Monthly Archives for December 2009

"Earth: Too Big to Fail?" by Rebecca Solnit

From TomDispatch.com:

Terminator 2009
Judgment Days in Copenhagen
By Rebecca Solnit

For Isaac Francisco Solnit, born December 17, 2009

It’s clear now that, from her immovable titanium bangs to her chaotic approximation of human speech, Sarah Palin is a Terminator cyborg sent from the future to destroy something — but what? It could be the Republican Party she’ll ravage by herding the fundamentalists and extremists into a place where sane fiscal conservatives and swing voters can’t follow. Or maybe she was sent to destroy civilization at this crucial moment by preaching the gospel of climate-change denial, abetted by tools like the Washington Post, which ran a factually outrageous editorial by her on the subject earlier this month. No one (even her, undoubtedly) knows, but we do know that this month we all hover on the brink.

I’ve had the great Hollywood epic Terminator 2: Judgment Day on my mind ever since I watched it in a hotel room in New Orleans a few weeks ago with the Superdome visible out the window. In 1991, at the time of its release, T2 was supposedly about a terrible future; now, it seems situated in an oddly comfortable past…

Read on at TomDispatch.com

THE KNOWN UNIVERSE

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17jymDn0W6U
The Known Universe takes viewers from the Himalayas through our atmosphere and the inky black of space to the afterglow of the Big Bang. Every star, planet, and quasar seen in the film is possible because of the world’s most complete four-dimensional map of the universe, the Digital Universe Atlas that is maintained and updated by astrophysicists at the American Museum of Natural History. The new film, created by the Museum, is part of an exhibition, Visions of the Cosmos: From the Milky Ocean to an Evolving Universe, at the Rubin Museum of Art in Manhattan through May 2010.

'NURSE NURSE 4' by Katie Skelly (pt. 1/3)

Katie Skelly lives in New York City.  She works full time and is working on an art history M.A. so she does comics whenever she has spare time. Sparkplug distributes the Nurse Nurse series, and she hopes to have the fifth issue out very soon. Her website is calicocomics.com.  Arthur is pleased to present issue 4 of Nurse Nurse, which we’ll serialize in 3 parts.  Here’s pt. 2 and pt. 3!

Previously:  In issues 1-3, interplanetary nurse Gemma is sent to space to help heal atmosphere-poisoned colonists on Venus. She’s attacked by a butterfly farmer who experiments in aphrodisiacs and steals a top secret book, which gets her demoted to a mission on Mars. On the way to Mars, two space pirates, Bandit and Pandaface, hijack her ship and loot it for parts. Gemma discovers a way to escape the pirates but it lands her on a familiar adversary’s ship.

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Today's Autonomedia Jubilee Saint – MAUD GONNE


DECEMBER 20 — MAUD GONNE
Firebrand Irish hermeticist, feminist, revolutionist.

DECEMBER 20, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
UNDERDOG DAY. FAREWELL TO AUTUMN. CHAOS DAY. Eat wontons.
Hindu world: PONGOL OF THE COWS. Sacred animals are sprinkled with
water, saffron, flowers & leaves of sacred plants; their horns are
painted, garlands hung about their necks. With drums & cymbals they
are driven through town with much festivity.

ALSO ON DECEMBER 20 IN HISTORY…
1838 — Edwin Abott, author of Flatland, born.
1865 — Irish feminist, revolutionist Maud Gonne born, Aldershot, Hampshire, England.
1968 — American social activist writer John Steinbeck dies, New York City.
1989 — US troops invade Panama and oust Manuel Noriega, but don’t catch him.
1991 — C.I.A. classifies a task-force report on greater openness as “secret.”

Excerpted from The 2009 Autonomedia Calendar of Jubilee Saints: Radical Heroes for the New Millennium by James Koehnline and the Autonomedia Collective. The 2010 Autonomedia Calender is now available on the Autonomedia site.

