Click image for more blue.

I constantly come back to Odilon Redon’s paintings … his colors and stories intrigue me. There always seem hidden layers and myths in his art - although they are mostly composed of ’simple’ elements.

The figures of the painting …

When the USA liberated (and this time it was such a thing) Afghanistan from the Taliban I considered this a good thing. This was actually religious fundamentalism gone mad and very bloody.

The Afghan situation can certainly be blamed on America’s lack of interest after the Soviets left the country and the Taliban used their military power - once provided by America - to terrorize this poor country.

But nevertheless - giving this country a chance to get back on it’s own feet was and still is a good cause. And some fighting was to be expected. The Europeans, Australians and Canadians thought a bit of the Taliban would be still around and annoying. Once again politicians committed troops to do the nation building thing without really thinking about it.

Now several years latter and many dead soldiers and Afghan people the Taliban are a serious threat - again.

Canadians, British, Dutch and Australian troops have been involved in fierce fighting - while German, Italian and French troops stayed save and away from bullets.

Frau Merkel loves posing with the troops, but not committing them to the fight for a good cause.

Although NATO asked Germany several time to commit some combat troops to the fights in the south Frau Bundeskanzler Merkel has successfully avoided supporting OUR allies.

Yesterday it was finally announced to send a combat unit to Afghanistan where already 3.000 German troopers are busy building roads, schools and bridges. Here comes the joke: it’s only a small unit - 250 fighters … and they are replacing 350 Norwegians in the safer north of the country.

Although I believe in Pacifism and not in Militarism - but the Taliban won’t go away, by being nice. If the wars in Iraq, Kosovo and Afghanistan have taught us anything it’s this: you can’t do Nation Building without security on the ground. And that means confrontation and sticking your head out and catching bullets. People will die.

Getting to work is a stressful experience for many commuters. Traffic jams, long cues, train delays, pushing and shoving, being squeezed into a corner of a bus while trying to drink your latte macchiato.

This hardly qualifies as ‘quality’ or ‘me’ time - even if you manage to enrich your brain with a podcast or reading a book or newspaper.

For many people it’s one or two hours of their life wasted. If you commute about 220 days per year to work and spend just about over one hour in a car, bus or train - that’s almost ten days of your life gone while transporting your sorry ass to make some money somewhere …

I am sick and tired of Apple getting all that hype for it’s new MacBook Air. My Samsung Q-35 is already 14 months old and isn’t considered a hot item these days. Here are some numbers to illustrate my point that Samsung built a great machine over two years ago that still is almost as good as Apples new Yuppie gadget:

Weight:
Apple: 1.36 kg
Samsung: 1.9 kg

CPU:
Apple: Intel Duo 2 Core / 1.6 Ghz
Samsung: Intel Duo 2 Core / 1.6 Ghz

Battery Life (according to official propaganda):
Apple: 5 hours
Samsung: 4 hours

Display:
Apple: 1280×800
Samsung: 1280×800

Dimensions:
Apple: 325 x 227 x 4 - 194 mm
Samsung: 299 x 214 x 27.4~35.8 mm

My Samsung has more ports (Ethernet, Modem, 2x USB, Firewire, PCMCIA card) and INCLUDES a DVD drive plus a slot for all sorts of memory cards (why is that missing in a Mac?).

The Mac has a built in video camera and better graphics card (no surprise two years later). The 80 GB hard drive is more or less identical. The Mac has a bit newer Bluetooth and WiFi, but not that much different or better.

The new Apple keyboards are terrible - dunno if the MacBook Air feels as rubbery as these. The Samsung keyboard is brilliant - since I write a lot this was an essential point for me.

The new trackpad in the Mac seems to be a big innovative plus, but I am not sure if it makes any difference while writing or designing. Most people use an extra mouse even while traveling - and hardly anyone does design work with Photoshop or Illustrator using the trackpad anyway.

The Samsung Q-35 is no longer available - but you can get it’s successor Q-45 under 1.000 Euro with more power, bigger drive, CPU and better graphics. The new MacBook Air will set you back 1.600 Euros with NO DVD drive …

Most cars waste most of their fuel to move themselves - the passengers are just an add on. Europeans have been for decades great consumers of small cars. Nice to see that India and hopefully China follow that trend.

You don’t need a bigass SUV or Hummer to get around. A small Tata Nano - or any other small car like the Smart - will do the job nicely.

Save precious oil and drive a small car - if you need to drive anyway.

Just because people watch you bending spoons doesn’t mean they believe in the paranormal. They rather like your little show and entertainment you provide …

Just within a hundred years we spread ‘waves’ everywhere. You can listen to radio or talk via your cell phone in almost every corner of our blue planet. Satellites and WiFi antennas will soon provide full broadband coverage everywhere - so you can tune into the intranets and the full media spectrum of radio, voice and webtv wherever you are.

