MEOW MEOW

TIME FOR MY DAILY OILING

Defensive

Murder weapons, Ed James

In what any Very Serious Journalist would consider a disqualifying move that requires the Republican Party to abandon the race completely, Florida Gov. Rick Scott refused to debate his Democratic opponent, the former Republican and former governor of Florida Charlie Crist (because of course; it’s Florida!), on Wednesday night. But he had a very good reason. As the debate’s moderator, Eliott Rodriguez, explained to the audience:

Ladies and gentlemen we have an extremely peculiar situation right now. …

Florida Gov. Rick Scott, our incumbent governor and the Republican candidate for governor, is also in the building. …

We have been told that Gov. Scott will not be participating in this debate. Now, let me explain what this is all about. Gov. Crist has asked to have a fan, a small fan, placed underneath his podium.

The rules of the debate that I was shown by the Scott campaign say that there should be no fan. Somehow there is a fan there. And for that reason, ladies and gentlemen, I am being told that Gov. Scott will not join us for this debate.

At that point, the audience started booing, and Rodriguez turned to his co-moderator, Rosemary Goudreau, and said, “I don’t know. What can we say?” She didn’t know what to say either, but Crist sure did: “That’s the ultimate pleading of the Fifth I’ve ever heard.”

Oh, snap! Zing! BURN! That one’s going to leave a mark or two. Or 75.

At that point, the audience started cheering. And applauding. And any undecided voters left probably started deciding they would vote for the guy who bothered to show up, not the guy back stage throwing a hissy fit. And then it got even worse for AWOL Rick Scott.

Goudreau: Do the rules of the debate say that there should be no fan?

Crist: Not that I’m aware of.

Goudreau: So the rules that the Scott campaign just showed us says that no electronics can be used, including fans –

Crist: Are we really going to debate about a fan? Or are we going to talk about education, and the environment and the future of our state. I mean, really. There are serious issues facing our state, and it’s like funding education appropriately, protecting our environment, making sure we have ethical, honest leadership. I mean, if he’s going to give it to me, I’m going to take it.

Rodriguez: This is not a platform for one candidate. We’re hoping that Gov. Scott will join us on the stage.

Crist: Well, that’d be great.

Rodriguez: And I am told that Gov. Scott will join us on the stage. In all fairness to Gov. Scott, I was shown a copy of the rules that they showed me that said there would be no fans on the podium.

And then the moderators discuss with each other — on air! for everyone to see and hear and mock! — just how weird and “remarkable” this situation is. And it is weird and remarkable, but it only got better (for Crist). Because Rick Scott finally dragged his creepy skeletal sack on stage and explained why he was unfashionably late, proving to everyone that he was probably better off not showing up at all. When asked why “the delay,” this was his answer:

I waited to figure out if he was going to show up. He said he wasn’t going to come to the, uh, he said he wasn’t going to come to the debate, so why come out until he was ready?

Hmm, let’s go back in time about, oh, say, a minute. Remember when there was one guy standing on stage, ready to debate, and it wasn’t Rick Scott? Bet Florida voters do.

The Scott campaign released a super sad statement to try to salvage what’s left of Scott’s dignity:

“Charlie Crist can bring his fan, microwave, and toaster to debates – none of that will cover up how sad his record as governor was compared to the success of Rick Scott,” Scott campaign manager Melissa Sellers said in a statement. “Crist should buy a fan for the 832,000 Floridians who lost their jobs while he was governor.”

Yeah! And, uh, can also bring his Forman Grill, his margarita machine, and his sub-zero fridge to the debates but it won’t matter because he still sucks. So there!

Maybe the current governor should have stayed off stage and sent Clint Eastwood in his place. We hear he’s pretty good at debates too.

The first rule of Fight Club, as we all know, is that you don’t talk about Fight Club. Now let’s do it some more.

“Fight Club,” filmmaker David Fincher’s big-screen adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk incendiary novel, opened in theaters on October 15, 1999. The world has never since quite recovered from its impact—and that’s the highest praise for which anyone involved in “Fight Club” could have ever hoped to hear.

Expertly and explosively, “Fight Club” delivers a savage series of satirical salvos against society’s corporate/authoritarian overlords so effectively that it’s long been impossible not to think of the movie any time one is confronted by an Ikea catalogue or bombarded by ads for khakis (“You are not your fucking khakis!”).

“Fight Club” uses the vehicle of a splashy, big budget Hollywood production filled with rich and famous movie stars to rouse the masses from the sleepwalking spells all such things typically cast. As such, the movie emerged as an instant meta classic and it rapidly evolved into one of cinema’s great cult masterworks. You can even still buy brand new “Fight Club” t-shirts at Target!

Let’s celebrate “Fight Club’s” masterful media manipulation and endlessly inspiring calls for mayhem with a list of 15 facts in accordance with the film’s 15th anniversary.

Fact #1: Chuck Palahniuk thinks the movie is better

Among those who believe the movie “Fight Club” is an improvement over the novel “Fight Club” is the book’s own author, Chuck Palahniuk. He especially praises some insights that are unique to the film. “The movie had streamlined the plot and made it so much more effective,” Palahniuk said. “There is a line about ‘fathers setting up franchises with other families,’ and I never thought about connecting that with the fact that ‘Fight Club’ was being franchised. I was just beating myself in the head for not having made that connection myself.”

