UCLA students are near-rioting over a 32% tuition increase. The unrest has resulted in 14 reported arrests and one tazering so far. Quick, deploy Apple Store discount vouchers to pacify them!

As a graduate of the UC system, I can’t say I’m surprised, but 32% is beyond the pale of previous tuition hikes. How in hell do they expect students or their families to pay that in this economy? How in hell do they expect to be able to fund that in financial aid? Why is California crippling its own workforce for the coming decades? Education is the backbone of any democracy, and by pricing it out of the range of those who need it, California is only hurting itself in the long run.

The Associated Press reports, from this morning:

About 200 demonstrators are chanting and marching around a UCLA building where University of California regents are scheduled to vote on a 32 percent fee increase for next year.

Protesters from several UC campuses stayed overnight at a campus tent city to take part in a second day of demonstrations on Thursday.

UCLA spokesman Phil Hampton says 30 to 50 students also have staged a sit-in at an ethnic studies building and have chained shut the doors. They’re peaceful and are being allowed to stay.

Fourteen people were arrested Wednesday for failure to disperse or disturbing the peace.

Protests are also reported at other UC campuses but no further arrests have been reported.

The regents say cuts in state aid leave are forcing the tuition hike.

You can shout at the UCLA Chancellor here, as this will likely affect the long-term quality of life of all Californians.

(LA Times: UC raising student fees)

 
From Brian O’Reilly, one of the collaborators of the Scan Processor Studies:

Woody, Steina, Garth and I spent many nights screening works for moving images, playing music, and cooking, enveloped in the huge ghost town mood the ZKM’s kitchen took on at night. During this time there were passionate discussions about video synthesizers (mainly my love for the Sandin Image Processor), and how Steina’s VIOLIN POWER had a huge influence on Garth’s and my new series of works.

The source materials were generated by Woody using a Rutt-Etra Scan Processor in the 1970’s and sat on a shelf for years, having been recently digitized. Woody came into my studio one day and asked me if I would be interested in using them to work on a collaboration, and the project began from there…

Thanks Manuel Quiza!

 

 
Jonathan Turner has created a new Flickr Pool dedicted to company logos on vehicles from the 60s and 70s. I really dig some of these designs.
 
Autografik
 
(via iGNANT)

 
Here’s a creepy book titled The Pop-up Book of Phobias by Gary Greenberg and illustrated by Balvis Rubess. Enjoy! 

 
(via Cakehead Loves Evil)

LSD by Damien Hirst
 
Cut-n-pasted from the Mindhacks blog:

I’ve just found a remarkable 1963 study [pdf] from the Archives of Opthalmology in which 24 blind participants took LSD to see if they could experience visual hallucinations.

It turns out, they can, although this seems largely to be the case in blind people who had several years of sight to begin with, but who later lost their vision.

Those blind from a very early age (younger than two years-old) did not report visual hallucinations, probably because they never had enough visual experience to shape a fully-functioning visual system when their brain was still developing.

It is evident that a normal retina is not needed for the occurrence of LSD-induced visual experiences. These visual experiences do not seem to differ from the hallucinations reported by normal subjects after LSD.

Such phenomena occurred only in blind subjects who reported prior visual activity. The drug increased the frequency of visual events such as spots, lights, dots, and flickers. However, the complex visual experiences reported by 3 subjects after LSD did not occur after placebo or in ordinary experience.

It is interesting to note that duration of blindness was not related to the occurrence of visual hallucinations; nor was intelligence, acuity of visual memory, or use of visual imagery in speech.

Read the entire post at the Mindhacks blog.

Thanks Dan Levy!

 
As a proud Angeleno since 1991, of course I’ve noticed the various small oil rigs along La Cienega Boulevard and elsewhere, but I didn’t realize there was one in… the Beverly Center? Would you believe there are several under the Farmer’s Market too? Am I pulling your leg? Nope! There are oil wells all around the city—particularly in Beverly Hills—disguised as buildings, islands and even palm trees. Before L.A. was firmly established as a movie and TV town it was an oil town. In fact, Los Angeles is part of a region that is third largest oil producer in America with over 20 billion barrels of oil yet to be extracted under our feet! Who knew?

