“Why Cecco Beppe Does Not Die” directed by Ben Coonley

Otto vs. the Italian Futurists. A remake of a scene from the lost Futurist omnibus film “Vita Futurista” (1916).

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Created for “Futurist Life Redux” (2009), a Performa Commission with SFMOMA and Portland Green Cultural Projects

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Original Synopsis (1916): Death (Chiti) comes for Cecco Beppe wearing black clothing with a white skeleton painted on top of it, so that, against the black background, he appears to be a floating mass of bones. But Beppe has a very bad odor–Death cannot stand it and collapses, allowing his victim to live on. This section was never actually shown with the rest of “Vita Futurista,” because it was censored by the Italian Ministry of the Interior.

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Otto the Cat: Otto the Cat
Director: Ben Coonley
Cecco Beppe: Etsa the Cat
Skeletwins: Benjamin & Oliver Giller
Original Music: JD Walsh
Special Assistant to Otto the Cat: Suzanne Fagel
Special Assistant to Etsa the Cat: Alina Simone
Special Assistants to the Skeletwins: Jeremy Giller and Julie Roth

Thank You: Ben Bloodwell, Paul Chan, Jennet Thomas, Paul Tarragó, Lana Wilson, Andrew Lampert

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“Why Cecco Beppe Does Not Die”

Creative Commons License:

Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported

DYNAMICS! Cubism / Futurism / Kinteticism
[DYNAMIK! Kubismus / Futurismus / Kinetismus]

February 10 – May 29, 2011
Lower Belvedere, Vienna

With its show DYNAMICS! Cubism / Futurism / Kineticism, the Belvedere offers a comprehensive insight into abstraction as practiced in Vienna between 1919 and 1929, in the context of European Modernism. The phenomenon of Viennese Kineticism, which has hitherto attracted little attention internationally, is presented alongside masterpieces from all over Europe, including works by František Kupka, Robert Delaunay, Fernand Léger, Carlo Carrà, and Giacomo Balla. In the early 1920s, it was particularly the students in Franz Cizek’s class at the Vienna School of Applied Arts who dealt with Cubism and Italian and Russian Futurism – art styles for which, contrary to Paris or Berlin, no tradition had yet been established in Vienna. The exhibition demonstrates how rapidly and innovatively Viennese artists joined in with the European post-war avant-garde during the 1920s.

A joint project by the Belvedere and the Vienna University of Applied Arts.

A+B+C/F= Futurism
One hundred years of words in freedom: semantics of a movement

December 14, 2010 – March 8, 2011
Guangdong Museum of Art of Canton

Organized jointly by the Guangdong Museum of Art and the City of Alessandria by the Italian Cultural Institute in Beijing and the Consulate General of Italy in Guangzhou

Curated by Sabrina Raffaghello, assistant curator Chen Wei; Artistic director: Luo Yiping

Plans are now being made to take this exhibit to the cities of Hong Kong and Wuhan

RELATED POSTS

A+B+C was previously exhibited in Italy in 2009

Road of Futurism, National Gallery of Art, Bejing

From Morandi to Guttoso
Masterpieces from the Alberto Della Ragione Collection

January 12 – April 3, 2011
Estorick Collection, London

Containing works by artists including Filippo de Pisis, Fortunato Depero and Giorgio de Chirico, the collection of Alberto Della Ragione provides an extraordinarily comprehensive overview of Italian Modernism.

Saturday, February 12, 2011 – Gallery Talk

Horse Power: Fortunato Depero’s Neighing at Speed and the Horse in Italian Futurism
Bernard Vere, Lecturer, Sotheby’s Institute of Art

Masterpieces From the Alberto Della Regione Collection at the Estorick Collection via ArtDaily

Giacomo Balla, Scritti futuristi
raccolti e curati da Giovanni Lista
Edizioni Abscondita, Milano, 2010
302 pagine