Fact #2: It was a nightmare for the studio

The production of “Fight Club” proved to be one long beat-down for Fox 2000 Pictures president Laura Ziskin. She was continually offended by the movie’s material, unsuccessfully demanding the removal of a scene where Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) sports a rubber glove to insinuate some unthinkably kinky sex with Marla (Helena Bonham Carter). Ziskin also insisted on the excision of Marla’s post-coitus pillow talk line, “I want to have your abortion.” David Fincher did cut the dialogue, but replaced it with the even more outrageous, “I haven’t been fucked like that since grade school!”

Fact #3: Reese Witherspoon was almost in it

Just imagine Reese Witherspoon attending support groups for the terminally ill as free entertainment. 20th Century Fox lobbied hard for Reese to play Marla in Fight Club, but she backed off, citing the film as “too dark.” Instead, she starred in Sweet Home Alabama and Legally Blonde. Also up for Marla: Sarah Michelle Gellar, but she couldn’t work it with her schedule on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Fact #4: Ed Norton took method acting too far

Ed Norton discovered that commitment to method acting has its limits. To play The Narrator in “Fight Club,” he starved himself down from his bulky “American History X” physique so he’d look scrawny and exhausted. Norton also learned how to make soap, and he took up smoking for the role, something he refused to do for Rounders. Finally, when both he considered actually attending support groups for the sick, he decided t it would cross the line from research into disrespect, so he didn’t.

Fact #5: Meat Loaf’s fat suit weighed more than 100 pounds

Meat Loaf’s fat suit weighed more than 100 pounds and was loaded with birdseed to emulate the sagging movement of recently gained weight. The visual effects team built two versions of it, as well—one with nipples, and one without. They feared Fox exec Laura Ziskin would forbid the nipple costume, but ultimately that was how Meat Loaf got to sport “bitch tits” in the role of fallen revolutionary Robert Paulson.

Fact #6: Starbucks is in every scene

At least a single Starbucks coffee cup is visible in every scene of “Fight Club,” except the one where Tyler and The Narrator level an upscale coffee chain outlet with a piece of corporate art. According to Fincher, Starbucks was enthusiastic and easy to deal with in terms of their product being satirized, but they stopped short of endorsing actual store demolition.

Fact #7: Extras stormed off

At least two extras stormed off the set and refused to even be paid. One took offense at a “Fight Club” member’s disclosure about using another man to get his wife pregnant. The other simply got tired of being slapped in the face and told he was worthless as part of his Project Mayhem training.

Fact #8: Leonardo DiCaprio makes a cameo—sort of

Leonardo DiCaprio makes a cameo in “Fight Club”—sort of. The visible breath coming out of Ed Norton when he meets a penguin in a South Pole cave was digitally recycled from DiCaprio’s death scene in “Titanic.”

Fact #9: Rosie O’Donnell spoiled the ending on opening day

Rosie O’Donnell spoiled “Fight Club’s” surprise ending on her TV show the day the movie opened in theaters. She decried the film as “fascist,” begged her middle-aged housewife audience to boycott it, and said that seeing the film had prevented her from sleeping for weeks. Brad Pitt called Rosie’s revelation “unforgivable.”

Fact #10: Pitt and Norton’s other movies get plugged

When Tyler and The Narrator beat each other throughout empty city streets, two movie theaters are visible. One is showing “Seven Years in Tibet,” which starred Brad Pitt; the other is running “The People vs. Larry Flynt,” with Ed Norton. A third theater marquee touted “The Wings of the Dove,” the name of a Helena Bonham Carter movie, but a bus blocks it from being seen on screen.

Fact #11: It bombed at the box office

“Fight Club” was officially a box office bomb. Costing $60 million to make, it earned back only $37 million in theaters. Where the film truly took off was on DVD, selling in excess of six million copies even before Blu-ray, and becoming one of the first blockbuster special edition discs.

Fact #12: It was a great year for movies

1999 proved to be a revolutionary year in Hollywood moviemaking, with a startling number of bold visions from maverick directors routinely playing at multiplexes. In addition to “Fight Club,” other major members of the cinematic Class of 1999 include “The Matrix,” “Eyes Wide Shut,” “American Beauty,” “Magnolia,” “Being John Malkovich,” “Three Kings” and “The Blair Witch Project.” So why has it all seemed like remakes, sequels, and superheroes ever since?

Fact #13: It’s been compared to ‘A Clockwork Orange’

“Fight Club” has been likened to Stanley Kubrick’s 1971 masterpiece “A Clockwork Orange” for its visual flourish, its uproarious attack on social control forces, and for using simulated extreme violence committed by desperate men to comment on real-life extreme violence committed by desperate men. Another parallel is that both films were censored by the British Board of Film Classification. “Fight Club” can only play in England with two scenes removed; “A Clockwork Orange” was banned from British cinemas until 2000.

