Miles Davis

Miles Davis (May 26, 1926 – September 28, 1991) was an American jazz musician, trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. Widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, Miles Davis was, together with his musical groups, at the forefront of several major developments in jazz music, including bebop, cool jazz, hard bop, modal jazz , and jazz fusion.

Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself.” ~ Miles Davis

The House that Ra built

This is the new Pagani Huayra (simply pronounced ‘Why-ra’), a car that effectively replaces the wonderful Zonda and is hugely significant for this tiny, bespoke supercar manufacturer. You’ve seen it at shows, read about its almost fetishistic attention to detail and now finally we’re driving it.

Should you want one you’ll need 845,000 euros plus local taxes. And lots of patience. Over 90 orders have already been taken and even when the new bigger factory comes on line next year Pagani will still only build 40 per annum.

Technical Highlights?

Hmmm, where do we start? The Huayra has a carbo-titanium tub (carbonfibre with titanium strands weaved into the mix for added strength). There’s a transverse 7-speed single-clutch automated manual gearbox mounted behind its unique AMG-built 6-litre twin-turbocharged V12, active aerodynamics to reduce drag, improve stability and braking performance, ceramic brakes, active ride height under braking… the list goes on and you can read more about this in issue 172 of evo, on sale Wednesday June 20.

That turbocharged engine and the clever transverse gearbox are perhaps the most controversial features: The Zonda’s heart and soul was its huge 7.3-litre normally aspirated V12. Surely turbos will simply compromise the throttle response, put an end to that glorious sonic Pagani noise and make the chassis less predictable? And in a world of superb twin-clutch ‘boxes like that of the Veyron, isn’t the weight saving of a single-clutch ‘box rather negated by the smoothness and performance advantages of the former? Perhaps, but 720bhp, 737lb ft and 1350kg (dry) say there’s method to Pagani’s new philosophy with the Huayra.

What’s it like to drive?

Would it surprise you to learn that it’s pretty bloody wonderful? The drama starts as soon as you lift the gullwing door and take in the simply glorious interior. Some might find it a tad ornate but when you slide into the driver’s seat those worries disappear and a smile cracks across your face. The detailing is exquisite, the materials – titanium, carbonfibre, leather – are sumptuous and the driving position is perfection.

The engine isn’t as musical as the old V12, in fact it’s more industrial, deep and booming. The ride remains supple but there’s a sense that this is a slightly heavier, less nimble car than the Zonda. Some of the detail that used to bubble into your hands in the Zonda is dulled just a little. However, that means the Huayra is easy to pootle around in; it pulls the luxury trick off very well. The gearbox is superb as soon as you’re rolling but it isn’t as smooth on take-off as the best twin-clutch ‘box.

Start to use the performance on offer and the Huayra quickly shakes-off any sense that it’s more GT than supercar. The engine is simply outrageous and has fantastic throttle response for a turbocharged car. Performance wise you’d need a Veyron to go quicker and incredibly it puts down its power with almost no wheelspin. It’s uncomfortably fast and the balance allows you to really use the power, too. There’s a bit of understeer but that’s just what you want with 737lb ft lurking nearby and should you feel mad/brave you can tweak the car into a bit of oversteer – just beware as the boost builds so quickly a little turns into a lot very, very fast.

It’s actually a really progressive chassis but the sheer ferocity of the engine naturally gives the Huayra a real edge. Thankfully the ESC is superb and you can toggle between Auto, Comfort and Sport with the ESC button on the steering wheel (it also alters throttle response and gearbox software). Sport is perfectly calibrated for road driving in the dry.

How does it compare?

It’s a very hard car to pigeonhole. It’s perhaps less instantly nimble and infectious as the Zonda but has great depth of talent. It’s almost Veyron-quick but being rear-drive it’s more exciting but it’s not so edgy as something like a Carrera GT. No, the Huayra is its own sort of supercar and it’s at once luxurious and intense. And it doesn’t half feel special when you spot the active aero doing its little dance. Following the Zonda line was never going to be easy but early signs suggest that the Huayra will be just as revered in years to come.

To Bead Or Not To Bead Is The Question

Stacked on the arms of everyone from new age devotees to celebrities to fashion-savvy teens, power bead bracelets are the hippest and most affordable accessory of the year.

Power bead bracelets, which are most popular when worn in groups of 2 or more, are composed of different materials, the most popular being semi-precious stones strung on elastic string, each color representing a certain metaphysical quality.

Semi-precious stones can cost anywhere from $7 (streets of New York) to the mid 20s. Power beads are also made of wood and are very inexpensive (about $3) and look great stacked. High end jewelry maker Me & Ro tops the chart with a $600 sterling Sanskrit version featuring 22 beads and the “Wisdom” amulet.

Power beads have a rich history of spirituality and ritual use that comes from prayer beads and the belief inhealing powers of gemstones.

