Info downpour.

Via Smart Mobs:

Researchers are working on "information rain", taking advertisements to the realm of mock meteorology.

A projector on a tall tripod shows images of raindrops hitting the ground and making ripples, in hopes that people will enter the "rainy" area and hold out their palms.

A camera tracks the entrants' movements and sends the data to connected computers. Then the projector shoots out a round-shaped advertisement -- which can post words such as "SALE" -- right onto their hands.

That's why they call it corporate media.

As one New York newspaper makes its entire front cover an ad for Cingular, Loews and Motorola, Adbusters takes a timely look at just who's sitting on the board at major media companies:

The myth of the mainstream media’s “liberal bias” has recently taken yet another hit after researchers at California’s Sonoma State University took a close look at the resumes of the 118 people who sit on the boards of directors of America’s ten largest media organizations. The research team is part of the Project Censored, which for nearly three decades has been exposing journalistic self-censorship — “the news that didn’t make the News.” They determined that the group of 118 board members in turn sit on the boards of 288 other major corporations. They also discovered that eight out of the ten media behemoths share common memberships in each other’s boardrooms.

Given that the job of the press is to help us to run the state, and not the other way around, the following makes for an alarming list of bedfellows:

New York Times:
Carlyle Group, Eli Lilly, Ford, Johnson and Johnson, Hallmark, Lehman Brothers, Staples, Pepsi.

Washington Post:
Lockheed Martin, Coca-Cola, Dun & Bradstreet, Gillette, G.E. Investments, J.P. Morgan, Moody's.

Knight-Ridder:
Adobe Systems, Echelon, H&R Block, Kimberly-Clark, Starwood Hotels.

The Tribune (Chicago & LA Times):
3M, Allstate, Caterpillar, Conoco Phillips, Kraft, McDonalds, Pepsi, Quaker Oats, Shering Plough, Wells Fargo.

News Corp (Fox): British Airways, Rothschild Investments.

GE (NBC): Anheuser-Busch, Avon, Bechtel, Chevron/Texaco, Coca-Cola, Dell, GM, Home Depot, Kellogg, J.P. Morgan, Microsoft, Motorola, Procter & Gamble.

Disney (ABC): Boeing, Northwest Airlines, Clorox, Estee Lauder, FedEx, Gillette, Halliburton, Kmart, McKesson, Staples, Yahoo.

Viacom (CBS): American Express, Consolidated Edison, Oracle, Lafarge North America.

Gannett: AP, Lockheed-Martin, Continental Airlines, Goldman Sachs, Prudential, Target, Pepsi.

AOL-Time Warner (CNN): Citigroup, Estee Lauder, Colgate-Palmolive, Hilton.

Can we reasonably imagine Peter Jennings’ handlers at ABC giving him the green light to investigate why Halliburton was awarded sole-source contracts in Iraq when their own wallets are fattening because of it? How about expecting the grand poobahs of the New York Times to report on the financial ties between the Bush and Bin Laden families through their mutual membership in the Carlyle Group when they’re feasting from the same trough?

Your house has been on the market how long?

Given the halo and cross elements of the identity on this sign, I'm sure there's good intentions behind the name of this company. But, really, is Eternity the best name for a realty company?

Variations on a theme.

Via Unbeige, an exploration of the graphic identities of subway systems worldwide. Sans commentary.

Eco-system under ice.

From Future Feeder:

The chance discovery of a vast ecosystem beneath the collapsed Larsen Ice Shelf will allow scientists to explore the uncharted life below Antarctica’s floating ice shelves and further probe the origins of life in extreme environments. Researchers discovered the sunless habitat after a recent underwater video study examining a deep glacial trough in the northwestern Weddell Sea following the sudden Larsen B shelf collapse in 2002.

“Seeing these organisms on the ocean bottom–it’s like lifting the carpet off the floor and finding a layer that you never knew was there.”said Eugene Domack, a professor at Hamilton College in New York and lead author of the report detailing the ecosystem.

Whoa.

Rushkoff on suicide bombs as viral media.

Venom line.

Bike manufacturer Specialized is allegedly (because there seems little on the web to back the claim) coming out with a new line of bikes next year called Venom. While it features ultra-lightweight frames that look unlike any bike I've seen on the road, I'm a much bigger fan of simpler designs.

And: While on the topics of bikes, check out solar- and bicycle-powered WiFi networks in Uganda, via Timbuktu Chronicles.

Meta-machinery.

"The Most Beautiful Machine" is an idea of Claude E. Shannon, who died in 2001. His "Mathematical Theory of Communication" is the fundament of the digital machine. It's a communication based on the functions ON and OFF. In this special case the observers are supposed to push the ON button. After a while the lid of the trunk opens, a hand comes out and turns off the machine.

(Thanks, Giselle.)

Billboards and the "Beautiful City"

Yesterday morning Calvin Klein launched a new "live billboard" in Times Square: around the clock, 40 gaunt models simulate partying (sans sex and booze) inside what's supposed to be a bottle of CK One. I suppose it's the next step in the billboardification of the world: we've got ad-tattooed foreheads, nuns selling ad space on coats that are given to homeless people, even Disney's less-than-altruistic act of outfitting LA's street people with Incredibles gear. As advertising's scales tip even further into the crass, garish, and eye-assaulting, here's a nice idea for a counter-balance:

In Canada, Them.ca proposes a Beautiful City Billboard Fee, a modest annual tax of $6 per square foot of ad space assessed to billboard companies, with proceeds going toward the creation of ad-free public art. In Toronto alone, revenue from the city's approximately 5,000 billboards could raise $6,000,000 for public art in a single year.

