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Archives: Limit of my knowledge

Long lost memory of a forgotten weekend

While cleaning up a house (yesyes, I finally started...) I found some old pictures of an almost forgotten weekend. I love the sea in winter..
You should see how Basil grew up by now. Smiling.

Posted on July 31, 2003
in Limit of my knowledge

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I don't know

It’s funny, some days ago, my grandmother mentioned that I am 26 now, and that by this age ‘most people’ have a house, a family, and children etc. to take care off. While I indeed have nothing. No house, no family, no children, no car, and also no bounds. A free bird. And yet.
It makes you think. By my age, my mother was happily married, and had a child of 3 to take care of, a second child coming.
Me, I am moving back home now…
Strange world.  
But for me it is ok. Although sometimes I wonder.
I would love to settle with the cosiness.  
But not with the boredom. I can’t stop travelling, or leaving in order to come back.
 
I cut of society for some days and jumped into an imaginary world. One I am afraid that probably would never exist, although, if I am honest, I would like to have.
 
I guess people always have two sorts of dreams, the one that let them do the amazing stuff, the things you dream of, and the other one of security and happiness.
(Well, I do.)
Since I don’t have the first I jumped into the second.
Don’t know if there can be an equality of things. Guess you choose between security and insecurity… And in between… I don’t know.
 
The wrinkles in my forehead tell that I don’t know, I just don’t know. And as I get older and should get wiser, it seems, me, I start to know less and less.  
 
But maybe that’s ok.
 
As Stef Bos put it: ‘Is this later?’
 
Even that I don’t know…

(picture from exploding dog)

Posted on August 20, 2003
in Limit of my knowledge

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We don't live in poetry

nor in fairytales.
nor in movies.
nor in fictionbooks.
 
somebody made me think for a sec.
 
we live now and here. the moment.
 
did i pretend something else?
 
that someone sounded very serious when saying it.
 
and i am very serious when answering.
 
do you remember your graduation day, or your first night with a boy, or even your first memory.
how does it look like?
like a movie or a fictionbook, no?
like a story that you tell.
 
once it was reality... and the colors were less romantic, and the conversations less dramatic.
but your head remembers the story, turned it into poetry.
a movie that you can rewind again and again.
 
amazing memories. when i think of it, it is a movie.  
but those days it wasn't. those days it was just fun.
 
and there are other days, when i shout in the phone, or somebody cries in the shower. or the night gets into day, and we didn't stop working, or an impossible client only knows his deadlines but not my needs...
 
yasser once told me: you always have good news.
my answer: because i silence the bad.
some people are very negative. and you become sad listening to it...
personally i keep up my spirit focussing on the nice news.
 
so, am i telling myself a ly?
i don't know, i sometimes wonder...

Posted on September 4, 2003
in Limit of my knowledge

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What do I remember today

Probably I should remember a big thing today. I don’t. Well I do. My only remark is how many people died for the 11000 that died 3 years ago?
Too much.
 
Today I followed a girl who moved to Belgium 8 years ago. For a political reason. It took her eight years to be able to stay into the country. After 2 years they wanted to send her back to Kosovo, if things had happened like that, she would have ended up in the war.
During this war, her parents send their children to Europe (and who’d been better to go to than their sister?) Parents that worried about their daughters.
Serbs have raped a lot of girls here. Like people say here: it was better to get killed in the streets at once, as long as they didn’t rape you.
The shame on that is different here than in Europe.
These sisters and aunts are sent back. Except for one sister and one brother that are still waiting for permission to stay. The brother arrived when he was 15 and is now 19, he has a Belgian life, Belgian friends and wants to stay there because his chances on a good life are better.
The sister has a war trauma, she didn’t see her parents in 5 years, but can’t make it to Kosovo. The thought of it makes her cry, every night she gets up crying and she needs medicines to calm her down.
She saw people get killed and she walked the streets when everywhere there were laying death bodies.
You’ld get shocked from less I guess.
Still I can’t understand. They tell me stories of Serbian neighbours that came out of their houses with kitchen knives to kill Albanians.
 
This story is not about Serbs or Albanians. It is about people that want to kill others, once neighbours… Try to understand…
 
This story is similar to that of a lot of people here…
And it keeps on going.
 
For me it is hard. Like it is for the European Community. Or even the world.
Because on one hand they might want to help, they might want to stop the immigration into Europe, and solve this problem is solving European problems.
The only way to do this, is to make economics better here.
But such a thing needs good politicians and no more corruption.
A long way to go, in other words.
 
If you would be living here, and you have problems, and in Belgian you find a (temporary) solution. Wouldn’t you go?
 
For sure I would…

Posted on September 11, 2003
in Limit of my knowledge

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Quantum reality...

Was rereading fragments in a book.
Ever read Jeanette Winterson? No, so you should...
She is gay and I admit the first reason why I started reading her. But then you read these amazing passages...
She got famous by a book called 'Oranges are not the only fruit' but I love her last one: Powerbook.

Out of her site on Powerbook:

'To avoid discovery I stay on the run.
To discover things for myself, I stay on the run…

The.PowerBook is twenty first century fiction that uses past, present and future as shifting dimensions of a multiple reality. The story is simple. An e-writer called Ali, or Alix (because x marks the spot), will pin up a story for you, cut it to fit. She is a language costumier, writing to order, letting you be the hero of your own life, offering you freedom just for one night.

The price? Risk. You risk entering the story as yourself and leaving it as someone else. But if the narrative changes, then so does the narrator, as Ali discovers this is a price she too will have to pay.

Set in London, Paris, Capri and cyberspace, this is a book that re-invents itself as it travels. Using cover-versions, fairy tales, contemporary myths and popular culture, The PowerBook works at the intersection between the real and the imagined.

It's territory is you. '

Lees meer "Quantum reality..." »

Posted on September 23, 2003
in Limit of my knowledge

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If you are not scared...

Outside it's raining, still you shine
How I've missed your trembling hands inside of mine
I've been away for ages, still you care
Do you count the Sundays when I'm there
 
Teach me how to watch this game
The way you see it through your magical frame
Time is ticking, try to see
That I am you and you are me
 
Don't deny that you're afraid to go
Don't deny that you want to cry
Look around and watch your children grow
I feel love in every sigh
If you're not scared, then why am I
 
Tell me stories, tell me more
Make me feel guilty for being bored
Tell me how to pick up things I've dropped
Please keep talking, never stop

Don't deny that you're afraid to go
Don't deny that you want to cry
Look around and watch your children grow
I feel love in every sigh
Pray for eternity to fly
Don't understand but how I try
If you're not scared, then why am I I feel love in every sigh
Pray for eternity to fly
Don't understand but how I try
If you're not scared, then why am I...
 
out of: K's Choice "Cocoon Crash"

Posted on October 1, 2003
in Limit of my knowledge

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Letter to a lost friend

Today something scratched my heart.
Guess I am realizing what is going on.
Have been living on a cloud since arrival in Belgium.
And that cloud has been large enough to neglect the emptiness behind it.
I have been floating all summer, but by now, the big haziness has shrunk till a little cloud, and I feel I can fall in the empty sky.

This time at home has been too short, and I didn’t visit enough friends, and the work has been killing.
In a way, I have the feeling most of my friends here didn’t see what has changed in me.
And I didn’t see their changes.

Only now, I took some time to look around.

And only now I realize that the friends I thought to have, are not the same as the ones I have.
Normally these things are part of life, and things go up and down. And I can easily settle with that.
But when a friend, one of those that only fit on the fingers of one hand, is not on that hand anymore, it hurts.

It hurts like hell.

Because you felt what was going on, but you don’t want to see this reality.
Until you have to.

I miss you. I really do.
And not ‘we’, the ones that this magnificent stupid things, and not we, where I tried to have to much we and not you and I.
I miss you as in ‘you’. As this amazing person that might be as uncertain as me, but has a head full of great ideas. And knowledge. Potential. A friend that everybody would love to have.

I never meant to push things, and when I give this impression you can always tell me to stop. I will never be mad because of that. I would have never been…

Maybe we crossed the lines, and maybe we stepped over the bridges. But we didn’t blow them up. Did we?

Posted on October 4, 2003
in Limit of my knowledge

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Loneliness

Yesterday Bart and I went to visit a sweetest girl from Kosovo, living here in Belgium.
She’s legal in the country but has no papers, a so called ‘sans-papiers’.
Her eyes were sad.
Captured in a country which does not accept her, and captured because going back to Kosovo is no option for her.
She saw too many cruel things during the war.
Although she is missing her family like crazy, the thought of going back to that country is worse.

Belgium could have been a ‘promised country’ but it didn’t turned out to be till now.
Waiting for 3,5 years to get papers, which are delayed, insecurity, no work permission, but costs to pay (rent etc.)

Thanks to her friendly house keeper, who helps her out, thanks to her sister who is helping her out, she is able to survive her solitude.

But loneliness can break you.
We could see it in her eyes, and the cry that stayed inside.

