Manufactured Landscapes

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Nickel Tailings #34

A film following photographer Edward Burtynsky through the making of his recent project Manufactured Landscapes opens today in New York. This is director Jennifer Baichwal’s second documentary covering a photographer. She also directed The True Meaning of Pictures on Shelby Lee Adams‘ Appalachia. The word invariably used to describe this film is haunting… and indeed it is. I look forward to seeing how she has covered Burtynsky.
Heading East’s Raul Gutierrez

The photos, and the film, treat the massive disruption to our environment being created in the developing world as it goes about taking care of the dirty work which we in the developed world no longer care to see bespoiling our own frontiers.

Bacon in China

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Pawn is a fan of Francis Bacon (as written before on these pages) and was surprised to find the image above in a recent collection at Michael Wolf’s web site:
MICHAEL WOLF | PHOTOGRAPHY | HONGKONG
This is a copy of one of Bacon’s more famous paintings from a series on Pope Innocent X (1953):

Image:Study after Velazquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X.jpg – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Having seen the orignal in person some months back, I am tempted to order a copy from China (see Heading East).

Or is that the other way around?

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reddragon.jpg

From The Caucus blog, over at The New York Times we get a story about Nelson Warfield joining Fred Thompson’s not-quite-a-campaign team. The story closes with this graph (emphasis mine):

Mr. Warfield has also emerged in this campaign season as one of the more pungent critics of Rudolph W. Giuliani, one of the Republican presidential candidates, and he brings to the Thompson campaign a history that will surely come in handy as the race increases: One of Mr. Warfield’s earliest jobs was as a senior adviser to Ronald Lauder when he ran an unsuccessful primary campaign against Mr. Giuliani for the New York Republican mayor nomination in 1989. Mr. Warfield is known for having a long memory and a sharp tongue.
Giuliani Critic Joins Team Thompson – The Caucus – Politics – New York Times Blog

So, while many people would value a long memory and a sharp tongue, there are others who prefer a sharp memory and a long tongue. Where do you line up on this hot topic?

These Things Snowball

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money-hands.jpg

Pawn’s old buddy Dave has some interesting comments to make about Congressman WIlliam Jefferson’s indictment over at the 100 Word Rant:

They found 90 thousand bucks in Bill Jefferson’s freezer. That’s slightly less than Bob Byrd’s maid normally finds between the sofa cushions. A 90 grand tip would be an insult to Dubya after giving some Halliburton exec’s wingtips one of his forked-tongue shoeshines. All Congressmen are traditionally assumed to be utterly corruptible, so why go after the gentleman from Louisiana? Let’s just say the reason starts with “n” and rhymes with “we grow.” While I have yet to peruse the entire 16-count indictment against “Dollar Bill” Jefferson, I’m pretty sure I’ll find the word uppity in there somewhere.
100 word rant: these things snowball

You tell ’em, Dave!

Rags to Riches

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I was all set to write a speculative piece, wondering how long before people started to project the Rags to Riches victory in today’s Belmont Stakes as a metaphor for Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Presidential race, but I’m already too late for that. Here are some examples. First, from The Huffington Post, (2 hours ago):

Rags to Riches, despite having the historical odds stacked against her, is considered both exceptional and a real threat to her male counterparts. It is tempting to draw comparisons to Hillary Clinton’s status as the lone female presidential candidate
Glynnis MacNicol: It’s a Horse Race! – Politics on The Huffington Post

Or here, from Newsday (37 minutes ago):

“It makes sense to me,” said Diane Wells, 61, who was wearing a white straw cowboy hat. “It’s like a lot of women are going to vote for Hillary Clinton.”
Though not the same type of pioneer as Clinton, Rags to Riches was bucking some significant history when she became the first Filly to win Belmont in 102 years. The last filly to win the race was hotwalkerTanya in 1905. The only other female champion was Tanya, who won it in 1867.
The Belmont scene: Feminine mystique | Newsday.com

Oh well, it’s off to the races!

