Official Skatz 10 Million Views Thread

[Carl Culture]

This morning we feature a picture of the Jewish Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. The wall is part of the Temple Mount, and was part of the original Jewish Temple which was destroyed by Titus, a Roman general, in AD 70. In looking at the crowd, I think it might be all men. I wonder what the tradition is/was related to men and women praying at the wall.






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[Carl Culture]

Chai ::: Neil Subhash ::: Photo taken in Rajasthan.

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[Carl Culture]

A winter sunset at Point of the Arches in Olympic National Park(This photo and caption were submitted to My Shot.)





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[NASA]

Like rivers of liquid water, glaciers flow downhill, with tributaries joining to form larger rivers. But where water rushes, ice crawls. As a result, glaciers gather dust and dirt, and bear long-lasting evidence of past movements. Alaska's Susitna Glacier revealed some of its long, grinding journey when the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on NASA’s Terra satellite passed overhead on Aug. 27, 2009. This satellite image combines infrared, red and green wavelengths to form a false-color image. Vegetation is red and the glacier's surface is marbled with dirt-free blue ice and dirt-coated brown ice. Infusions of relatively clean ice push in from tributaries in the north. The glacier surface appears especially complex near the center of the image, where a tributary has pushed the ice in the main glacier slightly southward. Susitna flows over a seismically active area. In fact, a 7.9-magnitude quake struck the region in November 2002, along a previously unknown fault. Geologists surmised that earthquakes had created the steep cliffs and slopes in the glacier surface, but in fact most of the jumble is the result of surges in tributary glaciers. Glacier surges--typically short-lived events where a glacier moves many times its normal rate--can occur when melt water accumulates at the base and lubricates the flow. This water may be supplied by meltwater lakes that accumulate on top of the glacier; some are visible in the lower left corner of this image. The underlying bedrock can also contribute to glacier surges, with soft, easily deformed rock leading to more frequent surges. Image Credit: NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science

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[Big Gay Al]

The Guadalupe fur seal (Arctocephalus townsendi) spends much of its time in the water, coming to land to breed. Named for their main breeding ground, Isla Guadalupe, the seals have been spotted on islands off the coast of Baja California, Mexico, as well as islands off the coast of southern California in the US. The elusive Guadalupe fur seal has not been studied much because of the rarity of sightings.

In the 19th century, Guadalupe fur seals were nearly driven into extinction along the Baja California coast by commercial sealers. Colonies off the southern California coast vanished by 1892, when the entire species consisted of only seven known seals. For a time, Guadalupe fur seals were believed to be extinct. Until 1954, only five seals had been spotted in addition to two Guadalupe fur seals that were housed in the San Diego Zoo. In 1954, a colony of 14 Guadalupe fur seals was spotted, and the species has been able to make a comeback. Despite the re-population of the species, the Guadalupe fur seal remains the rarest of the fur seals, and is still listed on the US endangered species list. In the 1970s, Isla Guadalupe was officially declared a refuge for the seals by the Mexican government, and the island population has grown to over 7,000.

Guadalupe fur seals grow to an adult size of 2.2m (7.2 feet) and 188kg (414.5 pounds) for males, and 1.5m (4.9 feet) and 49kg (108 pounds) for females, and have a lifespan of 17 - 20 years.The diet of the fur seal consists almost entirely of fish, which the seals swim out to sea to hunt. Guadalupe fur seals are sometimes hunted by great white sharks, but historically the populations has been impacted most by the commercial sealing industry. Populations of the Guadalupe fur seals are limited to colonies, as the species does not migrate. Colonies occasionally relocate, but only if driven out of their current habitat.

Although the species does not migrate, the seals do have separate areas used for day-to-day living, and their May-July breeding season, when they prefer rocky, secluded areas. After giving birth, female Guadalupe fur seals venture out to sea for a 2-6 day feeding session.


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[Kel Mitchell]

Gotham socialite and filmmaker Maggie Betts makes her directorial debut with the compelling new documentary, 'The Carrier,' which premieres tonight (Apr. 21) at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City. The story follows Mutinta, a young Zambian woman who's pregnant and in a legally polygamous marriage. When she discovers she's HIV positive, she sets out to keep her baby, and community, virus-free.
Rebecca Carroll: One of the things that struck me most about Madonna's 2008 documentary, 'I Am Because We Are,' about children in Malawi with AIDS, was that there was absolutely no discussion whatsoever about practicing safe sex. Why is that?
Maggie Betts: It's really hard to express an opinion about that issue, because the context is so different. The level of education I had when I was 12 is barely reaching people in rural [African] communities now. The one strong opinion that I do have, is that I truly believe that female empowerment and protecting the rights of women, and particularly HIV positive women, is one of the greatest opportunities we have to go at the pandemic in a new and probably more successful way. A lot of women in the film barely have any choice over who they sleep with, when they sleep with them, and if they get pregnant or not get pregnant. They are so conscientious about the spread of the virus, and I feel like if they were given more agency, it would make a great impact on how the disease is spread.
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RC: So if the women are super-conscientious of spreading the virus, what's the conversation?
MB: The women don't want to infect other people, whereas men seem less concerned.

