XYu - Zorica Kondza (Stijene)

Who wants to watch?

It is well known that war films make up for poor reporting.

Brian De Palma's Redacted, arguably the most shocking feature yet about events in Iraq (about to hit theatres) is using a documentary style to tell the true story of the gang rape and murder of an Iraqi girl by U.S. troops in 2006. Paul Haggis also based In The Valley Of Elah on true events linked to the war, although, unlike De Palma's cast of unknown actors, he employed major stars Tommy Lee Jones, Charlize Theron and Susan Sarandon.
Both film makers have attacked mainstream media for their coverage of the Iraq war and events leading to it. During the Vietnam war there were terrific journalists doing their job, reporting on things that no one wanted to hear.
Many in the U.S. media admit that reporting of the war, and particularly the failure to question the reasons given for it, left much to be desired. Many recent films dealing with wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and the repercussions of the September 11 attacks have failed to find an audience, including those who feature top talent. In The Valley Of Elah earned just $9 million at the box office worldwide. Rendition, a film about detaining terrorism suspects and starring Reese Witherspoon, earned $15 million globally, while audiences for Lions For Lambs, with Tom Cruise in an Afghan war-themed plot, have been disappointing, according to reports.

Hallmark pearls

A criminal defense lawyer and adviser to the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, Terrye Cheathem has developed a line of greeting cards for a Hallmark-ignored demographic: the recently incarcerated. Among her selections are cards reading Sorry to hear about your arrest, and Honestly, I never knew anyone who was arrested before, and, simply, Not You! A remorseful correspondent could choose: I know that I have not visited you. But I still care about you ... When are you getting out, anyway? Card sales are slow and Cheathem acknowledges that people might prefer to ignore their connections to criminals. (You think?)

Molly Johnson

Less known films worth mentioning this year

No Country for Old Men





Director: Joel Coen
Cast: Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin, Javier Bardem, Woody Harrelson
Plot: The story begins when Llewelyn Moss (BROLIN) finds a pickup truck surrounded by a sentry of dead men. A load of heroin and two million dollars in cash are still in the back. When Moss takes the money, he sets off a chain reaction of catastrophic violence that not even the law - in the person of aging, disillusioned Sheriff Bell (JONES) - can contain. As Moss tries to evade his pursuers - in particular a mysterious mastermind who flips coins for human lives (BARDEM) - the film simultaneously strips down the American crime drama and broadens its concerns to encompass themes as ancient as the Bible and as bloodily contemporary as newspapers' headlines.


Eastern Promises




Director: David Cronenberg
Cast: Viggo Mortensen, Naomi Watts, Vincent Cassel, Armin Mueller-Stahl
Plot: The film follows the mysterious and ruthless Nikolai (Viggo Mortensen), who is tied to one of London's most notorious organized crime families. His carefully maintained existence is jarred when he crosses paths with Anna (Naomi Watts), an innocent midwife trying to right a wrong, who accidentally uncovers potential evidence against the family. Now Nikolai must put into motion a harrowing chain of murder, deceit, and retribution.

Essential Vocabulary Additions for the Workplace

1. BLAMESTORMING : Sitting around in a group, discussing why a deadline was missed or a project failed, and who was responsible.
2. SEAGULL MANAGER: A manager, who flies in, makes a lot of noise, craps on everything, and then leaves.
3. ASSMOSIS: The process by which some people seem to absorb success and advancement by kissing up to the boss rather than working hard
4. SALMON DAY : The experience of spending an entire day swimming upstream only to get screwed and die in the end.
5. CUBE FARM : An office filled with cubicles.
6. PRAIRIE DOGGING : When someone yells or drops something loudly in a cube farm, and people's heads pop up over the walls to see what's going on.
7. MOUSE POTATO : The on-line, wired generation's answer to the couch potato.
8. SITCOMs: Single Income, Two Children, Oppressive Mortgage. What Yuppies get into when they have children and one of them stops working to stay home with the kids.
9. STRESS PUPPY : A person who seems to thrive on being stressed out and whiny.
10. SWIPEOUT: An ATM or credit card that has been rendered useless because magnetic strip is worn away from extensive use.
11. XEROX SUBSIDY : Euphemism for swiping free photocopies from one's workplace.
12. IRRITAINMENT: Entertainment and media spectacles that are Annoying but you find yourself unable to stop watching them.
13. PERCUSSIVE MAINTENANCE : The fine art of whacking the crap out of an electronic device to get it to work again.
14. ADMINISPHERE : The rarefied organizational layers beginning just above the rank and file. Decisions that fall from the adminisphere are often profoundly inappropriate or irrelevant to the problems they were designed to solve.
15. 404 : Someone who's clueless. From the World Wide Web error Message "404 Not Found," meaning that the requested site could not be located.
16. GENERICA : Features of the North American landscape that are exactly the same no matter where one is, such as fast food joints, strip malls, and subdivisions.
17. OHNOSECOND : That minuscule fraction of time in which you realize that you've just made a BIG mistake. (Like after hitting send on an email by mistake).
18. WOOFS : Well-Off Older Folks.

