Black Flag

Black Flag was an American punk rock band formed in 1976 in Hermosa Beach, California. The band was established largely as the brainchild of Greg Ginn: the guitarist, primary songwriter and sole continuous member through multiple personnel changes. They are widely considered to be one of the first hardcore punk bands.

Black Flag forged a unique sound early on that mixed the raw simplicity of the Ramones with atonal guitar solos and frequent tempo shifts. The band was also known for the intense and evocative lyrics found in their songs, most of which were penned by Ginn. Like other punk bands of this era, Black Flag gave voice to an anti-authoritarian, non-conformist message, featuring songs punctuated with descriptions of isolation, neurosis, poverty, and paranoia, themes that would be explored further when Henry Rollins joined the group as lead singer in 1981. Most of the band's material was released on Ginn's independent label, SST Records.

Black Flag was—and remains—well respected among their underground punk culture, with their influence primarily in their tireless promotion of a self-controlled DIY ethic and aesthetic. They are often regarded as pioneers in the movement of underground do-it-yourself record labels that flourished among the 1980s punk rock bands. Through constant touring throughout the United States and Canada, and occasionally Europe, Black Flag established an extremely dedicated fan base. Many other musicians would follow Black Flag's lead and book their own tours, utilizing a word-of-mouth network.

Over the course of the 1980s, Black Flag's sound, as well as their notoriety, evolved in ways that alienated much of their early punk audience. As well as being central to the creation of hardcore, they were part of the first wave of American West Coast punk rock and are considered a key influence on the punk subculture. Along with being among the earliest punk rock groups to incorporate elements and the influence of heavy metal melodies and rhythm (particularly in their later records), there were often overt freestyles, free jazz, breakbeat and contemporary classical elements in their sound, especially in Ginn's guitar playing, and the band interspersed records and performances with instrumentals throughout their career. They also played longer, slower, and more complex songs at a time when many bands in their milieu stuck to a raw, fast, three-chord format. As a result, their extensive discography is more stylistically varied than many of their punk rock contemporaries.

The Doors of Perception

The Doors of Perception is a 1954 book by Aldous Huxley detailing his experiences when taking mescaline. Mescaline is the principal agent of the psychedelic cactus peyote, which has been used in American religious ceremonies for thousands of years. The title comes from William Blake's poem The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.

The book takes the form of Huxley’s recollection of a mescaline trip which took place over the course of an afternoon. Huxley recalls the insights he experienced, which range from the "purely aesthetic" to "sacramental vision", he also incorporates later reflections on the experience and its meaning for art and religion.

Huxley had been interested in spiritual matters for some time, in the late Thirties he had become interested in the spiritual teaching of Vedanta and in 1945 he published The Perennial Philosophy, which set out a philosophy which he believed was found amongst mystics of all religions. Huxley had first heard of peyote use in ceremonies of the Native American Church in New Mexico soon after coming to the USA in 1937. He first became aware of the cactus’s active ingredient, mescaline, after reading an academic paper written by Humphry Osmond, a British psychiatrist working at Saskatchewan State Mental Hospital in early 1952.

After reading Osmond’s paper, Huxley sent him a letter on 10 April, 1952 expressing interest in the research and putting himself forwards as an experimental subject. His letter explained his motivations as being rooted in an idea that the brain is a reducing valve that restricts consciousness and hoping mescaline may help access a greater degree of awareness.

After a brief overview of research into mescaline, Huxley recounts that he was given 4/10 of a gram at 11.00 am one day in May 1953. Huxley writes that he hoped to gain insight into extraordinary states of mind and expected to see brightly-colored visionary landscapes. When he only sees lights and shapes, he puts this down to being a bad visualiser, however, he experiences a great change in the external world.

