amyvdh

by Chris Bodenner
The mainstream media was no match for the early reporting of citizen journalists on the Discovery gunman:

There were noteworthy documents linked in the massive tweet stream, too: a rambling manifesto of demands by Lee, his MySpace page and a YouTube video of Lee allegedly throwing money into the air on a busy street a few blocks from the Discovery building, in 2008. TV can offer live pictures of an event (and local stations were on the scene quickly on Wednesday), and newspapers can provide context and fact-checking, but for raw speed and real-time eyewitness accounts, it's now virtually impossible for the mainstream media to keep pace with the likes of Twitter. The service enables anyone equipped with a smartphone to tell the world what he or she sees in 140-character bursts. Twitpic (as well as similar sites) can let them see it.

(Image source here)

Twitter - MySpace - LinkedIn - YouTube - TwitPic

by Chris Bodenner
A Dish reader sends a portrait he painted of Dina. Playwright Craig Lucas once said of her:

Once in a great long while, the planets align and all of nature conspires to come up with the previously unimaginable, the wondrous and newly beautiful, the awe inspiring. And some people are lucky enough to live in a time when such a creative vision appears in their midst. Now is such a time, we are the lucky ones, and Dina Martina is it.

Playwright - Craig Lucas - Dina Martina - Arts - Literature

Panjim, India, 12 pm

India - Panaji - Asia - Goa - Sexual assault

Like Clinton, Blair is a much-sought-after and charismatic speaker, reportedly commanding fees of more than $200,000 for a single appearance. He has also signed extremely lucrative contracts as a consultant to firms such as JP Morgan and to the governments of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
His wealth, by one estimate, is about $23 million. The money helps pay for a large personal staff, office space in central London and mortgages on a stately home in the affluent county of Buckinghamshire and a flat in one of the toniest districts of London, among other properties.
From: Tony Blair reemerges with memoir (LA Times)

In defining different types of political news photos, these fall into the category I call “the re-introduction.” As if calling this out, the pictures from Getty Europe seem to barely contain their contempt for Blair, Dubya’s Iraq War doppelgänger, as his book hits the shelves.
Above, there is: Two faces of Tony, half-price.

Then, there is: Embargo Tony.

And: Tony at the bottom of the barrel.
With the ability to score all the cash he needs, the fact all proceeds from the book are going to injured war veterans has led many English to call it blood money.  Exactly how did it happen in Western celebrity culture that sitting on the sidelines for a requisite stretch earned someone a clean slate?
(caption: The memoirs of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, entitled ‘A Journey’, goes on sale in Waterstone’s flagship store on September 1, 2010 in London, England. Mr Blair’s book, which he took three years to write, describes his life in politics and reveals details of his relationship with the then Chancellor Gordon Brown.)

Ruth Imes, 19, left, comforts her brother Ariel, 16, at their parents' memorial service. Yitzhak Imes and Talia Imes along with two hitchhikers they picked up, Kochava Even Haim and Avishai Schindler, were shot dead by Hamas militants yesterday evening while driving near Hebron, on September 1, 2010, in Beit Haggai, West Bank.  Washington is preparing to host renewed Middle East peace talks. By Warrick Page/Getty Images.

Hamas - Middle East - West Bank - Hebron - Avishai Schindler

by Chris Bodenner

David Cross' take on "white fright":

A reader writes:

Thank you for posting the video where participants were asked why they were attending the Beck event. I was struck how every participant referenced American exceptionalism in their answer. Even when criticizing Obama (much milder than I expected, btw), they mostly cited how he doesn't appreciate America's unique and exceptional standing in human history. Considering the economy, Katrina, the inability to dispatch, not one but two wars, their fear is understandable. Attributing it all to Obama and his election makes perfect sense, because he too is different and represents anything but the past. Call it ironic or a contradiction, but one of the exceptional parts of America (not the same thing as exceptionalism) is that considering our history, we elected an Obama so soon.

United States - Beck - David Cross - President - Barack Obama

Oliver Sacks is interviewed on NeuroTribes where he talks about his forthcoming book and his own experience of spectacular hallucinations that occurred after he developed a tumour behind his retina.
NeuroTribes is a new blog by ace science writer and Wired veteran Steve Silberman. It is part of the new PLoS science blog network and in the inaugural post Silberman has scooped a fascinating interview with the great neurologist and raconteur himself.
Here he discusses how his hallucinations, caused by the brain trying to ‘fill in’ or ‘guess’ what should be in the damaged part of the retina, are affected by smoking pot.

I also had — and still have — almost continuous hallucinations of a low order: geometric things, especially broken letters, some of them like English letters, some like Hebrew letters, some like Greek, some runes, and some a bit like numbers. They tend to have straight lines rather than curves, but they rarely form actual words. This is not something I said in the book, but if I smoke a little pot, they sometimes become words. And they tend to be in black and white — but when I smoke a little pot, they’re in color.
Silberman: That’s wonderful. What do the words say?
Sacks: Short English words of no particular significance like “may,” or pseudo-words, like “ont.” Also, since my back surgery last year, I’ve been on nortriptyline, which is supposed to block the gating mechanism for pain in the spinal cord. I only take a small dose, because it gives me an intensely dry mouth. But even the small dose has a striking effect of enhancing dreams and involuntary imagery, and upgrading my hallucinations from black-and-white to color, and from geometric patterns to faces and landscapes.

