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Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Watch an Artist Turn Thousands of Photos Into a Single Imaginary Moment

New York-based artist Pelle Cass turns thousands of images into beautiful time-lapse photographs for his series Selected People. It kind of feels like trick photography, but it takes a discerning eye, a quick trigger finger, and a lot of editing. Here's how he does it.

Farm Families Pick Massive Corn Harvest As Prices Shrink

Curt Friesen is a fourth-generation farmer in central Nebraska.

Grant Gerlock/for NPR

Curt Friesen is a fourth-generation farmer in central Nebraska.

Grant Gerlock/for NPR

Corn prices are down and the farm bill is stalled in Congress. So there's a lot of uncertainly in the air as harvest season gets into full swing across the Midwest. But this is a time of year when farm families like the Friesens in Henderson, Neb., come together to focus on the big task at hand: the corn harvest.

Everyone in the family has a job to do.

"Like my dad — he drives auger wagon," Curt Friesen says. "He drives auger wagon only. That's all he's done since 1976, I think. ... My wife, Nancy, she drives the combine; that's her job."

Curt drives a truck. So does his son-in-law, who's new on the farm. That's how the Friesens are harvesting 1,100 acres of corn this fall, about middle of the pack in terms of its size.

With roughly 97 million acres of corn to pick nationwide, farmers are pulling in family and friends as part-time help to haul in the crop.

Nancy Friesen grasps the orange joystick that controls the Friesens' giant John Deere combine, which is so big, it makes the cornstalks look like matchsticks.

"It is a humongous piece of equipment," she says, "and it is intimidating. It's got all kinds of bells and whistles to let you know what's going wrong."

During corn harvest, it's all hands on deck on the Friesen family farm in Henderson, Neb. Nancy Friesen typically takes the controls of their John Deere combine.

Grant Gerlock/for NPR

During corn harvest, it's all hands on deck on the Friesen family farm in Henderson, Neb. Nancy Friesen typically takes the controls of their John Deere combine.

Grant Gerlock/for NPR

Nancy Friesen isn't totally comfortable in the driver's seat. Even a modestly priced combine costs $350,000, and most of the year she's in the garden, not the field. But she expressed some relief as she mowed down the cornstalks and watched the grain flow in.

"It is a good feeling when the corn is in the bin and we don't have to worry about it out here anymore," she says. "So many weird weather things can happen," like last year's drought, which was the worst since the 1950s.

The drought caused corn yields to dry up across the Midwest. The Friesens were lucky — irrigation saved most of their crop. And farmers who irrigate reaped the rewards last year, as drought shrunk supply, pushing corn prices to record highs of over $8 a bushel.

Of course, drought can also be disastrous at harvest time, as Albert Friesen, Curt's 92-year-old dad, knows firsthand.

When Albert Friesen started farming he used horses, not green tractors. In 1938, at age 16, he took over the farm after his dad died. The next year a drought hit and the crop was ruined.

"There was nothing here," he says. "Everything dried up. I went to Minnesota to pick corn by hand."

He brought home $69, just enough to keep the farm. That was a tough year.

"But I think we're in for some tough times yet again," he says.

Tough in comparison to last year, at least — 2013 could be the biggest corn harvest in history: The U.S. Department of Agriculture has estimated 13.8 billion bushels. With so much supply, corn prices have been shrinking since the beginning of the year and are down around a three-year low, though prices remain quite healthy by historical standards.

Still, it's not clear what the crop will be worth by the time it's in the bin. That uncertainty comes just as Jason Lewis, the Friesens' son-in-law, is joining the family farm. A year ago, Lewis was in a college classroom. He wasn't a student — he was the professor.

"This time last year, I was at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, and I was probably teaching turf grass science class," Lewis says.

Now the 35-year-old Ph.D. from Kearney, Neb., is hauling corn and wearing earbuds so he can listen to podcasts while he's in the field.

During a break in the action, Nancy said she is grateful to have extra help on hand.

"I love it when I can hear Curt and Jason talking in the shop and he's got somebody to talk shop to," she says. "I love having the kids back. It takes the pressure off so much."

But Nancy couldn't talk for long. Albert had an empty grain wagon. Jason had a truck to fill. She plunged the combine into the standing corn. The harvest grind will go on for another four to six weeks.

"It's just pretty much harvest," Nancy says. "I try to clear the schedule. I just figure nothing really happens in October."