Fact #14: A sequel in graphic novel form is forthcoming

“Fight Club 2″ is coming—in comic book form. Chuck Pahlahniuk is penning a ten-part graphic novel for Dark Horse comics that will take up the story ten years after the conclusion of the first Fight Club. The Narrator is married to Marla and they have a nine-year-old son name Junior. Tyler Durden re-emerges, and Pahlahniuk has said: “Tyler is something that maybe has been around for centuries and is not just this aberration that’s popped into [The Narrator's] mind.” Artist Cameron Stuart is doing the illustrations. Fight Club 2 is scheduled to debut in May 2015

Fact #15: The Blu-ray has a subliminal message from Tyler

When watching “Fight Club” on DVD or Blu-ray, be sure to hit pause right after the standard copyright message. A subliminal, one-second screed from Tyler Durden appears. It reads: “If you are reading this then this warning is for you. Every word you read of this is useless fine print is another second off your life. Don’t you have other things to do? Is your life so empty that you honestly can’t think of a better way to spend these moments? Or are you so impressed with authority that you give respect and credence to all who claim it? Do you read everything you’re supposed to read? Do you think everything you’re supposed to think? Buy what you’re told you should want? Get out of your apartment. Meet a member of the opposite sex. Stop the excessive shopping and masturbation. Quit your job. Start a fight. Prove you’re alive. If you don’t claim your humanity you will become a statistic. You have been warned… Tyler.”

the-cold-war:

An aerial view of Soviet built SA-2B Guideline surface-to-air missiles positioned at a desert location.

Engulfed, Rafael Sottolichio

Mindsuckers

The New York Times has a huge Pulitzer-bait story about injuries to U.S. military forces from old, unstable chemical weapons in Iraq, and how the Bush administration and the Pentagon covered it all up. It’s big, it’s a jaw-dropping exposé of shoddy treatment of soldiers, and you should read it.

The one thing that it does not do is vindicate George W. Bush’s brilliant decision to invade Iraq to put an end to the threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s supposedly active program to manufacture chemical and biological weapons. All the chemical weapons that U.S. forces found were old and deteriorating, leftovers from the Iran-Iraq war:

The United States had gone to war declaring it must destroy an active weapons of mass destruction program. Instead, American troops gradually found and ultimately suffered from the remnants of long-abandoned programs, built in close collaboration with the West.

You’re going to hear a lot of conservatives — like the nine paid staffers of Twitchy, for instance — saying, “See? Bush was right, so shut up, libs!” We especially loved Dead Breitbart’s take on the story, which leaves out a few somewhat important details. They say only that the Times story “details U.S. forces in Iraq finding thousands of chemical weapons during the Iraq war.”

“From 2004 to 2011, American and American-trained Iraqi troops repeatedly encountered, and on at least six occasions were wounded by, chemical weapons remaining from years earlier in Saddam Hussein’s rule,” Chivers wrote. “In all, American troops secretly reported finding roughly 5,000 chemical warheads, shells or aviation bombs, according to interviews with dozens of participants, Iraqi and American officials, and heavily redacted intelligence documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.”

See? Bush was right! Saddam had WMDs! USA! USA! USA! Suck it, libs!

Funny, though, what U.S. troops found was not those mobile chemical weapons labs that the Bush administration insisted were there but a lot of munitions left over from the 1980s:

After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Mr. Bush insisted that Mr. Hussein was hiding an active weapons of mass destruction program, in defiance of international will and at the world’s risk. United Nations inspectors said they could not find evidence for these claims.

Then, during the long occupation, American troops began encountering old chemical munitions in hidden caches and roadside bombs. Typically 155-millimeter artillery shells or 122-millimeter rockets, they were remnants of an arms program Iraq had rushed into production in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq war.

All had been manufactured before 1991, participants said. Filthy, rusty or corroded, a large fraction of them could not be readily identified as chemical weapons at all. Some were empty, though many of them still contained potent mustard agent or residual sarin. Most could not have been used as designed, and when they ruptured dispersed the chemical agents over a limited area, according to those who collected the majority of them.

In case after case, participants said, analysis of these warheads and shells reaffirmed intelligence failures. First, the American government did not find what it had been looking for at the war’s outset, then it failed to prepare its troops and medical corps for the aged weapons it did find.

In a pretty brilliant bit of revisionism, the ever-thoughtful American Thinker blog proclaims “NY Times admits Saddam had WMDs” in its headline, and then accuses Chivers and the Times of revisionism:

Chivers, of course, can’t very well say that Bush was right all along: His readers wouldn’t stand for it. So he tosses a bone to them, claiming the Bush administration’s goal in Iraq wasn’t merely to disarm Saddam of his WMDs — but to destroy “an active weapons of mass destruction program.” Instead he claims that American troops only found “remnants of long-abandoned programs, built in close collaboration with the West.” Yet the fact remains that these chemical agents still had military value — a fact that Chivers concedes

Yep, they had “military value”: They could be wired together to create roadside bombs. Remember how Colin Powell went to the UN to warn the world that Saddam had rotting remnants of a weapons stockpile that could be used as components of roadside bombs? They were truly a terrifying international security threat.

The main thing we take away from the story is that the Bush administration did everything it could to not call attention to these old chemical weapons. They were an embarrassment. The were the wrong weapons. They were actually not the droids we were looking for. Worse, they would have raised awkward questions about where they came from:

In five of six incidents in which troops were wounded by chemical agents, the munitions appeared to have been designed in the United States, manufactured in Europe and filled in chemical agent production lines built in Iraq by Western companies.

