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David Bowie’s 65 birthday: 65 crazy facts and bizarre myths – mirror.co.uk: “David Bowie’s 65 birthday: 65 crazy facts and bizarre myths
By Paul Cockerton 8/01/2012
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1 First things first – how do you pronounce David Bowie’s name? It is ‘Bowie’ to rhyme with ‘Joey’, rather than as if it were similar to the acronym for The Only Way is Essex, TOWIE.

2 Did Bowie help start the credit crunch? BBC journalist Evan Davis suggests he may have had a role. In 1997, Bowie sold bonds on his future back catalogue royalties, an idea which was copied by the banks who sold on mortgage income. This ‘securitisation’ was partly responsible for the problems banks developed in the late Noughties.

3 Bowie says he was moonwalking years before Michael Jackson wowed the world in 1983′s Billie Jean. He wrote on his official website that choreographer Toni Basil taught him a type of moonwalk for his 1974 Diamond Dogs tour.

4 Bowie was interviewed on a BBC programme as the founder of The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Long-haired Men at the age of 17. He complained: “It’s not nice when people call you darling and that”.

5 Bowie shares his birthday with Elvis Presley, who was exactly 12 years older. In her book, Stardust, Angie Bowie writes David Bowie could do a “devastating” impersonation of Elvis Presley. And Elvis once considered recording a cover version of Bowie’s 1976 hit, Golden Years.

6 Bowie’s first ever release was Liza Jane/Louie Louie Go Home in June 1964, under the name of Davie Jones with The King-Bees.

7 Born David Robert Jones in Brixton, London in 1947, he changed his name to avoid the similarity with Davy Jones from The Monkees. Due to the similar-sounding name, a popular misconception is that Bowie was actually in The Monkees.

8 Bowie got just one O Level – in art. He still draws, paints and sculpts with his favourite artists listed as Picasso, Michael Ray Charles, Tintoretto and Erich Heckel.

9 Many young boys in the 1970s and 1980s grew up wanting to be Bowie – and so did girls. Queen of Shops Mary Portas said Bowie was her hero as a child and she dressed up as Ziggy Stardust aged 12.

10 Blue-eyed boy Bowie’s left pupil is permanently dilated thanks to a punch thrown by friend George Underwood at school over a girl. His thumbnail dug into Bowie’s eye, which now appears either brown or blue depending on the light.

11 The fictional Major Tom has appeared in three of Bowie’s hits: ‘Space Oddity’ in 1969, ‘Ashes To Ashes’ in 1980 and ‘Hallo Spaceboy’ in 1996.

12 Rock guitarist Peter Frampton was Bowie’s friend at school and he has played guitar with Bowie many times during his career.

13 Bowie released his debut album, called ‘David Bowie’, in 1967 after playing in pub and club bands.

14 The Laughing Gnome – regarded by many as Bowie’s worst song – was the most requested track by fans when invited to make phone votes to select songs for him to perform on the 1990 world tour – although he didn’t play it.

15 His first hit in the UK was ‘Space Oddity’ in 1969 and – aptly enough – was used by the BBC for the coverage of the moon landing.
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16 Nicolas Roeg cast Bowie in his first lead role in 1976, as a stranded alien, in The Man Who Fell to Earth.

17 His first number one in the United States was Fame, in 1975. Co-written by John Lennon, it features the late Beatle on backing vocals.

18 Bowie wrote the soundtrack for the BBC dramatisation of Hanish Kureishi’s novel, ‘Buddha Of Suburbia’.

19 On album ‘Diamond Dogs’, Bowie plays pretty much every instrument, including the guitar riff on ‘Rebel Rebel’.

20 Bowie was ahead of the pack when the internet started to take off. In 1997 Bowie made single ‘Telling Lies’ available for release only on the internet. He launched Bowienet, his own ISP, a year later.

21 Bowie made a special guest appearance on the SpongeBob SquarePants episode Atlantis SquarePantis as the Lord Royal Highness in Atlantis SquarePantis on November 12, 2007.

22 Bowie formed his own mime troupe in 1969 called Turquoise, later to change their name to Feathers.

23 Bowie appeared as Pontius Pilate in Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ.

24 In contrast, in the 1986 movie Labyrinth, Bowie plays Jareth The Goblin King.

25 Bowie married supermodel Iman in 1992. In fact they married twice – at a registry office

26 Bowie’s hit ‘Ziggy Stardust’ is about Vince Taylor, proto-punk and frontman for The Playboys.

27 A version of ‘Space Oddity’ was recorded in Italian titled ‘Ragazzo Solo, Ragazza Solo’ which translated means ‘Lonely Boy, Lonely Girl’.