While a primitive radio set can built with the most basic of electrical components modern communication relies on complex digital technology. I wonder if things like emergency radio will be any use in the future - when nobody owns any equipment to listen to it.

Radio Waves are the very essence of modern communication.

“Tell me Darling, that little war made you even richer? You just wait - a 100$ per barrel is nothing I tell ya … by the way I got some nice guns for ya too …”

I always like to compare an artists self-portrait with the real thing - too bad we can’t do that with many old masters. But in the case of Matisse we can … great beard Henri!

Once again the people of PBS / Frontline have produced a breath taking documentary: the medicated child (you can watch the whole thing online). America seems not only obsessed with it’s War on Drug - to protect children - but is also totally paranoid kids behaving differently. Compared to any other industrial countries huge amount of small kids and teenagers are heavily medicated.

Plus the pharma industry and doctors have invented many new illnesses and syndromes. It’s a HUGE business and scared / dumb parents willing to force extremely dangerous drugs down their children’s throats.

The documentary has just one serious flaw (maybe because of the time limits) - it really didn’t try to answer why so many kids are diagnosed with these serious psychiatric disorders compared to other countries AND if this is really true: why are American kids so much more ‘damaged’ than for example Swedish or Canadian ones?

I don’t envy these kids - and the is a whole new Prozac generation coming to the world stage. This is really a ‘Brave New World‘ coming true …

Being  a sex slave is hardly as exciting and pleasurable as it might sound. Every year thousands of woman and children are abused this way.

BBC Essay: In search of a ‘humane’ execution

What do countries like the USA, China and Iran in common? They still believe in executing hardcore criminals - including youngsters

It is hard to believe that in our modern world people still get killed by their Governments. I am deeply against the death penalty - and it’s a good thing that the EU has abolished it.

The BBC has an interesting article (link above) that gives an insight into the search of Michael Portillo for an humane way of killing (no unnecessary pain, etc).

Just until the early 20th century horse & cart were literally the workhorses of transportation. The combustion engines and steam power - and later electricity replaced them slowly until the 1950s in most industrialized countries.

The question is what do we do when petrol becomes so expensive that a car or a flight is no longer affordable for the common man? How do we transport our food and other goods from the producers to our homes and shops?

Will electricity become the main source of energy or will be go back to proven methods of transportation like horse & cart?

Forests need small fires to ‘clean’ themselves - but since most of our Forests no longer are in a natural condition fires sometimes get totally out of hand. Climate change and extreme weather increases the disastrous effects even further.

Another problem is that we humans have intervened before the fires in a bad way and do so after the big barbecue. Instead of supporting nature to rebuild itself - we use the new ‘free space’ for property development or farming.

Not good.

CNN recently asked it’s viewers if they were sick and tired of all that shallow reporting? 94% of the viewers said yes. Even the question was so bloody obvious that one has to ask if not only the politicians, but also most of the mass media in that big country has lost contact with reality?

I recent weeks I watched the live reporting of the presidential primaries - and I was quite amused by the stupidity of it. The insights and talking points that the pundits and so called ‘experts’ used were chillingly flat - even I as an Non-American could see that.

This is not a dumbing down of a country - it is already dumb and shallow in the places were intellectuals should offer their brainpower to the people.

Apart from a few shining examples like Keith Olbermann I hardly see any TV journalist worth their money. Political agitation has become such a money game, that the messages they spread are so full of artificial flavor that they no longer need to have any nutritional value. American news has became like American Fast Food - it just bloats your mind, fattens your fears - but leaves you hungry and sick in the end.

Click image for more madness.

I consider Billy Wilder one of the greatest movie makers of all times. His Sunset Boulevard is basically a nasty homage to the old Hollywood and it’s star cult. There are only a few movies from that period that have that mind of psychological depth and character play in them. And this movie hardly has a happy ending …

The final scene

Gloria is just brilliant in this VERY creepy last scene.

PS: The most tragic figure in the movie is Erich von Stroheim - the butler (director by the cameras in this scene) and a great - but ignored director in real life.

I think this is one of the best movies about the American military industrial complex - and how it came to be.

An addiction to military power is as dangerous as the addiction to oil - the US suffers from both. Will this ever change? Will America grow up some day and feel less insecure and vulnerable? Today this country spends more money on military power and secret services than almost all other nations on this planet. This is paranoia and insecurity of a so called great nation.

documentary / 1:38 / Wikipedia entry

Highly recommended for all who want to understand how the American politics, the American dreams and politics are intertwined.

Click image for more Rays.

