The Spazz Talks About...

Pavel Constantin - Romania


Ares - Cuba


Sergei Tunin - Russia


Alex Falco - Cuba

Please use the link(s) to read the article(s) in full.
TIP: Right click on the link and open it as a new window or tab.
THANK YOU! - tkm


http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=31600

SpaceRef Interactive

Date Released: Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Source: NASA's Earth Observatory:

Image of the Day: Sarychev Peak Eruption, Kuril Islands

..."A fortuitous orbit of the International Space Station allowed the astronauts this striking view of Sarychev Volcano (Kuril Islands, northeast of Japan) in an early stage of eruption on June 12, 2009. Sarychev Peak is one of the most active volcanoes in the Kuril Island chain, and it is located on the northwestern end of Matua Island."...

Oguz Gurel - Turkey



Riber Hansson - Sweden



Pavel Constantin - Romania



Humberto Lázaro Miranda Ramírez(LAZ) - Cuba



Alex Falco - Cuba



Ares - Cuba

Dear Readers,
I highly recommend you read this in full and think about the subject.
As a producer(I as a painter)of original content and a consumer of other
peoples content, I try to balance both sides needs. I have to pay bills also!
I create original works for two reasons:

1. new generations HAS to be exposed to ART in all its forms.
2. ART NEEDS to be shared...

on this blogg there are over 200 works all free, the only stipulation is
not to use it for commercial purposes and if you do put full attribution
(PUT MY NAME ON IT!)that is all I ask.

Enjoy,

K. Talat Muskara

****************************************
From the book "For or Against the Citizenry: Power sharing", published May 25, 2009

http://www.nisus.se/archive/090525e.html


..."What has copyright to do with democracy?


Abstract: The debates on whether or not copyright and democracy are compatible concepts are not new. It has been discussed since the 1700s and concerns a form of separation of powers. Copyright is a monopoly, but at the same time, when copyright came, it was a strike at another form of monopoly, the printers' rights, with their roots in the guild system. Copyright could not occur until censorship was abolished, and it can actually be seen as a complement to the freedom of expression. Copyright was early associated with privacy issues. However, if proportionality is not followed in the maintenance of law, both integrity and freedom of expression could be threatened.

Many debaters today claim that copyright and democracy are incompatible concepts, that copyright infringes the privacy of readers and other cultural consumers or that copyright is a kind of censorship.

Others believe that copyright per se constitutes a kind of protection of the integrity of both author and work, and that the requirement for the whole concept of copyright to occur was that censorship was abolished.

Both these views may have some merit, depending on how these interests are balanced against each other in practice. Almost any legislation can tip over in some unwanted direction, unless the various interest areas concerned have been identified and defined well enough, and if the law is not maintained with reasonable means."...

Please use the link(s) to read the article(s) in full.
A TIP: Right click on the link and open it as a new window or tab.
THANK YOU! - tkm



http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/boroditsky09/boroditsky09_index.html


Edge

HOW DOES OUR LANGUAGE SHAPE THE WAY WE THINK? - By Lera Boroditsky
6.12.09

..."Does this mean that the speakers think differently about the world? Do English, Indonesian, Russian, and Turkish speakers end up attending to, partitioning, and remembering their experiences differently just because they speak different languages? For some scholars, the answer to these questions has been an obvious yes. Just look at the way people talk, they might say. Certainly, speakers of different languages must attend to and encode strikingly different aspects of the world just so they can use their language properly.

Scholars on the other side of the debate don't find the differences in how people talk convincing. All our linguistic utterances are sparse, encoding only a small part of the information we have available. Just because English speakers don't include the same information in their verbs that Russian and Turkish speakers do doesn't mean that English speakers aren't paying attention to the same things; all it means is that they're not talking about them. It's possible that everyone thinks the same way, notices the same things, but just talks differently."...

( or is it having many windows, un-filtered, to the world? - tkm)

Dear Readers,
This might be a classic example of "dis-information".
Someone should check who and what is MEMRI.
But if this is true then we are in deep, deep trouble!
tkm



http://www.memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=countries&Area=turkey&ID=SP224809

Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI)

..."At a January 2009 meeting with Turkish Ambassador to Iran Salim Kara 'Othman Oglu, Parviz Davoudi, deputy to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said: "In the new circumstances [that have emerged], the expansion of relations between Iran and Turkey is a necessity... As the two great powers [in the region], the two countries have a broad common denominator, and by deepening the cooperation between them, they could play a decisive role in [shaping] the regional and international balances [of power]... The support of the Turkish government and people for the oppressed people of Gaza showed that [Turkey] was taking an independent stance."

The Turkish ambassador, for his part, said, "The government in Ankara is willing to broaden its relations with Tehran in all areas, and to the maximal extent."...

..."Kayhan: Turkey's Inclination Towards Political Islam - A Strategic Goal For Us

"A February 3, 2009 Kayhan editorial titled "The Muslim Brotherhood in Turkey", in the daily Kayhan (which is close to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei), dealt extensively with the growing influence of the Islamic movement (i.e. the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood) throughout the Middle East, presenting it as a Sunni Islamic model that supports the model of Iran's Shi'ite Islamic Revolution. The editorial stressed that Islamic Turkey, as a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, must stand alongside Iran as part of an emerging Islamic Middle East bloc confronting the West:

"...To which camp does Turkey belong? To the West, or to the 'Islamic resistance?' Today, Islam's supporters in Turkey... are [actually] part of the Muslim Brotherhood.

