Просмотрено: Полустанок

Два клипа из замечательного советского фильма

Просмотрено На семи ветрах

Hong Kong: New Year is coming!

Жители Гонконга осаждают банки в погоне за «счастливыми» купюрами
В преддверии китайского Нового года, который жители Поднебесной празднуют по лунному календарю 9 февраля, в Гонконге началась охота за «счастливыми» купюрами. Как передает радио «Маяк», тысячи людей выстраиваются в очереди за бумажными деньгами, по традиции каждый год выпускаемые банками города. Свежеотпечатанные купюры являются неотъемлемым атрибутом празднования китайского Нового года. Они считаются счастливыми, и каждый год три банка Гонконга выдают от 300 до 400 млн новых и приведенных в порядок старых банкнот. Погоня за новенькими купюрами превращается в Гонконге в настоящую лихорадку. Тысячи людей выстраиваются в очереди за несколько часов до открытия банков, чтобы получить счастливые купюры. Главным новогодним подарком в Китае является небольшой красный конвертик, в который вкладываются деньги. Наибольшим шиком считается положить в конверт новую купюру.
Самой популярной банкнотой, предназначенной для подарка, является 20 гонконгских долларов (около 2,5 долларов). Другим сезонным хитом стала вышедшая в массовое употребление пластиковая банкнота в 10 гонконгских долларов.

NYT: Monkey's Mind

True

Интернет - это среда, поощряющая писать людей, не умеющих читать.
The Internet is an environment encouraging to write those who cannot read.
http://denismajor.livejournal.com/204105.html

Советы джентльменам: ковыряние в носу - лучшее средство от грязи под
ногтями.
Advice for gentlemen:picking up your nose is the best way to prevent dirt under your fingernails.

Just read: Darkness Visible

So what can be said about this dark intriguing but somewhat clumsily written book? Like in a bad horror movie which hints at the nightmare ahead by showing glimpses of thing to come, this book outlines four sets of characters that will intersect at a later point. I am going through the works of Golding trying to find the reason for the Nobel Prize as well as fame and glory that he supposedly deserved for his works. This work definitely is not the reason, but then what do I know :) I am just a reader.

see what a lit crit article says about the book:

Darkness Visible is undoubtedly William Golding's most puzzling and enigmatic work, a fact that has not been lost on many critics who have noted its inscrutability without attempting a detailed analysis of the text. In fact, given the critical attention that Golding's work usually receives, criticism about Darkness Visible is conspicuous by its absence.' Golding refuses to comment about the novel, a refusal which perhaps suggests the extremely personal nature of the work and which ultimately draws more attention to it: "The fact of the matter is . . . that for a number of reasons Darkness Visible is the one of my books I have refused to talk
about: and the more I am pressed, the more stubborn my refusal has become" (Crompton, View 11). He will talk about his other wprks and has commented that "I've never read a criticism of my work which is half complicated enough. It's far more complicated than it looks" (Haffenden 105). Such authorial statements only add to the mystery inherent in Golding's work, a mystery culminating in Darkness Visible.
Darkness Visible-with its title from Paradise Lost (I:63), its epigraph from The Aeneid (6:266), and its narrative, in part, from the apocalyptic books of the Bible-is a novel about judgment.
read more of the article here

Просмотрено:Тупой жирный заяц

Играли два товарища...
Наша история разворачивается в провинциальном детском театре. Здесь все как обычно — актеры годами играют зверушек, а закулисная жизнь... полна интриг, сомнительных секретов и роковых страстей.

Главный герой — актер Аркаша Сапелкин — последние 10 лет играет в театре только одну роль — роль Зайца. Но разве этого просит душа? И он начинает "творить" прямо в костюме желтого зайца! Его не удерживают ни выговоры, ни угрозы директора театра. Заяц — крепкий орешек. "Высшие силы" в лице Никиты Сергеевича приходят к нему во сне, благословляют на настоящее творчество, и полный решимости Аркадий вступает в бой за право быть художником!

Но вот в жизни театра открывается новая страница — у него появляется спонсор — владелец колбасных цехов провозглашает новое направление в творчестве детского театра: "секс и ужасы — то, что нужно простому зрителю!". Он открывает в театре колбасную точку и начинает репетировать новое шоу "Плоть или Вампиры навсегда". Неожиданно Аркаша Сапелкин получает в новом спектакле главную роль...

Кажется, мечты Зайца начинают сбываться?

