erhebung

Toxic Smog

Things aren’t good in Moscow:

“Morgues and crem­at­oria are overcrowded.”

There is no official data on the number of smog-​related ill­nesses and deaths but a Moscow registry service official told AFP late last week the mor­tality rate in Moscow soared by 50 percent in July compared to the same period last year.

A doctor with a Moscow ambu­lance crew told Russia’s top oppos­i­tion daily Novaya Gazeta on con­di­tion of anonymity that the number of ambu­lance calls and deaths had gone up in recent days.

“We have been strictly for­bidden to hos­pit­alize people barring the most extreme cases,” he said, com­plaining of haz­ardous working conditions.

“There are no air con­di­tioners in vehicles and those that are simply do not work. Tem­per­at­ures inside reach 50 degrees…Sometimes our doctors faint.”

A surgeon at a major hospital described a similar picture, saying the smog and heat were taking its toll on both patients and medical staff.

“Air con­di­tioners work only on the floor of the admin­is­tra­tion, tem­per­at­ures reach 30 degrees in the oper­ating room,” he told Kom­mersant on con­di­tions of anonymity. “It’s hard to work in these conditions.”

Cracked

Fairly epic:

An ice island four times the size of Man­hattan broke off from one of Greenland’s two main glaciers, sci­ent­ists said on Friday, in the biggest such event in the Arctic in nearly 50 years.

The new ice island, which broke off on Thursday, will enter a remote place called the Nares Strait, about 620 miles south of the North Pole between Green­land and Canada.

The ice island has an area of 100 square miles (260 square km) and a thick­ness up to half the height of the Empire State Building, said Andreas Muenchow, pro­fessor of ocean science and engin­eering at the Uni­ver­sity of Delaware.

The Nares Strait (had to check that definite article, as Reuters uses it but Wiki­pedia omits it) looks like a place I’d like to visit. And Hans Island, situated in (the) Nares Strait, is subject to a ter­rit­orial dispute: Denmark and Canada, head to head (what a war that would be).

Wonder where the new island will go.

They Are Among Us

This also is great (in 1080 HD):

(via Games­Radar)

Piaf Redux

This is great:

(via cluste­flock)

Something New Every Day

My new word for the day, courtesy of Undead Back­brain:

Tok­us­atsu (特撮) is a Japanese term that applies to any live-​action film or tele­vi­sion drama that usually features super­heroes and makes con­sid­er­able use of special effects (tok­us­atsu lit­er­ally trans­lates as “special filming” in Japanese).

Tok­us­atsu enter­tain­ment often deals with science fiction, fantasy or horror, but movies and tele­vi­sion shows in other genres can some­times count as tok­us­atsu as well. The most popular types of tok­us­atsu include kaiju monster movies (the Godzilla and Gamera film series), super­hero TV serials (the Kamen Rider and Metal Hero Series), and mecha dramas (Giant Robo). Some tok­us­atsu tele­vi­sion programs combine several of these sub­genres (the Ultraman and Super Sentai series). Tok­us­atsu is one of the most popular forms of Japanese enter­tain­ment, but most tok­us­atsu movies and tele­vi­sion programs are not widely known outside Asia.

Continue reading…

A Kneecap of the World

In the words of Spider Jerusalem:

Journ­alism is just a gun. It’s only got one bullet in it, but if you aim right, that’s all you need. Aim it right, and you can blow a kneecap off the world.

Will what has happened change journ­alism? Maybe. Many inter­esting thoughts over at Press­Think, here.

The soundtrack to this whole thing, for me, has been a little inter­esting, or odd, depending, I suppose, on how you look at it: snatches of Arcade Fire, a chunk of Bowie’s Heathen, a Gil Scott-​Heron track, some­thing that might have been Chrissie Hynde, Stars, and part of Bitches Brew.

Flood

My browser is cur­rently grinding to a slow halt: so many stories to read related to the WikiLeaks leak (or, more accur­ately, flood) of doc­u­ments relating to the war in Afgh­anistan. And as some are sug­gesting, if there are similar doc­u­ments relating to Iraq, this might be just the beginning.

This (found here alone is enough to raise serious ques­tions about how the war is being fought:

Amer­icans fighting the war in Afgh­anistan have long harbored strong sus­pi­cions that Pakistan’s military spy service has guided the Afghan insur­gency with a hidden hand, even as Pakistan receives more than $1 billion a year from Wash­ington for its help com­bating the mil­it­ants, according to a trove of secret military field reports made public Sunday.

The doc­u­ments, made avail­able by an organ­iz­a­tion called WikiLeaks, suggest that Pakistan, an ostens­ible ally of the United States, allows rep­res­ent­at­ives of its spy service to meet directly with the Taliban in secret strategy sessions to organize networks of militant groups that fight against American soldiers in Afgh­anistan, and even hatch plots to assas­sinate Afghan leaders.

