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Guardian Unlimited -
4 hours and 58 minutes ago
Musicians, DJs and authors to reveal their favourite hangouts
Have your say on
the Travel blog
HiFi, New York
HiFi is the best rock'n'roll bar in NYC.The room
is covered with empty album sleeves and the juke box is hands-down the best in the city
– I believe there are about 3,000 albums on it, so you can't complain about
them not having your song. There is a fantastically affordable happy hour and a great local
crowd. Like the rest of the East Village, it can get a bit much on weekend nights, but most of
the time it's my favourite bar in town.
· 169 Avenue A, +1 212 420 8392.
Craig Finn, lead singer of the Hold Steady
Pegu Club, New York
The entrance to the Pegu is an unassuming
doorway on the south side of West Houston Street. It's only when you are up the stairs that the
glory of this place hits you. It is like going back to the great clubs of the 20s, when the staff
were pretty and jazz and cocktails ruled. On a recent visit, two amazing Django Reinhardt-style
guitarists were swinging through 30s classics. Cocktails are taken seriously here
– the art of proper, classy drinking is almost a motto. At the weekend it can
get pretty busy as it is becoming the "in" place.
· 77 West Houston Street, +1 212 473 7348.
James Pearson, artistic director, Ronnie Scott's, London
Po' Monkey's, Mississippi
It was a balmy night in September when I visited Po' Monkey's juke joint. It's a ramshackle hut
powered by a single cable in the tiny town of Merigold, deep in the Mississippi delta. A poster
on the door warned: "Bring your liquor inside but not your beer." The walls were cluttered with
posters and age-old postcards, while toy monkeys swung from the rafters. It was low lit
– smoky but inviting, with beer and whiskey flowing freely. Terry "Harmonica" Bean took to the tiny
stage, elbow to elbow with the crowd, and delivered a mind-blowing, foot-stamping performance
that will stay with me forever. Delicately soulful cries came from his ageing gruff voice, while
stupendous bluegrass melodies oozed effortlessly from his antique steel guitar. This was raw
blues at its authentic and spine-shivering best.
· +1 662 514 7488, 15km from Cleveland.
Dan Hipgrave, co-founder of Original Music
Company (originalmusictravel.com), which launched this month and specialises
in music-themed holidays
The Spirit Store, Ireland
The Spirit Store in Dundalk, County Louth, is
on the edge of town beside a small harbour. There's a small, friendly bar downstairs which opens
around 4pm, but it is the live music upstairs that is the main draw. You would be hard-pressed to
find anywhere as welcoming to an artist and more genuinely music-driven in its programming of
events. That's why I keep going back there to play, and why many other artists who have outgrown
the 120- or so capacity venue keep returning. So many venues and promoters are about the money
but Derek Turner, who books the music, is driven by something much more.
· +353 42 9352697.
Duke Special,
musician. His DVD box set, The Stage, A Book & the Silver Screen is out now
The Hideout, London
Not exactly a venue, not exactly a bar, entrance to Trishas/The Hideout/that door on
Greek St (as it is variously known), is obtained by boldly knocking on what appears to be the
entrance to a flat above a shop, striding through a starkly lit corridor and down a flight of
stairs, before mumbling an explanation to the owner as to why you don't appear to be in
possession of a membership card – having accidentally put it through the
washing machine normally does the trick. Inside, you'll find a cupboard-sized, candle-lit cavern
which can be hired out for private music showcases. But stumble in unannounced after hours on a
weekend and you might also find a doo wop or jazz band sandwiched into the corner between the
usual crowd of transvestites, metropolitan hipsters and veteran Italian locals.
57 Greek Street, Soho, London.
Krissi Murison, editor, NME
The Shed North Yorkshire
I first played at this blink-and-you'll-miss-it shed in the tiny village of Brawby back in 1998.
It only held 64 people and we scraped our legs on the front row's knees. It has since moved to
Hovingham village hall, though it retains its name. The man behind The Shed, Simon Thackray, has
presented events from the Fish and Chip Van Tour with a trombonist, to mixed media knitting
installations – saxophonist Lol Coxhill playing free jazz in a skip to coach
trips for folks in knitted Elvis wigs touring sites of Elvisian interest in Ryedale. My own band,
Hank Wangford and the Lost Cowboys, started a tradition of Christmas gigs at The Shed, where we
play morose songs and have a riotously miserable time. The Shed was the inspiration for my
village hall tour around Britain, which I am currently writing up as a book. And, after 235
villages, The Shed is still the loony best.
· 01653 668494.
Hank Wangford, writer and musician. His CD, Whistling in the Dark, is out now
A38, Budapest
For me, the greatest gig of 2009 was at A38, a
huge old ship that used to lug coal up and down the Danube. The lower deck is now a
state-of-the-art live music venue, but bits of engine room equipment are still there. Even though
the boat is held down in dry dock by 100 tonnes of concrete, the bottles still jingle on the
shelves of the bar when the parties get wild. The booking policy is great –
they've had cutting-edge electronic artists such as Ikonika, Dorian Concept and Foreign Beggars
play recently. And nothing compares with the signature dish of the restaurant on the upper deck:
rooster stew, complete with the crest and testicles of the bird.