"Everyone knows that the Muslim Brotherhood in Sunni countries - [both] Arab and non-Arab - is the most deeply rooted political movement to emerge in the last 120 years. It was established in Syria and Egypt... [and] now rules three countries, Turkey, Sudan, and Palestine, and plays a significant role in governing [several other] countries, such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Lebanon, Jordan and Tunisia.

"The governments of [Turkish Prime Minister] Erdogan, [Isma'il] Haniya and [Sudanese President Omar] Al-Bashir are currently [controlled by] the [Muslim] Brotherhood.

"Former Afghanistan prime minister Prof. Burhanuddin Rabbani, former Malaysian prime minister Makhatir Muhammad, and former Indonesia prime minister Abdurrahman Wahid were [also] Muslim Brotherhood leaders in their [respective] countries...

"There is no doubt that the Justice and Development Party - Erdogan's government - is well established and enjoys considerable religious support.

"The Turkish model is different from the Iranian one... [the former] is not at odds [with the latter], but rather is influenced by it and supportive of it.

"All Muslim [Brotherhood] groups in the Middle East support the Islamic Revolution [in Iran] and the regime of the Islamic Republic [of Iran]... Islam's supporters in Turkey have never criticized Iran, and have even sided with it on the issue of nuclear energy... Turkey under Islamic rule consistently supports Iran's regional stance...

"The Iran-Turkey rapport, which grows daily; the increasing rapport of these two countries with the [lands of the] broad and rich geographical [expanse of which they are a part, comprising] Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Sudan; and the joint [Iran-Turkish] effort to cooperate with other countries in the region, such as Qatar, Yemen, Algeria and Libya - [all these factors place] the countries of this bloc in an exceptional historic position completely at odds with Western interests - and especially with U.S. aspirations.

"In this bloc, there is no need for one country to be at the center, with the others rallying around it... For this [alliance] to succeed, the larger and more influential countries must strengthen the influence of the other [smaller] countries, and welcome more extensive diplomacy by the smaller member countries. Our enemies are undoubtedly aware of this...

"The members of [this] Islamic movement see joining the E.U. as a multifaceted [challenge] for the resistance front - [a challenge] with political, cultural, economic and security aspects. They believe that it is impossible to ignore the northern gate of this front [i.e. Turkey] and its ties with Europe, or to underestimate its importance. They think that this issue [i.e. Turkish membership in the E.U.] will imbue the regional resistance front with aspects of international influence.

"Turkey's inclination towards [political] Islam... is a strategic goal [for us] - because there are forces in the West that are making great efforts to misleadingly portray Turkey as diametrically opposed to Iran and to the Islamic movements in the Middle East...

"Some media outlets in the region... do the same when they present Turkey as Sunni and/or Turkish [rather than Islamic]... Through this propaganda, they wish first of all to console themselves a little, because it pains them to realize that the Middle East is slipping from [the control of] the West and the Arab countries allied with it. Another [aim of such propaganda] is to suppress the resistance, by driving a wedge between Iran and the other countries of the region.

"But following the millions-strong Istanbul demonstration in support of Gaza, and Erdogan's indictment of Peres at Davos, [the West] must soon acknowledge that in the changing situation in the Middle East, Turkey's place is alongside Iran. [The West must also realize] that these two models [Iran's and Turkey's] are [only] two of the Islamic movement models [that exist,] which share two goals: ending Western control of [energy] resources and of the Middle East [lands], and reviving Islamic civilization and identity." [4]




Turkey Is Influenced by Iran's Islamic Revolution

Some senior Iranian officials attributed recent statements by Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan to the influence of the Islamic Revolution. Senior cleric Ayatollah Hossein Nouri Hamdani said at a meeting with senior Iranian military intelligence officers: "[Erdogan's] declarations against the regime that is occupying Jerusalem are a sign of the [impending] downfall of the artificial Israeli regime... The victory of the Islamic Revolution in Iran precipitated a great awakening throughout the world... God willing, the earthquake that will destroy Israel will come [soon], preparing the ground for the arrival of the Hidden Imam." [5]

Yahya Rahim Safavi, security advisor to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, attributed Erdogan's actions at Davos to the influence of Iran's Islamic regime: "Erdogan's... courageous words at the Davos summit against the war crimes of the Zionist regime... are evidence of the Islamic awakening among the Turkish people - a result of the influence of Iran's Islamic Revolution." [6]

At a closed meeting with Erdogan on the subject of Gaza, during his mid-January 2009 visit to Turkey, Iranian Majlis Speaker Ali Larijani said: "As the two influential countries in the region, Iran and Turkey can play a decisive role in the [Gaza] crisis." Erdogan, for his part, said that he wished to expand commercial ties between Iran and Turkey - which currently stand at about $20 billion - and also stressed Turkey's wish to complete the Iran-Europe gas pipeline project as soon as possible. [7]

[1] See MEMRI Inquiry and Analysis No. 492, "An Escalating Regional Cold War -Part I: The 2009 Gaza War," February 2, 2009, http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=ia&ID=IA49209 ; MEMRI Inquiry and Analysis No. 490,"Recent Attempts to Form Strategic Regional Bloc: Syria, Turkey and Iran," January 6, 2009, http://www.memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=countries&Area=turkey&ID=IA49009.