[Cross-posted at the Walker blog. Photo via Myszka.]

Cell Phones for Civic Engagement

Cross-posted at the Walker blog:

"Civic engagement" is an incredibly broad term, running from get-out-the-vote drives to the Walker Art Center's interest in linking contemporary art with community concerns to... cell phones? Apparently. The global conference MobileActive: Cell Phones for Civic Engagement, to be held in Toronto September 22–24, will look at how this not-quite ubiquitous technology can be instrumental in participatory democracy, human rights work, and community building.

Sound far-fetched?

USA Today reports how SMS (short message service) has been used in political movements from South Korea to the Middle East to the Phillippines, where in a beautiful case of "mobile democracy," text messages were used to organize the demonstrations that contributed to the downfall of President Joseph Estrada in 2002. WorldChanging catalogues other examples where cell-phone technology has been pivotal in social change, from ways the technology can spark bottom-up economic development in poor nations in Africa to the use of textmobbing as a form of political protest. And Howard Rheingold links to a story about how the poor in the Philippines use "texting" for the collective good:

Finding that his family has run out of its supply of rice, Nestor Santos (not his real name) pulled out a cellular phone from his pocket, keyed in the order and promptly sent it via short message service (SMS) ... to his order taker.

A few hours later, the ordered sack of rice to be shared by Nestor and his neighbors arrived.

This account may sound like just another technology-assisted lifestyle story, except for the fact that Nestor collects garbage for a living, and lives in a former dumpsite that still has a huge mound of compacted decades-old filth -- and a much-reduced stench outsiders still find overpowering -- to remind residents of their even sorrier past.

What the world needs now...

An antidote to terror and other unpleasantries, reported on by the Star Tribune:

Jennifer Crutcher was driving through Wisconsin on her way from Cincinnati to Minneapolis when she found out about the terrorist bombings in London. She looked up and found solace in an unlikely icon stuck to her rearview mirror:

A My Little Pony magnet.

"It's just a peaceful feeling you get when you see them," said Crutcher, sitting at a table in the University of Minnesota's Coffman Union early this month for the annual My Little Pony convention. "The people who collect them just do it because they are sweet. There is no ulterior motive behind My Little Pony. This is really about community more than anything."

It would have been hard to find a less cynical, more sincere place in America than that day, when perhaps 100 members of "the pony community" gathered to talk about a small plastic toy....

(Thanks, Adrienne.)

Our own Santorum.

Last week, Sen. Rick Santorum opined that "it's no surprise that Boston, a seat of academic, political and cultural liberalism in America, lies at the center of the storm" of clergy sexual abuse. Rick, meet Katherine. The conservative Star Tribune columnist Katherine Kersten is blaming gang crime on "the debilitating attitudes of the '60s," which were brought to us by liberal "intellectuals, lawyers, and entertainment executives" (!). In a column where she offers no indication that she's discussed poverty with actual poor people, gang members, or victims, she pinpoints the real problems—welfare and sexual freedom:

The '60s revolution was about personal "liberation." Recreational sex? "Make love, not war." Drugs? "Whatever turns you on." Teachers, parents and police? "Challenge authority."

The '60s also launched the War on Poverty. Though well-intentioned, it created incentives for self-destructive behavior such as out-of-wedlock childbearing and welfare dependence. Its mantra was that the poor are victims without responsibilities, whose behavior has nothing to do with their plight.

Waffles anyone?

"President Bush changed his stance today on his close adviser Karl Rove, stopping well short of promising that anyone in his administration who helped to unmask a C.I.A. officer would be fired," reports the New York Times. But the prez isn't the only waffler in the GOP. Check out Minnesota's Norm Coleman (who owes his job, in part, to Rove's intervention), then and now:

"What we're hearing is a little rank political hypocrisy when it comes to claims about a special prosecutor, and I also want to note, the president of the United States has been very, very, very clear. If someone in his administration leaked information or did something that is illegal, they will be held accountable."
—October 1, 2003

"My Democratic friends would be doing the nation a great service if they spent half as much time getting legislation passed that will benefit the country as they do in  attacking Karl Rove. When you're out of ideas and lack vision, you are left with nothing but personal attacks and negativity. We have enough to do in the Senate in minding our own business than to be sticking our noses into someone else's business. Everyone needs to cool the rhetoric, focus on the business of the people, and allow the investigation to run its course."
—July 13, 2005

[Image via Patridiots.]

Henge by hand.

A retired carpenter in Flint, Michigan, thinks he's figured out how Stonehenge was made using no wheels, rollers, or machines. In his experiments, he's devised a way to pivot (and move as much as 300 feet vertically) objects ranging in size from a minivan-sized chunk of stone all the way to a 30 x 40' barn—by himself. He also created a teeter-totter-esque jack (shown here) to raise an obelisk. His website: The Forgotten Technology. And a video on his work.

[via]

Christianer than thou.

If you're Catholic in Mississippi, you're not Christian enough for a Jackson adoption agency. A branch of Bethany Christian Services won't accept adoption applications from Catholics, claiming that "Catholicism does not agree with our Statement of Faith." The Presbyterian agency, part of a national organization that has 75 offices in 30 states, doesn't mind accepting money from Mississippians of all denomination, presumably even Catholics: Bethany accepts money generated from the sale of "Choose Life" license plates.

Urethane rubber bearskin from Eelko Moorer. Via We Make Money Not Art.

