Saving Flannel (Shout-out James McKinnon)
The Annals of Flannel
Told that the cozy shirting fabric could no longer be made in America, one man began a yearlong quest.
Boxes proudly proclaim the product’s origin.CreditAmerican Giant
Three years ago, Bayard Winthrop, the chief executive and founder of the clothing brand American Giant, started thinking about a flannel shirt he wore as a kid in the 1970s. It was blue plaid and bought for him by his grandmother, probably at Caldor, a discount department store popular in the northeast back then. The flannel was one of the first pieces of clothing Mr. Winthrop owned that suggested a personality.
“I thought it looked great,” he said, “and I thought it said something about me. That I was cool and physical and capable and outdoorsy.”
Since 2011 American Giant, or AG, has mass-produced everyday sportswear for men and women, like the Lee jeans or Russell sweatshirts once sold in stores like Caldor — from the ginned cotton to the cutting and sewing — entirely in the U.S. Mr. Winthrop, a former financier who had run a snowshoe firm, made it the company’s mission to, in his words, “bring back ingenuity and optimism to the towns that make things.” He’s been very successful, especially with a full-zip sweatshirt Slate called “the greatest hoodie ever made.” AG has introduced denim, leggings and socks, among other products.
But Mr. Winthrop’s madeleine of a garment proved elusive. “We kept asking around and hearing, ‘Not flannel. You can do all these other things here, maybe. Flannel is gone.’” he said.
Bringing its manufacture back to America, Mr. Winthrop thought, could be deeply symbolic. Both of the capability of U.S. manufacturing and of the need for big fashion brands to invest here again. It was a quixotic artisanal project, perhaps, but one with potentially high business stakes.
Each time AG develops a new product, Mr. Winthrop must patch together its supply chain from what remains. To help him navigate the process, he relies on “old dogs in the industry,” he said, though AG is based in San Francisco and runs like a tech start-up, with sales almost entirely online.
For flannel, he called James McKinnon.
At 50, Mr. McKinnon is not that old (Mr. Winthrop is 49). But he is the third McKinnon to run Cotswold Industries, the textile manufacturer his grandfather started in 1954. Cotswold made the woven fabric for headliners inside Ford cars. Later, the firm manufactured pocket linings for Lee, Wrangler and Levi jeans. Cotswold still handles pocketing business for many U.S. brands, part of a diverse portfolio that includes making fabrics for culinary apparel. The fabrics are woven at its mill in Central, S.C.
Mr. Winthrop called Mr. McKinnon at his office in midtown Manhattan and ran through the list of questions. Why is flannel gone? What would it take to bring it back? How would you do it?
How Much For A Torso?
Made in America: U.S. body brokers supply world with human torsos, limbs and heads
Part 9: Body parts from American donors have been exported to at least 45 countries, and thousands of parts are sent abroad annually. Demand is high in nations where customs limit selling or dissecting their own dead. In the U.S., though, almost anything goes.
By JOHN SHIFFMAN and READE LEVINSON
REMAINS FOR RENT: A U.S. body donation company leased the heads of dead Americans to a Tel Aviv dental training facility. The facility posted pictures of the training on Facebook in October, just before returning a shipment of heads to the United States. That shipment was intercepted by U.S. border agents because the manifest mislabeled the package of heads as “electronics.” REUTERS/Handout
PORTLAND, Oregon – On July 20, a Hong Kong-flagged cargo ship departed Charleston, South Carolina, carrying thousands of containers. One of them held a lucrative commodity: body parts from dozens of dead Americans.
According to the manifest, the shipment bound for Europe included about 6,000 pounds of human remains valued at $67,204. To keep the merchandise from spoiling, the container’s temperature was set to 5 degrees Fahrenheit.
The body parts came from a Portland business called MedCure Inc. A so-called body broker, MedCure profits by dissecting the bodies of altruistic donors and sending the parts to medical training and research companies.
MedCure sells or leases about 10,000 body parts from U.S. donors annually, shipping about 20 percent of them overseas, internal corporate and manifest records show. In addition to bulk cargo shipments to the Netherlands, where MedCure operates a distribution hub, the Oregon company has exported body parts to at least 22 other countries by plane or truck, the records show.
Among the parts: a pelvis and legs to a university in Malaysia; feet to medical device companies in Brazil and Turkey; and heads to hospitals in Slovenia and the United Arab Emirates.
