[monochrom] Adventures in a megacity: Sorrows of the house of Oudh

[das ende der nahrungskette]

The forests of the Ridge are a lung to Delhi. From here, this 
enormous city, one of the most populous in the world, is invisible, 
inaudible. The Ridge is uninhabited, almost. For hidden away in a 
thick jungle of keekar and babul trees are two very different 
buildings, just 20 metres apart. A satellite ground station next to a 
ruined hunting lodge, built more than six hundred years ago. The 
former is bristling with modernity, large dishes, CCTV and 
high-security defences. However, the inhabitants of the decrepit 
Malcha Mahal take their security even more seriously. Next to a 
footpath to the building is a rusted metal signboard that declares:


ENTRY RESTRICTED.
CAUTIOUS OF HOUND DOGS.
PROCLAMATION.
INTRUDERS SHALL BE GUNDOWN.

Malcha Mahal is occupied by members of the former royal family of 
Oudh, whose rule ended in the 1850s. They fell on hard times, living 
at one point in the 1980s in a waiting-room at New Delhi Railway 
Station before hiding themselves away on the Ridge. They have not 
shot anyone, to my knowledge, though they have let loose their dogs 
on those who have gone beyond the signpost without permission. I 
first attempted to visit Malcha Mahal in the early nineties, as a 
young reporter for the BBC. A liveried servant, whose once-white 
uniform was muddied and torn, appeared with a large black dog on a 
tight leash. He carried a silver tray, on which I placed my business 
card and a letter asking for an audience. Ten minutes later, I 
received a letter informing me that my request had been turned down, 
but that I was welcome to ask again. I had now returned, more than 15 
years later; a friend had secured an audience with them, and asked me 
to tag along...


Link

--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 8/07/2009 12:41:00 PM  

[monochrom] monochrom @ PlumberCon 2009

[das ende der nahrungskette]

monochrom will take part in PlumberCon 2009. 
PlumberCon, by the way, tries to "combine the knowledge of 
experienced security speakers, the craziness of plumbing conclusions, 
and the fun of a small conference". August 7-9 at the 
werkzeugH, Vienna.


--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 8/06/2009 04:09:00 PM  

[monochrom] monochrom @ Journey to the End of the Night: Vienna

[das ende der nahrungskette]

Friday, August 7, 2009. Meetup: a shallow pit in Prater at 8 PM (GPS: 
48.20673 / 16.40878, see map); near Tram 1 stop Prater Hauptallee and 
U2 station Stadion.

Link

--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 8/06/2009 11:23:00 AM  

Re: [monochrom] Lenin Cake

[das ende der nahrungskette]

it does.

At 14:57 31.07.2009, you wrote:

http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/2009/07/im-guessing-they-didnt-have-matching.html
Does KPdSUZöD approve?

[monochrom] Join us for a street game of epic proportion in the night of August 7

[das ende der nahrungskette]

monochrom wird da auch eine station stellen:



Journey to the End of the Night: Vienna
=> http://journeyvienna.at

===

On the night of Friday, August 7

Meetup:
  a shallow pit in Prater at 20:00
  (GPS: 48.20673 / 16.40878, see map)
  near Tram 1 stop Prater Hauptallee and U2 station Stadion

Re: [monochrom] Pieptöne in Popstücken

[das ende der nahrungskette]

Es geht auch darum, dass das dann natürlich 
schnell als Gag/Gimmick eingesetzt wird


gibts da nicht was von eminem?

[monochrom] The Future of Pentagon Reform: Beyond the F-22

[das ende der nahrungskette]

The Senate system, political and otherwise, is not designed to stop 
producing much of anything -- let alone weapons -- especially in a 
lousy economy. The 58-40 vote to put the F-22 out of it misery offers 
a ray of hope that intelligent defense decisions can be made in 
Congress, even if it takes a massive effort by a determined secretary 
of defense, the president, and arm twisting by Rahm Emanuel. Perhaps 
the single individual to credit most for this important success is 
John McCain. Without him, and even with Gates, the vote would have 
been purely partisan, supplemented by pork crazed Democrats, such as 
Murray, Boxer, Feinstein, Byrd, and many others.


Important as it is, the vote should not be misinterpreted as a 
manifestation of Gates' "reform" agenda. Put simply, reform is not 
his agenda; reorientation is. Clearly he wants to focus on fighting 
the wars at hand, and he is having some real success at that, but 
only inside the Pentagon. And, reform it is not.


Link

--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 7/28/2009 05:39:00 PM  

[monochrom] Transparent Aluminum? Finally?

[das ende der nahrungskette]

Transparent aluminium, a sci-fi material brought to 20th century 
Earth by the crew of The Enterprise in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, 
turns out to exist after all - if you see in X-rays.


To create this exotic state of matter, researchers at the FLASH 
facility in Hamburg, Germany, took a thin piece of aluminium foil and 
blasted it with an X-ray laser that can generate about 10 million 
gigawatts of power per square centimetre.


At standard temperature and pressure, solid aluminium is a lattice of 
ions, with a sea of free electrons in between. The FLASH beam had 
enough energy to knock an electron out of each ion and set it free, 
while the photon got absorbed in the process.


Link 



--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 7/28/2009 05:38:00 PM  

[monochrom] Solidarity with the Iranian freedom struggle is non-negotiable

[das ende der nahrungskette]

Peter Tatchell says solidarity with the Iranian 
freedom struggle is non-negotiable, no matter how 
much the US threatens a military strike.
Principled, consistent left-wingers do not base 
their politics on the unprincipled, inconsistent 
geo-political manoeuvres of western powers. We 
stand with the oppressed against their 
oppressors, regardless of what the west (or anyone else) demands or threatens.


US sabre-rattling against Iran is worrying. A 
military attack must be resisted. However, 
opposition to Washington's war-mongering and 
neo-imperial designs is no reason for socialists, 
greens and other progressives to go soft on Tehran.


Iran is an Islamo-fascist state – a clerical form 
of fascism based on a confluence of Islamic 
fundamentalism and police state methods. It 
differs, of course, from traditional 
European-style fascism, being rooted in religious 
dogma and autocracy. This makes it no less 
barbaric. Iran under the ayatollahs has a history 
of repression that is even bloodier than Franco's 
clerical fascist regime in Spain. Sadly, it 
merits far less outrage by the left.


Link

--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 7/28/2009 05:32:00 PM  

[monochrom] The Era of Iconomania

[das ende der nahrungskette]

New York New York: What a time for Iconomania, none of it critical, 
none of it questioning, none offering deeper perspective or leading 
to very revealing coverage.


Politicians may rule but celebrities dominate in a culture where 
every pol dreams of shaping an aura that inspires hero worship and 
adoration. That was Barack Obama's trump card with his eloquence 
often blinding us to the substance of his stances.


First there was Michael Jackson's death with wall-to-wall coverage 
dominated by our info-tainment media where show biz and news biz 
merges more easily than media companies.


Michael's Moon Walk excited many more of us than even Neil 
Armstrongs' 40 year ago. The gloved one transcended the planet of the 
strange to join the pantheon of the adored, achieving in death what 
he failed to achieve in life, despite his fans, impact and commercial 
success. He became larger than life, at least for now, until all the 
details of his tragic death emerge as they surely will.


One analyst, Chris Hedges says the media that made him so big also 
tore him down, writing, "In celebrity culture we destroy what we 
worship. The commercial exploitation of Michael Jackson's death was 
orchestrated by the corporate forces that rendered Jackson insane."


And now, joining him on that astral plane of idol worship, is Walter 
Cronkite who rocketed from a life of a journo journeyman into the 
hero's circle. His many media-mates and wannabes pumped the airwaves 
with non-stop nostalgia, and testimonials, but paid little attention 
to his dismay with the direction "his" industry had taken, and the 
colleagues who hijacked it.


In the early days, Cronkite referred to his operation as the CBS NEWS 
CONTROL CENTER---and yes, the big nets did CONTROL what we saw, and 
who we saw. There is a reason that the room most TV shows take place 
are out of is called the CONTROL Room. From there, the signal goes to 
MASTER CONTROL. Control is still the metaphor or media mediation.


Link

--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 7/27/2009 03:04:00 PM  

[monochrom] Why is it hard to "unlearn" an incorrect fact?

[das ende der nahrungskette]

Cognitive psychologist Gordon H. Bower of Stanford University answers:
Identifying, correcting and averting our memory errors are part of a 
cognitive process called memory monitoring. Incorrect associations 
can be tough to change, but we can use techniques to retrain our brain.


When strong habits impede our ability to acquire a desired new habit 
or association, we experience a common phenomenon known as proactive 
interference. Wrong associations appear in common spelling errors 
such as "wierd" for "weird" and "neice" for "niece." Persistent 
mistaken connections also can cause embarrassing errors, such as 
calling a man's second wife by the name of his first. Interference is 
stronger the more previous wives you've had to deal with, and it is 
more difficult to overcome the stronger the habits are.


Link 



--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 7/27/2009 03:08:00 PM  

[monochrom] When Russia Learned to Read: Literacy and Popular Literature, 1861-1917

[das ende der nahrungskette]

Languagehat recommends:
I just finished When Russia Learned to Read: 
Literacy and Popular Literature, 1861-1917, by 
Jeffrey Brooks, and I recommend it to anyone with 
an interest in Russian cultural history. It 
describes the kind of thing people without much 
education liked to read in the final decades of 
tsarist Russia and the production and 
distribution networks that got it to them, and 
besides resurrecting many long-forgotten writers, 
publishers, and stories (Brooks must have done a 
tremendous amount of reading for this project, 
and clearly enjoyed it judging by the brio with 
which he summarizes the tales of knights, 
maidens, ambitious peasants, and wicked 
foreigners) he brings to light a whole world 
that's been forgotten in the canonization of High 
Culture. What I particularly like, besides the 
information itself, is his democratic take on it; 
he dislikes as much as I do those nanny types who 
want to control what the "little people" read and 
think, and is forthright in his belief that 
people should be able to have the kind of 
cultural input they prefer. I'll quote a passage from his Epilogue:
The existence of cheap popular reading material 
was a prerequisite for the spread of literacy in 
Russia. Such material had to be of a sort that 
the newly literate were eager and able to read. 
In the Russian case, the market proved an 
effective means for identifying and satisfying 
the demand of the common reader. Ordinary people 
showed their preference for commercial popular 
literature by spending their hard-earned and very 
few rubles to obtain it. What was extraordinary 
about Russian popular commercial literature in 
contrast to Western European and American was its 
peasant character. Written for peasants and 
former peasants by people who were close to their 
world and concerns, it served these often 
first-generation readers with information and 
ideas they could readily absorb as they sought to 
make sense of the changing world around them. To 
create such a literature, popular writers had to 
develop a new language for ordinary people, with 
a shared if limited vocabulary and a common stock 
of clichés, symbols, and ideas. The establishment 
of this language of popular communication meant 
that many ordinary people were able to receive 
and exchange information through the printed word 
for the first time. The popular commercial 
materials in particular contained a fund of 
shared information that ordinary people could 
seek out as they needed it. To peasants and 
former peasants with new expectations and 
unfamiliar problems to solve, reading about 
fanciful characters and situations was a crude 
but simple way of acquiring useful ideas and symbols.


In her 1972 Russian Journalism and Politics, 
1861-1881: The Career of Aleksei S. Suvorin, 
Effie Ambler (who never seems to have written 
anything else) writes "One must bear in mind that 
most present-day studies of the mid-19th century 
press commence from a conceptual framework 
derived from the views of the radical publicists 
of the time"; after Brooks's work, one cannot 
commence from that conceptual framework without 
ostentatiously putting on blinders.


Link 



--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 7/27/2009 02:56:00 PM  

[monochrom] The Philosophical Baby: What Children's Minds Tell Us About Truth, Love and the Meaning of Life

[das ende der nahrungskette]

In the days when Jean Piaget and Sigmund Freud dominated thinking 
about child development, small children were thought to be 
irrational, incoherent, and solipsistic in their thinking and both 
easily distractible and unfocused in their awareness of the world. 
Recent work in developmental psychology offers a sharply contrasted 
picture. "Children are unconsciously the most rational beings on 
earth," says Alison Gopnik, "brilliantly drawing accurate conclusions 
from data, performing complex statistical analyses, and doing clever 
experiments." And not only does empirical work reveal this about 
babies and small children, but what is thus revealed throws light on 
some of philosophy's more intriguing questions about knowledge, the 
self, other minds, and the basis of morality.
Such are the claims made by philosopher and developmental 
psychologist Alison Gopnik in this fascinating account of the growth 
of child minds. Gopnik's affectionate and sympathetic enjoyment of 
the way children think in their first five years is manifest 
throughout her book, but so too is her sensitivity to the deeper 
philosophical implications of what their way of thinking can teach 
us. The result is absorbing and educative. This is despite the fact 
that, at times, it seems as if developmental psychology provides 
arduous scientific confirmation for what parents and preschool 
teachers have always long known; but Gopnik is skilled at producing 
the rabbit of insight from an apparently old hat. And there is also 
much that is new and surprising in the field, all of it promising to 
change our understanding of mind in general.