La raccolta degli “scritti futuristi” di Giacomo Balla, mai realizzata prima d’ora, offre una delle principali testimonianze sul significato storico dell’avanguardia futurista. Balla è stato uno dei maggiori protagonisti del futurismo italiano, alla stregua di Marinetti e Boccioni. Ma mentre gli scritti di quest’ultimo sono stati già da tempo oggetto di un’antologia e ampiamente diffusi, quelli di Balla sono rimasti in gran parte sconosciuti. Questa raccolta rinnova la lettura critica della teoria, della storia e della pratica attivistica dell’avanguardia italiana. Permette finalmente di comprendere il ruolo di Giacomo Balla, le sue idee e la sua posizione in seno al movimento futurista, oltre a dargli lo spazio che si merita all’interno delle correnti avanguardistiche del XX secolo.

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The collection of Giacomo Balla’s “futurist writings”, never achieved before, offers one of the main attestations concerning the historical meaning of the futurist avant-garde. Balla has been one of the most important protagonist of Italian futurism, like Marinetti and Boccioni. But while Boccioni’s writings have been the object of an anthology and widely spread for long, Balla’s ones have mostly remained unknown. This collection refreshes the critical reading of the Italian avant-garde theory, history and activist experience. Eventually it enables us to understand Giacomo Balla’s role, ideas and position in the futurist movement, as well as to give him the position he deserves within the avant-gardistic currents of the XXth century.

Like Copenhagen’s COP15, the next international climate talks have a lot of hopes pinned on them.

Greenpeace activists 2010

“If we do not keep momentum in Cancun and build on what was achieved in Copenhagen, then there is a risk that some key parties will start to simply lose interest in the international UN process,” said European Commissioner for Climate Action Connie Hedegaard at a pre-summit meeting in Mexico City.

“It’s probably going to be tough” in Cancun, Hedegaard told AFP, acknowledging that the goal of an internationally binding deal had slipped given the unchanging positions of China and the United States.

The two giants clashed at a UN climate meeting in China in October, accusing each other of blocking progress ahead of Cancun.

“In the end, what matters is that the world’s two largest emitters … that they also say: ‘Yes, we really want to do this,’” Hedegaard said.  . . . Hedegaard called for a practical approach and smaller goals, such as deals on deforestation, setting up climate warning systems, progress on financing, and encouraging the transfer of cleaner technology to poorer countries. . . . . “

Read more here. The two largest emitters of greenhouse gases at this point in time are the U.S. and China.  Per capita, the U.S. is far and away the highest emitter.

Mexico, the country hosting the conference this year in Cancun, has much more specific goals and talks about the importance of the talks more bluntly.

Mexico’s foreign minister said on Wednesday the U.N. climate talks she will co-host this month should zero in on immediate goals such as the creation of a Green Fund, as hopes fade for a sweeping result.

Failure to achieve even a “bare minimum” set of decisions would undermine the credibility of the already troubled negotiations on a broader climate pact, Patricia Espinosa said in an interview on the sidelines of an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) ministerial meeting.

Prospects for the Nov 29-Dec 10 climate change talks in the Mexican resort of Cancun have dimmed in recent months because of near-deadlock in the 194-nation negotiations over how to share the burden in cutting greenhouse gas emissions. . . . . “

Read more here. In a related story, the China talks ahead of the Mexican conference didn’t go well either.

I have to give the EPA some credit this year: despite the political hurdles the right-wing politicians have thrown at them, they have continued to slog on with enforcing the Clean Air Act and try to do what they can about coal mining and emissions. I wasn’t too happy about their work on the BP oil leak and spills, or the misinformation they seemed to spread about where all the oil went — much of it is clearly still in the Gulf of Mexico.   Also not admirable was their misinformation about the Corexit during the oil leak. Now much of that oil is still under the water and no one knows the long-term effects of the dispersants.

Lately, however, the EPA has shown itself to be nearly in defiance of obstructionist politics in their attempts to get things done,  to ensure our environment isn’t completely trashed by the pro-business policies of our government. The pro-corporate policies are not just coming from Republicans either; President Obama himself is telling the G20 this week that faster U.S. growth is the key to fixing our economic problems. Unfortunately, more U.S. “growth” is what has caused the climate change mess we’re in.

