Untitled

quickhits: Report: “It is indisputable that the United States...

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 13:24:22 -0400

Report: “It is indisputable that the United States engaged in the practice of torture” after 9/11.

It’s ironic that one of the stories pushed off the front page by the Boston tragedy yesterday involved a report on the Bush administration’s brutal reaction to a similar tragedy.

New York Times: A nonpartisan, independent review of interrogation and detention programs in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks concludes that “it is indisputable that the United States engaged in the practice of torture” and that the nation’s highest officials bore ultimate responsibility for it.

The sweeping, 577-page report says that while brutality has occurred in every American war, there never before had been “the kind of considered and detailed discussions that occurred after 9/11 directly involving a president and his top advisers on the wisdom, propriety and legality of inflicting pain and torment on some detainees in our custody.” The study, by an 11-member panel convened by the Constitution Project, a legal research and advocacy group, is to be released on Tuesday morning.

Debate over the coercive interrogation methods used by the administration of President George W. Bush has often broken down on largely partisan lines. The Constitution Project’s task force on detainee treatment, led by two former members of Congress with experience in the executive branch — a Republican, Asa Hutchinson, and a Democrat, James R. Jones — seeks to produce a stronger national consensus on the torture question.

Not only would this make members of the Bush administration as guilty of war crimes as most realists have suspected, but it has almost certainly resulted in American deaths. Fighters who believe their enemies are torturers will fight to the death, rather than risk capture — meaning that many battles in Iraq and Afghanistan were lengthened by a torture-caused unwillingness to surrender among combatants.

It’s also very easy to recruit fighters when you’re fighting torturers, because torture itself is a sort of proof of evil — the good guys don’t torture.

And, of course, it’s stupid and pointless, as well as counterproductive:

The use of torture, the report concludes, has “no justification” and “damaged the standing of our nation, reduced our capacity to convey moral censure when necessary and potentially increased the danger to U.S. military personnel taken captive.” The task force found “no firm or persuasive evidence” that these interrogation methods produced valuable information that could not have been obtained by other means. While “a person subjected to torture might well divulge useful information,” much of the information obtained by force was not reliable, the report says.

In other words, torture doesn’t magically turn people into truth-tellers.

There are a lot of people who deserve to be in prison over this. Unfortunately, that will almost certainly never happen. What we can do is keep this information and use it to make sure we never make the same mistake again. At heart, the torturer and the torture apologist are cowards. None of these people should ever be remembered as heroes.

[photo by World Can’t Wait]

quickhits: Report: “It is indisputable that the United States...

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 13:24:19 -0400

quickhits:

Report: “It is indisputable that the United States engaged in the practice of torture” after 9/11.

It’s ironic that one of the stories pushed off the front page by the Boston tragedy yesterday involved a report on the Bush administration’s brutal reaction to a similar tragedy.

New York Times: A nonpartisan, independent review of interrogation and detention programs in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks concludes that “it is indisputable that the United States engaged in the practice of torture” and that the nation’s highest officials bore ultimate responsibility for it.

The sweeping, 577-page report says that while brutality has occurred in every American war, there never before had been “the kind of considered and detailed discussions that occurred after 9/11 directly involving a president and his top advisers on the wisdom, propriety and legality of inflicting pain and torment on some detainees in our custody.” The study, by an 11-member panel convened by the Constitution Project, a legal research and advocacy group, is to be released on Tuesday morning.

Debate over the coercive interrogation methods used by the administration of President George W. Bush has often broken down on largely partisan lines. The Constitution Project’s task force on detainee treatment, led by two former members of Congress with experience in the executive branch — a Republican, Asa Hutchinson, and a Democrat, James R. Jones — seeks to produce a stronger national consensus on the torture question.

Not only would this make members of the Bush administration as guilty of war crimes as most realists have suspected, but it has almost certainly resulted in American deaths. Fighters who believe their enemies are torturers will fight to the death, rather than risk capture — meaning that many battles in Iraq and Afghanistan were lengthened by a torture-caused unwillingness to surrender among combatants.

It’s also very easy to recruit fighters when you’re fighting torturers, because torture itself is a sort of proof of evil — the good guys don’t torture.

And, of course, it’s stupid and pointless, as well as counterproductive:

The use of torture, the report concludes, has “no justification” and “damaged the standing of our nation, reduced our capacity to convey moral censure when necessary and potentially increased the danger to U.S. military personnel taken captive.” The task force found “no firm or persuasive evidence” that these interrogation methods produced valuable information that could not have been obtained by other means. While “a person subjected to torture might well divulge useful information,” much of the information obtained by force was not reliable, the report says.

