Vietnam Day 9 Hoi An
Citadel and the Forbidden City
Photos by Valera Meylis 2007
December 30, 2007
December 28, 2007
BMJ: Mixed messages
Medical myths
Rachel C Vreeman, fellow in children’s health services research, Children’s Health Services Research, Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis, IN, USA
Aaron E Carroll, assistant professor of paediatrics, Regenstrief Institute, Indianapolis, IN, USA
Correspondence to: R.C.Vreeman rvreeman@iupui.edu
Sometimes even doctors are duped, say Rachel C Vreeman and Aaron E Carroll
Physicians understand that practicing good medicine requires the constant acquisition of new knowledge, though they often assume their existing medical beliefs do not need re-examination. These medical myths are a light hearted reminder that we can be wrong and need to question what other falsehoods we unwittingly propagate as we practice medicine. We generated a list of common medical or medicine related beliefs espoused by physicians and the general public, based on statements we had heard endorsed on multiple occasions and thought were true or might be true. We selected seven for critical review:
People should drink at least eight glasses of water a day
We use only 10% of our brains
Hair and fingernails continue to grow after death
Shaving hair causes it to grow back faster, darker, or coarser
Reading in dim light ruins your eyesight
Eating turkey makes people especially drowsy
Mobile phones create considerable electromagnetic interference in hospitals.
We used Medline and Google to search for evidence to support or refute each of these claims. Because "proving a negative" can be challenging, we noted instances in which there was no evidence to support the claim.
read more
People should drink at least eight glasses of water a day
The advice to drink at least eight glasses of water a day can be found throughout the popular press.w1-w4 One origin may be a 1945 recommendation that stated: A suitable allowance of water for adults is 2.5 litres daily in most instances. An ordinary standard for diverse persons is 1 millilitre for each calorie of food. Most of this quantity is contained in prepared foods.w5 If the last, crucial sentence is ignored, the statement could be interpreted as instruction to drink eight glasses of water a day.w6
Another endorsement may have come from a prominent nutritionist, Frederick Stare, who once recommended, without references, the consumption "around 6 to 8 glasses per 24 hours," which could be "in the form of coffee, tea, milk, soft drinks, beer, etc."w7 The complete lack of evidence supporting the recommendation to drink six to eight glasses of water a day is exhaustively catalogued in an invited review by Heinz Valtin in the American Journal of Physiology.w8 Furthermore, existing studies suggest that adequate fluid intake is usually met through typical daily consumption of juice, milk, and even caffeinated drinks.w9 In contrast, drinking excess amounts of water can be dangerous, resulting in water intoxication, hyponatraemia, and even death.
We use only 10% of our brains
The belief that we use only 10% of our brains has persisted for over a century, despite dramatic advances in neuroscience. In another extensive expert literature review, Barry Beyerstein provides a detailed account of the origins of this myth and the evidence disputing it.w10 Some sources attribute this claim to Albert Einstein, but no such reference or statement by Einstein has ever been recorded.w10 This myth arose as early as 1907, propagated by multiple sources advocating the power of self improvement and tapping into each person’s unrealised latent abilities.w10-w13
Evidence from studies of brain damage, brain imaging, localisation of function, microstructural analysis, and metabolic studies show that people use much more than 10% of their brains.w10 Studies of patients with brain injury suggest that damage to almost any area of the brain has specific and lasting effects on mental, vegetative, and behavioural capabilities.w14-w16 Numerous types of brain imaging studies show that no area of the brain is completely silent or inactive.w10 w17 w18 The many functions of the brain are highly localised, with different tasks allocated to different anatomical regions.w19 w20 Detailed probing of the brain has failed to identify the "non-functioning" 90%.w10 Even micro-level localisation, isolating the response of single neurones, reveals no gaps or inactive areas.w10 w21 Metabolic studies, tracking differential rates of cellular metabolism within the brain, reveal no dormant areas.w10
Hair and fingernails continue to grow after death
Morbid information about the body captures the imagination and reinforces medical mythology. In All Quiet on the Western Front, the author describes a friend’s fingernails growing in corkscrews after the burial.w22 Johnny Carson even perpetuated this myth with his joke, "For three days after death hair and fingernails continue to grow, but phone calls taper off."w23 To quote the expert opinion of forensic anthropologist William Maples, "It is a powerful, disturbing image, but it is pure moonshine. No such thing occurs."w24
This myth does have a basis in a biological phenomenon that can occur after death. As Maples and numerous dermatologists explain, dehydration of the body after death and drying or desiccation may lead to retraction of the skin around the hair or nails.w24 The skin’s retraction can create an appearance of increased length or of greater prominence because of the optical illusion created by contrasting the shrunken soft tissues with the nails or hair. The actual growth of hair and nails, however, requires a complex hormonal regulation not sustained after death.w25 w26
Shaving hair causes it to grow back faster, darker, or coarser
Another common belief is that shaving hair off will cause it to grow back in a darker or coarser form or to grow back faster. It is often reinforced by popular media sourcesw27 and perhaps by people contemplating the quick appearance of stubble on their own body.
