After two years of analysis, West and Bettencourt discovered that all of these urban variables could be described by a few exquisitely simple equations. For example, if they know the population of a metropolitan area in a given country, they can estimate, with approximately 85 percent accuracy, its average income and the dimensions of its sewer system. These are the laws, they say, that automatically emerge whenever people “agglomerate,” cramming themselves into apartment buildings and subway cars. It doesn’t matter if the place is Manhattan or Manhattan, Kan.: the urban patterns remain the same. West isn’t shy about describing the magnitude of this accomplishment. “What we found are the constants that describe every city,” he says. “I can take these laws and make precise predictions about the number of violent crimes and the surface area of roads in a city in Japan with 200,000 people. I don’t know anything about this city or even where it is or its history, but I can tell you all about it. And the reason I can do that is because every city is really the same.” After a pause, as if reflecting on his hyperbole, West adds: “Look, we all know that every city is unique. That’s all we talk about when we talk about cities, those things that make New York different from L.A., or Tokyo different from Albuquerque. But focusing on those differences misses the point. Sure, there are differences, but different from what? We’ve found the what.”A Physicist Solves the City (New York Times)
When Prince Charles claimed thousands of Indian farmers were killing themselves after using GM crops, he was branded a scaremonger. In fact, as this chilling dispatch reveals, it's even WORSE than he feared.Read the original article here at The Daily Mail
The children were inconsolable. Mute with shock and fighting back tears, they huddled beside their mother as friends and neighbours prepared their father's body for cremation on a blazing bonfire built on the cracked, barren fields near their home.As flames consumed the corpse, Ganjanan, 12, and Kalpana, 14, faced a grim future. While Shankara Mandaukar had hoped his son and daughter would have a better life under India's economic boom, they now face working as slave labour for a few pence a day. Landless and homeless, they will be the lowest of the low.
Shankara, respected farmer, loving husband and father, had taken his own life. Less than 24 hours earlier, facing the loss of his land due to debt, he drank a cupful of chemical insecticide.
Unable to pay back the equivalent of two years' earnings, he was in despair. He could see no way out.
There were still marks in the dust where he had writhed in agony. Other villagers looked on - they knew from experience that any intervention was pointless - as he lay doubled up on the ground, crying out in pain and vomiting.
Moaning, he crawled on to a bench outside his simple home 100 miles from Nagpur in central India. An hour later, he stopped making any noise. Then he stopped breathing. At 5pm on Sunday, the life of Shankara Mandaukar came to an end.
As neighbours gathered to pray outside the family home, Nirmala Mandaukar, 50, told how she rushed back from the fields to find her husband dead. 'He was a loving and caring man,' she said, weeping quietly.
'But he couldn't take any more. The mental anguish was too much. We have lost everything.'
Shankara's crop had failed - twice. Of course, famine and pestilence are part of India's ancient story.
But the death of this respected farmer has been blamed on something far more modern and sinister: genetically modified crops.
Shankara, like millions of other Indian farmers, had been promised previously unheard of harvests and income if he switched from farming with traditional seeds to planting GM seeds instead.
Beguiled by the promise of future riches, he borrowed money in order to buy the GM seeds. But when the harvests failed, he was left with spiralling debts - and no income.
So Shankara became one of an estimated 125,000 farmers to take their own life as a result of the ruthless drive to use India as a testing ground for genetically modified crops.
The crisis, branded the 'GM Genocide' by campaigners, was highlighted recently when Prince Charles claimed that the issue of GM had become a 'global moral question' - and the time had come to end its unstoppable march.
Speaking by video link to a conference in the Indian capital, Delhi, he infuriated bio-tech leaders and some politicians by condemning 'the truly appalling and tragic rate of small farmer suicides in India, stemming... from the failure of many GM crop varieties'.
Ranged against the Prince are powerful GM lobbyists and prominent politicians, who claim that genetically modified crops have transformed Indian agriculture, providing greater yields than ever before.
The rest of the world, they insist, should embrace 'the future' and follow suit.
So who is telling the truth? To find out, I travelled to the 'suicide belt' in Maharashtra state.
What I found was deeply disturbing - and has profound implications for countries, including Britain, debating whether to allow the planting of seeds manipulated by scientists to circumvent the laws of nature.
For official figures from the Indian Ministry of Agriculture do indeed confirm that in a huge humanitarian crisis, more than 1,000 farmers kill themselves here each month.
Simple, rural people, they are dying slow, agonising deaths. Most swallow insecticide - a pricey substance they were promised they would not need when they were coerced into growing expensive GM crops.
It seems that many are massively in debt to local money-lenders, having over-borrowed to purchase GM seed.
Pro-GM experts claim that it is rural poverty, alcoholism, drought and 'agrarian distress' that is the real reason for the horrific toll.
