Tertiarymatt

David "How to Sharpen Pencils" Rees describes the Rolling Jubilee, a project from Occupy Wall Street to buy up, and zero out, other peoples' debts:

Now OWS is launching the ROLLING JUBILEE, a program that has been in development for months. OWS is going to start buying distressed debt (medical bills, student loans, etc.) in order to forgive it. As a test run, we spent $500, which bought $14,000 of distressed debt. We then ERASED THAT DEBT. (If you’re a debt broker, once you own someone’s debt you can do whatever you want with it — traditionally, you hound debtors to their grave trying to collect. We’re playing a different game. A MORE AWESOME GAME.)

This is a simple, powerful way to help folks in need — to free them from heavy debt loads so they can focus on being productive, happy and healthy. As you can see from our test run, the return on investment approaches 30:1. That’s a crazy bargain!

Now, after many consultations with attorneys, the IRS, and our moles in the debt-brokerage world, we are ready to take the Rolling Jubilee program LIVE and NATIONWIDE, buying debt in communities that have been struggling during the recession.

We’re kicking things off with a show called THE PEOPLE’S BAILOUT at Le Poisson Rouge on Thursday, November 15. It will also stream online, like a good ol’-fashioned telethon!

I just put in $100, which will erase $3000 worth of someone's debt.

The People’s Bailout

Decided to mix in some Guild Wars 2 imagery* for this comic, which is sort of a sequel to It’s Important and It’s Really Important, and the spiritual successor to the Show Me Your Cyber Face comic from a while back. I dare say the first panel overshadows the rest of the comic in scope, and I’ll make adjustments for clarity as needed.

Remember virtual reality? Remember when wearing a big headset and funky gloves was the coolest thing in the world? VR promised to be the next generation in human experiences. Despite the nascency of the technology, it rose to the challenge set upon itself by…itself, and bestowed upon the 90′s much richness. Gems such as VirtualBoy, VR.5, simulation sickness, and rumors of brain damage defined a technological era.

Okay, okay, VR was terrible. But it may have just redeemed itself a tiny bit. Published in PLOS One last week was an experiment conducted by the University of Barcelona that had humans cooperating with rats in a virtual reality game. Separated by 12km, the human and the rat inhabited a shared digital space where they could see each other and move about the room—the human participant by using a VR headset and controller, and the rat via camera tracking. Since the rat can’t see the digital space, a small robot represented the human player’s movements. It’s complicated, and I hope the comic did the explanation justice. Or else I failed entirely.

The catch line of the paper is slightly misleading because during the first trials, the human participant was told that they were playing with a rat. In fact, to cement this notion in their head, they were occasionally shown footage from the rat’s arena. In the later trials, the researchers used this to trip up the participants by showing them footage of a woman waving at the camera. Player 1 never caught on that Player 2 was still a rat, and even changed their behavior slightly. For example, they kept a greater distance between the avatars, possibly due to social notions of personal space.

So what did they accomplish? This is possibly the first time VR has been used in order for a human to interact with an animal on their respective scales—meaning the space and avatars were sized according to the user. I can see this form of teleoperation (TO) used in bee hives, with a small human-controlled robotic bee interacting with the colony. Even better, imagine doctors being able to enter a person’s body and perform microscopic surgeries without having it huddle around a tiny space.

VR has a long way to go, but this is a pretty good start.

*For fans of the tuxedo-wearing Charr engineer, you can see his first appearance in the infamous On Playing Well With Others comic.

Barclays Center, new home of the Brooklyn Nets, is located a few blocks from my apartment. The arena, which has prompted breathless praise from The New York Times and other major media outlets, was controversial from the start. Construction was delayed for years thanks to community opposition. Now that the arena exists, it is fitting to take a closer look at the house that mafia capitalism built.

WHAT IS IT?
Atlantic Yards/Barclays Center is a 22-acre, $4.9 billion construction project in Brooklyn. The sports complex itself, which cost about $1 billion, is the most expensive arena in the United States.

WHY IS IT?
A developer named Ratner wanted it. It’s really that simple.

NO, SERIOUSLY, WHY ELSE WAS IT BUILT THOUGH?
Some people thought it would be good for “the economy” and also “jobs.” In 2004, Senator Schumer, who strongly supported the project, predicted the arena would bring 10,000 jobs. Who could argue with that?

WILL IT CREATE JOBS?
A few really crappy ones. There will only be 1,900 jobs at Barclays (out of 10,000 promised), most of them seasonal, part-time and low wage.

HOW WAS BARCLAYS PAID FOR AND SUCH?
Funny you should ask because you know who paid for it, New Yorkers? YOU DID! Ratner received $305 million in public subsidies, such as cash payments, tax breaks, and property transfers. No, that does not mean you get to attend games for free

HOW ELSE WAS IT PAID FOR?
Over $300 million in tax-exempt bonds were also sold to finance the arena (tax exempt means that investors do not have to pay taxes on the profits from the arena.) The municipal bonds were issued by a special development corporation (ESDC) whose officials are not elected or accountable to voters.

WHAT HAPPENS IF THE PROJECT DOES NOT TURN A PROFIT AND THE DEBT DOESN’T GET PAID?
Funny story….if the investors don’t get paid, WE ALL GET TO PAY FOR BARCLAYS CENTER AGAIN! The bonds are backed by taxpayer dollars. So that means bondholders will definitely get their money no matter what.

BUT DOESN’T THE DEVELOPMENT INCLUDE AFFORDABLE HOUSING?
No. Ratner pledged 6,300 units but reduced that figure to about 2,500 after he received financing (sneaky). Of course, that was still too many in the end! As of now, only 181 affordable housing units are planned for a first tower, which hasn’t even been built yet.

HOW ELSE IS AY AFFECTING THE LOCAL COMMUNITY?
Non-rich people are getting pushed out of their neighborhood. Before Barclays construction began, rents in the area were running $45 to $50 a square foot. Now, they are $150 to $175. So good luck getting a sort-of affordable apt in that area ever again, suckers!

DOESN’T THE DEVELOPMENT INCLUDE PUBLIC SPACE?
No. What happened at Atlantic Yards is, in fact, the privatization of public space. As Michael D. D. White explains on the Noticing New York blog, Ratner, a single individual, now presides over 50 acres of land in downtown Brooklyn. He can decide which activities are allowed and which are prohibited.

OK BUT REALLY IN THE END THIS PROJECT WILL PAY FOR ITSELF WITH ALL THE NEW PROPERTY TAXES IT WILL GENERATE AND STUFF, RIGHT?
No. It will not make money for anyone except Ratner and his investors. The NYS Independent Budget Office has estimated that, over the next 3 decades, the arena will cost $40 million more that it will generate in new revenues. “Even at the current assessment levels,” the report states, “we project that [payments] generated by the arena would still fall short of the payments needed to finance the arena’s debt service.”

Barlcays Center exemplifies how the 1% uses debt to extract wealth from the 99%. Public debt was issued to pay for the arena to make one rich guy richer. Ultimately, the 99% will pay through increased taxation (money that should go to fund public services, but will instead be used to pay debt service to Wall Street) and through austerity measures (such as cutting public services and laying off workers). After all, the money to pay bondholders has to come from somewhere!

It’s mafia capitalism 101!

Chances are, somewhere along the way you’ve gotten cynical. I don’t know where you’ve come from, and I don’t know where you’re going, but I’ll bet you’ve found yourself staring straight at the concrete slab of ennui. There’s nothing new to hear, no new depths of extremity to be sounded. There’s no more ‘more’, anymore; no more ‘other’ or ‘also’ or ‘what?’ You start walking enough miles in this mucky thicket of heavy metal, or even its motherland – ‘extreme music’ – and many tributaries, and the dull sting of your own soured imaginings is bound to raise its grizzled countenance.

This earth has life, though. New things will stir; bold sapling shoots of equal parts frailty and reckless invention are pushing even now through the cakey topsoil, audacious and recombinant.

Cover art for 2012 album ‘Ursus Americanus’

Enough with the bullshit: Author & Punisher is the mantle adopted by San Diego’s Tristan Shone. Shone has designed and created all the instruments – all the machines – you hear in his one-man outpouring of precise mechanical destruction. Watch a few videos of him recreating these widescreen dystopias in the live setting, and you wouldn’t be alone in picturing Shone as a bleak 21st century version of Dick Van Dyke’s one-man band carryings-on from Mary Poppins.

Spinal Tapdance sent the following questions to Tristan Shone’s techno-bunker; SkyNet obliged to let through the following responses.

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Spinal Tapdance: Which came first for you, an interest in building machines or making music? Did you start out wanting to make music only to discover that you were limited by the equipment available to you, or did you start out tinkering with machines and then realize some of them could be turned toward songwriting?

