Monday, December 31, 2012
Sunday, December 30, 2012
Saturday, December 29, 2012
3D Photo Booth
In Tokyo you can pop into The World first 3D Photo booth and have a miniature model of you and your friends and family in 3D. You have to stand still for 15 mins while they scan you, you then have to wait for the models to be painted which can take 1 month. And it's only $250 per model.
Thanks, Presurfer
Friday, December 28, 2012
Thursday, December 27, 2012
Wednesday, December 26, 2012
One Minute of Good Advice From Steve Jobs
from Government Executive
BONUS:
Though he passed away more than a year ago, Steve Jobs legacy and lessons (both the good and bad) continue to shape our view of the world. The blog Inneractive recently uncovered a one minute video of Jobs sharing his vision of the world and, more importantly, his view on possibility. Jobs succinctly dissects the shortsightedness of the walls we build as we grow older to confine our own imagination.
His advice feels particularly applicable to those leaders striving to bring change to the federal government--a big ship that turns slowly, anchored by its own architecture and design. Jobs says the key is to realize that "everything around you you call life was made up by people who were no smarter than you--and you can change it."
It's an explication of the slogan that would come to define his company and his life's work: think different.
A short, must watch. Also a great way to start your week. Check it out below:
BONUS:
Tuesday, December 25, 2012
I’M DREAMING OF A BLACK CHRISTMAS: A GUIDE TO ENJOYING THE HOLIDAYS WITH AFROCENTRIC CHRISTMAS MUSIC
from DangerousMinds
Turkey Day has passed, and it is officially the Christmas season. As the Pamplona of Black Friday reminded us, this means an onslaught of fevered consumerism and fetishizaton of commodities and conspicuous consumption and all that other stuff that turns our stomachs. The complement to that consumerism is the hallmark corniness. “Peace on earth and goodwill towards men” can feel so cliche and forced when contrasted with the materialism of the spectacle. It’s easy to get a little contemptuous at Christmas.
It’s all reminiscent of an essay by (self-identified socialist) George Orwell, “Why Socialists Don’t Believe in Fun.” Writing under a pen name, Orwell starts the piece with an anecdote on Lenin reading Dickens’ A Christmas Carol; Lenin was on his death bed, and dismissed the feel-good classic as full of “bourgeois sentimentality.”
Orwell goes on to bemoan the cynicism of the anti-capitalist, how we can’t seem to enjoy anything too steeped in sentimentality, and I’d say he was pretty dead-on. So in the interest of avoiding our fuddy-duddy tendencies, allow me to show you one of my favorite Christmas genres: The Afrocentric Christmas Song.
Now when I say “Afrocentric” I am not talking about something performed by a black artist, or even a Christmas song in a traditionally Afrocentric genre. I’m talking about a song that portrays Christmas as explicitly black. Let’s start with “The Be-Bop Santa Claus,” by Babs Gonzalez.
This update of T’was the Night Before Christmas starts out with the line, “T’was the black before Christmas.” Now Babs was a bebop pioneer and poet, and used to go by the name “Ricardo Gonzalez” in an attempt to get into hotels that discriminated against black people; the line is an incredibly personal artistic comment. What follows is a perfectly painted picture primed for Reaganite propaganda: suede shoes, Cadillacs, applejack—it’s fantastically subversive, unapologetic, and self-aware.
Of course, I can’t resist including what’s essentially the white hipster version of the same artistic statement.
It’s quite the (ahem) “homage.” Paging Norman Mailer…
If “The Be-Bop Santa Claus” alludes to urban poverty, James Brown’s “Santa Claus, Go Straight to the Ghetto” leaves nothing to the imagination.
“Say It Loud—I’m Black and I’m Proud” had already come out by the time this song was released, so James Brown was already a floating signifier for the Black Power Movement. There are two reasons this is such an interesting extension of his career. First, it acknowledges black poverty as a pressing matter of social justice in a seemingly incongruously celebratory song. Second, the song applies Black Power politics to something as traditional as Christmas. (If I could add a third, I’d also say that this is just a sick jam, but I digress.)
This one, though, is my absolute favorite.
Performed by Teddy Vann and his daughter, Akim, “Santa Claus is a Black Man” is arguably the most adorable product of Black Power. I mean Jesus, look at that album cover! Look at her wee little black power fist and listen to her sweet, spastic, bubbly little voice!
Politically, it’s a perfect delivery. You have a black child taking a spin on “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus,” with hook of, “and he’s handsome, like my Daddy, too.” Aiming something specifically at children to counteract racist depictions of blackness is particularly salient when delivered by a child.
Interestingly, towards the end, Akim says, “I want to wish everybody Happy Kwanzaa.” Kwanzaa had been introduced in 1966, and the song came out in 1973. At first, Kwanzaa founder and activist Maulana Karenga posited Kwanzaa as a way to “give Blacks an alternative to the existing holiday and give Blacks an opportunity to celebrate themselves and history, rather than simply imitate the practice of the dominant society.” After realizing that American black people were rarely willing to give up the holiday of the oppressor, Karenga softened his position to allow Kwanzaa to be celebrated alongside Christmas—no need to be sectarian when it comes to Santa Claus!
Now, none of these songs succeed in making Christmas “cool”- just the opposite, in fact; they’re as rife with schlocky sentimentality as any Christmas song, even though they’re great songs. But what’s so bad about sentimental and schlocky, anyway? Does Wal-Mart win if we enjoy a little syrupy holiday cheer? These songs are still doing something beautiful by using a traditional event as a site of counter-hegemony. They represent the underrepresented and condemn racism and poverty, and they do it all with a little bit of mawkish sincerity and delight.
This Christmas, why not resist our inner-Lenins and wallow in a little sentimentalism? It was good enough for James Brown.
