Ads on your Mobile... Aren't You Thrilled

31 July 2011

A Desperate Appeal for the Earth: through Interpretive Dance

Time to capitalize on it is running out
The poetic dance narrative was Nyarady's way of relating her research on the bee crisis. Part of the process is definitely trying to understand things
Actually it isn't. It's the actual crisis (if any). For the Arts to "understand and mobilize" is usually a sign that "the crisis", whatever it is, has graduated into somethign socially useful to them.

In that sense, the more fake their preferred horror is, the better it is for all of us.

Hair Crimes!

Send out that APB!
Although no crime was committed at the neighbor's home, the police department is interested in talking to this suspicious individual.
The scourge of fair, leafy, Upper Moreland, PA?
His hair was in a mullet style and he was wearing a blue and yellow baseball cap. The male was riding a 10 speed bike.

29 July 2011

28 July 2011

Euro-Middle East Relations: an Object Lesson

From LIFE magazine, 16 September 1940

“The weasel is a cunning and courageous beast with such a lust for killing that he kills for the love of it, even when not hungry. He first sucks victim’s blood, then eats its brains.”

27 July 2011

Today in History

27 July 1961:
East Berlin to be Rebuilt Into Red Super-Metropolis

BERLIN (NANA) – East Germany plans to rebuild Communist East Berlin as the showcase capital of the German Communist state and an architectural counter-attraction to West Berlin.
Walter Ulbricht, the East German leader, revealed that cornerstones for a complex of government buildings at Marx-Engels Square as a feature of signing ceremonies for a Soviet-East German peace treaty.

East Germany has conducted an architectural competition for the designing of the “ultra modern socialist metropolis.” Professor Max Hensermann, the architect in charge, says East Germany decided against imitating Moscow architecture.
“There are many forms of functional socialist architecture, and we will choose those forms best suited to East Berlin,” Henselmann said.

In 1953 East Germany began construction of the Stalin Allee, a gaudy boulevard designed as a propaganda façade for the rubble and ramshackle structures which make East Berlin and eyesore.
This avenue of “Moscow Modern” apartment buildings and luxury shops now stretches for nearly a mile along the pre-war Frankfurter Allee. It is to be extended to the Alexanderplatz.
But future new construction will deviate sharply from the Rococo and gingerbread of “Moscow Modern.” Henselmann indicated that the east Germans have decided on a modified Le Corbusier functional architecture with flowing lines.

The Marx-Engels Square, the pre-Communist Lustgarten, will house government offices, in effect replacing the pre-war Wilhelmstrasse and Leipzigerstrasse.
Foreign embassies will again be concentrated at the western end of Unter Den Linden, the famous Linden tree-lined avenue containing Humboldt (Berlin) University, the State Opera, and principal museums.
Since the war the Soviets have built a mammoth embassy near the former site of the U.S., British, and French embassies. The East German regime has now reserved a large tract in this area which will be subdivided and sold for embassy sites to countries recognizing East Germany.


COMMUNIST GAIETY

The opposite end of Unter Den Linden, bordering on the old Lustgarten, will be developed as East Berlin’s center of elegance. It will contain large department stores, cafes and restaurants, and even night clubs. Henselmann remarked, “who says there’s anything against gaiety in Communism?”

Freiedrichstrasse, pre-war Berlin’s amusement area, will retain the same character under the Communist reconstruction plans. A 200-bed hotel is to be constructed near the Friedrichstrasse railway station.

Hanselmann estimates that the major buildings in the program including Friedrichstrasse Hotel, will be completed by 1967. “The exact date depends upon the establishemtn of priorities for this program as compared with our general industrial development,” he explained.
“But we can promise this: By 1965 you will no longer recognize the city you see today.”

26 July 2011

New York Stories

The city of lost souls has a million tales to tell...
A man with fine, thin hair trying to affect a rock 'n' roll look was dubbed a "coconut wearing a toupée." A red-eyed pothead who forgot to shampoo became a "vulture with a mullet." I came for the haircut. I stayed for the weird Q-tip imagery.

24 July 2011

Mullet Trash Talk

Yo
Q: Who had a better mullet? You or the Big Unit?
Charlton: Probably the Big Unit. But it was close.

Images of the Near Distant Ago




SPON features a set of images of a disused Soviet military hospital in the Brandenburg town of Beelitz, a sanitarium in Oranienburg, and other abandoned structures in what was the DDR by Berlin photographer Axel Hansmann. Is it art or merely deliciously grim scenery?

23 July 2011

News Digest from the Fake-Crisis Management Center, no. 2011\07B

Scary bee eugenics replaces bee crisis

Building A Super Bee To Save Us From A Food Crisis
Mite-resistant bees are probably not the panacea to our bee crisis. Because while mites and viruses certainly contribute to our bee problems.
And you though that THEY thought that Genetically Modified Organisms are BAAAAAD.

22 July 2011

What to Feel Tall? Hang out with Short People!

Want to feel smart? Randomly generate postmodernist trash. Reload for even more high-achieving academic brilliance obfuscation.

He is an evil genius, Thank him, sofort, tous de suite, and chop chop

21 July 2011

Smell ya Later!

An excellent data source is found for twhat I'd like to call “the dead hippy index”.
"German society is changing and it's not easy to be a naturist anymore," said Kurt Fischer, president of the German FKK association (DFK). There are some 500,000 registered nudists and a total of seven million Germans sunbathe naked regularly.

"But the numbers are unfortunately falling by about two percent each year," Fischer told a group of reporters in the Foreign Press Association (VAP) while sitting, fully clothed, at a beach bar in Berlin's government quarter. "Times are tough."

