Monday, March 24, 2008

Must be catching on...the Come Correct show...

Review 4/10/08: so i have no idea what about the show was coming correct...i mean the art was kinda mindless, small, a lot of it was tired or else pastel and cartoony...It was a lot of hot young girls and then some out of place old school people in a crowded room...I think most of the art was a collaboration on part of Cope...No offense to Cope but he is pigeonholed by his type of canvasses...The Skateboard Graffiti show at Brooklyn Tea Lounge on Saturday April 5th was much better...Got to see Ink and hang with Dil in a cafe atmosphere...My Yerba Mate Latte was excellent...I know that's corny, but I've never been a wine sipping gallery person...

Thursday, March 20, 2008

The End of a Vision...

Writer Clarke to be buried Saturday

From Yahoo.com By KRISHAN FRANCIS, Associated Press Writer 2 hours, 28 minutes ago

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka - Famed science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke will be buried Saturday in his adopted country of Sri Lanka in a secular funeral according to his wishes, a spokesman said Thursday.

"It will be a secular, simple funeral and there will be no speeches," said Clarke's aide Nalaka Gunawardena.

Clarke who died at the age of 90 on Wednesday had left written instructions that no religious rites of any faith should be associated with his funeral.

He will be buried at Colombo's general cemetery in a plot owned by his friend and diving company partner with whom the writer lived for decades, Gunawardena said.

Fred Clarke, his brother, had arrived in the island to participate in the funeral, the aide added.

The visionary author won worldwide acclaim with more than 100 books on space, science and the future.

The 1968 story "2001: A Space Odyssey" — written simultaneously as a novel and screenplay with director Stanley Kubrick — was a frightening prophecy of artificial intelligence run amok.

Born in Minehead, England, on Dec. 16, 1917, the son of a farmer, Clarke was also credited with the concept of communications satellites in 1945, decades before they became a reality.

He moved to Sri Lanka in 1956.

Sunday, March 16, 2008

Da...The First South Korean to go to space has two X Chromosomes and no penis...


Woman to be first S. Korean in space

disclaimer: image is for illustration purposes only
From SpaceDaily.com by Staff Writers
Seoul (UPI) Mar 11, 2008
A woman has been chosen to be the first South Korean in space after a male astronaut was dismissed for security violations.

Ko San was replaced by Russian space authorities for taking sensitive training materials outside the Russian space center, The Korea Times reported Monday.

Ko was replaced by Yi So-yeon, a 29-year-old mechanical engineer. She will fly on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft to the International Space Station as a payload specialist with two Russian cosmonauts for a seven- or eight-day mission. The spacecraft is scheduled to launch April 8.

The head of the Korea Aerospace Research Institute said Yi has trained side-by-side with Ko for a year.

6 "Making It" Native...

Indian DNA links to 6 'founding mothers'

From Yahoo.com By MALCOLM RITTER, AP Science Writer Thu Mar 13, 6:14 PM ET

NEW YORK - Nearly all of today's Native Americans in North, Central and South America can trace part of their ancestry to six women whose descendants immigrated around 20,000 years ago, a DNA study suggests.

Those women left a particular DNA legacy that persists to today in about 95 percent of Native Americans, researchers said.

The finding does not mean that only these six women gave rise to the migrants who crossed into North America from Asia in the initial populating of the continent, said study co-author Ugo Perego.

The women lived between 18,000 and 21,000 years ago, though not necessarily at exactly the same time, he said.

The work was published this week by the journal PLoS One. Perego is from the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation in Salt Lake City and the University of Pavia in Italy.

The work confirms previous indications of the six maternal lineages, he said. But an expert unconnected with the study said the findings left some questions unanswered.

Perego and his colleagues traced the history of a particular kind of DNA that represents just a tiny fraction of the human genetic material, and reflects only a piece of a person's ancestry.

This DNA is found in the mitochondria, the power plants of cells. Unlike the DNA found in the nucleus, mitochondrial DNA is passed along only by the mother. So it follows a lineage that connects a person to his or her mother, then the mother's mother, and so on.

The researchers created a "family tree" that traces the different mitochondrial DNA lineages found in today's Native Americans. By noting mutations in each branch and applying a formula for how often such mutations arise, they calculated how old each branch was. That indicated when each branch arose in a single woman.