Monday, December 24, 2012
There Is No Stopping Climate Change Unless We Can Mobilize Against Plutocracy
from AlterNet By George Monbiot
Humankind’s greatest crisis coincides with the rise of an ideology that makes it impossible to address. By the late 1980s, when it became clear that manmade climate change endangered the living planet and its people, the world was in the grip of an extreme political doctrine, whose tenets forbid the kind of intervention required to arrest it.Neoliberalism, also known as market fundamentalism or laissez-faire economics, purports to liberate the market from political interference. The state, it asserts, should do little but defend the realm, protect private property and remove barriers to business. In practice it looks nothing like this. What neoliberal theorists call shrinking the state looks more like shrinking democracy: reducing the means by which citizens can restrain the power of the elite. What they call “the market” looks more like the interests of corporations and the ultra-rich(1). Neoliberalism appears to be little more than a justification for plutocracy.
The doctrine was first applied in Chile in 1973, as former students of the University of Chicago, schooled in Milton Friedman’s extreme prescriptions and funded by the CIA, worked alongside General Pinochet to impose a programme that would have been impossible in a democratic state. The result was an economic catastrophe, but one in which the rich – who took over Chile’s privatised industries and unprotected natural resources – prospered exceedingly(2).
The creed was taken up by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. It was forced upon the poor world by the IMF and the World Bank. By the time James Hansen presented the first detailed attempt to model future temperature rises to the US Senate in 1988(3 [3]), the doctrine was being implanted everywhere.
As we saw in 2007 and 2008 (when neoliberal governments were forced to abandon their principles to bail out the banks), there could scarcely be a worse set of circumstances for addressing a crisis of any kind. Until it has no choice, the self-hating state will not intervene, however acute the crisis or grave the consequences. Neoliberalism protects the interests of the elite against all comers.
Preventing climate breakdown – the four, five or six degrees of warming now predicted for this century by green extremists like, er, the World Bank, the International Energy Agency and PriceWaterhouseCoopers(4 [4],5 [5],6 [6]) – means confronting the oil, gas and coal industry. It means forcing that industry to abandon the four-fifths or more of fossil fuel reserves that we cannot afford to burn(7 [7]). It means cancelling the prospecting and development of new reserves – what’s the point if we can’t use current stocks? – and reversing the expansion of any infrastructure (such as airports) that cannot be run without them.
But the self-hating state cannot act. Captured by interests that democracy is supposed to restrain, it can only sit on the road, ears pricked and whiskers twitching, as the truck thunders towards it. Confrontation is forbidden, action is a mortal sin. You may, perhaps, disperse some money for new energy; you may not legislate against the old.
So Barack Obama pursues what he calls an “all of the above” policy: promoting wind, solar, oil and gas(8 [8]). Ed Davey, the British climate change secretary, launched an energy bill in the Commons last week whose purpose was to decarbonise the energy supply. In the same debate he promised that he would “maximise the potential” of oil and gas production in the North Sea and other offshore fields(9 [9]).
Lord Stern described climate change as “the greatest and widest-ranging market failure ever seen”(10 [10]). The useless Earth Summit in June; the feeble measures now being debated in Doha; the energy bill(11 [11]) and electricity demand reduction paper(12 [12]) launched in Britain last week (better than they might have been but unmatched to the scale of the problem) expose the greatest and widest ranging failure of market fundamentalism: its incapacity to address our existential crisis.
The 1000-year legacy of current carbon emissions is long enough to smash anything resembling human civilisation into splinters(13 [13]). Complex societies have sometimes survived the rise and fall of empires, plagues, wars and famines. They won’t survive six degrees of climate change, sustained for a millennium(14). In return for 150 years of explosive consumption, much of which does nothing to advance human welfare, we are atomising the natural world and the human systems that depend on it.
The climate summit (or foothill) in Doha and the sound and fury of the British government’s new measures probe the current limits of political action. Go further and you break your covenant with power, a covenant both disguised and validated by the neoliberal creed.
Neoliberalism is not the root of the problem: it is the ideology used, often retrospectively, to justify a global grab of power, public assets and natural resources by an unrestrained elite. But the problem cannot be addressed until the doctrine is challenged by effective political alternatives.
In other words, the struggle against climate change – and all the crises which now beset both human beings and the natural world – cannot be won without a wider political fight: a democratic mobilisation against plutocracy. I believe this should start with an effort to reform campaign finance: the means by which corporations and the very rich buy policies and politicians. Some of us will be launching a petition in the UK in the next few weeks, and I hope you will sign it.
But this is scarcely a beginning. We must start to articulate a new politics: one that sees intervention as legitimate, that contains a higher purpose than corporate emancipation disguised as market freedom, that puts the survival of people and the living world above the survival of a few favoured industries. In other words, a politics that belongs to us, not just the super-rich.
References:
1. See Colin Crouch, 2011. The Strange Non-Death of Neoliberalism. Polity Press, Cambridge.
2. Naomi Klein, 2007. The Shock Doctrine: the rise of disaster capitalism. Allen Lane, London.
3. http://www.nytimes.com/1988/06/24/us/global-warming-has-begun-expert-tells-senate.html [3]
4. Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Climate Analytics, November 2012. Turn Down the Heat: why a 4C warmer World Must be Avoided. Report for the World Bank.http://climatechange.worldbank.org/sites/default/files/Turn_Down_the_heat_Why_a_4_degree_centrigrade_warmer_world_must_be_avoided.pdf [4]
6. PriceWaterhouseCoopers, November 2012. Too late for two degrees? Low carbon economy index 2012. http://www.pwc.co.uk/sustainability-climate-change/publications/low-carbon-economy-index-overview.jhtml [6]
7. http://www.monbiot.com/2011/07/19/an-underground-national-park/ [7]
8. http://www.barackobama.com/energy-info/ [8]
9.http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmhansrd/cm121129/debtext/121129-0002.htm [9]
10. http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill/2012-2013/0100/130100.pdf [10]
11. Nicholas Stern, 2006. The Economics of Climate Change.
http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/d/Executive_Summary.pdf [11]13. Susan Solomon, Gian-Kasper Plattner, Reto Knutti, and Pierre Friedlingstein, 10th February 2009. Irreversible climate change due to carbon dioxide emissions. PNAS, vol. 106, no. 6, pp1704–1709. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0812721106.http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/01/28/0812721106.full.pdf+html [13]
14. I’m speaking loosely here, as Solomon et al propose that not 100% but around 40% of the CO2 produced this century will remain in the atmosphere until at least the year 3000. On the other hand, unrestrained emissions and global warming will not stop of their own accord in 2100: temperatures could rise well beyond 6C in the following century: without sharp mitigation now, we’re setting up 1,000 years of utter chaos.