Today, 4-7pm, Hollywood: LA Ladies Choir leads free-admission benefit for Children of the Night at Space 15 twenty

treasures_invite-1

LA LADIES CHOIR
presents

TAKE MY TREASURES
all proceeds go to
Children of the Night

4-7pm Saturday December 19

Space15 twenty
1520 Cahuenga Blvd
90028

featuring
SILENT AUCTION: Donated treasures, from Flea’s bass guitar with his original drawings, Bauhaus, Tom Petty, Kevin Willis, Lauren Dukoss, Jess Holzworth, Kime Buzzelli, Alia Penner, Will Lemon III, Billy Idol, Lucky Dragons, original sketches from Where the Wild Things Are film and more to be announced

RAFFLE: Family Bookstore, Amoeba Music, Miranda July, Atherton Lin, Annakim, Dallas Clayton, Manimal Records, Elf Cafe, City Sip Wine Shop, Acupuncture by Leona Marrs, Bedford Falls, Miss KK, Warner Bros. boxsets and dresses from LA Ladies Choir

Plus Baked goods (by Mooi, Trails Cafe, Kevin and Daisy Mae) and a Polaroid Santa Booth!!!!

With DJ Will Lemon III and Ana Alderon

And the LA Ladies Choir performing Christmas Carols!

Poster by Alia Penner

Children of the Night is a private, non-profit, tax-exempt organization founded in 1979. They are dedicated to assisting children between the ages of 11 and 17 who are forced to prostitute on the streets for food to eat and a place to sleep. Since 1979 they have rescued girls and boys from prostitution and the domination of vicious pimps. And they provide all programs with the support of private donations.
More info here: childrenofthenight.org

Map For An Other LA

The Llano Del Rio working group’s “Map For An Other LA” (pictured above) is now available free.

The full-color, two-sided map sites and describes locations that support, dream, act and aid in the creation of an other Los Angeles. Beekeepers, greywater operators, hacker spaces, cooperatives, collectives, art spaces, radical places, gardens, swimming holes, cooking collectives, think tanks etc….

Two ways to get the map:

1) If you live in LA County simply email us your postal address and we’ll drop one in the mail for you free (till postage $ runs out)
Contact llanodelrio(at)gmail.com

2) Maps have been delivered to the following and ever-expanding distribution nodes. Pick up a copy or two at these locations around town:
Machine Project
Farmlab
TOW
Bicycle Kitchen
Bike Oven
Echo Park Film Center
Sea and Space
Materials and Applications
Barf Space

We’ll be expanding our distribution universe (to the valley and Westside especially) so keep an eye out.

Today's Autonomedia Jubilee Saint – PHIL OCHS


DECEMBER 19 — PHIL OCHS
Emblematic American protest folksinger of the Sixties.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5pgrKSwFJE&feature=related

DECEMBER 19, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
Hindu FESTIVAL OF THE GODDESSS ANKRANT. The gods wake up after six
months of sleep. A day for exchanging gifts, feasting and visiting.

Guatemala: FIESTA OF SANTO TOMAS (Dec. 19-25). Celebrated by the
Chichicastenango Indians. Features the flying-pole ceremony: A pole
made from a tall pine is consecrated and erected in the village. Plat-
forms and ropes are attached, dancers climb to the very top and,
attached to ropes coiled around trees, they fly into the air in
ever-widening circles.

ALSO ON DECEMBER 19 IN HISTORY…
1848 — British novelist Emily Bronte dies, Haworth, Yorkshire, England.
1875 — Black educator, historian Carter G. Woodson born, New Canton, Virginia.
1910 — Criminal, gay author Jean Genet born, Paris, France.
1940 — American protest folksinger Phil Ochs born, El Paso, Texas.
1946 — Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh launches war against French.
1968 — Socialist politico Norman Thomas dies, Huntington, Long Island, New York.

Excerpted from The 2009 Autonomedia Calendar of Jubilee Saints: Radical Heroes for the New Millennium by James Koehnline and the Autonomedia Collective. The 2010 Autonomedia Calender is now available on the Autonomedia site.

The Diggers Papers No. 34: "DIGGERS WELCOME"

DiggersPapers34a

DiggersPapers34b

Click on each image to enlarge.

About these documents:
Pretty self-explanatory.

