SPANISHJOURNALS

Marbella Forest Fire

2012-09-02T20:00:00.001+01:00

Major wildfire in Malaga leaves elderly Briton dead and his wife missing

2012-09-01T00:17:00.001+01:00

One person was confirmed dead and another missing on Friday night after a major wildfire Affected Municipalities of the Coin, Alhaurin el Grande, Mijas, Marbella and Ojén, in Málaga province. The victim is a British man aged 78 was found Whose charred body in the area of Las Blanquillas, inside the city limits of Ojén. His wife has not yet been found. Meanwhile, a couple in late fifties was taken Their hospital with burns to 60 percent to of Their Bodies. Both lived in a detached home inside the Marbella residential estate of El Rosario. A mother and her two children were found hiding inside a cave in Ojén and taken to hospital to be Treated for smoke inhalation. Five other people Were Also Evacuated from Their Homes. The fire was Extending to the Sierra de las Nieves even as the chief of the firefighting department Málaga, Manuel Marmolejo, Announced That a new front had opened up and Reached the area of Juanar, where two hotels had to be Evacuated. Marmolejo said Extending the wildfire was with "great virulence." The blaze Began around 6.50pm on Thursday and soon extended to a perimeter of Between 50 and 60 kilometers, said Marmolejo. An Estimated 1.000 hectares of land Have Been Affected.

Marbella eight urbanisations has been evacuated. 4,000 people have been evacuated from their homes.

2012-08-31T11:46:00.001+01:00

The village of Ojen and eight urbanisations in Marbella have been evacuated. 4,000 people have been evacuated from their homes.

The fire broke out on Thursday afternoon and has affected Coín where some 60 homes have had to be evacuated. The fire was still burning overnight so the terrestrial fire fighters continued to work overnight, according to the fire fighting Infoca.
The extinction of the blaze was complicated by the strong hot wind known locally as the ‘Terral’.
Three of the four fronts were brought under control just after midnight.

The fire is also affecting Alhaurín El Grande and Mijas where homes have been evacuated in the Entrerrios area, according to the Junta de Andalucía.

The Barranco Blanco urbanisation in Coín is close to the fire, and there were fears that non-forestry zones could be affected.

In Calahonda there are flames in the urbanisation between Calle Cristóbal Colón and Residential Princess Park. The upper zone of Calahonda is being evacuated.

Two people have been seriously injured with burns. They were in the urbanisation El Rosario where five homes have been affected by the flames. The two injured were taken to the Costa del Sol Hospital in Marbella a 4.30am this morning. One of them has burns to 50% of their body.

The AP-7 Motorway was for a time overnight for a while.

The Mayor of Marbella, Ángeles Muñoz, has confirmed that several urbanisations have been evacuated, including La Mairena, Elviria, the area of Las Chapas and Molinillo where the fire is concentrated and continues to advance.

The Hotel La Cala Resort has also been evacuated of its 200 guests.

Those evacuated have been told to go to the sports centre in La Cala, the sports centre in Las Lagunas or the Mijas Hippodrome.

Between 25 and 30 families have been evacuated from Alpujata on the outskirts of Monda.

13 airborne fire fighting planes were brought in on Thursday afternoon from Málaga, Córdoba and Granada, and they have resumed their work at first light.

Land forces totalled 99 fire fighters distributed in seven brigades, three reserve brigades, five fire engines, five operation technicians and four environmental vehicles.

The fire continues out of control on one front and the Mijas Town Hall has told the residents of la Atalaya to urgently leave their homes. A level 1 has been put in place and that indicates that the prevision for the fire could affect non-forestry assets.

350 firefighters are at the scene this morning and the fire fighting planes have returned to work.

Numerous homes have been burnt out and others seriously affected in Ojén and Marbella. The urbanisation La Mairena has flames affecting several properties.

2012-08-31T11:38:00.001+01:00

The situation is particularly difficult in the upper part of Calahonda where residents have been evacuated and there are flames in the urbanisation between Calle Cristóbal Colón and the residential complex Princess Park.

Some 3,000 residents of El Rosario in Marbella have been evacuated, and German couple in their 60’s have been seriously hurt. Marbella Ayuntamiento says they were surprised by the flames and now have burns 40-50% of their bodies.

Those affected by the blaze are being first treated in the Costa del Sol Hospital in Marbella, and then many suffering burns are being transferred to Málaga to the Specialist Burns Unit in the Carlos Haya Hospital.

People have been sleeping in sports centre in Monda and Marbella and municipal buses have been laid on as transport.

The Junta delegate in Málaga, José Luis Ruiz Espejo, has said today that he suspects the fire could have been started deliberately given its rapid propagation. He said the technicians suspected the fire was man made from the start.

Ground fire fighters worked through the night facing difficult terrain and totalled 99 fire fighters distributed in seven brigades, and three reserve brigades, five fire engines, five operation technicians and four environmental vehicles.

At first light this morning the 17 fire-fighting planes returned to the air.
Five planes which drop earth, four large capacity helicopters, five transport helicopters, two amphibian planes, and a plane for coordination and vigilance.

More than 250 professionals from fire fighting organisation INFOCA are working this morning in Mijas, Marbella, Alhauin de la Torre and in Coín where the fire started.

The Mayor of Marbella, Ángeles Muñoz, has confirmed that several urbanisations have been evacuated, including La Mairena, Elviria, the area of Las Chapas and Molinillo where the fire is concentrated and continues to advance.
Between 25 and 30 families have been evacuated from Alpujata on the outskirts of Monda.