Demand for body parts from America — torsos, knees and heads — is high in countries where religious traditions or laws prohibit the dissection of the dead. Unlike many developed nations, the United States largely does not regulate the sale of donated body parts, allowing entrepreneurs such as MedCure to expand exports rapidly during the last decade.
No other nation has an industry that can provide as convenient and reliable a supply of body parts.
XFL Cities
XFL unveils 8 team cities, stadiums, says games will be cheaper, fast-paced
By
The XFL, a new professional football league backed by WWE CEO Vince McMahon, on Wednesday unveiled the inaugural eight cities and stadiums that will host its teams when play begins in 2020.
XFL Commissioner Oliver Luck said the league will focus on maintaining a fast-paced, safer on-field product with fewer game stoppages and penalties. Ticket prices will be “significantly lower” than other U.S. professional sports leagues, he added. The league will begin play on Feb. 8, 2020, the weekend after that year’s Super Bowl.
The eight XFL teams will be based in New York, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, St. Louis, Seattle, Tampa Bay, and Washington, D.C. Games will take place at the following venues: MetLife Stadium in New Jersey; Globe Life Park in Arlington, Texas; TDECU Stadium in Houston; StubHub Center in Carson, California; The Dome at America’s Center in St. Louis; CenturyLink Field in Seattle; Raymond James Stadium in Tampa Bay; and Audi Field in Washington.
Porch Pirates vs. Doorstep Vigilantes
Porch Pirates are trying to steal Christmas, but doorstep vigilantes are on high alert
The Porch Pirates are in overdrive.
Their crimes are unfolding on doorsteps across the nation as Christmas presents, ordered from online retailers, arrive by the hundreds of millions. And plenty of those packages disappear.
The thieves are totally legit villains now because they have an official villain name. Search “Porch Pirates” on Twitter or other social media, and you’ll see what I mean.
But some of the 26 million victims who say they’ve had boxes swiped from their porches are heroically fighting back, determined to protect their precious packages.
They’re using booby traps, secret cameras, geo-trackers and bait boxes. The scenes of Good vs. Evil being posted online make for days of great comic-book reading, complete with shaming doorbell video clips of sneaky pirates, clumsy pirates, grandma pirates in flowery tunics, at least one pirate in a bra, even regretful pirates who’ve returned to the scene of the crime to leave an apology note.
Alex Morgan Tops Again
Alex Morgan named top women’s soccer player in US
FILE/MARCIO JOSE SANCHEZ/AP
Alex Morgan was named US Soccer’s women’s player of the year for a second time after leading the national team with 18 goals in 19 games and helping it earn a spot in the 2019 World Cup in France. Morgan scored seven of her goals during the CONCACAF World Cup qualifying tournament this fall to earn the Golden Boot. Morgan, who was also the top player in 2012, also has three assists and has logged 1,500 minutes this year, most of any player on the team.
Bienvenue Bennu!
NASA spacecraft arrives at ancient asteroid, its 1st visitor
By MARCIA DUNN
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — After a two-year chase, a NASA spacecraft arrived Monday at the ancient asteroid Bennu, its first visitor in billions of years.
The robotic explorer Osiris-Rex pulled within 12 miles (19 kilometers) of the diamond-shaped space rock. It will get even closer in the days ahead and go into orbit around Bennu on Dec. 31. No spacecraft has ever orbited such a small cosmic body.
It is the first U.S. attempt to gather asteroid samples for return to Earth, something only Japan has accomplished so far.
RIVAL X RAZER Holiday Showdown Tournament
RIVAL X RAZER Holiday Showdown Tournament Culminates In $150,000 Prize Pool, Finals Hosted By AT&T In Los Angeles
3BLACKDOT, Razer, and AT&T host the top players who will compete on the Razer Phone 2 in final match in Los Angeles alongside guest influencers
LOS ANGELES, Dec. 7, 2018 /PRNewswire/ — Razer™, the world’s leading lifestyle brand for gamers is collaborating with 3BLACKDOT, the leading Influencer-driven studio, and AT&T to produce the RIVAL X RAZER Holiday Showdown. This two-week event will feature 3BLACKDOT and Section Studios highly rated arena battle mobile game, “RIVAL: CRIMSON X CHAOS.” Participants will have the opportunity to play RIVAL: CRIMSON X CHAOS for a chance to win over $150,000 in total cash, Razer Phone 2, and other prizes.
