Simon Christen: The Unseen Sea (Vimeo)
A collection of time lapses Simon Christen took around the San Francisco Bay Area roughly shot over the period of one year.
Scott Burns: Hope for Home Values (assetbuilder.com)
… the value of our homes is so central to our financial security and middle class prosperity that I went to visit Michael Castleman, the CEO and prime mover at Metro Study, Inc. Castleman and his firm were the primary data source that fueled Fortune's optimism. … My first question: Does he still believe the home market can, and will, turn around? His answer: You bet.
Paul Constant: Shut Up, Hippie (The Stranger)
The environmental movement needs a voice, a writer who can make its case to a large number of people in an accessible way. … What we need to get people involved are human stories, told in an entertaining and emotional way-environmental journalism needs its own Hunter S. Thompson or Joan Didion, a writer with voice, passion, and skill.
David Bruce has 42 Kindle books on Amazon.com with 250 anecdotes in each book. Each book is $1, so for $42 you can buy 10,500 anecdotes. Search for "Funniest People," "Coolest People, "Most Interesting People," "Kindest People," "Religious Anecdotes," "Maximum Cool," and "Resist Psychic Death."
Kirk Douglas (born Issur Danielovitch, December 9, 1916) is an American stage and film actor, film producer and author.
Source
Charlie was first, and correct, with:
Kirk Douglas
Alan J said:
Kirk Douglas
Marian responded:
Kirk Douglas
BttbB replied:
That would be Kirk Douglas, SallyP's favorite Viking... Yesterday's 'Berlin Cold War Listening Station' link took me back thinking about an old Army buddy who did exactly that as a member of the 'Berlin Brigade' and a German linguist in the early 70's. That's all he did all day, listening to and translating the East German Army radio frequencies traffic, either 'real-time' or recorded. He was also a trained Signal Corps radio engineer and I came to know him when he was transferred back to CONUS and Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio where I worked. There he helped run and produce our little radio/TV system used for 'in-service' medical training. We were room-mates living in an 'off-post' apartment and he would occasionally regale our small group of friends with his 'Cold War intrigue' stories and life in Berlin surrounded by the 'Evil Empire'... BTW, Monsieur Zig-Zag was usually in attendance during those sessions... :)
Adam answered:
Kirk Douglas
Sally said:
Kirk Douglas (Born Issur Danielovitch, December 9, 1916 Amsterdam, New York, United States. Born the same date as my precious grandson!
Issur was famous for the dimple in his chin. My grandson has two dimples in his cheeks - facial of course...
PS: The rain is coming in, I can feel it in my bones...
Jim from CA, retired to ID is enjoying a cruise.
MAM wrote:
Kirk Douglas
And, Joe S answered:
Why do I know this stuff? It's a blessing............and a curse.
Kirk Douglas
Sally, I spoke to a few "friends." Help is on the way.
John Simon's new
film of Philip K. Dick'sRadio Free
Albemuth is proof positive that mind boggling science fiction can feature
battling human beings instead of battling robots.
"Reality is that which, when you stop
believing in it, doesn't go away."
- Philip K.
Dick
"I don't believe anybody. Even the
most knowledgeable person on any subject has only a small fraction of the big
picture. Whatever anyone says, you add it or subtract if from the big picture.
Multiplication and division are out. As soon as you start multiplying and
dividing the big picture by individual pieces that happen to fit together, you
end up with a sum that's far from a summation."
- Kilgore Trout
-
Philip K. Dick is such a
good writer you almost wish Hollywood had never discovered him, that he
could have remained the overlooked genius, the fanciful madman whose ideas were
so profound he could barely find the words to describe them, completely beyond
the realm of cinematic translation. There's an alternate universe where that
happened, but we live in the universe where this happened...
Ridley Scott
and Philip K. Dick (who died before Blade Runner came
out)
Why PKD isn't the subject of the same
adulation as Stephen King, with rows and rows in every book store and library of
everything he's ever written, remains a mystery. Search for Philip K. Dick in
the sci/fi section of any but a specialty shop and you're lucky to see two or
three, but it's not like fans are bereft of material. There are annual Philip K.
Dick awards, his wife has written a memoir called Searching for Philip K.
Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is now a highly-praised
graphic novel, Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said is supposedly being made
by the producers of Terminator, Nottingham Trent University has an annual
PKD Day celebration, The Adjustment Bureau is now Available on Blu ray
and DVD, and in an alternate universe, Amazon will give you one of them for free
just by mentioning my name, but that still doesn't explain why The Three
Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch isn't in every Borders. (There must be some
other reason.)
Just
to get it out of the way, from this point on I will continue to refer to Philip
K. Dick as PKD because I inadvertently wrote a headline that went something like
Radio Free Albemuth, a triumph of Dick, thus causing a cavalcade of
inappropriate dick jokes to echo through the shadowy hallways of my demented
brain, and which will be corralled into this paragraph and this paragraph alone.
One of the difficulties of writing about Dick is not in figuring out how many
people were influenced by his work but how to do so without creating inadvertent
dick jokes. If I were to mention Philip Jose Farmer or Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., if I
were to say Farmer this or Vonnegut that, you'd know to whom I was referring.
Obviously Vonnegut is Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., and Farmer isn't just some random
farmer who wandered into the proceedings unannounced. But if I refer to the cult
of Dick or how Dick always makes me laugh and how Dick changed my life
completely and how I own every book with the name Dick on it, or how Dick is
best enjoyed between two covers, and if I know your film involves Dick, I'm
going to run to my neighborhood theater to see how you handled my precious, the
reader could be excused for laughing behind my back. Philip K. Dick is harder to
write about than one would imagine. Try Googling Vonnegut. Now try Googling
Dick. See what I mean?
Now that we've
gotten the 300 lb. gorilla of dick jokes out of my system, it's time to point
out that fans of Kurt Vonnegut Jr. might think of PKD as Kilgore Trout, the
renegade lunatic science fiction writer who appears in a good half dozen of
Vonnegut's own profound novels. Vonnegut's descriptions of Kilgore Trout are
spot-on for the pre-Blade Runner PKD - Trout wrote over 117 novels
and over 2000 short
stories, and is usually described as
an unappreciated science fiction writer whose works are used only as filler
material in pornographic magazines. He has only two fans, Eliot Rosewater and Billy Pilgrim, both Vonnegut characters who have complete
collections of Trout's work.** Philip Jose Farmer's "Venus on the Half
shell by Kilgore Trout" reads a lot like a Philip K. Dick novel, too. Vonnegut
eventually admitted that Kilgore Trout was in fact based upon Theodore Sturgeon*
(Sturgeon/Trout, get it?**), but I will always think of Trout as half Sturgeon,
half Dick. (How did that dick joke get in here? Flee! Be gone to the previous
paragraph!)
"So
I ask, in my writing, What is real? Because unceasingly we are bombarded with
pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very
sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not distrust their motives; I
distrust their power. They have a lot of it. And it is an astonishing power:
that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind. I ought to know. I do
the same thing. It is my job to create universes, as the basis of one novel
after another. And I have to build them in such a way that they do not fall
apart two days later. Or at least that is what my editors hope. However, I
will reveal a secret to you: I like to build universes which do fall apart. I
like to see them come unglued, and I like to see how the characters in the
novels cope with this problem. I have a secret love of chaos. There should be
more of it. Do not believe -- and I am dead serious when I say this -- do not
assume that order and stability are always good, in a society or in a
universe. The old, the ossified, must always give way to new life and the
birth of new things. Before the new things can be born the old must perish.
This is a dangerous realization, because it tells us that we must eventually
part with much of what is familiar to us. And that hurts. But that is part of
the script of life. Unless we can psychologically accommodate change, we
ourselves begin to die, inwardly. What I am saying is that objects, customs,
habits, and ways of life must perish so that the authentic human being can
live. And it is the authentic human being who matters most, the viable,
elastic organism which can bounce back, absorb, and deal with the new."
-
Philip K. Dick: How to Build a Universe that Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later
-
One day, PKD woke up from a fever dream, as have we all, wrapped
up in an enigma, awaking from an alien thought pattern, surely not his own, a
message from somewhere else, entering his brain, sending him thoughts from
something he could only describe as a system that was vast, active, living, and
intelligent, outside himself, sending him messages he could only transcribe as
science fiction, making up fantastic worlds beyond imagination, but never giving
himself full credit, believing in his own personal vision, that his pineal gland
was crystallizing, bringing on what was once defined as senility, but which he
knew as a radio transmitter, deep in his brain, a self-generating crystal set
allowing him to tune into the cosmos, allowing the cosmos to contact him, a
wireless remote controlling his body from somewhere else, a cosmic radio
station, Radio Free Albemuth, transmitting the word of the VALIS,
the Vast Active Living Intelligent System that spoke through him, PKD, writer of
fanciful novels that lived in the vast underbelly of alternative universes we've
all grown so used to ignoring.
