- No matter what he does for the rest of his career – or his
life for that matter – Jack White can look back on this day and smile. White
has fronted some great bands in his early career, including the White Stripes,
Raconteurs and Dead Weather, but the moment when he opened fire on pop hack and
perpetual fame-seeker Lady Gaga should go down as his finest. White, who is
eccentric to the core, runs his own record label and remains cryptic about the
demise of the White Stripes more than a year after the fact, has been especially
odd over the past year. He dresses like a vintage scarecrow much of the time
and isn’t routinely seen in public for prolonged periods of time, but none of
that matters if he’s sitting down for interviews and planting a verbal dagger
between the eyes of hacks like Gaga. His primary issue wit her seems to be her
obvious lack of authenticity and the resulting deficiencies it causes in her
music. "I
don't think she lives it, because it's all artifice," White explained. “It's
all image with no meaning behind it. You can't sink your teeth into it. It's
very of this age, because that's what people want." As one might infer
from those remarks, White also is not a big fan of the wave of celebrity
culture and get-famous-fast world of reality television that is sweeping the
world like a giant biohazard to humanity. "The goal of modern celebrity is
to make yourself into the lowest common denominator,'" White continued. "Especially
in reality television, you'll see people will go as far as to make a fool out
of themselves just to prove that ... Twitter is the most perfect example of
modern living. I think the only people who should have [Twitter accounts] are
comedians. Because it's all about one-liners." If the idea on the table is
to get rid of Lady Gaga and restrict Twitter accounts to actual comedians, then
White is more of a genius than anyone ever imagined………..
- The universe is even more infinite than anyone realized. Technically
that’s impossible because there is no way for infinity to increase, but don’t focus
on the small details in this case. Shift your gaze to the fact that the Earth’s
solar system is significantly larger than previously known, according to the
exploits of NASA’s Voyager 1 space probe. NASA officials have been claiming for
months that Voyager 1 is nearly there when it comes to interstellar
space as it chugs along on the longest road trip in the history of mankind – without
Funyuns and Mountain Dew, no less. Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 took off 16 days
apart in 1977 and according to NASA, Voyager 1 is now about 11 billion miles
from
the sun. As it progresses on its journey and sends back data, project officials
have begun to realize something surprising. Based on that data alone, most in
the scientific community would agree that Voyager 1 is out of the solar system.
Instead, the probe is very much in the solar system and the Voyager team
believes the region where it is currently traveling is where lines of magnetic
particles from the solar system are meeting particles from interstellar space.
Because the direction of the magnetic lines in the region is the same as the
rest of the system, the project members count this as part of the solar system.
When and only when the the direction changes, Voyager 1 will finally be in
interstellar space. "We believe this is the last leg of our journey to
interstellar space," said project member Edward Stone of the California
Institute of Technology. "Our best guess is it's likely just a few months
to a couple years away. The new region isn't what we expected, but we've come
to expect the unexpected from Voyager." A few months or a couple of years?
Thanks for the specificity, ace. Voyager 2 is on a different flight path and is
presently a few billion miles closer to the sun……….
- The line between news/journalism and the world has always
been a blurry one. How far can a journalist go in creating and capturing news
and where does the line between reporter and human being end? There may not be
an end for one freelance photographer in New York City. Professional picture
snapper R.
Umar Abbasi is at the center of a giant sh*t storm after he took (and the New
York Post published) a now-famous image of a man about to be struck by a New
York subway train. Abbasi took the shot of 58-year-old Ki-Suck Han desperately
clawing at a New York Square subway platform after being shoved onto the tracks
by a man with whom he had been arguing. And the Post ran it with the headline,
"Doomed," with the subhead, "Pushed on the subway track, this
man is about to die." For some peculiar reason, Abbasi is catching heat
from would-be do-gooders who believe that rather than stand by and snap a
picture of a man who was about to die, he should have tried to help. Not only
does Abbasi dispute those arguments, he claims he only took the picture as part
of a failed effort to warn the train conductor. As he tells it, this ass hat
saw a man pushed in front of an oncoming train and his first thought was….wait
for it….to warn the conductor by furiously firing off his camera flash. Really.