By 12.30, a vase of flowers becomes the "miracle, moment by moment, of naked existence". The experience, he asserts, is neither agreeable nor disagreeable, but simply "is". He likens it to Meister Eckhart’s ‘istigheit’ or ‘is-ness’, and Plato’s ‘Being’ but not separated from ‘Becoming’. He feels he understands the Hindu concept of Satchitananda, as well as the Zen koan that ‘the dharma body of the Buddha is in the hedge’ and Buddhist suchness. In this state, Huxley explains he didn’t have an ‘I’, but instead a ‘not-I’. Meaning and existence, pattern and colour become more significant than spatial relationships and time. Duration is replaced by a perpetual present.

Huxley concludes that mescaline is not enlightenment or the Beatific Vision, but a 'gratuitous grace' (a term taken from St Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica). It is not necessary but helpful, especially so for the intellectual, who can become the victim of words and symbols. Although systematic reasoning is important, direct perception has intrinsic value too. Finally, Huxley maintains that the person who has this experience will be transformed for the better.

Pictorialism

Pictorialism is the name given to a photographic movement in vogue from around 1885 following the widespread introduction of the dry-plate process. It reached its height in the early years of the 20th century, and declined rapidly after 1914 after the widespread emergence of Modernism. The terms "Pictorialism" and "Pictorialist" entered common use only after 1900.

Pictorialism largely subscribed to the idea that art photography needed to emulate the painting and etching of the time. Most of these pictures were black & white or sepia-toned. Among the methods used were soft focus, special filters and lens coatings, heavy manipulation in the darkroom, and exotic printing processes. From 1898 rough-surface printing papers were added to the repertoire, to further break up a picture's sharpness. Some artists "etched" the surface of their prints using fine needles. The aim of such techniques was to achieve what the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica termed, in discussing Pictorialism, "personal artistic expression".

Despite the aim of artistic expression, the best of such photographs paralleled the impressionist style then current in painting. Looking back from the present day, we can also see close parallel between the composition and picturesque subject of genre paintings and the bulk of pictorialist photography.

One of the most important publications that promoted Pictorialism was Alfred Stieglitz's "Camera Work" 1903 - 1917. Each publication had up to 12 plates that were reproduced in Photogravure, Halftone or Collotype. These plates are now collected and very sought after in the art world. Most of the photographers that made up the issues were members of the Photo-Secession, a group that promoted photography as art and soon moved away from the ideals of pictorialism.

By the year of 1910, when Albright Gallery bought 15 photographs from Stieglitz' 291 Gallery, a major victory was won in the battle for establishing photography as art. Pictorialism, which had served to open the museum doors for photography, was now already regarded as a vision of the past by the spearheading photographers of that time.

Blintz

A blintz is a thin pancake. It is somewhat similar to a crêpe with the main difference being the fact that yeast may be used in blintzes, but not in crêpes.

Blins had a somewhat ritual significance for early Slavic peoples in pre-Christian times since they were a symbol of the sun, due to their round form. They were traditionally prepared at the end of the winter to honor the rebirth of the new sun (Butter Week, or Maslenitsa). This tradition was adopted by the Orthodox church and is carried on to the present day. Bliny were once also served at wakes, to commemorate the recently deceased.

Traditional Russian bliny are made with yeasted batter, which is left to rise and then diluted with cold or boiling water or milk. When diluted with boiling water, they are referred to as zavarniye bliny. The bliny are then baked in a traditional Russian oven. In fact, the process of cooking bliny is still referred to as baking in Russian, even though these days they are almost universally pan-fried, like pancakes. French Crêpes made from unyeasted batter (usually made of flour, milk, and eggs) are also not uncommon in Russia, where they are called blinchiki and considered to be a borrowed dish (most people in Ukraine consider it their native dish and think that the French got it from the occupying Russian army). All kinds of flour may be used for making bliny: from wheat and buckwheat to oatmeal and millet, although wheat is currently the most popular by far.

Blintzes were popularized in the United States by Jewish immigrants who used them in Jewish cuisine. While not part of any specific religious rite in Judaism, blintzes that are stuffed with a cheese filling and then fried in oil are served on holidays such as Chanukah (as oil played a pivotal role in the miracle of the Chanukah story) and Shavuot (when dairy dishes are traditionally served within the Ashkenazi minhag).