Specifically, Hugh Everett's
many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics states that every time the
universe has a choice between different realities, it literally splits into
every one, creating an eternity of alternate universes where every possible
thing that can happen, does happen. This theory, like the theory of gravity and
the theory of relativity, has yet to be disproven. How could one disapprove such
a thing? You can't. It's a theory that can't be disproven, which was proof
enough to PKD. He believed deeply in this
theory and his novels show it. In his novels, things happen that can only
possibly be explained by the alternate universe theory. PKD knew he wasn't making this shit up, that there
actually WAS an alternative universe in which the Axis won WWII, like in The
Man in the High Castle, Europe was given to Germany while Japan got the
Americas, and everyone was reading a book about another alternative universe,
ours, where the allies won the war. It was inevitable because everything that
can happen, does happen. The universe splits into another universe every
time something different can happen, which is infinitely, every second of your
reality, you've just chosen to follow the path you're on, but in another
universe, you didn't eat those little chocolate donuts.
It was a pink light, beaming
directly to his brain from somewhere in space, a satellite, an overwhelming
religious experience that shook him to the core. According to We'll always have VALIS, "Phil dedicated the rest of this life to
understanding these visions. He wrote constantly about them, producing a 8000
page exegesis," a massive raving about the nature of the universe that
was either genuine divine intervention, the ravings of a drug-addled lunatic
losing his grip on reality, or simply symptoms of the stroke that would kill him
months later. (To me, much of Exegesis, at least the parts one can read
online, the unreadable rants about Jesus, Spinoza, the trinity, the nature of
Karma and enlightenment, are products of a mind that has mysteriously lost its
humor. He takes himself so serious you just want him to snap out of it, thanks
for the profundity without entertainment value, so good luck finding a film in
it.)
Either way, there is irony in the fact that the mad
preposterous ravings of one science fiction writer, L. Ron Hubbard are accepted
as gospel by millions of Scientologists, whereas the comparatively rational
ravings of PKD, which match up pretty constantly with accepted parallel reality
theory, have to be treated as science fiction. One can just as easily imagine a
world, which must exist somewhere, where VALIS is a true religion with millions
of followers of the divine words of PKD, while the works of L. Ron Hubbard are
turned into bad John Travolta movies.
As the keeper of this monumental truth,
PKD found himself in a quandary. He found Scientology vile and refused to
do the same thing, even though he knew he was right, that he had found the one
true religion, that we were all radio receivers, using the crystals in our
pineal glands to get our orders from beyond, not god, not Yahweh, just a vast
active living intelligent system that we might as well call VALIS.
I'll leave it to writer/director
John Simon to explain the difference between PKD's novel VALIS and PKD's
novel Radio Free Albemuth, but let it be said that no other novel of his
is more personal or more paranoid. PKD took his own personal dealings
with VALIS, the fever dreams keeping him up at night, and gave them
to a fictional character named Nicholas Brady, while making himself Nick's best
friend Phil trying to figure out what the hell is going on. Is his friend
nuts or what? Who could believe such a thing?
In
the movie, as in the book, it's real, there's no need for a spoiler alert,
right away, we see the satellites sending their transmissions down to Nick, so
we know it's really happening. What's more mysterious is the world this takes
place in. Where are we? Yet another alternate reality, much like the one in
Terry Gilliam's Brazil, where everything is ALMOST right, a deliberately
incongruous mixture of technologies and politics, part 1984, part Richard
Nixon on steroids.
Radio Free Albemuth (written in
1976 and published posthumously in 1985*) is very much PKD's adaptation of
George Orwell's 1984. The original was published in 1948, Orwell just
switched the last two numbers to come up with a date 36 years in the future
where the world has gone through horrible unimaginable changes. In 1976, 1984
was just over the horizon, PKD could see it coming, only with Nixon in office it
wasn't so unimaginable. He could write a REAL 1984 by changing very little.
