African Giant Pouched Rats are being trained to detect unexploded landmines in Tanzania. Socyberty says:
The idea occurred to Weegens as he realized that rats were both easy to train and had an excellent sense of smell. Combining these two would, he considered, provide a cheap way to detect unexploded mines and ?
It’s a story that is getting surprisingly little national attention: former Mod Squad actress Peggy Lipton has inadvertently found herself at the center of New York’s pension fund scandal. Lipton was the object of the affections of a political operative named Jack Chartier who abused taxpayer supported town cars and other perks of his job in an effort to woo the actress. Chartier has been described in rather unflattering terms in the majority of the articles I’ve read on the matter. (The back story is told here in great detail). But now the scandal is getting deeper.
Tom Robbins write in the Village Voice:
The only victims in the Tiger Woods episode, for instance, are an SUV and the golf star himself, possibly due to a few swings on a nine-iron by his gorgeous wife. Compare that paltry disabled list to the lethal fallout produced after a schlubby late-middle-aged political hack from Queens fell hard for Lipton, the aging but still charming TV starlet. Lovestruck Jack Chartier was chief of staff to the New York state comptroller with influence over billions in state pension funds. The result has been financial scandal history.
Since Chartier, 64, started confessing to Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s investigators about how he abused his office in order to better impress Lipton, at least five powerful figures have been forced to plead guilty to crimes involving the pension fund. Those admitting felonies so far include the former leader of the state’s Liberal Party, a Texas hedge-fund manager, a hugely successful investment adviser, and a pension fund broker.
The latest victim is the biggest catch yet: Elliott Broidy, 52, is the former national finance committee chairman of the Republican National Committee and a personal friend of George W. Bush. Broidy was such a generous and prolific giver that he qualified as a “Super Ranger” on Bush’s fundraising team, a designation for those ponying up $300,000-plus. One glittering evening in 2006, Broidy and his wife had Dubya as the guest of honor at their Bel Air mansion where more than $1 million was raised for the Republican cause. Broidy’s wallet was so wide open that Bush named him to the board of the Kennedy Center, placed him on the Homeland Security Advisory Council, and had him to dinner at the White House with another famously randy figure, Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.
None of those powerful connections, however, were any help once Chartier started singing after having been being nailed on his own transgressions.
The Peggy Lipton Affair Brings Down Another Mogul (Village Voice)
Chicks and vinyl! Vinyl and chicks!
Lifelounge says, “May we present to you a gallery that is a homage to lovely ladies of the past caught mid turntable tease with vinyl in hand. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to get the timeless appeal of this subject. Enjoy.”
Chicks and Vinyl
Autonomedia’s 2010 calendar of Jubilee Saints is now available. The calendar tracks world history dates in anarchist and poetic resistance to Teh Machine. (Arthur mag’s blog regularly posts dates from the calendar, which help restore my sense of narrative on a regular basis.)
Autonomedia’s Jubilee Saints Calendar for 2010! Our 18th annual wall calendar, with artwork by James Koehnline, and text by the Autonomedia Collective.
Hundreds of radical cultural and political heroes are celebrated here, along with the animating ideas that continue to guide this project ?
John Patterson at the Guardian’s critical appreciation of The New World, one of my favorite movies from my favorite director, ever. Patterson calls it the best movie of the decade. I think he’s probably right. It’s the kind of movie that will help you breathe for weeks. John says:
This decade hasn’t been up to much, movie-wise, but I am more than ever convinced that when every other scrap of celluloid from 2000-2009 has crumbled to dust, one film will remain, like some Ozymandias-like remnant of transient vanished glory in the desert. And that film is The New World, Terrence Malick’s American foundation myth, which arrived just as the decade reached its dismal halfway point, in January 2006.
It’s been said that The New World doesn’t have fans: it has disciples and partisans and fanatics. I’m one of them, and my fanaticism burns undimmed 30 or more viewings later. The New World is a bottomless movie, almost unspeakably beautiful and formally harmonious. The movie came and went within a month, and its critical reception was characterised for the most part by bafflement, condescension, lazy ridicule and outright hostility. And, less often, by faintly hysterical accolades written too soon and in terms too overheated to convey understanding. I know, I wrote one of them.
I was lucky. I saw the movie at 10 in the morning, on 20 minutes’ notice. I knew only that it was about Pocahontas and Captain John Smith, and was directed by the man who made Badlands, Days of Heaven and The Thin Red Line. I saw it on a screen the size of a warehouse wall, boasting a state-of-the-art sound system that picked out every insect whirr and birdcall, every droplet of falling water, every muted sigh. Having been underwhelmed by The Thin Red Line (upon which critics had ?
Watch as Bill O’Reilly gets his panties in a twist! This REALLY bugs him. It’s obvious that this got under his skin and really drove him nuts! At approx 2:10 he says something so ridiculous I am surprised he didn’t spontaneously combust from the hypocrisy. Bill, tell us what you really think… And then he pulls out Laura Ingraham to help back him up, and she of course, obliges. It a classic! (Something tells me John Larroquette and Ice-T had a good time with this dialogue!)
From Yahoo News:
Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly lashed out at “Law & Order” franchise creator/executive producer Dick Wolf Thursday night. The bombastic host, upset over how he was recently characterized on the long-running NBC drama, called the “far left” Wolf a “despicable human being” whose show is “out of control.”
Sparking O’Reilly’s ire was an episode of “Law and Order: Special Victims Unit” that aired earlier in the week, in which a crazed anti-immigration activist set out to murder the children of illegal immigrants. In one scene, a character named Randall Carver, played by veteran actor John Larroquette, is sitting on a park bench talking to Fin, the detective played by Ice-T. In defending the actions of the man who killed the immigrants?
My brother Josh pointed out another perfect one in the form of “She Brings The Rain” by the venerable Can. DM reader Jason W points us in the direction of this description of the film from which it originally came. Somebody needs to dig that film up, pronto !
Being that it’s my 28th birthday, I suppose I can allow myself the leeway to obscenely promote myself.
A big hello to those who follow my posts here as 1/4 of the Four-Headed Culture Vulture known as Dangerous Minds (wait… correction… 1/5th. Welcome Brad Laner!). Many of you already know me, but for those who don’t, check out my webpage here. I’m a writer and editor. I put together the following books (after starting my publishing career working with Richard Metzger at a publishing house that will go unnamed):
Thee Psychick Bible: A New Testameant
These books are, of course, about how to use your brain to warp reality. If that sounds fun, you’ll probably enjoy all three of them. I also write a ton about pop culture theory, the weird, the outr?ɬ
While not a general fan of the reality TV genre, I did catch the first episode of MTV’s new “Jersey Shore” show online recently and have to say it’s some of the best TV ever. Largely because there’s nothing funnier than NJ Guidos. Especially the prime specimens MTV has picked to star in the show: utterly self-obsessed, plastic freaks with names like “The Situation” (in honor of his abs) and “J-WOWW.” Apparently the MTV offices are getting regular death threats from real guidos incensed at the portrayal of their ilk. Amazing. Cracked did a rundown of the show so far here:
MTV?
