You can now rent Adobe Photoshop for $35 per month, CS 5.5 available soon

Rejoice! No longer will you have to fork over $700 for a Photoshop CS5 license! Adobe has unveiled a new subscription scheme where you can rent the entire Creative Suite, or individual packages, by the month, or for an entire year.

Adobe Photoshop can be yours for $35 per month if you agree to rent it for 12 months, or $49 per month if you require its services for a shorter period. Dreamweaver can be had for even cheaper, at just $19 per month. The entire Master Collection is still rather expensive, though, at $125 per month.

Today, Adobe also ushered in the release of Creative Suite 5.5, and simultaneously upped its release cycle from 18 months to 24 months. This means, if you rent Photoshop for two years, it's actually the same cost as buying it outright. There's no rent-to-own option, though -- so you wouldn't have access to the cheaper upgrade price once Creative Suite 6 rolls around next year. Still, if you need access to Photoshop, After Effects or Premiere for a one-time project, the new rental scheme could be exactly what you're looking for.

In other news, Adobe has announced that it will be launching three rather exciting iPad apps that work in conjunction with Photoshop: Eazel, Nav, and Color Lava. Eazel lets you five-finger paint on your iPad, and export the result into Photoshop; Nav acts as some kind of workspace, brush and menu extension, and the hopefully named Color Lava is a paint mixing palette. The apps are expected to appear in the App Store in the next 30 days.

You can now rent Adobe Photoshop for $35 per month, CS 5.5 available soon originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 11 Apr 2011 06:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Is the WHO Saying Cell Phones Cause Cancer?

There's been much freaking out about a World Health Organization announcement (PDF) about the link between mobile phone use and cancer: The group now considers radiation from cell phones a possible carcinogen. Sounds scary, but what does it actually mean?

Over at BoingBoing, there's a good post that explains why the WHO news isn't really news at all. It doesn't represent any new scientific findings; rather it basically tells us what we've known for a while: that while very limited evidence suggests there might be a connection between some brain tumors and radiation, there isn't enough to say for sure that cell phone use causes cancer.

Frustrating though this may be, it's par for the course for epidemiology. The fact of the matter is that proving causation is just really hard. Indeed, as the New York Times points out, other examples of "possibly carcinogenic" substances include some dry cleaning chemicals and pesticides, but also coffee and pickles.

Even the results of the Interphone project, the largest and most highly anticipated epidemiological study of cell phones and cancer to date, were maddeningly inconclusive when they came in last year. The researchers from the 13 participating countries did find that although very heavy cell phone users were about 40 percent more likely to develop glioma, but there were so many potentially confounding methodological issues that the ultimate conclusion was that cell phone use does not significantly increase cancer risk for the vast majority of people.

Unfortunately, all of this means we're pretty much just as in-the-dark as we were about the subject when I was reporting on cell phones and radiation a few years back. And frustratingly, as I noted before, we probably won't know more for at least a few years:

Finding subjects who have brain tumors and who have used their cell phones for more than 10 years is difficult, especially considering that the tumors typically take 10 to 20 years to develop. What's more, people are notoriously bad at remembering how much they've used their phones and which ear they hold their cell phone up to—especially if they're looking around for something to blame a brain tumor on. 

In the meantime, does that mean that you're all clear to sleep with your cell phone next to you on your pillow? Of course not; it just means that the researchers haven't yet proven anything one way or the other. As a precaution, the WHO panel suggests you'd do well to limit talking time, especially for kids.

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Source: http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2011/05/who-cell-phones-and-cancer

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Andr�s Schiff ? review

Wigmore Hall, London

It would do Andr�s Schiff an injustice to say that the best thing about this piano recital was the encore. But it was in many ways the most remarkable thing. At the end of an already demanding programme of major sets of variations by five different composers, culminating in Beethoven's incomparable Diabelli set, and with many of the audience already out of the door, Schiff sat once more at the keyboard and played, get this, the entire arietta and variations last movement of Beethoven's final piano sonata in C minor, Op 111.

Not since Sviatoslav Richter played the even longer final movement of the Hammerklavier sonata as an encore in the Festival Hall decades ago have I heard the like. Yet there was nothing distasteful or self-advertising about Schiff's choice, let alone his execution. The logic of his ambitious afterthought was, in fact, compelling, given that the arietta so closely resembles the harmonies of Diabelli's little waltz and that the Op 111 variations are on a pinnacle, even by Beethoven's standards.

