In the Age of TV families shared quality moments together in front of the screen. In the Internet Age we sit quietly in our rooms and maybe chat via AIM together. Computer screens don’t provide the same social glue as TV screens.

Several people fighting for the remote control was bad enough - but a consensus could be reached which show to watch for an hour or two. But you can’t have four people controlling a computer and surf different websites at the same time.

TV serves as the radio today - it provides the noise to our life, but it is the computer with it’s highly individualized interaction that grabs our FULL attention.

So our media experience is more and more individualistic - and all these digital toys and gadgets (especially cell phones and instant messaging) keep us “busy” and distracted all the time.

In front of the TV the whole family could switch off - today that switch has been lost. We are always “ON” …

In the foreseeable future we will raise life expectancy further and further. It is now easy to replace many body parts and rejuvenate the body in many ways.

So maybe we can rebuild and regenerate our bodies for hundreds of years - but what about our minds?

Most people’s minds already go down the drain in their 40’s without physical “defects”. And when we live longer we need to constantly learn new stuff - you can’t play dumb grandpa if you live 200 or more years. You need to learn and adapt.

And what about the emotional strain of a long life? How much pain, idiocy and trivia can you take before you loose your will to live?

I knew that the Empire was going down the drain.

Mission Statement from 2003:

Start a War based on lies.

Alienate all your European Allies.

Piss of the whole Muslim world.

Save money on protective gear and Hummvees.

Totally ignore the Shia and Sunni conflict in the region.

Totally ignore the Kurdish and Turkish conflict.

Ignore security and rule of law in postwar Iraq.

Dissolve the Iraqi Police for more crime.

Dissolve the Iraqi Military for more crime.

Torture your prisoners and take snaps for everybody.

Ignore war crimes of your own troops.  

Forget to secure huge amount of weapons and ammo.

Drive up the price for oil.  

Ruin your own military.

Start a job boom for Blackwater and other mercenaries.

Make Halliburton even richer.

Funnel Billions of Dollars into dark holes.

Funnel Billions of Dollars to contractors who waste the money.

Encourage a culture or corruption in Iraq.

Blame everything on Iran and al-Quaida.

Promise to pay insurgents to fight for you - and then don’t pay.

Lay the foundation for another war in the region.

Did I miss anything?

Journalists should be able to read / understand what some people said - analyze them and put the into context.

But most US journalists lack these skills today.

Mass media seem only to deliver triggers for scandals instead of content. Stoking anger on all sides seem the only mission.

Anyone remember that saying “A house divided against itself cannot stand” by Abraham Lincoln. But hardly anyone in American Politics or Journalism is capable of delivering or understanding such great speeches anyway.

Who says it’s hard to understand other cultures humor. Some stuff is pretty universal and easy to “get”. This one cracks me up every time …

Pain is certainly a main ingredient of Christianity. So some fanatics celebrate Jesus crucifixion by getting nailed to a cross themselves. I am not sure sure good old Bene approves of such madness …

Ouch.

Now the Olympic fire will travel from Greece to China - expect a lot of protests on the way. I really really really hope these games won’t take off. Beijing 2008 should be boycotted. How can the world celebrate all the great athletes in country that shots, tortures and suppresses it citizens at the same time?

Never was big into all these religious festivals - they don’t mean shit to me. They just happen, nobody works and I can’t go shopping as usual.

Why is sexual unity so often considered the ultimate ‘oneness’? Can’t we be one without arousal, hormones and desire? Or are we talking unity in sexual energy with all Chakras open and flowing? But still, that can be achieved without intercourse. Or do our egos need sex to be so distracted that they finally can see the unity that is always there?

Artist: Andrew Gonzalez

This is an old report from the LA Times - but still valid. Young American soldiers and Iraqis get blown to bits.

A three part documentation about wounded American soldiers in Iraq. Harsh reality - highly recommended to see what you don’t see on mainstream television.

Rice is the most important food source, but climate change is fucking rice production up (from the New Scientist):

Rice is arguably the world’s most important food source and helps feed about half the globe’s people. But yields in many areas will drop as the globe warms in future years, a review of studies on rice and climate change suggests.

The poorest parts of the world, including Africa, will probably be hardest hit, the study says. Rice harvests already need to increase by about a third just to keep up with global population growth.

Predicting how a changing climate will affect crop yields is notoriously difficult. Temperature, carbon dioxide concentration and ozone levels all have a big impact on growth. Yet most studies look at just one of these factors, making it difficult to know what the combined effect will be.

It is also hard to know whether results from experiments in greenhouses with artificial climates will hold true in the real world. But when the evidence from some 80 different studies is combined, the outlook is bleak, says Elizabeth Ainsworth of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

In regions where the average daily temperatures are expected to rise above 30ºC, rice yields will start to fall off, and the impact will get worse as the temperature increases.