Link

--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 7/25/2009 12:36:00 PM  

[monochrom] Highgate cemetery: the zenith of nineteenth-century landscape design and funerary architecture

[das ende der nahrungskette]

Graveyards in 18-century England were overcrowded and body snatchers 
active. The Victorians revolted against this, and pressed for secure 
and hygienic resting places for their dead. A radical reform movement 
oversaw the building of Highgate, eclectic, ostentatious and quirky.

Link

--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 7/25/2009 12:45:00 PM  

[monochrom] Military Space: The NRO and the Space Shuttle

[das ende der nahrungskette]

Between 1982 and 1992, NASA launched 11 shuttle 
flights with classified payloads, honoring a deal 
that dated to 1969, when the National 
Reconnaissance Office—an organization so secret 
its name could not bee published at the 
time—requested certain changes to the design of 
NNASA’s new space transportation system. The 
NRO built and operated large, expensive 
reconnaissance satellites, and it wanted a bigger 
shuttle cargo bay than NASA had planned. The 
spysat agency also wanted the option to fly "once 
around" polar missions, which demanded more 
flexibility to maneuver for a landing that could 
be on either side of the vehicle's ground track.


"NRO requirements drove the shuttle design," says 
Parker Temple, a historian who served on the 
policy staff of the secretary of the Air Force 
and later with the NRO's office within the 
Central Intelligence Agency. The Air Force signed 
on to use the shuttle too, and in 1979 started 
building a launch pad at Vandenberg Air Force 
Base in northern California for reaching polar 
orbits. Neither the Air Force nor the NRO was 
ever comfortable relying exclusively on NASA’s 
vehicle, however. Delays in shuttle launches only 
increased their worry; even before the 1986 
Challenger accident, they were looking for a way 
off the shuttle and back onto conventional rockets like the Titan.


Link

--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 7/25/2009 12:32:00 PM  

[monochrom] RIP Heinz Edelmann

[das ende der nahrungskette]

Heinz Edelmann (June 20, 1934 - July 21, 2009) was a German 
illustrator and designer. He was born in 1934 in Czechoslovakia. He 
is a well-known illustrator in Europe, but is probably most famous 
for his art direction and character designs for the 1968 animated 
film Yellow Submarine.
He also designed Curro for the 1992 Seville World's Fair. He died 
from heart disease and renal failure in Stuttgart, aged 75.

Link

--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 7/24/2009 05:18:00 PM  

[monochrom] Nanotubes Weigh A Single Atom

[das ende der nahrungskette]

How can you weigh a single atom? European 
researchers have built an exquisite new device 
that can do just that. It may ultimately allow 
scientists to study the progress of chemical reactions, molecule by molecule.


Carbon nanotubes are ultra-thin fibres of carbon 
and a nanotechnologist's dream.


They are made from thin sheets of carbon only one 
atom thick – known as graphene – rolled into a a 
tube only a few nanometres across. Even the 
thickest is more than a thousand times thinner than a human hair.


Interest in carbon nanotubes blossomed in the 
1990s when they were found to possess impressive 
characteristics that make them very attractive 
raw materials for nanotechnology of all kinds.


"They have unique properties," explains Professor 
Pertti Hakonen of Helsinki University of 
Technology. "They are about 1000 times stronger 
than steel and very good thermal conductors and good electrical conductors."


Hakonen is coordinator of the EU-funded CARDEQ 
project 
(http://www.cardeq.eu/) 
which is exploiting these intriguing materials to 
build a device sensitive enough to measure the masses of atoms and molecules.


Link

--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 7/24/2009 12:55:00 PM  

[monochrom] A Royalty Fight Over Germany's Most Popular Beer-Hall Yodel

[das ende der nahrungskette]

The money-spinning power of 'horlla-rü-di-ri, 
di-ri, di-ri', the famous chorus of the 
Kufsteinlied, which is capable of making even the 
hardiest of lederhosen-clad Germans go weak at 
the knees, has been keenly felt this week in a 
Munich courtroom battle over who owns the copyright.
Link 



--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 7/24/2009 12:51:00 PM  

[monochrom] "Love Hurts": Hunter S. Thompson, the Marquis de Sade and St. Paul queer Alain Badiou's truth and fidelity

[das ende der nahrungskette]

By Graham Potts.
Generally put, and commonly understood the State of Love in the West 
is: boy and girl meet (or sometimes boy and boy, or girl and girl, 
dependent upon codified legal norms in a given state), they 'fall in 
love' with one and other (and no other from here-on-in), they act on 
their love by disciplining themselves to the codified laws of the 
state and/or religious norms into a marriage bond, and forsaking Love 
in this way for all others (think of the Christian religious 
proscriptions of: "do you take him/her, forsaking all others" or 
"till death do you part"), they live happily ever after (unless 
subject to state or religious forms of reversing this process which 
is initiated on an individual level, that is: the break-up, 
separation and divorce).


There are two items of note within the State of Love that must be addressed.

First, the legalistic inclusion of homosexual love into the State of 
Love in some states clearly marks it as part of the rule, part of the 
State of Love, rather than some sort of bold rupture with established 
norms. It is not an exception, a fundamental break - whatever the 
religious and/or political right might think; it does not affirm a 
truth, but rather merely expands and encompasses more individuals 
(who do not by this act become subjects) within the State of things. 
In one sense, legalistic exclusion of groups based on their specific 
particularities does fundamentally matter: prohibitive laws against 
homosexuality are reprehensible and must be combated wherever they 
exist. But inclusion into the State of Love - outside of practical 
considerations such as pensions and benefits, a right not to be 
discriminated against or subject to harassment - does not correlate 
to Love as truth, as the ability to affirm a truth, to become 
subjects as bearers of a truth. This is why we have separated wholly 
our discussion into two points - affirmations and particularisms.


Second, and this is of fundamental importance: there is no relation 
to love under the State of Love, and fidelity to Love as a truth. 
Through the latter one becomes an immortal subject, ones' address is 
universalizable, and holds absolutely without wavering in ones' 
fidelity to it ("it is never shattered"), and is part of something 
that is in excess of oneself through unity with others; with the 
former, one is regulated, submits to a pre-described definition of 
love that is particular and filled with proscriptions of various 
kinds, and most importantly, one does not hold that love with 
unwavering fidelity. In the State of Love, in the states of the West, 
the love "commitment" - for it is wholly different from an 
affirmation which can only be used in reference to a truth - can be 
broken by individual or "natural" occurrence: break-up or divorce in 
the first instance; death in the latter. Alain Badiou is 
fundamentally clear on this point: death/dissolution is never an 
event, at least with reference to love, and thus bears no relation to a truth.


What becomes clear is that in addition to there being no relation 
between the State of Love, and Love as a Truth - and I will argue, 
the Truth - on Badiou's topology of ethics, the State of Love in the 
West, including those states that recognize homosexual love as being 
part of it, is an established and proscribed state sanctioned 
legal-religious ethical Evil. What is posited as an event of love, is 
really a simulacrum of a possible event, as it is neither universal 
in address nor conforms to particularities. What is posited as 
fidelity is contingent, temporary (either till death or break-up), 
and has built in religious or legal procedures to actualize betrayal. 
I should note that I am clearly not arguing against the right to 
divorce or break-up, but identifying a lack of subjective fidelity, 
that fidelity must be sanctioned and enforced by legal, religious or 
normative procedures. Finally, the State of Love forces the 
unnameable, the truth of love, to conform to particularisms and 
smothers it under layers of rites and norms into a unitary form. In 
states which recognize homosexual unions, they are subject to the 
same legalistic framework as their heterosexual counterparts; and in 
all states, the State of Love is unitary in forcing non-subjects - 
for they do not affirm a truth - into the model accepted, marked and 
named by the state or religious particularism in question.


Link

--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 7/24/2009 12:42:00 PM  

[monochrom] Congo Ignored, Not Forgotten: When 5 million dead aren't worth two stories a year

[das ende der nahrungskette]

The wars that have wracked the Democratic 
Republic of the Congo since 1996, killing well 
over 5 million people (International Rescue 
Committee, 1/08) in what may be the deadliest 
conflict since World War II, are officially over. 
A peace agreement was signed in 2002, and general elections were held in 2006.


But conflict and the humanitarian crisis 
continue. The most recent survey (IRC, 1/08) 
estimated that 45,000 people are dying each month 
from conflict-related causes (primarily hunger 
and disease), nearly the same shocking rate as 
during the war itself. And with the recent 
flare-up of violence in Congo’s volatile east, 
things don’t seem to be getting any better.


To put the death rate in perspective, at the peak 
of the Darfur crisis, the conflict-related death 
rate there was less than a third of the 
Congo’s, and by 2005 it had dropped to less 
than 4,000 per month (CRED, 5/26/05). The United 
Nations has estimated some 300,000 may have died 
in total as a result of the years of conflict in 
Darfur (CRED, 4/24/08, SSRC.org, 3/25/09); the 
same number die from the Congo conflict every six and a half months.


And yet, in the New York Times, which covers the 
Congo more than most U.S. outlets, Darfur has 
consistently received more coverage since it 
emerged as a media story in 2004 (Extra!, 
1–2/08). The Times gave Darfur nearly four times 
the coveragge it gave the Congo in 2006, while 
Congolese were dying of war-related causes at 
nearly 10 times the rate of those in Darfur.


Link

--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 7/23/2009 11:33:00 PM  

[monochrom] Common Ground: Learning from Latin American Social Movements

[das ende der nahrungskette]

As the global economic crisis expands, a rapidly increasing number of 
people are seeking ways to combat unemployment, marginalization, 
corruption, repression and other problems. Such challenges have faced 
millions of Latin Americans for decades, and as a result, many 
successful grassroots solutions to economic crisis have been 
developed by people in communities across the continent. In this 
essay, I propose that strategies from Latin American social movements 
can be applied elsewhere in the world to build better societies.


Rather than continuing the flow of generally destructive policies, 
tactics and advice from the north to the south - via entities such as 
the IMF, World Bank, WTO, US embassies, corporate board rooms and so 
on - I am suggesting that the flow of knowledge be reversed, from the 
south to the north. This reversal should focus on liberating, 
revolutionary strategies and tactics for social change, rather than 
neoliberal policies focused on looting resources and repressing people.


I am not suggesting that these movements' strategies be copied and 
applied directly to other communities and countries, or forced onto a 
situation without considering the very specific conditions of each 
community. I am suggesting that these strategies and experiences from 
Latin America be considered and studied by activists elsewhere, as 
these movements may shed light on new tactics and approaches, and 
developed upon when moving ahead with community-specific work toward 
building a new society. While it is important to share tactics and 
experiences between various movements from around the globe, this 
essay focuses specifically on Latin America in part because the 
region has recently been home to some of the most powerful and 
successful movements in the world.


Link

--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 7/23/2009 10:00:00 PM  

[monochrom] Twittering Program Notes In Real Time? D.C.'s National Symphony Will Give It A Try

[das ende der nahrungskette]

Conductor Emil de Cou has prepared real-time program notes to 
Beethoven's Sixth [Symphony] that will be beamed to Twitterati 
sitting on the lawn of Wolf Trap July 30.
It's an interesting variation on a palm-held device, tried out by 
some orchestras a few years ago, that texted program notes as a 
performance was in progress. There were skeptics then, and I can 
imagine there will be howls and scowls from some corners about the 
Twitter application, but you just know this was bound to happen. And 
what a great thing this will be for those folks who can't go more 
than a minute or two without staring down at some sort of electronic 
device in their hands.


Link 



--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 7/23/2009 09:54:00 PM  

[monochrom] Out of out minds: How did humans come down from the trees and why did no one follow?

[das ende der nahrungskette]

In the 6 million years since hominids split from the evolutionary 
ancestor we share with chimpanzees and bonobos, something happened to 
our brains that allowed us to become master cooperators, accumulate 
knowledge at a rapid rate, and manipulate tools to colonize almost 
every corner of the planet.

