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Monkey’s butt is red.:

monkey’s butt is red. An odd but lovely little work by the video artist min oh. (Thanks, Susannah Breslin).

(Via Boing Boing.)

Recetas Urbanas by Santiago Cirugeda:

All the urban prescriptions showed next are public domain and may be used in all its strategic and juridical proceedings by the citizens who may try out to do it.

Recommends a full research on the different urban locations and situations in which the citizen may want to intervene. Any physical or intellectual risk produced by such interventions will be on each citizen account.

Santiago Cirugeda _ Alquiler de azoteas from tv.edgargonzalez.com on Vimeo.

A how to rent your roof and generate housing without paying the taxes.

(Via Eyebeam reBlog.)

ElectroVee’s “Popstars” video:

The song on this video by ElectroVee is catchy. I hope he makes more videos.

(Via Clippings.)

Three letters come to mind. W, T, and F.
-Monkey

How to make a squirrel sandwich:

Video of a cooking show host and her son hunting and killing a squirrel. Next, she shows how to make a tasty sandwich.

‘I promised him a squirrel sandwich and that is what he’s gonna get after school. You’ve heard of tuna melts or patty melts, well why not squirrel melts.’

Saturday Night Live couldn’t have done better than this.

(via Finkbuilt)

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(Via Clippings.)

Why we drink:

(Via Life as an Artificial Lifeform.)

20/20 Report on Music Video (1980):

(Via Rhizome.org.)

Sex Pistols’ “God Save The Queen” sung by octagenerian Aussie ladies:

The video above is taken from the exhibition ‘no future’ by Christoph Büchel, at the Sydney Biennale 2008:

‘no future’ transforms the gallery into a rehearsal space for a punk band of volunteers who are over the age of 80 years. in the space they rehearse the 1977 sex pistol’s hit, ‘god save the queen’, originally called ‘no future’, which was banned from BBC, but still made its way to the top of the charts despite this. the band gathers for practice and performs in public whenever they please during the gallery’s opening hours, during which their sessions are video-taped and recorded and will be released on DVD and CD at the end of the biennale.

christoph büchel at the biennale of sydney 2008 (designboom, thanks Susannah Breslin)
Image: ‘Lead singer jill mckay practices ‘god save the queen’ with her band mates photo courtesy of lisa wiltse’

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(Via Boing Boing.)

COUNTRY MUSICIANS CAN’T BE DEMOCRATS!:

Here are the Red State Update guys talking about Toby Keith being a Democrat:

It might be useful for starting a discussion about the way country music is so associated with conservative politics and the Republican party today, and why we would be surprised that a guy like Toby Keith (who has proudly acknowledged smoking pot-liberal!-but also wrote the song ‘Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue’-conservative!) would be a Democrat-what does that say about our ideas of what a Democrat (or Republican) must be or act like? You might contrast that with the number of country artists in the first half of the 20th century who were often progressive Democrats or (gasp!) even socialists. It’s pretty fascinating how much the politics associated with country music have changed, and how ‘obvious’ it seems to people today that country musicians would be conservative, to the point that country music has in many ways become a symbol of conservatism (as opposed to ‘alt country,’ which is often associated with a more liberal outlook*).

For an excellent discussion of the early political culture of the California country music scene, see Pete LaChapelle’s book Proud to Be an Okie: Cultural Politics, Country Music, and Migration to Southern California.

(Via Sociological Images.)

MGM (1975) - Jack Goldstein:

(Via Rhizome.org.)

Christian Ska band performs “Jesus is My Friend”:

I hardly go out to see bands any more, but I’d pay a lot to attend a Sonseed concert.

♫ Once I tried to run, once I tried to hide, but Jesus found me and touched me deep down inside. ♫

‘Jesus is My Friend’ by Sonseed (Via Arbroath)

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(Via Boing Boing.)

Simplified spelling lesson from former president of the American Literacy Council: “

Ed Rondthaler, age 102, gives a very cool lesson about how odd the written English language is. Andy Cruz of House Industries says:

We had the privilege to spend a day filming Ed Rondthaler, the founder of Photo-Lettering, Inc., former president of the American Literacy Council and author of The Dictionary of Simplified American Spelling. Another living legend, writer/director Erich Weiss, is in the process of editing down all of the film we shot. Click here for the ‘trailer’ he put together for us.
Ed Rondthaler

(Via Boing Boing.)

PROGENE MALE SUPPLEMENT: BUY IT, OR YOU’LL NEVER HAVE SEX AGAIN:

This commercial I recently saw on Comedy Central for Progene male enhancement supplement warns men who are ‘not 20 anymore’ that, without their product, they won’t be able to satisfy a woman.

Here’s a screenshot of a graph from the video which purports to show how men’s sexual performance declines with age:

Of course, we women ‘know it’s not your fault,’ ‘it’s natural.’

Obviously you could could use this for a discussion of the increasing scrutiny men’s bodies are put under (much as women’s long have). But it’s also a good example of the way sex is often discussed; the implication here is that the only way to satisfy a woman sexually is to be able to have sex like a 20-year-old man, and the emphasis is clearly on penile-vaginal intercourse as the main source of sexual pleasure (though it does come with the handy DVD about the female orgasm). I might also use it when I talk about the ways we construct biology and treat some ‘natural’ processes as inevitable and unalterable while attempting to change others.

(Via Sociological Images.)

