Mister Never gets press

My buddy Greg AKA Mister Never also made it to the Times...Guess it's the year for MassArt alums...

Drawing on New Orleans...

from Jim Smith at Massart.edu

On this anniversary of the flood in the Gulf Coast, I thought you might like to see some work that was published in today's New York Times Op-Ed section including the work of MassArt alumnus, Jeff Marshall (MFA '00). To mark the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, the Op-Ed page asked artists who either live or have spent considerable time in New Orleans to draw and write about a place of particular importance to them in the city.

Click here to view work by DAVID ROBERTS, KAROLINE SCHLEH, JACQUELINE BISHOP, JEFFREY MARSHALL, PAUL ROGERS, MYRTLE VONDAMITZ and KYLE BRAVO. Click here to view more of Jeff Marshall's work and the background to his New Orleans drawing project.

Shoutout to Rene...

www.ilovemelbournegraffiti.blogspot.com

Across the Hall Part One


This is a teenage-hood buddy's, James Oliver AKA Cutie's short film made for Samsung Mobile...

Across the Hall Part 2

Here's part 2...

Les is more...

Les is more...
Originally uploaded by snailsone.

At 91, he's still kickin' it every Monday night at Cafe Iridium in Midtown...Special thanks to Germ and his Mom for a great night out, dinner too...We were seated very close to the action and so it felt very intimate...The menu was so-so...Pricy, if you're a drinker, it is your type of joint...

What! I'm Listening to (part 4):

WFMU has archives of their radio shows as podcasts...Can be played as MP3's or as Real...or you can listen live through streaming audio...Germ aka Balanceman went out to NJ for Billy Jam's show last night (August 26th)...They had an All-Bay-Area show...

"Acoustical Liberation of books in the public domain"

Librivox.org needs readers to record chapters of books in the public domain...Also, they have a library of stuff already recorded...

from NYTimes.com (Public Domain Books, Ready for your Ipod)> by Craig Silverman...LibriVox’s founder, Hugh McGuire, 32, a software developer and writer in Montreal, said there were another 100 works in development, all of which would be recorded, edited and uploaded by volunteers.“The principles of the project are to be totally noncommercial, totally ad free, totally volunteer and totally public domain,” he said.

Noble, not Nobel...

from NYtimes.com

Prestigious Award, ‘Nobel’ of Mathematics, Fails to Lure Reclusive Russian Problem Solver

by Kenneth Chang

Grigory Perelman, a reclusive Russian mathematician who solved a key piece in a century-old puzzle known as the Poincaré conjecture, was one of four mathematicians awarded the Fields Medal yesterday.

But as with previous honors, Dr. Perelman refused to accept this one, and he did not attend the ceremonies at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Madrid.

“I regret that Dr. Perelman has declined to accept the medal,” Sir John M. Ball, president of the International Mathematical Union, said during the opening ceremonies.

The Fields Medal, often described as mathematics’ equivalent to the Nobel Prize, is given every four years. The other Fields medalists this year are Andrei Okounkov, a professor of mathematics at Princeton; Terence Tao, a professor of mathematics at the University of California, Los Angeles; and Wendelin Werner, a professor of mathematics at the University of Paris-South in Orsay, France.

Dr. Perelman, 40, is known not only for his work on the Poincaré conjecture, among the most heralded unsolved math problems, but also because he has declined previous mathematical prizes and has spurned offers from Princeton, Stanford and other universities. He has shown no interest in pursuing the $1 million that the Clay Mathematics Institute in Cambridge, Mass., is offering for the first published proof of the conjecture.

In June, Sir John went to St. Petersburg, Russia, where Dr. Perelman lives, and spent two days trying to persuade him to travel to Madrid to accept the Fields. “He was very polite and cordial and open and direct,” Sir John said in an interview.

And Dr. Perelman was resolute in saying no. “The reasons center around his feeling of isolation from the mathematical community,” Sir John said, “and in consequence his not wanting to be a figurehead for it or wanting to represent it.” He added: “I don’t think he meant it as an insult. He’s a very polite person. There was never a cross word.”