· +36 1 464 39 40.
Mary Anne
Hobbs, Radio 1 DJ. Her show is broadcast on Thursdays 2-4am
Wild At Heart, Berlin
Wild At Heart is a
whisky-soaked, no-nonsense rock'n'roll joint in Berlin's old anarchist district, Kreuzberg: a
seven-nights-a-week venue painted blood red, crammed with Elvis memorabilia, Hawaiian gods and a
lifetime's supply of hard liquor. For 15 years it has presented bands from all over the world
– mostly punk, rockabilly, psychobilly, 60s garage and surf. I spent a
memorable evening there talking to TV Smith from the Adverts and another with Wreckless Eric,
both of whom started out with punk label Stiff Records in 1977, and I've played there with my
band, the Flaming Stars. The music's loud, but the welcome is friendly, and the club also runs
the Tiki Heart cafe and clothes shop next door,
where you can eat, drink and kit yourself out in a spectacular variety of rock'n'roll
clobber.
· Wienerstrasse 20, +49 30 610 747 01.
Max Décharné, singer in the Flaming Stars and author of A Rocket in My
Pocket: The Hipster's Guide to Rockabilly, to be published by Serpent's Tail in June
Mesa de Frades, Lisbon
Mesa de Frades in Alfama, the oldest district of Lisbon, is the sort of place you dream of
hearing fado, the traditional soulful Portuguese music. A tiny converted chapel with
tiled walls, it is full of locals and quality performers booked by owner Pedro Castro, a great
guitar player. You can come for the music, which starts late – around 11pm
– or book a table and come for an excellent dinner beforehand. A couple of
years ago I sat here watching Carminho, the amazing young fado singer who is now the talk of
Lisbon. When the music starts, the doors are shut to enclose the tiny performing space. It's what
fado in Lisbon should be, but so rarely is.
· Rua dos Remedios 139A, +351 91 702 9436, mesadefrades.com. Booking is
essential.
Simon Broughton, editor of Songlines magazine (songlines.co.uk/musictravel)
Il Folk Club, Turin
In the heart of Turin, off Piazza Statuto, you'll find the best of all worlds: from Wednesday to
Saturday Il Folk Club plays host to Italian and
international jazz, folk and world musicians. How this Italian institution –
legendary in Turin for over 20 years – has remained generally unknown to
travellers and music junkies outside Italy is a mystery. Alongside its regular programme, Il Folk
Club is also the launching point for Radio Londra, a monthly mini-festival which fuses British
musicians such as Jim Mullen, Kit Downes, Brandon Allen and Quentin Collins Quartet, with local
stars such as Mario Pozza, Enzo Zirilli and Dado Moroni. The bar is simple –
one central room with space for about 150 people, exposed brick walls, and a stage
– so the focus is always on the incredible music.
Via Ettore Perrone 3, Turin.
Sam Sollai, buyer and events coordinator, Ray's Jazz at Foyles
Gerbard, Barcelona
This little neighbourhood bar used to have a green door with panes that rattled when you opened
it, but it has now been replaced with something more solid, partly to keep the sound in. It's run
by Mar and Nacho, both dyed-in-the-wool culés (Barcelona supporters), and nights
there are long and loud. You can hear Sam Lardner, an American resident who plays his own fusion
of flamenco and bossa nova, or wonderful classical and flamenco guitarists like Daniel Figueras
and Pedro Javier Hermosilla, or the Covers Project, with frontman Philip Stanton. The eating and
drinking are delicious too – Galician-style octopus, traditional meatballs,
pimientos de padron (small green peppers), and wine for not much more than a euro a
glass. A great night out in the Alta Zona.
· C/ Ivorra 24, Sarria, Barcelona, +93 203 4988.
Rupert Thomson, author living in Barcelona. His latest book, This Party's Got to Stop,
will be published on 8 April
La Casona del Molino, Salta, Argentina
Salta, in north-west Argentina, is well-known for its folk music heritage. This has given rise to
the creation of pena, which roughly translates as a place where musicians and music
lovers come together. Seven nights a week you can experience this at La Casona. The venue's five
colonial rooms are filled to the brim with musicians, professional and amateur, folk, jazz and
others, locals who come down from the Andes bearing pan pipes and drums, and some foreign
visitors, all coming together to jam the local tunes. As a musician, I found great comfort in the
fact that this kind of place exists in the world. And of course, many people come simply for the
music.
· La Casona del Molino, Caseros.
