from CNN.com

Meth ring used comic books to launder cash, authorities say

DENVER, Colorado (CNN) — Investigators in Colorado say they have broken up a massive methamphetamine ring in the Denver area that distributed pounds of the dangerous drug every week and laundered the profits using collectible comic books.

“To launder the money you have to use something that is quick and convenient,” Colorado Attorney General John Suthers said at a news conference Monday. “And in this case, they used classic comic books.”

While arresting the alleged ringleaders, brothers Aaron and Alfonzo Castro, law enforcement officers seized about 100 boxes of first-edition collectible comic books. Investigators say one title alone is worth $3,500 and the total collection of comics is worth half a million dollars.

“It appeared they were working on a startup company for high-end comic books,” said Don Quick, the district attorney in Adams County near Denver.

Quick said the seized comic books included some first-edition Superman and Batman titles. They fragile, vintage comics were stored in plastic bags to protect them.

According to a grand jury indictment released Monday, the Castro brothers arranged for weekly, multiple-pound shipments of the meth from Phoenix, Arizona. The brothers then distributed the drugs to a network of runners that made deliveries to dealers around the Denver area.

Suthers says Castro brothers sometimes used females “as drug mules by having them hide methamphetamine inside their vaginal cavities.” These women would then deliver the meth to a series of houses, and then lower-level dealers would distribute the drug.

“It’s a tawdry piece of information, but it’s a big part of what this group was doing,” he said.

[ click to continue reading at CNN.com ]

from TIME Magazine

 

This is probably not what you think (there is no website for that, yet). Get High Now is a science site disguised as mind-expansion. There are 40 audio and visual illusions (or, if you must, “hallucinations”) to be experienced and, after reading about the brain science that explains them, understood. Risset rhythms seem to get faster and faster, yet not if you time them by tapping your foot. Shepard tones get higher and higher (or lower and lower) yet never change key. Binaural beats and theta-wave synchronizations make you feel different — and you’re not just imagining things; the changes they induce can be seen with fMRI. And then there’s the highly intoxicating chronosynclastic infundibulum, which remains a mystery to science.

See the 50 best websites of 2008.

[ click to read at TIME.com ]

from The Huffington Post

Can Art Keep You Out of Jail? Rikers Inmates and Alumni Exhibit Paintings

by Glyn Vincent

Few inmates at Rikers Island jail could identify a Picasso or Matisse painting if it was hung in their cell. But the dozen or so young men who are lucky enough to attend Elizabeth Josephson’s art class at the jail can not only identify the masters, many of them do inspired interpretations of their favorite painters’ art, whether it be the work of Marsden Hartley, David Hockney, Jean-Michel Basquiat or Takashi Murakami.

 “I teach them art history,” says Josephson, who curated “Turnstile I,” an exhibition of Rikers inmate art that opens this Thursday, August 6th at the FiveMyles gallery in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. “It’s important that they know who these people are. It teaches them about the real art world and it gives them alternative role models to look up to.”

The show is the first of three exhibits, by or about Rikers inmates, to be shown at FiveMyles in the next year to raise awareness and support for an after-prison arts program that Josephson is planning to open in Crown Heights. “These are talented young men who need someplace to go to develop their skills, discipline and self esteem when they get out of jail,” she told me.

[ click to continue reading at HuffPo.com ]

from The Washington Post

Shocks & Awe: Mysterious Art in New Mexico

‘Lightning Field’ Jolts Visitors With an Array of Meanings

By Blake Gopnik, Washington Post Staff Writer

QUEMADO, N.M. – Only six people are allowed to see it every day, and only for six months of the year.

It’s thousands of miles from the big art scenes on either coast, and hours from the nearest city.

Photos are not allowed, so it barely even circulates in pictures.

There’s even a tiny chance that, if you don’t follow instructions, it could help you wind up dead.

And yet, for many of the few who’ve made the pilgrimage, it turns out to be “one of the great works of art of the last century.”

That, at least, was the judgment of one art-historian friend, not usually prone to hyperbole, when he returned from a summer visit to “The Lightning Field,” a huge work of “land art” hidden in the middle of New Mexico. His rave got me to go.

A classic patch of sagebrush-covered land, set on an empty plateau 7,200 feet high. A ring of jagged mountains at its edges, out-cliche-ing any Hollywood western. And in the middle, 400 lightning rods, custom-made from stainless steel and laid out in a grid that stretches a mile in one direction and a kilometer in the other. Set 220 feet apart, the rods tower to several times the height of a tall man; whatever kind of mound or furrow they get planted in, their tops all reach to the same table-flat height.

