Obama cracks wise, pardons turkey

In a ceremony on the North Portico Wednesday, President Obama pardoned a turkey, known as Courage, from his "terrible and delicious fate." "I believe it's fair to say that we have saved or created four turkeys," Obama joked.

Pirelli Brings People Togetther

Con Amore

When In Rome...? Actually, not so much

President Obama and French President Nicolas Sarkozy trade places on a dais with "Junior G8" delegates.

On first glance, the snapshot appears to show President Obama caught in a moment of less than lofty analysis. But upon looking at the video, the moment might seem to appear quite innocent -- one of those times when a picture can be misleading. The president was on a higher step and was stepping down -- so he looked down to assure his footing as the woman was walking up the stairs.

Although: not everyone agrees. Judge for yourself.

Chess News

Michael Jackson: Thriller

They Don't Know What The Hell Is Going On

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Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Jason Jones in Iran

CNN has taken a lot of heat in the past few days for its initial lack of coverage of the Iranian election and the ensuing melee. Now Jon Stewart is going after the coverage they are devoting to the historic struggle.

Iran expelled many foreign reporters and put others under house arrest, making first hand reporting more difficult. As a result, CNN has thrown out their playbook, "just reporting what they find on the Internet," without a vetting process. Stewart sees no difference between this "new" policy and what CNN normally does.

Stewart has been devoting the bulk of his show to the Iranian elections. Monday night he called Ahmadinejad "batshit insane," and then had John Oliver use a CNN-esque magic screen to prove that he had in fact won fair and square.

But Rachel Maddow reported more ballots than voters and after that more votes than voters. How can that be fair and square? Watch:

And there is more fun ahead when we try to understand what we know about President Obama, so, watch this too:

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Old Iranian Song

Air Supply - Lost In Love

Sure, it’s one of the worst songs ever written. But perhaps President Obama and First Lady Michelle are closet Air Supply fans and are simply “Keeping the Love Alive” by enjoying a date-night in New York City tonight.
The Obamas are spending a presumably romantic evening together with dinner and a Broadway show this evening in the Big Apple.
If the RNC are fans of Air Supply as well, perhaps they believe the Obamas are “Lost in Love” because flying off to New York while the economy is tanking is just not right they say.

“As President Obama prepares to wing into Manhattan’s theater district on Air Force One to take in a Broadway show, GM is preparing to file bankruptcy and families across America continue to struggle to pay their bills,” RNC spokeswoman Gail Gitcho said in an email this afternoon.
That’s not all from Gitcho. She then added a snitty, “Have a great Saturday evening — even if you’re not jetting off somewhere at taxpayer expense.”

Fung Wah
Well, you can say the Obamas are at least trying to keep the costs down. They downsized the transportation opting not to take the normal Air Force One 747.
It’s not like they took the $10 Fung Wah Bus either though. They just hopped on a smaller plane. Although it is still called Air Force One, it’s just part of the fleet.
The plane they took this afternoon is an Air Force Gulfstream V (C-37A) — a 12 passenger aircraft. (H/T Mark Knoller). And there are no plans to circle the Statue of Liberty.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Art student's car vanishing act

A design student made a battered old Skoda "disappear" by painting it to merge with the surrounding car park.
Sara Watson, who is studying drawing at the University of Central Lancashire (Uclan), took three weeks to transform the car's appearance.
She created the illusion in the car park outside her studio at Uclan's Hanover Building in Preston.
The car is now being used for advertising by the local recycling firm that donated the vehicle.

'Just amazing'

Ms Watson, a second year student, said: "I was experimenting with the whole concept of illusion but needed something a bit more physical to make a real impact."
She was given the Skoda Fabia from the breaker's yard at local firm Recycling Lives.
Owner Steve Jackson described her work as "amazing".
"When I first saw the photos I was convinced it was something which had been done on the computer," said Mr Jackson.
"But when you look more closely you see the effort and attention to detail she has put into it. It is just amazing."