Lizzie Ball, violinist
and singer. She will be performing – and launching her album
– with Machaca at La Linea Festival in the Purcell Room on London's South Bank on 27 April
Salón Rosado de la Tropical, Havana
The first time I asked a taxi driver to take me to Havana's Salón Rosado de la Tropical
back in 1989 he said it was a place for Cubans, not foreign tourists – and
certainly not lone women – and I'd better watch out as it could be rough. He'd
obviously never been inside this mecca of Cuban dance music, where all the top bands play
regularly, testing their latest material in front of the sexiest dancers on the island. In Cuba,
most music venues are geared to tourists and too expensive for ordinary Cubans, who are often not
allowed in anyway. Not so the Salón Rosado. This is the closest you can get to hanging out
with a Cuban clientele. Dedicated to the memory of Beny Moré, Cuba's touchstone band
leader of the 1950s, it started out life a Spanish cultural centre at the beginning of the 20th
century. These days there's a balcony reserved for tourists overlooking the dance floor where, if
you're lucky, you may rub shoulders with the musicians as they gather for the gig. Although today
reggaeton and hip-hop dominate street tastes, Salon Rosado continues to offer a window on to the
latest music scene and is a dancer's dream.
· Avenida 41 esq. 46, Nicanor del Campo, Marianao, +53 7 203 5322.
Jan Fairley has been travelling to Cuba since 1978 and is writing a book on women and
music in Cuba
Liquid Room, Tokyo
Leading Japanese venue Liquid Room has been going for about 15 years and hosts weekly bands and
DJs from Japan and around the world. The website may say it closes at 12, but the last time I
played there, as The Orb, they didn't let us out till 6am. There's a beautiful cafe upstairs and
the friendly enthusiasm of Tokyo clubbers has to be experienced to be believed. The last time I
played there I took a bag of Space Dust (the sweet!) which made me very popular.
· Higashi, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo, +81 3 5464 0800, liquidroom.net.
Alex Paterson, co-founder of The Orb and HFB, his new project. HFB's first three EPs are
available from 12 April on Malicious Damage Records
New Africa Shrine, Lagos, Nigeria
Lagos is not your classic tourist destination; it's a prohibitively expensive city of 14 million
people and a crime record to frighten even the toughest traveller. But Nigeria's notorious
capital does have one musical landmark worth going the extra mile for: the New Africa Shrine. It's named after the
legendary club run by the late musical activist Fela Kuti, which was razed
by soldiers. Fela's daughter Yeni and her musician brother Femi have built up a nightclub that
can hold thousands and has live music throughout the week. It's not for the faint-hearted, but
the Shrine is probably the safest place in Lagos: it has its own police force. You'll get a warm
welcome, and hear some of the best live music in the region.
· Pepple Street, Ikeja.
Rose Skelton, music and travel journalist specialising in West Africa
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media
Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

|
CrunchGear -
6 hours and 2 minutes ago

Mosquitos are one of the major ways that malaria is spread, causing an estimated two million
deaths per year. Wouldn’t it be cool if those mosquitos could be genetically modified to
spread a malaria vaccination instead of the disease itself? Scientists have theorized
about just such a solution for years, but recent work from Jichi Medical University in Japan
proves that it’s
actually possible, not just theoretically possible.
Associate Professor Shigeto Yoshida and his research team “successfully generated a
transgenic mosquito expressing the Leishmania vaccine within its saliva. Bites from the insect
succeeded in raising antibodies, indicating successful immunization with the Leishmania vaccine
through blood feeding.” Of course, this vaccination idea isn’t perfect, since
you’ll still have one or more mosquito bites to scratch at, but at least you won’t
have malaria.
Maybe I’m alarmist, but I can’t help but think that this kind of approach throws the
natural order of things seriously out of whack. As I read the story, I kept hearing Jeff Goldblum
from Jurassic Park in my mind, saying “life, uh … finds a way.”


|
"Bloody-Disgusting" -
7 hours and 35 minutes ago
Arriving on DVD June 1 from Phase 4 Films is Uwe Boll's first watchable movie, Rampage ( review), which stars Brendan Fletcher, Shaun
Sipos, Lynda Boyd, Robert Clarke, Matt Frewer, Katey Grace, Brent Hodge, Katharine Isabelle,
Michael Paré, Malcolm Stewart and Pale Christian Thomas. " The boredom of small town life
is eating Bill Williamson alive. Feeling constrained and claustrophobic in the meaningless drudgery
of everyday life and helpless against overwhelming global dissolution, Bill (Brendan Fletcher)
begins a descent into madness. His shockingly violent plan will shake the very foundations of
society by painting the streets red with blood." Check out the art and trailer below.
|
GameSetWatch -
8 hours and 2 minutes ago
[‘Design Diversions’ is a biweekly GameSetWatch-exclusive column
by Andrew Vanden Bossche. It looks at the unexpected moments when games take us behind the
scenes, and the details of how game design engages us. This time -- how emotional design can make
us think about not thinking about violence.]
Senseless violence in videogames is fun, but more importantly, it can also be intellectually
stimulating and thought provoking. While designers and critics alike cry out for more depth in
games, pathos is not the only path to artistic merit. For a medium that's constantly patronized,
misunderstood, and derided even by its supporters, sometimes satire and irony is the best way to
get a point across.
This is the philosophy of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, as
the most unapologetic of that series so lambasted by those who were the target of the
game’s satire. The ultraviolent and candy colored Vice City is an excessively pink world in
which violence is comical and cartoonish. Violence in this game is already highly desensitized.
