More death in Darfur…
KHARTOUM (Reuters) – Insurgents killed three Sudanese policemen in an ambush in the country’s Darfur region, a police chief said on Wednesday.
Category Archives: News
Jens Lekman News!
Found on his official website:
There’s a few of my songs in Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut “Whip it”. Drew was really nice, she flew me out to LA, we had a cup of coffee and she showed me some clips from the movie. Usually I say no to film synchs because you just get a short synopsis from someone’s agent’s agent, and I always feel awkward my song will end up in the wrong context. You know, I write my songs for specific people, I find it hard to find them applied to someone elses story. But Drew listened to my concerns and we discussed the scenes she had in mind.
At some point our conversation drifted away and I think we were talking about monkeys, and it just struck me right there and then how surreal my life has become. And how absurd it is when anyone expects any kind of real compensation in this business. Compensation for what ? I’ve been touring on and off like crazy, I’ve put so much work into recording and writing. And in the end what I make my money from is talking to Drew Barrymore about monkeys…
The soundtrack is compiled by Randall Poster, who put together the soundtracks for the Wes Andersson movies among others. His soundtracks are like amazing little jukeboxes of random goodies. I haven’t seen the movie but it seems to be falling smoothly into the category of American movies about teenage love and alternative sports. From Breaking Away to Bring It On.
“Politics and the English Language” Response
The Founding Fathers created a new kind of democracy, one that has impacted regimes all around the world since the US Constitution became law. But since then the very word “democracy” has acquired both a positive connotation and multiple definitions. The standard definition is rule by the people, whether direct as in a town hall-style government or the representative republic the Founding Fathers espoused. But George Orwell makes provocative statements about the further meaning of that word in his essay “Politics and the English Language”:
In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning.
The dictionary at answers.com has some surprising definitions, in addition to “rule by the people”:
• The common people, considered as the primary source of political power.
• Majority rule.
• The principles of social equality and respect for the individual within a community.
These meanings go a bit beyond “rule by the people” and explore what that rule theoretically leads to: social equality, respect, majority rule…hence the word’s positive connotation. But perhaps Orwell’s most provocative statement is that the defenders of all regimes take advantage of democracy’s meaning.
The question now is: when is a regime truly a democracy? Or in the case of the United States, how much of the actions of elected representatives are truly representative of the majority’s interest? Is South Carolina a democratic state if its governor uses taxpayer money to go to Argentina? Certainly that was more in his personal interest than in that of South Carolina’s majority.
Ben
Food Aid At 20-Year Low
Something is wrong:
LONDON (Reuters) – Food aid is at a 20-year low despite the number of critically hungry people soaring this year to its highest level ever, the United Nations relief agency said Wednesday.
The number of hungry people will pass 1 billion this year for the first time, the U.N. World Food Program budget shortfall. (WFP) said, adding that it is facing a serious
To date the WFP has confirmed $2.6 billion in funding for its 2009 budget of $6.7 billion.
“This comes at a time of great vulnerability for the hungry,” the WFP said in a statement.
“Millions have been buffeted by the global financial downturn, their ability to buy food is limited by stubbornly high prices. In addition, unpredictable weather patterns are causing more weather-related hunger,” the WFP said.
KK+BBQ Kids Shows!
From Mark Sultan’s Facebook page:
me and kk wanna do some kids shows on our next US tour at elementary/special needs schools/classes during the afternoon. if you have an idea, hit me up.
Hit him up!
Darfur Advocacy Groups Prepare For Summit
Good to see that some are aware of what’s happening in the Sudan, and are getting a message out.
Isaac Leju-Loding was 18 when he emigrated from Kajo Keji, in southern Sudan, to Florida in 1989.
It was hot in Florida. It was too much like home, he said. The snow he saw on television fascinated him, so he eventually moved to Pittsburgh to experience winter.
Now president of the Sudanese Community in Pittsburgh, Leju-Loding works to fight the violence occurring in his home country. There, his people protest the destabilization and genocide that’s occuring — for religious and economic reasons — in southern Sudan and Darfur.
He and about 100 others — including members from Pitt’s chapter of Students Taking Action Now: Darfur — held a “Solemn Walk” Downtown yesterday to rally international attention to the genocide in Darfur. It was part of their preparation for the G-20 Summit, which will be held in Pittsburgh Sept. 24-25.