To have announced that we were finding these suckers would have required Bush to say that he’d discovered where Saddam got his chemical weapons, and then, presumably, we’d have to bomb some American and European defense contractors. Even when the Pentagon did announce that some weapons had been found, it scrupulously avoided talking about where they came from:

The publicly released information also skirted the fact that most of the chemical artillery shells were traceable to the West, some tied to the United States.

These shells, which the American military calls M110s, had been developed decades ago in the United States. Roughly two feet long and weighing more than 90 pounds, each is an aerodynamic steel vessel with a burster tube in its center …

The United States also exported the shells and the technology behind them. When Iraq went arms shopping in the 1980s, it found manufacturers in Italy and Spain willing to deal their copies. By 1988, these two countries alone had sold Iraq 85,000 empty M110-type shells, according to confidential United Nations documents. Iraq also obtained shells from Belgium.

Strangely, these details aren’t getting mentioned so much in the rightwing media. Saddam had some WMDs, all right, and they were top-notch American military technology.

Getting beyond the question of whether Bush is vindicated — say, we mentioned that he isn’t, didn’t we? — the story is just amazing. The Pentagon was not about to expose the existence of these old weapons that were injuring soldiers, so the soldiers got inadequate preparation before being sent out to dismantle what they expected to be conventional shells that might be used in IEDs. And then, after they were injured, they were given a gag order, because what they found was TOP SECRET. But at least they got Purple Hearts for their trouble.

At every step, the military leadership did whatever it could to downplay just how many of these old embarrassing weapons were still floating around Iraq. By 2004 the mission had shifted to fighting insurgents, and documenting old chemical weapons and reporting them just slowed things down.

Go read this thing. It’s important, and lord knows the conversation needs to be about the incompetent handling of the chemical weapons that were found, and the shoddy treatment of those who found them, not merely dragging out the “Bush was right!” claims again. Because, as we may have mentioned, he wasn’t.

[New York Times / Breitbart / American Thinker]

This is big news: HBO just announced it will launch a web-only service sometime next year. Meaning, you can get HBO with no cable subscription. Yay!

Read more...

Jacked In

Must read.

Divya Anantharaman at the Rogue Taxidermy Fair. Photo by the author.

When taxidermy became popular during the Victorian era, it was mostly men who hunted, skinned, fleshed, and stuffed the animals. History’s roster of well-known taxidermists include guys like John Hancock (not the American revolutionary), Charles Waterton, Carl Akeley, William Hornaday, and John James Audubon. Few women make the list, the most famous being Martha Ann Maxwell, who is generally recognized as the first female field naturalist.

Unsurprisingly, if you enter your local traditional taxidermy shop today, chances are it’s run by a professionally trained old dude whose family has been in the business for generations. But taxidermy really isn’t the boys’ club it used to be. The number of ladies embracing the art are increasing thanks to the growing genre of alternative—or “rogue”—taxidermy in the past decade.

The term was coined in 2004 by artists Sarina Brewer and Scott Bibus, co-founders of the Minnesota Association of Rogue Taxidermists (MART), the only official organization of its kind. “Rogue taxidermy is a pop-surrealist genre of sculpture that uses taxidermy materials, traditional materials, in an unconventional manner,” Robert Marbury, MART’s third co-founder told me. “The attempt is to be as ethical, to reduce and reuse as much as we can of the animal so there’s no waste, feeding back to stewardship and conservation.”

Instead of focusing on pure, perfect mimesis of specimens, rogue taxidermists create abstract works that deliver a more emotional narrative than the true-to-life trophies displayed in hunting lodges or the mounts found in natural history museums. (Some prefer to identify as artists working with taxidermy-related material rather than taxidermists.) Using ethically-sourced materials—i.e., they don't hunt—the genre has adopted a creative, DIY-esque aesthetic. Its methods are easily self-taught or demonstrated in classroom settings, exemplified by the emergence of taxidermy lessons in places like Brooklyn, London, Los Angeles, and Baltimore. Rogue taxidermy is highly accessible to the public—and curiously, it is dominated by women.

“Alternative taxidermy is very female-oriented,” Marbury said. “It tends to be 80/20 in classes.” Marbury has spoken with many international artists working with taxidermy for his new book, Taxidermy Art: A Rogue’s Guide to the Work, the Culture, and How to Do It Yourself. I met Marbury at his book's release party, which was held in conjunction with the Rogue Taxidermy Fair in Brooklyn. Most of the taxidermists selling their hand-made pieces at the fair were women, including Divya Anantharaman, who was previously featured in VICE's documentary Taxidermy Babe.

Amber Maykut, a self-taught taxidermy artist who was selling her work at the fair, told me she converted her Williamsburg apartment’s second bedroom into her “taxidermying room.” A former taxidermy instructor at the Morbid Anatomy Library (now Museum), she recalls having “20 students in the class, and maybe one would be a man.” The Museum’s current teachers, Katie Innamorato and Anantharaman (both also at the Fair), report similar numbers. Innamorato describes welcoming more and more women to her workshops each year and Anantharaman places her average class gender distribution at “95 to 99 percent women.”

Meanwhile, in classic taxidermy the gender makeup remains static. I asked Richard Santomauro, who’s owned a traditional taxidermy shop in New Jersey for 48 years, how many male taxidermists he knows. “Hundreds and hundreds,” he responded. And what about females?