At least, not until the last load of corn comes in.

Grant Gerlock reports from Nebraska for NET News and Harvest Public Media, a public radio reporting collaboration that focuses on agriculture and food production issues.

Source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2013/10/14/232270283/farm-families-pick-massive-corn-harvest-as-prices-shrink?ft=1&f=3
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Officials: Attacks across Iraq kill at least 42

BAGHDAD (AP) — A string of bombings Sunday across Iraq, many in Shiite-majority cities, killed at least 42 people and wounded dozens, officials said, a grim reminder of the government's failure to stem the uptick in violence that is feeding sectarian tensions in the country.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the latest attacks, but waves of bombings are frequently used by al-Qaida's Iraq branch.

The Sunni militant group and other Sunni extremists often targets Shiite civilians in an effort to undermine the Shiite-led government. Al-Qaida's extremist ideology considers Shiites heretics.

The deadliest of Sunday's attacks, many of which struck busy commercial areas, happened in the southern city of Hillah, 95 kilometers (60 miles) south of Baghdad. Back-to-back car bombings hit an outdoor market there, killing eight people and wounding 22, police said.

Two parked car bombs ripped through a commercial area in the city of Suwayrah, 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Baghdad, killing five people and wounding 14. Two other car bombs exploded simultaneously in the city of Kut, 160 kilometers (100 miles) southeast of Baghdad, killing four and wounded 16, according to police.

In the nearby city of Samawah, 370 kilometers (230 miles) southeast of Baghdad, four people were killed and 13 wounded when two car bombs exploded. Two other car bombs killed three and wounded 13 in the city of Diwaniyah, 130 kilometers (80 miles) south of the capital.

Samarra was struck twice Sunday, a day after a car bombing in the Sunni-dominated city left 17 dead. The memory of the 2006 bombing of the city's al-Askari Shiite shrine still haunts many Iraqis because it set off years of retaliatory bloodshed between Sunni and Shiite extremists.

Two people were killed and 15 were wounded in the morning when a car bomb exploded near a group of mourners at a funeral for some of the previous day's dead. A suicide bomber struck a security checkpoint near the shrine in the Sunni-dominated city later in the day, killing four and wounding 10, said Mizhar Fleih, the deputy head of the municipal council there.

In other violence Sunday, police reported five people killed and 34 wounded in the southern city of Basra and the central towns of Mahmoudiyah and Madain.

In the western Baghdad neighborhood of Sadiyah, police said a bomb went off near a row of shops, killing two people and wounding nine others. Three others were killed in a blast near a soccer field in Baghdad's mainly Shiite southeastern suburb of Nahrwan. Yet another bomb exploded in the western Amariyah neighborhood, killing two and wounding 10, police said.

Medical officials confirmed the causalities. The police and hospital officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.

More than 5,000 people have been killed in Iraq since attacks began accelerating in April following a deadly security crackdown against a Sunni protest camp in the northern town of Hawija.

With today's death toll, at least 267 people were killed so far in October. The latest surge in violence has raised fears that Iraq could be returning to widespread sectarian killings similar to those that brought country to the edge of civil war in 2006 and 2007.

___

Associated Press writers Sameer N. Yacoub and Qassim Abdul-Zahra contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/officials-attacks-across-iraq-kill-least-42-180659645.html
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AstraZeneca buys oncology-focused Spirogen for up to $440 million

LONDON (Reuters) - British drugmaker AstraZeneca said on Tuesday its MedImmune unit would buy biotech company Spirogen for up to $440 million to bolster its research and development pipeline in oncology.

Privately held Spirogen focuses on antibody-drug conjugate technology, which has the potential to directly target cancer tumors while safeguarding healthy cells, AstraZeneca said.

AstraZeneca said it would pay an initial $200 million plus a further $240 million if Spirogen meets development targets.

It will also pay $20 million to take an equity investment in Swiss-based ADC Therapeutics, which has a licensing agreement with Spirogen.

"The cutting-edge technologies developed by Spirogen and ADC Therapeutics complement MedImmune's innovative antibody engineering capabilities, enabling us to accelerate antibody-drug conjugates into the clinic," said MedImmune Executive Vice President Bahija Jallal.

Oncology treatments, both traditional "small cell" pills and injectable biologics, has been prioritized as a research area by AstraZeneca Chief Executive Pascal Soriot, who used to head Roche's Genentech biotech unit.