The RIVAL X RAZER Holiday Showdown will take place from Thursday, December 6th and will conclude with a final event on December 15th at the new AT&T store in Los Angeles, California. From December 6th to December 11th fans looking to compete in this exciting event can download RIVAL: Crimson X Chaos from the Google Play Store and Apple App Store and compete in daily quests and leaderboard challenges for a chance to win daily cash and in-game prizes. The top 24 players will be flown to Los Angeles to compete in the championship event. “Since launching Rival: Crimson x Chaos, fans around the world and our 3BLACKDOT influencers have been playing Rival and absolutely love this game,” says Rahshiene Taha, VP of Marketing at 3BLACKDOT. “The Rival x Razer Holiday Showdown takes it to a new level. There nothing like the energy of a live event that brings fans and our 3BLACKDOT influencers together and we couldn’t be more excited!”
Retailers and carriers around the world are making significant efforts in attracting the fast-growing mobile gaming community to their stores with tournaments, large prize pools, and other forms of entertainment. Michael Breslin, Razer Mobile’s Global Head of Sales & Marketing, said: “Mobile gaming is the fastest growing platform in the space, with mobile gamers logging over 200% more game time than through any other platform,” adding “since Razer Phone 2 was designed specifically with mobile gaming in mind, we wanted to partner with companies whose mission to entertain and engage mobile gamers aligned with ours, and we found that in 3BLACKDOT and AT&T.”
“We’re thrilled to help bring the RIVAL X RAZER Holiday Showdown to gamers, culminating with the championship event at our newest L.A. retail location,” said Shiz Suzuki, assistant vice president of AT&T Sponsorships and Experiential Marketing. “Our commitment to gamers is all about enhancing their experience. We’re excited to see that come to life through this tournament where fans will have the opportunity to win cash and prizes, including the Razer Phone 2 – just like the pros.”
Shiny Happy Martians
Curiosity Rover Just Spotted This Super-Shiny Object on Mars
An unusually smooth and reflective Martian rock has caught the attention of NASA scientists, prompting an investigation by the Curiosity rover.
With the spectacularly successful landing of the InSight probe on Mars earlier this week, our attention has understandably been diverted away from Curiosity, which has been exploring the Red Planet since 2012. While we’ve been gushing over InSight, the six-wheeled NASA rover has been working at Vera Rubin Ridge, investigating the Highfield outcrop, a unique patch of grey bedrock.
Curiosity has been at the Highfield drill site before, but NASA’s mission controllers wanted to take a look at four previously detected rocks—including an unusually smooth rock that, in black and white at least, looks a bit like a chunk of gold.
Sushi Grass Explained
The $0.006 Object in Your Sushi Container Is Doing an Important Job
It separates flavors and comes from a centuries-old Japanese tradition.
By Wendy MacNaughton
NASA Admits It
Nasa admits ‘tiny super-intelligent’ aliens may have ALREADY visited Earth – and says some UFO sightings ‘cannot be explained or denied’
A top Nasa scientist said the space agency needs to be “more aggressive” in the hunt for alien life
By Sean Keach, Digital Technology and Science Editor
A NASA scientist admits that it’s entirely possible aliens have already visited Earth – and we simply never noticed.
The space expert also noted that not all UFO sightings can be “explained or denied”, and said scientists should be more open-minded about the possibility of alien visitors.
Nasa has long been investing in SETI, the “search for extraterrestrial intelligence” – better known as aliens.
And in a recently publisher paper on SETI, Professor Silvano P. Colombano suggested that alien life may have already visited us.
He suggested that aliens could look so different from how we expect, and that they may be able to travel huge distances – because we simply can’t comprehend their make-up or technology.
“I simply want to point out the fact that the intelligence we might find and that might choose to find us (if it hasn’t already) might not be at all be produced by carbon based organisms like us,” said Professor Colombano, of Nasa’s Ames Research Centre in California.
Earth’s Bell Rung – And No One Heard
Strange waves rippled around the world, and nobody knows why
Instruments picked up the seismic waves more than 10,000 miles away—but bizarrely, nobody felt them.
BY
On the morning of November 11, just before 9:30 UT, a mysterious rumble rolled around the world.