Tristan Shone: I have always made gadgets (since like 2nd grade) and started piano around the same time.  I started writing songs on piano in high school, and shortly after picked up guitar and bass.  It wasn’t until I had really learned to design and fabricate real machines and robots that I even began thinking of combining the two, which was maybe 10 years ago.  The moment of clarity came in art grad school after working in high tech cubicle cleanroom hell (not all boiling hell) for 5 years when really had the chance to reflect on my connection with my own music.  I spent a lot of time with my bass, guitar, laptop and a huge soundsystem.  I was playing along with sequences and although I enjoy that and still do that now form time to time, there wasn’t enough of my own live, instantaneous, live input; the spastic, “create a clusterfuck in that exact moment” involved with the sequenced setup. I then got rid of my guitar and made a machine that I had to move to make sound…and then another…and then another.  They all had a specific purpose and design aesthetic.  That was it.

ST:  Much of Author & Punisher’s music obviously has more in common with some of the heavier styles of electronic and experimental music (dub, drum and bass, dark ambient, industrial, and so forth) than it does with metal. Do you think of A&P as having a closer affinity to one style or the other?

TS:  My base will always be the 80s/90s doom of Neurosis, Melvins, Godflesh, as I broke my teeth on that stuff and never got it out of my system, but since like ‘98 or so I have been focused mainly on all sorts of dark electronic, as you mentioned.  It’s much harder for me to find a good, innovative metal band these days, but then again, there are so many goddamn doom bands with crosses on their heads, it’s hard to pick through.

ST: Your previous full-length album Drone Machines was an all-out assault for nearly its entire length; Ursus Americanus has a bit more ebb and flow, with songs like “Mercy Dub” and “Below and Above You” providing a less oppressive (though still menacing) atmosphere.  Was that an intentional songwriting choice, or is it a result of using different hardware for each album?  More generally, I suppose, does your songwriting process dictate the types of machines you build, or do your new constructions open up new possibilities?

TS: Good question.  Each album is dictated by the machines: Drone Machines are very heavy and slow to move, so the sound is a bit more drrrroooonnneeee and heavy, whereas the new album Ursus Americanus was played on the Dub Machines, which were designed to be lighter, enable a quicker dynamic, and give me to wider spectrum.  I wanted Ursus to really be an album representing exactly what I would play live with little to no overdubs.  I love how raw and simple Ursus sounds to me; it is not clogged, and that really works out well in a live atmosphere, because with too many sequences and things that I can’t really control, the live performance loses punch.  The reason I bring this up, is that Drone Machines has some songs that I love, like “Doppler” and “Burrow Below,” that were written before I started making machines and have a lot of layering, giving them a unique sound, yet a conflicting live setup for me.  Half of the DM album is exactly like the Ursus album, all live, no sequence…When I tour the vinyl release of Drone Machines next year, I may bring my bass and do those two songs, because I miss their heaviness.

ST: Your vocals also take a much less prominent role in Ursus Americanus than they did on previous albums.  Was that a conscious decision, turning your voice even more into a supporting texture rather than a rhythmic or storytelling vehicle (as on “Lonely” and “Set Flames,” for example)?

TS: Yes, I just didn’t want to be forced to write lyrics for song structure-sake and I guess I didn’t have much to say on this album other than “Lonely”, ha.  I feel much more meaning in the mood of my music and effect of the sound.  That being said, I probably use my voice more on this album.  I like to think of it like a good dub or hip hop track where maybe there is one line and then a string track and you think: “yeah it’s Sunday afternoon and I’m going to eat fried clams,” bam. No lyrics necessary.

ST: Godflesh seems like an almost unavoidable comparison, but were there any other acts in particular that originally piqued your interest in this type of metal/heavy electronics fusion?  The absolutely massive climax of album centerpiece “Set Flames,” for example, reminds me a bit of Neurosis, albeit fed through some horrific digital wood-chipper.

TS: Exactly.  I mean, I liked those aforementioned bands a lot, along with His Hero is Gone, Jesu, Nile, Meshuggah, but I it was always alongside a lot of drum and bass, dub, dubstep, electro, some industrial.  One that sticks out was Ed Rush and Optical, they had some great dark simple tracks. I really like some gabber stuff, but I really missed the boat on that as I was listening to US metal and hardcore.  I really wanted my high school band, which was a blast and I will always remember, to play super heavy slow stuff, like the last track off of every Godflesh album that lasted 20 minutes, but it was actually really hard to find people to play with that were into that. I kind of gave into it from like ’96 to ’03, until I broke up with the last band and knew that was it, A&P from then on.  I’ll just walk around a lot of the time and come up with all sorts of different heavy riffs…the shower is a good place for that.

ST: The aesthetic appeal of Author & Punisher seems pretty clearly tied to the fusion of the human/organic and the mechanical.  What is it about that fusion that appeals to you?  Is it about surpassing the limitations of the organic? Is it a fetishization of machines and industry?  Is there anything about it that’s cautionary or anxious about the impact of technology on humanity?

TS: I am trying to be as natural as possible with my designs, meaning that I like to avoid relational aesthetics as a practice.  I like quality materials that and I like machines that are made with extreme prejudice and precision and attention to detail so that they function flawlessly.  This can be a shaft spinning smoothly on a bearing so that there is no slop, or a handle that feel cold in your hand, so you know it’s steel or brass, etc. etc.  If this is fetishistic, then I guess that can be said, but for me, as an engineer and musician, it is good engineering practice applied to the world of electronic music where things are fabricated out of total shit plastic.  I have said this before, but if I had more time I would release A&P vacuum cleaners and blenders because they are also total pieces of shit and can be designed out of better stuff.  In terms of human machine, that is also just simple HCI design (Human Computer Interaction), where you try to improve that relationship so it works better.

ST: I mean, let’s be honest: isn’t this whole machine-music thing just your attempt to be shown mercy by our new robotic overlords following the inevitable technopocalpyse?

TS: I’m afraid my robots are too simple to be even shown the slightest bit of mercy…the robot oppressors will be bacteria-powered, virus-driven, super-efficient bio-machines that will just urinate and destroy all.

ST: Is there any particular machine you’ve invented of which you’re the most proud, or maybe one that was the most difficult to get just right?

TS:I have a special relationship with all of the machines, but probably like the Rails the best: rock solid.  The Throttles is a pain the ass and needs some work internally to fix the motors and linkages, which will need to happen soon before the Spring DM tour!

ST: Do you think of your studio albums and live performances in mostly the same terms?  That is, do you think the experience of hearing Author & Punisher in the live context is a significantly different experience from listening to the album?

TS: I think of them as the same, but the listener can’t possibly, because live you are watching the sound be made by the movement or hit, meanwhile getting knocked in the gut by a wall of sound. Listening to the album you have to imagine this and you may not get the same effect, however the albums are a somewhat “perfected” version of the live songs, so that can be a more balanced experience.

ST: Are there any current plans for touring the Ursus Americanus material?  Do you think it’s any more or less difficult for you to tour than for a band with a more traditional instrumental set up?

TS: Touring is increasing exponentially right now with a few shows on the East Coast and fests coming up.  Stay tuned.  It’s pretty easy for me to tour actually, since I don’t need speakers since a lot of clubs have good sound.  I do bring my sound system for the odd bar that has tweeters blown or douchebag sound guy :).

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Many thanks to Tristan for answering our questions, and to Kim Kelly of Catharsis PR for wrangling and mediation.  Author & Punisher recently released a professionally-done (and quite unsettling) video for Ursus Americanus‘s “Terrorbird”:

For more information on Author & Punisher (and Tristan’s other exploits), head to the man’s website.  You can purchase Ursus Americanus from Seventh Rule Recordings here, or stream and/or purchase it and previous A&P albums at Tristan’s Bandcamp page.

In the comics industry, special issues that promise one hero “versus” another are usually long on gimmick and short on action. Keeping with that tradition my blog post promises an epic confrontation when in reality I’m not really engaging Graeber’s thought provoking essay “Super Position” in a substantial way. I’m going to use the author’s Freudian critique of the summer blockbuster The Dark Knight Rises as catalyst to reflect on the anthropological study of popular culture.

As an aside I will say this about Graeber’s essay: he uses Roman numerals to demarcate thematic chunks of the essay, which allows him to write without transitions. Whenever I see this technique it always makes me think of Walter Benjamin, that patron saint of the Marxist critique of pop culture. To invoke Benjamin in an essay on Batman is like saying, “I’m very serious about playing around here.” Or, at least that’s what I’m thinking when I write essays with Roman numerals.

I.
Graeber’s subject is Christopher Nolan’s series of Batman movies, which are themselves based on Frank Miller’s legendary characterization of the hero in “The Dark Knight Returns” (1986), widely considered one of the greatest comic book stories of all time (and rightfully so). Miller’s book closed the door on the Silver Age version of the character and redefined the Gotham City universe as gritty and violent. Among the movie going public Miller is also known as the original author of Sin City and 300, while to the comics crowd he’s associated with legendary runs at Daredevil and Wolverine.

