Wednesday 23 November 2011
Paul Motian RIP
He moved to New York in 1955 and played with numerous musicians - including Thelonious Monk, Lennie Tristano, Coleman Hawkins, Tony Scott, and George Russell - before settling into a regular role as part of Bill Evans' most famous trio (with bassist Scott LaFaro), appearing on his classics Sunday at the Village Vanguard and Waltz for Debby.
In 1963, Motian left Evans' group to join up with Paul Bley for a year or so, and began a long association with Keith Jarrett in 1966, appearing with the pianist's American-based quartet through 1977.
In addition, Motian freelanced for artists like Mose Allison, Charles Lloyd, Carla Bley, and Charlie Haden's Liberation Music Ensemble, and turned down the chance to be John Coltrane's second drummer.
In 1972, Motian recorded his first session as a leader, Conception Vessel, for ECM; he followed in 1974 with Tribute.
He formed a regular working group in 1977 (which featured tenor Joe Lovano) and recorded several more dates for ECM, then revamped the ensemble to include guitarist Bill Frisell in 1980. Additional dates for ECM and Soul Note followed, and in 1988 Motian moved to JMT, where he recorded a long string of fine albums beginning with Monk in Motian.
During the '90s, he also led an ensemble called the Electric Bebop Band, which featured Joshua Redman. In 1998, Motian signed on with the Winter & Winter label, where he began recording another steady stream of albums, including 2000 + One in 1999, Europe in 2001, and Holiday for Strings in 2002. In 2005 Motian moved to the ECM label, releasing I Have the Room Above Her that same year, followed by Garden of Eden in 2006 and Time and Time Again in 2007.
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A Sudden Void at the Vanguard
One of my fave gigs ever was seeing him play as part of a trio at the Bimhuis in Amsterdam back around 84 or so...
Fox News Host Dismisses Pepper Spray Attack By Cops: ‘It’s A Food Product, Essentially’
Love the comment that by this logic that as we drink water then waterboarding is just quenching someone's thirst!!!
Tuesday 22 November 2011
#Occupy Bat Signal for the 99%
Video from the #occupy bat signal crew. Inside look at this series of inspirational video projections on the side of the Verizon building on November 17th.
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WikileaksTruck Art Superheroes
Just for the record: The truck was loaded to the brim with billions of dollars of gold and diamonds. Maybe trillions.
Monday 21 November 2011
US can access Aussie DNA, personal data
If the DNA or fingerprint query returns a reference match, US agencies can access a target's personal information to verify the hit. Personal data would include information on a target's full name, aliases, sex, date and place of birth, nationality, passport number, other identity document numbers and fingerprint data beyond the reference information supplied in the initial hit.
US agencies won't have access to the data on a random whim, however. To access the information, agencies must be presented with the clear and present threat of criminal activity or terrorism.
According to the MOU, circumstances may include the possibility that the target or targets:
- (a) Will commit or has committed terrorist or terrorism related offences, or offences related to a terrorist group or association as those offences are defined under the supplying participant's laws; or
- (b) is undergoing or has undergone training to commit the offences referred to in in sub-paragraph 12.1(a) [above]; or
- (c) will commit or has committed a serious criminal offence or participates in an organised criminal group or association.
The MOU highlights the importance of data security in the transmission, storage and analysis of such information and has outlined in several sections how this data should be kept secret from prying eyes while respecting the legal rights of the host nation and the target when dealing with said data.
"The participants are to ensure that the necessary technical measures and organisational arrangements are utilised to protect personal data against accidental or unlawful destruction, accidental loss or unauthorised disclosure, alteration access or any unauthorised form of processing," the MOU reads in the section on data security.
Each party will also be required to keep a record of the transmission of data, which will include what was sent about whom and when. Data will be retained for a period of two years and the nation supplying the data can always query the status of how the information is being used.
The two signatories to the MOU, Brendan O'Connor, Federal Minister for Home Affairs, and Jeffrey Bleich, US Ambassador to Australia, said that the document is designed to ensure that law enforcement agencies can correctly identify and move on criminals and persons of interest hiding amongst legitimate tourists and businesspeople.
