A new show in Paris with paintings (and packaging!) that look terrific!
You could kinda say that Tim Biskup is like a younger, less pretentious, less grandiloquent Jeff Koons. You could call his work Pop Surrealism. You call also call him slightly mad (in a good way; we salute him for it). In any case, it's exciting to see that his latest exhibition "O/S Operating System" is in Paris, showing a new side to a body of work that is in constant evolution.

Each of the twelve pieces in the exhibition are self contained units which include an original painting packed into its own shipping crate along with an elaborate pedestal that can be assembled using parts that come inside the crate as well as the crate itself.

The pieces are intended to represent the interconnection between art itself and the peripheral elements that allow it to exist. As a metaphor, the "systems" ask the question of weather the peripheral elements actually add to or distract from the the artwork being presented. Also included in the exhibition is a large scale serigraph, "Tree Of Life" depicting the artist's familiar Cyclops character, known as "Helper", perched among the branches of a lush tree, surrounded by flora and fauna and wielding an axe. Biskup has said that the character is a symbol of mankind corrupted by his own sense of spiritual knowledge.

As we are more familiar with Tim Biskup's paintings, it will be interesting to see how he turns them into hybrid sculptures. The exhibition will also be the chance to buy limited edition prints signed by the artist (rare!).

Here are all the essential details for the Tim Biskup exhibition "O/S Operating System" in Paris

Where: Addict Galerie, 14/16 rue de Thorigny, 75003 Paris. Métro Saint-Sébastien-Froissart (line 8)
When : 11th October - 16th November 2008. Grand opening (no invitation necessary) on Saturday 11th October from 6pm - 9pm
Exhibition opening hours: Tuesday - Saturday, 11am - 7pm (closed Sundays and Mondays)
More information (in French) : on the gallery site de la galerie
Tim Biskup official site : here
Buy a limited print of "Tree of Life": here
(parts of this post were taken from the article on the great BoingBoing site. Click here to read the original article.)


Agrandir le plan

Because it's impossible to make sense in this subforum, Zf_ quit service as mdoerator of turbosim section. This section will now be watched by the other guys now. Sad he goes, but seems noone give a shit on expert comments these days. And expert he is, but we will see how it will work out without any hint into the right direction, at least til the next big bang when cards will be invalidated and no longer working.

You may remember last year that the popular online poker site Bodog.com was forced to a href="http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070920/005726.shtml"change its name/a after losing a patent battle in Nevada, where the judge seized Bodog's domain name. The whole thing was pretty questionable. First of all, the a href="http://www.google.com/patents?id=JAgbAAAAEBAJ#038;dq=Method+and+System+for+Interactivity+Transmitting+Multimedia+Information+Over+a+Network+which+Requires+Reduced+Bandwidth"patent/a itself is incredibly broad and could be used against any number of online sites. Secondly, why would a judge order that a company's idomain name/i be taken in a patent dispute? The domain itself has nothing to do with the infringement. Of course, the ruling itself was mostly based on it being a default judgment: no one from Bodog showed up, pointing out that the site was not based in the US at all. br /br / However, after losing, the folks at Bodog did file an appeal, arguing that it wasn't properly served and that it, as a Costa Rican company, is outside the jurisdiction of a Nevada court. The appeals court apparently disagrees and a href="http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2008/10/federal-circuit.html" target="_new"has affirmed the lower court's decision/a without issuing any opinion. The ruling still makes very little sense, but that's what happens when you don't show up in court when sued, unfortunately. br /br / a href="http://techdirt.com/articles/20081009/0130462500.shtml"Permalink/a | a href="http://techdirt.com/articles/20081009/0130462500.shtml#comments"Comments/a | a href="http://techdirt.com/article.php?sid=20081009/0130462500op=sharethis"Email This Story/a br / br style="clear: both;"/ img alt="" style="border: 0; height:1px; width:1px;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?i=6cbb300ecac62f29fc9d02140a9ac68f" height="1" width="1"/ img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=6cbb300ecac62f29fc9d02140a9ac68f" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.techdirt.com/~f/techdirt/feed?a=Rgfzm"img src="http://feeds.techdirt.com/~f/techdirt/feed?i=Rgfzm" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.techdirt.com/~r/techdirt/feed/~4/416478638" height="1" width="1"/