The seismic waves began roughly 15 miles off the shores of Mayotte, a French island sandwiched between Africa and the northern tip of Madagascar. The waves buzzed across Africa, ringing sensors in Zambia, Kenya, and Ethiopia. They traversed vast oceans, humming across Chile, New Zealand, Canada, and even Hawaii nearly 11,000 miles away.
These waves didn’t just zip by; they rang for more than 20 minutes. And yet, it seems, no human felt them.
Pilate’s Ring
2,000-year-old ‘Pilate’ ring just might have belonged to notorious Jesus judge
Uncovered 50 years ago at the Herodian palace near Bethlehem, a simple copper-alloy ring is now given a good cleaning — and a second look by skeptical scholars
An intriguing 2,000-year-old copper alloy ring bearing the inscription “of Pilatus” may be only the second artifact testifying to the historicity of the infamous Pontius Pilate. Unearthed 50 years ago, the ring was overlooked until recently, when it got a good scrub, and a second look.
Pilate, a Roman prefect who ruled the Roman province of Judaea from circa 26–36 CE, is mentioned in several accounts in the New Testament, as having ordered the trial and crucifixion of Yeshua, a Second Temple-period radical preacher from the Galilee, more commonly known as Jesus.
The ring was first found among hundreds of other artifacts in 1968–1969 excavations directed by archaeologist Gideon Foerster, at a section of Herod’s burial tomb and palace at Herodium that was used during the First Jewish Revolt (66–73 CE). Recently, current dig director Roi Porat asked that the engraved copper sealing ring be given a thorough laboratory cleaning and scholarly examination.
Frankenstein From Within
Will We See “Monstrous” Neuroscience?
By Neuroskeptic
The science story of the past week was the claim from Chinese scientist He Jiankui that he has created gene-edited human babies. Prof. He reports that two twin girls have been born carrying modifications of the gene CCR5, which is intended to protect them against future HIV risk.
It’s far from clear yet whether the gene-editing that He described has actually taken place – no data has yet been presented. The very prospect of genetically-modifying human beings has, however, led to widespread concern, with He’s claims being described as “monstrous“, “crazy” and “unethical”.
All of which got me wondering: could there ever be a neuroscience experiment which attracted the same level of condemnation?
What I’m asking here is whether there are neuroscience advances that would be considered inherently unethical. It would, of course, be possible to carry out any neuroscience experiment in an unethical way, by forcing or tricking people into participation. But are there experiments which would be unethical even if all the participants gave full, informed consent at every stage?
Here are a couple of possibilites:
Renoir Vanished
The Renoir Landscape Was Ready for Auction. Then It Was Gone
(Bloomberg) — A man and two accomplices walked into a Vienna auction house on Monday and hijacked a Renoir landscape before splitting up and slipping from the building into the crowd, police said.
The French impressionist’s coastal landscape “Golfe, Mer, Falaises Vertes”—estimated to be worth between 120,000 euros ($135,000) and 160,000 euros and pictured below after being shared on Twitter—had been on display ahead of an auction planned for Wednesday.
Surveillance video showed a group of three men who went to the second floor of the Dorotheum gallery before pulling the painting from its frame, police said in a statement. Local media had earlier reported a single thief. The “obviously professional” trio dispersed and left through different exits, with two of them carrying shopping bags, pictures from the cameras released by police show.
Messin’ With The Pope
Porn For Girls
The Feminist Erotic Film Director Making Porn Hot Again: ‘I Want to Show How Sex Feels’
Indie erotic cinema director Erika Lust owns the site XConfessions, where women submit fantasies and she adapts them into beautiful pornographic films.
by Natalia Winkelman
Courtesy Erica LustErika Lust remembers the exact moment she first saw a porno. She was around 11 or 12, chomping on popcorn at a friend’s sleepover party, when the young host pulled out a VHS she’d swiped from her dad’s private stockpile. Before then, porn was something Lust had only glimpsed in Playboy or simulated with Barbie and Ken. When the sex started, the girls all shuddered. Was porn always this ridiculous, this gross?
It would be years before Lust, now a pioneer in erotic cinema—she writes, directs, and runs her own production company, Erika Lust Films—would view porn under more pleasurable circumstances. Studying political science at Lund University in Sweden, Lust, like many of her female peers, considered herself a liberated young woman, with feminist ideals and an open mind. So when her college boyfriend suggested that they pop in a video to get them in the mood, Lust was eager to give it a try.