Strong scientific evidence disproves these claims. As early as 1928, a clinical trial showed that shaving had no effect on hair growth.w28 More recent studies confirm that shaving does not affect the thickness or rate of hair regrowth.w29 w30 In addition, shaving removes the dead portion of hair, not the living section lying below the skin’s surface, so it is unlikely to affect the rate or type of growth.w26 Shaved hair lacks the finer taper seen at the ends of unshaven hair, giving an impression of coarseness.w31 Similarly, the new hair has not yet been lightened by the sun or other chemical exposures, resulting in an appearance that seems darker than existing hair.
Reading in dim light ruins your eyesight
The fearful idea that reading in dim light could ruin one’s eyesight probably has its origins in the physiological experience of eye strain. Suboptimal lighting can create a sensation of having difficulty in focusing. It also decreases the rate of blinking and leads to discomfort from drying, particularly in conditions of voluntary squinting.w32 w33 The important counterpoint is that these effects do not persist.
The majority consensus in ophthalmology, as outlined in a collection of educational material for patients, is that reading in dim light does not damage your eyes.w34 Although it can cause eye strain with multiple temporary negative effects, it is unlikely to cause a permanent change on the function or structure of the eyes.w34 Even in patients with Sjögren’s syndrome (an autoimmune disease that features inflammation in certain glands of the body), decreased functional visual acuity associated with strained reading improves when they stop reading.w35
One review article on myopia concludes that increased use of one’s eyes, such as reading in dim light or holding books too close to the face, could result in impaired ocular growth and refractive error.w36 The primary evidence cited was epidemiological evidence of the increased prevalence of myopia and the high incidence of myopia in people with more academic experience.w36 The author notes that this hypothesis is just beginning to "gain scientific credence." In the past reading conditions involved even less light, relying on candles or lanterns, so increased rates of myopia over the past several centuries does not necessarily support that dim reading conditions are to blame.w37 In contrast to that review, hundreds of online expert opinions conclude that reading in low light does not hurt your eyes.w38
Eating turkey makes people especially drowsy
The presence of tryptophan in turkey may be the most commonly known fact pertaining to amino acids and food. Scientific evidence shows that tryptophan is involved in sleep and mood control and can cause drowsiness.w39 w40 L-tryptophan has been marketed as a sleep aid.w41
The myth is the idea that consuming turkey (and the tryptophan it contains) might particularly predispose someone to sleepiness. Actually, turkey does not contain an exceptional amount of tryptophan. Turkey, chicken, and minced beef contain nearly equivalent amounts of tryptophan (about 350 mg per 115 g), while other common sources of protein, such as pork or cheese, contain more tryptophan per gram than turkey.w42 Any effects of the tryptophan in turkey are probably minimised by consuming it in combination with other food, which would limit its absorption according to expert opinion.w43 In fact, consuming supplemental tryptophan on an empty stomach is recommended to aid absorption.w44 Other physiological mechanisms explain drowsiness after meals. Any large solid meal (such as turkey, sausages, stuffing, and assorted vegetables followed by Christmas pudding and brandy butter) can induce sleepiness because blood flow and oxygenation to the brain decreases,w45 and meals either high in protein or carbohydrate may cause drowsiness.w46-w51 Accompanying wine may also play a role.w52 w53
Mobile phones create considerable electromagnetic interference in hospitals
In a search by www.snopes.com we could not find any cases of death caused by the use of a mobile phone in a hospital or medical facility.w54 Less serious incidents, including false alarms on monitors, malfunctions in infusion pumps, and incorrect readings on cardiac monitors, have occasionally been reported. Although no references or dates are given, one government website published an anecdote in 2002 describing how use of a mobile phone in an intensive care unit resulted in an unintended bolus of adrenaline (epinephrine) from an infusion pump.w55 After publication of a journal article citing more than 100 reports of suspected electromagnetic interference with medical devices before 1993,w56 the Wall Street Journal published a front page article highlighting this danger.w57 Since that time, many hospitals banned the use of mobile phones, perpetuating the belief.