We walked in and 3 hours walked out of the house.
Strangers but accepted as friends.
If only we could do the same for them…

Posted on October 21, 2003
in Limit of my knowledge

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Syn·chro·nize

Wondering what it exactly meant, so looked it up in Merrian-Webster

Main Entry: syn·chro·nize
Pronunciation: 'si[ng]-kr&-"nIz, 'sin-
Function: verb
Inflected Form(s): -nized; -niz·ing
Date: circa 1624
intransitive senses : to happen at the same time
transitive senses
1 : to represent or arrange (events) to indicate coincidence or coexistence
2 : to make synchronous in operation
3 : to make (motion-picture sound) exactly simultaneous with the action
- syn·chro·niz·er noun

So looked further:
syn·chro·nous
Pronunciation: 'si[ng]-kr&-n&s, 'sin-
Function: adjective
Etymology: Late Latin synchronos, from Greek, from syn- + chronos time
Date: 1669
1 : happening, existing, or arising at precisely the same time
2 : recurring or operating at exactly the same periods
3 : involving or indicating synchronism
4 a : having the same period; also : having the same period and phase b : GEOSTATIONARY
5 : of, used in, or being digital communication (as between computers) in which a common timing signal is established that dictates when individual bits can be transmitted, in which characters are not individually delimited, and which allows for very high rates of data transfer

and more important:
co·in·cide
Pronunciation: "kO-&n-'sId, 'kO-&n-"
Function: intransitive verb
Inflected Form(s): -cid·ed; -cid·ing
Etymology: Medieval Latin coincidere, from Latin co- + incidere to fall on, from in- + cadere to fall -- more at CHANCE
Date: 1719
1 a : to occupy the same place in space or time b : to occupy exactly corresponding or equivalent positions on a scale or in a series
2 : to correspond in nature, character, or function
3 : to be in accord or agreement

What is co·in·ci·dence?
What is syn·chro·nize?

Some things seems strange some times, but isn't it because we let them?
Isn't it because we remark it?
Because everything is random in this world.
And suddenly because we see something peculiar that has to do with the linking in our head, we consider it 'a strange coincidence', 'a synchonisation'.

I am still convinced we want it to be coincidence, synchronisation
Without those links in our head, there wouldn't be...
There just would be randomness.

Makes me think...

(Funny remark: these words only existed since 1600 and later, didn't they think about this before? How did they explain coincidence before those times...)

Posted on October 29, 2003
in Limit of my knowledge

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Fragment

To photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed. It means putting oneself into a certain relation to the world that feels like knowledge -- and, therefore, like power. A now notorious first fall into alienation, habituating people to abstract the world into printed words, is supposed to have engendered that surplus of Faustian energy and psychic damage needed to build modern, inorganic societies. But print seems a less treacherous form of leaching out the world, of turning it into a mental object, than photographic images, which now provide most of the knowledge people have about the look of the past and the reach of the present. What is written about a person or an event is frankly an interpretation, as are handmade visual statements, like paintings and drawings. Photographed images do not seem to be statements about the world so much as pieces of it, miniatures of reality that anyone can make or acquire.

out of Susan Sontag 'On Photogaphy'

Makes me think.

Posted on October 29, 2003
in Limit of my knowledge

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Pi.

The perfect ness of pi.

Pi is one of the amazing numbers people can philosophize on for hours.
It is part of the perfect circle, and yet so unpredictable.
There is no system in the number itself.
3.141592654… a randomisation of numbers without any predictable output at all.

I guess this is what I want my life to be: pi.
Unpredictable and yet part of the perfection.
Where every point taken from the middle with the same distance is part of the bigger cause.
And nobody that can tell where the beginning is, nor the end.

Posted on November 9, 2003
in Limit of my knowledge

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Futile

Frustra laborant quotquot se calculationibus fatigant pro inventione quadraturae circuli.
(Futile is the labor of those who fatigue themselves with calculations to square the circle.)
by Michael Stifel (1544)

This quote is on Pi.

And has nothing to do with life. And yet.
Yet I has.
For me.

Don't try the impossible.
This is what Michael seems to say.
Almost 960 years ago.

Lees meer "Futile" »

Posted on November 10, 2003
in Limit of my knowledge

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Supermen

She looks at me in anger, wonders why I am here. Minutes pass by.
And suddenly she comes closer, sticks a little fist in the air and says:
‘Superman’
We smile. It is our pact.

Later we will go. 2 supermen in 2 blue jackets.
She in my arms, her arms around me.
And when we are playing ‘Little chaser’ on a square, a thought circles up:
I love her. I love this little supergirl that made my day, by just existing.

The truth of a child is simple: I love you, you love me, I hate you, you love me.

One day later, we’ll drop her in school. Her hand still in mine.
And when we go, we stick fists to each other. ‘Superman!’
‘Who is Superman?’, somebody asks.
‘Ine’, she answers. I have to smile. Never teached her that.
I look when she enters the class. Like a little princess.

One day, this little supergirl will break a lot of hearts.
Last night she glued mine.

Posted on November 13, 2003
in Limit of my knowledge

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Squaring circles

Iris mailed me.
'Do not worry, Ine. You will square the circle in the end.'
She made me smile.

Today I had the feeling I might be.

Had this amazing talk with an organisation 'Language Connections'
They are exactly on the same golfwave are we (Sigal, Tamar and I) are with our 'Snow in Jerusalem'-project.

For me, they were the missing link: a bunch of enthousiast Jewish Israeli and Israeli Arab teachers that want to have children tell their stories.

I got in touch with them thanks to Marlene (Tamar's mother).

So this little project might get rather big. Instead of the 6 little kids we are now talking about 120 kids writing stories.
A blogging system will make the system work.

And there we are: on the one side an organisation that needs funds, on the second hand Daheisheh kids that want to write, on the third hand funds waiting to be implemented in a serious thing, on the fourth hand even a radio crew that is really curious about this project, on the fifth hand the digital artlab that wants to cooperate and on the sixth hand a blogging system.

Let's put our hands together and see what happens.

It is exciting to see that because of us, because of our linking and talking, our seeking and wanting, something might be happening.
We know we won't change the world, but we may make a difference for 120 kids.

More news on it soon...

(And yes, sometimes it is scary, because one day we will have to materialize the thoughts and make it work. I can tell you that very capable persons are involved. And knowing that is a relieve.)

Posted on November 13, 2003
in Limit of my knowledge

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Now I know

Now I know:

"Love is when the person you love opens the door for you
Takes your hand and give you a guided tour within himself/herself
As if visiting a house you have only seen from the outside
And now you are invited to explore it from the inside;
The colors, its special odors and smells, how the light is falling on objects
And also the shadows and dusty hidden places
You go up to the attic to see the window view
And then go down hand in hand to the main floor,
Where the books, CD'S and photo albums are neatly arranged
And eventually, you go down to the cellar
And there – full of dust and spider webs – are packed the memories, dreams and secrets
And when the guided tour ends, the person who loves you lets you continue on your own, freely, up and down the stairs –
Open the photo albums, snoop into drawers, peek and taste from the pots,
Rip off the spider webs from wrinkled dreams, rusty as old tin toys

And even make a mess "

I smile when I read these words. I silence some words that pop up in my mind and seem to jump around, bouncing.
And my god, I love this mess.
How I love this mess... (grin)

Lees meer "Now I know" »

Posted on November 18, 2003
in Limit of my knowledge

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Photography and other stuff

The last two years I have been busy taking pictures all over...
Shooting bright and shiny in Finland, Russia, Vienna, Roumania, Iraq, Israel, Kosovo, Palestine.
Films and films full, files and files on my computer.

Sometimes I really think my teachers here don't realize I do take pictures, since, when they arrive, I always seem to be working on my comp.

I filled my walls with some 'souvenir' pics of home. All my friends are hanging in my studio now. And everytime I pass by, I re-live the mo(nu)ment on that picture. Makes me smile, but also makes me miss them sometimes.

On the other hand, I am filling it with a selection of what I dare to call 'my good pics'. I finally got to the point where I start selecting the pics I have been making these two years.
Although there is still a pile of negatives at home that urgently need to be scanned...

For that reason, the photoblog is a good thing. Makes me keep up with my selections. Makes me review my latest pics within a week.
That and the pressagency, whom I send pics on regular basis now, make that I keep my archives organised.

Just went to the lab, to have some pictures in print, instead of in files stored on a harddisk.
Will have to buy Lomurello's urgently.

And then present everything to the teachers...

Maybe they might get surprised...
I guess I will be surprised this evening when getting the bill...

Posted on November 19, 2003
in Limit of my knowledge

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Lacan and links

This is what you find when you start doing research on Lacan, for school...
I have to say, this is far more interesting than the boring texts we have to read...

But off course it is a fact that we have to read the texts first before you actually do something on it...

Posted on November 22, 2003
in Limit of my knowledge

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Wit

De woorden zijn verdwenen, verhalen die ik wou vertellen.
En terwijl ik letters op het scherm tot woorden probeer te toveren, om dan tot zinnen te verworden, is het de delete-toets die even later, ingedrukt, langzaam alle letters opeet.
Opvreet.
Wat overblijft is niets anders dan het wit van dit blad.
En plots het besef dat dit wit alles vertelt. Het hele verhaal.
Ik stop.
Laat het wit wit.

Posted on November 23, 2003
in Limit of my knowledge

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Wereld

Eerst reikt je wereld niet verder dan het kleine bed waarin je ligt, waarna het de kamer wordt, en eens je kan stappen je de deur opent naar de volgende kamer.
Ik herinner me de zaterdagen wanneer we uitgingen, naar Herne, het een boogscheut ver.
Het leven niet groter dan enkele dorpen klein.
Met nu en dan een reis naar zonnige oorden, of helderwitte sneeuw. Vakantie.

Intussen is de wereld mijn dorp.
Kan ik lopen doorheen steden aan de andere kant van de wereld, en er herinneringen hebben die verder reiken dan ‘vakantie’
Er vrienden hebben.
Of een thuis.

