{ Hedge-fund manager John Paulson’s wager on gold wiped out almost $1 billion of his personal wealth in the past two trading days as the precious metal plummeted 13 percent. Paulson started the year with about $9.5 billion invested across his hedge funds, of which 85 percent was in gold share classes. | Businessweek | full story }
As life has evolved, its complexity has increased exponentially, just like Moore’s law. Now geneticists have extrapolated this trend backwards and found that by this measure, life is older than the Earth itself.
Andy Warhol took the subject of homosexual obsession to the big screen [in 1965]. The film was “My Hustler.” […]
By the mid-1960s, the movie taboo against homosexuality was down. But progressive depictions of gays (let alone lesbians) were rarities. In American movies, gay characters were portrayed as deviant misfits who inevitably met with societal scorn or tragedy (usually suicide). British films like “Victim” and “A Taste of Honey” were somewhat more open-minded in providing sympathetic (if epicene) depictions of gays.
“My Hustler” was radically different because it was not the least bit apologetic of the gay lifestyle. While the film dabbled in stereotypes (the bitchy queen, the rough trade call boys, even the fag hag best friend), no one was shown as a victim, let alone a freak. It was a raw, honest vision of a portion of the gay world which movie audiences never witnessed before.
Warhol was not, by any stretch, a polished filmmaker. His films were unsophisticated in their technique and production values were painfully low. In fact, “My Hustler” consists of two unbroken shots running 33 minutes each (the length of a 1,200 foot reel of 16mm film). While the visual aspect may seem stagnant, the film’s imagery and wall-to-wall talk makes its feel as if one if literally a voyeur to the mini-drama at hand.
“My Hustler” takes place on the Labor Day weekend at the beachfront Fire Island home of a wealthy and not-young queen (Ed Hood). He called a New York Dial-a-Hustler service and was sent a tall, muscular blonde hunk (Paul America). The film finds the older man on his deck watching his leased boytoy reclining on the beach. It is quite a sight to behold, as the hustler rubs suntan oil on his body and whittles with a piece of wood. And speaking of pieces of wood, the guy’s tight bathing suit leaves little to the imagination.
This scene is interrupted by two uninvited guests: Genevieve, the rich and bored socialite (Genevieve Charbon), and Joe, a late-30s hustler (Joe Campbell). The three sit on the deck and talk/bitch/dish among themselves about the stud in the sand. The camera pans back and forth between the deck trio and the hustler (there are no edits – just a continuous run of the camera). For long periods, the camera is fixated on the hustler while the others talk on the soundtrack. Joe claims to know the hustler, Genevieve states she can charm the guy with her sex appeal, and their mincing host belittles both of them with acidic camp remarks (he calls Genevieve a “fag hag” and calls Joe “the sugar plum fairy” – a line that Lou Reed would use in “Walk on the Wild Side”). All three make blunt comments about the object of their gaze (ranging from whether he is a real blonde to fantasizing about the length and width of what the bathing suit is barely concealing). Genevieve eventually makes her move and invites the hustler to go swimming with her.
According to a meta-analysis published in the August edition of the Journal of Family Medicine, colon cleansing provides no known health benefits, only dangerous side effects including, in rare cases, death.
{ Gastroenterology & Endoscopy News | Continue reading | via Improbable }
Coffee enemas are the enema-related procedure of inserting coffee into the anus to cleanse the rectum and large intestines.
How to Make a Coffee Enema
It is best to arise early enough each morning to allow time to take the enema in a relaxed, unhurried state.
The coffee must be organic, non-decaffeinated coffee. It must be prepared in enamelware, Corning ware, glass or stainless steel, or by the tricolator filter method. Aluminum or Teflon should not be used at anytime!! We have found that the coffee that is prepared via the “drip method” is preferable. Use 3 to 4 teaspoons of ground coffee to four (4) cups of reverse osmosis water increasing after several uses to seven to eight (7-8) teaspoons of ground coffee to an equal number of cups of reverse osmosis water. This allows more therapeutic value to the treatment. Do not use ice cubes to cool the coffee because of the poor quality of water in the ice maker, despite the mfg’s filters. […]
How to Take a Coffee Enema
First, attempt a normal bowel movement. The enema is much more effective if the colon has been evacuated. One should not become disturbed, however, if there are no regular bowel movements, or very few, during the program. In many cases, not enough bulk collects to instigate a normal bowel movement. When no normal bowel movements are forthcoming during the frequent enemas the enema cleans the colon adequately. The ultimate goal is to have no less than one bowel movement daily.