Defamation - The Film

Is anyone who expresses anti-Zionist opinions necessarily also anti-Semitic? Is anti-Semitism itself still an endemic and dangerous global problem? Has remembering the Holocaust become an unhealthy obsession, perhaps with a hidden agenda? Will readers regard a Jewish critic as a self-hating Jew just for considering Israeli helmer Yoav Shamir's personal, occasionally irreverent "Defamation" an ace slice of provocative, timely docu-making? No doubt the first three questions -- and many more -- will stir up red-hot debates wherever "Defamation" unspools, which is likely to be at numerous further fests (although some Jewish-themed ones may balk) and on upscale channels.

Shamir, whose previous docu features ("Checkpoint," "5 Days," and "Flipping Out") explored various aspects of current Israeli life, lays his cards on the table from the start by saying he's never directly experienced anti-Semitism himself. After a comical interview with his own 92-year-old grandmother (who claims Jews abroad really are lazy and make money off others so they don't have to work), Shamir sets out to assess whether anti-Semitism still lurks underneath the surface of supposedly civilized societies, or is just a scarecrow used to drum up political support for right-wing Zionism.

Judging by the evidence offered here, both opinions look plausible. Shamir engages thinkers from across the spectrum, from Abraham Foxman, director of the Anti-Defamation League, which collects evidence of anti-Semitism, to left-wing academic Norman Finkelstein, whose controversial book "The Holocaust Industry" argues that what the Nazis did is used today to justify Israel's maltreatment of Palestinians.

As journalism, pic is impressively evenhanded (as were "Checkpoint" and "5 Days"), even though the filmmaker never attempts to disguise his own left-leaning sympathies. He can't resist skewering the ADL a bit, making Foxman look somewhat sinister and Machiavellian behind his front of affability. Then again, persuasive but embittered Finkelstein, caught ranting about the "warmongers of Martha's Vineyard," doesn't come across too well either.

Quotation from Berlinale Press

..... Like Yoav Shamir, whose Flipping Out was in last year’s programme, and whose entry this year, Defamation, is pretty provocative stuff?

Defamation starts out as a film about anti-Semitism and about people who have set out to expose and fight anti-Semitism around the world. In the course of his research, however, the director discovers that insisting on anti-Semitism can also be a profitable business. The other, perhaps even more dramatic finding of Shamir’s film is the systematic indoctrination of young people in Israel, who are taught on a mass scale that the whole world hates Jews and that the only way to define oneself as an Israeli is on the basis of this worldwide animosity. Defamation is about the use and production of these kinds of negative stereotypes.

That sounds like a difficult subject, in the sense that there’s always the risk of getting caught up in a vicious discursive circle.

It is a very difficult subject, and I doubt the film will make many friends in Israel. We nevertheless think this film is absolutely worth showing,...

The most comic and disturbing sequences spring from footage of Israeli high school students visiting extermination camps in Poland. Struggling to come to grips with what the Holocaust means for their generation, they eat candy while watching archive footage of emaciated Auschwitz victims (a moment worthy of "Seinfeld"). Later, some kids confess they're scared to leave their hotel rooms because they've been warned by their teachers and the Secret Service agents accompanying them that the country is fit to burst with anti-Semites who mean them harm.

Use of hand-drawn graphics to identify onscreen figures amps up the comedy effectively, as does editor Morten Hojbjerg's deadpan use of abrupt cuts, which dampens subject matter's potential grimness. End result is at once intelligent, wry and -- there's no way around it -- quintessentially Jewish, in the best sense.

Daily Show takes on torture supporters

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Jon Stewart Slams Hannity, Bachmann, And Beck

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I love watching Jon Stewart shred right-wingers and their sour grape-fueled conspiracy theories, especially when it involves the idiocy espoused by FOX blowhards Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity. It is astounding though to see the these shock jocks do a complete 180 from when Bush was in power, back when they labeled you unpatriotic simply for criticizing the President.

