Category: Streamingvideo

Fight Club …on 60 Minutes

Fight Club …on 60 Minutes; Exclusive Video Only on Yahoo! News
It’s been likened to a street corner brawl: two men fighting, very few rules, and the last one standing is the winner. It may be brutal but “Mixed Martial Arts” is also one of the fastest growing sports in America. Scott Pelley talks with the man behind the “Ultimate Fighting Championship” and goes toe-to-toe with some of the top fighters in the sport today.

Now its pay-per-view buys are approaching one million and Spike TV’s Ultimate Fighting Championship, the nation’s most popular pro league, outdraws baseball and basketball among the 18 to 34 crowd, which is the most highly desireable advertiser’s demographic.  In fact, many have speculated that cage fighting, with its hyper-quick action and colorful characters, will replace boxing as the nation’s choice bloodsport.

The UFC was to be based upon a version of Brazilian vale tudo fighting. Often violent and brutal with minimal rules, the UFC’s brand of vale tudo, initially known as no holds barred fighting, allowed fighters of various disciplines to prove which martial arts style prevailed above others in realistic, unregulated situations. Early UFC fights, while accomplishing the goal of determining which style was best, were less sport than spectacle, which led to accusations of brutality and “human cockfighting” by opponents. Here is some video from that period, which was eventually banned on Pay-for-View, until it was re-vamped with 31 rules.

Mashups.com : The Link and Mashups of the Day

Mashups.com : The Link and Mashups of the Day – A new Mashup site with MP3s every day!

With the Christmas gift-giving release of a mashup of Beatles Love Songs mixed by George Martin, what started out as Club DJs cross-mixing different songs and then spreading them as bootleg mp3s over the internet, has climbed out of the Underground into legitimacy. Even JC Penney has a X-mas mashup ad. The hottest trend now is to mary these audio mashups with corresponding videos, such as this Beatles Medley or the Monkees “I’m a believer” & the Beatles “Paperback Writer” mashup.

Aroesmith’s “Walk this Way” used by Run DMC was a crossover in the evolution of the Mashup with the music sampling of Urban Rap overlaying Hard Rock. The highly popular video was the first rap video ever played in heavy rotation on MTV. In addition to being one of the songs that helped break Aerosmith into the mainstream in the 1970s, it also helped resurrect their career and revolutionized rock and roll and rap music when it was re-made in 1986 with rappers Run-D.M.C. on their album Raising Hell. It became an international hit and won both groups a Soul Train Music Award for Best Rap – Single in 1987. Click the image to view it. click on the other highlighted videos to play them. The Green Day video embedded below, just needs you to click on the play icon.

The Mashup ran into heavy copyright resistance. American Edit is an album of mashups paying tribute to the Green Day Album ‘American Idiot’. Although Green Day liked the album their record label banned it in late 2005. Watch ‘Boulevard of Broken Songs’ featuring Broken Dreams by Green Day, Wonderwall by Oasis, Writing to Reach You by Travis, and Sing for the Moment by Eminem. This is the original by Party Ben / Dean Gray (Pioneers of the Mashup Movement) but with video edited by Pilko, only this version is entitled ‘Wonderwall of Broken Dreams’. The audio mashup still became a huge music download favorite.

Navy Outkasts Karaoke at Sea

Those crazy squids pumpin it « Dave in Texas

Dave has linked 2 karaoke videos made at sea by the the VAW 116 Kings, who have provided carrier-based Airborne Early Warning (AEW), Airborne Battle Management, Command, Control, and Communication (ABCCC) services to the Strike Group and Joint Forces Commander. While the Vietnam generation went to war with Jimmy Hendrix ringing in their ears, this generation of co-ed warriors sails off into the wild blue yonder to Outkast. This music video is a great insight to the current Navy culture that all know the lyrics to these 2 songs -“Hey Ya'” and “Shake it like a Poloraid”.

Hear the 911 tape: ‘Help, a gator’s got me!’ screams naked man on crack

Hear the 911 tape: ‘Help, a gator’s got me!’ screams naked man on crack: South Florida Sun-Sentinel

The article has a link to the TV coverage as well as the mp3 audio of the 911 tape.

” ‘I have two broken arms, and an alligator’s got me pinned. I can’t move. Please help me,’ ” the Polk County deputy sheriff recalled the man saying at a news conference Wednesday.

As Osborne listened, he followed the pleading voice through more than 20 yards of weeds in Lake Parker’s murky, chest-deep water about 4 a.m.

Then he saw them: a naked man slumped over, caught in the jaws of a huge alligator amid thick cattails in bloodied water. He said the man, who had been using drugs and lost a lot of blood, seemed oddly calm. Continue reading “Hear the 911 tape: ‘Help, a gator’s got me!’ screams naked man on crack”

IRAQ IN FRAGMENTS – The Movie

IRAQ IN FRAGMENTS ; background
Suddenly the flood gates had opened. There was no government in Iraq and I could film whatever I wanted as long as I could stay alive.

My guess was that I would have about a year before either a new authoritarian government would be put in power or Iraq would descend into civil war and become too dangerous to work in. I needed to make my film while it was still possible.

This amazing Indie film won the accolades of the Sundance and many other Film Festivals. Excerpts are available at Fareed Zakaria excellent PBS show from 11/16 “Foreign Exchange – Where America meets the world”

Children aghast as pelican swallows pigeon whole

Children aghast as pelican swallows pigeon whole | the Daily Mail
Families strolling through a London park were left shocked when a pelican picked up and swallowed an unsuspecting pigeon.

The Eastern White pelican struggled with the desperately frantic pigeon in its beak for more than 20 minutes before swallowing it whole.

The moment was caught on camera by photographer Cathal McNaughton, who was taking pictures of the wildlife in St James’s Park.

The pigeon was still alive when it reached the pelican’s stomach, he said.

Video of him trying to swallow the pigoen

Azadeh Pourzand: A letter about Stoning to Death

Azadeh Pourzand: A letter about Stoning to Death

Click the link above for a poignant letter from a child who watched his mother stoned to death 26 years ago.
According to Article 83 of the Islamic Penal Code of Iran, stoning to death has been declared a permissible punishment for a few different types of adultery, based on this Koran text:
Volume 2, Book 23, Number 413:
Narrated ‘Abdullah bin ‘Umar :
The Jew brought to the Prophet a man and a woman from amongst them who have committed (adultery) illegal sexual intercourse. He ordered both of them to be stoned (to death), near the place of offering the funeral prayers beside the mosque.”

In stoning to death, the victims’s hands are tied behind their backs and their bodies are put in a cloth sack. Then, this human “package” is buried in a hole, with only the victims heads showing above the ground. If its a woman, she is buried upto her shoulders. This is to give her an seemingly equal (but nonetheless impossible) chance to escape recognizing her lesser physical strength.
After the hapless individual has been secured in the hole, people start chanting “Allah hu Akbar” (meaning, God is great), and throw palm sized stones at the head of the victim from a certain distance (a circle is drawn).
The stones are thrown until the person dies or until he/she escapes out of the hole and crosses the circle. Escaping is impossible, given that the individual’s hands are tied behind their backs and they are buried in a hole up to their necks or shoulders (in the case of males and females respectively). Click here to watch the Stoning-to-death video