Radio Free Albemuth takes place in an alternate reality that's damn close
to the real America of the 80s.
Even if you've never read a word PKD has
written, even if you've only seen a few of the films based upon his novels, how
can anyone see Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report, A Scanner Darkly,
Paycheck, Next, or The Adjustment Bureau and not ask themselves who
is the mind-blistering madman who made all this shit up.
Just as I will always picture Jack
Nicholson in Reds whenever I think of Eugene O'Neill, I will always
picture Shea Whigham in Radio Free Albemuth whenever I think of
PKD. It's a tricky performance to pull off since, in the context of what's
happening, he's the sane one, the rational science fiction writer with the
emphasis on fiction. What's happening to his friend Nicholas (Jonathan Scarfe)
simply cannot be happening in real life, even though he makes up even more
implausible stories every day. It's a restrained and fascinating performance,
but Simon gets great performances all
around, from Alanis Morrissette as a mysterious songstress with her own
relationship to VALIS, to Katheryn Winnick, who plays the traditional long
suffering wife who doesn't know if her husband is going crazy, with passion and
grace.
The lack of chase scenes and pumped-up
CGI lunacy is actually one of the charms of the film. It's low budget because
this is all it takes to tell the story, which is intellectual, political,
musical, and scientific, in fact, everything good science fiction should be. The
fact the SyFy channel has degenerated into one cheesy monster flick after
another, as though nothing has changed in the science fiction world since
Creature from the Black Lagoon, instead of featuring films like this that
stretch the human imagination, is just appalling. No wonder they changed their
name. They're to science fiction what Sunny Delight is to Orange
Juice.
Radio Free Albemuth
opens up the Pandora's Box of the VALIS trilogy. I hope Hollywood is smart
enough to let Simon explore it further. Mindfucks this massive deserve proper
care and treatment.
"The authentic human being is one of us who
instinctively knows what he should not do, and, in addition, he will balk at
doing it. He will refuse to do it, even if this brings down dread consequences
to him and to those whom he loves. This, to me, is the ultimately heroic trait
of ordinary people; they say no to the tyrant and they calmly take the
consequences of this resistance. Their deeds may be small, and almost always
unnoticed, unmarked by history. Their names are not remembered, nor did these
authentic humans expect their names to be remembered. I see their authenticity
in an odd way: not in their willingness to perform great heroic deeds but in
their quiet refusals. In essence, they cannot be compelled to be what they are
not."
-
Philip K. Dick: How to Build a Universe that Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later
-
The epitaph on Kilgore
Trout's tombstone reads, "Life is no way to treat an animal." Guess what
Philip K. Dick's tombstone reads?
He said it, I didn't.
MD
* correctly quoted from
Wikipedia
** deliberately misquoted from
Wikipedia
***actually remembered
****remembered from a dream state,
somewhere between a hallucination and consciousness, where the boundaries
between fact and fiction are non-existent and people who use footnotes aren't
automatically assumed to be ripping off David Foster Wallace.
If I've failed to mention any of
Simon's other projects like The Getaway and Wicker Man, or
Katheryn Winnick's brilliant performance on House MD, or Shea Whigham's
outstanding bit in Boardwalk Empire, it's only because I expect you to do
your own research. What am I, the fucking IMDB?
CBS begins the night with a RERUN'NCIS", followed by a RERUN'NCIS: The 2nd One', then another RERUN'NCIS: The 2nd One'.
Scheduled on a FRESHDave are Kim, Kourtney & Khloe Kardashian, Michael Emerson, and the Jim Jones Revue.
Scheduled on a FRESHCraig are Lisa Kudrow and Richard Engel.
NBC starts the night with a FRESH'It's Worth What?', followed by a FRESH'America's Got Talent'.
Scheduled on a FRESHLeno are Wanda Sykes, Nick Swardson, and Roger Daltrey.
Scheduled on a FRESHJimmy Fallon are Denis Leary, Olivia Munn, and the Antlers.
On a RERUNCarson 'The Scab' Daly (from 4/8/11) are Evan Glodell, Black Milk, the Black Angels, Nicole Atkins and the Black Sea.
ABC opens the night with a RERUN'Wipeout', followed by a FRESH'Take The Money & Run', then a FRESH'Combat Hospital'.