{ Heise Health Clinic | Continue reading }
Prince Charles has never made a secret of his love affair with alternative medicine. Now he has infuriated the medical profession by backing a controversial cancer treatment which involves taking daily coffee enemas and drinking liters of fruit juice instead of using drugs.
oil on paper laid down on canvas { Mark Rothko, Untitled, 1969 }
Researchers at the University of Leeds may have solved a key puzzle about how objects from space could have kindled life on Earth.
While it is generally accepted that some important ingredients for life came from meteorites bombarding the early Earth, scientists have not been able to explain how that inanimate rock transformed into the building blocks of life.
This new study shows how a chemical, similar to one now found in all living cells and vital for generating the energy that makes something alive, could have been created when meteorites containing phosphorus minerals landed in hot, acidic pools of liquids around volcanoes, which were likely to have been common across the early Earth.
“The mystery of how living organisms sprung out of lifeless rock has long puzzled scientists, but we think that the unusual phosphorus chemicals we found could be a precursor to the batteries that now power all life on Earth. But the fact that it developed simply, in conditions similar to the early Earth, suggests this could be the missing link between geology and biology,” said Dr Terry Kee, from the University’s School of Chemistry, who led the research. […]
“Chemical life would have been the intermediary step between inorganic rock and the very first living biological cell. You could think of chemical life as a machine –a robot, for example, is capable of moving and reacting to surroundings, but it is not alive. With the aid of these primitive batteries, chemicals became organised in such a way as to be capable of more complex behaviour and would have eventually developed into the living biological structures we see today,” said Dr Terry Kee.
The US Congress has severely scaled back the Stock Act, the law to stop lawmakers and their staff from trading on insider information, in under-the-radar votes that have been sharply criticised by advocates of political transparency.
The changes mean Congressional and White House staff members will not have to post details of their shareholdings online. They will also make online filing optional for the president, vice-president, members of Congress and congressional candidates. […]
The Stop Trading On Congressional Knowledge – or “Stock” – Act prohibited them from buying or selling stocks, commodities or futures based on non-public information they obtain during the course of their work. It also banned them from disseminating non-public information regarding pending legislation that could be used for investment purposes. […]
Political watchdogs were dismayed. “Are we going to return to the days when public can use the internet to research everything except what their government is doing?” asked Lisa Rosenberg of the Sunlight Foundation, which monitors money in politics.
{ Financial Times | Continue reading }
The Federal Reserve said early Wednesday that it inadvertently e-mailed the minutes of its March policy meeting a day early to some congressional staffers and trade groups.
Late this afternoon, the central bank released to reporters a list of more than 150 e-mail addresses that it says received the early e-mail on Tuesday afternoon. (The minutes had been scheduled for release a day later.) The list includes e-mail addresses for dozens of congressional staffers, along with contacts — many of them government-relations executives — at major banks, lobbying firms and trade groups.
We will provide the full list of people who manipulate and cheat the market shortly, but for now we are curious to see how the Fed will spin that EVERYONE got an advance notice of its minutes a day in advance without this becoming a material issue with the regulators, and just how many billions in hush money it will take to push this all under the rug.
“GB” is a 28 year old man with a curious condition: his optic nerves are in the wrong place.
Most people have an optic chiasm, a crossroads where half of the signals from each eye cross over the midline, in such a way that each half of the brain gets information from one side of space. GB, however, was born with achiasma – the absence of this crossover. It’s an extremely rare disorder in humans, although it’s more common in some breeds of animals, such as Belgian sheepdogs. […]
In the absence of a left-right crossover, all of the signals from GB’s left eye end up in his left visual cortex, and vice versa. But the question was, how does the brain make sense of it? Normally, remember, each half of the cortex corresponds to half our visual field. But in GB’s brain, each half has to cope with the whole visual field – twice as much space (even though it’s getting no more signals than normal.)