pFiled under: a href="http://www.joystiq.com/category/ds/" rel="tag"Nintendo DS/a, a href="http://www.joystiq.com/category/adventure/" rel="tag"Adventure/a, a href="http://www.joystiq.com/category/tgs/" rel="tag"TGS/a/pcenterobject classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" width="490" height="298" id="viddler_7afc3bc9"param name="movie" value="http://www.viddler.com/simple/7afc3bc9/" /param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always" /param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /embed src="http://www.viddler.com/simple/7afc3bc9/" width="490" height="298" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowScriptAccess="always" allowFullScreen="true" name="viddler_7afc3bc9" /embed/object/centeremHotel Dusk/em and emTrace Memory/em developer CING is teaming up with Tecmo to deliver another atmospheric adventure on the Nintendo DS, this time in the form of a supernatural murder mystery.em Again: Eye of Providence/em follows FBI special agent Jonathan Weaver as he investigates his family's death and its connection with a series of murders that occurred 18 years earlier. emAgain/em's title is derived from Jonathan's ability to see into the past and experience crimes -- you know, emagain/em.br /br /Producer Koichi Yamaguchi walked us through a very early build of the game, demonstrating how this helpful hindsight would help us piece together the events that occurred in a given crime scene. In what is essentially a game of spot-the-difference, you'll view the environment in a first-person perspective on both DS screens (in book orientation). The touch screen allows you to interact with the scene, while the screen to your left displays the same area, but as it was in the past. As Yamaguchi noted, it makes sense to confine history to the non-interactive screen. You can't change the past, you can only learn from it.br /div class="postgallery"pstrongGallery: a href="/photos/again-eye-of-providence-ds/"Again: Eye of Providence (DS)/a/strong/pa href="/photos/again-eye-of-providence-ds/1088908/" class="gallerythumbnail"img src="http://www.blogcdn.comwww.joystiq.com/media/2008/10/again_logo_english_thumbnail.jpg" alt="" title="" //aa href="/photos/again-eye-of-providence-ds/1088904/" class="gallerythumbnail"img src="http://www.blogcdn.comwww.joystiq.com/media/2008/10/retrospect_e_thumbnail.jpg" alt="" title="" //aa href="/photos/again-eye-of-providence-ds/1088903/" class="gallerythumbnail"img src="http://www.blogcdn.comwww.joystiq.com/media/2008/10/pastvision_thumbnail.jpg" alt="" title="" //aa href="/photos/again-eye-of-providence-ds/1088902/" class="gallerythumbnail"img src="http://www.blogcdn.comwww.joystiq.com/media/2008/10/map_e_thumbnail.jpg" alt="" title="" //aa href="/photos/again-eye-of-providence-ds/1088901/" class="gallerythumbnail"img src="http://www.blogcdn.comwww.joystiq.com/media/2008/10/investigation_e_thumbnail.jpg" alt="" title="" //a/divpa href="http://www.joystiq.com/2008/10/10/tgs-08-hotel-dusk-devs-reveal-again-for-the-first-time/" rel="bookmark"Continue reading emTGS 08: Hotel Dusk devs reveal 'Again' for the first time/em/a/pp style="clear: both; padding: 8px 0 0 0; height: 2px; font-size: 1px; border: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0;"nbsp;/ppa href="http://www.joystiq.com/2008/10/10/tgs-08-hotel-dusk-devs-reveal-again-for-the-first-time/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent link to this entry"Permalink/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.joystiq.com/forward/1337789/" title="Send this entry to a friend via email"Email this/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.technorati.com/cosmos/search.html?rank=amp;fc=1amp;url=http://www.joystiq.com/2008/10/10/tgs-08-hotel-dusk-devs-reveal-again-for-the-first-time/" title="Linking Blogs"Linkingnbsp;Blogs/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.joystiq.com/2008/10/10/tgs-08-hotel-dusk-devs-reveal-again-for-the-first-time/#comments" title="View reader comments on this entry"Comments/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.joystiq.com/~f/weblogsinc/joystiq?a=ssrfm"img src="http://feeds.joystiq.com/~f/weblogsinc/joystiq?i=ssrfm" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.joystiq.com/~f/weblogsinc/joystiq?a=fmWJm"img src="http://feeds.joystiq.com/~f/weblogsinc/joystiq?i=fmWJm" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.joystiq.com/~r/weblogsinc/joystiq/~4/416467268" height="1" width="1"/

pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/10/bigcontent.jpg" width="494" height="374" style="display:block;float:none;" / Ars Technica did an in-depth investigation into the numbers behind the war against piracy and found that Congress might as well be telling people counterfeit goods cost the economy eleventy billion zillion, for all the truth behind its figures. The oft invoked $250 billion and 750,000 jobs lost because of intellectual property theft have been repeated for over a decade, with virtually no research to back it up./p pIt's not just industry groups like the International AntiCounterfeiting Coalition that's quoting them either. Everyone from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to the Patent and Trademark Office to the bFBI/b will repeat the same numbers back at you, pointing evasively to each other when asked which body funded the extensive economic analysis needed to arrive at such figures./p pArs pointed out that, even without looking for their sources, the numbers don't make much sense. 750,000 would mean 8% of all unemployed people in the U.S. lost their jobs to counterfeiting. $250 billion is more than the combined 2005 domestic revenues of the movie, music, software and video game industries. Yet policies are made from this information every day. [a href="http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/dodgy-digits-behind-the-war-on-piracy.ars"Ars Technica/a]/p br style="clear: both;"/ a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:998ac5495c20efe8ae47b1a0aaea910c:wkYLXgOcutfWsMrI6Q0p%2F0l%2BPZ8HRv4UAvOuEKM7pLolqMWk2NcHPchiTLqqpGbujKiJiAn2nc0p2A%3D%3D'img border='0' title='Poll' alt='Poll' src='http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/poll_securityslow.png'//a br style="clear: both;"/ img alt="" style="border: 0; height:1px; width:1px;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?i=ab15c286b460c6aba24e9bd85f67c665" height="1" width="1"/ img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=ab15c286b460c6aba24e9bd85f67c665" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/ pa href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~a/gizmodo/full?a=i88D71"img src="http://feeds.gawker.com/~a/gizmodo/full?i=i88D71" border="0"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=psQWM"img src="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=psQWM" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=36SjM"img src="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=36SjM" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=HKG8m"img src="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=HKG8m" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=Re2Pm"img src="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=Re2Pm" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~4/416460168" height="1" width="1"/

