Perhaps everyone was caught up in the excitement of the potential news when a systematic error was actually the cause.
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
CODA: Faster than Light? Hold On There -- Not So Fast, Pardner
Perhaps everyone was caught up in the excitement of the potential news when a systematic error was actually the cause.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
"The Mill and the Cross" by Lech Majewski
Rutger Hauer as "Peasant Pieter (the Elder) Bruegel
Rutger Hauer, Lech Majewski, and Michael Yorke,
during the making of "The Mill and the Cross"
The Way to Calvary by Pieter Bruegel
There is no melodrama or biopic flourishes in Lech Majewski's beautiful and estimable "The Mill and the Cross." The film stars Rutger Hauer, Charlotte Rampling and Michael Yorke, and they are terrific, but the film's true power comes from the vision of director Majewski, as he explores Pieter Bruegel and in particular the painter's "Way to Calvary". That work by the elder Bruegel, known as "Peasant Pieter" for his practice of dressing in more common garb so he could travel among the peasant folk and observe them, depicts the passion of Christ in the context of country life in Flanders in 1564, at a time when the people were under the brutal occupation of the Spanish, who sought to suppress the Protestant Reformation.
As the prodiction notes state: "The film changes the way art is portrayed on film, pioneering a new method to “enter” a painting and to create a narrative based on its depicted figures, performed by live actors. Majewski's method consists of combining digitally shot footage in three different ways:
· actors shot in front of a blue screen, which is integrated later with various backdrops
· actors and footage shot on location in Poland, the Czech Republic, Austria and New Zealand on specifically chosen
landscapes resembling those found in Bruegel’s paintings
· a large 2D backdrop of Bruegel's work painted on canvas by Majewski
In post-production, Majewski and his editor painstakingly layered these various elements. For example, he added an actor shot in front of a blue screen to several layers of both painted backdrops and location footage, enhanced by digital footage of a majestic sky shot in New Zealand. This process allowed the filmmaker to act as a painter himself."
The music, the stunning visuals, and the depiction of the quiet and earthy country life, melded with the subdued brutality,
create a rivoting and beautiful film. All things considered, the film's languid, countrified pace may be slow for some viewers, but the director (writer of the original screenplay for Julian Schnabel's Basquiat) has done a masterful job in wresting a
simple narrative from just the painting and a few fragments of art history and the painter's bio.
Once again, this viewer can't help but admire any artist who is unafraid to challenge the tyranny of modernity, at the same time taking creative leaps of faith . One needs only to allow Majewski's vision to establish the parameters of a new old world, and sit back in wonder at what film as art -- and art as film for that matter -- can achieve.
--Anthony Napoli for Deep in the Heart of Brooklyn
Storyboard fragments here
More from the official site here
Friday, October 7, 2011
Digital+Culture+Style= The Story of Apple, Inc.
Steve Jobs leaves a trail of new products for future release/development here
The day the notoriously private Steve Jobs contacted his future biographer; Time magazine excerpt here:
On Walter Isaacson, who wrote the forthcoming biography Steve Jobs, available later this month and excerpted in an upcoming special Time magazine here
The Global Woman: 3 Winners of the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize
"[T]he road to freedom is long, the cost of freedom is high [and] the fight for freedom is not for the faint-hearted and the pessimists." --Leymah Gbowee of Liberia
"With two civil wars, an al-Qaeda presence and 40% unemployment, what else is President Saleh waiting for?" she told the Guardian in March. "He should leave office now." --Tawakul Karman - Activist in Yemen
"What do you say to those who say your gender is the key to your presidency?
Gender's an important part of our agenda, there's no question about it. [Women] did not have a voice before. Today we know they listen to us. Illiterate market women ... many of them can now read and spell their names. All girls know that they can be anything now. That transformation is to me one of the most satisfying things. [Having a woman President] sends a signal. Women just all of a sudden come alive because they have a role model, because they know it's possible. I expect some places in the Middle East where women have been contained will see them emerge after this Arab Spring."
--Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf
Full article here
"With two civil wars, an al-Qaeda presence and 40% unemployment, what else is President Saleh waiting for?" she told the Guardian in March. "He should leave office now." --Tawakul Karman - Activist in Yemen
"What do you say to those who say your gender is the key to your presidency?
Gender's an important part of our agenda, there's no question about it. [Women] did not have a voice before. Today we know they listen to us. Illiterate market women ... many of them can now read and spell their names. All girls know that they can be anything now. That transformation is to me one of the most satisfying things. [Having a woman President] sends a signal. Women just all of a sudden come alive because they have a role model, because they know it's possible. I expect some places in the Middle East where women have been contained will see them emerge after this Arab Spring."
--Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf
Full article here
Thursday, October 6, 2011
American Visionary: Steve Jobs 1955-2011
Steve Jobs 1955-2011
From the NY TIMES obituary: "His worldview was shaped by the ’60s counterculture in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he had grown up, the adopted son of a Silicon Valley machinist. When he graduated from high school in Cupertino in 1972, he said, ”the very strong scent of the 1960s was still there.” ...
"Decades later he flew around the world in his own corporate jet, but he maintained emotional ties to the period in which he grew up. He often felt like an outsider in the corporate world, he said.When discussing the Silicon Valley’s lasting contributions to humanity, he mentioned in the same breath the invention of the microchip and “The Whole Earth Catalog,” a 1960s counterculture publication."
Full article here
BACK WHEN: Apple's First Logo drawn by Ronald Wayne
NOW: Adobe Myriad Typeface
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
What's Behind the Media, Political and Power Elite Disdain for "Occupy Wall Street" ? While Some NYPD Support and Refuse to Suppress the Activists?
from Kevin Gosztola's trenchant analysis on the opposition to "Occupy Wall Street":
"[Journalist John] Avlon is an example of why many Americans do not support Occupy Wall Street. They understand that Occupy Wall Street wants to have an impact on the system and force the system to respond to the occupation’s demands, but they see protesters do not want to work within the system and lobby members of Congress and sign petitions and find out what piecemeal reforms representatives and senators think they can manage to deliver without jeopardizing their re-election campaigns. They are afraid of people power or “too much democracy.”
Compounding the contempt for grassroots struggle in America is the unwavering confidence in the myth known as the American Dream. The American Dream rests upon the idea that all Americans can prosper if they try hard enough. In its most perverted form, it cons Americans into believing they could not only prosper but be rich one day. This was discussed on “Real Time w/ Bill Maher” Friday night too
MAHER: Do [Americans] really think everyone can be rich? How can that really work? Who would do the things for rich people that allow them to be rich people if we are all rich?
MOORE: 400 Americans have more wealth than 150 million combined
HARMAN: I don’t think we can all be rich. I agree with that. But look at who is rich and how young people who are colossally inventive can become the billionaires?
MAHER: So anecdotal.
HARMAN: Have polices that promote innovation and enterprise in this country.
AVLON: This is part of the American character. Right, this is the idea. It’s not just anecdotal. It’s Google. It’s the guys behind Google. There’s dozens and dozens and hundreds — This is the story of America. There are two things going on here. One, eighty percent of Americans always think they are middle class and that’s a good thing. The problem is we have seen the middle class get squeezed for around four decades now. And the average CEO’s salary is around $9.6 million while the average family of four still makes 50 [thousand?] …
Avlon concludes, “You can’t dismiss the idea of the American Dream because people live it every day and that’s what animates our country.” But, as Moore responded, “That dream is a nightmare for most people” these days
from Glenn Greenwald in Salon:
"It's unsurprising that establishment media outlets have been condescending, dismissive and scornful of the ongoing protests on Wall Street. Any entity that declares itself an adversary of prevailing institutional power is going to be viewed with hostility by establishment-serving institutions and their loyalists. That's just the nature of protests that take place outside approved channels, an inevitable by-product of disruptive dissent: those who are most vested in safeguarding and legitimizing establishment prerogatives (which, by definition, includes establishment media outlets) are going to be hostile to those challenges. As the virtually universal disdain in these same circles for WikiLeaks (and, before that, for the Iraq War protests) demonstrated: the more effectively adversarial it is, the more establishment hostility it's going to provoke.
