On Friday I received my first ever blender! It’s one of those things I kind of always wanted to try and have at home but never really got around to buy. The current heat wave and the urge for cold smoothies put thought into action.
So this weekend have been very smoothielicious.
Follow the smoovie’s development and other smoovie stories on willow’s blog
I have been so busy at work, so after office hours my brain says no. So… here I am; a sunday morning with the will of doing nothing besides drinking smoothies and watching the F1 race in Hockenheim (starts in 30 min) with 10 drafts on my blog (which some of them soon will be out of date).
I might try to take a stab at them after the F1. But I can’t guarantee I will. Cause beside the 10 drafts (and like I said - the will of doing nothing), I need to restructure and redesign this page a bit.
and really sorry for the excuse ;)
On the BBC news website they have a page called “on this day”, where you select a date and then you get to see the top article for that date throughout some years.
I find this very interesting. Have always been interested in seeing patterns in everything. Before I started this online journal, I had an offline (analog) journal. Since an analog is flat and not dynamic, every time I was about to start a new year, I wrote a summary of previous years in small type on top of each date. This actually only took a few hours. And I did find some patterns…
On the BBCs “on this day” website I entered my date of birth - 12 october, and got: 2 bombs a failure and a murder charge.
2000: Suicide bombers attack USS Cole
At least six American sailors die in what’s thought to have been a suicide bomb attack on a US Navy destroyer in Yemen.2002: Dozens killed in Bali nightclub explosion
Reports from the Indonesian holiday island of Bali say more than 50 people have been killed in two explosions.1986: Reykjavik summit ends in failure
Superpower talks collapse after Presidents Reagan and Gorbachev fail to agree on Star Wars.1978: Sex Pistol Vicious on murder charge
British punk rocker Sid Vicious is arrested on suspicion of murder after his girlfriend’s body is found in their New York hotel room.
Not maybe what you would like your birthday to be like. But… again, I bet if you enter your birthday you will get similar result. News don’t seem to be about spreading and talking about good “stuff”. It’s about announcing terror, tragedy. Making news and selling papers. Making news and sell advertising.
Seriously, even dictionaries seem to be a bit confused what the word ‘news’ stands for.
news |n(y)oÅ?z|
noun
newly received or noteworthy information, esp. about recent or important events : I’ve got some good news for you.
• ( the news) a broadcast or published report of news : he was back in the news again.
• ( news to) informal information not previously known to someone : this was hardly news to her.
• a person or thing considered interesting enough to be reported in the news : Chanel became the hottest news in fashion.PHRASES
make news become a story in the news : stolen babies make news.
no news is good news proverb without information to the contrary you can assume that all is well.ORIGIN late Middle English : plural of new , translating Old French noveles or medieval Latin nova ‘new things.’
You find that
newly received or noteworthy information, esp. about recent or important events : I’ve got some good news for you.
and then
PHRASES
make news become a story in the news : stolen babies make news.
no news is good news proverb without information to the contrary you can assume that all is well.
What I find interesting is how society defines a word and then, slowly over time, alters it’s definition so that what the word stood for has changed.
In the song ‘The News’ Jack Johnson sings:
Why don’t the newscasters cry when they read about people who die
At least they could be decent enough to put just a tear in their eyes
I guess Jack, that would be to emotional very ‘unprofessional’…
A friend of mine was standing in a bar having a discussion about how it is Ok for men to approach a women in a bar, but it’s not Ok for a man to approach a man (unless of cause they are homosexual).
Basically, people don’t approach anyone in a bar situation unless they want to pick them up.
My friend, under the influent of alcohol, did not agree - he said - well we haven’t tried; so how can we know? So he took a few steps away from the bar, looked around, and said, “aaa! that guy look like a friendly face!” a few seconds later - #*S*MA#S#H* - he walked into a mirror.
Found this link to the RSS news aggregator Newshutch on 37signals blog. The post is titled “Beautiful interface: Newshutch”.
I found it funny that they go on and on about how good the design and execution of it is:
I was so impressed by its clarity, execution, and style that I still feel the glow today.”
cause to me - #*S*MA#S#H* - it looks/feels like they are looking/walking into a mirror.
The RSS aggregator, or reader, works well though. As long as you don’t have to many feeds hooked up to it. Then it turns quite slow and almost more hassle then just have them as RSS bookmarks in Safari.
Sadly, what brought me to write this post is not the brilliance of the website and service last.fm, but how they are slowly transforming into something… less brilliant. They are slowly but surely ‘losing it’. Instead of keeping it simple - focusing on one thing…
I don’t know. The greatness of the service is getting more and more lost in the overwhelming of features. The new design is also a major fall back.
