A quite bizarre post Bad journalism, disguised protectionism on Atlantic blog about Dr Michael Sachs the New York plastic surgeon in the news because of the death of Irishwoman Kay Cregan (or Kelly as he calls her) after he operated on her. The author thinks that efforts to bring him to Ireland to operate on disfigured children was blocked because of protectionism and that RTE were remiss in not pointing this out. Presumably the author hasn't read this article on the New York Times about Dr Sachs or this article in the Irish Times which mentions that Dr Sachs was banned by the New York Board of Professional Medical Conduct from carrying out complex "revisionist" surgery on patients without outside medical supervision or even heard this interview with NY Times journalist Warren St John about his investigation into Dr Sachs. But I guess you don't want to let facts get in the way of a ideological position, sounds like mindless partisan noises to me.

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An extraordinary gallery of French base jumping photographs, the one above by Laurent Filoche. If that looks like fun maybe you could consider a polar base jumping trip to Baffin Island and jump off this.

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If you really want to you can read the script of Star Wars Episode III the revenge of George Lucas, I've scoured the script but still can't find out how Anakin gains 3 feet to become Darth Vader oops gave away the ending. I laugh but I'll go see it anyway if only to say worse episode ever.

A George Lucas story. I heard this from a relative who works in a fancy Hollywood job on the techie side of making fancy Hollywood films. A friend of hers was working for a few weeks sound editing in Lucas' Skywalker ranch. One day ahe was waiting in line to get lunch when she noticed that George Lucas was in front of her in the line. Now normally in Hollywood Directors and stars don't mix with the 'help' so she was pretty impressed with how down to earth he was eating in the same canteen as everyone else and decided to make small talk with him. All went fine she got her lunch and thought no more of it. Next day a memo went around to everyone and I quote Employees are reminded that if they see Mr Lucas in the canteen they are NOT to talk to him. True story!

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Yet more free MP3 downloads, this time from Pitchfork

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An Italian coffin manufacturer who uses scantily clad models to sell his wares, sounds like a Joey Skaggs spoof to me.
via linkbunny

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An original print of Robert Doisneau's Baiser de l'Hotel de Ville was sold at auction by Francoise Bornet (the subject) for €155,000, ten times the expected amount but not quite a record.

On a related note a project which is rephotographing Atget's Paris, of course apart from cars Paris still looks the same.

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From Troika studios a handheld battery powered projector which projects text messages.

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Sandy Crombie inept boss of Standard Life has had to apologise for anti Irish comments when he said a switch to year-end reporting from mid-November made 2004 a 13 and a half month year 'if that doesn't seem too Irish'. OK Irish people in the UK nowadays are no longer a vulnerable minority but generations of Irish people had no choice but to put up with anti Irish 'jokes', discrimination and the infamous no blacks, no Irish, no dogs signs. Now that the boot is on the other foot I think it's our responsibility to stamp on this type of thing with extreme prejudice although some may say it's just a gaffe it reveals an underlying mindset, if you were working for this clown would you fancy your promotion chances? Lets hope it's a Ratner moment.

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UbuWeb has launched a collection of historic artist's films to download including Luis Buñuel, Yoko Ono, Kenneth Anger, Luis Buñuel, John Cage, Guy Debord, Marcel Duchamp, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Robert Morris & Stan VanDerBeek, Isidore Isou, Nam June Paik, Man Ray, Robert Rauschenberg, Hans Richter, Harry Smith and Jack Smith, George Maciunas, Robert Watts, John Cale.

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Andrea Polli : Atmospherics/Weather Works

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My net art project Cyclops got a nice review written by Stafano Caldana & Roberto Bosco in the Ciberp@ís section of the Spanish newspaper El Pais (online version subscription only) last Thursday. I've included the Spanish text below.

Cyclops: historias de Dublín Conor McGarrigle celebra su ciudad
y el escritor que la hizo inmortal con un proyecto que envuelve al visitante en las brumas irlandesas y lo traslada a un mundo de ficción donde la Dublín contemporánea se funde con la atmósfera obsesiva e irreal de los libros de James Joyce. Cyclops es la primera parte de un relato interactivo que sigue los pasos del artista Artie Doyle por las calles de Dublín, en un viaje épico tras las huellas de Leopold Bloom. Según McGarrigle, “no se trata del Ulises online, sino de una obra inspirada en la mejor historia jamás contada sobre esta ciudad”. Recreaciones digitales donde las cámaras de vigilancia que siguen el recorrido de Artie Doyle sustituyen los ojos hostiles de los conciudadanos de Bloom

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From Scenestars even more free MP3s to download, also worth checking out are Erik Brown's MP3 link page, the internet archive's live music archive, Matador Record's MP3 archive and of course the brilliant 1 Million free MP3s.

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The Amazon top 200 free MP3s to download, updated every six hours.

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This photo is taken from this document (PDF) from the FBI's John Lennon files, I wonder did they add the speech bubble themselves? I mean it's a little too groovy maan.

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A disturbing account by Alexander Cockburn of a Coca Cola plant in Plachimada, Kerala in India which drained the groundwater reserves leaving drinking water wells unfit for human consumption, dumped toxic sludge on local land passing it off as a good fertiliser and when the water ran out upped and left leaving locals to pick up the pieces.

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From a fantastic gallery of UFO images at the Black Vault archive of US Government documents obtained under the freedom of information act.

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I'm sure you couldn't be bothered to hear my opinion on the new pope, but you might like this link about a previous Benedict, Benedict IX who was Pope on three separate occasions and who was ....ahemm well one of the less reputable Popes.