Despite the concerns, there is little evidence. In the United Kingdom, early studies showed that mobile phones interfered with only 4% of devices and only at a distance of <1 meter.w58 w59 Less than 0.1% showed serious effects.w58 At the Mayo Clinic in 2005, in 510 tests performed with 16 medical devices and six mobile telephones, the incidence of clinically important interference was 1.2%.w60 Similarly rigorous testing in Europe found minimal interference and only at distances less than 1 meter.w61 Recent technological improvements may be lessening even this minimal interference. A 2007 study, examining mobile phones "used in a normal way," found no interference of any kind during 300 tests in 75 treatment rooms.w62 In contrast, a large survey of anaesthesiologists suggested that use of mobile phones by doctors was associated with reduced risk of medical error or injury resulting from delays in communication (relative risk 0.78; 95% confidence interval 0.62 to 0.96).w63
Conclusions
Despite their popularity, all of these medical beliefs range from unproved to untrue. Although this was not a systematic review of either the breadth of medical myths or of all available evidence related to each myth, the search methods produced a large number of references. While some of these myths simply do not have evidence to confirm them, others have been studied and proved wrong.
Physicians would do well to understand the evidence supporting their medical decision making. They should at least recognise when their practice is based on tradition, anecdote, or art. While belief in the described myths is unlikely to cause harm, recommending medical treatment for which there is little evidence certainly can. Speaking from a position of authority, as physicians do, requires constant evaluation of the validity of our knowledge.
December 27, 2007
Putin's dog to get GPS
Les chiens russes entretiennent décidément un rapport singulier avec l’espace. Cinquante ans après Laïka, premier être vivant à voyager en orbite autour de la Terre, c’est au tour de Koni, le labrador de Vladimir Poutine, d’être mis à contribution pour le programme russe de géolocalisation par satellite. Lors d’une réunion télédiffusée avec M. Poutine, lundi 24 décembre, le vice-premier ministre Sergueï Ivanov s’entretenait du développement du Glonass, le GPS russe. « Quand pourrais-je en être équipé pour que ma chienne ne s’enfuie pas trop loin ? » s’est inquiété le président cynophile. Le ministre a su calmer les angoisses du chef de l’Etat : le service commercial du Glonass devrait être disponible « dès juillet prochain ».
Mais avant de doter le meilleur ami du président d’un collier « géolocalisable », encore faut-il que le système Glonass soit prêt. Equivalent russe du Global Positioning System américain (ou du Galileo européen, toujours en développement), Glonass sera, à terme, composé de 24 satellites couvrant la planète. 24 satellites en 2010 Mardi 25 décembre, 3 satellitesont été lancés de la base de Baïkonour, au Kazakhstan, portant à 18 le nombre de satellites en orbite de la « constellation » Glonass, un nombre suffisant pour couvrir la totalité du territoire russe. En 2010, les 24 satellites devraient être en activité. Comme son équivalent américain, Glonass était initialement destiné à des usages militaires. Lancé en 1976, le projet était moribond, faute de fonds, après la chute de l’Union soviétique. Il a été réanimé en 2003 avec les premiers lancements de satellites plus puissants. A l’instar de Galileo pour les Européens, Glonass doit permettre à la Russie de s’affranchir des aléas diplomatiques et militaires liés à l’utilisation du GPS, géré par l’armée américaine. Moscou ne boude pas pour autant le projet européen : une mise en commun partielle des deux réseaux est prévue d’ici à 2012, date à laquelle le système Galileo devrait être totalement opérationnel. Mais l’essentiel n’est pas là. Et si, malgré le fameux collier, le président Poutine devait perdre la trace de Koni ? Qu’à cela ne tienne, il pourra toujours lui rendre hommage en se rendant à Saint-Pétersbourg: des citoyens de l’avenue Primorski ont récemment demandé l’autorisation d’y ériger une statue en l’honneur du « premier chien de Russie »… a
December 26, 2007
December 25, 2007
Vietnam Day 4 Ha Long Bay
Funny Signs....
