The Man from Utopia - Frank Zappa | Artwork by Tanino Liberatore

The Man from Utopia is a 1983 album by Frank Zappa. It is a more song-driven, and less conceptual work than many others in Zappa's oeuvre. The album is named after a 1950s song, written by Donald and Doris Woods, which Zappa covers as part of "The Man from Utopia Meets Mary Lou".[1]

The sleeve art features the work of RanXerox artist Tanino Liberatore. It portrays Zappa on stage trying to kill mosquitos. The back cover shows the audience as seen from the stage. Chaos prevails, and the cover is meant to show the events at a disastrous concert in Palermo, Italy, July 14, 1982. At that concert, fans kept trying to rush the stage, and the local security force began firing tear-gas canisters into the crowd. Zappa and his band continued to perform, but were forced to flee when the gas became unbearable, and live ammunition (presumably from the audience) was fired. Backstage footage can be found on The Dub Room Special. The album was the second of two to credit Steve Vai with "impossible guitar parts" (the first being Ship Arriving Too Late To Save A Drowning Witch).

Found Here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_from_Utopia

Porsche Museum, Stuttgart

The Porsche Museum is a museum in the Zuffenhausen district of Stuttgart, Germany on the site of carmaker Porsche.

The new Porsche museum stands on a conspicuous junction just outside Porsche Headquarters in Zuffenhausen. The display area covers 5600 square meters featuring around 80 exhibits, many rare cars and a variety of historical models.

The musuem (official opening: 31 January 2009) is open Tuesday to Sunday from 9am to 6pm. Entrance price: 8 euros (4 euros for concessions, children 14 years and under get in for free when accompanied by an adult).

The museum was designed by the architects Delugan Meissl. The design concept is based on a model by HG Merz who was also involved in the building of the award winning Mercedes Benz museum.^[1]

[edit] Construction

The original Porsche museum opened in 1976 in a side-road near the Porsche factory. It was a relatively small works museum with little parking space and it was only big enough to hold around 20 exhibits (in rotation).

Porsche built the museum as a kind of "rolling museum" with rotating exhibits from a stock of 300 restored cars, many in pristine condition and still in full driving order. Originally there was discussion that the new museum would be built alongside a new Mercedes-Benz museum on former trade fair grounds in the Killesberg area of Stuttgart.^[1]. After the new Mercedes-Benz Museum opened in the east of Stuttgart in 2006, Porsche went ahead with plans to upgrade and extend its museum in the northern district of Zuffenhausen next to the company headquarters. Originally costs were set at 60 million euros but days before the official opening ceremony on 29 January 2009, it was confirmed that the actual costs hit 100 million euros^[2].

Found Here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porsche_Museum,_Stuttgart

Collection of Landscapes

Property is any physical or virtual entity that is owned by an individual or jointly by a group of individuals. An owner of property has the right to consume, sell, rent, mortgage, transfer and exchange his or her property.^[1][2][3] Important types of property include real property (land), personal property (other physical possessions), and arguably^[4] intellectual property (rights over artistic creations, inventions, etc.). A title, or a right of ownership, is associated with property that establishes the relation between the goods/services and other individuals or groups, assuring the owner the right to dispense with the property in a manner he or she sees fit. Some philosophers assert that property rights arise from social convention. Others find origins for them in morality or natural law (e.g. Saint Irenaeus).

There exist many theories. Perhaps one of the most popular was the natural rights definition of property rights as advanced by John Locke. Locke advanced the theory that when one mixes one’s labor with nature, one gains ownership of that part of nature with which the labor is mixed, subject to the limitation that there should be "enough, and as good, left in common for others" [2].

From the RERUM NOVARUM, Pope Leo XIII wrote "It is surely undeniable that, when a man engages in remunerative labor, the impelling reason and motive of his work is to obtain property, and thereafter to hold it as his very own."

Anthropology studies the diverse systems of ownership, rights of use and transfer, and possession^[6] under the term "theories of property". Western legal theory is based, as mentioned, on the owner of property being a legal individual. However, not all property systems are founded on this basis.

In every culture studied ownership and possession are the subject of custom and regulation, and "law" where the term can meaningfully be applied. Many tribal cultures balance individual ownership with the laws of collective groups: tribes, families, associations and nations. For example the 1839 Cherokee Constitution frames the issue in these terms:

Sec. 2. The lands of the Cherokee Nation shall remain common property; but the improvements made thereon, and in the possession of the citizens respectively who made, or may rightfully be in possession of them: Provided, that the citizens of the Nation possessing exclusive and indefeasible right to their improvements, as expressed in this article, shall possess no right or power to dispose of their improvements, in any manner whatever, to the United States, individual States, or to individual citizens thereof; and that, whenever any citizen shall remove with his effects out of the limits of this Nation, and become a citizen of any other government, all his rights and privileges as a citizen of this Nation shall cease: Provided, nevertheless, That the National Council shall have power to re-admit, by law, to all the rights of citizenship, any such person or persons who may, at any time, desire to return to the Nation, on memorializing the National Council for such readmission.

Communal property systems describe ownership as belonging to the entire social and political unit, while corporate systems describe ownership as being attached to an identifiable group with an identifiable responsible individual. The Roman property law was based on such a corporate system.

Different societies may have different theories of property for differing types of ownership. Pauline Peters argued that property systems are not isolable from the social fabric, and notions of property may not be stated as such, but instead may be framed in negative terms: for example the taboo system among Polynesian peoples. [3]