The first half of Schiff's slightly schoolmasterly programme had begun with Mozart's insouciant Variations K500, gone up a gear with a formidable account of Mendelssohn's virtuosic Variations s�rieuses, taken a cantabile turn into Haydn's restrained F minor Andante and variations (beautifully judged by Schiff), before ending with the austere, almost heartbreaking melancholy of Schumann's last composition, his E flat variations. After the interval came the Diabelli Variations, given an uneven account that came together best in the later and more meditative variations. Finally, that encore, played with the directness and at the tempo Beethoven prescribes, and which too few observe. Not a perverse choice, but an almost perfect one.

Rating: 4/5

• Classical music
• Ludwig van Beethoven

Martin Kettle

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Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/may/30/andras-schiff-review

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The Obama Edge

Yes, being the first black president probably helps: "Centrist voters and the ones who decide elections are still fundamentally rooting for the guy," [former New Hampshire Republican Party chairman Fergus] Cullen said. "People who don't view politics in ideological terms...

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Text of a letter from the President regarding Poland and the Visa Waiver Program

Release Time: 

For Immediate Release

May 27, 2011

Dear Representative: (Dear Senator:)    Senator Mark Kirk, Senator Barbara Mikulski, Representative Mike Quigley, Representative Janice Schakowsky, Representative Daniel Lipinski, and Representative Brian Higgins

Thank you for your letter regarding my visit to Poland and your recent introduction of the Secure Travel and Counterterrorism Partnership Program Act of 2011 (S. 497/H.R. 959) to restructure the Visa Waiver Program (VWP).

I write to express my strong support for the Secure Travel and Counterterrorism Partnership Program Act of 2011.  I share your view that our counterterrorism and security partnerships have evolved and it makes sense to pursue a restructuring of the program.  Countries that are willing to cooperate with the United States on our global priorities, including on counterterrorism initiatives, information sharing, and prevention of terrorist travel, deserve the opportunity to become part of our VWP.

I also share your support for Poland and disappointment that this close NATO ally has been excluded from the VWP to date.  Poland's strong and steadfast support during our missions in Iraq and Afghanistan demonstrates the deep alliance we have forged and the close partnership between our two countries.

It is my hope that my trip to Poland will help to strengthen the enduring bonds between the American and Polish people.  Thank you again for your leadership on this important issue of interest to both countries.

Sincerely,

BARACK OBAMA

Source: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/05/28/text-letter-president-regarding-poland-and-visa-waiver-program

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The View From Your Window

Waterlemon Cay, U.S. Virgin Islands, 9.25 am

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Adele can change how music industry markets female acts, says label boss

XL's Richard Russell blames 'boring, crass and unoriginal' music on industry's over-sexualisation of female artists

A top record executive has launched a damning attack on music industry attitudes, claiming the insistence on over-sexualising female artists has led to "boring, crass and unoriginal" music.

Richard Russell is founder of record label XL Recordings, home to the hugely successful artist Adele, who he said had the potential to change the way women were seen in the industry by focusing on her music rather than her sexuality.

"The whole message with [Adele] is that it's just music, it's just really good music," said Russell. "There is nothing else. There are no gimmicks, no selling of sexuality. I think in the American market, particularly, they have come to the conclusion that is what you have to do."

The singer's record-breaking second album 21, which has spent 15 of the last 17 weeks at No 1, smashing Madonna's record of nine weeks in the top slot, was "almost political and sort of radical", Russell added.

His attack follows recent songs such as S&M by Rihanna, which contains the line "sticks and stones may break my bones but chains and whips excite me". The song was criticised by some for the extensive use of bondage imagery in its video.

The media regulator Ofcom ruled last month that raunchy routines by Rihanna and Christina Aguilera during the December final of the X Factor were "at the limit of acceptability for transmission before the 9pm watershed". Ofcom had 2,868 complaints.

Russell said he was shocked while watching a recent MTV show featuring top 10 hits from female artists, as each video used "faux porn" imagery. "I felt a bit queasy," he said. "But now you see that Adele is No 1. What a great thing, how amazing. Not only are young girls going to see that, but [also] the business people who are behind all those videos. It's going to make them rethink what they should be doing."