Allemaal opgeslagen in de bibliotheek in mijn hoofd.
In een grote kaart die helemaal niets meer vandoen heeft met een wereldbol.
Want mijn kaart is meer dan een blad vol blauwe vlakken of groen, mijn kaart is een verwrongen papiertje, een vod, met hier en daar kleine krabbels, telefoonnummers haastig opgeschreven. En afstanden die anders gemeten worden dan meters of kilometres, maar in tijd. In het aantal bussen dat ik nam van de ene plaats naar de andere, steden worden dorpen of wereldsteden naargelang de tijd die ik er spendeerde. Autostrades lijnen tussen verschillende plaatsen, routes naar ‘nowhere’ of het onderweg zijn naar mezelf.
Soms al liftend, soms in een bus, soms in de open lucht op een motor met een mooie dame achterop.

En mensen, dagen vol met mensen, die je lastig vallen of knuffelen, die met je praten, of schreeuwen. Die zwijgen. En later verdwijnen. Soms terugkomen, soms blijven.
Soms je bed verwarmen, soms je hart.
Soms schimmen zijn van wat ze ooit konden zijn, of waren geweest, soms je wereld oplichten.

Licht, lichter lichtst.

Posted on November 30, 2003
in Limit of my knowledge

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Man on the moon...

109:15:45 Aldrin: Okay. About ready to go down and get some Moon rock?
109:15:47 Armstrong: My antenna's out. (Pause)
109:16:12 Aldrin: All right. That should go down with no twists now. Put the (LEC stowage) bag up this way. That's even. Okay, are you hooked up to it?
109:16:26 Armstrong: Hmm? (Pause) Okay. Now we need to hook this...
109:16:30 Aldrin: Yeah. Move that up there.
109:16:34 Armstrong: Okay. (Pause) Okay. Your visor...(Pause)

This is actually Neil Armstrong trying to set up a connection with Earth, back in July 1969.

Guess he should see the latest technology -he died back in '86-
Funny to see how the world has changed so much...

Want to read/hear/see what happened back in 69, why your parents still refer to it as something 'amazing'? Read it here and suddenly you'll close your eyes and be on the moon.

Posted on December 2, 2003
in Limit of my knowledge

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Fire.

Posted on December 10, 2003
in Limit of my knowledge

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Verloren.

Wat is het misschien meer dan
Het nooit dat zekerheid biedt
De twijfel waarin je me
Doet baden verbergt
Mijn naaktheid niet.
En terwijl ik dreig te verdrinken
In dit te diepe momentum
Bevries je met je glimlach
Dit ogenblik tot eeuwigheid
Uiteindelijk is het jij die wint
Vertel je me
Wat ik je vergat te zeggen
Is dat mezelf al lang in jou
heb verloren.

Posted on December 10, 2003
in Limit of my knowledge

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Black sea

Are you also afraid of the black emptiness of the sea at night?
The nothing that is waiting you, and while you put your feet inside of it,
you see your feet disappear, slowly the rest of your body follows.
Where are you going?
Do you vanish?

Sometimes I wish I could.
I wished these thoughts would stop at night?
I would not feel the urge to think.
To worry.

Night swimming and its excitement has been to long ago.
Float on the sea, watch the stars above and the deep emptiness beneath.
A head that gets empty and only enjoys the moment.

My head is to full.

(Today I decided some things.
Help me remind when I forget:
*No more television at night: because you end up zapping and not seeing anything at all.
*More sports, biking towards the sea at night, enjoy that moment of silence
And wonder if the sound you hear is the one of the mermaids.
*No more computer after 9PM (this leaves me just another 1.15h before I shut this one down) because it stops the interesting ‘human conversation’
*More reading of books.
*No addiction to the web: only post one photo a day and stop being busy with it. Focus on other stuff.
*More good pictures.

This should be enough; today was a good day to start all these things.)

Posted on December 11, 2003
in Limit of my knowledge

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Silence speaks

He didn't say many words, and yet we could understand.
Bodylanguage.
Tells me more than many other things by now.

Read my hands... I'll read yours.

Posted on December 13, 2003
in Limit of my knowledge

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The very end and and the very beginning of my knowledge.

She walks towards the building, all alone, almost a big girl.
Suddenly she stops, turns back.
'Mammy?'
'Yes?'
'Mammy, will you tell, will you tell Ine...'
'What?'
'Tell Ine that I love her.'

When her mammy tells me the story, she doesn't know this story makes my day.
Isn't this what we all want?
To be really loved for a second.
A second, an eternity.

I smile.

Posted on December 15, 2003
in Limit of my knowledge

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Internet & art

Francis raised an interesting question in our talk yesterday and his second lecture today raised the question again.
Made me think.

Is the internet the new place for artists. Don't they get lost in the mass of it?

Razzi is talking about the same kind of thing, saying 'Oh yes, a week ago one of the Killbots pictures was published on the front page of a weekly magazine (being read by 97000 families). The number of reactions I received from this: 'none' Printed media are clearly dead material. Long live the internet!!'

We do get an audience, and probably an audience that is pretty interested since they had to look for us. The quality of your audience can be as good as in a fysical gallery, the number of viewer though might be higher on the web. Much higher...

The access to the web is free, you don't need a curator to elect you, or a gallery that wants to represent you. Your viewers will determinate your quality.
Artists that sell online, might be the next future. Like Shane Lavalette. Or explodingdog, who intereacts with its audience in order to make his art.

Francis continues 'I am convinced that the issue of copyright and ownership that is now being debated is a key moment in the history of distributing ideas and artistic material and a defining moment in the evolution of internet. I believe an understanding of this debate is necessary in order to trace the development of net art and to gauge it’s future directions. I also feel that this issue must be examined critically in art schools at this point in time, keeping them up to date with these developments and allowing them to make a useful contribution to the debate'

More artists online at Randomstate.org

Posted on December 17, 2003
in Limit of my knowledge

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Leonardo's squaring the circle

In my search for squaring the circle, off course I had to pass this amazing image of Leonardo de Vinci. And finally find an estetic answer to squaring the circle.

Yesterday I had a talk with Ohad, a fellow student, about squaring circles.
That it was impossible. But how do we make impossible things possible...
By dreams, by optic illusions, by faking things for our head.

This is why the only solution for my problem will be a fake one, one that distracts my mind and only lives in fantasies.

I found my solution in Leonardo and his Vitruvian (image above)
And in writings of a mathematic professor.
Download his pdf
And this link which might interest John: Pi and surfboards

Which brought me to Mandelbrot (not so interesting to me) but what is: Mandelbrot Music
Is this music randomly or not???

Enjoy.

Posted on December 18, 2003
in Limit of my knowledge

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New York

New York, city of motion, could not go forward, and so, because it hated to stand still, it went backwards. Went backwards into its past, individual and collective, the past of the place; the Hudson river and the trappers, the Indians and their piebald horses, the Dutch Stuyvesants, trading, building, navigating, dealing. The past of its people, now from so many parts of the globe, but all knowing what it was to struggle, to pioneer. To make the difficulty into the dream.

Makes me long even more.
March is nearing...

Extract out of 'GUT Symmetries'

Posted on December 18, 2003
in Limit of my knowledge

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Words

Get your free credit report
online and know where you stand. A bank wont lend you anything if your destitute.

Posted on December 18, 2003
in Limit of my knowledge

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Poésie

CHAMBRES D'AMIS
(NYONS)

Moby
(Sleep Alone)

(out of 'Alaska', Peter Verhelst, p.51)

Posted on December 30, 2003
in Limit of my knowledge

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A filosophical remark on moving forward

Out of a conversation:
"I know, we are moving forward but it's for memories AMAZING ones"

If the world is not flat and space is not lineair, then what is moving forward?
So maybe we are not moving forward, maybe we are going backwards, or even making circles, maybe it doesn't matter.

Strange trought that popped up in my mind right now

Posted on December 31, 2003
in Limit of my knowledge

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Wat is kunst?

'What is kunst? Wat is kunst? De blik in haar ogen, dat is kunst.'

[What is art? What is art? The glance in her eyes that is art!]

Noordkaap

Posted on January 1, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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2004

It is funny.
I left in 2002, by now it is 2004.
We move fast...

My blog exists quite some time now, and writing it has never been a burden.
Every day little notes, send through bits and bytes to the world.

Many people catch.
Fragments.

And that is what this is supposed to be: fragments, mo(nu)ments out of my life.
You will never be able to read all of it here.

You will only read where my mind decided to stop and to see. And even then it is only a fragment out of.

Because some things belong to me.

The power of a blog is that readers get involved, they sneak into a life, peek.
But in the end it is only a fragment.
Like a photographer who frames, and by choice leaves things unseen.

Posted on January 4, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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Statements

I have to make a little note for the exhibition in Bezalel.
A statement.
An explanation.

But I do not have any explanation.

Wondered about it, silently running in my mind.
And suddenly it popped up, making sense.
One quote.

"There's no use trying," she said; "one can't believe impossible things."
"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

Maybe this is what it is about, the last year and a half.
Or maybe way before.
The jump abroad, by accident Israël –it could have been so many places, but it became Israël-

And even while writing this, a little ghost appears in the hall, a certain song in a background, kisses a blown-away kiss, and I have to smile.
Certainly this is what it is about.
Squaring circles, jumping bridges, travel the road less traveled, fly like a swallow.