Vietnam: The People

Photos by Valera Meylis 2007-2008

US Primaries

at the Church listening to Obama speak...
Photo Le Monde 2008

Masdar: The City of the Future

WWF and the government of Abu Dhabi today launched a Sustainability Strategy to deliver the world’s greenest city – Masdar City. The six square kilometre city, designed by Foster and Associates, is to house an eventual 50,000 people in accordance with WWF One Planet Living sustainability standards which include specific targets for the city’s ecological footprint. Independent and public verification of Masdar City's performance in meeting these standards is just one of the features distinguishing the project. Another is the commitment that the project will not just preserve existing regional biodiversity but enhance it.
Masdar City - which will be zero-carbon, zero-waste and car-free - plans to exceed the requirements of the 10 sustainability principles of the One Planet Living programme, a global initiative launched by WWF and environmental consultancy BioRegional. It is expected this will make it a global benchmark for sustainable urban development.
The electricity for the six square kilometre city will be generated by photovoltaic panels, while cooling will be provided via concentrated solar power. Water will be provided through a solar-powered desalination plant. Landscaping within the city and crops grown outside the city will be irrigated with grey water and treated waste water produced by the city. Construction is to begin in early 2008.
read more

Jean-Paul Jeanrenaud, Director of WWF International’s One Planet Living initiative, said, ”Today Abu Dhabi is embarking on a journey to become the global capital of the renewable energy revolution. Abu Dhabi is the first hydrocarbon-producing nation to have taken such a significant step towards sustainable living.
“Masdar is an example of the paradigm shift that is needed and the strategic vision of the Abu Dhabi government is a case study in global leadership. We hope that Masdar City will prove that sustainable living can be affordable and attractive in all aspects of human living – from businesses and manufacturing facilities to universities and private homes.”
The city is part of the Masdar Initiative, Abu Dhabi’s multi-faceted investment in the exploration, development and commercialisation of future energy sources and clean technology solutions. A model of the Masdar City will be unveiled on January 21, at the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi.
Dr. Sultan al Jaber, CEO of the Masdar Initiative, said, “Masdar City will question conventional patterns of urban development, and set new benchmarks for sustainability and environmentally friendly design – the students, faculty and businesses located in Masdar City will not only be able to witness innovation first-hand, but they will also participate in its development.”
“We are pleased to be able to work with One Planet Living to make our vision a reality,” he said. Pooran Desai OBE, co-founder of BioRegional and Technical Director of the One Planet Living Communities programme, said Masdar would be the largest and one of the most advanced sustainable communities in the world.
“The vision of One Planet Living is a world where people everywhere can lead happy, healthy lives within their fair share of the Earth’s resources. Masdar gives us a breathtaking insight into this positive, alternative future.
“In realising the goal of a sustainable future, Masdar is committed to achieving the One Planet Living Program’s Ten Guiding Principles, covering issues that range from how waste is dealt with to the energy performance of the buildings.”
The One Planet Living programme is based on 10 unique principles of sustainability. Masdar City will meet and exceed each of these, as detailed below.
These targets are to be achieved by the time the Masdar City is completed and fully functioning in 2012.

One Planet Living principle
Masdar Target
ZERO CARBON
100 per cent of energy supplied by renewable energy – Photovoltaics, concentrated solar power, wind, waste to energy and other technologies
ZERO WASTE
99 per cent diversion of waste from landfill (includes waste reduction measures, re-use of waste wherever possible, recycling, composting, waste to energy)
SUSTAINABLE TRANSPORT
Zero carbon emissions from transport within the city; implementation of measures to reduce the carbon cost of journeys to the city boundaries (through facilitating and encouraging the use of public transport, vehicle sharing, supporting low emissions vehicle initiatives)
SUSTAINABLE MATERIALS
Specifying high recycled materials content within building products; tracking and encouraging the reduction of embodied energy within material sand throughout the construction process; specifying the use of sustainable materials such as Forest Stewardship Council certified timber, bamboo and other products
SUSTAINABLE FOOD
Retail outlets to meet targets for supplying organic food and sustainable and or fair trade products
SUSTAINABLE WATER
Per capita water consumption to be at least 50 per cent less than the national average; all waste water to be re-used
HABITATS AND WILDLIFE
All valuable species to be conserved or relocated with positive mitigation targets
CULTURE AND HERITAGE
Architecture to integrate local values.
EQUITY AND FAIR TRADE
Fair wages and working conditions for all workers (including construction) as defined by international labour standards
HEALTH AND HAPPINESS
Facilities and events for every demographic group
In June 2007, Masdar City received the first World Clean Energy Award from the Transatlantic21 Association in Basel, Switzerland. In September 2007, the city’s design was voted “Sustainable Region/ City of the Year” at Euromoney and Ernst & Young’s Global Renewable Energy Awards.

How True...

when it comes to money, everybody has the same religion.
Voltaire

Iran: Ashura

Double-click the image above to read the article in Le Monde.