The fire broke out on Thursday afternoon and has affected Coín where some 60 homes have had to be evacuated. The fire was still burning overnight as so the terrestrial fire fighters continued to work over night, according to the fire fighting Infoca.
The extinction of the blaze is being complicated by the strong hot wind known locally as the ‘Terral’.

Three of the four fronts were brought under control just after midnight.

The fire is also affecting Alhaurín El Grande and Mijas where homes have been evacuated in the Entrerrios area, according to the Junta de Andalucía.
The Barranco Blanco urbanisation in Coín is close to the fire, and there were fears that non-forestry zones could be affected.
The Hotel La Cala Resort has also been evacuated of its 200 guests.

Those evacuated have been told to go to the sports centre in La Cala, the sports centre in Las Lagunas or the Mijas Hippodrome.
13 airborne fire fighting planes were brought in on Thursday afternoon from Málaga, Córdoba and Granada, and they resumed their work at first light this morning.

The fire continues out of control and the Mijas Town Hall has told the residents of la Atalaya to urgently leave their homes. A level 1 has been put in place and that indicates that the prevision for the fire could affect non-forestry assets.

A huge wildfire is approaching the wealthy resort of Marbella on Spain's Costa del Sol, where the authorities have evacuated thousands of people.

2012-08-31T11:30:00.001+01:00

Flames reached the Elviria area on the edge of Marbella early on Friday.

About 1,000 people have been evacuated from the edge of Marbella, about 3,300 from Ojen and others from a camp site at Alpujata, Spanish media report.

They include at least 300 British expats sent to evacuation centres, the UK embassy told the BBC.

Marbella is famous for its up-market hotels and villas - it is a favourite haunt of wealthy foreigners.

Overnight the fire spread rapidly through a 12km (eight-mile) coastal strip, not far from holiday resorts.

Two people have suffered serious burns and some homes have been engulfed by the fire.

The Costa del Sol is one of Spain's most popular holiday destinations and home to a large British expatriate community.

The British embassy says it is working closely with the Spanish authorities and consular staff have been deployed to assist those affected.

Much of Spain's countryside was left tinder-dry this summer by a prolonged heatwave. There have been major wildfires in northern Catalonia - near the Pyrenees - and on La Gomera, in the Canary Islands.

The wind speed has dropped since Thursday and the air is more humid, so there are hopes that the Costa del Sol blaze can be contained soon.

More than 250 firefighters are battling the fire, helped by 17 aircraft dropping water to douse it, Spain's El Pais news website says.

The fire started on Thursday afternoon in the Sierra Negra area of Coin, near Malaga and has now affected an area of some 1,000 hectares (2,471 acres).

Part of the AP-7 highway was cut temporarily, but other roads are unaffected. It is not yet clear how many homes have been damaged or destroyed.

OwnFone: A Custom-Printed Phone Perfect for Seniors and Kids

2012-08-27T11:22:00.001+01:00

Some people need all the latest apps and features available on their smartphone so they can be connected 24/7, while others just want to make a phone call. For the connected crowd, read all the latest reviews onMashable. For the others, check out the OwnFone.

It’s designed to call only the people you want to reach most frequently. In fact, it can only hold 12 contacts. There are no keys or buttons to program. Instead you let OwnFone know who you want to add, and they program and send you a custom-printed phone, about the size of a credit card.

If you lose it, they just print you a new one. You do need to call OwnFone support if you need to change someone’s number, or add a contact.

OwnFone says it plans to come out with a phone that can be customized in braille in the near future. Right now OwnFone is only available in the UK.

Check out the video above for more details and let us know what you think of a printed, pre-programmed cell phone.

Estepona Wild Fires rage on a 2km front

2012-08-26T01:33:00.001+01:00

Police and Ambulances hurried to evacuate as wild fires quickly spread our reporter on the scene photographer the devastation

Estepona on Fire

2012-08-26T01:20:00.001+01:00

We had a tiny little fire today, which they put out.

Then an hour later, it restarted, and spread along 2 Klm of the coast.

It was horrible seeing old people being run out of their homes, and carried through the smoke by police and ambulances.

The pictures really doesn,t do show bad it really was.many houses have gone

During experiments on the axons of the Woods Hole squid (loligo pealei), we tested our cockroach leg stimulus protocol on the squid's chromatophores.

2012-08-25T12:01:00.001+01:00

The results were both interesting and beautiful. The video is a view through an 8x microscope zoomed in on the dorsal side of the caudal fin of the squid. We used a suction electrode to stimulate the fin nerve. Chromatophores are pigmeted cells that come in 3 colors: Brown, Red, and Yellow. Each chromatophore is lined with up to 16 muscles that contract to reveal their color.

Paloma T. Gonzalez-Bellido of Roger Hanlon's Lab in the Marine Resource Center of the Marine Biological Labs helped us with the preparation. You can read their latest paper at:http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2012/08/13/rspb.2012.1374

London's secret music venue and their livestream act

2012-08-14T00:24:00.001+01:00

With an invite-only door policy and super secret location, Boiler Room is London's most exclusive music venue. But elitism isn't the premise for its clandestine nature—in fact, anyone with an Internet connection can easily join in the fun. Using a simple webcam, the crew behind Boiler Room livestreams each set for the world to see free of charge, and each month more than a million viewers tune in to see performances by artists like James Blake, The xx, Roots Manuva, Neon Indian, Juan Maclean and more.

We recently chilled out to the smooth sounds of Brooklyn's How To Dress Well before rocking out to revered musician Matthew Dear, who brought down the house with an intense 40-minute DJ set. Keep an eye out for our interview with Dear, but for now you can get a little more insight into the underground music scene's most talked about livestream show by checking out our interview with assistant musical programmer and Boiler Room host Nic Tasker.

