Art

Robert Lang: Idea + square = origami

Who is he?

Origami, as Robert Lang describes it, is simple: "You take a creature, you combine it with a square, and you get an origami figure." But Lang's own description belies the technicality of his art; indeed, his creations inspire awe by sheer force of their intricacy. His repertoire includes a snake with one thousand scales, a two-foot-tall allosaurus skeleton, and a perfect replica of a Black Forest cuckoo clock. Each work is the result of software (which Lang himself pioneered) that manipulates thousands of mathematical calculations in the production of a "folding map" of a single creature.
The marriage of mathematics and origami harkens back to Lang's own childhood. As a first-grader, Lang proved far too clever for elementary mathematics and quickly became bored, prompting his teacher to give him a book on origami. His acuity for mathematics would lead him to become a physicist at the California Institute of Technology, and the owner of nearly fifty patents on lasers and optoelectronics. Now a professional origami master, Lang practices his craft as both artist and engineer, one day folding the smallest of insects and the next the largest of space-bound telescope lenses.

"Lang creates creatures of such complexity that it seems impossible that each is composed of a single sheet of paper, no cuts, no glue."

Apple.com

Reed Kroloff: Architecture, modern and romantic

Who is he?

Already known throughout the architecture community for his award-winning tenure as editor-in-chief of Architecture magazine, Reed Kroloff came to the attention of the country at large after Hurricane Katrina. As Dean of Architecture at Tulane University, he was responsible for bringing back 97% of the school's student body and 100% of its faculty after the disaster. In 2005, New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin appointed Kroloff to the Bring New Orleans Back Commission to assist in the reconstruction of the city, and to help avoid creating, in Kroloff's words, "a bad cartoon version of what New Orleans actually is."
His searing 2006 essay "Black Like Me" lays out the frustrations of a citizen of post-Katrina New Orleans -- "the slow-burning frustration of being at the table but not invited to sit down." It's typical of his desire to look past simple aesthetics to the emotional heart of any building project.
Kroloff left New Orleans in 2007 to become the director of the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. He continues to promote excellence in urban design through his writing and his consulting firm Jones | Kroloff. He is also an active organizer and adviser for dozens of New Public Works competitions designed to choose architects for high-profile projects, including the Motown Center in Detroit, and a signature building for the University of Connecticut campus (the contract for which was awarded to Frank Gehry).

"Mr. Kroloff can afford to be cheeky."

Fred Bernstein, New York Times

Vik Muniz: Art with wire, thread, sugar, chocolate

Who is he?

Because he's self-effacing, frankly open and thought-provoking, all at the same time. Vik Muniz's explorations into the power of representation and his masterful use of unexpected materials such as chocolate syrup, toy soldiers and paper confetti mean that his resulting images transcend mere gimmickry.

Muniz is often hailed as a master illusionist, but he says he's not interested in fooling people. Rather, he wants his images to show people a measure of their own belief. Muniz has exhibited his playfully provocative work in galleries all over the world. Describing the history of photography as "the history of blindness," his images simply but powerfully remind a viewer of what it means to see, and how our preconceptions can color every experience.

"Think of brilliant trickster Vik Muniz as the offspring of Man Ray and Jacques Henri Lartigue, combining the former's relentless experimentation, the latter's effortless wit, and their mutual inventiveness in work that defies category."

Vince Aletti, the Village Voice

Ideas

Cameron Sinclair: TED Prize wish: Open-source architecture to house the world

Who is he?

After training as an architect, Cameron Sinclair (then age 24) joined Kate Stohr to found Architecture for Humanity, a nonprofit that helps architects apply their skills to humanitarian efforts. Starting with just $700 and a simple web site in 1999, AFH has grown into an international hub for humanitarian design, offering innovative solutions to housing problems in all corners of the globe.