But, as I discovered during a four-day journey through the epicentre of the disaster, that is not the full story.In one small village I visited, 18 farmers had committed suicide after being sucked into GM debts. In some cases, women have taken over farms from their dead husbands - only to kill themselves as well.
Latta Ramesh, 38, drank insecticide after her crops failed - two years after her husband disappeared when the GM debts became too much.
She left her ten-year-old son, Rashan, in the care of relatives. 'He cries when he thinks of his mother,' said the dead woman's aunt, sitting listlessly in shade near the fields.
Village after village, families told how they had fallen into debt after being persuaded to buy GM seeds instead of traditional cotton seeds.
The price difference is staggering: £10 for 100 grams of GM seed, compared with less than £10 for 1,000 times more traditional seeds.
But GM salesmen and government officials had promised farmers that these were 'magic seeds' - with better crops that would be free from parasites and insects.
Indeed, in a bid to promote the uptake of GM seeds, traditional varieties were banned from many government seed banks.
The authorities had a vested interest in promoting this new biotechnology. Desperate to escape the grinding poverty of the post-independence years, the Indian government had agreed to allow new bio-tech giants, such as the U.S. market-leader Monsanto, to sell their new seed creations.
In return for allowing western companies access to the second most populated country in the world, with more than one billion people, India was granted International Monetary Fund loans in the Eighties and Nineties, helping to launch an economic revolution.
But while cities such as Mumbai and Delhi have boomed, the farmers' lives have slid back into the dark ages.
Though areas of India planted with GM seeds have doubled in two years - up to 17 million acres - many famers have found there is a terrible price to be paid.
Far from being 'magic seeds', GM pest-proof 'breeds' of cotton have been devastated by bollworms, a voracious parasite.
Nor were the farmers told that these seeds require double the amount of water. This has proved a matter of life and death.
With rains failing for the past two years, many GM crops have simply withered and died, leaving the farmers with crippling debts and no means of paying them off.
Having taken loans from traditional money lenders at extortionate rates, hundreds of thousands of small farmers have faced losing their land as the expensive seeds fail, while those who could struggle on faced a fresh crisis.
When crops failed in the past, farmers could still save seeds and replant them the following year.
But with GM seeds they cannot do this. That's because GM seeds contain so- called 'terminator technology', meaning that they have been genetically modified so that the resulting crops do not produce viable seeds of their own.
As a result, farmers have to buy new seeds each year at the same punitive prices. For some, that means the difference between life and death.
Take the case of Suresh Bhalasa, another farmer who was cremated this week, leaving a wife and two children.
As night fell after the ceremony, and neighbours squatted outside while sacred cows were brought in from the fields, his family had no doubt that their troubles stemmed from the moment they were encouraged to buy BT Cotton, a geneticallymodified plant created by Monsanto.
'We are ruined now,' said the dead man's 38-year-old wife. 'We bought 100 grams of BT Cotton. Our crop failed twice. My husband had become depressed. He went out to his field, lay down in the cotton and swallowed insecticide.'
Villagers bundled him into a rickshaw and headed to hospital along rutted farm roads. 'He cried out that he had taken the insecticide and he was sorry,' she said, as her family and neighbours crowded into her home to pay their respects. 'He was dead by the time they got to hospital.'
Asked if the dead man was a 'drunkard' or suffered from other 'social problems', as alleged by pro-GM officials, the quiet, dignified gathering erupted in anger. 'No! No!' one of the dead man's brothers exclaimed. 'Suresh was a good man. He sent his children to school and paid his taxes.
'He was strangled by these magic seeds. They sell us the seeds, saying they will not need expensive pesticides but they do. We have to buy the same seeds from the same company every year. It is killing us. Please tell the world what is happening here.'
Monsanto has admitted that soaring debt was a 'factor in this tragedy'. But pointing out that cotton production had doubled in the past seven years, a spokesman added that there are other reasons for the recent crisis, such as 'untimely rain' or drought, and pointed out that suicides have always been part of rural Indian life.
Officials also point to surveys saying the majority of Indian farmers want GM seeds - no doubt encouraged to do so by aggressive marketing tactics.
During the course of my inquiries in Maharastra, I encountered three 'independent' surveyors scouring villages for information about suicides. They insisted that GM seeds were only 50 per cent more expensive - and then later admitted the difference was 1,000 per cent.
(A Monsanto spokesman later insisted their seed is 'only double' the price of 'official' non-GM seed - but admitted that the difference can be vast if cheaper traditional seeds are sold by 'unscrupulous' merchants, who often also sell 'fake' GM seeds which are prone to disease.)
With rumours of imminent government compensation to stem the wave of deaths, many farmers said they were desperate for any form of assistance. 'We just want to escape from our problems,' one said. 'We just want help to stop any more of us dying.'
