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Kazakhstan’s Radioactive Legacy
11.11.2009
12:39 pm
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60 years ago, on the steppes of northeast Kazakhstan, “First Lightning,” the very first nuclear weapon to detonate in Russia, went off at the Semipalatinsk Polygon test site.  Over its 40-year existence, Semipalatinsk Polygon would go on to host 456 additional explosions.  These photos, just two of many, depict that legacy’s haunting aftermath on the people of Kazakhstan.

Residents in the surrounding area became unwitting guinea pigs, exposed to the aftereffects of the bombs both intentionally and unintentionally. The radiation has silently devastated three generations of people in Kazakhstan—the total number affected is thought to be more than one million—creating health problems ranging from thyroid diseases, cancer, birth defects, deformities, premature aging, and cardiovascular diseases.  Life expectancy in the area is seven years less than the national average of Kazakhstan.

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For more photos: Kazakhstan’s Radioactive Legacy

 

Posted by Bradley Novicoff
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11.11.2009
12:39 pm
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1960s Anti-LSD Film: That’s No Hot Dog!
11.10.2009
01:49 pm
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Posted by Jason Louv
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11.10.2009
01:49 pm
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HOWTO Skateboard Safely (1970s)
11.10.2009
12:10 pm
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Here’s a humorous skateboarding saftey video from the 1970s. It was produced for Pro / Am Skateboard Association and features Santa Cruz Boards.

Posted by Tara McGinley
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11.10.2009
12:10 pm
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Rock snobs, Rejoice: Wolfgang’s Vault, the Ft. Knox of classic concerts
11.06.2009
06:48 pm
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If you call yourself a music fan and you’ve not taken a pilgrimage over to Wolfgang’s Vault, then make a move, stat, hippie! The sprawling website is a veritable treasure trove of classic rock concerts, many from the archive of the late, great San Francisco-based concert impresario Bill Graham (real name: Wolfgang Grajonca). It’s the Ft. Knox of live music.

Graham began recording rock shows at his Winterland, Fillmore West and Filmore East show palaces and stored the tapes in the basement of his Bill Graham Presents offices. These 2,500 hours formed the basis of the Vault’s collection, but the archives of the “King Biscuit Flower Hour” radio show, the Dawson Sound collection, the Ash Grove (a L.A. 60s folk club, now known as the Improv) archive, the Newport Jazz archives and tapes from the Record Plant have been added in recent years. Meticulous restoration work is done on the well-preserved, but aging, material by an army of recording engineers who will even resort to slow baking the tapes for several days so they can be played just one time and captured digitally.

From the acid rock of the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane and Jimi Hendrix on to the punkier sounds of the Sex Pistols, the Clash and beyond (‘80s New Wave groups like Culture Club, Duran Duran and ABC are represented too), much of the 3,500 concerts on Wolfgang’s Vault stream free for members (it costs nothing to sign up, but you do have to register to listen) and the audio quality is top-notch. Additionally Wolgang’s Vault boasts a streaming radio station and an online store with what is probably the single best source of rock and roll memorabilia on the Internet. New concerts are added weekly. There’s even a Wolfgang’s Vault iPhone app for listening to concerts on the go, which was named the best app of 2009 by Macworld.

www.wolfgangsvault.com

Cross posting this from Brand X

Posted by Richard Metzger
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11.06.2009
06:48 pm
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Artists and Animals
11.06.2009
01:24 pm
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If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger, There’d Be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats has a sweet collection of images titled, “Artists and Animals.” It’s worth a click!

Posted by Tara McGinley
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11.06.2009
01:24 pm
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“Inner Statue” Discovered Under Nefertiti’s Bust
11.06.2009
12:24 pm
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UPI says,

Italian scientists say CAT scans have helped them uncover an “inner statue” under one of the world’s best-known faces, the bust of Queen Nefertiti of Egypt.

The bust, about 3,400 years old, was discovered in 1912 by German archaeologists in what had been the workshop of the sculptor Thutmose. It is now in the Neues Museum in Berlin.

Franco Crevatin , an ethnologist at Trieste University, and Stefano Anselmo, an expert in the history of cosmetics, have created a computer-generated image they believe is closer to Nefertiti’s actual face than the one shown in the finished statue. Their findings were published this month in Focus Storia, a history journal.

The researchers added skin color to the image picked up by CAT scans and studied surviving Egyptian portraits of Nefertiti’s relatives. Their image makes the queen’s nose somewhat less perfect and adds laugh lines around her mouth. The cheekbones are less dramatic and the eyes shallower.

(via UPI and Jezebel)

 

Posted by Tara McGinley
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11.06.2009
12:24 pm
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Remember, remember the 5th of November: Happy Guy Fawkes Night!
11.05.2009
09:55 pm
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Although most American?

Posted by Richard Metzger
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11.05.2009
09:55 pm
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Animated Stereoviews of Old Japanese Photos
11.05.2009
12:16 am
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Awesome blog Pink Tentacle says, “In the late 19th and early 20th century, enigmatic photographer T. Enami (1859-1929) captured a number of 3D stereoviews depicting life in Meiji-period Japan.”
 
See more cool Japanese stereoviews over at Pink Tenticle.

Posted by Tara McGinley
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11.05.2009
12:16 am
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Girls Freestyle International Skateboard Championship (1965)
11.04.2009
11:42 pm
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(via Nerdcore)

Posted by Tara McGinley
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11.04.2009
11:42 pm
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Amazingly Restored Billie Holiday, Beatles Footage
10.30.2009
04:05 pm
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I’m not sure exactly what kind of digital voodoo LiveFeedVideoImaging applies to their historical footage, but the clarity of the following clips is pretty astounding.  In clip one, from ‘57, Billie Holiday performs Fine and Mellow from the Seven Lively Arts episode, “The Sound of Jazz.”  To compare and contrast the resolution, you can check out the extended YouTube clip here.

 
Even more amazing—in terms of clarity, anyway—is the following brief Beatles clip from ‘63’s Royal Variety Performance:

Posted by Bradley Novicoff
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10.30.2009
04:05 pm
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