Eight Myths About Video Games Debunked

Games don't make kids violent, adult's trying to prevent kids from playing do. Some facts on the subject here.

Howard Stern

The Last Show on FM today, click on the pic to see the live broadcast.

The Boondocks

This is the best American animated show of the year, from content (political content) to animation style. American Dad is funny but this is way edgier and unapologetic. Check this interview with the creator from The Onion's AV Club.

Stanley 'Tookie' Williams

Stanley 'Tookie' Williams, co-founder of the Crip street gang in LosAngeles, was executed in San Quentin Prison on December 13 just aftermidnight.By his own account, Williams co-founded the Crips street gang in LosAngeles. He was convicted of four murders and sentenced to death in 1981.Whatever Williams may or may not have done in the gang life, he hasmaintained his innocence in the case that sent him to Death Row--a casebased on circumstantial evidence and testimony by witnesses who were facingfelony charges including fraud, rape, murder, and mutilation. Even the 9thCircuit Court of Appeals admitted in a September 10, 2002 ruling that thewitnesses in Williams' case had incentives to lie in order to obtainleniency from the state in either charging or sentencing.There is an cruel, sick irony in the fact that Stanley Williams is facingexecution. By the system's own standards he has been a model prisoner. Hehas spoken out against gang violence, and written Tookie Speaks Out AgainstGang Violence--a series of eight books that are in schools, libraries, andjuvenile correctional facilities throughout the nation and around the world.The television movie starring Jamie Foxx, Redemption, was based on his life.Williams has received numerous awards including five nominations for theNobel Peace Prize.Williams played an important role in promoting the gang truce movement,which emerged especially out of the fires of the L.A. rebellion in 1992.When other gang leaders in Watts asked him to voice his support for the gangPeace Treaty in 1993, Williams sent a videotaped message upholding thetreaty to a gang summit.The U.S. just executed the 1,000th person since the Supreme Courtre-legalized the death penalty in 1976. A majority of people on Death Roware people of color--including 77% of all federal death row prisoners. Thedeath penalty in this society is a ruthless enforcement of oppression.California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger coldly and callously refused togrant him clemency, saying that the facts do not justify overturning thecourt decision. Even though Tookie Williams had changed and became a veryoutspoken advocate against gang violence and for peace. They showed him nomercy. But it is deeper than this. In a highly political statement,Schwarzenegger also said that Tookie Williams' 1998 book Life In Prison wasdedicated to people like Assata Shakur, Mumia Abu Jamal and particularlyBlack militant George Jackson which, according to Schwarzenegger, is asignificant indicator that Williams is not reformed and that he still seesviolence and lawlessness as legitimate means to address societal problems.George Jackson and the other prominent Black figures mentioned inSchwarzeneggers statement are heroes to a lot of Black people and people ofall races and nationalities because of their revolutionary stance. This isproof that this is a politically motivated execution.It does not matter to Schwarzenegger and the powers-that-be that StanleyWilliams has changed. That he has consistently spoken out against gangviolence. Or that the evidence which led to his conviction of four murdersin 1981 was circumstantial and that the testimony against him came frompeople facing felony charges of fraud, rape, murder, and mutilation. Or thathe had consistently and repeatedly said that he is innocent.Since his final appeal was denied, the powers-that-be have put StanleyWilliams execution on a fast track. They moved it up ahead of people who hadtheir final appeals rejected before him.This represents a leap in the vicious, racist, and genocidal program theyhave for the masses of people in the inner cities. Many of the youth of theinner city have no jobs and no prospects of ever being employed. The systemhas no productive use for them. The working of this capitalist systems putspeople in desperate situations where crime becomes the only option for many,many of them to live. Then, Black and other oppressed youth are attacked andmaligned and demonized. William Bennett, a former adviser to Ronald Reagan,has said: If you want to get rid of crime you could abort all Black babiesand the crime rate would go down. Thats genocide.The execution of Tookie Williams comes on the heels of Hurricane Katrina,where tens of thousands of Black people were left to die. The Bush regime ismaking it LOUD AND CLEAR.Look at what they did. People in New Orleans did not have to die. But thepowers that be left thousands of people to suffer and die needlessly, whileat the same time demonizing them and sending in the National Guard tosuppress them. Didnt Bush himself issue an order to shoot to killanyone whowas caught looting, no questions asked? The system's well-oiled propagandamachine spewed out lies about Black people raping babies and robbing andmurdering each other. The very clear message was: the masses of Black peoplein New Orleans were demons and deserved to die.Hundreds and even thousands of people who tried to get into New Orleans torescue, feed and give medical aid to people were stopped by the army andpolice and prevented them from helping people. A congressman from Louisianasaid they had been trying to get rid of the projects in New Orleans foryears and god decided to do them a favor by getting rid of them.Again the message was that Black people are bad seeds who do not deserve tolive.Pat Robertson, one of Bushs Christian Fascist advisors, has called for abiblical model for crime and punishment which suggests genocide against themasses of people in the inner cities as well as preparation to use extremerepression and even execution against people who do things which are minorcrimes or in many cases no crime at all.What kind of system is this that does these things? It is one that cries outfor proletarian revolution..Although Stanley Tookie Williams was not a revolutionary, he dedicated hisbook Blue Rage, Black Redemption in this way: To poor people, prisoners,slaves and the disenfranchised everywhere through faith and theories putinto practice you bend the most oppressive circumstances to your will, tomake the impossible possible.