“I know a girl in Philadelphia,” he said. “That’s about the only one I really know of.”

It’s tough to pinpoint the reasons why rogue taxidermy in particular draws more women than men, but its participants have their theories. “It’s probably that there’s no hunting involved, and it’s crafty,” Maykut said. “It’s more like an Etsy-store phenomenon than it is a manly, hunting thing.”

Others attribute the disparity to gender-specific behavioral tendencies: “If you talk to these traditional guys, they all say women have a better attention for detail,” Innamorato said. “And you have to have a lot of patience, and women tend to have a lot more patience than guys.”

Brewer, the co-founder of MART, posits that the reason lies in human evolution carving out established roles rooted in our biological makeup. “Nature has programmed females with the drive to nurture, and programmed males with the drive to kill,” she said. “I believe that’s why we see an overwhelming female demographic within the genre of rogue taxidermy, and mostly men in the world of sportsman’s mounts.”

But even as a few women working within taxidermy gain prominence, their broader contribution to the art form has yet to garner the respect it deserves. According to Marbury, women who share their taxidermy online sometimes receive “rape-y responses” while “men traditionally don’t.”

“Even Scott [Bibus], who does bloody and zombie-type stuff, does not get disregarded in the same way that some of the women are,” Marbury said.

'Mother's Little Helper Monkey' by Sarina Brewer

That stigma against women, however, doesn’t really exist within the real-world business of taxidermy, as competitive as it is. Many female rogue taxidermists who reached out to traditional male taxidermists to learn their skills describe their experiences with them as very positive.

“I think they’re more interested than anything,” Anantharaman told me. “For the most part, people I know who are traditionalists love it because they see it as a new generation of people interpreting this age-old art form in a different way.”

Below, meet some of the women working in alternative taxidermy. For more of their work, check out Marbury’s Taxidermy Art.

Photo by Adam Murphy, Deep Grey Photography

Lisa Black, 32, Brisbane, Australia

VICE: Can you tell me about your work?
It's a reflection of our undeniable technological progression. Seeing animals with carefully integrated mechanical additions encourages us to reassess how we define "natural." By creating beauty within this supposed paradox, I aim to challenge the concept of a world separated into the "sacrosanct" natural and "vulgar" industrial.

What's the coolest thing you've made?
I created a mechanical crocodile some years back and incorporated an antique clock movement inside the body. You could wind the movement up and watch the gears turn, giving it a lifelike quality. It also apparently reminded a lot of people of the crocodile in Peter Pan.

What's it like working in taxidermy as a woman?
I've had my fair share of negative and sexist comments and emails over the years, although it was definitely more at the start of my career. Really early on, I remember someone sent me a photo of my face photoshopped onto this weird baby mechanical body, using the mechanical parts of my sculptures. Although it was intended to be aggressive, it was so badly photoshopped and ridiculous that it made me laugh.

Photo by Charles Howells

Sarina Brewer, Minneapolis, Minnesota

Can you tell me about your work?
Sarina Brewer: When creating my taxidermy sculptures, folklore, mythology, and anomalies of nature are all an influence. Cryptozoology and even urban myths creep into these works. Since my animal materials are recycled, they generally have some sort of imperfection. Often the skins can't be used in one piece because a section is damaged, so I end up with a variety of mismatched leftover bits. This forces me to come up with all sorts of unlikely animal combinations drawn from my own imagination—these are among my favorite works. My materials include discarded livestock remnants, pet trade casualties, naturally deceased animals, donated nuisance animals, and legally collected roadkill.

What's the coolest thing you've ever made?
That would be Mother's Little Helper Monkey [below]: A tongue-in-cheek, autobiographical piece that consists of a winged monkey wearing a fez and guarding a martini. The title is a play on words, a combination of The Rolling Stones’ song "Mother's Little Helper" (about mama needing a little something to relax) and service animals called "helper monkeys," which are trained to be live-in care providers for quadriplegic people. People always ask me if it has anything to do with The Wizard of Oz... No, I just really like monkeys, and I really like vodka.

What's it like working in taxidermy as a woman?
It's true that men working in this realm don’t experience a reaction to their work in the same manner a woman does. Woman are expected to nurture. A woman doing something "disrespectful" to the dead body of some poor, innocent animal flies in the face of social expectations and people (usually other women) blow a gasket. I have received enough hate mail over the years that at one point I joked I would turn them into a book... My all-time favorite was "I'm gonna hang you from a meat hook you shit-bitch." Someone else threatened to run over me and my entire family with her Harley.

But in all seriousness, pioneers like myself who have been at this for many years have taken the brunt of this type of abuse and paved the way for the younger women who are only recently entering the field. It's not anywhere as bad as it used to be, and it's on a noticeable decrease... I think I might be going for a world record right now; I haven’t had any hate mail in almost a year.

Katie Innamorato, 24, New Jersey

Can you tell me about your work?
Katie Innamorato: My work focuses a lot on the cyclical connection between life and death, and growth and decomposition. I have been fascinated by decomposition for a while now. I also look at the idea of remembrance and different ways of creating homage to fallen animals. Right now my work is becoming more story- or fairy tale–like, more narrative than my past works.

