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Britney Spears’ Twitter tweaked
11.19.2009
06:08 pm
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Poor Britney Spears just can’t catch a break! Earlier this week, the beleaguered pop strumpet, still smarting from the walkouts and poor reviews she encountered during her recent Australian shows, had her Twitter account hacked and defaced with an “Illuminati” wallpaper background. In addition, the hackers also made two tweets, one reading ?

Posted by Richard Metzger
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11.19.2009
06:08 pm
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GOOD: How the Web Liberalized Liberal Arts Education
11.19.2009
04:43 pm
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As a companion to the story about the UCLA near-riots, here’s a DIY education chaser courtesy of GOOD magazine.

We live with an economy and country where education is increasingly becoming either priced out of availability or a lifelong financial ball-and-chain turning students into indentured servants to the state that has paid for their education?

Posted by Jason Louv
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11.19.2009
04:43 pm
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UCLA Students Almost-Riot Over Tuition Increase
11.19.2009
04:16 pm
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UCLA students are near-rioting over a 32% tuition increase. The unrest has resulted in 14 reported arrests and one tazering so far. Quick, deploy Apple Store discount vouchers to pacify them!

As a graduate of the UC system, I can’t say I’m surprised, but 32% is beyond the pale of previous tuition hikes. How in hell do they expect students or their families to pay that in this economy? How in hell do they expect to be able to fund that in financial aid? Why is California crippling its own workforce for the coming decades? Education is the backbone of any democracy, and by pricing it out of the range of those who need it, California is only hurting itself in the long run.

The Associated Press reports, from this morning:

About 200 demonstrators are chanting and marching around a UCLA building where University of California regents are scheduled to vote on a 32 percent fee increase for next year.

Protesters from several UC campuses stayed overnight at a campus tent city to take part in a second day of demonstrations on Thursday.

UCLA spokesman Phil Hampton says 30 to 50 students also have staged a sit-in at an ethnic studies building and have chained shut the doors. They’re peaceful and are being allowed to stay.

Fourteen people were arrested Wednesday for failure to disperse or disturbing the peace.

Protests are also reported at other UC campuses but no further arrests have been reported.

The regents say cuts in state aid leave are forcing the tuition hike.

You can shout at the UCLA Chancellor here, as this will likely affect the long-term quality of life of all Californians.

(LA Times: UC raising student fees)

Posted by Jason Louv
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11.19.2009
04:16 pm
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Scan Processor Studies: Super Trippy Video
11.19.2009
04:14 pm
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From Brian O’Reilly, one of the collaborators of the Scan Processor Studies:

Woody, Steina, Garth and I spent many nights screening works for moving images, playing music, and cooking, enveloped in the huge ghost town mood the ZKM’s kitchen took on at night. During this time there were passionate discussions about video synthesizers (mainly my love for the Sandin Image Processor), and how Steina’s VIOLIN POWER had a huge influence on Garth’s and my new series of works.

The source materials were generated by Woody using a Rutt-Etra Scan Processor in the 1970’s and sat on a shelf for years, having been recently digitized. Woody came into my studio one day and asked me if I would be interested in using them to work on a collaboration, and the project began from there…

Thanks Manuel Quiza!

Posted by Tara McGinley
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11.19.2009
04:14 pm
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Autografik: Vintage Logos On Vehicles
11.19.2009
01:33 pm
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Jonathan Turner has created a new Flickr Pool dedicted to company logos on vehicles from the 60s and 70s. I really dig some of these designs.
 
Autografik
 
(via iGNANT)

Posted by Tara McGinley
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11.19.2009
01:33 pm
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The Pop-up Book of Phobias
11.19.2009
11:46 am
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Here’s a creepy book titled The Pop-up Book of Phobias by Gary Greenberg and illustrated by Balvis Rubess. Enjoy! 

 
(via Cakehead Loves Evil)

Posted by Tara McGinley
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11.19.2009
11:46 am
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Do blind people hallucinate on LSD?
11.19.2009
12:07 am
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LSD by Damien Hirst
 
Cut-n-pasted from the Mindhacks blog:

I’ve just found a remarkable 1963 study [pdf] from the Archives of Opthalmology in which 24 blind participants took LSD to see if they could experience visual hallucinations.

