- Could someone please help the Library of Congress out? No, not with the threat of a government shutdown that could derail the library’s work. That threat has been averted for now and a much bigger threat is the library itself, which is once against selecting sound recordings for preservation in its archives. On Wednesday, Librarian of Congress James H. Billington announced 25 new additions to the ninth annual National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress, a collection of cultural, artistic and historical recordings the government wants to ensure will always be available to the American public. The new selections cover a wide time frame, spanning the years 1853-1994, beginning with what are believed to be the first recorded sounds. Their inclusion brings the total number of preserved recordings to 325. On the surface, it’s a great concept because even with the digital revolution having overtaken music and very little chance of any worthwhile song ever being lost completely, preserving copies of original recordings is always a nice backup plan. However…….let’s just say the recordings the library has chosen to preserve aren’t exactly the finest musical fare. Among the selections are a bootleg recording of a Mort Sahl stand-up concert, Tammy Wynette's "Stand by Your Man," Henry Mancini's theme for 1950s TV detective drama Peter Gunn, Edward Meeker's "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" from 1908, Al Green's "Let's Stay Together"; the Western classic "Tumbling Tumbleweeds" from the Sons of the Pioneers and performances by Nat "King" Cole, Les Paul, Blind Willie Johnson, Steely Dan, Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band and De La Soul. Who made these regrettable choices while leaving others - Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Aerosmith, the Beatles, the Clash, the Ramones, etc. - on the outside looking in? Billington, that’s who. As per the terms of the National Recording Preservation Act of 2000, the Librarian, with advice from the Library's National Recording Preservation Board, is assigned tasked each year with selecting 25 recordings that are "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant" and at least 10 years old. Additional help comes from online submissions from the public and from the NRPB, which comprises leaders in the fields of music, recorded sound and preservation. "Songs, words and the natural sounds of the world that we live in have been captured on one of the most perishable of all of our art media," Billington said. "The salient question is not whether we should preserve these artifacts, but how best collectively to save this indispensable part of our history." Once a song is selected, the library identifies and secures the best existing version of each recording on, which are then housed in the Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation in Culpeper, Va. In total, the library’s Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division's collections include nearly 3 million sound recordings. Should anyone want to help avoid a similarly awful selection of music for next year’s registry, the library is now accepting nominations at the NRPB website…………
- Since it doesn’t appear LeBron James will be winning an NBA championship any time soon, he may as well take a run at winning a title in another sport - soccer. As part of his push to become a “global icon” and the first black billionaire, James is partnering with the owners of the Boston Red Sox for a long-term deal to
secure marketing and sponsorship opportunities that includes ownership of a small piece of Liverpool FC, one of the world's most famed soccer teams and a longtime marquee franchise in the English Premier League. James and the management company he helped create, LRMR, inked the deal with Fenway Sports Management. "I can't even explain the level of excitement that we have right now," James' manager and LRMR CEO Maverick Carter stated. "As far as my business career goes, it's one of the most exciting times. And the opportunity for growth for us is huge. The guys at FSM understand it too and they probably see it even more than we do." James and Carter - childhood friends - have been familiar with FSM owners John Henry and Tom Werner for some time and the relationship came to be through mutual acquaintances with Berkshire Hathaway -- billionaire Warren Buffett's company. Of course, the deal is ironic because James is a diehard New York Yankees fan. "It's strictly business. ... It's very humbling," James joked. The results of the deal, however, are no joke. FSM, which handles the marketing for the Red Sox, Liverpool and Roush Fenway Racing, will now handle James, too. "What FSM does for Roush Fenway, Liverpool and the Red Sox, we will now do for LeBron James," FSM president Sam Kennedy said. "We will aggressively pursue business opportunities for him." Teaming with FSM will help James take another step toward the global icon status he so desires - some may argue more than he desires being one of basketball’s all-time greats - and give him a footprint in another corner of the globe. Curiously, Fenway Sports Group’s acquisition of Liverpool for $488 million was the key to its deal with James. "Without purchasing Liverpool, we never would have been able to have this conversation," Werner explained. Never underestimate the draw of one of the most valuable soccer franchises in the world and its 18 top division championships to an über-talented but killer-instinct-lacking NBA star who has never won so much as one Finals game, apparently. "Eighteen championships," James mused. "I see myself trying to do the same things they have." On the same day his agreement with FSM was announced James and LRMR also formally launched his cartoon series on YouTube, "The LeBrons." Now if he didn’t have those pesky playoffs to distract him from his quest for global business domination…………
- Way to man up, Iceland. When you face a $5 billion debt and other nations are counting on you to pay what you owe, the one thing you want to make sure to do is hold a vote on whether to approve a plan to repay that debt, with most observers predicting that the plan will be rejected by voters. Yet there were Icelanders, voting on Saturday on whether debts to Britain and the Netherlands. The vote is on an agreement to repay a $5 billion debt incurred after Britain and the Netherlands repaid depositors who had lost money in online savings accounts. Iceland is involved because the "Icesave" accounts were run by Landsbanki, one of three Icelandic banks that collapsed in 2008. Putting money into something called an “Icesave” account should have been a tip-off about their stability, but that’s hindsight now. Iceland’s refusal to pay its debts up to this point has strained the small North Atlantic island nation and the two nations seeking repayment. Icelanders have been reluctant to pay as their economy went into deep recession amid the bank crisis and their position has not changed even though Icelandic lawmakers in February backed the