In other words, torture doesn’t magically turn people into truth-tellers.

There are a lot of people who deserve to be in prison over this. Unfortunately, that will almost certainly never happen. What we can do is keep this information and use it to make sure we never make the same mistake again. At heart, the torturer and the torture apologist are cowards. None of these people should ever be remembered as heroes.

[photo by World Can’t Wait]

kateoplis: The Strip

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 04:50:43 -0400

kateoplis:

The Strip

laughingsquid: What Extremely Successful People Were Doing At...

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 19:02:12 -0400

laughingsquid:

What Extremely Successful People Were Doing At Age 25

laughingsquid: Bronies: The Extremely Unexpected Adult Fans of...

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 18:57:28 -0400

laughingsquid:

Bronies: The Extremely Unexpected Adult Fans of My Little Pony

laughingsquid: I’m Google, A Mesmerizing Blog of Visually...

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 18:36:48 -0400

laughingsquid:

I’m Google, A Mesmerizing Blog of Visually Connected Images & Video

soupsoup: Metropolitan Museum curators talk about 100 works of...

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 18:25:59 -0400

soupsoup:

Metropolitan Museum curators talk about 100 works of art that changed how they see the world

laughingsquid: Computerized Eyewear Pioneer Steve Mann Has Been...

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 19:17:27 -0500

laughingsquid:

Computerized Eyewear Pioneer Steve Mann Has Been Wearing His Own Devices for 35 Years

momalibrary: Sad, Depressed, People. by David...

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 19:17:06 -0500

momalibrary:

Sad, Depressed, People. by David Horvitz

http://new-documents.org/books/sad-depressed-people

from the artist: “It’s called Sad, Depressed, People. A collection of stock photographs depicting depression. In the back is a collective-text orchestrated by Laurel Ptak. Its published by New Documents (Jeff Khonsary who publishes Fillip Magazine in Vancouver).”

From the text by Laurel Ptak: “Type the keywords ‘sad, depressed, people’ and here is what turns up: mental anguish styled in it most photogenic pose. Photos poised to sell us our antidepressants and debt relief services…”

-ds

beyondneptune: Ten-Minute Art School Course Brian Eno’s Diary:...

Mon, 04 Feb 2013 18:01:02 -0500

beyondneptune:

Ten-Minute Art School Course

Brian Eno’s Diary: A Year With Swollen Appendices

excerpts via austinkleon and notational

Art is about scenius, not genius.

Eno rails against what he calls the “Big Man” theory of history, “where events are changed by the occasional brilliant or terrible man, working in heroic isolation.” Instead Eno believes that the world is “a cooperative enterprise,” “constantly being remade by all its inhabitants.”

The reality of how culture and ideas evolve is much closer to the one we as pop musicians are liable to accept — a continuous toing and froing of ideas and imitations and misconstruals, of things becoming thinkable because they are suddenly technically possible, of action and reaction, than the traditional fine-art model which posits an inspired individual sorting it all out for himself and then delivering it unto a largely uncomprehending and ungrateful world.

Art is not an object, but a trigger for experience.

Stop thinking about art works as objects, and start thinking about them as triggers for experiences (Roy Ascott’s phrase). That solves a lot of problems: we don’t have to argue about whether photographs are art, or whether performances are art, or whether Carl Andre’s bricks or Andres Serranos’s piss or little Richard’s ‘Long Tall Sally’ are art, because we say, ‘Art is something that happens, a process, not a quality, and all sorts of things can make it happen.’ (…_ Suppose you redescribe the job ‘artist’ as ‘a person who creates situations in which you can have art experiences’.

All artists are con(fidence) artists.

The term “confidence trick” has a bad meaning, but it shouldn’t. In culture, confidence is the currency of value. Once you surrender the idea of intrinsic, objective value, you start asking the question “if the value isn’t in there, where does it come from?” It’s obviously from the transaction: it’s the product of the quality of a relationship between me, the observer, and something else. So how is that relationship stimulated, enriched, given value? By creating an atmosphere of confidence where I am ready to engage with and perhaps surrender to the world it suggests.

Eno also suggests, “People should be trained in lying from a young age. That way you become healthily skeptical (and also train yourself to imagine what things would be like if something else was true).”