Whether rebuilding earthquake-ravaged Bam in Iran, designing a soccer field doubling as an HIV/AIDS clinic in Africa, housing refugees on the Afghan border, or helping Katrina victims rebuild, Architecture for Humanity works by Sinclair's mantra: "Design like you give a damn." (Sinclair and Stohr cowrote a book by the same name, released in 2006.)

A regular contributor to the sustainability blog Worldchanging.com, Sinclair is now working on the Open Architecture Network, born from the wish he made when he accepted the 2006 TED Prize: to build a global, open-source network where architects, governments and NGOs can share and implement design plans to house the world.

"Cameron Sinclair is doing his best to save the world, one emergency shelter and mobile AIDS clinic at a time."

Washington Post

Who is she?

Mechanical engineer Amy Smith's approach to problem-solving in developing nations is refreshingly common-sense: Invent cheap, low-tech devices that use local resources, so communities can reproduce her efforts and ultimately help themselves. Smith, working with her students at MIT, has come up with several useful tools, including an incubator that stays warm without electricity, a simple grain mill, and a tool that converts farm waste into cleaner-burning charcoal.

The inventions have earned Smith three prestigious prizes: the B.F. Goodrich Collegiate Inventors Award, the MIT-Lemelson Prize, and a MacArthur "genius" grant. Her course, "Design for Developing Countries," is a pioneer in bringing humanitarian design into the curriculum of major institutions. Going forward, the former Peace Corps volunteer strives to do much more, bringing her inventiveness and boundless energy to bear on some of the world's most persistent problems.

"Smith has a stable of oldfangled technologies that she has reconfigured and applied to underdeveloped areas around the world. Her solutions sound like answers to problems that should have been solved a century ago. To Smith, that's the point."

Wired News

David Kelley: The future of design is human-centered

Who is he?

David Kelley is a designer -- of products, details, environments, his own industry-leading workplace, and now a groundbreaking design school at Stanford.

Kelley was working (unhappily) as an electrical engineer when he heard about Stanford's cross-disciplinary Joint Program in Design, which merged engineering and art. What he learned there -- debate, openness to new approaches, a desire to solve fundamental problems with design -- he has maintained in his professional life as a designer.

In 1978, he co-founded a design firm that ultimately became IDEO, now renowned worldwide for its innovative, user-centered approach to design. IDEO works with a range of clients -- from fast food conglomerates to high tech startups, hospitals to universities -- building everything from a life-saving portable defibrillator to the defining details at the groundbreaking Prada shop in Manhattan (IDEO designed those famous see-through dressing rooms). Based in Palo Alto, Calif., IDEO has grown to seven offices and 400+ employees worldwide.

Now chairman of IDEO, Kelley has also been teaching design at Stanford for more than 25 years. He's now leading the university's brand-new d.school -- an interdisciplinary institute for educating innovative designers and thinkers. "Kelley has become a poster child for innovation in America for two reasons: His engineering firm serves as the brains behind many of today's most innovative products, and IDEO (Greek for idea) has been a trendsetter in modern-day corporate management."

Virtual Advisor (www.va-interactive.co)

