Thanks to Christoph Tornow, Christoph Gontard, Fabian, Marcella, Mortimer, Mark, Ali Salehi, BMW-MINI, Erste Libe Films, The Erste Libe Bar, and The Vicious Gallery.

I am now in Hamburg Germany working on a couple of different projects. One project is with the car company MINI. They have kindly provided me with a MINI COOPER S to have my way with. So far everything has been really cool and everyone is super nice and helpful.
Hamburg is a bit rainy right now, but everyone is really nice, the architecture is interesting, and the food and wine have been great.
The car came out really great! More photos tomorrow after the event.

The KRINK MINI will be shown Wednesday Oct 28th.
Erste Liebe Bar
Michaelisbrucke 3
Hamburg Germany
7 - 11
Come thru if you are in the area. More photos soon.
Photo: Ali Salehi
I also painted a wall in the bar, but don’t have the photo yet. I will post more this week, there is a lot more to see.

Cold in effect at the studio.

Above is a relatively simple station, and even here the materials are impressive. Materials at almost every station I visited were top notch, marble, granite, and other types of stone expertly laid out and very well maintained.
Impressive metal work.
Some stations look like the halls of old museums.
Details were amazing. Notice no grime and dust.


Station dedicated to Dmitry Mendeleyev inventor of The Periodic Table of Elements. I didn’t get a photo, but another version of these “molecule” inspired lamps were also on the platform where the trains stopped, very nicely done.
Insides look the same as anywhere.
More soon.

Kind of nervous at first.

According to a lot of the people I spoke with, many Russians are totally unfamiliar with what many westerners often take for granted. The history of skating, graffiti, punk rock, hip-hop, etc is very new to them.
Many Russians speak limited English, they explore things on the internet but don’t always fully understand them, and it can be difficult for them to travel outside of Russia. I was told that it’s very hard for a Russian girl to get a visa to the US, because they think they will come here and try to marry an American and stay here.

Every Russian I met was very interested in the world and really hungry for information about everything from fashion to politics. I think after years and years of Soviet rule the young generation is really optimistic and open minded.
According to them, Russia is still trying to find itself and it’s collective voice and direction, because in Soviet times the government gave them the direction.
They were hit by very hard economic times in the 90’s after the fall of the Soviet Union and then by an ever widening gap between rich and poor.
Many of them also feel a sense of instability, that the government could change things on them overnight. So while they are optimistic, they have this sense of caution and to not go too far too fast.
The organizers of the event had to pay off the cops, the security, the fire dept, it was really crazy, it’s all about bribes and paying a “Vig”.
I had to pay to go to the bathroom, the lady was talking to me in Russian and I didn’t know what she wanted, a young kid was like, “10 Rubles. You must pay for everything. This is Russia. Sorry.”

If the government stays stable, Moscow is going to be a very cool place for creativity. Russia has to open up a bit more to make business and importing goods and ideas easier, the people want it, and there is endless potential there.
I highly recommend a trip there. More and more western cities are becoming the same, local flavor is on it’s way out. Global trends are growing faster via the internet. Moscow still has local flavor and an edgy feeling. Get it while it lasts.
I gave a small talk at a local school.
Sasha helped organize.
Painting for the people.
Anna helped hang photos.



Getting blurry on vodka shots.

Wall detail


Big up to Oleg and Dimitry who were my main contacts and brought me out to Moscow, these dudes and their crew worked super hard to make things happen, much respect.
More soon.

Custom Krink fire extinguishers. Black or silver, both with chrome silver logos.


Latex and Krink on wood panel


Penny wearing the niceproduce tee.

Thanks to everyone who came through.

I really liked this piece.

Love the Ellsworth Kelly influence.

Mr. Deitch is always immaculately dressed.

Rob and Ryan.

After party at the studio.

No Credit, Don’t ask. Krink on steel. 


Just finished this sign for a new sandwich shop down the street from his studio. Very tasty quality stuff they are selling, dude used to work down the street from his old house. Small world.
Enamel on steel.

KRINK inks and markers have chosen an entire crew of Valentine’s day ladies to smother with metallic kisses by collaborating with Married to the MOB.

February makes way for the release of an exclusive co-branded t-shirt printed with MTTM’s classic pink stamp logo, coupled with KRINKS’ signature silver drip style. KRINK and the M.O.B came together, both because of an existing friendship and an on-going involvement in the streetwear industry. Merging an NYC street artist with Married to the Mob’s feminine and edgy aesthetic makes for yet another classic collaboration.