MedImmume, the U.S. biotech business that AstraZeneca bought in 2007 for $15.6 billion, is key to the strategy.

The unit is focused on two key areas in oncology development: antibody-drug conjugates and immune-mediated cancer therapy, which aims to harness the power of the patient's own immune system to fight cancer.

(Reporting by Paul Sandle; Editing by Kate Holton and David Cowell)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/astrazeneca-buy-oncology-focused-spirogen-440-million-062947157--sector.html
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Bridget Jones is back in 'Mad About the Boy'

LONDON (AP) — Readers, there is good news and bad news. Bridget Jones is back. But — brace yourselves — Mark Darcy is dead.

Fans have been shaken by the revelation, leaked ahead of publication of "Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy," the third book in Helen Fielding's series about the diary-writing singleton. He may be fictional, but the demise of Bridget's handsome lawyer lover — played on the big screen by a smoldering Colin Firth — was headline news.

"I turned on the news and there was the Syrian crisis, and then 'Mark Darcy is dead,'" Fielding said, amazed.

"It's quite extraordinary for a fictional character to be treated as if they're alive. I sort of think, hats off to Colin, because really he inhabited that character."

The reaction is a testament to the hold of Fielding's characters on the popular imagination. In ditsy, indomitable Bridget, she created an archetype. (In Darcy she borrowed one, from the brooding Mr. Darcy of Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice").

Bridget, created for a series of 1990s newspaper columns, was a 30-something Londoner looking for love and career fulfillment while enduring the condescension of "smug marrieds" and confessing her many insecurities in her diaries: "Alcohol units 7, cigarettes 22, calories 2,145. Minutes spent inspecting face for wrinkles 230."

In "Mad About the Boy" she is still counting calories and booze, though cigarettes have been replaced by nicotine gum. Bridget is now a 51-year-old widow with two young children, convinced she will never find romance again.

Fielding said she had no choice but to kill Darcy so Bridget's story could move on.

"The book I wanted to write was not about domesticity, married life. It was about Bridget struggling with what life throws at you," Fielding said over lunch at the London gastropub where she likes to write in the daytime.

"It was Bridget being single with two children in the age of technology. And rediscovering her sexuality. She was a mother and she lost it amid the nappies and the busy-ness. I think lots of women go through that."

Breaking the news of Darcy's demise to Firth, who starred opposite Renee Zellweger in the film adaptations of "Bridget Jones's Diary" and "Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason," was surprisingly tough.

"I was really nervous, and I had to make sure that he had someone with him and they were sitting down. And then I said, 'Colin, I've got something really bad to tell you.'

"And then I suppose I just said 'You're dead,' which is an odd thing to say to anyone. And we were both upset, but at the same time we were laughing."

"Bridget Jones's Diary," published in 1996, turned Fielding from a freelance journalist into one of Britain's most successful writers. The novel and its 1999 sequel have sold 15 million copies.

For years, Fielding resisted writing another installment. She was drawn back into Bridget's world by a desire to write about the lives of middle-aged women, who often face stereotyping, just as the single Bridget did in the earlier books.

"There was the idea of 'tragic, barren spinster' because she was unmarried in her 30s," Fielding said. "It was real then. You were Miss bloody Havisham if you didn't have a boyfriend at 35. And I think the same is true of the middle-aged woman now.

"When I was in my 20s, I couldn't imagine that life would continue beyond 40, really," she added. "I couldn't imagine there would still be dating and going out and getting drunk with your friends and worrying about calls or texts that hadn't come, and what to wear."

In "Mad About the Boy," Bridget's romantic misadventures are overshadowed by loss and the fear of aging — but a strong comic vein remains.

"I think most of the things I write are a mixture of dark and light," Fielding said.

Life is "not all sailing along marvelously, nor is it 'Oh, we're in a well of despair.' People hit tough times, and then their friends get round them and cheer them up and then they keep buggering on."

As in the previous books, Bridget can lean on old friends Jude, Tom and Talitha, as well as disreputable former paramour Daniel Cleaver.

She navigates the treacherous world of online dating sites and Twitter, and acquires a 29-year-old boyfriend named Roxster.

The book also introduces Mr. Wallaker, a teacher at Bridget's son's school with whom she instantly clashes. But wait — is that a spark between them? (Hint: Fielding says her dream casting for a movie adaptation is Daniel Craig).