I am not looking for explanations anymore.
This is my query, and even if it brings no answers, it is OK.
The answer is the road…

Posted on January 14, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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Back to the start

Come up to meet you, tell you I'm sorry
You don't know how lovely you are

I'm going back to the start

[Coldplay]

Posted on January 17, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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An empty chair

Beauty can be so simple...

Absence of what is not...

Posted on January 18, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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It is not an accident

"It is no accident that you are reading this. I am making black marks on white paper. These marks are my thoughts, and although I do not know who you are reading this now, in some way the lines of our lives have intersected... For the length of these few sentences, we meet here.

It is no accident that you are reading this. This moment has been waiting for you, I have been waiting for you. Remember me."

Duane Michals
(One of my favorite photographers)

Posted on January 18, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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Emptiness and other questions

While scrolling through a classmate’s last exhibition, suddenly it popped up to me what photography does with me.
I dare to say that my photography makes me wonder every day.
Being graduated as a documentary photographer and studying in an art school makes me question myself over and over.
Does a picture have to be beautiful?
Does it have to tell something?
And what if it has to tell something, what does it tell?

I watched so many pictures lately, and really they are so beautiful.
But it is the only thing I can say about it ‘They are beautiful’
They are like magazine pictures that track our attention and seconds later, the attention drops. Nothing keeps our mind there.
Emptiness.

I guess that’s what disturbs me most. We like to show we’re an empty throw away society. But by playing the game and being empty in our pictures we don’t keep the attention. We don’t point out what it is really about.

We don’t look for the story anymore.
Growing up in today’s world is equal to being overwhelmed with images.
Images that want us to buy, or stick things in our throat.
I am convinced that we have to teach our children how to watch the world, how to make interpretations, because surely they don’t know anymore.

To come back to my photography: I am sure I can make a book full of nice pictures, just grab them from my photoblog, ordinary things.
Have an exhibition with them.
Have people say ‘Beautiful picture’
But will it make me happy?
Will I have the feeling I achieved something in life?

I don’t believe so.

So let me stick to what I am busy with. Trying it my way.
And I guess the part where I am in people’s heads instead of on people’s walls is more important to me.
The part where E.T point his finger to the boys head, and it lightens up ‘I am in here’ when he is going home.
I hope that one day I’ll be in there.
More than I hope to have my picture on your wall…

I truly believe that this stream in art will disappear very quickly, as people tend to ask for more than emptiness.
When people will look at a piece of art, smile and say it is beautiful, and seconds later wonder what it is about. And truly find something then.

So by the end of this year, I want to collect some pictures, maybe only 1, that makes you question this world.

The rest is just empty filling of what never has been.

Posted on January 21, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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Living in a plastic world

She asked me 'I like the bags. Will you present them in your exhibition?
Will you present them like this, or will you picture them?'

I was stunned.

The question of these days becomes: do we show reality, or do we show an image of reality.
And again: what do we want to tell by presenting that image.

What is the difference between showing 4 bags hanging on a wall and a picture of 4 bags hanging on a wall.

Tell me, because I am trying to figure it out...

Posted on January 21, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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How to be an artist

How to be an artist:

Stay loose. Learn to watch snails. Plant impossible gardens. Invite someone dangerous to tea. Make little signs that say "Yes!" and post them all over your house. Make friends with freedom and uncertainty. Look forward to dreams. Cry during movies. Swing as high as you can on a swing set, by moonlight. Cultivate moods. Refuse to be responsible. Do it for love. Take lots of naps. Give money away. Do it now. The money will follow. Believe in magic. Laugh a lot. Celebrate every gorgeous moment. Take moonbaths. Have wild imaginings, transformative dreams, and perfect calm. Draw on the walls. Read everyday. Imagine yourself magic. Giggle with children. Listen to old people. Open up. Dive in. Be free. Bless yourself. Drive away fear. Play with everything. Entertain your inner child. You are innocent. Build a fort with blankets. Get wet. Hug trees. Write love letters. --Sark

Guess he was a real artist, he just died too soon.

Posted on January 29, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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On photography.

Luc Delahaye, wondering about being an artist...
Interesting stuff for my teachers I guess.
I marked the passages that are in my mind too...

The Magnum and Newsweek photographer Luc Delahaye recently declared publicly that he was no longer a photojournalist. He was an artist. While this kind of talk would make Englishmen blush, the French are perfectly at ease cohabiting with art. For them, it is a relationship as normal as falling in love - and often not quite as daft.

"Officially, three years ago," he said.

The zenith of this development is presented in a new collection of 13 vast, 1.1m x 2.3m panoramic prints of events between 2001 and 2002 - the prints include Milosevic On Trial, Ground Zero, George Bush At The UN, Jenin Refugee Camp; there are also scenes of death in Afghanistan and Kabul. The work is presented under the title History.

Delahaye's enormous new prints were on display in a New York gallery last year - for sale at $15,000 a print. Next week, they go on show in the UK, at the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television in Bradford. They have also been published in a smaller, album form, as a limited edition of 100 copies at $1,000 each.

We were in Delahaye's apartment in Montmartre, a geographical position that in his case gives off misleading signals - this is the Paris of the Moulin Rouge, of Doisneau's romantic canoodling snapshots, at best of Cartier-Bresson. And Delahaye is probably unique in being willing publicly to criticise the master and his legacy.

A wiry man of 41, a thoughtful and precise talker, Delahaye is often loosely described as being of peasant stock. But he is actually rooted in the maraîcher class: not true peasants, but the market gardeners who traditionally ringed and nourished French towns - Tours, in Delahaye's case. There is no known artistic background. So this is no Parisian aesthete.

He cooked lunch for me - smoked salmon, spaghetti, terrific cheeses, wine, of course - and we discussed at leisure his attitudes, his experiments and his claims for his work. At the heart of the discussion was the financial and artistic crisis that photojournalism is currently going through.

On the financial side, few magazines any longer commission photographers to go off for several months and produce an "essay". So, to consolidate their careers, photojournalists are inevitably looking to book production and the galleries.

On the aesthetic side, many photographers are going through a soul-searching similar to that of painters in the late 1800s when, for some at least, photography made figurative, naturalistic work redundant.

Now photographers are questioning their own realistic conventions and, above all, reacting against the new digital technology. The digital camera will do almost everything for the photographer - focus, judge the exposure, compensate for variations of light.

True, you can do your own cropping/editing there and then on the viewfinder-monitor, but - with the tactility of handling film gone and the darkroom gone - there is that old fear of the craftsman's intimate skills being overtaken by "the machine".

The very convenience of so much work being done for you can become a dilemma for the creative photographer. Some plunge in and push the technology further; others, like the painters of old, are looking critically at their craft.

In search of "answers" (essentially, a search for control), an artist might deliberately abandon all control of his instrument, in this case the camera - peculiar behaviour in the eyes of the layman, perhaps, but it has its logic. This is what Delahaye did.

"Ten years ago, when I was still a photojournalist," he explained, "I was beginning to confront the limitations of journalism. I asked extremely simple questions: what is a camera exactly? What happens when the shutter fires?" So, by way of a test, he gave clochards around the Gare du Nord 20 francs each to sit in photobooths and have their picture taken. Delahaye kept the pictures. His only act as a photographer was to put the coin in the slot.

What did he learn from the experience, I asked.

"Confirmation of what I already knew," Delahaye replied. "That the recording process is a magical process. You see that when you leave the camera on its own."

[fragment out of an interview, published in the Guardian, tx Jimmy, for forwarding this]

Posted on February 8, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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True places...

It is not down in any map; true places never are.

[out of Moby Dick]

[original image can be found here; print, cut and have a special globe...]

Posted on February 9, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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I do not...

I do not believe in rational decisions.

Posted on February 14, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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Most important picture

She asked me 'What is the most important picture you ever made?'
The 10 year old girl looked at me, eager to know my answer. I told her I took so many. But probalby the pictures of my grandparents, eyes closed, are the most important to me. Dreams captured behind their eyes.
She asks me which picture I dream to make?
I never thought of it. Probably I'll know when I take it.
Her uncle answers in my place: 'Every next picture.'

Posted on February 19, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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What counts...

What counts the most is emotion, the rest is extra.
Once I brought home from the desert a little tin
I liked, to include it in a sculpture.
It had a very beautiful patina due to the years
it had spent lying in the sun. When I went to make
the sculpture in the workshop, some sand trickled
out of the inside.
It was, although, it might seem absurd, one of the
greatest thrills of my life.

Gerardo Ruedo

Posted on March 8, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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Do we forget to see?

On the one hand the high amount of high quality pictures reaching our eye are enormous.
On the other hand, still I am missing some things.
Don't we forget to really see, to see and live in this snapshotworld?
Aren't we becoming consumers in an imageworld.
Look, see, and go on.

How many times do we dare to be shocked. stand still, stop to consume and enjoy the image that comes to us.
Live it for a moment?

Posted on March 10, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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BLogging and readers

I have a friend, she said to me: 'Lately I didn't read your blog so much'
I guess that's ok. I never meant this blog to be a higly visited thing, in fact it was just meant for the friends and family to follow the stories.
Meanwhile other people are reading it, and next to that I find it a very easy way to keep my links pretty organized. Thoughts I have end up on the web, and if I want to refer to something I can always easily look it up.
My own library'tabs' straigt by the hand.

You didn't post anything in NYC, somebody said.
Indeed I didn't.
The blog is not my life reference.
I announced a radio silence, because I didn't wanted to be like a little Japanese tourist, running around and missing real thing, busy with commenting everything.