Scheduled on a FRESHJimmy Kimmel are Uncle Frank Memorial Celebration, and Don Rickles.
The CW offers a RERUN'90210', followed by a RERUN'Shedding For The Wedding'.
Faux has a RERUN'Glee', followed by a RERUN'Raising Hope', then another RERUN'Raising Hope'.
MY has 'Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader?', followed by another 'Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader?', then 'Don't Forget The Lyrcis', followed by another 'Don't Forget The Lyrics'.
A&E has 3 hours of 'Billy The Exterminator', followed by a FRESH'Billy The Exterminator', and another 'Billy The Exterminator'.
AMC offers the movie 'Bulletproof', followed by the movie 'The Peacemaker'.
BBC -
[6:00 AM] BBC World News
[7:00 AM] BBC World News
[8:00 AM] The Graham Norton Show - Ep 5 - Lady Gaga, Geoffrey Rush, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jason Byrne
[9:00 AM] Gordon Ramsay's F Word - Episode 4
[10:00 AM] Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares - Ep 7 Jack's Waterfront
[11:00 AM] Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares - Ep 3 Momma Cherri's
[12:00 PM] Doctor Who - Ep 11 Utopia
[1:00 PM] Gordon Ramsay's F Word - Episode 5
[2:00 PM] Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares - Ep 4 Black Pearl
[3:00 PM] Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares - Ep 7 Oscars
[4:00 PM] Star Trek: The Next Generation - Ep 7 Reunion
[5:00 PM] Doctor Who - Ep 10 Love & Monsters
[6:00 PM] Doctor Who - Ep 11 Fear Her
[7:00 PM] Top Gear - Episode 6
[8:00 PM] Top Gear - Episode 1
[9:00 PM] Top Gear - Episode 2
[10:00 PM] Gordon Ramsay's F Word - Episode 9
[11:00 PM] Gordon Ramsay's F Word - Episode 10
[12:00 AM] Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares - Ep 9 - Le Bistro
[1:00 AM] Gordon Ramsay's F Word - Episode 9
[2:00 AM] Gordon Ramsay's F Word - Episode 10
[3:00 AM] Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares - Ep 8 - Lido Di Manhattan Beach
[4:00 AM] Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares - Ep 7 Oscars
[5:00 AM] BBC World News (ALL TIMES EST)
Bravo has 'Flipping Out', 'Real Housewives Of Beverly Hills', followed by a FRESH'Flipping Out', then a FRESH'Rachel Zoe Project'.
Comedy Central has last night's 'Jon Stewart', last night's 'Colbert Report', 'Larry The Cable Guy: Tailgate Party', 'Tosh.0', another 'Tosh.0', still another 'Tosh.0', and 'Workaholics'.
Scheduled on a FRESHJon Stewart is Buddy Roemer.
Scheduled on a FRESHColbert Report is Gov. Tim Pawlenty.
FX has '2½ Men', followed by the movie 'X-Men Origins: Wolverine', then a FRESH'Sons Of Anarchy'.
History has 'Modern Marvels', followed by the FRESH'Targeting Bin Laden', then a FRESH'Top Shot'.
IFC -
[6:00AM] Lords of Dogtown
[8:15AM] Delirious
[10:30AM] The Whitest Kids U'Know
[10:45AM] Young Broke and Beautiful - Memphis
[11:15AM] Dummy
[1:15PM] Lords of Dogtown
[3:40PM] The Making Of: Transformation
[3:45PM] Delirious
[6:00PM] Arrested Development - Justice Is Blind
[6:30PM] Arrested Development - Best Man for the GOB
[7:00PM] Whisker Wars - West Coast Showdown
[7:30PM] Rhett & Link: Commercial Kings - Da Spot
[15PM - 21PM] , Paid Programming
[8:05PM] Religulous
[10:20PM] The Notorious Bettie Page
[12:30AM] Thirteen
[2:45AM] Religulous
[5:00AM] Arrested Development - Justice Is Blind
[5:30AM] Arrested Development - Best Man for the GOB (ALL TIMES EST)
Aretha Franklin performs prior to President Barack Obama speaking in Detroit, Monday, Sept. 5, 2011. Obama's speech at the annual event was serving as a dress rehearsal for the jobs address he's delivering to a joint session of Congress on Thursday night.