A policewoman uses a blanket to try to cover activists from People for The Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) as they protest outside a G20 Summit venue in Seoul November 9, 2010.   Holding signs “Save the Planet, Go Vegetarian”, activists from PETA staged a brief protest against what they say are hazards of meat production before police stopped and detained them outside a G20 Summit venue in Seoul.  From PlanetArk.

President Obama needs to understand the destructive role of economic growth to the environment, and how it adds to climate change.  At some point, when the economy has recovered enough that people have settled down and can think of other things, growth is going to have to stop being the main pursuit of governments.

The EPA is trying to deal with the results of growth.  This is recent EPA news:

EPA Finalizes Greenhouse Gas Reporting Requirements for Petroleum and Natural Gas Industry

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has finalized greenhouse gas (GHG) reporting requirements for the petroleum and natural gas industries as part of the mandatory reporting program. The petroleum and natural gas industries emit methane, carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, and are one of the largest human related sources of methane in the United States.  Annual methane emissions from intentional venting and equipment leaks from these industries are comparable to annual emissions from more than 40 million passenger cars.   

The data collected through the reporting program will provide important information about GHG emissions from petroleum and natural gas facilities. While methane is a potent greenhouse gas, trapping more than 20 times as much heat as carbon dioxide, it is also the primary component of natural gas, a valuable fuel.  The data collected by the companies will help identify cost effective ways to minimize the loss [...]

It was  reported last week by the Journal Science that, based on paleoclimate knowledge of the Middle Eocene era, sea level rise and warming were caused by very high CO2 levels.  The heightened CO2 levels were from a source not yet determined, but perhaps the destruction of carbonized rocks in Asia or intense volcanic activity. Whatever the source, it’s not happening now, but people’s  modern day activities are having a similar effect on the climate via CO2 emissions.  This valuable information is why many climate change scientists like James Hansen rely more on paleoclimate evidence than on “climate models”.

The new Know Nothings promise to ramp up their climate change denialism and anti-science political action, since the Republicans took over the U.S. Congress.  (I’m seeing more of the Know Nothings’ denialism online now than even two years ago).   For a dose of reality, here is what the Journal Science included in the November 5th issue (it’s the part the public can read without a subscription) about this:

Increased Atmospheric CO2 During the Middle Eocene

Even without humans, there are many processes that can change the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) in Earth’s atmosphere and affect global climate. On page 819 of this issue, Bijl et al. (1) provide the first direct evidence that very high CO2 levels occurred about 40 million years ago during the Middle Eocene Climatic Optimum (MECO), one of the hottest intervals in Earth’s climate history. The hunt is now on for a geological cause for this event—and fingers are pointing at the Himalayan mountain belt.

School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, Cardiff University, Cardiff CF10 3YE, UK.

Middle Eocene era, with the white outlines present day land masses. If we move back to a climate like that of the Middle Eocene, we will lose a lot of land mass to water.

Below is an article on Paleoclimate evidence explaining the above in more detail. It clearly shows that CO2 is the most probable culprit to explain global warming spikes in the past and present. From Solveclimate:

“… 40 million years ago, the world experienced an extreme spike in global warming. The heat was so intense that deep sea temperatures rose by about 4 degrees Celsius. This enigmatic sultry period, known as the Middle Eocene Climatic Optimum (MECO), marked a 400,000-year-long heat wave in the midst of a long era of global cooling.

Now research published Nov. 5 in the journal Science suggests the rise in surface sea temperature occurred during a time when atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels were particularly high, according to a research team from Utrecht University and the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research.

First reported by U.S. scientists in 2003, the MECO warming period has been documented by data from a smattering of sites around the world. “Our paper is among the first to show that CO2 concentrations and the temperature varied hand in hand in that time,” says Peter Bijl, a paleoclimatologist [...]

Members of a rescue team walk among debris in Glagaharjo village, which has been hit by Mount Merapi eruptions, to search for more victims, in the Sleman district of Indonesia's central Java province November 8, 2010. REUTERS/Sigit Pamungkas

The eruption of Mount Merapi in Indonesia is not big enough to stop climate change temporarily, as Mount Pinatubo did, but it may contribute to changing rainfall patterns in Asia.