Russell dismissed criticism that Adele is too mainstream, saying she was as radical as the Prodigy, who he worked with in the 1990s. "At the level it is at now, it is radical," he said. "It is clearly about the music and the talent and the things it is meant to be about. I think there has been a certain amount of confusion, and it's resulting in garbage being sold and marketing with little real value to it ... Adele is a good thing to be happening."

That a strong female performer could succeed without bowing to pressure to conform to a certain body type or being over-sexualised, was "unbelievable", he said.

"It's just so boring, crass and unoriginal," he said, adding that the problem goes "way beyond" the music industry.

Adele talked openly about her image in an interview with Q magazine, insisting that a sexualised image did not fit her music. "If you've got it, flaunt it, if it works with your music," she said.

"But I can't imagine having guns and whipped cream coming out of my tits. Even if I had Rihanna's body, I'd still be making the music I make and that don't go together."

She was derided for comments she made in the same interview that she resented paying a large tax bill. "[While] I use the NHS, I can't use public transport any more. Trains are always late, most state schools are shit and I've gotta give you, like, four million quid ? are you having a laugh? When I got my tax bill in from [the album] 19, I was ready to go and buy a gun and randomly open fire."

The singer added that she would not try to dodge paying tax "and do a Philip Green", but would pay her bills reluctantly.

• Adele
• Music TV
• Music industry
• Women
• Gender

Alexandra Topping

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Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/may/29/adele-change-women-music-business

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"I Love That Smell Of The Emissions"

Marie Diamond seizes on Palin's perfect timing: Ironically, the same day Palin professed her love of carbon emissions, the International Energy Agency issued a dramatic announcement on the same subject: greenhouse-gas emissions increased by a record amount last year to...

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/andrewsullivan/rApM/~3/0QDml5V9efE/i-love-that-smell-of-the-emissions-1.html

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Holiday Music

Year after year, we are consistently blown away by the popularity of Holiday music on Pandora. This year we thought it would be fun to survey some of our users to get their perspective on Holiday music and we found that just as we suspected, they certainly do have a sense of humor!

Check out the questions and results, below. We are sure you will be feeling full of good cheer (and maybe even "Eggnoggy") by the time you're finished reading...

Happy Holidays and Happy Listening!

The Pandora Crew

Where do you most like hearing holiday music?

At home in front of a fire - 53%
In the car - 17%
In the mall - 14%
Outside, Christmas tree shopping - 12%
While shopping for gifts online - 4%

What holiday song are you most likely to sing along to?

It's Beginning to Look a lot Like Christmas - 39%
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer - 25%
Silver Bells - 20%
Hells Bells by AC/DC - 11%
Frosty the Snowman - 5%

Overall, holiday music makes you feel:

Full of Good Cheer - 38%
Cozy - 24%
Merry - 17%
Eggnoggy - 14%
Jolly - 7%

What song is most likely to make you book tickets home for Christmas?

I'll Be Home for Christmas - 65%
It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year - 22%
Orinoco Flow (Enya) - 8%
Wonderful Christmastime - 5%

What song would you most like to hear while being kissed under Mistletoe?

All I Want for Christmas is You - 45%
Santa Baby - 35%
I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus - 11%
A Holly Jolly Christmas - 9%

What song would send you running out of the mall store the quickest?

All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth - 42%
Anything sung by a Chipmunk - 40%
Anything sung by a Muppet - 18%

Source: http://blog.pandora.com/pandora/archives/2010/12/holiday-music.html

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Have your say on who's in and out of the Power 100

An expert panel helped us to identify the music industry's biggest movers and shakers ? but what do you think?

? Meet the Music Power 100 panel
? Interactive: The Music Power 100
? News: Team Adele top Guardian Music Power 100
? The full list at a glance

The Music Power 100 is our attempt to navigate the currents of influence within the UK music industry. The remit was simple: which people have the greatest influence over what rock and pop music people in the UK listen to right now? That didn't mean everyone on the list had to be British, or even working in the UK: the importance of key figures in the US industry couldn't be ignored, and nor could the influence of key artists, songwriters and producers who have set trends that have been followed, or whose commercial success is undeniable.