Nate Harrington, a local DJ and publisher of the “Constantly Pregnant” zine filed this video report for Vice Media’s new online series “Uneven Terrain,” peeking behind the scenes to uncover LA’s hidden oil rigs residing within hollow office buildings, the camouflaged rigs standing right next to high schools, and the ones concealed within popular shopping malls. Fascinating!

Cross posting this from Brand X

 
With a philosophy seemingly diametrically opposed to that of elected law enforcement officials in Los Angeles, the attorney general of Colorado, John Suthers (a Republican), has advised the governor of that state that medical marijuana sales should be regulated and taxed like alcohol and tobacco (and not tax- exempt like pharmaceuticals are, as medical cannabis is not prescribed per se, but “recommended” by doctors). This plan seems consistent with the stark reality in these dark times that state and county governments need to seek new avenues of public funding that will not prove to be politically unpopular. Medical cannabis activists have long been pro-taxation, as it confers legitimacy on the space.

The taxation of medical marijuana sales is something that we hear a lot about in California, and the above graphic gives some idea of how much money would be left on the table should medical marijuana be banned—or merely hounded and harassed out of business—here in Los Angeles. City Atty. Carmen Trutanich and Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley have declared their intentions to continue fighting the medical marijuana dispensaries, but it’s important to keep in mind that 77% of Los Angeles residents indicated that they were for the regulation and taxation of dispensaries, according to a recent Mason-Dixon poll.

No matter what sort of spin you put on the issue, ignoring the revenue-creating potential of taxing cannabis sales—which will continue, legally or otherwise—hardly seems prudent when we live in an era in which local governments can’t afford to fix potholes or hire schoolteachers.

Cross posting this from Brand X/Graphic via Sloshspot

An archaeological team that discovered caves full of Tibetan manuscripts in the Himalayas thinks it could be linked with the fabled paradise of Shangri-La. Real, or History Channel fodder? Read on…

A treasure trove of Tibetan art and manuscripts uncovered in “sky high” Himalayan caves could be linked to the storybook paradise of Shangri-La, says the team that made the discovery.

The 15th-century religious texts and wall paintings were found in caves carved into sheer cliffs in the ancient kingdom of Mustang?

 
?

 
200-plus years of colonialism in 3.5 minutes, “The data refers to the evolution of the top 4 maritime empires of the XIX and XX centuries by extent. The visual emphasis is on their decline.”

 
(via Seed, via 3 Quarks Daily)

This guy is like the Christian Bale of Winnebago sales. NSFW if you work in a rectory. GET THE F*** OUT OF HERE YOU FLIES!

 
“Bloody, barbaric, free-for-all,” or the must-see ticket for the 2012 London Olympics?  Welcome to the wonderful and frightening world of Buzkashi, a sport which, thanks to our prior scrubbing of the Taliban from Afghanistan, is now bigger than ever:

Is the world ready for a sport played with a headless goat carcass?  Haji Abdul Rashid thinks it is and has big plans: corporate sponsors, television rights and beyond.  “We want it to become an Olympic sport,” says Rashid, who heads the Buzkashi Federation.

To understand how ambitious ?

Der Spiegel Online reports on the upcoming trial of a German spy who betrayed state secrets to his lover. The whole thing begs to be made into a movie, and we’re not even fully into the second act yet. Serious drama:

An explosive trial about to start in Munich involves a spy accused of betraying state secrets to his gay lover. It promises to expose the shadowy world of Germany’s foreign intelligence and may end up damaging the service…

The defendants are Anton K., a BND agent for many years, and his interpreter. The trial revolves around money and the betrayal of secrets. Love, sex and a betrayed wife are also part of the checkered tale, which takes place against the seedy backdrop of Kosovo’s criminal underworld. In other words, the case that the federal prosecutor general is now preparing is the stuff of a larger-than-life drama, the sort of material that would normally be found in the movies or in bestsellers.