It turns out, they can, although this seems largely to be the case in blind people who had several years of sight to begin with, but who later lost their vision.

Those blind from a very early age (younger than two years-old) did not report visual hallucinations, probably because they never had enough visual experience to shape a fully-functioning visual system when their brain was still developing.

It is evident that a normal retina is not needed for the occurrence of LSD-induced visual experiences. These visual experiences do not seem to differ from the hallucinations reported by normal subjects after LSD.

Such phenomena occurred only in blind subjects who reported prior visual activity. The drug increased the frequency of visual events such as spots, lights, dots, and flickers. However, the complex visual experiences reported by 3 subjects after LSD did not occur after placebo or in ordinary experience.

It is interesting to note that duration of blindness was not related to the occurrence of visual hallucinations; nor was intelligence, acuity of visual memory, or use of visual imagery in speech.

Read the entire post at the Mindhacks blog.

Thanks Dan Levy!

Posted by Richard Metzger
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11.19.2009
12:07 am
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Oil of L.A.
11.18.2009
10:27 pm
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As a proud Angeleno since 1991, of course I’ve noticed the various small oil rigs along La Cienega Boulevard and elsewhere, but I didn’t realize there was one in… the Beverly Center? Would you believe there are several under the Farmer’s Market too? Am I pulling your leg? Nope! There are oil wells all around the city—particularly in Beverly Hills—disguised as buildings, islands and even palm trees. Before L.A. was firmly established as a movie and TV town it was an oil town. In fact, Los Angeles is part of a region that is third largest oil producer in America with over 20 billion barrels of oil yet to be extracted under our feet! Who knew?

Nate Harrington, a local DJ and publisher of the “Constantly Pregnant” zine filed this video report for Vice Media’s new online series “Uneven Terrain,” peeking behind the scenes to uncover LA’s hidden oil rigs residing within hollow office buildings, the camouflaged rigs standing right next to high schools, and the ones concealed within popular shopping malls. Fascinating!

Cross posting this from Brand X

Posted by Richard Metzger
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11.18.2009
10:27 pm
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Put that in your pipe and smoke it
11.18.2009
10:18 pm
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With a philosophy seemingly diametrically opposed to that of elected law enforcement officials in Los Angeles, the attorney general of Colorado, John Suthers (a Republican), has advised the governor of that state that medical marijuana sales should be regulated and taxed like alcohol and tobacco (and not tax- exempt like pharmaceuticals are, as medical cannabis is not prescribed per se, but “recommended” by doctors). This plan seems consistent with the stark reality in these dark times that state and county governments need to seek new avenues of public funding that will not prove to be politically unpopular. Medical cannabis activists have long been pro-taxation, as it confers legitimacy on the space.

The taxation of medical marijuana sales is something that we hear a lot about in California, and the above graphic gives some idea of how much money would be left on the table should medical marijuana be banned—or merely hounded and harassed out of business—here in Los Angeles. City Atty. Carmen Trutanich and Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley have declared their intentions to continue fighting the medical marijuana dispensaries, but it’s important to keep in mind that 77% of Los Angeles residents indicated that they were for the regulation and taxation of dispensaries, according to a recent Mason-Dixon poll.

No matter what sort of spin you put on the issue, ignoring the revenue-creating potential of taxing cannabis sales—which will continue, legally or otherwise—hardly seems prudent when we live in an era in which local governments can’t afford to fix potholes or hire schoolteachers.

Cross posting this from Brand X/Graphic via Sloshspot

Posted by Richard Metzger
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11.18.2009
10:18 pm
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National Geographic: “Shangri-La” Caves Yield Treasures, Skeletons
11.18.2009
07:10 pm
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An archaeological team that discovered caves full of Tibetan manuscripts in the Himalayas thinks it could be linked with the fabled paradise of Shangri-La. Real, or History Channel fodder? Read on…

A treasure trove of Tibetan art and manuscripts uncovered in “sky high” Himalayan caves could be linked to the storybook paradise of Shangri-La, says the team that made the discovery.

The 15th-century religious texts and wall paintings were found in caves carved into sheer cliffs in the ancient kingdom of Mustang?

Posted by Jason Louv
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11.18.2009
07:10 pm
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