Ros Serey Sothea

Ros Serey Sothea was a famous Cambodian singer during the nation's thriving cultural renaissance of the 1960s. She sang from a variety of genres but romantic ballads emerged as her most popular works. Despite a rather short career she is credited with producing hundreds of songs and even starring in a few movies. Details of her life and fate during the Khmer Rouge is relatively unknown but it is generally accepted she did not survive.

Ros Sothea was born in 1948 to Ros Sabun and Nath Samean in Battambang Province. Growing up relatively poor, Ros Sothea was the second youngest of five children and displayed vocal talent around the age of three or four. Her talent would remain relatively hidden until she was persuaded by friends to join a regional singing contest in 1963. After winning the contest she gained the attention and praise of the province and was invited to join Lomhea Yothea (a musical troupe) which regularly performed at Stung Khiev Restaurant in Battambang. It is believed that Im Song Seurm, a singer from the National Radio heard of Sothea's talents and invited her to the capital, Phnom Penh in 1967.

In Phnom Penh, she adopted the stage name Ros Serey Sothea and became a singer for National Radio performing duets with Im Song Seurm. Her first hit, Stung Khieu debuted the same year and she quickly attracted fans with her clear and high pitch voice. Eventually she became a regular partner with Sinn Sisamouth another famous singer of the era and they were a smashing success. She also performed with other prominent singers of the era such as Pan Ron, Houy Meas, and Sos Mat.

Recognized as a national treasure she was honored by King Norodom Sihanouk with the royal title of "Preah Reich Theany Somlang Meas", the "Golden Voice of the Royal Capital".

The style of music early in her career is characterized by traditional Cambodian ballads and duets. She would eventually shift to a more contemporary style by combining romantic ballads drenched in loss, betrayal, and death with Western instruments. This change of style is most likely be attributed to her traumatic marriage with fellow singer, Sos Mat.

By the 1970s, Sothea began experimenting in other genres. Her high, clear voice, coupled with the rock backing bands featuring prominent, distortion-laden lead guitars, pumping organ and loud, driving drums, made for an intense, sometimes haunting sound that is best described today as psychedelic or garage rock. And like the leader of the music scene, Sinn Sisamouth, Sothear would often take popular Western rock tunes, such as John Fogerty's "Proud Mary" and refashion them with Khmer lyrics.

Her career would continue until the Khmer Rouge captured the beleaguered capital, Phnom Penh in April 1975.

Like everyone else when the Khmer Rouge took over, she was forced to leave Phnom Penh. There are many speculations regarding her fate from a variety witnesses.

Some say Sothea was forced by Pol Pot to marry one of his assistants in 1977 who was said to have argued with her and beaten her often. She then disappeared under typically mysterious circumstances and is almost certainly dead. Other accounts believe that she died from being overworked in a Khmer Rouge agricultural camp. Another account said that she was still alive when the Vietnamese invading forces arrived in Phnom Penh and died of malnutrition shortly after in a hospital.

Finally, her sisters insist that Sothea along their mother and children were taken to Kampong Som province and executed immediately following the Fall of Phnom Penh.

Fordlândia

Fordlândia ("Ford-land") is a now-abandoned, prefabricated industrial town established in the Amazon Rainforest in 1928 by American industrialist Henry Ford for the purpose of securing a source of cultivated rubber for the automobile manufacturing operations of the Ford Motor Company in the United States. Ford had negotiated a deal with the Brazilian government granting his newly formed Companhia Industrial do Brasil a concession of 10,000 km² of land on the banks of the Rio Tapajós near the city of Santarém, Brazil, in exchange for a nine percent interest in the profits generated.