Yes I did it, in my other trip, but there I was alone and not in company.

So if in some weeks I take of for Egypt, and there is no report. Don't panic.
It is me just taking of the web into reality...

:)

Posted on March 11, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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New horizons

I read this text of Fluser on Witolds blog
Funny when you start to think. Photography only exists 170 years.
The possibility to travel in an easy way started not so long ago, and is no longer a privilege of the very rich. Next to that there is the television.
Again, only recently everybody has one in the livingroom and thus a window on the world.

We are privileged. And when I say this, I maybe mean me in the first place. Chosing to take a plane and fly to NYC, or deciding to go and live abroad for a year.
Why? Is it because of the exotic images. Or me, wanting to jump through the window and end up in the image behind the television... The real one.

Some days ago, on the other side of the world, I was talking about this urge to travel the world, to see, to live.
Stany, my talking companion, said that people like us, usually don’t fit in Belgium anymore.
Not because we don’t like it, but because our view on the world has changed, widened, while others didn’t. That that is the reason why we get troubled.
Maybe he’s right. (And he has a reason to know... He did it 40 years ago.)
And to be honest, it is what I fear a little bit.

Looking for new opportunities now.
To keep the horizon wide.
Or to look for new ones...

Posted on March 12, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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A little scarf

I look at my hands, the palm, some lines, a little scarf.
Is this real? Is what I see reality?
How can I sit in a flying bird and cross the ocean, how can my seat contain a phone, which, when a creditcardis inserted, transfers my voice to the other side of the world, right into the ear of my friend?
How can waves transfer noise? How could somebody invent the internet, make it work? How comes a microwave heats up food? And a television shows images of an unknown world?
Did we really put a man on the moon? And are we sure there was water on Mars?
The human brain that keeps on inventing these things is unlimited.
An impossible, crazy, unbelievable world.
Meanwhile we turn into people that are lived, we got stuck in our little world and the window on the world. A house, a car, a nice new computer, or a camera. A huge television with satellite dish to see another addictive program.
We are living the image we make from our real world...

Posted on March 14, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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Constitution of reality 

As further as I am investigating things, it seems that although all the things I am busy with seems to be from a great disctance, in the end it makes all sense.
I am trying to find a solution for what I think can be called an reliable image of reality.

Being busy with documentary, and on the same time with the children's project, and on the same time with the returning question of the media influence on our view comes to the same things.
Make an interpretation of reality and doubt it...

The talk with Nahum was on the same thing.
Instead of showing a series of documentary photography I am trying to show the most basic form of a camera: the camera obscura.
And as I am busy with it, more and more the explanation appears why.

I found this text today:

With the invention of photography first and film later the claim of perspective to be reality became less convincing, and new concepts for the constitution of reality were created. One main point then was the actuality of the image: what could be photographed or filmed must have been in front of the camera lens.

Taking a camera obscura, which was on the basis of photography, which made people think something had to be in front of the camera. And project things with it that don't reflect this so called reality, makes us doubt the photography again.

Nahum talked on the relation between this knowing that something was in front of the camera and the new knowing that maybe that what different from what the image shows.
Yet, I also believe we have this certain embedded believe in a picture, that somehow it has to be true because it is a projection of what once was reality...

Makes me think all the time...

The whole intersting essay on Constitution of Reality
I guess I can use this text... :)

Posted on March 15, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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Happiness

Remember the happiness that was hidden in the big bed of your parents, when on Sundays you went in and jumped on it, wanting to ly inbetween. Sweetly allowing your sister to join, and slowly pushing one of your parents out, until you were the only one left to enjoy the bed.
The same thing happened everywhere, at your grandparents, even in the bed of your best friends parents.
I still love Sunday mornings, staying in bed late, enjoying what there is to enjoy, living few hours in this nice cocoon.
Where does it come from?
The cosiness, the leftovers of a warm duvet, the love hidden in the room, the happy dizzyness of waking up late, or the people in the bed that truly love you?
I don’t know.
I do remember the memory as yesterday.
One of the few images of childhood that are leftover, well kept in the big library in my head.
Easily to remember, when lying in bed on Sunday, under a big duvet, longing for the same amount of love and happiness.
Or like today, when this little kiddo jumps on the bed, happy, probably for the same reason as I was and today am...

Posted on March 16, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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Marginal to me...

Had a small chat with John, friend and co-founder of Photoblog.
On marginality.
I can think of many meanings it has to me, but when it comes to marginality in work these are the things I am thinking of:
-being in traffic jams every morning and evening.
-being stuck to a desk that doesn't offer me any enrichment in life. (read enrichment as intellectual and thus not material)
-a mobile that keeps on ringing.
-9 to 5 job.
-perfect outlined tasks, which don't offer any liberty
-getting up at 5 in the morning...

On the other hand, you can give me:
-hard work
-a challenge
-different interesting /cultural surroundings
-input
-comments and remarks
-creativity

and I am in...

Posted on March 21, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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To be in a magazine...

Today a friend wrote me: "You have to do what you want to do, but it has to be worth to come into the news. Otherwise, why are you doing it?"

I guess our similar backgrounds make us have something in common.
One of that is the will to get somewhere, no matter what.
As long as it has a point, and the point is that we want it ourselves.

I guess the recent interviews I had to give for newspapers and radio, give me some comfort, saying that what I am busy with, is worth the try. ;)
And no, I am not gaining any money with what I have been doing lately. But I have to tell, the 'voldoening' is big.

Posted on March 22, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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The details?

"The details?
The shirt she carefully unbuttons before putting her hand on the naked shoulder.
To leave it there for a while."

(Read in a little notebook)

Posted on March 23, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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Qui connaît la route ?

J'sais pas quoi faire
Je n'sais pas où aller
Manque de repère
L'horizon est bouché
Je regarde en arrière
Ça m'fait pas avancer

Y a que des mythes usés
Des trucs de musée
Des rêves désabusés

Chaque jour la Terre fait sa révolution
Et moi je tourne, je tourne comme elle, je tourne en rond
Chaque jour la Terre fait sa révolution
Et moi je tourne en rond

Est-ce un jeu de rôles
Je connais pas la règle
J'trouve pas ça très drôle
Je vais perdre
Un jour le contrôle

Mais qui connaît la route
J'ai les ailes collées au mazout
Qui connaît la route

Qui peut m'enlever
Me faire évader
Je voudrais m'envoler

Je n'sais pas où aller
Manque de repère
L'horizon est bouché

Axelle Red
Paroles: Axelle Red. Musique: A.Red, R.Seff
1996 "À tatons"

Translate here

Posted on March 28, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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Ithaka

As you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon-don't be afraid of them:
you'll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon-you won't encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won't have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you'll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

(Notes:
By Cavafy
Translated by
Edmund Keeley & Philip Sherrard
First version probably written January 1894.
Final version written October 1910, and published November 1911.)

While in search for some information, I was scrolling through my mailbox.
And suddenly this one popped up.

I am sure I saw Ithaka, not so long ago, close enough to smell, far enough to known that the time isn’t there yet.
But one day, I’ll arrive.
Meanwhile the road I am taking is indeed a long one, full of adventure, and discovery of unknown heavens.

Posted on March 29, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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Copyright of pictures on the web

The issue was raised in Photoblog, and I can not say nothing on it, since it concerns me.

The internet is a dangerous place for copyright. Many musicians will curse it, since Napster, the selling of music fell down.
Why do the effort of going to the mall and buy a very expensive cd, when you can find it free?
The same thing for the expensive software.

Yet I truly believe that there are alternatives. In USA people tend to pay for Shareware, and the Apple Itunes shop, selling music turned to be a huge success.
As for the software I truly believe that lower prices would make a larger market. If a program like Photoshop would cost only 250 dollars instead of a 1000, wouldn’t you have the intention to buy it more easily? I would...
Developments in the world make the need for new markets, new solutions.
Recordcompanies don’t work anymore? Well, excuse me, they made a lot of money since the invention of the cd. Prices for making it, dropped through the years, the prices of the CD stayed. If they would have been busy with a solution like Itunes, maybe the damage wouldn’t have been so big. And look at solutions such as Kristin Hershes mp3 releases through the web: fans do pay.

Jumping to the photography now...
Can people copy images?
No. But what can we do against it?
This is what I mean by saying ‘everybody steals’
Of course I don’t encourage such a thing, but I can not offer a solution. I will not be able to stop them.

For this reason, the creative common license (see it on this site) is a good invention. At least somewhere in your site you are mentioning that your work is under copyright. And which rules you give it.

To me it is useless to have people pay for low resolution on a site.
It would have been nice though, but face it. Most of the time it is just a nice advertisement.
So the only thing you can do, is make sure that people give you credits, and ask for it.
This site: Ausias.net, used a picture of mine, without ever asking for it.
I send them a mail asking whether they could make a link to my site.
I know they won’t give me money. They had the opportunity to contact me, they didn’t.

Anyhow, according to the Belgian Copyright law, people can use an image for free if it refers to an exhibition, in an article or whatsoever. Referring to another website would implement this. And justify.
Radio 1 recently used one, on my own proposal. I didn’t think of asking money. They made the nicest advertisement I could wish for...
(Towards printing I have another opinion. Printing has nothing to do with public relations. Printing should be paid (unless it is referring to an exhibition))

Copyright and the web have still a long way to go... And I truley believe that in the near future it has to be taken in consideration. More and more artists are putting work online and want credits for that. Although < a href="http://creativecommons.org/ ">Creative Commons is a good idea, it is not the solution.
There should be something in an image that marks it, and a softwareprogram (a kind of google for these images) that tracks it. I am sure such a thing exists, but tell me, who uses it? And the iptc of an image can always be erased...