Pedestrians die, but after their bodies despawn the world will be back to normal as if nothing
happened, maintaining the status quo like a TV serial.
It's the worst possible environment for a serious engagement with issues of violence, but it's a
great environment to engage with how we depict violence. Most games take the opposite position of
Haunting Ground, and are designed to soften, justify, or excuse violent actions so that players
feel like heroes instead of murderers.
It's the same treatment summer blockbusters get. But unlike most of these media, Vice City goes a
step further. This is a game that mercilessly skewers the groups most opposed to its existence,
freely leaps into self parody, and satirizes the cultural attitudes towards violence that
ultimately gave it form. By the end of Vice City it's clear that everyone from the mob to the
talking heads on the radio are guilty of the same violence as the protagonist. No one in Vice
City is innocent, and neither is anyone in the world.
How to Take the Sense Out of Violence
While technology makes blood and gore more realistic, game designers continue to construct this
violence to minimize its impact. In the goriest of games (like Mortal Kombat) violence is there
to thrill or disgust, not to inspire existential terror. Designers (and gamers) get excited over
realism, but we want it for specific reasons. Despite how much we clamor for realism in graphics
and physics, emotional realism actually gets in the way of enjoying games like Grand Theft Auto.
For this reason GTA4 has actually been criticized for being too realistic. GTA4 succeeded in its
attempt to be more serious and taken more seriously, but it resulted in a different game
experience--one that many fans hadn't been looking for and subsequently found in the much less
serious Saints Row 2.
GTA4’s Nico feels more like a person than the caricature that is Vice City’s Tommy
Vercetti, and for that reason it can be hard for players to engage senseless violence. Even the
normal missions feel a little odd considering the sheer number of people you kill, creating a
scenario in which the gameplay and story don’t quite mesh.
Abstracting Emotion
Trauma Center is an interesting example of a game that uses abstraction to eliminate
squeamishness. This is a game inspired heavily by medical dramas with surgery-based gameplay.
Medical dramas have a wide appeal; exposed organs do not. Surgeons and other medical
professionals have to get used to blood and guts, but most people are pretty squeamish about
that. Even the bloody fantasy violence of the average videogame can be less intense than the
exposed entrails of a living human. Because of this, the designers went to great lengths to
create a representation of the human body that wouldn't be grotesque.
Naoya Maeda, the lead 3D and event designer said on the Trauma Team web site that he came up with
this abstract approach while thinking of how a surgeon would see the entrails. What's interesting
about this approach is that the more realistic option may be less "true." In the game, the player
is a doctor and revulsion is not part of the experience. In the same way, Tommy Vercetti attitude
towards human life is pretty obvious from the way pedestrians are depicted.
A World of Mannequins
In violent videogames, it’s common to dehumanize the enemy so that players can feel
justified in killing them. Zombies, robots, and aliens all serve their roles. With human
opponents, it’s common to make them as evil as possible, which may be why WWII is the
favorite FPS genre and Nazis the favorite foe. Ultimately though, the greatest tool for removing
humanity is simply to leave them undeveloped.
The civilians in GTA don’t mourn, cry, or express themselves. Because they don't exhibit
sympathetic actions, it's hard to empathize with them. They exist only to run screaming like
Godzilla was stomping through the city. Vice City is inhabited by crash test dummies that respawn
endlessly no matter how many times they die. It’s similar to watching Bugs Bunny gets
blasted point blank with a shotgun: the next second, he's up and chomping carrots.
No matter how many times the player dies in GTA, or however many generic citizens he wastes,
everything in the world will be respawning and back to normal in minutes. In this way, actions
that would normally appear reprehensible loose all their emotional impact. If GTA was an accurate
murder simulator, depicting the horror of real-world violence and murder with unflinching
accuracy, the nightly news stories would have been about kids getting PTSD.
Sensitive Violence
If there is a flaw in this form of violence in videogames, it’s that it isn’t violent
enough. It’s emotionally casual, designed specifically to not challenge the player’s
feelings of empathy or guilt. Although it takes a lot of design work to make sure the player
won’t feel sorry for the extras, seeing how many pixilated crash-test dummies you can run
over isn’t emotionally challenging for the player.
Haunting Ground has a near-opposite outcome, but the design is obviously quite intentional.
Compare GTA to the visceral Manhunt, and you can see that Rockstar is quite capable of creating
an experience uniquely tailored to inspiring certain emotions. That’s a game that really
does make the player feel like a murderer.
So Vice City is engineered for players to be as violent as possible without thinking about it.
This is where a lot of game stop, having accomplished their purpose, and just let the player have
fun. But Vice City fills the game with relentless satire, and this cleverness works in part
because it's so violent. The result is a game about thinking about not thinking about violence.
Whose America?
The talk radio blabbering about videogame violence is underscored by the incredible violence
perpetuated by the player. With Tommy Vercetti chaining rows of exploding cars and fighting
everything from SWAT to the US Army, the irony of legislating against bleeding pixels isn’t
lost on the player.