Wit, indeed, and new life

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kirlian-fingerprints.jpg

Just found this on /.
MIT has demonstrated power transfer without wires. Many of us may recognize this as something Nicola Tesla did a century ago, but who’s counting:

Realizing their recent theoretical prediction, they were able to light a 60W light bulb from a power source seven feet (more than two meters) away; there was no physical connection between the source and the appliance. The MIT team refers to its concept as “WiTricity” (as in wireless electricity). The work will be reported in the June 7 issue of Science Express, the advance online publication of the journal Science.
Goodbye wires… – MIT News Office

This seems to be a big day for proprietary claims on obvious prior art. J. Craig Venter and his institute are trying to patent life:

A research institute has applied for a pat­ent on what could be the first largely ar­ti­fi­cial or­gan­ism. And peo­ple should be al­armed, claims an ad­vo­ca­cy group that is try­ing to shoot down the bid. The idea of own­ing a spe­cies breaches “a so­ci­e­tal bound­ary,” said Pat Mooney of the Ot­ta­wa, Canada-based ETC Group, which is asking the pat­ent ap­pli­cants to drop their claim. Creat­ing and own­ing an or­gan­ism, he added, means that “for the first time, God has com­pe­ti­tion.”
First patent claimed on man-made life form, and challenged

Darn, why didn’t we think of that?!?

A Good Day Not To Work At Starbucks

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The Long and Winding Road

In 13,728 Stores

Over a span of 329,472 Hours

Or 19,768,320 Minutes

10 Million Customers were aurally assaulted, so ABC News told us last night, in their reporting on the full frontal marketeering perpetrated by Starbucks yesterday. As has been well reported on, blogged on, etc., Starbucks has released the first album on their new “Hear” music label; Paul McCartney’s latest, “Memory Almost Full.”

Pawn is a fan of McCartney — The first real rock-n-roll album I purchased was “Let It Be” on its original Christmas release, oh so many years ago. But this is going too far. We fear the day when other marketeers decide to start their own labels and assault their customers, and employees, with non-stop repeating loops of aging rock stars.

Yesterday Pawn read the June 4th profile, in The New Yorker Magazine, of McCartney. A very good piece. Here is an interesting excerpt:

His new record includes a song called “That Was Me,” an upbeat rock tune on which he demonstrates that his voice is still capable of startling clarity and range. The song contains a verse about his Beatle days: “That was me / Seathing cobwebs / Under contract / In the celler / On TV / That was me!” I mentioned that the song seems to express amazement at the life he has led.

“That’s exactly it, I am amazed,” he said. “How could I not be? Unless I just totally blocked it off. There were four people in the Beatles, and I was one of them. There were two people in the Lennon-McCartney songwriting team, and I was one of them. I mean, right there, that’s enough for anyone’s life. And there was one guy who wrote ‘Yesterday,’ and I was him. One guy who wrote ‘Let It Be,’ ‘Fool on the Hill,’ ‘Lady Madonna’ — and I was him, too. All of these things would be enough for anyone’s life. So to be involved in all of them is pretty surprising. And you have to pinch yourself. That’s what that song is about.”

You’ve gotta love how he can brag and not seem immodest at the same time. How rare it is to hear someone speak proudly, and yet reverently, about their own accomplishments, and not come off sounding like they’re full of themselves.

Just to make this complete, reading this at a Chinese restaurant, as I got to these paragraphs, the song “Hey Jude” came on the Muzak!

That’s just freaky!

Long View or Short Sighted?

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Much has been made about the important role that the situation in Iraq will play in the upcoming presidential election. Take, for example, this excerpt from CNN’s blog from last night:

We learned from this debate what the central issue is going to be in the 2008 general election campaign. Republicans will argue that leaving Iraq too soon will increase the threat of terrorism in the United States. Democrats will argue exactly the opposite – that staying in Iraq increases the terrorist threat.
CNN.com – CNN Political Ticker Tonight’s headline? The sparks didn’t fly «

But given that even highly partisan Republican leaders are calling for a change in course in Iraq, and that the September time frame seems to be accepted wisdom, will the decision of staying or leaving really be current much longer?