Elections and Democracy

Seven Ways your vote might not count this November

Voter Purges
According to the federal law that governs how people may be removed from voter lists, the last day that most registered voters can be purged is 90 days before an election, which would have been Aug. 5 for the presidential election. However, some states are not following the process in the National Voter Registration Act, according to voting rights attorneys. Moreover, because purges are often conducted secretly, people who do not call local election offices to confirm their registration status may discover later this fall that they cannot vote.
Solution: Voters, particularly those who have not voted in recent years, should call their local election office to confirm they are registered at their current address. If they are not properly registered, they should update their voter registration. This must be done before registration closes, which is the first week in October in 27 states. Advocacy groups can facilitate this by accessing a voter registration list and reviewing it with community activists. (Editor's note: Web sites and experts to help voters are listed below.)
Unprocessed Voter Registrations
After the Democratic Convention, the Obama campaign will launch a national voter registration drive to bring millions of new voters to the polls in November, according to top campaign officials. This could be the largest voter drive in decades. In previous years, local election officials have complained about receiving too many registration forms at the last minute to verify before Election Day. In two Ohio cities in 2004, Cleveland and Toledo, boxes of registrations went unprocessed by Election Day.
Solution: New voters should register sooner rather than later, and then verify that their voter registration forms have been processed by calling local election offices. Remember, it is local election officials, not political parties or third-party groups, who are legally responsible for validating and processing voter registrations.
Obstacles to Student Voting
Historically, students have been criticized for not voting, but what is often overlooked are the obstacles created by local officials or state legislators that discourage student voting. The most frequent barriers involve state residency and ID requirements. In some places, registrars tell students that a campus post office box is not a proper address and refuse to register students for that reason.
Solution: Students who experience problems with voter registration should contact organizations working on voter registration, or the presidential campaigns, or election protection lawyers who have the legal expertise to help with registration and could go to court to enforce student voting rights.MORE

State Voting Machine Problems Won't Be Fixed Before November

After the 2000 election, the nation that first sent a man to the moon set for itself what seemed an attainable technological goal: ensure that states had efficient and reliable voting machines. In 2002, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), which allocated nearly $3 billion to the states for election administration. But eight years later, with an election fast approaching, the system is still characterized by the same panicked improvisation.
At least $1.2 billion went towards new voting machines between 2003 and 2007, McClatchy reports. But many states (Alaska, California, Florida, Iowa, Maryland, Tennessee and New Mexico) that bought touch-screen machines have decided to replace them due to concerns about their reliability. In a number of places, that process won't be completed until long after the 2008 election.
Ohio's secretary of state recently sued to recover the $83 million in state funds spent on touch-screen machines, yet the machines will nevertheless be used in November. The machines will still be widely used in dozens of other states, but the trend, McClatchy reports, is apparent:

Election Data Services, a consulting firm that specializes in elections, estimated that half the electorate used touch-screen voting in 2006. This year, less than a third will be using the touch screens.

Are Feds Trying to Aid Republican Candidate's Election?

I usually shy away from conspiracy theories.

When the Democrats and their attorneys began claiming last year that the Bush administration was using its prosecutorial might to target opposition candidates and their major financial supporters, I greeted the allegation with a skeptical eye.

I'm not so sure anymore.

This past week's developments in the four-year-old investigation into the failed Mississippi Beef Processors plant seem timed to help derail Democrat Ronnie Musgrove's bid to snatch one of the state's two U.S. Senate seats from Republican hands.

Three Georgia businessmen, one by one over the course of four days, entered guilty pleas to federal charges arising out of the Yalobusha County beef plant's quick and costly demise.

The three, all executives with The Facility Group of Smyrna, Ga., were largely left off the hook on the more serious charges that they had swindled the state out of at least $2 million and had left the plant's vendors and contractors holding the bag.

Instead, they were allowed in a plea bargain to confess to trying to buy influence with Musgrove by steering $25,000 to the then-governor's unsuccessful re-election campaign in 2003.

The orchestrated guilty pleas -- and the prosecutors' suggestion that more indictments could be forthcoming -- are a boon to the campaign of Republican Roger Wicker, who was appointed to the vacant Senate seat in December but is considered vulnerable. They leave a cloud over Musgrove in voters minds and provide more fodder for negative campaign ads from the GOP camp, even though Musgrove has not been charged with any wrongdoing and there's nothing in the court records to document he did anything illegal.

Musgrove may have put himself at risk of guilt by association by accepting campaign donations from some scoundrels. That's a fact. But whose campaign finance reports, including Wicker's or Gov. Haley Barbour's, could stand up to the close scrutiny that the federal prosecutors decided to give this one? MORE

Yes, that Terrence Howard

Terrence Howard - "Sanctuary"
Debut album, "Shine Through It"

Terrence Howard- Love Makes You Beautiful

Terrence Howard-Shine Through It

So the Police decided that they would start intimidating protestors before the Repub. Con.