The jingoistic ads run by the game's gun stores unsubtly implicate that GTA is not the cause of
America's attitudes towards violence, but a product of it. The entrepreneurial rise of the main
character reflects a certain pulling-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps-attitude that, along with
this construction of violence, satirically constructs Tommy Vercetti as an ideal American.
Vice City is violent videogame about America’s attitude towards violence. Vice City came
out after GTA 3, and it was born while the immediate reaction to that game was fresh in the minds
of its audience and opponents. As the in game talk show parody unfolds, extremists from all sides
fight over which vision of America to cram down the rest of the country’s throat while the
player is laughing at them and having a grand old time.
While the guests on talk radio worry about fictional violence, their world is being blown up by
the player on a regular basis. After mowing down the city in a tank, players may wonder why they
aren't the ones being discussed on the news. Shouldn't they be thinking about real violence?
Shouldn't the player? It's fun to live the American Dream as Tommy Vercetti, but is this bitter
satire worth bringing to reality?
Even though Vice City goes to great lengths to create emotionally uninvolved violence, it wants
the player to be conscious of how different this is from real world violence. At the time, the
charge levied against the playerbase and the industry was that videogames confused the two. With
the pitch perfect satire of radio pundits and activists, Vice City invites the player to think
about whether the game is more damaging to society than the people trying to ban it. Rockstar has
a clear agenda, of course, and stacks the deck in their favor. Even so, that’s a lot to
think about for a game that’s not supposed to be about thinking at all.
Pathos certainly has its place in videogames, and it's certainly something we need more of. A GTA
like game that forced players to confront the realities of murder would be an interesting idea.
It couldn't work as a satire, and it wouldn't really be fun, but that’s just fine as
it’s another way to engage the player. One of the great things about survival horror games
like Haunting Ground is that they've proven that games don't necessarily need to be fun to be
compelling.
But let's not underestimate Vice City just because it makes us laugh.
[Andrew Vanden Bossche is a freelance writer and student. He has a blog called Mammon Machine, which is updated less often than this
message, and can be reached at AndrewVandenB@gmail.com]


|
Guardian Unlimited -
8 hours and 33 minutes ago
The will to learn brings confidence, and the ability to view society through truthful eyes
The socialist paradise in which I'm now sitting is a place where people from all walks of life,
young and old, firm and somewhat less firm, have – through a combination of
apprenticeship and self-examination – come to learn together about the world,
without having to pay for the privilege.
It's a public library, of course: a place which you visit voluntarily in order to learn more
things than you were taught at school. I call it "the place where dreams can come true". It's
where the project of learning continues, at your own pace and of your own volition, and where you
are understood to be an equal participant in the making and changing of your mind. No possibility
is closed off to you.
Good fortune favours the well-primed, and the habit of seeing yourself as someone who doesn't do
that sort of thing, or have that kind of luck, can be hard to get out of. But oh, to be a child
in Newham now! The east London borough has just announced a policy of giving every pupil in its
primary schools free music lessons for a minimum of two years, and the loan of an instrument of
their choice. You can almost hear its mayor, Sir Robin Wales, rubbing his hands together at the thought of spending
£1.25m a year making Every Child a Musician, as the scheme is known.
Knowing that my nan, who left school at 11, could play a bit of piano, whereas I barely know one
end of the instrument from the other, proves that no skill is transmitted by osmosis. It has to
be passed on deliberately, which is why progress can never be taken for granted, and why the
invidious nature of cultural dispossession must be kept in mind.
It's hard to convey the sheer desultoriness of our music teaching at my secondary school. For a
start, we were given one half-hour lesson a week, of which 25 minutes were spent trying to wind
up the plainly contemptuous teacher. When she couldn't be bothered, she looked out of the window
and let us get on with pressing the demo button on our Casio keyboards: playing at playing and
learning nothing in the process because the person we needed to guide us didn't think it was
worth her while.
This is shown more powerfully in 36 Children, Herbert Kohl's account of teaching in a Harlem elementary school
in the late 1960s. He shows the children that they have brains when every other teacher has told
them they're brainless. He invites them round to his apartment and puts on jazz music while they
rifle through his books and artefacts. They quickly become fascinated by Greek myths and work
together to produce a literary magazine full of allegory, truth and creativity.
Middle-class children are subjected to "accelerated learning" virtually from birth. The nascent
person of power is treated as a sponge who can take it all in, because they're assumed to have
the potential for discrimination and specialism later in life. Start with piano, violin, trumpet,
ballet and chess club and you can always drop one when, as expected, you start to show
exceptional talent in one or more of them. This enrichment of the domestic environment
– turning home life into an extension of schooling – is
taken as a given by teachers at largely middle-class schools, which stretch their children to the
extent that excelling becomes the norm.
Note that accelerated learning programmes – or "wraparound schools" which
start early and finish late, the better to fit more of these "middle-class" activities into the
daily life of working-class children – are intended to do the opposite: to
make school an extension of the home. However, the value of making educational activities
something you do outside of school, as well as inside, is surely that you stop associating
learning exclusively with schooling.