Link

--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 7/23/2009 09:51:00 PM  

[monochrom] Iran - Empire / video

[das ende der nahrungskette]

Whatever the outcome of the recent troubles, Iran sees itself as a 
natural leader in the region. It is determined to follow an 
independent foreign policy, and regards the nuclear question as a 
matter of national pride, and nobody elses business. With war raging 
all around it, we ask: is Iran a regional influence, or an 
international threat?


Empire examines a country torn between traditional values and 
modernity, between its imperial past and its relations with the 
region, between its universal pretentions and its moderate means, 
between its highly educated and globalised urban youth and its more 
conservative hinterland.


Part 1:



Part 2:



--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 7/22/2009 01:46:00 PM  

[monochrom] Giovanni Arrighi: The Winding Paths of Capital

[das ende der nahrungskette]

The author of Long Twentieth Century and Adam 
Smith in Beijing, interviewed by David Harvey, on 
dispossession and development, capitalist crises, 
China's future. The political education of a 
teenage factory-manager, via African liberation 
struggles and autonomia operaia; and 
influences—Braudel, Gramsci, Smith, Marx—in Arrighi's work.

Link

--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 7/22/2009 01:44:00 PM  

[monochrom] Foster And Koolhaas To Plan Hong Kong's New Cultural District

[das ende der nahrungskette]

Foster + Partners has been given a second chance to masterplan the 
$2.7 billion West Kowloon Cultural District in Hong Kong The British 
starchitect, together with Rem Koolhaas and local designer Rocco Yim 
Sen-kee, make up the three-strong team named as consultants on the 
conceptual plans for the cultural and artistic hub.


Link 



--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 7/22/2009 01:40:00 PM  

[monochrom] Humanity and the Future of Smartness

[das ende der nahrungskette]

Seventy-four thousand years ago, humanity nearly 
went extinct. A super-volcano at what's now Lake 
Toba, in Sumatra, erupted with a strength more 
than a thousand times that of Mount St. Helens in 
1980. Some 800 cubic kilometers of ash filled the 
skies of the Northern Hemisphere, lowering global 
temperatures and pushing a climate already on the 
verge of an ice age over the edge. Some 
scientists speculate that as the Earth went into 
a deep freeze, the population of Homo sapiens may 
have dropped to as low as a few thousand families.


The Mount Toba incident, although unprecedented 
in magnitude, was part of a broad pattern. For a 
period of 2 million years, ending with the last 
ice age around 10,000 B.C., the Earth experienced 
a series of convulsive glacial events. This 
rapid-fire climate change meant that humans 
couldn't rely on consistent patterns to know 
which animals to hunt, which plants to gather, or 
even which predators might be waiting around the corner.


How did we cope? By getting smarter. The 
neuro­physi­ol­ogist William Calvin argues 
persuasively that modern human 
cognition—including sophisticated language and 
the capacity to plaan ahead—evolved in response 
to the demands of this long age of turbbulence. 
According to Calvin, the reason we survived is 
that our brains changed to meet the challenge: we 
transformed the ability to target a moving animal 
with a thrown rock into a capability for 
foresight and long-term planning. In the process, 
we may have developed syntax and formal structure from our simple language.


Link

--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 7/22/2009 01:37:00 PM  

[monochrom] 40 jahre mondlandung: oewf weltraumnacht

[das ende der nahrungskette]

ich moderiere das
heute abend in linz
http://fm4.orf.at/stories/1619876/

[monochrom] Fwd: Aktuelle Kommentare zum Iran

[das ende der nahrungskette]

Date: Sun, 19 Jul 2009 23:12:07 +0200
Subject: Aktuelle Kommentare zum Iran
From: Café Critique 

In dieser Email:
I. Aufstand der Privatheit. Gerhard Scheit zur Krise des iranischen Regimes
II. Sanktionen, "kritischer Dialog", Protest. 
Interview mit Stephan Grigat zum Iran
III. Neu auf Instant Coffee: Florian Markl über 
Barak Carter & Jimmy Obama, israelische und iranische Atomwaffen

IV. Der Wahn vom Weltsouverän. Vorankündigung von Gerhard Scheits neuem Buch
V. Neue Mitschnitte der Kritischen 
Theorie-Ringvorlesung: Gerhard Scheit zu 
"Dialektik der Aufklärung" & "Behemoth", Florian 
Ruttner & Alex Gruber zum Poststrukturalismus


__

I.
Aufstand der Privatheit

von Gerhard Scheit

(erschienen in Jungle World, Nr. 29, 2009: 
http://jungle-world.com/artikel/2009/29/35493.html)


Wer wie Jürgen Elsässer eine deutsche 
Volksinitiative gründet, um auch in Deutschland 
die »Strichjungen des Finanzkapitals« in den 
»Darkroom« des Volksempfindens zu befördern, hat 
ein gewisses Gespür dafür, wo das Moment der 
Protestbewegung liegt, das nicht mit dem Regime 
identisch ist. »Hier wollen Discomiezen, 
Teheraner Drogenjunkies und die Strichjungen des 
Finanzkapitals eine Party feiern. Gut, dass 
Ahmadinejads Leute ein bisschen aufpassen und 
den einen oder anderen in einen Darkroom 
befördert haben.« Was die Protestierenden 
offenkundig eint, ist nicht die Parole, alles 
Private ist politisch, sondern dessen 
Verteidigung gegen Tugendwächter, die in den 
letzten Jahren immer öfter darin eingedrungen sind.


In diesem Bezugspunkt liegt ihre Stärke wie ihre 
Schwäche. Darum wählten sie, wer ihnen als 
Repräsentant der Privatheit galt: Mir Hussein 
Mousavi, in den achtziger Jahren Premierminister 
und für namenlose Greuel verantwortlich, hatte 
sich, danach als Architekt und Maler arbeitend, 
zurückgezogen. Seinen Erfolg im Wahlkampf 
verdankte er nicht zuletzt der Unterstützung 
durch seine Frau, eine Bildhauerin und Autorin, 
die aber einmal Rektorin der Frauenuniversität 
war und sich als Beraterin des Präsidenten 
Khatami an den politischen Verbrechen des 
Regimes beteiligte, ehe auch sie privatisierte.


Der Wahlkampf des Ehepaars versprach, dass der 
Familie und dem Wohnzimmer innerhalb des 
islamischen Systems vielleicht wieder mehr 
Kompetenzen zurückerobert werden könnten. 
Tatsächlich unterscheidet sich die Gesellschaft 
im Iran von der anderer islamisch geprägter 
Länder dadurch, dass in ihr Säkularisierung im 
Privaten einmal möglich geworden war. Diese seit 
dem Sturz des Schah-Regimes in den eigenen vier 
Wänden eingekapselte Emanzipation beschreibt 
Fathiyeh Naghibzadeh als reale Fluchtmöglichkeit 
unter den Bedingungen religiöser Despotie. 
Während es etwa, das Verhältnis der Geschlechter 
betreffend, in der saudischen Bevölkerung gar 
keine Trennung zwischen öffentlich und privat 
gebe, sei im Iran die »reaktionäre Institution 
Familie« als »einzige relativ staatsfreie Zone 
der iranischen Gesellschaft paradoxerweise zum 
Terrain relativer Freiheit« geworden, oder »doch 
zumindest zum Kampfplatz, auf dem die Gestaltung 
des Geschlechterverhältnisses ausgefochten wird« 
(Jungle World 18/08, vgl. auch Fathiyeh 
Naghibzadeh: Die göttliche Mission der Frau. Zu 
Geschichte und Struktur des 
Geschlechterverhältnisses im Gottesstaat Iran. 
In: Stephan Grigat/Simone Dinah Hartmann (Hg.): 
Der Iran - Analyse einer islamischen Diktatur 
und ihrer europäischen Förderer. Studienverlag 
2008: 
http://www.studienverlag.at/titel.php3?TITNR=4599).


Was aber hier mit staatsfrei gemeint ist, wäre 
für eine »Republik« erst noch zu bestimmen, in 
der von einem Staat überhaupt nur in einem 
oberflächigen Sinn gesprochen werden kann. Es 
gibt keinen einheitlichen Zwangsapparat, dafür 
mehrere politische Gewalten, die umso brutaler 
zuschlagen, als ihre Beziehungen in allen 
wesentlichen Dingen nicht institutionalisiert 
sind, sondern lediglich personal vollzogen 
werden. Bezeichnungen wie Republik, Demokratie 
oder Diktatur gehen da ins Leere, denn die 
Einheitlichkeit besteht nur aus Arrangements, 
die ad hoc unter den geistlichen Führern und den 
einzelnen Gruppen - Rackets wie Pasdaran, 
Bassiji, Hizbollah usw. - sich herstellen. Diese 
»Gewalten« sind, wie David Menashri, Direktor 
des Tel Aviver Zentrums für Iran-Studien, 
schrieb, »originally spontaneous, 
semi-autonomous« und »centers of power in their own right«.


Institutionalisierte Regelung wird nur 
simuliert, checks and balances heißt hier: 
wechselseitiges Abtasten und personengebundene 
Abhängigkeitsverhältnisse; die Personen 
bekleiden nicht Ämter, sondern sind als Ämter 
verkleidet: »Wächterrat«, »Versammlung zur 
Erkennung der Systeminteressen« 
(»Schlichtungsrat«), »Oberster Rat der 
nationalen Sicherheit«, »Expertenrat«, 
»Exekutivkomitee der Wahlen«, »zentrale 
Beobachtungskommission« etc. Teilung der Gewalt 
und Vermittlungsfo

[monochrom] Arse Elektronika 2009 Film Festival

[das ende der nahrungskette]

Arse Elektronika 2009: "Of Intercourse and Intracourse"

+

FILM FESTIVAL

+

The 2009 Arse Electronika Festival is coming to San Francisco October 
1-4, 2009. On October 1, we'll be holding the first Arse Elektronika 
Film Festival at the Roxie Theatre, and we would like you to participate.


Arse Elektronika is focused on sex and technology, and we are looking 
for films that express a vision of that intersection. Documentary or 
dramatic, short or feature-length, live-action or animation, 
experimental or narrative, explicit or not, any presentation is 
fascinating as long as it brings out a new way of thinking about how 
humanity as a sexual creature and as a tool-using animal combine.


+

Submission Details

Send in submissions via WithoutABox 
(http://withoutabox.com/login/8252). Films of any length (up to 90 
minutes) will be considered. We'll need to receive all materials, 
including a DVD of the movie, by August 31, 2009.


+

For More Information

For more information about the Arse Elektronika conference, contact 
us at arse09 AT monochrom.at.


For more information about the film festival, contact Blowfish at 
festival AT blowfish.com.


Blowfish is proud to be the organizing sponsor of the Arse 
Elektronika Film festival.


+

http://www.monochrom.at/arse-elektronika/

[monochrom] Roboexotica 2009 / Call

[das ende der nahrungskette]

Finally we can announce a date. Roböxotica 2009 
-- and 11 YEARS OF ROBÖXOTICA!! -- will take 
place in Vienna from December 3 thru December 6.


Roboexotica (or Roböxotica) is the first and 
inevitably leading festival concerned with cocktail robotics.
Until recently, no attempts had been made to 
publically discuss the role of cocktail robotics 
as an index for the integration of technological 
innovations into the human Lebenswelt, or to 
document the increasing occurrence of radical 
hedonism in man-machine communication. 
Roboexotica is an attempt to fill this vacuum. It 
is the first and, inevitably, the leading 
festival concerned with cocktail robotics 
world-wide. A micro mechanical change of paradigm 
in the age of borderless capital. Alan Turing would doubtless test this out.
Scientists, researchers, computer geeks and 
artists from all over the world participate to 
build cocktail robots and discuss about 
technological innovation, futurology and science fiction.


Roboexotica is a cooperation with 
Shifz and 
'Bureau für Philosophie', Vienna.


[]


Link

--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 7/18/2009 12:50:00 AM  

[monochrom] Stoppt Schwimmbadurin!

[das ende der nahrungskette]

Neue Ueberwachungsinitiative: deutsche Regierung muss gegen 
Schwimmbadpinkler vorgehen! Und Innen!


http://www.monochrom.at/propool/

[monochrom] Arse Elektronika 2009 Film Festival: "Of Intercourse and Intracourse"

[das ende der nahrungskette]

The 2009 Arse Electronika Festival is coming to San Francisco October 
1-4, 2009. On October 1, we'll be holding the first Arse Electronika 
Film Festival at the Roxie Theatre, and we would like you to participate.