28 Chart rivals Roxy Music were miffed when Bowie copied their catsuit look on stage – so they ‘stole’ his trusty lighting engineer.

29 Bowie’s duet with Bing Crosby of ‘The Little Drummer Boy’, recorded for Christmas 1977 and a hit five years later, was Crosby’s last ever single.

30 A letter that Bowie sent to Young American Sandra Adams in 1967, thanking her for sending his first fanmail from across the Atlantic, was unearthed in 2010.

31 It’s nothing new for bands to be pelted by missiles during gigs, but the projectile usually takes the form of a beer cup of water bottle. Not so during a gig by Bowie in Norway in 2004 when he was hit in the eye by a lollipop while onstage. The gig was stopped while Bowie received medical attention.

32 Actor and musician Scarlett Johansson said: “I learned I was a sexual being through David Bowie’s songs.”
David Bowie performing The Jean Genie on Top of the Pops in 1973

33 Lost Top of the Pops footage of The Jean Genie from 1973, regarded as the ‘holy grail’ by Starman’s fans, was found in a dusty box by a former cameraman on the show last year. It had been wiped by the BBC and assumed to be gone forever.

34 ‘The Man Who Sold The World’ has been covered by Nirvana and Lulu.

35 Bowie proposed to Iman in Paris while on a boat cruise on the Seine while it was passing under the Pont Neuf.

36 His favourite aftershaves are Minotaure by Paloma Picasso and anything by Guerlain.

37 David Bowie has been immortalised in stone to celebrate turning 65. Artist Ed Chapman, 40, created this tile mosaic of the Starman in time for his milestone birthday. Ed, who lives in Manchester, has previously made of a portrait of Lord Sugar out of sugarcubes and Jimi Hendrix from 5,000 plectrums.
Bowie pin-up

38 Bowie declined the CBE in 2000 and a knighthood in 2003. He said: “I would never have any intention of accepting anything like that. I seriously don’t know what it’s for. It’s not what I spent my life working for.”

39 He was the star of an episode in the second series of Ricky Gervais, where he makes up a song ridiculing Gervais’ character Andy Millman.

40 Bowie grew up in Bromley, London, but his family hail from Doncaster in South Yorkshire and Tunbridge Wells, Kent.

41 Rumour has it that Bing Crosby did not know who Bowie was before they recorded their Little Drummer Boy duet, but Bing’s son recommended him.

42 29-year-old Bowie was arrested for cannabis possession in Rochester, New York in 1976.

43 Wife Iman has a Bowie knife tattooed on her ankle as well as the name ‘David’ in Arabic writing.

44 Estimates of Bowie’s wealth range from £100m to £500m.

45 Other pseudonyms Bowie has used over the years include Aladdin Sane, the Thin White Duke, Tao Jones, Halloween Jack and John Merrick.

46 His Glastonbury performance in 2000 is regarded by fans as one of the greatest Glasto shows of all time. And in a poll of who festival fans want to headline Glastonbury when it returns next year, Bowie was number one choice.

47 A new spider species discovered in Malaysia in 2009 was called Heteropoda Davidbowie.

48 Guitarist Mick Ronson’s work with David Bowie is sometimes credited as being the ‘birthpoint of heavy metal’.

49 The video for Ashes to Ashes was voted the 27th greatest music video of all time in a poll by Channel 4.

50 When recording the Magic Dance song for the Labyrinth soundtrack, the baby wouldn’t provide the necessary coos and giggles so David Bowie did it himself.

51 His mum Peggy was a waitress and his dad John worked for Barnardo’s.

52 A pupil at Stockwell Infants School in south London, he had a reputation for ‘defiance and brawling’.

53 Bowie began playing the piano at the age of ten and played the ukelele and tea-chest bass in skiffle seesions with mates.

54 He met first wife Angela Barnett in 1969 – they married within a year.

55 The song ‘Kooks’ on 1971 album ‘Hunky Dory’ was written for his son Zowie.

56 Now know better as Duncan Jones, he is an award-winning director responsible for science fiction-techno-thriller 2011 flick Source Code.

57 ‘Diamond DOgs’ was planned to be a musical version of George orwell’s 1984.

58 In 1980, Bowie did a three-month run on Broadway in The Elephant Man.

59 He turned down the chance to play baddie Max Zorin in James Bond film ‘A View To A Kill’ – a role that was performed by Christopher Walken.