Richard Sennett, author of The Craftsman, writes convincingly of the role that
learning to read and play music has in building confidence. Mastery is a transferable skill
– once you've mastered, or at least gained a working knowledge of, one thing,
there's nothing stopping you from trying another. When my husband takes his Grade 8 exam in
classical guitar next month he'll be 35, but that won't stop him picking up another instrument to
learn straight afterwards (I know what he's like). Playing music gives him another kind of voice,
and affords him a sort of enviable mental polyphony.
You can keep people down with this kind of power: the power to deprive, to impoverish, to make
ignorant. But you can't keep them down for ever. At some point it will warp and blast out some
other way, in bitterness, in fighting, in baying for blood, the consequences of having just
enough knowledge to know you're ignorant. Learning is what enables us to look at ourselves and
our society through more detached, more truthful, eyes. Who would deny anyone that?
Lynsey Hanleyguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use
of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

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"Bloody-Disgusting" -
10 hours ago
The official website has been launched
for Brian Singleton's Werewolf Fever, a film that begins when a werewolf attacks a
fast food restaurant, terrorizing the employees. The trailer found below features a good look into
the film that rocks tons of blood and some really cool FX work. I'm looking forward to checking
this out. 
|
Cinematical -
10 hours and 15 minutes ago
Snip, snip, splosh, splosh. Wielding a scalpel, Remy ( Jude Law) shoots a powerful stun gun
at another man, then calmly proceeds to slice his hapless victim open and slip his fingers inside
the guy's guts. Remy feels around inside -- squish, squish -- and then pulls out a blood-soaked
artificial organ. Job done, he smiles and heads to the office. Oh, what fun it must be to live in
the future!
In the near future of Repo
Men, artificial organs are freely available to everyone from a lone entrepreneur
who has shared his intellectual property freely for the benefit of mankind. (Just kidding.) No, the
artificial organs are all controlled by a giant corporation named The Union. Trouble is, they're
still darn expensive, much like real organs, costing upwards of $400,000 to $600,000 or more, and
people have trouble making the monthly payments. That keeps Remy and his boyhood chum Jake
( Forest Whitaker)
mighty busy stunning and slicing and repossessing organs so they can be recycled into the bodies of
other people who won't be able to make the monthly payments. Ad infinitum, ad nauseam.
You might wonder how one corporation has managed to gain a monopoly on artificial organs. Or why
the future of Repo Men looks like downtown Tokyo now, all tall buildings, neon
lights and blinking digital billboards. Or why Jake doesn't act more directly on his man-crush for
Remy, since he likes to wrestle him so much, and even begs him to leave his wife so they can cruise
the streets together.
You can ask those type of questions all you want, but Repo Men is exclusively concerned
with looking good and bleeding profusely.
Filed under: Action, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, New Releases, Universal, Theatrical Reviews
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Review: Repo Men
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linkfilter.net - fresh links -
10 hours and 17 minutes ago
Indeed, 90 percent of the world’s wheat has little or no protection against the Ug99 race of
P. graminis. If nothing is done to slow the pathogen, famines could soon become the norm
— from the Red Sea to the Mongolian steppe
— as Ug99 annihilates a crop that provides a third of our calories.
China and India, the world’s biggest wheat consumers, will once again face the threat of mass
starvation, especially among their rural poor. The situation will be particularly grim in Pakistan
and Afghanistan, two nations that rely heavily on wheat for sustenance and are in no position to
bear added woe. Their fragile governments may not be able to survive the onslaught of Ug99 and its
attendant turmoil. The pathogen has already been detected in Iran and may now be
headed for South Asia’s most important breadbasket, the Punjab, which nourishes hundreds of
millions of Indians and Pakistanis. What’s more, Ug99 could easily make the transoceanic leap
to the United States. All it would take is for a single spore, barely bigger than a red blood cell,
to latch onto the shirt of an oblivious traveler

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Emu Nova | Actualité -
11 hours ago
Le Hanabi Festival célèbre au Japon l'arrivée du printemps. Sur la Console
Virtuelle de la Wii, il est l'occasion de découvrir des jeux qui n'ont pas eu l'honneur de
connaître la France. Ainsi cette semaine, nous, Européens, avons la chance de voir
débarquer un mythe de la PC-Engine. Le génial Castlevania : Rondo of Blood intialement
disponible sur Super CD-ROM² reste toujours aussi impressionnant. Ses
musiques n'ont pas perdu de leur superbe et le level design donne toujours autant de plaisir.
Le titre de Konami ne vient pas seul et est accompagné d'un autre jeu de plates-formes, mais
cette fois-ci sur NES. Milon's Secret Castle est l'ancètre de Do-Re-Mi Fantasy également sur Console
Virtuelle. Vous incarnez Milon qui combat des hordes de monstres avec des bulles magiques.
Etonnant.