Miller himself is a reactionary ass and his slander of the Occupy movement as composed of “louts, thieves, and rapists” was only the latest salvo in a stream of proto-fascist dribble. So when Graeber pins down the The Dark Knight Rises as “anti-Occupy propaganda” he is pretty much on the money. A more patient man than I could probably connect the dots between the Reagan-era conservatism of “Returns” with Rises. Neoliberalism and the apocalypse, maybe. Revenge, definitely.

What are superhero movies all about? And why are they so popular right now? These are the questions that prompted me to think about how anthropology could actually forward such a project. How ought we compose a research agenda focused on mass media and popular culture? Personally, I find myself consistently disappointed in most everything academics have written about pop culture. I’d like to think that anthropology could do better. What Graeber is doing here is using history and critical theory to write a polemic in order to make a political point. That’s fine, but it’s only one way that anthropology might go about designing research about comic book super heroes.

What could potentially make an anthropology of pop culture difficult is method. How, exactly, do you use ethnography to study it? There are a few entry points that could be alternatives to/ supplements for a theory-based cultural critique and they revolve around production and consumption.

Some ideas–

Production. Objective: study the “backstage” process from creative talents to publishing and distribution. To be sure there is a difference in scale between the indies and the major labels but it all starts with a creative person or team having an idea. Role-model: “Latinos, Inc.” by Davila – the author conducts an ethnography of New York advertizing agencies focusing on how they imagine, study, interact with, and represent Hispanic markets through highly orchestrated advertising campaigns.

Consumption. Objective: learn what pop culture means to the people who love it. We call the cultural practice of consuming a comic book “reading” and it is basically a private experience. You sit still, hold the book in your hands, and interpret what you see. Using your imagination you are transported into a fictional world. However, the majority of readers share their love for the genre with others. In this way you experience pleasure twice: once in private by reading and once in public by being a fan. Role-model: “Reading the Romance” by Radway – the author uses ethnography to investigate why romance novels are so popular among women and what is really happening when people read by studying a book club and the bookstore the club members frequent.

Consumption as production. Objective: investigate the performance of fandom through the creative re-appropriation of established characters. Internet culture has made more visible the tendency of fans to use beloved characters and themes as templates for their own creations and self-expressions including cosplay, fanfic, animated GIFs, remix and mash-up just to scratch the surface. Is increased visibility making this form of fandom increasingly popular? Role-model: “Textual Poachers” by Jenkins – author uses theory from De Certeau to talk about how sci-fi and fantasy fans engage in self-expression by embezzling bits and pieces from their favorite universes and re-presenting them in various forms.

Ethnography as pop culture. Objective: use whatever genre of pop you are interested in as the mode of communication with your readership. Anthropology in particular seems to struggle in communicating its findings to the wider public. Appropriating popular genres could be one model for reimagining ethnography is especially well suited for the study of pop culture. Role model: “Shane, the Lone Ethnographer” by Galman – the author uses the comic book format in place of conventional text to communicate introductory ethnographic topics to readers.

II.
There are two vulnerabilities to the academic study of popular culture that are (possibly?) unique to this particular topic. One – few academics can hope to match the total genre mastery of superfans and thus leave themselves open to critique for “not getting it” on a very basic level. Two – pop culture is by definition ephemeral and dominated by fads, likewise the academic critique of pop culture does not age well; whatever hot topic you write about today will quickly fall out of fashion.

Back in Graeber’s secret lair, he’s moving into a critique of super hero movies. But first he opts to look at comic books themselves and this is where things start to get Freudian. Citing Eco, the author notes that comics share with dreams an obsession with repetition.

The plot is almost always some approximation of the following: a bad guy, maybe a crime boss, more often a powerful supervillain, embarks on a project of world conquest, destruction, theft, extortion, or revenge. The hero is alerted to the danger and figures out what’s happening. After trials and dilemmas, at the last possible minute the hero foils the villain’s plans. The world is returned to normal until the next episode when exactly the same thing happens once again.

Here we might observe that, as per my methodological discussion above, anthropology is better suited to studying people than plots. Maybe it’s my closeted structuralism, but in anthropological studies of narrative forms the plot is, sometimes, beside the point. What narratives mean to the people who use them and traffic in their symbolism is a far more interesting set of questions.

Graeber does go on to make a keen observation that I have not heard in comics circles before: whereas villains are constantly engaged in some creative project or another, the hero only ever reacts and seldom engages in such projects of their own. This really speaks to me on an intuitive level and I think it might pan out to be true if we inventoried a representative sample of universes. Just consider Ozymandias from “The Watchman” (1987), a hero who becomes a villain once he takes on a world changing project!

While I’m sympathetic to Graeber’s leftist political project, his essay also highlights the difficulties of using theory to navigate the realms of pop culture. While the author moves to suture consuming comic books and consuming movies it’s still apples and oranges to me. Status in comic book fandom, like jazz or baseball fandom, is measured out by the accumulation of esoteric factoids and errata (perhaps demonstrating that level of mastery is part of the appeal). But even I can tell you this:

Batman on the page and Batman on the big screen are fundamentally not the same person.

This conflation of book and movie is driven home by the art, presumably chosen by the design staff at The New Inquiry, to accompany the essay. The addition of vintage comic book covers makes the essay more appealing visually and some of them are supremely evocative of the author’s subject, as with the first one which features Lex Luther dreaming of Superman. But comic book superheroes reside in complex universes, the knowledge of which fans covet and use to authenticate their prestige. There are canons, alternate universes, spin-offs, and endless debate about which is the proper heading for any given story. Let’s not even get started on the “What if…” series.

The result is often a self-contradictory mess. Just check out this brief synopsis of Bane, the villain from The Dark Knight Rises. When a movie director goes to translate this mess to the screen the result is like that diagram in Latour’s “We Have Never Been Modern”: in the realm of the real there is a tangle of meaning, but modernity only ever allows us to represent it to ourselves as order. The result is we think we have created progress when in reality we have not, this is why Nolan’s was an impossible task.

So all the Freud and the lesson on how law is based on violence leads to this: the superhero needs the villain just as the cop needs the criminal. Without villains we’d have no need for heroes. Superheroes themselves aren’t fascists, Graeber writes, “They are just ordinary, decent, super-powerful people who inhabit a world in which fascism is the only political possibility.”

This is not the ordinary way of looking at superheroes. Just as easily one could have used Freud to read the dream of comic books as wish fulfillment. The reader (likely a boy) holds an ambiguous social status: privileged because he is male, disempowered because he is not an adult. The superhero then offers a child’s fantasy of what the adult world is like. To the boy his parents are both hero and villain. Their knowledge is plainly superior to his and their power over his world seemingly limitless.

It’s also a supremely dissatisfying conclusion to a Batman fan because it gets the genre “wrong” much as Nolan gets the character of Bane “wrong” – at least according to the high standards set by SMOF. And while the politics of “Rises” and Nolan’s Batman are hot today, in a few years nobody will care about them. I mean, have you read Lawrence Grossberg’s essays on rock music? No. The kids don’t listen to rock anymore anyways.

So kudos to Graeber for attempting a critical reading of Batman in light of Occupy. But its not clobberin’ time quite yet. If anthropology wants to do something with pop culture other than interpret it with critical theory, then how the hell are we going to do it? And can we do in a way that sucks less than Cultural Studies?

There’s something inherently enjoyable about a band lovingly twisting old sounds into new shapes, which is precisely what Alabama’s Ectovoid does on its debut album Fractured in the Timeless Abyss. The album’s production and delivery is cut mostly from death metal’s rancid cloth, but there are frequent enough stylistic digressions – into melancholic tremolo, thin-drawn blasting, and so forth – to point also to a clear black metal heritage. In the interest of shorthand, let’s call it Autopsy and Incantation by way of Demoncy and Inquisition. But more importantly, let’s call it righteous metal and leave it at that.

Genre nitpicking and name-dropping aside, what sets Ectovoid apart as a serious proposition is the band’s twin focus on swirling, punchy riffs and an unbroken atmosphere of subterranean gloom. Michael Stewart’s guitar tone is thick and raw, occasionally pulling some Soulside Journey tricks to lead the whole band pulsing forward in a piledriving mass, which is precisely what is reminiscent of perennially underrated American black metal pioneers Demoncy. See the great album opener “Transcend into the Moonless Night” for a great example of this, as Stewart’s guitar twins with Chuck Bryant’s bass in a nimble pre-verse bridge before barreling forward as one; his twitchy soloing late in the song offers a brief glimpse of lightness, but it remains ephemeral. The earth swallows all its children.