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You gotta give it up for those scene guys. Now and then they show that they have a sense of humour. The XviD version of this episode should have pre’d by now, but apparently there is some delay and this appeared in the pre channel: Come.On.With.Smallville.FFS.S08Esomething.HDTV.XviD-2HD. Couldn’t agree more, but I’ll settle for 720p which is my preferred way of watching stuff these days. You better stock up on patience if you’re after the XviD release…

Instinct
Tess and her team of scientists trigger a signal through the blue Kryptonian crystal. It reaches an alien princess, Maxima, who comes to Earth to seek a suitable mate… and whose kiss kills mortal men.

Links: Homepage - TV.com

Smallville.S08E04.720p.HDTV.x264-CTU
x264 | 1280×720 - 23.976 fps | AC3 5.1 - 384 kbps | ~43 mins 1.09 GB
NewTorrents Search - Usenet Search

more at RLSLOG.net

Ari Cohen says: "We have started a blog of our own that documents street style and fashion of the mature and wizened. Our aim is to take photos of elders with a unique sense of personal style that has developed with age. We noticed so many amazingly dressed older people in New York and are having a great time getting to know them, hearing their stories and capturing a bit of their style to share with others." Advanced Style...br style="clear: both;"/ img alt="" style="border: 0; height:1px; width:1px;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?i=2640af26147461983adabd1c89bc7c94" height="1" width="1"/ img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=2640af26147461983adabd1c89bc7c94" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/

div class="image"a href="http://pixhost.ws/avaxhome/big_show.php?/avaxhome/25/5e/00095e25.jpeg" target="_blank"img src="http://pixhost.ws/avaxhome/25/5e/00095e25_medium.jpeg" id="external_img_613925"//a/divbr/ bdiv class="center"Faith in Nation: Exclusionary Origins of Nationalism/bbr/ Oxford University Press, USA | ISBN 0195154827 | 2003 | PDF | 270 pages | 2.86 MB/divbr/ table class="quote"trtd class="quote_left"#8220;/tdtd class="quote_center"Common wisdom has long held that the ascent of the modern nation coincided with the flowering of Enlightenment democracy and the decline of religion, ringing in an age of tolerant, inclusive, liberal states.br/ Not so, demonstrates Anthony W. Marx in this landmark work of revisionist political history and analysis. In a startling departure from a historical consensus that has dominated views of nationalism for the past quarter century, Marx argues that European nationalism emerged two centuries earlier, in the early modern era, as a form of mass political engagement based on religious conflict, intolerance, and exclusion. Challenging the self-congratulatory geneaology of civic Western nationalism, Marx shows how state-builders attempted to create a sense of national solidarity to support their burgeoning authority. Key to this process was the transfer of power from local to central rulers; the most suitable vehicle for effecting this transfer was religion and fanatical passions.br/ Religious intolerance--specifically the exclusion of religious minorities from the nascent state--provided the glue that bonded the remaining populations together. Out of this often violent religious intolerance grew popular nationalist sentiment. Only after a core and exclusive nationality was formed in England and France, and less successfully in Spain, did these countries move into the "enlightened" 19th century, all the while continuing to export intolerance and exclusion to overseas colonies.br/ Providing an explicitly political theory of early nation-building, rather than an account emphasizing economic imperatives or literary imaginings, Marx reveals that liberal, secular Western political traditions were founded on the basis of illiberal, intolerant origins. His provocative account also suggests that present-day exclusive and violent nation-building, or efforts to form solidarity through cultural or religious antagonisms, are not fundamentally different from the West's own earlier experiences./tdtd class="quote_right"#8221;/td/tr/table

Tim Biskup has a new show in Paris and the paintings (and packaging!) look terrific. O/S (Operating System) New Paintings, Sculptures amp; Prints October 11th - November 16th Addict Galerie 14/16 rue de Thorigny 75003 Paris - France. T: +33(0)1 48 87 05 04 T: +33(0) 971 41 45 39 info@addictgalerie.com www.addictgalerie.com Opening reception: Saturday, October 11th (open to the public) With Tim Biskup's new collection of sculpture/painting combination pieces he presents the duality of his recent work in a neatly organized fashion. Each of the twelve pieces in the exhibition are self contained units which include an original painting packed into it's own shipping crate along with an elaborate pedestal that can be assembled using parts that come inside the crate as well as the crate itself. These "systems", as the artist calls them, constitute a fusion of Biskup's aesthetic style and his conceptual theories. The pieces are intended to represent the interconnection between art itself and the peripheral elements that allow it to exist. As a metaphor, the "systems" ask the question of weather the peripheral elements actually add to or distract from the the artwork being presented. Also included in the exhibition is a large scale serigraph, "Tree Of Life". This 30-color print depicts the artist's familiar Cyclops character, known as "Helper", perched among the branches of a lush tree, surrounded by flora and fauna and wielding an ax. Biskup has said that the character is a symbol of mankind corrupted by his own sense of spiritual knowledge. The image was originally created as the cover of "American Cyclops" a catalog of artwork from an exhibition of the same name that took place at Iguapop Gallery in Barcelona in July of 2006....br style="clear: both;"/gt; img alt="" style="border: 0; height:1px; width:1px;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?i=80f2629e8f68b89c689f851352d3a906" height="1" width="1"/gt; img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=80f2629e8f68b89c689f851352d3a906" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/gt;