Prince Charles is so distressed by the plight of the suicide farmers that he is setting up a charity, the Bhumi Vardaan Foundation, to help those affected and promote organic Indian crops instead of GM.
India's farmers are also starting to fight back. As well as taking GM seed distributors hostage and staging mass protests, one state government is taking legal action against Monsanto for the exorbitant costs of GM seeds.
This came too late for Shankara Mandauker, who was 80,000 rupees (about £1,000) in debt when he took his own life. 'I told him that we can survive,' his widow said, her children still by her side as darkness fell. 'I told him we could find a way out. He just said it was better to die.'
But the debt does not die with her husband: unless she can find a way of paying it off, she will not be able to afford the children's schooling. They will lose their land, joining the hordes seen begging in their thousands by the roadside throughout this vast, chaotic country.
Cruelly, it's the young who are suffering most from the 'GM Genocide' - the very generation supposed to be lifted out of a life of hardship and misery by these 'magic seeds'.
Here in the suicide belt of India, the cost of the genetically modified future is murderously high.
Why don’t I believe in God? No, no no, why do YOU believe in God? Surely the burden of proof is on the believer. You started all this. If I came up to you and said, “Why don’t you believe I can fly?” You’d say, “Why would I?” I’d reply, “Because it’s a matter of faith.” If I then said, “Prove I can’t fly. Prove I can’t fly see, see, you can’t prove it can you?” You’d probably either walk away, call security or throw me out of the window and shout, ‘’F—ing fly then you lunatic.”Read the whole thing at The Wall Street Journal.
This, is of course a spirituality issue, religion is a different matter. As an atheist, I see nothing “wrong” in believing in a god. I don’t think there is a god, but belief in him does no harm. If it helps you in any way, then that’s fine with me. It’s when belief starts infringing on other people’s rights when it worries me. I would never deny your right to believe in a god. I would just rather you didn’t kill people who believe in a different god, say. Or stone someone to death because your rulebook says their sexuality is immoral. It’s strange that anyone who believes that an all-powerful all-knowing, omniscient power responsible for everything that happens, would also want to judge and punish people for what they are. From what I can gather, pretty much the worst type of person you can be is an atheist. The first four commandments hammer this point home. There is a god, I’m him, no one else is, you’re not as good and don’t forget it. (Don’t murder anyone, doesn’t get a mention till number 6.)
When confronted with anyone who holds my lack of religious faith in such contempt, I say, “It’s the way God made me.”
(click to enlarge each image)
Watch the full episode. See more American Masters.
'All I Want for Christmas’ Science Gallery Greeting Card. Design by Shaun O’Boyle and Luke McManus. Inside message: Season’s Greetings. Card size: 210cm x 148.5cm.from DangerousMinds(via BB Submitterator)
This ‘All I Want for Christmas’ greeting card from Science Gallery is guaranteed to totally baffle your relatives this holiday season. Try it out. The card sells for €2.50.
The Zuckerberg Revolution
By Neal Gabler
America's favorite boy genius, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, has announced a new form of messaging. E-mail, the last Internet link to traditional, epistolary, interpersonal communication, is, he said, outmoded. Young people, by which he meant younger than his own 26 years, desired something more nimble for their iPads, mobile phones and other devices. What he proposed was a "social inbox" where users could readily access messages from friends and then sort them — sort of a cross between instant messaging and Twitter.
We are so accustomed by now to declarations of new technological revolutions that another one hardly gets noticed, especially when it comes to finding new ways of minimizing how we communicate with each other. And it is entirely possible that this proposed geological change will be no more geological than all those other alleged game-changers. But whether his messaging system really transforms how people communicate or not, Zuckerberg issued what amounts to a manifesto that in its own terse way conveys what is already altering our lives — not only how we interact but also how we think and feel. It may even challenge the very idea of serious ideas. Call it Zuckerberg's Revolution.
It qualifies as a revolution because how we communicate largely defines what we communicate. You know: "The medium is the message." When Johannes Gutenberg invented the first movable-type printing press, it was rightly considered one of the signal moments in human history. By allowing books to be mass produced, Gutenberg's press had the immediate effect of disseminating ideas far and wide, but it also had the more powerful and less immediate effect of changing the very construction of thought — through typography.
The social theorist Marshall McLuhan, in his book "The Gutenberg Galaxy," posited that the printing press resulted in what he called "typographic man" — humans with a new consciousness shaped by the non-visual, non-auditory culture of print. He felt that print's uniformity, its immutability, its rigidity, its logic led to a number of social transformations, among which were the rise of rationalism and of the scientific method. In facilitating reason, print also facilitated complex ideas. It was no accident that it coincided with the Renaissance. Print made us think better or, at least, with greater discipline. In effect, the printing press created the modern mind.