How important is it for Boiler Room to remain secret, at least in its location?

That is quite an important aspect of it, purely because it means when you do shows you don't get a lot of groupies, pretty much everyone in the room is either a friend of ours or one of the artist's. It helps to create a more relaxed atmosphere for the artist and I think they feel less pressure. They're also just able to chill out and be themselves more rather than having people being like, "Hi can I get your autograph?" If the artists are relaxed usually you get the best music.

It seems like there is more interaction among the crowd than at a typical venue, is that intentional?

It's definitely a social place. All the people that come down, most of them we know and they're all our friends. So they come down, hang, have a drink and just chill out, basically. From our very set-up, we do it with a webcam, we're not a highly professional organization but I think that's kind of the charm of it. The main thing is people come down with the right attitude.

How much of the show is prescribed?

I guess that depends on the artist. We never say anything. Literally, whatever they want to do—we're kind of the platform for them to do whatever they want, so if Matthew Dear wants to come and play an hour of noise with no beats, he can do that. That's fine with us, and I think that's why artists like coming to play for us. We're not like a club where you have to make people dance, we don't give a shit if people dance. It's nice if they do and it makes it more fun, but some nights you just get people appreciating the music, which is equally fun.

Is there a particular kind of artist you guys look for and ask to come perform?

No, not particularly, it's just whatever we're feeling. Thristian [Boiler Room's co-founder] has the main say on musical direction, but it's a massive team effort. In London there's five of us, New York there's two, LA there's one and Berlin there's two.

Tonight you had different set-ups for each artist, do you tailor their positioning in the room to their style?

It definitely depends on the act and what kind of music they do. With live bands we found what works nicely is having them opposite each other because it's like they're in rehearsal, like they're just jamming. Which is again trying to give them that chilled out feel that they're just at home jamming and there happens to be a camera there. For some of our shows we've had over 100,000 viewers. When you think of those numbers it's quite scary, but when you're in the room and it's all friends it creates that vibe that people don't mind. You can imagine if you had all those people in front of you it would be a very different situation.

Have you ever thought of Boiler Room as an East London version of Soul Train?

It's never crossed my mind like that, but I can see why you think that. I like to think of us as the new music broadcaster, kind of the new MTV, but obviously we operate in the underground scene mainly. But I like to think that what we do is as revolutionary as what they were doing. We're always growing into something new.

What's up next for Boiler Room?

We have had visual people in doing 3D mapping, and that's something we're looking forward to progressing—doing more with the visuals. We've got the upstairs as well, we're starting to do breakfast shows with some high profile DJs, we're going to be doing that regularly. Each will have an individual format. The next step is progressing the US shows, we're alternating weekly between New York and LA, so the next step is to take Boiler Room to America

Breaking Free of the Co-dependency Trap presents a groundbreaking developmental road map to guide readers away from their co-dependent behaviors and toward a life of wholeness and fulfillment.

2012-08-13T10:07:00.001+01:00

Breaking Free of the Co-dependency Trap presents a groundbreaking developmental road map to guide readers away from their co-dependent behaviors and toward a life of wholeness and fulfillment.UK Citizens

This is the book that offers a different perspective on codependency and is strongly recommended by Dream Warrior Recovery as part of a solution based recovery. This bestselling book, now in a revised edition, radically challenges the prevailing medical definition of co-dependency as a permanent, progressive, and incurable addiction. Rather, the authors identify it as the result of developmental traumas that interfered with the infant-parent bonding relationship during the first year of life.US Citizens

Drawing on decades of clinical experience, Barry and Janae Weinhold correlate the developmental causes of co-dependency with relationship problems later in life, such as establishing and maintaining boundaries, clinging and dependent behaviors, people pleasing, and difficulty achieving success in the world. Then they focus on healing co-dependency, providing compelling case histories and practical activities to help readers heal early trauma and transform themselves and their primary relationships.

Vintage Ads Most Disturbing Household Products

2012-08-12T05:27:00.001+01:00

Maybe. But it's really hard to see how even our parents and grandparents didn't get nightmares from ...

#13. Three-Legged Dingo Boots

vintageadbrowser.com

The Message:

Here are some boots that you should buy, because famous people wear them. Three of them.

The Horror:

Wait, what?

Yes, amazingly, the fact that this ad stars a pre-murder O.J. Simpson is the second-creepiest thing about it. And you can squint and try to read the text all you want -- it makes no reference whatsoever to the fact that their spokesperson has three legs. There's no cute slogan like "Boots so comfortable, you'll wish you had another foot!" Nope. It's like some guy in the art department just said, "Eh, I don't like how you can't really see the chair, let's just add another leg to fill that space."

We know what you're thinking: "Cracked, this is obviously a subtle 'big dick' joke. 'Third leg?' Get it?" But, no, it turns out this was a whole campaign they did with various celebrities, some of whom are women:

eBay
Like, uh ... this famous lady right here.

But O.J. seems to be the most frequent star of the "Third Leg" campaign, which apparently lasted for years. Note how his afro shrinks as he gets more comfortable with his new appendage:

The picture in that third ad would have been perfect for the cover of his book.

Please don't blame us for the inevitable nightmare in which O.J. is running after you, in the dark, those three boots pounding down the pavement after you with a noise like a wounded horse.

#12. Lord West Suits Will Impress Your 7-Year-Old Date

vintageadbrowser.com
"I like my women like I like my code names: 007."

