Spending a gozillion euros/dollars on Wellness makes you feel well. Ever heard of cause and effect?
Spending a gozillion euros/dollars on Wellness makes you feel well. Ever heard of cause and effect?
I just don get it! Why can’t modern gaming wizards create games like this series anymore?! Monkey Island is the proof that good games don’t need fancy graphics, a gazillion monsters and gadgets to be fun and cool. All they need is a good story, loveable characters and some amazing dialogues.
Is there nobody out there capable to create something like it?!
Sorry, I am still slow these days - so only a few postings these days. I hope some of you enjoy the collection of documentaries - even when it is a serious effort to watch them (online). But I think these are all brilliant and too good to be ignored. So watch less crap on the telly and more good stuff on the intranets! 
It is easy to laugh about this old candid camera ‘prank’ - but it is a very good study of our social behavior and conformity. We want to fit in - and most of us do it automatically and without ‘thinking about it’.
So next time you stand in a cue, shop in a mail, go into an elevator or sit in a sauna - try to see what kind of rules are in play, what kind of consensus is silently agreed on and how you yourself comply.
BBC 4 / documentary / 3 episodes each ca. 1 hour
This is what I would consider basic knowledge or better say insight what happened in recent history.
I can recommend watching all parts - but number 2 is especially important, because it shows that Racism was one of the driving forces in America that swapped over to Europe (again) in a scientific disguise and supported the old idea of the Masterrace, which suited the Nazis perfectly.
Beginning by assessing the implications of the relationship between Europe, Africa and the Americas in the 15th century, it considers how racist ideas and practices developed in key religious and secular institutions, and how they showed up in writings by European philosophers Aristotle and Immanuel Kant.
Looking at Scientific Racism, invented during the 19th century, an ideology that drew on now discredited practices such as phrenology and provided an ideological justification for racism and slavery. These theories ultimately led to eugenics and Nazi racial policies of the master race. Some upsetting scenes.
The third and final episode of Racism: A History examines the impact of racism in the 20th Century. By 1900, European colonial expansion had reached deep into the heart of Africa. Under the rule of King Leopold II, The Belgian Congo was turned into a vast rubber plantation.
Men, women and children who failed to gather their latex quotas would have their limbs dismembered. The country became the scene of one of the century’s greatest racial genocides, as an estimated 10 million Africans perished under colonial rule.
I consider Fritz Lang as one of the greatest directors ever. His movies were ground breaking in his days. His masterpiece ‘M - eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder’ still puts many modern productions to shame. But I also recommend watching his outdated movies like ‘Frau im Mond‘ from 1929. How times have changed … but this movie actually ‘invented’ the countdown, which is still in use today.
Back in the 80’s I adored these modern looking Apricot computers. Too bad they were not so successful like the IBM machines. Their design and technology were pretty cool and innovative.
More? Apricot @ Wikipedia
This is one amazing collection of images. Bring a lot of time and dive into this incredible gallery.
Mister Leping Zha you are a genius!!!
Do you suck at organizing yourself and completing tasks? Here is a very simple tool to give you some easy to use goal tracking: Joe’s Goals. You can even share specific goals with friends or family - so you loved ones know how much you suck or succeeded in getting rid of some of your bad habits.
Just two years ago I discovered Bob Ross show ‘The Joy of Painting‘ although it’s pretty old. You might not like his style, but he is fun to watch. It’s the most peaceful art show I have ever seen - he is more like a monk preaching happiness then a art teacher. I love it - and I might even learn a trick of two.
He died over ten year ago 1995 - a sad loss, since there are not many TV art shows around. I would swap ten big brothers for one decent show about architecture or sculpting. I would even dump some of these techno fetish documentaries (Monster Trucks, Monster Buildings, Monster Anything) from the History Channel for some more art education.
We already have way too much crap on TV.
More? Bob Ross on YouTube
Pimp my FireFox! I love this hilarious skin for my favorite browser. Make sure to also visit it’s official website www.pimpzilla.nl.