Bridget has always contained elements of Fielding, who is 55 and, like her character, lives in one of the nicer areas of North London with two young children. She is separated from their father, American comedy writer Kevin Curran.

There are glimpses of Bridget in the writer's quick wit and sense of the absurd — though Fielding exudes a considerably greater sense of control than her hapless heroine.

"Mad About the Boy" suffered its own Bridget Jones-style mishap when 40 pages from another book, a memoir by actor David Jason, were inserted into the British edition by mistake.

And some of the reviews have been less than glowing: not everyone hails mishap-prone, insecure Bridget as a 21st-century heroine. Guardian newspaper columnist Suzanne Moore wrote a piece headlined "Why I Hate Bridget Jones," condemning the character as "vapid, consumerist and self-obsessed" and the book as anti-feminist.

Fielding has heard that argument before.

She said that if women can't make fun of themselves, "we haven't got very far at being equal, have we?"

"And also, I think that is the way women communicate with each other, often, privately. They talk about their frailties, their mess-ups, their weaknesses, their vulnerabilities, and they are funny about it and they support each other.

"I was surprised with the first book, with the women who told me they identified with it — powerful, successful women, saying 'Oh yes, I have that problem with tights being all tangled up.' And it's not just women, either. (Prime Minister) David Cameron was in the papers not so long ago ... and he said that he'd get in a situation when he's got the kids in the back of the car and he gets a head of state on the phone: 'Will you shut up, I've got the Israeli prime minister on the phone!'

"Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy" is published in the United States by Knopf on Tuesday.

___

Jill Lawless can be reached at http://Twitter.com/JillLawless

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/bridget-jones-back-mad-boy-104040383.html
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Sunday, October 13, 2013

South Dakota ranchers reeling from cattle losses

FILE - In this Monday, Oct. 7, 2013, file photo, a dead cow lies in the snow along Highway 34 east of Sturgis, S.D., another casualty of the early October blizzard. Western South Dakota ranchers are reeling from the loss of tens of thousands of cattle in last weekend’s blizzard as pits to dispose of the dead animals are set to open Monday, Oct. 14, 2013. (AP Photo/Rapid City Journal, Kristina Barker, File)

FILE - This Thursday, Oct. 10, 2013, file aerial photo shows dead cattle in Sulphur Creek in western South Dakota during a flyover of areas hard hit by a snowstorm that killed thousands of animals. Western South Dakota ranchers are reeling from the loss of tens of thousands of cattle in last weekend’s blizzard as pits to dispose of the dead animals are set to open Monday, Oct. 14, 2013. (AP Photo/KOTA-TV, Pool, File)

FILE - In this Monday, Oct. 7, 2013, file photo, snowmobile tracks can be seen in the snow between fence lines and Highway 34 east of Sturgis, S.D., as area ranchers race to find cattle that drifted beyond fenced pastures during the blizzard. Western South Dakota ranchers are reeling from the loss of tens of thousands of cattle in last weekend’s blizzard as pits to dispose of the dead animals are set to open Monday, Oct. 14, 2013. (AP Photo/Rapid City Journal, Kristina Barker, File)

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — Western South Dakota ranchers are reeling from the loss of tens of thousands of cattle in last weekend's blizzard, and many will dispose of carcasses in pits set to open Monday.

Rancher Heath Ferguson said the storm killed 96 percent of his herd of 100 black Angus and Limousin cattle, a hit worth about $250,000. He said total losses topped more than 1,000 head, as six other herds were roaming the family's 16,000 acres east of Sturgis.

Up to 4 feet of snow fell in the Black Hills area last weekend. Reports of 20 or more inches of snow were common, and 21½ inches in Rapid City were a record for both a 24-hour period in October and the entire month. At least two deaths were attributed to the storm, and it took a particularly heavy toll on livestock.

Ferguson said the vast majority of ranchers don't have insurance covering storm-related damage.

"It's cost-prohibitive for a producer," he said Sunday in an interview with The Associated Press. "Unless you're a really big operator, you can't afford to pay for the insurance."

Cattle ranchers dealing with weather-related losses would typically turn to the federal Livestock Indemnity Program, but that farm bill provision has expired and its future is in flux due to congressional gridlock and the continuing federal shutdown.

"We're an independent, pretty self-sufficient bunch, but we need help," Ferguson said.