On the October 9 edition of MSNBC's News Live, host Alex Witt claimed that Sen. Barack Obama "originally dismissed" former Weather Underground member William Ayers as "just a guy from the neighborhood despite the fact that Ayers did, in fact, host an event for Obama when he was running for state Senate." Witt went on to ask former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack (D), "[D]o you think that Barack Obama has always been completely honest about his ties to Ayers?" But contrary to Witt's suggestion, Obama did not attempt to conceal the fact that Ayers "host[ed] an event" for him when he referred to Ayers as "a guy who lives in my neighborhood." In fact, the very question Obama was responding to addressed the "organizing meeting" that Ayers hosted for Obama, and Obama did not deny that the event took place.

Moreover, Obama did not use the word "just" when he described Ayers as "a guy who lives in my neighborhood," as Witt claimed. Witt's injection of the word "just" into Obama's statement recalls a McCain campaign ad, which asserts: "When their relationship became an issue, Obama just responded, 'This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood.' That's it?"

From the exchange between Obama and debate co-moderator and ABC host George Stephanopoulos, during the April 16 Democratic primary debate in Philadelphia:

STEPHANOPOULOS: A gentleman named William Ayers, he was part of the Weather Underground in the 1970s. They bombed the Pentagon, the Capitol and other buildings. He's never apologized for that. And in fact, on 9/11 he was quoted in The New York Times saying, "I don't regret setting bombs; I feel we didn't do enough."

An early organizing meeting for your state senate campaign was held at his house, and your campaign has said you are friendly. Can you explain that relationship for the voters, and explain to Democrats why it won't be a problem?

OBAMA: George, but this is an example of what I'm talking about.

This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who's a professor of English in Chicago, who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from. He's not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis.

And the notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago when I was 8 years old, somehow reflects on me and my values, doesn't make much sense, George.

From the October 9 edition of MSNBC's News Live:

WITT: Could Bill Ayers derail Barack Obama's run for the White House? John McCain is trying to raise questions about the depth of Obama's relationship with the man who bombed the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol in the 1970s. Obama's campaign says the two haven't been in contact in years.

OBAMA [video clip]: The notion that somehow he has been involved in my campaign, that he is an adviser of mine, that he -- I've "palled around with a terrorist" -- all these statements are made simply to try to score cheap political points.

WITT: Iowa's former Democratic Governor Tom Vilsack is an Obama supporter. It's good to see you again, governor. Thanks for being here.

VILSACK: You bet, Alex. Thank you.

WITT: John McCain insists Obama hasn't been truthful about this relationship, and what he's trying to do is reveal the truth. Obama originally dismissed him as just a "guy from the neighborhood" despite the fact that Ayers did, in fact, host an event for Obama when he was running for state Senate. So, do you think that Barack Obama has always been completely honest about his ties to Ayers?

One of the most gorgeous-looking films I've seen this year is City of Ember, the Fox/Walden adaptation of Jeanne Duprau's young-adult fantasy novel about a post-apocalyptic underground city. Although the story is aimed at younger audiences, it's still enjoyable for grown-ups. The movie should be viewed on as large a screen as you can find, giving you the sense that you're this close to the fascinating and decaying city where the story is set.

The movie's prologue lays out the premise clearly. In the future, something goes haywire that causes the end of the world, but fortunately top U.S. scientists have created an underground city to keep a portion of mankind safe. The inhabitants will not be told about the Earth's past, so they won't be traumatized and will assume that their underground city is the only civilization. A box with instructions for returning to the Earth's surface will open in 200 years, which should be time enough for the Earth to be inhabitable again. However, over the course of time the box becomes lost, and after more than two centuries have passed, the city is starting to run out of resources and is falling apart.

Filed under: Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Theatrical Reviews, 20th Century Fox, Family Films, Fantastic Fest

Continue reading Review: City of Ember

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In an October 9 article, the Politico's Andy Barr reported on Sen. John McCain's ad "on [Sen.] Barack Obama's relationship with 1960s radical William Ayers" without noting that it contains several distortions and misleading assertions. While the ad claims that Obama and Ayers are "friends" who have "worked together for years" and "ran a radical 'education' foundation, together," Barr did not note that "the two men do not appear to have been close," according to The New York Times, or that prominent McCain supporters are also connected to the purportedly "radical 'education' foundation" the ad references. Furthermore, Barr did not note that the ad distorts Obama's April remark that Ayers is "a guy who lives in my neighborhood."