Click image for a larger Teutonic Master.
Herr Dürer is simply a God of Art. He paints and draws like none other. Too bad his great skills were wasted during the Dark Ages. This is his self-portrait aged 28.
I have been a long time fan of Bloglines.com, but in recent weeks it had it’s fair share of problems and bugs. I am usually very tolerant with such hiccups, but I hate it when companies don’t react to problems.
Bloglines was pretty ignorant, lazy or simply stupid not to respond to many postings and requests in the forum. Since many people like me rely on their RSS Feed Reader to manage the daily information overkill for work - this was no longer tolerable.
I am not a big fan of using Google for everything - and the Google Reader is pretty ugly compared to Bloglines. But Google simply ‘works’ - although I can assure you that Google is also a company that hardly responds to User requests. It’s forums are also filled with screaming users - often begging for attention or help when their GMail accounts have problems or data is lost with some other Google application.
Overall I am less and less a fan of web based solutions. When Google Reader or GMail load in my Firefox they use more memory than my good old Outlook. Web applications often load slower than their desktop counterparts as well. And making backup is often impossible.
Click image for an even bigger bang.
BBC - on this Day: Now that was a big bang and all the dust contributes to global warming today. It’s not only we humans that pollute the atmosphere, but also events like this - although volcanic eruptions are pretty rare and lame compared to some earlier earth periods.
More? Wikipedia entry and don’t miss the 1980’s section with some great images! Then you can ‘feel’ how massive that explosion was.
As a non-American one has to follow US politics closely - because anything these people vote for has serious - and I really mean serious - consequences for the rest of the world.
Thanks to MSNBC’s live stream I was able to watch the whole drama unfold last night (thanks to MSNBC for being so kind and allowing foreigner to watch their video as well - many American media outlets block foreigners).
Overall I am not the least bit surprised about the current state of affairs - and the obvious conclusions. (I know that this is only the first state of over 50 to cast their votes.)
America’s so called conservatives haven’t learned a bit from the dreadful Bush experience - nor have the Democrats.
Where is our next Christian Preehehehesident?!
Once again the born again citizens have pushed the next professional Christians to the top. Huckabee came out as the top dog followed by the equally christy Romney. Once again the religious affiliation reigns superior. The sheep demand a Shepard.
The Bush White House has hardly delivered any of the goods the evangelicals wanted, he didn’t fight poverty, nor did he overturn unpopular abortion laws. But still these religious people believe another one of ‘them’ will fix it this time.
On the Democrat’s side the picture is equally bleak. I consider Obama as the ultimate liberal excuse and fantasy: he is young like Kennedy and represents the biggest black icon Martin Luther King. This is a terrible addiction to symbols of the past, because neither Kennedy nor King did ‘finish’ their projects. And they both had some serious political deficits.
A small sidenote: I find it really strange that most popular Democratic icons (Clinton, Kennedy & King) are womanizers.
He is dead - get over it Democrats.
So America’s voters are still addicted to the same old qualities that make no sense in politics at all: likeability and electability.
Once again they are looking for a person that everybody likes - once again the search for the beer buddy. (Remember when they sold Bush to Americans as the presidential candidate you want to have a drink with?).
Electability is even worse. It just means finding a person that looks presidential enough to be elected. It does NOT mean finding the person who is best suited for the job.
Go for the transvestite: President and First Lady in one person!
That is why experienced leaders like John McCain, Joe Biden and to a certain degree Hillary Clinton did so badly in the polls. Also the analyses of the voter’s decision process shows that they give a shit about political experience and good (international) network to make things happen.
They want change - whatever that is to them.
Apart from unelectable ‘weirdos’ like Ron Paul and Denis Kucinich none of the candidates have shown any solid ideas or visions - nor commitment - for true change - just more of the same.