repayment plan. President Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson refused to sign the bill, leading to today's referendum. Recent polls have shown that between 52 and 57 percent of voters oppose the deal. Government officials insist the current proposal is better than one overwhelmingly rejected in March 2010, but those assurances have done little to assuage voters. Resentment over having to assume the debts of banks whose executives are still living wealthy, privileged lifestyles despite their companies’ failure is high and the odds of passing this measure remain low. Prime Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir made a final attempt to curry favor for the measure Thursday, saying said a 'no' vote would cause economic uncertainty for "at least the next one to two years." If the vote goes as expected and Icelanders reject the deal, the dispute could end up in a European court, a solution likely to be even costlier for all involved. "We now have the option to settle this unfortunate affair with dignity and honor, or to embark on a new journey into uncertainty," Finance Minister Steingrimur Sigfusson said in an interview with Iceland's state broadcasting organization late on Friday. That may be the minister’s opinion, but his constituents seem to feel differently…………
- Could there be something more effective than drugs and medication when it comes to reducing the intensity and perception of pain? And could that something be inside a person’s own mind? Research conducted by Robert Coghill, a neuroscientist at Wake Forest Baptist Medical School in North Carolina, has suggested that meditation can significantly reduce a person’s perception of physical pain and those effects could extend beyond a person’s own psyche. Study participants trained to perform a type of meditation called focused attention and MRI exams monitored their brains while they performed it. The scans showed that areas of the brain typically activated by pain were altered - often significantly - while subjects engaged in the thought-controlling exercise. "So it’s not just some sort of mumbo-jumbo. It’s doing real things in our brain," said Coghill, who admitted to doubting meditation’s supposed benefits prior to the research. Wake Forest researchers recruited 15 healthy subjects who had never meditated for the study and had them attend four 20-minute classes to learn focused attention. The idea of focused attention is to create mindfulness meditation in which people concentrate on their breathing and let go of distracting thoughts and emotions. Coghill and his team examined participants’ brain activity before and after the four days of meditation training using an advanced form of MRI imaging that captures longer-duration brain processes better than a standard MRI scan. During the scans, researchers placed a heat device on participants’ right legs to heat a small area of their skin to 120 degrees Fahrenheit, a temperature most people find painful, over a five-minute period. Subjects reported a drop in two pain sensations measured — on average, 40 per cent for intensity and 58 per cent for unpleasantness - when the pain stimulus was applied during meditation, the researchers report in a paper published in this week’s issue of the Journal of Neuroscience. Although the decrease in pain varied from subject to subject, with reductions in pain intensity ranging from 11 to 70 percent, all 15 participants reported a decrease. "So that’s really a whopping big effect," Coghill observed. "It was very surprising to me because I’ve never done anything with meditation before. If anything, I was fairly skeptical about it." A cynic might contend that measuring one’s perception of pain is evidence of nothing more than a psychological effect created by the meditation, but Coghill’s team used additional MRI scans to prove that the effects weren’t all in participants’ minds. They discovered reduced activity in a number of brain areas while people were meditating, among them the primary somatosensory cortex, an area critical to the body’s ability to perceive the location of a painful stimulus, as well as its intensity. "We detected a really robust activation of that area while subjects were not meditating," said Coghill. "However, when participants were meditating during the scans, activity in this important pain-processing region could not be detected." That lack of activity could be due to increased activity in the anterior cingulate cortex, anterior insula and the orbito-frontal cortex, regions of the brain that shape how it builds an experience of pain from nerve signals coming from elsewhere in the body. Coghill cautioned against applying the findings to all sufferers of chronic pain, but believes the findings suggest meditation could hold promise in pain management. The only people not celebrating this revelation have to be stoners, er, medicinal marijuana enthusiasts who are fighting to legalize the hippie lettuce across this great nation…………
- For anyone looking to attend college and not die of lung cancer due to secondhand smoke before the age of 40, the University of Massachusetts-Amherst is a school that should be high on the list. The university’s faculty senate Thursday afternoon voted for a campus wide smoking ban that covers literally every inch of university property. Faculty, students and staff will be prohibited from smoking anywhere on campus or in their cars while driving on campus, with the ban going into effect by the summer of 2013. The senate did the right thing despite a disturbing number of loser smokers who showed up to the hearing to voice their opposition during the vote. These misfits believe the ban is a violation of their rights and will be difficult to enforce, with student Kelly Jo Fuller saying, “I think that people are going to continue to smoke. I think more people will be pushed to smoke inside of their rooms, which does create a fire hazard." Hey K. Jo, they have a really nifty tool to curb smoking in rooms and other indoor spaces and I’m guessing that UMass-Amherst has some of these technological marvels known as smoke detectors. Listen to the wisdom of faculty health council member, Wilmore Webley, who pointed out "on any university campus you're walking in and out of buildings and you're walking through a cloud of smoke. Second hand smoke kills nearly 50,000 Americans every year." The truth in those words resonates with anyone in a cold-weather campus who has ever exited a building in freezing temperatures only to be engulfed in a flock of leathery-faced, green-skinned, hacking, wheezing smokers huddling in a circle over their cancer sticks looking for a nicotine fix despite the fact that it’s 17 degrees outside. The only real complaint anyone should have about the smoking ban is that it doesn’t go into effect until July 1, 2013. Barring a decision to enforce it sooner, salivating over the potential penalties for students or faculty who violate the ban will have to tide all us non-smokers over………
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