Why no classical, or jazz, or folk? We felt those were separate worlds existing in parallel to rock and pop, and in an exercise that was, at times, like comparing the relative merits of apples and oranges (as our advisory panel member Geoff Travis put it), adding these other musics would complicate matters to the point of impossibility.

We tried to look across the range of the music industry, including artists, managers, labels, retailers, broadcasters, promoters and some of the other backroom jobs that never attract attention. That means we've concentrated on a very few figureheads at the labels, and we've often put people into teams.

In fact, the two things our panel stressed most forcefully were teamwork and the artist ? "None of us would be here without the artists," they said. Hence the choice of No 1 ? an artist served by a top-rate team. Another theme to emerge was the importance of organisations that mentor talent, be it formally ? in the case of the Brit School ? or informally, as in the case of Rinse FM, the de facto clearing house for UK urban music.

We know, however, that this list is far from perfect (and all its faults should be attributed to the Guardian, not to the expert advisers who gave up their time to offer their opinions). There will be people we've simply missed out; there will be others who are too high, and others who are too low. Maybe there are some who shouldn't be there at all.

What do you think? Who would you have put in the No 1 spot? Share your thoughts by posting a comment below.

The top 20 is listed below. Click here for the full 100..

1. Team Adele

Artist: Adele

Label executive: Richard Russell, founder XL Recordings

Manager: Jonathan Dickins

Publisher: Paul Connolly, European and UK president, Universal Music Publishing Group

Radio plugger: Brad Hunner, Radar Plugging

2. Lucian Grainge and David Joseph

Label executives: CEO, Universal Music Group, and chairman and CEO, Universal Music UK

3. Simon Cowell

Label executive: managing director, Syco

4. Nigel Harding

Broadcaster: Music policy executive, Radio 1

5. person or persons unknown

Retailer: iTunes UK

6. Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim

Digital media: founders, YouTube

7. George Ergatoudis

Broadcaster: head of music, BBC Radio 1 and 1Xtra

8. Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt

Digital media: co-founders, Google, and their executive chairman

9. Simon Moran

Live music promoter: managing director, SJM Concerts

10. Jeff Bezos

Retailer: president and CEO, Amazon.com

11. will.i.am

Artist: Black Eyed Peas

Producer: Justin Timberlake, U2, Britney Spears, Nicki Minaj, Cheryl Cole

12. Lyor Cohen

Label executive: chief executive, Warner Music US

13. Mark Zuckerberg

Digital media: founder, Facebook

14. Team Radiohead

Artists: Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood, Colin Greenwood, Ed O'Brien, Phil Selway

Managers: Chris Hufford, Bryce Edge and Brian Message

15. Ged Doherty

Label executive: chairman and CEO, Sony BMG UK and Ireland

16. Max Hole

Label executive: COO, Universal Music Group International

17. Jeff Smith

Broadcaster: head of music, Radio 2/6Music

18. Lady Gaga

Artist

19. Rob Stringer

Label executive: chairman, Sony Music Label Group

20. John Reid, Christian Tattersfield, Max Lousada

Label executives: CEO Warner Europe, CEO Warner Music UK, chairman of Atlantic Records UK

• Pop and rock
• Music industry

Michael Hann

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2011/may/26/music-power-100

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In Defense Of Magic

Jessa Crispin defends Maud Gonne, occultist and wife of muse to Yeats, noting that the "atheist versus faithful debate has become whether it is 'sad' or weak or immoral for someone to believe in anything unprovable": Wasn?t the Enlightenment supposed...

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Morbid Fascination

Jeff Mason explores it: For a long time, I have been puzzled by two famous philosophical ideas about death, one from Plato and one from Spinoza. The first is that a philosopher has a vital concern with death and constantly...

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/andrewsullivan/rApM/~3/sjuuX-XXtBs/the-morbid-fascination.html

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TweetDeck to launch as HTML5 Web app, now accepting beta testers

When TweetDeck landed in the Chrome Web Store, it seemed like an indication that it might eventually evolve into a pure HTML5 Web app. Now it looks as though that's exactly what's going to happen, with TweetDeck announcing that a new, not-just-for-Chrome Web client is ready for beta testing.