60 In 1992, he played FBI agent Phillip Jeffries in ‘Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me’.

61 He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996.

62 He and Iman appeared as characters in 1999 game Omikron – for which he provided the soundtrack.

63 Bowie suffered an acutely blocked artery that required emergency heart surgery in 2004 and went into semi-retirement.

64 Rolling Stone magazine declared him 39th on the list of the 100 Greatest Artists Of All Time.

65 Bowie was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006.”

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Stanley Kubrick’s Photos of 1940s New York – mashKULTURE: “Stanley Kubrick’s Photos of 1940s New “

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Primate Watching (junky plaza) | Inside Mundoblaineo: “Yesterday I had to go over to the post office on Ebay business. The local post office around here is at the Platia Dimarchios, city hall plaza. For some reason, local junkies and other permanently bewildered types have taken up a sort of residence there. There seems to be only minimal dealing going on, furtive ingestion, not much else except for a sort of Brownian motion and social interaction. I told Maria it was like going to the monkey house to watch our distant cousins. Big time voyeur action. I watched a strange menage a trois as one belle of the balle, her left eye blackened and swollen, squeezed into jeans and boots, decorated with chains flirted openly with another candidate as her bearded oblivious companion phased in and out of existence off to one side. He lifted her up from behind, stretching her back while beardo, resplendent in plaid shirt and baseball cap had image iteration and rendering problems. Then the police came by and no one altered their behavior in any way.

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Sirota: Legalizing marijuana is now a ‘mainstream’ position | The Raw Story: “The slow drumbeat to legalizing marijuana in America continued Friday evening when Salon.com columnist David Sirota appeared on Current TV’s The Young Turks.

Sirota mentioned a recent Gallup poll in which half of Americans support legalizing marijuana, with 77 percent also backing medical marijuana. With those figures, Sirota and host Cenk Uygur slammed White House and Washington figures still viewing marijuana legalization as a radical idea.

“I think if you look at those numbers like that, what you see is the mainstream, centrist position, is to support legalizing marijuana,” he said. “And the extremists are those who continue to fight the drug war.””

Marijuana: Fight Back With The Facts – Toke of the Town: “The prohibitionists try to tell us that marijuana is not medicine. The scientific research tells us that cannabis can be a useful medical treatment for a wide range of diseases, and there are literally hundreds of scientific studies to back this up. For a 420-page listing of studies showing the effectiveness of medical marijuana, check out Granny Storm Crow’s list.
Marijuana is medically good for you. Fight back with the facts.

The prohibitionists tell us that smoking marijuana makes us stupid and lazy and unmotivated. But the scientific research tells us that cannabis smokers work harder and smarter than their non-toking brethren. The Rubin Study in Jamaica, published in the 1970s by Dr. Vera Rubin (look it up if you don’t believe me), shows that the hardest workers are the highest workers.
Marijuana is good for your motivation. Fight back with the facts.

The prohibitionists tell us that marijuana is a gateway drug. The scientific research tells us that not only is cannabis not a gateway drug, but is in fact an exit drug from hard drug use, which has shown to be invaluable in helping addicts of meth, cocaine and heroin, along with alcoholics, maintain abstinence from harmful substances.
Marijuana is good for stopping drug abuse. Fight back with the facts.

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Photo: American Pregnancy
?The prohibitionists tell us that the smoking of marijuana by pregnant women results in lower birth weights and less intelligent babies. The scientific research tells us that toking mothers have babies that are just as healthy, with birth weights just as normal, as babies born of non-toking mothers. And you know what else the research showed? That the babies of pot smoking mothers scored better on laboratory tests of cognition than babies of non-smoking mothers. Another independent scientific study showed that babies of marijuana-using mothers have a lower mortality rate than babies of mothers who didn’t use any drugs at all! The baby mortality rate among non-using mothers was 13.7 per 1,000 live births, while babies of toking mothers had a rate of only 8.9 deaths per 1000 births.”

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News from the Edge | Mayans Ended up in Georgia | unknowncountry: “How did corn, beans and tobacco come to the Indians of the US? We used to think they came from Native Americans who brought them back from their trips across the border into Mexico, but they may have come from Mayans who moved north and eventually settled in the state of Georgia.

