Category Archives: Uncategorized
The Secret Lives Of Paintings
James Kerr, aka Scorpion Dagger, makes irreverent GIFs out of Renaissance art. He described his project in an interview this February:
Q: How does your practice relate to collage, or your other pre-GIF art practices?
A: Essentially, I’m using these Renaissance paintings as a palette to draw upon or cut open. So I’ll take a head from a Lucas Cranach the Elder painting, and hand from a Hans Memling painting and put those things together.
Mostly, I’m inspired by the idea of what happens to these types of paintings after a museum closes. I like the idea that the people in the paintings then get on the bus, go home, do the dishes, go to a restaurant. I like to think I’m creating a world for them outside of the museums where you would normally view these pieces of art. I like to think about what the life of…
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Guy toys – really? : Check Out The Military-Grade Stealth Motorcycle The LAPD Bought: LAist
“Our officers have an added tactical advantage while on patrol,” said Officer Steve Carbajal of the LAPD Off-Road Unit in a press release. Among these tactical advantages aside from the quiet engine include the ability to go zero-to-60 in 4.4 seconds and ford water over three feet deep. The bike is designed for off-road use, but can even be used in indoor pursuits down with zero emissions. It has a top speed of 85 MPH.
via Photos: Check Out The Military-Grade Stealth Motorcycle The LAPD Bought: LAist.
black rose
Debunking The Republican Iraq War Liars – ‘Iraq Vet Blasts Romney and Iraq Revisionists With Damning Letter’
Jim Wright writes a long rant and a great one but I’ve only included a very small part.
http://www.stonekettle.com/2014/06/negotiating-with-terrorists.html
Seems someone is ripping him off to make money.
Since I make no $$ form my blog and always give credit, I have no problem reposting.
Again a great rant by an Iraq Veteran Jim Wright.
‘Here’s the piece originally written by Jim Wright for the Stonkette Station’:
“Tragically, all we’vefought for in Iraq, all that 4,500 American lives were shed to gain, is on the cusp, potentially, of vanishing”.
– Mitt Romney, “Ideas Summit,” 6/13/2014
“All we fought for in Iraq is on the cusp of vanishing.
That’s what Mitt Romney says”.
“We fought for. We fought for. We“.
“Oh, so it’s wenow, is it, Mitt”?
“We”.
“I must have missed you over there, but it was a busy place. We. The guy who helped…
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The Adlieh Detention Center: A Living Hell
Not the only nation to abuse expatriate workers but I always expected better from Lebanon and hope someday soon my expectations will be met by a new reality…
“I fell down on my knees, covering my eyes from the bright sunlight that I didn’t see for 12 months, 12 months! Can you imagine!? And the fresh air.” That’s how one migrant described his release from the General ‘Security’ Detention Center in Adlieh. Barbaric would be an apt description of the Adlieh center, a location many of us pass by on a daily basis. Heartless, cruel, unfair, unjust, repulsive. You take your pick.
Formerly an underground parking lot, this detention center is now the home of around 800 migrant workers, refugees and asylum seekers – the detention center’s capacity is 250. According to the Lebanese Center for Human Rights (CLDH), “migrants, asylum seekers and refugees are detained illegally in an underground parking lot where they never see the sunlight and suffer terrible detention conditions for sometimes very prolonged periods of time, with the aim to either punish them…
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Getting Assaulted By A Taxi Driver in Beirut
A Separate State of Mind | A Blog by Elie Fares
It was Sunday June 15th, a few hours before starting my final year of medicine, as I headed to the graduation dinner of colleagues at my university. I took the unfortunate decision to go to the location by a “service,” or the cheap fare for taxis in Beirut. The place was within walkable distance on any given day but I was borderline suited up and it was June in Beirut.
The taxi picked up a 25 year old guy who wanted to go to “Hotel Dieu” and drove onwards. He dropped me off next to Banque Byblos on Achrafieh’s main road, facing Sofil, and I gave him 20,000.
That was mistake #1.
The moment he saw the bill, he started barraging me about how I hadn’t told him that I had such a huge bill with me. I looked at him and replied: “it’s just 20,000. What would you have…
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Wolfowitz’s Noble Lies
An ignoble lie again to keep from being prosecuted as a war criminal or being indicted for fraud.
I tend not to hold the somewhat conspiratorial view that followers of Leo Strauss, the guru of the neocon intelligentsia, actively believe in deceiving the American people in the pursuit of statecraft. Strauss argued that many critical texts in Western civilization were written with an esoteric teaching for the intelligent few, while presenting a less radical and palatable public doctrine for the masses. Hence the Straussian penchant for a noble lie – one that is good for the people to believe but which the elite knows is bullshit. Perhaps the classic example of this is the Straussian support for public religion, while the bulk of them are atheists. For them, religious faith is entirely instrumental – a way to lie your way to social order and cohesion.
In the case of the Iraq war, several untruths were told. Among them: there is no sectarianism in Iraq; it will cost next…
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Soccer: An Immigrant’s Game
It is the only world team game – not an immigrant’s game…
Charles Kenny adds soccer to the list of reasons to support a more open immigration policy, pointing to the aftereffects of a 1995 European Court of Justice ruling that made it easier for players from outside the EU to play for European clubs:
Unsurprisingly, leagues that saw a higher influx of talented players improved: Clubs in the
league won more Europewide competitions. Meanwhile, talented players migrated to teams in strong leagues based in countries that were richer, closer to their home country, and shared colonial ties. That meant the better leagues, like the English Premier League or Spain’s Primera Division, extended their lead over other European leagues in countries such as Denmark and Romania. In this case, talented migration into Europe created greater productivity but also increased inequality. Everyone was better off, but it is true the best leagues benefited the most.
There was unvarnished good news for the countries that the…
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No, ISIS Is Not Al-Qaeda
Evan Perkoski and Alec Worsnop clear up an important misconception:
[C]ontrary to many media reports, ISIS is not a splinter group of AQ. ISIS wasn’t founded by or ever directly a part of AQ; rather, they were affiliates, two groups with close bonds, with one pledging loyalty to the other though at all times maintaining autonomy. This is an important distinction since labeling ISIS a splinter implies AQ factionalism that in reality never existed. Instead, ISIS’s links with AQ, rather than signaling weakness or factionalism, have played a major role in their development by providing access to resources, strategic and tactical guidance, recruits, and an ideology that helped socialize and bind together individuals from disparate backgrounds.
Benjamin H. Friedman also rejects the comparison in terms of the threat ISIS poses (or rather doesn’t pose) to the US:
The idea that we need to fight ISIS because of its potential to use…
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