for cocaine trafficking in the 1990s and his alleged link to a securities fraud in Hungary, according to US court documents from 1997.
Mr Hargitay also boasts about daily meetings in South Africa with the Asian Football Confederation boss, Mohammad bin Hamman.
Documents detail Mr Hargitay's role arranging meetings between overseas football officials and Mr Lowy and Australian politicians. The former prime minister Kevin Rudd met Mr Warner in his Trinidad and Tobago home in November.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Ageing, the agency that provided the World Cup grant, said yesterday that the FFA briefed it regularly on its spending.
Asked about differing bid balance sheets, the spokeswoman said: ''The detailed internal accounting systems of the FFA are a matter for them.''
She said the department was aware of the backgrounds of Mr Hargitay and Mr Radmann. It also had no evidence of any breaches of the public service guidelines that cover the FFA's consultants.
All FFA bid team employees and lobbyists must comply with Australia's Public Service code of conduct and act in an honest and ethical manner. The spokeswoman said: ''The FFA has assured the[ department] taskforce that this provision is being adhered to. If evidence contrary to this was provided it would be thoroughly investigated as would any alleged breach of the funding agreement.''
Nick McKenzie & Richard Baker @'SMH'
♪♫ Plan B - Prayin'
Extended version
'Stay Too Long'
The album 'The Defamation of Strickland Banks' that this is from is truly one of the most amazing English soul albums that I have ever heard...No kidding, highly recommended!
Speakers reinvented
Deep down I think we all have a little audiophile in us. It's not a bad thing, but quite the contrary, as music is the most beautiful sound in the world... apart from the sound of a male lyrebird in the morning. (more on that later). So with that little audiophile always curious about beautiful objects that make sound, much like the lyrebird, these cardboard speakers grabbed my attention. It turns out that this is a fantastic project by Sounds Like that worked with nine designers and five musicians to reinterpret the Ceramic Speaker. The first ceramic speaker was designed by Joey Roth and was a stunning piece almost floating on a natural birch stand. Joey then gave a set of the speakers to nine of his favorite artists (don't even get me started on the fact that he got David Lynch to collaborate) to modify, reshape, rework and generally do what they please with.
As stated on the website "The collaborators then worked with musicians to produce tracks specifically for their re-imagined speaker systems. During the show, these tracks will be played sequentially through the corresponding set of speakers. Each collaborator’s concept will be on display, both as an object and as a musical composition."
The show opened up at ICFF 2010 and is showing in LA in September.
I was really impressed with the idea, and creativity. Please go and have a look at their site below.
Australia agrees deal to reduce new mining tax
The Australian government has reached a deal with mining companies over controversial tax plans.
Former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd had announced plans for a 40% tax on miners' profits.
But a compromise agreement negotiated by his successor, Julia Gillard, has now reduced the rate to 30% for coal and iron ore miners.
But petroleum and gas operations will still pay a pre-existing 40% tax rate, the government said.
But that will now cover onshore oil and gas projects as well as the offshore operations previously subject to it.
Smaller iron ore and coal companies, with annual profits below A$50m (£28m; $42m), will not be required to pay the new tax.
The plans are still expected to raise billions of dollars for the government, however.
When Mr Rudd announced the tax plans earlier this year, he said he expected to raise A$9bn a year.
The revised plan would raise A$1.5bn less, the government said, but cuts to company tax rates that were to be paid for by the mining tax will still go ahead.
Mining executives welcomed the deal, calling it "a positive outcome".
Mining giants including BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto had initially launched an aggressive lobbying campaign against Mr Rudd's tax plan, warning that it could harm economic growth.
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