For a long time, US archaeologists said there were no Mayan ruins here, but that was probably because they weren’t familiar with the buildings of the descendants of the Southeastern mound-builder tribes: The Creeks, Alabamas, Natchez, Chitimachas and Choctaws. Despite their insistence that all Indians arrived in North America by walking across the land bridge that once stretched from Siberia, these tribes have always claimed that their ancestors came up from the south, and recent DNA evidence shows proof that they were right. “

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Jim Sherwood obituary | Music | The Guardian: “Jim Sherwood on tour in Germany with the Mothers of Invention in 1967. His principal contributions came on baritone and/or tenor saxophone, though he could also be heard on percussion and vocals. Photograph: Petra Niemeier/K&K/Redferns
Jim “Motorhead” Sherwood, who has died aged 69, was a member of Frank Zappa’s original Mothers of Invention. He appeared on all the group’s early albums, up to and including Weasels Ripped My Flesh (1970), as well as on Zappa’s solo disc Lumpy Gravy. He later performed with the Grandmothers, a group of musicians who had accompanied Zappa during different phases of his career.

Born in Arkansas City, Kansas, Sherwood first met Zappa in 1956 when both of them were attending Antelope Valley high school in California. Sherwood was in the same class as Frank’s brother: “Bobby found out that I collected blues records and he introduced me to Frank, and Frank and I sort of got together and swapped records.”

At the time, Zappa was already in a band called the Blackouts, but this soon disintegrated. Then the brothers moved to Ontario, California, and started a new band, the Omens, which also included Sherwood. He would regularly jam with Zappa in a string of different groups, and eventually, in 1964, the Mothers. The following year, the band signed a recording contract with MGM records, and set about the lengthy process of recording their first album, Freak Out!, with producer Tom Wilson. At the time, Sherwood was not a fully fledged member of the band, which changed its name to the Mothers of Invention. He described his role on Freak Out! as “just making sound effects on some of the songs”.

After the album’s release in June 1966 on MGM’s Verve label, the band went on tour, then in November that year took up a six-month residency at the Garrick theatre in New York, during which they played 14 shows a week. Sherwood was working for the band as equipment manager and roadie, and sometimes operated the lighting during the Garrick shows. These were a bizarre mix of music and performance art, featuring puppet shows and interludes when the band would pelt the audience with fruit.

It was when the Mothers made their first trip to England, in mid-1967, that Sherwood was finally hired as a full-time musician. It was the band’s vocalist and percussionist Ray Collins who gave Sherwood the nickname “Motorhead”, through his love of working on cars and trucks and motorcycles: “He said ‘it sounds like you’ve got a little motor in your head’, so they just called me Motorhead and that seemed to stick.”

Sherwood contributed on baritone and/or tenor saxophone, and sometimes percussion and vocals, to Absolutely Free, We’re Only in It for the Money, and the doo-wop album Cruising with Ruben & the Jets, taking in the Zappa solo album Lumpy Gravy en route. Zappa disbanded the original Mothers of Invention in 1969 for financial reasons and what he perceived as public apathy, but Sherwood appears on the albums Uncle Meat, Burnt Weeny Sandwich and Weasels Ripped My Flesh, recorded before the split but released subsequently.

Sherwood makes an appearance in Zappa’s bizarre and confusing 1971 movie 200 Motels (“Frank wanted me to play a newt rancher and I was supposed to be in love with a vacuum cleaner,” as he put it). In 1973, he played baritone sax on the album For Real!, by Ruben & the Jets. This was a band formed by Ruben Guevara, inspired by Zappa’s album Cruising with Ruben & the Jets, and Zappa played some guitar on their debut album as well as producing it.

Sherwood appeared on the further Zappa releases You Are What You Is (1981), Civilization Phaze III in 1993, the year of Zappa’s death, and the Läther box set, released three years later.

In the 1980s, Sherwood performed with the Grandmothers, and played on a couple of albums with them. During the 1990s, he joined forces with Billy James and his Ant-Bee project.

James, a graduate of Berklee College of Music, Boston, wanted to express his fascination with psychedelic and experimental music from the 1960s, for which he assembled musicians from the Mothers of Invention and Captain Beefheart’s band. Sherwood appears on three Ant-Bee albums, though by this time he had given up playing the saxophone and his contributions are limited to “snorks”, in which you “snort through your nose, sucking air in through your nose”. He added further snorks to Sandro Oliva’s album Who the Fuck Is Sandro Oliva?!? (1995).

“I just feel honoured to have spent time with [Frank Zappa] and the other guys in the early group,” said Sherwood. “[He was] an incredible person, and his music is just something I enjoy listening to all the time.”

• Euclid James Sherwood, musician, born 8 May 1942; died 25 December 2011″

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In Memoriam: Christopher Hitchens, 1949–2011 | Blogs | Vanity Fair: “Christopher Hitchens—the incomparable critic, masterful rhetorician, fiery wit, and fearless bon vivant—died today at the age of 62. Hitchens was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in the spring of 2010, just after the publication of his memoir, Hitch-22, and began chemotherapy soon after. His matchless prose has appeared in Vanity Fair since 1992, when he was named contributing editor.