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Andrew Bucksbarg : The Prosthetic Component Interface Series

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From the Wooster collective Dr D's liberated billboards

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A trailer for Last Days, the new Gus Van Sant film the last days in question are those of Kurt Cobain. From Gus Van Sant it could be brilliant or utter nonsense.

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A profile of Iranian fim director Abbas Kiarostami, I saw his brilliant film 10 fairly recently. I found myself surprised at the normality of the picture of Tehran life it presented and was a bit shocked at that reaction of mine, what did I expect, why wouldn't it be normal? Iran has been demonised for so long in the west that this caricature has seeped into my head without me even realising it. That's one reason why I like to see more of Kiarostami's work on tv and in cinemas here, the other is that he's one of the most exciting directors working today.

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Hyperthesis Visual Lab : Shifting Nature

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A satellite image of the now adrift B-15A iceberg – the world's largest floating object, the Antarctic iceberg is around 120 kilometres long, with an area exceeding 2500 square kilometres, making it about as large as Luxembourg. You can also check out a webcam of it's movement.

Satanic backtracking of popular songs in particular check out another one bites the dust and hit me baby one more time

Queueing for the Star Wars film, obviously a slow learner. The thing I wonder about is how Darth Vader is going to grow about three feet before he puts on the hat?

A €40 fisheye camera from Lomo

Nice Reuben Bolling cartoon exposes the menace the library system presents to the publishing industry

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Nice tool to test just how fast your connection is.

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The lyrics of masters of war pure righteous anger, still relevent 40 years on.

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An interview with Franny Armstrong the director of McLibel the documentary about the McLibel case where McDonalds sued a postman and a gardener for libel, the case became the longest running case in British legal history which ended with the judge ruling that McDonalds 'exploit children' with their advertising, produce 'misleading' advertising, are 'culpably responsible' for cruelty to animals, are 'antipathetic' to unionisation and pay their workers low wages. But as the defendents failed to prove all the points the Judge ruled that they HAD libelled McDonald's and should pay £60,000 damages. They refused and McDonald's let it drop.
BBC are showing the documentary this Thursday

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622 music videos to download including a great selection of Sonic Youth vids including the excellent Kim Gordon / Ciccone Youth version of addicted to love

via Fimoculous

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The freedom institute is rapidly becoming my favourite scam site, I thought they'd jumped the shark with their hilarious posts defending Irish Ferries paying employees €1 / hour which were very close to the Yes Men's WTO scam but they got away with that too. The key clues, of course, continue to be the brilliantly written spokesmen profiles such as the one for Mr Waghorne (c'mon even the name) bold mine;

Freedom Institute Spokesman on Economics & Infrastructure Mr. Waghorne is reading Philosophy and Politics in UCD, where he seats on the Academic Council (polling 23% on the first count). He was educated in Gonzaga, and is a keen chess player. A former member of the National Youth Orchestra, he regularly attends concerts in the National Concert Hall. He is the Auditor of the UCD Philosophy Society, and also was the co-ordinator of the Campaign to Re-Introduce Coca-Cola, which narrowly failed to overturn a ban on the product in UCD. He has been the subject of a profile in the Phoenix Magazine, and has appeared on a number of media programmes, including Liveline on RTE Radio One.

So who's the joker behind the site, well the domain is registered to David Cochrane Freedom Institute c/o OEPN, who also runs politics.ie and OEPN which has only an ad based holding site of the type preferred by domain name speculators is registered to Madhu Sudhan Rao of nellore, AP India. The plot thickens.

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Paul Camacho : Victor Volume 1

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With the extraordinary scenes in Rome I'm a bit wary of the value of adding my two cents but I though I'd add a few thoughts because I've always been conflicted in my attitude toward the Pope and recent events have brought these conflicts into sharp focus. He always seemed to me to be a man of great contrasts. On one hand he was an authoritarian conservative while on the other a steadfast supporter of peace and human rights who condemned all the invasions of Iraq as immoral, who opposed the death penalty everywhere and believed that that after the fall of communism that capitalism was the world's greatest menace. He was a populist with the common touch but also a formidable intellectual and philosopher, a practical man and also a mystic with a devotion to St John of the Crossand a dark apocalyptic vision of the world, a vision which stunned the curia during his 1976 Vatican lenten retreat lecture series, a lecture series which is believed to have marked him for the Papacy. He was praised for his championing of freedom but believed that we are only free in order to pursue truth ( and for truth read God as revealed by the Catholic Church) and that freedom without virtue is a new form of slavery. Did his ideas actually make an impact or did people just take what they want to hear? Conservatives like his conservative values but ignore his oposition to war, the death penalty and free market capitalism wheras the more liberal minded admire his stance on these things but disagree with his more conservative positions. I wonder was there really a dichotomy in his thinking or was he thoroughly consistant but we can't beyond our preconceived notions? I'm not sure but it's worth thinking about.

Just two links one an insightful article about John Paul II's faith and the other Panoramas from St Peter's Square

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The finalists from the first round of voting for the Rhizome commissions have been announced and my proposal Sirens has made the list. Once again, gentle readers, who are also Rhizome members I humbly ask you to VOTE FOR ME VOTE FOR ME!!!!

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A quick recommendation for fans of jazz, this Sunday the 10th April at the Pavilion Theatre Dun Laoghaire there's a night of traditional and contemporary jazz with Honor Heffernan and the Noel Kelehan Trio, Rock Fox & friends and Ronan Guilfoyle with the Brazilian group Tudo Bem. More information here.

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