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 Prison rape is so endemic—more than seventy thousand prisoners are raped each year—that it is routinely held out as a threat, part of the punishment to be expected. The subject is standard fodder for comedy, and an uncoöperative suspect being threatened with rape in prison is now represented, every night on television, as an ordinary and rather lovable bit of policing. The normalization of prison rape—like eighteenth-century japery about watching men struggle as they die on the gallows—will surely strike our descendants as chillingly sadistic, incomprehensible on the part of people who thought themselves civilized.

Long article, but worth reading. What would Dickens think?

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Libya’s leadership has apologised after armed men smashed the graves of British and Italian soldiers killed during World War II.

Amateur video footage of the attack, posted on social networking site Facebook, showed men casually kicking over headstones in a war cemetery and using sledgehammers to smash a metal and stone cross.

One man can be heard saying: “This is a grave of a Christian,” as he uprooted a stone headstone from the ground.
Another voice in the footage says of the people buried in the cemetery: “These are dogs”.

Are we all mad?

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FUTULELE is an upcoming Ukulele synthesizer for iOS. Although it can work on a single iPad, similar to our well-known guitar synth OMGuitar (http://amidio.com/omguitar), Futulele really shines with a special guitar-shaped case that holds both an iPad and an iPhone, which are connected to each other via Bluetooth. iPhone is used to define the chords and iPad is used for strumming.

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By applying Innerscope’s latest patented techniques in biometric research, NCM was able to measure the emotional impact of cinema advertising on audiences for the first time.
In the study, NCM and Innerscope examined participants viewing commercials for seven brands in categories including consumer electronics, retail and various consumer packaged goods in a simulated TV living room environment, as well as in a cinema environment.
The results revealed that the cinema experience has a significantly positive influence on the audience’s emotional response to advertising. Following exposure in cinema, the lift in brand resonance, the unconscious emotional connection to a brand, was 75 percent higher than that generated by exposure on TV, with individual ads seeing increases up to 193 percent. Viewers exposed to ads in cinema were taken on an emotional journey that had peak engagement levels often corresponding to the main messaging and branding moments of the ads measured.

Well, I must admit I don’t go to the cinema any more, but when I did, my peak engagement level from the emotional journey of cinema advertising expressed itself by the urge to vomit.

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Lester Chambers, former lead singer of The Chambers Brothers, highlights the hard reality of the record company’s exploitation of its artists. Chambers sang such hits as “Time Has come Today”, “People Get Ready”, “Uptown”, “I Can’t Turn You Loose” and “Funky”, went for almost thirty years without seeing a royalty check, and has still to see the majority of payment due to him for all of his recordings.

Chambers has suffered great hardship over the years through no fault of his own, and was most recently sleeping in a rehearsal room, until Yoko Ono and Sean Lennon offered to pay his rent on a home for him and his son in 2010.

Last year, Chambers was inducted into the West Coast Blues Hall of Fame, which is an honor, but hardly full recompense for all the years of being screwed over by record companies.

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The first political scandal of Egypt’s fledgling electoral democracy erupted on Monday after an Islamist lawmaker was expelled from his ultraconservative party for fabricating a story that he was viciously beaten by masked gunmen.

Doctors said in fact the bandages on his face covered up plastic surgery on his nose.

The lawmaker, Anwar el-Balkimy, had belonged to the Nour party, part of the ultraconservative Salafi Islamist movement — Egypt’s religious right — whose members typically condemn plastic surgery as sinful, along with most music and other forms of popular entertainment.

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The model was built for the first film – Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone – and has been used for exterior shots in every film since.

When all the time spent by 86 artists and crew members is added up, it took an incredible 74 years to build.

Measuring 50 feet across, it has more than 2,500 fibre optic lights to simulate lantern torches and students passing through hallways.

It even has miniature owls in the Owlery and hinges on the doors.

The castle, which was based on Durham Cathedral and Alnwick Castle, is now due to go on display as part of The Making Of Harry Potter studio tour at Leavesden Studios, near Watford.