"Friends" and "palling around"

Barr reported that "Ayers is referred to as a terrorist throughout the ad, which highlights his 'friendship' with Obama" and quoted the ad calling Obama and Ayers "[f]riends" who have "worked together for years." However, Barr did not note that, as Media Matters for America has repeatedly documented, an October 4 New York Times article reported of Obama and Ayers, "the two men do not appear to have been close." Nor did Barr mention that the Times article also noted that Obama has never "expressed sympathy for the radical views and actions of Mr. Ayers, whom he has called 'somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8.' "

Barr also wrote that "McCain surrogates have been linking Obama to Ayers in recent interviews as has Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin who accused Obama of 'palling around with terrorists.' " However, Barr did not note that Palin distorted the October 4 Times article in making her remarks. In addition to the Times, CNN.com's Political Ticker blog wrote: "There is no indication that Ayers and Obama are now 'palling around,' or that they have had an ongoing relationship in the past three years. Also, there is nothing to suggest that Ayers is now involved in terrorist activity or that other Obama associates are."

"[W]orked together for years"

Barr uncritically reported the ad's claim that Obama and Ayers "worked together for years" -- a reference to their work on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which the ad claims is "a radical 'education' foundation." However, Barr did not note that McCain supporter Arnold R. Weber, like Ayers and Obama, also worked with the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. Nor did Barr note that Leonore Annenberg -- whose husband, Walter, funded the Annenberg Challenge -- has been touted by the McCain campaign as a prominent supporter.

According to former Annenberg Challenge executive director Ken Rolling, as quoted in an Obama campaign fact check, "Barack Obama was elected as Chair of the Annenberg Challenge by the founding Board of Directors of the Annenberg Challenge -- Susan Crown, Pat Graham, Stanley Ikenberry, Ray Romero, Arnold Weber, and Wanda White." The fact check further notes that Weber was an assistant secretary of labor and associate director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Nixon and served as an adviser to Presidents Carter and Reagan.

According to a Media Matters search of Federal Election Commission data, Weber made donations of $500 and $1,000 in 2008 to McCain's presidential campaign. Media Matters found no indication that the McCain campaign has returned Weber's campaign contributions.

AsTime magazine's Michael Scherer noted, the McCain campaign touted the endorsement of "Leonore Annenberg, the wife of Ambassador William [sic] Annenberg, the founder of the Annenberg Institute of Reform, which funded the Annenberg Challenge." From Scherer's October 8 post on Time's Swampland blog:

This morning John McCain put out a list of 100 former ambassadors who are supporting his campaign. Number two is Leonore Annenberg, the wife of Ambassador William [sic] Annenberg, the founder of the Annenberg Institute of Reform, which funded the Annenberg Challenge, which once had two famous board members: former "domestic terrorist" William Ayers and Sen. Barack Obama.

So either we should all be outraged that John McCain is supported by a family who funded a foundation that hired a domestic terrorist, or this whole William Ayers thing is just plain silly. I choose the latter.

"That's it?"

Barr also quoted the ad stating: "When Obama just says, 'This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood.' Americans say, 'Where's the truth, Barack?' ... When their relationship became an issue, Obama just responded, 'This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood.' That's it?" In fact, contrary to the ad's suggestion that Obama said only that Ayers is "a guy who lives in my neighborhood," he went on to say that Ayers' Weather Underground actions were "detestable." From the April 16 Democratic primary debate:

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS (moderator): A gentleman named William Ayers, he was part of the Weather Underground in the 1970s. They bombed the Pentagon, the Capitol and other buildings. He's never apologized for that. And in fact, on 9/11 he was quoted in The New York Times saying, "I don't regret setting bombs; I feel we didn't do enough."

An early organizing meeting for your state senate campaign was held at his house, and your campaign has said you are friendly. Can you explain that relationship for the voters, and explain to Democrats why it won't be a problem?

OBAMA: George, but this is an example of what I'm talking about. This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who's a professor of English in Chicago who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from. He's not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis.

And the notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8 years old, somehow reflects on me and my values doesn't make much sense, George.