Flora Furniture

A few years ago, the Walker Art Center featured the Terra chair in a show of contemporary design. Organic in form and composition, it looked like a great project for my parents' 80-acre plot in Wisconsin. My visions of sprouting armchairs in unexpected places—overlooking the creek, beside their Chartres-style mowed labyrinth, along the intersecting paths through the woods—deteriorated when I saw the plans for the chairs (which involved simple interlocking cardboard sheets that are filled with dirt) were selling in the museum shop for $150.

Enter: ReadyMade magazine's plans for a sod couch. Way cheaper, do-it-yourself, and infinitely modifiable.

[via]

Click me.

Elephonics:

For the big sounds of pachyderm percussion, check out the Thai Elephant Orchestra, a group of elephants at the Thai Elephant Conservation Centre that play specially designed instruments in the jungles of Thailand:

Those familiar with Thai instruments will recognise the slit drums, the gong, the bow bass, the xylophone-like renats, as well as the thundersheet. The only difference is that the elephant versions are a bit sturdier.

The elephants are given a cue to start and then they improvise. They clearly have a strong sense of rhythm. They flap their ears to the beat, swish their tails and generally rock back and forth. Some add to the melody with their own trumpeting.

Some of these elephants are multidisciplinary masters: they created paintings with artists Komar and Melamid that were auctioned off at Christie's.

Coffinmakers can't keep up:

In Baghdad, where one person dies every hour, as in much of the rest of Iraq, casket makers are unable to keep up with demand. A Swiss study states that 39,000 of the 100,000 civilian deaths in Iraq are the result of bombings.

Iraq: The view from Minnesota. Things are pretty darn rosy in Iraq, says St. Paul Pioneer Press columnist Mark Yost, but you'd never know it reading the hateful screeds of the press. (Of course, seeing the sunshine in Iraq must be pretty easy from the comfort of a Minnesota laptop.) In a piece called "Why they hate us" ("they" being Americans, "us" being the press), he writes:

I know the reporting's bad because I know people in Iraq. A Marine colonel buddy just finished a stint overseeing the power grid. When's the last time you read a story about the progress being made on the power grid? Or the new desalination plant that just came on-line, or the school that just opened, or the Iraqi policeman who died doing something heroic? No, to judge by the dispatches, all the Iraqis do is stand outside markets and government buildings waiting to be blown up.

Naturally, the daily reports of Iraqis getting blown up—an average of 800 civilians and police officers killed each month—might color one's view of Yost's statements. And maybe journalists on the schoolpainting beat get pulled off assignment when dozens are killed by insurgents.

But I'll leave it to this conservative columnist's peers to straighten him out. Editor & Publisher's Greg Mitchell contacted journalists at the Baghdad bureau of Knight-Ridder, the same company that owns the PiPress. Among those who replied was bureau chief Hannah Allam:

I invite Mr. Yost to spend a week in our Baghdad bureau, where he can see our Iraqi staff members' toothbrushes lined up in the bathroom because they have no running water at home. I frequently find them camping out in the office overnight because electricity is still only sporadic in their sweltering neighborhoods, despite what I'm sure are the best-intentioned efforts of people like his Marine buddy working on the electrical grid.

Mr. Yost could have come with me today as I visited one of my own military buddies, who like most officers doesn't leave the protected Green Zone compound except by helicopter or massive convoy. The Army official picked me up in his air-conditioned Explorer, took me to Burger King for lunch and showed me photos of the family he misses so terribly. The official is a great guy, and like so many other soldiers, it's not politics that blind him from seeing the real Iraq. The compound's maze of tall blast wall and miles of concertina wire obscure the view, too.

Mr. Yost can listen to our bureau's morning planning meetings, where we orchestrate a trip to buy bottled water (the tap water is contaminated, when it works) as if we're plotting a military operation. I wonder whether he prefers riding in the first car -- the most exposed to shrapnel and bullets -- or the chase car, which is designed to act as a buffer between us and potential kidnappers.

Perhaps Mr. Yost would be moved by our office's tribute wall to Yasser Salihee, our brave and wonderful colleague, who at age 30 joined the ranks of Iraqi civilians shot to death by American soldiers. Mr. Yost would have appreciated one of Yasser's last stories -- a rare good-news piece about humanitarian aid reaching the holy city of Najaf.

Mr. Yost's contention that 14 of Iraq's 18 provinces are stable is pure fantasy. On his visit to Baghdhad, he can check that by chatting with our resident British security consultant, who every day receives a province-by-province breakdown of the roadside bombs, ambushes, assassinations and other violence throughout the country.

If Baghdad is too far for Mr. Yost to travel (and I don't blame him, given the treacherous airport road to reach our fortress-like hotel), why not just head to Oklahoma? There, he can meet my former Iraqi translator, Ban Adil, and her young son. They're rebuilding their lives under political asylum after insurgents in Baghdad followed Ban's family home one night and gunned down her 4-year-old daughter, her husband and her elderly mother in law.

Freshly painted schools and a new desalination plant might add up to "mission accomplished" for some people. Too bad Ban's daughter never got to enjoy those fruits of her liberation.

For an interesting thread at Romenesko by Yost's peers—including fellow Pioneer Press staffer Charles Laszewski, who writes, "[Yost has] spat on the copy of the brave men and women who are doing their best in terrible conditions. More than 20 reporters have died in Iraq from around the world. You have insulted them and demeaned them, and to a much lesser degree, demeaned the reporters everywhere who have been threatened with bodily harm ...I am embarrassed to call you my colleague."—click here.