Writing scarcely 20 years after McLuhan, in 1985, Neil Postman, in his path-breaking book "Amusing Ourselves to Death," saw the handwriting — or rather the images — on the wall. He lamented the demise of print under the onslaught of the visual, thanks largely to television. Like McLuhan, Postman felt that print culture helped create thought that was rational, ordered and engaging, and he blamed TV for making us mindless. Print not only welcomed ideas, it was essential to them. Television not only repelled ideas, it was inimical to them.
One wonders what Postman — who died the same year Facebook's precursor went online — would have thought of Zuckerberg's Revolution. Facebook is still typographically dependent. Its messages are basically printed notes. But contradicting Postman, these bits of print are no more hospitable to real ideas than the television culture Postman reviled. Indeed, in making his "social inbox" announcement, Zuckerberg introduced seven principles that he said were the basis of communication 2.0. Messages have to be seamless, informal, immediate, personal, simple, minimal and short.
As Zuckerberg no doubt recognizes, these principles are all of a piece. The seamless, informal, immediate, personal, simple, minimal and short communication is not one that is likely to convey, let alone work out, ideas, great or not. Facebook, Twitter, Habbo, MyLife and just about every other social networking site pare everything down to noun and verb and not much more. The sites, and the information on them, billboard our personal blathering, the effluvium of our lives, and they wind up not expanding the world but shrinking it to our own dimensions. You could call this a metaphor for modern life, increasingly narcissistic and trivial, except that the sites and the posts are modern life for hundreds of millions of people.
Which is where the revolutionary aspect comes in. Gutenberg's Revolution transformed the world by broadening it, by proliferating ideas. Zuckerberg's Revolution also may change consciousness, only this time by razing what Gutenberg had helped erect. The more we text and Twitter and "friend," abiding by the haiku-like demands of social networking, the less likely we are to have the habit of mind or the means of expressing ourselves in interesting and complex ways.
That makes Zuckerberg the anti-Gutenberg. He has facilitated a typography in which complexity is all but impossible and meaninglessness reigns supreme. To the extent that ideas matter, we are no longer amusing ourselves to death. We are texting ourselves to death.
Ideas, of course, will survive, but more and more they will live at the margins of culture; more and more they will be a private reserve rather than a general fund. Meanwhile, everything at the cultural center militates against the sort of serious engagement that McLuhan described and that Postman celebrated.
McLuhan understood that print would eventually give way to electronic media, and that these new media would create his famous "global village," though it is nevertheless ironic that typography, which he thought engendered isolation, would in digital form lead to tens of millions of people calling themselves "friends."
Postman was more apocalyptic. He believed that a reading society was also a thinking society. No real reading, no real thought. Still, he couldn't have foreseen that a reading society in which print that was overwhelmingly seamless, informal, personal, short et al would be a society in which that kind of reading would force thought out — a society in which tens of millions of people feel compelled to tell tens of millions of other people that they are eating a sandwich or going to a movie or watching a TV show. So Zuckerberg's Revolution has a corollary that one might call Zuckerberg's Law: Empty communications drive out significant ones.
Gutenberg's Revolution left us with a world that was intellectually rich. Zuckerberg's portends one that is all thumbs and no brains.
Neal Gabler is at work on a biography of Edward M. Kennedy.
Copyright © 2010, Los Angeles Times
While Bill O’Reilly and David Letterman sit wondering where all the electric cars are, Director Chris Paine has actually been out there documenting their resurgence. The result is his documentary “Revenge of the Electric Car”, a sequel to the hit 2006 film “Who Killed the Electric Car?”.from Ecorazzi
With their official Facebook page hitting 10,000 fans this week, the first trailer for the flick (complete with thumping Gregorian chants) is now online. In an email to AutoblogGreen, the producers wrote, “The fact that so many people want to see this film and spread the word proves how important it is for everyone to learn about electric vehicles as an alternative to gasoline-powered cars and to be informed about new developments in EV production and what kind of options there are out there for consumers ready to shift into an electric gear.”
Check out the trailer below.
The original article with more links and info is HERE. Thanks BoingBoingThis tube-nosed fruit bat—which became a Web sensation as "Yoda bat"—is just one of the roughly 200 species encountered during two scientific expeditions to Papua New Guinea in 2009, scientists announced in October.
Though seen on previous expeditions, the bat has yet to be formally documented as a new species, or even named. Like other fruit bats, though, it disperses seeds from the fruit in its diet, perhaps making the flying mammal crucial to its tropical rain forest ecosystem.This unidentified purple octopus is one of 11 potentially new species found during a July deep-sea expedition off Canada's Atlantic coast.
