Author: Trent

  • Book Review – 'My Guantánamo Diary,' by Mahvish Rukhsana Khan

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    The fact that many of the prisoners Khan describes appear to have been innocent of the vague accusations against them, were imprisoned for years without formal charges or fair hearings and were eventually released by the United States without apology or compensation makes the abuse they suffered during years of imprisonment all the more outrageous. By giving us the perspective of the detainees, “My Guantánamo Diary” provides a valuable account of what we can now recognize as one of the most shameful episodes in the war on terror. It is hard to read this book without a growing sense of embarrassment and indignation.

    Check it out here.

  • In pictures: Jamaican dancehall culture | Art and design | guardian.co.uk

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    Writer and photographer Beth Lesser travelled in Jamaica throughout the Eighties with her husband, interviewing musicians for her magazine. Along the way she captured the scene at the time, exploring the period between the death of Marley and ragga’s conquest of America

    Check it out here.

  • Full Battle Rattle

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    In California’s Mojave Desert, the US Army has built a “virtual Iraq” – a billion dollar urban warfare simulation – and populated it with hundreds of Iraqi role-players. FULL BATTLE RATTLE, a feature documentary, follows an Army Battalion through the simulation, as they attempt to quell an insurgency and prevent Medina Wasl, a mock Iraqi village, from slipping into civil war. Comic, surreal and poignant, the film provides a revelatory look at the soul of the American war machine

    Check it out here.

  • Apple – Movie Trailers – Trouble the Water

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    Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, this astonishingly powerful documentary is at once horrifying and exhilarating. Directed and produced by Fahrenheit 9/11and Bowling for Columbineproducers Tia Lessin and Carl Deal, Trouble the Watertakes you inside Hurricane Katrina in a way never before seen on screen.

    Check it out here.

  • We're Just Sayin: And With a Tear in My Eye

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    David Burnett:

    Then the show started, Amazing, fantastic. All my adjectives fall short, as do my pictures. The creative minds which cobbled it together must have been extraordinary. The one thing I can tell you for sure: this operation was NOT put together by a bunch of consultants using their Blackberrys. In the last few minutes, when the medalist carry the torch started to ascend from the edge of the playing field, you could hear 80000 people say “Ahhh!” all at once. That is a sound you should hear at least once in your life. Then, tilting to the side, he became a slow motion runner, legs taking in ten, twenty feet at a stride. He lacked only a flickering light to make you think you were watching a film clip of the 1920 Olympic Games. As he started into the first turn, headed towards me (and my 200mm lens) I couldn’t see the image in the viewfinder, for the tears which were crawling down my face.

    Check it out here.

  • View from the Bird’s Nest » Just 5% make it — or, more how the sausage gets made | Blogs | Reuters.com

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    To bring you the stunning choreography of the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony, Reuters photographers and photo editors do a complex dance of their own — and then a brutal Darwinian whittling down to select just the best and most iconic images to send to subscribers.The team shot a staggering 18,000 frames during the four hours of the ceremony. Only about 850 shots made it to the “wire” — our file of photos to customers. That’s just five percent. Less than a 10th of those were selected for our web slideshow and a typical newspaper subscriber might only print one two or three shots from the selection.

    Check it out here.

  • scott c: I AM 8BIT!! flyers… collect them!

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    Hey, everyone. So this is what’s happening: I AM 8BIT opens on AUG 14 at World of Wonder in LA. There are 4 different flyers for this show. All of these flyers have a different video game on them that you can cut-out and construct yourself and make your own little arcade.

    Check it out here.

  • Olympic photo journal — chicagotribune.com

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    Chicago Tribune photojournalist Scott Strazzante shares the experience of the 2008 Summer Games

    Check it out here.

  • Nikon Introduces Flagship Coolpix P6000 Pocket Camera

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    What doesn’t thrill us, particularly, is the camera’s RAW capability, which uses a new Nikon format called NRW — not the familiar NEF format used by Nikon’s DSLRs — which can only be processed in-camera at this point. You will be able to open NRW files in Nikon’s ViewNX Software but that won’t be released until October as a Windows-only application. Bummer.

    Check it out here.

  • Soundgarden Inadvertently Reunites At Area Cinnabon

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    Members of the popular 1990s grunge band Soundgarden shocked critics and fans alike Tuesday, appearing together publicly for the first time in more than a decade after accidentally running into one another at the Northgate Mall Cinnabon.

    Check it out here.