The question if an image can be owned by someone, has a simple answer to me: yes.
Because I took it and not you. And my eye see things differently than yours.
Next to that my hands work with the camera, decide which aperture I use, or which diafragm.
I can perfectly design how something would look like before I take the picture. (Well most of the time)
I frame it, I make it.
Thus I own.

This discussion is a filosophical, but many filosophers will agree.
We don’t expect a James Nachtwey to say: ‘well this picture only exists because of what happened, not because of me...’
The difficulties he had to go through are different from others that didn’t take the picture, and for that reason only, he has to get that respect of copyright.
And the same thing counts for any photographer.

Or any artist in general.

For more on copyright and others opinion I refer to:
Copyright Basics for the web
Copyright Issues for webpublishers
Copyright in berkeley Univ

Posted on March 30, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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Why I am a blogger and not a journalist...

Some months ago Salam Pax wrote this:

"My life has taken a sharp turn towards the surreal.
it starts with this [The Baghdad Blog].
did you see the promo, it is so scary it freaked me out the first time I saw it. do turn up the volume, the track is by the Aphex Twin and when Intro contacted Warp records they said that they can choose any track they want by the Aphex Twin and it's for free. Warp even has the promo linked from its site.
Then there is the today show on BBC Radio 4 later followed by a web chat.
a radio interview with Late Night Live in *australia*.
A daily telegraph piece (needs registration).
A web page on the Guardian site.
A million other interviews by people who are nice enough to bring me books as presents.

Salam Pax has developed a life of his own, he is not me anymore. and I miss baghdad like hell.
:: salam 2:42 PM [+] :: "

Bloggers are individuals, ready to make mistakes, and to criticize themselves in their daily magazine. They tell their worries, their concerns, their ideas.
People following the stories will read the before and the after. Will smile or not.
Will put things into a perspective.

A journalist is not an individual, but a mediator. He tries to analyze and to give a point of view that is in between parties, that gives a ‘neutral’ point of view.
Or at least that is what they should do.

More and more the interviews become shorter, reportages lighter. ‘because people like it.’ And ‘there is no money to pay for it.’

A journalist will never dare to refer to himself like Salam Pax did here.
Or not agree with what his boss did to him. Or doubt his decisions. Since it his credibility that stands or falls.
A blogger does…

That’s why I am a blogger and not a journalist.

(This is also some of the journalists of indymedia should open an blog and not to pretend to be a journalist…)

Posted on March 30, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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Lawrence of Arabia

Yesterday i finally started to see this beautiful movie.
Once before, I had put the dvd aside, because 2 was to much.
Yesterday though, I longed for those beautiful deserts I saw months ago.
It is said that Lawrence of Arabia went through Wadi Rum.
Years later I would sleep in the same desert, near the same rocks. Atleast if the dates carved into the rock where real..

Mum, I recommend you to see this movie.

Next to that it is a great way to get introduced to what happened here long time ago, and why years later the Israeli conflict started...

More here

Posted on April 4, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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It's a fire

It's a fire
These dreams they pass me by
This salvation I desire
Keeps getting me down
Cos we need to
Recognise mistakes
For time and again
So let it be known for what we believe in
I can see no reason for it to fail.... ...
Cos this life is a farce
I can't breathe through this mask
Like a fool
So breathe on, sister breathe on
From this oneself
Testify or tell
Its fooling us now
So let it be known for what we believe in
I can see no reason for it to fail...
Cos this life is a farce
I can't breathe through this mask
Like a fool
So breathe on, little sister, breathe on
Ohh so breathe on, little sister, like a fool

(It's a fire - Portishead)

Posted on April 12, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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The power of an image

Remember the days where a picture could become an icon, change a way of thinking or show beauty because it was new.
Photographers as Bresson, Weston, Weegee, … They all had something in common: photography was new, not open to everybody.
Photography was still a very vague thing, and only few where really into it.
During the years these things changed: the coming of the television with moving images, the cheaper and easier cameras,.. People got adapted to images and to photography.
It all stayed pretty expensive in production.

I remember my explanation’ Why to learn photography’ like yesterday:
Because I want to learn a language, understand it. And in the end speak it.

After 5 years of studying it, my conclusion was to use documentary, it suited me the most and the narrative aspect

In everything I did with photography, the research kept on appearing.
Photography as a narrative, in its most clear form: documentary.
It was an obvious choice to turn to documentary, while other students where experimenting with the reality-fiction aspect, I didn’t want to flirt with those things. The fresh new stream of empty pictures, showing reality like emptiness seemed absurd to me.
Coming from a mainly documentary school suddenly everybody seemed to do this stuff.
Showing how beautiful ugly things can be.
I kept to what was known and what has a purpose to me: showing the world through my eyes, as a social-documentary photographer

During that last year we had to make a paper.
I choose it to be on the influence of digital media in the opinion-making of the people.
More-over I looked at the mis-use and dangers of it, and the evolution of imagebanks.

Reality is different from the news we get.
And press and media should be responsible about that.

10 years ago, the fear of adaptations in pictures, the use of Photoshop and similar things made us aware of the dangers. The fact that Time magazine and Newsweek published the same picture of OJ Simpson but in a different gradation of black, suddenly started a huge discussion how media should deal with these tools.
Statements were made, and for sure some of these magazines won’t make the same mistake again.

The fear of such adaptations and the doubt if what we see is real, is still there.
Though, as I see it, we should not be so afraid of those things.
By now it turned out that most of the newspapers, magazines realized they lose credibility when using it.

5 years later, we have a different kind of problem.
The embedded journalism.
No fake pictures, and real things on the pictures.
But do we see everything?
On both sides, different stories were told.

Next to that the fact that we are overwhelmed by pictures.

I think photography as a language is a very difficult language.
The grammaticism keeps on changing.

Posted on April 14, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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Be aware and do something

Let's try to save a life.

...el Tribunal de apelación de la Sharia decidirá si ratifica o anula la condena de Fátima Usman y Ahmadu Ibrahim a morir lapidados por mantener relaciones sexuales fuera del matrimonio.

La firma de millones de ciudadanos ha sido efectiva. Safiya Hussaini y Amina Lawal lo saben. Si aún no lo has hecho, por favor, firma ahora. Muchas gracias.

Oppose here

Posted on April 14, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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On the other side of the world

Today I was mailing with this lady on the other side of the world.
She wrote a nice mail, saying that when reading my stories, she realized I was doing what she is dreaming of.

It is nice to get such mails. But the 'down to earth' me in me immediately will answer that what I am doing is not such a special thing. And sometimes even boring, and sometimes hard. Sometimes lonely.

But very possible.

So amazingly easy possibly.

I have to thank my dad for that one.
He was the one always telling 'If you work hard and you want things hard enough, you will get there. You just have to try to be the best in what you do.'

I have blamed him silently for running away from our home and building another one. And yes, we have lost the special contact we once had, and it turned into talking about nothing and everything.

But when I stand here, and I am realizing my dreams, every day again, it is because of him. Because of my dad who teached me that it is worth to live our dreams.

Even when sometimes they seem unreachable.

Posted on April 21, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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Spam...

No: 24A Idrisa Road,
Baghdad.
Republic of Iraq.
Salam
Greetings to you in the name of our Allah i got your e mail through the
help of my nurse who scanned the internet and gave me your mail.
I am Mrs Mariam Khalid a devoted muslim,a new muslim convert of 74
years old after being converted from a christian family by my husband.
For quite a good number of years now,I have been suffering from cancer of
the breast and fibroid of the womb which has for a long time now affected
my health and from all indications my condition is deteriorating by day and
by my doctor's prediction I have less than six months to live.

Today I received this spammail.
They are pretty creative these Spamboosters...
Asking for money.
I am laughing when reading it. As if a 74 year old Iraqi muslim speaks English and knows how to email...
Give me a break.

If you consider to help Iraq, I suggest Medecins Sans Frontieres They are still in Irq with 80 people.

Posted on April 22, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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Everything my dad teached me...

-To look for the ghosts under the bed and see that they are not there
-To tell fairy tales
-To write those stories
-To believe that I can write the real stories
-To love design
-To make design
-To see light
-To feel light
-To dream
-To believe in dreams
-To be free
-To be who ever you want to if you try enough
-To look for the things you are longing for
-To look for the ones you are searching for
-To keep on going til you find
-To love

And so I ended up jumping over and over on the bed, with arms going up and down. Because my dad told me: 'When you try hard enough, you can do it.'
-I am not sure he thought I would try to fly...-

It took me a long time to see those things, to remember them, hidden behind the things he broke.
But they become more clear every day...

Posted on April 26, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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Birds

My little totem bird is flying circles.
The city is full with it.
Calling me. To follow.
Summer has arrived, time to go home, it seems to whistle.
Soon I will. Open wings and fly. J

Posted on May 2, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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US troops cut off from internet...

A week after a scandal broke involving photos of American troops torturing Iraqi prisoners, Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown, & Root is pulling the plug on private electronic communications with the folks back home, apparently at the request of the Department of Defence. See, for example, this note from military blogger ginmar:

I might be getting transferred within the next week to anotehr post. At the very least, KBR is not allowing any private computers on their system for the next ninety days. There might be one other option, but if you don't hear from me for a while...God, I don't know what I'll do about the kitty.