pFiled under: a href="http://www.joystiq.com/category/psp/" rel="tag"Sony PSP/a, a href="http://www.joystiq.com/category/action/" rel="tag"Action/a, a href="http://www.joystiq.com/category/strategy/" rel="tag"Strategy/a, a href="http://www.joystiq.com/category/tgs/" rel="tag"TGS/a/pcenterobject classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" width="490" height="301" id="viddler_4a5f688"param name="movie" value="http://www.viddler.com/simple/4a5f688/" /param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always" /param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /embed src="http://www.viddler.com/simple/4a5f688/" width="490" height="301" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowScriptAccess="always" allowFullScreen="true" name="viddler_4a5f688" /embed/object/centerWe've always known that zombies are tools. Well, mostly in the sense that they want to bite us on our vulnerable, fleshy bits, but one should certainly consider the possibilities afforded by having a snarling, undead force at one's disposal. That's what Tecmo has in mind for emUndead Knights/em, a newly announced action game -- with just a sprinkle of strategy -- for the PSP.br /br /Stuck in the midst of a royal power struggle, you're encouraged to see every enemy as a potential ally. Casting you in the role of the anti-hero, emUndead Knights/em sees the dead join your ranks, an increasing and varied assortment of undoubtedly foul-smelling monsters which will act out your every destructive whim. If we had to draw a comparison, we'd say it sounded a bit like ema href="http://www.joystiq.com/tag/Overlord/"Overlord/a/em -- or perhaps a more sinister ema href="http://www.joystiq.com/tag/Tokobot/"Tokobot/a/em. Either way, Tecmo intends to keep things relatively smooth and simple, with action forming 80% of gameplay, and strategy relegated to those times when the unique services of certain felled enemies are required to progress. br /br /If you feel conquering is best done in the company of friends, you'll be pleased to note that emUndead Knights/em will support 4-player ad hoc multiplayer and co-op. It will rise to retail in 2009. br /div class="postgallery"pstrongGallery: a href="/photos/undead-knights-psp/"Undead Knights (PSP)/a/strong/pa href="/photos/undead-knights-psp/1087870/" class="gallerythumbnail"img src="http://www.blogcdn.comwww.joystiq.com/media/2008/10/undead_05_thumbnail.jpg" alt="" title="" //aa href="/photos/undead-knights-psp/1087869/" class="gallerythumbnail"img src="http://www.blogcdn.comwww.joystiq.com/media/2008/10/undead_04_thumbnail.jpg" alt="" title="" //aa href="/photos/undead-knights-psp/1087868/" class="gallerythumbnail"img src="http://www.blogcdn.comwww.joystiq.com/media/2008/10/undead_03_thumbnail.jpg" alt="" title="" //aa href="/photos/undead-knights-psp/1087867/" class="gallerythumbnail"img src="http://www.blogcdn.comwww.joystiq.com/media/2008/10/undead_02_thumbnail.jpg" alt="" title="" //aa href="/photos/undead-knights-psp/1087866/" class="gallerythumbnail"img src="http://www.blogcdn.comwww.joystiq.com/media/2008/10/undead_01_thumbnail.jpg" alt="" title="" //a/divp style="clear: both; padding: 8px 0 0 0; height: 2px; font-size: 1px; border: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0;"nbsp;/ppa href="http://www.joystiq.com/2008/10/09/tgs-08-undead-knights-lay-siege-to-psp/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent link to this entry"Permalink/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.joystiq.com/forward/1337766/" title="Send this entry to a friend via email"Email this/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.technorati.com/cosmos/search.html?rank=amp;fc=1amp;url=http://www.joystiq.com/2008/10/09/tgs-08-undead-knights-lay-siege-to-psp/" title="Linking Blogs"Linkingnbsp;Blogs/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.joystiq.com/2008/10/09/tgs-08-undead-knights-lay-siege-to-psp/#comments" title="View reader comments on this entry"Comments/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.joystiq.com/~f/weblogsinc/joystiq?a=r6iWm"img src="http://feeds.joystiq.com/~f/weblogsinc/joystiq?i=r6iWm" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.joystiq.com/~f/weblogsinc/joystiq?a=7uQtm"img src="http://feeds.joystiq.com/~f/weblogsinc/joystiq?i=7uQtm" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.joystiq.com/~r/weblogsinc/joystiq/~4/416163044" height="1" width="1"/

pIt somehow seemed appropriate that both the Captain and the First Officer of the flight that took me to the True Woman Conference were women. Coincidence? Maybe. Maybe not. I've often wondered if a female pilot would laugh if I said, "I'm totally comfortable with you flying the plane, but, you know, I've seen my wife's spatial sense and, well, would you mind letting a man park it?" (If it's not painfully obvious, I'm joking--don't hate me.)/p pWhenever I leave for a conference I pack all kinds of books, but I generally pick up another one at a bookstore in the airport--something that makes for easy reading when I've got all kinds of ambient noise, a seat reclined in my face, and somebody I don't know snoring on my shoulder. Today it was, finally, emThree Cups of Tea/em and I read the first 150 pages. Overrated but still interesting. I splurged and bought a couple of other books as well--one dealing with the Second World War and one with music. We'll see./p pAnyways, the crowds of women are gathering out in the halls as they wait to head into the convention center. For now, here is the scene inside:/p pimg alt="2926770341_27e1d8e4c7.jpg" src="http://www.challies.com/media/2926770341_27e1d8e4c7.jpg" width="500" height="333" class="mt-image-left" /br clear="all" //p pAnd here, from earlier, are the Getty's and their band, preparing to lead in worship. Things will get underway in about 90 minutes. Tonight we'll hear messages from John Piper and from Nancy Leigh DeMoss./p pimg alt="2926769951_9957772782.jpg" src="http://www.challies.com/media/2926769951_9957772782.jpg" width="500" height="333" class="mt-image-left" /br clear="all" //pa href="http://www.worldwide-classroom.com"img src="http://www.adgrab.org/www/images/468x60.jpg" //adiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/challies/XhEt?a=1nj2M"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/challies/XhEt?i=1nj2M" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/challies/XhEt?a=LXUAm"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/challies/XhEt?i=LXUAm" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/challies/XhEt?a=byjgm"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/challies/XhEt?i=byjgm" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/challies/XhEt/~4/416182683" height="1" width="1"/

Here’s entry number three.

