According to an unnamed source in the Beijing News, between 40 and 50 tigers have died at the Shenyang Wildlife Zoo since 2000, and it was an “open secret” that the zoo was making tiger-bone liquor…A report surfaced last week that 11 of the zoo’s tigers had recently died of starvation, and three years ago, four tigers at the zoo killed and ate a fellow tiger that they had been sharing a cage with for five years.”

The Times Online has more on the very awful story, quoting a zoo worker who made “tiger wine” in very large vats in the past:

The unidentified official said: “I myself have taken tiger bone wine.” He said the zoo generally used the wine in gifts-for-favours transactions with senior officials including the Forestry departments, which are responsible for animal conservation, as well as the police.

I am not sure which is worse, the fact that China’s industry intentionally cut its milk with poison and killed people, or that one of their zoos starved an endangered species to make money off its body parts. Both make me fear for what the intrigue of capitalism has born in the fastest growing economy in the world. It is believed there are only about 20 Siberian tigers left living in the wild.

via China Zoo Selling Spare Tiger Parts.

The latest development in Salander’s downward spiral of legal wranglings is that Robert De Niro, the actor, has struck a deal to step in and purchase six of his father’s works that Salander had in his possession. De Niro will pay 14,000 for the works, which come to only half the paintings that Salander had of De Niro, Sr. The twelve paintings total are valued at over $1 million, so younger De Niro is getting quite the deal. He is also saving his father’s works from seeing the auction block, where they could have been sold to the four corner’s of the world.

via Art Savior De Niro.

So we should all be pleased that the growing popularity of e-readers will slow this destruction. However, as we wait on the newest Apple super product, the iPAD, to be released in April, the excitement should be partnered with news that an expansive recycling program for e-readers is being established. This should be a national program and/or a privatized program in which when one’s e-reader dies of natural causes–and this will start happening soon, if it has not already started happening–the owner can bring the dead e-reader to a place where it will be recycled responsibly.

Consider this Treehugger article from all way back in October 2008, long before the e-reader market got real momentum.

Recyclability of Paper vs E-Readers
We know that e-paper devices are environmentally on par or better than printed materials and online reading, according to research done last year. But paper can be recycled or reused in a million different low-impact ways. What about e-readers? We don’t know yet what their recyclability is, the percentage that will be properly recycled and the energy that would go into recycling them. Looking at current electronics recycling rates, my guess is it won’t be very pretty.

So, is it going to be pretty now? Since I hear a lot about new e-readers crashing to market and not a peep about the networks established to recycle these new electronic devices, my guess is that not much has changed. This should be a call to arms for socially and environmentally minded companies, such as Whole Foods. When you leave Whole Foods, there are bins where shoppers can deposit burnt out cell phones. In the coming months this bin should be joined by a place where shoppers can drop off dead e-Readers. Perhaps it’s depressing to be contemplating the death of e-Readers already, but when it comes to introducing more electronic devices to our world, we should have a pre-planned clean-up in place.

via Will e-reading Change how we Read?.

via Cleantech Group report: E-readers a win for carbon emissions.

Did you know that Scott Brown—the new star Republican Senator—was accused of harassing a female campaign worker in 1998? We have the documents to prove it. Did the Democrats blow an opportunity to keep their 60th Senate seat?

In 2000, Scott Brown was a freshman state representative in Massachusetts. A few years earlier, he’d served on the Wrentham, Mass. Board of Selectmen. Jennifer Firth, a local mortgage banker who was elected to the Board of Selectmen in 1999, filed a civil defamation suit against Brown in July of 2000, alleging that he had harassed her when she worked on his campaign in 1998, and then tried to smear her reputation around town with forged letters and emails.

According to Firth’s complaint, Brown engaged in ‘offensive’ conduct that caused her to quit his campaign; he then tried to ‘defame and humiliate’ her by spreading rumors to her colleagues that she ‘had made sexual advances’ towards him during his campaign. She also alleged that Brown told several people that he’d had an ‘intimate relationship’ with her and that he had a stack of sexually explicit letters that Firth had sent him. In her suit, Firth says that she’d never been sexually intimate with Brown, nor did she ever send him the aforementioned letters. A 2000 article in the local paper, the Sun Chronicle reported that Brown had denied the charges; for her part, Firth said she felt that filing the suit was ‘the only way I could stop this.’”

Then, oddly, two days later Firth dropped the suit claiming that her lawyer told her she had no chance of winning. Gawker points out that Democrats missed out big time in not even letting a whisper of this slip to the press during Brown’s campaign against Coakley. In terms of the recently bought memoir by Harper Collins, this is exactly the type of thing I was cautioning against. Writing your memoir at such an early stage in the politics game seems like jumping the gun. Who knows what could come out in the next year before the book publishes. This strange lawsuit is only one example of what can happen.

via The Scandalous Scott Brown Lawsuit that no one Told you About.