Unfortunately southeast Asia, already suffering from flooding and torrential downpours, will probably see more of that in the months to come.

“The largest volcanic eruptions that took place on our planet most likely caused an important shift to appear in worldwide rain patterns, in the sense that certain areas got drenched more, whereas others were subjected to floods and excessive rain.

New data show that the phenomenon is a lot more widespread than originally thought, which means that the rain pattern disturbances affect a lot more regions on Earth than researchers first estimated.

The new work was carried out by researchers based at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, which is located at the Columbia University, in Ithaca, New York.

Tree ring analysis experts there looked at the traces that about 54 large eruptions left in the rings of trees over the past 800 years, and determined that central Asia usually dries out following an eruption.  On the other hand, regions in southeast Asia, such as for example Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, get more precipitations than usual. These findings are the exact opposite of the ones made with climate computer models.

After analyzing tree ring data, the scientists determined that active volcanoes have been contributing to the surprising increased rainfall.

Read more here.

The latest podcast can be found here. (These are the notes for that podcast.)  In large part the midterm elections were bought and paid for by special interests, including the fossil fuel industries, Big Coal, Big Oil. So, the outcome isn’t that unexpected, but it certainly makes for a dismal two-year political outlook for climate change legislation. Is this outcome going to sentence humanity to extinction, due to delays on climate change legislation, and less funding for renewable energy and cleaner transportation? Do we have a future?

If you are someone who trusts science more than religion and if you are someone who cares about things other than taxes, then this taking over of the U.S. Congress by anti-science right-wingers who care about nothing but taxes, is a big setback. The new leadership in Congress will be concerned with turning over much of the progress on renewable energy, EPA decisions, and all ideas on fighting global warming. Many Republicans don’t even believe climate change is happening. And last but not least, hear part of a talk Gwynne Dyer gave about climate change this summer. He’s the author of Climate Wars. Gwynne Dyer talks quite a bit about geoengineering. He assumes it will happen to buy us some time, but it might not be easy . . .

More than 190 nations agreed to ban geoengineering, but it’s already being studied around the world.

New Mexico Adopts Country’s Most Comprehensive Greenhouse Gas Rules

UNFCCC COP16 is starting soon. Here is the Mexican website for COP16, being held in Cancun this year. COP16 starts November 29th and runs through December 10th.

The GOP has already announced plans to attack the EPA and do other anti-science things.

Inaction on Climate Change Putting Decades of Human Progress at Risk

McGill Study Asks “Are We Adapting to Climate Change?”

Download the PDF press release here
Find the scientific article in Global Environmental Change here
Download the scientific article as a Word document here

Pentagon: “Climate change, energy security, and economic stability are inextricably linked” Earth will take 100,000 years to recover from global warming Only 47% of Republicans Think Global Warming Is Happening — If only denying its existence would make it go away. Sixty-three percent of Americans believe that global warming is happening. Here is Yale Study.

You can download the podcast at the link at the beginning.

President Obama spoke about  jobs, nuclear energy, and climate change during his recent trip to India.  Climate change may be a topic that is considered “dead” in Congress and the media, but it’s still on the mind of Obama.  (It will have to be dealt with no matter how bored the media is with the subject.)  Here is the excerpt from his speech where he discusses climate change and jobs.  These were his remarks on November 7th to the Joint Session of the Indian Parliament in New Delhi.

Obama in India November 2010

“. . . . Since taking office, I’ve, therefore, made our relationship a priority.  I was proud to welcome Prime Minister Singh for the first official state visit of my presidency.  (Applause.)  For the first time ever, our governments are working together across the whole range of common challenges that we face.  Now, let me say it as clearly as I can:  The United States not only welcomes India as a rising global power, we fervently support it, and we have worked to help make it a reality.