The pack includes a hot pink KRINK marker stamped with MTTM’s trademark kiss-logo on a metallic-pink custom colored label. Married to the Mob keeps it New York City centric by having the photo shot by Brooklyn’s own Timothy McGurr (13thWitness) and modeled by Chelsea’s infamous “Sweet 16″, overlooking the city from the top of the Empire State Building.

Thanks Dan.

“Challenge”

“Satie”
Give this video a chance to load.

Peep game


Mad belts and Filipinos in the house.



Yeah Manny..


More Filipinos..

Ease

Os Gemeos

Faro

Duel

Here is one part of the wall. I also painted the front wall and part of the windows. Check it out if you’re in the hood.

Splitting, 1974

Conical Intersect detail, 1974

Directed by Romain Gavras, So Me & Justice

Tip and Vashtie, party people in the place to be.

Check it out. netflix.com

I like youtube because it’s easy and they let you share, but the quality is really poor.
A higher quality version of this can be seen here.
Directed: Jonas & François, El Nino, Paris
Music:Teenage Bad Girl

And now, a random flick for your viewing pleasure. Seattle steez.

Directed by The Crystal Pharoah

You can see in higher quality on youtube.com, click watch in high quality.

Excerpts from Complex magazine photo shoot.

Related article here:

Os Gemeos, “Too Far Too Close”
June 28 - August 09, 2008
Deitch Projects
18 Wooster St. NYC.

Spill


Central booking, NYC


Logo with swirls

Heartbreaking.

That dude is the best. Hope he’s having a good time.

‘I don’t like to copy anybody. Everybody tries to do what I do, update it,’’ he said. ‘‘I don’t have any idols I copied after.’‘

Gangster.

Gangster.

capturedmovie.com

CAPTURED
Since 1979 Clayton Patterson has dedicated his life to documenting the
final era of raw creativity and lawlessness in New York City’s Lower
East Side, a neighborhood famed for art, music and revolutionary
minds. Traversing the outside edge he’s recorded a dark and colorful
society, from drag to hardcore, heroin, homelessness, political chaos
and ultimately gentrification. His odyssey from voyeur to provocateur
reveals that it can take losing everything you love to find your own
significance.

Check it out on: The Sundance Channel

Documentary filmmaker Erwin Wagenhofer investigates the food that graces middle-class dining tables around the world and delivers an eye-opening cinematic essay about scarcity, plenty, globalization and waste. From struggling fishermen and long-distance truckers to agronomists and multinational corporate executives, We Feed the World presents a sobering portrait of the people who define the contemporary food industry, where the constant pursuit of profit takes precedence over preserving livelihoods or sustaining natural resources.

1998




Wasted Youth, 2000, trash, McDonalds packaging, replica food, wood and light projector, 25.98 x 82.68 x 52.76 inches

Nobody’s smilin’.

Article by Rob Walker.
Read it here: Consumed

I just got put on to this music website. Let’s you search for a song or band, and then creates a playlist based on that search.
So far it’s fucking awesome.
Create new station.
Enjoy.

Dumb and Dumber: Are Americans Hostile to Knowledge?

By PATRICIA COHEN
A popular video on YouTube shows Kellie Pickler, the adorable platinum blonde from “American Idol,” appearing on the Fox game show “Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?” during celebrity week. Selected from a third-grade geography curriculum, the $25,000 question asked: “Budapest is the capital of what European country?”

Ms. Pickler threw up both hands and looked at the large blackboard perplexed. “I thought Europe was a country,” she said. Playing it safe, she chose to copy the answer offered by one of the genuine fifth graders: Hungary. “Hungry?” she said, eyes widening in disbelief. “That’s a country? I’ve heard of Turkey. But Hungry? I’ve never heard of it.”

Such, uh, lack of global awareness is the kind of thing that drives Susan Jacoby, author of “The Age of American Unreason,” up a wall. Ms. Jacoby is one of a number of writers with new books that bemoan the state of American culture.

Joining the circle of curmudgeons this season is Eric G. Wilson, whose “Against Happiness” warns that the “American obsession with happiness” could “well lead to a sudden extinction of the creative impulse, that could result in an extermination as horrible as those foreshadowed by global warming and environmental crisis and nuclear proliferation.”