Ha Long Bay
Cave in the Ha Long Bay
Photos by Valera Meylis 2007
December 24, 2007
December 23, 2007
December 22, 2007
Vietnam. Hanoi Day 1
In the city
Boat Trip to Ninh Binh
A short video
A Pagoda
Signs
Please do not watch this video if you are easily scared. The video shows a killing of a cobra for the delight of the tourists who are later served its meat prepared 7 different ways. In Viet Nam cobras, frogs, rats, dogs, porcupines are part of many restaurants' menus (as they are in China). Appalling! I am very seriously considering becoming a vegetarian. It may not be a foolproof solution, as many animals die in the production of vegetables as well, but watching the live thing getting killed right before the consumption is something very hard to stomach.
The remains
Photos by Valera Meylis 2007
Peking Opera House
A brand new Opera House designed by Andreu, the French architect, who designed de Gaulle airport terminal 2. The one that collapsed couple of years ago :)
December 16, 2007
NYT: Jewish Orthodox America
KIRYAS JOEL, N.Y.
It was late one night over the summer when the Greenberg family was frightened by a menacing phone call. Then came threats, and then vandalized cars. As the days turned into weeks and the police canvassed the neighborhood, knocking on doors and interviewing potential witnesses, they were met with silence.
This was not the troubled streets of the city, nor were the witnesses fearful of gang retribution. Rather, this was Orange County, and the victims — a husband and wife who are members of the Hasidic sect known as Satmars — said they were being harassed by those in their own insular world here.
The woman, Toby Greenberg, told the police that the root of the harassment was her decision to deviate slightly from the culture of modesty that defines and reinforces this Orthodox Jewish enclave of bewigged women in long-sleeved shirts and ankle-length skirts and bearded men in black hats and long black coats.
According to the police, Mrs. Greenberg said she was singled out because she chose to wear denim skirts, long, natural-looking wigs made of human hair, and stockings without a visible seam — traditionally worn because they show that women’s legs are not bare. The incidents offered a rare glimpse into the strict social dynamics that govern life in this village of 20,000 people, an hour from Manhattan and not far from West Point. It is a place where television and the Internet are forbidden and women do not drive, restrictions intended to provide a haven from the temptations of the outside world.
read more
Occasionally someone defies the social mores — whether it is a young man frequenting bars in the nearby village of Monroe or a woman dressing inappropriately or flirting. That is when the “vaad hatznius,” the rabbinically appointed modesty committee that enforces the village’s rules of behavior and appearance, intervenes.
“If we find they have a TV or a married woman won’t wear a wig, we will invite them to speak with us and try to convince them it’s unacceptable, or next year we will not accept their children into the school system,” said David Ekstein, the vice president of the village’s leading congregation, Yetev Lev, and one of eight men who make up the committee, hand-picked by Rabbi Aaron Teitelbaum, the town’s spiritual leader.
Mr. Ekstein, 62, the president of an insurance company, said that the committee was widely respected for its role in protecting the community, especially children. “There has to be some kind of watchdog,” he said. “But do we have any real power? We’re not a government.” In the case of Mrs. Greenberg, he insisted, “This had nothing to do with the vaad or the community.” He called the harassment a “chilul hashem,” a desecration of God’s name. But weeks after the incidents began, the New York State Police started to investigate the case of Mrs. Greenberg, the 25-year-old mother of a young daughter, and her husband, Yoel, who accused the vaad hatznius of orchestrating the harassment. According to the police, leaflets calling the couple immoral and threatening them with expulsion were scattered in the streets and delivered to their home.