The drop in yield caused by rising temperatures can be counteracted by the boost to photosynthesis provided by the increased levels of carbon dioxide driving climate change. But when Ainsworth pooled the studies, she found that effect is not strong enough to counteract the stress plants suffer at high temperatures.

Harvests will also be reduced by rising ground-level ozone concentrations. They are caused by nitrogen oxides (NOX) from power stations that catalyse the formation of ozone in warm and sunny conditions. Ainsworth’s review found that ozone concentrations of around 60 parts per billion, which have already being recorded on farms in China and the United States, cause yields to drop by 14%.

Experiments on the effect of ozone using greenhouses containing artificial atmospheres are still crude, so other rice researchers are urging caution in interpreting Ainsworth’s results. For example, many experiments use fixed levels of ozone, but outdoors levels fluctuate daily and plants can use the low points to recover from brief periods of high concentrations.

Of all the spring festivals Holi seems the happiest to me.

From Wikipedia:

Holior is an annual Hindu spring festival, predominantly celebrated in North India and Nepal. It takes place over two days around late March or early April. As per the Hindu calendar, it falls on the last day on the month of Phalgun, which is a Purnima (or Pooranmashi, Full Moon), and on the first day of Chaitra. It is a celebration also of the Hindu New Year, as Chaitra is the first month of the Hindu Year.

It is also called the Festival of Colour. On the first day, a bonfire is lit at night to signify burning Holika. On the second day, known as Dhulandi, people go around until afternoon throwing coloured powder and water at each other, although the powder stings the eyes.

A special drink called ‘thandai’ or bhang is also consumed sometimes, which actually contains small amounts of marijuana(Cannabis sativa). People invite each other to their houses for feasts and celebrations later in the evening. Rangapanchami occurs a few days later on a Panchami (fifth day of the full moon), marking the end of festivities involving colours.

In Hindu mythology, Hiranyakashipu was the king of demons, and he had been granted a boon by Brahma, which made it almost impossible for him to be killed. The boon was due to his long penance, after which he had demanded that he not be killed “during day or night; inside the home or outside; not on earth or on sky; neither by a man nor an animal; neither by astra nor by shastra”. Consequently, he grew arrogant, and attacked the Heavens and the Earth. He demanded that people stop worshipping gods and start praying to him. But his own son, Prahlad, was a devotee of Lord Vishnu. In spite of several threats from Hiranyakashipu, Prahlad continued offering prayers to Lord Vishnu.

He was poisoned but the poison turned to nectar in his mouth. He was ordered to be trampled by elephants yet remained unharmed. He was put in a room with hungry, poisonous snakes and survived. All of Hiranyakashipu’s attempts to kill his son failed. Finally, he ordered young Prahlad to sit on a pyre on the lap of his sister, Holika, who could not die by fire by virtue of a shawl which would prevent fire affecting the person wearing it. Prahlad readily accepted his father’s orders, and prayed to Vishnu to keep him safe. When the fire started, everyone watched in amazement as the shawl flew from Holika, who then was burnt to death, while Prahlad survived unharmed, after the shawl moved to cover him. The burning of Holika is celebrated as Holi. It is also said that later Lord Vishnu came in the form of a Narasimha (who is half-man and half-lion) and killed Hiranyakashipu at dusk (which was neither day nor night), on the steps of the porch of his house (which was neither inside the house nor outside) by restraining him on his lap (which is neither in the sky nor on the earth) and mauling him with his claws (which are neither astra nor shastra).

In Vrindavan and Mathura, where Lord Krishna grew up, the festival is celebrated for 16 days (until Rangpanchmi in commemoration of the divine love of Radha for Krishna). Lord Krishna is believed to have popularized the festival by playing pranks on the gopis here. Krishna is believed to be complained about his dark colour and Radha’s fair colour to his mother and so decided to apply colour to her face. The celebrations officially usher in spring, the celebrated season of love.

There is another story about the origin of holi. The Kamadeva is God of love. Kama’s body was destroyed when he shot his weapon at Shiva in order to disrupt his penance and help Parvati to marry Shiva. Shiva then opened his third eye, the gaze of which was so powerful that Kama’s body was reduced to ashes. For the sake of Kama’s wife Rati (passion), Shiva restored him, but only as a mental image, representing the true emotional and mental state of love rather than physical lust. The Holi bonfire is believed to be celebrated in commeration of this event.

The Holi Festival looks like a tradition I want to import to grey Germany - although this chap doesn’t look too happy.

Get an even bigger color rush with a big Holi image pool on Flickr.

Still one of the quintessential 80’s pop songs in style and content. Although it seems neither the Russians nor the Americans have learned any lessons from this?

What better way to celebrate Easter than watching some Christian pain porn? Maestro Waterhouse once again proves his sense for drama and half naked ladies with this piece.