"Transnational criminals and terrorists are always trying to hide among legitimate tourists and business travellers. It is critical for us to find them and stop them without interfering with those travellers who build bonds between our people and strengthen commerce for both countries," Bleich said in a statement.
O'Connor added that "this important measure reinforces our shared values regarding the protection and privacy of the citizens of both countries while also denying safe haven to criminals".
Luke Hopewell @'ZDNet'
Guess we are officially the 51st State now...
About Pepper Spray
I checked the Scoville Scale for something else yesterday. I was looking for a way to measure the intensity of pepper spray, the kind that police have been using on Occupy protestors including this week’s shocking incident involving peacefully protesting students at the University of California-Davis.
As the chart makes clear, commercial grade pepper spray leaves even the most painful of natural peppers (the Himalayan ghost pepper) far behind. It’s listed at between 2 million and 5.3 million Scoville units. The lower number refers to the kind of pepper spray that you and I might be able to purchase for self-protective uses. And the higher number? It’s the kind of spray that police use, the super-high dose given in the orange-colored spray used at UC-Davis.
The reason pepper-spray ends up on the Scoville chart is that – you probably guessed this - it’s literally derived from pepper chemistry, the compounds that make habaneros so much more formidable than the comparatively wimpy bells. Those compounds are called capsaicins and – in fact – pepper spray is more formally called Oleoresin Capsicum or OC Spray.
But we’ve taken to calling it pepper spray, I think, because that makes it sound so much more benign than it really is, like something just a grade or so above what we might mix up in a home kitchen. The description hints maybe at that eye-stinging effect that the cook occasionally experiences when making something like a jalapeno-based salsa, a little burn, nothing too serious.
Until you look it up on the Scoville scale and remember, as toxicologists love to point out, that the dose makes the poison. That we’re not talking about cookery but a potent blast of chemistry. So that if OC spray is the U.S. police response of choice – and certainly, it’s been used with dismaying enthusiasm during the Occupy protests nationwide, as documented in this excellent Atlantic roundup - it may be time to demand a more serious look at the risks involved.
My own purpose here is to focus on the dangers of a high level of capsaicin exposure. But as pointed out in the 2004 paper, Health Hazards of Pepper Spray, written by health researchers at the University of North Carolina and Duke University, the sprays contain other risky materials:
Depending on brand, an OC spray may contain water, alcohols, or organic solvents as liquid carriers; and nitrogen, carbon dioxide, or halogenated hydrocarbons (such as Freon, tetrachloroethylene, and methylene chloride) as propellants to discharge the canister contents.(3) Inhalation of high doses of some of these chemicals can produce adverse cardiac, respiratory, and neurologic effects, including arrhythmias and sudden death...
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Deborah Blum @'Speakeasy Science'
How I Got My Song - Leonard Cohen's Prince Of Asturias Speech 21/10/11
"Poetry comes from a place that no one commands, that no one conquers. So I feel somewhat like a charlatan to accept an award for an activity which I do not command. In other words, if I knew where the good songs came from I would go there more often."
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MetPoliceCO11 Metropolitan Police
In response to the ongoing CCTV outage in the Holborn area we have now deployed a small team of barn owls with notepads.
In response to the ongoing CCTV outage in the Holborn area we have now deployed a small team of barn owls with notepads.
#OWS Livestream
Now, finally, a drum circle you don't have to be high to enjoy: this Sunday at 2pm, for 24 hours, bring the love to Mayor Bloomberg's personal townhouse: 17 East 79th Street.
Tie-dye, didgeridoo, hackeysack welcome! No shirt, no shoes, no problem! And if you don't have talent, don't worry: FREE DRUM LESSONS offered! Also on offer: collaborative drumming with the police!
Even though this is a 24-hour drum circle, don't be late! The mayor loves evictions. Who knows what'll happen? But no matter how long it lasts, there'll be an afterparty and love-in in world-famous Central Park just next door.
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Tie-dye, didgeridoo, hackeysack welcome! No shirt, no shoes, no problem! And if you don't have talent, don't worry: FREE DRUM LESSONS offered! Also on offer: collaborative drumming with the police!