She enjoyed what she watching more this time around, but there was something about it that still didn’t sit right. The production design was dreadful, for starters. And where was the feeling, the texture of a real erotic encounter? The sex it depicted was all mechanics, no mood.
“I felt this disconnection between my body and my brain,” Erika recalled, perched in a swanky Manhattan cafe in early November. “My body did get turned on. I felt it in my guts, you know?” She squinted and gripped her abdomen. “But the women that I saw were not my women. I didn’t identify with them. I didn’t feel that that kind of sexual encounter had anything to do with my sex life, and what I expected of sex.”
Born and raised in Sweden, Lust is currently based in Barcelona, where she lives with her husband (who doubles as her business partner) and two teenage daughters. She produces the majority of her work around Europe, where porn—and sex in general—are less of a taboo, and she doesn’t often find herself in America.
Stephen Hillenburg Gone
‘SpongeBob SquarePants’ Creator Stephen Hillenburg Dead At 57
by Geoff Boucher and Greg Evans
Stephen Hillenburg, the creator of Nickelodeon’s signature cartoon series SpongeBob SquarePants, died on Monday. He was 57.
The animator and former marine biology instructor created a powerhouse property with the quirky SpongeBob SquarePants — the global merchandise sales alone have gone north of $13 billion for a brand that has also yielded two animated feature films — with a third due in 2020 — nine music albums, a video game and a Tony-winning Broadway musical.
Hillenburg revealed in March 2017 that he was battling the neurodegenerative disease ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease. His death was announced today in a Nickelodeon statement that framed his singular sensibility, which gave the world a loopy but lovable classic of television animation.
Bertolucci Gone
Bernardo Bertolucci, Director of ‘Last Tango in Paris,’ Dies at 77
By Dennis Lim
Bernardo Bertolucci, the Italian filmmaker whose sensual and visually stylistic movies ranged from intense chamber dramas to panoramic historical epics, died on Monday at his home in Rome. He was 77.
His death was confirmed by his wife, Clare Peploe, in a statement that did not specify the cause.
Mr. Bertolucci’s early work reflected the revolutionary spirit of the 1960s and ’70s, in particular the shifting social and sexual mores of the times. While several of his films delved into the traumas of his country’s recent past, he fashioned himself as a global auteur.
Coming of age as the Italian neorealist movement was on the wane, he drew inspiration from the French New Wave and routinely worked across borders and with international casts.
Many of Mr. Bertolucci’s films were warmly embraced by Hollywood. “The Last Emperor” (1987), a lavish biopic of Pu Yi, who became the emperor of China at the age of 3, won all nine Academy Awards for which it was nominated, including best picture and best director.
Nicolas Roeg Gone
How Nicolas Roeg Broke Movies—and Rebuilt Them in His Own Image
At their best, the director’s masterpieces like ‘Walkabout’ and ‘Don’t Look Now’ added up not to a complete picture but a kind of Rorschach test
By
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Nicolas Roeg, who died Friday at the age of 90, didn’t just bend the medium of film to his will. He broke it, splintered it, and sutured it back together. He was a like a surgeon gifted with second sight, and his movies would have probably died on the operating table with anybody else in charge. A former cinematographer who left his mark in several different areas of 1960s cinema—doing unit work for David Lean on Lawrence of Arabia; shooting Fahrenheit 451 for François Truffaut and The Masque of the Red Death for Roger Corman—Roeg had an undeniable eye for color and composition. But it was his attention to editing that made him a legend. His movies were jagged jigsaw puzzles that the viewer had to try to put together in real time; at their best, the pieces added up not to a complete picture but a kind of Rorschach test. “I prefer it,” he said once, “when the familiar is made to feel strange.”
