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A Music-Mixing Command Station     Today's featured workspace comes from reader Rasidel Slika, who put together a really intense digital audio workstation in a pretty small space. In addition to being practical and well-organized, the vibration dampening pads on the walls actually look cool (which you know isn't an easy feat, if you've ever tried before). - linkfilter.net

Rupert Murdoch doesn't like the BBC.     And sometimes the BBC doesn't seem to like Rupert Murdoch either.     Following the principle that you should know your enemy, the BBC has assiduously recorded the relentless rise of Rupert Murdoch and his assault on the old "decadent" elites of Britain.     And I thought it would be interesting to put up some of the high points.     It is also a good way to examine how far his populist rhetoric is genuine, and how far its is a smokescreen to disguise the interests of another elite.     As a balanced member of the BBC - I leave it to you to decide. - linkfilter.net

A bombing starts off smelling similar to a barbecue. There's a charcoal-like whiff of gunpowder mixed with blood and burned flesh. It's thick and bitter, and it overpowers everything. You can taste it in your mouth. - linkfilter.net

At the peak of the underground comix movement—roughly 1972-1973—the Mission District was peppered with cartoonists all living within walking distance of each other. Few of the artists involved were San Francisco natives. As with the upsurge of the Beats in North Beach in the ’50s, and with the much-hyped love generation in the Haight-Ashbury around 1966, the influx of cartoonists attracted to the underground scene in the Mission pulled in participants from far and wide.     Listen to an excerpt from "The Rise and Fall of Underground Comix in San Francisco and Beyond" read by author Jay Kinney: - linkfilter.net

In the new Russia, a country obsessed with wealth and status, snagging a superrich man is big business — and so are the outrageous classes that claim to give women a leg up. - linkfilter.net

Cool summer temperatures can be found in major cities across the United States. Among the country's 51 largest cities, San Francisco tops the list for usually having the coldest weather each day in June, July and August.     The major cities included in the weather rankings below represent the 51 metropolitan areas in the United States with the most people, all those with over one million residents in 2010, according to the US Census Bureau. - linkfilter.net

There are lots of reasons why women have sex – some are very misleading, some are very serious, and some can be very, very, VERY SURPRISING. The hardest fact is that women’s reason and desire for sex is not necessarily a desire to really have sex and experience a pure physical pleasure. The Texas University psychologists, Cindy Meston and David Buss, conducted a fascinating study (2006-2009) and interviewed 1,000 different women to find out why they really have sex. In their book “Why Women Have Sex” (2009), Meston and Buss identified more than 200 unexpected reasons and diverse sexual motives! Some women have sex to keep their loved one, whereas other women have sex to trap a new partner or get rid of an unwanted one. Some ladies do not know how to say ‘‘no’’ and feel like it’s easier to ‘‘go all the way’’ than to say no. Some feel sorry for a person, others feel guilty or make a special favor to someone. Among female reasons for sex there are – revenge, boredom, profit, losing... - linkfilter.net

This was the most elaborate Atomic Energy educational set ever produced, but it was only only available from 1951 to 1952. - linkfilter.net

Libyan Food contains delicious recipes and fascinating information about Libyan food culture. It discloses no information about its author who describes the blog as being about “food cooked in the modern Libyan kitchen, based on traditional Shargawi [eastern Libyan] and Gharbawi [western Libyan], Amazigi [Amazigh/Berber mountain tribes in western Libya] and South Libyan cuisines” and “recipes recently imported into Libya from the rest of the Arab world. - linkfilter.net

Melvin the Magical Mixed Media Machine is an epic Rube Goldberg machine takes pictures and makes videos of its audience as it sets things on fire and smashes ceramic hippos. - linkfilter.net

How did more than 160 million women go missing from Asia? The simple answer is sex selection -- typically, an ultrasound scan followed by an abortion if the fetus turns out to be female -- but beyond that, the reasons for a gap half the size of the U.S. population are not widely understood. And when I started researching a book on the topic, I didn't understand them myself.     I thought I would focus on how gender discrimination has persisted as countries develop. The reasons couples gave for wanting boys varies: Sons stayed in the family and took care of their parents in old age, or they performed ancestor and funeral rites important in some cultures. Or it was that daughters were a burden, made expensive by skyrocketing dowries. - linkfilter.net

Another Nickel In The Machine is a blog about 20th century London, its history, its culture and its music. - linkfilter.net

Throughout the shadowy world of ghosts and demons there is no figure so terrible, no figure so dreaded and abhorred, yet dight with such fearful fascination, as the vampire, who is himself neither ghost nor demon, but yet who partakes the dark natures and and possesses the mysterious and terrible qualities of both. - linkfilter.net

Dmitriy T.M. sent us a link to some images at the Brookings Institution, based on analysis by William Frey, illustrating the very uneven changes in average of of the population by state in the U.S. Overall, the U.S. population is aging, with rapid growth in the population over age 55 and individuals over age 45 surpassing those aged 18-44, according to the 2010 Census     The traditional family is now the preserve of a minority - linkfilter.net