It looks to be a very warm, fuzzy kind of affair, full of touching moments that fill American hearts near to bursting capacity. And people will read it, without a doubt, even Democrats should read it to find out more about the man who ruined their unstoppable senate majority and basically all plans for the future. But isn’t this a little too soon? Brown has been in office only a few months and the memoir is announced? It’s a long road ahead in politics and history has shown that a lot can happen in a very short amount of time in Washington. Given the book publishing cycle and the planned release about a year from now, who knows what can happen between now and the book’s publication? Standard practice in the memoir game is one publishes when the long road is behind them, when the accomplishments or horror stories can be viewed with proper hindsight and acuity. Harper Collins and the Republicans clearly want to capitalize on Brown’s momentum while the iron is hot, but this can also lead to terrible consequences. Just look at that now notorious South Carolina governor, Mark Sanford, who published The Trust Committed To Me in 2000. That trust is certainly gone now. And then there is John Edward’s attempt to manufacture that soft focus look back in Four Trials. (Check out the Amazon description of Edwards for the book. It’s worth a laugh and a great example of how an Internet page can reflect how much changes.) For the sake of Scott Brown, who I bare no grudge against, let’s hope that the future does not end up betraying history like it has these two gentlemen. I’d like to believe that Brown is smarter and more savvy than to go down that road, but Washington is a strange place. Only a year ago we elected who we thought was Superman as the president only to find out that he is just a man like everyone else, albeit a better man than most. For Brown, I hope that his political career steers clear of danger and therefore keeps his memoir relevant.

via Senator and GOP Star Scott Brown will Write Memoir.

Hawke was questioned by the police in connection with the crime but admits he was of little help, saying all he saw was “a bunch of hoods.” I’m guessing he means sweatshirt hoods, not the slang term. Witnessing the murders rattled the actor, as it would anyone.

It’s not even a joke… it was a full-blown assassination and they accidentally killed the guy cutting his hair – it was a woman cutting his hair. It was terrible. I stood there, like, an actor in a movie. I kept expecting the AD (assistant director) to go, ‘Cut, cut…’ The police shut the block down.”

via Hawke witnessed double shooting – Ethan Hawke Gossip.

But in the months since the announcement of the exhibition the outrage has largely died down in favor of the appreciation of the show itself, which is the way it should be. This type of exhibition, showcasing such an exceptional contemporary art collection, will only happen once in a very long time. Even if one does not fully endorse contemporary art these days, to see so many works by the reigning champions is to have the opportunity to understand where art is right now at the highest level. The exhibition is totally unique in its ability to show off the stars and be put together by one of those stars at the same time. Arguing the that the exhibition is unethical at this point is moot. It’s here and it’s up and it will draw massive crowds, and ultimately that is good for art. When it comes down to it, those who bristled at the insiderness of the show are art insiders themselves to boot. Art inherently breeds an insider world, full of people with lots of money who trade favors and enjoy sharing their passion with each other. The defining factor has to be whether the public benefits more than the insiders in the case of Skin Fruit. And in the art world, a place in which most of the time it is the insiders who benefit most, this exhibition provides the public with a chance to see a carefully collected and curated collection. And, of course, it arrives at the same time as The Armory Show, yet another contemporary art mecca.

via Skin Fruit: Selections from the Dakis Joannou Collection :: NewMuseum.org.

I was thinking she could slip in there anonymously and no one would know she was there. I’d be glad to not tell a soul.

Or maybe she would want to pose, maybe she would want people to know she was there but just couldn’t be found in the crowd. You know, then it could be like ‘where’s Lady Gaga?’”

If she accepts, this would be one of the more interesting ways for Lady Gaga to keep her artistic approach while simultaneously dispelling the rumors that she is not all woman. Though Tunick’s photographs are often a packed assembly of naked bodies, it should be easy enough to spot a hermaphrodite in the crowd (Unless, of course, there are other hermaphrodites in the crowd as well.). I see no reason why Lady Gaga should not take Tunick up on his offer. She’d be giving fans what they have wanted for so long, to see her sans clothing; she’d put to rest the ridiculous rumors concerning her anatomy; and she’d be paying homage to the gay and lesbian community, one of her largest demographics of fans. Plus, it seems she’s already halfway there since she posed topless on the cover of Q Magazine this month.

via Spencer Tunick invites Lady GaGa to pose naked in Sydney | Herald Sun.

The Seattle Art Museum can now celebrate another victory. It was announced a few days ago that the museum is the first U.S. museum to score big with an exhibition of works on loan from the Musée National Picasso in Paris, which closed in August for major renovations. Initially, the Musée National Picasso claimed it would not be lending any of its over 5000 Picasso works while undergoing renovations, but that no longer seems to be the case. The exhibition, titled “Picasso: Masterpieces from the Musée National Picasso, Paris,” will open on October 8 and run until January 9, 2011 and it will include more than 150 paintings, sculptures, drawings, and photographs.

The exhibition is sure to draw huge crowds and provide even more help to the Seattle Art Museum, which, in a not-so-great year for museums, has had quite the string of good luck.

via Seattle is First U.S. stop for Picasso exhibit.