Despite Dr. Perelman’s refusal, he is still officially a Fields medalist. “He has a say whether he accepts it, but we have awarded it,” Sir John said.

Beginning in 2002, Dr. Perelman, then at the Steklov Institute of Mathematics of the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg, published a series of papers on the Internet and gave lectures at several American universities describing how he had overcome a roadblock in the proof of the Poincaré conjecture.

The conjecture made by Henri Poincaré in 1904 essentially says that any shape that does not have any holes and fits within a finite space can be stretched and deformed into a sphere. That is certainly true looking at two-dimensional surfaces in the everyday three-dimensional world, but the conjecture says the same is true for three-dimensional surfaces embedded in four or more dimensions.

Dr. Perelman solved a problem other mathematicians had encountered when trying to prove the conjecture using a technique called Ricci flow that smoothes out bumps in a surface and transforms the surfaces into simpler forms.

Dr. Okounkov, born in 1969 in Moscow, was recognized for work linking different fields of mathematics that had seemed unrelated. “This is the striking feature of Okounkov’s work, finding unexpected links,” said Enrico Arbarello, a geometry professor at the University of Rome.

Dr. Okounkov’s work has found use in describing the changing surfaces of melting crystals. The boundary between melted and nonmelted is created randomly, but the random process inevitably produces a border in the shape of a heart.

Dr. Tao, a native of Australia and, at age 31, one of the youngest to win a Fields Medal, has worked in several fields, producing significant advances in the understanding of prime numbers, techniques that might lead to simplifying the equations of Einstein’s theory of general relativity.

Dr. Werner, born in Germany in 1968, has also worked at the intersection of mathematics and physics, describing phenomena like percolation and shapes produced by minute particles jittering randomly in a process known as Brownian motion.

The medal, first awarded in 1936, was conceived by John Charles Fields, a Canadian mathematician, “in recognition of work already done and as an encouragement for further achievements on the part of the recipient.” That stipulation has been interpreted to mean that the award should usually be limited to mathematicians 40 or younger.

Battra...

Battra (aka Batora or the Black Mothra) <here's another site on Battra> and Mothra were the only monsters to defeat Godzilla...I had a black cat named Mothra that I loved very much, but had to give her up when I moved to New York about 11 years ago...I never forgave myself for leaving her behind...Which is why it's taken me so long to get new pets...I have decided to adopt instead of foster a black cat I named Battra...Found this great site on Godzilla and everything you need to know including his friends/foes/production companies/timelines...etc...As a kid, I was a Godzilla fanatic...

Update: I have since given up duties as foster parent to Mao...I can only handle one cat at a time...

I have a reliable Apple product...

I'm always wary to get the latest stuff when I have reliable equipment, so I was glad to see that Appledefects.com has the latest on the new macbook pro and mac book before I was to buy anything new...There is no page on the mac pro, though...Of course, the virus thing is a big sell always as stated in Pogue's Posts...

I am a foster parent...

I am a foster parent...
Originally uploaded by snailsone.

I went to the Brooklyn Animal Foster Network bus and
got a brindle brown Domestic Short Hair named Roger...I renamed him "Closetman Mao" because the first thing he did was go to my closet and stay there
for almost the whole first day...It is the second day that he has been with me and he has since spent most
of the time out of the closet...He is a sweetheart, really affectionate...

Update: There is a bit of controversy surrounding BAFN...They seem to have a very high turnover rate and there are claims that the founder is only in it for the money which does not go back to foster care...Any rescue organization is going to be costly...I am undecided on whether or not BAFN is shady...I don't know them well enough, but I have been warned through comments on Craig's List...

Don't know much about history...

from Yahoo.com
Diversity brings breadth to U.S. History
By ERIN TEXEIRA, AP National Writer
Sun. Aug. 20, 2006 11:01 PM

American students often get the impression from history classes that the British got here first, settling Jamestown, Va., in 1607. They hear about how white Northerners freed the black slaves, how Asians came in the mid-1800s to build Western railroads. The lessons have left out a lot. Forty-two years before Jamestown, Spaniards and American Indians lived in St. Augustine, Fla. At least several thousand Latinos and nearly 200,000 black soldiers fought in the Civil War. And Asian-Americans had been living in California and Louisiana since the 1700s.