While the outcome of the trial remains uncertain, it is already clear that there will be at least one loser: the BND. If the prosecution wins its case, the agency will face the embarrassment of having to admit that one of its agents was out of control for years, and that a career spy gave away state secrets in the height of passion while on assignment in Kosovo. But an acquittal would be just as embarrassing for the agency, because it would show that the BND had expended tremendous resources pursuing one of its employees.

(Der Spiegel: Trial of Gay Spy Threatens to Embarrass German Intelligence)

Iceberg Slim is well-known as the literary progenitor of gangster rap (Ice-T, Ice Cube and Jay-Z have all listed him as a formative influence), mostly for his groundbreaking autobiography Pimp. Check out this great tribute to Slim by Josh Alan Friedman:

Like the painter Grandma Moses, Iceberg Slim was reborn an artist after age 40. His third, and harshest prison sentence - 10 months in steel solitary at the Cook County House of Corrections - finally crushed the pimp right out of him. Vilifying past predatory values, he exorcised his demons into folklore, leaving a seven-book legacy. Pimp: The Story of My Life, contained bookend warnings against the life. But Iceberg’s masterpiece only bolstered pimp liberation amidst the blaxploitation movie craze. In Times Square, for instance, a hundred fur-coated Superflys lorded over a thousand streetwalkers, taking renegade control of 8th Avenue. For them, Pimp declassified the sorcery of whore control, became a textbook for wannabe’s, and lent ethnic pride to the hideous profession.

Pimp still holds as perhaps the greatest chronicle ever written on male-female relations. In the flush of literary success, white feminist-journalist types sought out interviews like intellectual groupies. Pimp philosophy, Iceberg believed, might be adapted to mainstream relationships. “My theory is that some quantum of pimp in every man would perhaps enhance his approach to women,” he told the Washington Post. “Because I think it’s a truism that women gravitate to a man who can at least flash transient evidence of heelism. . . Women are prone to masochism, anyway. I think if you are able to manufacture a bit of ‘heelism’ in your nature and give them a sense of insecurity as to whether some voluptuous rival might come along and steal you, then you are a treasured jewel.”

I read Pimp when I was 13. I’m not sure it exactly uh helped my skills with women, but it certainly gave me a new vocabulary to irritate my friends with.

However, nothing compares to Slim’s readings of his own work on the album Reflections. Hearing Iceberg Slim’s renditions of key points in his life?

Pope Benedictus
 

Lady Di
 

Dalai Lama
 
From Lost At E Minor:

The latest innovation in the world of the puppet toys are the unsettling dolls of celebrities that are manufactured by the German company ?ج

 
Naughty WTF video from French electronic band Flairs. Ummm… Err…

Truckers Delight animated video clip directed by newcomer wunderkid J?ɬ

I hear the sound of heads exploding all across the vaunted land of Nerddom. Porn star and Darklord of the IXth Dimension Sasha Grey is set to star as Molly Millions in a six hour stage production of Neuromancer at the New Museum in NYC. R. U. Sirius at h+ Magazine says:

It’s a play… no it’s a reading… no it’s… hard to tell.  But on November 22, from noon to 6 pm, the New Museum in NYC is doing some sort of cool six hour Neuromancer thing that they describe thusly:

“An ambitious new work by Brody Condon, Case is a contemporary adaptation of the classic cyberpunk novel Neuromancer by William Gibson. Combining Gibson?

 
If you live or find yourself in Paris this holiday season, you must visit the first big Paris show of artist Paul Laffoley at the Palais de Tokyo through Jan 17, 2010. There is also a new Laffoley poster from the event and it’s amazing, I got mine in the mail yesterday. Proceeds from the poster sales are 100% dedicated to the costs of completing photography and printing of the Paul Laffoley Catalogue Raisonne currently being put together by Douglas Walla at Kent Gallery in New York. There is a lot of work so it’s a huge undertaking that will be spread across several volumes. I think it’s what’s needed before the public at large finally catches on about what a genius we have in our midst.