[2] IRNA (Iran), January 20, 2009.

[3] IRNA (Iran), January 29 2009.

[4] Kayhan (Iran), February 3, 2009.

[5] IRNA (Iran), February 1, 2009.

[6] Fars (Iran), February 4, 2009.

[7] Resalat (Iran), January 15, 2009."...

http://www.dvorak.org

The Curse of Video and other Agnosia by John C. Dvorak

Video Agnosia (Ag-nose-ee-ah) will be the curse of the 21st Century. Like dyslexia, video agnosia may be genetic in its origins. Simply put, video agnosia is the inability to understand information coming from any video device. This includes both television and computer displays.

The curious thing about this handicap is that it reflects deeper brain disorders that crop up as other forms of agnosia (rock and roll agnosia, sexual agnosia, political agnosia) including the dreaded general agnosia–the inability to understand what the heck is going on around one. These are people who we say are “out of it.”

While researching this little known, but common, ailment I happened upon a secret society known as The Friends of Yuri Ivanovich. Apparently Ivanovich, a Russian emigre, was the first person fired from a job because of video agnosia. In 1956, he was working for Honeywell monitoring computer activity on an old cathode ray tube (CRT) and he kept seeing images of Czar Nicholas on the screen.

Paul Trudeau and John Collins of St. Paul, Minnesota, both knew Ivanovich and both suffered from this peculiar inability to see what is actually on a CRT. They determined that if the general public found out about this, the agnosiacs would be ridiculed. That was in 1957 and that was when they formed the FYI.

The way I was told the story, Collins and Trudeau secretly grew the membership to 10,000 when they discovered an older group of general agnosiacs with a membership of 100,000 in San Francisco. Formed around the turn of the century by the illustrious Blackjack Constable, San Francisco’s famous gambling cheat. Constable knew that there was a segment of the population, like himself, who had no understanding as to what was going on. Everyday some new technology would frighten him. It took him weeks to accept the existence of dog leashes and he never did understand their function.

Constable knew that the way to keep this handicap a secret was to form a group of like-minded associates–fellow agnosiacs. This group would work as a team and permeate all levels of decision-making in both government and private industry.

Agnosiacs have a special handshake or something–this wasn’t revealed to me–so they can identify each other. In this way they can promote each other to higher and higher positions of authority. Once authority is achieved, then it is up to them to resist all change. A unnamed member of the Friends of Yuri Ivanovich told me that most school boards, public utility commissions, and publishing companies have recently been taken over by secret agnosiac societies. “The auto industry was taken over a long time ago, and don’t trust anyone who belongs to a club,” he told me. He then hinted that in California the agnosiac central committee all works within the structure of the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Agnosiacs have to protect their identity or they wouldn’t be working at all. After discovering the existence of these underground organizations, I made it a point to identify characteristics of agnosiacs to, perhaps, ferret out a few.

Agnosia is a brain disorder that can’t be cured. If a person has one form of agnosia, he or she is likely to exhibit other aberrations. Bad judgment crops up a lot. If a Congressmen is investigated for taking bribes you’ll notice something else usually turns up such as a penchant for enjoying the company of young goats. This is a guy with general agnosia.

Agnosiacs generally do not like technology. They’ll never have a computer on, near or around their desks. They claim that this is some sort of executive decision–it’s demeaning to have a terminal on the desk. The fact is that this is probably a cover-up for agnosia. Be on the look out.

Agnosiacs have no sense of humor. If they laugh at something it is usually practiced. Agnosiacs will get together to decide something is funny and then all pretend to laugh at it in public to allay suspicion. Don’t be fooled by this ploy. Toss a one-liner at them and see how they react.

Agnosiacs can’t dress themselves. When given the go-ahead to choose their own clothes it’s a disaster. Needless to say the clothes that appeal to them are manufactured by companies which are run by fellow tasteless agnosiacs. Beware the ivy-league look.

Agnosiacs write lots of memos. They can seldom communicate any other way. Look for the tell-tale mark of the Friends of Yuri Ivanovich, the FYI symbol on the memo. If you really think it means “for your information,” you’ve been fooled.

Agnosiacs stick together. This is their strength. It’s up to normal people like you and I to stop creeping agnosia and get rid of agnosiacs from all positions of authority and put them back where they belong–sweeping streets.

–end

This column ran in the San Francisco Examiner circa 1984. The editor at the time actually did not recognize it as a satire and was asking me to get quotes from local agnosiacs. I should have asked him for a quote.

Damien Glez - Burkina Faso


Michael Kountouris - Greece


Simanca Osmani - Brazil


Alex Falco - Cuba