The main problem is the shrinking population, Fischer said.
Aside from a still fetid river cum canal, Berlin’s government district (as if that didn’t describe their whole society), is far enough away from a tropical beach (Club Med Libya, perchance?) to make this look about as silly as most impromptu press events in Germany.

20 July 2011

19 July 2011

Dystopia Then, Dystopia Now

Just as now, the wasteland of popular culture promoted a sort of "unilateral disarmament" against the world's evils. Otherwise we were to still enjoy the misery we were deserving.

18 July 2011

Another Blog Reviewing Techhie Crap

Apps are ubiquitous. Apps are everywhere.

It's as if all blogs have to review things to look edgy and technically adept, so I'll apply those years in teh High School A/V club to good use.

Someone here needs to do a review of apps, and there ain't nobody but me, so here goes:
I track my bitches wit da Cellsnithes.
See? Just like that I entered that new-fangled techy world of Apps in a faux-ironical kind of way.

17 July 2011

Paranoid and Mulleted is no way to go Through Life, Son

Worried? When Your Do is a Don't
This time around, I managed to get past the dreaded "growing it out over my ears" stage, and the "looks a little like a Billy Ray Cyrus Mullet"
So don't. Or maybe get a haircut, and stop making us listen to you talk about yourself.

15 July 2011

Random DX Report

A number station of undetermined origin was heard 15 June 2011, 0135 GMT on 6767 khz. 5 digit cifer was read in multiple languages by what sounded like a computer generated female voice.

It went off air at 0140 GMT.

The use of number stations is an ‘old school’ method of communicating with your spies from the home land to the nation where they are doing their surveillance without being detected.

The strength of the signal and the use of this reliable but primitive method of messaging suggest that it likely originated in Cuba, Venezuela, or transmitted from sea.

14 July 2011

Oiks!

Crazy Mixed Up Pup, 1956



An animated fillum directed by the criminally insane Tex Avery, inventor of characters like Screwy Squirrel, Chilly Willy, Daffy Duck, and Porky Pig. Find me JUST ONE of those characters that isn’t struggling with their inner demons, why dontcha?

13 July 2011

The Future, as Always, is Bleak. Almost,

Large Asteroid to Almost Hit Earth in November
Let's hope that 2005 YU55, the 400 meter wide monster headed our way this year and forecast to be near Earth in November, doesn't slightly change course and become one of the asteroids that actually hit Earth.
Let's also hope monkeys don't ALMOST come flying out of my butt, so long as we're at it.

12 July 2011

The Swedish Miracle Mullet


"I have been trying for ten years to get this classified as a handicap," Tullgren told The Local.

"I spoke to three psychologists and they finally agreed that I needed this to avoid being discriminated against."
Whenever you see news coming out of Sweden, why do feel compelled to ALWAYS ask "is this a joke"? It’s a stupid question, because it never is.

Sweden: Man gets sick benefits for heavy metal addiction
A Swedish heavy metal fan has had his musical preferences officially classified as a disability. The results of a psychological analysis enable the metal lover to supplement his income with state benefits.
So on the occasions where he DID show up to work, he employed psychiatry to try to compel his employer to listen to metal for what is likely a 6 hour a day job. This despite the fact that he was getting paid at all.
Eventually his last employer tired of his absences and Tullgren was left jobless and reliant on welfare handouts.

But his sessions with the occupational psychologists led to a solution of sorts: Tullgren signed a piece of paper on which his heavy metal lifestyle was classified as a disability, an assessment that entitles him to a wage supplement from the job centre.

"I signed a form saying: 'Roger feels compelled to show his heavy metal style. This puts him in a difficult situation on the labour market. Therefore he needs extra financial help'. So now I can turn up at a job interview dressed in my normal clothes and just hand the interviewers this piece of paper," he said.
Winners and enterpreneurs seem rather hard to come by after 6 decades of deprogramming people of common sense.

03 July 2011

Not So Distant, Not so 'Ago'

Shortwave listeners... yes, both of you, will enjoy this. A British group has been refining software that harvests what remaining SW transmissions are still being broadcasted out there in the murky land of spookdom.
Building on the huge successes of previous editions, Version 3.5 delivers to users a vast array of signals intelligence gathering tools and provides far more comprehensive functionality to cope with today's dynamic signals collection environments. HARVESTER just got better.

In a rapidly changing world where major events impact on all our lives, you need to keep one-step ahead of the news. Signals Intelligence can give you that edge but valuable time can be lost sorting, storing and searching through collected intelligence.

The HARVESTER family of SIGINT database applications provide unique and cost-effective solutions to a wide range of collection requirements. From a network enabled multi-user collection system to the standalone radio enthusiast, HARVESTER provides real-time solutions for all COMINT, ELINT or FISINT signal intercepted between 0 Hz to 100 GHz.
My next radio indulgence will be this dandy little trifle:



Frankly, I have too many of the groovy old ones to keep up with. Owing to their vintage, they may start getting the attic treatment, where they are cleaned, boxed, and forgotten for another decade.

02 July 2011

Post-Nuclear Germany, Beware

Beware of fooling yourself most of all:
However, without these subsidies not one of the "world famous" Danish wind farms would be profitable. But not even the government largesse, courtesy of the taxpayers/consumers seems to be enough to keep wind power profitable in Denmark; Scan Energy, one of the major wind and solar energy companies, with production also in Germany and France, has finally called it a day. Among the major shareholders are a number of the biggest Danish farming estates. Now there is, according to the Danish daily Jylland-Posten, a real risk that some of these family estates, built up during centuries, will have to be sold as a consequense of the Scan Energy bankruptcy.