[ click to continue reading at WaPo.com ]

from The New York Times

Where Little Chefs Learn the Art of Slicing and Dicing

Ángel Franco/The New York Times

Emily Rios, director of the Creative Cooks Culinary Center in Brooklyn, demonstrating how to make pastelitos. “Being prepared is half the battle in terms of keeping their attention,” she said. More Photos >

By ANN FARMER

Published: August 18, 2009

By the time lunch was over, flour coated all the workstations at the culinary school in Brooklyn. Shards of dough stuck to the surfaces. And a dozen or more flat yellow blobs festooned the floor — each indicating the spot where a chickpea had rolled off the table and been squished by the foot of a cook in training.

Whether any of the students learning how to debone a chicken or slice cheese for a Spanish pastry will ever oversee the kitchen of one of New York’s culinary temples is impossible to tell.

After all, the students are between 5 and 11 years old.

For the last nine weeks, more than 100 children have been slicing, measuring and baking at Creative Cooks, a children’s cooking school in Boerum Hill that treats the culinary arts as an anthropological adventure.

[ click to read full article at NYTimes.com ]

from The New York Post

STRIPHANGER

HERE’S PROOF NUDE YORK IS THE NAKED CITY

By JUSTIN ROCKET SILVERMAN

A strip club isn’t the only place in town you can see a pole dance — amazed passengers on an L train watched in awe as a naked young woman competed with straphangers for space on a pole.

The performance by actress Jocelyn Saldana, 19, lasted just 30 seconds, and some of the passengers probably thought they were hallucinating or dreaming.

Most were blasé. But one woman started screaming and an elderly man next to her got the shakes.

[ click to continue reading at NYPost.com ]

from Fox Reno

Man Strips Naked On Flight; Assaults Passenger

OAKLAND, Calif. — A 21-year-old man is in custody at a hospital in Oakland after allegedly exposing himself to a female passenger on a Southwest Airlines flight, punching her and then stripping naked, an Alameda County sheriff’s spokesman said.

Darius Chappille, who has residences in both Oakland and Jefferson City, Miss., was arrested after causing a scene on a plane that took off from Oakland International Airport at about 7:15 a.m. Thursday, sheriff’s Sgt. J.D. Nelson said.

During the flight, Chappille exposed himself to a female passenger, according to Nelson. When the female passenger screamed, Chappille punched her, he said.

At that point, flight attendants and other passengers intervened and subdued Chappille, who continued to strip down during the struggle until he was naked, Nelson said.

[ click to continue reading at Fox Reno ]

from JAMSBIO magazine

BRASS TRAX

Pathways to Unknown Worlds: 
The Afrofuturism of Sun Ra

By Rick Sawyer

It was more than just jazz for Sun Ra. The pianist and band leader created a total, collaborative artwork that comprised his music, his album covers and iconography, his band and its costumes, his record label, and even his public and private persona. In many substantial ways, Sun Ra was the embodiment of what came to be known as Afrofuturism, the mid-century wave of Afrocentric science fiction spectacles. For Sun Ra, it wasn’t a show. Doctor Funkenstein might have gone back to being George Clinton when the Mothership was packed up, but Sun Ra never stopped being Sun Ra.

The totality of Sun Ra’s art was recently on view at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia. Pathways to Unknown Worlds: Sun Ra, El Saturn & Chicago’s Afro-Futurist Underground, 1954-1968 showed the breadth of Sun Ra’s iconography and even gave visitors a chance to see his storied band in action—offering a live performance of the surviving Arkestra members last May along with vintage video and photographs. The show, which had been curated by John Corbett, Anthony Elms and Terri Kapsalis for the Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, consisted of album covers, stray instruments, videos, audio recording, and even corporate memos, each evincing Sun Ra’s total commitment to his aesthetic.

Sun Ra was born Sonny Blount in Birmingham, Alabama, but he wouldn’t let you believe that. He claimed that he came from Saturn, and he took his name from the Egyptian god of the sun. His story, a fusion of the ancient and the otherworldly, would take on a changing array of particulars throughout the years, but the core would remain the same. Sun Ra is not like us, he’s not human, but his music can save the world.

