Headlines And Links

'Scream' And 'Madonna' Go Home


Two years after they were stolen, these paintings are going home.

OSLO, Norway -- Two years after the brazen daylight theft of national artistic treasures from an Oslo museum, police announced Thursday they recovered the Edvard Munch masterpieces "The Scream" and "Madonna."
Art lovers had feared the priceless paintings were gone for good. Norwegian news media spent the months speculating about the works' fate - whether they had been burned to escape the police hunt, sold to a wealthy collector for private viewing or suffered harm in their hiding place.
"I saw the paintings myself today, and there was far from the damage that could have been feared," said Iver Stensrud, the police inspector who headed the investigation since the paintings were taken by masked gunmen who raided the Munch Museum on Aug. 22, 2004.

Experts from the Munch Museum confirmed late Thursday that the paintings, still shielded from the public and the news media, were the real thing.
"The Scream" is probably the best known work in Munch's emotionally charged style, which was a major influence in the birth of the Expressionist movement. Its waif-like figure, apparently screaming or hearing a scream, has become a modern icon of human anxiety.
"The Scream" and "Madonna" were part of the artist's "Frieze of Life" series, focusing on sickness, death, anxiety and love.

So that's good news at long last.

Prog Rock Links
It used to be nigh impossible to see footage of these bands from long ago. You practically had to imagine entire live concerts based on terrible live recordings. Anyway, Walk-Off HBP has been sending me these amazing links.

Frank Zappa
King Crimson playing Larks Tongues in Aspic
Rush playing Xanadu
ELP 1971
ELP at the Beat Club

There's also this entry which features one of the anonymous superstars on the net.
He became so famous, the NYT tracked him down and wrote an article about him.

EIGHT months ago a mysterious image showed up on YouTube, the video-sharing site that now shows more than 100 million videos a day. A sinewy figure in a swimming-pool-blue T-shirt, his eyes obscured by a beige baseball cap, was playing electric guitar. Sun poured through the window behind him; he played in a yellow haze. The video was called simply “guitar.” A black-and-white title card gave the performer’s name as funtwo.

The piece that funtwo played with mounting dexterity was an exceedingly difficult rock arrangement of Pachelbel’s Canon, the composition from the turn of the 18th century known for its solemn chord progressions and its overexposure at weddings. But this arrangement, attributed on another title card to JerryC, was anything but plodding: it required high-level mastery of a singularly demanding maneuver called sweep-picking.

Over and over the guitarist’s left hand articulated strings with barely perceptible movements, sounding and muting notes almost simultaneously, and playing complete arpeggios through a single stroke with his right hand. Funtwo’s accuracy and velocity seemed record-breaking, but his mouth and jawline — to the extent that they were visible — looked impassive, with none of the exaggerated grimaces of heavy metal guitar heroes. The contrast between the soaring bravado of the undertaking and the reticence of the guitarist gave the 5-minute, 20-second video a gorgeous solemnity.

Like a celebrity sex tape or a Virgin Mary sighting, the video drew hordes of seekers with diverse interests and attitudes. Guitar sites, MySpace pages and a Polish video site called Smog linked to it, and viewers thundered to YouTube to watch it. If individual viewings were shipped records, “guitar” would have gone gold almost instantly. Now, with nearly 7.35 million views — and a spot in the site’s 10 most-viewed videos of all time — funtwo’s performance would be platinum many times over. From the perch it’s occupied for months on YouTube’s “most discussed” list, it generates a seemingly endless stream of praise (riveting, sick, better than Hendrix), exegesis, criticism, footnotes, skepticism, anger and awe.

Pretty good stuff.

Pleiades Mailbag
Here are some new goodies from the Pleiades mailbag.

Some Russians think there might actually be global cooling before the global warming.
Of course, most of the hottest years on record all took place in the last 30 years.