Previously posted Diggers Papers:
http://www.arthurmag.com/contributors/diggers

About this series:
Arthur Magazine is proud to present scans of essential documents produced by and about the San Francisco Diggers, who were in many ways the epicentral actors in the Haight-Ashbury during the epic, wildly imaginative period from late ’66 through ’67. The Diggers’ ideas and activities are essential counter-cultural history, sure, but they are also especially relevant to the current era, for reasons that should be obvious to the gentle Arthur reader.

Most of the documents that we are presenting are broadsides originally published on a Gestetner machine owned and operated in the Haight by the novelist/poet Chester Anderson and his protege/sidekick Claude Hayward, who used the name “Communication Company,” or more commonly, “Com/Co.” According to Claude, these broadsides were then “handed out on the street, page by page, super hot media, because the reader trusted the source, which was another freaky looking hippie who had handed it to him/her.”

Donate
You can be a patron of this series by making a tax-deductible donation to Arthur Magazine via our fiscal sponsor, Fractured Atlas: info here

The Diggers Papers No. 33: "WHAT IS THE DIGGERS?"

DiggersPapers33

Click on image to enlarge.

About this document:
Pretty self-explanatory: “We come to Haight-Ashbury, where many of us gather together, to start a flow of love.”

Previously posted Diggers Papers:
http://www.arthurmag.com/contributors/diggers

About this series:
Arthur Magazine is proud to present scans of essential documents produced by and about the San Francisco Diggers, who were in many ways the epicentral actors in the Haight-Ashbury during the epic, wildly imaginative period from late ’66 through ’67. The Diggers’ ideas and activities are essential counter-cultural history, sure, but they are also especially relevant to the current era, for reasons that should be obvious to the gentle Arthur reader.

Most of the documents that we are presenting are broadsides originally published on a Gestetner machine owned and operated in the Haight by the novelist/poet Chester Anderson and his protege/sidekick Claude Hayward, who used the name “Communication Company,” or more commonly, “Com/Co.” According to Claude, these broadsides were then “handed out on the street, page by page, super hot media, because the reader trusted the source, which was another freaky looking hippie who had handed it to him/her.”

Donate
You can be a patron of this series by making a tax-deductible donation to Arthur Magazine via our fiscal sponsor, Fractured Atlas: info here

HYPER-ADAPTED

from : http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2009/12/17/hyper-adapted/

Synanthropes
http://beefheart.com/walker/lyrics/crow/icecreamforcrow.htm
http://community.zdnet.co.uk/blog/0,1000000567,10007459o-2000331777b,00.htm
“My new favourite word is synanthropy – the study and practice of creating symbiotic relationships between people and animals. Metafilter pointed me at A Vending Machine For Crows, a project by polymath techie Joshua Klein that aims to put some of the hundreds of millions of dropped coins back in circulation. It does this by training crows to realise that if they find coins and take them to the machine, they’ll get food. The benefits of this idea are manifold. Klein posits that if you can get a few crows trained, then the idea will spread naturally throughout the population – and that means that mostly, human intervention can be restricted to seeding the idea and then leaving enough machines around. That makes it very economical – especially if the crows remain unaware of the true market value of the coinage they find. Although I’m sure that economics will take over if the idea catches on; if it’s profitable for the machine operators, then rival devices will appear offering better deals and a wider range of treats – and I do hope crows really are partial to ice cream. Is it perhaps entirely smart to introduce intelligent non-humans into our economy? If this catches on,avian mugging will spread from the seagulls in no time flat.”

Coconuts As Portable Shelter
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/12/15/2771822.htm
“Scientists at the Melbourne Museum have recorded the first case of tool use in an invertebrate animal. The veined octopus selects, stacks, transports and assembles coconut shells as portable armour. “It comes at a cost, carrying these shells in this awkward way and it’s a fantastic example of complex behaviours in what we consider the lower life forms,” he said. They watched the octopuses dig out coconut shells from the ocean floor and empty the shells of mud using jets of water. Dr Finn says it is not unusual for octopuses to live inside coconuts but how it uses the shells is unique. “It gathers them together, it stacks them like bowls, covers its whole body over bowls, lifts them up and then trundles along on its arm tips until a predator comes or there’s a threat,” he said. “Then it closes them over like a ball and hides inside.””

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