[ click to continue reading at JAMSBIO.com ]

from the LA Times

Enjoy the great outdoors and a fabulous meal with grilled soy skirt steak. (South Florida Sun-Sentinel/Mark Randall)

Garlicky grilled soy skirt steak

Servings: 4

Ingredients:
1 / 4 cup reduced-sodium soy sauce
1 teaspoon minced peeled ginger root
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 tablespoon Hoisin sauce
1 / 2 to 1 teaspoon sriracha chili sauce or Thai chili garlic sauce, optional
Fresh-ground black pepper, to taste
Juice of 1 / 2 lime
1 (16- to 24-ounce) skirt steak

1. Preheat a gas or charcoal grill to medium-high heat.

[ click to continue with recipe at The LA Times ]

from The Guardian UK

Traces of cocaine found on up to 90% of dollar bills in American cities

by Ed Pilkington in New York

Photograph: Getty/Piet Mall

It’s an image much beloved of Hollywood directors: the head lowered over a mirror, a crisp greenback tightly rolled and inserted in a nostril, then applied at the other end to a line of white powder.

Researchers from the American Chemical Society in Washington have discovered that the practice of consuming cocaine through rolled up paper money is far more than just a cinematic cliché. They found that in big cities in the US, up to 90% of the notes tested positive for traces of the drug.

In Washington itself, the percentage of notes with cocaine residue reached 93%, a prevalence almost matched by other urban areas such as Boston, Detroit and Baltimore.

Any film directors hoping to be authentic in their portrayal of cocaine snorting should note that the researchers found that in the US the bills of choice of cocaine consumers were $5, $10, $20 and $50. Both the modest dollar note, and the more elusive $100 note appear to be rarely deployed as an aid to nasal intoxication.

[ click to read full article at The Guardian ]

from Rolling Stone

Remembering Michael Viner, The Man Who Recorded “Apache”

8/14/09, 1:35 pm EST

 

Michael Viner, the record producer whose 1973 recording of “Apache” by the Incredible Bongo Band is the cornerstone of hip-hop, died in Los Angeles on Saturday, August 8th, from cancer. He was 65.

Viner held a number of positions in the entertainment world. He was an executive for MGM Records in the 1970s, signing Debby Boone (whose “You Light Up My Life” was Number One for 10 weeks in 1977) and helping produce Sammy Davis Jr.’s “The Candy Man,” which topped the charts in 1972. He also produced the second Nixon inaugural ball in early 1973, a result of his association with Republican MGM head Mike Curb, lieutenant governor of California from 1979 to 1983. (Viner’s politics were more liberal; he’d worked as an aide for Robert Kennedy in the ’60s.) Later, Viner’s Dove imprint pioneered books-on-tape, and he later made a name publishing books based on tabloid scandal. Still, it’s the much-sampled Incredible Bongo Band recordings that stand as Viner’s lasting achievement.

Viner was born in 1944 and grew up in Washington, D.C. In 1970, as a joke, Viner released the infamous Best of Marcel Marceau — a live LP of a mime, consisting of two sides of silence concluded by audience applause.

[ click to continue reading at Rolling Stone ]

from the San Gabriel Valley Tribune

Suicidal man dumps cash on Glendora freeways

By Brian Day, Staff Writer

Posted: 08/16/2009 05:10:38 PM PDT

 

An emotionally disturbed man dumped cash out on two freeways in Glendora Sunday, prompting motorists to pull over and try to pick up the money from the roadway, authorities said.

The 56-year-old man, whose name was not released, then went to the Azusa Police Department where he told officials he wanted to commit suicide, Azusa police Lt. Steve Hunt said in a written statement.

The incident began about 11:50 a.m. when the man started throwing money out of his car on the westbound 210 Freeway between the 57 Freeway and Grand Avenue, California Highway Patrol Sgt. Kurt Stormes said.

Six or seven vehicles pulled over, and about 10 people ran into traffic lanes to grab up the cash, Stormes said.CHP officers recovered about $1,000 from the freeway, in 20-, 50- and 100-dollar bills, he added.

Officials ask that anyone who picked up some of the money to turn it into the Azusa Police Department so it can be returned to the man.

Police also cautioned motorists against trying to pick up money on the freeway.

Please do not stop on the freeway to look for money,” the police statement said. “Stopping on the freeway can be hazardous or even fatal.”

[ click to read full article at the SGV Tribune ]

from The Arizona Republic

Honey-Soy Beef Dippers

by Meghan Pembleton

1 pound flank steak
1/4 cup lemon juice
1/4 cup honey
1 tablespoon soy sauce
2 tablespoons olive oil
Metal or wood grilling skewers

Cut beef crosswise about 1-inch thick and cut each slice into cubes. Place meat in a zip-top plastic bag. Add lemon juice, honey, soy sauce and oil. Seal bag and turn to coat meat. Refrigerate at least 30 minutes, up to overnight. (If using wood skewers, soak them in water while meat is marinating.) Heat grill to high.

[ click to continue with recipe at AZCentral.com ]