It’s one hell of a trail of paper. And we can thank these people for organ­ising it all into such a con­venient elec­tronic format.

Now, I need to read some more of this stuff.

Based on Actual Events

More stuff that got thrown into “drafts” while I was busy:

This is surely one of the most ambi­tious lists cur­rently on Wiki­pedia. Per­son­ally, I’d be more inter­ested in seeing a list of all the films that begin with a montage of “real life” footage before segueing into the fic­tional world of the film. I watched Dark Blue earlier this week, and in that, the director, Ron Shelton, used the footage of Rodney King being assaulted\beaten\subdued by the Los Angeles Police Depart­ment to open his thriller about cor­rup­tion in the LAPD. There must be hundreds more (I’m fairly sure JFK opens with “real” footage, and of course Stone weaves a great deal of archive material into the body of the film).

Another inter­esting list would be a list of novels directly inspired by actual his­tor­ical events. I was thinking about this while listening to an audiobook of James Ellroy’s American Tabloid because I found myself trying to figure out who was fic­tional and who wasn’t. There are thou­sands of his­tor­ical novels, of course, but I’m thinking spe­cific­ally of novels that build them­selves around recog­nis­able “events” or “points” in history (The Cold Six Thousand, the sequel to American Tabloid, opens just after news breaks that John F. Kennedy has been assas­sin­ated). I can’t find a list that does what I want, though, and I’m not in the frame of mind to make one. But books and films that use his­tor­ical events (or nar­rat­ives) as texture, or as struc­turing elements, are on my mind.

Over the last few weeks I’ve mean mulling a little excess­ively on the question of ver­is­mil­itude and art, and I need to mull some more, form up some thoughts.

I have mulled some more, but not enough. Will return to this in the future.

A Bit Used

This is some­thing I wrote weeks ago but forgot to post.

‘No Sound But the Wind’ is a track by Editors that I dis­covered by accident: I was looking for inform­a­tion about the com­posers who had scored Twilight, New Moon, and Eclipse (Howard Shore, an amazing composer, produced one) and happened to see that Editors featured on the soundtrack to New Moon. I read some­where that the track was ori­gin­ally written for the film adapt­a­tion of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, but was dropped and was changed a bit so it could be used in New Moon. I’ve not seen that film, so I’ve no idea where it features, or if it adds anything to the exper­i­ence. However, as a track in its own right, it has had me on a short leash, has truly cap­tiv­ated me, which frus­trates me, a bit, as there isn’t much sub­stance to it at all. After listening to it (and I’ve been listening to it a lot) I feel a bit used.

I managed to pull myself away from the track, but after reading this want to go back to it and listen again. Maybe a bad idea. But we’ve got to have guilty pleasures.

The City is a Cypher

I’ve not been taking many pho­to­graphs lately, but I haven’t felt a lack. And as I’ve men­tioned here before, when I do take pho­to­graphs, I’m usually just doc­u­menting some­thing: these days I don’t feel com­pelled, or oblig­ated, to make pho­to­graphs, just take them. The dis­tinc­tion might seem slight, but it is a dis­tinc­tion, in my mind. The six pho­to­graphs below are from the last couple of months and have been placed together along some lines (decoding some­thing?) but are really just fragments.

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Watch the Modern Kids

The new Arcade Fire album, or what I’ve heard of it so far, is everything one expects an Arcade Fire album to be: vast, com­pel­ling, dramatic, delicate, poetic, anti-​intuitive. I’ll be listening to it a lot more. The way the rhythm of ‘Modern Man’ seems to keep cutting back on back on itself — almost tripping over, fal­tering — is fas­cin­ating. ‘Half Light II (No Cel­eb­ra­tion)’ has the verve you’d expect from the makers of Funeral and Neon Bible. At ‘Month of May’ things become punkier, more frenetic, and it’s a shift in gears which jalts in the right way. It is in no way dis­ap­pointing, thus far, but it def­in­itely needs more time. And it needs to be seen in the context of the other two albums. Which reminds me of a track by track com­par­ison I did, a couple of years ago, of Funeral and Neon Bible:

Arcade Fire: Old vs New

‘Neigh­bor­hood #1′ vs ‘Black Mirror — I think this one has to go to Funeral, as no matter how intriguing ‘Black Mirror’ is at times, ‘Neigh­bor­hood #1′ will always win over, for me, as it has so many mental asso­ci­ations, par­tic­u­larly from around the time I was staying in Moscow. But, the more I listen to Neon Bible (and I’m listening to ‘Black Mirror’ right now, in fact), the more I feel that the new album is a very inter­esting pro­gres­sion. But this one, for now, is going to go to Funeral.

‘Neigh­bor­hood #2′ vs ‘Keep The Car Running’ — This one is a bit trickier, as I like both the tracks, but don’t really love either. I guess I’m going to go with ‘Funeral’ again, because it seems a little less cluttered: ‘Keep the Car Running’ seems, at moments, to lack clarity. However, I might change my mind later.