“Cancer victimhood contains a permanent temptation to be self-centered and even solipsistic,” Hitchens wrote nearly a year ago in Vanity Fair, but his own final labors were anything but: in the last 12 months, he produced for this magazine a piece on U.S.-Pakistani relations in the wake of Osama bin Laden’s death, a portrait of Joan Didion, an essay on the Private Eye retrospective at the Victoria and Albert Museum, a prediction about the future of democracy in Egypt, a meditation on the legacy of progressivism in Wisconsin, and a series of frank, graceful, and exquisitely written essays in which he chronicled the physical and spiritual effects of his disease. At the end, Hitchens was more engaged, relentless, hilarious, observant, and intelligent than just about everyone else—just as he had been for the last four decades.

“My chief consolation in this year of living dyingly has been the presence of friends,” he wrote in the June 2011 issue. He died in their presence, too, at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas. May his 62 years of living, well, so livingly console the many of us who will miss him dearly.”

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Fox LA Reporter Hits New Low in #OccupyLA Coverage | Crooks and Liars: “This is Fox 11′s Gigi Graciette. Gigi doesn’t cover Dodger games or the Rose Parade by mentioning the debris discarded by attendees, but apparently that’s how she covers a international protest’s local chapter: they have trash left behind after they’ve been arrested en masse. Gross trash, too. Way to inform the public. No question as to why 292 Angelenos all but volunteered to be arrested last night. No mention of what nonviolent struggle has accomplished in American history (ahem civil rights). No mention of the cruel irony of the protesters getting evicted because they brought homeless people to the steps of City Hall instead of the usual safe distance of two blocks east. No mention of the politics involved and how the City decided to support the protest, then negotiated with them and then suddenly reneged – made apparent by the 1400 LAPD officers in riot helmets on the streets of Los Angeles last night.

But here’s the thing that really makes this clip disgusting from a basic journalism perspective: Gigi doesn’t know and didn’t find out what that mysterious white liquid was in those water bottles before she reported on them. She didn’t know and instead of being hesitant to make accusations or start any rumors – she just does it without pause. I saw her there at around 11pm – she was there all night and never asked anyone what it was before she went live?! You’re supposed to know MORE than the people on their couches watching you – because you’re on the scene! This is hackery at its worse.

The white liquid is more than likely Maloxx. They had it on site because it is supposed to neutralize the pain of pepper spray and tear gas. Yes, there’s a story – there were hundreds of Angelenos willing to be pepper sprayed for a political statement. They were (their phrase) militantly nonviolent and had been spending days training and planning to be raided by police and THAT is what that mysterious white liquid symbolized – that’s what it meant. They were willing, to quote Mario Savio “put their bodies upon the gears.”

Since I will always assume the best in people, I will guess it’s just laziness. Just not caring about telling a real story about Occupy LA and opting for the easy “look at the stuff on the ground” to fill up airtime. I say laziness and not incompetence or malice. But I’m feeling generous today.”

British Director Ken Russell Dies Aged 84 – The Hollywood Reporter: “LONDON – Iconic British filmmaker Ken Russell has died aged 84. OUR EDITOR RECOMMENDS

‘The Devils’ With Oliver Reed and Vanessa Redgrave Scares Up U.K. DVD Release Reports of his death broke across the Internet  early Monday in the U.K. Russell’s friend, arts writer, novelist and columnist Norman Lebrecht, said a family friend told him of Russell’s death on Sunday morning. The filmmaker is reported to have died peacefully in his sleep.”

U.S. Patent Office Honors Steve Jobs with iPhone-Shaped Exhibit: “The late Steve Jobs has been hailed as a brilliant businessman, marketer, and visionary. He was also an prolific inventor, if the number of patents bearing his name are any indication.

No less than 323 Apple patents list Jobs among the inventors responsible for them. Now the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is honoring the Apple founder with a dedicated exhibit.”