Arse Elektronika is focused on sex and technology, and we are looking 
for films that express a vision of that intersection. Documentary or 
dramatic, short or feature-length, live-action or animation, 
experimental or narrative, explicit or not, any presentation is 
fascinating as long as it brings out a new way of thinking about how 
humanity as a sexual creature and as a tool-using animal combine.


Submission Details

Send in submissions via 
WithoutABox. Films of any length 
(up to 90 minutes) will be considered. We'll need to receive all 
materials, including a DVD of the movie, by August 31, 2009.


For More Information

For more information about the Arse Elektronika conference, contact 
us at arse09 AT monochrom.at.


For more information about the film festival, contact Blowfish at 
festival AT blowfish.com.


Blowfish is proud to be the organizing sponsor of the Arse 
Elektronika Film festival.


--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 7/06/2009 08:09:00 PM  

[monochrom] monochrom @ POOL/LOOP Festival in Zürich

[das ende der nahrungskette]

monochrom leistet den Eid und ist deswegen von 3. 
bis 5. Juli auf dem 
POOL/LOOP Festival in 
Zürich zugegen. Mindestens zwei öffentliche Performances sind zu erwarten!

[monochrom] Soviet Unterzoegersdorf @ Toorcamp: A Triumphant Gala Using Public Domain Clipart

[das ende der nahrungskette]

Let the proletarians sing with joy! Let us celebrate a glorious 
triumph! 
Soviet 
Unterzoegersdorf's ambassador Nikita Perostek Chrusov will be giving 
a speech at a former ICBM silo in Washington State! On the 4th of 
July! Surrounded by volcanic dust and libertarian nerds! The irony!


Saturday, 4th of July, 2009.
Link

--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 7/03/2009 09:04:00 PM  

[monochrom] Hacking the Spaces @ Toorcamp

[das ende der nahrungskette]

"Hacking the Spaces" / 
Workshops @ Toorcamp


"Change the nerds. Make them a better space. For you and for me and 
the entire human race."


July 2-5, 2009 in Moses Lake, Washington State, USA.

--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 7/02/2009 08:20:00 PM  

[monochrom] Arse Elektronika 2009: "Of Intercourse and Intracourse"

[das ende der nahrungskette]

Arse Elektronika 2009:
OF INTERCOURSE AND INTRACOURSE

Sexuality, Genetics, Biotech, Wetware, Body mods.
http://www.monochrom.at/arse-elektronika/

+

Call for Papers, Performances, Machines and Sponsors.

+

Scottish SF author Iain Banks created a fictitious group-civilisation 
called "Culture" in his eponymous narrative. The vast majority of 
humanoid people in the "Culture" are born with greatly altered glands 
housed within their central nervous systems, who secrete - on command 
- mood- and sensory-appreciation-altering compounds into the person's 
bloodstream. Additionally many inhabitants have subtly altered 
reproductive organs - and control over the associated nerves - to 
enhance sexual pleasure. Ovulation is at will in the female, and a 
fetus up to a certain stage may be re-absorbed, aborted, or held at a 
static point in its development; again, as willed. Also, a viral 
change from one sex into the other, is possible. And there is a 
convention that each person should give birth to one child in their 
lives. It may sound strange, but Banks states that a society in which 
it is so easy to change sex will rapidly find out if it is treating 
one gender better than the other. Pressure for change within society 
would presumably build up until some form of sexual equality and 
hence numerical parity will be established.

Does this set-up sound too futuristic? Too utopian? Too bizarre?

We may not forget that mankind is a sexual and tool-using species. 
And that's why our annual conference Arse Elektronika deals with sex, 
technology and the future. As bio-hacking, sexually enhanced bodies, 
genetic utopias and plethora of gender have long been the focus of 
literature, science fiction and, increasingly, pornography, this year 
will see us explore the possibilities that fictional and authentic 
bodies have to offer. Our world is already way more bizarre than our 
ancestors could have ever imagined. But it may not be bizarre enough. 
"Bizarre enough for what?" -- you might ask. Bizarre enough to 
subvert the heterosexist matrix that is underlying our world and that 
we should hack and overcome for some quite pressing reasons within 
the next century.

Don't you think, replicants?

+

Please send us [arse2009 AT monochrom.at] your papers, ideas, machines!
Deadline: July 31, 2009!

+

Festival Schedule:

October 1: Film festival(*), opening ceremony and Prixxx Arse 
Elektronika(*) Gala

October 2: Literature, fiction, reading
October 3: Talks and discourse
October 4: DIY workshops
(*) Separate calls will be out shortly.

+

Arse Elektronika 2009 will take place in San Francisco, USA.

+

http://www.monochrom.at/arse-elektronika/
http://www.arse-elektronika.com 

[monochrom] Fwd: Vortrag Prof. Irwin Cotler, 3. Juli - Lecture Prof. Irwin Cotler, July 3rd

[das ende der nahrungskette]

From: STOP THE BOMB 
To: j...@monochrom.at
Subject: Vortrag Prof. Irwin Cotler, 3. Juli - 
Lecture Prof. Irwin Cotler, July 3rd

Date: Mon, 29 Jun 2009 08:31:57 +0200
X-FromIP: 87.230.94.22

English follows German
---

Das iranische Regime

Was tun gegen die Planung eines Genozids, 
Nuklearbewaffnung und Menschenrechtsverletzungen?


Vortrag von Prof. Irwin Cotler
(ehem. kanadischer Justizminister und Generalstaatsanwalt)

Begrüssung:
NR Dr. Hannes Jarolim (Justizsprecher d. SPÖ)
NR Mag. Albert Steinhauser (Justizsprecher d. Grünen)

Moderation:
Simone Dinah Hartmann (STOP THE BOMB)

Freitag, 3. Juli 2009, 18:00 Uhr
Jüdisches Museum, Dorotheergasse 11, 1010 Wien

Der iranische Präsident Ahmadinejad wurde bei 
den Pseudowahlen Anfang Juni im Amt bestätigt. 
Das Agieren des Obersten Geistlichen Führers Ali 
Chamenei und der Revolutionsgarden nach den 
Wahlen hat abermals gezeigt, dass die 
aggressivsten und radikalsten Kräfte innerhalb 
der "Islamischen Republik" gar nicht daran 
denken, ihre Machtpositionen aufzugeben. Nicht, 
dass ein Wahlsieg von Ahmadinejads 
Herausforderer etwas Substantielles an der 
antiisraelischen Außenpolitik, dem Festhalten am 
Nuklearprogramm und der Verfolgung der 
Opposition geändert hätte, aber der Sieg 
Ahmadinejads bedeutet, das sich jene Fraktionen 
des iranischen Regimes durchgesetzt haben, die 
auf jegliche verbale Rücksichtnahme gegenüber 
dem Westen und jede Zurückhaltung bei der 
Unterdrückung der eigenen Bevölkerung verzichten.


Wie kann Europa darauf reagieren? Was kann die 
westliche Welt der gefährlichen Mischung aus 
Verhetzung, Vernichtungsdrohungen und 
Nuklearprogramm entgegensetzen? Und warum 
beteiligt sich Österreich nicht an den 
Bemühungen, das iranische Regime konsequent 
unter Druck zu setzen und ist statt dessen 
bestrebt, seine wirtschaftlichen Beziehungen mit 
der Diktatur der Ajatollahs und der Pasdaran 
noch auszubauen? Prof. Irwin Cotler, der 
gemeinsam mit international renommierten 
Juristen wie Alan Dershowitz eine Initiative 
gestartet hat, um Ahmadinejad und andere 
Vertreter des Regimes wegen der Anstachelung zum 
Genozid vor Gericht zu stellen und mit scharfen 
Sanktionen zu belegen, wird in dem Vortrag seine 
Vorschläge zum Vorgehen gegen die Führung in Teheran erläutern.


Prof. Irwin Cotler war Justizminister und 
Generalstaatsanwalt in Kanada. Er arbeitete als 
Rechtsprofessor an der McGill University in 
Montreal und ist seit 1999 Mitglied des 
kanadischen Parlaments, wo er zu den Mitgründern 
der Parliamentarians for Global Action und der 
Save Darfur Parliamentary Coalition gehörte. Als 
Justizminister und Generalstaatsanwalt Kanadas 
initiierte er die erste Anklage im Rahmen des 
kanadischen Gesetzes über Kriegsverbrechen und 
Verbrechen gegen die Menschheit wegen des 
Völkermords in Ruanda. Prof. Cotler zählt zu den 
Gründern der interparlamentarischen Koalition 
zur Bekämpfung des Antisemitismus.


Eine Veranstaltung von STOP THE BOMB mit 
Unterstützung von Scholars for Peace in the Middle East – Austria


http://www.stopthebomb.net

---

The Danger of a Genocidal, Nuclear and 
Rights-Violating Iranian Regime: What Must De Done?


Lecture by Prof. Irwin Cotler
(former Justice Minister and Attorney General of Canada)

Introductory remarks:
MP Dr. Hannes Jarolim (Social-Democrat Party Speaker for Justice)
MP Mag. Albert Steinhauser (Green Party Speaker for Justice)

Chair:
Simone Dinah Hartmann (STOP THE BOMB)

Friday, July 3rd 2009, 6:00 PM
Jewish Museum, Dorotheergasse 11, 1010 Vienna

At the beginning of June the Iranian president 
Ahmadinejad was confirmed in his office in a 
pseudo-democratic election. The highest 
religious leader’s Ali Chamenei and the 
revolutionary guard’s despicable actions after 
the elections demonstrated again that the most 
aggressive and fundamental forces within the 
"Islamic Republic" don’t even think about 
resigning power. Although an election victory of 
Ahmadinejad’s opponent wouldn’t have 
substantially changed anything regarding the 
anti-Israeli foreign policy, the ongoing support 
of the national nuclear program or the 
suppression of the secular and democratic 
opposition in the country, Ahmadinejad’s victory 
revealed that those factions of the Iranian 
regime have prevailed, which reject any verbal 
thoughtfulness towards the West and any 
abstinence in suppressing their own citizens.


How could Europe react? What could the Western 
world counter to this dangerous mixture of 
aggressive propaganda, annihilation threat and 
the nuclear program? And why doesn’t Austria 
support those efforts to consequently pressure 
the Iranian regime instead of intensifying its 
economic ties with the Ajatollah’s and 
Pasderan’s dictatorship? Irwin Cotler, who – 
together with lawyers like Alan Dershowitz – 
started an initiative to bring Ahmadinejad and 
other representatives of the Iranian regime to 
justice because of agitating for genocide and to 
pressure the regime wi

[monochrom] Bob Ross, the People's Painter - Happy Trees

[das ende der nahrungskette]

Link

--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 6/28/2009 04:29:00 PM  

[monochrom] Darwin vs. Freud: The Evolutionary Enigma of Dream Content

[das ende der nahrungskette]

In a recent review of evolutionary theories concerning the possible 
adaptive function of dreaming, Barrett shrugs off the better-known 
psychoanalytic theories of dreams (for example, Freud's "wish 
fulfillment" and Jungian archetypes) as being irreconcilable with a 
Darwinian framework and instead highlights the major contemporary, 
biologically informed theories. Remember, the key question for us to 
consider is why dreaming occurs at all, since it's not immediately 
apparent why natural selection wouldn't have simply engineered a 
dreamless, non-REM sleep.


Link 



--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 6/28/2009 04:27:00 PM  

[monochrom] Domestic Wars Redux: Obama, Digital Prohibition and the New 'Reef...

[das ende der nahrungskette]

January 2009: In a reflexive public gesture, the U.S.'s first 
African-American President-elect, the ectomorphic Barack Obama, 
retraced Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural train route (1865) to the 
capitol, two hundred years after the birth of the similarly 
ectomorphic Lincoln. In another reflexive echo of a turbulent past, 
as the bloated and behemoth U.S. economy wobbled, cold-turkey, in 
withdrawal from its macro-economic drugs of choice, easy credit and 
unbridled consumption, Obama faced a dire economic and social 
configuration similar to that which confronted Franklin Roosevelt in 
March of 1933. Hemorrhaging jobs, personal and institutional debt 
while spewing endemic mortgages defaults, the U.S. faced its most 
severe legitimacy crisis since the late 1960s.