Read an article from Wikipedia here

Quote of the day

The real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing at the right place but to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.
- Dorothy Nevill

NYT: FDA approves cloned meat

By ANDREW MARTIN
After years of debate, the Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday declared that food from cloned animals and their progeny is safe, removing the last government hurdle before meat and milk derived from copies of prize dairy cows and superior hogs can be sold at grocery stores. The decision comes more than four years after the agency tentatively declared that food from cloned animals was safe, only to face a backlash from consumer groups and some scientists who said the science supporting the decision was shaky. On Tuesday, the F.D.A. declared that further studies had confirmed its earlier decision. Extensive measurement of nutrients in the meat and milk of clones found no cause for alarm, the agency said.
“Following extensive review, the risk assessment did not identify any unique risks for human food from cattle, swine or goat clones, and concluded that there is sufficient information to determine that food from cattle, swine and goat clones is as safe to eat as that from their more conventionally bred counterparts," the agency said in a statement. The F.D.A. ruling was a major victory for cloning companies, which hope to use the cloned animals primarily for breeding purposes, selling copies of prize dairy cows, steers and hogs. The company putting the most effort into developing the technology is ViaGen, of Austin, Texas. That company and others have already produced scores of clones that live on American farmsteads, though the F.D.A. has asked the farmers to honor a voluntary moratorium on the sale of clone meat and milk.
No law prohibits such sales, and the document the F.D.A. issued Tuesday is essentially an advisory opinion to industry saying the agency sees no ground to seek a permanent ban.
read more

Consumer groups and some members of Congress have fought the decision, arguing that there was still not enough science. Some groups also object to the technology on animal-welfare grounds, noting that clones face an elevated risk of health problems early in life.
It remains to be seen how widely the technology will be adopted. Interest from the food industry has been tepid, with some companies declaring that they will not sell milk or meat from cloned animals or their offspring. Other types of reproductive technology, such as artificial insemination, faced resistance on farms when they were first developed, but eventually they became widespread.
Even if cloning spreads, it is unlikely that clones themselves will wind up on grocery shelves anytime soon, since they still cost thousands of dollars apiece to produce. A limited amount of milk from cloned cows might be sold, but mostly it would be the meat and milk of second- and third-generation clone offspring that would enter the food supply. The goal of the cloning companies and their clients is to use multiple copies of an animal to upgrade the genetics of entire herds.
Tuesday’s decision means cloning technology could move into commercial use a mere decade after the world learned of the existence of Dolly the sheep, the first mammal cloned from an adult cell, in Scotland. To create Dolly, scientists took an unfertilized sheep egg and removed the genetic material. They then inserted the genetic material from an adult cell. Machinery within the egg somehow reset the clock on the adult genes, and the new cell, after implantation into a surrogate mother sheep, developed into Dolly.
This technique has since become routine in laboratories, with clones produced in numerous species — not including humans, so far as is known. In public discussion, the technology is sometimes confused with other techniques that involve genetic manipulation, such as by transferring genes into animals from unrelated species. But cloning is simply the creation of an identical genetic copy, with no tweaking of individual genes.
While most Americans have never seen a cloned animal, farm families have been seeing them for years at agricultural shows, and many have gradually grown comfortable with the notion of cloning as the next big thing in animal husbandry.

Chimps eat dirt to heal themselves

here is the English version of the same information:

Chimps eat dirt. This has been known for years. And while chimp cuisine might look more gritty than gourmet to us, it turns out our closest animal relations have a good reason for feasting on soil: It improves their health. By studying samples of soil eaten by chimpanzees in Kibale National Park in Uganda, a research team led by Sabrina Krief of the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris found that eating soil with their meals boosts the anti-malarial properties of plants the chimps eat.
Krief collected the dirt along with leaves from one of the chimps' favorite foods, the Trichilia rubescens plant. She found that when eaten alone, the leaves had no pharmacological effect, but when combined with soil, the mixture had clear anti-malarial properties. Scientists previously suspected that animals might eat dirt when stressed or as a source of missing minerals. This new result is the first suggestion that the combination of soil and other foods could have health benefits, Krief said. "Here we show by eating plants and soil shortly after, the properties of the plants may be revealed or enhanced," she told LiveScience. "It’s this association of items which provide potential benefits which is new." The study will be published online this week in the journal Naturwissenschaften. Krief also compared the dirt chimps eat to that used by nearby human healers to treat diarrhea. The samples shared many similarities, including a high concentration of the mineral kaolinite, the main ingredient of some anti-diarrheal medicines. "Local people around Kibale use soil in traditional medicine, associated to different plant parts," Krief said. "It may potentialize the properties of plant or attenuate their toxicity by adsorbing noxious compounds." This discovery could help reinforce the idea that conservation benefits humans and animals alike, Krief said. "This overlapping use by humans and apes is interesting from both evolutionary and conservation perspectives," she said. "Saving apes and their forests is also important for human health."