It's a natural progression for TweetDeck, especially since its originally Adobe Air app is practically all Web code. TweetDeck Web will sport a feature set which is nearly identical to the Chrome app, with the notable exception of Twitter streaming.

Initially, TweetDeck is targeting Firefox 4 and 3.6, Google Chrome, and Safari. Opera and Internet Explorer 9 won't be invited to the dance until a bit later on.

If you'd like to get in on the TweetDeck Web beta, head on over and register -- or sign up using your existing TweetDeck account.

TweetDeck to launch as HTML5 Web app, now accepting beta testers originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 06 Apr 2011 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Children of Immigrants Are America's Science Superstars

Filed under: News

From The Huffington Post:

Adding fuel to the fiery debate over immigration policy, a study released Tuesday shows that top science achievers in the U.S. are overwhelmingly the children of immigrants.

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The study, conducted by the National Foundation for American Policy, found that 70 percent of the finalists in the 2011 Intel Science Talent Search competition -- also known as the "Junior Nobel Prize" -- were the children of immigrants even though only 12 percent of the U.S. population is foreign-born.

According to the report, children of immigrant parents have been increasingly dominant in the fields of math and science. In 2004, for example, researchers found that 60 percent of the top science students in the U.S. and 65 percent of the top math students were born to immigrant families. Findings were based upon data from the Intel Science Talent Search and the 2004 U.S. Math Olympiad.

Based on these findings, the study concluded that "Liberalizing our nation's immigration laws will likely yield even greater rewards for America in the future."

Read more here.

 

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Source: http://www.bvblackspin.com/2011/05/25/children-of-immigrants-are-americas-science-superstars/

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Skype 5.3 for Windows released, improves mobile video call quality

Version 5.3 of Skype for Windows has just been released, with the main emphasis of the new release being improved call quality, and the quality of video received by mobile Skype users. Presumably one party of the video call must be using Skype for Windows 5.3, though.

Beyond improved call quality, not much has changed. You can now see your friends' presence icons when contact cards are collapsed, and the topic editing button is now always visible on the conversation header. For a complete list of changes, hit up the Skype Garage blog.

Download Skype 5.3 for Windows

Skype 5.3 for Windows released, improves mobile video call quality originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 07 Apr 2011 12:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Retromania: Pop Culture's Addiction to its Own Past by Simon Reynolds ? review

Does it matter that pop music is stuck in the same old groove?

Like many people of a certain age, the first thing I did upon going to university was to blow my entire student grant on records. Sixties French chansonni�res, 30s Greek rembetika, seven-inch singles on the Glasgow-based Postcard label: this kind of music, John Peel's radio show aside, was hard to hear or find in the late 1980s. Only after I'd lugged back my newfound treasures to my room did I remember: there was no turntable to play them on. For the next few months, I stroked the records' sleeves, studied their liner notes, sniffed the vinyl. When I finally got round to listening to them, they were mostly underwhelming, but it didn't matter: my relationship to the music, one full of yearning and conjecture, already felt very rich.

These days, as Simon Reynolds describes in Retromania, things are very different. Pop music, even though sales of vinyl and cassettes are going up, is less likely to exist in material form. There's no need to dream about what a particular Velvet Underground bootleg or Frankie Wilson's famously rare northern soul stomper "Do I Love You (Indeed I Do)" or 20s field recordings of Inuit might sound like: they're available at the click of a mouse. The deleted, the obscure, the exotic: archaeological layers of musical history are constantly being rediscovered, circulated and filtered into records being released today.

For Reynolds, the past is calcifying contemporary music. More than that, it threatens to disable the possibility of new or futuristic music being created. Retromania describes a pop ecology festering with reissues of late-70s German synth-wave, 28-CD box sets of Sun Ra club residencies, bands such as the Sex Pistols and the New York Dolls reforming, Sonic Youth playing shows in which they perform old albums in their entirety. Drawing a comparison with the fashion industry's tendency to recast old or secondhand clothes as "vintage", he bristles against those hipsters who create micro-genres such as Welsh Rare Beat or West African psychedelia, as much as he bemoans those rock museums full of cheesy cutouts of Dizzee Rascal.