Again, I’m sad I didn’t get a chance to tell everyone how f**king great they were.
This article, titled: People Over 35 Should be Dead, got me thinking of, and reminded me of, a chapter in a Chuck Palahniuk book called Survivors (both of them, the article and the book are brilliant and I suggest you read them both). They aren’t very similar. The article just brought a chapter of the book back into my memory.
They both are about how society evolves into different eras, that later on will be looked upon as something stupid. It’s about different cultures at different times and different reference points which place different weights upon different values. The only common factor is the fact that we are dealing with people - humans.
The book is about a guy called Tender who’s brought up in a cult called Chreedish. In this cult, only the first born son can stay in the church district colony, the others must leave and work in the outside world.
On chapter 45, starting on page 276 (the book is a countdown, the chapters are structured in reverse so it is actually chapter 2 page 13) Tender is getting a haircut done by his older brother Adam. This is the last thing before Tender leaves the church district colony for the outside world. Adam, being the first born son and allowed to stay in the church district colony, has also been allowed outside the colony to do some errands. So during these last moments together, Adam tells Tender a few things about the outside world. Here are some of quotes from that chapter:
In the outside world, he said. women had the power to change the color of their hair. And their eyes. And their lips.
In the outside world, he said, people kept birds inside their houses. He’d seen it.
In the outside world, he said, people were visited in their houses by spirits they called television.
Spirits spoke to people through what they called the radio.
People used what they called a telephone because they hated being close together and they were too scared of being alone.
People in the outside world said something stupid with their every breath, and when they didn’t talk their radios filled the gap with the copied voices of people singing the same song over and over.
Evil flowed through electric wires to make people lazy.
Water in pipes carried away their garbage and shit so that it was someone else’s problem.
…in the outside world, people looked in mirrors. Right in front of him on the bus, he said, people had mirrors and everyone was busy seeing how they looked. It was shameful.
A hotel, he told me, was a big house where a lot of people lived and ate and slept, but no on knew each other. He said that described most families in the outside world.
Churches in the outside world, my brother told me, were just the local stores that sold people lies made up in the distant factories of giant religions.
Sure - some of these are a bit exaggerated - but he makes a good point. If we look upon ourselves (at least here; in rich and other rich and priviledge societies) with a bit of an objective eye and a bit of distance - we are pathetic. Religion. Culture. Modern sociality. These blocks have shaped, over time - ridiculous value stones, which we all have bought shares in.
One of the best 2:20 minutes you can spend in front of your computer today.
Truth of Argentina
The video is also available on YouTube
a quick update on this post
Just found some interesting facts on an article titled: Did Argentina’s ‘Truth’ spot deserve more?
From the article
Cannes delegates found the ad to be powerful and cleverly written, yet the question lingered: Wouldn’t it have run originally in Spanish, not English? Apparently troubled by the notion that it might have been altered for the show, the judges awarded the ad and its agency, Savaglio\TBWA in Buenos Aires, a silver. “That’s probably why it didn’t win a gold,� noted one juror. For it to remain in the show at all, the juror said, “we had to assume it was the same as we had seen it.�
From the comments on the article
Hi, I’m from Brazil. This idea of two opposite texts in a single one, depending the direction you read is already common in Brazil and spanish speaking countries. I’ve received many spams with different texts (some about politics, some about love) using the same idea. It was nice to use it in advertising, but the idea is far from original.
/Posted by: Daniel | Jun 28, 2006 2:37:05 PM
Far from original and far from the first time this exact ad has seen the light of Cannes….it also won a CyberLion two years ago as a banner (minus the voiceover). I was on that jury and remember it well.
/Posted by: Sean Ganann | Jun 29, 2006 8:27:31 AM
The real thing about this ad is that actually it was “new� 4 years ago… The first version was a full-page print ad, the second version was this kindda “long-time-in-front-of-a-tiny� banner (a medal @ 2004 Cyber Lions), and now, the last but not least version is this TV Spot… So, my suggestion for the title of the post is “The silver, that should have been gold in Press 4 years ago and got a silver in Cyber 2 years ago!�
/Posted by: Dude from Argentina | Jul 7, 2006 11:00:08 AM
It is still “One of the best 2:20 minutes you can spend in front of your computer today”. I just found it extremely interesting that it won a interactive price two years ago… now - where is the good creative? Interactive? Press? Tv?… as i said - interesting.
