Pink Tentacle has a creepy post about Sogo & Seibu announcing plans to build “robot doppelgangers.” Ack!

Pink Tentacle says:

The mechanical doppelgangers are available for a limited time as part of a special New Year?

 
I find this totally plausible.
 
(via Scott Gairdner)

 
Jane Meyer‘s excellent New Yorker article, The Predator War, suggests that the U.S. reliance on drones to carry out overseas assassinations may be quick and efficient, but it’s hardly without consequence.  Sticky moral issues aside, delivering death from above—and beyond—has been taking a toll on the drone pilots safely ensconced at their video feeds thousands of miles away. 

I found it oddly telling that pilots sometimes feel compelled to, “wear flight suits when they operate a drone?

 
And speaking of Germany trying to “transcend its gruesome past,” the New York Times relays the story of Yitzhak Ganon and his 65-year-long fear of doctors:

But when he became sick recently, his wife insisted that he visit one.  Stents were implanted to help his heart in a procedure made more risky because he was missing a kidney.  What happened to his other kidney explained his aversion to doctors, according to an account he gave Spiegel Online.

While held at the Auschwitz concentration camp, the 85-year-old Mr. Gannon told his doctors, he was the subject of an experiment by Joseph Mengele, the Nazi physician known as ?

 
Sister Wendy, the art lovin’ nun and a clearly flummoxed Bill Moyers discuss Andres Serrano’s controversial photograph “Piss Christ”. There’s something delightful about the way in which she calmly damns Seranno with faint praise and generally defends her appreciation for erotic imagery in this clip. Go Sister Wendy, go !

 
Since Dangerous Minds seems to be trading the Stones for Krautrock (thanks, Brad Laner!), I thought I’d chime in with this BBC documentary, Krautrock: The Rebirth of Germany:

Between 1968 and 1977 bands like Neu!, Can, Faust and Kraftwerk would look beyond western rock and roll to create some of the most original and uncompromising music ever heard.  They shared one common goal—a forward-looking desire to transcend Germany?

Hey that’s my name up there in pretty red letters ! Sorry for the self-indulgence so early in my tenure, but this here atheist Jew has composed and recorded a Christmas song for the 8 days of Hometapes event and today is my day. Hometapes is the fine and happening Portland-based label that released my 2007 solo debut LP, Neighbor Singing and is due to release my 2nd, Natural Selections some time next year.

 

 

 
Yimmys Yayo is a colorful photoblog descirbed as “visual crack for the ocular fiend.” It is “purely to share amazing visuals found with as many people as possible.” Enjoy!
 
Yimmys Yayo

Part 2 of my interview with Philip Austin, Peter Bergman, David Ossman and Philip Proctor, the legendary Firesign Theater. In the 60s and 70s, The Firesign Theatre’s smart, anarchic—and decidedly psychedelic—“theater of the mind” was embraced by the era’s counterculture. Their mind-bending humor paved the way for Cheech & Chong, Saturday Night Live and The National Lampoon. www.firesigntheatre.com