Posted in Political on 01/18/2010 07:45 am by Gare
COPYRIGHT CRIMINALS PREMIERES TUESDAY, JAN. 19, 10PM
ON THE PBS SERIES INDEPENDENT LENS (check local listings)
Can you own a sound?
COPYRIGHT CRIMINALS, a documentary produced by Benjamin Franzen and Kembrew McLeod, examines the commercial and creative value of musical sampling, including the ongoing debates about artistic expression, copyright law and money. COPYRIGHT CRIMINALS showcases many of Hip Hop music’s legendary figures like Public Enemy, De La Souland Digital Underground along with emerging artists such as audiovisual remixers Eclectic Method. The film also provides an in-depth look at artists who have been sampled, such as renowned drummer Clyde Stubblefield, the world’s most sampled musician, best known for his work with James Brown, as well as commentary by Funk legendGeorge Clinton. JAN 19: Broadcast & DVD Release Partywith ECLECTIC METHOD, MR. LEN & DJ SPOOKY FREE with RSVP at IndiePix Evite. Doors at 8pm. Broadcast Premiere on Independent Lens at 10pm. Brooklyn Bowl 61 Wythe Ave Brooklyn NYC 11211. Facebook Event Page
kembrew mcleod
associate professor
university of iowa
dept. of communication studies
kembrew-mcleod@uiowa.edu
http://www.freedomofexpression.us
http://copyrightcriminals.com
http://kembrew.com
“This boy is definitely out to lunch, the same place I eat at.” – George Clinton on Sun Ra
Pew Center on Global Climate Change has links to reports, Fact Sheets, including “During the twentieth century, the earth’s surface warmed by about 1.4 °F. There are a variety of potential causes for global climate change, including natural and human-induced mechanisms”
“I have more respect for people who change their mind after acquiring new information than for those who cling to views they held thirty years ago. The world changes. Ideologues and zealots don’t” - Michael Crichton, “State of Fear”
And of course we continue to play lots of board games, eat out, and travel as much as possible.
Spring
Spring was a wonderful blur of work and thaw.
Erin got an academic article published in the spring edition of GLQ.
Nice Visit from Buddy & Rhetta to Mount Vernon. Buddy found a great restaurant in Dubuque, IA on the Mississippi River where we ate lunch and then went to the Mississippi River museum.
Summer
Lee and Jacque volunteered as Camp Hosts at Bellevue State Park in Iowa during July and August. We spent July 4 watching fireworks being shot over the Mississippi River in Bellevue. Had great time hanging out at their campground this summer and discussing politics.
Erin was granted tenure at Cornell College and promoted to Associate Professor of Sociology.
Gare gets a promotion or two at work.
We grew lots & lots of tomatoes this year in our garden.
Erin went to Japan in late July & August to make preparations to bring a class of students over in Spring 2010.
Bellah the cat breaks her tooth, so she has her prominent fangs removed. Power dynamics change in the house as Emily the cat reasserts her position as supreme leader of the Davis / Calhoun household.
Fall
After spending the summer building up his cities in the online game Evony, Gare accidentally gets locked out of the game over the weekend and returns to find his entire empire attacked and destroyed. He then turns his energies to a new game, Immortal Cities: Nile Online, for the rest of the year. He also continues with regular team games of Battle for Wesnoth.
Hotel Turkuaz – a great bed and breakfast type hotel in Istanbul
Great Bed and Breakfast in Istanbul
Excellent Breakfasts, service, and lodging. Was my favorite spot by far on our vacation. We found this place in a tour book, and liked it so much we stayed here for the full week in Istanbul.
Vegetarian Diet Better for Environment, Says UK Climate Change Leader
Damian Robin
EpochTimes Staff Oct 28, 2009
LONDON—One of the UK’s most prominent climate change experts, Lord Stern, has said a vegetarian diet is better for the environment.
Author of the 2006 Stern Review on the cost of tackling global warming, and former chief economist of the World Bank. Lord Stern believes that the Climate change conference in Copenhagen in December should call for prices of meat and other foods that contribute to climate change to increase.
“Meat is a wasteful use of water and creates a lot of greenhouse gases,” he said in an interview with The Times on Tuesday 27th October. “It puts enormous pressure on the world’s resources.”
“I think it’s important that people think about what they are doing and that includes what they are eating.”
Nearly one fifth of the world’s current greenhouse gas emissions are produced by livestock – about 50 per cent higher than the level produced by all the vehicles in the world.
Lord Stern’s comments were welcomed by some environmental and farming groups, but dismissed as over-simplistic and irresponsible by the the farmer’s union in the UK.
“Cutting down on meat is a win-win for healthier people and a healthier planet”, said Friends of the Earth’s senior food campaigner, Clare Oxborrow, “but we also need the Government to make big changes to the way it’s produced.”
National Union of Farmers President Peter Kendall commented: “Livestock production is based on grasland which stores more carbon than other land use in England. Focusing on a single issue as a way of saving the planet is extremely iressponsible and likely to be counterproductive.”
Compassion in World Farming said: “Reducing meat consumption in affluent nations will release land for growing food for people rather than feed for factory farmed animals or fuel crops to power our vehicles and it will reduce the emissions of some of the most noxious greenhouse gases.”