The 20-day expedition aimed to uncover relationships between cold-water coral and other bottom-dwelling creatures in a pristine yet "alien" environment, according to the researchers' blog.A new leech king of the jungle, Tyrannobdella rex—or "tyrant leech king"—was discovered in the remote Peruvian Amazon, National Geographic News reported in April.
The up-to-three-inch-long (about seven-centimeter-long) leech has large teeth, like its dinosaur namesake Tyrannosaurus rex. What's more, the newfound critter's "naughty bits are rather small," noted study co-author Mark Siddall, curator of invertebrate zoology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.
For these reasons and more, the bizarre bloodsucker is an editors' pick for one of the oddest new species of 2010.Using its fins to walk, rather than swim, along the ocean floor in an undated picture, the pink handfish is one of nine newly named species described in a scientific review of the handfish family released in May.
Only four specimens of the elusive four-inch (ten-centimeter) pink handfish have ever been found, and all of those were collected from areas around the city of Hobart (map), on the Australian island of Tasmania.Squid? Worm? Initially, this new species—with bristle-based "paddles" for swimming and tentacles on its head—so perplexed Census of Marine Life researchers that they threw in the towel and simply called it squidworm, National Geographic News reported in November.
Found via remotely operated vehicle about 1.7 miles (2.8 kilometers) under the Celebes Sea (see map) in 2007, the four-inch-long (ten-centimeter-long) creature turned out to be the first member of a new family in the Polychaeta class of segmented worms.Boasting a tail three times the length of its head, the newly described long-tailed slug is found only in the high mountains of the Malaysian part of Borneo, scientists said in April.
The new species shoots its mate with "love darts" made of calcium carbonate and spiked with hormones—hence its nickname: ninja slug. Scientists believe this Cupid-like behavior may increase reproductive success.new monkey species in Myanmar is so snub-nosed that rainfall is said to makes it sneeze—but that's apparently the least of its problems, conservationists announced in October.
The only scientifically observed specimen (pictured) had been killed by local hunters the time researchers found it—and was eaten soon after.A new species of armored, wood-eating catfish (pictured underwater) found in the Amazon rain forest feeds on a fallen tree in the Santa Ana River in Peru in 2006.
Other so-called suckermouth armored catfish species use their unique teeth to scrape organic material from the surfaces of submerged wood. But the new, as yet unnamed, species is among the dozen or so catfish species known to actually ingest wood, National Geographic News reported in September.Nosing around for "lost" amphibian species in western Colombia in September, scientists stumbled across three entirely new species—including this beaked toad.
"Its long, pointy, snoutlike nose reminds me of the nefarious villain Mr. Burns from The Simpsons television series," expedition leader Robin Moore said in a November statement.You could call it the surprise du jour: A popular food on Vietnamese menus has turned out to be a lizard previously unknown to science, scientists said in November.
What's more, the newfound Leiolepis ngovantrii is no run-of-the-mill reptile—the all-female species reproduces via cloning, without the need for male lizards.
Read more: "New Self-Cloning Lizard Found in Vietnam Restaurant."
With his eccentric personal life and air of mystery, the flamboyant WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange seems to be doing his best to impersonate a James Bond villain.A few more good pieces: Debating the changing nature of protest, Michael Moore "'Leaks Don't Kill People, Secrets Do" , WikiLeaks and 9/11: What if?
How appropriate, then, that he has chosen what looks like an 007 film set as the back-up store for the thousands of confidential emails and documents that have shaken the world. These pictures show the Pionen data centre, 100ft below ground in a former Cold War nuclear bunker, where all the WikiLeaks files are being kept.
Nerve centre: Super-servers which act for storage for many companies are also used by WikiLeaks to store its information
U-boat back-up: Submarine engines are used as emergency generators at the Bahnhof internet service provider, in Stockholm, Sweden
The vast cave, drilled into granite under the Vita Berg Park in Stockholm, houses dozens of computer servers used as storage by many companies. Complete with a 'floating' conference room, suspended glass corridors, lunar landscape flooring, designer furniture, and even, intriguingly, German U-boat engines as back-up generators, all that is missing is the bleached-blond Assange himself, stroking a white cat.
The disused bunker was reopened in 2008 with its futuristic design the brainchild of Swedish architects Albert France-Lanord, who were inspired by Bond sets created by Sir Kenneth Adams. The brutalist design is softened by plants kept alive by brilliant solar lighting and artificial waterfalls. While on the run from Swedish and American authorities, Assange has had to use this secure base for his files.
Chilly reception: The bunker, drilled into granite under the Vita Berg Park, could withstand a nuclear attack
Plant life: The offices feature lunar-landscape flooring, glass corridors and a 'floating' conference room
WikiLeaks was hosted by internet retailer Amazon but it was kicked off its website following intense pressure from American politicians. Assange then used a French firm before being expelled from there as well. As a result, WikiLeaks has set up numerous 'domain names' in dozens of countries, each linked to one that keeps copies of the original files. Assange has turned to Sweden because the country's laws are some of the best in the world for protecting the work of freedom of speech campaigners.