Written by Joe Vaele taken from the Revolution website rwor.org

The One

Gummo

For some unknow reason this song is not included in the Movie soundtrack, this is probably the best one.

Whisky

Whisky, the next movie of the creators of 25 watts is coming out in August 6, 2005 (now on DVD in Uruguay), they won a couple of prizes on Cannes.
SYNOPSIS: Montevideo, Uruguay. Jacobo, a 60-year-old man, lives alone since the death of his mother, of whom he took care up to her last day. All he has in life is a humble sock factory about to go out of business. Marta, 48, Jacobo's right hand has worked for him for twenty years. She is the most experienced employee, an acting supervisor who also assumes other tasks, such as keeping Jacobo out of trouble. read more!

Nuhlluz

Go to the Red River Bird Gallery to see a High Definition Scan of this drawing.

Devilah: The Head Hunter

Go to the Red River Bird Gallery to see a High Definition Scan of this drawing.

Daimon: Fallen (Season1)

Go to the Red River Bird Gallery to see a High Definition Scan of this drawing.

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (second gig)

Ghost in the Shell (the tv show) also know as the anime show that made me read a book, is back for a second season. The first thing I noted was: Produced by the Ghost in the Shell committee, this indicated to me some kind of loss of funding, what I think is very common in anime shows. The second thing I noted was a significant decreased in the animation quality, that went from a fairly realistic approach to the more "classic" anime look in the character designs and backgrounds. Is a shame that an outstanding show like this both in animation and content gets a character doing a monologue with a 2 frame animation. But regardless of that the second episode "Night Cruise" delivers an excellent character driven plot orbiting around a lonely "Notes from the Underground" kind of character that reminded me why Ghost in the Shell is such a good show and so different from anything else on animation or even tv.

Made me read a book?

Capote

This guy is a genius actor, it a very complex roll that he plays flawlessly. I have to go read the book now.

The Real Godzilla and King Kong

Godzilla! That’s what they’re calling a brand new (though 135 million year old) species of crocodile found in fossil form in Patagonia, in the southern tip of South America. During the Jurassic Period, that region was submerged in a tropical bay and, as we now know, was home to one of the fiercest creatures to ever swim the seas. Though technically a crocodile, the Dakosaurus andiniensis differed greatly from our modern croc—and even more so from its contemporaries.
Measuring thirteen feet, the Dakosaurus had fish-like fins in place of feet, meaning that it never came on land like our modern crocodilians. Far stranger, though, was its head: whereas other crocodiles of the Jurassic Period had long, slender snouts and long thin teeth good for tossing back lots of little fish, the Dakosaurus’s head more closely resembled a Tyrannosaurus rex. Its snout was short and high, and its jaw spanned a foot and a half, full of huge, serrated teeth—the biggest ones reaching four inches, about the size of a width of your palm. Though there is no way to know for sure what the Dakosaurus ate, we can be sure it was big. Diego Pol, a researcher at the Mathematical Biosciences Institute and the Department of Biomedical Informatics at Ohio State University, said, “Dakosaurus probably fed on other large marine reptiles.” Although the Dakosaurus differed from other crocodiles in many ways and closely resembled some of the large, predatory land dinosaurs, there are sufficient similarities to be sure it was indeed a crocodile.. Pol says it is an example of convergent evolution, the process by which mostly unrelated organisms may acquire very similar characteristics even when evolving in different ecosystems. Pol worked with Zulma Gasparini of the National University at La Plata in Argentina. Their findings were published on November 10 in the online version of Science.
While Dakosaurus died out with the dinosaurs, the modern crocodile is a living testament to its lineage. Likewise do we see reflections of Gigantopithecus Blacki, the ten-foot tall, 1,200-pound primate which some call King Kong, in today’s gorillas and orangutans. The only remains of the Gigantopithecus we have are the fossils of three jawbones and close to a thousand teeth—some collected at digs and some collected from Chinese apothecary shops, who sell “dragon bones,” or fossils, for their believed curative properties. However, much can be approximated from just teeth and jawbones. Using an average head-to-body ratio of the modern orangutan and Australopithecus afarensis (“Lucy”), a one-inch wide molar becomes a ten-foot ape. Other than the size, our visual of Giantopithecus is more-or-less speculative, but one thing is for sure—the 1,200-pound ape was not a tree-dweller like the orangutan. For that reason scientists generally agree that its body would have more closely resembled that of the earthbound gorilla.
Now one other thing is for sure: The Gigantopithecus walked the earth at the same time and in the same regions as did early humans. Using an extremely precise dating method which uses electron spin resonance to determine the age of organic material, geochronologist and associate professor at McMaster University Jack Rink recently discovered that Gigantopithecus roamed southern China for nearly a million years—up until 100,000 years ago, when the species became extinct. During this time span that region was also host to the human race, as it was undergoing important evolutionary changes. In fact, one theory is that the early humans contributed to the Gigantopithecus’s demise: the giant ape, man, and a now-extict giant panda are all thought to have been consumers of bamboo. The giant ape and panda wanted it for food, and man wanted it for tools. With a less voracious appetite but a more resourceful brain, us humans apparently won the competition. For my part, I’m just glad we don’t compete for food with giant squids.