Nor is it surprising that much of the most vocal criticisms of the Wall Street protests has come from some self-identified progressives, who one might think would be instinctively sympathetic to the substantive message of the protesters."
Finally, unconfirmed reports that 100 New York City Police Department officers refused to participate in suppressing the activists:
"Today we received unconfirmed reports that over one hundred blue collar police refused to come into work in solidarity with our movement. These numbers will grow. We are the 99 percent. You will not silence us."
"The news was released shortly after the identity of Deputy Inspector ..was revealed after he allegedly pepper sprayed a deaf woman."
"[Journalist John] Avlon is an example of why many Americans do not support Occupy Wall Street. They understand that Occupy Wall Street wants to have an impact on the system and force the system to respond to the occupation’s demands, but they see protesters do not want to work within the system and lobby members of Congress and sign petitions and find out what piecemeal reforms representatives and senators think they can manage to deliver without jeopardizing their re-election campaigns. They are afraid of people power or “too much democracy.”
Compounding the contempt for grassroots struggle in America is the unwavering confidence in the myth known as the American Dream. The American Dream rests upon the idea that all Americans can prosper if they try hard enough. In its most perverted form, it cons Americans into believing they could not only prosper but be rich one day. This was discussed on “Real Time w/ Bill Maher” Friday night too
MAHER: Do [Americans] really think everyone can be rich? How can that really work? Who would do the things for rich people that allow them to be rich people if we are all rich?
MOORE: 400 Americans have more wealth than 150 million combined
HARMAN: I don’t think we can all be rich. I agree with that. But look at who is rich and how young people who are colossally inventive can become the billionaires?
MAHER: So anecdotal.
HARMAN: Have polices that promote innovation and enterprise in this country.
AVLON: This is part of the American character. Right, this is the idea. It’s not just anecdotal. It’s Google. It’s the guys behind Google. There’s dozens and dozens and hundreds — This is the story of America. There are two things going on here. One, eighty percent of Americans always think they are middle class and that’s a good thing. The problem is we have seen the middle class get squeezed for around four decades now. And the average CEO’s salary is around $9.6 million while the average family of four still makes 50 [thousand?] …
Avlon concludes, “You can’t dismiss the idea of the American Dream because people live it every day and that’s what animates our country.” But, as Moore responded, “That dream is a nightmare for most people” these days
from Glenn Greenwald in Salon:
"It's unsurprising that establishment media outlets have been condescending, dismissive and scornful of the ongoing protests on Wall Street. Any entity that declares itself an adversary of prevailing institutional power is going to be viewed with hostility by establishment-serving institutions and their loyalists. That's just the nature of protests that take place outside approved channels, an inevitable by-product of disruptive dissent: those who are most vested in safeguarding and legitimizing establishment prerogatives (which, by definition, includes establishment media outlets) are going to be hostile to those challenges. As the virtually universal disdain in these same circles for WikiLeaks (and, before that, for the Iraq War protests) demonstrated: the more effectively adversarial it is, the more establishment hostility it's going to provoke.
Nor is it surprising that much of the most vocal criticisms of the Wall Street protests has come from some self-identified progressives, who one might think would be instinctively sympathetic to the substantive message of the protesters."
Finally, unconfirmed reports that 100 New York City Police Department officers refused to participate in suppressing the activists:
"Today we received unconfirmed reports that over one hundred blue collar police refused to come into work in solidarity with our movement. These numbers will grow. We are the 99 percent. You will not silence us."
"The news was released shortly after the identity of Deputy Inspector ..was revealed after he allegedly pepper sprayed a deaf woman."
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Google@13: Dead Sea Scrolls Online
Monday, September 26, 2011
Coda: Summer of Eleven Earthquake Shuts Washington Monument
The Washington monument is shuttered indefinitely for repairs following last summer's earthquake. Tourists ran from the building as it shook violently.
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Faster than the Speed of Light?