The Message:

Women of all ages dig men in tuxedos!

The Horror:

According to the text, this dinner suit is for "sophisticated traditionalists," a euphemism we weren't previously aware of for "child molesters." Because there's no other way to interpret this picture. That's not tenderness on their faces. That's hunger. If you told us that they're a father and daughter, that would only make it creepier.

And it turns out that this is only the worst example in a whole series of ads associating little girls with selling tuxedos.

eBay
The style is best described as Godfather meets Lolita.

Can you imagine the pitch meeting that led to this campaign? Picture Don Draper from Mad Men standing before his clients, selling them on this idea:

"Class. Elegance. Making out with little girls. These are the values your company represents."

"Did ... did you say 'making out with little girls,' Don?"

"Yes," replied Don with perfect confidence.

"OK, just making sure."

Sitting at the end of the table, Peggy looks at Don and smiles. He did it again.

#11. Man in Tuxedo Carefully Considers Naked Child

library.duke.edu
"Told you it was bigger. Now pay up."

The Message:

Regular soap sinks in the bathtub, causing children to take longer in washing themselves and their fathers to get angry and spank them. Prevent child abuse by buying Ivory Soap -- it floats.

The Horror:

OK, they're clearly just fucking with us at this point. Remove the text and the message becomes clear: "In the old days, child predators used to dress way better than they do now." But let's put the pedophilia overtones aside for the moment and examine the text.

Was the elaborate scenario described under the picture (involving childhoods ruined by non-floating soap) really such a common problem in the '20s, or was this based on the painful personal experiences of whoever commissioned this ad? We're betting on the latter option. Note that the father's body language doesn't say "I'm going to spank you" -- he's clearly pondering which part of the kid's body to break first.

"Maybe the 28th trimester isn't too late for an abortion."

#10. "Are You Sure I'll Still Be a Virgin?"

thesocietypages.org
"If you didn't think band camp counted, I don't see why you'd think this would."

The Message:

Don't worry, teens, you can use Tampax tampons without losing your virginity.

The Horror:

Be honest: How many of you looked at this picture and immediately recognized it as a Tampax ad? And how many looked at it and thought it depicted a teenage girl being sexually propositioned? It's not just us, is it?

This ad would have looked 90 percent less sordid if both people involved were clearly visible. Instead, the second teenager is for some reason sitting on the floor of the porch with her back to us, so we can't see how young, or scared, she is. But, of course, all of that is purely from our own depraved imagination. The real ad is simply about two teenagers debating whether or not inserting a tampon counts as sex.

#9. Escaped Convicts Love Revell Authentic Model Kits

vintageadbrowser.com
"Is this the new plan, boss?"
"I've spent all day plotting against Superman; this is 'Lex Time'."

The Message:

Hey kids! Check out these sweet model kits!

The Horror:

There's only one possible scenario in which this picture could have come to exist: The photographers were getting ready to shoot this ad when they realized that the boy who was supposed to be holding up the models in the picture never showed up for work. Panicking, the man from the ad agency looked around the studio.

"Dmitri, can you come here for a second?" he said to the guy who fixes the lighting. "Stand here and hold this model. Yes, that's great. You'll play the boy in this ad."

"But sir," said the photographer, "Dmitri was just released from jail. In fact, he's still wearing the prison jumpsuit."

"No, no, he's perfect. Look at him. Look at that childlike innocence in his face."

"Could you open the top button maybe, show a little chest hair?"

"Perfect."

#8. Our Competitors = Surgical Ass Torture

vintageadbrowser.com
"Don't worry, sir, the gloves are just to establish atmosphere."

The Message:

Using cheap toilet paper can lead to medical complications.

The Horror:

... which in turn can lead to rubber-gloved hands inserting clamps in your anus. Better play it safe and go with Scott Tissues.

This attempt to traumatize customers into buying their product with threats of anal torture was part of a whole marketing campaign created during the Great Depression in which Scott Tissues' slogan went from "Wipe your butt with us" to "Wipe your butt with us, or die in a world of asshole pain."

Of course, it was all bullshit: There's no such thing as "toilet tissue illness," it was just a thing they made up to convince people to keep buying tissues at a time when they were lucky enough if they had a toilet.

#7. "Before You Scold Me, Mom ... Maybe You'd Better Light Up a Marlboro"

deceptology.com

The Message:

Before you beat your baby for stealing your favorite hat, have a cigarette and relax yourself. Then beat the baby.

The Horror:

How many times did this months-old child have to be punched before it learned to pick up the Marlboros and offer them to mommy to calm her down? If that's not the saddest thing you've imagined all week, you're dead inside. This is actually one in a series of ads from the '50s, back when Marlboro was targeting mommies instead of rugged cowboys. Sometimes the babies actually seem to be guilting their moms into smoking more.

tobacco.stanford.edu
"You turned me into an addict when I was a fetus, now deal with it."

Oddly enough, the version of this ad aimed at fathers doesn't involve scolding, but a pompous baby in a basket defending daddy's rather feminine cigarette tastes (note the reference to "beauty tips" at the bottom).

tobacco.stanford.edu
This is the kind of debate babies have all the time.

Mike Capp's pop cultural spoof of the painting, Sleep Batman, Batman fills the head's role

2012-07-29T18:52:00.001+01:00

Salvador Dalí's painting Sleep depicted a disembodied, slumbering head held aloft by crutches. In Mike Capp's pop cultural spoof of the painting, Sleep Batman, Batman fills the head's role, snoozing without any thought to the fragile props that might collapse below him.