Then there is Lee Siegel’s “Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob,” which inveighs against the Internet for encouraging solipsism, debased discourse and arrant commercialization. Mr. Siegel, one might remember, was suspended by The New Republic for using a fake online persona in order to trash critics of his blog (“you couldn’t tie Siegel’s shoelaces”) and to praise himself (“brave, brilliant”).

Ms. Jacoby, whose book came out on Tuesday, doesn’t zero in on a particular technology or emotion, but rather on what she feels is a generalized hostility to knowledge. She is well aware that some may tag her a crank. “I expect to get bashed,” said Ms. Jacoby, 62, either as an older person who upbraids the young for plummeting standards and values, or as a secularist whose defense of scientific rationalism is a way to disparage religion.

Ms. Jacoby, however, is quick to point out that her indictment is not limited by age or ideology. Yes, she knows that eggheads, nerds, bookworms, longhairs, pointy heads, highbrows and know-it-alls have been mocked and dismissed throughout American history. And liberal and conservative writers, from Richard Hofstadter to Allan Bloom, have regularly analyzed the phenomenon and offered advice.

T. J. Jackson Lears, a cultural historian who edits the quarterly review Raritan, said, “The tendency to this sort of lamentation is perennial in American history,” adding that in periods “when political problems seem intractable or somehow frozen, there is a turn toward cultural issues.”

But now, Ms. Jacoby said, something different is happening: anti-intellectualism (the attitude that “too much learning can be a dangerous thing”) and anti-rationalism (“the idea that there is no such things as evidence or fact, just opinion”) have fused in a particularly insidious way.

Not only are citizens ignorant about essential scientific, civic and cultural knowledge, she said, but they also don’t think it matters.

She pointed to a 2006 National Geographic poll that found nearly half of 18- to 24-year-olds don’t think it is necessary or important to know where countries in the news are located. So more than three years into the Iraq war, only 23 percent of those with some college could locate Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Israel on a map.

Ms. Jacoby, dressed in a bright red turtleneck with lipstick to match, was sitting, appropriately, in that temple of knowledge, the New York Public Library’s majestic Beaux Arts building on Fifth Avenue. The author of seven other books, she was a fellow at the library when she first got the idea for this book back in 2001, on 9/11.

Walking home to her Upper East Side apartment, she said, overwhelmed and confused, she stopped at a bar. As she sipped her bloody mary, she quietly listened to two men, neatly dressed in suits. For a second she thought they were going to compare that day’s horrifying attack to the Japanese bombing in 1941 that blew America into World War II:

“This is just like Pearl Harbor,” one of the men said.

The other asked, “What is Pearl Harbor?”

“That was when the Vietnamese dropped bombs in a harbor, and it started the Vietnam War,” the first man replied.

At that moment, Ms. Jacoby said, “I decided to write this book.”

Ms. Jacoby doesn’t expect to revolutionize the nation’s educational system or cause millions of Americans to switch off “American Idol” and pick up Schopenhauer. But she would like to start a conversation about why the United States seems particularly vulnerable to such a virulent strain of anti-intellectualism. After all, “the empire of infotainment doesn’t stop at the American border,” she said, yet students in many other countries consistently outperform American students in science, math and reading on comparative tests.

In part, she lays the blame on a failing educational system. “Although people are going to school more and more years, there’s no evidence that they know more,” she said.

Ms. Jacoby also blames religious fundamentalism’s antipathy toward science, as she grieves over surveys that show that nearly two-thirds of Americans want creationism to be taught along with evolution.

Ms. Jacoby doesn’t leave liberals out of her analysis, mentioning the New Left’s attacks on universities in the 1960s, the decision to consign African-American and women’s studies to an “academic ghetto” instead of integrating them into the core curriculum, ponderous musings on rock music and pop culture courses on everything from sitcoms to fat that trivialize college-level learning.

Avoiding the liberal or conservative label in this particular argument, she prefers to call herself a “cultural conservationist.”

For all her scholarly interests, though, Ms. Jacoby said she recognized just how hard it is to tune out the 24/7 entertainment culture. A few years ago she participated in the annual campaign to turn off the television for a week. “I was stunned at how difficult it was for me,” she said.

The surprise at her own dependency on electronic and visual media made her realize just how pervasive the culture of distraction is and how susceptible everyone is — even curmudgeons.

Recent laboratory tests found so much mercury in tuna sushi from 20 Manhattan stores and restaurants that at most of them, a regular diet of six pieces a week would exceed the levels considered acceptable by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Sushi from 5 of the 20 places had mercury levels so high that the Food and Drug Administration could take legal action to remove the fish from the market. The sushi was bought by The New York Times in October.