Photo by Paul Sancya
Classic Arabian folk tales brimming with the modern influence of the Arab Spring sweeping North Africa and the Middle East closed out the 2011 Edinburgh International Festival.
Erotic, tragic, hilarious, romantic, the stories from the cities, souks and courtyards contained in "Alf layla wa-layla" - the Thousand-And-One Nights - played to enthusiastic audiences as the three-week festival drew to a close at the weekend.
Director Tim Supple said it was inevitable that the events of the "Arab Spring" sweeping through the Middle East and North Africa "would become and overwhelming part of our project."
The cast of the production included actors and musicians from Egypt, Syria and Tunisia. The 16 stories lasting six hours in a mixture of Arabic, French and English ran over two separate performances.
Actress and director Famke Janssen poses for a photocall for her film "Bringing up Bobby" during the 37th American Film Festival in Deauville September 5, 2011.
Photo by Regis Duvignau
World champion soprano Pretty Yende never knew opera existed until a soaring score of an airline commercial came over the television in her South African black township home 10 years ago.
The flash of 19th-century French composer Leo Delibes' classic "Flower Duet" from his opera "Lakme" so moved the teenager growing up without librettas and arias that she asked a high school teacher the next day what the music was.
"He told me it's called opera," recalled Yende, now a resident at Milan's renowned La Scala a decade after telling her teacher: "I need to do that."
From Thandukukhanya in eastern South Africa to northern Italy, the 26-year-old was recently handed joint top honour in the Operalia world opera competition founded by Spanish maestro Placido Domingo.
South African black opera voices have burst onto the international stage, mirroring the country's shift to democracy, decades after white Afrikaner soprano Mimi Coertse debuted at the Vienna State Opera in 1956.
He may be 87, but don't suggest to French crooner and veritable national monument Charles Aznavour that his forthcoming tour is a goodbye. "I have never, ever used the word farewell," he quickly points out.
The legendary singer-songwriter pleased fans the world over when he announced plans for a month-long residency at Paris' landmark Olympia theatre starting September 7, followed by a nationwide tour.
Aznavour's stint in the capital is a return to the stage that launched his career 55 years ago. Close to 1,000 songs and some 60 films later, there is -- once again -- speculation that he may choose the moment to announce his retirement.
"Some of the press say anything!" he told AFP. "I said that I was going to do one of my last tours. But when (US director) Martin Scorsese presents his latest film, you don't say he's not going to make another."
Actor Colin Firth and his wife Livia Giuggioli pose for photographers as they arrive on the "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" red carpet at the 68th Venice Film Festival September 5, 2011.
Photo by Alessandro Bianchi
They lived in cells barely big enough to turn around in and usually fought until they died. This was the lot of those at a sensational scientific discovery unveiled Monday: The well-preserved ruins of a gladiator school in Austria.
The Carnuntum ruins are part of a city of 50,000 people 28 miles (45 kilometers) east of Vienna that flourished about 1,700 years ago, a major military and trade outpost linking the far-flung Roman empire's Asian boundaries to its central and northern European lands.
Mapped out by radar, the ruins of the gladiator school remain underground. Yet officials say the find rivals the famous Ludus Magnus - the largest of the gladiatorial training schools in Rome - in its structure. And they say the Austrian site is even more detailed than the well-known Roman ruin, down to the remains of a thick wooden post in the middle of the training area, a mock enemy that young, desperate gladiators hacked away at centuries ago.
The gladiator complex is part of a 10-square kilometer (3.9-square mile) site over the former city, an archaeological site now visited by hundreds of thousands of tourists a year. Officials said they had no date yet for the start of excavations of the gladiator school, saying experts needed time to settle on a plan that conserves as much as possible.
Four former executives from News Corp's UK newspaper arm will appear before a powerful parliamentary committee on Tuesday in the ongoing hunt to establish who knew what about phone hacking and whether James Murdoch did enough to uncover the scandal.
The committee called the four men who no longer work for News International -- two lawyers, the head of human resources and an editor -- after evidence emerged which suggested that the company had engaged in a huge corporate cover up.
The four will appear before the Culture, Media and Sport Committee to answer questions on their role in the hacking affair, which wiped billions off Rupert Murdoch's company in July as a sense of crisis engulfed the firm.