The limitations of a new medium will one day become its signature.

Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit — all these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided.

It’s the sound of failure: so much of modern art is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits and breaking apart. The distorted guitar is the sound of something too loud for the medium supposed to carry it. The blues singer with the cracked voice is the sound of an emotional cry too powerful for the throat that releases it. The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white, is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned to record them.

“Try to make things that can become better in other people’s minds than they were in yours.”

Eno rejects the term “interactive,” and suggests “unfinished” instead. He suggests that new culture-makers will move away from providing “pure, complete experiences to providing the platforms from which people then fashion their own experiences.”

Once we get used to the idea that we are no longer consumers of ‘finished’ works, but that we are people who engage in conversations and interactions with things, we find ourselves leaving a world of ‘know your own station’ passivity and we start to develop a taste for active engagement. We stop regarding things as fixed and unchangeable, as preordained, and we increasingly find ourselves practising the idea that we have some control. Most importantly, perhaps, we might start to think the same way about ourselves: that we are unfinished (and unfinishable) beings whose task is constantly to re-examine and remix our ideas and our identities.

Art is where we go to become our best selves.

What a bastard Beethoven sounds — arrogant, paranoid, disagreeable. Why am I still surprised when people turn out to be not at all like their work? A suspicion of the idea that art is the place where you become what you’d like to be… rather than what you already are…

Stop obsessing over all the possible journeys you could take, and just start off on one.

Over and over, Eno expresses a desire for less choices in the process of art-making, not more. ”Less exploring of all the possible journeys you could make; more determination to take one journey (even if the choice of it is initially rather arbitrary) and make it take you somewhere.“

My ideal is probably based on the story I heard years ago of how the Japanese calligraphers used to work — a whole day spent grinding inks and preparing brushes and paper, and then, as the sun begins to go down, a single burst of fast and inspired action.

That cultural image — which you find throughout Japanese culture from Sumo to Sushi — is very interesting and quite different from ours. We admire people who stick at it doggedly and evenly (I also admire them) and put in the right amount of hours. But more and more I want to try that Japanese model: to get everything in place (including your mind, of course) first, and then to just give yourself one chance. It seems thrilling.

“If you don’t call it art, you’re likely to get a better result.”

Eno says, “people do much better when they don’t think they’re being artists,” and when they do think decide they’re being artists, they “suddenly turn out crap.”

Oldenburg’s earlier stuff — before he knew what he was doing — looked best. So often the case that people work best when they are stretching out over an abyss of ignorance, hanging on to a thin branch of “what-is-still-possible”, tantalized by the future.

And some one-liners:

“People who don’t seem to care whether or not they’re liked are nearly always in some way likeable.”

“‘Why the fuck am I doing this?’ — the question that always precedes something worthwhile.”

“Cooking is a way of listening to the radio.”

“Luck is being ready.”

“Spending lots of money is often an admission of lack of research, preparation, and imagination.”

“By the time a whole technology exists for something it probably isn’t the most interesting thing to be doing.”

If you don’t feel like picking up the book, watch this lecture instead. It contains many of the ideas, and Eno draws!

kateoplis: “In the morning, I don’t talk to anyone, nor do I think about certain...

Mon, 28 Jan 2013 22:10:50 -0500

kateoplis: “In the morning, I don’t talk to anyone, nor do I think about certain...:

kateoplis:

“In the morning, I don’t talk to anyone, nor do I think about certain things.

I try to stay within certain confines. I imagine this as a narrow, shadowy corridor with dim bare walls. I’m moving down this corridor, getting to the place where I can write.

I brush my teeth, get dressed, make the…

explore-blog: Beloved cartoonist Lynda Barry is teaching a...

Sun, 27 Jan 2013 16:33:39 -0500

explore-blog:

Beloved cartoonist Lynda Barry is teaching a university-level course on doodling and neuroscience that you can audit remotely for free. She’s posting the weekly assignments on her Tumblr – this is the first one.

(↬ @kirstinbutler)

soupsoup: kenyatta: kansassire: The Century of the Self,...

Sun, 27 Jan 2013 15:41:54 -0500

soupsoup:

kenyatta:

kansassire:

The Century of the Self, 2002, Adam Curtis (Tv Mini-Series)

Edward Bernays on the industry he created.

btw, I highly recommend finding the time to watch Adam Curtis’ The Century of the Self.