  • Monsters at 3 a.m.: From Stefan Bucher's Ink Puddles, a World of Exhilarating, Well-Heeled Creatures – Gendy Alimurung – The Essential Online Resource for Los Angeles

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    The last monster comes to life in the wee hours of the morning. Stefan Bucher squirts a dab of black ink onto paper. He hits it with a blast of compressed air. Twists the paper here and there. Soon, he sees it. A jawbone. He starts to draw. The splotch of ink grows wings, a ruffly tail. A beak like a toucan’s protrudes — yellow, gargantuan, perverse. Then a reptile eye. Within seconds, all the monster trademarks are in place.

    For the past year, Bucher has videotaped himself drawing monsters. The videos, 199 of them, are archived on his Web site, dailymonster.com. This new toucan-beaked critter, Monster 200, is the last of the “daily” monsters for a while. They’ll be going on hiatus while Bucher develops their cousins into an animated TV segment for 2009’s rebooted Electric Company on PBS. His work is also collected in the book 100 Days of Monsters.

    Check it out here.

  • Tim Hussin: Wildfire

    There was a pretty big grass fire near the city on Monday. It seemed tame at first, but then it spread rapidly, pushing its way to the edge of many neighborhoods. I ended up abandoning my car and running around the neighborhood following the fire.

    Check it out here.

  • Visions of China: A 2008 Olympics Picture Blog : Preparing for the Biggest Organized Event of Them All: The Olympics

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    I’m not sure there’s an event I ever cover that requires as much advance logistics planning as the Olympics. Travel plans start up to a year before The Games, and from there on you continue to prepare until the games begin. In this post, I will discuss how I did my best to prepare for these games in advance, and how I packed all of my equipment for the Olympics—something that took well over a month on its own in the end.

    Check it out here.

  • David Pogues Gadget List of 2008 – Pogue’s Posts – Technology – New York Times Blog

    “I would love to see a feature where you list what you personally use. Call it Pogue’s List or something. It would be great to see what someone as plugged in as you uses personally. Everything tech — watch, laptop, TV, car, digital camera, film camera, like that.”

    What’s really surprising to me is how many readers have written to request an update of that list, especially lately.

    Actually, the time is probably right. This year alone, I’ve bought several of the products that I reviewed in my column. So here it is: Pogue’s List 2008.

    Check it out here.

  • WFMU's Beware of the Blog: Minimal Synth Videos of Varying Levels of Absurdity

    Last time I put the most absurd first and most talented last, so this time I’ll put the clips I actually like first before we descend into the laughable.  Top left are the super catchy French duo, Deux.  I’d definitely recommend checking out more from this band, whether it be the recently issued discog, Agglomerate , or the recent BIPPP comp of obscure French synth wave.  At the very least, check out the myspace, won’t you?  ps I have a crush on Cati.  She’s so melancholy and hot, smoking her cigarette!  Top right is a more humorous clip from Belgian schizoids Arbeid Adelt!  Although the band has been active since the early 80s, I can’t personally vouch for the quality of their music much beyond this early single, Pro Vita.  How the hell do you think up a video like this?

    Check it out here.

  • Mikhael Subotzky- Magnum

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    Quote: “For me, photography has become a way of attempting to make sense of the very strange world that I see around me. I don’t ever expect to achieve that understanding, but the fact that I am trying comforts me”

    Check it out here.

  • New Eco-Friendly Hummer Engineered To Kill Its Drivers

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  • Chase Jarvis Blog: Chase Jarvis TECH: Photo Shoot in 180 Seconds

    So many of the photography videos out there show great behind-the-scenes footage and tons of gear-related details. This video is more than that. In this Chase Jarvis TECH, I’m responding to the dozens–seemingly hundreds–of emails I’ve received recently asking me to highlight the various steps that comprise a professional commercial photo shoot. Therefore, follow along in this 3 minute video as I walk you through a recent commercial assignment where I was hired to photograph 3 hot young golf ladies of the LPGA.

    Check it out here.

  • Speaking of Skater Photography: Ryan Allan – Shoot The Blog

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    Check it out here.

  • Rolling Stone, Travis Dove, and Skatopia – Shoot The Blog

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    Brewce Martin began building Skatopia in 1996. Skatopia sits on 88 acres of hilly, forested land in Rutland, Ohio, an Appalachian town with a population of approximately 420, about 20 minutes from the West Virginia state line. Martin has been a skateboarding fanatic since he was a kid. That was in the Seventies; he is 42 now. Martin and his girlfriend, Amber Cavender, revel in the chaos of this year’s Bowl Bash, the annual summertime festival that’s Skatopia’s answer to Woodstock.

    Check it out here.