Moscou investit dans un cimetiere francais

Le gouvernement russe vient d'allouer 692 700 euros à l'entretien du cimetière de Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois (Essonne), une commune située au sud de Paris. L'idée peut sembler baroque si l'on ignore qu'il s'agit de la plus grande nécropole russe en dehors de Russie.
Ici, 6 000 tombes abritent les restes de près de 20 000 Russes, dont une partie notable de l'intelligentsia qui a fui le régime soviétique, à différentes époques. On y trouve le Prix Nobel de littérature Ivan Bounine (1870-1953), le cinéaste Andreï Tarkovski (1932-1986), auteur d' Ivan Roublev et du Sacrifice, les danseurs et chorégraphes Serge Lifar (1905-1986) et Rudolf Noureev (1938-1993), le peintre Serge Poliakoff (1900-1969), le prince Lvov (1861-1925), président du premier gouvernement provisoire après la chute du tsar Nicolas II en 1917. Ou encore quelques Romanov, membres de l'ancienne famille impériale, l'écrivain Viktor Nekrassov (1911-1987), prix Staline de littérature pour Dans les tranchées de Stalingrad, le poète et chanteur contestataire Alexandre Galitch (1919-1977) ou l'acteur de cinéma Ivan Mosjoukine (1887-1939), une star de l'entre-deux-guerres.
Le Francilien se trouve dépaysé au milieu de cette forêt de croix orthodoxes et de ces inscriptions en caractères cyrilliques. L'architecte Benois y construisit une petite église bleue et blanche, Notre-Dame de l'Assomption, qui, avec son clocher à bulbe, ne serait pas déplacée du côté de Novgorod.
Pourtant il s'agit du cimetière communal de Sainte-Geneviève- des-Bois. Et c'est bien la source du problème, essentiellement juridique, qui est aujourd'hui réglé. « Comme dans tous les cimetières municipaux, les tombes de Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois sont concédées, moyennant finance, pour des durées variables [qui ne peuvent pas excéder 99 ans], explique son maire, Olivier Léonhardt (PS). A l'expiration de la concession, celle-ci est, soit prolongée, soit abandonnée si personne ne se manifeste. C'était le cas de 648 concessions situées dans la partie russe du cimetière qui compte plus de tombes russes que de tombes génofévaines - les habitants de Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois. Nous aurions dû redistribuer ces concessions après avoir placé les vestiges de leurs occupants dans un ossuaire. La municipalité, compte tenu de la situation historique de cette nécropole, a sans cesse différé la reprise de ces concessions. Il fallait agir. » C'est ainsi que le maire français a contacté les autorités russes. Et a finalisé un accord avec le gouvernement de Moscou pour « régulariser la situation juridique des concessions tombées en déshérence en les renouvelant », indique Olivier Léonhardt.
Pourquoi une telle enclave orthodoxe en grande banlieue parisienne ? Parce qu'une maison de retraite, la Maison russe, au départ destinée aux émigrés « blancs » - et qui existe toujours -, a été ouverte ici en 1927. Les vieux pensionnaires étaient naturellement enterrés dans le cimetière municipal. L'aura de la maison de retraite et celle de cet ultime morceau de terre russe firent qu'un grand nombre d'émigrés russes, fameux ou non, domiciliés en France ou ailleurs, le choisirent pour leur dernière demeure.
Aujourd'hui, la notoriété du cimetière de Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois est si grande en Russie que les tour-opérateurs russes l'ont inclus dans leur tournée parisienne. Le président Poutine et le patriarche de Moscou, Alexis II, sont venus se recueillir ici.

NYT: Food Allergies

Very interesting article. An almost sentimentally populist story of somebody who became adamant about food is told in a very strange mood. "Her theory.... is not supported by researchers", "lack of hard data" etc. But if you read carefully, Kim Leverson is trying to avoid any liability for her statements. Lack of data is due to lack of unbiased reserach. Lack of support by researches is due to lack of data on which to bease verifiable scientific statements publishable in the magazines.

This is just another cigarette-cancer "theory" that is waiting to explode in our faces. I have opted out ot of most packaged food, most - because it is impossible to get something that is not wrapped, sealed in this country. Even the produce may turn out to be bad for me, since there is no information about its status, pesticides used etc. Organic food is like carbon offsets - great white lie. Using manure of the cows filled with hormons, antibiotics, who eat nothing but the genetically modified food grown with pesticides may be minutely better than eating food covered with pesticides.

In the end it all boils down to a simple thing: there is way too much cheap food. Food must be scarcer, better and more expensive. We will eat less of better food and die hungry, healthy, and happy :)


here is the article




Food Allergies Stir a Mother to Action
By KIM SEVERSON
Lafayette, Colo.