What distinguishes "retromania" from other ways of assessing or using the past? After all, forms of nostalgia or arcadianism ? the Victorian revival of Gothic, say ? have arisen, sometimes very productively, throughout history. Reynolds argues that retro revives a past that is barely the past (all those I Love the 1990s-style shows), and does so, using video- and internet-enhanced documentation, with a forensic precision that precludes creative distortion and the art that comes from misremembering.

The retro sensibility, he adds, isn't animated by the modernist anger or subversion found in the work of collagist John Heartfield or the productions of Public Enemy's Hank Shocklee, but a general mood of eclectic irony. Put this way, Reynolds seems to be describing the kinds of bricolage and hyper-referentiality of postmodernism. But he's also narrating the trickle-down effect, philosophically as much as technologically, of the remix culture of the late 1980s, when cheap samplers allowed artists to treat the whole history of recorded music as a free zone for resource extraction.

The title of Reynolds's last book, about post punk, was Rip It Up and Start Again. That's what he wants pop music to do; not to think of its past in terms of repertoire or standards, but as a series of chokes and shackles from which, in existential fashion, it must perpetually break free. Though far from being a Luddite, he worries about websites such as YouTube that clog the present with too many yesterdays: "History must have a dustbin, or history will be a dustbin, a gigantic, sprawling garbage heap."

And yet, as Reynolds himself points out, one style of music never entirely supplants another: in 1968, a year in which Jimi Hendrix, Van Morrison and Frank Zappa released important new records, Bill Haley and his Comets were still able to pack out the Royal Albert Hall. Are revivals necessarily bad? Without 2 Tone's ska revival, the Specials' "Ghost Town" or the Beat's "Mirror in the Bathroom" may never have existed. And what of listening to the listeners? Sceptics may dismiss the likes of the Strokes as punk pastiche, but anyone who heard them for the first time at a club in early 2001 will recall how startlingly fresh they sounded then.

Reynolds's mapping of today's pop environment is often witty; his account of the way in which so many artists position themselves as curators is spot-on, as is his description of internet users ? himself included ? gorging on illegal downloads. His prose, casually neologistic and making deft use of sci-fi tropes, is bracingly sharp. As a work of contemporary historiography, a thick description of the transformations in our relationship to time ? as well as to place ? Retromania deserves to be very widely read.

However, Reynolds's belief that pop music needs to be less doting towards the past reminds me of the economist Joseph Schumpeter, who saw creative destruction as the linchpin of modern capitalism. Pop's appeal doesn't just lie in its ability to shock and surprise; it can also be a source of safety and succour, especially when life ? life under capitalism ? feels concussive, brutalising. For listeners, not embracing the Next Big Thing may be a kind of resistance; for music writers, not being able to champion artists solely in neophiliac terms would force them to develop more sophisticated critical lexicons.

Retromania is a book about the poverty of abundance. At malls, on mobile-phone ads, in the background as we work at our computers: pop, usually in the form of anorexically thin MP3 sound, is everywhere these days. Perhaps that ubiquity puts a brake on its ability to astound or shape-shift. Perhaps the process of circulating and accessing music has become more exciting than the practice of listening to it. And perhaps pop's status as a futurist genre has been supplanted by the giddying, immersive realm of video games.

Reynolds says he still believes that "the future is out there for pop", but where is "out there"? The east? The global south? It may very well be that the spirit of innovation and insurgency Retromania craves is to be found in the favelas, shanty towns and sprawling metropolises of the developing world.

Sukhdev Sandhu is the author of London Calling: How Black and Asian Writers Imagined a City (Harper)

• Music
• Sex Pistols
• Sonic Youth
• John Peel
• Dizzee Rascal
• Frank Zappa
• Van Morrison
• Jimi Hendrix
• The Specials

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/may/29/retromania-simon-reynolds-review

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The Panacea For Pox

Michael Specter chronicles the gory history of vaccination: By 1700, variolation?deliberate infection with smallpox?had been tried successfully as a preventive measure. It was dangerous, but far less so than the disease itself. Dried smallpox scabs were blown into the nose...