Capp does a lot of these fine art/pop culture mashups, including Boba Fett and Spider-Man as painted by Picasso, Lily Munster as a Modigliani nude, and Skeletor in the style of Klimt. As for Dalí himself, Capp casts him as the Joker, which seems apt for the mischievous artist.

Prints of both paintings are available from Capp's Yessy gallery.

Sleep Batman Sleep and Dalí Joker [Yessy via Ian Brooks]

TENACIOUS D Concert Shut Down Due to STABBING

2012-07-29T16:53:00.001+01:00

"I'm gonna hump you sweetly," is not what the crowd at a Tenacious D concert got to experience last night ... because a brutal fight broke out instead and at least one person was STABBED, this according to local reports.

It all went down at Mandalay Bay's House of Blues in Vegas. Jack Black and Kyle Gasswere playing a set when all of the sudden a fight erupted in the crowd, according to 8 News Now Vegas.

According to the report, one person was stabbed in the leg and rushed to the hospital, but is expected to recover.

Following the incident, the police shut down the House of Blues, thus cancelling the rest of the concert.

8 News Now says the cops currently have one person in custody and they are not looking for any other suspects.

Recently Apple celebrated the opening of its new flagship store in Barcelona, Spain. Incasecommemorates the opening with a new limited edition iPhone 4/4S Snap Case.

2012-07-29T16:49:00.001+01:00

“This limited-edition Snap Case is available exclusively at the Apple Store, Passeig de Gràcia in Barcelona. It features the bold red and yellow stripes of Barcelona’s flag, which come from the Crown of Aragon’s coat of arms. The mosaic tile shapes are inspired by the work of renowned architect Antoni Gaudí, whose famous buildings, such as the Casa Batlló, are found throughout the city.”

If you want the new Incase case, you will have to pass by the new store.

Paper Passion, a scent from Geza Schoen for Wallpaper magazine, makes its wearers smell like freshly printed books

2012-07-26T10:38:00.001+01:00

Paper Passion, a scent from Geza Schoen for Wallpaper* magazine, makes its wearers smell like freshly printed books. I suppose it can be alternated with "In the Library," a perfume that smells like old books.

Paper Passion fragrance by Geza Schoen, Gerhard Steidl, and Wallpaper* magazine, with packaging by Karl Lagerfeld and Steidl.
“The smell of a freshly printed book is the best smell in the world.” Karl Lagerfeld.

It comes packaged with inside a hollow carved out of a book with "texts" by "Karl Lagerfeld, Günter Grass, Geza Schoen and Tony Chambers."

'Porno' depiction of Kali in game leads to protest

2012-07-20T08:40:00.001+01:00

Hindu groups are protesting against Hi-Rez Studios, a US-based company, which has launched an online game, SMITE, with a slutty, femme-fatale portrayal of Hindu Goddess Kali. SMITE is an online battleground of mythical gods and features a number of other Hindu gods and goddesses such as Vamana and Agni.

Catholics, Jews and Buddhists have come out in the support of those Hindus who are upset with this. Well-known Roman Catholic leader in Nevada, USA, Father Charles T Durante, prominent Jewish leader in western USA Rabbi ElizaBeth W Beyer and distinguished Buddhist leader from Nevada, USA, Reverend Jikai' Phil Bryan have issued separate statements criticising Hi-Rez's game. Reverend Bryan has reportedly said: "Shame on the game-makers for denigrating these Supreme Beings".

The Hindu Jagruti Manch on its website says: "This game has portrayed Hindu Goddess Kali Mata in very bad manner, with appearance as a combat porn-star. Kali Mata is highly revered Hindu Goddess and more than one billion Hindus worship her. Also it is grave of insult of Hindu Deities as Deities are not objects to be used for online games."

While IBNLive checked out the game videos where the characters are pretty tiny, it has found no evidence of the Goddess being portrayed as a pornstar. Yes, she is barely clad like Hollywood femme fatales which is possibly not a reverential portrayal of a goddess worshipped by a billion people.

Hi-Rez COO Todd Harris's words have been pretty high-strung. "In fact, given Hinduism's concept of a single truth with multiple physical manifestations, one could validly interpret ALL the gods within Smite to be Hindu. And all gods outside of Smite as well. Ponder that for a minute. Anyway, going forward Smite will include even more deities, not fewer," he has been quoted as saying.

Rajan Zed, President of Universal Society of Hinduism, said he's urging Hi-Rez to reconsider their portrayal of these gods and that they should have them removed from the game, especially Kali. He has called the portrayal "pornographic style".

"Video game makers should be more sensitive while handling faith-related subjects and no faith, larger or smaller, should be trampled. As these games left lasting impact on the minds of highly impressionable children, teens and other young people; such inappropriate depictions would create more misunderstandings about Hinduism, which was already a highly misunderstood religion in the West," Zed's official press statement reads.

Tattoos are permanent reminders of temporary feelings

2012-07-13T14:46:00.001+01:00

'It's wisest to pick someone whom you cannot break up with or divorce.' Photograph: Gary Powell/Getty Images

Tattoos are permanent reminders of temporary feelings – at least if you believe the report in Thursday's Daily Mail, which looked at "embarrassing" matching couple tattoos – designs that complement or complete each other across two, romantically involved bodies.

Yet there are millions of people who feel no embarrassment about the tattoos they share with their friends, lovers and even exes. Moreover, as with most perceived "new trends" in tattooing, this practice is one with a history far older than the current generation; it's a phenomenon that provides both an insight into human beings' fundamental relationships with their own bodies and the bodies and lives of those close to them.