In September, the tires of their Chevrolet Impala were slashed and the warning “Get out, defiled person” was slathered in Yiddish in white paint on a window of their Mazda CX-7. That was when Mrs. Greenberg approached the authorities — a rare move in a community that is loath to attract attention from secular law enforcement.
Hella Winston, the author of “Unchosen: The Hidden Lives of Hasidic Rebels,” said that it was not uncommon for women who defy their strictly codified role in such communities to become targets.
Ms. Winston, an assistant professor of sociology at Queens College, said that because these sects can not legally discipline nonconformists, they must resort to public shaming. “Their power is in fear and intimidation,” she said, though “blacklisting children from schools can at times cross the line into threats and violence.” The efforts to silence the Greenbergs appear to have worked. Reached at her home, Mrs. Greenberg, with worry in her voice, declined to comment.
Kiryas Joel is no stranger to social discord and outbursts of violence. Since its inception in the 1970s, residents considered to be flouting the village’s stringent rules have been victims of vandalism, beatings and arson, as well as expulsion.
A decade ago, a faction of the town’s Satmars sued its rivals in federal court for religious persecution and intimidation. The dissidents claimed they had been assaulted, their cars set on fire and the windows in their homes smashed because they were defying the authorities chosen by Rabbi Teitelbaum. The two sides reconciled only so that Rabbi Teitelbaum would not have to take the witness stand.
On a recent day, villagers on the main commercial street here condemned the vigilantes and the harassment, although they also voiced disapproval of Mrs. Greenberg’s actions.
“People are hot-blooded. They see her on the street and have asked her nicely to stop wearing tight-fitted clothing, but she wouldn’t listen,” said a woman working at Kiryas Joel Shoes, who identified herself only as Sarah. “If she had behaved as she does inside the four walls of her house, it would have been fine, but on the street is different. She turned it into a dirty public thing.”
And although Sarah, a mother of 11 children, did not condone any efforts to drive the Greenbergs from the community, she said: “They’re not after you if you go off a little bit. You really have to do something to bring shame.”
After two months of fruitless inquiries, the police closed the investigation last month. “Pick any ethnic group and people are suspicious at times,” said Sgt. Warner Hein of the State Police. “They don’t want to be seen as cooperating, even at the expense of tragedies in their own community.”
December 15, 2007
December 13, 2007
Putin to become Prime Minister
So here's the next trick to swindle Russians yet again out of democracy and any chance of prosperity... Dmitry Medvedev announces that Putin would be a great Prime-Minister.
December 12, 2007
First Train Between Koreas
The train station inaugurated by George Bush in 2002 and visited by me in 2006, has finally seen its first train! The pictures of the train station can be found on this blog in July 2006 archives. I have a stamp in my passport allowing me to board the train, once the service is opened :)
UN TRAIN de marchandises a franchi, mardi 11 décembre, la frontière entre les deux Corées pour la première fois depuis cinquante-six ans. Le convoi de fret a traversé la frontière entre les deux pays divisés depuis la guerre de Corée (1950-1953) en début de matinée, au niveau de la gare sudcoréenne de Dorasan. Cette gare, inaugurée par le président américain George Bush en 2002, est devenue le symbole de la réconciliation entre les deux entités de la péninsule, toujours théoriquement en guerre, seul un armistice – et non un traité de paix – ayant conclu les affrontements en 1953. Ce service de fret régulier reliera la ville de Munsan au Sud et celle de Bongdong au Nord, sur une vingtaine de kilomètres. « Paix et prospérité » La liaison ferroviaire est destinée à acheminer des matériaux de construction vers le Nord dans le cadre de l’aide apportée par Séoul à sa voisine communiste. Elle desservira en particulier un complexe industriel situé dans la ville frontalière nord-coréenne de Kaesong, où 13 000 Nord-Coréens sont employés par vingt-deux entreprises du Sud.