All that talk about health care and getting out of Iraq is just that - cheap talk. None of them really touched farm subsidies, a REAL energy policy, a reduction of military spending and a working solution for immigration. Not to speak of breaking up big media, a real reform of the educational system, etc. …
Overall America is still entrenched in it’s ignorant ways: it’s voters as much as it’s politicians. It doesn’t matter if the president will be Hillary, Obama, Romney or Huckabee - the military industrial complex will grind on without mercy. American troops will still be in Iraq in 2010, Americans will continue to guzzle oil in huge amount and the decline of the country will take up even more speed.
A new President will just change the face of Americanism - and maybe a Democrat will do some ’stuff’ to soften the social and economic pressure on Americans, but the system itself will be untouched. And most of the draconian laws and limited civil liberties will stay in place.
Adam Curtis / documentary / 50+ minutes / BBC
If you are one of these people who tries to make sense of our mad modern world then this documentary is for you.
Adam Curtis is one of the few and rare geniuses working in television - trying to connect the dots and documenting his findings in an understandable way.
The Century of the Self is about Freud, his nephew Bernays, marketing, the politics of freedom, consumerism, so called free markets, individualism and the modern “self”.
Please take the time (four hours) and watch each episode. It’s worth it - and many things will appear in a different light after that.
More? Century of the Self @ Wikipedia, Adam Curtis and Edward Bernays
The story of the relationship between Sigmund Freud and his American nephew, Edward Bernays. Bernays invented the public relations profession in the 1920s and was the first person to take Freud’s ideas to manipulate the masses. He showed American corporations how they could make people want things they didn’t need by systematically linking mass-produced goods to their unconscious desires.
Bernays was one of the main architects of the modern techniques of mass-consumer persuasion, using every trick in the book, from celebrity endorsement and outrageous PR stunts, to eroticising the motorcar.
His most notorious coup was breaking the taboo on women smoking by persuading them that cigarettes were a symbol of independence and freedom. But Bernays was convinced that this was more than just a way of selling consumer goods. It was a new political idea of how to control the masses. By satisfying the inner irrational desires that his uncle had identified, people could be made happy and thus docile.
It was the start of the all-consuming self which has come to dominate today’s world.
The programme explores how those in power in post-war America used Freud’s ideas about the unconscious mind to try and control the masses.
Politicians and planners came to believe Freud’s underlying premise - that deep within all human beings were dangerous and irrational desires and fears. They were convinced that it was the unleashing of these instincts that had led to the barbarism of Nazi Germany. To stop it ever happening again they set out to find ways to control this hidden enemy within the human mind.
Sigmund Freud’s daughter, Anna, and his nephew, Edward Bernays, provided the centrepiece philosophy. The US government, big business, and the CIA used their ideas to develop techniques to manage and control the minds of the American people. But this was not a cynical exercise in manipulation. Those in power believed that the only way to make democracy work and create a stable society was to repress the savage barbarism that lurked just under the surface of normal American life.
In the 1960s, a radical group of psychotherapists challenged the influence of Freudian ideas in America. They were inspired by the ideas of Wilhelm Reich, a pupil of Freud’s, who had turned against him and was hated by the Freud family. He believed that the inner self did not need to be repressed and controlled. It should be encouraged to express itself.
Out of this came a political movement that sought to create new beings free of the psychological conformity that had been implanted in people’s minds by business and politics.
This programme shows how this rapidly developed in America through self-help movements like Werber Erhard’s Erhard Seminar Training - into the irresistible rise of the expressive self: the Me Generation.
But the American corporations soon realised that this new self was not a threat but their greatest opportunity. It was in their interest to encourage people to feel they were unique individuals and then sell them ways to express that individuality. To do this they turned to techniques developed by Freudian psychoanalysts to read the inner desires of the new self.
This episode explains how politicians on the left, in both Britain and America, turned to the techniques developed by business to read and fulfil the inner desires of the self.
Both New Labour, under Tony Blair, and the Democrats, led by Bill Clinton, used the focus group, which had been invented by psychoanalysts, in order to regain power. They set out to mould their policies to people’s inner desires and feelings, just as capitalism had learnt to do with products.