"I had no idea what I was shooting. I'm not even sure it was registering
with me what was happening. I was just looking at that train coming,"
Abbasi wrote in a piece that ran in the Post on Wednesday. In his version of
the tale, he didn’t even look at the pictures before returning to the office
and turning his camera's memory card over to police. The images were published
the next day and would-be pundits and media members began blasting Abbasi for
his callousness in the face of certain tragedy. Han later died at the hospital
and a man who has implicated himself in Han's death is in custody, according to
New York City police. What Abbasi failed to explain was whether he is simply
soul-less or just a moron because in the amount of time it took him to get out
his camera and start shooting, he could have at least made an attempt to pull
Han to safety, which couldn’t have been any less effective than what he did
instead. Publishing the photo comes as no surprise for the Post, which once ran
a headline that read, "HEADLESS BODY IN TOPLESS BAR.” Of course, in that
case the photographer didn’t stand idly by as someone was killed and try to sell
everyone on the story that he or she was attempting to help by warning someone
with their camera’s flash………
- Dammit world, how did we let the Danes and Finns kick our
ass again? Oh, and the Kiwis too. Those three nations once again reign supreme
in the court of political and societal corruption, according to the Corruption
Perceptions Index, an annual measure of global corruption compiled by Transparency
International. The list showed little change from last year, when New
Zealand took first place and Denmark and Finland shared second place.
This time around, those three nations shared first place in the rankings as the
world’s least corrupt countries. Denmark is also at the top of nearly every
ranking of happiness among its populace, so maybe there is something to be said
about a lack of corruption and its impact on the masses. Fittingly, the bottom
of the list was stagnant as well, with Somalia, Afghanistan, and North Korea
all tying for 174th, or last place, in this year’s rankings, after North Korea
and Somalia tied for last place in 2011 and Afghanistan was in the bottom five.
Transparency International is a Berlin-based anti-corruption group and the CPI
has become a go-to source for scoring the level of graft and bribery in
most of the world’s countries. TI drew from 13 indexes compiled over the last
year, all of which are either business people opinion surveys or performance assessments from a
group of analysts. In the 2012 index, two-thirds of the 176 countries ranked scored below
50, on a scale from 0 to 100, with 0 being highly corrupt and 100 being perceived
to be very clean. Americans will be happy to know that the U.S. fared slightly
better this year, coming in at 19th with a score of 73, up from 24th place last
year. “After a year of focus on corruption, we expect governments to take a
tougher stance against the abuse of power,” TI Chair Huguette Labelle said.
“The Corruption Perceptions Index 2012 results demonstrate that societies
continue to pay the high cost of corruption.” The one question sure to be
lingering on the minds in many a nations has to be, “What can we possibly do to
ensure that we compete with the Somalis, Afghanis and North Koreans next year?”
Corruption is, after all, the way to make sure illegal and unethical perks and benefits
flow to those who already have plenty of them……….
- It is no secret that the Los Angeles Lakers have been the
biggest disappointment in the NBA so far this season. A team that acquired two
All-Stars, one considered the best defensive player in the league among big
men, now stands at 8-10. One of those stars, 38-year-old point guard Steve
Nash, hasn’t played in more than a month because of a broken bone in his leg.
The other star, Dwight Howard, is converting a career-low 48 percent of his
free throws. A 1-4 start led to the firing of head coach Mike Brown, who was
replaced by Mike D’Antoni and his 7-6 record. Yet it’s the team’s two
established stars who are at the center of the drama, as Kobe Bryant and
long-time running mate Pau Gasol are locked in their own theatrics. Gasol is
battling tendinitis in his knees, but that’s not the reason he was benched for
the closing minutes of two recent games. Gasol has struggled to adapt to
D’Antoni’s offensive system and the coach has responded by sidelining him in
pressure situations at the end of games. In response to the most recent
benching, at the end of a 113-103 home loss to Orlando, Bryant suggested it was
time for Gasol to “put his big boy pants on” and make the necessary adjustments.
Those may not have been the wisest words with trade rumors already swirling
around he ailing Pau Gasol and
Bryant seemed to realize as much when he doubled back and tried to explain the
thinking behind his comments. "I love Pau like a brother," Bryant
said. "I really do. I want him to dig in and be determined, not
discouraged.” Gasol sat out Tuesday’s game in Houston because of his tendinitis
and there is no set timetable for how long he will be out, but his absence
allows the Lakers to push the pause button on the drama for a moment anyhow. So
far, Gasol is averaging 12.6 points and shooting 42 percent from the floor,
both career lows, and both he and D'Antoni have acknowledged that his role is
much different than it has been previously. Those comments suggest that a trade
might be best for both sides and with a thin bench and little quality depth at
any position, the Lakers could very much use the infusion of talent that a good
trade for Gasol would bring.……….
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