You can buy a Paul Laffoley poster here. Makes a great Christmas present!

Paul Laffoley in Paris.

The gallery at Palais de Tokyo.

 
An enterprising activist/prankster named Robert Erickson yes man’d a contingent of mentally challenged Tea Baggers in Minneapolis by getting them to chant—it was an anti-immigrant rally, basically—“Columbus go home” like braying jackasses until a few of these dim-bulbs caught on. It’s bust-a-gut funny and disturbing at the same time. Watch the one old guy in the NRA hat guy lose it at the end.

When I was watching this I was thinking how these people are so angry, they don’t like the way things are going, they know they are less well off than they were before and they are pissed off and they have a right to be, but the problem is, their anger is directed at the wrong targets. This is in no small part due to the out-sized influence of assholes like Glenn Beck, Lou Dobbs and Bill O’Reilly on low IQ Americans. These Tea Bagger’s opinions are simply ignorant—that’s putting it kindly—and their minds are snapped shut like steel traps. They’re so dumb they don’t even know how dumb they are. It’s impossible to take them seriously as a political force. I take heart that as time goes on and demographics change in this country that there will be less of this kind of idiocy moving forward in history. The faces in the crowd here are mostly senior citizens. They’re not going to be around, most of these folks in 20-30 years. We’re watching the death throes of a certain reactionary element of American society that we can all do better without. It’s not going to happen tomorrow, but it is will eventually happen. [To clarify, I still think there will be dumb people, but they’ll be less dumb than the Boomer tea baggers simply because they will be less old-fashioned and have lived in a more interconnected, multicultural world than their parents. Does that make sense?]

 
Equinox Fitness Clubs asked we four at Dangerous Minds to tour their facilities, write up our impressions and offer our readers a 3-day trial membership so they can check out an Equinox near them. Click here to sign up.

I agree with all of what Richard had to say in his post about Equinox. The main thing he mentions is that it was sparkling clean and this is quite true. That’s a big plus for me, too—but I have a few other observations to offer.

From a woman’s perspective, Equinox seems extremely luxurious. The spa looked especially good to me and the prices were better than reasonable. Everything smelled nice, the sauna was extra clean (that word again) and I loved the way everything looked. The yoga studio was very “zen” but at the same time ultra modern and chic. There was nice Italian modernist furniture in the waiting room/lobby area. The spa staff had ready answers to all of our questions, were friendly and very knowledgeable about all they offered there. I’m definitely going to check out the spa one day soon and pamper myself. I’d been looking for a good place to go in LA (without naming names, I had a horrific experience once in what is probably LA’s best known spa chain and so I’m pretty picky!) and I was quite impressed by the day spa at the Equinox club on Sunset Blvd, the club we visited.

Second woman-only observation: I would feel comfortable working out at an Equinox club. The male clientele seems to be on the “classier” side of the equation and I wouldn’t fear dumb guys hitting on me in such a high end gym. There is nothing worse than that and every woman knows what I am talking about.

I got the sense during our tour that the club was undergoing constant upgrading and improvements. Improvements to an already pretty fantastic gym, I should say. They had just gotten a fleet of brand new state-of-the-art Schwinn exercise bikes, and the men’s locker rooms were being redone from the floors up when we were there. I know I keep coming back to the same thing, how clean the club is, but if you think about it, gyms can get really grody, really fast and this place positively gleamed. It’s a big, huge part of enjoying your workout experience, are you with me ladies?

Finally, if you did want to hang out and talk to someone cute afterward, there’s an Elixir health cafe with all kinds of yummy drinks and things right on the premises. I can see myself coming here often after a workout. I’d take an Elixir over a Starbucks any day.

All in all, great experience. What more can I say beside this is the single nicest gym I’ve ever been in? If you’d like to check out an Equinox Fitness Club near you, click here for a 3-day trial membership and tell ‘em Dangerous Minds sent you.