Chuck Bryant’s vocals are typical but extremely impressive gut-scraping death growls, and his dank bass tone is fantastic, as is the way the instrument is used throughout the album. Bryant’s vocals are particularly notable because, given how well their tone fits in with the instrumental production, they easily blend into the background if one chooses to ignore them; however, it one chooses to focus on the vocals, the lyrics are extremely understandable, which is quite a feat for this sort of coarse delivery. Chris McDonald’s drumming manages to be surging and restrained, hungry yet understated. His cymbals gently crest the band’s wave, while the deep, loose toms sound the echoing depths.

Some of the album’s best moments occur when Bryant’s rumbling vocals are backed by a higher-pitched heaving (see “Chewing through the Membranes of Time and Space” and “Murmurs from Beyond”). Because the album’s atmosphere is so uniform, the extremely judicious use of this additional vocal style makes a huge impact the few sparse times it is employed. The midsection of “Chewing through the Membranes of Time and Space” points most clearly to the band’s black metal influence and the sickly doom that opens “Locked in Dismal Gaze” points most fervently to Autopsy, while “Splintered Phantasm” is one of the best examples of Ectovoid’s very attractive blending of black and death metal.

In the spirit of full disclosure, Ectovoid’s drummer Chris McDonald is a colleague of mine at MetalReview.com. That having been said, no amount of collegiality could’ve convinced me to not call Ectovoid dog balls if it was dog balls; Ectovoid is not dog balls. Ectovoid is a grimy, slithering thing, and with Fractured in the Timeless Abyss, the band has crafted a captivating set of songs that are sure to draw your soul to dwell with the wraiths in Christina Casperson’s tremendous artwork. To dwell with the doom that abides.

Overall rating: 80%.  Something something abyss Nietzsche.

Fractured in the Timeless Abyss is out now on Hellthrasher Productions.  Listen to it here.

P.O.S - “Fuck Your Stuff” (Official Music Video) (by pitchforktv)

Halloween is upon us, and what better way to usher in the Dia de los Muertos than to showcase Boston Dynamics, builders of some of the most advanced robots around. Also, the most weird and creepy. Plus their research is funded by DARPA, so no nefarious purposes there, right? In all seriousness, I think the robots are incredible, and I love DARPA, but allow me to keep my theater of the absurd hat on for a little while longer. On that note, allow me to present to you a Robot Creepshow, featuring some of Boston Dynamics’ most dastardly creations.

You’ve probably seen Big Dog, with its weird spindly legs, hig-pitched drone, and an uneasy gait resembling a newborn calf. One thing I’ve noticed about Boston Dynamics robots is that you connect with them. When they kick Big Dog to test its balance, you feel for it.

Someday this thing will be chasing you down a dark alley. Straight out of Fahrenheit 451, the Cheetah broke robot speed records.

When the Boston Dynamics team shoves Big Dog, you feel bad. When they push PETMAN, you get nervous. The army-boot-wearing, humanoid machine can be seen marching towards your doom and showing off by doing some push-ups. The last words you’ll ever hear are a metallic voice saying, “Bro, do you even lift?”

PETMAN’s successor, Atlas, is the inspiration behind today’s comic and can be seen here navigating an obstacle course like a boss. I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords.

This might be my favorite of them all. The aptly-named Sand Flea not only has some serious jumping capabilities, but can also take a fall with surprising resilience.

Of course, Boston Dynamics isn’t the only company making really creepy robots. Stay tuned, and we’ll have some gems from the land of creepy and awkward: JAPAN.

mckelvie:

My cover for Captain Marvel #9, coloured by Jordie Bellaire!

This is a really stupendous cover.  I don’t want to see the titled version, because I’m certain it’s going to blow the wonderful composition.

The first time Tullis Onstott ventured underground, he squeezed into an elevator with dozens of South African gold miners and descended a mile into a pit called Mponeng. His goal: Finding the bizarre, hardy microbes that survive in sweltering, inhospitable rock. A geologist by training, Onstott spent his early career studying the Earth’s crust—until he heard a talk in 1993 about colonies of bacteria living thousands of feet below the surface. Ever since, he has made dozens of deep expeditions, sometimes paying his own way, and discovered bacteria living more than two miles beneath the surface in 140-degree-Fahrenheit heat. By investigating microbes in these harsh environments, Onstott is gleaning clues about how life could have begun in Earth’s hot, chaotic early days—and about what it might look like on other worlds. Even his office is underground, in the basement of Princeton University’s geology building, where Onstott met with DISCOVER reporter Valerie Ross.

The first time you went underground to look for life, in 1996, you had no idea what to expect. What was that trip like?
The miners took me into the stopes, the tunnels where they mine gold, to sample the rocks. We were looking at an organic rock layer just millimeters thick that had lots of carbon, because we 
figured somewhere with a lot of carbon was a good place to look for life. The stopes are a meter high and they tilt downward at a steep angle, so you go down them almost like a slide, passing from one tunnel to the next. I basically slipped into a rabbit hole and got this big chunk of rock. I put it in an autoclave bag [normally used for sterilizing equipment], stuffed it in my knapsack, and then I went down the stope further until I came out the bottom into another, deeper tunnel.

What did you do with the sample you collected?
We measured the rock’s radioactivity. The Geiger counter showed it was hot as a pistol, so we sealed it up in a steel canister and filled the canister with argon gas, which pushed out all the oxygen. Organisms that live deep down are not normally exposed to oxygen, and in fact it could be toxic to them. So we sealed the rock away until we could get it back into the lab. I checked this radioactive rock inside a steel thing as baggage on a plane. This was 1996. Airport security was not like it is today.

When you analyzed the sample back at your lab, did you find any life?
We found one bacterium species similar to one previously identified from a hot spring in New Mexico. But the surprise was that this particular species could do something the other hot spring organisms could not: reduce [i.e., transfer electrons to] iron, which is present in minerals that are abundant in the mine’s rocks, and uranium, part of soluble compounds found in water in the mine. That helped us understand how they got their energy...

Image: Onstott keeps a carefully sealed workspace in his lab at a high temperature and free of oxygen—just like home for the bacteria he studies. Photo: Jess Dittmar

The Claim  Fukushima evacuees should not go home and risk health problems due to radiation exposure.

The Contrary View  Veteran journalist Jeff Wheelwright, who covers health and genetics, says the evidence linking small radiation doses to cancer is flimsy.

I live a dozen miles from the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant on the central coast of California. If a tsunami were to hit the plant and send a radioactive cloud drifting over the hills, I would be ordered to leave my home. I worry I’d never be permitted to return. That’s why I think a lot about Fukushima.

More than a year has passed since a tidal wave crippled Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Now the country is considering how to repopulate the zone, 12 miles in radius, from which some 80,000 people were evacuated in March 2011. Workers in hazmat suits are reducing the radiation contamination to a level that health authorities consider safe.

The question is whether the government’s multibillion-dollar cleanup will ease local residents’ cancer fears enough for them to return. After examining the risks, which are small at worst and nonexistent at best, I maintain I would go back in a heartbeat...

Image: koi88 / Shutterstock.com

What a month it’s been for contentious science! The latest scrum is over a new study from the University of Washington agricultural scientist Charles Benbrook, who looked at the rate of pesticide use in the age of genetically engineered seeds, or GMOs. Benbrook’s results undercut one of the main arguments in favor of the seeds — the idea that they have significantly brought down pesticide use. In fact, according to Benbrook’s analysis, since their introduction in the 1990s, pesticide use for commodity crops like corn and soy has increased by approximately 7 percent.

What’s interesting is that the biotech industry’s claim about GMOs reducing pesticide use was true when the first GMO seeds came on the market. Those seeds, known as Bt corn and Bt soy cotton, expressed their own pesticide. And when they were the only GMO game in town, Benbrook confirms that pesticide use did drop.

But then came Monsanto and its herbicide-resistant RoundUp Ready product line — seeds engineered to withstand the pesticide RoundUp (whose active ingredient is glyphosate). These seeds had the opposite effect, encouraging farmers to use a single pesticide, ultimately to excess. Benbrook decided to figure out exactly how much.

But the U.S. Department of Agriculture had ended its pesticide use tracking program years earlier, so Benbrook was forced to estimate the total use. He had to come up with a model using incomplete data from the USDA combined with other sources, like planting data and pesticide-use models. He arrived at this estimation: Since GMO crops were introduced 1996, U.S. farmers have used 404 million more pounds of pesticide than they would have with just conventional crops.

This conclusion is (surprise, surprise) not without its detractors. Graham Brookes of PG Economics, a U.K. consulting group specializing in biotechnology that has conducted its own industry-funded studies on the subject, told the Huffington Post that Benbrook’s figure was “biased and inaccurate.” And Keith Kloor, who recently compared GMO “skeptics” to climate deniers, has accused Benbrook of being biased because he’s affiliated with the Organic Center, among other things.