RC: Which kind of resonates on a global level as well, right?
MB: Yeah, and it's the same argument as if you said there would there be less wars if women ran the world.

RC: Clearly, you are well known in NYC as a fashionista of sorts. What was it like filming in rural Africa day to day?
MB: We stayed in a very bare bones, rudimentary hotel -- there's a toilet and electricity, but I would say that's the end of the amenities. We would get up super early, like 5 or 6 o'clock in the morning. You have to drive quite a ways to get where we were filming. It's absolutely gorgeous; I loved those rides, old dirt roads in the middle of nowhere. This particular family that we were shooting lived on a large maize farm, and we just kind of lived their life with them.

RC: What did that look like?
MB: They're subsistence farmers, so they get up really early and take care of their kids, farm, and usually by 1 or 2pm, when the sun is the highest, they take a break. For the women, you would not believe how filled up their days are with getting their children ready for school, sweeping up the property, farming, cooking, feeding themselves, doing laundry.

RC: How about your hair? It's such a fundamental aspect of daily maintenance for black American women that I have to ask.
MB: I usually wore it in a ponytail, and was just really concerned about keeping it up. I didn't care what it looked like.

RC: How long did you shoot?
MB: I spent four months total there. We shot two women, and this particular story just gradually emerged. Of those four months, the majority was with this family.

RC: Have you been back?
MB: It's hard because it takes 27 hours to get there. I want to try to go back this summer, and I became very close with the woman who served as our translator. We left a cell phone with the family, so the translator calls Mutinta, the lead character from the movie, and Mutinta tells her how she's doing and the translator emails that to me, and then I write a letter back and she reads it to Mutinta. That happens once a month. Mutinta is now mainly just interested in whether I've got a boyfriend yet.

RC: Has Mutinta seen the film? Are you going to show it to her and her family?
MB: No, she hasn't. I would like to show it to them, but they've never seen a movie in their lives, and so I don't know how it would be to process the sophistication of the editing. And there aren't that many facilities [in rural Zambia] to watch movies, even on television. But I want to figure it out and do it in a special way, and just be alone with her and watch it to see what she thinks. I think she'd like it, but it's also a totally different context. I think she would be pleased.

RC: How did you describe it to her when you were talking about making the movie?
MB: I told her that we were trying to tell a story in pictures, and it was going to be the story and effort to protect her baby from HIV. We just wanted her to be honest and open about what this was like, and then we would bring that back to our country and share that. And our hope is that people in our country would be moved to help people like her.

RC: What struck you most about the filmmaking process?
MB: Having never made a movie and going this far, it's almost like what didn't strike me about the process? I learned about things I cared about. I didn't know I had this deep, very visceral interest in women's rights. I learned what I value from [Mutinta]. I was filming, studying and obsessing over this person, and trying to figure out the larger themes that she represented so that I could communicate them to other people. I admire so many things about her. She taught me things that I value. I never felt it like that.

RC: I often wonder about going to a place that is so far from your own experience, and seeing people and situations that are deeply compromised. Then coming home to America, which is so ridiculously over the top with resources.
MB: I remember coming home after the first days of filming and crying, crying, crying over the variety of foods that were available within a two block radius on my street in the West Village. I could get pizza, Chinese food, Thai food, Japanese food, organic, raw and it definitely did seems so unfair.

RC: It would be hard to compartmentalize my feelings once I got back home. I'd probably be thinking "Where is Mutinta today?" or "Why can't I bring her here?"
MB: I said to her, do you have any idea of how many people have HIV in Africa? And she said "no clue." I told her it's about 25 to 28 million people, and she was shocked. I don't even know if she knew there were that many people in the world. The look on her face to know that there are that many people suffering is impossible for her to understand. I asked her if it made her feel comforted to know that she's not the only one, and she said, "No, because I'm one of those people."

RC: And now you're headed to this film festival. You'll do a lot of press junkets and talk about this movie as if it's a commodity, essentially. How do you feel about that?
MB: The movie is about an idea, the idea of the possibility of seeing an HIV free population in the next 10 or 15 years, and however I can sell that idea to people to make believe in that, is worth the effort for me.

Here's a trailer of 'The Carrier' -- check it.



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[Big Gay Al]

Location: New Orleans, Louisiana, USA



This is Duchess. Right now she is using her adorable face to convince me to not study and pay attention to her. Needless to say, I spent more time attempting to study than actually studying.



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[Big Gay Al]

Upgrading the blog and changing to a new WP Theme, which will take a few hours. If posts and pages look strange and categories or other links don’t work, please return later once the upgrade is complete and everything should be back to normal, albeit with a slightly new look. Thanks.




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[Kenan Thompson]

Marilyn Davenport A Southern California GOP official who sent an email depicting President Barack Obama as a chimpanzee said Wednesday she considered the email political satire and not racist. Speaking publicly for the first time, Marilyn Davenport reiterated...(read more)

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[Georgie Thompson]

Roberto Martinez has criticised the structure of the British game and called for a shake-up of the loan system.

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