Lovely

Protesters here in Minneapolis have been targeted by a series of highly intimidating, sweeping police raids across the city, involving teams of 25-30 officers in riot gear, with semi-automatic weapons drawn, entering homes of those suspected of planning protests, handcuffing and forcing them to lay on the floor, while law enforcement officers searched the homes, seizing computers, journals, and political pamphlets. Last night, members of the St. Paul police department and the Ramsey County sheriff's department handcuffed, photographed and detained dozens of people meeting at a public venue to plan a demonstration, charging them with no crime other than "fire code violations," and early this morning, the Sheriff's department sent teams of officers into at least four Minneapolis area homes where suspected protesters were staying.
...
In the house that had just been raided, those inside described how a team of roughly 25 officers had barged into their homes with masks and black swat gear, holding large semi-automatic rifles, and ordered them to lie on the floor, where they were handcuffed and ordered not to move. The officers refused to state why they were there and, until the very end, refused to show whether they had a search warrant. They were forced to remain on the floor for 45 minutes while the officers took away the laptops, computers, individual journals, and political materials kept in the house. One of the individuals renting the house, an 18-year-old woman, was extremely shaken as she and others described how the officers were deliberately making intimidating statements such as "Do you have Terminator ready?" as they lay on the floor in handcuffs. The 10 or so individuals in the house all said that though they found the experience very jarring, they still intended to protest against the GOP Convention, and several said that being subjected to raids of that sort made them more emboldened than ever to do so.
Several of those who were arrested are being represented by Bruce Nestor, the President of the Minnesota chapter of the National Lawyers' Guild. Nestor said that last night's raid involved a meeting of a group calling itself the "RNC Welcoming Committee", and that this morning's raids appeared to target members of "Food Not Bombs," which he described as an anti-war, anti-authoritarian protest group. There was not a single act of violence or illegality that has taken place, Nestor said. Instead, the raids were purely anticipatory in nature, and clearly designed to frighten people contemplating taking part in any unauthorized protests.See videos and more reports here

Now, haddyr has come up with a possible pretext for the raids, the fact that an organization calling itself the RNC Welcoming Committee was planning to disrupt the convention. However, other organizations such as Food, Not Bombs, to say nothing of members of I-Witness, a group that has the bad habit of filming the police doing rather illegal things (like arresting people without cause and lying about the circumstances) were also targeted and held in place until the raids were finished.

fengi adds even more context to the story:

Now, there are some people I consider confrontational idiots among the protesters. I don't like dealing with them in Chicago either. It should be pointed out their plans to disrupt traffic was just one part, one page of the anti-RNC organizing site. They were not, in fact, the organizers of all protests. Nor is a public discussion of such tactics necessarily count as a criminal conspiracy. In fact, that's why it's public. The police used their plans as an easy excuse for their behavior, but that makes it no less of an excuse and no more legal.

Meanwhile, this flimsy pretext has been stretched to justify a general crackdown on activists. Including surrounding a house where a video activists which specialize in monitoring police behavior, this raid without a subpoena may have had FBI involvement and ended without any arrests.

Earlier this week, Minneapolis police officers detained three filmmakers from the New York based Glass Bead Collective and confiscated their cameras:

According to a statement from the collective, the officers refused to file an official incident report or fill out a receipt inventorying seized property, claiming that they were allowed to conduct the search and seizure under the jurisdiction of Homeland Security due to security risks leading up to the Republican National Convention.

Afterwards, the three journalists/artists were released without receiving any charges or tickets. (Police kept their belongings.) Teichberg said he recently learned that the Minneapolis Police Department is claiming they are being investigated for trespassing on train tracks. “We were targeted. They knew who we were. This was an attempt not to let us document what is happening at the convention… They’re taking away the media’s ability to protest,” he said.