The six "founding mothers" apparently did not live in Asia because the DNA signatures they left behind aren't found there, Perego said. They probably lived in Beringia, the now-submerged land bridge that stretched to North America, he said.

Connie Mulligan of the University of Florida, an anthropolgist who studies the colonization of the Americas but didn't participate in the new work, said it's not surprising to trace the mitochondrial DNA to six women. "It's an OK number to start with right now," but further work may change it slightly, she said...


And the US just took China off the Human Rights Violators List?


Chinese security forces swarm Tibet

From Yahoo.com By AUDRA ANG, Associated Press Writer 2 hours, 16 minutes ago

BEIJING - Soldiers on foot and in armored carriers swarmed Tibet's capital Saturday, enforcing a strict curfew a day after protesters burned shops and cars to vent their anger against Chinese rule. In another western city, police clashed with hundreds of Buddhist monks leading a sympathy demonstration.

The violence erupted just two weeks before China's Summer Olympic celebrations kick off with the start of the torch relay, which passes through Tibet. China is gambling that its crackdown will not draw an international outcry over human rights violations that could lead to boycotts of the Olympics.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called on China "to exercise restraint in dealing with these protests," while the State Department issued a travel alert for Americans in the region. Her statement also called for China to release monks and others jailed for protesting.

The latest unrest began Monday on the anniversary of a 1959 uprising against Chinese rule. Tibet was effectively independent for decades before communist troops entered in 1950.

Initially, the protests were led by Buddhist monks demanding the release of other detained monks. Their demands spiraled to include cries for Tibet's independence and turned violent Friday when police tried to stop a group of protesting monks. Pent-up grievances against Chinese rule came to the fore, as Tibetans directed their anger against Chinese and their shops, hotels and other businesses.

It was the fiercest challenge to Beijing's authority in nearly two decades.

China's official Xinhua News Agency reported at least 10 civilians were burned to death on Friday. The Dalai Lama's exiled Tibetan government in India said Chinese authorities killed at least 30 Tibetans and possibly as many as 100. The figures could not be independently verified...

>>It's not exactly going to be a show of goodwill games with the Chinese lighting humans on fire...Do they deserve to light the torch for the Olympics? I think I've watched too many kungfu movies because I can almost picture these ridiculous scenes in my head, on the other side of the world, it just sounds brutal, monk against cop...

For more info, go to www.savetibet.org...

Thursday, March 13, 2008

Inside North Korea review...


National Geographic's Inside North Korea is a pretty good insight into the state of the North Korea's health care and also the goodwill of a Nepalese eye surgeon, Dr. Ruit, who travels with reporter Lisa Ling and crew. My one major criticism with Lisa Ling is her butchering of the capital's pronunciation. I know in the West it is common to mispronounce other countries' locales, but she said "Pyongyang" incorrectly so many times and it was like nails on a blackboard for me each and every time. I think as a reporter you should try to get little major things like that right.
What occurred to me during the viewing of the doc was that it was like watching a nation of Stockholm Syndrome afflicted hostages. When the surgery patients actually got their bandages off, they all cried "Mansai" (We praise you) to the "Great Leader" instead of giving their thanks to the good doctor. And it was shocking to learn about 22, the concentration "brainwashing" camp where most never leave from, the place that keeps fear alive in order for their way of life to continue. Also, I didn't realize the largest land mine field in the world is in the DMZ.

First Blind and Black Governor...


10 Things You Didn't Know About David Paterson
From USNews.com By Stephanie Salmon
Posted March 11, 2008

1. David Alexander Paterson was born on May 20, 1954, in Brooklyn, N.Y., to labor law attorney Basil Paterson and his wife, Portia. His father was the second black politician nominated for statewide office in New York and served as a state senator. The first of two sons, David was legally blind from birth, with only partial sight in his right eye.

2. When their son was denied the opportunity to attend classes with sighted students in his hometown, Paterson's family moved to Hempstead, N.Y., so that he could participate in a mainstream classroom. An excellent student, Paterson graduated from high school in three years.

3. He attended Columbia University, receiving a bachelor's degree in history in 1977. He worked at various jobs for a few years and then earned a law degree from Hofstra Law School in 1983.

4. In 1985, Paterson was elected to the New York State Senate, representing the 30th State Senate District, which encompasses Harlem, East Harlem, and the Upper West Side neighborhoods of Manhattan. It is the same district his father had represented.