Finally, a little work-sanctioned blogging: I'm a blogger-at-large (of sorts) at the Walker Art Center's blogs. So far, the Film/Video; Education and Community Programs; and Performing Arts departments are blogging. Look for my posts—and those of some pretty interesting minds in a variety of areas—there. Here's my first post, on the film blog:

Downloading nightmares: In the "war on terror," it's pretty easy to tell the good guys from the bad guys, right? The BBC's documentary series The Power of Nightmares, produced last fall, suggests it's not so easy. The film looks at two groups, American neo-conservatives and radical Islamists, arguing that the notion that we're "threatened by a hidden and organised terrorist network is an illusion... a myth that has spread unquestioned through politics, the security services and the international media." Here's a plot summary from the TimesOnline:

[Writer/narrator Adam] Curtis’s argument is so neatly structured that you don’t want anything to threaten its symmetry. It goes like this: Washington’s neoconservatives, who had President Reagan’s ear and now have George W. Bush’s, start scouring the world for a new ideologically flawed, power-hungry bogeyman following the demise of the Soviet bear; and they find an ally for their despair of incontinent liberalism in America’s Christian fundamentalists. At the very same time, various Islamic fundamentalists, repulsed by Egypt’s slide into secularism, resolve to restore Islam to its rightful place as the religious, political and cultural backbone of the Middle East.

Winner of a 2004 British Academy Television Award, the documentary has apparently never been shown in the US.

'Til now: the amazing, nonprofit Internet Archive is offering The Power of Nightmares as a free download.

Wayback lawsuit: The 10-year old Internet Archive, which also runs the Wayback Machine, a site where you can search an archive of 40 billion web pages as they appeared when first published, is getting sued. A company called Healthcare Advocates has filed suit against the organization "saying the access to its old Web pages, stored in the Internet Archive's database, was unauthorized and illegal."

Plamegate Cliff's Notes: Came late to the Plame/Rove party and can't pick up the plot? Feel stupid, at this late date, asking what Nigerian uranium-enriched yellowcake has to do with Times reporter Judith Miller's imprisonment? Wonder why all those lefty blogs keep writing "ribbit" (a reference to Joe Wilson's question about "whether or not we can get Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs")? Here's an excellent, breezy-reading overview of the story, courtesy of Defective Yeti.

This Divided State: When Michael Moore planned a visit to Utah Valley State College last October 20, the turd hit the turbine: rightwingers protested, hate mail and death threats poured in, an outraged local millionaire offered the college $25,000 to cancel Moore's appearance, and an ominous proclamation foretold that Moore would bring with him the Apocalypse. Young filmmaker and BYU grad Steven Greenstreet and a small documentary film team were there to capture the conflict. Their movie, This Divided State is out and is beginning a small national tour. See the trailer here.

Coke threatens photographer: This rather picturesque billboard showing water jugs in front of a Coke mural may land Cannes Silver Lion–winning photographer Sharad Haksar in court. The problem: he's shedding light on the fact Coke is causing water shortages in Indian towns where it has bottling operations, and according to rural movements against the company, they pollute whatever water they don't bottle. Haksar refuses to apologize, and reportedly is hiring lawyers to file a countersuit.

A few more works by Haksar:

A stump-tailed macaque, that's what. This seven-day old lost its mother three days ago at the state zoological park in Guwahati, India.

Rirkrit Radio: As part of his show at the Serpentine (which was blandly panned here), Rirkrit Tiravanija is running a live radio station out of the gallery on Resonance 104.4 FM ("London's first radio art station"). See the when and how of listening here (see the listing for "Please do not turn off the radio if you want to live well in the next 15 minutes.")

Kid-powered: According to BoingBoing, the Colombian sustainability village Gaviotas features a pre-school that has a see-saw disguised as a water pump. Gaviotas, energy independent since 1995, has also made a slew of innovative tools and toys, from a wind-powered musical organ to a solar oven:

• a high pressure solar cooker
• methane burners
• hot-water solar panels
• parabolic solar grain driers
• self-cooling rooftops
• cooling wind corridors
• corkscrewing manual well digger
• variety of highly efficient and durable windmills
• specialized bicycle for the Llanos
• pedal powered cassava grinder (10 hours work done in 1 hour)
• rotating drum peanut sheller
• ox-drawn land graders
• one-handed sugarcane press

Shopdroplifting: Where "droplifting" left off, "shopdropping" is taking over. Just as audio collage artists a few years back "reverse-shoplifted" their CDs into the bins at Sam Goodys and Best Buys across the continent, now artist Ryan Watkins-Hughes is replacing labels on canned foods at grocery stores with those featuring his own photography. Whereas droplifters had no bar codes (which forced stockers on inventory day to apply codes or clerks to arbitrarily assign prices at checkout), Watkins-Hughes leaves the barcode intact so the price can be read. An interesting take on traditional art distribution channels. The artist is looking for others to submit work to be featured on cans. Click here for details.

(Via We Make Money Not Art.)

America's worst greenwashers: A new "helios" logo and a tagline (from "British Petroleum" to "Beyond petroleum") doesn't hide the fact that BP is still in the top 10 list of worst greenwashers (those who give "a positive public image to putatively environmentally unsound practices") published by The Green Life. All ten:

1. Ford Motor Company
2. BP
3. United States Forest Service
4. ChevronTexaco
5. General Motors
6. Nuclear Energy Institute
7. Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers
8. TruGreen ChemLawn
9. Xcel Energy
10. National Ski Areas Association

(Via Sustainablog.)