ROBYN O’BRIEN likes to joke that at least she hasn’t started checking the rearview mirror to see if she’s being followed.
But some days, her imagination gets away from her and she wonders if it’s only a matter of time before Big Food tries to stop her from exposing what she sees as a profit-driven global conspiracy whose collateral damage is an alarming increase in childhood food allergies.
Ms. O’Brien has presented her views, albeit in a less radical wrapper, on CNN, CBS and in frequent print interviews. Frontier Airlines and Wild Oats stores distribute the allergy-awareness gear she designed.
Her story is one of several in a new book, “Healthy Child, Healthy World” (Dutton, March 2008), whose contributors include doctors, parents and celebrities like Meryl Streep.
Sitting at the table in her suburban kitchen, with her four young children tumbling in and out, Ms. O’Brien, 36, seems an unlikely candidate to be food’s Erin Brockovich (who, by the way, has taken Ms. O’Brien under her wing).
She grew up in a staunchly Republican family in Houston where lunch at the country club frequented by George and Barbara Bush followed Sunday church services. She was an honors student, earned a master’s degree in business and, like her husband, Jeff, made a living as a financial analyst.
Ms. O’Brien was also the kind of mom who rolled her eyes when the kid with a peanut allergy showed up at the birthday party. Then, about two years ago, she fed her youngest child scrambled eggs. The baby’s face quickly swelled into a grotesque mask. “What did you spray on her?” she screamed at her other children. Little Tory had a severe food allergy, and Ms. O’Brien’s journey had begun.
By late that night, she had designed a universal symbol to identify children with food allergies. She now puts the icon, a green stop sign with an exclamation point, on lunch bags, stickers and even the little charms children use to dress up their Crocs. These products and others are sold on her Web site, AllergyKids.com, which she unveiled, strategically, on Mother’s Day in 2006.
The $30,000 Ms. O’Brien made from the products last year is incidental, she said. Working largely from a laptop on her dining room table, she has looked deep into the perplexing world of childhood food allergies and seen a conspiracy that threatens the health of America’s children. And, she profoundly believes, it is up to her and parents everywhere to stop it.
Her theory — that the food supply is being manipulated with additives, genetic modification, hormones and herbicides, causing increases in allergies, autism and other disorders in children — is not supported by leading researchers or the largest allergy advocacy groups.
That only feeds Ms. O’Brien’s conviction that the influence of what she sees as the profit-hungry food industry runs deep. In just a few dizzying steps, she can take you from a box of Kraft macaroni and cheese to Monsanto’s genetically modified seeds to Donald H. Rumsfeld, who once ran the company that created the sweetener aspartame.
Through creative use of e-mail, relentless inquiry and a persona carefully crafted around the protective mother archetype, Ms. O’Brien has emerged as a populist hero among parents who troll the Internet for any hint about why their children have food allergies.
“You have changed my life ... my diet ... my health ... my spirit ... and I thank YOU,” a father who had lost his teenage daughter to anaphylactic shock told her by e-mail.
Ms. O’Brien encourages people to do what she did: throw out as much nonorganic processed food as you can afford to. Avoid anything genetically modified, artificially created or raised with hormones. Don’t eat food with ingredients you can’t pronounce.
Once she cleaned out her cupboards, she said, her four children started behaving better. Their health problems, which her doctor attributed to allergies to milk and other foods, cleared up.
“It was absolutely terrifying to unearth this story,” she said over lunch at a restaurant in Boulder, Colo. “These big food companies have an intimate relationship with every household in America, and they are making our children sick. I was rocked. You don’t want to hear that this has actually happened.”
But has it?
Record numbers of parents are heading to doctors concerned that their children are allergic to a long list of foods. States are passing laws requiring schools to have policies protecting children with food allergies. But no one knows why the number of allergies seems to be on the rise, or even if they are rising as fast as some believe.
Ms. O’Brien and leading allergy researchers agree that few reliable studies on food allergies exist. The best estimates suggest that 4 to 8 percent of young children suffer from them, though the reactions tend to grow less serious and less frequent as children grow older.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention put the number of deaths linked to food allergies at 12 in 2004, the most recent year for which data are available. However, its statisticians point out that such figures are drawn only from doctors’ notations on death certificates.
“It’s a soft number, and it might well be an understatement,” said Arialdi Miniño, a statistician at the agency’s National Center for Health Statistics.
Dr. Elizabeth Gleghorn is the director of pediatric gastroenterology at the Children’s Hospital and Research Center in Oakland, Calif. She has been in practice for 20 years, and has noticed a recent increase in eczema, which can indicate food allergies. But she doesn’t think food allergies are increasing dramatically.