Stewart: Yes, tyranny. A.K.A. our democratically elected President. You know what guys....I think you might be confusing tyranny with losing. And I feel for you because ah...I've been there. A few times. In fact one of them was a bit of a nail biter. But see, when the guy that you disagree with gets elected, he's probably going to do things you disagree with. He could cut taxes on the wealthy. Remove government's oversight capability. Invade a country that you thought should not be invaded but that's not tyranny. That's democracy. See now you're in the minority. It's supposed to taste like a s#%t taco. And by the way, if I remember correctly when a disagreement was expressed about that President's actions when ya'll were in power I believe the response was "Why do you hate America?". "Watch what you say." "Love it or leave it." "Suck on my truck nuts." ..... For god's sake guys. You've been out of power for ten f*%#ng weeks. You've got a mid-term election in twenty months. Pace your rage!

Fox news examines atheism with Bill O'Reilly

Part One:




Part Two:



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Museum finds "secret" message in Lincoln's watch

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A gold watch owned by Abraham Lincoln bears a message marking the start of the U.S. Civil War, but the president never knew of the "secret" inscription uncovered on Tuesday at the National Museum of American History.

The engraving, by watchmaker Jonathan Dillon, is dated April 13, 1861, and reads in part: "Fort Sumpter was attacked by the rebels" and "thank God we have a government."

The museum said it agreed to open the watch to find out if the message really was there after it was contacted by the watchmaker's great-great-grandson, Doug Stiles of Waukegan, Illinois.

The American Civil War began when Confederate troops opened fire on Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina, on April 12, 1861.

Forty-five years later, Dillon the watchmaker told The New York Times that he was repairing Lincoln's watch when he heard that the first shots of the Civil War had been fired.

Dillon said he unscrewed the dial of the watch and used a sharp instrument to mark the historic day on the president's watch. He told the newspaper that, as far as he knew, no one had ever seen the inscription.

"Lincoln never knew of the message he carried in his pocket," Brent Glass, director of the National Museum of American History said in a statement. "It's a personal side of history about an ordinary watchman being inspired to record something for posterity."

Lincoln was elected the 16th president of the United States in November 1860. In the leadup to the Civil War, South Carolina and six other states seceded from the Union before Lincoln's inauguration in March 1861.

Claire Marchand, Flute!

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The New Monthly Harvest on Pointer's Weekly

Excuse me, I didn't maintain this weblog over several days, because I had to do something professionally. But we are all going forward with the result. Pointer decided to publish monthly on Pointer's Weekly the works of his alter ego "Casper C. Bosveld" - who ever that may be - at the end of each month. It's the concept of a photo album on his website simple, but it has some plus-points above a flash-player or video footage. Though, you can choose images from a menu by clicking on the thumbnail image which are fully listed on the menu page and you can click previous or next on top of each full-screen high-resolution visualization.
Try before you die via the Click & View page or directly to the menu.

