Click image for a bit larger version.
In Maestro Chagall’s little village there is always a story to tell about what happened recently … especially about floating goats and herders in the sky … or that funny neighbor who was almost blown away by the last rain storm …
There are such things as reactions time, habits and a learning curve. Our minds are (sometimes) great to react quickly to something physical - but in social, political, personal, emotional or technical situations we are rather slow.
It takes for our psyche or so called egos VERY long to understand new situations, figure out new people in our life’s or even our own selfish desires.
Then we are blinded by our life’s - looking daft or simply continue to behave like nothing has changed. But we are often ‘behind’ our own situation - slowly adopting to change …
Don’t be startled. Don’t be ignorant. Don’t be a creature of habits.
Change is natural. Surprises are normal. Go deal with them. Go and experiment. It’s fun!
Climate Change, reduced consumerism, no more cheap flights to your favorite party location, less cheap petrol, more expensive food, responsible consumerism, less convenience food, less lead and cheap toys, more reusing things - less shopping for new stuff …
Sure all that complicated and a serious effort for humans.
But how would you explain to those two chaps why we fucked up the whole planet. Most animals will simply be destroyed by more and extreme climate change. Sure nature will survive and produce some new amazing species after we have killed ourselves and the rest of the inhabitants of planet earth.
We need change - but not at a snails pace and with much more brains. Aren’t we always saying we are the smartest life form on earth? Time to prove it.
If sex doesn’t do it for you anymore - you can simply go for good old fashioned madness or weird outfits.
Folks we are almost there and then it is over. No more presents, no more mad shopper and no more clients who want stuff done before xmas. Happy days to you - and don’t get insane.
Time Magaine’s choices for the person of the year haven’t always been ‘nice’ ones. People like Hitler made the list. But this is not about being nice, but about being influential.
Vladimir Putin has changed Russia and put it back on the world stage - after that drunken and chaotic Boris Jelzin a big change. (See also this BBC News video)
He certainly was one of the most dominating characters of 2007. See also Time Magazine’s other choices …
Afghanistan - he is 40, she is 11. She was sold by her parents, because they needed the money. Still girls are treated like a commodity in many countries or simply sold as sex slaves. (Photo by Stephanie Sinclair)
Chechnya - the world seems to have forgotten Putin’s terrible war on these people? War is terrible for adults, for kids is sheer hell. (Ohoto by Musa Sadulayev)
America - even living in a rich country can’t save you from serious illness. Still most kids all over the world don’t have universal health care. This little guy is already dead - he died 2006. (Photo by Renée C. Bayer)
Bangladesh - many kids have to work hard to survive. Although child labor has decreased in recent years it’s still there and needs to be abolished. It my sound cynical: but I think it’s better when kids have work and can feed themselves - instead of starving to death. (Photo by Akash)
Philippines - every place can be a playground, even this landfill outside Manilla where the poorest of the poor scavenge for food. Hunger and starvation are still with us - even in developing nations or economic superstars like China or the USA. (Photo by Hartmut Schwarzbach)
Rich Nations - while kids in poor countries struggle to get education, food and healthcare in high-tech nations they are slowly turned into brain washed zombies. This is the typical brain dead TV stare. (Photo by Wolfram Hahn)
All the images are taken from here: unicef.org. Go there and read more in detail about the stories behind each kid.
After watching all that pain porn you should be ready to give some money and not just a sentimental sigh in front of your computer. Do something!
I highly recommend SPONSORING a kid all year long - and not just for that special Christmas feel good moment. How about five Euros or Dollars each month? That’s not much - but already some REAL money in many poor countries. Have a look at the video on this page for some insight or more motivation: www.plan-uk.org
There are many charities for kids out there: www.children.org, www.sos-childrensvillages.org, www.worldvision.org and www.unicef.org.
Thank you!
If you can believe in enlightened pink elephants - you can believe in anything. Spirituality starts in your mind - if you mind can cope with incredible thoughts it can’t cope with incredible truths either.
Open your mind, expand your mind, cultivate your ability to think and imagine new possibilities … maybe then you get enlightened or trampled by an elephant on the way …
I applaud the current writer’s strike in the US. The creative people should be paid for their stuff! But I don’t think I can cope for much longer without Stephen, John, Dr. House, Boston Legal …
But especially American political satire is needed these days with all the weird presidential election stuff going on. Bring some insanity back to explain all the political madness going on …
Even after millions of wrecked knees, broken ankles and harsh downfalls the female of our species refuses to wear normal and safe footwear.