As a marker that the past sins of slavery and segregation could be 
jettisoned in favor of meritocratic ascension, there could be no 
better legitimation symbol than Barack Obama. Articulate, attractive, 
with an understated ironic tone, and often frank in discussing 
personal failings, Obama simultaneously signified the ultimate 
success of a new African-American class of elites while buttressing 
faltering cross-ethnic, cross-racial and cross-generational 
allegiances to the tattered tenets of the American Dream. Exemplified 
by street artist Shepard Fairey's red, white and blue iconic poster 
of Obama's upturned visage, the human heart's desire for "Hope" 
(often embodied in ideological allegiances) became thoroughly 
conflated, through Fairey's composition, with Obama's message and 
image. Fairey's widely reproduced icon was a masterful and thoroughly 
intentional gesture in the aesthetics of politics, praised both by 
the original Associated Press photographer, and by Obama, himself.


Yet what has happened to Fairey, in the wake of this representational 
triumph, may be instructive. Two weeks after the Obama inauguration, 
Fairey was simultaneously threatened with a lawsuit by the Associated 
Press (which claimed a violation of their Intellectual Property 
rights) over how he appropriated some elements of a 2006 AP photo, 
just as he was arrested on graffiti charges, in Boston, on the 
opening night of his first major formal exhibit ("Supply and Demand") 
at the Institute of Contemporary Art. The AP's legal threat, Fairey's 
simultaneous arrest (combined with the non-starter drug-use 
revelations in Obama's autobiographical Dreams From My Father and the 
likely and significant reduction in the U.S.'s broad and expensive 
incarceration of non-violent drug users) arguably signifies a 
transition in the objects of Prohibition, as the portion of the 
generation-long War on Drugs that has targeted recreational users 
ratchets down. This downshift occurs just as the Baby Boomers retire, 
en masse, accessing expensive entitlements, and as state governments 
find that they can no longer afford to house, feed, clothe and 
provide Federally-mandated medical services for aging inmates, many 
who were given long prison sentences for non-violent drug offenses.


Link

--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 6/28/2009 04:25:00 PM  

[monochrom] Paul Mason's "Meltdown": developing a coherent alternative to neoliberalism

[das ende der nahrungskette]

Larry Elliott welcomes Paul Mason's new book 
Meltdown, because it takes forward the urgent 
task facing the left of developing a coherent 
alternative to neoliberalism. But Elliott urges 
us also to seek solutions to the climate and 
energy crisis simultaneously with the financial crisis.
It's the end of an era. Things will never be the 
same again. The age of neoliberalism is dead. How 
many times have we heard those pat phrases these 
past 18 months or so as what started as a little 
local difficulty in the US housing market 
developed into the biggest financial crisis since 
the Great Depression. There are certainly good 
reasons for the left to believe that the tide has 
at last turned after three decades in which the 
right has been in the ascendancy. As Paul Mason 
illustrates in this excellent account of the 
humbling of the former masters of the universe, 
the crash was the consequence of 'giant hubris 
and the untrammelled power of a financial elite'.


The events of 2007-09 have been big finance’s 
equivalent of the British labour movement's 
'winter of discontent' 30 years previously. 
Public disgust at the excesses and incompetence 
of the bankers has meant there has rarely been a 
better time for a radical shift leftwards in 
politics. But it is one thing saying the 
conditions are ripe for change, another thing 
altogether bringing that change about.


Think about it for a second. Ever since the 
crisis began, the prime aim of governments – most 
notabbly Gordon Brown’s – has been to put the 
genie back in the bbottle. There is nothing the 
prime minister would like more than to return to 
life as it was in June 2007, when, on the eve of 
moving into 10 Downing Street, he used his 
Mansion House speech to praise the 'ingenuity and 
creativity' of the City, contrasting Britain's 
light-touch regulation with the heavy-handed 
approach favoured by the Americans.


As a result, the government went to extraordinary 
lengths to avoid nationalising Northern Rock and 
has taken other parts of the financial sector 
into part or full state ownership only with 
extreme reluctance. It is even ploughing on with 
the deeply unpopular part-privatisation of the Royal Mail.


Link

--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 6/27/2009 02:46:00 PM  

[monochrom] 'Neurologger' Reads Bird Brains In Flight

[das ende der nahrungskette]

Using a "neurologger" specially designed to record the brain activity 
of pigeons in flight, researchers reporting online on June 25th in 
Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, have gained new insight 
into what goes through the birds' minds as they fly over familiar terrain.

Link

--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 6/27/2009 02:41:00 PM  

[monochrom] monochrom: neues Kalender/RSS Feature

[das ende der nahrungskette]

Hallo Leute!

Oh ja, wir habens lange geplant und noch länger 
verschoben, aber nun ist es Realität (was auch 
immer Realität sein mag). Unser wunderbarer 
Praktikant David Brunnthaler (Applaus!) hat uns 
dabei geholfen ein neues Kalendersystem 
(inklusive RSS) aufzubauen: "Probieren Sie es doch einfach einmal aus!"


http://www.monochrom.at/liveobstruktae/performance.htm
http://monochrom.at/liveobstruktae/mono_deu.rss

[]

Re: [monochrom] RIP Michael Jackson

[das ende der nahrungskette]

Mass Moonwalk today @ karlsplatz
6:30pm - 7:15pm


das wird sicher ein rumgestolpere...
wer kann denn bitte moonwalken?

[monochrom] PostSecret: mail art project about secrets

[das ende der nahrungskette]

PostSecret is an ongoing community mail art project, created by Frank 
Warren, in which people mail their secrets anonymously on one side of 
a homemade postcard. Select secrets are then posted on the PostSecret 
website, or used for PostSecret's books or museum exhibits.

Link

--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 6/26/2009 04:04:00 PM  

[monochrom] Dorkbot Vienna #9: Martin Kaltenbrunner (reacTIVision, TUIO, Reactable)

[das ende der nahrungskette]

Dorkbot Vienna #9 is being hosted by J 
Grenzfurthner (monochrom). Thanks to the Metalab!


Martin Kaltenbrunner is a Human Computer 
Interaction Designer, currently finalizing his 
Ph.D. at the Pompeu Fabra University in 
Barcelona, Spain. Recently he has been mainly 
working on the interaction design of the 
reacTable - a tangible modular synthesizer based 
on a multi-touch surface. He is author of the 
open source tangible interaction framework 
reacTIVision and the related TUIO protocol, which 
has been widely adopted for open source 
multi-touch applications. He is co-founder of 
reactable systems SL, dedicated to the 
development of novel HCI concepts and products, 
while he is teaching classes and workshops on 
tangible interaction at the Kunstuniversitt Linz and at the UCP Porto.


http://modin.yuri.at/

reacTIVision is an open source, cross-platform 
computer vision tool for the fast and robust 
tracking of fiducial markers attached onto 
physical objects, as well as for multi-touch finger tracking.


http://reactivision.sourceforge.net/

TUIO is an open framework that defines a common 
protocol and API for tangible multi-touch 
surfaces. The TUIO protocol allows the 
transmission of an abstract description of 
interactive surfaces, including touch events and 
tangible object states. There exists a growing 
number of TUIO enabled tracker applications and 
TUIO client libraries for various programming 
environments, as well as applications that 
support the protocol. This combination of TUIO 
trackers, protocol and client implementations 
allows the rapid development of table based tangible multitouch interfaces.


http://www.tuio.org/

The reactable is a collaborative electronic music 
instrument with a tabletop tangible multi-touch 
interface. Several simultaneous performers share 
complete control over the instrument by moving 
and rotating physical objects on a luminous round 
table surface. By moving and relating these 
objects, representing components of a classic 
modular synthesizer, users can create complex and 
dynamic sonic topologies, with generators, 
filters and modulators, in a kind of tangible 
modular synthesizer or graspable flow-controlled programming language.


The instrument has been developed by a team of 
digital luthiers, the two Austrian researchers 
Martin Kaltenbrunner and Günter Geiger and their 
Spanish colleagues Marcos Alonso and Sergi Jord, 
working at the Music Technology Group within the 
Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. This 
multidisciplinary team of researchers, musicians 
and designers  has been awarded with various 
international prizes such as the Prix Ars 
Electronica Golden Nica, two D&AD Yellow Pencils 
and the prize if the city of Barcelona.


After its overwhelming success on Youtube and 
since the Icelandic singer Björk has incorporated 
the instrument during her last Volta world tour, 
the reacTable has become widely known to the general public.


http://www.reactable.com/

Sunday, June 28, 2009.
7 PM @ Metalab Vienna (Rathausstrasse 6, 1010 Vienna)

Link

--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 6/26/2009 12:09:00 PM  

[monochrom] 'Worm porn' video shows details of nematode sex

[das ende der nahrungskette]

Some might call it worm porn, but a video showing a male worm 
preparing to mate with a hermaphrodite could equally be described as 
balletic in its graceful movement.
Link 



--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 6/26/2009 10:25:00 AM  

[monochrom] US patent 5255452: Michael Jackon's anti-gravity lean

[das ende der nahrungskette]

US patent 5255452, filed by Michael Jackson, described the 
anti-gravity lean used in the music video for "Smooth Criminal".

Link

--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 6/26/2009 10:23:00 AM  

[monochrom] Stoned wallabies make crop circles

[das ende der nahrungskette]

Australian wallabies are eating opium poppies and creating crop 
circles as they hop around "as high as a kite", a government official has said.
Link (via 
Mae Saslaw)


--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 6/25/2009 04:04:00 PM  

[monochrom] Pilz fordert Bewaffnung der Müllabfuhr

[das ende der nahrungskette]

hahahahaha
http://www.ots.at/presseaussendung.php?schluessel=OTS_20090625_OTS0242


Pilz fordert Bewaffnung der Müllabfuhr
Utl.: "Postler allein sind zu wenig"

Wien (OTS) - "Postler allein sind zu wenig", kritisiert der grüne
Sicherheitssprecher Peter Pilz die Halbherzigkeit der Vorschläge von
Beamtenministerin Heinisch-Hosek und der Euphorie von Finanzminister
Pröll. Da es offensichtlich kein Geld für echte Kriminalpolizisten
gibt, werden jetzt Scheinpolizisten ernannt. In diesem Sinne fordert
Pilz:

- Die Bewaffnung der Müllabfuhr. Nur eine schwer bewaffnete
Müllabfuhr kann Täter abschrecken.
- Präsenzdiener in den Gemeindebau. Wenn die dort etwas sehen, können
sie die Müllabfuhr verständigen.
- Die Zusammenfassung von Müllabfuhr, Präsenzdienern und Wiener SPÖ
in einer "SOKO TOTAL".

Pilz erwartet sich von den Vorschlägen eine weitere Steigerung des
Sicherheitsgefühls.

Rückfragehinweis:
   Die Grünen, Tel.: +43-1 40110-6697, 
pre...@gruene.at


*** OTS-ORIGINALTEXT PRESSEAUSSENDUNG UNTER AUSSCHLIESSLICHER
INHALTLICHER VERANTWORTUNG DES AUSSENDERS - WWW.OTS.AT ***

OTS02422009-06-25/13:30

251330 Jun 09

[monochrom] Free Speech vs. Surveillance in the Digital Age

[das ende der nahrungskette]

Tools of mass communication that were once the 
province of governments and corporations now fit 
in your pocket. Cell phones can capture video and 
send it wirelessly to the Internet. People can 
send eyewitness accounts, photos and videos, with 
a few keystrokes, to thousands or even millions 
via social networking sites. As these 
technologies have developed, so too has the 
ability to monitor, filter, censor and block them.


A Wall Street Journal report this week claimed 
that the "Iranian regime has developed, with the 
assistance of European telecommunications 
companies, one of the world’s most 
sophisticated mechanisms for controlling and 
censoring the Internet, allowing it to examine 
the content of individual online communications 
on a massive scale." The article named Nokia 
Siemens Networks as the provider of equipment 
capable of "deep packet inspection." DPI, 
according to the Electronic Privacy Information 
Center, "enables Internet Service Providers to 
intercept virtually all of their customers’ 
Internet activity, including Web surfing data, 
e-mail and peer-to-peer downloads."


Nokia Siemens has refuted the allegation, saying 
in a press release that the company "has provided 
Lawful Intercept capability solely for the 
monitoring of local voice calls in Iran." It is 
this issue, of what is legal, that must be 
addressed. "Lawful intercept" means that people 
can be monitored, located and censored. Global 
standards need to be adopted that protect the 
freedom to communicate, to dissent.