Even though this is a 24-hour drum circle, don't be late! The mayor loves evictions. Who knows what'll happen? But no matter how long it lasts, there'll be an afterparty and love-in in world-famous Central Park just next door.
Via
Newyorkist Newyorkist
Cop instructed someone to remove mask. Said against law. Ppl told him chk law. He said: "I don't need to chk the law, I can do what I want."
Cop instructed someone to remove mask. Said against law. Ppl told him chk law. He said: "I don't need to chk the law, I can do what I want."
Sunday 20 November 2011
Duqu from ‘Well-Funded Coders’
Duqu, the malware that targeted industrial manufacturers around the world, contains so many advanced features that it could only have been developed by a team of highly skilled programmers who worked full time, security researchers said.
That finding falls in place with the ISSSource report last week that learned American and Israeli officials are heading a team effort to perfect the new Stuxnet worm, called Duqu, that may be able to bring down Iran’s entire software networks if the Iranian regime gets too close to breakout, U.S. intelligence sources said.
The new report finds features include steganographic processes that encrypt stolen data and embed it into image files before sending it to attacker-controlled servers, an analysis by NSS researchers found.
Using a custom protocol to hide the proprietary information inside the innocuous-looking file, before it’s sent to command and control servers, is a centuries-old technique used to conceal the exchange of sensitive communications.
Duqu is also the world’s first known modular plugin rootkit, the researchers said. That allows the attackers to add or remove functionality and change command and control servers quickly with little effort. The conclusion the researchers draw from their analysis is Duqu is the product of well organized team of highly motivated developers.
“Given the complexity of the system (solid driver code plus impressive system architecture) it is not possible for this to have been written by a single person, nor by a team of part-time amateurs,” NSS researchers Mohamed Saher and Matthew Molinyawe wrote. “The implication is that, given the requirement for multiple man-years of effort, that this has been produced by a disciplined, well-funded team of competent coders.”
The modular design means there’s a potentially large number of components that have yet to be discovered. NSS released a scanning tool that can detect all Duqu drivers installed on an infected system. The tool doesn’t generate false positives and has already been used to spot two previously undetected Duqu drivers, the researchers said.
“We hope the research community can use this tool to discover new drivers and would ask that any samples be provided to NSS researchers (anonymously if preferred) in order to aid us in understanding more about the threat posed by Duqu,” they wrote.
The researchers echoed previous reports that Duqu contains many similarities to the Stuxnet worm used to sabotage uranium enrichment plants in Iran. The NSS analysis said Duqu uses similar code and techniques to those of Stuxnet, but they said they are not aware if Duqu comes from Stuxnet.
Duqu’s state-of-the-art design and its resemblance to Stuxnet makes the malware worth watching, but with key questions still unanswered, it’s too early to know exactly what to think.
“There is no possible explanation for the production of such a sophisticated and elegant system merely to steal the information that has been targeted so far,” they wrote. “Why go to all this trouble to deploy a simple key-logger? Given that there are additional drivers waiting to be discovered, we can liken Duqu to a sophisticated rocket launcher – we have yet to see the real ammunition appear.”
@'ISS Source'
That finding falls in place with the ISSSource report last week that learned American and Israeli officials are heading a team effort to perfect the new Stuxnet worm, called Duqu, that may be able to bring down Iran’s entire software networks if the Iranian regime gets too close to breakout, U.S. intelligence sources said.
The new report finds features include steganographic processes that encrypt stolen data and embed it into image files before sending it to attacker-controlled servers, an analysis by NSS researchers found.
Using a custom protocol to hide the proprietary information inside the innocuous-looking file, before it’s sent to command and control servers, is a centuries-old technique used to conceal the exchange of sensitive communications.
Duqu is also the world’s first known modular plugin rootkit, the researchers said. That allows the attackers to add or remove functionality and change command and control servers quickly with little effort. The conclusion the researchers draw from their analysis is Duqu is the product of well organized team of highly motivated developers.
“Given the complexity of the system (solid driver code plus impressive system architecture) it is not possible for this to have been written by a single person, nor by a team of part-time amateurs,” NSS researchers Mohamed Saher and Matthew Molinyawe wrote. “The implication is that, given the requirement for multiple man-years of effort, that this has been produced by a disciplined, well-funded team of competent coders.”