Instead they spent huge amounts of their income for these contraptions - just to be a little bit sexier, just to be a little bit higher and just to feel a bit better about themselves.
Just as guys try to improve their penis by buying huge cars and guns, female try to expand their alluring sexual qualities by huge amounts of leather objects in their closets.
Hot summer nights on xmas eve, hanging out with sharks and kangaroos on the beach, even more exotic animals in the outback, no snow and no freezing your ass off, a new socialist government … some people have all the luck!
Damn you Australia!
We only get grumpy when we are sick, because we want be by ourselves. Overly protective and motherly females can be very annoying when one is trying to die in peace …
Oh, I love these cute SciFi chicks who are already dressed up as a sperm. Makes the evening go much smoother …
There is only a certain amount of Kitsch and cuteness I can take in such miserable times as winter. Although I wouldn’t mind celebrating Holy Kittiness for the next 2000 years …
It is amazing how much effort people put into visiting fish and water mammals like dolphins and whales. If we continue to eat, pollute and destroy their habit as effective as in the last 200 years there won’t be much to see in a short time.
Click stone to see a larger version.
First of all: it’s such an irony that our key to the ancient languages was falsely named. It was found in the Egyptian town of Rashid - the French had renamed the city to Rosetta.
What was so special about this stone was it’s identical text in three ancient languages: Egyptian hieroglyphic and demotic scripts - and in classical Greek. By comparing these fragments it was only a matter of time until the code of the old Egyptian writings was cracked.
A Frenchman found the stone, but it was later taken by the British and brought to London (where it is still on display in the British Museum). The Egyptians want it back - like so many artifacts - still in the hands of former colonial powers.
More? Wikipedia
About 10.000 years our ancestors made a huge leap forward. For thousands of years we had lived as hunter-gatherers - happily stuffing anything down our throats we could find. But this kind of lifestyle was harsh and food rather unpredictable.
By settling down and cultivating grasses like wheat all that changed. Compared to all other foods available at that time wheat or better say grain can be stored for year without going stale. Compared to collected veggies, fruit or meat that is a huge advantage.
And wheat can be used to produce more wheat. So a whole new production system developed around wheat. Humble dwelling developed into villages and cities. Additional land was transformed into farmland. Farming allowed longer and permanent settlement, since it made sense to use the same fertile fields again and again.
Once again a collection of images, texts and background info about an old and great myth. The story of Icarus & Daedalus is complex and highly symbolic. It contains several layers and aspects I find very interesting:
Daedalus - the great inventor, whose skills are highly praised, but bring only blood and tears to himself and his family.
Evil King - who forces Daedalus to build the labyrinth.
Father and Son - a great family story, how they work together to escape the evil king.
Freedom - you can outwit evil and literally fly into freedom. Great symbolic act.
Inventor - great ideas can give you wings and let you escape your current (dreadful) situation. Outsmart your own destiny.
Wild youth - when youngster go wild and burn themselves - once again in a literal way. Also connects to the old ‘I told you so’ aspect of parenthood.
Burning - you can burn yourself if you get to close to the Gods or being too curious.
Falldown - the higher they fly, the deeper they fall. Also ‘keeping it low - even when you made it’ - so you don’t fall to deep. Daedalus was wise and survived, Icarus was foolish and died.
Moving on - although he lost his son Daedalus continues his life. He also faced his treacherous talents and prayed to the gods.
Part of the Art Motive Series: "The Story of Daedalus and Icarus"
Ludovico Lana - Daedalus and Icarus
Ovid’s Metamorphoses, VIII,(lines 183 to 235):
… Daedalus, hating Crete and his long exile, and longing to see his native land, was shut in by the sea. “Though he may block escape by land and water,” he said, “yet the sky is open, and by that way I will go. Though Minos rules over all, he does not rule the air.” So saying, he sets his mind at work upon unknown arts, and changes the laws of nature. For he lays feathers in order, beginning at the smallest, short next to long, so you would think they had grown on a slope. Just so the old-fashioned rustic pan-pipes with their unequal reeds rise one above another.Then he fastened the feathers together with twine and wax at the middle and bottom; and, thus arranged, he bent them with a gentle curve, so that they looked like real birds’ wings.