The events of the past few years—financial meltdown of 2008, the failed Copenhagen talks and increasing climate destabilization, the BP oil disaster, and the financial crises in the Eurozone—make it clear that the business-as-usual economy is both wreaking havoc on the planet and failing on its own terms. But so far, the conversation about how to transform this economic model has been stuck in neutral. Traveling around North America discussing my new book, Plenitude, I am increasingly convinced that a key obstacle to moving forward is a lack of confidence that there is another way. To gain that confidence, we need to articulate a model of how a sustainable economy could work. The core insight of my model is the need to transform how people spend their time. Its first principle is to reverse the increased in time devoted to the market that has occurred in recent decades. (The US, most of the global South and some OECD countries have experienced rising hours.) In the US, annual hours of... - linkfilter.net

...Researchers have documented the first-ever case of a cookiecutter shark attacking a human. Although this shark maxes out at ~22 inches, its scoop-like bite is the stuff of nightmares.     The cookiecutter shark (a.k.a. the cigar shark) may not be the most dangerous shark out there, but its modus is gnarly...     ...In 2009, distance swimmer Mike Spalding was attacked off the coast of Hawai'i...     With links to photograph of injury (ack!) and nature video. - linkfilter.net

Text isn't the most glamorous type of media on your computer, but it's one that everyone creates and consumes frequently and it's not as boring as it sounds. To make the best use of the text you encounter and generate on your own, there some tips and tricks you should know. - linkfilter.net

My woman threatened to dump me because I didn't want to work... ever.   To show her that I'm not such a layabout I set a new record in Changing Jobs, 14 jobs in 24 days! - linkfilter.net

Long after blacks and Jews have made great strides, and even as homosexuals gain respect, acceptance and new rights, there is still a group that lots of Americans just don’t like much: atheists. Those who don’t believe in God are widely considered to be immoral, wicked and angry. They can’t join the Boy Scouts. Atheist soldiers are rated potentially deficient when they do not score as sufficiently “spiritual” in military psychological evaluations. Surveys find that most Americans refuse or are reluctant to marry or vote for nontheists; in other words, nonbelievers are one minority still commonly denied in practical terms the right to assume office despite the constitutional ban on religious tests.     Rarely denounced by the mainstream, this stunning anti-atheist discrimination is egged on by Christian conservatives who stridently — and uncivilly — declare that the lack of godly faith is detrimental to society, rendering nonbelievers intrinsically suspect and second-class citizens. - linkfilter.net

Although straightforward pyramid schemes are illegal in many countries, such "businesses" often camouflage themselves quite successfully by assuming the form of various MLM (multilevel marketing) or Network Marketing companies. Their organizers and promoters often refer to such activities as "the 21st century business", however there's nothing about them that is particular to the 21st century, for they always existed (see below), especially in times of economic uncertainty. An MLM operation normally involves the distribution of an actual product (thus legally separating itself from a straightforward pyramid scheme), but its "success" (or rather success for those who are at the top of the pyramid or close to it) is afforded by ever increasing participation of new members whose numbers grow in geometric progression. A Russian and Soviet science writer Yakov Isidorovich Perelman (1882-1942) authored numerous books in which he popularized physics, mathematics, mechanics and other... - linkfilter.net

This musing on intraday trading may come off as a bit harsh and simplistic, but I think subconsciously maybe that is what I intended when I decided to pen this piece (initially as an email to a few traders friends). Here’s the premise for this piece: trading is “blue collar” work. If you want to succeed at this game, put on your hard hat, load up your tool-belt and be ready to work when you get to your computer station. Too many traders and wanna-be traders simply don’t understand this concept. There’s a grand misconception as to what the daily function looks like of an independent trader. Allow me to break it down for you – at least the way I see it. Your job as an independent trader is to watch, analyze, wait, continue to watch, continue to wait, and finally execute on the pattern(s) that you have learned to have a high probability of being successful on a consistent basis. Your job is to look for that reoccurring high probability pattern and decide whether to deploy your capital or... - linkfilter.net

They're often called lost boys, the many young men who keep postponing adulthood. As Donna Nebenzahl writes, social scientists are trying to figure out why their numbers keep growing     reddit comments - linkfilter.net

When the recession hit, you could hear the words buzzing from the cell phones of every restaurant consultant in America: "It's time for comfort food." But under the mashed potatoes and meatloaf lies a question: What does "comfort food" really mean? What about it actually comforts us? Let's look at some big-time comfort foods: Fried chicken. French fries. Chocolate cake. When people talk about comfort food, the obvious explanation is that it's all about nostalgia and missing Mommy. But that's also cultural. Look at lutefisk, natto and the reddish-black blood sausage I was served once by a sad Belgian who took comfort in what struck me as something you might see in a hospital. And really, it takes more than this to create the rush of sensations that make us feel safe, calm, and cared for. It's a complex interplay of memory, history, and brain chemistry, and while some basics apply — most of us are soothed by the soft, sweet, smooth, salty and unctuous — the specifics are highly... - linkfilter.net