Sunday, December 23, 2012
Vegetarians are more intelligent, says study
From The London Evening Standard
Frequently dismissed as cranks, their fussy eating habits tend to make them unpopular with dinner party hosts and guests alike.
But now it seems they may have the last laugh, with research showing vegetarians are more intelligent than their meat-eating friends.
A study of thousands of men and women revealed that those who stick to a vegetarian diet have IQs that are around five points higher than those who regularly eat meat.
Writing in the British Medical Journal, the researchers say it isn't clear why veggies are brainier - but admit the fruit and veg-rich vegetarian diet could somehow boost brain power.
The researchers, from the University of Southampton, tracked the fortunes of more than 8,000 volunteers for 20 years.
At the age of ten, the boys and girls sat a series of tests designed to determine their IQ.
When they reached the age of 30, they were asked whether they were vegetarian and their answers compared to their childhood IQ score.
Around four and a half per cent of the adults were vegetarian - a figure that is broadly in line with that found in the general population.
However, further analysis of the results showed those who were brainiest as children were more likely to have become vegetarian as adults, shunning both meat and fish.
The typical adult veggie had a childhood IQ of around 105 - around five points higher than those who continued to eat meat as they grew up.
The vegetarians were also more likely to have gained degrees and hold down high-powered jobs.
There was no difference in IQ between strict vegetarians and those who classed themselves as veggie but still ate fish or chicken.
However, vegans - vegetarians who also avoid dairy products - scored significantly lower, averaging an IQ score of 95 at the age of 10.
Researcher Dr Catharine Gale said there could be several explanations for the findings, including intelligent people being more likely to consider both animal welfare issues and the possible health benefits of a vegetarian diet.
Previous work has shown that vegetarians tend to have lower blood pressure and lower cholesterol, cutting their risk of heart attacks. They are also less likely to be obese.
Alternatively, a diet which is rich in fruit, vegetables and wholegrains may somehow boost brain power.
Dr Gale said: 'Although our results suggest that children who are more intelligent may be more likely to become vegetarian as adolescents or young adults, it does not rule out the possibility that such a diet might have some beneficial effect on subsequent cognitive performance.
'Might the nature of the vegetarians' diet have enhanced their apparently superior brain power? Was this the mechanism that helped them achieve the disproportionate nature of degrees?'
High-profile vegetarians include singers Paul McCartney and Morrissey and actress Jenny Seagrove.
Past exponents of a meat-free lifestyle include George Bernard Shaw and Benjamin Franklin.
Promoting the cause, Shaw said, 'A mind of the calibre of mine cannot drive its nutriment from cows', while Franklin stated that a vegetarian diet resulted in 'greater clearness of head and quicker comprehension'.
Liz O'Neill, of the Vegetarian Society, said: 'We've always known that vegetarianism is an intelligent, compassionate choice benefiting animals, people and the environment. Now, we've got the scientific evidence to prove it.
'Maybe that explains why many meat-reducers are keen to call themselves vegetarians when even they must know that vegetarians don't eat chicken, turkey or fish!'
Saturday, December 22, 2012
He Had You Hooked on the Beatles
CULTURAL CONVERSATION WITH GEORGE MARTIN - from WSJ.com
By MARC MYERS - Wiltshire, England
Moments after greeting this writer outside his 260-year-old summer home here, two hours west of London, Sir George Martin suggested we sit in a gazebo at the high end of a manicured lawn. "I used to do the mowing, but now I'm not allowed to operate heavy machinery," he said, grinning. Tall and more youthful than his 86 years, Mr. Martin strides with long, measured steps, his cobalt eyes alert with purpose. The problem is his ears. Mr. Martin no longer can hear music and he must rely on two hearing aids and lip-reading for conversations.Another great interview with Sir George Martin HERE.
In a cruel twist, rock's most famous record producer has become a victim of the very music he helped elevate to a classic art form. Long hours of exposure to loud sound in recording studios have inflicted permanent damage. It's a topic he talks about openly in "Produced by George Martin" (Eagle Rock), a BBC documentary that will be released on DVD in the U.S. on Tuesday.
The sole producer of the Beatles' recordings, with the exception of their album "Let It Be," Mr. Martin has worked with dozens of other artists, including Cilla Black, Shirley Bassey, Jeff Beck, John McLaughlin, the Who and Celine Dion. A winner of six Grammys, he still holds Billboard's record for producing the most No. 1 pop singles—23 in all—and had two titles bestowed on him by Queen Elizabeth.
"A producer's role is still a mystery to most music-listeners, isn't it?" said Mr. Martin, whose cellolike voice is as soothing as it is commanding. "Put simply, my job was to make sure recordings were artistically exceptional and commercially appealing, maximizing the qualities of artists and songs."
Mr. Martin's early magic can be heard in the "hooks" that kick off many of the Beatles' hit singles. These hooks include the opening drum roll on "She Loves You," the initial ringing guitar chord on "A Hard Day's Night" and the first yelp on "Help!"
"For 'Can't Buy Me Love' in early '64, I designed a catchy opener for Paul that used the tagline at the song's corners. If you could grab teens' imaginations right away over the radio, you'd have them."
