From Michael:

Africa for Norway – New charity single out now!

Phony Bishop: German Imposter Sneaks into Vatican
Spiegel Online
March 4, 2013

German church officials on Tuesday distanced themselves from the man who infiltrated a meeting of cardinals at the Vatican by masquerading as a bishop, saying he can’t be trusted. This isn’t the first time the self-proclaimed bishop and “Jesus yoga” proponent has caused a kerfuffle.

He called himself “Basilius” and showed up wearing a cassock that was too short, a strange-looking chain with a crucifix and a purple shawl instead of the traditional sash. The man who managed to slip into the Vatican on Monday and mingle with cardinals was not a bishop as he claimed. He was German Ralph Napierski, who is known among German clerics as something of a troublemaker.

The fake bishop snuck into the Vatican along with dozens of cardinals who were there making preparations to elect a new pope later this month, according to Italian news agency ANSA. Though he managed to go unnoticed for a time, even posing for a photo with Cardinal Sergio Sebiastiana, he was “eventually identified and kicked out to the visible amusement of journalists nearby,” ANSA reported. Read more…

SILENCED Kickstarter campaign: Only 6 days to go and the producers are within $2,000 of their goal to raise funding for post-production.

Telling the truth becomes a dangerous act when four federal whistleblowers reveal the darkest corners of America’s war on terror.

SILENCED is new documentary now in production from Academy Award nominated director James Spione.

Trailer:

The War on Whistleblowers

SILENCED follows a group of high-profile truthtellers who dared to question official national security policy in post 9-11 America, and have endured harsh consequences. Read more…

From the Yes Lab and the Center for Artistic Activism:

“Actipedia” Crowdsourcing Platform Goes Public

Database of creative activism case studies will inform and inspire a new generation of activists

The Yes Lab and the Center for Artistic Activism are announcing the launch of Actipedia.org, an open-access, user-generated database of creative activism case studies designed to inspire activists.

Actipedia is built on an open-source platform and is designed for ease of use, with simple formats for viewing, searching and posting examples. The site draws case studies from original submissions, reprinted news articles, and informal snippets of action reports. Although it is only now launching, Actipedia already hosts over 400 case studies and counting, from countries from all over the world.

Contact: Stephen Duncombe, 212-998-7327, srd@artisticactivism.org

Media literacy alert! This article about covert advertising does exactly what it talks about. It masquerades as content while advertising products…

When advertising becomes content, who wins — advertisers or publishers, or both?
by Mathew Ingram
PaidContent.org
March 2, 2013

One of the biggest trends in media at the moment is “sponsored content” or what some call “native advertising.” But is it the savior of online media, or just another mirage in the advertising desert?

Andrew Sullivan, the former Daily Beast writer who recently launched his own standalone publishing venture, has made it pretty clear that he doesn’t like advertising, which is why his site is supported entirely by reader subscriptions. And he also made it clear in a recent series of posts that he doesn’t like the growing trend of sites like BuzzFeed using what they call “sponsored content” as a replacement for traditional advertising — something he suggested was ethically questionable for media entities of all kinds.

Like it or not, however, this phenomenon is becoming more and more commonplace — and not just at new-media ventures like BuzzFeed but also at traditional publishers like The Atlantic. Is it the savior of online media, or just another mirage in the advertising desert? This is a question we are going to discussing at length at paidContent Live in New York on April 17, including a panel entitled “The future of native advertising: Blurring ads and content.”

If it’s useful, does it matter if it’s sponsored? Read more…

From ZeroZeroKappaKappa collective:

Spoof campaign poster for Cardinal Turkson appears in pre-conclave Rome
Reuters
March 1, 2013

Spoof “vote for Turkson” posters have popped up in Rome along walls still plastered with campaign posters from Italy’s general election on Sunday and Monday. Campaigning for the papacy is officially forbidden and even suggesting one is a candidate is usually enough to end any cardinal’s chances of ascending to the throne of Saint Peter.

Ghana’s Cardinal Peter Turkson is the Irish bookmakers’ favorite to replace Pope Benedict, putting a non-European in pole position to lead the 1.2 billion-member Roman Catholic Church for the first time in more than a millennium. Read more…

Editor’s note: Media literacy alert!

From Nancy:

Really Cute, but Totally Faked
by Dave Itzkoff
New York Times
February 26, 2013

It seemed too adorable to be fake, but it was too good to be true.

On Sept. 19 a 30-second video appeared on YouTube, depicting a baby goat that had become stuck in the pond of a petting zoo and that was heroically rescued with a helpful nudge from a pig that swam out to it.

Within hours the video had been posted around the Web; it had been shared with the Twitter followers of Time magazine and Ellen DeGeneres; and it had been broadcast on NBC’s “Today” show and its “Nightly News” program, ABC’s “Good Morning America” and Fox News, where the “Fox & Friends” co-host Brian Kilmeade said of it, “You couldn’t do this at Warner Brothers as a cartoon and make it seem more realistic.”

But the video was thoroughly staged. It was created for a new Comedy Central series, “Nathan for You,” with the help of some 20 crew members, including animal trainers, scuba divers and humane officers, and required the fabrication of a plastic track to guide the pig to the goat (which was never in jeopardy).