Edited to add: Screw it. No matter what it takes, I will get to my email.

The email cut-off has to do with the release of images last week, which made Bush and Rumsfield have 'some difficulties'
Democratic world as they say...

Posted on May 11, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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Influence of media in newsbuilding

For my paper in Bezalel, I am doing some research on the imfluence of images in our perception of the world.
Neccessary I have to research the way of newsbuilding.
So now I am reading on the mediacoverage of the Watergate-scandal.
This gives another perspective on the matter.
It comes back to the power of the media and how they are not able to be aware of that...
The same thing now with the events in Iraq.

The biggest news-supplier in the US (and thus the world //see CNN...) is the White House, the second one the Pentagon that gives a daily pressconference.

Makes you wonder about your perspective of the world. Doesn't it...

(Interesting note: the CIA admitted in the '70s that they had an agent in every main newspaper in the world. Who says that they are not anymore today?)

Posted on May 12, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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Bloggers doubt Berg execution video

Interesting to read is this article: shows another point of view.

The truth? We will probably never know...

Posted on May 15, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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Nuchtere afweging

Nuchtere afweging en realistische taxatie van het effect van voorgestelde maatregelen lijken te bezwijken onder de reële dreiging van terroristische aanslagen en de last van ernstige criminaliteit. De symboliek van voorstellen is echter vaak groter dan de effectiviteit ervan. Steeds verder gaande controlemaatregelen zullen niet zonder meer leiden tot vergroting van de veiligheid van de burger, terwijl de maatschappelijke kosten ervan voor overheid en burgers hoog zijn. Bezinning op nut, noodzaak en maatvoering van te nemen controlemaatregelen is nodig.

Linked from...

Posted on May 15, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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The Matrix

If your ambitions in the Matrix are relatively small-scale, like opening a restaurant or becoming a famous actor, then you may very well be able to achieve them. But if your ambitions are larger—e.g., introducing some long-term social change—then whatever progress you make towards that goal will be wiped out when the simulation gets reset. Any long-term efforts of this sort would be an exercise an futility.

Princeton professor in de filosofie James Pryor over The Matrix I.

Posted on May 15, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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The cat...

It is like the cat that is locked in the room, to be killed.
What do you expect the cat to do?
Off course it will try to scratch his attacker.
Or to attack his eyes.
We are that cat.

2/6/04. Yasser

Posted on June 9, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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My luck was never far away...

Today one simple message: thank you.
Thanks mom and dad, and grandparents of mine, and my sweet little mentor, for believing in me.
And encouraging even when there was nothing ot encourage, or when encouraging was not really the thing that you wanted to do.
Because of you, I am where I am standing today. And because of nobody else...

Posted on June 15, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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Quote

Posted on June 15, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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Growing racism in spam.

Some days ago I received this spammail:
Liebe Kameraden,

Mit aufrichtigem Gruss, Maik T.

Results in the voting of my home country tell the same:
racism is growing, and fast.
People here will shout: you see, antisemitism.
But me I don't know who are most hated in Belgium, muslims or jews?

I am wondering: are we heading for a new 'Reich'?
Where exactly are we heading for?

Posted on June 16, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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BBC prepares to put TV archive on Web

The BBC has given a major boost to the Creative Commons movement this week by revealing how it plans to open up its archive of broadcasting material to UK Internet users.

The corporation has decided to allow surfers to download, distribute and modify digital clips of BBC television programmes through an initiative called the Creative Archive.

While users won't be allowed to resell the material, they will enjoy increased access to content that many potential users effectively paid the BBC to create through their licence fees.

A Creative Commons licence allows content creators to dictate whether or not anyone can copy their own work, creative derivative works from it, or use it for commercial purposes. It is an attempt to create a middle-ground rather than making content owners choose between putting something fully into the public domain or controlling it tightly through copyright.

This move has been warmly welcomed by Professor Lawrence Lessig, chair of the Creative Commons project, who has played a major role in driving the Creative Commons agenda for several years.

"The announcement by the BBC of its intent to develop a Creative Archive has been the single most important event in getting people to understand the potential for digital creativity, and to see how such potential actually supports artists and artistic creativity," said Professor Lessig.

"If the vision proves a reality, Britain will become a centre for digital creativity, and will drive the many markets – in broadband deployment and technology – that digital creativity will support," he added.

Posted on June 18, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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Telenet Hotspots

Telenet has a series of Hotspots in Belgium; read surfing for free when you have a wireless connection.
Find the list here
(Also to know, if you are living in their neighbourhood you can check if you can cancel your account ;))

Posted on June 25, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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Demolished house

This is how a demolished house looks like... Sometimes it feels like being a ramp tourist. I don't understand how people decide to blow an apartment -and how the rest of the people living in the apartment building have to cope with it.-
These measurements are really trying to hit the society, more than the so-called 'terrorist'.
(Was guilt proven?)

More pics here

Posted on June 28, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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America's War With Blogistan

The blog represents free speech in excelsis. Or does it? If the blog accepts advertising or maintains ties to institutions -- like, say, the Democratic Party -- then the freedom to say whatever you like can be sharply curtailed. Commentary by Adam L. Penenberg. [Thanks to Wired News]

Posted on July 7, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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US reveals Iraq nuclear operation

The US says it removed nearly two tons of radioactive material from Iraq in a secret operation last month...

"This operation was a major achievement," said US Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham in a statement.
He said it would keep "potentially dangerous nuclear materials out of the hands of terrorists".

Yeah right...

Wondering who gets this 'free uranium' now.
And what their plans are with it.

[Through BBC News]

Posted on July 7, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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Difference between 'strever' and 'ambitious'

'Een strever mikt op punten en absolute zelfvervolmaking (is negatiever), iemand ambitieus probeert met wat hij/ zij doet ook iets nuttig te bereiken.'

July 7, 2004, A. Dehandschutter

Posted on July 7, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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Bush Military Service Files Were Destroyed - Report

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Pentagon says military records related to President Bush's service in the National Guard more than 30 years ago were inadvertently destroyed, The New York Times reported on Friday. [ from Reuters: Top News]

Makes you wonder, doesn't it?

Posted on July 9, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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If Spam was more like this...

Received a spam message in my mail (yeah, still slips through.)

Even when driving down a perfectly straight road, it is necessary to turn the steering wheel from ti
ispatched their predecessors.
If you are blonde and pretty, it is possible to be a world-famous expert on nuclear fission, dinosau
You can take a picture of yourself from ten feet away without using the timer.
Instant coffee takes too long.

If I get too much change in a store, I always give it back.
the interview process...
I get excited very easily.
oyed.
The insurance was invalid for the invalid.

Almost poetry.
If Spam was more like this, I might read it more often...

Posted on July 11, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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Hersh: children raped at Abu Ghraib, Pentagon has videos

From Daily Kos' partial transcript of a video (link to stream) of Seymour Hersh speaking at an ACLU event. According to this transcript, Hersh says the US government has videotapes of children being raped at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

It is easy to post this kind of stuff and doubt the Americans.
We don't have a clue of what is going on there, but more and more it seems to become the Vietnam of the Middle-East.
And people wondering WHAT exactly the Americans are doing there.
Establishing peace?
Or a democratic system?

The pity is that this all happened because of a president.
Where was his mind?

Posted on July 15, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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Would you recognize a terrorist...

This image made from surveillance video from Washington's Dulles Airport, obtained by the Associated Press, shows two of the five hijackers on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, man in blue shirt, left, and white shirt, right, leaving a security checkpoint before boarding American Airlines flight 77 that later crashed into the Pentagon.(AP Photo/APTN)

So forget about thinking you will recognize one... If you would see one of these guys walking on your plane, you'd say: Nice guys.

Posted on July 22, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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Mostar bridge opens with splash

Lavish celebrations mark the reopening of the historic bridge, destroyed in the war in Bosnia-Hercegovina.

[from BBC News]

A symbolic act, 'crossing bridges'.
Something different than 'building walls'

Posted on July 24, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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Journalistics?

Bloggers are no journalists is the claim of some journalists...
In my definition, a journalist can be a blogger, but not every blogger is a journalist.
Exactly the same with newspaper can be paper, but not every paper is a newspaper -think of some Belgian newspapers...-

For a paper in school, I did some research on the 'media', some facts are really stunnning.
An extract out of this paper, based on official surveys:

The most important newsmaker in the world is the White House. In the study of “Age of Propaganda – The everyday use and abuse of persuasion” Anthony Pratgkanis and Elliot Aronson refer to politicological research stating that the American presidents give about one speech a day. Many of those speeches are generated in this way that they get the news.
‘By talking about certain things and get the evening news, the president can create a political agenda – an image of the world that serves his/her politics’

That the images are not used only by the Americans is a fact. Everybody plays the game, and also the ‘opposite party’ realized the power of it. The release of the movie of the beheading of an American prisoner in Iraq is cruel but got world attention.
The repetition of bombings in Iraq and in Israel don’t make ‘big amounts’ of deaths, but its shocking manner, make them catch the news every time.
These bombings keep the underlying subject (the political situation in that country) in the spotlight (Compare it with the terrible situation in Africa, concerning the HIV, that kills more people everyday, a situation that doesn’t get press attention in the news.)
Some state that terrorism is a creation of the media. Terrorists use the effect of shock to track the attention and put a light on their ideas. Since its nature, media will give prime time to these events and thus feed the terrorists with what they wanted: world attention and influence the opinion of the viewer.
Think of the recent beheading of the Korean, which resulted in mass demonstrations in the streets of Korea, condemning the governments decision to send more troops to Iraq.