Link 



--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 6/25/2009 01:19:00 PM  

[monochrom] Complexity and Causality in Nutritional Research

[das ende der nahrungskette]

The complex and difficult problem of causality is central to our 
understanding of nutrition research. A cause is defined as "that 
factor which is possible or convenient for us to alter in order to 
produce or prevent an effect. This concept contains two components: 
production of an effect and an understanding of its mechanisms." To 
understand current concepts of causality, it is helpful to briefly 
review historical thinking about it. Aristotle believed that bodies 
in motion required constant force (efficient cause) to keep them 
moving, that the seed contained the adult (teleological cause). After 
more than 2,000 years, Newton overturned Aristotle in physics with 
the concept of inertia. Hume further advanced our understanding by 
postulating that our notion of causality depends on well-documented 
associations. Partially correct, Kant believed the mind (brain) 
imposes notions of time, extension, and causality on nature.


Link

--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 6/25/2009 01:12:00 PM  

[monochrom] Immortality, Glory And Happiness

[das ende der nahrungskette]

This is what the Greeks called 'glory,' and it expresses a very 
different understanding of immortality than is common amongst us. One 
lives on only through the stories, accounts and anecdotes that are 
told about one. It is in this that happiness consists. This has a 
very peculiar consequence for societies like the United States, so 
singlemindedly devoted to the pursuit of happiness. We assume that 
the question of happiness is a question of my happiness or, more 
properly, of my relation to my happiness. But why?


Link 



--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 6/25/2009 01:09:00 PM  

[monochrom] monochrom's "Department For Criticism Against Globalisation" @ Common History and Its Private Stories/MUSA

[das ende der nahrungskette]

Our installation 
"Department For 
Criticism Against Globalisation" will be on 
display as part of MUSA's 
exhibition 
Common 
History and Its Private Stories (Vienna; June 
thru October 3). Curators: Iara Boubnova and Roland Fink.


The exhibition "Common History and Its Private 
Stories. Geschichte und Geschichten" is an 
attempt to honour the twentieth anniversary of 
the fall of the Berlin Wall not so much as the 
main event of recent European history but as an 
event with massive implications; an event, which 
triggered a succession of political and global 
events that are defining our lives in the last 20 
years. [...] Due to the strong increase in 
dialogue and cooperation in the world of 
politics, business, art and culture, it has 
become necessary to readjust and fine-tune our 
attitude towards everything that is different. 
National and international aspects have been 
increasingly intermingled, public entities have 
been privatised – all these aspects have shaped 
the recent common history in Europe and beyond.


With works a.o. by: Hildegard Absalon, Armin 
Bardel, Sabine Bitter & Helmut Weber, Luchezar 
Boyadjiev, Libia Castro & Olafur Olafsson, Josef 
Dabernig, Heinrich Dunst, Anita Fricek, Marianne 
Greber, Matthias Herrmann, Christine 
Hohenbüchler, Robert Jelinek, Anna Jermolaewa, 
Ulrike Johannsen, David Jourdan, Dejan 
Kaludjerovic, Johanna Kandl, Martin Kitzler, Oleg 
Kulik, Marko Lulic, Ken Lum, Anna Meyer, Michail 
Michailov, monochrom, Muntean / Rosenblum, Lisl 
Ponger, Andreas Reiter Raabe, Peter Sandbichler, 
Kamen Stoyanov, Katharina Struber, Martina 
Stuffer, Magda Tothova, Borjana Ventzislavova, 
Gernot Wieland, Alexandra Zaitseva...


Link

--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 6/24/2009 02:58:00 PM  

Re: [monochrom] falsche priester im film

[das ende der nahrungskette]

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis%E2%80%99_unheimliche_Begegnung_mit_den_Au%C3%9Ferirdischen

At 19:17 23.06.2009, you wrote:

Luis de Funes und die Ausserirdischen (oder so aehnlich hiess er ;-)
Ein wundervolles Stueck Filmgeschichte

Lg
sepp


--

ARK EXPERIMENT - THE LAB

July 10th - August 31st 2009
Headbones Gallery Toronto

www.myspace.com/thearklab

Come and BE A SURVIVOR!







From: Jürgen Marschal 
To: BAGASCH@LISTS.MONOCHROM.AT
Sent: Tuesday, June 23, 2009 12:16:07 PM
Subject: [monochrom] falsche priester im film

hallo liste.

ich bin auf der suche nach filmen, in denen sich jemand als falscher
priester/mönch/ähnliches versucht. also egal, ob er/sie den job durch
verwechslung bekommt oder sich mit gefälschten diplomen erschleicht oder
sonstiges.

würde mich freuen, wenn euch der eine oder andere titel einfällt.

schöne grüße,
jürgen.

[monochrom] google squared? ich?

[das ende der nahrungskette]

gruban schreibt auf twitter:

==cut==
Wow @johannes_mono ist einer der 
Top20-Contemporary Artists bei Google Squared 
http://bit.ly/MJrwB (-> Add next 10 items)

==cut==

was ist google squared? 

[monochrom] Peter Custers: green means zero growth

[das ende der nahrungskette]

With the world economy in disarray and military expenditure 
spiralling, what hopes are there of a genuinely Green New Deal? In 
this month's podcast, George Miller talks to Peter Custers, an expert 
on the international arms trade, about his article "Towards zero 
growth", which argues that "an economy that refuses to grow" is 
exactly what the world economy must aim for. He sees positive signs 
in Germany's policy on renewable energy and offers his verdict on how 
green Barack Obama will turn out to be.

Link (podcast)

--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 6/23/2009 11:25:00 AM  

[monochrom] Too complex to exist: power grids, financial market?

[das ende der nahrungskette]

On Aug. 10, 1996, a single power line in western Oregon brushed a 
tree and shorted out, triggering a massive cascade of power outages 
that spread across the western United States. Frantic engineers 
watched helplessly as the crisis unfolded, leaving nearly 10 million 
people without electricity. Even after power was restored, they were 
unable to explain adequately why it had happened, or how they could 
prevent a similar cascade from happening again - which it did, in the 
Northeast on Aug. 14, 2003.


Over the past year we have experienced something similar in the 
financial system: a dramatic and unpredictable cascade of events that 
has produced the economic equivalent of a global blackout. As 
governments struggle to fix the crisis, experts have weighed in on 
the causes of the meltdown, from excess leverage, to lax oversight, 
to the way executives are paid.


Although these explanations can help account for how individual 
banks, insurers, and so on got themselves into trouble, they gloss 
over a larger question: how these institutions collectively managed 
to put trillions of dollars at risk without being detected. 
Ultimately, therefore, they fail to address the all-important issue 
of what can be done to avoid a repeat disaster.


Link 



--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 6/23/2009 11:15:00 AM  

[monochrom] The Wold is an Apple (minus Madagascar)

[das ende der nahrungskette]

Where's Madagascar?

Link

--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 6/23/2009 11:13:00 AM  

[monochrom] monochroms "Es war einmal die Medien": Als Video

[das ende der nahrungskette]

+
++
+++ monochroms
+++ ES WAR EINMAL DIE MEDIEN
+++ Die Diskursgroteske nun auch als Video
++
+

Download bzw. embedded video, eine Stunde Laufzeit
http://www.monochrom.at/eswareinmaldiemedien/

+++

Ein kuehler Tag im letzten Winter: Fuer den 
klassischen Schullehrfilm sieht es alles andere 
als gut aus. In einer Welt der 
Powerpointpraesentationen und der 
Downloadplattformen kommt er sich ein bisschen 
vor wie Cat Stevens in einer Welt der 
Powerpointpraesentationen und der 
Downloadplattformen. Dabei koennte er die 
Zielgruppe da abholen, wo sie abgestellt wurde. 
Aber wie?! In einer Sprache von heute etwa, so 
zeitlos wie moeglich und so zeitgemaess wie 
noetig? Vielleicht! Und mit Themen, die der 
unmittelbaren Erfahrungswelt der SchuelerInnen 
entstammen?! Why not! Das Bundesministerium fuer 
Bildung, Wissenschaft und Kultur handelt: Der 
alte Schullehrfilm muss der neue Schullehrfilm 
werden, damit Lerninhalt Lerninhalt bleiben kann. 
Unter der Regie der bekannten Medienkuenstlerin 
Amina Staniescu (u. a. Hans-Heinz-Hensler-Preis 
Dortmund 2005, Teilnahme an der Videonale Zagreb 
2006) entsteht der erste "Schullehrfilm 2.0" 
(Klappentext) "Es war einmal die Medien" ­ der 
interessante Versuch, Teledidaxe mit einer 
heutigen Formensprache aufzumoebeln. Und das 
braucht natuerlich den entsprechenden Soundtrack. 
Die Wahl faellt auf Tonki Gebauer (Lampshade, 
Artist in Resistance, Sennheiser X, DJ AC/DJ), 
der bereits mit dem Soundtrack zu "Weites Land" 
aufgefallen war (oesterreichischer 
Dokumentarfilmpreis 2004). Am 27. Februar treffen 
sich beide in Gebauers Studio in Sopron, um sich 
den Rohschnitt anzusehen. Es entspinnt sich eine 
gnadenlose Analyse der spezifischen Medienform 
der spaetbuergerlichen Gesellschaft und ihrer Funktion.


+
++
+++ Mit Susa Meyer und Reinhold G. Moritz
+++ Buch: Frank Apunkt Schneider und Johannes Grenzfurthner
+++ Regie: Johannes Grenzfurthner
++
+

+ Herzlichen Dank an das Volkstheater Wien und Okto TV.

+ Downloads: http://www.monochrom.at/eswareinmaldiemedien/

+ CC Lizenz: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/at/

[monochrom] Throw-n-fetch bot

[das ende der nahrungskette]

Link

--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 6/22/2009 12:26:00 AM  

[monochrom] Researchers probe the genetic basis of memory

[das ende der nahrungskette]

A group of Montreal researchers has discovered that GCN2, a protein 
in cells that inhibits the conversion of new information into 
long-term memory, may be a master regulator of the switch from 
short-term to long-term memory. Their paper Translational control of 
hippocampal synaptic plasticity and memory by the eIF2a kinase GCN2, 
which was published in the journal Nature, provides the first genetic 
evidence that protein synthesis is critical for the regulation of 
memory formation.

Link

--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 6/22/2009 12:17:00 AM  

[monochrom] Researchers probe the genetic basis of memory

[das ende der nahrungskette]

A group of Montreal researchers has discovered that GCN2, a protein 
in cells that inhibits the conversion of new information into 
long-term memory, may be a master regulator of the switch from 
short-term to long-term memory. Their paper Translational control of 
hippocampal synaptic plasticity and memory by the eIF2a kinase GCN2, 
which was published in the August 25th issue of the journal Nature, 
provides the first genetic evidence that protein synthesis is 
critical for the regulation of memory formation.

Link

--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 6/22/2009 12:17:00 AM  

[monochrom] Bubblenomics: Economic cataclysms now and then

[das ende der nahrungskette]

Economic cataclysms such as the Great Depression 
or today's ongoing collapse of global finance 
destroy commonly held understandings of political 
and economic reality. That is one reason why we 
call them cataclysms; such events occur precisely 
because no one with the power to do anything 
about them saw them coming. Icebergs spotted in 
time do not, after all, sink ships. But once the 
conventional wisdom has joined prosperity and 
confidence in the wreckage on the ocean floor of 
the global economy, we begin to hear of 'the' 
explanations for what happened. Such 
proclamations mark the times as surely as 
collapsed Ponzi schemes, falling governments, 
ruined banks and suicides among the former 
nouveaux riches. Thus, in the aftermath of the 
Depression, there emanated from various quarters 
announcements that the reasons for the 
catastrophe lay in policy errors by the Federal 
Reserve, in the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Acts, in 
stock trading on the margin, in vvengeful 
treatment of Germany in the Versailles Treaty and so forth.


Similarly, the present-day plunge into the 
economic abyss has again brought forth a 
smorgasbord of assertions about 'the' cause: mad 
scientists let loose in dealing rooms, squishy 
liberals dishing out mortgages to the coloured, 
inscrutable Chinese officials 'manipulating' 
their yuan, feckless American central bankers 
throwing the gasoline of low interest rates on a 
briskly burning fire of asset inflation, Robert 
Rubin and his cronies in the Clinton White House 
tearing up regulations, George W. Bush waging 
wars of choice while cutting taxes on the 
rich—the disccriminating diner can pick and 
choose what best suits his or her ideological tastes and preconceptions.