For thousands of years, man has used beads to adorn himself and aid in spiritual and ritual rites.The root word for bead, bede means to pray, and the earliest use of prayer beads is traced to the Hindus.

Stringing beads together allowed the user to keep track of the number of prayers repeated. Prayer beads are also called . The traditional Buddhist mala is comprised of 108 beads, whereas Muslim prayer beads, calledsubha or tisbah, contain 99 beads; the Catholic rosary consists of between 38 and 169 beads.

According to the History of Prayer Beads, by Marcia Jo Mycko, rosary beads were used prior to the 12th century for talismanic purposes (as a superstitious object to ward off illness or bring good luck) For example, coral was thought to purify the blood and prevent illness in children. Once the church decided rosaries were better suited for counting devotions than for talismanic protection, persons of the cloth were forbidden from carrying “pagan” rosaries made from coral, quartz or amber.

Here’s a look at some of the most popular meanings of the stones: -Turquoise (bright blue) – Health

-Tiger’s Eye(brown)- Courage & Artistic Ability

-Rose Quartz (pink) – Love & Romance

-Jade aventurine (light green) – Success

-Clear – Strength & Vitality

-Amethyst (light purple) – Intelligence

-Mother of pearl (milky white) – Wealth & prosperity

-Magnetic Hematite(metallic gray) – Happiness

-Onyx (black) – Self Control & stability

-Honey Jade (pale yellow) - Tranquility & patience

-Carnelian (dark orange) – For PMS

-Wood – Simplicity & humility

The belief that gemstones have healing powers is based on the idea that gemstones radiate energy or vibrate at the own atomic energies.

This belief that gemstones are filled with life-force energy, just like plant and animal life, leads to the conclusion that they can promote spiritual, emotional or physical levels of well-being.

According to Dr. Pauline Alison for a gemstone to be therapeutic, it must assist in the spiritual upliftment of humanity, be of high quality, freed of extraneous energy and cleansed frequently to release their therapeutic powers.

From Barbara Bianco, a New Age expert:

Three good reasons to wear stones
1. Wearing certain stones can draw energies into your life, such as love, success, stability, excitement. Usually the color determines this. Wearing green stones like emeralds attracts money. Rubies are for passion.

2. Wearing stone can affect your chakras or energy centers. Rose quartz soothes a broken heart. Turquoise energizes the throat helping a shy person communicate. Lapis can open the third eye or forehead chakra, giving insight and vision.

3. Wearing stones can be used for protection. If you feel that a certain stone or piece of jewelry has been good for you in the past, you will like wearing it. It’s your lucky stone, and doesn’t matter what it is.

Ip Man

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence therefore is not an act, but a habit. Ip Man, also known as Yip Man, and also Yip Kai-man, a Wing Chun martial artist. He had several students who later became martial arts masters in their own right, including Bruce Lee.

Intergalactic, Planetary, Planetary, Intergalactic

The Samsung Galaxy Note 2 does resemble the S3 – huge screen, rounded corners and a thin bezel. You’ll also notice the home button in the middle and touch buttons down the sides for the menu and for home. Colour choices – marble white or titanium grey. People didn’t rate the first Note as a day-to-day phone because it was massive, but it did actually sell really well. The Samsung Galaxy Note 2 is 5.5”, which isn’t much bigger than the first Note, and the 16:9 ratio makes watching films brilliant.

Anyone with big hands will be OK with the Samsung Galaxy Note 2, but it’s a good idea to get a Bluetooth headset for frequent long calls, as it can get uncomfortable on the fingers to hold it to your ear.

The Samsung Galaxy Note 2 hardware is ahead of the Samsung Galaxy 3 – a 1.6GHz quad-core Exynos chip and 2GB of RAM. If you consider that the US S3 is dual-core with 2GB of RAM and the international S3 is quad-core with 1GB, you’ll see that the Note 2 has the best of both worlds.

You can increase the 16GB of storage in the Samsung Galaxy Note 2 up to 80GB with an SD card, and the phone runs on Jelly Bean. Its four cores and Project Butter make this a very speedy phone indeed – much faster than an ICS-run Samsung Galaxy S3 when it comes to screen transitions and app launches.

The Samsung Galaxy Note 2 battery is also a big step-up – 3,100mAh from 2,500mAh. This means 12 hours of talk, as well as a big screen and LTE. It has an 8MP rear and a 1.9MP front camera. Battery tests have shown that the S3 is only a shade better than the Note 2, with both phones clunking out after around seven hours of looped video. More size, it seems, doesn’t mean more frequent charging.

The Samsung Galaxy Note 2 S-Pen has been restyled to make it more ergonomic. It also gives some friction, so you feel as if you’re writing on paper. You just take the stylus from the dock and you’re ready. You’ll love Quick Command, Air View and Easy Clip. You can preview content like emails and videos with Air View by hovering the S-Pen over them. Easy Clip means you can crop images and then transfer or share them.