Together with our partners, we have made the G20 the premier forum for international economic cooperation, bringing more voices to the table of global economic decision-making, and that has included India.  We’ve increased the role of emerging economies like India at international financial institutions.  We valued India’s important role at Copenhagen, where, for the first time, all major economies committed to take action to confront climate change —- and to stand by those actions. We salute India’s long history as a leading contributor to United Nations peacekeeping missions.  And we welcome India as it prepares to take its seat on the United Nations Security Council.

In short, with India assuming its rightful place in the world, we have an historic opportunity to make the relationship between our two countries a defining partnership of the century ahead.  And I believe we can do so by working together in three important areas.

First, as global partners we can promote prosperity in both our countries.  Together, we can create the high-tech, high-wage jobs of the future.  With my visit, we are now ready to begin implementing our civil nuclear agreement. This will help meet India’s growing energy needs and create thousands of jobs in both of our countries. . . . .

We can pursue joint research and development to create green jobs; give India more access to cleaner, affordable energy; meet the commitments we made at Copenhagen; and show the possibilities of low-carbon growth.

. . . .

Together, we can strengthen agriculture.  Cooperation between Indian and American researchers and scientists sparked the Green Revolution.  Today, India is a leader in using technology to empower farmers, like those I met yesterday who get free updates on market and weather conditions on their cell phones.  And the United States is a leader in agricultural productivity and research.  Now, as farmers and [...]

What do bejeweled vaginas and Marinetti have in common? Read more

Craig Schuftan [...] linked the Italian Futurism movement to Gwen Stefani‘s Hollaback Girl, through the use of unlikely sounds for music (Bassling)

Let’s Murder the Moonlight! examined in Jane Brox’s new book: Brilliant: The Evolution of Artificial Light

Article on Italian Futurism and the African Diaspora

“Futurism, 100 years of inspiration” on the exhibit at the National Art Museum of China

Group la Chambre des Machines reenacted Luigi Russolo’s Intonarumori at the Sonar Chicago Festival (Sept. 9-11, 2010)

Tom McCarthy, author, references futurism in his new novel C

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Viva il Futurismo! festival

Futurismo 100+1

Novemeber 12, 2010, 7pm
Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Colonia
Germany

official site of Viva il Futurismo!

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*Video: msnbc bjorn lomborg interview november 11 2010

(Click to play video)  MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan interviewed Bjorn Lomborg last week, a former “climate change skeptic” and now a guy who thinks that telling the blunt truth about climate change is the wrong approach. He feels the right approach is to emphasize clean energy. He may be right, but not for the reasons he’s stating. Clean energy is really all we have left in this political “climate” (no pun intended.) Since the anti-science Republicans have taken over Congress, the United States will probably not do anything about ending greenhouse gas emissions this year and next that doesn’t include support for American business. That means we will still be supporting and using coal, gas and BP oil. There is just no other realistic expectation.

But it’s misleading to say that “scaring people” doesn’t work, especially when the background for this show claims that the world is not going to end. I don’t know of anyone who is saying that in the first place, and trying to de-emphasize the emergency situation we are in with climate change does no service to anyone. It’s accurately described by climate scientists as a “crisis”.  Scaring people is warranted when a serious threat exists for real, and we aren’t doing much about it, as with climate change. And scaring people through communications has been proven to work. That’s the only reason there are so many negative campaign ads every election season.  It’s the reason the American public supported a war in Iraq that didn’t need to be fought.  Negative ads and scare tactics work, but that have to be used honestly and only when necessarily.  Obviously, the fear of higher taxes has worked on the American public lately more than the fear of climate change.  So, fear tactics only work when the conditions are right, and they don’t always work.  Education would be better, in a world where people were open to being educated.  (That’s a problem of another kind.)  And yet another problem — lying to the American public about climate change, which is what a lot of very rich people are doing.

What is worse – sugar-coating climate change or being straight with the public about it?

Climate Progress Guest blogger Josh Nelson is New Media Director at the Alliance for Climate Protection and its Repower America campaign.

Koch Industries, “the biggest company you’ve never heard of,” first among a final four in online poll.

From Climate Progress.

To spread the word about Koch Industries and its long history of working to deceive the American people about climate change, we’ve launched a new website: http://www.KochIndustriesFacts.com.