Has the team at CERN identified particles that are shot between two labs that are arriving slightly before they left the lab. Does this indicate that the speed of light can be exceeded? Details here http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15017484
Preventing the Great Depression 2: Nouriel Roubini
Nouriel Roubini outlines recommended steps to prevent the double dip recession from collapsing into a full-fledged global depression (aka Great Depression II) here
Dr. Roubini: "The risks ahead are not just of a mild double-dip recession, but of a severe contraction that could turn into Great Depression II, especially if the eurozone crisis becomes disorderly and leads to a global financial meltdown. Wrong-headed policies during the first Great Depression led to trade and currency wars, disorderly debt defaults, deflation, rising income and wealth inequality, poverty, desperation, and social and political instability that eventually led to the rise of authoritarian regimes and World War II. The best way to avoid the risk of repeating such a sequence is bold and aggressive global policy action now."
Dr. Roubini: "The risks ahead are not just of a mild double-dip recession, but of a severe contraction that could turn into Great Depression II, especially if the eurozone crisis becomes disorderly and leads to a global financial meltdown. Wrong-headed policies during the first Great Depression led to trade and currency wars, disorderly debt defaults, deflation, rising income and wealth inequality, poverty, desperation, and social and political instability that eventually led to the rise of authoritarian regimes and World War II. The best way to avoid the risk of repeating such a sequence is bold and aggressive global policy action now."
Plain Speaking: Elizabeth Warren on the Debt Crisis and Fair Taxation -- Direct and to the Point
Democratic Senate candidate in Massachusetts Elizabeth Warren on the Debt Crisis and Fair Taxation here
Monday, September 19, 2011
Monday Morning Melody": David Bowie on Soul Train Sings Golden Years
David Bowie interviewed by the legendary Don Cornelius on "Soul Train" and then performs "Golden Years." Looks like a rebroadcast from Japanese TV.
What's Going On In the White House During this Economic Crisis: One (Almost) Doesn't Want to Know
NY Magazine's Adam Moss and Frank Rich weigh in on Ron Suskind's book about the Obama Adminstration's Economic Quagmire, Confidence Men: For example:
"Peter Orszag relays this eviscerating quote that Summers said to him about Obama during the worst of the economic distress. According to Orszag, Summers says, "You know, Peter we're really home alone. There's no adult in charge. Clinton would never have made these mistakes." Later, Orszag says to Suskind, "Larry just didn't think the president knew what he was deciding. Was this [obstruction of the president's wishes] outright and willful?" In other words, asks Orszag, was Summers saying, "I know more than the president flat-out? That strikes me as ... likely." In an amazing memo, Pete Rouse, who would replace Emanuel temporarily as chief of staff, recommends firing Summers for "Larry's imperious and heavy-handed direction of the economic policy process."
": I kept flipping back and forth between fury at Obama and — I know I'm easy — sympathy. So much of the damage comes from the initial decision to hire these guys, a decision he had to make almost immediately after being elected. He was inexperienced, he needed help, they burned him, he let them — that's the story in brief."
"Suskind also nails, I think, Obama's intellectual blind spot. Indeed, Obama himself nails it, telling Suskind that he was too inclined to search for "the perfect technical answer" to the myriad of complex issues coming at him. What he'd end up with instead is, as Suskind astutely summarizes it, "clever" answers that were "respectfully acknowledging opponents' positions, even those with thin evidence behind them, that then get stitched together into some pragmatic conclusion — but hollow." That said, could someone else have done better? Not the out-of-it McCain, not Hillary (an equivocator in her own right and one who would have embraced the same Clinton administration alumni and Wall Street crowd that Obama did). I still believe Obama was our best hope, and I still hope, however quixotically and self-deludedly, that he might learn from his mistakes."
Link here
"Peter Orszag relays this eviscerating quote that Summers said to him about Obama during the worst of the economic distress. According to Orszag, Summers says, "You know, Peter we're really home alone. There's no adult in charge. Clinton would never have made these mistakes." Later, Orszag says to Suskind, "Larry just didn't think the president knew what he was deciding. Was this [obstruction of the president's wishes] outright and willful?" In other words, asks Orszag, was Summers saying, "I know more than the president flat-out? That strikes me as ... likely." In an amazing memo, Pete Rouse, who would replace Emanuel temporarily as chief of staff, recommends firing Summers for "Larry's imperious and heavy-handed direction of the economic policy process."
