Aesthetics and Astronomy Project at Harvard

By David Pescovitz at 10:35 am Tuesday, Oct 11

The Aesthetics and Astronomy Project is a new effort from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics to explore how beautiful scientific images can better be used to present complex ideas and provoke a sense of wonder. The multidisciplinary research team includes astrophysicists, astronomers, science communicators, and psychologists. From the Harvard Crimson:

The popularity of websites such as NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day shows that celestial images are compelling to the general public, but A&A researchers initially thought that this attention was solely aesthetic in nature.

The results of surveys and focus groups conducted by A&A researchers, however, contradicted this theory. People responded more positively to images that were accompanied by an explanation, suggesting curiosity about the nature of the celestial event or object pictured, according to Smith.

“There is a devaluing when you separate out function and form,” Arcand said.

Aesthetics & Astronomy Project

"Researchers Merge Art and Science" (Harvard Crimson)

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Jean-Luc Godard's WEEKEND, 1967, returning to theaters in a new 35mm print

By Xeni Jardin at 11:47 am Tuesday, Oct 11

Above, the original, rarely-seen French release trailer for Jean-Luc Godard's WEEKEND, which is now touring again in a new 35mm print via Janus Films. That opening shot with the slow pan accross the traffic jam is so amazing. Everything about this trailer, and the film itself, is amazing. I can't wait to see it in a theater for the first time! Here are some of the early cities and dates. Go!

YouTube Video Link. Here's an older DVD release on Amazon. (thanks, @somebadideas)

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More than 100 arrested at Occupy Boston

By Xeni Jardin at 10:29 pm Tuesday, Oct 11

Video Link: "Occupy Boston 10/10/2011: Police show their presence at new campsite."

Hundreds of "Occupy Boston" protesters were arrested last night, as police moved in on demonstrators who refused to leave a park. From the Boston Globe:

At 1:20 a.m., the first riot police officers lined up on Atlantic Avenue. Minutes later, dozens of sheriff vans and police wagons arrived and over 200 officers in uniforms and riot gear surrounded the Greenway. Police Superintendent William Evans and Commissioner Edward F. Davis watched from across the street. Evans gave the crowd two minutes to disperse from the park, warning that they would be locked up if they did not comply.

The crowd of protesters, energized by the sudden appearance of the Boston and Transit police officers, chanted, ‘‘The people united will never be defeated,’’ “This is a peaceful protest,” and “the whole world is watching.’’

About 10 minutes later, the first officers entered the park and surrounded the group. Evans, using a loudspeaker, gave one more warning and then each protester was individually put on his or her stomach, cable-tied, and dragged off as others tore down tents and arrested and detained people on the fringe of the park.

And from the New Yorker:

More than a hundred people taking part in the Occupy Boston protests were arrested in the early hours of Tuesday morning, after police moved in to close down a secondary tent city that had been built after the group outgrew their original footprint at Dewey Square. Two hundred police, some clad in riot gear, loaded people into vans before tearing down between twenty and thirty tents. Videos of the arrests immediately made their way around the Web, including several capturing a chaotic scene in which marchers from a group known as Veterans for Peace came into physical contact with officers.

That video is below. More live streams at OccupyStream.

(thanks, Ned Sublette!)

Video Link: "Boston Police Attack Veterans for Peace."

Video Link: "Occupy Boston: Police Action." Tags: occupy boston, occupy wall street, ows, police

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Art show in NJ to benefit Jack Kirby Museum, October 15, 2011

By Mark Frauenfelder at 3:56 pm Tuesday, Oct 11

This Saturday (October 15) at 5pm, legendary rock club Maxwell's in Hoboken will open its Kirby Enthusiasm art show in its front room. More than 30 visual artists have contributed work paying tribute to "The King of Comics."

At 7pm, in the back room, the Kirby Enthusiasm rock show will start, with WEEP (featuring the Venture Brothers' Doc Hammer), WJ & The Sweet Sacrifice and (formed for this occasion) The Boom Tubes!