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Nintendo Difference -
14 hours and 16 minutes ago
Le vendredi, comme tout les vendredis on fête la sortie des jeux sur format Ware à
savoir WiiWare et DSiWare mais aussi Virtual Console (VC) pour les amateurs d'Oldies. Nous
commençons donc avec la sortie WiiWare du jour en la personne de Muscle March qui met en
scène des gars bodybuildés dans un univers totalement délirant (à
découvrir en cliquant sur la fiche du jeu un peu plus bas). Le jeu vous est proposé
pour 500 Wii Points soit 5€.On enchaine avec les sorties DSiWare, plus
nombreuses avec Car Jack Streets une sorte de GTA premier du nom (800 points -
8€), Flashlight qui n'est pas un jeu mais un logiciel transformant votre
DSi en Lampe-Torche (200 points - 2€), Libera Wing, un jeu d'Action et
de Stratégie dans lequel vous devrez sauver l'Union Terrestre (800 points -
8€) et enfin Photo Dojo, un jeu de combat dans lequel vous pourrez vous
prendre en photo (des pieds à la tête) afin de vous utiliser en tant que combattant
(200 points - 2€).Enfin on terminera avec les sorties Virtual Console
(ou Console Virtuelle si vous préférez) ou le tant attendu Castlevania : Rondo of
Blood (PC Engine CD) et Milon’s Secret Castle (NES) sont enfin disponibles. Ce jeux sont
issus du Hanabi Festival qui propose de jouer à des jeux qui n'avaient jamais
étés édités en Europe... pour le plus grand bonheur des gamers et vieux
loups du pad !

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CiteULike: Borelli's watchlist -
17 hours and 59 minutes ago
Sensors and Actuators B: Chemical, Vol. 27, No. 1-3. (June 1995), pp. 461-464.
A method using six sensors for measuring the activity of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) is
presented. The measured parameters are: skin potential, skin resistance, skin blood flow, skin
temperature, instantaneous heart rate, and instantaneous respiratory frequency. The multiparametric
measurement of variables of different natures provides complementary information relating to ANS
activity. The sensors are characterized by being non-invasive and painless and provide minimal
discomfort to the subjects. The sensor's instrumentation system is portable and can be used in
laboratory and in real conditions (sports field, on board a vehicle, air -traffic control room,
etc.) and presents high immunity to noise. experiments were performed on 11 marksmen during a
shooting competition to study the correlation between ANS activity and shooting performance on the
basis of the subjects' control of their emotional reactivity and concentration/relaxation
technique.
A Dittmar

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CiteULike: Borelli's watchlist -
18 hours ago
Sensors and Actuators B: Chemical, Vol. 144, No. 1. (29 January 2010), pp. 81-87.
This study aimed (i) to assess the ability of electronic nose (e-nose) technology to differentiate
between blood samples of experimentally infected and non-infected subjects and (ii) to evaluate
e-nose responses given by volatile organic compounds in relation to the acute phase reaction
generated in the host. In an animal model of gram-negative bacterial infection (20 calves;
intratracheal inoculation of Mannheimia haemolytica A1), the concentrations of the acute phase
proteins (APPs; i.e. lipopolysaccharide binding protein and haptoglobin) were measured in serum
samples before and after challenge, and headspaces of pre- and post-inoculation serum samples were
analysed using a conducting polymer-based e-nose. Significant changes of certain e-nose sensor
responses allowed discrimination between samples before and after challenge. The maximal changes in
responses of sensitive e-nose sensors corresponded to the peak of clinical signs. Significant
correlations linked decreasing responses of multiple e-nose sensors to increasing concentrations of
APPs in the peripheral blood.
Henri Knobloch, Wieland Schroedl, Claire Turner, Mark Chambers, Petra Reinhold

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CiteULike: Borelli's watchlist -
18 hours and 3 minutes ago
Sensors and Actuators B: Chemical, Vol. 36, No. 1-3. (October 1996), pp. 419-421.
The correlation of acetone concentration in blood with that in the air expired by patients suffered
from diabetes mellitus was revealed. This correlation may become the basic one for invasive acetone
determination in patient's blood via analysis of the air expired. The factors which interfere with
acetone determination are: (i) smoking just before the analysis and (ii) the alcohol presence in
patients' blood at the moment of analysis. Based on the sensor developed, the apparatus was
designed for ketoacidosis diagnosis by means of acetone determination in expired air accounting for
the peculiarities of human breath-out dynamics. Acetone determination by means of the apparatus
designed is an express one. It is much more simple, does not involve special carrier gas and is
less expensive than GLC or photometry analysis.
