Beautiful life-size flash banner of a blue whale brought to you by Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society.

The ban on commercial whaling is one of the greatest conservation victories of all time. Before it came into effect in 1986, whaling had brought entire species to the brink of extinction. Today, shocking developments are threatening its existence.

Many governments represented at the International Whaling Commission (IWC) are poised to vote for a deal that will allow Japan to legally slaughter whales in its coastal waters in return for reductions in its so called ‘scientific’ whaling in Antarctica. This coastal whaling deal would not only mark the end of the ban on commercial whaling, but offers no guarantee of stopping ‘scientific’ whaling, and it does nothing to stop Norway and Iceland’s expanding hunts.

Meanwhile, South Korea has announced that it is ready to start whaling too and is looking to the IWC to tell it how many whales it can kill.

Life-size blue whale is here.
 
(via Testpiel.de)

 
Really cool digital graffiti wall by Canadian designers Tangible Interaction.

Now, artists can digitally “paint” a surface in the same way they can tag a wall with traditional spray paint.

Tangible Interaction

 
Mister Freedom is a 1969 satire directed by expat American fashion photographer William Klein. It stars French actress Delphne Seyrig (who was also in Day of the Jackal). Donald Pleasence and Serge Gainsbourg have supporting roles and May 1968 student rebel-rouser Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Simone Signoret and Yves Montand have uncredited cameos.
 

 
Mister Freedom concerns a loutish, jingoistic American superhero, a self-righteous idiot run amok, who’s willing to destroy France in order to save it from the Ruskies and Chinamen. Obviously this is a parody of American foreign policy of the Vietnam era, but what’s so utterly uncanny about the film is how well it predicts the Bush era. It’s incredible! Watch a clip and see if you agree:
 

 
Beck made a “tribute” to Mister Freedom with his Sexx Laws video and the Japanese pop duo Pizzicato 5 made an homage to the film with their Sister Freedom Tapes EP.
 

 
Spotted today in NY Mag, an update on the certainly-fascinating David Morrill:

What would you suggest as a fair price for a Sarah Palin?

This is one of the most impressive Dubstep releases I’ve heard since, well, I forgot dubstep existed. Just the right hint of Burroughs, Gysin and the assault of the citadels of enlightenment. Towers open fire!

Download a DJ mix from Shackleton here.

And get his new release “Three Eps” here.

 
Here in the US we have Chupacabra.  In Japan they’ve got Kappa, which, according to various sources, dwell in lakes and rivers and have shell-covered, shiny-skinned bodies with either beaked or ape-like faces (either?!).

That’s all necessary background, mind you, for the following clip from the same Japanese hidden camera show that brought you, a few weeks back, that hi-larious faux sniper attack prank.  Watch below as actress-model Yukina Kinoshita has the living crap scared out of her by a village of cucumber-offering Kappa believers.

 
(via, what else, Japan Probe)

This rather grim tale has been circulating the lefty net. This version is from The Nation. Pic related.

In November 2008, the National Intelligence Council (NIC), an affiliate of the Central Intelligence Agency, issued the latest in a series of futuristic publications intended to guide the incoming Obama administration. Peering into its analytic crystal ball in a report titled Global Trends 2025, it predicted that America’s global preeminence would gradually disappear over the next fifteen years—in conjunction with the rise of new global powerhouses, especially China and India. The report examined many facets of the future strategic environment, but its most startling, and news-making, finding concerned the projected long-term erosion of American dominance and the emergence of new global competitors. “Although the United States is likely to remain the single most powerful actor [in 2025],” it stated definitively, the country’s “relative strength—even in the military realm—will decline and U.S. leverage will become more constrained.”

That, of course, was then; this—some eleven months into the future—is now, and how things have changed. Futuristic predictions will just have to catch up to the fast-shifting realities of the present moment. Although published after the onset of the global economic meltdown was underway, the report was written before the crisis reached its full proportions and so emphasized that the decline of American power would be gradual, extending over the assessment’s fifteen-year time horizon. But the economic crisis and attendant events have radically upset that timetable. As a result of the mammoth economic losses suffered by the United States over the past year and China’s stunning economic recovery, the global power shift the report predicted has accelerated. For all practical purposes, 2025 is here already.

The article concludes:

How much longer will Washington feel that Americans can afford to subsidize a global role that includes garrisoning much of the planet and fighting distant wars in the name of global security, when the American economy is losing so much ground to its competitors? This is the dilemma President Obama and his advisers must confront in the altered world of 2025.

It’s get off stage gracefully or try and take everyone else with you, I think. Bush tried the second one. It doesn’t work, and the planet doesn’t have the resources to support it.

(The Nation: Welcome to 2025: American Pre-eminence Ends Fifteen Years Early)

Via the Telegraph:

In a high-tech country that grew rich selling cars and electronics, young farmers are standing up to reinvent the image of agriculture. Organic farming converts, rice-growing Tokyo fashionistas and other young green fingers have trickled back into rural Japan, where many farm towns have been slowly dying amid fast-greying Japan’s demographic crunch.

Japan, the world’s second-largest economy, now imports 60 per cent of its food, and many worry about future food security if climate change affects global food supplies or energy costs increase international grain prices.

No matter how big Japan’s economy is, no matter how much cash it stacks up, this country will soon be unable to buy so much food from overseas,” Yusuke Miyaji, 31, recently told a crowd of young farmers.

“I want to make a job in the primary sector cool, striking and profitable,” said Miyaji, dressed in overalls, to applause from his audience. “Kids should dream of becoming farmers, not baseball players!”

Miyaji, who comes from a pig farming family, has created a network called Kosegare, a word meaning “farmer’s son”, that has attracted more than 200 young farmers and supporters who share his sense of crisis.

(Telegraph: Japan’s urban youth swaps fashion for farming)

 
Pot-stirring, hell, pot-smashing, author and journalist Christopher Hitchens (God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice) muses in Slate this week on what he’s “learned from debating religious people around the world.”  Typical for Hitchens, “Faith No More” is a nice balance of lucidity and venom.  But it’s also gracious to his current sparring partner, Pastor Douglas Wilson, a senior fellow at New St. Andrew’s College:

Wilson isn’t one of those evasive Christians who mumble apologetically about how some of the Bible stories are really just “metaphors.”  He is willing to maintain very staunchly that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ and that his sacrifice redeems our state of sin, which in turn is the outcome of our rebellion against God.  He doesn’t waffle when asked why God allows so much evil and suffering?

 
British artist—and “human camera”—Stephen Wiltshire has set about drawing a 20-ft. long panorama of New York City’s skyline.  What’s astounding about this, though, is that Wiltshire, who has autism, has seen the city just once—during a 20-minute helicopter ride.  He’s sketching it entirely from memory.  You can watch a bit of Wiltshire’s process, and progress, below:

 
In the NYT: Like A Skyline Is Etched In His Head

(via New York Magazine)