Since Los Angeles 1984 I recall watching a lot of Olympic Games every fourth summer (my oldest Olympic impression is the pole vault, not the rocketeers). My record was Sydney 2000: I watched an average of 8 hours per day, perhaps even more.
But this time I watched ZERO seconds of the Olympic Games. Nothing, absolute nothing, not even in
YouTube or any other online videos. I just kept reading the usual newspapers which I always read.
I talked about
boycotting the Games, and I did it. Because I don't either like the repressive government of China nor the attitude of Occident towards China: being "ecnonomically affraid" of them, but supporting them, and making them stronger. It's nonsense, a contradiction. Absurd. For example: compare these numbers:
14,901 residents were relocated to make way for Olympic venues, according to a Beijing municipal official. But a human-rights group says that
1,500,000 people evicted to make way for Olympic venues and infrastructure. (Yes, unfortunately I don't know the source: I read it
here, where you can read some other interesting numbers.)
It's stupid to get impressed because they are "so successful". At what cost? Athletes are preselected very soon, trained for years at the governement's expenses, so that they can achieve the most gold medals in order to impress us. And people do get impressed.
But suicide is top-5 in the death causes in that country. There are for instance one suicide and eight failed suicide attempts every two minutes in China. Obviously there are many reasons to attempt suicide, not only government's role.
Liu Xiang's story is a good hint to understand how things work. Or Cao Lei's (I really think that the Party put pressure on the father's decision of not telling her that her mother had passed away).
C'est ça!
Blue Brain Project is one of the most ambitious projects of neuroscience: "the first comprehensive attempt to reverse-engineer the mammalian brain, in order to understand brain function and dysfunction through detailed simulations".
Detail of Jackson Pollock's #8 (1949)
Since Los Angeles 1984 I recall watching a lot of Olympic Games every fourth summer (my oldest Olympic impression is the pole vault, not the rocketeers). My record was Sydney 2000: I watched an average of 8 hours per day, perhaps even more.
In Egypt, two scepters developed from them: the Heqat, an emblem of authority, and the Was-Scepter, which had a religious aspect as well. In the Near East, curved staffs primarily had a ritual function: a loosy curved staff (Gamlum) in the hand of the rulers, priests and gods was used in incantations. A strongly curved staff (Kalmus) is, in the case of Hittite rulers, also an allusion to ritual functions. The Etruscans adopted the strongly curved staff from the East. It seems to have been primarily a staff of command, including --as in Orient-- priestly functions. A point at the upper end could have served as a help for dividing up the sky of the earth.
We are at the Station Schlachtensee and want to get back home. It seems that soon it will begin to rain:
BTW: if you attend a Ph.D. Kolloquium in Berlin's Humboldt Universität you'll see Hegel's desk.
Hace 487 años terminó el sitio de la ciudad-isla de Tenochtitlan. 13 de agosto de 1521. El santoral indicaba a san Hipólito, y esa misma tarde Hernán Cortés mandó poner la primera piedra de la primera iglesia, y celebraron allí mismo una misa sobre un altar improvisado. Luego, la iglesia se llamó San Hipólito. He aquí dos fotos tomadas por Guillermo Kahlo.
Pasé ya la centésima página de "Cien años de soledad", que no había leído antes. El balance: negativo. Esperaba más, no un cúmulo de aventuritas superficialmente narradas y una multiplicación de personajes. Cantidad a costa de profundidad.
The Vietnam girl's interactive "Fountains" with water, cups and Duchamp's banks.
This marvelous lamp.
This sick guy by some Holland artist, which makes guests of the hotel who see them through the window and don't know what all this is about to call Reception.
This drawings by Elliason (or one of his relatives? ... not sure): he sat on a boat and didn't move the pencil, but the sea itself moved the table and the paper. This is somehow the visual version of Zadar's sea orgel.
Another Elliason work: light projected to a screen through a mirror and steam.
"For whom the bell" is the first work, and somehow it repeats Kandinsky's idea of "seeing" the sound of music. The bell moves with increasingly speed, but since it lacks of clapper. Nonetheless, due to it's velocity, you're able to hear the air waving in the inside rim. Fantastic!