Today such images are standard - but back in the early days people like Alfred Stieglitz, Man Ray and George Weston reinvented the nude act for this new medium called photography.

For us it’s hard to see these old images in this new and fresh way - like Man Ray’s contemporaries saw them in early 20th century. We are so much bombarded with images each day that we can hardly be as open and innocent as people almost a hundred years ago.

He was born 8th of January 1942 - and I consider him one of the greatest minds alive in our times.

When Stephen Hawkings took this zero-g trip last year I was thrilled with joy. I deeply admire Mr Hawkings for scientific work and his bravery facing his disability.

I guess we can hardly imagine what weightlessness means and feels like for someone slumped in his wheelchair all day. Since Hawkings is also a big space nerd this trip is - for the moment - the closest he can get to being in outer space. But maybe Virgin Galactic will take him and many others a bit further out pretty soon.

So Sarko and his former wife worked as a team to bring him to the top - then they separated. Big deal? Nope!

His new affair with a former top model makes the European Yellow Press go gaga. But what’s the point of being the King … le President if you can’t have the hottest Mistress in town?

Once again we monkey watch the alpha monkey screwing another alpha. Sex is still the best distraction from the political process - a distraction that everybody can understand and relate too.

The political process dies somewhere in between speculation and hot gossip. Instead of carefully observing what the King is doing the public and the press are addicted to his penis and fertility.

It is the publics obsession with following the alpha pack that is their own undoing in the political process. If nobody would be interested in the private life of officials - and would be rather focused on their public and political life’s - our Democracies would be less shallow …

It’s all about politics stupid - not the penis!

Tribal loyalties, corruption and witchcraft still reign supreme in African culture. Such blatantly rigged elections are not just an African problem - Putin’s recent reelection was as ignorant of the law and the democratic process as well.

But as long as African politicians and voters have no problem of using violence to get what they want - this sad affair of corruption and violence won’t end. Poverty, lack of education and tribal loyalties create a combustive mixture - and a life seems worth nothing.

But we also have to blame colonial powers and foreign aid money for the chaos.

Many countries were literally made up on the drawing board by colonial powers - thy often mixed tribes together, who didn’t like each other to form a ‘nation’. Many of today’s conflicts go back to these tribal roots and difference in culture.

Foreign aid is another problem, because the large sums for money are a huge temptation for fraud. Many western donators hardly care or control where the money goes and many local charities that receive the money are made up by local big wigs and fraudsters. This kind of culture is based on cheating each other - not by creating a working economy and improving the life for everyone.

2007 was a bad year for Democracy - and it looks like that 2008 will continue that trend.

Before radar and heat seeking missiles air war was crude and rather brutal. Planes and balloons were first only used to observe ground movements.

Flying in these primitive machines was very cold and nauseating, because of the fumes.

Than pilots started to shoot at each others with their pistols, which started the aerial arms race.

Aerial bombardments started with hand grenades and even bricks. The first bombs were dropped by hand - usually by the observer - who often operated the second machine to the rear.

Many crews didn’t have parachutes in the beginning - but most of them would not have been able to jump anyway. Their planes didn’t offer any protection from enemy machine gun fire or burning engines or fuel, so they were often killed after a serious hit.

We humans do really stupid stuff to kill each other.

This years presidential election is a nice soap opera - it has action, drama and even some tears. Apart from America’s arcane procedures this still is a democracy at work - compared to recent elections in Kenya or Russia.

But it also shows the flaws of the popular vote: you have to say what people want to hear. These days Obama created the buzzword ‘change’ - so now all candidates babble about change. And all the talk is without substance, because foggy visions allow everyone to project their own idea of ‘change’ onto the candidate.

Is Hillary an agent of change? Actually she is - and she also know from experience how hard it is to change the system. Compared to Obama she has fought many harsh battles against companies, the establishment and the political system.

Compared to the 90’s she is now deeply wired into the political system - and now she has influence, knows how to pull the right strings and endure the agony of making change.

I very much doubt that Obama has these connections and know how to play the system. Because playing the system is important. Look at Dick Cheney or Carl Rove - they are masters in that profession. They have been playing the system for their masters and political goals so perfectly.

What America needs is someone who can dig deep, who is well connected and WANTS to change the system this time for the people instead of companies and the military industrial complex.

If you look back at inexperienced NEW political leaders - they all waste at least one or two years before they get a hold on power and understand the game. And often they fail to change anything in that time, because if Obama would loose that amount of time American voters would be frustrated and send many Republicans to the House and Senate - which in turn will block any change.

“Does this costume make me look fat?”

A Day In The Life of Miss McDonald - just brilliant surreal consumerism combined with a dadaist performance!