Worth checking out...

MUSIC: Germans Love David Has... I Mean Johnny Cash: "I've just heard the most bizarre version of 'Space Oddity' since The Langley Schools Music Project:

For the past few years, producer Jennifer Sharpe has amassed a small collection of what she likes to call 'foreign tongue recordings.' They're versions of hit songs from the American charts, sung by the original artists, usually in German, Italian or French.



The singers learned the lyrics phonetically, line by line, taught by a language coach. Sharpe says the songs were recorded in a time when English-language songs had a tough time making it in Europe.

I don't know much about the German language, but I'm pretty sure the Beatles butchered it unmercifully.

(Written by: Cigarette)

"

(Via SuicideGirls: News Wire.)

I just discovered information about the Choose Your Adventure Book Inside UFO 54-40 - a clear precursor to the Sliders TV series, and one of the gems of the CYOA series.

Apparently the book had an Easter Egg...

/me wants it.

Soft Power.

POLITICS: Iraq’s Sergeant Sheik: "U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Dale Horn managed to earn himself the unlikely title of ‘Sheik’ in Iraq. Here’s how he did it.

Late last year a full-blown battle between insurgents and U.S. and Iraqi forces had erupted, and U.S. commanders assigned a unit to stop rocket and mortar attacks that regularly hit their base. Horn, who had been trained to operate radar for a field artillery unit, was now thrust into a job that largely hinged on coaxing locals into divulging information about insurgents.



Horn, 25, a native of Fort Walton Beach, Fla., acknowledges he had little interest in the region before coming here. But a local sheik friendly to U.S. forces, Mohammed Ismail Ahmed, explained the inner workings of rural Iraqi society on one of Horn's first Humvee patrols.



Horn says he was intrigued, and started making a point of stopping by all the villages, all but one dominated by Sunni Arabs, to talk to people about their life and security problems.



Moreover, he pressed for development projects in the area: he now boasts that he helped funnel $136,000 worth of aid into the area. Part of that paid for delivery of clean water to 30 villages during the broiling summer months.



Mohammed, Horn's mentor, eventually suggested during a meeting of village leaders that Horn be named a sheik.



Some sheiks later gave him five sheep and a postage stamp of land, fulfilling some of the requirements for sheikdom. Others encouraged him to start looking for a second wife, which Horn's spouse back in Florida immediately vetoed.

(Written by: Michael_J_Totten)

"

(Via SuicideGirls: News Wire.)

Here's a question from this. Does the ionosphere block frequencies in the 2.4Ghz range? If one can reach 125miles with WiFi equipment, perhaps communications with satellites in Low Earth Orbit may be possible with the same equipment.

TECHNOLOGY: 125 Miles of Wireless: "Last year at Defcon, four kids from Ohio cobbled together scavenged satellite dish equipment, loaded it onto a truck, and dragged to the desert outside Las Vegas to see how far they could send an unamplified wireless signal. They set the record at 55.1 miles, and on the last day of the conference when they stepped up to accept their award, one of them jokingly asked if anyone wanted to buy their equipment so they could get home.



This year, the same four friends loaded up even more gear and set out for the desert again, with the intention of shattering their record... which they did. They shot a decent wireless signal almost 125 miles into the desert, across the border into Utah.

Contestants had to establish an 802.11b or 802.11g Wi-Fi link using two laptops with home-brewed or commercial antennas, and see how far apart they could place the computers and still get a connection with or without amplification.



The team, iFiber-Redwire, competed for the second time in the Wi-Fi shootout contest last weekend at the DefCon hacker conference here, and achieved a 124.9-mile unamplified connection from atop a mountain in Nevada and a small mound in Utah. (Wired magazine helped sponsor the contest.)



That was several dozen miles farther than the 55.1-mile link that won them the contest last year. They maintained the connection for three hours.



Ben Corrado, Justin Rigling, Andy Meng and Brandon Schamer, all 19 and 20 years old and hailing from Ohio, were hoping to demolish a 192-mile record set by an amplified air-to-ground link in 2003, but were limited by terrain and time.

Even though they had some sponsorship this year, the team was plagued with problems. One of their laptops died in the desert and would only function if held upside-down. Their path to their destination for the shot was blocked by a forest fire. While rigging up their gear, one of the teammates fell from a scaffold and broke his leg.



That's some pretty amazing stuff from young engineers. I can't wait to see what this team is doing in a few years.

(Written by: Shalome)

"

(Via SuicideGirls: News Wire.)