“No one should eat a meal of tuna with mercury levels like those found in the restaurant samples more than about once every three weeks,” said Dr. Michael Gochfeld, professor of environmental and occupational medicine at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in Piscataway, N.J.

Dr. Gochfeld analyzed the sushi for The Times with Dr. Joanna Burger, professor of life sciences at Rutgers University. He is a former chairman of the New Jersey Mercury Task Force and also treats patients with mercury poisoning.

The owner of a restaurant whose tuna sushi had particularly high mercury concentrations said he was shocked by the findings. “I’m startled by this,” said the owner, Drew Nieporent, a managing partner of Nobu Next Door. “Anything that might endanger any customer of ours, we’d be inclined to take off the menu immediately and get to the bottom of it.”

Although the samples were gathered in New York City, experts believe similar results would be observed elsewhere.

“Mercury levels in bluefin are likely to be very high regardless of location,” said Tim Fitzgerald, a marine scientist for Environmental Defense, an advocacy group that works to protect the environment and improve human health.

Most of the restaurants in the survey said the tuna The Times had sampled was bluefin.

In 2004 the Food and Drug Administration joined with the Environmental Protection Agency to warn women who might become pregnant and children to limit their consumption of certain varieties of canned tuna because the mercury it contained might damage the developing nervous system. Fresh tuna was not included in the advisory. Most of the tuna sushi in the Times samples contained far more mercury than is typically found in canned tuna.

Over the past several years, studies have suggested that mercury may also cause health problems for adults, including an increased risk of cardiovascular disease and neurological symptoms.

Dr. P. Michael Bolger, a toxicologist who is head of the chemical hazard assessment team at the Food and Drug Administration, did not comment on the findings in the Times sample but said the agency was reviewing its seafood mercury warnings. Because it has been four years since the advisory was issued, Dr. Bolger said, “we have had a study under way to take a fresh look at it.”

No government agency regularly tests seafood for mercury.

Tuna samples from the Manhattan restaurants Nobu Next Door, Sushi Seki, Sushi of Gari and Blue Ribbon Sushi and the food store Gourmet Garage all had mercury above one part per million, the “action level” at which the F.D.A. can take food off the market. (The F.D.A. has rarely, if ever, taken any tuna off the market.) The highest mercury concentration, 1.4 parts per million, was found in tuna from Blue Ribbon Sushi. The lowest, 0.10, was bought at Fairway.

When told of the newspaper’s findings, Andy Arons, an owner of Gourmet Garage, said: “We’ll look for lower-level-mercury fish. Maybe we won’t sell tuna sushi for a while, until we get to the bottom of this.” Mr. Arons said his stores stocked yellowfin, albacore and bluefin tuna, depending on the available quality and the price.

At Blue Ribbon Sushi, Eric Bromberg, an owner, said he was aware that bluefin tuna had higher mercury concentrations. For that reason, Mr. Bromberg said, the restaurant typically told parents with small children not to let them eat “more than one or two pieces.”

Koji Oneda, a spokesman for Sushi Seki, said the restaurant would talk to its fish supplier about the issue. A manager at Sushi of Gari, Tomi Tomono, said it warned pregnant women and regular customers who “love to eat tuna” about mercury levels. Mr. Tomono also said the restaurant would put warning labels on the menu “very soon.”

Scientists who performed the analysis for The Times ran the tests several times to be sure there was no mistake in the levels of methylmercury, the form of mercury found in fish tied to health problems.

The work was done at the Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Institute, in Piscataway, a partnership between Rutgers and the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.

Six pieces of sushi from most of the restaurants and stores would contain more than 49 micrograms of mercury. That is the amount the Environmental Protection Agency deems acceptable for weekly consumption over a period of several months by an adult of average weight, which the agency defines as 154 pounds. People weighing less are advised to consume even less mercury. The weight of the fish in the tuna pieces sampled by The Times were 0.18 ounces to 1.26 ounces.

In general, tuna sushi from food stores was much lower in mercury. These findings reinforce results in other studies showing that more expensive tuna usually contains more mercury because it is more likely to come from a larger species, which accumulates mercury from the fish it eats. Mercury enters the environment as an industrial pollutant.

In the Times survey, 10 of the 13 restaurants said at least one of the two tuna samples bought was bluefin. (It is hard for anyone but experts to tell whether a piece of tuna sushi is bluefin by looking at it.)