Their testimony is likely to increase pressure on James Murdoch as two of the men have already contradicted Rupert's son over what he knew and when, while another has accused both Murdochs of "serious inaccuracies".
British actors John Hurt and Gary Oldman arrive for the press conference of the film Tailor Soldier Spy at the 68th edition of the Venice Film Festival in Venice, Italy, Monday, Sept. 5, 2011.
Photo by Joel Ryan
Deezer won a legal victory on Monday when a French court threw out a complaint by Universal Music France seeking to block the music streaming site from using its catalogue of songs.
The Paris High Court dismissed the complaint in its entirety, which Universal Music France brought after Deezer continued to allow its subscribers to listen -- but not download -- songs following their contract dispute.
In 2008, Deezer concluded a deal under which it paid Universal Music France for use of its catalogue, but in May 2011 it refused new conditions including limiting its free offer to listening to five consecutive songs.
In June, Deezer restricted its free service to five hours per month at the insistence of music companies. It said the change led to it losing many free users but a five-fold increase in paying customers.
Girls sing as they stand around a carpet of flowers during a procession to commemorate Peru's most revered Catholic religious icon, "Lord of the Miracles", in Lima September 4, 2011. Every year, 2,500 children of the "Children's Brotherhood of The Lord of Miracles", between 9 and 15 years old, participate in the procession to carry a 300 kg (661 pounds) replica of the religious icon along Lima's main square, before the actual festival in October. The icon's name originated in the 17th century after an earthquake destroyed most of the city, leaving only that mural standing.
Photo by Enrique Castro-Mendivil
Hackers who broke into a web security firm issued hundreds of bogus security certificates for spy agency websites including the CIA as well as for Internet giants like Google, Microsoft and Twitter, the Dutch government said Monday.
Information Technology experts say they suspect the hackers were probably cooperating with the Iranian government, and hundreds of thousands of private communications between Iranian Internet users and Google were likely monitored in August.
Roel Schouwenberg of Internet security firm Kaspersky said Monday night that the incident could have a larger political impact than Stuxnet - a computer worm discovered in July 2010 which targeted Siemens industrial software and equipment running on Microsoft Windows.
"A government operation is the most plausible scenario" he added.
The latest versions of browsers such as Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Google's Chrome and Mozilla's Firefox are now rejecting certificates issued by the firm that was hacked, DigiNotar.
Susanna Nordrum (L) and Stacey Aguilar make "mancakes" in hot ash at the base where the effigy of The Man was burned during the Burning Man "Rites of Passage" arts and music festival in the Black Rock desert of Nevada, September 4, 2011. More than 50,000 people from all over the world have gathered at the sold out festival which is celebrating its 25th year.
Photo by Jim Urquhart
Producer David Gest, Tito Jackson and others close to Michael Jackson on Monday unveiled a singing and spoken-word tribute tour to the late King of Pop.
"A Jackson Named Michael: Remembering a Legend," kicks off in the United Kingdom in March 2012, and follows another tribute set for October in Wales that has caused some controversy among fans of the "Thriller" singer.
Gest's show will feature Tito, a member with Michael of Motown singing sensations The Jackson 5, along with another sibling Rebbie Jackson and friend Deniece Williams singing tunes and telling tales about Jackson's life and career. Plans call for a question-and-answer session with audience members.
The tour also follows the October U.K. release of Gest's documentary film, 'Michael Jackson: The Life of an Icon," which Jackson's mother and family matriarch Katherine Jackson called "a tremendous achievement."
An artist is seen as works on a sculpture of the Hindu deity Durga at a workshop in Kathmandu September 5, 2011. The annual Durga Puja festival, which will start from September 28, is one of the most popular festivals for Hindus. In Hindu mythology, Durga is a symbol for power and the triumph of good over evil.
Photo by Navesh Chitrakar
Wildlife officials in New York may ban captive boar hunts as they try to curb a growing feral hog population before it gets as bad as it is in Southern states, where roaming droves have devastated crops and wildlife habitat with their rooting, wallowing and voracious foraging.
Feral swine are breeding in three counties in central New York, according to a federal study done last year with funding from New York's Invasive Species Council. The wild population statewide is likely in the hundreds , said Gordon Batcheller, head of the state Department of Environmental Conservation's Bureau of Wildlife.