Three weeks ago, we asked our members to nominate the worst corporate polluters of 2010. Our goal was to identify organizations that have hijacked our democracy, devastated our environment and denied the science of climate change — all while reaping massive profits. The response was overwhelming. In just a few days, [...]

Google Investing Big in $5 Billion Offshore Wind Corridor

Google is investing big in offshore wind development along a large chunk of the East Coast. The proposed project will cost about $5 billion over 10 years to build a string of deepwater transmission lines that would run up to 20 miles offshore from Virginia to New Jersey.

Often one of the most expensive parts of renewable energy projects, transmission lines are crucial to the growth of clean energy in the country.  After all, there’s no benefit to a wind farm until that energy is delivered to our homes.

The 350-mile Atlantic Wind Connection will start construction in 2013.  It will be able to transmit 6,000 MW of energy from offshore wind farms, enough to power about 1.9 million homes.

The first phase, which will run 150 miles from New Jersey to Delaware in federal waters will be capable of delivering 2,000 MW of wind energy.   It will be completed by 2016 and will cost about $1.8 billion.

The entire transmission system will tie into PJM’s electrical grid that serves 13 states, plus Washington, D.C.

Google will be one-third owner of the project, while investment firm Good Energies, Japanese company Marubeni and Maryland transmission company Trans-Elect are splitting the rest.  The combined initial investment in the project runs in the tens of milions of dollars.

via Huffington Post

Two years ago, wind power was more of a going concern. Suzlon wind turbine blades that were each 150 feet long were moved into position for delivery to a new wind farm in Fort Bridger, Wyo.

We need more renewable energy, not less!  That’s why this is the saddest renewable energy story this year, and a cautionary tale of politics gone wrong.  Our government should be helping subsidize renewable energy like wind and solar, but apparently, that’s over with.  Or is the problem the “market”?  Our regional coal plants continue bellowing pollution and mercury because coal remains cheap to buy and use. Then today it was reported that this  factory is closing December 29th.

There will be no “next year” for this wind turbine plant.  It’s shutting down, and along with it goes hundreds of real and potential jobs.  At it’s peak, this green business employed 500 people.  Just think — 500 renewable energy green jobs, and now they’ll be gone.  Today there were two stories about this in the Star Tribune.  The first, the sad ending of a Minnesotan wind turbine plant.

Wind-turbine maker Suzlon Group will idle its Pipestone, Minn., plant, putting 110 workers out of jobs, because the once-booming U.S. wind energy market has lost headway.

The layoffs, to take effect Dec. 29, were announced Monday, the same day Suzlon, the world’s No. 3 wind energy company, reported a 70 percent drop in U.S. wind turbine installations for the first half of the year. It follows other industry reports of a deep downturn in the U.S. wind market.

Suzlon, headquartered in India, invested $8.5 million four years ago to open its first U.S. blade-making factory in the heart of southwestern Minnesota’s wind-power alley. The company took advantage of government offers of free land and JOBZ tax breaks. Factory employment, once at 500 workers, had declined to 143 before Monday’s layoff announcement.  Read more here.

The government can encourage renewable energy, or it can let the “market” determine our energy future and our response to climate change.  The market should not be deciding something so critically important.  The problem is that the U.S. has no energy policy.

It’s time to decide which way the wind is blowing

On the same day that Suzlon Group decided to shut its wind turbine blade plant in Pipestone, Minn., city officials in Jonesboro, Ark., were glowing from Friday’s grand opening of a $40 million wind turbine manufacturing plant by Denmark-based Nordex. And now many of those green jobs are in Denmark. In part, this is due to the fact that Republicans deny science, don’t believe in climate change, and feel that renewable energy should take a backseat to coal and oil.

This is a recipe for disaster, and despite Jon Stewart pleading with us all to be “sane”, there is no way to overstate the threat of climate change to our world.

Europe gets about 5 percent of its energy from wind, and in some countries the total is 10 [...]

