Commercialism (updated)

Update:
John K pointed to this commercial. I think an example of how wrong things can go on this slope.    :-)  I just know I'll have nightmares about the line "Camera ciao, picture wow!"...


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Recently, and I don't know if this happens in the US too, I see several big movie stars in commercials. People like Samuel L. Jackson, Kevin Bacon, Bruce Willis, and Natalie Portman. People I find it hard to believe are hard up for money.

It leaves a bit of a bad taste in my mouth, what do you think? Seems to me that through their creative work, they have earned a sizeable amount of respect and affection amongst the public, and now they are selling out of this affection for money to help some company sell more of a product they probably don't care about. And if they care, I don't think they would do it without the money.

It seems a bit like prostitution. Taking money for showing affection which is not there.
Does Natalie really think one perfume is significantly better or more important than another?

Or does Kevin think EE (4G phone provider) is way above the rest? He doesn't even live in this country, UK, so I doubt he's a customer of theirs.

Pressing metal (updated)

Bert send me this cool animated GIF of a machine making chains. Lovely, simple, very effective.

I am always amazed at how they can just press metal into shape. Apple today showed a video of the making of the upcoming new Mac Pro. If you like technology, the keynote presentation is worth it just for that. It starts with a big circular chunk of aluminium being put into a shaped hole. Then a shaped thing comes from above, and in a second simply presses the chunk into the cylinder it needs to be. Holy moly, what force!
It's a short video, starting at about 37 minutes into the keynote.

Update: 
... And that's just the relatively soft aluminium, they can also do it with steel:



The force applied is 800 tons, about two fully loaded jumbo jets!

Wildlife Photographer Of The Year 2013

The best of the best. Don't try this at home.

Apple Keynote

Here's my post with thoughts about today's Apple Keynote. (New iPads and various other stuff.)

Community La Biblioteca Spanish Rap

This is from the end of the second episode of Community (good stuff).  I just knew somebody would have put it on Ytube, it's so funny and brilliant.
It was barred from embedding, so go here.
(Any body knows what "buei! buei! at the end means?)

Get an impression of the size of the GM1

Finally after five years, they pushed the techonology to be able to do this.
There was also talk about in the beginning that people didn't want the cameras too small. I don't know who those people were. Grandfathers and hulky professional press photographers?
Actually one press photographer got famous by shooting with very compact cameras, and this was years ago, before they got good. He had to carry a couple because they are not so durable in war zones, but he found he could get a lot closer to people and be more inconspicuous with the small cameras.
Of with this color, it won't be very inconspicuous. But it won't be taken seriously, which can be good, you're not seen as a threat.