“By reducing meat consumption and supporting higher welfare farming, we can help to revive the planet, restore dignity to farmers’ livelihoods and enable the animals themselves to lead lives of quality,” said a statement on their website.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation in 2006 concluded that worldwide livestock farming, including the destruction of forest land for cattle ranching and the production of animal feeds, generates 18 per cent of the planet’s greenhouse gas emissions. By comparison, it said, all the world’s cars, trains, planes and boats accounted for a combined 13 per cent.
Hotel Turkuaz – a great bed and breakfast type hotel in Istanbul. View of ocean and the blue mosque. The staff and hostess are very friendly and courteous. Morning breakfast is a veritable feast. Address: Kadirga, Cinci Meydani No: 36 Eminonu – Istanbul 528 63 42
We bought a small rug from a very nice private carpet store called Punto of Istanbul . Ryan called his friend Pamira who got us an appointment with a nice firm that deals in rugs. They were very professional and friendly – we sat in the viewing room, served us drinks, and were very polite and made conversation despite the knowledge we only wanted 1 small rug. Our rug is supposed to have been hand woven by members of a eastern Turkish tribe.
Freudian Slip of the Trip:
“I want control”, says Erin while on a long hike; Erin sick with fever, and Ryan had the map, and we had been walking for a couple of hours in downtown Istanbul. She meant “I want the map”, via the slip “I want the control”. Funny, funny.
pictures coming soon.
Currency Rates
www.xe.com/ucc
http://www.xe.com/ucc/full/
Live rates at 2009.10.19 11:19:58 UTC
1.00 USD = 0.669793 EUR
United States Dollars Euro
1 USD = 0.669793 EUR 1 EUR = 1.49300 USD
Live rates at 2009.10.19 11:16:58 UTC
1.00 USD = 178.704 HUF
United States Dollars Hungary Forint
1 USD = 178.704 HUF 1 HUF = 0.00559584 USD
Live rates at 2009.10.19 11:14:58 UTC
1.00 USD = 1.30996 BGN
United States Dollars Bulgaria Leva
1 USD = 1.30996 BGN 1 BGN = 0.763384 USD
Live rates at 2009.10.19 11:20:58 UTC
1.00 USD = 1.45845 TRY
United States Dollars Turkey Lira
1 USD = 1.45845 TRY 1 TRY = 0.685661 USD
Posted in Political on 10/14/2009 02:39 am by Gare
“Surreal” Vegetarian Spider Found — A First
Matt Kaplan
for National Geographic News
October 12, 2009
A new discovery has taken the bite out of spiders’ status as meat-eaters.
A tropical jumping spider that eats mostly plant buds has been identified, a new study says—making it the only known vegetarian out of some 40,000 spider species.
In the late 1800s, naturalists named the spider Bagheera kiplingi after a panther in British author Rudyard Kipling’s 1894 children’s book The Jungle Book.
“At that time in history, all the [naturalists] had was a tattered dead specimen,” said study leader Christopher Meehan, a biologist at the University of Arizona in Tucson.
“They had no idea what it ate. But perhaps they knew that jumping spiders were cat-like in their movements, and [they] decided to name the spider after the agile panther Bagheera in Kipling’s book.”
“Utterly Surreal”
Between 2001 and 2008, Meehan and colleagues studied the spider in its tropical habitat in southeastern Mexico and northwestern Costa Rica. (Get spider facts.)
They observed that the spiders ate nutrient-rich buds that grow on acacia plants.
Vegeaterian Spider Found
The acacias are also home to a species of ant that live in the plants’ hollow thorns. In a classic example of mutualism, the ants protect the plant in return for shelter and food, said Meehan, who conducted the research while at Villanova University in Villanova, Pennsylvania.
Yet the fast, stealthy Bagheera has figured out how to leap from thorn to thorn to collect its meal—while avoiding the highly aggressive ants.
Though the spider does occasionally snack on ant larvae, the bulk of their diet is plants, Meehan said.
“It is utterly surreal,” he said, “to see a spider use such effective hunting strategies to hunt a plant.”
Study published October 12 in the journal Current Biology.
erin writes:
We’ve made it to Istanbul and while the other cities were interesting and often beautiful, Istanbul is wonderful. Full of windy streets filled with children playing, merchants selling fruit and nuts, clothes, rugs,and everything imaginable, and/or mosques or historical relics. And it also a city of sounds. The prayer call is broadcast on loudspeakers 5 times a day. We have mostly just been wandering the streets. Yesterday, we were at a cafe under Galatia bridge. The bridge is constructed with the road over the top and then restaurants and cafes underneath. You can sit and look out over the water and back at the mosques and the palaces on land –so you have a mix of tourist, but also locals, many on dates. In addition there are tons of fishing lines hanging from the top portion of the bridge that fall past the bottom section and you can see the lines and the buckets being hauled up and down. During our time there we only saw one fish actually being caught and we watched the fish being hauled in. All of a sudden, when it was almost at the top of the bridge, it fell off the hook. This Turkish man, walking in a nice suit, with his date, got hit on the shoulder with the fish. There was a mad scramble for the fish. The waiters caught the fish and then gave it to the man—I guess if it hits you, it’s yours.
In the next couple of days, we’ll probably head over the the Asia side of Istanbul and spend some more time at the Grand Bazaar.
With the exception of the windy streets making it easy to get turned around, Istanbul has been fairly easy to negotiate. However, we have been lucky to have my brother with us at points. For example the street signs in Belgrade (and train announcements, etc) are written in Cyrillic script while the map was in roman lettering—not so helpful.
And, we are of course all fighting off or succumbing to various illnesses, but still managing to get out and explore.