Strange was Roeg’s sweet spot, and his run of five films from 1970 to 1980—Performance, Walkabout, Don’t Look Now, The Man Who Fell to Earth, and Bad Timing—has yet to be equalled in terms of consistently virtuoso weirdness. (The only real contender: Roeg superfan Ben Wheatley, whose Kill List is deeply indebted to Don’t Look Now, and who put an admiring quote from Roeg on the poster for his midnight-mindfuck comedy A Field in England). Because he was initially drawn to genres like gothic horror and sci-fi, Roeg attracted a cult audience, and the way that he used movie stars and rock stars guaranteed studio backing, although more often than not his financiers hated the final product: Even in 1990, when he scored a gig directing an adaptation of Roald Dahl’s The Witches for Jim Henson’s production company, he freaked out his collaborators by making Anjelica Huston’s witch queen too flamboyantly sexy for a kids movie—and pissed off Dahl by changing the book’s ending, leading to the author’s attempt to take his name off the movie.
Wherefore Art Thou, S. Mundi
The fate of Leonardo’s ‘lost’ Salvator Mundi
Salvator Mundi vanished after it was sold last year for $450 million. There are fears for its safety
Salvator Mundi before it was sold at Christie’s in 2017GETTY IMAGES
Wanted: Leonardo da Vinci’s spectacular Salvator Mundi, the long-lost, then found painting of Christ — the “saviour of the world” — holding an orb. His enigmatic expression has led some to consider it the male Mona Lisa. The Renaissance master was thought to have painted fewer than 20 works, including The Last Supper, so when Salvator Mundi was authenticated less than a decade ago, it took on a mystical quality all of its own and, eventually, the heftiest price tag in history.
Yet, despite its enormous art-historical importance, those who care about it the most say they have no idea where the painting is — and they have concerns about how it is being cared for and how that could affect its condition.
Be Careful Whom You Try To Colonize
US tourist killed by arrow-shooting Indian tribe
Contact with several tribes on the Andaman islands, set deep in the Indian Ocean, is illegal in a bid to protect their indigenous way of life and shield them from diseases Contact with several tribes on the Andaman islands, set deep in the Indian Ocean, is illegal in a bid to protect their indigenous way of life and shield them from diseases AFP/File
An American tourist was killed by arrows shot by protected tribesmen living in one of the world’s most isolated regions tucked in India’s Andaman islands, police said Wednesday.
John Chau, 27, had taken a boat ride with local fishermen before venturing alone in a canoe to the remote North Sentinel Island where the indigenous people live cut off completely from the outside world.
As soon as he set foot on the island, Chau found himself facing a flurry of arrows, official sources told AFP.
Contact with several tribes on the islands, set deep in the Indian Ocean, is illegal in a bid to protect their indigenous way of life and shield them from diseases.
Odessa Young Interview
Odessa Young interview: Young women are set up for failure by society
Young and true: Odessa Young says new film Assassination Nation portrays modern teenagers as they really are ( AAP/PA Images )
“In the world we live in now, you can’t win as a young woman,” declares actress Odessa Young. The 20-year-old is explaining why her latest film, Sundance hit Assassination Nation — a sort of woke Mean Girls-cum-horror film-cum-allegory for the social media age — resonates with her and her peers.
Young women have been “set up for failure” by society’s double standards, she says. “The most typical example is the Madonna and the whore complex. Of, ‘Well, if I’m a virgin then I’m a prude, but if I feel myself, I’m badass, then I’m a slut and a whore.’ So that’s the simplest way of explaining it, there’s no way to win.”
From Freud to flat whites, no topic feels too big or too small for the bright and down-to-earth Young. When we meet, on a stormy day in New York at a basement coffee shop near Times Square, her demeanour is so unstarry that I almost miss her casually scrolling her phone at a nearby table.
Such anonymity, however, is unlikely to last long. In addition to Assassination Nation, she has recently made her professional theatre debut off-Broadway (or “Broadway-adjacent”, as she jokingly refers to it) in Days of Rage by Steven Levenson, the Tony Award-winning writer of Dear Evan Hansen. This year she is also in A Million Little Pieces, a film based on James Frey’s controversial book directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson. Oh, and she’s also just finished filming Shirley, starring Elisabeth Moss as horror writer Shirley Jackson, in Upstate New York.
The Cannibal Earth
The Earth Is Eating Its Own Oceans
As Earth’s tectonic plates dive beneath one another, they drag three times as much water into the planet’s interior as previously thought.