Born in London in 1926, Mr. Martin taught himself piano and could play Rachmaninoff just by listening to recordings. He attended private school on a scholarship in 1937, and in 1943 enlisted in the Fleet Air Arm, Britain's naval aircraft unit. "Formal music studies for me didn't begin until I was 21, at London's Guildhall School in 1947," he said.
Urged by a mentor to interview at EMI, Mr. Martin was hired in 1950 to assist the head of Parlophone—EMI's smallest label. "When my boss retired in 1955, I was named the label's new director, which was a shock to me," he said. Over the next seven years, Mr. Martin recorded classical ensembles, jazz combos and comedians, including Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan.
In April 1962, Syd Coleman called. "Syd headed EMI's music-publishing unit. He asked me to hear a group managed by someone named Brian Epstein. When Brian came by and played their demo, I wasn't impressed. But when I met the Beatles soon after, they had so much charisma I offered them a studio test."
An hour-long test turned into weeks, and singles became hits. By 1965, Mr. Martin questioned his pay. "The head of EMI offered a raise, but it was so low compared to the revenue I was generating that I left to start my own company." With the formation of Associated Independent Recording (AIR), Mr. Martin was a free agent, and EMI hired him regularly to produce the Beatles and other artists.
In June 1965, Mr. Martin launched his rock-classical experiments, beginning with "Yesterday." "We had never done anything like that before—and no one else had either. When I first suggested adding a string quartet, Paul [McCartney] grimaced and said, 'I don't want Mantovani, thank you.' I said, 'It doesn't have to be like that—we can be more clinical. We can use a baroque string quartet.'"
When "Eleanor Rigby" was slated for recording a year later, Mr. McCartney pushed for strings. "My approach was greatly influenced by Bernard Herrmann and his film score for 'Psycho,'" Mr. Martin said. "He had a way of making violins sound fierce. That inspired me to have the strings play short notes forcefully, giving the song a nice punch."
Mr. Martin even played on a number of Beatles songs, including "In My Life" on "Rubber Soul." "I wrote a piano part that I couldn't perform fast enough. So I played the notes at half speed but an octave lower on the piano, recording at 15 inches per second. When I ran the tape back at 30 inches per second, the notes were at the right speed and in the correct octave. But the piano's personality also had changed, which is why it sounds like a harpsichord."
Mr. Martin's instrumental collages and overdubbing grew more imaginative on "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" in 1966 and '67. "On 'A Day in the Life,' we needed to bridge John's first half with the second half written by Paul. Paul suggested an orchestral orgasm, so I scored 24 measures, from the lowest note to the highest. I told the orchestra, 'Make your own way up there. If you're playing the same note as the chap next to you, you're wrong.'"
When our conversation turned to "Let It Be"—the Beatles' last prebreakup album release—the pain was still evident. "It's still a sword in my side and hard to discuss, even today. When we started in '68 and '69, John said to me, 'We don't want any of your production crap on this. We do it live. We're a good band. No overdubbing or editing.'"
But at the recording sessions, errors mounted, and upward of 50 takes were needed on some tracks. "We tried to assemble an album, warts and all, just as John had insisted. But it was a mess and shoved to one side. Later, I heard that John and George took the master tapes from EMI and gave them to [producer] Phil Spector, who did all the things that John wouldn't let me do. It was baffling."
By the late '70s, music was becoming harder for Mr. Martin to hear. "In the '60s, nobody warned us that listening to loud music for too long would cause damage. I was in the studio for 14 hours at a stretch and never let my ears repair. Today's headsets are causing the same problem for a new generation," said Mr. Martin, who is a vice president at Deafness Research UK, a London charity.
Before we headed indoors for tea, a final legacy question: How does it feel to be responsible for helping rock grow up and become timeless? "If I did, I didn't intend to," Mr. Martin said. "Rock should never grow up. It's the domain of young people and must stay young." A short pause followed. "You won't find me making any more rock and roll records."
Friday, December 21, 2012
Amazing discoveries in science fiction: Everyone in Star Wars might be illiterate
"It seems like all the characters in Star Wars learn how to do is punch certain buttons to make their machines do what they need to do, and everything else is left up to droids." Ryan Britt at Tor has an analysis on how all the citizens in George Lucas' space epic have culturally evolved to a state in which the written word has gone extinct and, as a result, no one can read or write. Consider this the next time you send a text with your voice, if you feel like giving yourself a small anxiety attack.via Boing Boing
Thursday, December 20, 2012
Grime Writer: detergent-filled graffiti pen
Grime Writer is a detergent-filled graffiti marker that cleans away street-filth to leave your message behind. There's a good chance that the graffiti you create with these is no more legal than any other kind -- there've been successful prosecutions against companies in the UK that paid "street teams" to "reverse-graffiti" their messages by using detergent and stencils to selectively clean away grime from public walls, leaving behind commercial messages.from, Boing BoingGrime Writer is a special chunky marker pen that can be filled with cleaning solution, and used to create art on a canvas of filth. Use it to tag your dirty vehicles & windows, or to transform dirt into artistic expression.
Much more socially acceptable than real graffiti and (more importantly) a lot less illegal - Grime Writer helps you leave your mark wherever you find muck. Use responsibly to help promote the phenomenon of negative graffiti, and brilliantly combine the crime of defacing a bridge with the community service time cleaning it up again afterwards, into one harmless, helpful, creative act.
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
Obedience and fear: What makes people hurt other people?
from Boing Boing
Stanley Milgram's "Obedience to Authority" experiments are infamous classics of psychology and social behavior. Back in the 1960s, Milgram set up a series of tests that showed seemingly normal people would be totally willing to torture another human being if prodded into it by an authority figure.