The interview is both playful and profound and makes a great teaser for his forthcoming book, which apparently, is due out in October.
 
Link to Oliver Sacks interview on NeuroTribes.

by Chris Bodenner
A reader writes:

I can't describe my utter joy in your posting of the commercial clips of my favorite freak-tastic drag goddess, Ms. Dina Martina.
She is THE must-see show for my partner and me every summer in Ptown. She was especially brilliant this year.
And our annual tradition as we drive to his family for Christmas is to listen to Dina's holiday CD. We laugh just as hard as the first time we listened, singing along to all the twisted lyrics (baby Jesus loving baby-back ribs that Mary will serve to the three kings - can't be beat!).

I've also seen her perform live, and that clip doesn't do her justice; you simply have to be there. (Also, I don't know for sure, but that boisterous laugh in the crowd sounds exactly like Andrew's.) For another dose of Dina, go here. The Stranger did a great profile of her in 1999:The primary fact that one must understand about Dina Martina -- beyond
her stature as a superstar entertainer without peer -- is that she is
in possession of not one shred of discernible talent or grace. Her
voice sounds like a cat having an epileptic fit on a chalkboard, her
body moves like two pigs fighting their way out of a sleeping bag, and
her face looks like the collision of a Maybelline truck with a Shoney's
buffet.

Dina Martina - Christmas - Singing - Compact Disc - Dina Lohan

by Chris Bodenner

The new Vanity Fair hit piece on Palin is providing plenty of grist for her critics. Gryphen plucks out the juicier parts. Ben Smith finds the piece embellished, and Weigel backs him up. I find this passage believable (if a tad exaggerated):

“This whole hunter thing, for Sarah? That is the biggest fallacy,” says one longtime friend of the family. “That woman has never hunted. The picture of her with the caribou she says she shot? She got out of the R.V. to pose for a picture. She never helps with the fishing either. It’s all a joke.” The friend goes on to recall that when Greta Van Susteren came to the house to interview Palin “[Sarah] cooked moose chili and whatnot. Todd was calling everyone he knew the day before—‘Do you got any moose?’ Desperate.”

Some Sullivan bait from the piece:

Early in the 2008 campaign, when John McCain’s aides discovered that Alaska-size gaps existed in Palin’s general knowledge (among those previously unreported: she had no idea who Margaret Thatcher was), they from time to time would give her some books to read in hopes of improving the candidate’s learning curve.

And this:

One person who has been a frequent houseguest of the Palins’ says that the couple began many mornings with screaming fights, a fusillade of curses: “ ‘Fuck you,’ ‘Fuck this,’ ‘You lazy piece of shit.’ ‘You’re fuckin’ lucky to have me,’ Sarah would always say.” (This person never saw Todd and Sarah sleep in the same bed, and recalls that Todd would often joke, “I don’t know how she ever gets pregnant.”)

Sarah Palin - Vanity Fair - John McCain - Ben Smith - Greta Van Susteren

A study just published in the British Journal of Psychiatry has found that only 23% of the population are without symptoms of personality disorder.
If you’re not familiar with it, personality disorder is a somewhat controversial diagnosis which essentially classifies people who we might otherwise called ‘extremely difficult’ – but to the point where they cause themselves significant life problems.
This new survey used the standard diagnostic criteria, but instead of giving people “you’ve got it or your haven’t” all-or-nothing diagnosis (that is given when a certain threshold of symptoms are reached) they totalled up the symptoms to make a sliding scale.
The study found that even those who wouldn’t qualify for a diagnosis but still had some symptoms were more likely to have had a history of running away from home, police contacts, homelessness and sexual abuse and are less likely to be employed.
Of course, what the study could be describing is simply that people who have had a rough time come out the worst for wear.
The question is not so much whether this is a high or low figure, but at what point psychiatry and mental health services should offer assistance.
For many years psychiatry has been suffering from ‘mission creep’ where things previously thought to be unhelpful but normal (e.g. low mood after a divorce, shyness) have become classified and promoted as mental illnesses with the accompanying pharmacological treatment.
At what point we decide that something is a mental illness has become one of the central psychological and cultural questions of the 21st century.
 
Link to summary of study at the British Journal of Psychiatry.

by Chris Bodenner

A reader writes:

I'm not sure if you've covered anything other than Christian music here (I may have missed some other posts), but for many Jews, especially Jews from an Orthodox background (me included), a Matisyahu concert is a much more spiritual experience than a synagogue service. And his work stands on its own as excellent reggae as well.

Matisyahu talked about his faith with the A.V. Club in 2006:AVC: Some have talked about your video for "Youth" and your
live show as being pitched to the mainstream instead of focused on the
Jewish community.

M: Well, it is. I would agree with that. I never aimed for
the Jewish community. I aimed for a mainstream audience, because that's
the world that I come out of. I spent 23 years in a secular lifestyle,
going to Phish concerts and reggae shows and hip-hop shows and
listening to that style of music. My focus has really been on the
mainstream people: non-Jews and Jews who aren't necessarily religious.
And while there are definitely a lot of religious Jews who get
something out of it, they're not my main focus.

AVC: So instead of putting reggae into Jewish popular music, you're putting your own spiritual understanding into reggae.

M: Yes.

Matisyahu - Judaism - Hip hop - Orthodox Judaism - Synagogue

San Anselmo, California, 4.12 pm

California - United States - Business and Economy - Police - Sustainable architecture