Holly Golightly: 7 Albums 1995 - 2003
2 hours ago
Monday, 9 August 2010
Sunday, 8 August 2010
Freedom to Fail
Google espouses a culture where it’s OK to be wrong. This is along the same lines as the difference between following your passion and bringing your passion with you. The former is just a dream (the so-called American Dream) and the latter is actually performing work and making progress. Dennis Hopper - Sometimes in a career, moments are enough
Dennis Hopper (at 18 yrs old) on the set of Rebel Without a Cause
“There are moments that I’ve had some real brilliance, you know.
But I think they are moments. And sometimes, in a career, moments are enough.
I never felt I played the great part. I never felt that I directed the great movie.
And I can’t say that it’s anybody’s fault but my own.”
–Dennis Hopper
Cardinal attacks US over Lockerbie bomber reaction
Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi was released last August
The leader of the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland has made an outspoken attack on the United States over the release of the Lockerbie bomber.
Cardinal Keith O'Brien said the Scottish government was right to free Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi last year on compassionate grounds.
US lawmakers want Scottish politicians to explain to a Senate committee their decision to release Megrahi.
But the cardinal said ministers should not go crawling to the US like lapdogs.
Kenny MacAskill, the Scottish government's justice secretary, released Megrahi, who has prostate cancer, after being told that three months was a "reasonable estimate" of his life expectancy.
Vengeance
However, he is still alive after almost a year and the decision continues to provoke anger in the United States, which was home to 189 of the Lockerbie victims.
Cardinal O'Brien said Americans were too fixed on retribution.
He said it was understandable why the families and friends of the 270 people killed on board Pan Am flight 103 in 1988 would want "justice" and "even vengeance".
But in an article for the newspaper Scotland on Sunday, he suggested Americans should "direct their gaze inwards" rather than scrutinise how the Scottish justice system worked.
"They seem to think they have got it right, and I don't think they've got it right, and I don't think most Christians would believe they have got it right either. It's not an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. And they really should look to the beam in their own eye rather than thinking what's wrong with us."
He added: "I think the United States government in many, many states - more than half of the states in the United States - they have a culture of vengeance."
He said the use of the death penalty meant the US kept "invidious company" with countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran.
He backed the Scottish Government's decision not to give evidence to American senators investigating Megrahi's release.
Recycled Island: plastic fantastic?
An artist's impression of Recycled Island.
A floating city of half a million people on a vast plastic island. Does that sound like Waterworld? The vision could soon be a reality if Dutch conservationists have their way. Recycled Island is a plan to clean up 44 million kilos of plastic waste from the North Pacific Gyre, which stretches from California to Japan, and provide 10,000 square kilometres (3,861 square miles) of sustainable living space in the process. Solar and wave energy would provide power for islanders while sustainable fishing and agriculture could provide their food.
According to the website for Whim Architecture, which designed the concept: "The proposal has three main aims: cleaning our oceans from a gigantic amount of plastic waste, creating new land and constructing a sustainable habitat."
There is an estimated 100m tonnes of plastic flotsam in the Pacific Gyre, where ocean currents cause it to accumulate. The floating dump covers an area one and a half times the size of the US.
Captain Charles Moore of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation (AMRF) was the first to find the huge, floating plastic dump in 1997. On the foundation's website, he described it as "just absolutely gross – a truly disgusting plastic cesspool. [It] has to be burned into the consciousness of humanity that the ocean is now a plastic wasteland".
Because petroleum-based plastics are non-biodegradable, any plastic that enters the ocean stays there, continually breaking into smaller pieces until it is ingested by marine life or deposited on the shore. In a 1998 survey, 89% of the litter observed floating on the ocean surface in the North Pacific was plastic. In the Central Pacific Gyre, the AMRF in 2002 found six kilos of plastic for every kilo of plankton near the surface. By 2008, that figure had risen to 45 to one.
Birds like albatrosses eat the larger pieces which block their stomachs, while smaller pellets can cause fatal intestinal damage in fish.
Recycled Island could be a unique opportunity to save marine life. "The project should be carried out with great care so no negative influence to the environment is made," states the project's website. "Our ideal is to return more balance to the environment and set an example of how an environment-friendly habitat could be created."
Cian Luanaigh@'The Guardian'
What If Mad Men's Don Draper Designed Facebook Ads?
(Click images to enlarge)
Trying to convince their clients that "everything ages fast," Brazilian ad agency Moma mocked up some hilarious vintage 1960s-style ads for Facebook, YouTube, and Skype. (Including charmingly broken Brazilian English.) Yes, there's even a Keyboard Cat cameo.
The ads are currently being published in Meio & Mensagem, a Brazilian newspaper.
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