His son, Icarus, was standing by and, little knowing that he was handling his own peril, with gleeful face would now catch at the feathers which some passing breeze had blown about, now mold the yellow wax with his thumb, and by his sport would hinder his father’s wonderful task. When now the finishing touches had been put upon the work, the master workman himself balanced his body on two wings and hung poised on the beaten air. He taught his son also and said: “I warn you, Icarus, to fly in a middle course, lest, if you go too low, the water may weight your wings; if you go too high, the fire may burn them. Fly between the two. And I bid you not to shape your course like Bootes or Helice or the drawn sword of Orion, but fly where I shall lead.” At the same time he tells him the rules of flight and fits the strange wings on his boy’s shoulders. While he works and talks the old man’s cheeks are wet with tears, and his fatherly hands tremble. He kisses his son, which he was destined never again to do, and rising on his wings, he flew on ahead, fearing for his companion, just like a bird which has led forth her fledglings from the high nest into the unsubstantial air.
He encourages the boy to follow, instructs him in the fatal art of flight, himself flapping his wings and looking back on his son. Now some fisherman spies them, angling for fish with his flexible rod, or a shepherd, leaning upon his crook, or a plowman, on his plow-handles–spies them and stands stupefied, and believes them to be gods that they could fly through the air. And now Juno’s sacred Samos had been passed on the left, and Delos and Paros; Lebinthos was on the right and Calymne, rich in honey, when the boy began to rejoice in his bold flight and, deserting his leader, led by a desire for the open sky, directed his course to a greater height. The scorching rays of the nearer sun softened the fragrant wax which held his wings.
The wax melted; his arms were bare as he beat them up and down, but, lacking wings, they took no hold on the air. His lips, calling to the last upon his father’s name, were drowned in the dark blue sea, which took its name from him. But the unhappy father, now no longer father, called: “Icarus, Icarus, where are you? In what place shall I seek you? Icarus,” he called again; and then he spied the wings floating on the deep, and cursed his skill. He buried the boy in a tomb, and the land was called for the buried boy.
More? Ovid @ Wikipedia and his breathtaking work Metamorphoses @ Wikipedia
Part of the Art Motive Series: "The Story of Daedalus and Icarus"
From Wikipedia:
In Greek mythology, Daedalus (Latin, also Hellenized Latin Daedalos, Greek Daidalos (Δαίδαλος) meaning "cunning worker", and Etruscan Taitle) was a most skillful artificer, so skillful that he was said to have invented images. Daedalus had two sons: Icarus and Iapyx. He is first mentioned in Homer as the creator of a wide dancing-ground for Ariadne. Homer refers to Ariadne by her Cretan title, the "Lady of the Labyrinth". The Labyrinth on Crete in which the Minotaur was kept was also created by the artificer Daedalus. The story of the labyrinth is told where Theseus is challenged to kill the Minotaur, finding his way with the help of Ariadne’s thread.
Ignoring Homer, later writers envisaged the labyrinth as an edifice rather than a single path to the center and out again, and gave it numberless winding passages and turns that opened into one another, seeming to have neither beginning nor end (see labyrinth as opposed to maze). Ovid, in his Metamorphoses, suggests that Daedalus constructed the Labyrinth so cunningly that he himself could barely escape it after he built it. Daedalus built the labyrinth for King Minos, who needed it to imprison his wife’s son the Minotaur. The story is told that Poseidon had given a white bull to Minos so that he might use it as a sacrifice. Instead, Minos kept it for himself; and in revenge, Poseidon made his wife lust for the bull. For Minos’ wife, Pasiphaë, Daedalus also built the wooden cow so she could mate with the bull, for the Greeks imagined the Minoan bull of the sun to be an actual, earthly bull.
Athenians transferred Cretan Daedalus as Athenian-born, the grandson of the ancient king Erechtheus, who fled to Crete, having killed his nephew, Perdix. Over time, other stories were told of Daedalus. In the nineteenth century, Thomas Bulfinch combined these into a single synoptic view of material which Andrew Stewart calls a "historically-intractable farrago of "evidence", heavily tinged with Athenian cultural chauvinism" (Stewart). Among these anecdotes, one told that Daedalus was shut up in a tower to prevent his knowledge of the labyrinth from spreading to the public. He could not leave Crete by sea, as the king kept strict watch on all vessels, permitting none to sail without being carefully searched.
Since Minos controlled the land and sea routes, Daedalus set to work to fabricate wings for himself and his young son Icarus. He tied feathers together, from smallest to largest so as to form an increasing surface. The larger ones he secured with thread and the smaller with wax, and gave the whole a gentle curvature like the wings of a bird. When the work was finally done, the artist, waving his wings, found himself buoyed upward and hung suspended, poising himself on the beaten air. He next equipped his son in the same manner, and taught him how to fly. When both were prepared for flight, Daedalus warned Icarus not to fly too high, because the heat of the sun would melt the wax, nor too low because the sea foam would make the wings wet and they would no longer fly. Thus the father and son flew away.