Patrick Swayze Dies Of Pancreatic Cancer
LOS ANGELES — Patrick Swayze personified a particular kind of masculine grace both on and off screen, from his roles in films like “Dirty Dancing” and “Ghost” to the way he carried himself in his long fight with pancreatic cancer.
Swayze died from the illness on Monday in Los Angeles, his publicist said. He was 57.
I can’t say I’m too familiar with his career but he seemed like a good man and a good actor. Also, he was great in that Chippendale’s sketch. Rest in peace.
Criticism Of Obama Based On Race?
New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote on Sunday, September 13 that Wednesday’s (September 9) outburst by South Carolina Republican Congressman Joe Wilson during President Obama’s address to a joint session of Congress was racially motivated. As we told you earlier, Wilson shouted, “you lie,” when the president said his health care plan would not cover illegal immigrants.
Dowd writes: “What I heard was an unspoken word in the air — you lie, boy!… Wilson clearly did not like being lectured and even rebuked by the brainy black president presiding over the majestic chamber.”
Liberal columnists are not alone in suggesting that any opposition to the president is race-driven. Texas Democratic Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson tells the Politico: “As far as African-Americans are concerned, we think most of it is.”
And California Democratic Congressman Mike Honda adds: “There’s a very angry, small group of folks that just didn’t like the fact that Barack Obama won the presidency. With some, I think it is (about race.)”
But White House press secretary Robert Gibbs says to CNN: “I don’t think the president believes that people are upset because of the color of his skin.”
It’s fair to say that *some* criticism is racially motivated. But there are plenty of other reasons why this is happening. It’s more partisan tension than racial.
The more conservative factions in this country don’t care that we’re the only nation without a universal health care system, because “socialism” is still a dirty word in this nation. The GOP has taken advantage of gullible citizens and convinced them that if Obama‘s plan gets passed, he’ll kill all the grandparents. And even before that the Republicans convinced America that Obama has turned this country into a socialist country…even though it was Bush who gave the O.K. to bail out Wall Street a year ago. In these respects and more, it’s fair to say that criticism of our president is more based on his politics than on the color of his skin.
Puff Daddy
Slate.com
In fact, a statistical trace of what I’ve taken to calling the “puff daddy” movement emerged a few years ago, when researchers at the National Institutes of Health compared national drug surveys conducted over two-year periods beginning in 1991 and 2001. Their analysis, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found that the percentage of people who say they smoked marijuana in the past year had remained fairly stable over the 10-year stretch. (That is to say, it ended where it started.) But they found a very different pattern among those between the ages of 45 and 64: As my parents’ generation matured, the number of smokers in that group had nearly tripled.The baby boomer drug uptick turns up again in the recent data. According to the 2007 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, almost 6 percent of all adults between the ages of 50 and 59 reported smoking marijuana in the past year. That’s up from about 3 percent five years earlier. Meanwhile, the number of recent users over the age of 50 has climbed to 2.65 million people nationwide (and we can assume the real prevalence is somewhat higher, since these figures are based on self-reported drug use). Here’s something to think about: There are about as many boomers using cannabis today as there are high-school students doing the same.//
Still, it’s not easy to get an accurate picture of who these puffing oldsters are and how their drug habits have evolved over the last few decades. (It’s also not clear to what extent the legalization of medical marijuana has been a factor.)
Hahahahahaha.
Shockwaves May Result In Damage
Physics Central
When today’s soldiers enter combat, they’re better protected from explosions than the military personnel of any previous war. Ultra-strong helmets shield them from the flying shrapnel of homemade bombs; high-tech cushioning cradles their skulls during sudden impacts with the ground. But because modern soldiers are surviving explosions that would have taken the lives of Vietnam-era infantrymen, army hospitals are seeing a rise in a particularly painful war wound—traumatic brain injury (TBI).TBI can range from a simple concussion to damage with long-term effects, including impaired cognitive abilities and even anxiety and depression. New research is helping to explain how those injuries come about, potentially pointing the way to helmet designs to reduce brain damage. Using code originally designed to simulate how a detonated weapon rattles a building or tank, physicists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and the University of Rochester in New York modeled an all-too-real situation: a 5-pound bomb exploding 15 feet from a soldier’s head. Their goal was to understand the effects of the high-speed shock wave that follows an explosion.
Kids Like You & Me (KLYAM) 