In The Credit Crunch: Housing Bubbles, 
Globalisation and the Worldwide Economic Crisis, 
Graham Turner has placed on the buffet table his 
own explanation for what has gone wrong, and it 
is a good deal more appetizing than many. Turner 
lays the blame for the current crisis squarely at 
the feet of the holy of holies of conventional 
economic orthodoxy: the 'unquenchable enthusiasm 
for raw free trade.' Given the near-total absence 
of any warning of the crisis from right-thinking 
academic economists, the distaste of the latter 
for such an account should provide no grounds for 
rejecting Turner's offering out of hand.


Link

--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 6/22/2009 12:14:00 AM  

[monochrom] "man spricht antideutsch": neues monochrom tshirt

[das ende der nahrungskette]

endlich ist es da. das neue monochrom-shirt.

"man spricht antideutsch"

kaufet es und traget. sogar wenn ihr "frau" seid.

http://www.monochrom.at/textiles/

[monochrom] Construction Begins on Spaceport America

[das ende der nahrungskette]

After years of planning, ground is officially being broken in New 
Mexico for the world's first interstellar airport.


Link 



--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 6/19/2009 01:14:00 PM  

[monochrom] UK Cabinet Secretaries' Notebooks from World War Two

[das ende der nahrungskette]

The UK Government National Archives have released the Cabinet 
Secretaries' Notebooks from World War Two. These notes give a few 
brief snippets about the views of Churchill and his war cabinet to 
events of WWII.


There is, for example, a transcript of a meeting on the 15th June 
1942, discussing reprisals for German Massacre of a Czechoslovakian 
Village. Churchill favored the summary execution of Nazi leaders by 
Electric 
Chair at this meeting. Another meeting was a discussion of how to 
come to terms with the American policy of segregation to its 
'coloured' 
troops.


Link

--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 6/19/2009 01:04:00 PM  

[monochrom] Geonames / The countries of the world in their own languages and ...

[das ende der nahrungskette]

I can't stop spending hours and hours on this site...
"The countries of the world in their own languages and scripts; with 
official names, capitals, flags, coats of arms, administrative 
divisions, national anthems, and translations of the countries and 
capitals into many languages") to get to the meat of the site, a 
collection of links to various pages: Days, Months, Planets, 
Mountains, etc.; a huge list of languages with each name given in the 
original (with transliteration where appropriate); various other 
random items (including a small set of famous people: it's fun to see 
the varying forms of Charlemagne); an Alphabets section; and finally 
a set of Glossaries, with a few hundred English words translated 
into, well, everything (divided into manageable sets: 
Albanian|Greek|Armenian, American|Polynesian, Asian, Balto-Slavic, 
Basque|Caucasus, Celtic, Constructed, etc.).


Link (via 
Languagehat)


--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 6/19/2009 12:52:00 PM  

[monochrom] Israeli scientists show bacteria can plan ahead

[das ende der nahrungskette]

Bacteria can anticipate a future event and prepare for it, according 
to new research at the Weizmann Institute of Science. In a paper that 
appeared in Nature, Prof. Yitzhak Pilpel, doctoral student Amir 
Mitchell and research associate Dr. Orna Dahan of the Institute's 
Molecular Genetics Department, together with Prof. Martin Kupiec and 
Gal Romano of Tel Aviv University, examined microorganisms living in 
environments that change in predictable ways. Their findings show 
that these microorganisms' genetic networks are hard-wired to 
'foresee' what comes next in the sequence of events and begin 
responding to the new state of affairs before its onset.


Link

--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 6/19/2009 12:19:00 AM  

[monochrom] Argentina's Community Media Fights for Access and Legal Reform

[das ende der nahrungskette]

In response to misinformation and lack of access in the mass media, 
citizens have created alternative media networks that play a 
fundamental role in today's Latin America. Together, these community 
television stations are transforming the media landscape throughout 
the Americas. This redefined space for independent media has three 
vital functions: disseminating alternative information; providing a 
space for popular voice and especially the voice of groups 
underrepresented in the media; and building community. In Argentina, 
citizen media groups simultaneously fight for autonomous spaces and 
for reforms in media laws that will allow them to operate legally.


Link

--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 6/19/2009 12:16:00 AM  

[monochrom] British Library Puts 19th-Century Newspapers Online

[das ende der nahrungskette]

Bad news is never new, but anyone overwhelmed by today's political 
scandals, wars, financial disasters, soaring unemployment and drunken 
feral children can take refuge in the 19th century - and its wars, 
financial disasters, political scandals, soaring unemployment and 
drunken feral children. Over two million pages of 19th and early 20th 
century newspapers go online today, part of the vast British Library 
collection.


Link 



--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 6/19/2009 12:12:00 AM  

Re: [monochrom] Frank Apunkt Schneider bei Klaus Walter zum Runterladen

[das ende der nahrungskette]

Also, klick an oder stirb!

http://www.monochrom.at/info-monochrom/2009_06_01_ 
archiv.html#4157859861223930749



und falls das nicht geht: http://tinyurl.com/krjfz7  

[monochrom] Frank Apunkt Schneider bei Klaus Walter zum Runterladen

[das ende der nahrungskette]

Endlich kann die Folge von Klaus Walters "Was ist 
Musik?" mit Frank Apunkt Schneider (ursprünglich 
ausgestrahlt auf www.byte.fm am Sonntag, den 26. 
April 2009) herunter geladen werden. Die beiden 
qautschen drei Stunden lang über Schneiders Buch 
"Als die Welt noch unterging. Von Punk zu NDW", 
und spielen sich obskure, semiobskure und 
unobskure Platten vor. Jede der drei Stunden 
können hiermit exklusiv bei uns einzeln runtergeladen werden:


Also, klick an oder stirb!

http://www.monochrom.at/info-monochrom/2009_06_01_ 
archiv.html#4157859861223930749

[monochrom] Drill! Drill! The return of trepanation

[das ende der nahrungskette]

In the early 1960s, a young Russian neurophysiologist called Yuri 
Moskalenko travelled from the Soviet Union to the UK on a Royal 
Society exchange programme. During his stay, he co-authored a paper 
published in Nature. "Variation in blood volume and oxygen 
availability in the human brain" may not sound subversive, but it was 
the start of a radical idea.


Decades later, having worked in Soviet Russia and become president of 
the Sechenov Institute of Evolutionary Physiology and Biochemistry at 
the Russian Academy of Sciences in St Petersburg, Moskalenko is back 
in the UK. Now collaborating with researchers at the Beckley 
Foundation in Oxford, his work is bearing fruit.


And strange fruit it is. With funding from the foundation, he is 
exploring the idea that people with Alzheimer's disease could be 
treated by drilling a hole in their skull. In fact, he is so 
convinced of the benefits of trepanation that he claims it may help 
anyone from their mid-40s onwards to slow or even reverse the process 
of age-related cognitive decline. Can he be serious?


Link 



--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 6/17/2009 02:29:00 PM  

[monochrom] CIA Secrecy on Drone Attacks Data Hides Abuses

[das ende der nahrungskette]

The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency's refusal to share with other 
agencies even the most basic data on the bombing attacks by 
remote-controlled unmanned predator drones in Pakistan's northwestern 
tribal region, combined with recent revelations that CIA operatives 
have been paying Pakistanis to identify the targets, suggests that 
managers of the drone attacks programmes have been using the total 
secrecy surrounding the programme to hide abuses and high civilian casualties.

Link

--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 6/17/2009 02:28:00 PM  

[monochrom] Common Fish Species: 'Human' Ability To Learn?

[das ende der nahrungskette]

Although worlds apart, the way fish learn could be closer to humans' 
way of thinking than previously believed, suggests a new research study.

Link

--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 6/17/2009 02:24:00 PM  

[monochrom] Cyberscares About Cyberwars Equal Cybermoney

[das ende der nahrungskette]

Frida Berrigan writes:
As though we don't have enough to be afraid of already, what with 
armed lunatics mowing down military recruiters and doctors, the H1N1 
flu virus, the collapse of bee populations, rising sea levels, failed 
and flailing states, North Korea being North Korea, al-Qaeda wannabes 
in New York State with terrorist aspirations, and who knows what else 
-- now cyberjihadis are evidently poised to steal our online 
identities, hack into our banks, take over our Flickr and Facebook 
accounts, and create havoc on the World Wide Web.


Late last year, in a 96-page report, Securing Cyberspace for the 44th 
Presidency, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) 
warned that "America's failure to protect cyberspace is one of the 
most urgent national security problems facing the new 
administration." In a similar fashion, Dr. Dorothy Denning, a 
cybersecurity expert at the Naval Postgraduate School, has just 
described the Internet as a "powerful tool in the hands of criminals 
and terrorists." And they're hardly alone.


To this fear chorus, our thoughtful, slow-to-histrionics President 
added his voice in a May 29th East Room address:
"In today's world, acts of terror could come not only from a few 
extremists in suicide vests but from a few key strokes on a computer 
-- a weapon of mass disruption... This cyberthreat is one of the most 
serious economic and national security challenges we face as a nation."


Uh-oh, and as we know, cybercrime is already on the rise. According 
to the president, the U.S. experienced 37,000 cyberattacks in 2007, 
an 800% increase from 2005. He referenced a study estimating that 
cybercrime has cost Americans $8 billion in the last two years. A 
trillion dollars worth of business information has reportedly been 
stolen from the corporate world.


Link 



--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 6/16/2009 10:16:00 AM  

[monochrom] Brazil: more dependent than ever

[das ende der nahrungskette]

President Lula fancied his country's economy was 'decoupled' from the 
rest of the world's. But when the economic crisis reached Brazil this 
March, it came on a tidal wave. Half a million people are now in 
poverty or extreme poverty.

Link

--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 6/16/2009 10:11:00 AM  

[monochrom] Finger popping time: Africa

[das ende der nahrungskette]

Link

--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 6/16/2009 10:05:00 AM  

[monochrom] Bitterness: The Next Mental Disorder?

[das ende der nahrungskette]

No one could accuse the American Psychiatric Association of missing a 
strain of sourness in the country, or of failing to capitalize on its 
diagnostic potential. Having floated "Apathy Disorder" as a trial 
balloon, to see if it might garner enough support for inclusion in 
the next edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental 
Disorders, the world's diagnostic bible of mental illnesses, the 
organization has generated untold amounts of publicity and 
incredulity this week by debating at its convention whether 
bitterness should become a bona fide mental disorder.


Link 



--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 6/16/2009 10:02:00 AM  

[monochrom] Twitter client for the Commodore 64

[das ende der nahrungskette]

Link 



--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 6/15/2009 06:23:00 PM  

[monochrom] Antoni Negri: "Keynes's communism of capital"

[das ende der nahrungskette]

Keynes believed in the virtues of finance; he 
even had an equivocal relationship with the Stock 
Exchange until he got kicked in the teeth – as 
often happens even to the most adept. (I disagree 
here with his biographer Harrod, who claimed that 
Keynes had financial speculation in his heart.) 
From Keynes's realistic point of view, the 
virtue of finance was that it was the beating 
heart of capitalism. Keynes subverted the old 
moralist conceptions that, from the Middle Ages 
to Hilferding, had downplayed and disqualified 
the hegemony of money in the production of wealth 
and the reproduction of social order. Against 
them, Keynes claimed that financial markets 
functioned as wealth multipliers. Can this 
theoretical assumption still be valid in a period 
of economic crisis? 'Of course it can', he 
asserted from his position in the middle of the 
crisis that started in the 1920s and assumed 
gigantic proportions by the end of the same 
decade. The state will have to intervene in 
society and reorganize it productively: 'Thus it 
is to our best advantage to reduce the rate of 
interest to that point relatively to the schedule 
of the marginal efficiency of capital at which there is full employment.'


This was how the entire therapeutic cookbook of 
Keynsianism emerged out of the crisis that kept 
affecting development. In building a new model of 
equilibrium whilst being pragmatic and keeping 
the continuous lack of equilibrium in mind, 
Keynes proposed to determine a persisting 
imbalance of state initiative through deficit 
spending. However, this deficit created new 
margins for effective demand and aided the 
development of capitalist dynamics whilst 
accepting the severe rigidity in workers' wages. 
This was the way class struggle got reabsorbed into the system of capital.