Tattoos have been used as markers of association for probably as long as human beings have walked the earth, to mark tribal affiliations, regimental membership in the military, membership of fraternal orders such as the masons or US college Greek letter groups, and to signify gang membership.

The most common of these types of affiliative tattoos, though, is marking an attachment to a loved one. There's an old adage in tattooed circles that suggests getting your lover's name tattooed on you is a sure kiss of death for that relationship, and it's an old gag too: Norman Rockwell's famous 1944 Saturday Evening Post cover painting, The Tattooist, shows a salty sailor in the tattooist's chair, having yet another name added to an arm already full of the crossed-out names of past paramours. Even earlier, a cartoon in Punch from 1916 shows a "fickle young thing" – a well-turned-out young woman, as it happens – revisiting her tattooist to seek an amendment to the ornamental crest tattoo on her arm as she has, euphemistically, "exchanged into another regiment".

None of this seems to have affected the long-standing popularity of having names or symbols tattooed to commemorate couples' love and bond. Magazines in the 1920s reported the latest fad for newlyweds was getting matching tattooed wedding rings; preserved tattooed skins in the Wellcome Collection from the late 19th century feature names and portraits of lovers; studies of tattoos in the American navy in the 18th century reveal a large percentage of seamen of the period bore tattoos of the names of women; even Christian pilgrims in the 16th century were recorded to have borne the names of their wives on their skins, as tokens or identificatory marks; and records attest to romantic tattooing even in ancient Rome – St Basil the Great (329-380) is said to have condemned the tattooing of a lover's name that he observed on someone's hand. While I'd certainly never advocate getting a permanent mark of your relationship too hastily, it does seem that the instinct to inscribe a permanent token transcends the ages. Caveat amator.

Single tattoos that span multiple bodies appear to be a more recent phenomenon, however. In 1977, New York-based tattoo artist Spider Webb undertook what was probably the first conceptual art project to use tattooing, in a piece called X-1000, in which he tattooed single, small Xs on to 999 individuals, and, as a culmination, one large X on the final, 1,000th skin, conceived as one contiguous work. This tattoo, potentially spanning thousands of miles at any one time, was, Webb said, "the largest tattoo ever done at any point in history". In 2000, as the culmination to a performance art project begun in 1998 designed to highlight the horrific lives and plights of the homeless and hungry in Mexico City, Santiago Sierra produced his piece 160cm Line Tattooed on Four People, a single black line tattooed across the backs of prostitutes in exchange for wraps of heroin, as a symbol of their desperation, interdependence, and utter powerlessness. Sierra would later remark: "You could make this tattooed line a kilometre long, using thousands and thousands of willing people." In 2003, author Shelley Jackson famously published her short story Skin on the bodies of 2095, one tattooed word per person. These tattoos bring together strangers in common cause.

My favourite set of matching tattoos, though, are probably the ongoing collection of work worn by twins Caleb and Jordan Kilby, tattooed with matching work by influential and extraordinarily talented New York-based artist Thomas Hooper. If you must get matching tattoos with someone, it's wisest to pick someone whom you cannot break up with or divorce, and to get the work carried out by a tattoo artist who will produce a piece of work that will stand the test of time on its own terms.

photographs capture town stained red by hungary's 2010 toxic waste spill

2012-07-13T14:42:00.001+01:00

spanish photographer palíndromo mészáros has created a series entitled 'the line'. the project chronicles the aftermath  of a 2010 toxic
waste spill in western hungary, killing nine people and forcing the evacuation of thousands, through a compendium of images
demonstrating the material staining areas of the village red.

the work does not focus so much on the people affected but more the noxious byproduct scarring the town's landscape.
without using any photo manipulation, it documents trees, homes and buildings  blemished with a scarlet hue reaching up to two meters high.  

the series documents the village stained red from a poisonous aluminum byproduct that killed 9 people when spilled in 2010

the event was widely considered the biggest in hungarian history, where around 1 million cubic meters of the alumina
sludge was released after the burst of the retaining wall in one of the reservoirs, used for the accumulation of rubbish from an aluminum company.
the thick, highly alkaline substance contains heavy metals, such as lead, and is slightly radioactive which has a caustic effect on skin causing a burning effect.

the hungarian village is permanently marked with a scarlet hue

meszaros comments with his thoughts on the opus:

'I always want to know what remains when the news is no longer 'new' anymore, the story gets forgotten by the media.  
an approach different from this traditional one seemed very natural to me. these photos have been taken six months after the accident
when the silence takes the place of the headlines and just 'the line' is left'.

the series focuses on a landscape scarred by disaster

the disaster was widely considered the biggest disaster in hungarian history

1 million cubic meters of the alumina sludge was released after the burst of the retaining wall in one of the reservoirs used for the accumulation of rubbish from an aluminum company

the spill killed nine people and displaced thousands

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Latvian company creates leather bound Ferrari

2012-07-13T12:22:00.001+01:00

We're familiar with seeing tight leather on smoking hot women, and weird old men, but it's a first for us seeing a leather bound Ferrari F430.

There seems to be a lot of fuss over this leather bound Ferrari F430 in the UK with both The Sun and The Daily Mail reporting about it recently.

However, this isn’t a new car by any means as US motoring blog Jalopnikreported on the F430 way back in August last year. It’s a pretty cool, albeit manky, car so we thought we’d show you anyway.

It’s the work of a Latvian custom car company called Dartz who hit the headlines in 2009 when they created a $1.5 million ruby red SUV with whale foreskin-covered seats. Yes, foreskin…

Anyway, some high roller with more cash then sense decided it would be a great idea to cover his €170,000 Ferrari in dark leather.