Musclepower: At The Land, a "laboratory for self-sustainable development" founded by artist Rirkrit Tiravanija outside Chiang Mai, Thailand, a new experiment in alternative power is in the works. Artist Philippe Parreno is creating a Battery House on this off-the-grid rice farm; in order to power laptop computers and, hopefully, host electronic music events, the house will transform the muscle power of water buffalos into electrical energy (originally, the project called for elephants):

In front of them is a structure made of still-inert plastic leaves holding a 20-tonne concrete counterweight, hanging vertically like clothes in a European miners’ locker room. Their job: to lift them patiently, one by one, using a system of cables and pulleys, moving with animal slowness. Thus muscular energy (2,000 w/h) is transferred, stored and released, transformed, by means of a dynamo, into electrical energy. This endless cycle from elephant to structure to gravity and then to energy compresses or frees interior space, in rhythm with the occupation of the Land and the movement of the counterweight platform.

The Land also features other alternative-energy experiments, including biogas developed by the Danish art collective Superflex.

Meanwhile, in Africa, the boundless energy of children provides the power for a new water management system. The Play Pump harnesses the energy of kids playing on a roundabout (or merry-go-round) to transport underground water into holding tanks—around 1400 liters per hour. As the inventor's website says, "Playing on a roundabout has always been fun for children, so there is never a shortage of 'volunteers'."

Musin's:
Two things about the Rove scandal:
1. It's part of a broader problem in the Bush administration about truth-telling. Recall that this whole thing got started when Joe Wilson came back from Niger to privately refute the administration's claim that Saddam Hussein had purchased yellowcake uranium for weaponry. Plame's name entered into it, many say, because Bush and Rove wanted to punish Wilson for going public with his doubts about the yellowcake claims, which Bush repeated in his State of the Union address. The little lie Rove and Co. have been telling--that Rove knew nothing of the Plame leaker--distracts from this bigger lie: one of trumped up WMD evidence that landed us, ultimately, in this war.
2. The affair offers a test of the White House's ethics: while they may have lied through their teeth--about WMD, about when Bush and Blair conspired to go to war, about who blew Plame's cover--they now face that dreaded "waffler" label. Will, as Bush and Scott McClellan promised, the White House fire the leaker? Will McClellan be strung up for his inconsistency?

McClellan in a "bad spot" over Rove: The net's abuzz, at least the lefternmost portion of it, over a just-concluded White House press conference in which press secretary Scott McClellan twisted in the wind over uncharacteristic and relentless questioning by reporters about Karl Rove's outing--by name or by inference--of CIA agent Plame. This exchange followed a question about whether McClellan stood behind his 2003 statement that four Bush insiders, including Rove, assured him they had nothing to do with the leak:

QUESTION: Scott, this is ridiculous. The notion that you're going to stand before us, after having commented with that level of detail, and tell people watching this that somehow you've decided not to talk.

You've got a public record out there. Do you stand by your remarks from that podium or not?

MCCLELLAN: I'm well aware, like you, of what was previously said. And I will be glad to talk about it at the appropriate time. The appropriate time is when the investigation...

QUESTION: (inaudible) when it's appropriate and when it's inappropriate?

MCCLELLAN: If you'll let me finish.

QUESTION: No, you're not finishing. You're not saying anything.

You stood at that podium and said that Karl Rove was not involved. And now we find out that he spoke about Joseph Wilson's wife. So don't you owe the American public a fuller explanation. Was he involved or was he not? Because contrary to what you told the American people, he did indeed talk about his wife, didn't he?

MCCLELLAN: There will be a time to talk about this, but now is not the time to talk about it.

QUESTION: Do you think people will accept that, what you're saying today?

MCCLELLAN: Again, I've responded to the question.

QUESTION: You're in a bad spot here, Scott...

And: Scotty then and now.

Genocide IS news: Last month, the five largest corporate TV networks ran 50 times as many stories about the Michael Jackson trial, and twelve times as many stories about Tom Cruise as they did about the genocide in Darfur. Only one network gave more coverage to the Sudan story than they did to the "Runaway Bride" story. Visit BeAWitness.org to tell the networks the government-backed genocide in Darfur IS news.

Learn more: A commenter points out the blog Sudan: The Passion of the Present, dedicated to "sharing ideas and inspiration on how to stop the genocide in Darfur."

Visit Sustainablog today! Drop by Jeff McIntire-Strasburg's thoughtful Sustainablog starting at 9 this morning: he'll be blogging for 24 hours straight to raise awareness of sustainability issues and to raise some cash for the Earthways Center, part of the Missouri Botanical Gardens in St. Louis. Read posts by guest bloggers from WorldChanging, Enviropundit, Grist, Eyeteeth, and others. Good luck, Jeff.

Russell Simmons: Not lovin' it. Hip hop mogul Russell Simmons, mentioned in this earlier post, will not be helping McDonad's do an urban overhaul on their burgerflipper uniforms, thankyouverymuch. "I am not in talks with them," he protests. "I'm a vegan!"

Mobile mouthpiece: "What would you say, given one free minute of anonymous, uncensored speech?" So asks Ohio State MFA student Daniel Jolliffe with his mobile art project, One Free Minute. Looking a little like a Little Tikes bike trailer mated with a Victrola by Atelier van Lieshout, the sculpture allows cellphone callers to leave one minute of anonymous, free speech that is then broadcast in public spaces. The recordings remain anonymous--caller ID data is purged and both live and recorded calls are randomly selected to be played out of the loudspeaker--and more than 1000 callers have participated, offering an array of free speech samples. The range? One caller decries how "f*&$ing terrifying" the Project for a New American Century is, while another performs the theme from Beverly Hills Cop as if he's a chicken.

