April 29, 2011 Could Hashish Gets You Life in Prison? The Oklahoma State legislature has passed a bill that's now heading to the governor's desk to be signed which would mandate a sentence of up to life in prison for converting marijuana into hashish. OK already has a law that allows those convicted of cultivating or selling marijuana to be sentenced with up to life in prison. Reason's Matt Welch weighs in.
April 28, 2011 Pat Robertson’s Pretzel Logic Pat Robertson says liberals support reproductive choice in order to prevent married women from having babies and thereby make lebsians equal.
April 27, 2011 War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning An illustrated excerpt from a speech by Chris Hedges author of "War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning" given April 23, 2010 at the 8th Annual Western Regional International Health Conference "War & Global Health" held at the University of Washington in Seattle.
April 26, 2011 The Truth About GOP Hero Ayn Rand The release of a film adaptation of the 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand has coincided with a resurgence of popularity for Rand on the American Right. The trailer for Atlas Shrugged had its world premier at this year's CPAC conference and the Tea Party group FreedomWorks has rolled out a massive campaign . At the same time, some of the right's leading political and media lights have heaped praise upon Rand. The author of the Republicans' new budget plan to gut Medicare and Medicaid, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), has said Rand is the reason he entered politics. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) and Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) have both declared themselves devotees of her writing. During her lifetime, Rand advocated "the virtue of selfishness," declared altruism to be "evil," opposed Medicare and all forms of government support for the middle-class and the poor, and condemned Christianity for advocating love and compassion for the less fortunate:
April 25, 2011 The Love Police Anarchist Division vs Royal Wedding Charlie Veitch of the Love Police speaks to ITN British news about how to hack the media coverage at the royal wedding without using any violence at all.
April 22, 2011 Weed Card by Garfunkel and Oates Riki "Garfunkel" Lindhome and Kate "Oates" Micucci sing about the perils of obtaining medical marijuana in California.
April 21, 2011 Apple: The Beast Apple’s ‘Think Different’ advertising campaign. Apple surpasses Microsoft as the world’s number one tech company. I’m a Mac. 10 workers commit suicide at Foxconn hardware contractors in China. After an Apple enquiry, Foxconn introduces counseling, cuts worker’s weeks to 60 hours, and strings nets to catch suicide attempts. 137 Wintek (contractor) workers get sick as a result of working with the n-hexane chemical. These workers say Apple is lying when it claims that they all were since cured, and say that neither Wintek, nor Apple have paid for follow-up medical treatment.
April 20, 2011 The Long-term Impact of the Gulf Oil Spill Democracy Now! interviews Antonia Juhasz, author of the new book, Black Tide: The Devastating Impact of the Gulf Oil Spill. Juhasz attended the BP shareholders meeting in London last week and spoke on behalf of Gulf Coast residents denied entry. This week marks the one-year anniversary of the worst maritime oil spill in history. Last year on April 20, an oil rig leased by oil giant BP exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 workers and releasing nearly 200 million gallons of oil, tens of millions of gallons of natural gas and 1.8 million gallons of chemicals.
April 19, 2011 Everything You Read in the Mainstream Media is 100% True The Love Police spread the message: Realise who and what you are as an amazing race of beings. Stop letting your life cloud your soul from being free. We are not bodies with Souls. We are Souls with Bodies. If you can't be who you Really want to be then how can you be who you are?
April 18, 2011 Lil Buck and Yo-Yo Ma The other day, I was lucky enough to be at an event to bring the arts back into schools and got to see an amazing collaboration between Yo-Yo Ma and a young dancer in LA, Lil Buck. Someone who knows Yo-Yo Ma had seen Lil Buck on YouTube and put them together. The dancing is Lil Buck's own creation and unlike anything I've seen. Hope you enjoy. — Spike Jonze.
April 15, 2011 Are We Living in End Times? — Slavoj Zizek Is the world ignoring the signs of the so-called "end times"? Renowned philosopher and critic, Slavoj Zizek, explains what he thinks is causing the downhill slide, and points to the faltering economy, global warming and deteriorating ethnic relations as evidence.
April 11. 2011 Black Rain Black Rain is sourced from images collected by the twin satellite, solar mission, STEREO. Here we see the HI (Heliospheric Imager) visual data as it tracks interplanetary space for solar wind and CME's (coronal mass ejections) heading towards Earth. Data courtesy of courtesy of the Heliospheric Imager on the NASA STEREO mission.Working with STEREO scientists, Semiconductor collected all the HI image data to date, revealing the journey of the satellites from their initial orientation, to their current tracing of the Earth’s orbit around the Sun. Solar wind, CME's, passing planets and comets orbiting the sun can be seen as background stars and the milky way pass by.
April 8, 2012 Supreme Court Ruling Gives Sports Fans The Right To Act Like Assholes In an 8-1 decision, the Court found that buying a ticket is license to boo, swear and throw beer at whomever fans please at a sporting event, on the grounds that anyone who doesn't like it can stay home, and those tickets pay for the players' salaries, so who are they to complain?
April 7, 2011 The Photography of Taryn Simon Simon exhibits her startling take on photography — to reveal worlds and people we would never see otherwise. She shares two projects: one documents otherworldly locations typically kept secret from the public, the other involves haunting portraits of men convicted for crimes they did not commit.