5. Paterson gained national attention in the 1990s because of his efforts to preserve an African-American burial ground that was discovered at the excavation site for construction of a new federal building in New York City. He worked to secure federal funding for the project and said in 1997 that "through the discovery of the African-American Burial Grounds, our history has at last come to the surface for all of us to know and respect."

6. In 2002, David Paterson was elected Democratic leader of the New York State Senate, the first nonwhite legislative leader in New York's history.

7. In 2004, he became the first visually impaired person to address a Democratic National Convention and, in 2006, he was elected New York's first African-American lieutenant governor.

8. David Paterson lives in Harlem with his wife, Michelle, and their two children, Ashley and Alex.

9. Paterson is a board member of the Achilles Track Club, an international track club for athletes with disabilities. He completed the New York City Marathon in 1999. He is also on the President's Council of the American Foundation for the Blind.

10. When asked by the New York Amsterdam News about life lessons he had learned, Paterson replied, "You never get to any level of leadership where your race is not a factor." He continued, "You don't want to be the first; you want to be the first of many."

Sunday, March 09, 2008

Maybe I should consider moving to Vermont...?

Vermont towns vote to arrest Bush and Cheney

From Yahoo.com Wed Mar 5, 3:55 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Voters in two Vermont towns on Tuesday approved a measure that would instruct police to arrest President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney for "crimes against our Constitution," local media reported.

The nonbinding, symbolic measure, passed in Brattleboro and Marlboro in a state known for taking liberal positions on national issues, instructs town police to "extradite them to other authorities that may reasonably contend to prosecute them."

Vermont, home to maple syrup and picture-postcard views, is known for its liberal politics.

State lawmakers have passed nonbinding resolutions to end the war in Iraq and impeach Bush and Cheney, and several towns have also passed resolutions of impeachment. None of them have caught on in Washington.

Bush has never visited the state as president, though he has spent vacations at his family compound in nearby Maine.

Roughly 12,000 people live in Brattleboro, located on the Connecticut River in the state's southeastern corner. Nearby Marlboro has a population of roughly 1,000.

"I make money to dance..."



Heard of self-loathing Jews? Well, I think I've been a bit of a self-loathing Korean all my life. Blame it on the fact that I've been a minority wherever I've been. Blame it on my childhood and how I was raised. Blame it on the media. Blame it directly on the material-loving, sheltered and at times prejudicial/racist society Koreans create for themselves. But maybe, just maybe I found my peoples, my true peoples...Even though I claim I am not just "hiphop", it is always hiphop that saves me...Thanks to those Korean bboys who try so hard to continue to do what they love and who are making public declarations successfully fusing the old world with the old school train of thought.





Here's a video of The Extreme Crew with Korean music group Sorea...

Thursday, March 06, 2008

Planet B-Boy Review...

(Revised 10.21.08 Slone shows off his latest work...He's the artist for Planet BBoy)...

Though it is not my job to be a movie critic, it is my friend Steve's job and he got passes to see Planet B-boy...I was glad to see it for a few reasons. Not only did the beginning sequence bring the culture back to its four elements, the bboying was in its purest form, and what has changed (the power moves, the level of difficulty, the choreography) in the decades since its inception, has only given it more validity. I don't think a lot of the youth gets the whole concept of hiphop, only the mainstream spoon-fed marketing ads of it, the MTV drivel, the "American Idol type dance shows"...This movie brought it back to the whole point of hiphop, battling...The other reason this movie really hit home with me was the backgrounds to the crews who were in the finals. The Koreans have really run with bboying and though a Korean crew won first (Last for One) and third place (Defending 2004 champs Gamblerz) at Battle of the Year 2005 in Germany, I really think that the Japanese crew Ichegeki that took second should've been the winners though they won best show. They had the most awesome concept and choreography. Not to be a traitor to my peoples, but I thought the Japanese were better. Anyways, it was nice to see boys from the southern countryside take the title anyway. And man, did I relate to the feeling like a minority within society picture they gave of bboying in Korea. Another thing, Slone did the artwork in it...That was really well done. Big ups to Slone...All in all, this documentary was really nicely done. I leave you with one of the best quotes in the movie. "I don't dance to make money. I make money to dance." Honorable mention goes to Phase T from France.