I am a doctoral student in cultural anthropology from New York University embarking on my year of fieldwork in Quito, Ecuador. I study the sex industry in Quito's historic center, which until very recently was the designated red-light district of the city. My blog shares my thoughts, observations, and adventures of my days on the streets. *I am also making a documentary film on the women I work with. - linkfilter.net

Admitting that “some will call me a torturer” is a surefire way to cut yourself off from anyone’s sympathy. But Glenn Carle, a former CIA operative, isn’t sure whether he’s the hero or the villain of his own story. Distilled, that story, told in Carle’s new memoir The Interrogator, is this: In the months after 9/11, the CIA kidnaps a suspected senior member of al-Qaida and takes him to a Mideast country for interrogation. It assigns Carle — like nearly all his colleagues then, an inexperienced interrogator — to pry information out of him. Uneasy with the CIA’s new, relaxed rules for questioning, which allow him to torture, Carle instead tries to build a rapport with the man he calls CAPTUS. But CAPTUS doesn’t divulge the al-Qaida plans the CIA suspects him of knowing. So the agency sends him to “Hotel California” — an unacknowledged prison, beyond the reach of the Red Cross or international law. Carle goes with him. Though heavily censored by the CIA, Carle provides the first detailed... - linkfilter.net

Grain, a research group that supports small farmers, says pension funds - often managed by private companies on behalf of unions, governments, individuals and employers - are investing US$100bn (£62.4bn) in commodities, with some $5bn-$15bn reportedly going into farmland acquisitions. "We usually read about Gulf states or China investing in farmland, but some of the biggest investors are much closer to home," said Henk Hobbelink, one of Grain's co-founders. "As a percentage of the total funds they manage it is not large, but in terms of their impact on small farmers it has a tremendous impact." International investment in farmland in developing countries, such as Sudan and Ethiopia, has sparked accusations from Grain and other NGOs of "land grabs" that often fail to deliver the promised benefits of jobs and economic development, while contributing to environmental and social problems in the poorest countries in the world. Grain also says the new surge of money will push up global food... - linkfilter.net

We are a not-for-profit bookshop, specialising in books, zines, and periodicals of radical interest and progressive politics. We stock the largest range of radical newsletters, newspapers and magazines of any shop in Britain. - linkfilter.net

Psychiatry and the Human Condition provides an optimistic vision of a superior alternative approach to psychiatric illness and its treatment, drawing upon modern neuroscience and evolutionary theory. Psychiatric signs and symptoms - such as anxiety, insomnia, malaise, fatigue - are part of life for most people, for much of the time. This is the human condition. But psychiatry has the potential to help. In particular, psychotropic drugs could enable more people to lead lives that are more creative and fulfilled. Current classifications and treatments derive from a century-old framework which now requires replacement. Available psychotropic drugs are typically being used crudely, and without sufficient attention to their psychological effects. We can do better. This book argues that obsolete categories of diseases and drugs should be scrapped. The new framework of understanding implies that clinical management should focus on the treatment of biologically-valid symptoms and signs, and... - linkfilter.net

Federal health officials are investigating whether contaminated alcohol prep products from a shuttered Wisconsin firm led to the death of a 66-year-old man who developed a bacterial infection after being treated for skin cancer and diabetes.     The death is among eight reports of fatalities, 11 infections and nearly 250 other problems now associated with medical products manufactured and distributed by the Triad Group and H&P Industries Inc. of Hartland, Wis., newly released records from the federal Food and Drug Administration show.     The death is the second fatal report to the FDA that specifically cites a rare infection with the bacteria Bacillus cereus in a patient who used Triad Group alcohol prep pads. Last month, the Wisconsin firm was legally barred from making or distributing the products because of potential contamination with that life-threatening bacteria... - linkfilter.net

What I'm after: The kind of crust that's substantial enough that it doesn't sog-out from a juicy filling but tender enough that it flakes in your mouth into buttery shards. A crust with substance, but not chew. A crust that divides along deep faults into many distinct layers separated by tiny air spaces and that cracks when bent. A crust that is never leathery or pliant, but not so tender or crisp that it crumbles instead of flakes. And of course, it should have a deep butteriness coupled with a balanced sweet and salty flavor.     Easier said that done, right? For many people, making pie crust is a crap shoot. Sometimes it comes out perfectly flaky, other times tough. Sometimes you need just a couple tablespoons of water, sometimes a full 1/2 cup. What gives?     Turns out that the science of pie crust is really not all that complex, and once you get a grasp of what's really going on in between those flaky layers, then making a perfect crust becomes a matter of smarts, not luck. - linkfilter.net