Often, a child might have intolerance to a food and not a true allergy. But the Internet has afforded more ways for parents to inform themselves and do their own diagnosing, which could add to the popular impression that food allergies are rising at alarming rates, Dr. Gleghorn said.
Many health professionals, though, agree that something is changing. Among the amalgam of theories that weigh the effects of genetics and environment, the hygiene hypothesis intrigues many researchers. It holds that children are being exposed to fewer micro-organisms and, as a result, have weaker immune systems.
“But this alone cannot account for the massive relative increase in food allergy compared with other allergic disease such as asthma,” said Dr. Marc E. Rothenberg, the director of allergy and immunology at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, the second-largest pediatric research facility in the country.
Could it be that a toxic food environment has made children’s immune systems go haywire? It’s hard to find an expert in the field who supports Ms. O’Brien’s theory. “I don’t think it can be proven, so I can’t say scientifically one way or the other,” Dr. Gleghorn said.
Mix the lack of hard data with an increasingly complex food landscape, and you’ve got Robyn O’Brien.
“Food allergies just become a focus for a broader fear about the food system,” said the author Michael Pollan, a contributor to The New York Times Magazine.
Mr. Pollan, in both “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” and his new book, “In Defense of Food” (January, Penguin), shares many of Ms. O’Brien’s views about industrialized agriculture. He also has a niece with a peanut allergy. So Ms. O’Brien sent him an e-mail message, and a correspondence began.
Ms. O’Brien took his responses as an endorsement of her work, and then mentioned his support in messages to other people. Mr. Pollan, who said he has no idea if her theories are accurate, asked her to stop telling people he was working with her.
Leveraging brief e-mail exchanges with notable people is an important method that Ms. O’Brien uses to build her universe. The unlikely mix includes members of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s staff; Mary Alice Stephenson, a host of “America’s Most Smartest Model”; and, recently, Dr. Mehmet Oz, a regular on Oprah Winfrey’s show.
“The fact that people like him and Malcolm Gladwell, presidential campaigns, celebs take the time to reply means a lot as it gives me hope that people are still engaged,” she said in an e-mail message to this reporter.
While some of her contacts, like Mr. Gladwell, an author and a writer for The New Yorker, don’t remember her, the strategy has worked. Nell Newman, who runs the organic arm of Newman’s Own products, spoke up on her behalf on the national news. Deborah Koons Garcia, the widow of Jerry Garcia and director of the documentary “The Future of Food,” invited her to lunch.
But her biggest asset might be a relentless drive to wind together obscure health theories, blog postings and corporate financial statements. She then posts her analyses on her Web site.
She chides top allergy doctors who are connected to Monsanto, the producer of herbicides and genetically modified seeds. She asserts that the Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network, the nation’s leading food allergy advocacy group, is tainted by the money it receives from food manufacturers and peanut growers.
Anne Muñoz-Furlong founded the network in 1991 after her daughter was found to have milk and egg allergies. She said the group now has 30,000 members and a $5.6 million budget.
Although Kraft did help the organization start its Web site and other food manufacturing companies and trade groups sponsor some of its programs, that support has amounted to about $100,000. Mrs. Muñoz-Furlong said that she and doctors on her medical board do not believe that genetically modified foods cause food allergies because most children with allergies react to specific foods, like eggs or milk.
And, she said, communicating regularly with industry can help get the word to parents about potential allergens in products, and supporting research to identify causes of allergies helps consumers more than companies.
She also cautioned against taking the advice of people who have no medical training or run Web sites not certified to have reliable medical information. “She’s a dot-com,” Mrs. Muñoz-Furlong said of Ms. O’Brien. “It’s completely different than a dot-org. From the very beginning our intent was education.”
(Ms. O’Brien did recently start a nonprofit foundation to support research that is not tied to the food industry.)
On the days when Ms. O’Brien grows discouraged at being David against the Goliath of Big Food, she turns to the people who believe her.
Erin Brockovich, whose brother died of a food allergy years ago, was a legal file clerk who helped land a record judgment against the Pacific Gas and Electric Company for contaminating drinking water. She is an environmental consultant who is popular on the inspirational lecture circuit.
Ms. Brockovich said her new friend does a great job of arming everyday people with facts, so they can take a stand.
“You don’t have to be a doctor or a scientist to look into whether our food supply is safe,” she said. “Being obsessed doesn’t mean she’s crazy. Frankly, I think it takes a little bit of being crazy to make a difference in this world.”