La réouverture de cette liaison avait été décidée après le sommet historique intercoréen de Pyongyang, le 4 octobre, conclu par une déclaration commune visant à promouvoir « paix et prospérité » entre les deux Corées. Des responsables des deux pays se sont ensuite rencontrés à Séoul, à la mi-novembre, pour discuter de plusieurs projets de coopération économique, dont une zone de pêche commune dans l’espace maritime situé à l’ouest de la péninsule. – (AFP.)
Just Read (Sorta): Milton
Milton "The Paradise Lost". The commentaries and the footnotes are more interesting than the actual test. Fucking unreadable. With all due respect...
December 11, 2007
December 10, 2007
The First Total War
Societies implacably mobilized against each other, in conflicts ending only in unconditional surrender; large-scale conscript armies, whose titanic clashes provoke mass slaughter; the enemy utterly dehumanized, with executions of prisoners and unspeakable atrocities against civilians; territories precariously controlled by occupying armies, whose power and authority are systematically eroded by guerrilla groups; and war and military martyrdom represented as the highest of human endeavours.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, David A. Bell suggests in The First Total War, these features of modern war were not born in the World Wars of the twentieth century. Rather, their origin lies in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic conflicts of 1792-1815, which gave birth to what Carl Schmitt later described as the norm of "absolute enmity". Bell claims that it was this moment - which consecrated Europe's largest empire since the Middle Ages, and its greatest conqueror since Charlemagne - that shaped the modern understanding and practice of "total" warfare, carrying it across the murderous battlefields of the twentieth century.
read the rest of the article here
December 9, 2007
The Best Love Story
Jeanne Conway and Douglas O’Connor
By LOIS SMITH BRADY
WHEN Gen. Douglas John O’Connor, 76, talks about being 17 and meeting Jeanne O’Brien, he often exclaims, “I remember it vividly!”
They were introduced in 1949 at Manhattanville College, her alma mater, when he and some fellow students from St. Peter’s College in Jersey City arrived for a conference. “And who did I meet but Jeanne Louise O’Brien,” he recalled, slowly enunciating her name as if it were a favorite line in a poem. “She was stunning, obviously an athlete.”
He soon learned that she had grown up riding polo ponies in Loudonville, N.Y., played field hockey and drove a convertible that matched her camel’s hair coat.
They dated for years, though both say they were more like best friends. “There was no hanky-panky,” she, now also 76, reported in her very direct manner. “He was very intellectual and friendly and a gentleman. It made me happy to see him so happy in my company.” He transferred to West Point in 1950, hanging her picture in his locker. “I had plans to marry her at some time in the future,” he said.
Instead they parted in 1954, when her father died suddenly and she moved back to Loudonville, and he was sent to Georgia for training following his graduation from West Point. “A long-distance relationship was not in the cards in that era,” he said.
In 1955, she married someone else, becoming Jeanne Conway. “I remember it vividly,” he said. “I’m at Fort Bragg in the 82nd Airborne Division jumping out of airplanes and I pick up the Sunday New York Times and whose picture do I see but the girl of my dreams?”
He was disappointed, but not devastated. “I’m an engineer by training so you say, ‘Well, that didn’t work out. What’s the solution? What’s next?’” For the next 50-plus years, he shuttled between civilian and Army positions, marrying twice along the way, both times to women named Mary Alice.
In 1974, he was living in California and working for General Instrument when the first Mary Alice had an aneurysm and died suddenly. “I was completely traumatized,” he said. To his surprise, he received a condolence letter from Mrs. Conway, who was living in Manhattan and raising two daughters. She and her husband became part of his “recovery team,” he said, organizing East Coast parties for him. Six months later, still in mourning, he met his next wife on a street corner. “I’m standing in the sunlight in California and the tears are coming down my cheek and this woman stopped and said, ‘Are you all right?’” he recalled. “And I said, ‘No, I’m not all right.’”
In 1978, Mrs. Conway joined ITT in Manhattan, eventually directing its employee assistance program. “You can only clean out so many closets,” she said. Her former beau, meanwhile, returned to the Army, becoming a brigadier general. By 1995 he was retired from the service and a widower again. His second Mary Alice died of Lou Gehrig’s disease. A year and a half later, Mrs. Conway’s husband died of heart attack. The general swiftly wrote her a condolence letter. General O’Connor had kept photos of her in a drawer at home, but rarely looked at them. He didn’t need to. He vividly remembered her. “Love never fails,” he said. “I really believe that.”