Leaker confirmed. Twas Karl Rove who leaked the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame to a Time reporter, according to Newsweek. As Rep. John Conyers blogs, "Remember during the 2000 Presidential campaign when the Republican mantra was that President Bush was going to 'restore honesty and dignity to the White House?' How’s that going?"

Anatomy of a fantasy: "[T]rying to come to an understanding as to [the] origins and true physiological make up" of characters from childhood animations and today, artist Michael Paulus began a series of anatomical drawings of the skeletal systems of Charlie Brown, Hello Kitty, Pikachu, and two dozen other 2D beings. Impressively rendered, the works for me go beyond just a clever exercise into a weird, almost-spiritual place: both about looking beyond surfaces and putting flesh and bone to the products of the imagination.

Japanese rice paddy art: Rice farmers in Inakadate, Japan have created field-sized works of art that feature images of the Mona Lisa and Ukiyoe works by 18th-century masters Sharaku (L) and Utamaro. Best viewed now through mid-August, the fields are created using purple and yellow varieties of rice. More images at the Inakadate village website.

Miscellany:

American Idiot: Green Day, proving that (major label) punk ain't dead, playing "American Idiot" at Live8 in Berlin, July 2. [Lyrics here; video of all Live8 shows here.]

Lego concentration camp: In an age where ends-justify-the-means rightwing pundits trivialize torture at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib as soldiers just "blowing off steam" and "having a good time," perhaps Polish conceptual artist Zbigniew Libera's Lego concentration camp of the late '90s is worth another look.

More free music: The Flaming Lips have released a live CD, The Fearless Freaks, for free mp3 download here.

Compassionate conservatism, courtesy Fox News: Fox News anchor Brit Hume says that his "first thought" on hearing about the London terror attacks that killed 40 or more people was "Hmmm, time to buy" stocks. Just a day earlier his Fox cohort John Gibson mused that, in selecting London for the 2012 Olympic Games, the IOC "missed a golden opportunity" in overlooking Paris: if the games were hosted by the French capital, terrorists could "blow up Paris, and who cares?"

Social-reality street art: In Brasilia, Brazil, Mello gives street art a new meaning--and relevance. See more examples here.

(Via Wooster.)

Gannon's bus seat: front line of the War on Terror. News fauxporter Jeff Gannon sticks it to the London bombers:

Today's terrorist attacks against innocent citizens in London are stark reminders that the War on Terror is indeed global and ongoing. It makes one wonder what would be happening if the front lines weren't in Baghdad.

I'm going to ride the Washington, DC Metro several times today in symbolic solidarity with our allies in Great Britain and defiance of terrorists and their murderous ideology.

One commenter at Gannon's blog asks, "Will you have any particular destination? Or are you simply planning to ride the train back and forth? How will you let your fellow passengers know that you are there to defy terrorists and are not just an ordinary commuter?" Another suggests, "don't forget to read the want-ads all day to show the terrorists who is boss."

DIY news on London blasts: With the death toll from today's terrorist attacks in London passing 30, citizen journalism is providing some of the more urgent, interesting coverage: as Waxy notes, a new Flickr photo pool is starting to move from screen-captures to original photos, and Wikipedia is offering constantly updated news coverage. And then, of course, there are the bloggers (here and here).

[Image: posting at a London school.]

Band-Aid for Africa? Kudos to Live-8 organizer Bob Geldoff, write The True-Cost Economists, for using the concert to put "poverty in Africa squarely back on the international political agenda – something that we consider to be a genuine media coup, worthy of everyone’s recognition." But perhaps the benefit distracts from the real problem:

Rather than bickering over how much money we should dole out to the world’s poor, the G8 big-wigs should be wrestling with the fact that economic justice is impossible under the current model. We need a new economic paradigm. One that eliminates subsidies that prevent African farmers from competing fairly with their northern neighbors. One where we stop burdening people in faraway places with the external costs of the goods we consume so voraciously. One that addresses the social and environmental costs of the way we do business. One based on more comprehensive ways of measuring progress. Until we establish economies that are open, holistic and human scale, hand-outs to Africa will merely serve as a band-aid.

Comments anyone?

Africa blogs: Can anyone suggest African bloggers who are covering the G8 summit well? Here are two interesting sites, written by Americans who served in the Peace Corps in Africa, and a third that's more of a portal, but I'd like to find sites written by authors in African countries.

Black Star Journal

My heart's in Accra...

BlogAfrica

And with a curtsy and a wave, he was off to the ball...

(Via Greg, who calls this Bush's "Ownership Society Skirt.")

Distribution of casualties: The Palm Beach Post is mapping the home states of military deaths in Iraq. Visit the paper's site to click on dots, representing the 1,748 soldiers killed in Iraq, to learn their names, towns, and details of their deaths.

(Via Raw Story.)

Honorin' the dead: Cindy Sheehan, whose 24-year old son Casey died in combat in Iraq, met privately with George W. Bush in June 2004. In a new interview, she says the meeting amplified her anguish. Bush kept forgetting her son's name and called her "Ma" and "Mom," in what she calls a "phony act." She says, "His mouth kept moving, but there was nothing in his eyes or anything else about him that showed me he really cared or had any real compassion at all. This is a human being totally disconnected from humanity and reality. His eyes were empty, hollow shells and he was acting like I should be proud to just be in his presence when it was my son who died for his illegal war! It was one of the most disgusting experiences I ever had and it took me almost a year to even talk about it." From the moment Bush entered the room, Sheehan had a sour taste in her mouth: rather than a hug or handshake, Bush, "in a condescending tone and with a disgusting loud Texas accent," said, 'Who we’all honorin’ here today?'"