Dana’s list:#5. Death (of Vertigo’s Endless) (Brad’s Note: So, yes, Tigra’s streak is broken at 2.)

The sexiest and nicest anthropomorphic in all the world.

Supposed to be a Role Model because: She’s powerful, friendly and willing to accept anyone regardless of their religious beliefs or physical appearance.

The “You Go Girl! Moment: Called Mary Poppins “Peachy Keen”. Took the soul of her own brother, Dream of the Endless

The Problem: She’s awesome and far more human than any of the other Endless, but in the end, she’s someone we can love, not someone we can emulate.

#4 The Question (Renee Montoya)

Montoya went from an incredibly difficult career as police officer in Gotham City (hell, who’d WANT to work there?) to a masked vigilante when the corruption grew too great to bear. She’s assumed the title of Question and fought against the powerful followers of the Crime Bible.

Supposed to be a Role Model because: She’s strong willed, determined, courageous and tough. She’s overcome great adversity, alcoholism and danger to become a powerful hero. As one of the few homosexual superheroines, she attracted attention when she became the Question during DC’s 52.

The “You Go Girl! Moment: Defeating the Monk of the Dark Faith in #5 of the Crime Bible.

The Problem: Since the end of 52 and without her own series, Montoya’s role in the DC universe has dwindled. She appears in Final Crisis (but who doesn’t) and a mini-series, but we really haven’t gotten enough appearances to see if this is someone to emulate or just an interesting character. When we have seen her, she’s failing as often as succeeding (succumbing to “sins” during Crime Bible).

#3 M (Monet St. Croix)

Originally a member of Generation X who joined the X-Men and then X-Factor, M began as an enigma and later become just lame.

Supposed to be a Role Model because: M was one of the powerhouse characters of Generation X both in power-sets and other assets. She possessed superhuman agility and strength, flight, telepathy and invulnerability as well as good looks, a genius intellect and fabulous wealth. In short, she has all the superpowers that a comic reader would rattle off as cliché.

The “You Go Girl! Moment: With her teammate Synch possessed by Emplate’s evil hunger and completely out of control, Gen X tried to stop him until they realized that any mutant close enough to do so would just make him stronger. M ends the standoff by walking up and daring him to absorb her powers, all of her powers. He tries, but she’s too much for him and he collapses. Even Emma Frost can only wonder at M’s true potential.

The Problem:: She was abrasive, superior and bitchy without any real victories under her belt. Having other characters say “wow, isn’t she powerful” is no real substitute for actual achievements. The fact that she was “revealed” to be a pair of autistic sisters didn’t help. When the “real” Monet appeared, she lost whatever accomplishments she’d actually achieved to that point because it hadn’t really been her. Ill-defined abilities are not enough without a real personality for the fans to appreciate.

#2 Amanda Waller

Supposed to be a Role Model because: Waller is a normal human with political connections and ambitions. A powerful politician and manipulator, Waller regularly orders and controls a cadre of super-powered characters (both heroes and villains). She possesses the personality and “balls” to face down Batman himself and powerful villains with nothing more than her attitude.

The “You Go Girl! Moment: “BACHOOM! Yeah, this’ll do.” (paraphrased) When her team is kidnapped to Apokolips, Waller gets a powerful weapon which she wields in combat against Granny Goodness.

The Problem: At heart, Waller is not a hero. She frequently pursues the greater good, or her greater good, regardless of the cost to other people. The number of dead members of the Suicide Squad is roughly equal to those who survived. She demonstrates the ability to make the hard calls, but possesses neither the physical appearance nor superpowers to truly become a great role model. (Of course, she’s one of my favorite DC characters, #49 of the 365 reasons to love comics and 72 most popular DC character.)

#1 Danielle Moonstar

A mutant with the ability to summon a mental image from a person’s mind, she generally used it to display a person’s greatest fear or desire. A former New Mutant, Moonstar has gone through her fair share of troubles including becoming an orphan student at Professor X’s school (though her parents got better), defeating her arch-nemesis before reaching issue 20 (leaving her little to do), becoming a Valkrie, joining the Mutant Liberation Front and fighting her former team-mates because she was working undercover for Shield, and losing her powers (along with many other mutants that no one cared about).

Supposed to be a Role Model because: Dani was strong-willed, courageous and occasionally snarky. She was the de facto team leader of the New Mutants. While Sam (Cannonball) was the oldest, Dani was the only one to possess any sort of tactics or sense. As a Native American, she was someone minorities could look up to. While her power was entirely mental, she was a skilled enough fighter to take on grizzly bears by herself, just not mystical 20’ tall grizzly bears. She was routinely the New Mutants member who made powerful opponents take a step back after making quick work of the physically oriented members of the team.

The “You Go Girl! Moment: Killing the demon bear by herself (though it didn’t last)

The Problem: Part of the problem involved the nature of her power. Purely mental abilities are difficult to portray because when they don’t work, the hero is completely screwed, hence many of them gaining additional powers (Jean Grey’s telepathy and Emma’s diamond form). They tried changing her powers to create physical objects which just shows part of the larger issue, Marvel didn’t know what to do with her, including what superhero identity to give her. They made her a valkyrie, changed her powers, almost killed her, wrote her out of the story, had her join the villains, revealed her to be a double agent, brought her back into the fold and finally took her powers away because there wasn’t a clear idea of how to handle her (or the other New Mutants).