Reclaimed Farmhouse Beams Made Into Eclectic “Farmpunk” Furniture : TreeHugger: “For those who find the relentless uniformity of modern, mass-produced furniture tedious (and not to mention environmentally unfriendly), there’s always the option of furnishings that are made from recycled materials, like these pieces by the resourceful American trio Unite Two Design. Combining unlikely elements of rustic with the industrial, Unite Two Design’s distinctive furniture is handcrafted from farm beams that are reclaimed locally, and odds and ends of industrial machinery. Calling their unique, juxtaposed style “farmpunk”, it’s cool to see that sometimes each component can hail from different centuries altogether. “

Zombie Feet Sandals – Boing Boing Shop: “Zombie Feet Sandals”

Shepard Fairey Designs ‘Occupy Hope’ Poster, Replaces Obama’s Face With ‘V for Vendetta’ Mask – Los Angeles News – The Informer: “Here we go again. L.A. street artist Shepard Fairey has released a second original design for the Occupy Wall Street movement — and this time, instead of playing it safe with a wistful scene out of an Angela Davis documentary, he’s given his own (in)famous HOPE poster from Obama’s first election campaign a rebellious makeover.”

Triangle-Headed Alien Mummy discovered in Peru — we’re not alone!: “Triangle-Headed Alien Mummy discovered in Peru — we’re not alone!

Triangle-Headed Alien Mummy discovered in Peru — we’re not alone! Behold a giant-headed alien mummy that turned up in Peru. Stare into the all-knowing eye sockets of an alien that somehow wound up on Earth many years ago, and was mummified by the locals. But what was is it doing here?”

The Wire: Adventures in Modern Music: Article: “Hosted by Anne Hilde Neset, with tracks by Can, Vas Deferens Organization, Ariel Pink, Baloji with Konono N? 1 and more”

World Map Made from Recycled Computers (7 Pictures) > Design und so, Netzkram, Sculptures, urban art > components, macs, old compoter, pcs, university, world map: “Besser kann man alte Computer-Kompenenten vermutlich nicht recyclen: die britische Künstlerin Susan Stockwell hat diese riesige Weltkarte aus alten Motherboards, Verkabelung, Ventilatoren, Platinen und Whatnots für die University of Bedfordshire zusammengebastelt. 2010 hat sie mit dem Sammeln begonnen und ist jetzt gerade fertig geworden. Papier kann sie übrigens auch.

“UK-based artist Susan Stockwell recently completed this gigantic world map made from recycled computer components for the University of Bedfordshire.””

The Top 10 Banned books of all time – ShortLists – ShortList Magazine: “1. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (1932)

The gist: Written in 1931 and published a year later, Huxley’s parody of H. G. Wells’ utopian future in his novel, Men Like Gods isn’t wholly dissimilar to George Orwell’s 1984. Addressing the period’s core theme of industrialisation, Huxley explored the loss of identity and increasing dividision of society to devastating effect.

Why was it banned? Initially, Ireland pulled it off the shelves for its controversial themes on child birth, before several states in the US tried to have it removed from school curriculums due to its “themes on negativity.”

Verizon Pays a Negative Federal Income Tax Rate, Then Pursues More Tax Breaks

Hyper realistic sculptures – Wall to Watch: ” Hyper realistic sculptures

Ron Mueck makes these amazing sculptures..”

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16 Unbelievable Urinals | KikiRiki Pics: “16 Unbelievable Urinals”

Zombie-Proof House Keeps the Walking Dead and Jehovah’s Witnesses at Bay | The Last Goddess Magazine: ““The Safe House,” designed by KWK Promes, is the perfect house for anyone who fears attack by zombies, Jehovah’s Witnesses or Mormons.

Located in Poland, by day the house is a two-story concrete cube, with 6,100 square feet of spacious living areas, floor to ceiling windows, panoramic views of the surrounding landscape, and a beautiful indoor swimming pool.

But by night, or in the event of a zombie or creepy religious fanatic attack, heavy doors and shutters slide closed, providing “maximum security” for the people hunkered down inside.

It isn’t the most beautiful design in the world, but when the zombiepocalypse comes it may very well be where mankind makes its last stand.”

Roundworms could hold the key to anti-ageing with daf-2 gene | Mail Online: “”

ALTERED ZONES – Vas Deferens Organization: “Defenestration At The Gravity Pit”: “In Eric Lumbleau’s recent piece for The Wire’s Collateral Damage column, the Mutant Sounds writer weighs in on the effects of file sharing on the underground music timeline. Forgetten outsider gems are gaining exposure to a new and surprisingly willing audience via torrents or mp3 blogs like Lumbleau’s own, allowing everyone to be their own curator, to write alternative musical histories based on what resonates with them in the now

Though Dallas’ Vas Deferens Organization, Lumbleau’s band, have a varied and prolific output, it’s safe to assume that their own musical timeline would give due props to veteran freaks like Captain Beefheart, The Residents, or Throbbing Gristle. In “Defenestration at the Gravity Pit,” the opening track from their latest Eye Peels And Brain Picks LP, this goofball approach to psychedelia manifests itself as a collagist, peyote-fueled soundtrack for your ritualistic mating dance. –Matt Sullivan, Altered Zones

