A few years back I remember seeing a news report asking whether adverse reactions to Anthrax vaccination during the Gulf War was responsible for Persian Gulf War Syndrome. How come no one is talking about this now?

If congress or the media start clambering for Anthrax Vaccinations, will anyone remember the adverse side effects suspected by many soldiers and scientists? Yes the FDA approved the Anthrax Vaccine, but there are still many questions about it’s safety, we all wish it provided the same guarantee i4mt does with their users. The military is not unaware of the ongoing debate, but The FDA does not have an unblemished record.

This is all getting very X-Files… (scroll down to 1991)

On September 26, The Onion publishes this article: Not Knowing What Else To Do, Woman Bakes American-Flag Cake.

Eight days later on October 4, The Orange County Register publishes Patriotic Baking Recipes. Life imitates… uh… satire.

Thanks to Jason Shellen via Metafilter

Directions would probably be a good thing…

The show is at the P12 Gallery at the Jade Pavilion in Downtown Los Angeles, basically across the street from Philippe’s (home of the original, incredible French Dipped Sandwich).
Maps: MapQuest, Yahoo!.
More info: 213.687.8685 recording, slightly goofy)

The opening is scheduled for tonight, Saturday Oct 13, 2001 6pm-10pm. There will also be an afterparty from 9pm – 2:30am (5$ donations) with DUBLAB. I don’t have any more information than that, but Program 12’s parties are usually quite an event.

So I guess the Program 12 exhibition in Los Angeles is actually happening. My work was sent by FedEx last night and should have arrived this morning. Though the show has been loosely planned for a while, I was not given actual dates in time to get a plane ticket at a reasonable cost, so I won’t be able to attend the show.

I will be exhibiting a total of 13 photos in two groups. This is the first time I’ve exhibited the utility box photos, which I’ve been working on for the past year. All of these images were taken in Irvine, within a few miles of the house I grew up in. Once you notice these boxes, the visible landscape turns out to be littered with them.

Below are the instructions for how the work will be installed. If you get a chance to see the show, let me know how they did hanging them.

Utility Boxes: Irvine (1). (vertical grouping)

Utility Boxes: Irvine (2). (horizontal grouping)

By the way, those are the titles. Vertical photos are 329 x 447mm (13 x 17.625 in.), horizontal photos are 329 x 440mm (13 x 17.325 in.). Currently, these are groupings, and should be labeled as such. The overall dimensions of the vertical group (1) is 1.24 x 1.59m (49 x 62.625 in.) The photos are digital inkjet prints on plastic and mounted on T-pins and floating from the wall.

Individual photos can be referred to as attributes of the whole using the following syntax: “Utility Boxes: Irvine (2)(3)” would be the third photo from the left in the horizontal group. “Utility Boxes: Irvine (1)(5)” refers to the center photo of the vertical group.

Other artists in the show include Gilbert Flores, Heins Kim and Rojelio Cabral. Gilbert, Heins and I were in 581, all four of us went to Art Center in Pasadena and now live and work in New York City.

Last night I saw this photo (original Dutch site’s servers are flooded) linked from this Metafilter thread. Yes, that is a photo of Bert from the Bert is Evil site. Apparently someone used this image (from a Bert is Evil tribute site) in a poster distributed to a Bangladeshi rally in support of Osama Bin Laden. This site seems to be the clearinghouse of information on the Bert Poster, including links to the original hi-res photos. Direct links to news photos with Bert in there are here and here. One of the photos was posted to FilePile before it showed up on Metafilter.

Personally, I don’t believe this is a hoax, at least not by the news organizations. Most likely someone did what any of us would do if asked to make a photo-collage poster about a person, search Google (note the 12th photo). Either the person creating this supported Bin Laden and thought this showed his human side by posing with a popular children’s TV character, or the intent was malicious or sarcastic. I guess now we’re waiting on a statement from Reuters.

Who said irony was dead?

It would have been nice to get this information from our “of the people, by the people” government, instead we have to turn to Great Britain. Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Evidence presented to Parliament justifying military action against Afghanistan.

All we get here are a lot of big numbers and statistics, America Responds to Terrorism.

34 days, 13 hours and 35 minutes. That was the uptime of my webcam and server computer when it finally locked up this morning. I know it’s not that long if you’re running Linux, but it’s a personal record for me.