Street Art Sell Out

'Guerilla' Advertising Masquerades as Graffiti

By Christian Fuchs
Companies are increasingly turning to graffiti and street art to give themselves a more youthful image. Taggers complain that this commercialization could destroy the street art subculture.
The deed was committed in downtown Berlin in front of hundreds of eyewitnesses. Last Saturday, shortly before midnight, as crowds of revelers were underway in the city's trendy Kreuzberg neighborhood, the vandals struck. They spattered black dots, at a height of 10 meters, onto a white fire protection wall at the Görlitz train station. The dots eventually formed an image of US rapper Snoop Dogg and the words "Snoop recommends vybemobile."
Although it may have looked like another rebellious act by street artists, it was in fact a new ad for a subsidiary of E-Plus, a provider of IT and mobile phone products and services. And the spattered dots were not real paint, but merely video images projected onto the building from across the street by employees of the advertising agency Fatcap Marketing.
This Christmas campaign for a mobile phone package is harmless compared with the amount of effort put into a campaign in Berlin for the Ogo mobile communication device at the beginning of the year. Overnight, hundreds of round cartoon monsters appeared, in the form of graffiti, on Berlin's high-rise buildings, on posters and construction site fences and, in the form of stickers, on cigarette machines and in public toilets. It wasn't until later that the operation was exposed as an advertising campaign. Robot, a Berlin agency, had been asked to draw attention to the Ogo brand in a relatively inexpensive way.
Graffiti, long the embodiment of an entire protest milieu, is increasingly being co-opted for commerce. More and more brands are donning the cloak of counterculture in their advertising, hoping to gain a young, rebellious image in the process. "We didn't want to come across as a corporation," says Robot Creative Director Lars Oehlschlaeger, who was responsible for the Ogo campaign. "Our subversive campaign, on the other hand, was young, impudent and sexy."
This is a paradoxical development, because the graffiti movement gained strength in the 1970s when it reclaimed public space from advertising. "Reclaim the streets" was one of the slogans of the early activists, who saw themselves as critics of commerce armed with spray paint and magic markers. At the end of the 1970s, the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard, in his graffiti manifesto, called for an "uprising of symbols."
By hijacking this youth culture, the advertising pirates hope that its coolness will somehow be associated with their brands. The industry has long realized that it can no longer reach Generation Zapp with conventional advertising. Young people have become immune to TV ads, radio spots and Internet banner advertising. Guerilla campaigns in places frequented by urban youth, on the other hand, are more surprising. An advertising professional with the TBWA agency, for example, says that "guerilla is a popular approach, because you can surprise people when they least expect advertising."

More:

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Celebrating the Taíno

The seven girls posed, preened and smiled with all the energy of Miss Universe contestants, but this was no ordinary pageant.
The competitors, from about 6-years-old to 16, had just paraded through a downpour to a small stage surrounded by mountains, where they displayed elaborate outfits handmade from wood, plants or, in one case, jingling shells. And the judges also sought a special kind of beauty: those who most resembled Puerto Rico’s native Indian tribe, the Taíno, received higher marks.
“It’s different,” said Félix González, president of the National Indigenous Festival of Jayuya, of which the pageant is a part. “It’s not white culture and blue eyes; it says that the part of our blood that comes from indigenous culture is just as important.”

Puerto Ricans have long considered themselves a mix of African, European and Native American influences. But since the 1960s, the Taíno — a tribe wiped from the Antilles by European conquest, disease and assimilation — has come to occupy a special place in the island’s cultural hierarchy.
The streets of Old San Juan are lined with museums and research centers dedicated to unearthing Taíno artifacts and rituals. Children are taught from a young age that “hurricane” is Taíno in origin, from the word “huracán,” while no Latin pop music concert is complete without a shout out to Boricuas — those from Borinquen, the Taíno name for Puerto Rico, which means “land of the brave noble lord.”
More:

Love For Sale (Cole Porter) in Tree Versions

1. Libby Holman

2. Eartha Kitt

3. Liza Spinelli


When the only sound in the empty street,
Is the heavy tread of the heavy feet
That belong to a lonesome cop
I open shop.
When the moon so long has been gazing down
On the wayward ways of this wayward town.
That her smile becomes a smirk,
I go to work.

Love for sale,
Appetising young love for sale.
Love that's fresh and still unspoiled,
Love that's only slightly soiled,
Love for sale.
Who will buy?
Who would like to sample my supply?
Who's prepared to pay the price,
For a trip to paradise?
Love for sale
Let the poets pipe of love
in their childish way,
I know every type of love
Better far than they.
If you want the thrill of love,
I've been through the mill of love;
Old love, new love
Every love but true love
Love for sale.

Appetising young love for sale.
If you want to buy my wares.
Follow me and climb the stairs
Love for sale.
Love for sale.