The basic set-up is probably familiar to you. Milgram told his test subjects that they were part of a study on learning. They were tasked with asking questions to another person, who was rigged up to an electric shock generator. When the other person got the questions wrong, the subject was supposed to zap them and then turn up the voltage. The catch was that the person getting "zapped" was actually an actor. So was the authority figure, whose job it was to tell the test subject that they must continue the experiment, no matter how much the other person pleaded for them to stop. In Milgram's original study, 65% of the subjects continued to the end of the session, eventually "administering" 450-volt shocks.
But they weren't doing it calmly. If you read Milgram's paper, you find that these people were trembling, and digging nails into their own flesh. Some of them even had seizure-like fits. Which is interesting to know when you sit down to read about Michael Shermer's recent attempt to replicate the Milgram experiments for a Dateline segment. Told they were trying out for a new reality show, the six subjects were set up to "shock" an actor, just like in Milgram's experiments. One walked out before the test even started. The others participated, but had some interesting rationales for why they did it — and a simple ingrained sense of obedience wasn't always what was going on.Our third subject, Lateefah, became visibly upset at 120 volts and squirmed uncomfortably to 180 volts. When Tyler screamed, “Ah! Ah! Get me out of here! I refuse to go on! Let me out!” Lateefah made this moral plea to Jeremy: “I know I'm not the one feeling the pain, but I hear him screaming and asking to get out, and it's almost like my instinct and gut is like, ‘Stop,’ because you're hurting somebody and you don't even know why you're hurting them outside of the fact that it's for a TV show.” Jeremy icily commanded her to “please continue.” As she moved into the 300-volt range, Lateefah was noticeably shaken, so Hansen stepped in to stop the experiment, asking, “What was it about Jeremy that convinced you that you should keep going here?” Lateefah gave us this glance into the psychology of obedience: “I didn't know what was going to happen to me if I stopped. He just—he had no emotion. I was afraid of him.”Read the rest in Michael Shermer's column at Scientific American
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
MELT THE GUNS
Here's a cool post from my friend Alex's blog Flaming Plablum:
Right On Alex!
I don’t generally delve too deeply into “current events” here, but speaking as the father of two elementary schoolchildren, today’s events in Connecticut (to say nothing of Wednesday’s events in Oregon) have left me – much like everyone else – deeply demoralized.
As many others have said far more eloquently, I think it’s the PERFECT time to escalate the debate on gun control. Back in August, I suggested that I wasn’t going to wade into the Second Amendment debate, as it was "far too complicated to get into here,” but fuck that. Stop waving that around like it’s a magic golden Wonka ticket – that was written for people who were afraid of being ATTACKED BY MUSKET-WIELDING REDCOATS! It shouldn’t mean that any bozo can go out and buy an automatic assault weapon. These are toys you simply don’t need.
And to the people who suggest that today’s events transpired because “we removed God from schools” – I’m talking about shitheads like Mike Huckabee and Ryan Fischer – Go fuck yourselves. You sicken me.
XTC sang it best…
Right On Alex!
Monday, December 17, 2012
Freedom of the Press Foundation launches: crowdsourcing funding for transparency and accountability
from Xeni at BoingBoing:
I'm proud to serve as a board member for the newly-launched Freedom of the Press Foundation, dedicated to helping promote and fund aggressive, public-interest journalism focused on exposing mismanagement, corruption, and law-breaking in government. The project accepts tax-deductible donations to an array of journalism organizations dedicated to government transparency and accountability. The board includes Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, EFF co-founder John Perry Barlow, actor and activist John Cusack, and other journalists and activists with whom I'm honored to serve.
Early news coverage: New York Times, Huffington Post, Firedoglake. Read more about the project here. A list of beneficiary organizations here. Twitter: @FreedomofPress.
Sunday, December 16, 2012
Saturday, December 15, 2012
BAN GUNS! NO MORE FUCKING GUNS!
GET RID OF THEM ALL!
I've said it before, and i'll say it again...
MORE CITY'S HAVE OUTLAWED SKATEBOARDS THAN HAVE OUTLAWED GUNS - DISCUSS THAT WITH A STRAIGHT FACE YOU DISGUSTING GUN SUPPORTING PEOPLE - ONE LESS SPORT, SHOOTING MOTHER NATURES ANIMALS WHO CAN'T SHOOT BACK. FREEDOM TO KILL SOME ONE WITH A TOOL THAT DOES SOMETHING YOU COULD NOT DO AS EASILY OR AS QUICKLY WITHOUT IT. WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU PROVE? OTHER THAN YOU ARE AN INSECURE ASSHOLE. THERE IS NO REASON IN THIS DAY AND AGE FOR PEOPLE TO HAVE GUNS IN CIVILIAN LIFE IN THIS COUNTRY, IN FACT IN ANY TYPE OF LIFE ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD IF WE EXPECT THE SPECIES TO SURVIVE. BUT GO ON, CRY 2ND AMENDMENT AND LIBERTY, FUCK YOU.
The business of guns is fucking despicable - it's a disgusting sickness people have, to need a gun, to feel so insecure, to need to shoot for sport or whatever the bullshit excuse, THERE IS NO EXCUSE, NO GOOD REASON FOR GUNS.
don't agree? go away, please.
read this article in The Atlantic:
A Land Without Guns: How Japan Has Virtually Eliminated Shooting Deaths
also Interesting:
The Geography of Gun Deaths
LET'S DO THIS PEOPLE
LET'S END THESE SENSELESS DEATHS
LET'S MAKE GUNS A PART OF OUR UGLY PAST HISTORY
LET'S TAKE THE POWER OF THE NRA & GUN LOBBY AWAY
THE TIME IS FUCKING NOW AND LONG OVER DUE.
SPEAK UP AND SPEAK OUT - RISE UP!
OPINIONS MATTER AND YOU NEED TO VOICE YOURS IF YOU WANT ANYTHING TO CHANGE.
PRAYING, CHANTING, MEDITATING, SORRY NO, NOT NOW, NOT HERE.
