I don’t know anything about robotics, but I’m easily entertained. Despite the warning about math, this performance by robot-guru Katy Levinson is stunning. Enjoy this little jump in your brain and have a cocktail while watching.
Juxtaposition: New York Times on spray tans and Toxins in your couch
Artifact one: Who Made That Spray Tan? – NYTimes.com.
Even so, the bottle tan — especially when slathered on — tends to turn out brassier and Snookier than the real thing. But at least it’s safer than a binge in the sun.
HOW SAFE IS THE SPRAY-TAN BOOTH?
Darrell Rigel is a clinical professor of dermatology at the N.Y.U. Medical Center.
Are spray-tan booths, where the customer is standing in a fog of chemicals, safe? The concern used to be that you’re breathing in acetones — those fumes that smell like nail polish. Recent studies have suggested that dihydroxyacetone binds with a protein in your skin, and it does get absorbed systemically, but there are no smoking guns.
What do you tell your patients? I say don’t inhale in there. You’ll probably be O.K., but it’s not a totally benign alternative.
via Who Made That Spray Tan? – NYTimes.com.
Artifact 2: Arlene Blum’s Crusade Against Toxic Couches – NYTimes.com.
The problem is that flame retardants don’t seem to stay in foam. High concentrations have been found in the bodies of creatures as geographically diverse as salmon, peregrine falcons, cats, whales, polar bears and Tasmanian devils. Most disturbingly, a recent study of toddlers in the United States conducted by researchers at Duke University found flame retardants in the blood of every child they tested. The chemicals are associated with an assortment of health concerns, including antisocial behavior, impaired fertility, decreased birth weight, diabetes, memory loss, undescended testicles, lowered levels of male hormones and hyperthyroidism.
via Arlene Blum’s Crusade Against Toxic Couches – NYTimes.com.
Filed under capitalism, communication, juxtaposition, nature, representation
911 as Mitt Romney’s campaign song: Rick Ross and Jay Smooth
Freaking brilliant comparison. The Rick Ross strategy of simply lying to make yourself into a celebrity laid out next to the Mitt Romney campaign who, with the advent of VP candidate Paul Ryan, have take lying to a whole ‘nother level.
“Post-realness” indeed.
As someone who has read about the stories Gary Webb reported about the CIA selling cocaine to California gangs, the origin of the “Freeway” Rick Ross name, I’ve felt kind of icky about the linguistic hijack Rick Ross presents. Sort of like someone taking a mass murderers name (Jim Jones?) and re-branding it for sale to teenage pop fans, the choice to appropriate this particular criminal for a nom-de-tough-guy has never sat well with me.
When the real drug-dealer Freeway Rick Ross sued the rapper Rick Ross and lost, I was astounded. I remember ranting at that time that the rapper was impervious to reality.
Jay Smooth suggests the entire republican campaign is generating an inviting and fictional narrative. And like Rick Ross, one that will be resistant to suggestions that it isn’t factually correct. Some communications corrode against other communications.
In this sense, Rick Ross might be the best comparison to the Mitt Romney campaign. “Post-realness” means just making it up and then calling anyone who disagrees with you a bad name.
Since the G.O.P. is having a tough time finding any musician who will allow them to use any of their music, perhaps they should ask Rick Ross if they can use 911? I think it is as strong an ideological fit as Ted Nugent’s “Cat scratch fever.”
1. Explicit biblical reference to open the conversation? Check
2. Focus on wealthy people with explicit disregard for the poor? Check
3. Retaliatory ethics with encouragement of NRA gun violence? Check
4. Consumer identity presented as patriotism? Check
5. Pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps bullshit? Check
6. Women included via objectification? Check
You may know that Rick Ross’s new protege Gunplay (the other guy in the video) has a swastika tattooed on the back of his neck. If Rick Ross’ Maybach Music Group did become more explicitly aligned with the Republican party, the value of Gunplay on the roster would obviously go way up. Not only is his name an NRA wet-dream, but the swastika tattoo would probably help get the votes of those die hard right-wingers who didn’t feel that the GOP showed enough visible Nazi tattoos.
Filed under communication, hip hop, juxtaposition, media, music, propaganda, representation
Weekend funkstravaganza with Hall and Oates
Saturday night join a bunch of hoodlums at the Ocean Grove for a fantastic liberatory time. I believe J Morg will play this tune.
Filed under music
I hope Killer Mike lives to be really old
F’real. I think he is just the absolute most enjoyable emcee these days. I wish him a long life so I can listen to his political rant raps when he is like eighty years old. (For those wondering, I suspect that he’ll sound exactly the same).
Fred Neil: other side of life
My return to work has slowed my blogging. But ‘that’s another side of this life . . . I’ve been leading’.
Filed under music
Blue whale poop
Photo by Eddie Kisfaludy. Taken from Wired.
The waters were rich in krill, the tiny crustaceans on which blue whales feed, and their orange hue was brightly visible in a fecal plume he photographed. It’s hard to judge absolute distances from the photo, but in scale the deposit is nearly as long as a full-grown blue whale.
It may well be the world’s largest documented poop. It’s also an exclamation point to a line of research pursued in recent years by marine biologists who say whales are the ocean’s unappreciated gardeners, playing enormous roles in nutrient and carbon cycles. In short — or perhaps in long — their poop helps make the aquatic world go round.
via The Hidden Power of Whale Poop | Wired Science | Wired.com.
Thanks to Dan Weiss and his morning coffee links for the connection.
Talib Kweli, Curren$y and Kendrick Lamar – Push Thru
In case you were curious I think Curren$y wins this one, but Kendrick Lamar is fan-freaking-tastic.
Filed under hip hop
Kiese Laymon and how to slowly kill yourself and others in America
Thanks to wikipedia for the gun photo.
Kiese Laymon is currently an Associate Professor of English and the co-director of Africana Studies at Vassar College. This essay was originally published on his blog, Cold Drank, and was republished with permission. It is an excerpt from Laymon’s forthcoming book, On Parole: An Autobiographical Antidote to Post-Blackness. Laymon is also the author of the forthcoming novel, Long Division, which will be released in early 2013.
I’ve had guns pulled on me by four people under Central Mississippi skies — once by a white undercover cop, once by a young brother trying to rob me for the leftovers of a weak work-study check, once by my mother and twice by myself. Not sure how or if I’ve helped many folks say yes to life but I’ve definitely aided in few folks dying slowly in America, all without the aid of a gun.
via How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America: A Remembrance.
The college decides that two individual fraternity members, Shonda and I will be put on disciplinary probation for using “racially insensitive language” and the two fraternities involved get their party privileges taken away for a semester. If there was racially insensitive language Shonda and I could have used to make those boys feel like we felt, we would have never stepped to them in the first place.
via How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America: A Remembrance.
Mama’s antidote to being born a black boy on parole in Central Mississippi is not for us to seek freedom; it’s to insist on excellence at all times. Mama takes it personal when she realizes that I realize she is wrong. There ain’t no antidote to life, I tell her. How free can you be if you really accept that white folks are the traffic cops of your life? Mama tells me that she is not talking about freedom. She says that she is talking about survival.
via How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America: A Remembrance.
Filed under academics, communication, human rights, juxtaposition, learning, police, race, representation
Life of refinement 