Out of this grew a new culture of public relations and marketing in politics, business and journalism. One of its stars in Britain was Matthew Freud who followed in the footsteps of his relation, Edward Bernays, the inventor of public relations in the 1920s.
The politicians believed they were creating a new and better form of democracy, one that truly responded to the inner feelings of individual. But what they didn’t realise was that the aim of those who had originally created these techniques had not been to liberate the people but to develop a new way of controlling them.
The feminist movement certainly has blessed woman with many new role models. I just wonder if the CEO really appeals to little girls and their natural breeding instinct?
Will CEO Barbie be is overstretched as modern moms or can she afford an immigrant brown Barbie to do her shopping, feeding the kids and blowing Ken, when she is at work making money?
CEO Barbie - preparing girls for the stressful lifestyle of a successful woman - who is able to still look like slut after working all day.
All I can say: bloody brilliant! Maestro Minkkinnen has many great shots in his portfolio - but this one really made me laugh out load. But he seems in general to have a great sense of humor - and a very unique and enjoyable point of view!
More? Official Homepage
Fish and Beef are a luxury. It takes big amounts of primary food sources like wheat to produce the same amount of calories in meat.
So instead of eating such luxuries items every day, we should change our habit and ignore the 99¢ burgers with fries and diet coke - and get some apples or pasta instead.
"After your death you will be what you were before your birth."
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."
"Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they shall think."
"Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal."
"Every person takes the limits of their own field of vision for the limits of the world."
"Martyrdom is the only way a man can become famous without ability."
"Reading is equivalent to thinking with someone else’s head instead of with one’s own."
Even when the chance of intelligent life is extremely small - there are billions and billions of stars and planet out there to increase the possibility to a realistic level.
We have just learned in recent years that bacteria can survive in outer space and travel in meteors and asteroids from planet to planet - even solar systems. So the chance of these messengers of life traveling and fertilizing other planets is rather the norm instead of a rarity.
Click image for more Patriotism.
I am not a big fan of Norman Rockwell. He is an American Propaganda painter - the opposite to the many Soviet Realist painters. His feel-good and homely images is American porn for patriots. These are images from the old America still in the heads of many US Neocons and die hard right wing Patriots.
But this America is long dead and won’t come back.
There is still small town America and American pie - but it’s kids listen to music from Negros on their Chinese iPods and watch porn from Sweden. Their parents drive Japanese and German cars - and pay Muslim countries huge amounts of money to keep these vehicles rolling. Their work has long been outsourced to India or Mexico …
More? Rockwell @ Wikipedia
Most people think that the atomic holocaust has gone away. Quite to the contrary. The nuclear powers have still way too many big crackers - so much firepower to kill us all several times over.
Russia and the USA both are planning to update their nuclear arsenal. China, Pakistan and India are new powers and constantly building new nukes. France and Britain certainly will upgrade their arsenal sometime.
Some of the nukes in service range from modern land- and submarine-based ICBM warheads to bombs dropped from planes and smaller so called tactical nukes.
Both Russia and the US have many old nukes and delivery system, so I don’t think that all 20.000 of them are operational. And modern ICBM carry several warheads at once.
China has LESS than 500 nukes so far.
I didn’t include North Korea, because I couldn’t find any ‘good’ numbers. But I doubt they have more than 10-20.
This may sound cynical: I would say that up to 100 warheads for smaller nuclear powers are ‘understandable’ as a deterrent. Everything over 500 is madness. The US and Russia (plus China and India) as huge countries and powers should be ‘happy’ with about 2000 each …
You also have to understand that keeping up an atomic force costs a lot of money: security, training, inspections and plus warning and delivery systems.
This new year seems oddly familiar - all my unfinished work is still unfinished - all my unpaid bills are still unpaid and that horny sex life I was wishing for still ain’t here. I must be doing something wrong?