The Glass Bead Collective was one of the groups involved in lawsuits against cops who assaulted Critical Mass riders.

There were incidents and rumors of police intimidation of reporters and protersters leading to the Society of Professional Journalists to issue a statement of concern.And that breathless police report?

Not to worry, the Republicans continue to be WAY out in front in the race to flush our Constitution down the toilet.

They HATE us for our FREEDOMS...

Via:Firedoglake

First they came for the Muslims, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Muslim. Then they came to detain immigrants indefinitely solely upon the certification of the Attorney General, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't an immigrant.
Then they came to eavesdrop on suspects consulting with their attorneys, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a suspect.
Then they came to prosecute non-citizens before secret military commissions, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a non-citizen.
Then they came to enter homes and offices for unannounced "sneak and peek" searches, and I didn't speak up because I had nothing to hide.
Then they came to reinstate Cointelpro and resume the infiltration and surveillance of domestic religious and political groups, and I didn't speak up because I had stopped participating in any groups.
Then they came for anyone who objected to government policy because it aided the terrorists and gave ammunition to America's enemies, and I didn't speak up because...... I didn't speak up.
Then they came for me....... and by that time no one was left to speak up.

Stephen Rohde, a constitutional lawyer and President of the ACLU of Southern California, is indebted to the inspiration of Rev. Martin Niemoller (1937).

Press and Politicians Silent in the Face of the RNC Police Harrasment and Snatch Squads Speaks Louder Than Words

It's notable that as of this writing, at midnight, I see nothing on the NY Times front page or on their US page about the RNC harassment, arrests and snatch squads. I see nothing on the Washington Post's front page, or its Politics page. As best I am aware no major Democratic politician has made a statement that warrants should be required before busting down doors, or that protesters have a right to protest, or that people even have a right to see a warrant.
Why is that? Is it that there's a bipartisan consensus that civil liberties are just for talk, but when the handcuffs get slapped on people who have done nothing, when people are punished for crimes they haven't commited, that it's no big deal as long as they aren't anyone important? Is it that Democrats stirring words about civil liberties were as sincere as many of their promises to vote against warrantless wiretapping?MORE

Breaking: As Police Mass Downtown and 9 More People Are Arrested, Legal Groups File Emergency Motion to Stop Cell and Camera Seizures During RNC

Update: ColdSnap is reporting 9 arrests downtown near the Excel center and police massing all over the downtown core.

The National Lawyers Guild and Communities United Against Police Brutality have filed an emergency motion to stop the seizure of cell phones and cameras during the RNC.

The groups will hold a joint press conference at Hennepin County Government Plaza to discuss their application for an emergency injunction, according to a tweet issued by the ColdSnap Legal Collective.

Habeas Corpus in Ramsey County, MN

he 6 activists arrested during police raids in advance of the Republican National Convention are being held without charge by the Ramsey County Sheriff's Office, the Minnesota Independent reports.

The arrestees are being held on probable cause holds. These holds give the authorities 36 hours to charge them or let them go. Holds are typically used to give investigators more time to gather evidence before filing formal charges.

Holds allow police to charge first and ask questions later. Sometimes that's a good thing. Arrest opportunities are unpredictable. A suspect could slip away in the time it takes to turn a solid suspicion into sufficient evidence to file charges. A probable cause hold buys the police some time to dot the i's and cross the t's.

However, it doesn't take a genius to see how the power to detain people without charge can be abused. For example, unethical police officers have been known to use frivolous holds as quickie jail terms. Piss off the police, spend 3 days in jail—no trial required. MORE

(no subject)

There's nothing that pisses me off more than to painstakingly make a long new post, notice that its really long, lj cut it, only to have the fraking post fuck up so badly that I have to delete it.

LOL!

Pink- So what


Def. has got a cool ex-husband, how many exes that you know would agree to cameo in a f-you break up song?