They had passed Samos, Delos and Lebynthos when the boy began to soar upward as if to reach heaven. The blazing sun softened the wax which held the feathers together and they came off. Icarus fell into the sea. His father cried, bitterly lamenting his own arts, called the land near the place where Icarus fell into the ocean Icaria in memory of his child. Eventually Daedalus arrived safely in Sicily, in the care of King Cocalus, where he built a temple to Apollo, and hung up his wings, an offering to the god.
Minos, meanwhile, searched for Daedalus by travelling from city to city asking a riddle. He presented a spiral seashell and asked for a string to be run through it. When he reached Camicus, King Cocalus, knowing Daedalus would be able to solve the riddle, privately fetched the old man to him. He tied the string to an ant which, lured by a drop of honey at one end, walked through the seashell stringing it all the way through. Minos then knew Daedalus was in the court of King Cocalus and demanded he be handed over. Cocalus managed to convince Minos to take a bath first, where Cocalus’ daughters killed Minos.
Daedalus was so proud of his achievements that he could not bear the idea of a rival. His sister had placed her son Perdix under his charge to be taught the mechanical arts. He was an apt scholar and showed striking evidence of ingenuity. Walking on the seashore, he picked up the spine of a fish[5]. Imitating it, he took a piece of iron and notched it on the edge, and thus invented the saw. He put two pieces of iron together, connecting them at one end with a rivet, and sharpening the other ends, and made a pair of compasses. Daedalus was so envious of his nephew’s accomplishments that he took an opportunity, when they were together one day on the top of a high tower, to push him off. But Minerva, who favors ingenuity, saw him falling and arrested his fate by changing him into a bird called after his name, the partridge. This bird does not build his nest in the trees, nor take lofty flights, but nestles in the hedges, and mindful of his fall, avoids high places. For this crime, Daedalus was tried and banished.
Part of the Art Motive Series: "The Story of Daedalus and Icarus"
From Wikipedia:
Icarus (Greek: Ἴκαρος, Latin: Íkaros, Etruscan: Vicare) is a character in Greek Mythology. Icarus’s father, Daedalus attempted to escape his prison, the Labyrinth, in which he was imprisoned at the hands of King Minos, the king for whom he had built the Labyrinth (Labyrinth is derived from the Minoans word for a ceremonial axe). The Labyrinth’s original purpose was intended to hold the horrible creature, the Minotaur, a beast that was a product of one of the King’s mistress’s affairs with a bull. The Minotaur was born to King Minos and his wife instead of a son because the Gods were mad at them. As the Minotaur grew up it became violent and dangerous, so they had to imprison it in the Labyrinth. Daedalus fashioned a pair of wings for himself and his son, made of feathers and wax. Before they took off from the prison, Daedalus warned his son not to fly too close to the sun, as the wax would melt, nor too close to the sea, as the wax would dampen. Overcome by the sublime feeling that flying gave him, Icarus soared through the sky joyfully, but in the process he came too close to the sun, which melted his wings. Icarus kept flapping his wings but soon realized that he had no feathers left and that he was only flapping his bare arms. And so, Icarus fell into the sea in the area which bears his name, the Icarian Sea near Icaria, an island southwest of Samos. His flight was routinely alluded to by Greek poets in passing, but was told in a nutshell in Pseudo-Apollodorus, (Epitome of the Biblioteca) . Latin poets read the myth more philosophically, often linking Icarus analogically to artists. In the fifteenth century Ovid became the source for the myth as it was rediscovered and transformed as a vehicle for heroic audacity and the poet’s own aspirations, by Renaissance poets like Jacopo Sannazaro and Ariosto, as well as in Spain.
Hellenistic writers who provided philosophical underpinnings to the myth also preferred more realistic variants, in which the escape from Crete was actually by boat, provided by Pasiphaë, for which Daedalus invented the first sails, to outstrip Minos’ pursuing galleys, and that Icarus fell overboard en route to Sicily and drowned. Heracles erected a tomb for him.
Part of the Art Motive Series: "The Story of Daedalus and Icarus"
The right stamp to send something via airmail? 
Part of the Art Motive Series: "The Story of Daedalus and Icarus"
Why do people paint such great images to ceilings - to break our necks. This image actually makes perfect sense up there - since it all happened in the sky above us.
This is a wonderful depiction of the whole event. Anyone knows the artist?
Part of the Art Motive Series: "The Story of Daedalus and Icarus"
The myth in comic style - anno 1500. The only thing that confuses me are the flies on the tower.
Part of the Art Motive Series: "The Story of Daedalus and Icarus"