What's the coolest thing you've made, or your favorite work?
My favorite piece is my most well known one, my Moss Fox. I have a lot of visions of pieces in my head, and that one seems to have set my mind in motion. I visualized a dead fox seemingly growing mosses and lichen from the inside-out. Everyone says the eyes in that piece really speaks to them and stays in their minds.

What's it like working as a woman in taxidermy?
I have only had one case of harassment and it was actually when I was working on my thesis in college. Some jackass school cop had a stick up his ass about me doing this kind of work at school and actually cornered me in my studio one day, talking down to me about how he did not think I should be doing any of that. He then called in the [Department of Environmental Conservation] and Health and Safety, who all cleared what I was doing as legal and safe... I reported him for harassment, and so did a few other students who overheard the whole thing. Besides that one idiot, I have been lucky.

'Moss Fox' by Katie Innamorato

Kate Clark, Brooklyn, New York

Can you tell me about your work?
Kate Clark: I make conceptual sculptures, fusing the human face and animal body in a lifelike way. My work uses taxidermy as a stepping-stone to start a conversation, but instead of presenting the "hierarchy" of man over animal, as traditional taxidermy does, the viewer sees a balance between man and animal, causing a primal reaction, and forcing the viewer to reconsider our relationship.

What's the coolest thing you've made?
One of my favorite pieces is a black bear I made for a solo gallery show in New York. My sister was the model. I was under the gun to finish the piece. The bear was on a tall pedestal looking down, and when I put the final pin in and looked up at her, it was a magical moment—she had a life-like presence beyond any I’d made before. I wasn’t sure I’d even made her. That piece was a turning point in my confidence and my goals as an artist. It sold, before the show even opened, to a great collection in Switzerland.

What's it like working as a woman in taxidermy?
To be honest, I am a woman working in the field of contemporary art—museums, galleries, and collectors. This field is exceptionally male-dominated also. When I present my work in a museum or gallery I commonly hear viewers talking about the artist as a "he" even though my name is plastered on the wall. But I don’t mind the element of surprise I see when a collector meets me. It’s just one more layer of the "rethinking" that’s part of appreciating my work.

Kate Clark, 'Black Bear,' from 'Taxidermy Art 'by Robert Marbury (Artisan Books). Copyright © 2014. Photo courtesy of the artist

Photo by Jared Joslin

Jessica Joslin, 43, Chicago, Illinois

Can you tell me about your work?
Jessica Joslin: I make hybrid species, integrating skulls and bones with metalwork.

What's the coolest thing you've made?
I'm a huge David Lynch fan. A few years ago, I was invited to participate in an art exhibition to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Twin Peaks. David Lynch and an extraordinary group of other contemporary artists were represented. For that show, I made a great horned owl named Cooper... It has huge silver wings, with brass feathers and menacing cast metal talons. He's crowned with a silver filigree helmet, wrought in the distinctive shape of the great horned owl's ear tufts, which give it its name. His gaze is intense, and it looks as if he is swooping in to capture his prey... if you are the viewer, that would be you.

What's it like working as a woman in taxidermy?
I guess I've been lucky. I do encounter the occasional troll, but for the most part, my interactions have been positive. I'm very grateful for that.

Photo by the author.

Amber Maykut, 33, Brooklyn, New York

Can you tell me about your work?
Amber Maykut: I make anthropomorphic taxidermy—particularly mice and butterfly mounts. I use repurposed vintage pieces, roadkill, discarded livestock, nuisance animals, feeder animals, pet trade casualties, and donations.

What's the coolest thing you've made? 
I made an anthropomorphic taxidermy piece of a ferret wearing a military outfit, complete with combat boots, beret, and weaponry. The ferret was donated to me as a deceased pet. I’m not sure why I, and many others, are obsessed with him. I guess he just has that certain je ne se quoi. He weaseled his way into my heart.

What's it like working as a woman in taxidermy?
My work has been called cute, adorable, and whimsical just as much as it’s been called sick, immoral, and wrong. Often people assume that I killed the animals, which is where I believe most of the backlash comes from. For me, I always try to take it with a grain of salt. It’s part of the territory of being a female: getting unsolicited praise and criticism. I think a big part of my personal development over the years has stemmed from learning to be brave enough to do whatever the hell I want because I’ll be criticized either way. At least then I know that one person is happy.

Photo by Del Almeida

Part of the allure of epidemiology is being able to describe and predict highly dynamic outbreaks with simple, clean mathematical models. But how close can models really get to perfectly mapping the spread of disease? 

Modeling how disease spreads early in an outbreak is a major challenge as sample sizes remain low and variables high. But a recently-developed method of making short-term outbreak projections called the IDEA model has shown promise, and is even doing an excellent job of tracking the current Ebola outbreak.

"If validated, the implications of such a finding may be profound," wrote the model's creators in an open-access 2013 paper in PLOS One, "e.g., the ability to project, with a high degree of accuracy, the final size and duration of a seasonal influenza outbreak within 2 weeks of onset."

The graph above shows how the model is faring with the current Ebola outbreak. So far, it's nearly perfect. If the IDEA model continues to predict the epidemic with the same accuracy, we can expect Ebola to start burning out in December, with a total of 14,000 cases. Currently, according to the CDC there are or have been 8,400. We have a ways to go.