Under Swedish law, WikiLeaks cannot be prosecuted and neither can the people who pass it information. Wikileaks is funded by a mixture of public donations, help from Assange's wealthy patrons and, so far as anyone can tell, a fair bit by Assange himself. But the cost of this storage will be very little, because although Assange's team have released several million documents, in data terms this is not a large amount. Everything WikiLeaks has in its possession could probably be stored on a high-capacity memory stick. However, putting it into the trust of this set-up - which any self-respecting Bond villain would be proud of - must surely pander to Julian Assange's huge ego.
Space age: Under Swedish law, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange cannot be prosecuted for publishing the sensitive information
Rock solid: The entrance to the Pionen high-security computer storage facility
from POPSCI.com via BoingBoing
"BacillaFilla," is the pet-name given by University of Newcastle researchers to a gengineered bacterium based on Bacillus subtilis that has been modified to fill and bond cracks in cement caused by earthquakes and other violence. The bacteria burrow into the concrete until they have filled all its cracks, then they politely turn into calcium carbonate and die.The researchers have tweaked it's genetic properties such that it only begins to germinate when it comes in contact with the highly-specific pH of concrete. Once the cells germinate, they are programmed to crawl as deep as they can into cracks in the concrete, where quorum sensing lets them know when enough bacteria have accumulated.
That accumulation lets the bacteria know they've reached the deepest part of the crack, at which point the cells begin to develop into bacterial filaments, cells that produce calcium carbonate, and cells that secrete a kind of bacterial glue that binds everything together. Once hardened, the bacteria is essentially as strong as the concrete itself, restoring structural strength and adding life to the surrounding concrete.
The bacteria also contains a self-destruct gene that keeps it from wildly proliferating away from its concrete target, because a runaway patch of bacterial concrete that continued to grow despite all efforts to stop it would be somewhat annoying
Directed, written and acted by teenagers Charlie Davis, David Williams and Jimmy Robinson, 1967’s The Jungle chronicles the exploits of Philadelphia’s 12th and Oxford street gang. It is amateur film making that transcends its limitations and achieves a certain rough artfulness.
With its starkly poetic black and white cinematography, urban rhythm and streetwise jargon The Jungle recalls Shirley Clarke’s The Cool World and the Beat-era improvs of Cassavetes’ Shadows. The fact that theThe Jungle holds its own against some of the sixties more legendary indie films makes it somewhat disappointing that none of the people involved with the production of the film went on to make more movies.
There’s little info on the internet regarding The Jungle, but the I found the following comment from Youtube compelling:This film (The Jungle) was shown along with slide shows of dead teens on slabs in the 70’s in schools around Philly to try to stop the gang violence at that time. In the early ‘70s, Philly led the nation in gang-related deaths at around 40 a year.Death Row inmate, Philly gang member and writer Reginald S. Lewis recalls the Oxford Street gangs:I saw the 70’s usher in the era of blackploitation flicks such as Superfly, The Mack, Come Back, Charleston Blue, and even slickly packaged Hollywood gangster movies like The Godfather. This was also an era that bred hustlers-turned-authors IceBerg Slim and Donald Goines, and some of the most ruthless true-life gangsters this country has ever seen.Teenage wasteland, Philly-style.
In my hometown, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, vicious black street gangs seemingly ruled every inch of the black community, and it was a dangerous time to be a young black teenager living in the treacherous terrain of the urban wilds. My parents did all they could to keep my two older brothers and me from being drafted into the notorious “12th & Oxford Street Gang,” one of the largest, fiercest black youth gangs in the history of Philadelphia.
The Oxford Street gang had well over 500 members, divided into gradations and ranks, according to age. There were the “Pee Wees,” “The Midgets,” “The Juniors,” and “The Seniors,” and “The Old Heads.” There was also 8th & Oxford, 15 & Oxford, and “Uptown Oxford Street,” which was 20th Street, and beyond. These divisions boosted the ranks into thousands.”
National Geographic Channel’s Explorer: Born to Rage? investigates the discovery behind a single “warrior gene” directly associated with violent behavior. With bullying and violent crime making headlines, this controversial finding stirs up the nature-versus-nurture debate. Now, Henry Rollins goes in search of carriers from diverse, sometimes violent backgrounds who agree to be tested for the genetic mutation. Who has the warrior gene? And are all violent people carriers? The results turn assumptions upside down.”‘Born To Rage’ airs on December 14. Here’s some of what you can look forward to.