WE NEED A CHANGE A SERIOUS ONE.
A COUNTRY WHERE SKATEBOARDS COULD BE MADE ILLEGAL BUT GUNS ARE UNTOUCHABLE.
FUCK THAT!
MORE CITY'S HAVE OUTLAWED SKATEBOARDS THAN HAVE OUTLAWED GUNS - DISCUSS THAT WITH A STRAIGHT FACE YOU DISGUSTING GUN SUPPORTING PEOPLE - ONE LESS SPORT, SHOOTING MOTHER NATURES ANIMALS WHO CAN'T SHOOT BACK. FREEDOM TO KILL SOME ONE WITH A TOOL THAT DOES SOMETHING YOU COULD NOT DO AS EASILY OR AS QUICKLY WITHOUT IT. WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU PROVE? OTHER THAN YOU ARE AN INSECURE ASSHOLE. THERE IS NO REASON IN THIS DAY AND AGE FOR PEOPLE TO HAVE GUNS IN CIVILIAN LIFE IN THIS COUNTRY, IN FACT IN ANY TYPE OF LIFE ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD IF WE EXPECT THE SPECIES TO SURVIVE. BUT GO ON, CRY 2ND AMENDMENT AND LIBERTY, FUCK YOU.
The business of guns is fucking despicable - it's a disgusting sickness people have, to need a gun, to feel so insecure, to need to shoot for sport or whatever the bullshit excuse, THERE IS NO EXCUSE, NO GOOD REASON FOR GUNS.
don't agree? go away, please.
read this article in The Atlantic:
A Land Without Guns: How Japan Has Virtually Eliminated Shooting Deaths
also Interesting:
The Geography of Gun Deaths
LET'S DO THIS PEOPLE
LET'S END THESE SENSELESS DEATHS
LET'S MAKE GUNS A PART OF OUR UGLY PAST HISTORY
LET'S TAKE THE POWER OF THE NRA & GUN LOBBY AWAY
THE TIME IS FUCKING NOW AND LONG OVER DUE.
SPEAK UP AND SPEAK OUT - RISE UP!
OPINIONS MATTER AND YOU NEED TO VOICE YOURS IF YOU WANT ANYTHING TO CHANGE.
PRAYING, CHANTING, MEDITATING, SORRY NO, NOT NOW, NOT HERE.
WE NEED A CHANGE A SERIOUS ONE.
A COUNTRY WHERE SKATEBOARDS COULD BE MADE ILLEGAL BUT GUNS ARE UNTOUCHABLE.
FUCK THAT!
Friday, December 14, 2012
40th anniversary of the Blue Marble photo
Last week was the 40th anniversary of the "Blue Marble," the iconic photo taken by the crew of the Apollo 17. More on the photo and its impact at LIFE.com and Wikipedia. Here's NASA's original caption:
View of the Earth as seen by the Apollo 17 crew traveling toward the moon. This translunar coast photograph extends from the Mediterranean Sea area to the Antarctica south polar ice cap. This is the first time the Apollo trajectory made it possible to photograph the south polar ice cap. Note the heavy cloud cover in the Southern Hemisphere. Almost the entire coastline of Africa is clearly visible. The Arabian Peninsula can be seen at the northeastern edge of Africa. The large island off the coast of Africa is Madagascar. The Asian mainland is on the horizon toward the northeast."Thanks, Boing Boing
Thursday, December 13, 2012
Ravi Shankar RIP
Raga - A Documentary
OBITUARY BY OLIVER CRASKE
Ravi Shankar, who has died aged 92, was one of the giants of twentieth century music. As a performer, composer and teacher, he was an Indian classical artist of the highest rank, and he spearheaded the worldwide spread of Indian music and culture.
He achieved his greatest fame in the 1960s when he was embraced by the Western counterculture. Through his influence on his great friend George Harrison, and appearances at the Monterey and Woodstock festivals and the Concert for Bangladesh, he became a household name in the West, the first Indian musician to do so. To a movement challenging accepted values, he symbolised the genius of an ancient, wiser culture.
Yet the Sixties were but one chapter in an unparalleled career of record-breaking longevity. He had first entered the public eye as a ten-year-old dancer and musician performing on the world’s stages, and he was still packing out concert halls this year. Indeed, when he first met Harrison, he was already 46 and widely acclaimed as India’s greatest classical musician.
A Bengali Brahmin, he was born Robindra Shankar in 1920 in India’s holiest city, Varanasi, the youngest of four brothers who survived to adulthood, and spent his first ten years in relative poverty, brought up by his mother. He was almost eight before he met his absent father, a globe-trotting lawyer, philosopher, writer and former minister to the Maharajah of Jhalawar.
In 1930 his eldest brother Uday Shankar uprooted the family to Paris, and over the next eight years Ravi enjoyed the limelight in Uday’s troupe, which toured the world introducing Europeans and Americans (and many Indians) to Indian classical and folk dance, in a foreshadowing of Ravi’s own pioneering of Indian music two decades later.
Ravi had only four years of conventional schooling in total, but his cultural education was mind- boggling. Pitched into the glamour and tumult of the Paris, New York and Hollywood highlife, he met Gertrude Stein, Cole Porter, Clark Gable and Joan Crawford. He saw Stravinsky, Toscanini, Heifetz and Kreisler, Shalyapin at the Paris Opera, Cab Calloway at the Cotton Club, Duke Ellington, W. C. Fields and more. As a twelve-year-old dancer, he was praised in a New York Times review.
He was even more blessed in India’s arts. He may have barely known his father but he inherited his restlessness, spirituality and love of music. In Uday’s troupe he worked with some first-class musicians, while Uday himself, who was twenty years older, instilled a love of dance and the stage and a reverence for India’s heritage. The latter was strengthened by an inspirational meeting at thirteen with India’s greatest cultural figure of the twentieth century, Rabindranath Tagore.