Kloor did not, however, mention that Benbrook is also, according to his bio, former “Executive Director of the Subcommittee of the House Committee on Agriculture with jurisdiction over pesticide regulation, research, trade and foreign agricultural issues” and former executive director of the Board on Agriculture of the prestigious National Academy of Sciences. Sounds like a total radical, doesn’t he! I guess even “realists” such as Kloor are not immune to selective editing.

But the main reason that Benbrook’s work is open to these criticisms has nothing to do with him. It’s the fact that, in 2008, the Bush USDA all but stopped tracking pesticide use. It was supposedly for budgetary reasons — but it is fishy that the last year of USDA data (2006) more or less coincides with widespread adoption of Monsanto’s RoundUp Ready crops — the same ones that encourage farmers to pour huge amounts of glyphosate on American lands.

Which brings me to another main critique of the study: Some scientists claim that while there’s lots more RoundUp used these days, RoundUp is much safer than the alternatives. But how much safer is it really?

We have lots of evidence — some of it from USDA scientists — that RoundUp isn’t the innocuous product it’s cracked up to be. And Benbrook cited evidence of an increase in the amount of RoundUp residue present on retail produce, a phenomenon that was once quite rare. He suggests this is due to farmers using higher doses of RoundUp in fields in an early response to the rise of pesticide-resistant weeds, or as we like to call them, “superweeds.”

The RoundUp residue is a mere harbinger of things to come, however. As I’ve written about before, many farmers are now turning to older, more toxic pesticides to control those weeds. Take 2,4-D, a common replacement; it’s been linked to cancer, neurotoxicity, kidney and liver problems, reproductive effects, and shows endocrine disrupting potential.

Benbrook sums up the implications like this:

A majority of American soybean, maize, and cotton farmers are either on, or perilously close to a costly herbicide and insecticide treadmill. Farmers lack options and may soon be advised, out of necessity, to purchase [GMO seeds] resistant to multiple active ingredients and to treat Bt corn with once-displaced corn insecticides. The seed-pesticide industry is enjoying record sales and profits, and the spread of resistant weeds and insects opens up new profit opportunities in the context of the seed industry’s current business model.

It’s a situation only a biotech company could love. It’s also worth noting that Benbrook calls not for a ban on GMOs, as his detractors intimate, but instead declares that “profound weed management system changes will be necessary in the three major GE crops to first stabilize, and then hopefully reduce herbicide use, the costs of weed management, and herbicide-related impacts on human health and the environment.”

It’s a sad day when a statement like that is seen as controversial. But it’s not surprising either, considering the way the science and media communities have been arguing about genetic engineering lately.

Take the recent, contentious “lifetime feeding study” [PDF] of rats and genetically modified corn that found health risks and high tumor rates, which I wrote about here. While there were issues with the study, especially surrounding the terms over which reporters could get access to the work in advance, the response from both media and other scientists was resoundingly aggressive (not to mention effective. Google the study and the first page of results contains only critical articles). The conventional wisdom quickly became that the safety of GMOs is “settled science.”

But how often is it made clear that this conclusion is based on the safety data provided by … the industry that developed and sells genetically modified seeds?

Even The New York Times hasn’t entirely ignored the lack of independent research on GMOs. A 2009 article documented a protest to the EPA by scientists who have been unable to get access to biotech companies’ seeds in order to do full analyses of their safety:

Biotechnology companies are keeping university scientists from fully researching the effectiveness and environmental impact of the industry’s genetically modified crops, according to an unusual complaint issued by a group of those scientists.

“No truly independent research can be legally conducted on many critical questions,” the scientists wrote in a statement submitted to the Environmental Protection Agency.

… [W]hile university scientists can freely buy pesticides or conventional seeds for their research, they cannot do that with genetically engineered seeds. Instead, they must seek permission from the seed companies. And sometimes that permission is denied or the company insists on reviewing any findings before they can be published, they say.

You cannot claim to understand or defend the science behind GMO safety without grappling with this reality. And Gilles-Eric Seralini, the scientist behind the rat study, is by no means the first scientist who has raised questions about GMO safety only to come under fire from industry (and in turn media).

A group of scientists recently penned a letter, which was cosigned by dozens of researchers, claiming a pattern of harassment of skeptical scientists by biotech companies and governments. The list includes:

Ignacio Chapela, a then untenured Assistant Professor at Berkeley, whose paper on GM contamination of maize in Mexico sparked an intensive internet-based campaign to discredit him. This campaign was reportedly masterminded by the Bivings Group, a public relations firm specializing in viral marketing — and frequently hired by Monsanto

And Arpad Pusztai, whose career as a biochemist “came to an effective end when he attempted to report his contradictory findings on GM potatoes.” The letter goes on to describe his experience this way:

Everything from a gag order, forced retirement, seizure of data, and harassment by the British Royal Society were used to forestall his continued research. Even threats of physical violence have been used, most recently against Andres Carrasco, Professor of Molecular Embryology at the University of Buenos Aires, whose research identified health risks from glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup.

It’s not easy for scientists to write letters like this — most prefer to produce research, not protests. It’s when they feel that their work is being suppressed or blocked that they get angry.

Of course, it’s easy to look at all this controversy as proof that all anti-GMO research is bunk — which is certainly a common opinion among traditional scientists. But we do live in a world where deep-pocketed industries can up and decide to “create their own reality,” as the Bushies liked to say. Fossil fuels, tobacco, and more recently, BPA and flame retardants have all benefited from a vigorous (and secretive) “product defense” industry to protect their interests (and bottom lines). Are we to believe GMOs are any different? The essence of product defense is — with apologies to Thomas Dolby – to blind with science. It hasn’t come to that point just yet; but it’s certainly getting hard to see through the fog.

All around the country this election season, we’ve got Democrats who don’t want to talk about climate change and Republicans who don’t even acknowledge that climate change is real.

But in the Washington state governor’s race, it’s a whole different ballgame. The Democrat, Jay Inslee, is a longtime, outspoken crusader for climate action and clean energy. The Republican, Rob McKenna, is one of a vanishing breed of Republicans who not only acknowledge that climate change is happening but support government action to fight it.

And they’re locked in one of the most competitive gubernatorial races of the year, vying to replace retiring Democrat Chris Gregoire.

Jay Inslee

Greens are positively swooning for Inslee. During more than a decade in the U.S. House representing areas north and west of Seattle, he pushed aggressively for climate legislation, environmental protections, federal support for cleantech, and a wholesale shift to a green economy. For Inslee, clean energy is not just another issue; it’s his motivating passion. He coauthored a book on the subject in 2007: Apollo’s Fire: Igniting America’s Clean Energy Economy. He cofounded the House Sustainable Energy Caucus. He’s written posts here at Grist calling for clean air, international climate action, and passage of his New Apollo Energy Act.

“I have a clear strategy to make Washington the national leader in clean energy technology,” Inslee recently told a Beyond Oil conference. His cleantech plan — part of his larger jobs plan [PDF] — calls for three years of tax breaks for clean-energy startups, among other new companies, and extension of existing tax breaks for renewables. Other strategies include encouraging energy efficiency, developing the state’s advanced biofuels industry, and investing in light rail and electric-vehicle infrastructure.

Ross Macfarlane of the Seattle-based nonprofit Climate Solutions calls Inslee “one of the two or three members of Congress from any state who is most informed and most [accomplished] in developing specific policies to drive the clean economy in really every relevant sector.”

Enviros and clean-energy entrepreneurs in Washington are pulling out all the stops to get Inslee into the governor’s mansion. Cleantech business leaders have praised and endorsed him. The Sierra Club’s state chapter is rallying its troops. Washington Conservation Voters (WCV) has raised about $750,000 for its PAC this year, and intends to spend the “vast majority” advocating for Inslee, says Executive Director Brendon Cechovic. The group has launched a pro-Inslee, anti-McKenna website and will do a big old-school push to directly hit up voters via snail mail, door knocks, and phone calls. “We view this as our highest priority in 30 years as an organization … a once-in-a-generation opportunity,” said Cechovic.

The national green community sees big stakes too. The D.C.-based League of Conservation Voters gave Inslee a full-throated endorsement, breaking its long-standing policy of not endorsing gubernatorial candidates. And it’s donated $250,000 to WCV’s PAC to help with the campaign.

Rob McKenna

McKenna is catching flack from enviros, but he’s not a mouth-breathing EPA-hater in the mold of congressional Republicans. As Washington’s attorney general, a post he’s held since 2005, he has supported the U.S. EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases and defended tougher state-level auto-emissions standards, which have since been adopted by the Obama administration.

“He’s very enthusiastic about solar and wind and energy efficiency and integrating those with the state’s existing hydropower systems,” said Jim DiPeso of ConservAmerica, the group formerly known as Republicans for Environmental Protection.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer columnist Joel Connelly notes that McKenna also “supports the state Growth Management Act, praises its contributions to the Puget Sound area, and endorses work of the Washington Wildlife and Recreation Coalition. His first political work was for the 1989 Open Spaces initiative.”