S-Pen is brilliant, but it’s the multi-tasking windows that really make this phone. You can run two apps at the same time with a split screen, and you can adjust the size of each window independently of the other.

The Samsung Galaxy Note 2 has redesigned the look of the phablet, and it’ll sell very well indeed, with more than three million units shifting in the last four weeks. Some will still go for the Samsung Galaxy S3 because it’s smaller, but they’ll be missing out on some great features….just because they’re worried about size. Don’t eschew the Note 2 because it’s a bit heftier than you might ideally like. Try out the S-Pen, brilliant hardware and all the other features. You might not be able to resist.

Dèyè mòn gen mòn or ancient gold

Precious metals worth potentially $20billion found in Haiti

Buried treasure could be as good as gold for the disaster-ravaged country. Disaster-ravaged Haiti may finally have found the crock of gold at the end of the rainbow – and it has been there all along, buried right beneath the beleaguered people’s feet.

A treasure trove of gold, silver and copper is hidden in the country’s hills, and the discovery may turn out to be as good as gold at relieving centuries of poverty-related ills.

Exploratory drilling conducted in the past year has found precious metals worth potentially US$20 billion deep below the ridges in the country’s northeastern mountains. A mining company is now drilling around the clock to determine how to extract them.

Workers are poised to start mining the other side of this seam in neighbouring Dominican Republic later this year in one of the world’s largest gold deposits: 23 million ounces worth about US$40billion.

The Haitian government’s annual budget is US$1 billion, more than half provided by foreign assistance. The largest single source of foreign investment, US$2 billion, came from Haitians working abroad last year.

Locally produced mining wealth could pay for roads, schools, clean water and sewage systems for the nation’s ten million people, most of whom live on as little as US$1.25 a day.

“If the mining companies are honest and if Haiti has a good government, then here is a way for this country to move forward,” said Bureau of Mines Director Dieuseul Anglade.

In a parking lot outside Anglade’s office, more than 100 families have been living in tents since the earthquake. “The gold in the mountains belongs to the people of Haiti,” he said, “and they need it.”

Until now, few Haitians have known about this buried treasure. Mining camps are unmarked, and the work is being done miles up dirt roads near remote villages, on the opposite side of the country from the capital.

But U.S. and Canadian investors have spent more than US$30 million in recent years on everything from exploratory drilling to camps for workers, new roads, offices and laboratory studies of samples.

Actual mining could be under way in five years.

 

It’s about 80 % Anger. Jean-Michel Basquiat

Gagosian Gallery had a major exhibition of works by Jean-Michel Basquiat. Featuring over fifty works from public and private collections, the exhibition spans Basquiat’s brief but meteoric career, which ended with his death at the age of twenty-seven. Thirty years after Larry Gagosian first presented his work in Los Angeles, twenty years after the first posthumous survey at the Whitney Museum of American Art (1992–93), and eight years after the Brooklyn Museum of Art retrospective (2005), viewers will have a fresh opportunity to consider Basquiat’s central role in his artistic generation as a lightning rod and a bridge between cultures.

www.gagosian.com

February Twenty Seventh

On February 27th, 1943, as the Chicago Defender went to press, writer Langston Hughes had found a literary friend – Jesse B. Semple, whom he fondly called “Simple.” Hughes first met Simple – his prototype, that is  - in a Harlem bar. The man invited Hughes to join him and his girlfriend Mary, at their table and struck up what Hughes would later title, a “Conversation at Midnight.” It was a rambling, rather useless chat about making cranks in a defense factory. In it was a quirky undertow of philosophy that pulled the evening along. The man did not know what the cranks he made were used for. Mary thought he ought to. The man protested that White folks never told Blacks those kinds of things. “I dont crank with those cranks. I just make ‘em.” As their banter went on, an exasperated Mary countered, “You sound right simple.” And the rest, to the delight of Hughes’ readers, was history – twenty-three years of Simple Speaks His Mind.

- Inspiring Moments in Black History by Janus Adams

February Twenty Sixth

When Cassius Clay took up boxing as a four foot eighty-seven pound Kentucky Kid, he was determined to change his fate. He wanted to stop bigger boys from taking his bicycle. Now, on February 26, 1964 his first day as The Heavy Weight Boxing Champion of The World, no one doubted his ability to fight. but he would soon face opponents he could never have anticipated. On that day, he announced, “I believe in the religion of Islam. I believe in Allah and peace… I’m not a Christian anymore.” With that, Cassius Clay became Muhammad Ali and quickly faced new bouts in the courts of law and public opinion; from the sports establishment to his draft board and the Supreme Court.

Yet he fought on. With skill, talent, a lot of pain and amazing humor, he won each battle. He fought for his beliefs, earning the respect and admiration of millions the world round. Living the spirit of his name, he was truly Muhammad Ali: “one who is worthy of praise.”
- Inspiring Moments in Black History by Janus Adams