MUSIC: Sigur Rós Song Title Translations for New Album: "Sigur Rós will release two songs, 'Saeglopur' and 'Glósóli', from their upcoming new album, Takk, on August 16th as downloads on a new site (not launched yet). 'Glósóli', however, will not be available for download in the U.S. for perhaps five minutes, possibly less, depending on P2P upload speeds. Takk will be released on September 13th.



Meanwhile, here are translations of the new album's song titles:

1. 'Takk' = Thanks

2. 'Glósóli' = Glowsun

3. 'Hoppípolla' = Hopping into Puddles

4. 'Med Blódnasir' = I've Got a Nosebleed

5. 'Sé Lest' = I See a Train

6. 'Sæglópur' = Lost at Sea

7. 'Mílanó' = Milan

8. 'Gong' = Gong

9. 'Andvari' = Zephyr

10. 'Svo Hljótt' = So Quietly

11. 'Heysátan' = The Haystack

As we reported earlier, the lyrics for this album are in an actual language, Icelandic. Hopefully someone will take the time to translate those as well when the album is released.

(Written by: Keith)

"

(Via SuicideGirls: News Wire.)

Bass culture: "In the comments section to yesterday's entry I quote an article in Monday's Guardian in which Julian Baggini and other philosophers examine imaginary scenarios designed to present typical modern problems and paradoxes. I particularly liked the first example, in which a 'cosmopolitan' called Saskia is annoyed that a white waiter brings her poppadoms in an Indian restaurant, because she wants to be multicultural herself but prefers the wait staff in the 'exotic' restaurants she visits to remain monocultural. 'Saskia highlights one of the great inconsistencies of contemporary western liberalism,' comments David Goodhart. 'The Canadian scholar Eric Kaufmann calls it asymmetrical multiculturalism, meaning that minority groups should express their ethnicity while dominant ones should transcend theirs.'

I usually refer to 'asymmetrical multiculturalism' as the strange collusion between liberal internationalists and conservative nationalists. Marxy put it rather more bitchily in a debate we were having yesterday about the meaning of a swastika he saw on a Harakjuku fashion-punk: 'I'm against right-wing politics, Momus is for, as long as they aren't Western peoples.' (My counter-argument was that there's nothing inherently right wing about preserving national cultural differences: artists, museum curators and restauranteurs do it as well as right wing bigots. What's more, the punk in question was decontextualizing a foreign symbol; he was more like the non-Christian Japanese women who wear crosses around their necks than a rabid nationalist.)

(Via Click opera.)

I feel sorry for all of you suckers passing your breaktime huddled around a cold exterior fire escape door shotgunning a cigarette before returning to the grind.



(Kt had this picture taken in Maui.)

Added to the list.

New World of Wine Stores: "

Navigating a wine store can be as difficult as trying to walk against traffic in Times Square. Aisle after aisle of labels that might as well be written hieroglyphic codes and cramped little spaces, which are almost begging you to knock a bottle off the shelf, is enough to drive you to drink (hmmm…coincidence or marketing strategy?). Well, times they are a changing - Discovery Wines, a unique and innovative wine store in Alphabet City, is setting out to change the face, or should we say interface, of wine stores.

The second you walk into Discovery Wines you are aware that this isn’t your typical wine shop. The bright modern space feels welcoming and airy – baby stroller and dog friendly – but what really separates Discovery Wines from any other place we have been are the touch screen panels around the store. These touch screens are like having your own personal sommelier guide you through the place. They give out information on wine based on the way we drink wine – a crazy concept. Let’s say you are cooking a chicken dish and are looking for a wine to pair it with – the amazing touch screen has an answer. Or suppose your are feeling a little crazy and are looking for an exciting red wine from Turkey for under $10 – the amazing touch scene has 4 options. Or the best feature yet, let’s just say the green label with the cute little ducks catches your eye, just walk it over to the amazing touch screen to scan and it will tell you what it tastes like, what foods to pair it with and even about the 16 brothers that picked the grapes off of the south side of the hill.

Ellisa Cooper, one of the owners of Discovery Wines, says ‘their mission is to fix what’s wrong with wine stores today.’ Some of the ways they have achieved this is through bright open spaces, offering lesser-known affordable wines (70% of the wines are $20 or less) and of course through those amazing screens. And all the time you save from not aimlessly wondering around the store can be spent at their wine bar, where they offer daily tastings.