But there are plenty of things on which McKenna and Inslee disagree.

McKenna is against cap-and-trade. He opposes government support for cleantech industries, employing the standard GOP argument that the government shouldn’t be in the business of “picking winners and losers” (never mind that it’s been funding the oil and coal industries’ wins for a century). He criticizes Inslee’s approach as “Solyndra-style economic policy.” And, though McKenna calls for targeted investments in transit, he’s been skeptical of a Seattle-area light-rail plan.

WCV criticizes McKenna for taking campaign money from polluting oil, gas, and timber companies and wanting to loosen the rules of the state’s renewable energy standard.

McKenna, for his part, calls himself a conservationist and says he’s following in the tradition of past Washington state Republicans, like former Gov. Dan Evans, who helped to establish wilderness areas and national parks in the state. “We need to recapture the big bipartisan spirit for conservation,” he said in May.

The choice

It’s no surprise that both the Democrat and the Republican in this race are talking up their eco-credentials. Washington state voters have traditionally been some of the greenest in the nation, second only to Californians, says Seattle-based Democratic consultant Tom Hujar. But this year environmental issues don’t seem to be as much of a priority for voters, he says.

At the moment, that doesn’t appear to be hurting Inslee; a new poll has him up by six points. But the race is still widely considered a toss-up, and Inslee and the Democrats aren’t taking anything for granted. They remember all too well that in 2004 Gregoire won the governor’s race by a mere 129 votes, one of the narrowest electoral victories in U.S. history.

If McKenna is elected, he could be the greenest Republican governor in the nation (which isn’t saying much, as Arnold Schwarzenegger and Charlie Crist have both been out of office for almost two years.)

If Inslee is elected, he could be the greenest governor in the nation, period.

—–

See also: David Roberts’ profile of Inslee

They’re back: Blue mussels and menhaden have returned to Long Island Sound this year in huge numbers. On this 40th anniversary of the Clean Water Act, many of us are celebrating their homecoming as a sign of the progress made reviving the sound. More needs to be done, but this welcome news of cleaner waters opens the opportunity to begin farming the urban sea.

Aquaculture has rightly earned a reputation for growing low-quality seafood at the expense of the environment, but a new form of ocean-friendly farming has emerged right outside of New York City. These small-scale vertical farms — some of the first in the country — are designed to grow multiple species of seaweed and shellfish, have small footprints, and provide an array of environmental benefits. Picture them as three-dimensional gardens, where seaweed, mussels, and scallops grow at the top of the water column, stacked above oysters and clams below. (Full disclosure: One of the authors of this article runs such a farm. There are also several others currently in
the permitting process.)

Eating local seaweed may seem exotic, but it’s coming to a plate near you. While shellfish have seen turns as both delicacies and a staple food source in our region for hundreds of years, the seaweed that grows alongside them is less familiar. It shouldn’t be, though: A native seaweed like Nori contains more vitamin C than orange juice, more calcium than milk, and more protein than soybeans. And it might surprise those of us on the hunt for omega-3s to learn that many fish do not create these heart-healthy nutrients — they consume them. By eating the plants fish eat, we get the same benefits. Already restaurants such as Beyond Sushi in Manhattan have crafted entire menus around these sea vegetables, and a bevy of gourmet chefs are working on recipes to make locavores swoon.

The best news is that these farms do more than grow food: In every sense, they restore rather than deplete. Matched up against land-based farming, these new ocean farms win every time. Seaweed and shellfish require no inputs — no land, no fertilizer, no fresh water — and since they grow three-dimensionally, they use space more efficiently than their land-based counterparts.

Shellfish and seaweed also act as filters, drawing out nitrogen and heavy metals — the primary objective of the Clean Water Act. While an important nutrient for humans, excess nitrogen from residential and agricultural runoff into the sound regularly triggers large-scale algae blooms that deplete oxygen levels, killing marine life and forcing beach closures. With a single oyster filtering up to 50 gallons of water a day, even small farms can have measurable impacts on water quality. Farms in waters polluted by heavy metals are cultivating shellfish and seaweed not for food production, but for the continued rehabilitation of the sound. One local initiative, spearheaded by the Bronx-based nonprofit Rocking the Boat and Charles Yarish of the University of Connecticut, grows kelp and mussels in the Bronx River to filter out mercury and other pollutants. Other local projects are even building oyster reefs to protect New York from storm surges and flooding.

Still not convinced? Local ocean farms are also emerging as a viable source for alternative energy. As the fastest-growing plant in the world, kelp is capable of producing over 2,000 gallons of biofuel per acre annually — five times more than the ethanol produced by corn and up to 30 times more per acre than soybeans. With companies like RPM Sustainable Technologies already working with Long Island Sound farmers to source kelp for their biofuel operations, the promise of growing alternative energy in local waters is on its way to becoming a reality.

Ocean farms open both new and old pathways for economic development. A decentralized system of small-scale operations could revitalize life along the shoreline, first by creating new green jobs on farms and in the biofuel industry and then, as the sea recovers, perhaps opening up old fisheries and bringing back traditional means of making a living. In April, the New Amsterdam Market staged a one-day outdoor fish market at the old Fulton Docks in lower Manhattan, demonstrating that the neighborhood has the potential to be home to local seafood, not just financial markets.

The urban sea promises to be one of New York’s great comeback stories. After 40 years of slow but steady progress under the Clean Water Act, it is time to deputize a new generation of ocean farmers to protect our sound and grow the green economy.

In yet another daring move I have written some filthy smut and released it unto the masses. I was not alone though. Oh no…my creative juices flowed forth upon ERIKA MOEN and she shared my boner dreams ant then we made a comic.

You can see our slavering depravity in the pages of SMUT PEDDLER along with a couple dozen other artistic hoes!

And for you locals, Erika and I will be reading out short story Easy out loud to a room full of perverts tomorrow the 18th! Come by and see us at the Jack London Bar at 8 PM , but please no touching us with your sticky, frotting hands.

mollycrabapple:

Nikos Michaloliakos, the leader of the Greek Nazi party, the Golden Dawn.

The Golden Dawn is the third most popular party in Greece.  Its members murder immigrants, smash shops Kristallnacht style, punch female MP’s on TV, build bombs, leave flyers on gay bars that read “you’re next”, attack leftists in gangs, and compose 60% of the police force. 

They have opened up offices in New York, Australia, and Montreal.

Fight fascism.

Please feel free to use image, remix, translate into Greek.

I am digging the Baron Harkonnen vibe here.  Also, fuck a bunch of Nazi shitheads. 

alexds1:

why is this so hilarious

AAAAAAAAAAHHH I HATE BALLOONS SO MUCH!

(via Caveman Couture: Neandertals Rocked Dark Feathers | Observations, Scientific American Blog Network)

“Over the past couple decades hints that Neandertals were savvier than previously thought have surfaced, however. Pigment stains on shells from Spain suggest they painted, pierced animal teeth from France are by all appearances Neandertal pendants. The list goes on. Yet in all of these cases skeptics have cautioned that the evidence is scant and does not establish that such sophistication was an integral part of the Neandertal gestalt.

The cutmarked bones from Gibraltar as well as bird remains from other sites could force them to rethink that view. In a paper published September 17 in PLOS ONE,paleontologist Clive Finlayson of the Gibraltar Museum, Rosell, a zooarchaeologist at Rovira I Virgili University in Tarragona, Spain, and their colleagues report on their analyses of animal remains from 1699 fossil sites in Eurasia and north Africa spanning the Pleistocene epoch. Their results show that Neandertals across western Eurasia were strongly associated with corvids (ravens and the like) and raptors (vultures and their relatives)—more so than were the anatomically modern humans who succeeded them.

The Neandertals seem unlikely to have hunted these birds for food. People today do not eat corvids or raptors. Moreover, if the Neandertals did hunt the birds for food, one would expect to see signs of butchery on those bones linked to fleshy parts of the bird, such as the breastbone. Yet the team’s study of the bird bones from the Gibraltar sites found the cutmarks on wing bones, which have little meat—a sign that the Neandertals targeted the birds for their feathers rather than their meat.

Exactly what the Neandertals were doing with the feathers is unknown, but because they specifically sought out birds with dark plumage, the researchers suspect that our kissing cousins were festooning themselves with the resplendent flight feathers. Not only are feathers beautiful, they are also lightweight, which makes them ideal for decoration, Finlayson points out. “We don’t think it’s a coincidence that so many modern human cultures across the world have used them.” “

I don’t want to blow any ones mind here, but I used to model.