Well worth checking out.

revcruz: Big eyes… #drawing #art #pencil #illustration #cat

Fri, 25 Jan 2013 07:43:48 -0500

revcruz:

Big eyes… #drawing #art #pencil #illustration #cat

marijatiurina: .Hi there buddies. This is my latest work and...

Fri, 25 Jan 2013 07:43:03 -0500

marijatiurina:

.
Hi there buddies.

This is my latest work and god knows it took me a while, not only because I’ve been too busy with less interesting stuff lately, but also because it’s an ink pen drawing on A2 size pastel paper. It took me a couple of months and involved a lot of dotting, which is a rewarding technique requiring quite a lot of patience (something that I lack these days), but the one that also made my housemate say “that’s some crazy shit!” when he took a close look at the original piece, haha.

revcruz: Classy and elegant… inked! #art #ink #illustration...

Fri, 25 Jan 2013 07:42:49 -0500

revcruz:

Classy and elegant… inked! #art #ink #illustration #drawing #cat

revcruz: One happy cat… inked! #ink #illustration #art #drawing...

Fri, 25 Jan 2013 07:42:44 -0500

revcruz:

One happy cat… inked! #ink #illustration #art #drawing #cat

momalibrary: Gilbert and George artists’ book Side by Side has...

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 13:01:30 -0500

momalibrary:

Gilbert and George artists’ book Side by Side has been reprinted! And it’s still great. -ds

Please Take Away My Right to a Gun

Sat, 19 Jan 2013 23:46:47 -0500

Please Take Away My Right to a Gun:

kateoplis:

“I had gone as far as to dial the number of the Metropolitan Police Department’s firearms registration division and begin the process. Then I stopped and put my BlackBerry down.

I remembered who I am.

I am one of the millions of people in this country who live with depression. I knew that in the gun registration form there would be a version of this question: Have you ever voluntarily or involuntarily been committed to a hospital? The answer is yes — voluntarily. But because my hospitalization was years earlier and I wasn’t in treatment at the time, I could have gotten a gun.

My depression appeared for the first time in the late ’90s, right before I began writing for politicians. It comes and goes like fog. Medicine can help. I have my tricks to manage and get through it. Sometimes it sticks around for a day or a week, and sometimes it stays away for a couple of years. But it never leads me to sleep all day, cry and wear sweat pants like the people in the commercials. You’d look at me and never know that sometimes my fight against the urge to die is so tough the only way I get through it is second by second; I live by the second hand.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 38,364 Americans lost that fight in 2010 and committed suicide; 19,392 used a gun. No one ever attempted to break down my door in the early morning again, but I had an episode when my depression did come back in full force in the early winter of 2009, after I made a career-ending decision and isolated myself too much; on a January night in 2010; and again in May 2012, after testifying in the federal criminal trial of John Edwards, my former boss. If I had purchased that gun and it had been in my possession, I’m not sure I would have been able to resist and would be here typing these words.”

Please Take Away My Right to a Gun

Sat, 19 Jan 2013 23:42:51 -0500

Please Take Away My Right to a Gun:

kateoplis:

“I had gone as far as to dial the number of the Metropolitan Police Department’s firearms registration division and begin the process. Then I stopped and put my BlackBerry down.

I remembered who I am.

I am one of the millions of people in this country who live with depression. I knew that in the gun registration form there would be a version of this question: Have you ever voluntarily or involuntarily been committed to a hospital? The answer is yes — voluntarily. But because my hospitalization was years earlier and I wasn’t in treatment at the time, I could have gotten a gun.

My depression appeared for the first time in the late ’90s, right before I began writing for politicians. It comes and goes like fog. Medicine can help. I have my tricks to manage and get through it. Sometimes it sticks around for a day or a week, and sometimes it stays away for a couple of years. But it never leads me to sleep all day, cry and wear sweat pants like the people in the commercials. You’d look at me and never know that sometimes my fight against the urge to die is so tough the only way I get through it is second by second; I live by the second hand.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 38,364 Americans lost that fight in 2010 and committed suicide; 19,392 used a gun. No one ever attempted to break down my door in the early morning again, but I had an episode when my depression did come back in full force in the early winter of 2009, after I made a career-ending decision and isolated myself too much; on a January night in 2010; and again in May 2012, after testifying in the federal criminal trial of John Edwards, my former boss. If I had purchased that gun and it had been in my possession, I’m not sure I would have been able to resist and would be here typing these words.”