French sports doctor who spent 16 years studying the busts of 330 women aged 18 to 35 suggests bras are useless. Going without could improve firmness.
Bizzare subway ‘kiss’ assault.
How Wireless Carriers Are Monetizing Your Movements. Data that shows where people live, work, and play is being sold to businesses and city planners, as mobile operators seek new sources of revenue.
Scientists have come up with a way to make whole brains transparent [video]. More: Looking through the brain with CLARITY.
Texting, social networking and other media use linked to poor academic performance.
Information technology amplifies irrational group behavior.
Teens Abandoning Social Networks, Study Says.
One of the prevailing personality stereotypes we rarely question is that extremely extroverted people do best in sales. On the flip side, extremely introverted people may as well not even try to sell anything because it’s a foregone conclusion that they simply can’t. Grant found that they pulled in roughly the same percentage of sales.
Why Humidity Makes Your Hair Curl.
One story coming out of Joint Special Operations Command is that the Esquire “shooter” isn’t the shooter after all. Sure he was there, but he wasn’t the man who shot UBL, and ended his life. […] The “Shooter” was removed from his DEVGRU Squadron for talking about the operation openly after being warned to “can it.”
Going to Coachella? You’re a Loser and Part of the Problem and Probably Fat.
Google Street View Hyperlapse. [How to]
James Gulliver Hancock is on a mission to draw all the buildings in New York City.
I think one of the things that make planning (and living) life so hard is the combination of the facts that
Its end date is uncertain;
It is rather highly likely that one’s faculties will be duller towards the end.If it was certain that when we sleep on our 40th birthday, we wouldn’t wake up, how different would the world be?
[…]
There will be considerable pressure to have kids at age eighteen or so. […] Other people would attempt to maintain a collegiate lifestyle through their death at age forty. […]
The likelihood of warfare would rise, if only because the sage elderly won’t be around and male hormones will run rampant. […]
Credit would be harder to come by and the rate of home ownership would fall.
A real-estate agent keeps her own home on the market an average of ten days longer [than she would for a client] and sells it for an extra 3-plus percent, or $10,000 on a $300,000 house. When she sells her own house, an agent holds out for the best offer; when she sells yours, she encourages you to take the first decent offer that comes along.
A second problem is that Foucault’s concept of resistance lacks a notion of emancipation. As the autonomist Marxist John Holloway argues, “in Foucault’s analysis, there are a whole host of resistances which are integral to power, but there is no possibility of emancipation. The only possibility is an endlessly shifting constellation of power and resistance.”
Christopher Knight went into the central Maine wilderness 27 years ago. […]
He built a hut on a slope in the woods, where he spent his days reading books and meditating.
There he lived, re-entering civilization only to steal supplies from camps under the cover of darkness. During those nearly three decades, he spoke just once to another person – until he was arrested during a burglary last week.
In between, Knight told police, he committed more than 1,000 burglaries, always taking only what he needed to survive. […]
Knight said he stole everything he has, except for his aviator-style eyeglasses, which are the same pair he wore in 1986. […]
Knight went to great lengths to make the camp invisible from the ground and the air, even covering a yellow shovel with a black bag. Knight never had a fire, even on the coldest days, for fear of being detected. He covered shiny surfaces, like his metal trash cans, with moss and dirt and painted green a clear plastic sheet over his tent.
Knight even situated his campsite facing east and west to make the best use of the sun throughout the day. […]
Knight carefully avoided snow, stepped on rocks when he could and even avoided breaking branches in thick growth. Knight usually put on weight in the fall so he would have to eat less in the winter and thus avoid making treks for food and risk leaving prints in the snow.