The modular design means there’s a potentially large number of components that have yet to be discovered. NSS released a scanning tool that can detect all Duqu drivers installed on an infected system. The tool doesn’t generate false positives and has already been used to spot two previously undetected Duqu drivers, the researchers said.
“We hope the research community can use this tool to discover new drivers and would ask that any samples be provided to NSS researchers (anonymously if preferred) in order to aid us in understanding more about the threat posed by Duqu,” they wrote.
The researchers echoed previous reports that Duqu contains many similarities to the Stuxnet worm used to sabotage uranium enrichment plants in Iran. The NSS analysis said Duqu uses similar code and techniques to those of Stuxnet, but they said they are not aware if Duqu comes from Stuxnet.
Duqu’s state-of-the-art design and its resemblance to Stuxnet makes the malware worth watching, but with key questions still unanswered, it’s too early to know exactly what to think.
“There is no possible explanation for the production of such a sophisticated and elegant system merely to steal the information that has been targeted so far,” they wrote. “Why go to all this trouble to deploy a simple key-logger? Given that there are additional drivers waiting to be discovered, we can liken Duqu to a sophisticated rocket launcher – we have yet to see the real ammunition appear.”
@'ISS Source'
When Kerouac Met Kesey
Before I ever met Kesey, Tom Guinzburg, president of Viking Press, called me one day in 1961 to ask whether Kerouac would write a blurb for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Kesey’s first novel. Tom had bought the book, but Viking had not yet published it. Publishers are always looking for well-known writers to offer positive comments for the book jacket or a press release. A blurb can be particularly helpful if readers feel there is a creative relationship between the two writers. I had no idea whether Kerouac would help, because I couldn’t remember his having blurbed before, but I didn’t think he would be offended if I asked. I thought he might even be flattered. So I told Tom to send me the manuscript. I read it before passing it on to Jack, and I knew right then that I wanted to work with Kesey. His novel was a bold, creative story of what happens in a mental institution—a very daring subject for his time. In the end, Jack did not write a blurb; he felt uncomfortable doing it, perhaps not wanting to get into that arena and all that went with it, and I respected that.
I called Guinzburg to tell him I’d like to represent Kesey, who didn’t have an agent, and then got in touch with Ken. He was delighted, and we started working together. In 1963, Ken sent me his second novel, Sometimes a Great Notion, and soon came to New York for the Broadway opening of the play based on Cuckoo’s Nest, starring Kirk Douglas as McMurphy and Joan Tetzel as Nurse Ratched.
When I met him then, Ken shook my hand with a firm grip. He was 28 and had the piercing blue eyes and warm smile of Paul Newman—but with not as much hair. (Newman would play the lead in the film adaptation of Sometimes a Great Notion.) He was five feet 10 and trim, and he had bushy sideburns that were his signature and wore a woolen bill cap. He seemed to be enjoying everything he did.
Kesey had brought his family and friends with him to Manhattan, and I soon realized that despite his many interests and his peripatetic life, family was a major part of who he was. The night before the play opened, we were sitting around in my apartment on Central Park West, which had a great view of the skyline looking south toward the Empire State Building. But the Kesey contingent, after a day visiting the Museum of Natural History and the site of the upcoming World’s Fair at Flushing Meadows in Queens, ignored the view. They were totally absorbed with one another.
I had just finished reading the manuscript of Sometimes a Great Notion and was impressed and moved. I had never been to Oregon, but Kesey’s writing gave me a vivid picture of that part of the country.
“Ken,” I said, “I think you’ve written a novel that will become an American classic!”
“Thanks very much,” he said immediately, “but I don’t think you’re right. The story is too complicated.”
He turned out to be more right than I was. When I read it again, I realized that although the story bears all the markings of an epic American tragedy, the rotating first-person narrative (often blurring one character’s perspective with that of the next) detracted from the premise of the Great American Novel: no single character or situation serves as emblematic of the novel’s period, and there is no clear hero or villain. But the distinctions it explores between the East Coast and the West Coast, nature and civilization, rugged individualism and communitarianism, all seem very much in keeping with the spirit of the times...
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Sterling Lord @'The American Scholar'
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