South Dakota Gov. Dennis Daugaard and U.S. Sen. John Thune did an aerial assessment Thursday of the blizzard damage and livestock losses. State officials said at least 10,000 to 20,000 head of livestock died, but the estimate will likely rise.

The South Dakota Stockgrowers Association estimates that western South Dakota lost at least 5 percent of its cattle, much of which are raised for slaughter. Nearly a third of the state's 3.7 million cattle and calves reside in the western part of the state.

Ranchers who lost cattle will be able to dispose of the carcasses for free at several pits being dug in Pennington County, according to the county's Emergency Operations Center. The county is coordinating the effort because the U.S. Farm Service Agency is closed during the shutdown.

Livestock owners are encouraged to document all animal losses with pictures, vaccination and hauling receipts in case disaster payments are available in the future.

South Dakota Farmers Union president Doug Sombke said that even if the federal government was open and Congress could reach a compromise on a new farm bill, it would take months to implement the Livestock Indemnity Program.

Meanwhile, the Stockgrowers Association, the South Dakota Cattlemen's Association and the South Dakota Sheep Growers Association are seeking donations to a relief fund that has been set up to help ranchers, and a couple of Montana groups are asking local farmers to donate cattle and sheep.

Ferguson, who also makes his living by working in the Wyoming coal fields, said he owns his herd, but many struggling ranchers have had to borrow money to stay in business.

"There's an awful lot of producers out here that sold our herds down because of the drought," he said. "A lot of people are into the financial institutions pretty hard."

___

Follow Dirk Lammers on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/ddlammers

Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2013-10-13-Autumn%20Storm-Livestock/id-8fae8fd48ccc48098b36a1e08fec7c13
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Friday, October 11, 2013

I Was Burning

In 1988 I was living 3,000 miles from my family. We spoke on the telephone once a week, but we didn’t see each other for years at a stretch. We weren’t estranged so much as strange to each other; my gayness was just one more thing we didn’t have in common, yet another topic we didn’t discuss. At the time, the distance between us didn’t even seem peculiar. Among my peers, PFLAG parents were the exception. Coming out was often met with threats of expulsion from the family or worse. I had friends who were institutionalized and knew at least one man whose parents put ground glass in his food when he told them he was gay.

June Thomas is a Slate culture critic. Follow her on Twitter.

Everyone figured their folks would eventually come around, and most did—even if they always seemed more invested in the lives of their heterosexual offspring. Still, knowing you’re a disappointment at best takes a toll. That year, Sarah Schulman explored the damage families inflict on their LGBT members in After Delores, now freshly re-released in a 25th anniversary edition by Arsenal Pulp Press.

In the novel’s first six pages, the lone wolf of a narrator gets drunk, makes out with a girl, obsesses about her ex-girlfriend, and acquires a gun. It’s an astonishingly efficient establishment of themes, because considerations of booze, sex, violence, and abandonment dominate the rest of the book. There’s a plot of sorts—while nursing some serious ill will against her ex-girlfriend Delores, the narrator tries to figure out who killed go-go dancer Punkette—but it’s a mystery novel only in the loosest sense of the term. Our nameless narrator is no private dick, and her drunken meanderings around New York City barely qualify as an investigation. But she does want justice for Punkette. Somebody has to hold society accountable for her murder, and who better than an unstable outcast?

The cover of the new edition features an unmade bed—a bed the narrator can no longer bear to sleep in after Delores takes off, abandoning their shared Lower East Side walkup so that she can trade up to fashion photographer Mary Sunshine’s Tribeca loft. There was no good reason for Delores to leave—no rational explanation for the narrator to go from being “the person Delores cared about the most [to] the one she most wants to break,” [p96] except perhaps her refusal to lie and promise that they’d never break up. “I couldn’t say ‘forever’ unless I knew for sure it was true,” she declares, while Delores’ new girlfriend, Sunshine, said “forever” without a second thought. [p. 95]

Without a good explanation for the terrible treatment Delores meted out to her, the narrator loses her grip, first on her drinking and then on her impulse control. “If I had money, I would have gone to a decent psychiatric hospital,” she says, “but instead I was just another pathetic person on the Lower East Side.” [p. 83] A pathetic person with serious anger issues. As soon as she lays hands on that pearl-handled pistol, she fantasizes about using it to shoot Delores and dreams of cutting Sunshine’s face open with a can opener.

Source: http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2013/10/sarah_schulman_s_after_delores_25th_anniversary_of_crucial_lesbian_novel.html
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