Free Press in America:

Amy Goodman is the host for Democracy Now! - a free independent Internet, Radio and TV news organization (12 years in existence). At the day she wanted to cover the protest against the Republican convention she and some senior producers were arrested by police with freaking baseball bats. Goodman one of the producers also arrested has been officially charged with obstruction of a legal process and interference with a “peace officer’ (no joke!) - or officer ‘I bring peace with my baseball bat’. (Democracy Now Article about the arrest here.)
America is officially a police state. There is no free press and the country is not free anymore - forget about a free election as well. Hail Reichspresident McCain and his creationist running mate cheerleader Palin.

(Via Life as an Artificial Lifeform.)

Lewontin on the Metaphors of Gene Organism and Environment:

(Via 3quarksdaily.)

Lou Gehrig’s Plaza:
(‘Representative path plots from one SOD1 rat and one control rat in the open-field arena. Image by Neri Kafkafi, et al.)

Research into Lou Gehrig’s disease has demonstrated that, at least in mice carrying the genetic mutation, it can spatially manifest itself as ‘very subtle’ but detectable behavioral patterns before the onset of symptoms.

Quoting at length a press release from the American Psychological Association:

Researchers led by Neri Kafkafi, PhD, of the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center, part of the University of Maryland’s School of Medicine, mathematically analyzed about 50,000 predetermined movement patterns that resulted when rats roamed freely, one by one, in a small arena. The software created an abstract space defined by combinations of behavior such as speed, acceleration and direction of movement. Mining the resulting behavioral data enabled researchers to test many more facets of behavior than they could analyze manually.

After videotaping the movement of two groups of rats – one type with the mutation that results in an ALS-type syndrome, the other type normal controls — the scientists used the computer to ‘pan’ for differences between groups and identified a unique motor pattern in mutant rats two months before disease onset (which would equate to roughly five to 10 years in humans).

Of the multitude of behavior patterns analyzed, the predefined ‘heavily braking while slightly turning away from the wall’ showed a group difference. In two independent data sets, rats with the ALS-type mutation were significantly less likely than controls to brake and turn from the arena wall as they approached.

The benefit of this study is that ‘by being able to predict more accurately which carriers may express the disease before they experience symptoms (the ‘premorbid’ state), researchers could test medicines that might prevent symptoms from emerging.’

(‘Three-dimensional attribute spaces. Attribute spaces for one SOD1 rat and one control rat, corresponding to the same sessions shown’ in the first image. Image by Neri Kafkafi, et al.)

One wonders whether this sort of research, somewhere down the line, will result in public places getting littered with CCTV cameras data mining for the tell-tale signs of genetic diseases affecting motor functions. Similarly when traffic cameras take a photo of your license plate when you go over the speed limit and then get your ticket in the mail a couple of days later, these outdoor medical scanners take a photo of your face, match it up to a database at the CDC and a couple of days later, you get a diagnosis in the mail.

There will be a specially outfitted plaza where those without health insurance can get their free check-ups. Those with no more sick days can simply walk pass through on their way to work or linger about during their lunch breaks. Hypochondriacs will come in droves and stay there, like skateboarders to a Brutalist plaza.

It’s landscape as a diagnostic tool.

(Spot the pedophiles and the terrorists. Photo courtesy of Barco. Source.)

If there is a predictive behavioral pattern to a pedophile’s movements within the spatial confines of playgrounds and park (that is, if children still go outdoors anymore) as well as the streets bordering schools, you get a court order to receive some psychiatric counseling.

Do terrorists have a genetic mutation that not only affect their cognitive reasoning but also their motor functions, the pattern array of which is so perceptibly different with that of non-terrorists that you can ‘spot’ them?

In the Archives:
The Alzheimer House
My Garden Is Telling Me That I’m Abusing My Kids

(Via Pruned.)

1940s phone assembles itself to industrial soundtrack:

micromov004 - Assemblage #1 from Chris Randall on Vimeo.

In Chris Randall’s mesmerizing music video, Micronaut: Assemblage #1, an old-timey animation from 1947 of a phone assembling itself is set to a modern sountrack. ‘I went and kited some footage from the Prelinger archive and made new music for it,’ he writes at his website.

Some New Micronaut For You… [Chris Randall via jwz]

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(Via Boing Boing Gadgets.)

Motion-Extraction-Reanimation Series, a difference perspective on film classics: “
New York based artist Kurt Ralske is a master of visual image manipulation. With his project ‘Motion-Extraction-Reanimation Series‘, the artist reassembles material from various commercial movies such as Jean-Luc Godard’s ‘Alphaville’ (1965) and isolates, processes, and animates only the motion content. Ralske treats motion in the films as an “object or surface” where alternate perspectives of a scene are presented simultaneously to produce often ghostly-like images. In particular, the actor’s motions while doing simple actions like drinking coffee are transformed into kinetic surfaces and volumes with dynamic architectural qualities. Although it might be difficult to actually make sense of the narrative progression in these clips, the effect produced is a hypnotic homage to the original filmmaker’s vision.
Jonah Brucker Cohen

(Via Neural.it :: media culture, hacktivism.)

La la la: “
Fragment of Amelia, a film by Edouard Lock and La la la Human Steps.

Another chapter of the film is here.”

(Via New Art.)

2 videos found by chance: “Star, by Alexander Reyna

Metalosis Maligna, by Floris Kaayk
“

(Via New Art.)

We love treehouses here at Inhabitat and are enamored with eco-architect Mitchell Joachim’s visionary ideas about how to grow living treehouses from ficus molded around frame structures. We’ve covered these brilliantly playful architectural ideas before on Inhabitat, but now we have a video from Mitchell Joachim explaining the details of how they work. Joachim does much better justice to his future-forward ecological designs than we are able to do in a mere post, so if you have any interest in living treehouses (and we know you do), check out this fascinating video below.