I’ll be so sad to see Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) go, but I suspect we haven’t seen the last of him. Grayson is one of the few Democrats to show any kind of a spine against the GOP. He’s practically the only Democrat to say the worlds “class war” because he’s not a pussy and he doesn’t mince words. This clip, of Grayson comically flaying the millionaires on Fox News shilling for the continuation of the Bush tax cuts, is Grayson at his straight-talking best. After all, if something saved you six or even seven figures in taxes, you’d probably be for it, too…They want tax cuts for the rich because they want a tax cut for themselves. What do I mean by that? Let’s take a look at the people who are really in charge, the ones who actually run the Republican party.
Let’s start with this gentleman here, the man with the cigar, Rush Limbaugh. Doesn’t he look happy? According according to Newsweek, he makes $58.7 million a year, and extending the tax cuts means he’ll have another $2.7 million. Mega dittos, Rush, and mega money. Let’s look at the next one.
Here’s Glenn Beck, according to Newsweek Glenn Beck makes $33 million a year as a pundit and extending the Bush Tax Cuts means a cool $1.5 million for Glenn bBeck’s ongoing imitation of Howard Beale from Network. Now let’s look at the next one.
Sean Hannity. Newsweek says that Sean Hannity, this man of the people makes $22 million a year from his act on Fox. And that means the Bush Tax cuts mean an extra $1 million. $1 million for Sean Hannity. Maybe he can afford some anger management classes. Let’s take a look at the next one.
Bill O’Reilly. He makes a modest $20 million a year from his gig on Fox. That means that the Bush tax cuts give him not quite seven figures, nearly $914,000 of extra cash. It’s easy to see why Bill O’Reilly wants to see the Bush tax cuts extended. And I have to say, he’s no pinhead when it comes to that.
And Now, Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin has made $14 million this year from cashing in on her fame. In fact, she’s done a better job of turning fame into cash than anyone in American history. $14 million. So she wants the Bush tax cuts extended so she can make an extra cool $638,000. As she was—as she would gesture (shoulder shrug.)
Dec. 12's issue of Time casts Wikileaks in a positive light, echoing a classic image of American censorship and pointing out that harm is not yet evident in the candor forced upon an unwilling government. Imagine how sad it would be for Fareed Zakaria's lovely smile to be covered thus! America's mainstream media often seems resentful of Wikileaks' beating it, bullying it and spoon-feeding it, but has perhaps rediscovered something it loathes far more: Joementum. Here's the cover story, by Massimo Calabresi.From BoingBoing [via @kaepora]
Instead in 2011 I will follow a million people to see what's inside the minds of the world. I always do more listening than talking. PEace
Lstpt. I don't look to be followed.I only tweet from my iPad.I'm deeper than 140 and refuse to do it from phone like it's some human remote
@rolfmohr thus I became a twitiot tonight Goodnight and great morning from beautiful Johannesburg South Africa Chuckd@publicenemy.com
@rolfmohr I in turn will use Twitter tofollow people instead ofthe other way around.I rather have 200 focused people than 3 million twitiots
@rolfmohr Simple I don't tweet. I'm deeper than 140 characters And I only do it from my iPad not my phone I'm am not to be followed.
When I get back to NYC in a week to turn over some desks..oh Yeah ,like said I come from a people who will tell folk to keep their FKN money
But ill be damn if I'm allowing that bullshit to infiltrate Africa into Amerfrica . Nope. So Glen Friedman tell Russell to join me when I ..
.. true HipHop generation led by the love of it behind an unknown door. 20 years since the PE anti Semitic charges we now see your results
..Had ourselves.. Soul is a bullish repellant. Without esteem and self confidence it's easy to image inject a mass. This is 35 and under ..
..Seem like you are wasting your lifetime being normal. I say this in closing. In my day black people could fight off bullsht because we..
A city block. Nervous. There are plenty of people who happy nobody knows them , so they can continue to FK peoples esteem up and make folk..
But your word sometimes must help and inspire. So I damn their exploiters who wait for their piece inthe back. LA Reid probably can't walk
Even if we talk Rick Ross or Nicki Minaj their obligation is to somehow give sometime not TAKE, and realize how to be around more than a min
I waited to be 50 so I could brag about it. And witnessing the mass debris of artists the past 20 years who now know that their word is bond
..Black celebrity must know that no one owns a culture they only borrow it because it comes from the people thus must return in high spirit
These are the people behind the barrage of image who some of them believe they are celebrities themselves. But a celebrity especially a
They take car service from point to point rather than a cab or a train. I'm talking entertainment execs usually the black ones in charge.
When a MF sits their ass up in a Viacom office they have little idea of the power emitted. It goes beyond their Job. You never know them.
I traveled the world to 76 countries in person not to have projected holograms make human beings feel inferior to the guise of celebrity.