No, no, no. Don’t curl your lip like that. I was a figure model. I worked at my art university for the illustration, painting and animation departments. I don’t know how much you know about art but in art it’s very important to learn to draw a vast range of forms so that you can properly art them. That includes people who look a bit like walking tubers wearing lipstick. 

Which is where I come in.

It was a pretty good job. Paid well, allowed me to set my own hours. It did generate some confusion in people who asked what I did to pay the bills. There seems to be some misinformation about what figure modeling entails. When I say “I pose for art students both clothed and nude so that they may better their craft by having a living example of how the forms of the body work or how clothing functions on a moving person.” What people hear is “I demonstrate female ejaculation in front of young adults for money! It’s just like stripping! I have daddy issues! Does anyone have any cocaine?”

After I get done explaining that I’m not sexually available to students or teachers the next reaction I would typically get was, “Oh, god! I could never let people look at my body for that long! You must be really comfortable with yourself.”

Which I suppose that’s the case. Or maybe I’m just resigned to it. I know I’m a fairly ridiculous looking person and I’m pretty comfortable with that. Also what sets me apart from no girl ever, is I’ve been called ugly plenty. It’s got little effect at this point. If I ever get sad about not looking like Rachel Weiss I just think back to all the ass I’ve gotten.

But one of the other fundamental differences between figure modeling and other industries where people look at your body, is that while you are up on that model stand? No one says can say shit to you.

Because figure models put themselves on display for the benefit of artists most studios have a strict policy about behavior around models. No disparaging comments, no talking when the model is posing, at all, No flirting, never, ever any touching. Students speak to the model only to request poses or correct the pose after a break. Mostly a model deals with the teacher and they know how to act. Maybe students talk about the models physical failings ( I know I’ve been guilty of it.) but they do it waaaaay the fuck out of earshot.

Periodically though, someone forgets themselves.

Bill Sanchez was, and from what I understand still is, a favorite at my old school. An exuberant dude from New York with the accent to prove it he’s one of those guys. That old guard illustrator you paid attention to. He knows form, shape, color. All of it. Coupled with his exuberance for illustration he was the guy to study under and his classes were in high demand. He even had his own catch phrase. Hunched in front of the easel he’d call all of his students around him to demonstrate.

“Okay, okay,” He’d flex his arm and shake out a piece of pastel. “Okay, Now you gotta look at it. You gotta looook at the way that sleeve is working, you gotta feeeeeeeeel it, okay? Then You gotta wrap that form around, Oh, yeah you gotta feeeeeeeeeel it then you gotta wraaaaaap it arrrrrouuuuund., ok, Wrap it aroooooooooound.“

I’m not doing that guy justice here. He’s a great professor to learn from and he’s was a blast to work for. I fell asleep on the stand during the hour-long lunch break once and woke up five minutes after starting time to find a chair on top of me.

“Oh, shit. Bill, I’m sorry- What pose did you want me to-” I started to get up and he motioned for me to stay where I was.

“Naaaaaaah, We’re gonna draw the chair, lay down! Lay down! Take yah nap! Relax! It’s just art school! Relax! Ok, now look at the girl! Draw the chair around the girl!”

Bill was also the only dude at our school you ever heard the words “Relax. It’s just art school.”  from.

One day I was working for his six-hour Clothed Figure II class. Models usually bring a few outfits to wear and I’d picked out a blouse, pencil skirt and black pumps. The class was fairly small and had gathered pretty close to the stand where I sat in a chair for a 20 minute pose.

On of the young men set his charcoal down and looked up from his drawing board over to Bill and proceeded to ask, in an out-of-doors voice:

“Hey, Bill? How do you draw the cankles?”

At that point three things happened simultaneously.

His classmates stopped what they were doing to glance at me and then stare at him, I mean really stare at him. I broke the pose to cock my head to the side and also really stare at him and Bill Sanchez asked with all of the wide eyed fascination of a child: “What are cankles?”

I’d like to take a moment in this anecdote to let other people as confused as Bill was in on what ‘cankles’ refers to.

Here is a helpful anatomical chart indicating the afflicted area.

Red arrow show the region.

This is common definition of Cankles from Ubandictionary.com

the seamless blend of calf into ankle. accomplished by inflammation, obesity, athleticism or a combination of the three. the affected leg takes on the shape of a summer sausage with a human foot at the end. there is no definition of the calf because it is obscured most often by fat which spills down over the ankle, hiding it, and causing a cankle to form.

It’s generally an unflattering thing to say to a woman. Which is why his classmates responded the way they did.

“Dude. She doesn’t have cankles.” One of his male classmates said.

“You don’t have cankles.” On of the girls reassured me.

None of this was helpful to Bill, who was still completely lost.

“How to draw the what? The crinkles? Cranckles?”

“The Cankles.” Said the student who began this teaching moment, a little more quietly.

“I don’t know what that is. What is that? What’s a Crimple?” Bill was looking from face to face for elucidation.

“It’s when there is no difference between the calf and the ankle. It’s a fat. ankle.“ The same girl told Bill. She looked up at me again. “Which she doesn’t have.”

“Oooooooh.” Bill danced up to the stand and squinted at my legs. “No, no, no. There’s some definition. Here, ” Bill held his hand for the curious students charcoal. “Here, lemme show how to draw a crinkle.”

“It’s a cankle.” I corrected him.

“A CANKLE.” Bill snapped his fingers. “See? I learn something new from you kids all the time! You’ve got all these new words! Okay so what you do is…”

I shifted back into my pose and watched Bill tutor this  young man who wore an XXL threadbare Pantera shirt over his knobbly frame and looked at the desperate whispy moustache that was trying it’s best to come in around the acne. I thought about what a shame it was that I was most likely never going to experience a night of pleasure with what had to be the reigning  masculine beauty of Stillrot Hollar, Tennessee due to my unacceptable lower leg regions. Did a single tear escape and roll down my cheek as I finished out that last pose? It may have my friends, It may have. How else do you react when you’ve come to a realization that romance has slipped you by? I gazed at his magnificent profile that could have come only from generations of his family fucking only the most shapely of first cousins and mourned.

Then it was lunch time!

I walked by my missed opportunity at love on the way to microwave to heat up my left overs. Maybe I could somehow salvage this?

So I slapped him on his scrawny back as I passed and let him know I was going to do my best by him.

“Hey, man. I don’t want you to worry too much. It may look like a lot of food in here but I’m just gonna throw it up after I eat it, ok?”

Gin producers are getting smart. They're paying attention to the spirits industry. They're watching the whisk(e)y developments and the cocktail revivals, and they're reacting swiftly with tact. The bold new market of spirits lovers wants bold new flavors in its spirits. The revival of high-proof gin is mirroring the trends we've seen with single malt and Bourbon. Much like with whiskey, the extra alcohol can sometimes bring out and even balance the flavor of an expressive or botanical gin. I love gin. I feel like it's a part of my blood sometimes (and for much of the night it literally is). Distributors with new gins are getting smart as well.

"Hey, that David Driscoll guy over at K&L? Bring your gin. He'll buy anything that's gin"

It's kind of true. I really love adding new gins to our shelves so I'm much more open to try a new spirit if the letters G-I-N are on the label in that particular, consecutive order. Navy Strength are two words we're beginning to see more often on the label, as well. Some producers tell the romantic, swashbuckling story of how naval captains needed to be certain their gunpowder would still fire should the ship's supply of gin happen to soak into the explosives. 57% was supposedly the strength at which the powder could still catch a spark if it happened to be as inebriated as the crew. While that's a fantastic tale, I think the higher proof probably helped the royal navy make sure the crown wasn't watering down its ration of hooch. Whatever the reason, I'm happy a few new producers are raising the alcohol levels without raising the prices.

Plymouth Navy Strength Gin $33.99 - Finally here, the 57% version of Plymouth Gin is a huge improvement over the standard expression. The pepper is more vibrant, the botanicals more herbacious, and the gin finally feels like it's in balance. I've always liked Plymouth, but I really like this. There's no going back at this point. You're getting a massively-potent, high-quality gin for the same price as most average craft distiller gins. This will be limited.

Leopold Bros Navy Strength Gin $44.99 -  This high-octane, full-throttle gin is loaded with herbacious character and tons of bitter citrus peel. Even at 57%, it doesn't feel overproofed, but rather in total balance. What I really like is that Todd Leopold didn't just bottle his standard formula with more alcohol. It's an entirely new formula for people looking to make serious cocktails. Try it in a Tom Collins or gin and tonic and taste how wonderfully concentrated the flavor is!

Royal Dock Navy Strength Gin $27.99 - Eric Seed found a real winner with this one, and an incredible value to boot. Hayman has come up with a steal of a deal - a bold, cuttingly dry and herbacious London Dry gin that's almost too much. You can't help but keep drinking it, despite the fact that your liver and kidneys are screaming otherwise.