By contrast, other species, like yellowfin and albacore, generally have much less mercury. Several of the stores in the Times sample said the tuna in their sushi was yellowfin.

“It is very likely bluefin will be included in next year’s testing,” Dr. Bolger of the F.D.A. said. “A couple of months ago F.D.A. became aware of bluefin tuna as a species Americans are eating.”

A number of studies have found high blood mercury levels in people eating a diet rich in seafood. According to a 2007 survey by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, the average level of mercury in New Yorkers’ blood is three times higher than the national average. The report found especially high levels among Asian New Yorkers, especially foreign-born Chinese, and people with high incomes. The report noted that Asians tend to eat more seafood, and it speculated that wealthier people favored fish, like swordfish and bluefin tuna, that happen to have higher mercury levels.

The city has warned women who are pregnant or breast-feeding and children not to eat fresh tuna, Chilean sea bass, swordfish, shark, grouper and other kinds of fish it describes as “too high in mercury.” (Cooking fish has no effect on the mercury level.)

Dr. Kate Mahaffey, a senior research scientist in the office of science coordination and policy at the E.P.A. who studies mercury in fish, said she was not surprised by reports of high concentrations.

“We have seen exposures occurring now in the United States that have produced blood mercury a lot higher than anything we would have expected to see,” Dr. Mahaffey said. “And this appears to be related to consumption of larger amounts of fish that are higher in mercury than we had anticipated.”

Many experts believe the government’s warnings on mercury in seafood do not go far enough.

“The current advice from the F.D.A. is insufficient,” said Dr. Philippe Grandjean, adjunct professor of environmental health at the Harvard School of Public Health and chairman of the department of environmental medicine at the University of Southern Denmark. “In order to maintain reasonably low mercury exposure, you have to eat fish low in the food chain, the smaller fish, and they are not saying that.”

Some environmental groups have sounded the alarm. Environmental Defense, the advocacy group, says no one, no matter his or her age, should eat bluefin tuna. Dr. Gochfeld said: “I like to think of tuna sushi as an occasional treat. A steady diet is certainly problematic. There are a lot of other sushi choices.”

He also caught some tags. 2008.

We got that work!

LONDON — Walking at the Brixton market among the parrotfish, doctorfish and butterfish, Effa Edusie is surrounded by pieces of her childhood in Ghana. Caught the day before far off the coast of West Africa, they have been airfreighted to London for dinner.
On the underside of the waterlogged brown cardboard box that holds the snapper is the improbable red logo of the China National Fisheries Corporation, one of the largest suppliers of West African fish to Europe. Europe’s dinner tables are increasingly supplied by global fishing fleets, which are depleting the world’s oceans to feed the ravenous consumers who have become the most effective predators of fish.

Fish is now the most traded animal commodity on the planet, with about 100 million tons of wild and farmed fish sold each year. Europe has suddenly become the world’s largest market for fish, worth more than 14 billion euros, or about $22 billion a year. Europe’s appetite has grown as its native fish stocks have shrunk so that Europe now needs to import 60 percent of fish sold in the region, according to the European Union.

In Europe, the imbalance between supply and demand has led to a thriving illegal trade. Some 50 percent of the fish sold in the European Union originates in developing nations, and much of it is laundered like contraband, caught and shipped illegally beyond the limits of government quotas or treaties. The smuggling operation is well financed and sophisticated, carried out by large-scale mechanized fishing fleets able to sweep up more fish than ever, chasing threatened stocks from ocean to ocean.

The European Commission estimates that more than 1.1 billion euros in illegal seafood, or $1.6 billion worth, enters Europe each year. The World Wide Fund for Nature contends that up to half the fish sold in Europe are illegally caught or imported. While some of the so-called “pirate fishing” is carried out by non-Western vessels far afield, European ships are also guilty, some of them operating close to home. An estimated 40 percent of cod caught in the Baltic Sea are illegal, said Mireille Thom, a spokeswoman for Joe Borg, the European Union’s commissioner of fisheries and maritime affairs.

“We know that it’s much too easy to land illegal fish in European ports, and we are really eager to block their access to European markets,” Ms. Thom said.

If cost is an indication, fish are poised to become Europe’s most precious contraband. Prices have doubled and tripled in response to surging demand, scarcity and recent fishing quotas imposed by the European Union in a desperate effort to save native species. In London, a kilogram of lowly cod, the traditional ingredient of fish and chips, now costs up to £30, or close to $60, up from £6 four years ago.