Months later she and her sister, Helen Maher, invited General O’Connor to a family party in Florida. “It was like we never left off,” Mrs. Conway said. Her sister commented: “They have both weathered many storms and always had fidelity and faith and focus.”
He began flying east to see her. “We had done what we had to do with our lives,” she said. “Now, we had the chance to concentrate on each other again,” she said. She describes their relationship as much freer now, “a magic slate” upon which they can “write anything they want. They became inseparable. “If I’m not with Jeanne, I feel like I’m just waiting to be back together with her,” he said. “It’s that kind of relationship.”
On Nov. 24, in chilly-yet-sunny weather, the couple were married at the Roman Catholic Church of St. Vincent Ferrer on the Upper East Side. It was a ceremony much like one they might have had in the 1950s. Guests in flip hairdos and wingtip shoes sang “Amazing Grace.” The bridegroom wore his uniform out of nostalgia because that’s what he always wore when they first dated. When the church doors opened after the ceremony, it was strange to see 2007 Hummers and taxis roaring by.
“My philosophy is, this was always meant to be,” the bridegroom said a few days before. “This was the girl of my dreams, the girl I had on a pedestal when I was a young man.” He added, “It’s as if the greatest dream you ever had finally came true.”
December 7, 2007
December 6, 2007
Slavoj Zizek: What To Do about Capitalism
by Slavoj Žižek
One of the clearest lessons of the last few decades is that capitalism is indestructible. Marx compared it to a vampire, and one of the salient points of comparison now appears to be that vampires always rise up again after being stabbed to death. Even Mao’s attempt, in the Cultural Revolution, to wipe out the traces of capitalism, ended up in its triumphant return.
Today’s Left reacts in a wide variety of ways to the hegemony of global capitalism and its political supplement, liberal democracy. It might, for example, accept the hegemony, but continue to fight for reform within its rules (this is Third Way social democracy).
Or, it accepts that the hegemony is here to stay, but should nonetheless be resisted from its ‘interstices’.
Or, it accepts the futility of all struggle, since the hegemony is so all-encompassing that nothing can really be done except wait for an outburst of ‘divine violence’ – a revolutionary version of Heidegger’s ‘only God can save us.’
read the whole article here
December 5, 2007
Xa-Xa
Маленький мальчик спрашивает отца:
- Папа, а что такое "биология"?
- Ну... Как бы тебе попроще объяснить. Вот ты, например, похож на
меня. Это и есть биология.
- А "социология" - это что? - не унимается сын.
- Это... Хммм... Вот у соседа сын тоже похож на меня. Это уже
социология!
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Кубинский анекдот:
Идет мужик по улице, смотрит - возле бара стоит девушка, плачет и
танцует.
- чего ты плачешь?
- мама заболела...
- а чего тогда танцуешь?
- музыка хорошая...
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
В цирке:
- А сейчас номер для настоящих мужчин. Записывайте: 8-913-123-45-67.
Настя.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
December 4, 2007
ITV Angelo's
A funny new show with Shelley Longworth (of The Adam and Shelley Show, which just finished its run). This one takes place at a small coffee shop in London, where the quirky characters (police couple, taxi driver, mime who sings etc.) hang out.
 Clip 1 |  Clip 2 |
Taxi clips
 Clip 1 |  Clip 2 |  Clip 3 |
Song and Dance clips
December 3, 2007
Just Read: Julian Barnes
A rather dry yet eloquent rendition of a real-life event that brought together two very different lives. Barnes is never boring, never dull - but the bravura of "Flaubert's Parrot" is barely present in this novel. Excerpts from the real letters, court documents and newspapers all blend together with the fictional emotions, narrated in chapters, named alternately "Arthur" or "George". There are couple of "Campbells" thrown in, as well as "Arthur & George" ones.