(Via Peek.)

The tyranny of the mouseclick: Part game, part digital anthropology, part ergonomic research project, the Institute for Interactive Research's site dontclick.it challenges you to navigate a web page using techniques other than clicking. Wend your way through the page replacing clicks with gestures or a timer, and learn about the history of computer interfaces, see the more than 7,000 "mouse recordings" of cursor movement, and answer the question, "Do you miss the click?" If a new clickless standard can be agreed upon, I wonder how it'll ease cases of carpal tunnel (he typed, with a twinge in his wrist).

(Via Seth Godin.)

But what would it have done to the environment? Vowing no change in the US's stance on global warming—a phenomenon the White House refuses to acknowledge as real—George W. Bush said yesterday that signing onto the Kyoto Protocol would've "wrecked the economy."

Who's buttering Bush's bread? On Bush's reluctance to believe prevailing science on climate change, Norman Baker of the UK's Liberal Democrats said, "Bush is in a phone box with the chief of ExxonMobil as the last of the non-believers." According to OpenSecrets, the oil and gas industry gave Bush nearly $5 million in contributions since 1990.

Deep-phat fry: Having hired a firm to negotiate product-placement for Big Macs in hip-hop songs, McDonald's is now angling to sign on urban fashion designers Russell Simmons and P.Diddy, along with Tommy Hilfiger, Fubu, and others, to turn its employee uniforms into coveted street gear. AdAge reports that the potentially $80-million makeover is meant to "turn employees into walking brand billboards as they circulate among their peers." With more than 30,000 employees, McDonald's is the world's largest youth employer.

Coalition dwindling: Of the 48 "Coalition of the Willing" countries listed on the White House web site in 2003, only 25 still have troops in Iraq today, and according to the Financial Times, on-the-ground troop numbers may plummet further: the UK has drawn up withdrawal plans that could cut British troops in Iraq in half, shifting many of them to Afghanistan.

One-post blog: How many of these must there be on the internet: blogs launched in a fit of optimism that fizzled out after just one post?

Engaged hip-hop, in black & white: "Armed with messages of Black political resistance, Black pride, and opposition to militarization and corporatization, [...] hip-hop's lyrical descendants of the 'fight the power' golden era today are booking concerts in record numbers—far beyond anything imaginable by their predecessors," writes Bakari Kitwana. "Problem is, they can hardly find a Black face in the audience."

Why is it that so-called consciousness-raising hip hop, like that of Boots Riley of The Coup (above), Zion-I, and the Perceptionists, can no longer draw black crowds the way Public Enemy could? While theories abound (read the comments to Kitwana's Village Voice piece), this passage seems interesting:

[Frances Cress] Welsing argued that soon white supremacists wouldn't have to worry about making Blacks seem inferior—they'd just need to keep providing them with inferior education, housing, health care, child care, and the like, and in a generation or two they would be. After 15 years of gangstas and bling, perhaps hip-hop's Black audience has been so inundated with material garbage that they don't want an uplifting message?

Zion, who believes the withering Black audience reflects the diminishing discussion of Blackness in public discourse, thinks so. "I do so many shows in front of mostly white audiences that it's the norm," says Zion. "When I get in front of a Black audience it's like, 'Finally you're here, feel me.' We've done shows in Chicago and São Paulo, Brazil, and it feels good to be in front of our people when they are feeling it. But there are some thugged-out crowds where our message doesn't resonate, and Black folks will say that they aren't trying to hear hip-hop artists remind them of their problems."

Today's climate is indeed a far cry from the African medallion mania of the 1980s. In the academy, we've gone from 1980s discussions of Black studies and Afrocentricity to multiculturalism to current-day debates about post-Blackness and polyculturalism. At the same time, in the arena of mainstream politics we've gone from discussing the collective Black impact of Jesse Jackson's run for president to the individual career successes of Clarence Thomas, Colin Powell, and Condoleezza Rice. In the streets we've gone from the Nation of Islam patrolling housing projects to whites reclaiming Harlem, South Side Chicago, and East Oakland, and Black scholars like Columbia University's Lance Freeman arguing that poor Blacks aren't significantly displaced by gentrification.

Strange bedfellows: The GOP has been wooing the hip-hop crowd. Def Jam Records founder (and a frequent critic of Bush) Russell Simmons recently talked with the head of the RNC in a meeting that ended up being so engaging, Simmons blew off a scheduled get-together with Howard Dean.

Rethinking the Fourth: Celebrating Independence Day ought to include a reread of the truly radical document that got this American experiment started. Read closely:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

[Image: Jasper Johns' Flag, 1954-1955]

Founder of Earth Day dies: Gaylord Nelson, former Senator from Wisconsin, founder of Earth Day, and tireless environmental activist, has died at the age of 89. When Clinton awarded him a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1995, the proclamation read: "As the father of Earth Day, he is the grandfather of all that grew out of that event: the Environmental Protection Act, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act." I encountered him once as a child, then more recently when I asked him to take part in a conceptual art project, which he gamely did. Truly a great American. Rest in peace.