Martin Miller's Westbourne Strength London Dry Gin $29.99 - Not quite navy strength, this higher-proof gin (45.7%) from Martin Miller offers a less-biting, more floral and citric flavored flavor profile. It's classic in every way and marries well with just about every cocktail ingredient.  A very good gin.

-David Driscoll

“Nice shelves loaded with glass jars full of home-canned food, Erica! Now, don’t you live right on a fault line or something? Aren’t you guys in Seattle just waiting for an 8.0 earthquake to turn your whole city into rubble? What’s your plan for those jars of tomatoes, then, huh?”

Yes…I know, I know. There is a huge risk in investing time and money into jars of healthy home-canned food when one little Gaia Hiccup could topple your entire investment. Putting all your food in glass jars when glass is the thing most likely to be destroyed by the natural disaster that is most likely to hit you is not good planning.

If you want to go all the way in protecting your jars from tectonic rumbling, this is what it’s going to take:

Sturdy Shelving

Either wood or heavy duty metal. This is not the place for some snap-together plastic shelving unit designed to hold sweaters for nine months in a college dorm before falling apart. To quote my father, you want shelving, “strong enough that elephants can dance on it.”

The ideal shelves should be either attached directly to wall studs at the back and supported by legs at the front to distribute the weight or should be free-standing but secured to your home’s framing studs with heavy duty screws or earthquake strapping to prevent rocking or “hopping” of the entire shelving unit in a quake. We currently have wall-mounted, bracketed shelves, and this type of shelf can never really be as strong as a free-standing type.

Bracing at the Front of The Shelves

A good shelf means nothing if a jar can just bounce off of the front of it in a quake. People who build wood shelves can add 1×2″or similar strips of wood across the front of the shelf. Ideally, you want this bracing to be high enough to prevent a jar from bouncing right over it.

Here’s a nice example of wooden bracing at the front of the shelves. You can tell the owner of this pantry is serious because there are at least 32 5-gallon buckets full of what I presume to be dry goods like rice and wheat stored in this pantry.

If you buy Metro-type snap together wire shelving at industrial or kitchen supply places (and this stuff is a personal favorite of mine), they will come with a 3 or 4-inch high snap-in “backstands” for each shelf. They look like this:

The backstands are designed to stop items from falling off the back of the shelving units. However, if your unit is mounted securely against a wall and you clip the backstands in the front, you have excellent earthquake bracing for your jarred goods.

We have Metro-type shelving like this in the garage and I adore it. Our current shelving in the pantry is a rail-and-post system with medium-duty wire shelves. It looks good, but I suspect that before too much longer we will need to swap the medium-duty set up for industrial Metro-type shelving to handle the weight I’m putting on the shelves.

I have seen a lot of examples of bungee cords being used to brace jars against earthquakes and, frankly, I don’t know that it does much. Bungee cords are stretchy. I have a hard time believing that you could get a bungee cord tight enough to actually keep a jar from bouncing off a flat shelf in an earthquake. If anyone has any direct experience with this I’d love to know your experience.

Baby Locks on Cupboards (Even If You Don’t Have A Baby)

If you store items in cupboards that might be damaged in an earthquake should the doors bounce open (which they will), you can install inexpensive interior-mounted baby latches to your cupboards. These will help keep doors closed and jars and other items in, in the event of a quake.

Jar Padding

Once you’ve ensured your shelves aren’t going to collapse, and you jars aren’t going to rattle off your shelves, the final step in earthquake proofing the pantry is padding the individual jars.

The simplest way to do this is to store filled jars back in the original box they came in with the cardboard divider in place (or, make a sturdier DIY one out of corrugated cardboard). I highly recommend wrapping once or twice around your jar-boxes with duct tape when they are still new and crisp. This does a lot to keep them functional and strong enough to handle getting shoved around (gently, please) while full of preserves.

You can also wrap your jars individually in something squishy. If you get a package with a lot of bubble wrap in it, you can cut jar-sized sections and duct tape them into reusable bubble-wrap sized sleeves for your jars. My kids would have a field day with this.

If you are super handy you might even bee (get it? bee?) able to crochet something like this lovely jar cover, although making 27 or 48 dozen of them might get seriously time prohibitive:

The simpler, uglier equivalent to apiary-themed jar garments is to re-purpose your old worn out tube socks by cutting off the top stretchy bit and sliding that on to protect your jars.

My Half-Ass Solution

I don’t have a perfect solution for my own pantry, but I have come up with a kinda half-ass solution that may or may-not accomplish anything. But it was free, and it makes me feel slightly better.

This is what my pantry shelves look like up close. The medium-duty wire shelf snaps into the wall-mounted bracket. These types of shelving systems are great and really customizable for closets and are probably great for pantries too, if the owner of the pantry is not insane about storing heavy canned goods, like me. You can get shelving systems like this at any organization store or big-box home improvement chain.

Note the rolled-over lip at the front of the shelf. I turned a few upside down and got this.

Here’s the same shelf, side-by-side, flipped upside down and right-way-up. (Sorry about the crappy not-quite-Instamatic photos. The natural light in my pantry is deliberately non existent.)

Simply flipping the wire shelves gives my jars a teeny bit of protection against sliding right off the front. The lip generated by this move is about 3/4″ deep. That’s not a lot but it is something.

That lip provides a measure of protection in that it slows down the daily earthquake that is my 2 year old son. He likes to run into the pantry in an attempt to play “stack the jars into a tower!” This is one of my least favorite games and I think he just likes seeing how fast I can run after him squealing, “Noooooo!”

I can’t say that it would stop the jars from bouncing right off the shelf in a big quake, but I think it might help in a small tremor.

Baby steps.

Have you done anything to protect your preserves from an earthquake or other natural disaster?

Preparedness means a lot of different things depending on your outlook and goals. But some things you can never be prepared for. Today we remember the victims of the 9/11 bombings and those first responders who were charged with being prepared for anything, no matter how terrible, and who did never faltered in their oaths on that day.

Burning questions and wild speculation following the debate last night. Mainly, what was Obama writing/doodling over there? My vote is on Dickbutt.

I was hoping for some great zingers and material, but got pretty much nothing out of the two candidates. People are saying Obama was too cool and poised compared to Romney’s “amped” new personality, but what did they expect? I don’t think I’ve ever seen Obama amped. Thankfully, I think Matt and Oz will save tomorrow’s debate comic.

That said, if you’re planning to vote based on the perceived outcome of these debates, you may want to reconsider your reasons for voting. These are chest-beating matches. Candidates are made to look good, and the truth was stretched by either side. Do your research and stick to the facts.

Though to be honest, even if Romney had a detailed, functionally sound plan to fix healthcare, jobs, and the economy, he still would have lost my vote on the creepy “We are all children of the same god” crap he managed to slip in there. The tidbit pretty much cemented my view that we should treat the founding declarations of America less like a holy book and more like a working document subject to criticism, review, and change.

Oh, and there really are debate bingo cards.

A New Book From n+1 and Occupy the Boardroom

by Mark Greif

Dear Readers,

Ordinarily the small books we do at n+1 are about literature, or the arts, or culture.

A year ago, when I read the letters pulled together by a website called Occupy the Boardroom, I knew that we had to try to collect them so that more Americans could read them.

Since these letters came from our fellow Americans and were addressed to bank executives and directors, by name—the unelected authorities who make decisions that affect all of our lives, and particularly made decisions that harmed the lives of a lot of these letter writers—I was determined that once we made this book, we would try to put it into the hands of those bankers, and also every Republican and Democratic politician who needed to hear these citizens' words.

Lots of books exist about the Great Recession. This book will remind you that none show the perspective of ordinary citizens. Of the rest of us.

Americans are intelligent and articulate and know the things that affect our lives. More people need to be shown it. These letters will.

If you're visiting our site to learn about The Trouble is the Banks, I hope you will pre-order the book from us. It's complete; we're just finalizing an appendix, which will let you see how these citizens' personal experiences are confirmed by settlements for bank fraud over the last four years. Then we send it to the printer.

We hope to mail every copy you buy to you in just two weeks. But if you want this book to get into other people's hands, too, into Mitt Romney's or Paul Ryan's or the writers' of the Wall Street Journal editorial page, or if you want to help make copies available to Occupy in New York and around the country, or if you want to help us try to get a copy onto Barack Obama's desk—we invite you to please donate some multiple of the price of the book, buying copies for others who should read it.

Any profits from this book (and all your donations) will go to getting this book to people who need the call of conscience or inspiration, or will be re-donated to campaigns for economic justice, debt relief, or charity.

I really believe in this project, and I'm proud that we've been able to amplify other people's voices—in partnership with the amazing people at Occupy the Boardroom and our editorial team at n+1.  Thanks for getting into it with us.

And if you're just wondering whether to buy the book: The book is great. Buy it. It will change your mind. That's true no matter what you already think and know.

Yours sincerely,

Mark

Purchase print issue »