‘Une Année Sans Lumiere’ vs ‘Neon Bible’ — I think the newer of the two tracks is the clear winner, here. Yes, the lyrics in the older track are great (“…eyes are shooting sparks…”), but ‘Neon Bible’ is excel­lent both lyr­ic­ally and music­ally (the segment from around 1:15 to 1:36 is lovely), so the winner by a mile seems here to be Neon Bible. But, wait, two minutes and forty-​six seconds into ‘Une Année Sans Lumiere’, some­thing amazing happens. And it keeps on hap­pening for almost a minute. So, I’m not sure. But I’ll be firm: this time, Neon Bible wins. Close, though — very close.

‘Neigh­bor­hood #3′ vs ‘Intervention’ — Much as I love the older of the two, not least because of that storming opening, I think ‘Inter­ven­tion’ was the first track on the new album that made me sit up and really listen. I’m prac­tic­ally listening to it on repeat right now, and the layering is mag­ni­fi­cent. So, yes — the winner here is def­in­itely Neon Bible.

‘Neigh­bor­hood #4′ vs ‘Black Wave, Bad Vibrations’ — I don’t actually like the old track, the fourth Neigh­bor­hood, all that much. But I really like the vocals and the arrange­ments in ‘Black Wave, Bad Vibra­tions’. It is funny: taking them one by one, Neon Bible is doing pretty well. But having said that, I think Funeral is hanging together better as an album, for me, right now.

‘Crown of Love’ vs ‘Ocean of Noise’ — Well, ‘Crown of Love’ is a mas­ter­piece, and I need to keep reminding myself of that, as I some­times forget. But ‘Ocean of Noise’ is cool, too. Here, though, Funeral gets it, even though “an ocean of violence, between me and you” is a fant­astic lyric.

‘Wake Up’ vs ‘The Well and the Lighthouse’ — I don’t actually like ‘Wake Up’ all that much, and ‘The Well and the Light­house’ has a spec­tac­ular opening, so this is an easy one: Neon Bible gets the prize.

‘Haiti’ vs ‘(Anti­christ Tele­vi­sion Blues) — ‘Haiti’ has this slightly dreamy, upbeat quality, which I really like; but the newer of the two tracks as a punchi­ness and passion, par­tic­u­larly in the lyrics, that really works for me. Another, then, to the newer of the two albums.

‘Rebel­lion’ vs ‘Windowsill’ — O, this one is tricky. ‘Rebel­lion’ is epic and very powerful, but I may actually have tired listening to it now, after over a year with the album in my life. But ‘Win­dowsill’ (if that is the correct title) needs to be with me a little longer before I can really be sure it is better than ‘Rebel­lion’. Actually, the segment from 2:02 to around 3:30 may just have swayed me, as some­thing about that portion really does walk all over the now over-​familiar ‘Rebel­lion’. But if you take 3:00 to on ‘Rebel­lion’, you get some­thing very, very special, too. Par­tic­u­larly that little hand-​clap at around 3:20. Problem, right now, is that the track feels too long. No, okay, if I allow for the fact that I’ve listened to it too much, I have to give it to ‘Rebel­lion’, right now.

‘In the Backseat’ vs ‘No Cars Go’ — I have to be in exactly the right mood to enjoy ‘In the Backseat’, which is a bit of a problem, right now, as I don’t think I’m in the right mood. ‘No Cars Go’ is won­derful. So, Neon Bible, again.

The last track on Neon Bible, ‘My Body Is a Cage’, really doesn’t work for me, though, so it is lucky it doesn’t have to go against anything on ‘Funeral’, as it would almost cer­tainly lose. And it is an awful reprise of those organs from the wondrous ‘Intervention’.

As a side note, the cover of ‘Maps’ per­formed by The Arcade Fire on Radio 1’s Live Lounge might just beat everything on both of those albums. And the same is probably also true for the live version (also from Live Lounge) of ‘Rebellion’ — simply extraordin­arily beau­tiful, par­tic­u­larly that piano playing.

I’m not sure who wins overall.

I’d com­pletely for­gotten about their cover of ‘Maps’. Need to dig that out. And digging out anything by Arcade Fire is always worthwhile.

Arcade Fire, live. (Source)

Digging Our Graves

Gasland, a doc­u­mentary film about hydraulic frac­turing, provides more proof, if proof were needed, that we are drawing ever closer to a grim future. The film presents the evidence too vividly, makes its case too cogently, for me to effect­ively sum­marise it here. But basic­ally, the world is beau­tiful, a gift, and we’ve found yet another way to shit all over it; and worse, our entire system (cap­it­alist, cor­porate: call it whatever you like) is enabling people, com­panies, to do this unhindered. Watching it shocked me not because of what was hap­pening, as I knew about that, but because of the scale of it all: I had no idea what was occuring was occuring in so many places and was creating so much damage. Needs to be seen.