I speak when I recognize crucial turning points.Africa can be the center of the hip hop planet on it's own terms it can't be steered from NY
I say all this tonight because a potential image and cultural poison has been planted inAfrica to create Amerfrica the nerve of businessmen
I tell Lyor Cohen at Warner don't be hidden and not so invisible when it comes down to being in charge of artists look but hate black folk
Clive Davis behind lives in some high rise , Jimmy Iovine lives in Malibu he's behind 50 EM Dre and made a lotta green off black bloodshed
Again I carry nothing but my head and heart , people should keep their jobs but I'm here to put FEAR into their bosses again people you dt C
He's gotta keep his job and satify his bosses in NYC HQ . So my goals are to fk his bosses up. We cannot afford Africa to become Amerfrica
But they are invited into the homes and heads.I'm trying to tell the bro here in AfricaMTV that turning Africa into Amerfrica Is not the way
Hot 97 broadcasts to millions but no one knows where the DJs live If somebody knocks on their home with that BS they the first to call cops
Something young heads can feel good about. If a so called celebrity is only looking for money from the people without even giving real talk
Radio DJs say zero for the people thus they are responsible for the condition. If you 40 talking to 20 year olds, your old asses should say.
Be accountable to the people and stop making young people feel inferior. They have the artists afraid by threatening to cut off their money
Start hiding when I'm in their building. It's funny I won't Nothing from them but to be accountable oh yeah just lil ol me no bodyguards..
MTV BET radio conglomerates , usually the men who pay the people you know and sometimes love. I'm 5-9 don't have a weapon and those fools ..
I don't blame people, I tell them don't be alarmed when I kick the gatekeepers asses Corporations and executives you don't know or ever see
Clubs are louder than ever because people ain't saying sht Can't look eye to eye And rather text than talk to someone a foot away. Lastly.
You have to one day think of yourself as better than an image thrown at you. It's ok to tell a person bragging about their $ Yeah. ..so ?
It's not a rant it's the clear and obvious truth never have we looked so good and been so hollow. Black americans are becoming mannequins
Thus I am done being a twitiot and picking Electronic cotton and diggin digital ditches tonight from SA where a nation of millions are movin
Last point Black america gotta nerve to say what work we ain't gonna do, claiming we picked sht..WE ain't did sht our people did it w skill
Trust me Jay Z Beyonce Diddy probably run from their family. Can you imagine them at a cookout?... probably got security and bodyguards
The fakeness of black celebrity is this. They are a sliver away from the poverty and drama of their own family.It's not the blue blood elite
@sunspotjonz Multi tasking like hit beats in a club time in your own business but fly the plane dude, cmon.
@sunspotjonz yup make yourself a tool I come here and the amount of people WORKing at skill areas is boggling. Men and women doing work
In the unitedstates continued genocide is backed by the LAW.Protecting the hood is considered taking the LAW into your own hands =violation
There are places in this world that taken THUGs who took the hood for granted and had their heads chopped off and put on posts in town..
What kind of country makes smart people wanna reduce and dumb themselves down? I don't want a FKN pilot who comes an tells me he makes beats
And I'm a knick fan but cmon money ain't everything . And in real life it's a tool remember make yourselves valuable and money will come
The USA is like the NY Knicks last 10 years a lot a hype swollen pockets lazy as f"k and not got the nerve to swing on old championships
@BrazenWords well I just got of the stage in South Africa I clearly see how far black people have fallen off from black people home a
Take the dollar just don't believe it , they got the nerve to print in God We Trust . Americas god is a dog just ask my man Mike Vick
@MsTrinaAquarian personal substance usually ends up in the garbage or yard sales within a year. Salvation Army andvPAWN shops are loaded!
I always encouraged THUG mcs to stop BS in and their companies and Mgt to do prison tours ...but many were scared. It's not a place for lies
....knowledge wisdom and understanding qualities of life you can't but or get from a microwave Technology can teach the nxt generations But
No offense to the homeless , but I know people who live in a big ass house who are homeless like a MF. Inside designers are ....
Now that we are allowed to buy designer gear , the question is who designs our insides. Bling on the outside homeless on the inside.
Trust me black people I come from were skilled but they had their soul. Bold enough to tell fools I don't want your FKN money keep that sht!
Nothing worse than a person that knows better and does worse ..no one takes Sht to the grave. YOU are measured by word and deed ..MCs heed
@rappinhood PEace my brother from Brazil
I come from a legacy of people bold enough to tell a drug dealer pimp or govt we don't want your FKN money and not the least impressed ethr
That was to some peeps from Johannesburg South africa
@MrChuckD thank you for representing we are grateful for you your city and country PEace and luvout
@TDdaPG7 thank you sir AND your city and country we are humbled Mr T