XYu - Atomsko Skloniste

Posljednje zelje

*Ljudi sirom svijeta sve cesce zele biti pokopani sa svojim mobilnima. Trend je krenuo iz Juznoafricke Republike, te se brzo prosirio na Irsku, Australiju, USA, i Ganu. Sve je krenulo kao urbani mit, a onda su se neki uistinu odlucili na taj korak. U Juznoj Africi se kao razlog pokapanja s mobilnim najcesce navodila zelja da mrtvac, ukoliko se probudi, uz sebe ima mobilni kako bi odmah mogao uspostaviti vezu sa zivima. U Australiji pokojnik na taj nacin zeli u vjecno pocivaliste otici s predmetom koji dobro ocrtava njegov nacin zivota. Jedna osoba je trazila da bude pokopana s mobilnim i laptopom.
*Kako bi ispunila poslednju zelju svog pokojnog supruga, Ute Miller, medicinska sestra iz Berlina, platila je jednoj americkoj kompaniji $10.930 da organizuje prenos pepela njenog supruga Heinza u svemir. Oko deset grama pepela u svemir leti u kapsuli velicine ruza za usne. Raketa s pepelom lansirana je iz svemirskog centra Bajkonur u Kazahstanu u januaru 2003. Kapsula izbacena iz rakete, kruzice oko Zemlje pet do sest godina, nakon cega ce se raspasti. Ute Miller dobija video snimak dogadjaja kao potvrdu ispunjenja poslednje zelje pokojnog supruga. "Kada se kapsula raspadne, ne zna se gdje ce pepeo zavrsiti. Mozda stigne do Sunca, ko zna?", rekla je Ute. (2002.)
*Alfred Nobel je cijelog zivota imao fobiju da bi mogao biti ziv sahranjen, zato je nalozio da njegovu smrt ustanove najmanje dva ugledna lijekara, a da zatim bude kremiran. TEKST NOBELOVOG TESTAMENTA:"Ja potpisani Alfred Bernhard Nobel moram ovime,nakon podrobnog razmisljanja, izjaviti svoju posljednju volju u pogledu imovine koju cu moci da ostavim u casu svoje smrti. I to kako slijedi: Sve sto preostaje od moga vlasnistva i sto se moze realizovati da bude raspodjeljeno na sljedeci nacin: Kapital koji ce izvrsioci oporuke u pouzdane obveznice treba da stvori fond od kojega kamate imaju svake godine biti raspodjeljene onima koji su u protekloj godini iskazali najvecu uslugu covjecanstvu. Kamate valja razdijeliti u pet jednakih dijelova koji ce biti doznaceni kako slijedi: Jedan dio dat ce se onome koji je postigao najvece otkrice na podrucju fizike; jedan onome koji je izvrsio najvece hemijsko otkrice odnosno usavrsenje, jedan dio onome koji je postigao najznacajnije otkrice na podrucju fiziologije ili medicine; jedan onome cije je dostignuce na podrucju knjizevnosti bilo najizvrsnije u idealistickom smislu; i jedan dio onome koji je najvise ili najbolje uznastojao za bratimljenje naroda i za ukidanje ili smanjenje stajacih oruzanih snaga kao i za podsticaj i razvitak mirovnih kongresa. Nagrade za fiziku i hemiju dodjeljivace Svedska Akademija Nauke; one za fizioloska i medicinska dostignuca Carolinski institut u Stockholmu (Carolinianum); one za istaknute domete na polju knjizevnosti Svedska Akademija za Knjizevnost. Nagrade za mir dodjeljivat ce odbor od pet clanova koje bira Norveski Parlament (Storthing). Ovaj testament je odsada unaprijed jedini vazeci dokument te ponistava sve moje prethodne oporucene odredbe pretpostavivsi da se koja od njih pojavi nakon moje smrti. Konacno izjavljujem da je moja izricita zelja i volja da se nakon moje smrti otvore moje zile kucavice, a kada to bude ucinjeno i mjerodavni ljekar ustanovi nedvosmisleno znakove da se zivot ugasio, da moje tijelo bude spaljeno u takozvanoj krematorijskoj peci."

