Einbauherd Test 2012

wnycradiolab:

If you’re interested in color theory, or you like beautifully-designed little games, or you just feel like being bad at something today (OH MY GOD SLOW DOWN TOO MANY COLORS), try this.

(via Metafilter)

noraleah:

2012 is the year of the Black Water Dragon.

The Black Water Dragon is a mythical creature, which many consider as non-existent, elusive, devoid of soul and physical appearance. However, Dragon plays a big role in people’s lives because he is the central character in the carnival procession, legends and fairy tales.

The dragon represents daylight and darkness in one person, invincible strength and weakness for beauty and good deeds. (via)

Tonight we are celebrating with M.’s dad and friends at City Grit’s Chinese New Year dinner. How ‘bout you?

(Image via.)

smarterplanet:

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gingervision:

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cjchivers:

Reading Lieutenant Colonel Robert W. Schaefer, and interviewing him for the At War blog, revived all manner of memories of the terrorist siege in Public School No. 1 in Beslan. Then a separatist web site began contacting me, again, making the tired claim that Russia’s tanks killed the hostages during that long, final, ugly battle on the afternoon and into the night of Sept. 3, 2004.

There is just enough possible fact in this falsehood that it once gained traction among those who defend — yes, defend — what that group of hostage-takers did. But let’s be clear: As a general statement, as an explanation of all those dead, this statement is nonsense. 

Above is a scene from the ruins of the school’s gym, in the hours of quiet after all the killing was done, and before the hostages’ bodies (or what remained of them) were dug out and carried away.

Fact: Russian tanks did not fire on the gym. These people were wounded, and in many cases they were dead, before the tanks entered the battle. They died under the explosives that the terrorists had rigged around them, and then were charred by the fire that consumed the sweltering room where they had been held at gunpoint for more than 50 hours, denied food and water throughout.

When the first tank, a T-72, did enter the fight — as crude and blunt an application of force as you will ever see — it drove to the exact opposite side of the roughly E-shaped school, and fired at the cafeteria, point blank. That tank may or may not have killed some of the surviving hostages who were held there, used as human shields by their captors. Certainly these hostages were put at terrible risk by that T-72, which I saw drive forward and fire. But how many hostages were killed this way, if any, is difficult to say with certainty. (The question of how some of those last hostages died is complicated by the manner in which that first tank round traveled; it is a forensic question, made difficult by the fact that one of the T-72 main-barrel rounds, perhaps the first, hit a steel fence post directly in front of the barrel. The post was sheared off, and the round did not have a full-order or “ordinary” effect on the brick wall of the school.)

But enough on that. Suffice to say the Chechen separatist movement has yet to show regret for what happened in Beslan, or to denounce the actions of those hostage-takers in any significant or comprehensive way. Instead, it has essentially taken this stance: Yes, we seized more than 1,100 hostages. Yes, we executed most of the adult men. Yes, we rigged up explosives around the others (read: women and children). And 52 hours after we started this stand-off, ransoming children’s lives before the world, when the violence spun utterly beyond control, we herded the survivors in front of windows and used them as human shields. But, no, we are not responsible for what happened in Beslan.

And there you have it.

I have a large collection of photographs from those days, including many of the Russian investigators’ pics, like the image at the top of this post. With time, I will post more here, perhaps when, as today, blood runs hot. Meanhwile, have a read of this, one story of one woman who died.

Now back up. Chechnya may or may not have valid claims to its independence. I offer no opinion on that. And Russia has engaged in a long pattern of state-directed collective punishment and human rights abuse across most of the North Caucasus. I would never quarrel with that, and have done much to document it. It is also a sad comment on the West’s engagement with post-Soviet Russia that Chechens have suffered horrors (yes, horrors) on an outsized scale while most of the world has looked away. Let’s admit these things. But when it comes to Beslan, well, let’s not let allow nonsense to masquerade as fact. 

ABOUT THE PHOTOGRAPHS

Tanks played no role in these deaths. Other than that, the image speaks for itself, and should be looked at for a long time. From an investigator’s camera. September, 2004.

theeconomist:

Daily chart: fastest growing nations. Global economic growth is originating almost exclusively from the emerging world, according to a new forecast from the International Monetary Fund.