Now, more of these and other lesser-known facts about American minorities are getting more attention. The main reason is the nation's growing diversity.

More than one in four Americans is not white, and many minority groups are gaining strength — in numbers, political clout and resources — to bring their often-overlooked histories to light.

Minority communities "are yelling for inclusion in the national consciousness," said Gary Okihiro, a historian at Columbia University. "One needs to understand what's true about the past to be able to make sound judgments about our present."

There are hundreds of efforts — big and small — under way to tell the untold stories.

Although Hispanics are the nation's largest minority group — 14.5 percent of the population according to Census Bureau figures released last week — there is no national museum dedicated to their history.

Democratic Rep. Xavier Becerra (news, bio, voting record) of California is pushing a bill to study building one on the National Mall in Washington. "When you walk the Mall in the capital of the United States, there is no better place to try to understand what Americans are and where we have been," Becerra said. "But it's still an incomplete picture."

The Mall has dozens of sites highlighting American culture and history, including the National Museum of the American Indian that opened in 2004, 20 years after it was authorized. Organizers in June settled on the future site of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, but its opening date is still years away. A Latino museum would be even further off.

Other federal agencies are shifting their work to incorporate more minorities' stories. Six years ago, National Park Service historians met to reevaluate how park sites tell the story of the Civil War, said Donald W. Murphy, deputy director of the parks. Old battlefield exhibits mainly discussed who fought and how many died. Now they include personal diaries, including those kept by slaves.

Once considered marginal to American history, those stories are "really important because oftentimes the margins really are the holders of American democracy," said Okihiro, an expert in Asian-American history. "They are those who have fought against their own racial profiling and fought for the freedoms that the majority seem to take for granted."

Asian-Americans are the only immigrants in U.S. history to have faced laws explicitly written to bar their entry — laws that were not overturned until immigration reform in the 1960s, said Dmae Roberts, whose eight-hour public radio program on Asian immigration, "Crossing East," airs on hundreds of stations.

"People know very little of this outside of California," she said.

Some tales have gone untold because, in the less-diverse America of the past, minorities didn't make the decisions on textbooks and other means of passing along history. And in many cases, minorities who had faced blatant discrimination wanted to discard evidence of past horrors.

But some who came of age during the civil rights movement are determined to pass the stories on. "It is so important that children of color are not made to feel that they're asking for anything — they're claiming what's rightfully theirs just like any other child," said Cynthia Morris Lowery, executive director of the African American Experience Fund. "I tell my grandchildren 'Grandpa has earned that spot for you.'"

Sometimes, history is recalled through criminal investigations.

Prosecutors in Jackson, Miss., last year exhumed the remains of Emmett Till, a black teenager killed in 1955 for allegedly whistling at a white woman. Medical examiners performed a new autopsy, and investigators are poring over thousands of documents.

Florida's attorney general ended an investigation last week into a 1951 house bombing that killed two civil rights activists. The probe found extensive circumstantial evidence pointing to four Ku Klux Klan members, all of whom are dead, Attorney General Charlie Crist said Wednesday.

Technology advances also have fueled new interest in history.

In Connecticut last month, archaeologists excavated the grave of an 18th century slave named Venture Smith in hopes that DNA evidence could verify tales of amazing physical strength and a childhood in Guinea, West Africa. No DNA traces were found, but the graves of his wife and children also will be examined.

Paul Beaty of Dallas turned to DNA testing when, after a decade of genealogical research, he could not trace his roots earlier than the 1830s due to incomplete slavery records. The tests linked him to the Ewondo tribe in Cameroon, West Africa, and when his son was born last month, he was named Evan Ewondo.

"We make the connections in America and make the connections in Africa and now we understand our lives," he said. "Now we can build bigger relationships. We are truly creating history." The quest to get the stories told is hardly over.

Though there are more than 12 million Asian-Americans, Roberts said it's tough to persuade stations to air her program, which is being broadcast through next May. "There are stations that haven't quite decided — they say 'We don't have any Asians here,'" Roberts said. "I tell them 'This isn't for Asians. This is for everyone else.'"