": I kept flipping back and forth between fury at Obama and — I know I'm easy — sympathy. So much of the damage comes from the initial decision to hire these guys, a decision he had to make almost immediately after being elected. He was inexperienced, he needed help, they burned him, he let them — that's the story in brief."
"Suskind also nails, I think, Obama's intellectual blind spot. Indeed, Obama himself nails it, telling Suskind that he was too inclined to search for "the perfect technical answer" to the myriad of complex issues coming at him. What he'd end up with instead is, as Suskind astutely summarizes it, "clever" answers that were "respectfully acknowledging opponents' positions, even those with thin evidence behind them, that then get stitched together into some pragmatic conclusion — but hollow." That said, could someone else have done better? Not the out-of-it McCain, not Hillary (an equivocator in her own right and one who would have embraced the same Clinton administration alumni and Wall Street crowd that Obama did). I still believe Obama was our best hope, and I still hope, however quixotically and self-deludedly, that he might learn from his mistakes."
Link here
Friday, September 16, 2011
Art and Anti-Art: Maurizio Cattelan Flips the Bird
This fall, Maurizio Cattelan will take New York, and probably America, by storm when his retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum opens in early November.
If you aren't yet familiar with the artist, whose work includes "The Ninth Hour", a life-like sculpture of Pope John Paul II struck down by a meteorite, among other satiric, comic and bizarre manifestations of Cattelan's provocative, renegade sensibility, you will soon.
Below, a teaser: "The Ballad of Trotsky" a sculpture by the artist. He also created a monumental sculpture of a hand "flipping the bird" positioned at the Italian Stock Market. Madonn'....
NY Times T Magazine interview here
The Guardian Interview here
If you aren't yet familiar with the artist, whose work includes "The Ninth Hour", a life-like sculpture of Pope John Paul II struck down by a meteorite, among other satiric, comic and bizarre manifestations of Cattelan's provocative, renegade sensibility, you will soon.
Below, a teaser: "The Ballad of Trotsky" a sculpture by the artist. He also created a monumental sculpture of a hand "flipping the bird" positioned at the Italian Stock Market. Madonn'....
The Ballad of Trotsky by Maurizio Cattelan
"Il Dito Medio"(Middle Finger) -- (or is it a vandalized black shirt salute?)
at the Milan Stock Exchange by Maurizio Cattelan
NY Times T Magazine interview here
The Guardian Interview here
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Save the St Marks Bookshop - Please Sign the Petition
The St. Mark's Bookshop is a NYC literary treasure. The St. Mark's Bookshop has a long tradition in the Lower East Side and serves an admirable and increasingly rare function. St. Mark's is struggling to pay the market rent that Cooper Union is charging them at 31 3rd Ave. A significant rent concession by Cooper Union could save this irreplaceable neighborhood institution.
So I signed a petition to Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science, which says:
"The St. Mark's Bookshop, a vital Lower East Side cultural institution, needs a rent low enough to survive. Join the Cooper Square Committee petitioning Cooper Union, the bookstore's landlord, to give St. Mark's Bookshop a lower rent."
Will you sign this petition? Click here:
http://signon.org/sign/save-the-st-marks-bookshop?source=s.em.cp&r_by=642007
Thank you
Deep in the Heart of Brooklyn
So I signed a petition to Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science, which says:
"The St. Mark's Bookshop, a vital Lower East Side cultural institution, needs a rent low enough to survive. Join the Cooper Square Committee petitioning Cooper Union, the bookstore's landlord, to give St. Mark's Bookshop a lower rent."
Will you sign this petition? Click here:
http://signon.org/sign/save-the-st-marks-bookshop?source=s.em.cp&r_by=642007
Thank you
Deep in the Heart of Brooklyn
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