We are certainly entering into a new era in the world of wine. It is no longer some esoteric, unapproachable subject. It’s fun, accessible and relaxed. The world of wine is getting a much overdue facelift– and we think it looks pretty amazing.

Discovery Wines, 10 Avenue A between Houston and 2nd Street, (212) 674-7833

"

(Via Gothamist.)

Yes.

MUSIC: Christopher Lee: Saruman the Metal: "What do you do for an encore after a lifetime spent playing film badasses like Dracula (ten times), Saruman, and a Star Wars Sith Lord? Something that celebrates horror, Tolkien fantasy, and science fiction: metal. And so, 82 year-old actor Christopher Lee will perform at the upcoming Earthshaker Festival in Geiselwind, Germany.

He will sing with two bands, Manowar and Rhapsody, according to concert organisers.



Lee will be accompanied by a live orchestra and a choir and will perform alongside heavy metal bands such as Grave Digger, Dragonlord and Forces of Evil.

Suggested name for Lee's band: Man-flesh.



(via brooklynvegan)

(Written by: Keith)

"

(Via SuicideGirls: News Wire.)

I'm so trying this tomorrow.

Elevator hacking: "

Calling this a hack is way too generous, but TheDamnBlog has a little tip for getting the most out of your next
elevator ride. Apparently lots of elevators have an express mode that lets you override everyone else’s selections and
go straight to the floor you’re going to. You just press ‘Door Close’ and the button for your floor at the same
time. Should work on most Otis elvators, as well as a few other models that are out there, but don’t blame us when you
accidentally go plunging to your death (blame TheDamnBlog, if you must).



[Via Digg]

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© 2005 Weblogs, Inc.

"

(Via engadget.com.)

I once picked Mr. Kernaghan up from the airport back during the activist late nineties at Michigan. He's a good man.

In the post just below,...: "

In the post just below, I linked to an article about Charles Kernaghan, a man who spends his life shaming big corporations over their use of child labor and sweat shop labor in the products they have made overseas. Over at his site, Matt Yglesias responded with the standard, but quite powerful, argument that we in the West (or the developed world) often project unrealistic and even harmful expectations on to wages and labor practices in developing countries.

So for instance, rotten working conditions for far under a dollar an hour may be bad. But the conditions may be less onerous and the pay at least marginally more generous than what some of these people would otherwise be making in the agricultural sectors of their national economies. And maybe that's why the company owners are able to get people to work at what seem to us to be inhumane conditions. (As a general matter, people in the West underestimate the sheer wretchedness of agricultural labor and the endemic nature of rural poverty.)

In any case, that's the argument. And while I think it somewhat discounts the related issues of rural overpopulation and mechanization, on balance it's a strong argument.

There is one thing, however, that this line of reasoning misses: political violence. Which is, after all, the grand-daddy of extra-economic inputs.

You can't make a solid argument that wages in other countries have found their natural level if one of the major 'inputs' is organized political violence to keep wages low and labor activism inert.

To put it more concretely, one part of a real market in labor is the ability for people to protest conditions, either actively (through organizing) or passively (through quitting or refusing to work). But if people who try to form labor unions are murdered then that whole theory falls apart.

This certainly doesn't solve the thicket of questions about globalization and third-world economic development. Nor does it invalidate the broader argument Matt is making. But on this particular point I think it makes clear that we're dealing with more than invisible hands.

"

(Via Talking Points Memo.)

Let me put extra emphasis on this New York Moment:

I feel very proud that God put me to walk that street this morning and just to go get a beer and get some chips and to save her.

Baby in a Gift Bag Found in Brooklyn: "

A newborn baby girl was found in a gift bag that was hanging on a chain link fence in Brooklyn. The girl, about a week or so old, is in stable condition, but the residents in Bushwick who found the baby were surprised that someone could leave the baby this way. There were a few interesting quotes. Karen Vaughan, who found the baby while heading to a store for cigarettes at 4AM, told the NY Times, 'I was like, 'Yo, look, a baby.'' Another man, Calvin Johnson, who also found the baby, told the Daily News, 'I'm very distraught. But I feel very proud that God put me to walk that street this morning and just to go get a beer and get some chips and to save her.' Another resident told the Times, 'I'd like to give [the mother] a nice beating.' Police are looking for the mother, and Brooklyn DA Chester Hynes emphasized that babies should be taken to 'any firehouse, police station, or hospital...The baby will be okay and no questions will be asked.'

Photography by Newsday

(Via Gothamist.)