Another Rwanda unfolds:
In 1998, President Bill Clinton addressed survivors of the attempted genocide in Rwanda four years earlier, in which nearly a million people were killed, many hacked to death by machetes:

It may seem strange to you here, especially the many of you who lost members of your family, but all over the world there were people like me sitting in offices, day after day after day, who did not fully appreciate the depth and the speed with which you were being engulfed by this unimaginable terror. The international community, together with nations in Africa, must bear its share of responsibility for this tragedy as well. We did not act quickly enough after the killing began. We should not have allowed the refugee camps to become safe haven for the killers. We did not immediately call these crimes by their rightful name: genocide. We cannot change the past. But we can and must do everything in our power to help you build a future without fear and full of hope.

Watching Hotel Rwanda in the comfort of my living room last night, a cool beer in hand, I was stunned by the callousness of western governments who refused to step in and help a nation with no real reserves of oil, gold, or diamonds. Then I realized that there, in front of my TV, I—and my government—are in the same situation Clinton characterized: we don't fully realize the horror engulfing Africans, and we're failing to act in any meaningful way. In the Darfur region of Sudan, a similar, yet still-smaller scale genocide is going on. Since the start of the conflict, up to 300,00 have died in Darfur and over two million have been displaced from their homes due to a violent civil war. Yet the governments of the west are largely unresponsive. UN humanitarian efforts there are facing a shortfall of $1.3 billion, an amount equivalent to just a week of war in Iraq. For this inaction, history will judge western nations, says UN chief Kofi Annan, as "slow, hesitant, uncaring and that we have learnt nothing from Rwanda."

What does it take for the US to intervene? Will we only step in when there are natural resources or votes to be gained? What are we to make of a president and a Congress dominated by Republicans who tout their Christian values but fail to prevent the death of innocents?

Small ways to help:
Buy the CD The Afrobeat Sudan Aid Project (ASAP), sponsored by True Majority, with 100% of net proceeds going to help reduce violence in Sudan.

Donate to the Genocide Intervention Fund or Human Rights Watch.

Keep up on Darfur news, and news from throughout Africa (the Congo, Sierra Leone, etc.) and don't let these issues fall through the cracks: write to your Congressional representatives and local papers.

Sustainable megamall? There are two words you wouldn't imagine going together. But for Robert Congel they do. He came to a realization a few years back while visiting Normandy beach and "looking at those pure white graves of tens of thousands of kids that died for freedom": ''Today our kids are dying in a war for oil. Petroleum addiction is destroying our country, our economy, our environment." A Bush Republican, he set out to raise $20 billion to create a green megamall called DestiNY USA in Syracuse, New York.

The notion that a gargantuan facility, presumably with Mall of America–sized parking ramps and amenities, can be both a temple of consumerism and a bastion of green thinking may seem preposterous, but Congel makes that claim. He says the mall will create 200,000 jobs, through countless shops and restaurants, 80,000 hotel rooms, a 40,000-seat arena and a Broadway-style theater, not to mention an "extensive research facility for testing advanced technologies and a 200-acre recreational biosphere complete with springlike temperatures and an artificial river for kayaking." More, the mall will be built without using a drop of petroleum, and it'll be completely energy independent. He says the ambitious plan, which will use solar, wind, and fuel cell technology, will bump national solar-electric capacity by 10 percent. How he aims to do it is through massive fundraising, corporate alliances with Intel, Microsoft, Clear Channel Communications, and others, and plenty of tax breaks.

Snapshot of America: Pages 12 and 13A of today's New York Times offer an accidental snapshot of the neocon dream. One page offers the report that the number of wealthy American's who pay no income tax whatsoever jumped 15% in 2002, to one in 431 high-income earners kittying up no money in taxes. One in 33 wealthy Americans paid less than a dime per dollar earned in tax (compared to an average of 13 cents per dollar paid by average Americans). Across the page, another story reveals that governmental secrecy has reached historic highs. A record 15.6 million government documents were classified last year, at the unimaginable cost of $7.2 billion to US taxpayers. No taxes for the ultra-rich, no transparency for the government: benchmarks of Brand Bush.

Karl Rove, Patriot.
The White House said it wasn't involved in a leak that outed a covert CIA agent, Valerie Plame. Then it said whoever blabbed—and risked the life of a long-serving agent by blowing her cover—should be fired and face legal repercussions. Now that it looks like the leaker is none other than this unpleasant looking man (the one on the right), how will the Bushies spin their way out of it? I'm guessing treason—a term previously reserved for war veteran John Kerry and Michael Moore—will conveniently disappear from the wingnut vocabulary. (If exposing covert government operatives isn't giving comfort to the enemy, what is?)

Woman becomes walking pop-up ad: "To build a better future for [her] son," Salt Lake City's Kari Smith took $10,000 from an online casino in exchange for a tattoo of the company's URL on her forehead. Smith auctioned the space on eBay, hoping to put the money toward her son's private school tuition, and bids hadn't topped $1,000 when the Canadian gambling outfit clicked the "buy now" button, ending the auction two days early. While ten grand seems a bit skimpy to me for a face-altering procedure, Smith says, "To everyone else, it seems like a stupid thing to do. To me, $10,000 is like $1 million." Apparently not to everyone else: the casino says it's purchased tattoo space on another forehead, more than 100 arms, legs, chests and backs.

Knitting Machine: To celebrate American Independence Day, artist David Cole will be using heavy construction equipment—a pair of John Deere excavators, a Genie, and 20-foot knitting needles—to knit a massive American flag. When it's completed July 3, the oversized flag, which, according to MASSMoCA's press release "can be seen as both a celebratory gesture of pride and a commentary on America's role in world affairs," will be folded into a traditional triangle roughly the size of a Volkswagen Beetle.

(Via Josh Rubin.)