April 6, 2011 Chinese Artist Ai Weiwei's Last Interview The last U.S. television interview with Chinese activist Ai Weiwei 10 days before he was detained by Chinese authorities. Weiwei was arrested at the Beijing airport on Sunday and hasn't been seen or heard from since. In response to worldwide outcry, the Chinese government warned that Weiwei would "pay a price" for his dissent.
April 4, 2011 The Billion-Bug Highway Look up at the sky and what do you see? Well, blue, yes. And maybe a plane or a bird, but otherwise ... nothing. Or so you think. It turns out that right above you, totally invisible, is an enormous herd of animal life -- tiny bugs riding the wind currents.
April 1, 2011 Lyrebird Imitating Construction Work A lyrebird's call is a rich mixture of its own song and any number of other sounds it has heard. The lyrebird's syrinx is the most complexly-muscled of the Passerines (songbirds), giving the lyrebird extraordinary ability, unmatched in vocal repertoire and mimicry. Lyrebirds render with great fidelity the individual songs of other birds and the chatter of flocks of birds, and also mimic other animals, human noises, machinery of all kinds, explosions, and musical instruments. The lyrebird is capable of imitating almost any sound — from a mill whistle to a cross-cut saw, and, not uncommonly, sounds as diverse as chainsaws, car engines and car alarms, fire alarms, rifle-shots, camera shutters, dogs barking, crying babies, and even the human voice.
March 30, 2011 Saxophone Prank Sergio Flores aka "Sexy Sax Man" performs George Michael's "Careless Whisper" as he trolls an In 'n Out, a food court, a college biology class, a high school football game, a Wal-Mart and more. As you can imagine, he gets kicked out of almost all of them.
March 29, 2011 Jeff Koons Must Die!!! The Video Game Jeff Koons Must Die!!! is made up of a fabricated 80’s style stand-up arcade cabinet, and a simulated digital environment presented in a first-person perspective. Viewers must pay twenty-five cents to play the game and the virtual environment is traversed with a joystick and two arcade buttons. The premise of the video game is to allow the viewer to virtually destroy work by the artist, Jeff Koons.
March 28, 2011 Derek Jarman's 'Wittgenstein' A scene from Derek Jarman's film 'Wittgenstein' (1989) upon the thought behind a word or a sentence like "This is a very pleasant pineapple."
March 18, 2011 Cry Baby: The Pedal That Rocks The World Cry Baby: The Pedal That Rocks The World tells the story of the wah wah effect pedal, from its invention in 1966 to the present day. Musicians, engineers, and historians discuss the impact of the pedal on popular music and demonstrate the various ways it has been used, as well as how its evolution has improved the ability of artists to express themselves musically. The film features interviews with Brad Plunkett, the inventor of the pedal, plus many other musical luminaries such as Ben Fong-Torres, Eddie Van Halen, Slash, Buddy Guy, Art Thompson, Eddie Kramer, Kirk Hammett, Dweezil Zappa, and Jim Dunlop. These professionals explain how a musical novelty transcended convention and has become timelessly woven into the fabric of modern pop-culture.
March 17, 2011 First Person Tsunami This is raw footage filmed in Kesennuma, Japan on Friday, March 11th, 2011,as the tsunami which occured in northern Japan following the 8.9 magnitude earthquake, engulfs the city. Please make your online donation to the Japan Earthquake Relief Fund.
March 16, 2011 Obama Justice Department Breaks DEA Promise (Again) Drug Enforcement Agency agents with the help of the Los Angeles Police Department and Los Angeles Sheriff's Department raided the Zen Healing Collective and Alternative Herbal Health Services medical marijuana dispensaries in Hollywood, California on March 15, 2011.When asked about raids on medical marijuana dispensaries in California in February 2009, Attorney General Eric Holder indicated raids would end on state approved dispensaries.
March 14, 2011 Three Fragments of a Lost Tale — John Frame Filmmaker Johnny Coffeen explores the artist John Frame's process in this 8-minute film. It will be presented an exhibition at the Huntington Library with Frame's own stop-motion animation film featuring his handmade characters. Three Fragments of a Lost Tale: Sculpture and Story by John Frame runs from March 12 - June 20, 2011 at The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.
March 11, 2011 Are You Typical? In a world of 7 billion people. Who is most typical? The world’s most typical person is right handed, makes less than $12,000 a year, has a cell phone, but not a bank account, less than %25 of us do. So what does he look like?
March 10, 2011 The Church of John Coltrane We all know that music is part of any religion – but one church has made music the central focus of its worship by celebrating legendary jazz saxophonist John Coltrane as a saint.
March 9, 2011 400 Year-old King Philip IV Visits the Met An unauthorized autograph signing in the Metropolitan Museum of Art with an actor who bears a striking resemblance to King Philip IV of Spain. Standing in front of the 400-year-old Velázquez painting, the “King” greeted museum patrons and offered free signed 8×10 photos.
March 7, 2011 Street Artist JR's Inside Out JR, the French street artist, is launching a global art project, Inside Out, which aims to bring communities together. Participants can upload their own picture to the site in the style of JR, submit their own personal statement, and order a black & white poster to wheatpaste or hang in their communities. They can then take a picture of the poster 'in the wild', and upload it back to the site, where visitors will be able to see where posters are around the world.
March 1, 2011 Warm Signal — Silke Sieler Silke Sieler is a motion graphics designer based in Hamburg, Germany. Sieler loves abstract things, strange details, loud music and lots of ice-cream and her vision of motion design is food for eager eyes. Her last short abstract movie is dealing with nature and maritime creatures, metamorphosis and transformation, connecting art and science.