“Fish and chips used to be a poor man’s treat, but with the prices, it’s becoming a delicacy,” said Mark Morris, a fishmonger for 20 years in London’s enormous Billingsgate market.

On a wintry day at 5 a.m. in Billingsgate last month, as wholesalers unpacked fresh fish from all over the world, the vast international trade that feeds Europe’s appetite was readily apparent, even if the origins of each fillet and steak were not.

Less than 24 hours before, some of these fish were passing through Las Palmas in the Canary Islands, a port with five inspectors to evaluate 360,000 tons of perishable fish that must move rapidly through each year. The Canaries, a Spanish archipelago off the coast of Morocco, have become the favored landing point of illegal fish as well as people.

Once cleared there, the catch has entered the European Union and can be sold anywhere within it without further inspection. By the time West African fish get to Europe, the legal fish are offered for sale alongside the ill gotten.

“In the fish area, we’re so far behind meat where you can trace it back to the origins,” said Heike Vesper, who directs the Fisheries Campaign of the World Wide Fund for Nature. The long distances and chain of fishermen and traders make that a difficult task, and every effort to regulate catches, it seems, pushes fishing fleets to other regions.

Mr. Morris, the fishmonger, said: “There are quotas in Europe, and with airfreight cheap it’s much more globalized. We don’t order ourselves; there are middlemen.”
At Billingsgate, for instance, the colorful boxes of shrimp called “African Beauty,” bearing a drawing of a beautiful woman in tribal dress, were fished off Madagascar and processed in France. “Ten years ago it was just from Britain, Norway and Iceland,” said Mr. Morris, whose family has been in the business for generations.
But many kinds of fish, like tuna, swordfish and cod, are not readily available from European Union waters anymore. In September the European Commission banned the fishing of endangered bluefin tuna in the eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean for the rest of 2007. Such rules barely slow the industry.

“There isn’t a market we can’t access anymore,” said Lee Fawcitt, selling tuna from Sri Lanka, salmon and cod from Norway, halibut from Canada, tilapia from China, shrimp from Madagascar and snapper from Indonesia and Senegal.

To many traders, the origin of the fish hardly matters. “We try to do something, but once it’s here, my attitude is that if it’s been caught it should be sold.” Mr. Fawcitt said. “I’d hate to see it being thrown away.”

Tracing where the fish come from is nearly impossible, many experts say. Groups like Greenpeace and the Environmental Justice Foundation have documented a range of egregious and illegal fishing practices off West Africa.

Huge boats, owned by companies in China, South Korea and Europe, fly flags of convenience from other nations. They stay at sea for years at a time, fishing, fueling, changing crews and unloading their catches to refrigerated boats at sea, making international monitoring extremely difficult.

Even when permits and treaties make the fishing legal, it is not always sustainable. Many fleets go well beyond the bounds of their agreements in any case, generally with total impunity, studies, including some by Greenpeace and Environmental Justice, show.

Under international law, the country where the boat is registered is responsible for disciplining illegal activity. Many of the ships fly flags from distant landlocked countries that collect registration fees, but put a low priority on enforcement.

When the Environmental Justice Foundation, which has studied the fishing industry, teamed up with a Greenpeace boat in 2006, more that half of the 104 vessels it followed off the coast of Guinea were fishing illegally, or were involved in illegal practices, the study found.

Their cameras recorded boats whose names were hidden to prevent reporting; boats whose names were changed week to week, presumably so multiple boats could use a single permit; the catch from a licensed boat being offloaded in the dead of night to another vessel, so that the boat could start fishing again.

“There’s a big competition out there with foreign vessels, especially from China,” said Moshwood Kuku, a fishmonger at Afikala Afrikane, a stall that specializes in African fish at Billingsgate. “Locals can only fish the coast.”

The China National Fisheries Corporation, which first sent boats to the Atlantic in 1985, now has offices up and down the coast of West Africa, accounting for more than half its international offices. It also has a huge compound in Las Palmas.

But some of those contributing to overfishing are European as well, said Rupert Howes of the Marine Stewardship Council, a fisheries conservation group. “We are allowing boats from places like France and Spain to rape and pillage West African fishing grounds,” he said. The European Union spends 265 million euros per year, or almost $400 million, to buy foreign fishing rights for its distant-water fleet.

While small local fishermen in West Africa tend to fish sustainably, large seagoing boats use practices that are dangerous to the environment, particularly the use of vast nets to trawl the sea bed. The nets destroy coral, and unsettle eggs and fish breeding grounds. They gulp up fish that cannot be sold because they are too small. Their competition decimates local fishing industries.