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Arthur is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, physician, sportsman, gentleman par excellence and the inventor of Sherlock Holmes; George is George Edalji, also a real, if less well-known person, whose path crossed not quite fatefully with the famous author's. Edalji was the son of a Parsi father (who was a Shropshire vicar), and a Scots mother. In 1903, George, a solicitor, was accused of writing obscene, threatening letters to his own family and of mutilating cattle in his farm community. He was convicted of criminal behavior in a blatant miscarriage of justice based on racial prejudice. Eventually, Sir Arthur ("Irish by ancestry, Scottish by birth") heard about George's case and began to advocate on his behalf. In this combination psychological novel, detective story and literary thriller, Barnes elegantly dissects early 20th-century English society as he spins this true-life story with subtle and restrained irony. Every line delivered by the many characters—the two principals, their school chums (Barnes sketches their early lives), their families and many incidentals—rings with import. His dramatization of George's trial, in particular, grinds with telling minutiae, and his portrait of Arthur is remarkably rich, even when tackling Doyle's spiritualist side. Shortlisted for the Booker, this novel about love, guilt, identity and honor is a triumph of storytelling, taking the form Barnes perfected in Flaubert's Parrot (1985) and stretching it yet again.
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December 2, 2007
Just seen: Spirit of the Beehive
'El Espíritu de la Colmena' ('The Spirit of the Beehive') 1973 by Victor Erice.
What a beautiful movie! A great precursor and companion to "Pan's Labyrinth" which creates the magic ambience without ANY special effects, just landscapes, music and mesmerizing landscapes. MUST SEE! Thanks, Criterion.
Norwegians towns' bad choices
NARVIK, Norway, Nov. 30 — At this time of year, the sun does not rise at all this far north of the Arctic Circle. But Karen Margrethe Kuvaas says she has not been able to sleep well for days. What is keeping her awake are the far-reaching ripple effects of the troubled housing market in sunny Florida, California and other parts of the United States. Ms. Kuvaas is the mayor of Narvik, a remote seaport where the season’s perpetual gloom deepened even further in recent days after news that the town — along with three other Norwegian municipalities — had lost about $64 million, and potentially much more, in complex securities investments that went sour. “I think about it every minute,” Ms. Kuvaas, 60, said in an interview, her manner polite but harried. “Because of this, we can’t focus on things that matter, like schools or care for the elderly.”
Norway’s unlucky towns are the latest victims — and perhaps the least likely ones so far — of the credit crisis that began last summer in the American subprime mortgage market and has spread to the farthest reaches of the world, causing untold losses and sowing fears about the global economy. Where all the bad debt ended up remains something of a mystery, but to those hit by the collateral damage, it hardly matters. Tiny specks on the map, these Norwegian towns are links in a chain of misery that stretches from insolvent homeowners in California to the state treasury of Maine, and from regional banks in Germany to the mightiest names on Wall Street. Citigroup, among the hardest hit, created the investments bought by the towns through a Norwegian broker. For Ms. Kuvaas, being in such company is no comfort. People here are angry and scared, fearing that the losses will hurt local services like kindergartens, nursing homes and cultural institutions. With Christmas only weeks away, Narvik has already missed a payroll for municipal workers.
Above all, the residents want to know how their close-knit community of 18,000 could have mortgaged its future — built on the revenue from a hydroelectric plant on a nearby fjord — by dabbling in what many view as the black arts of investment bankers in distant places. “The people in City Hall were naïve and they were manipulated,” said Paal Droenen, who was buying fish at a market across the street from the mayor’s office. “The fund guys were telling them tales, like, ‘This could happen to you.’ It’s a catastrophe for a small town like this.” Now, the towns are considering legal action against the Norwegian brokerage company, Terra Securities, that sold them the investments. They allege that they were duped by Terra’s brokers, who did not warn them that these types of securities were risky and subject to being cashed out, at a loss, if their market price fell below a certain level.
“When you sell something that is not what you say it is, that is a lie,” Ms. Kuvaas said. She disputed the suggestion that people here lacked the sophistication to understand what they were buying. “We’re not especially stupid because we live so far in the north,” she said
December 1, 2007
Просмотрено: Путешествие с домашними животными
На последнем Московском кинофестивале 2007 года фильм Веры Сторожевой «Путешествие с домашними животными» взял главный приз.
A very simple film, describing a simple life - beautiful poetic rendition of a young woman's reawakening.
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