Eye Peels And Brain Picks is sold out on Puer Gravy, but Side A is available as a free download”

Vas Deferens Organization and Brad Laner – “Transcontinental Conspiracy”: “Headed up by Matt Castille and Eric Lumbleau, Vas Deferens Organization’s history dates back to the mid-1990s and includes a sizable discography. Summary descriptions of the band can’t possibly do them justice, but put a gun to my head and I’ll say – imagine if The Residents listened to 100 of the best Psychedelic, Krautrock, Prog, Experimental, and 80s Hometaper albums, and then started making albums based on their digestion and regurgitation of all those albums… and you might get something like Vas Deferens Organization (VDO).”

Vas Deferens Organization – “Eye Peels & Brain Picks”: “Last year’s Ninth Ward Fourth World LP marked the first Vas Deferens Organization (VDO) album in nine years (see AI #42), and now the band are back with a new set – Eye Peels & Brain Picks – once again featuring the trio of Matt Castille, Eric Lumbleau and Christopher Moock.”

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Yelp Update Makes Fun Of Rick Perry’s Debate Flub In App Update: “At the GOP debate in Detroit, Republican presidential nominee Rick Perry committed a memorable gaffe when he claimed that he would eliminate three government agencies and was only able to name two, totally brain-farting on the third (Read all about it and watch the cringe-inducing video of Perry’s flub here).

Now, the day after, the local guide Yelp is mocking this political brain-fart in their iOS app update.

“There are three types of bugs that are now gone,” the update says:”

Collateral Damage: Mutant Sounds’ Eric Lumbleau

The Wire: Adventures in Modern Music: Article: “”

VAS DEFERENS ORGANIZATION coupe poudre scirocco by HLAVA

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Adobe touts the end of blurred photos with new Photoshop feature: “Adobe is developing an upcoming feature for Photoshop that could end the problem of blurred photos forever.

The new feature was demoed at the company’s MAX 2011 event, drawing gasps of amazement from a crowd that witnessed a blurred photo, retouched and perfected in seconds. Advanced algorithms calculate the movements of the camera at the time the image was taken, enabling the user to ‘fix’ the image by unblurring it – saving what would ordinarily be a disappointing, dud image.

As the video – which is unfortunately slightly shakey itself – demonstrates, the process can be used on a photo captured on a mobile device to sharpen the quality and, in the case of text-based images, reveal more data.

Though it was showcased at MAX, Adobe has no official release date for the anti-blur feature, though suffice to say it is likely to get a very warm welcome when it is finally available to the public.”

Shark Attack Mug: “Shark Attack Mug”

Psychedelic Art | The Suite World: “Korean surrealist artist Jung Yeon Min’s works are visually stunning, and made us curious to dig into what kind of psyche it takes to produce such artistic beauty. In our research we discovered a view into the infinite imagined world that exists outside the boundaries of our cranium. In the imaginary spaces depicted in her works, the extraordinary and the realistic merge, the micro and the macro coexist, and rules of physical space and time are manipulated.”

Studio 54 – The home of decadence | Decadent Lifestyle: ““Studio 54 was the high temple of the Great Stoned Age, a nightly spectacle of wanton debauch fueled by four main ingredients – marijuana, alcohol, Quaaludes, and cocaine – all of them working toward a common end.””

Posters by Kazumasa Nagai ~ Pink Tentacle: “Here is a collection of posters by graphic artist Kazumasa Nagai from the 1960s and 1970s.”

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Vas Deferens Organization + Perihelion – The Science Of The Impossible (Vinyl, LP) at Discogs: “Vas Deferens Organization + Perihelion – The Science Of The Impossible Label: Pure Pop For Now People – PURE 07 Format: Vinyl, LP Country: Germany Released: 15 Nov 2011 Genre: Rock Style: Space Rock, Psychedelic Rock, Experimental”

Brilliantly Sarcastic Responses To Completely Well-Meaning Signs | Happy Place:

“Brilliantly smart-ass responses to completely well-meaning signs.”

Homeschoolers for Perry – Funny Misspelled Sign – Homescholers:

Federal agency blocks FDA-approved marijuana research for veterans | The Raw Story: “The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has blocked a pilot study to examine the benefits of marijuana for veterans with treatment-resistant post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

The study was sponsored by the nonprofit research organization the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), and would have been conducted by Dr. Sue Sisley of the University of Arizona at Phoenix.