Просмотрено: Враги 2007

Блестящий фильм. Слегка формульный, слегка наивный - но безупречно емоциональный. Актерские работы настолько великолепны, что в иные моменты начинаешь просто любоваться присутствием этих людей в тщательно выстроенном и сказочно освещенном кадре.
Простая история, непростое повествование, голос за кадром, комментирующий просходящее, иногда модульные сцены - но фильм настолько хорошо продуман и прочувствован, настолько беззащитен в своем стремлении просто рассказать историю, которые до этого времени рассказать было просто нельзя - что я не мог оторваться от экрана.

Смотреть!

Название: Враги
Год выхода: 2007
Жанр: Военная драма
Режиссер: Мария Можар
В ролях: Юлия Ауг, Аксель Шрик, Елена Яцко, Геннадий Карбук, Олеся Пуховая, Зинаида Зубкова, Иван Мацкевич

О фильме:
Лето 1942. Война ушла далеко на восток. Жизнь районного центра, где обосновалось немецкое руководство, входит в русло «нормы». Немцы учат русский язык, пытаются заигрывать с местными молодками. Женщины стирают немцам, кормят их, а кто-то и заводит с постояльцами отношения. Надо жить дальше…

Выпущено: Белоруссия, Беларусьфильм
Продолжительность: 01:18:02

Traffic Safety

Please click on the picture above to see a very short video. Watch a pedestrian on the left crossing the street on green never swerving away from the safety of the crossing zebra. What a wonderful reminder about the unpredictability of our lives...

Just Read: No country for old men

In a very disappointing book written a la Gaddis, Cormac McCarthy avoids punctuation but delivers a very rhythmic thriller. Or so I think. The narrative is so unbalanced that the split between the voices only creates confusion not resolved until the end of the book, which of course resolves nothing. From a terse "shoot 'em up" it quickly turns into the porch discussions of not wanting to read newspapers anymore because they don't mention Jesus Christ and the country going to pits.
Haven't seen the movie yet, so I hope that usual brilliance of Coen brothers will overshadow the flaws of the narrative, and that cinematographic language would revive this stillborn.


From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
For 40 years, since The Orchard Keeper, Cormac McCarthy has brought forth literature as important as it is rare. Beyond that, critics and readers tend to diverge wildly with each novel, which to my eye is further proof of the writer's power. No Country for Old Men will have the same effect. This is a profoundly disturbing and gorgeously rendered novel that will certainly be quibbled with. Not the least of the objections will almost surely be what makes the novel so attractive. No Country for Old Men is the most accessible of all McCarthy's works. This is not necessarily a good thing.
The plot is simple.
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One fine morning in west Texas, a young Vietnam vet is antelope hunting when he comes upon the carnage of a drug deal gone bad. Both heroin and a suitcase of cash remain at the site, along with a number of bodies. The cash is enough to entice the otherwise upright Llewelyn Moss to steal it, although conveniently it's not so much that it can't be carried, not even after Moss receives the first in a long line of wounds. Moss has a moral clarity reminiscent of John Grady Cole from All the Pretty Horses (1992); he knows he's making the worst mistake of his life but can't resist the temptation or the chance to test himself. He knows he'll be hunted (and hunted he is) but believes he can outsmart the hunters.
The other two main characters enter as polarities: a psychopathic killer, Anton Chigurh, whose only apparent moral code is to leave no witnesses to his existence; and Sheriff Bell, a World War II veteran who's a bit smarter than most other law enforcement officers and does his best to find and protect Moss while offering thoughts on existence and the unhinged modern world. The sheriff has his own dark secret which, unfortunately, is somewhat at odds with his character.
Finally, other than a handful of minor characters, there are three women -- or two and a half, depending how you count. The wives of Moss and Bell are tough, tender women, rock-solid square behind their men. The third has the same potential but like most everyone in the novel winds up dead first.
McCarthy's language is stripped lean and mean here. In places, dialogue carries large sections of the story. His ear for speech, dialect and wordplay remains noteworthy in American letters. His descriptive passages are lucid and visual -- this novel needs no film adaptation. He writes in painstaking and painful detail about self-treatment of gunshot wounds, exhibiting a near-morbid fascination that's beyond the call of the narrative. Even what in previous novels were long digressions are now minimal injections of first-person rumination and reflection by Bell. In short, No Country for Old Men is a page-turner. Readers who have been unwilling to wade through McCarthy's more complicated fables will be swept along for the ride. Many long-term readers will do the same.
So what's not to like? Plenty. The symbolism is achingly awkward, starting with the names; Moss, Bell, Chigurh (rhymes with "sugar" but reminded this reader of chigger, the small boring insect that gets under the skin and causes a rash, pain and possibly blood infection). Narcotics are the broken hinge of the world or, as the sheriff, who offers homely and homespun thoughts at a numbing rate, has it, "If you were Satan and you were settin around tryin to think up somethin that would just bring the human race to its knees what you would probably come up with is narcotics." Modern society's abandonment of Christ is frequently mentioned, which, while fitting the near-stereotypical rural nature of these characters, is handled simplistically. Even moments that on first reading appear insightful lose their sheen a second time through:
"Every moment in your life is a turning and every one a choosing. Somewhere you made a choice. All followed to this. The accounting is scrupulous. The shape is drawn. No line can be erased. I had no belief in your ability to move a coin to your bidding. How could you? A person's path through the world seldom changes and even more seldom will it change abruptly. And the shape of your path was visible from the beginning."
Bell's wife, Loretta, is quickly sketched but has a vibrancy lacking in more fully realized women from previous works. Still, it's hard to picture ex-prisoners bringing their new wives to meet her and breaking into tears because she fed them well when they were incarcerated. Cornpone, pure and simple.
That said, this is an entertaining novel from one of our best writers. Often seen as a fabulist and an engineer of dark morality tales, McCarthy is first a storyteller. But No Country for Old Men is a minor addition to his work. Rumor has it that this novel came to the publisher at around 600 pages. If that is the case, one can't help but wonder if a truly magnificent work was lost at the cost of pruning with an eye toward the marketplace.
Reviewed by Jeffrey Lent
Copyright 2005, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.