Ong Bak 2

I was a total fan of the first movie, the USA Title "The Protector" is out now...

Joan's mural at South Beach...

Joan's mural at South Beach...
Originally uploaded by snailsone.

Under such short notice, Joan Reilly did a great job and was
a pleasure to get down with...

South Beach Hospital Mural

South Beach Hospital Mural
Originally uploaded by snailsone.

My buddy Joan and I spent Tuesday painting murals for South Beach Hospital in Staten Island. My idea for my mural was to incorporate people who were thought to have bipolar disorder...Buzz Aldren, Amadeus, Marilyn, Jimi, Abe, Tim Burton and Isaac Newton...The room is for the Consumer Network and is used for a group called "Cups Up"...

New-clear...

from discover.com
America plans its first nuclear warhead in two decades
by Alex Stone

Everything has an expiration date—even nuclear warheads. Concerned that the United States' 10,000-strong stockpile of atomic bombs are past their prime, scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico are vying to design the first new nuclear bomb in the United States since the W88 warhead in the mid-1980s. The bomb, dubbed the Reliable Replacement Warhead, "is the next logical step," announced the Department of Energy, which sponsors the design competition and is expected to select a winning model for development—pending congressional approval—later this year.

As countries like North Korea and Iran acquire or approach nuclear capability, the program may sound long overdue. And even though the half-life of weapons-grade plutonium is 24,000 years, some experts have suggested that alpha particles emitted as the plutonium decays could crack the pits in the bombs that contain it within 15 years. But careful analysis of old warheads by the Energy Department turned up no signs of weakness, raising questions about the need for new nukes.

To avoid violating international antitesting treaties, the stockpile is kept up to date via a $6 billion-a-year recertification program that tests existing weapons for signs of corrosion. "They take out pits from old weapons and find that all these potential problems are not occurring," explains Ivan Oelrich, a physicist at the Federation of American Scientists. "The consensus is that plutonium pits will be stable for at least 90 to 100 years." What's more, a new warhead might undercut efforts to discourage nuclear proliferation abroad. "It's hypocritical for us to call for other nations to stop their nuclear goals when the United States seems to be pushing its own nuclear program," says Robert Nelson, a physicist at the Union of Concerned Scientists. "We should be doing everything we can to discourage other countries from developing nuclear weapons."

Everything changes, even the planets...

from Yahoo.com
by Seth Borenstein, AP Science Writer
WASHINGTON - The idea that our nine-planet solar system may soon join the obsolete world of eight-track tapes and slide rules should send science teachers, textbook writers and toymakers back to the cosmic drawing board.

"This is, of course, a huge headache for publishers," said Gilbert Sewall, director of the American Textbook Council, a New York-based research institute that follows educational textbooks. Last-minute changes are expensive, but won't break any publisher, he said.

For example, Pearson Prentice Hall has science texts for next year going before California's textbook approval board and will try to get the 12-planet revision in for the state officials to review, said Julia Osborne, the publisher's science editorial director.

"It's worth it because this is such an exciting thing," Osborne said. But 2006 textbooks are already at schools, she said, so for "most students this fall it will be out of date."

Because schools keep textbooks for five to 10 years, it will be about seven years before most school books have 12 planets in them, said Osborne and Sewall.

The world's astronomers are likely to open the solar system doors to three new planets: Ceres, Charon, and one nicknamed Xena to be renamed later.

South Korean "Smart Clothing"

from Yahoo.com
by the Associated Press

SEOUL, South Korea isn't happy making only MP3 players and the memory chips that go inside many of the more popular models. It also wants people wearing South Korean "smart" clothes with built-in digital music players.

Since 2004, smart-apparel development has involved a range of research institutes, universities and conglomerates with the active support of the South Korean government. The government even has estimated that the global market for digital clothing could be $7 billion by 2014. South Korea wants more than 20 percent of it.

Before you drink that cup of coffee...

The effects of caffeine (drug-dosed flies) on web-making...Check out other drug effects on spiders...