By the time huge mechanized vessels have thrown the unsalable juveniles back into the sea, they are often dead, bringing stocks another step closer to extinction. Of the estimated 90 million tons of fish caught worldwide each year, about 30 million tons are discarded, Ms. Vesper of the World Wide Fund for Nature said.

Many experts feel that a better way to control overfishing is to end the system of flags of convenience and to improve port inspections at places like Las Palmas. But enforcement requires resources, which would probably push fish prices even higher.

The European Union is exploring the idea of requiring officials at its ports to check with officials from countries where boats are registered to make sure they are legal and have fishing rights. It is proposing to provide financial assistance for more enforcement in developing countries.

In the short term, prices will be higher. Procuring genuinely sustainable fish means buying more expensive fish, or not eating fish at all. “We’ve acted as if the supply of fish was limitless and it’s not,” said Steve Trent, executive director of the Environmental Justice Foundation.

The decision comes more than four years after the agency tentatively declared that food from cloned animals was safe, only to face a backlash of criticism from consumer groups and some scientists who said the science supporting the decision was shaky.

On Tuesday, the F.D.A. declared that further studies had confirmed its earlier decision.

“Following extensive review, the risk assessment did not identify any unique risks for human food from cattle, swine or goat clones, and concluded that there is sufficient information to determine that food from cattle, swine and goat clones is as safe to eat as that from their more conventionally-bred counterparts,” the agency said in a statement.

The F.D.A. ruling was a major victory for cloning companies, which hope to use the cloned animals primarily for breeding purposes, selling copies of prize dairy cows, steers and hogs.

Consumer groups and some members of Congress have fought the decision, arguing that there was still not enough science to support such a decision.

It remains to be seen how widely the technology will be adopted. Interest from the food industry has been tepid, with some companies declaring that they will not sell milk or meat from cloned animals or their offspring.

Even if the technology is widely adopted, it is unlikely that clones themselves will wind up on grocery shelves, since they cost thousands of dollars apiece to produce. A limited amount of milk from cloned cows might be sold, but mostly it would be meat and milk from second- and third-generation offspring of clones that would enter the food supply.

Dolly is the first cloned animal.

When scientists explain the practice of cloning livestock, they describe clones as genetic twins born at different times. Cloning companies say it’s just another reproductive technology, such as artificial insemination.

Here is how cloning works:

Scientists take an immature egg, usually from a cow that went to the slaughterhouse, and remove the nucleus. They add DNA from a donor cow, often taken from the skin cell of an ear, and a tiny electric shock coaxes the egg to start dividing and grow into a copy of the original animal. The egg is then implanted into a surrogate animal for gestation and birth.

The first mammal cloned from an adult cell was Dolly the sheep in 1997.
Dolly was euthanized in 2003 at the age of 6, well short of her normal lifespan, after developing a progressive lung disease.

Fedor is the Champ! Watch all his fights, he is one of the greatest ever.
His first appearance is in PRIDE demolition. Start there.
There are so many great fights, it’s too many to name. Anderson Silva vs Ryo Chonan. Amazing.
It’s worth it to watch them all in order, to see the rise and fall of the winners and losers. Trust.

Art by Jon one

New colors! Opaque, pigmented inks - pink, purple, red, blue, green, yellow, white.



New Bleed Thru Red!
More new products and colors shipping in 2008.

Follow the leader.

Also comes in white

Available at ALIFE, NYC, LA, Vancouver.

“Plinth” Cast resin.

Untitled (Table), cast resin. The space underneath a table cast in resin.

“House” Cast concrete.

“Ghost” Cast plaster. The inside of a room cast in plaster.

“Sequel IV"Cast Plaster a bookshelf with books cast in plaster.

“Spaces” Cast resin. The space underneath various chairs cast in resin.

Thomas L. Friedman
From the NY Times.

Not long ago, the satirical newspaper The Onion ran a fake news story that began like this:

“At a well-attended rally in front of his new ground zero headquarters Monday, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani officially announced his plan to run for president of 9/11. ‘My fellow citizens of 9/11, today I will make you a promise,’ said Giuliani during his 18-minute announcement speech in front of a charred and torn American flag. ‘As president of 9/11, I will usher in a bold new 9/11 for all.’ If elected, Giuliani would inherit the duties of current 9/11 President George W. Bush, including making grim facial expressions, seeing the world’s conflicts in terms of good and evil, and carrying a bullhorn at all state functions.”