Dave Matthews

About the Universe

Everything in the Universe rotates. The Earth spins on its axis. The whole planet orbits around our parent star, the Sun. The Sun rotates around the centre of the Milky Way, along with the billions of other stars in the Galaxy. Studying how fast stars at the very edge move reveals the mass of the whole galaxy. The faster the Galaxy rotates, the more mass there is inside it. There is also stuff out there that we just can't see - and so it's called 'dark matter'. If this dark matter wasn't there, galaxies would fly apart as they spun round. Imagine looking at a tower block at night. Although you can only see lights coming from some of the rooms, that doesn't mean that there aren't any more rooms in the tower. Just like these unlit rooms, dark matter can't be seen, because it doesn't shine. Finding it will help to answer one of the most fundamental questions in astronomy - what is the fate of the Universe.

The fate of the Universe is basically a battle fought between the inward pull of gravity and the outward push of expansion. So astronomers are trying to calculate the strength of these forces. The amount of gravity the Universe has to wield against this expansive onslaught depends on how much stuff there is out there in space. Anything with a mass has its own gravity. Even you yourself have a gravitational force that attracts everything else around you, including other people. The bigger you are, the stronger this force is, and so, the Earth, being the most massive thing around, completely overwhelms the tiny forces that we personally possess. So to calculate the fate of the Universe, we must weigh it to find its density.
Also, in about 4 billion years the Sun will expand and engulf our planet Earth. Also around the same time, our nearest galactic neighbour, Andromeda, will start to crash into our own galaxy, the Milky Way.

Life on Earth must escape into space if it is to survive.

Nov.12 B-Day: Auguste Rodin

The Hand of God

About Rodin

Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings

Radiohead's getting out

Radiohead has set a Dec. 31 international release date for the physical version of its new album, In Rainbows, which fans can currently download from the group's Web site for a price of their choosing. The album will be released on CD and vinyl, followed by the single, Jigsaw Falling Into Place on Jan. 14. Here's the Rolling Stone's Track-By-Track preview with some concert videos.

Kerouac

The name typically evokes a sense of hip, cool, rebellion, exploration and of course "Beat," as in voice of the Beat Generation. Exhibit opening at the New York Public Library reveals some less flattering sides of the writer: mama's boy, anti-Semite and perhaps women hater or misogynist, if you will. The centerpiece is a scroll on which Kerouac wrote "On the Road," the iconic work of the counterculture Beat Generation and one that is marking its 50th anniversary.One can see handwritten notebooks, photographs, diaries, letters, paintings and manuscripts. There are harmonicas and dice, crutches from a football injury, a brown pair of ankle boots and a partial pack of Beech Nut chewing gum, even a list Kerouac compiled of women he had slept with. The list of conquests indicates that Kerouac often could not remember the women's names, instead using geographic labels like "Harlem" or derogatory terms such as "NYU Junkie" and "Mary Filth." The illustrated "sports diaries" of his youth give voice to his well-documented athletic skills, while original paintings attest to one of his lesser known talents. Images of angels, shepherds, a crucifix and Buddha reflect his Roman Catholic identity and 1950s flirtation with Buddhism. The exhibit also includes a letter from Kerouac's mother, Gabrielle, with whom the writer lived for most of his adult life, to Allen Ginsberg, demanding that the Beat poet avoids further contact with her son. Calling Ginsberg and experimental novelist William S. Burroughs "miserable bums," she wrote, "You are not free to associate with us Christians." The exhibit also shows Kerouac conforming to his mother's anti-Semitic ravings, at least in his final days. His mother subverted virtually every serious relationship he ever had, except the last - Stella, Kerouac's wife (at the time of his death in 1969 at age 47 following years of heavy drinking). An interview with fellow bad boy Ken Kesey, author of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," quotes Kerouac as saying: "The Communist is the main enemy -- the Jew."