So how does the model work? A few weeks ago, we discussed the infamous r_0 number—which is used to calculate the transmissibility of a disease in terms of additional infections per infected individual—and a model known as SIR, which describes the powerful dynamics involved in mixing susceptible (S), infected (I), and immune (R, for recovered) segments of a population that's exposed to infection.

The SIR model is classically used to see how much an infection can grow within a population, with those susceptible becoming infected, and the infected sometimes becoming recovered or immune. (A good explainer example is this model of a potential zombie outbreak.) When combined with r_0, the models can give us the force of an infection.

Generally, epidemic models grow from the SIR framework, with each one adding a new "compartment." For example, the SEIR model adds an "E" for a population group that's been exposed, and is incubating the pathogen, but isn't yet infectious—such as when US Ebola patient zero Thomas Eric Duncan boarded his plane from Liberia in September. 

The MSIR model adds "M," a group with natural, born-with-it immunity. Meanwhile, the SIS model actually removes the immune group entirely from the equations, a situation that fits the common cold and flu, in which being infected once offers no future protection.

There are several other variations on the basic compartmental model, but this is hardly the only modeling strategy out there. Both generally and as a way of informing the models above, we might turn to the IDEA model. 

IDEA stands for "incidence decay and exponential adjustment." Yes, finally, we get to really talk about exponential things in the proper sense, rather than the usual casual redefinition of the term to mean "a lot."

One of the IDEA scheme's creators, Amy Greer, writes that the model is "based on the idea that we could use simple types of public health surveillance data and turn that information into reliably accurate projections of what might happen in the outbreak in the short-term."

The model attempts to make up for the usual shortcomings of the r_0 number, which, according to the IDEA creators, often fails to accurately account for epidemic control efforts. 

As with the compartmental models, r_0 is at its best at the very beginning of an outbreak using sets of initial values. In an outbreak, things change fast, however, and public health responses can add a ton of variables to the mix. 

Again, in the case of Ebola, how could a research have modeled the way misinformation and protests have undermined quarantine efforts? This is where IDEA is designed to be most effective.

If you remember, r_0 is technically defined as the average number of secondary infections that can be expected to result from one primary infection. In other words, this is how many people that each infected person can expect to transmit the disease to before they, the primary case, become not-infectious. 

Ebola sits at around r_0 = 1.5 in the United States and closer to 2 in West Africa, where the disease has a higher chance of spreading. Keep in mind the 1.5 is an initial value and as more control measures are taken, it should decline.

Measuring the decline is where things get murky, according to Greer. Her model uses a new term d to modify r_0 like this:

The main thing here is the d, which is a factor representing some discount function that changes through time, so named because it resembles discounting in financial models. Here it's meant to represent the efforts taken to control the epidemic, vaccinations and quarantines etc. The larger d gets, the smaller the I result, which is the number of total infected individuals.

Using this first I, we can find out how I changes through time, given by this equation, where the Ret at time 0 is just r_0:

So, multiplying the R value at a given time, which is the Ret, by the first equation we got using d will tell us how many infected individuals we can expect at the next time interval (days, probably). 

All that is to say that the IDEA model is a much more dynamic way to look at transmissibility as it's continuously being modified by the various control mechanisms we might put into place to limit the epidemic or, rather, the observed effects of them.

Algebraically twisting around the equations above, along with other equations in the model that predict changes in an epidemic's immune and susceptible populations, gives us some other useful predictions: The expected time an epidemic is likely to stop growing, an estimated maximum number of total infected individuals, and so on. The model can also give epidemiologists a way of determining how effective their control measures are.

Greer and her team tested the model out on data from an H1N1 outbreak in Nunavet, Canada (a reasonably isolated population). You can see the results below. Not bad: the models tracked the observed data pretty well. (Note that SI refers to how many different time intervals, the ts above, are calculated.)

Image: Greer et al

In simulated epidemics, the researchers found that their model did very well with low or moderately low starting r_0 values, which SIR can have a difficult time with. According to Greer and her team, the IDEA prediction was a near-perfect fit.

"We found that best-fit projections for the IDEA model for disease dynamic systems with low or intermediate r_0 were exceedingly good, with parameters derived within 34 generations able to project the full extent of simulated epidemics with remarkable accuracy," the team concluded in their PLOS One paper.

Erik Siador, “Subconscious Mathematix.”

Artist Erik Siador currently has brand new work on display at Thinkspace Gallery’s Project Room in Culver City, California in a show entitled “Subconscious Mathematix.”  The intricate, sci-fi drawings all feature very beautiful, complex frames to compliment the work.

Erik Siador: Website

Thinkspace Gallery

rfmmsd:

Artist & Sculptor:

Alastair Mackie

"Untitled (Sphere)"

Mouse Skulls, Wood, Glass

2010

Richard Brittain is a champion on Countdown (a British gameshow) as well as a self-published author. He's also, apparently, very good at being a complete and utter creepy stalker.

Read more...

alcrego:

From pray to prey in ten days.

The CROW-N. “Original photos by Nemo’s: (1) (2) (3).”

Official website: http://www.whoisnemos.com

Follow his twitter here: https://twitter.com/whoisnemos

catsbeaversandducks:

If you don’t talk to your cat about catnip, who will? 