Like all good satire, the story made me both laugh and cry, because it reflected something so true — how much, since 9/11, we’ve become “The United States of Fighting Terrorism.” Times columnists are not allowed to endorse candidates, but there’s no rule against saying who will not get my vote: I will not vote for any candidate running on 9/11. We don’t need another president of 9/11. We need a president for 9/12. I will only vote for the 9/12 candidate.

What does that mean? This: 9/11 has made us stupid. I honor, and weep for, all those murdered on that day. But our reaction to 9/11 — mine included — has knocked America completely out of balance, and it is time to get things right again.

It is not that I thought we had new enemies that day and now I don’t. Yes, in the wake of 9/11, we need new precautions, new barriers. But we also need our old habits and sense of openness. For me, the candidate of 9/12 is the one who will not only understand who our enemies are, but who we are.

Before 9/11, the world thought America’s slogan was: “Where anything is possible for anybody.” But that is not our global brand anymore. Our government has been exporting fear, not hope: “Give me your tired, your poor and your fingerprints.”

You may think Guantánamo Bay is a prison camp in Cuba for Al Qaeda terrorists. A lot of the world thinks it’s a place we send visitors who don’t give the right answers at immigration. I will not vote for any candidate who is not committed to dismantling Guantánamo Bay and replacing it with a free field hospital for poor Cubans. Guantánamo Bay is the anti-Statue of Liberty.

Roger Dow, president of the Travel Industry Association, told me that the United States has lost millions of overseas visitors since 9/11 — even though the dollar is weak and America is on sale. “Only the U.S. is losing traveler volume among major countries, which is unheard of in today’s world,” Mr. Dow said.

Total business arrivals to the United States fell by 10 percent over the 2004-5 period alone, while the number of business visitors to Europe grew by 8 percent in that time. The travel industry’s recent Discover America Partnership study concluded that “the U.S. entry process has created a climate of fear and frustration that is turning away foreign business and leisure travelers and hurting America’s image abroad.” Those who don’t visit us, don’t know us.

I’d love to see us salvage something decent in Iraq that might help tilt the Middle East onto a more progressive pathway. That was and is necessary to improve our security. But sometimes the necessary is impossible — and we just can’t keep chasing that rainbow this way.

Look at our infrastructure. It’s not just the bridge that fell in my hometown, Minneapolis. Fly from Zurich’s ultramodern airport to La Guardia’s dump. It is like flying from the Jetsons to the Flintstones. I still can’t get uninterrupted cellphone service between my home in Bethesda and my office in D.C. But I recently bought a pocket cellphone at the Beijing airport and immediately called my wife in Bethesda — crystal clear.

I just attended the China clean car conference, where Chinese automakers were boasting that their 2008 cars will meet “Euro 4” — European Union — emissions standards. We used to be the gold standard. We aren’t anymore. Last July, Microsoft, fed up with American restrictions on importing brain talent, opened its newest software development center in Vancouver. That’s in Canada, folks. If Disney World can remain an open, welcoming place, with increased but invisible security, why can’t America?

We can’t afford to keep being this stupid! We have got to get our groove back. We need a president who will unite us around a common purpose, not a common enemy. Al Qaeda is about 9/11. We are about 9/12, we are about the Fourth of July — which is why I hope that anyone who runs on the 9/11 platform gets trounced.

Best sandwiches in Nyc, hands down. If you live in NYC, and haven’t heard, or you’re visiting and want the real deal, Alidoro is the spot.
My pick for the best sandwiches in all of Nyc. Battle anybody.
The dude in the picture is from Italy, he uses only the best ingredients and knows how to make a sandwich. Not too much meat (very important and a common mistake), always well balanced, nice bread selection, consistently on point.
Only thing is, he simply will not shut up! This guy will talk your ear off and keep you in the spot for 20 min without even making your sandwich! He’ll be talking and not working, just standing there and asking all kinds of stuff, How’s work? where’s your friend? Just rambling. blah, blah, blah.
This is New York City, we like to keep things moving. But if you want the real deal, top notch sandwich you have to grin and bear it.
If Mexicans are behind the counter, you’re good, order and your out. If you see this dude, you’re in for it.
Either way it’s the spot. Might seem pricey, but well worth it. Trust.

105 Sullivan Street between Prince And Spring.

Bucket of molten lead.

Finished piece.

http://nycexposed.com/Worth/