“Hundreds of veterans in medical marijuana states already report using marijuana to control their PTSD symptoms,” MAPS said in a statement. “The growing number of service members returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with combat-related trauma combined with large numbers of treatment-resistant veterans highlights the pressing need for research into additional treatments for PTSD.””

Lower court’s ruling stands: Downloading music is not a crime | The Raw Story: “(Reuters) – The Supreme Court let stand on Monday a ruling that a traditional Internet download of sound recording does not constitute a public performance of the recorded musical work under federal copyright law.

The justices refused to review a ruling by an appeals court in New York that the download itself of a musical work does not fall within the law’s definition of a public performance of that work.

The not-for-profit American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) appealed to the Supreme Court. It said the ruling has profound implications for the nation’s music industry, costing its members tens of millions of dollars in potential royalties each year.”

Matt Stone Trey Parker Acid | Oscar Dresses | Video | Mediaite: “Like many a quinceañera I’ve known, South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker delighted, intrigued, confused and repulsed people the world over when they donned copies of iconic celebrity dresses to the Academy Awards in 2000. “What are they on?” many must have wondered. And the answer to that is “acid, of course.”

The duo told Jimmy Kimmel about what exactly happened on that fateful and Lycra-encased evening:”

Limitless Space: Computerized Dataveillance Since 9/11 | Truthout: “Hundreds of state, local and federal databases clog our nation’s digital infrastructure, collecting, sharing and hoarding inconceivable amounts of information about ordinary people. From DHS to the DOJ to the DOE, from the state and local police all the way up to the military and CIA, our government is increasingly relying on a data-driven model of social control. Below is only a tiny sampling of the many hundreds of government databases containing personally identifiable information about hundreds of millions of people. Many of these databases are exempt from the Privacy Act. Some of them remain so secret we don’t know all of the kinds of data kept and shared, or how many records they contain. For more information about data collection and sharing, visit www.privacySOS.org/data.”

16 ‘super-Earths’ found outside solar system – Light Years – CNN.com Blogs: “16 ‘super-Earths’ found outside solar system It’s not like aliens put up a welcome banner or anything, but scientists now have newly identified at least one planet that could potentially sustain life.

The European Southern Observatory has just announced the discovery of more than 50 new exoplanets (planets outside our solar system), including 16 super-Earths (planets whose mass is between one and 10 times that of our own planet).

One of these planets in particular could theoretically be home to life if conditions are right. It’s called HD 85512 b, and scientists say it’s about 3.6 times the mass of the Earth. This planet is about 35 light years from Earth. Its location with respect to its star suggests that this planet could have liquid water under certain circumstances.

Don’t get too excited, though; there’s a lot more work to be done to explore whether this planet is truly fit for life, in addition to whether there are alien life forms there.

The discovery comes from High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher, or HARPS. HARPS is located at the La Silla Observatory in Chile, and is part of a telescope that’s nearly 12 feet long.

Here’s how it works, according to ESO: When a planet orbits a star, the star move towards and away from the person who’s stargazing on Earth in a regular fashion. That’s called a change in radial velocity. Because of the Doppler effect, changes in radial velocity makes the star’s light spectrum move towards longer wavelengths when it’s moving away, and towards shorter wavelengths as it gets closer. HARPS can detect this shift in the spectrum, and infer that there is a planet present.

So far, scientists have confirmed the existence of 564 planets outside of our solar system, according to NASA’s PlanetQuest website, not counting this latest batch of more than 50. Beyond that, NASA’s Kepler mission has found more than 1,200 exoplanet candidates.

“In the coming 10 to 20 years we should have the first list of potentially habitable planets in the Sun’s neighbourhood. Making such a list is essential before future experiments can search for possible spectroscopic signatures of life in the exoplanet atmospheres,” said Michel Mayor, who led the HARPS team, in a statement.”

Female ‘vampire’ busted for trying to eat elderly man | The Raw Story: “”

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The Makayama Movie Mount is essentially a case for your iPad 2 that allows you to “radically improve video capture” by attaching a number of professional photography related peripherals. Some of the possibilities include third-party wide angle and tele-lenses, microphones and lights, and a standard tripod (not included) for “stable shots, pan & tilt camera movements”.

Simply clip the iPad 2 into the case and attach your third-party accessories to one of the two standard hot shoes or screw fittings. Wide angle lens conversion up to 0.5x and zoom-angle up to 2x comes courtesy of a 37mm screw fitting that allows you to attach conversion lenses and even switch between the attached lens and the iPad’s lens on the fly.

Radically improve iPad 2 video capture with the Makayama Movie Mount | 9to5Mac | Apple Intelligence: “”