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/andrewsullivan/rApM/~3/kon-Ojh4O2w/a-pox-on-your-house.html

Genelle Frenoy Shania Twain Gwen Stefani Sunny Mabrey Karolína Kurková

Remarks by the President after Touring Tornado Damage in Joplin, Missouri

Release Time: 

For Immediate Release

Joplin, Missouri

1:16 P.M. CDT

THE PRESIDENT:  Obviously the scene speaks for itself.  When we were in Tuscaloosa a few weeks ago, I talked about how I had not seen devastation like that in my lifetime.  You come here to Joplin and it is just as heartbreaking and in some ways even more devastating.

I want to thank the outstanding work that Governor Nixon, the Mayor, all the congressional delegation, as well as the First Lady have done -- and the Red Cross -- in helping people to respond.  But obviously it is going to take years to build back. And we mourn the loss of life.  We're going to be going to a memorial service and try to help comfort the families and let them know that we're praying for them and thinking about them.

We had a chance to meet some of the folks who lived in this community, and just harrowing stories but also miraculous stories.  I met an 85-year-old gentleman who has a -- still has a lawn service.  He explained how he had just gotten his chicken pot-pie out and the storm started coming and he went into the closet, and came out without a scratch.  And so there are good stories to tell and happy stories to tell here, but obviously there’s been a lot of hardship as well.

The main thing I just want to communicate to the people of Joplin is this is just not your tragedy.  This is a national tragedy and that means there will be a national response.   Craig Fugate, who has probably been the busiest man in the federal government over this last bit of months, has been on the ground since just the day after this happened, and he’s helping to coordinate with an outstanding team of state and local officials. We're going to do everything we can to continue whatever search and rescue remains.  We are doing everything we can to make sure that folks get the shelter that they need, the support that they need.

We're working with the Governor to make sure that we cut through any red tape that's necessary with respect to rebuilding here.  And then we're just going to have a tough, long slog.  But what I've been telling every family that I've met here is we're going to be here long after the cameras leave.  We are not going to stop until Joplin is fully back on its feet.

So to all the volunteers who are helping out -- one of the things that’s been incredible is to see how many people from out of state have driven from as far a way as Texas, nearby Illinois, people just coming here to volunteer -- firefighters, ordinary citizens.  It’s an example of what the American spirit is all about.  And that gives us a lot of encouragement at a time when obviously people are going through a lot of hardship.

So, thank you again, Governor.

GOVERNOR NIXON:  Thank you, Mr. President.

THE PRESIDENT:  Would you like to say a few words?

GOVERNOR NIXON:  Just that we've been out -- I've been here every day, trying to work early to late, trying to back up the local officials, what they needed, trying to coordinate the federal response, trying to make sure we green-light the necessity to move forward.

Today is a day of remembrance, as we move here to the memorial service.  The loss not only of life, not only of injuries, property are significant.  It’s going to take a higher power to keep the strength of this community resolved to get this done.  And we're confident that it will happen.

We're especially appreciative, Mr. President, you focusing your attention right here, the entire world’s attention right here, to help us in ways that will make a lasting difference to this community.  God bless you, my friend.

THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you. 

And one last point I want to make, obviously in the rebuilding process there are a lot of families who are thankful that they’re okay.  But they’ve been displaced.  It’s not just their homes; many of them lost their means of transportation.  The school has been destroyed.  And so for all Americans, to take a little bit of time out and make a contribution to the American Red Cross or other charitable organizations that are active here in Joplin, that can make an enormous difference.  Even if it’s just $5, $10, whatever you’ve got to spare -- because one of the things that’s striking about this -- and I felt the same way when I was down in Alabama -- this can happen to anybody.  The difference between you being in the path of this twister and a few blocks away, you being okay, is a very slim, slim margin.  And so we've all got to put together because here but for the grace of God go I.

Thank you very much, everybody.

End
1:21 P.M. CDT

Source: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/05/29/remarks-president-after-touring-tornado-damage-joplin-missouri

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The View From Your Window

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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/andrewsullivan/rApM/~3/38W1zCABBNw/the-view-from-your-window-22.html

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Alexis Petridis on pop's worst year

It doesn't carry quite the same import as the busting of the Trafigura superinjunction, or the on-the-spot reporting from the heart of the Arab spring, but it was a great Twitter moment nonetheless: Ben Goldacre, writer of the Guardian's Bad Science column, recently announced to an aghast cyber-audience that his mum was Noosha Fox, the Goldfrapp-influencing frontwoman of 1970s pop band Fox.