Sophocles is sometimes credited with having introduced the idea that, in the theatre, spectators should be able to identify with the characters. Two thousand years later, Shakespeare went further and suggested how we might also identify with the actors. “All the world’s a stage,” says Jaques in As You Like It, “And all the men and women merely players.” But it was not until 1959 that the dramaturgical metaphor for human life was theorised fully in sociologist Erving Goffman’s seminal The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. […]
Whenever we are with others we are always “performing”, trying to control how we appear to them, consciously or otherwise. […]
Most things change according to their situation and each variant reveals another aspect of their entireties. To say we are only ourselves in one kind of situation is as nonsensical as saying water is only itself when liquid, and that steam and ice are just performances. […]
If you resort to humour when you’re hurt, for instance, someone could comment that you are “wearing a mask”. But it might be a coping strategy. […] Rather than worry about whether you’re being “real”, it might be more helpful to ask more specific questions, such as whether a coping strategy is working or not.
related:
Why do we sigh?
Does it help regulate my breathing when I’m stressed? Is it a subconscious action I do to express to those around me that I’m anxious or upset? Perhaps a mental reset button, so to speak?
In fact, it may be a combination of all three.
In a series of studies, Teigen and colleagues at University of Oslo explored the context in which people sigh—when are people doing it, and how is it perceived by others?
photo { Mario Torres }
Hijacking airplanes with an Android phone
By taking advantage of two new technologies for the discovery, information gathering and exploitation phases of the attack, and by creating an exploit framework (SIMON) and an Android app (PlaneSploit) that delivers attack messages to the airplanes’ Flight Management Systems (computer unit + control display unit), he demonstrated the terrifying ability to take complete control of aircrafts by making virtual planes “dance to his tune.”
art { Cy Twombly, Untitled, 1971 }
Identity Thieves Filed for $4 Million in Tax Refunds Using Names of Living and Dead.
United flight diverted after family complains about movie.
Low on self-control? Surrounding yourself with strong-willed friends may help.
Lasers that stimulate targeted neurons ease cocaine addiction in rats.
A few years ago a leading elevator design and manufacturing company gave me the task of examining how people experienced and interacted with elevators.
Secrets of FBI Smartphone Surveillance Tool Revealed in Court Fight.
‘Secretbook’ Lets You Encode Hidden Messages in Your Facebook Pics.
In pictures: Ultra-light material. [Thanks Max]
How to Scramble Eggs Inside Their Shell. [video]
City bills cyclist $1,200 for damage to police car that struck him.
In San Francisco, if you ever leave your bike unlocked, it will be stolen. If you use a cable lock to secure your bike, it will be stolen at some point. Unless you lock your bike with medieval-esque u-locks, your bike will be stolen from the streets of most American cities. Even if you take these strong precautions, your bike may still get stolen. What Happens to Stolen Bicycles?
In Oregon, unintentional drug overdoses now kill more people than car accidents. The drugs that are driving up those numbers and killing most often are opiates—heroin and prescription pain medication, including methadone.
Exceptional mathematical fluency is required in only a few disciplines, such as particle physics, astrophysics and information theory. Far more important throughout the rest of science is the ability to form concepts, during which the researcher conjures images and processes by intuition. Many of the most successful scientists in the world today are mathematically no more than semiliterate.
Internal document from the Drug Enforcement Administration complains that messages sent with Apple’s encrypted chat service are “impossible to intercept.” And: DEA Accused Of Leaking Misleading Info Falsely Implying That It Can’t Read Apple iMessages.
Kids in England aren’t using Facebook. They’re all on a chat program you’ve never heard of, called Kik, which has roughly 40 million users. [Kik.com]
Why aren’t we all using Japanese toilets?
How common are prostitute-seeking men and how much do they differ from men in the normal population?
The first sociological study of pimps was published in February 1931.
15 Mid-Century Modern Dream Homes that will Kill Your Children. [Thanks Tim]
What technology, or potential technology, worries you the most?
In the nearer term I think various developments in biotechnology and synthetic biology are quite disconcerting. We are gaining the ability to create designer pathogens and there are these blueprints of various disease organisms that are in the public domain—you can download the gene sequence for smallpox or the 1918 flu virus from the Internet. So far the ordinary person will only have a digital representation of it on their computer screen, but we’re also developing better and better DNA synthesis machines, which are machines that can take one of these digital blueprints as an input, and then print out the actual RNA string or DNA string. Soon they will become powerful enough that they can actually print out these kinds of viruses. So already there you have a kind of predictable risk, and then once you can start modifying these organisms in certain kinds of ways, there is a whole additional frontier of danger that you can foresee.
