Pics from wherever

May I say something...?

The Invisible Man: Liu Bolin

[Thanks to Uncle Ron.]

The Invisible Man: Liu Bolin. Apparently he paints himself. That's gotta be tricky.
One gallery and another.

Olympus, praise the little differences

I once talked about how interesting it is how very different two women can be, and yet both be very beautiful. The same goes, I think, for cameras... (for those who are not familiar with them, not only do they look very different, but the Nikon was/is big, and the Olympus amazingly compact.)



... And apropos both Olympus and women, here is a funny ad. Something like this could only happen in the early seventies, the same time we had naked ballet in the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen.

Democracy and rightness

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half the time.
-- E. B. White

This is funny, and of course flies in the face of the idea that with democracy, you automatically get the right or best solution.

But... I actually think democracy is very simply a way to keep fighting to a minimum. "We're seven guys who want to paint the boat green, and only four of you who want to paint it red. You wanna make something of it?"

Old camera, new pictures (updated)

[Update: turns out the photographer is an octogenarian, out with bicycle and camera. See comments for links.]

More pictures here.
You won't believe how primitive a camera Herman Krieger used to make these wonderful, timeless shots.

Untethered space walk

Untethered space walk.

Million to one apple is half red, half green

Million to one apple is half red, half green, article.

More dancing with Beyonce

TC Girl, like me being a fan of Arianna's dancing to Beyonce, found an even younger fan's attempt. Concidering that he clearly is just learning to walk, I think he does a very good job at it.

I love how some performers can get hold of audiences of literally all ages. I once walked past a kindergarten where they played Aqua's Barbie Girl, and the toddlers were all dancing and rocking their hearts out. And I just loved that these little spontaneous creatures were fans of the same song as somebody like me, a stiff, crusty, over-educated, near-middleaged man.

And also I worked for a while at a nursing home, and one of the brighter octogenarians, lovely lady, told me she was quite fond of rock music, and we talked about David Bowie and his then-current disc, Black Noise White Tie.

Anonymous said...
People who claim to be over-educated usually have just the bare minimum. One woman once claimed to be while having only a BA.

eolake said...
Yes, I thought you might pounce on this, my friend. I used "over-educated" here as shorthand for the condition you can find yourself in even at a young age, where didactic education has knocked most of the spontaneous joy-of-life and curiosity out of you. This happens to most people.

Quitting School

Quitting School, article.
Very cool article about the quality of learning and free choice.
"You're far more intelligent, each one of you, than you are given credit for. Instead of starting with what we think you should know, why can't we start with what you genuinely want to know? I think that a learner, given time, space, respect and resources, will do a far better job of teaching himself than if he has knowledge imposed upon him with utter disregard for his own interests and abilities."

[Note: it seems that Julie's blog has a bug which prevents it from taking comments from people who are logged in. Try to write in a name manually instead.]

Billionaire's yacht uses lasers to thwart paparazzi

Roman Abramovich zaps snappers with laser shield, article.
He buys/builds a $2B hyper-futuristic yacht the size of Copenhagen... and he does not want it to be seen???
Funny enough, all a photographer has to do to avoid the lasers is... use a film camera instead of a digital one!

Printcrime

Printcrime, a short-short story. A very poignant one.

Under the RepRap post, I'd commented:
"As soon as a new invention threaten the income of an old business (as they often do), then you have a fight."

And Forrest, who is part of the RepRap core team, said:
You know your history all right! You might enjoy reading Cory Doctorow's short story, Printcrime.

He wrote it a short while after we got started with Reprap and was quite pleased when we told him about it.