But the decisive influence on his life was his music guru. Rejecting showbusiness, in 1938 Shankar began seven years of intensive guru-shishya training with Ustad Allauddin Khan, living under the same roof. This was the period when he began to develop into a musician of uncommon powers. In 1941 he married Allauddin Khan’s daughter, the surbahar player Annapurna Devi. (They had one son, Shubho.) Her brother was Ali Akbar Khan, who went on to become the world’s leading sarod player. In the early 1940s a lucky fly on their Maihar wall could have watched the three students learning music together at the feet of Allauddin Khan – the ancient oral tradition at its best.
During the Forties and Fifties Shankar became a star in India as a scintillating performer on sitar and a leading creative force. He developed a characteristic sitar sound, with powerful bass notes and a serene and spiritual touch in the alap movement of a raga. He was responsible for incorporating many aspects of Carnatic (south Indian) music into the north Indian system, especially its mathematical approach to rhythm. He also gave a new prominence to the tabla player in concert.
He was appointed Director of Music at the Indian People’s Theatre Association, and later held thesame position at All India Radio (1949–56). He composed his first new raga in 1945 (30 more would follow) and began a prolific recording career. He wrote a new melody for Mohammed Iqbal’s patriotic poem ‘Sare Jahan Se Accha’ – today a ubiquitous Indian national song. He mounted a theatrical production of The Discovery of India, and formed the National Orchestra (Vadya Vrinda) whose ground-breaking explorations of orchestral playing used both Indian and Western instruments. He was soon providing award-winning film scores; Satyajit Ray invited Shankar to compose for four of his movies, including the Apu Trilogy. In the traditional manner, he also took on his own music disciples, teaching them through the oral tradition, and never charging. He continued teaching in this way throughout his life.
Believing in the greatness of Indian classical music and blessed with charisma and intelligence, he pursued a dream of taking the music out to the Western world. Between the early 1950s and the mid-1960s he became the leading international emissary for Indian music, first performing as a solo artist in the USSR in 1954, in Europe and North America in 1956, and Japan in 1958. Yehudi Menuhin, John Coltrane and Philip Glass, among many others, fell under the spell of his music. He built his audience by relentlessly touring small venues and releasing records. Meanwhile his star continued to rise at home, with more Bengali movie soundtracks, two notable Hindi films too (Anuradha and Godaan), his own music school in Bombay, new stage productions Melody and Rhythm, Samanya Kshati, Chandalika and Nava Rasa Ranga, as well as regular concerts and broadcasts.
The connection with George Harrison from 1966 took him temporarily to a level of superstardom. Thereafter he spent increasing amounts of time in the West, but he never lost his roots, and was shocked by how superficially Indian culture was portrayed by some. Happily, after the hysteria died down he retained a long-term international following of serious enthusiasts, which continued to grow. Probably his most long-lasting achievement was to establish this new audience outside India for hundreds of other Indian musicians who followed in his footsteps. This assisted musicians from other countries too; Harrison later called Shankar ‘the Godfather of World Music’.
He remained lifelong friends with Harrison. In the early 1970s they collaborated on two albums and toured the USA together. They also organised the Concert for Bangladesh in 1971, the forerunner of all charity concerts, which highlighted the plight of Shankar’s fellow Bengalis during the liberation war. Thereafter both were considered heroes by Bangladeshis. They worked together again on later projects, in particular the 1997 album Chants from India, and Harrison co-produced the excellent box set retrospective Ravi Shankar: In Celebration.
Shankar’s impact was felt on other musical traditions too. His work with Yehudi Menuhin on West Meets East earned them a Grammy, and he was commissioned by the London Symphony Orchestra to write a concerto for sitar and orchestra. He later wrote a second sitar concerto for the New York Philharmonic under the direction of Zubin Mehta. He composed works for flautist Jean-Pierre Rampal, cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, shakuhachi master Hosan Yamamoto and koto virtuoso Musumi Miyashita. In a 1987 concert held inside the Kremlin, he wrote beautiful music for Russian orchestral, choral and folk singers to perform alongside Indian classical players. His influence on Philip Glass was such that Glass considers Shankar to be one of his two principal teachers. Later they would collaborate on the 1990 album Passages, and on Orion for the Athens 2004 Cultural Olympiad.
A long-term ambition was to establish an ashram-style home and music centre in India where selected students could live and learn. His first effort at this was in Varanasi in the 1970s. Then, after composing the music for the 1982 Asian Games in Delhi, he moved to the capital, eventually building the Ravi Shankar Centre in Delhi in 2001, which today hosts an annual music festival.
His first marriage ended in divorce in 1982, following many years of separation. As he admitted, his private life was complicated then. There were long-term relationships with Kamala Chakravarty and with Sue Jones. Eventually in 1989 he married Sukanya Rajan, who became a source of enormous strength for him. They divided their time between Delhi and San Diego. A tragedy occurred in 1992 when his son Shubho, a sitarist who had performed with his father at times, died unexpectedly at the age of 50. Later Shankar took great pride in seeing his two musician daughters achieve world renown in different fields:the multi-Grammy winning Norah Jones (daughter of Sue Jones) and the Grammy-nominated sitar player Anoushka Shankar (daughter of Sukanya). Anoushka often accompanied him in concert.
He was the author of three books: two in English, My Music, My Life and Raga Mala (the latter an autobiography), and Raag Anurag in Bengali. In latter years he received numerous awards, principal among which were probably the Bharat Ratna, India’s highest civilian award, France’s Commandeur de la Légion d’Honneur, and an honorary knighthood from Britain. His film score for Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi was nominated for an Academy Award. Another kind of nomination came from Rajiv Gandhi, who appointed him as a member of the Rajya Sabha, India’s upper house of parliament, from 1986 to 1992.