That's small compared with Texas, where biologists estimate the feral hog population at around 2 million, but Batcheller said any number is bad because they're certain to multiply. Damage becomes more noticeable when the population reaches the thousands and the hogs stake out home territories rather than wandering widely.
Eurasian wild boars have become popular on private hunting ranches throughout the U.S. in recent years as an addition to deer and elk. Ranch owners deny they're the source of the free-roaming pigs, but Patrick Rusz, director of wildlife programs for the Michigan Wildlife Conservancy, said the animals started showing up in the wild soon after hunting preserves began importing them. Their distribution is clustered near preserves, he added.
"We're not talking about Porky Pig getting loose from the farm," Rusz said. "These are Russian wild boars. Those animals are Houdini-like escape artists and they breed readily in the wild. We've had domestic pigs for centuries and never had a feral hog problem until the game ranches started bringing these in."
John Hoover, a revered artist in Alaska who used imagery and tales from Native traditions in contemporary works, has died at 91.
His wife, Mary, said Monday that he died Saturday in Washington state, where they lived on the Puget Sound near Grapeview.
Hoover's work has been shown around the world and was prized by collectors, corporations and museums, The Anchorage Daily News reported.
Hoover was born to a Dutch father and an Aleut-Russian mother in Cordova, Alaska. He was a ski instructor in Idaho and a commercial fisherman in Alaska, staying on the latter job until 1991, his wife said.
He told the Daily News in a 1998 interview that he turned to art after building a 58-foot fishing vessel in the late 1950s "without much in the way of power tools." He said he realized what he had done was much like sculpture. His pieces often used a kind of bas relief on carved red cedar.
In 2002, the Anchorage Museum held a major retrospective of his work. In May, the University of Alaska Anchorage awarded him an honorary doctorate.
He had exhibitions around the world, but was particularly appreciated in his home state where the Egan Civic and Convention Center, the Alaska Native Medical Center and the Alaska Native Heritage Center in Anchorage showed his large sculptural work.
Hoovei is survived by his wife, and daughter Anna, also an artist.
Salvatore Licitra, a tenor known in his Italian homeland as the "new Pavarotti" for his potent voice and considerable stamina, died Monday at age 43 after spending nine days in a coma following a motorscooter accident in Sicily.
Catania's Garibaldi Hospital, announcing the death, said Licitra never regained consciousness after suffering severe head and chest injuries in the Aug. 27 accident. Doctors had said Licitra crashed his scooter into a wall near the town of Ragusa, apparently after suffering an interruption of blood to the brain while driving.
The hospital said Licitra's family agreed to make his organs available for transplant.
La Scala noted that Licitra debuted in the famed Milan venue in the 1998-1999 season, with maestro Riccardo Muti conducting him in Verdi's "La Forza del Destino."
But it was on the stage of Metropolitan Opera in New York, that Licitra, the Swiss-born son of Sicilian parents, grabbed the world's attention. He subbed for mega-tenor Luciano Pavarotti in a gala performance in 2002 of Puccini's "Tosca," wowing the audience and winning long ovations for his two big arias. The audience's response brought tears to his eyes.
Italian state TV, giving the news of his death, said Licitra was considered "Pavarotti's heir."
The tenor made his debut in Parma, Italy, in 1998.
He had travelled to the Ragusa area in late summer ahead of a September ceremony to receive a local music prize. Licitra's website, which carried the news of his death, still listed upcoming engagements, including an appearance later this month in Tokyo.
During his career, Licitra also performed at the Vienna State Opera, Munich's Bayerische Staatsoper, London's Royal Opera, Paris' Opera Bastille, and the Lyric Opera of Chicago and several other prestigious venues.
Participant Kevin Wagter, dressed as the "Dust Demon", walks across the playa during the Burning Man "Rites of Passage" arts and music festival in the Black Rock desert of Nevada, September 4, 2011. More than 50,000 people from all over the world have gathered at the sold out festival which is celebrating its 25th year
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In
the movie, as in the book, it's real, there's no need for a spoiler alert,
right away, we see the satellites sending their transmissions down to Nick, so
we know it's really happening. What's more mysterious is the world this takes
place in. Where are we? Yet another alternate reality, much like the one in
Terry Gilliam's Brazil, where everything is ALMOST right, a deliberately
incongruous mixture of technologies and politics, part 1984, part Richard
Nixon on steroids.