Rand Paul is just one of our newly-elected headaches. It’s going to be tougher than ever to stop climate change based on the results of the midterm elections. First the good news: California reelected Barbara Boxer, the head of the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. We really need her to fight for us in the Senate due to the Republican obstructionists like Jim Inhofe. Also, Jerry Brown won the governorship in California, presumably preserving the environmental headway they have accomplished there already. And from DemNow! some good news too.

California Voters Maintain Clear Air Rules

Voters also decided on 160 ballot initiatives nationwide. Two of the most closely watched measures were in California. Voters there defeated Prop 19, which would have legalized recreational marijuana use. In a rebuke of major oil companies, voters rejected Prop 23, a measure that would have suspended implementation of the state’s 2006 groundbreaking clean air legislation that requires greenhouse gas emissions to be reduced to 1990 levels by 2020. South Dakota also rejected a measure to legalize medical marijuana. Meanwhile, Oklahoma voters approved measures to ban the use of international law in state courts and allow opt-outs from President Obama’s healthcare reform bill.

In addition, the progressive Democratic Mark Dayton was elected as Minnesota governor, but he will go through a recount process because the vote was so close.  Mark Dayton is a green in the sense that he believes in the science and is committed to reducing pollution, supporting renewable energy, and doing what we can to mitigate climate change.  In that regard, the new governors of California, Minnesota, and other states can now work together to do what states can do what they can for the climate and energy.  If cap and trade was dead before, it’s even deader now that Republicans will be controlling Congress.  That means we will need state governments to step up and do what can be done about climate change now without waiting for conferences and legislation from Congress.  California and Minnesota can potentially be real leaders in fighthing climate change this year and next, even with a U.S. Congress succumbing to gridlock. 

The bad news is that so many climate change deniers were elected or relected.  Michele Bachmann was reelected to Congress from Minnesota, and she is a notorious, relentless climate change denier. She doesn’t even think it’s happening, much less being caused by human activity. She is joined by other Republicans in the Congress and Senate, people like Rand Paul.  Paul might not be as extremist and outrageous as Bachmann, but he does not think the government has any right to control greenhouse gas emissions.  That kind of thought would doom the human  race to extinction if it’s allowed to prevail, so we’ll be looking for ways around these people as much as possible in the next two years.  This is the good news.

There are plenty of gloomy predictions now that Republicans are taking over the Congress.  This headline [...]

Jules Schmalzigaug

October 29, 2010 – January 23, 2011
The Royal Museums of Fine Arts: Museum of Modern Art (Brussels, Belgium)
Catalog by Michel Draguet, Valérie Verhack, Giovanni Lista and Willard Bohn

Jules Schmalzigaug (1882-1917) was the only Belgian painter who was involved in the development of Futurism during the pre-war period. To render an homage to this neglected pioneer who died prematurely, the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium organize a retrospective exhibition from October 29th 2010 to January 23rd 2011. Additionally, a catalogue of this exhibition will be published. In 1912, after his rather traditional artistic education in Germany and Belgium, Jules Schmalzigaug visits the exhibition of Italian futurists in Paris which constitutes for him a real revelation. During that same year he settles down in Venice, where he joins the local artistic avant-garde and appropriates the Futurist artistic language. In the spring of 1914 he participates in the Esposizione libera futurista internazionale in Rome where he displays his work next to that of the key figures of Italian Futurism and of other foreign Futurist artists. From autumn 2010 onwards his impressive oeuvre will finally be on show in the Royal Museums through a selection of paintings and works on paper.