Prodigy vs. White Stripes

Marketing Fiascos

*Coors put its slogan, "Turn it loose," into Spanish, where it was read as "Suffer from diarrhea."
*Scandinavian vacuum manufacturer Electrolux used the following in an American campaign: "Nothing sucks like an Electrolux."
*Clairol introduced the "Mist Stick", a curling iron, into German only to find out that "mist" is slang for manure. Not too many people had use for the "manure stick."
*Colgate introduced a toothpaste in France called Cue, the name of a notorious porno magazine.
*An American T-shirt maker in Miami printed shirts for the Spanish market which promoted the Pope's visit. Instead of "I saw the Pope" (el Papa), the shirts read "I saw the potato" (la papa).
*Pepsi's "Come alive with the Pepsi Generation" translated into "Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the grave", in Chinese.
*Frank Perdue's chicken slogan, "it takes a strong man to make a tender chicken" was translated into Spanish as "it takes an aroused man to make a chicken affectionate."
*The Coca-Cola name in China was first read as "Ke-kou-ke-la", meaning "Bite the wax tadpole" or "female horse stuffed with wax", depending on the dialect. Coke then researched 40,000 characters to find a phonetic equivalent "ko-kou-ko-le", translating into "happiness in the mouth."
*When Parker Pen marketed a ball-point pen in Mexico, its ads were supposed to have read, "it won't leak in your pocket and embarrass you". Instead, the company thought that the word "embarazar" (to impregnate) meant to embarrass, so the ad read: "It won't leak in your pocket and make you pregnant."

How much would you pay for it?

The escalating value of the late Italian conceptual artist Piero Manzoni's canned feces was chronicled in News of the Weird in 1993, 1998, 2002 and 2004, but now in June 2007 his former colleague Agostino Bonalumi told a reporter that the project had been a hoax and that Manzoni had merely filled the cans with plaster. Manzoni created 90 small tins, and collectors had paid thousands of dollars each (making his feces worth more per ounce than gold, including once, in 1993, paying $75,000 for a tin). A spokesman for Britain's Tate gallery, which once paid the equivalent of about $35,000 for one, said that the actual content of the art is beside the point.(?)

Pavlov's Dog

Don't mind the cheesy spot...

The history of mankind?

They say that history is the teacher of life and that whoever does not learn from his history is doomed to repeat it forever.
Giza Pyramids
The pyramids are set almost perfectly in relation to the North Pole, which tells us that they obviously knew about the North Pole, at least in a theoretical or mystical sense. The base of the Cheops pyramid forms an almost perfect square that was constructed so precisely that it is difficult to reproduce even with today’s technology. Perhaps the greatest mystery is that the pyramids are standing even today. They weigh thousands of tonnes and still did not fall through the sand to this day.
Stonehenge
The society that built it must have been, without a doubt, quite developed to be able to engage the work force on such a demanding project. When modern scientists tried to make a reconstruction of the building of Stonehenge using ancient construction means, the stones that weighed several tonnes simply fell through into the soft soil. And after somehow constructing it, the mysterious builders also managed to build it so that it could be used to follow events in the sky. This proves that they also had great knowledge in astronomy.
Moai
The mysterious statues from Rapa Nui (Easter Island), are believed to depict the predecessors of the island’s inhabitants. A society that was capable of creating such big statues should have numbered several thousands of citizens to be able to keep an army of workers. The population of Rapa Nui was never more than several thousand people, which is simply too little for such an endeavour.
The myth about dragons
The Westerners mostly see them as evil beings that like to steal sheep, incinerate crops and amass gold. The Easterners saw them as wise creatures crucial for the functioning of the world. How could people thousands of kilometres apart who did not communicate before the Middle Ages share the same myth?

Age of man
Science claims that the first real people originated some 200,000 years ago and the first script some 6,000 years ago. From that moment, simply put, the beginning of human civilisation began. Ancient people arrive at the history scene with great and never explained knowledge of archaeology and astronomy whose origins were never established. What was never explained is the great time difference from when man originated to his technological development. If man managed to conquer the Moon in less than 10,000 years since the beginning of written history, the logical question to ask oneself is: what were we doing the remaining 190,000 years?

U susret Novoj godini - Slozna Braca