Update: Where in the World I've Been

3-D Video Posters are reality

In the movie Back to the Future II, a gigantic shark from a mock Jaws sequel springs out of a theater marquee and engulfs Michael J. Fox. Now, a Canadian company has developed a way to print lifelike holographic posters that could make that kind of eye-catching advertising possible.
Last week, 10 U.S. theaters rolled out full-color 3-D posters with motion and photorealistic detail to promote the movie How She Move. Made by Quebecois company RabbitHoles, the advertisements feature one of the film's characters tearing up the dance floor in an eight-second clip that can be "played" in 3-D by walking from left to right of the poster. Despite the images' slightly transparent quality, what you see is pretty close to the real thing.
"The sensation you first get when you look at this is your mouth automatically responding with, 'Oh my God,'" says Michael Page, visiting professor at the University of Toronto's Institute for Optical Sciences and a RabbitHoles board member.
Holographic imagery is becoming more common these days, from the fraud deterrents on credit cards to National Geographic's 3-D magazine covers. However, these images have been limited with respect to color, resolution, viewing angle and size. RabbitHoles' new technology takes the crisp, detailed 2-D images we're used to seeing on computer and TV screens and translates them into full-color, 3-D images.
"Up until now, 3-D advertising hasn't always been done very well," says M2 Research analyst Wanda Meloni. "The technology has just been evolving and we're just starting to touch the surface of 3-D being incorporated into our everyday lives."
Rather than simple static images, RabbitHoles' can take six- to eight-second movie clips from 2-D and 3-D films and print them into a poster that "moves" as the viewer walks past. RabbitHoles poster art unveiled at Comic-Con in July features pop surrealist painter Ron English’s iconic character Cathy Cowgirl as she flirtatiously cocks her head, lifts her pistol, and fires a shot -- all while her udders slightly shudder.
To produce the imagery, RabbitHoles creates a 3-D computer model of the object that will be turned into a hologram. A virtual camera takes snapshots at different angles, and a software algorithm developed by RabbitHoles calculates how light would bounce off each angle in the scene. The result is up to 1,280 different snapshots, or frames, that not only hold color, distance and angle info, but light patterns as well.
To record the actual hologram onto a sheet of film, the data is sent to a printer that divides each frame into pixels -- a poster-size print can hold up to 700,000. The company then exposes each pixel with red, green and blue pulsed lasers.

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If the hologram is destined to become framed artwork, it's mounted on Plexiglas, but it can be mounted on virtually anything. At the Los Angeles Auto Show last month, Scion's promotional vehicle had windows exploding with artwork by English.
The development of the RGB pulsed laser was key to RabbitHoles' process. Previous systems used either a continuous-wave laser or a single-color pulsed laser. The former employs a low-intensity light that requires a long exposure time lasting from less than a second to a few minutes. Any vibration during filming can lead the laser and the film to slightly shift, diminishing the hologram's resolution.
In contrast, pulsed lasers flash for just 1/10,000,000 of a second, so getting a clear image is much easier. But up until now, pulsed lasers were monochromatic. RabbitHoles' newly engineered RGB pulsed laser offers the best of both worlds -- crisp images in full color.
In the future, doctors may even use RabbitHoles' technology to visualize the human body.
"Much of our work in the area of scientific and medical imaging is now in 3-D," says Page. "Once we're able to accurately parse a variety of forms of medical data into this process, we will be able to provide researchers and surgeons with more detailed visualization of the data. This could save lives."

No more smoking in German bars