Keynes's proposal was wholly progressivist. He 
fully recognized it when, in the negotiations 
leading to the establishment of the Bretton Woods 
system of international monetary relations, he 
faced the opposition of the conservative 
representatives of Washington who were not 
willing to allow the currency of reference to 
forget a real standard, as this standard was the 
dollar that functioned as a means to organize 
labour and its international division based on 
the accumulation of gold in the US Central Bank. 
For them, deficit spending – which each 
capitalist and national government could have 
advanced so as to progressively contain the 
movements of its national working class, who 
sought to change society and break the capitalist 
yoke – needed to be controlled by a capitalist 
centre, the Komintern of Wall Street. Farewell to 
the illusion of bancor, Keynes's great invention, 
an ideal currency based on free exchange that 
could have given way to the establishment of 
different equilibriums that referred to the 
desires of populations and the intensity of the 
struggle of the organized working class...


Link 



--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 6/15/2009 03:23:00 PM  

[monochrom] Watchmen: Semiotic Superheroes

[das ende der nahrungskette]

Since their beginning, superhero flicks have 
always scavenged special effects magic and visual 
style from the tables of preceding adventure 
films rather than their original source material, 
comic books themselves. Superman could only fly 
through Metropolis after Skywalker flew through 
the Death Star Trench; Batman only became a 
believable crime-fighter in the vein of Jason 
Bourne's hyper-realism; and I groaned aloud in 
the theater when my own best-loved comic hero, 
Spider-Man, performed a horribly superfluous 
Matrix-esque slow motion flip-dodge to evade a 
hail of razor-sharp projectiles. Superheroes are 
homeless on the silver screen. The characters 
that inspired action films on a large scale too 
often prefer to dress themselves in the 
precedents other films rather than establishing 
their own stylistic identities. Good comics do 
more than depict fantastical stories about 
characters endowed with great power. They create 
an environment in which art and symbol converge 
to create semiotic storytelling that has the 
potential to transcend the written word. Is it 
possible then to develop a true "comic book film" 
genre, and would it have anything to contribute to the medium as a whole?


My answer: yes and yes—if it can avoid being mere 
extensions of the Tarantino B-movie aesthetic and 
if it is possible to ban Frank Miller from ever using a camera again.


Link

--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 6/15/2009 03:19:00 PM  

[monochrom] Plug and Play: Researchers Expand Clinical Study of Neural Interfaces

[das ende der nahrungskette]

BrainGate technology is designed to read brain signals associated 
with controlling movement, which a computer could translate into 
instructions for moving a computer cursor or controlling a variety of 
assistive devices.
Link 



--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 6/15/2009 03:17:00 PM  

[monochrom] Clive Thompson on the Future of Reading in a Digital World

[das ende der nahrungskette]

Books are the last bastion of the old business 
model—thhe only major medium that still hasn't 
embraced the digital age. Publishers and author 
advocates have generally refused to put books 
online for fear the content will be Napsterized. 
And you can understand their terror, because the 
publishing industry is in big financial trouble, 
rife with layoffs and restructurings. Literary 
pundits are fretting: Can books survive in this 
Facebooked, ADD, multichannel universe?


To which I reply: Sure they can. But only if 
publishers adopt Wark's perspective and provide 
new ways for people to encounter the written 
word. We need to stop thinking about the future 
of publishing and think instead about the future of reading.


Link

--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 6/15/2009 03:15:00 PM  

[monochrom] Fwd: Here It Is! Surprise Teaser Trailer for Michael Moore's New Film

[das ende der nahrungskette]

From: "Michael Moore" 
To: j...@monochrom.at
Subject: Here It Is! Surprise Teaser Trailer for Michael Moore's New Film
Date: Sat, 13 Jun 2009 22:46:49 -0400
List-Unsubscribe: 


Reply-To: maill...@michaelmoore.com
X-FromIP: 69.25.193.7

Audiences at thousands of theaters across the country last night 
were treated to a surprise teaser for Mike's new film.


Click here to check out 
the teaser. And after you've watched it, 
check out the commotion Mike's coming 
attraction caused at many theaters last night (spoiler alert: watch 
the trailer first!).


More info on the new movie coming your way in the weeks ahead.

Enjoy!

Webmaster
MichaelMoore.com
web...@michaelmoore.com


Join Mike's 
Mailing List | Join Mike's Facebook 
Group | Follow Mike on Twitter | 
Become Mike's MySpace Friend


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To unsubscribe 
click 
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or send a blank email to 
leave-18541854-38069267.ec74f379eac22f6895df779da8518...@go.netatlantic.com 


[]

[monochrom] Che Guevara: The Economics of Revolution

[das ende der nahrungskette]

Helen Yaffe explores impact of Che Guevara as an economist and politician.
In my first A-level economics class, at the age 
of 16, I was taught these guiding principles; 
people only produce if they can make a profit, 
humans have infinite desires, while resources are 
limited, so everything must be rationed through 
the price mechanism – demand and supply.
No concept of production for need or socialist 
economics appeared on the curriculum. This was 
the early 1990s, the socialist bloc had collapsed 
and neo-liberalism was triumphant, or so we were 
told. Over the previous ten years, British 
Telecoms, the British water industry, British 
Rail, British Gas and British Coal had been 
packaged up and sold off to corporations and share holders.


Rational economic man, it was said, would ensure 
efficiency through privatisation and competition, 
even while, in the following years, prices rose 
and accidents increased in these fundamental 
services of the economy. Darwinism was recruited 
to the cause, as underdeveloped countries were 
forced to 'liberalise' their economies, selling 
their natural resources to foreign investors, 
rolling back the state, and removing obstacles to 
the 'revolutionising' power of market forces. In 
Latin America, the 'lost decade' of the 1980s and 
the 'Washington Consensus' of the 1990s saw debt 
crisis, restructuring and liberalisation plunge 
millions more into destitution, with or without inflated GDP statistics.


Amidst this neoliberal onslaught, Cuba stood 
almost alone. The collapse of the socialist bloc 
countries between 1989 and 1991 cut off 80 per 
cent of Cuba's trade, GDP plummeted by 35 per 
cent and food shortages decreased caloric intake 
by nearly 40 per cent. The crisis was exacerbated 
by punitive laws tightening the US blockade in 
1990, 1992, and 1996. Despite entering a 'special 
period in time of peace', the Cuban revolution 
did not renege on political commitments to 
socialist welfare, state planning and the 
predominance of state property, even while forced 
to introduce pragmatic reforms – limitted 
concessions to market forces – to stimulate the 
economy and get vital goods to the people.


Link

--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 6/13/2009 01:42:00 PM  

[monochrom] On Game Art, Circuit Bending and Speedrunning as Counter-Practice...

[das ende der nahrungskette]

By Seb Franklin.
In The Exploit Alexander R. Galloway and Eugene Thacker speculate 
that "[f]uture avant-garde practices will be those of nonexistence." 
This extraordinary claim is a response to the current ubiquity of 
digital technology and its impact on cultural politics; if existence 
becomes a question of being classified informatically, the avoidance 
of this classification, or nonexistence, becomes of paramount 
importance. The discussion of nonexistence in The Exploit opens with 
a question, one that forms the basis of this essay: "how does one 
develop techniques and technologies to make oneself unaccountable 
for?" Directly following this question comes a specific, material 
example through which a crucial distinction between "unaccountable 
for" and "invisible" or "absent" is made -- the use of a laser 
pointer, aimed into a surveillance camera in order to 'blind' it. In 
this situation, the camera is not destroyed nor is the individual 
shining the laser actually hiding, or invisible; instead, they are 
simply not present on the particular screen or data set recorded by 
the camera in question. The same is true of the tricking of a server, 
causing it to record a routine event when one goes online. These 
kinds of tactics, "tactics of abandonment", are "positive 
technologies" for Galloway and Thacker. They are entirely distinct 
from absence, lack, invisibility and nonbeing because they are "full" 
or rather, because they "permeate." The practical consequences of 
Galloway and Thacker's formulation of nonexistence are clear: It's 
not a question of hiding, or living off the grid, but of living on 
the grid, in potentially full informatic view, but in a way that 
makes one's technical specification or classification impossible.


Link

--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 6/13/2009 01:38:00 PM  

[monochrom] Rat Brain Robot

[das ende der nahrungskette]

This robot is controlled by the brain of a rat - making it the 
world's first cyborg rodent.

Link

--
Posted By johl to 
monochrom 
at 6/12/2009 05:37:00 PM  

[monochrom] Godzilla Bukkake: Macroherpetophile image macros

[das ende der nahrungskette]

Link

--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 6/12/2009 05:18:00 PM  

[monochrom] Tetris Theme on Church Organ during Service

[das ende der nahrungskette]

Link

--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 6/12/2009 04:37:00 PM  

[monochrom] Slavoj Zizek: How To Begin From The Beginning

[das ende der nahrungskette]

In his wonderful short text "Notes of a 
Publicist"—written in February 1922 when the 
Bolsheviks, after winning the Civil War against 
all odds, had to retreat into the New Economic 
Policy of allowing a much wider scope to the 
market economy and private property—Lenin uses 
the analogy of a climber who must backtrack from 
his first attempt to reach a new mountain peak to 
describe what retreat means in a revolutionary 
process, and how it can be done without 
opportunistically betraying the cause. [...]


Link

--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 6/12/2009 04:06:00 PM  

[monochrom] tvwww feature about monochrom (Serbian language)

[das ende der nahrungskette]

tvwww created a feature about monochrom in Serbian language. Check it out.
Link

--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 6/12/2009 03:39:00 PM  

[monochrom] The Penal State in an Age of Crisis

[das ende der nahrungskette]

By Hannah Holleman, Robert W. McChesney, John 
Bellamy Foster, and R. Jamil Jonna.
As a rule, crime and social protest rise in 
periods of economic crisis in capitalist society. 
During times of economic and social instability, 
the well-to-do become increasingly fearful of the 
general population, more disposed to adopt harsh 
measures to safeguard their positions at the apex 
of the social pyramid. The slowdown in the 
economic growth rate of U.S. capitalism beginning 
in the late 1960s and early 1970s—converging with 
the emergence of radical social protest around 
the same period—was accompanied by a rapid rise 
in public safety spending as a share of civilian 
government expenditures. So significant was this 
shift that we can speak of a crowding out of 
welfare state spending (health, education, social 
services) by penal state spending (law 
enforcement, courts, and prisons) in the United 
States during the last third of a century...


Link

--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 6/11/2009 06:33:00 PM  

[monochrom] 10 scientific objects that changed the world

[das ende der nahrungskette]

To mark its centenary, the Science Museum in London had its curators 
select the ten objects in its collection that made the biggest mark 
on history. Explore them in this gallery, and cast your vote in the 
public poll to decide the most significant of all.


For example: the Apollo 10 capsule.

Link 



--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 6/11/2009 06:28:00 PM  

[monochrom] Freeman Dyson Takes On The Climate Establishment

[das ende der nahrungskette]

Princeton physicist Freeman Dyson has been roundly criticized for 
insisting global warming is not an urgent problem, with many climate 
scientists dismissing him as woefully ill-informed. In an interview 
with Yale Environment 360, Dyson explains his iconoclastic views and 
why he believes they have stirred such controversy.

Link

--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 6/11/2009 06:24:00 PM  

[monochrom] "European Culture & Journalism 2009" about monochrom

[das ende der nahrungskette]

Well, nice little report for "European Culture & 
Journalism 2009" about monochrom. Although 
monochrom has nine members, and "Frenzfurthner" 
is not quite right... and I can't remember calling monochrom my "hobby"...
Hidden in Quartier21's main entrance - Electric 
Avenue - the Monochrom office could almost be 
mistaken for a rebellious teenager's unkempt 
bedroom. Magazine cut-outs, a cartoon of a 
pirate's head, two ping-pong paddles, a fake 
parrot and a poster that reads "BUSH CHENEY" are 
scattered all over a large green wall. But behind 
every image is a story – and a strong political 
message. The Monnochrom office in Quartier21.


Though there is barely any space left on the 
tables – which are cluttered with stacks of 
folders, CD casess and books – Monochrom's 
five-member team somehow manages to work aamong 
the mess. But the disheveled space is what makes 
these guys passionate about what they do. After 
all, there are no rules at Monochrom, because their goal is to break the rules.


Link

--
Posted By johannes to 
monochrom 
at 6/11/2009 06:07:00 PM  

[monochrom] metalab wird 3 jahre alt

[das ende der nahrungskette]

hier eine kleine wuerdigung

http://fm4.orf.at/stories/1604159/

[monochrom] kommentar zum mq

[das ende der nahrungskette]

sehr gut:
http://fm4.orf.at/stories/1604161/