Those are the results of a new paper published today (Nov. 14) in the journal Nature. Using the natural seismic rumblings of the earthquake-prone subduction zone at the Marianas trench, where the Pacific plate is sliding beneath the Philippine plate, researchers were able to estimate how much water gets incorporated into the rocks that dive deep below the surface. [In Photos: Ocean Hidden Beneath Earth’s Surface]
The find has major ramifications for understanding Earth’s deep water cycle, wrote marine geology and geophysics researcher Donna Shillington of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University in an op-ed accompanying the new paper. Water beneath the surface of the Earth can contribute to the development of magma and can lubricate faults, making earthquakes more likely, wrote Shillington, who was not involved in the new research.
Condi To Take Over The Browns?
Condoleeza Rice Under Consideration For Cleveland Browns Head Coach – ESPN Report
by Bruce Haring
If Rice actually moves forward, she would be the first woman to ever interview for an NFL head coaching job. The league currently has three women in assistant coaching positions, but none in key coordinator positions that would merit consideration as a head coach.
Rice is reportedly a lifelong Browns fan. She would inherit a mess, as the 3-6-1 Browns have disappointed this year and are just one season removed from an 0-16 record.
Frey on Friedrich Kunath
Friedrich Kunath’s “One Man’s Ceiling is Another Man’s Floor” at Blum & Poe, New York
Blum & Poe at New York is presenting “One Man’s Ceiling is Another Man’s Floor,” Friedrich Kunath’s sixth solo exhibition with the gallery, which is on view through December 22.
This show follows Kunath’s “Frutti di Mare” (2017) —a carpeted, scented, multi-room installation flecked with tie-died tube socks and outfitted with mirrored floors, a mechanical spinning canvas, and a vertical piano.
According to the gallery press note, Kunath carries on his study of a dichotomous human condition—an exploration in happiness and sadness, romanticism, nostalgia, longing, the fetish of authenticity, and the myth of genius. This exhibition negotiates the facets of personal experience registered on a psycho-emotional pendulum that swings between the search for deep existential meaning and purpose, and a frenetic, nonsensical and humorous nihilism.
The gallery reveals that in conjunction with this exhibition, a new major monograph devoted to the last fifteen years of Kunath’s work will be released by Rizzoli Electa. Entitled “I Don’t Worry Anymore,” this book offers new insights into the artist’s work across media, organized conceptually rather than chronologically in eight chapters.
The book features new writing by four contributors—art historian James Elkins takes an historical approach to Kunath’s work, linking him to both recent and older traditions of European painting; Ariana Reines contributes a poem inspired by the artist’s work; James Frey offers a short essay motivated by Kunath’s persona; and the artist and John McEnroe, the famed tennis player, have a spirited conversation about their shared passion for the game of tennis.
William Goldman Gone
William Goldman, Butch Cassidy screenwriter, dies at 87
William Goldman, screenwriter of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and All the President’s Men, has died aged 87.
Goldman, who received Oscars for both of those films, also wrote Marathon Man, Magic and The Princess Bride, which he adapted from his own novels.
His memoir Adventures in the Screen Trade is famous for his memorable declaration that “nobody knows anything” about the movie business.
He was also a noted “script doctor” who worked uncredited on many features.
Born in Highland Park, Illinois in 1931, Goldman started out as a novelist before breaking into movies with 1965 spy caper Masquerade.
He followed that with The Moving Target, also known as Harper, in which Paul Newman played a laconic private eye.
Skull-collecting Ants Cool
Florida ant species collects skulls, uses chemical weapons to kill prey
“It’s really unusual for an ant species to display this much variation in chemical signature,” researcher Adrian Smith said.
By Brooks Hays
Florida is filled with strange creatures, but skull-collecting ants are near the top of the creepy list.
“In 1958, shortly after this ant was described as a species, scientists reported something weird about it,” Adrian Smith, an entomologist at North Carolina State University, said in a news release.
Researchers found dozens of decapitated heads of trap-jaw ants in the nests of the newly discovered ant species, Formica archboldi. Scientists theorized the species either uses the abandoned nests of trap-jaw ants or is specially equipped to hunt their ant relatives.
Until now, however, scientists haven’t studied the behavior of skull-collecting ants in detail.
Dark Matter Hurricane Coming
Scientists predict a ‘dark matter hurricane’ will collide with the Earth
Yes, here’s the story of the dark matter hurricane — a cosmic event that may provide our first glimpse of the mysterious, invisible particle.
BY JACKSON RYAN
Space Telescope Science Institut, NASA, ESA, the Hubble SM4 ERO Team, and ST-ECF
Don’t panic.