Video by jebdogrpm

That a faked video had been so rapidly disseminated by unskeptical news outlets was both surprising and dispiritingly familiar to professional experts on the news media. Read more…

…isn’t the pot calling the kettle black?

Original: By The Big Questions. You can watch the complete episode here: Part 1, Part 2.

via Upworthy.com

CIA whistleblower Kiriakou gets posh send-off to prison
by David Montgomery
Washington Post
February 21, 2013

John Kiriakou stood in the ninth-floor banquet hall of the Hay-Adams hotel Thursday night and took in the spectacular view of the White House and the Washington Monument. He recalled briefing two presidents during his career with the CIA. “It’s ironic,” he said, spreading his arms as if to embrace the tableau. “This really is the reason I came to Washington 30 years ago in the first place.”

But next Thursday he will check into the Federal Correctional Institution in Loretto, Pa., to begin a 30-month sentence for divulging information that prosecutors said could harm his country.

Kiriakou, 48, seemed unbowed and almost content at the prospect of prison as he basked in the well wishes of about 100 supporters, who gathered for a posh send-off at the luxury hotel. The guests wore orange jumpsuits and other mock prison garb and serenaded Kiriakou with a reworked version of the protest anthem “Have You Been to Jail for Justice?”

“I’m proud of my career,” said Kiriakou, who lives in Arlington County. “I still love the CIA — crazy as that may sound. . . . I wear my conviction as a badge of honor.” Read more…

From artist Norm Magnusson: I’m raising funds on Kickstarter for a project to install one of my ‘historical’ markers in each of the 27 travel plazas of the New York State Thruway. I’d love you to join me in this project. The Kickstarter campaign runs through March 20, 2013.

These are sculptures of cast aluminum and acrylic paint. They look just like the historical markers found on country roads, in front of stone houses, or near scenic overlooks all over America, but instead of commemorating the site of a battle or a place where a famous person slept, these markers deal with contemporary social issues such as gender wage disparity, global warming, illegal immigration, taxes, health care and many, many others.

The markers are expensive to make. The cost of materials keeps going up. Fabrication, installation, transportation, assistants, insurance, van rental, rewards and fulfillment… it all adds up and all of a sudden, it’s a pricey project. 7 people at $10,000 each or 7000 people at $10 each or some combination thereof will get me going. But I don’t just need money, I’m also going to need help installing these things, so if you’re interested in digging holes and planting poles, please let me know.

See more from Norm Magnusson here and here.

Posted on YouTube by John Pemberton:

via Upworthy.com

From Larry C.:

Bigfoot Is Real, And We Have DNA To Prove It: Researchers
by Lee Rannals
RedOrbit.com
February 14, 2013

We thought the first evidence would emerge from some backyard video footage, or a smartphone photo, but the real proof of the existence of Bigfoot actually lies in the DNA.

A team of scientists has published the results of a five-year study of DNA samples from Sasquatch in the journal DeNovo Journal of Science.

Researchers claim they have sequenced three whole Bigfoot nuclear genomes, helping to prove that the legendary creature exists in North America, and is a human relative that arose 13,000 years ago.

The scientists hypothesize that the Bigfoot creature is a hybrid cross of modern Homo sapiens, with a novel primate species, giving it the species name Homo sapiens cognatus. Read more…

From Emerson Dameron: An homage to a great prankster!

The Man Behind The Brilliant Media Hoax Of “I, Libertine”
by Matthew Callan
The Awl
February 14th, 2013

In the 1950s, a DJ named Jean Shepherd hosted a late-night radio show on New York’s WOR that was unlike any before or since. On these broadcasts, he delivered dense, cerebral monologues, sprinkled with pop-culture tidbits and vivid stretches of expert storytelling. “There is no question that we are a tiny, tiny, tiny embattled minority here,” he assured his audience in a typical diatribe. “Hardly anyone is listening to mankind in all of its silliness, all of its idiocy, all of its trivia, all of its wonder, all of its glory, all of its poor, sad, pitching us into the dark sea of oblivion.” Shepherd’s approach was summed up by his catchphrase: a mock-triumphant “Excelsior!”, followed by an immediate, muttered “you fathead…”

Shepherd inspired fierce loyalty in his listeners who would tune in to listen to him in the middle of the night. These listeners embraced his term for them, “night people,” and under his direction they would execute one of the biggest and most bizarre media hoaxes of the 20th century. The hoax was meant as a strike against their opposite: “day people,” that is, against phoniness and squareness—all those 50s words—as well as a joke on New York pretension.

In our time of memes, virality, and reality blurring, the hoax Shepherd dreamt up seems extremely modern and prescient in its contours—as does the fact that, eventually, it got out of his control. Read more…

From Linda: Hilarious street performance…

Produced by actor/comedian/jackass Gary Lee Mahmoud of Panhandler Party Productions, LLC. More credits and info here

From Fresh Juice Party:

California Group Mails Chocolate Corpses for Valentines

Instead of sending a chocolate heart this Valentine’s, send the entire mutilated body! The limited edition FUBAR comes in both white and milk chocolate and is decorated to depict an American soldier’s corpse returning from war. FUBARs are packaged in refrigerated, flag-wrapped coffins, equipped with hidden sound devices which play the FUBAR Memorial Theme Music when opened. The group has posted this music video that demonstrates these features for those who will not be receiving one of their own.

Who will the lucky recipients be? Read more…