If he could walk with these kings and prime ministers, he never lost the common touch. Friends loved his impish sense of fun, which complemented his air of dignity and authority. In the words of the film- maker Mark Kidel, who produced an award-winning 2002 documentary on Shankar, he had ‘a marvellously light touch and a strong spiritual core’.
He never contemplated retirement, and every year arranged tours. In the tradition of Indian music one never stops learning, and he gave the lie to the notion that age must bring a diminishing of creativity. In 2009 he said, ‘I feel very strongly that I am now a much better musician than ever before, so much more creative. Maybe I don’t have the same speed or stamina of youth, but believe me, I have trouble sleeping these days because so much music is going through my head.’ Thus his 3rd sitar concerto was premiered by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra in 2009, and at the age of 90 he composed his first symphony for sitar and orchestra, premiered at the Royal Festival Hall by the London Philharmonic under the baton of David Murphy.
The sitar soloist for both of these performances was Anoushka rather than Ravi, a sign that while the nonagenarian’s creative reserves were overflowing, his energy levels could not always keep up. Nevertheless he repeatedly bounced back from major health troubles to reappear in concert halls. Audiences would watch nervously as a frail old man was helped on stage, only to be amazed by the transformation that music brought upon him. In his last concert, on November 4th in Long Beach, California, he required a wheelchair and an oxygen supply, but once he started playing his vitality and magic returned.
At a time of music industry change, he set up his own label that has issued fascinating archival releases and a live album recorded at home (which has just received a 2013 Grammy nomination). The symphony appeared on CD (The Independent deemed it ‘a resounding triumph’), and there are DVD releases of his feature-length 1968 documentary Raga and a film of his 2011 Escondido concert. The music never stopped and it is hard to believe it will now.
In 2011 the Los Angeles Times ventured that ‘Music may not have, precisely, saints. But no musician alive is a closer fit.’ It’s a verdict that he would have rejected, but the millions whose lives he touched may agree with it.
He is survived by his wife, two daughters, three grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren.
- Oliver Craske is a writer and editor. He was an invaluable resource and provided additional narrative for Ravi
Shankar’s autobiography, ‘Raga Mala.’
LINKS
• www.eastmeetswestmusic.com • www.ravishankar.org • www.anoushkashankar.com • www.unfinishedside.com
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
DO FOX NEWS VIEWERS REALLY HAVE ‘AN IQ THAT IS 20 POINTS LOWER THAN THE U.S. NATIONAL AVERAGE’?
from DangerousMinds
We’ve known for a long time that Fox News has the oldest cable audience (average age 65) and we know, too, that Fox has the dumbest and most misinformed audience. But are they really THIS DUMB?
A PRWeb press release reposted on Yahoo News, “Intelligence Institute Study shows Fox News viewers have an IQ that is 20 points lower than the U.S. National average.” is currently quite high on the hit parade at reddit/r/politics. I’d like to believe that’s true, but it’s very obviously a prank.
Although it admittedly does feel “true enough” to be plausible for a moment (or even two moments) if you do a search for “The Intelligence Institute” and “lead researcher, P. Nichols” you don’t come up with much. In this case, just a bunch of people who are either gullible lefties who want to believe this is true, reposting it frantically, or else people who simply find the writing hysterically funny.
I wonder who paid PRWeb to post this:The results of a 4 year study show that Americans who obtain their news from Fox News channel have an average IQ of 80, which represents a 20 point deficit when compared to the U.S. national average of 100. IQ, or intelligence quotient, is the international standard of assessing intelligence.Sweet Jeebus is that droll. But it’s still totally plausible isn’t it?
Researchers at The Intelligence Institute, a conservative non-profit group, tested 5,000 people using a series of tests that measure everything from cognitive aptitude to common sense and found that people who identified themselves as Fox News viewers and ‘conservative’ had, on average, significantly lower intelligent quotients. Fox Viewers represented 2,650 members of the test group.
One test involved showing subjects a series of images and measuring their vitals, namely pulse rate and blood pressure. The self-identified conservatives’ vitals increased over 35% when shown complex or shocking images. The image that caused the most stress was a poorly edited picture of President Obama standing next to a “ghostly” image of a child holding a tarantula.Test subjects who received their news from other outlets or reported they do not watch the news scored an average IQ of 104, compared to 80 for Fox News viewers.Admittedly. if they said the Fox News watchers had IQs of around 90, I could totally see that, but 80?Lead researcher, P. Nichols, explains, “Less intelligent animals rely on instinct when confronted by something which they do not understand. This is an ancient survival reaction all animals, including humans, exhibit. It’s a very simple phenomenon, really; think about a dog being afraid of a vacuum cleaner. He doesn’t know what a vacuum is or if it may harm him, so he becomes agitated and barks at it. Less intelligent humans do the same thing. Concepts that are too complex for them to understand, may frighten or anger them.”Sputtering with laughter on this end…
He continues, “Fox News’ content is presented at an elementary school level and plays directly into the fears of the less educated and less intelligent.”
The researchers said that an IQ of 80 is well above the score of 70, which is where psychiatrists diagnose mental retardation. P. Nichols says an IQ of 80 will not limit anyone’s ability to lead happy, fulfilling lives.
The study did not conclude if Fox News contributed to lowering IQ or if it attracts less intelligent humans.It’s the sort of thing that could have been written by jokesters on either on the right or from the left, it’s hard to tell what the motivation was here. I expect we’ll find out soon. Since it’s actually funny, I don’t think this is likely to turn out to come from a conservative prankster, but maybe it was.P. Nichols concludes that he wasn’t shocked by the studies’ results, rather how dramatic their range. “Several previous studies show that self-identified conservatives are less intelligent than self-identified moderates. We have never seen such a homogeneous group teetering so close to special needs levels.”
The email information leads nowhere, but if anyone calls the number and gets someone on the line, leave what happens in the comments [at DangerousMinds].More info to this study can be seen here:
P. Nichols
The Intelligence Institute
202-656-1746
Email Information