The year 2005 exceeded previous global annual average temperatures despite having weak El Niño conditions at the beginning of the year and normal conditions for the rest of the year. (El Niño is a period of warmer-than-average sea surface temperatures in the east-central Pacific Ocean that influences weather conditions across much of the globe.) In contrast, the record-breaking temperatures of 1998 were boosted by a particularly strong El Niño.

The record heat of 2005 is part of a longer-term warming trend exacerbated by the rise of heat-trapping gases in our atmosphere that is due primarily to our burning fossil fuels and clearing forests. Nineteen of the hottest 20 years on record have occurred since 1980 (see table).

Yikes.
Here's an article on the 'memory molecule'.

Scientists at SUNY Downstate Medical Center have discovered a molecular mechanism that maintains memories in the brain. In an article in Science magazine, they demonstrate that by inhibiting the molecule they can erase long-term memories, much as you might erase a computer disc.

Furthermore, erasing the memory from the brain does not prevent the ability to re-learn the memory, much as a cleaned computer disc may be re-used. This finding may some day have applications in treating chronic pain, post-traumatic stress disorder, and memory loss, among other conditions.

The SUNY Downstate researchers reported in the August 25 issue of Science that an enzyme molecule called “protein kinase M zeta” preserves long-term memories through persistent strengthening of synaptic connections between neurons. This is analogous to the mechanism storing information as 0’s and 1’s in a computer’s hard disc. By inhibiting the enzyme, scientists were able to erase a memory that had been stored for one day, or even one month. This function in memory storage is specific to protein kinase M zeta, because inhibiting related molecules did not disrupt memory.

These findings may be useful for the treatment of disorders characterized by the pathological over-strengthening of synaptic connections, such as neuropathic pain, phantom limb syndrome, dystonia, and post-traumatic stress. Conversely, the identification of the core molecular mechanism for memory storage may focus effort on the development of specific therapeutic agents that enhance memory persistence and prevent memory loss. Earlier this year, SUNY Downstate scientists reported that PKMzeta was bound up in the tangles of Alzheimer's disease, thus perhaps blocking its function in memory storage.

That's so Philip K. Dick, it's right next door to 'Total Recall'.
Also, a rather angry eentry on Rense.com:

When the neocons launched the Bush administration's invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and announced plans for invading Syria and Iran, I labeled Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Rice "the Five Morons." With the passage of time, I see that I overestimated their mental capabilities.

The "cakewalk" war has now lasted longer than World War II with Nazi Germany, and no end is in sight. It has cost the U.S. taxpayers $310 billion in out-of-pocket costs, with many additional hundreds of billions coming due in veterans' medical bills and other expenses yet to be paid.

To carry on this pointless war, which has achieved nothing but death, destruction, and hatred of America, Bush has had to call up inactive reserves who long ago completed their active-duty service to their country and have managed to get on with their lives. It is well known that the older one gets the harder it is to find employment or the energy to restart a mothballed business. But Bush is too busy saving us from terrorism to care about people's lives.

Despite the lack of U.S. troops and Bush's inability to prevail in Afghanistan and Iraq, neocons in Bush's government are working around the clock to instigate war with Iran and Syria.

I thought that I had Rumsfeld pegged as the complete dolt, but I was stunned when I read Associated Press reporter Robert Burns' account of what Rumsfeld told 200 Navy aviators in a question and answer session at Fallon Naval Air Station on Aug. 28. "The thing that keeps me up at night," said Rumsfeld, is the success of terrorist groups in "manipulating the media."

Rumsfeld told the pilots that terrorists "are actively manipulating the media in this country" by falsely blaming U.S. troops for civilian deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan. All that "collateral damage" we hear about, the tens of thousands of dead and maimed civilians, is just terrorist propaganda. "The enemy lies constantly and with impunity. The enemy is so much better at communicating." Rumsfeld made similar remarks to the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Reno, Nevada, where he was presented the Dwight D. Eisenhower Distinguished Service Award. Eisenhower must be rolling over in his grave.

There are known unknowns and unknown unknowns...