Poor little St. Eulalia was just a young girl, when she was brutally tortured and than finally killed for refusing to pay homage to pagan gods. From Wikipedia:

Eulalia of Mérida was a Roman Christian child martyred in Emerita in Lusitania (modern Mérida in Spain) during the persecution of Christians in the reign of emperor Diocletian and his co-emperor Maximian. Others place her death at the time of Trajan Decius (AD 249-51).[2] There is some dispute as to whether Saint Eulalia of Barcelona, whose story is similar, is the same person.[3]

Eulalia was a devout Christian virgin, aged 12–14, whose mother sequestered her in the countryside in AD 304 because all citizens were required to avow faith in the Roman gods. Eulalia ran away to the law court of the governor Dacian at Emerita, professed herself a Christian, insulted the pagan gods and emperor Maximian, and challenged the authorities to martyr her. The judge’s attempts at flattery and bribery failed. According to the Spanish-Roman poet Prudentius of the fifth century, she said:

    Isis Apollo Venus nihil est,
    Maximianus et ipse nihil:
    illa nihil, quia factu manu;
    hic, manuum quia facta colit

    (Isis, Apollo and Venus are naught,
    Nor is Maximian anything more;
    Nothing are they, for by hand they were wrought,
    He, for of hands he the work doth adore)

She was then stripped by the soldiers, tortured with hooks and torches, and burnt at the stake, suffocating from smoke inhalation. She taunted her torturers all the while, and as she expired a dove flew out of her mouth. This frightened away the soldiers and allowed a miraculous snow to cover her nakedness, its whiteness indicating her sainthood.

Can’t wait for Mel Gibson to make another bloody movie about her.

The painting itself has an unusual symmetry, since the main subject literally falls flat on the lower third of the image. The central space is almost vacant. Compared to most other Waterhouse paintings (where the woman and the tension is located smack in the center of the image) this one requires some “looking” to realize what is actually going on.

What an amazing and unusual game! Disc of Tron used a two different controllers: one to aim your light disk at the red (pink?) player and one to control your blue avatar. It was pretty hard to play, because you needed some serious hand & eye coordination …

I very much preferred Apple’s marketing when it was based on it’s own technology instead of constantly bashing the PC / Windows.

Today it’s way too much focused on lifestyle or labeling PC users as stupid. Don’t tell I am an idiot because I DON’T use a Mac - you are not making any friends with me …

When I watch some young parents playing with their kids I often wonder: did they want a kid or simply a talking doll?

That phrase “they grow up so fast” especially sounds very stupid in that context. What did you expect what was going to happen: your baby would stay forever tiny, vulnerable and totally dependable on you - so you can play and dominate that little human?

Final the proof: woman don’t produce their own milk, they simply store bovine fluids in their own portable containers and spread the goods to hungry children of this world.

Let’s stomp out these ugly reports comrades …

It is easy to blame only the evil communist in China for all the censorship and blatant disregard for Tibet’s Freedom.

But Chinese Nationalism is as rampant as the state controlled suppression of the Tibetans. One only needs to remember the extreme rage against the Japanese during the last years. Japan has a lot to apologize for to China and Korea - and never has done so - so some of the outrage was “just”. But it was mostly insanely angry and fueled by Nationalism instead by a call for justice.

Chinese people - like the Russians, Iranians and North Koreans - live in a mental vacuum. They have no real news, only glints of reality and they don’t really know what’s going on in the world. Freedom of speech, public discourse and social experiments are absolutely limited and controlled by the state.

That is why many Chinese people defend their countries “actions” in Tibet as “just” and “fair” on the intranets. They are simply blind and ignorant. Patriotism is an ugly political disease, doesn’t matter if you scream “China! China!”, “USA! USA!” or “Heil Hitler!”.

This year the Easter Bunny was especially hard at work and put all your eggs into a shark invested reef!

Happy Easter to all my friends and readers out there …

I am a huge Beethoven fan. This human being was simply amazing and his music still sends shivers down my spine. And I guess I am not alone.

One of the things that pisses me off about Beethoven is that we don’t have any recordings of him playing the piano. It has been reported that he was not only a genius composer but also a master of the black & white keys.

Can anyone please build a time machine and bring back a good recording?

This portrait from Herr Stieler is the only one were Beethoven could be persuaded to sit down and be painted. People noted back than that this portrait was actually pretty close to the van’s passionate self.

I think it’s unfair to have only one girlfriend altogether. It should be one for each species.

This design from the 50/60’s is once again modern in it’s simplicity and naturalistic approach. I wonder if minimalism can ever run out of fashion?

We humans are so often amazed by natures inventions - but we often fail to see that many creatures and plants are just transitions from one “model” to the next.

Only a few of natures experiments have been around for a long time and proven themselves worthy to continuing: the shark is one of the oldest “models”, so are the bees and crocodiles.

We humans are pretty new and I am not sure if we make it for several million years like the sharks have …