The New Mutants were created to act as the new generation of X-Men (in training) and the idea had great merit as shown by returning to that with Generation X and the New X-Men. However, what do you do when the older generation remains more popular and won’t retire? The New Mutants got shuffled to the side, used as fodder or wallowed in character limbo, becoming more irrelevant as ever more new mutants join the fold.

Brad’s note- Hope everyone enjoyed this. I’ll run more contests/solicitations like this in the future. Especially if Cracked gives me another list to swipe.

img class=face src=http://planet.ubuntu.com/heads/sabdfl.png alt= div class=entrytext pThe term “credit crunch” is very misleading for the current crisis. It suggests that the problem is merely one of confidence, that calm will return if liquidity is introduced to the system./p pMy view, though, is that the real issue is one of solvency. This is the systemic bankruptcy of 2008./p pstrongMortgages are just the beginning./strongbr / At real rates of interest, with real expectations of a reasonable rate of return, many of the deals which have been done since 2003 just do not make economic sense. Thus far, the spotlight has been on one piece of that problem - bad mortgage loans - but I think we’ll see the problem areas expanding rapidly to include a lot of the private equity deals which were done on the basis of free money between 2003-2007. I remember a fatuous statement by some private equity genius that “everybody’s rushing to do the first $100bn deal”. Well, the chickens are coming home to roost. Expect a steady flood of announcements of setbacks, restructurings and bankruptcies as companies that were bought with borrowed money turn out to be unable to service their debt./p pstrongLower interest rates will ease the symptoms only.br / /strongDramatic easing of interest rates will help to slow down the pace at which we have to deal with the bankruptcies, but they won’t change the cold reality of the situation, and they run the very real risk of making things worse by encouraging another round of speculation based on free money. We are once again in a situation where the US discount rate is effectively a negative real rate of interest, as a gift to the banks, but staying there for any length of time puts us back into a state of addiction./p pstrongInterventions must target bank equity and leverage, not liquidity.br / /strongThe latest move from the UK to buy equity stakes is the best response yet, I think. It dramatically improves the capitalisation of those institutions, it keeps the upside of that move in taxpayers hands (they are taking the pain and funding the bailout, it seems right to preserve the upside for them) and it dilutes the existing shareholders who allowed their institutions to become insolvent. Personally, I’d be inclined to do more than dilute those shareholders./p pI don’t see the current $700bn deal making a real difference to US banks. I would expect the US to announce a deal similar to the UK deal soon, but the numbers would have to be larger. Scarily large. Much better for the US to make that move, than to wait for Asian and Middle-eastern sovereign wealth funds to step into the breach./p pstrongDepositors in regulated banks should be protected by the governments that run the regulators. Shareholders not so much. Bondholders... maybe.br / /strongI think the Irish and other countries who have guaranteed the deposits of individual users have done the right thing. Governments setup regulatory authorities, and banks advertise that they are regulated. The people who appoint those regulators need to stand by the approach they take - they should offer a guarantee that they will stand by their product, and when it fails, they will stand by the people who trusted in them. Depositors at banks in the UK really should not have to worry that the bank might fail - such a failure should at most affect the interest rate they receive, not the safety of their capital. Shareholders in those banks, however, should be very worried indeed. There’s an interesting question about bondholders and institutional depositors. By one argument they are sophisticated investors and should be responsible for their bonds. By another argument, they are the very people who can cause massive shifts in funds from bank paper to T-bills, and hence worth keeping pacified. I would lump them in with individual depositors too./p pstrongExecutive compensation should be structured not fixed.br / /strongThere has been a lot of discussion about limiting executive compensation. That’s just an invitation for armies of consultants and lawyers and accountants to work around whatever compensation limits are put in place. And frankly, I’m hard-pressed to understand how politicians, who constantly vote themselves bigger salaries and expense accounts, are qualified to set bank executive salaries. They effectively WERE in charge of Fannie and Freddie executive compensation, and that wasn’t a stellar success./p pWhat I would say, however, is that financial institution earnings should only be recognised over a seven year period, and bonuses based on those earnings should be held in escrow until that seven year period is up. Imagine if we could now tap into the bonuses of investment bank employees over the past seven years in order to shore up the balance sheets of those banks. That would include the bonuses paid to Mr Fuld, Mr Greenberg, and Mr Greenspan. Anybody care to run the numbers? I think it would be material./p pstrongI’m nervous.br / /strongThe big question I’m asking is strongwhich sidelines don’t have landmines?/strong My team and I are fortunate to have stepped out of many markets before the current flood of fear. We stepped right into a few problems, but in large part dodged the cannonballs. So far so good. But what does it mean to have cash in the bank, when banks themselves are failing? What does it mean to hold dollars, when the dollar is being debased in a way that would feel familiar to the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe? These are very dangerous times, and nobody should think otherwise./p/div