Yes, astronomers suggest it’s very likely a “dark matter hurricane” will slam into the Earth as it speeds through the Milky Way — but it shouldn’t cause any damage. In fact, in the hunt for the mysterious particle (or particles) that makes up dark matter, the “hurricane” may provide our best chance at detection.
Throughout the Milky Way there are a number of stellar streams, gatherings of stars that were once dwarf galaxies or clusters. In ancient history they collided with the Milky Way and were torn apart — leaving a stream of orbiting stars that circle the galactic centre. One such stellar stream, dubbed S1 and discovered last year by scientists examining data from the European Space Agency’s Gaia satellite, passes directly through the path of our sun.
As our solar system speeds through the outer reaches of the Milky Way, it flies through dark matter at around 230 kilometres per second ( around 143 miles per second). A study, published Nov. 7 and led by researchers at the University of Zaragoza, suggests that the dark matter present in the stream may be travelling at double that speed — roughly 500km/s (around 310 miles per second) — giving us a much better chance at detecting dark matter.
Death By Data
Dark satanic mills 2.0: inside the massive server farms storing your data—and harming the planet
Experts suggest data centres will consume one fifth of the world’s electricity by 2030
A data storage centre: cooling the centres alone can create a large carbon footprint. Photo: PixabayYour family photos are currently in a warehouse on the edge of the M25. Or maybe they are in a warehouse in Swansea. Or maybe, just maybe, they are not in a prosaic suburb, but in a hollowed-out mountain in Norway.
When we think of the “cloud” we are supposed to think of the ether. But data is not immaterial. The route you took to work in your car today, the time at which you logged in to Facebook, the amount of money in your bank account—all this information is physical, perishable, and it is housed in a farm of computers hidden far from your view.
“A lot of people have the perception of the cloud as something out there,” says Tor Kristian Gyland, pushing his hand out into an expanse of thin air. “It doesn’t matter to them if their data is stored in a field in Ireland, or on a hill outside Barcelona or in a mountain in Stavanger.”
Gyland is the affable and surprisingly un-villainous CEO of Green Mountain, a company that transformed an old NATO ammunition store into an underground data centre. “Digitisation has progressed really quickly. Everyone now has an iPhone, an iPad, a Smart TV. But they don’t know where it’s all actually happening.”
When companies store their data (or rather, your data) there are three methods they can use. They can rent “racks” of servers in a form of storage called colocation. Or they can upload the data to the not-so-nebulous cloud, in which case there is no specific server on which the data is stored at any one time, with it instead rebounding from one server to another. Finally, if you are a Facebook or a Google you can just go and build your own data centre.
Whichever way you go, the final product is a warehouse containing thousands of black boxes whirring with billions of calculations. The precious computers are lavished with air conditioning lest they overheat and malfunction. Data centres positively feast on electricity.
“They are growing like mushrooms,” bemoans Dr Anders Andrae, a Swedish academic who studies the ecological impact of technology. “The number of data centres is increasing by 25 per cent every year and this is leading to at least a 10 per cent annual growth in the sector’s energy consumption.”
Stan Lee Gone
Stan Lee Dies: Marvel Comics Icon Was 95
Stan Lee, the co-creator of Spider-Man, the Avengers, the X-Men, the Hulk and the Fantastic Four, is dead. He was 95. Kirk Schenck, the attorney for Stan Lee’s daughter, confirmed to Deadline that the comics culture legend passed away Monday morning after being admitted to Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.
As a writer and editor for Marvel Comics, Lee became the most famous comic book creator in the history of the medium — he was the only creator in the field whose fame rivaled that of the characters he created. His career began in 1941 when — at age 17 — he got his first published work, a prose story that appeared in the fifth issue of Captain America Comics. It was the 1960s, however, when Lee minted his reputation and tapped into a vein of pop-culture creativity that made history.
It was Fantastic Four No. 1 in 1961, which teamed Lee with Jack Kirby, and its landmark success changed everything for Lee and for Marvel. It signaled the arrival of a new and dynamic brand of superheroes that were far different than the old-guard heroes of industry leader DC Comics (which published Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and Green Lantern). The Fantastic Four bickered with each other — one looked like a monster and none of them had secret identities. They were at times driven by ego, shame, profit, jealousy or pride. Fans loved it.