Copyright 2008 The New York Sun Wed, 18 Jun 2008 16:33:31 -0400 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Channing Joseph :: Stories from The New York Sun http://www.nysun.com/authors/Channing+Joseph istoll@nysun.com (Ira Stoll) webmaster@nysun.com en-us CHANNING JOSEPH http://www.nysun.com/arts/beams-handsprings-now-for-adults/73016/ Mon, 17 Mar 2008 00:00:00 EST When one thinks of gymnastics, one often thinks of youth — wee toddlers rolling and performing cartwheels on soft mats, adolescent girls whirling through the air above impossibly thin beams, and fresh-faced teenage boys walking upon their hands with the ease of strolling through Central Park. But for those in their 20s, 30s, 40s — or even 50s — it may be time to fulfill a long-buried dream of becoming the next Mary Lou Retton or Bart Conner. (Well, it may be too late for that. But it's not too... CHANNING JOSEPH http://www.nysun.com/foreign/wikileaks-releases-secret-report-on-military/62236/ Sun, 9 Sep 2007 19:13:14 EST The government transparency Web site Wikileaks.org has unveiled secret military documents detailing the complete equipment register for all units managed by the American Army in Afghanistan. The confidential records -- which Wikileaks said were probably given to the site by an unnamed government official -- list most of the equipment held in that country as of last April by American and coalition forces, and possibly even the CIA. According to the site's staff, who also remain anonymous, the... CHANNING JOSEPH http://www.nysun.com/national/conservative-pennsylvanians-pass-radical-laws/58464/ Mon, 16 Jul 2007 00:00:00 EST Nearly 220 years after America's Constitution was drafted in Pennsylvania, scores of rural Keystone State communities are declaring the document null and void. More than 100 largely Republican municipalities have passed laws to abolish the constitutional rights of corporations, inventing what some critics are calling a "radical" new kind of environmental activism. Led by the nonprofit Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, they are attempting to jumpstart a national movement, with Celdf... CHANNING JOSEPH http://www.nysun.com/national/new-mexico-gallery-set-to-cause-a-stir-with/54307/ Fri, 11 May 2007 00:00:00 EST It's dusk at Calvary, and Jesus, covered in red sores, gazes down from his cross upon the figure of a bearded monk. Atop the crucifix, in the same place where traditional Christian paintings display the Latin shorthand for "Jesus of Nazareth, king of the Jews," the artist, William Hart McNichols, has inserted another message: "AIDS leper, drug user, homosexual." In the wake of the recent controversy sparked by a milk chocolate sculpture of Jesus that was to be shown at a New York gallery during... CHANNING JOSEPH http://www.nysun.com/arts/city-arts-set-for-asia-week/50248/ Mon, 12 Mar 2007 00:00:00 EST Alexandra Munroe doesn't hesitate to announce that an Internet search of her name yields a photograph of her in a lip lock with Yoko Ono, whom she considers a "very dear friend." In a way, Ms. Munroe's unorthodox self-presentation is not surprising. After all, she is used to breaking new ground. Appointed senior curator of Asian art at the Guggenheim Museum in January 2006, she is the first person to hold that title at a major international museum of modern and contemporary art. As the New York... CHANNING JOSEPH http://www.nysun.com/arts/indianas-power-of-words/48152/ Wed, 7 Feb 2007 00:00:00 EST The art of Robert Indiana is famed throughout the world. The problem is no one has heard of him. Unlike some of his contemporaries in the Pop art movement — Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, and Jasper Johns, who have become household names — a mention of Mr. Indiana's name in casual conversation is often mistaken as a geographic reference to the Midwestern state sandwiched between Illinois and Ohio. Although the artist has produced a significant volume of work over the last four decades, he has... CHANNING JOSEPH http://www.nysun.com/arts/sargents-venice-comes-to-new-york/46397/ Wed, 10 Jan 2007 00:00:00 EST On a sparkling day in Venice, Italy, the orange curtains of a gondola's canopy provide shade from the white heat reflecting off the water. Its translucent cloth casts a reddish haze over Ramσn Subercaseaux, who sketches a drawing of John Singer Sargent while the unseen artist busily paints a portrait of the Chilean diplomat. When the exhibit featuring this painting, "Sargent's Venice," opens at the Adelson Galleries on Thursday, viewers will be swept along with both men down the city's... CHANNING JOSEPH http://www.nysun.com/arts/making-a-quantum-comeback/45424/ Tue, 19 Dec 2006 00:00:00 EST If you look closely at one of Thornton Willis's paintings at Elizabeth Harris Gallery, you might see a sailboat transform into a kite. Or is it a kite metamorphosing into the sharp fins of an origami fish? Yes, maybe it is a fish disappearing under the weight of a lopsided skyscraper tumbling over into a rainbow-colored sea of triangles. This is Mr. Willis's jumbled geometric art. The artist, a Florida-born New York abstract expressionist, is about to conclude his first solo exhibit since 1993... CHANNING JOSEPH http://www.nysun.com/new-york/ward-churchill-will-speak-at-new-school-university/44693/ Wed, 6 Dec 2006 00:00:00 EST A professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, Ward Churchill — who ignited a national furor with his description of some of the World Trade Center employees killed on September 11, 2001, as "little Eichmanns" — is scheduled to speak Monday in New York at the New School. At the invitation of the New School's Women of Color student group, which is funding the event from the university's