He did it with enviable panache, casually mentioning it on a Twitter feed more usually concerned with the machinations of big pharma, midway through Fox performing S-s-s-Single Bed on the 1976 series of Top of the Pops, currently being repeated on BBC4. "When she married my dad it was the only time the word 'epidemiology' appeared in the music press," he added.

Soon the name Noosha Fox ? not one that's been much on the public's lips since her last hit, 34 years ago ? started trending. That's partly because it's a great obscure pop pub fact; but also because Fox's performance had already caused consternation by dint of being the only thing on said 1976 TOTP series that didn't leave you wondering if those barmy theocracies that ban all music might have a point.

I confess, I approached the repeats with considerable excitement. I like seeing old music in the context of its times: it acts as a corrective to the nostalgia industry's discreet editing of history; and, furthermore, I'm an unabashed fan of the kind of guileless, forgotten, mid-70s, medium-wave radio-pop that punk understandably, but a little unfairly, obliterated from memory (and that the first Guilty Pleasures album attempted to rescue). That means music like Fox's, Sailor's Glass of Champagne, Clout's Substitute, and Couldn't Get It Right by the Climax Blues Band.

Or at least I thought I was. It took about a minute of Sailor's follow-up to Glass of Champagne, Girls Girls Girls, to make me strongly reconsider my position on the unfairness or otherwise of punk obliterating guileless, mid-70s, medium-wave radio-pop from memory. After two, I was pretty much ready to form Sham 69 myself.

If you haven't seen it, it's difficult to express how awful TOTP ? and by extension ? pop music seems to have been in 1976. Every week, something comes on that causes you to be gripped by the absolute certainty that an unequivocal nadir has been reached and that things can only get better: second-division glam-rockers Mud going disco in a desperate attempt to stave off the inevitable; Dave Lee Travis's mirthless novelty record Convoy GB. It's invariably followed by something even worse: JJ Barrie's No Charge; second-division glam rockers the Rubettes going country in a desperate attempt to stave off the inevitable; and, my personal favourite, Paul Nicholas's awe-inspiring Reggae Like It Used to Be.

This, just to clarify, features the bloke off Just Good Friends boldly announcing that in 1976 ? the year of Lee "Scratch" Perry's Super Ape, the Mighty Diamonds' Right Time, Max Romeo's War Ina Babylon and Augustus Pablo's King Tubbys Meets Rockers Uptown ? the only reggae worth listening to is that made by Paul Nicholas. His jaunty presentation of this controversial theory, for which he wore a bowler hat, could only have been improved had he been forced to perform in front of an audience composed entirely of angry Rastafarians.

And yet the TOTP repeats are worth watching, largely because they throw the 2011 charts into an unexpectedly forgiving light. Recently, listening to the top 40 has seemed like a grim business. For one thing, it's become weirdly sclerotic. Singles loaf around it uselessly for months on end, until you can't imagine who's buying them. Rihanna's S&M has been in the charts for 27 weeks: surely everybody who likes it owns it by now?

For another, the top 40 is in a stage of conformity. Traditionally, you look to R&B and hip-hop for edge and sonic innovation in the charts: they're the genres that come up with the ideas pop producers subsequently steal. But pop seems to have caught up with urban music (the influence of French DJ David Guetta's brand of commercial electro-house is all-pervading) which means that everything currently sounds like everything else. Nevertheless, if you think the charts seem moribund, a cursory glance at the TOTP repeats will confirm that they're wrigglingly, obscenely alive compared to 35 years ago: a useful thing to remember next time you're confronted by the kind of bore who tells you rock and pop was, by default, better in the past.

However sick you may be of Rihanna, or Katy Perry, or whatever variation on David Guetta's brand of commercial electro-house is currently setting up camp in the top 10, you can console yourself with the fact that: a) at least it's not Paul Nicholas in a bowler hat telling Peter Tosh where to get off; and b) 12 months on from the TOTP series currently being repeated, the charts looked distinctly healthier, not just as a result of punk and new wave, but because of disco, soul and all that reggae that wasn't like it used to be. All of which proves that, even when it appears to be in its death throes, pop has a habit of reinventing itself.

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Alexis Petridis

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Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2011/may/29/critics-notebook-alexis-petridis

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