Monthly Archives: June 2010

COP16 – Let’s Try This Again

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Copenhagen didn’t amount to much. Maybe the next world climate conference will.

COP 16 & CMP 6 – Launch of host country website
Cancún, Mexico — The sixteenth Conference of the Parties (COP) and the sixth Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP) will be held in Cancún, Mexico, from 29 November to 10 December 2010, together with the thirty-third sessions of the subsidiary bodies and the fourteenth session of the AWG-KP and twelfth session of the AWG-LCA.
The official host country of Mexico’s website is now available online.
Visit the website

COP16 will be in Cancun.  It’s not actually correct to say it’s near Tulum, as the website advertises,  but if you are going to COP16 you should try to visit Tulum even though it’s quite a ways down the coast.  I visited Tulum in 2007.  The Mayans in general are a cautionary tale about what happens when you misuse the land for farming and diverting water, etc.  Cancun itself is frighteningly overdeveloped on the ocean side, with resorts everywhere.  If there are any mangroves left there, they must be hiding them. In fact, much of the coast from Cancun down to Tulum is what I would call overdeveloped, and as everyone knows, that’s not exactly great for the ecosystems and the environment.  Tulum was a Mayan fortress, or a walled city, and mainly occupied around AD 1200.   The walls and location were to ward off invasions that would come from the sea, and obviously they were unsuccessful.  The Spanish eventually abandoned Tulum in the 1600s.

The photo below is one I took of Tulum on the sea edge, with some ruins in the back left area.  This area of Mexico is unbelievably gorgeous and [...]

This Tuesday at Observatory! Torino:Margolis Performance

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This Tuesday! Morbid Anatomy presents at Observatory! Hope to see you there!

Torino:Margolis Performance
A performative exploration of electricity, biomedicine, and spectacle
Date: June 29, 2010
Time: 8:00 P.M.
Admission: $5
Please note: This lecture is paired with an event which took place on Tuesday, June 15; More here.

Tonight, join Observatory as it hosts Torino:Margolis in a three-part performance investigating the rich history of biomedicine, electricity, and spectacle. First, the audience will have the opportunity to control the movement of the performer using neuromuscular stimulation, which sends outside electricity into the performer’s muscle, forcing their muscle to contract and the performer to move involuntarily.

In the second part of the performance, they will use electromyography (EMG) in a sound-based performance. EMG is a way of sensing the electricity produced naturally during muscle contraction when an individual moves voluntarily. However, when the performer is physically manipulated by another person there is no action potential generated, no signal sensed by the EMG, and no change in the sound is produced. In this way you can hear someone’s free will.

In the third portion they will add a vocal component to the EMG “rig” by manipulating sound coming from the vocal cords using neuromuscular stimulation.

Torino:Margolis will then explain the workings of the biomedical tools used in the performance and the audience will have the opportunity to ask questions.

Torino:Margolis is a performance art team that smashes through physical and psychological barriers separating one body from another using invasive electronics and biomedical tools. They explore the idea that the self is transient, elusive and modular by playing with the notion of control and free will. Their extraction of physiological processes concretizes these concepts and presents them as questions to the viewer — not to illustrate the mechanism, but to explore the experience. The team has performed nationally and internationally at New York venues such as Issue Project Room, POSTMASTERS Gallery and Exit Art, the HIVE Gallery in California, and the Bergen Kunsthall Museum in Norway. They have lectured for institutions such as SUNY Stony Brook and the School of Visual Arts. For more information please see http://www.torinomargolis.com.

You can find out more about this here. You can get directions to Observatory--which is next door to the Morbid Anatomy Library (more on that here)--by clicking here. You can find out more about Observatory here, join our mailing list by clicking here, and join us on Facebook by clicking here.

Site Issues Mean Images Are Still Missing UPDATE Now Fixed [Announcements]

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The problem which has plagued Gawker Media sites the past couple of days is still present, meaning images and avatar pictures aren't showing up. We've tried turning it off and back on, rubbing the batteries between our warm palms—heck, even holding the server differently as commenters here suggested. Stay tuned for the magical moment when the lights get turned back on, but in the meantime comments are still working fine. You know what to do. More »




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Kagan Was My Dean at Harvard – Human Events (blog)

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msnbc.com
Kagan Was My Dean at Harvard
Human Events (blog)
The University, however, receives about 15% of its operating budget from the federal government, with the Medical School and the School of Public Health ...
Kagan an eager, tough-talking political playerCNN
Reject KaganHuman Events (blog)
Wash. Times compiles its distortions and falsehoods into one massive attack on ...Media Matters for America

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