The owner of Dartz, Leonard Yankelovich, said: "One of our very rich customers from the Cote d'Azur wanted a leather exterior and knew we could deliver.

"It took three of my staff 16 working days to apply the leather and finish. He was more than happy when he picked it up."

He won’t be too happy when he scratches it though.

Is this the most expensive way to ruin a Ferrari?

Bee Collective: Sky Hive

2012-07-12T16:55:00.001+01:00

As everybody should know by now, bees have been in a spot of bother lately. They’re really not having the best time of things, either because of global warming (probably) or because we’ve stopped loving them like we used to (less likely). Sadly if they die out, so will an enormous amount of the native flora that decorates the landscapes we inhabit – not to mention we’d have no honey, effectively rendering crumpets obsolete.

Enter the Bee Collective, a cohort of beekeeping enthusiasts led by experienced honey-monger Pierre Van de Wal. Their aim is to bring bees back into urban environments by creating a manmade habitat for them to inhabit, located high above the city streets and in public parks. Their creation Sky Hive consists of a six metre pole at the centre of a platform of hives that can be winched up and down as desired – keeping the bees out of harm’s way (or us out of their way depending on your viewpoint) but allowing them to be tended to when necessary.

The Bee Collective then takes joint responsibility for their hives, allowing the fairly laborious day-to-day tasks of beekeeping to be shared amongst its members, allowing them to fit the bees into their buzzy (YES!) schedules.

Bee Collective: Sky Hive

Bee Collective: Sky Hive

Bee Collective: Sky Hive

Bee Collective: Sky Hive

www.beecollective.eu

shrink-wrapped bodies by julien palast

2012-07-12T16:52:00.001+01:00

'skindeep' by julien palast

french photographer julien palast has conceived his 'skindeep' series. the vivid image-based project silhouettes the beauty of the
human form by shrink-wrapping bodies, exposing the contours and curves of male and female figures with vibrant colors.

the project explores the human form

male and female models are shrink-wrapped

vibrant colors silhouette the bodies

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Old photograph fever is currently sweeping China.

2012-07-11T10:03:00.002+01:00

China's photographic record begins only in the 1970s because nearly all earlier pictures were destroyed. The ones that survived are mostly outside China, and a major effort is now under way to bring them together online, says Mary Ward-Lowery.

Twelve years ago a student from Peking University knocked on Robert Bickers' door.
He'd come, he said, to study Keats, but he knew Professor Bickers was a historian, a specialist in Sino-British relations at Bristol University.
The student had been given a travel grant to come to the UK, with specific instructions to find historical photographs of Peking University. "Because we don't have any," his Chinese professors told him.
Old photograph fever is currently sweeping China. A new and intense appetite for images of the country's past has resulted in a publishing phenomenon - sales of books of historical photographs have rocketed.

Such photographs are exceptionally rare in China. The turbulent history of the 20th Century meant that many archives were destroyed by war, invasion and revolution. Mao Zedong's government regarded the past as a "black" time, to be erased in favour of the New China. The Cultural Revolution of the late 1960s finished the job.
"If you were at all savvy," says Bickers, "you realised early on that you had to destroy your own private family records, before the Red Guards came and found evidence of your bourgeois, counter-revolutionary past, when you might have drunk coffee in a café bar, à la mode."

Continue reading the main story

Find out more

Old Photographs Fever: The Search For China's Pictured Past can be heard on BBC Radio 4 at 1102 BST on Wednesday 11 July 2012
Or listen again using the link below

BBC Radio 4 - Old Photographs Fever

Holiday snapshots, studio portraits of weddings and babies, all were dangerously incriminating. So people destroyed their own family collections, rubbing out over 150 years of photographic history in the process.

But now China is opening its horizons, looking to the West and to the past, to reclaim its cosmopolitan history.
After the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, Chinese leaders concluded that young people did not fully appreciate what the Communist Party had done for China, so they began an ambitious new policy of historical education, the Patriotic Education Movement. The craze for old photographs is partly a by-product of this movement.
But such photographs are not to be found in China. They are in the attics and wardrobes of foreigners - many British - whose families once lived and worked in China and who took their photographs safely out of the country when they left.
Bickers is leading a project to collect the photographs and make them freely available. It started when he put online a list of 2,000 British policemen who had worked in the Shanghai Municipal Police.
Relatives contacted him to find out more, attaching photographs. Bickers was astonished. "There were photos of Chinese society, culture and people that I have never seen before. I had never seen anything like them," he says.

These women were pictured in 1910 Hong Kong

Now the photographs arrive from all sorts of people and places, ranging across every possible subject and every part of China.
The British - businessmen, missionaries, customs officers and police - were everywhere, even in remote places where very few people even possessed a camera.
Some collections, like those of Tita Hayward and Audrey Gregg, record a childhood of privilege and frivolity spent mostly in the company of servants, as their parents attended to business and a hectic social life.
There are unintentionally controversial photographs by policeman William Armstrong, depicting plump and contented peasants in the 1920s, whereas communist propaganda suggested they were starving and unhappy.
G Warren Swire's collection records the trading interests of John Swire & Sons. His photographs of warehouses and dockyards might be thought dull were it not for Swire's careful - and beautiful - compositions and the fact that most of these landscapes no longer exist.
Rapid urban development in China has meant that historic buildings and neighbourhoods have been swept away and replaced with skyscrapers. They exist now only in people's memories or in these photographs.