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Anteprima Mondiale/ World Première

Il Futurismo. Un Movimento di Arte/Vita

November 1, 2010, 9:30pm
Festival Internazionale del Film di Roma
Casa del Cinema

Release Date: 15 Ottobre 2010
Genre: Docufiction
Studio: Overcom – Absolute – French Connection Films

Starring:

Riccardo Bàrbera – Eleonora Ivone – Edoardo Sylos Labini – Paco Reconti – Alex Pacifico – Hilary Mostert – Claudio Rosato – Ninni Cannizzaro – Claudio Patierno – Ruggero Mostert Manciati – Manuela Boni

Screenplay By: Alessandro Zambrini

Directed By: Luca Verdone

Produced By: Paolo Bruno – Marco Genone

Plot Outline:

Futurismo un movimento di arte vita é il primo documentario futurista sul futurismo. Una graphic opera che con il reenactment, le interviste ed un punto di vista emozionale, racconta la nascita l’evoluzione e l’impatto visionario che il movimento futurista ebbe sulle arti e la societa, dal novecento ad oggi. Marinetti in prima persona è Il narratore, una operazione resa possibile dalla costante consulenza della famiglia Marinetti e da una accurata ricerca storica.

Per Marinetti la comunicazione in tutte le sue forme fu il fulcro della rivoluzione futurista, la leva con cui concretizzare la visione del futuro. Di conseguenza ogni espressione della creatività poteva e doveva essere futurista. Attraverso le opere di Boccioni, Balla, Carrá, di Depero e dei molti altri che aderirono al movimento, si costruisce l’immagine che questi prefiguratori ebbero dei giorni attuali. Prestigiosi esperti italiani ed internazionali forniscono un aspetto storico e critico su quanto il movimento fece in Letteratura, pittura, scultura, musica, architettura, cinema, design e pubblicità, e come questo si inserì nel contesto sociale e storico.

Intervistati | Interviewees: Gino Agnese – Giordano Bruno Guerri – Achille Bonito Oliva – Simona Cigliana – Maurizio Calvesi – Günter Berghaus – Didier Ottinger – Claudia Salaris – Daniele Lombardi – Mario Verdone

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Electric cars are raising the demand for lithium for use in batteries.  The LEAF electric vehicle, as an example, uses a 24 kWh lithium-nickel-manganese polymer battery.  So where do people find lithium?  It’s relatively rare.  We heard a couple of months ago that Afghanistan has a lot of lithium,  which partially explains why our military is still there.  I sincerely hope Bolivia isn’t ever a country the U.S. military invades for its resources, but various companies are already very interested in their natural resources.  Bolivia has around 50 percent of the world’s lithium, about 5.4 million tons, according to the United States Geological Survey.  Some conservatives are already angry that Bolivia has decided to claim their own natural resources instead of selling them off to the highest American bidder.

Bolivian President Evo Morales

Bolivia, a landlocked country that is thought to be home to about 50 percent of the world’s lithium supply, is promising to begin production at its first major lithium mine and processing center in 2014. That mine, which is located in the Uyuni salt flat, will be planned in collaboration with South Korea, which will in turn receive a claim to 30 percent of its products.

Global demand for lithium is expected to as much as triple in the next decade, and companies like LG, Mitsubishi, and Sanyo—which is planning a 1000-percent increase in annual lithium ion battery production in just five years—are currently jostling elbows in an effort to lock down the resources that will allow them to profit from that boom. But despite the international sourcing scramble, South Korean and Japanese state-owned mining entities are to date Bolivia’s only partners in developing its lithium reserves.

After negotiating with companies including France’s Bollore, South Korea’s LG, and Japan’s Sumitomo and Mitsubishi Corp, Bolivia’s President Evo Morales decided to develop a lithium industry in Uyuni by itself last year.

“Bolivia guarantees a change in the world’s energy balance … we assure the world we’ll be able to supply enough lithium for electric cars,” Morales told reporters.

Lithium is the main component of the rechargeable batteries that power everything from laptops to cars to cameras. Existing suppliers such as neighboring Argentina and Chile can meet existing demand, but Bolivia plans to develop a industry ahead of a possible electric car boom, which could will cause demand for lithium to soar. Who can blame Morales? I hope Bolivia is successful with its lithium production and I hope they hold out against the corporations who want to control their resources.

Info from Reuters and HybridCars

Containers of brine to extract lithium are seen at the Uyuni salt lake about 500 km (311 miles), south of La Paz, October 27, 2010. Bolivian President Evo Morales said on October 22 that the impoverished Andean country does not need foreign investors to develop an ambitious lithium carbonate project by 2014. Picture taken in October 27.