N Makisimovich
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All-nintendo : Nintendo Wii et Nintendo DS : L' actualité Nintendo -
20 hours and 10 minutes ago
Voici de nouveaux titres d'anciennes consoles disponibles en téléchargement dans la
partie Console Virtuelle de votre boutique en ligne Wii :
Castlevania : Rondo of Blood (TurboGraphX CD, Konami) – 900 Nintendo
Points
Milon's Secret Castle (NES, Hudson Soft) – 600 Nintendo
Points
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LiveWii RSS FEED -
21 hours and 10 minutes ago
Le Hanabi Festival continue, et semble déjà se terminer puisque les deux derniers
jeux prévus sortent aujourd'hui. Il s'arrêtera donc sur l'arrivée du
très attendu Castlevania : Rondo of Blood qui risque fort d'alléger la
bourse de nombreux fans européens, accompagné par un jeu NES, Milon's Secret
Castle, disponible depuis 2007 sur les autres territoires. -
Castlevania : Rondo of Blood (900 Nintendo points) sorti en 1993 sur PC-Engine Super
CD-ROM²  - Milon's Secret Castle (600 Nintendo points)
sorti en 1986 sur NESÂ Â Â Â
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BMC Neuroscience -
22 hours and 43 minutes ago
Publication Date: 2010 Mar 16 PMID: 20233439Authors: Vandermeeren, Y. - Jamart, J. - Ossemann,
M.Journal: BMC NeurosciABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is used
in human physiological studies and for therapeutic trials in patients with abnormalities of
cortical excitability. Its safety profile places tDCS in the pole-position for translating in
real-world therapeutic application. However, an episode of transient respiratory depression in a
subject receiving tDCS with an extracephalic electrode led to the suggestion that such an electrode
montage could modulate the brainstem autonomic centres. We investigated whether tDCS applied over
the midline frontal cortex in 30 healthy volunteers (sham n=10, cathodal n=10, anodal n=10) with an
extracephalic reference electrode would modulate brainstem activity as reflected by the monitoring
and stringent analysis of vital parameters: heart rate (variability), respiratory rate, blood
pressure and sympatho-vagal balance. We reasoned that this study could lead to two opposite but
equally interesting outcomes: 1) If tDCS with an extracephalic electrode modulated vital
parameters, it could be used as a new tool to explore the autonomic nervous system and, even, to
modulate its activity for therapeutic purposes. 2) On the opposite, if applying tDCS with an
extracephalic electrode had no effect, it could thus be used safely in healthy human subjects. This
outcome would significantly impact the field of non-invasive brain stimulation with tDCS. Indeed,
on the one hand, using an extracephalic electrode as a genuine neutral reference (as opposed to the
classical "bi-cephalic" tDCS montages which deliver bi-polar stimulation of the brain) would help
to comfort the conclusions of several modern studies regarding the spatial location and polarity of
tDCS. On the other hand, using an extracephalic reference electrode may impact differently on a
given cortical target due to the change of direct current flow direction; this may enlarge the
potential interventions with tDCS. RESULTS: Whereas the respiratory frequency decreased mildly over
time and the blood pressure increased steadily, there was no differential impact of real versus
sham tDCS. The heart rate remained stable during the monitoring period. The parameters reflecting
the sympathovagal balance suggested a progressive shift over time favouring the sympathetic tone,
again without differential impact of real versus sham tDCS. CONCLUSIONS: Applying tDCS with an
extracephalic reference electrode in healthy volunteers did not significantly modulate the activity
of the brainstem autonomic centres. Therefore, using an extracephalic reference electrode for tDCS
appears safe in healthy volunteers, at least under similar experimental conditions.post to:
CiteULike

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Releaselog | RLSLOG.net -
1 days and 1 hours ago
This article has been published at RLSLOG.net - visit our
site for full content.
C4 Has released another nice music compilation, Enjoy listening…
Tracklisting
01. The Byrds – Mr. Tambourine Man 02:31
02. Van Morrison – Brown Eyed Girl 03:06
03. Simon & Garfunkel – Mrs. Robinson 03:51
04. Donovan – Sunshine Superman 04:33
05. Harry Nilsson – Everybody’s Talkin’ 02:49
06. The Lovin’ Spoonful – You Didn’t Have To Be So Nice 02:29
07. Blood, Sweat & Tears – Spinning Wheel 04:08
08. The Chambers Brothers – Time Has Come Today 04:53
09. Roy Orbison – In Dreams 02:49
10. The Tokens – The Lion Sleeps Tonight (Wimoweh) 02:41
Release name: VA-Best_Of_60s_Hits-2009-C4. NFO Genre: Top 40
Size: 48.22 MB
Download: Hotfile, NT
more at RLSLOG.net
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Nature Neuroscience -
1 days and 23 hours ago
Publication Date: 2010 Mar 14 PMID: 20228805Authors: Buckholtz, J. W. - Treadway, M. T. - Cowan, R.
L. - Woodward, N. D. - Benning, S. D. - Li, R. - Ansari, M. S. - Baldwin, R. M. - Schwartzman, A.
N. - Shelby, E. S. - Smith, C. E. - Cole, D. - Kessler, R. M. - Zald, D. H.Journal: Nat
NeurosciPsychopathy is a personality disorder that is strongly linked to criminal behavior. Using
[(18)F]fallypride positron emission tomography and blood oxygen level-dependent functional magnetic
resonance imaging, we found that impulsive-antisocial psychopathic traits selectively predicted
nucleus accumbens dopamine release and reward anticipation-related neural activity in response to
pharmacological and monetary reinforcers, respectively. These findings suggest that neurochemical
and neurophysiological hyper-reactivity of the dopaminergic reward system may comprise a neural
substrate for impulsive-antisocial behavior and substance abuse in psychopathy.post to:
CiteULike
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