Ford intended to use Fordlândia to provide his company with a source of rubber for the tires on Ford cars, avoiding the dependence on British (Malayan) rubber. The land was hilly, rocky and infertile. None of Ford's managers had the requisite knowledge of tropical agriculture. The rubber trees, packed closely together in plantations, as opposed to being widely spaced in the jungle, were easy prey for tree blight and insects, a problem avoided by the Asian rubber plantations where transplanted Amazonian rubber trees faced no such natural predators. The mostly indigenous workers on the plantations, given unfamiliar food such as hamburgers and forced to live in American-style housing, disliked the way they were treated — they had to wear ID badges, and to work midday hours under the tropical sun — and would often refuse to work. In 1930, the native workers revolted against the managers, many of whom fled into the jungle for a few days until the Brazilian Army arrived and the revolt ended.
Ford forbade alcohol and tobacco within the town, including inside the workers' own homes. The inhabitants circumvented this prohibition by paddling out to merchant riverboats moored beyond town jurisdiction and a settlement was established five miles upstream on the "Island of Innocence" with bars, nightclubs and brothels.

Ford tried again, relocating downstream to Belterra where better weather conditions to grow rubber existed, but by 1945, synthetic rubber was developed, dampening the worldwide demand for natural rubber. Ford's investment opportunity dried up overnight without producing any rubber for Ford's tires, making Fordlândia a total disaster. In 1945, his grandson Henry Ford II sold it for a loss of over $20 million. Despite repeated invitations from residents and periodic promises to do so, Henry Ford never actually visited his ill-fated jungle city.

Vibrissae

Vibrissae, or whiskers, are specialized hairs, usually employed for tactile sensation. Vibrissae hair grow around the nostrils, above the lips, and on other parts of the face of most mammals, as well as on the forelegs and feet of some animals. Vibrissae are usually thicker and stiffer than other types of hair. The term may also refer to the thick hairs found inside human nostrils, but these have no sensorial function and only operate as an airborne particulate barrier.

Vibrissae consist of inert material and contain no nerves, but do have special sensory cells associated with them. Vibrissae are different from other hairs mainly because they are implanted in a special follicle sealed by a capsule of blood, called a blood sinus. Touching a vibrissa causes it to bend, and the blood in the sinus is pushed to one side or the other. The blood amplifies the movement and allows the mechanoreceptors at the base of the vibrissa to detect extremely small deflections.

In some mammals, the follicles of vibrissae are surrounded by a highly developed sheath of muscle tissue which can be used to move them, such as in the case of whiskers found on cats, dogs and other mammals. Whiskers can grow to be extremely long; the length of a chinchilla's whiskers can be up to a third of its body length.

Vibrissae offer an advantage to most animals that do not always have sight to rely on to navigate or to find food, or when the usefulness of non-tactile senses is limited. Some animals, such as house mice, can even detect air movements with their vibrissae.

A large part of the brain of many mammals is devoted to processing the nerve impulses from vibrissae, because this is important for survival. Information from the vibrissae is transmitted and processed through the trigeminal nerve into the brainstem and thalamus before relaying to the barrel cortex of the brain. Mammals use a great deal of energy to keep the follicles housing their whiskers warm and ready to use. Some species actively explore the environment by palpating their vibrissae, a process known as whisking, while others do not.

The arrangement of whiskers is not random: a good picture will show an ordered grid of arcs and rows of whiskers, shorter in front and longer at the rear.

Magdeburg Hemispheres

The Magdeburg hemispheres were a pair of large copper hemispheres with mating rims. When the rims were sealed with grease and the air was pumped out, the sphere contained a vacuum and could not be pulled apart by teams of horses. The Magdeburg hemispheres were designed by German scientist and mayor of Magdeburg, Otto von Guericke in 1650 to demonstrate the air pump which he had invented, and the concept of atmospheric pressure.

The first artificial vacuum had been produced a few years earlier by Evangelista Torricelli, and had inspired von Guericke to design the world's first vacuum pump, which consisted of a piston and cylinder with one-way flap valves.

Von Guericke's demonstration was performed on 8 May 1654 in front of the Reichstag and the Emperor Ferdinand III in Regensburg. Thirty horses, in two teams of 15, could not separate the hemispheres until the valve was opened to release the vacuum. In 1656 he repeated the demonstration with 16 horses (2 teams of 8) in his hometown of Magdeburg, where he was mayor. In 1663 the demonstration was given in Berlin before Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg with 24 horses.