Few photos exist of shipping in Shanghai in the early 1900s

One of the treasures of the collection, however, is a set of photographs taken by a Chinese politician and diplomat, Fu Bingchang. Fu was a talented amateur photographer and his subjects just happen to include the Kuomintang elite.
When the Nationalist government fell in 1949, Fu was sent into exile but before he left he arranged for his papers to be smuggled to France.
Fu never saw them again but in the early 70s, his son Johnny received a phone call from Fu's former secretary, Chen Ding, inviting him to his house in St Cloud, the Paris suburb where he'd lived for the past 20 years.
Johnny discovered a dozen leather suitcases full of photographs, diaries and paintings, an incredible treasure trove, a gift from his father.
"I was 12 years old and living in Macao when the Japanese attacked," recalls Johnny, now 83 and living in Lancashire in the UK.
"We had to run away because of my father's position. We had to walk for seven days non-stop, drinking water from paddy fields.
"I was lucky to be alive, lucky to carry the clothes on my back, so we were very lucky to be able to salvage the photos."

Fu Bingchang (left) was a senior diplomat and keen photographer

Bickers calculates that one British person in 10 has some historical connection to China and he wants their photographs to add to the online collection.
"These photos are an inadvertent legacy of that period of national humiliation, of British supremacy in China.
"I feel strongly that this is an act of historical restitution, giving back to China something that's now here, that was taken."

Swiss photographer captures the fleeting moment when multi-coloured soap bubbles wobble into life

2012-07-10T23:24:00.001+01:00

Photographer Fabian Oefner captures mysterious objects that look like visions captured by the Hubble space telescope - but they're in fact ordinary soap bubbles, wobbling into life for a precious few seconds before they pop.

Oefner used a sugar funnel to blow up the mixture from an ordinary children's pot of bubbles.

Oefneer had to use a special lighting rig to give his images their peacock-like colours, 'With this series of images, I was trying to capture the beauty of these short-lived sculptures, which consist of 99% air and actually do not have any colour at all.'

Photographer Fabian Oefner captures mysterious objects that look like visions from the Hubble space telescope - but they're in fact ordinary soap bubbles

Oefner explaisn 'Most of us remember playing with soap bubbles in our childhood, when we were fascinated by the colours of them and therefore even more disappointed when the bubble all of a sudden disappeared again.'

Fabian, a 28-year old art photographer from Zurich, was inspired by memories of blowing bubbles as a child

'With this series of images, I was trying to capture the beauty of these short-lived sculptures, which consist of 99% air and actually do not have any colour at all,' says Oefner

Talented Fabian Oefner made it his mission to capture the short-lived beauty of bubbles at the point of bursting

.Fabian, a 28-year old art photographer from Zurich, was inspired by memories of blowing bubbles as a child, but put scientific principles into place to get the required results.

He explains: ‘Most of us remember playing with soap bubbles in our childhood, when we were fascinated by the colours of them and therefore even more disappointed when the bubble all of a sudden disappeared again.

‘With this series of images, I was trying to capture the beauty of these short-lived sculptures, which consist of 99% air and actually do not have any colour at all.’

But in the series he calls 'Iridient' the challenge was in lighting the subjects to make them visible to the camera and then capturing the split second before they popped.

Fabian explains: ‘There are two major challenges, when taking images of bursting soap bubbles. One is how to light the bubble, so that its colours become visible and second is obviously to capture the right moment.

‘A soap bubble is made of a thin film of water, on which soap molecules gather on both sides. The vibrant colours, that bubbles are famous for, are created by the reflected light hitting the surface of the bubble. This effect is called iridescence, a phenomenon that is also visible on the wings of the morpho butterfly or on the tail feathers of a peacock.

Oefner's results look like shimmering space objects or even otherworldly transparent creatures

Oefner says, 'With this series of images, I was trying to capture the beauty of these short-lived sculptures, which consist of 99% air and actually do not have any colour at all.'

Intended Consequences, powerful series of portraits of women who were brutally raped in the Rwandan genocide and the children they bore as a result.

2012-07-09T17:20:00.001+01:00

A visitor looks at Jonathan Torgovnik's photographs at Rencontre d'Arles. Photograph: Gerard Julien/AP/Getty

Jonathan Torgovnik has won the Discovery prize at this year'sRencontre d'Arles photography festival for Intended Consequences, his powerful series of portraits of women who were brutally raped in the Rwandan genocide and the children they bore as a result. Torgovnik, who is based in South Africa, photographed in Rwanda for three years and interviewed all his subjects about their experiences. He is co-founder of Foundation Rwanda and, in his acceptance speech, said he would be donating a large portion of his prize money of €25,000 (£19,850) to the organisation, which supports the women and children and raises awareness about the consequences of sexual violence through photography and film.

The Latin American Photobook (Aperture), a historical overview of the form edited by Horacio Fernandez, deservedly won the historical book award.

One of my personal favourite photobooks from 2011, Red Headed Peckerwood (Mack) by Christian Patterson took the author book award. A blend of fact and fiction, oblique narrative and found ephemera, the book retraces the infamous killing spree of Charlie Starkweather, 19, and his 14-year-old girlfriend, Caril Anne Fugate, across Nebraska and into Wyoming in 1958. I enthused about the book when it came out and also included it in my list of best photobooks of 2011. It is a beautifully realised project, despite its visceral subject matter, and fully deserves the prize.

British-based independent publishers Mack are on a roll at Arles, having now won the author book award two years running – Taryn Simon's A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters was last year's winner.

The festival's opening week concluded on a celebratory note on 7 July with a well-received screening of Journal of France, a film on the great French photographer Raymond Depardon made by his wife and sound recordist, Claudine Nougaret.