If you're at New York Comic Con, Maxwell's is easy to get to from the Javits Center - take a ferry at 39th Street across the Hudson to Hoboken North and walk a few blocks to 1039 Washington St.

The art is awesome - the music is gonna rock - Kirby Enthusiasm!

Here's my contribution to the show: A 24x24" painting of Carroll Baker starring in the reel-to-reel tape audiobook, Flower, Daughter of Googam.

There might be a 12x12 print for sale at the show, which is based on the Illustrator preliminary drawing I made. I'll find out if it is available for sale online.

Kirby Enthusiasm Art Show Tags: Art and Design, Event, Jack Kirby

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Ruben Bolling wins Society of Professional Journalists award for Tom the Dancing Bug comic

By Mark Frauenfelder at 12:40 pm Tuesday, Oct 11

Congrats to our friend and colleague Ruben Bolling for winning the Society of Professional Journalists Award for his Tom the Dancing Bug comic strip!

"Combining rapier wit with an astute sense of kitsch, Ruben Bolling's weekly comic strips play on (and play with) conventions of American pop culture and psychology as well as any artist today. 

Nothing is sacred in Bolling's work; and giving lie to the sacredness American society invests in its golden calves (military machismo, Christian exceptionalism, the WASP-y, superficial idealism of the 1950s and early '60s) is what gives the work so much of its power.

 Bolling's work takes corporations' "rights" to task, in the form of a bedtime tale told by a suit-wearing father to his young daughter, a la "Leave It to Beaver" and "Father Knows Best."  The strip foretells a future that peers back to a horrific past, when corporations were not granted the rights of individuals -- before the days of "too big to fail" and the Citizens United Supreme Court decision.

In the end, we learn the father is, himself, a corporation.

 Judges called the work "smart, clever and, more important, unique."  They praised Bolling's willingness to creatively subvert convention - in part by incorporating and recontextualizing those conventions in his work."

Well deserved, Ruben!

Ruben Bolling wins Society of Professional Journalists award for Tom the Dancing Bug comic

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Faces of Occupied Wall Street: Molly Crabapple

By Xeni Jardin at 10:54 am Tuesday, Oct 11

Molly Crabapple's "Faces of Occupied Wall Street."

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Mexican Narcogangs' War On Digital Media

By Xeni Jardin at 12:09 pm Tuesday, Oct 11

Neal Ungerleider interviewed me for a (very good) piece in Fast Company about drug cartels in Mexico, and a new assault on digital media:

“The factors that are remarkable about the narcoblog phenomenon don't exist together in any other current expression of media," Boing Boing's Xeni Jardin, who has reported regularly on narcoviolence, tells Fast Company. "You have the threat of horrific, violent consequences for publishers, if their activity falls afoul of cartel (or perhaps police or army) approval. You have huge, huge traffic and correlating ad revenue. The public is hungry for the information they publish as a matter of their own life and death, and the content is published incredibly fast and wide--but the content is traumatizing."

Meanwhile, American print, web, and television media have largely ignored the massive wave of Mexican narcoviolence. This is despite the fact that many of the worst attacks (such as the Nuevo Laredo social media killings) take place within a half hour's drive of the border. There have been rare exceptions such as Boing Boing, and newspapers in cities with large Mexican diaspora populations such as the Los Angeles Times and border publications such as the El Paso Times have consistently provided excellent coverage. However, most coverage of the Mexican narcogangs in the United States press is limited to novelty pieces about private drug cartel zoos and drug-trafficking submarines.

The big question that observers have been curious about is whether, given the porous nature of the Mexican-United States border and the narcogangs' extensive ties to the U.S. underworld, violence could spread into El Norte on a mass scale. There have already been isolated attacks in Arizona and Texas, and an American consular worker was the subject of an attempted hit from the Sinaloa cartel. Ironically enough, Mexican narcogangs appear to be a greater threat to American homeland security than the Middle Eastern terrorists who dominate the popular discourse.

Read the full article: Mexican Narcogangs' War On Digital Media | Fast Company.

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