Photos via crack two

the-goddamazon:

hariettubs-undrgrnd-anaconda-prk:

ftcreature:

The Featured Creature: Deep Sea Siphonophore: a Creature Made of Creatures

This remarkable ‘creature’ is not actually a creature at all, but multiple tiny creatures, called zooids, all living and working together. They combine to create what’s called a siphonophore; a long, thin, sometimes transparent pelagic floating colony that can superficially resemble a jellyfish.

video & full article: http://bit.ly/1DkNrTz

Kelley!

thesmileoctopus

explain this to me!

Deep Sea Voltron wassup.

tracyvanity:

adreciclarte:

THE MAKING OF “IN VOLUPTAS MORS” – SALVADOR DALI BY PHILIPPE HALSMAN

 

This is amazing!

Stronzo Bestiale has published research in some of the world's most esteemed physics journals, and his co-authors are often leading members in their fields. But Stronzo Bestiale, whose name means "total asshole" in Italian, has a secret. He kind of doesn't exist.

Read more...

Still from the trailer of No No: A Dockumentary

Certain moments in baseball history have transcended the game to become bona fide pop culture memes. Babe Ruth pointing to the outfield wall before smashing a home run in that direction, a little kid asking Shoeless Joe Jackson to say it ain't so, Bobby Thomson hitting the "Shot Heard 'Round the World" to give the Giants the 1951 National League pennant. Then there was the time Dock Ellis pitched a no-hitter for the Pittsburgh Pirates while tripping on LSD.

If you're not familiar with the story, it must be because you didn't have internet access in 2009, when James Blagden's amazing animated short film Dock Ellis and the LSD No-No exploded across the web, turning what was a quirky footnote in baseball history into a modern-day tall tale known by fans and non-fans alike. 

If you've never seen it, enjoy:

Like with most legends, there's some controversy about how much of it is the unvarnished truth—there's no way to prove that Ellis was actually tripping balls while standing on the pitcher's mound that day, as he maintained until his death, in 2008. Deadspin tried to sort out facts from fiction in 2011, noting that none of Ellis's teammates have ever corroborated his story about tripping on acid. But myth or not, Ellis was a fascinating man, and a worthy subject for a new film by Jeffrey Radice, No No: a Dockumentary. Although the pitcher consumed mountains of pills, weed, and cocaine before and during games in his career, Ellis's story is more complex than that of a simple drug-addled athlete.

The film, which played at Sundance earlier this year, tells the story of a man who fought against racism in baseball and worked hard to advocate for the right to free agency, before which players were largely at the mercy of owners who could buy and sell them at will. Ellis, who died in 2008, also turned the Pittsburgh Pirates' dugout into the biggest party in the major leagues.

I met with Radice to talk about why this story has such staying power.

VICE: Why did you want to make a movie about Ellis?
Jeffrey Radice: What brought me to the story of Dock Ellis is if you trace the history of LSD—in the United States at least—it goes back to the CIA and their MKUltra stuff. I had produced a short film about that. The CIA had hookers on the payroll dosing guys, and they were observing them through two-way mirrors. That, to me, is far stranger than any fiction that anyone could make up.

But you also love 1970s baseball, right? Did you want to spread that love?
[Between] baseball and counterculture, if you did a Venn diagram, there’s not a tremendous amount of overlap. [There’s] a little bit of “sticking it to the man,” and it’s also kind of a nod to a bygone era. The war on drugs started in 1970 and LSD was certainly a part of the war on drugs. What I tried to do with the film was use [Ellis] as the third eye, and that game as this kind of blossom to explore. To people in their 20s, the 1970 is [an alien] time and place. So Dock Ellis is kind of this “fuck-you to the establishment!” character, and that’s where I was going with it. 

Dock kind of embodies that anti-establishment attitude. People who are kind of drawn to that—the Burning Man kinds of people—it causes them to take a step back and kind of say, “That’s cool! Not what I would have expected [from a baseball player].”

Pitching a no-hitter on acid seems hard. How'd he pull it off?
Dock was tripping for a couple of days. So he took acid, came down, and took some more, but the more you take, the less of an effect it has. You can prolong your trip, but, it was at the tail end of a multi-day trip, and when he got to the stadium, he also took a lot of speed—which was his drug of choice for pitching—and so that helped him get more set mentally. 

Right. It seems like you would get psyched out by the people watching you.
Dock was able to handle that situation. I think pro athletes become real experts at tuning out the crowd and not paying attention to the roar. Another thing is muscle memory. Dan really talked about that. Especially for pitchers, more than any other position in baseball, it’s about just pounding the ball. You get into a groove. 

Do you think pitching is the only position where tripping doesn't interfere with your ability to play?
If you’re playing right field, you only have maybe one ball that comes to you an inning. Or maybe every two innings. So, there’s a lot of time for your mind to wander. But if you’re a pitcher, it’s like one thing after another and you hit this rhythm. That’s why I think it’s plausible from that perspective.

That's why you don't doubt the story?
At one point in time, I thought a lot of the doubt came from people who had no experience with LSD. It’s very much a mental drug, so I don’t think it’s obvious if someone is under the influence of LSD. It’s all practice and muscle memory at the end of the day. I think hallucinogens, with the right kind of mental focus, allow you to really just get into a groove and rely on your muscle memory. 

No No: a Dockumentary was just released online. You can stream it in several places, including YouTube.

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.