The hemispheres became popular in physics lectures as an illustration of the power of air pressure, and are still used in education. The original hemispheres are preserved in the Deutsches Museum in Munich.

Jor-El

Jor-El is a fictional character, an extraterrestrial in the DC Comics Universe. Created by writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster, he first appeared in Action Comics #1 as Superman's biological father.

Jor-El is a Kryptonian, and the husband of Lara. He was a scientist on the planet Krypton before its destruction. Jor-El foresaw the planet's fate, but was unable to convince his colleagues in time to save their race after his appeals. He was able to save his infant son, Kal-El (Superman), sending him in a homemade rocketship to Earth just moments before Krypton's demise. After constructing his Fortress of Solitude, Superman honored his deceased biological parents with a statue of Jor-El and Lara holding up a globe of Krypton.

Jor-El is usually portrayed as closely resembling the later appearance of Kal-El as the adult Superman.

Soma

Soma was a ritual drink of importance among the early Indo-Iranians, and the later Vedic and greater Persian cultures. It is frequently mentioned in the Rigveda, whose Soma Mandala contains many hymns praising its energizing qualities.

It is described as prepared by extracting juice from the stalks of a certain plant. In both Vedic and Zoroastrian tradition, the drink is identified with the plant, and also personified as a divinity, the three forming a religious or mythological unity.

There has been much speculation concerning what is most likely to have been the identity of the original plant. There is no solid consensus on the question, although most experts now seem to favour a species of Ephedra, perhaps Ephedra sinica.

In the Vedas, Soma is portrayed as sacred and as a god (deva). The god, the drink and the plant probably referred to the same entity, or at least the differentiation was ambiguous. Two holy drinks exist: Soma for the immortal soul and Amrita for the immortal body. In this aspect, Amrita is similar to the Greek ambrosia; both is what the gods drink, and what made them deities. Indra and Agni are portrayed as consuming Soma in copious quantities. The consumption of Soma by human beings is probably under the belief that it bestows divine qualities on them.

The Ninth Mandala of the Rigveda is known as the Soma Mandala. It consists entirely of hymns addressed to Soma Pavamana ("purified Soma"). The drink Soma was kept and distributed by the Gandharvas. The Rigveda associates the Sushoma, Arjikiya and other regions with Soma. Sharyanavat was possibly the name of a pond or lake on the banks of which Soma could be found. It is described as "green-tinted" and "bright-shining" in the RigVeda.

The plant is sometimes described as growing in the mountains (giristha, cf. Orestes), with long stalks, and of yellow or tawny (hari) colour. The drink is prepared by priests pounding the plants with stones, an occupation that creates tapas (literally "heat"). The juice so gathered is heated, filtered through lamb's wool, and mixed with other ingredients (including milk, represented by cows) before it is drunk. It is said to "roar" and unify or tame the senses, represented by horses. It is said to be the place or bringer of the gods.

There has been much speculation as to the original Proto-Indo-Iranian Sauma plant. It was generally assumed to be hallucinogenic, based on RV 8.48 cited above. But typical description of Soma is associated with excitation and tapas, not hallucination. Soma is associated with the warrior-god Indra, and appears to have been drunk before battle.

Candidates that have been suggested include honey, and fly agaric (Amanita muscaria), which was widely used as a brew of sorts among Siberian shamans for its hallucinogenic and entheogenic properties. Several texts like the Atharvaveda extol the medicinal properties of Soma and he is regarded as the king of medicinal herbs (and also of the Brahmana class).

From the late 1960s onwards, several studies attempted to establish soma as a psychoactive substance. A number of proposals were made, including an important one in 1968 by the American banker R. Gordon Wasson, an amateur ethnomycologist, who asserted that soma was an inebriant, and suggested fly-agaric mushroom, Amanita muscaria, as the likely candidate. Since its introduction in 1968, this theory has gained both detractors and followers in the anthropological literature.