student fees, Mr. Churchill will give a talk titled "Sterilizing History: The Fabrication of 'Innocent... CHANNING JOSEPH http://www.nysun.com/national/veterans-say-they-organized-against-the-war-while/58157/ Tue, 10 Jul 2007 10:10:30 EST Three veterans who came back from Iraq in 2005 say they conducted anti-war organizing while fighting on the front lines and are now continuing their activism by offering help to soldiers who oppose the war and decide to go AWOL, or "absent without leave," from their military duties. They are doing it all with seeming impunity. The former Army specialists, Jeffrey Englehart and Joseph Hatcher, both 26, and Garett Reppenhagen, 31, spoke on a panel at the Judson Memorial Church in New York City on... CHANNING JOSEPH http://www.nysun.com/arts/fine-art-from-new-orleans-comes-to-new-york/43697/ Fri, 17 Nov 2006 00:00:00 EST A new exhibition of artworks from the New Orleans Museum of Art — opening to the public at Wildenstein & Co. today — recreates the Crescent City's storied museum within a new venue on the Upper East Side. The two-floor show, "The Odyssey Continues," consists of 100 major pieces of art, some dating from the 1300s, alongside 20th-century works by masters including Picasso, Magritte, and Miro. Although some of the paintings, drawings, and sculpture were borrowed from private New Orleans... CHANNING JOSEPH http://www.nysun.com/new-york/civil-rights-group-will-train-radicals-in-how/43473/ Tue, 14 Nov 2006 00:00:00 EST The New York Civil Liberties Union, in what it says is an effort to expose possible government spying on law-abiding activists, is starting a campaign to teach "radical" activist groups how to obtain their own government surveillance files from the FBI, Pentagon, and New York City Police Department through the use of federal Freedom of Information Act and local Freedom of Information law requests. Some critics are saying the program could interfere with law enforcement activity and may even... CHANNING JOSEPH http://www.nysun.com/national/morbid-web-site-makes-amusement-of-online/43116/ Wed, 8 Nov 2006 00:00:00 EST Fifteen-year-old Kayla Reed bared her soul in her MySpace profile. In it, she discussed her love of hiphop music, her dream of attending beauty college, and her first thoughts on waking in the morning — "going back to sleep." The teenager went on to confess that she had been drunk before and had shoplifted, "but it was only a candy bar." Eerily, Kayla's profile even announced that she wanted to die "in my sleep." But the Livermore, Calif.,high school student was not so fortunate. Earlier this... CHANNING JOSEPH http://www.nysun.com/arts/saddam-defaced/42926/ Mon, 6 Nov 2006 00:00:00 EST For photographers, war zones contain infinite material. And after bombs hailed down on Baghdad in the spring of 2003, shutterbugs recorded the destruction of buildings, human bodies, and ancient artifacts pillaged by looters. But in the aftermath of the American-led invasion, Belgian photojournalist Teun Voeten noticed a phenomenon that no one else thought to capture: the defacement of Saddam Hussein portraits. In an exhibit titled "Saddam Mania," on display at the Think Tank 3 gallery, Mr... CHANNING JOSEPH http://www.nysun.com/national/new-film-is-a-cross-between-abu-ghraib-and-girls/42779/ Thu, 2 Nov 2006 00:00:00 EST If you're an exhibitionist willing to strip and lie down in a pool of blood, or if you would get a kick out of being part of a pornographic human pyramid, then it may be your lucky day if you can hustle over to the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Filming begins today in Brooklyn on scenes depicting the abuses at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison for "Memorial Day," a film backed by REM's Michael Stipe and the producers of the Oscar-nominated 2004 movie "Maria Full of Grace." The drama-documentary follows a group of... CHANNING JOSEPH http://www.nysun.com/arts/view-on-a-forgotten-noguchi/42631/ Wed, 1 Nov 2006 00:00:00 EST The Noguchi Museum opens its doors today on a new photographic exhibit, "Shin Banraisha: A Cultural Memory." The show is an attempt to revive interest in a visionary, but destroyed fusion of art and architecture designed by Japanese-American sculptor and landscape architect Isamu Noguchi. The Banraisha — which translates roughly to "the hall for 10,000 visitors to come" — was a one-room social club on the campus of Tokyo's Keio University. Created in Japan's early Meiji period, nearly three... CHANNING JOSEPH http://www.nysun.com/arts/abu-ghraib-in-paint/41632/ Tue, 17 Oct 2006 00:00:00 EST Naked figures writhe in an eerie darkness. Vicious beasts bare their teeth and snarl. The faces of lost souls cry out in unimaginable agony, forced into strange and contorted positions reminiscent of crucifixion. Such a vision evokes a scene of the apocalypse typical of 15th-century Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch. But no, these paintings by Colombian artist Fernando Botero are depictions of real events. Despite their hellish subject matter, they are all meticulously based on photographs and... CHANNING JOSEPH http://www.nysun.com/national/police-chief-says-he-exaggerated-post-katrina/38268/ Mon, 21 Aug 2006 00:00:00 EST The New Orleans police chief during Hurricane Katrina, Eddie Compass, says he unnecessarily "heightened people's fears" by repeating unconfirmed reports of out-of-control crime in the city during the aftermath of the storm, adding to the confusion caused by the disaster and potentially hampering rescue efforts. "There were reports of rapes and children being raped. And I even got one report … that my daughter was raped," Mr. Compass says in the Spike Lee documentary "When the Levees Broke: A...