(information gathered out of Jaap van Ginniken, “De schepping van de wereld in het nieuws”, 1996, Houten/Diegem (Creation of the world in the news), David Simpson's “The Mourning Paper”, and David L. Altheide, “Creating Reality, How TV news distorts events”, 1976, Sage Publications)

Posted on July 27, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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Turn your iPod in to a universal infrared remote

A remarkable article that I want to save for 'if one day I am bored and...'

Engadget has posted a step-by-step article on how to turn your iPod or iPod mini into a universal infrared remote control which can be used to control all of your home electronic equipment...

[fromMacMinute]

Posted on July 27, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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Question of an American soldier to an Iraqi Blogger

What's the right answer?

On another note, is America too powerful? Doesn't it usually do good things with its power, or does it screw up as much as it helps?

Read the answer here

Posted on July 30, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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In my soup...

Posted on August 2, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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how hot does it get in Iraq?

Well, I left a dozen eggs I bought in the local market in the car for day and forgot them. Well, my driver brought them to me the next day and they were softboiled from the heat. That’s how hot it gets here.

[from Back to Iraq 3.0]

Posted on August 3, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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The difference between cultures

When my computer broke down in Israel -my screen faded from one moment to another- and I brought it to the repair service, they claimed that my guarantee was not valid, saying that the repair would cost me between 500 and 800$ and it would take them 3 weeks.
They said I dropped my computer -which I didn't-
I disagreed, begged, screamed, saying the truth: this computer had no reason to be NOT under guarantee.
My friends started to doubt me because of the convincing tone of the guy at the repair desk.
I refused to give in and had to scream again to get my computer back.
So, they gave it back, and I continued to work in difficult circumstances, connecting my computer to an external screen.

After arriving in Belgium, I gave the computer in at a repairdesk in Brussels, explained the thing, and giving in the invoice to proove the guarantee.
A week later I have my computer back, without any problems, fixed.

The costs? 0 euro.

Thank you very much ARC Dilbeek.

Posted on August 3, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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Ashcroft orders public libraries to destroy law books

The Justice Department is ordering public libraries to destroy certain books it has deemed not "appropriate for external use."

Link
[through Boing Boing]

Yep, in America.

Posted on August 3, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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Iraq abuse photos 'taken for fun'

A female US soldier told investigators that photos of prisoner abuse in Iraq were taken "for fun", a court hears.

[from BBC News]

I guess the world is shocked.
But this is what the press highlights. The shocking thing gets attention.
The real why behind the question is slightly getting on the background.
Was it only fun, or did somebody ordered to do so? To me that is the real question, that gets erased little by little.
What I keep in mind is this article of Susan Sonntag -published in March this year-.

Looking at these photographs, you ask yourself, How can someone grin at the sufferings and humiliation of another human being? Set guard dogs at the genitals and legs of cowering naked prisoners? Force shackled, hooded prisoners to masturbate or simulate oral sex with one another? And you feel naive for asking, since the answer is, self-evidently, People do these things to other people. Rape and pain inflicted on the genitals are among the most common forms of torture. Not just in Nazi concentration camps and in Abu Ghraib when it was run by Saddam Hussein. Americans, too, have done and do them when they are told, or made to feel, that those over whom they have absolute power deserve to be humiliated, tormented. They do them when they are led to believe that the people they are torturing belong to an inferior race or religion. For the meaning of these pictures is not just that these acts were performed, but that their perpetrators apparently had no sense that there was anything wrong in what the pictures show.

What formerly was segregated as pornography, as the exercise of extreme sadomasochistic longings -- as in Pier Paolo Pasolini's last, near-unwatchable film, ''Salo'' (1975), depicting orgies of torture in the Fascist redoubt in northern Italy at the end of the Mussolini era -- is now being normalized, by some, as high-spirited play or venting. To ''stack naked men'' is like a college fraternity prank, said a caller to Rush Limbaugh and the many millions of Americans who listen to his radio show. Had the caller, one wonders, seen the photographs? No matter. The observation -- or is it the fantasy? -- was on the mark. What may still be capable of shocking some Americans was Limbaugh's response: ''Exactly!'' he exclaimed. ''Exactly my point. This is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation, and we're going to ruin people's lives over it, and we're going to hamper our military effort, and then we are going to really hammer them because they had a good time.'' ''They'' are the American soldiers, the torturers. And Limbaugh went on: ''You know, these people are being fired at every day. I'm talking about people having a good time, these people. You ever heard of emotional release?''

Posted on August 4, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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Questions to Mr Deckmyn

-How many times does a journalist 'Foreign News' goes abroad to check the situation on the countries he is writing on? You should ask one of your collegues...

-On which sources do journalists base their info? -Yep, indeed, on the telex that runs in the news.-

-On which info do you check your articles? Ever doubted them?

-Who decides the importance of news? And how comes it is almost everywhere the same? (Did you ever read Jaap van Ginniken, “De schepping van de wereld in het nieuws”, 1996, Houten/Diegem
(creation of the world in the news))

-Did you ever check the meaning of the word 'journalist'?
Main Entry: jour·nal·ist
Pronunciation: -n&l-ist
Function: noun
1 a : a person engaged in journalism; especially : a writer or editor for a news medium b : a writer who aims at a mass audience
2 : a person who keeps a journal

Instead of attacking the blogger -in which I truly see a difference with a journalist- people should cooperate and work together.
See the added value.
I think some bloggers can make veryvery good journalists.
And vice-versa.

Give a more personal vision of the news sometimes wouldn't do bad. Give the impersonal a face.
Because behind all those facts there is a world which isn't shown in the news.
Reach beyond the drama...

I have lived 2 years in Israel and moved back and forward to the Occupied Territories.
I can assure you that the news never gave a right vision on it. It only highlights the drama.
A pity.

Posted on August 4, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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The importance of communities

Apple Fans Pull for Jobs

News of Steve Jobs' cancer surgery has unsettled the Mac community like nothing else in recent years, resulting in a flood of forum postings and get-well cards.

I picked this from a news source, and it is very relevant to some ideas I have recently:
The importance of a group and its odd formalities, and sociological occurence.

Myself, I belong to several 'groups'
And I started to think the first time of its oddity when driving my motorcycle.
Who doesn't know the bikers, always saying hello to each other. And yet, under the helmet of the other biker might be hidden a personality that wouldn't fit in my life, that might fight all my ideas.
To put it into the strangest contradictions: a right winged guy might say hello to a lesbian girl, just because they are bikers.
And this guy will even help this girl any time, just because they are bikers.
It is the strange bound of a group.

The same thing happens with gay people, or to foreigners from the same nationality abroad, or the corporate businesses like Randstad, or to many other existing groups: they will always help each other.

PhotoBlog is the perfect example of such a 'group' online.
These groups become more and more important.

The funny thing is that by being in a group the other group seems to be forgotten. As is the example: the gay girl and the right winged man, in other groups they belong to they would fight eachother.

The importance of the group* can not be underestimated.
And I believe that in the near future it will gain more importance.
An interesting research can be found here

The key elements in this definition of community are that:

* you believe you belong, you are a member
* they involve meaningful social interaction
* there is a belief in 'common ties' or shared beliefs between members
* people 'share time' with each other

Should do some more research though...

(*A group is something different than a network)

Posted on August 5, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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what's a VC?

"Venture capitalists are chickens. Compared to entrepreneurs they're spectators in the great game of small business hardball. They would no sooner personally guarantee a corporate bank loan than they would jump off the cliffs of Acapulco. Contrary to popular opinion, however, they are not totally worthless - they work long hours, sift through more garbage than a trash collector, and have to get used to disappointing 99 entrepreneurs for every one they please. They are veteran roller coaster riders, but never get used to those big drops. They are, above all else, risk reducers - they prospect in the land of the commercially unfinanceable, and try to differentiate the superstars from the merely enthusiastic. Most of them are pretty good at it, a result of lessons learned, mistakes made, and successes observed."

[from TJ's Weblog]

Reminds me of someone. ;)

Posted on August 5, 2004
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Why documentaries are 'hot'

According to recent sources, documentaries are hot topic. Probably after the heat of 'Fahrenheit 9/11' and his 100 million dollar profit, movie makers realize it is possible.
Recent research says that the viewer wants more real documentary because he is tired of the so-called human interest

Maybe there is hope after all.
The question is if they will be meant controversial like Moores or just looking for the truth.

Posted on August 7, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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Quote of the week

"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we"

by ... Bush

Grinning...

Posted on August 7, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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Prozac 'found in drinking water'

An Environment Agency report says the antidepressant drug Prozac has been found in the UK's drinking water.

Soon we'll live in a happy world. ;)

[from BBC News]

Posted on August 8, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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Oil prices surge to record highs

The price of crude oil continues its surge to record levels after output was halted in Iraq's southern oilfields amid the threat of sabotage.

[through BBC News]

Remark:
-This happens of course after the major oil magnates in US have set their deals
-Prices can not stay as cheap as they were, oil experts say that by gaining the oil of Iraq, the problem is only delayed by 10 years, not even considering the higher needs of the Chinese.
Alternatives have to be found urgently.

As said before: the wealth we are living today won't last forever. 95% of the people is paying for it, while we have it.

Posted on August 10, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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Quote of the week

"What can you learn from History? Very little... History was written with red ink, wth bloodshed. We should educate our children how to imagine, not how to remember."

by Shimon Peres

Posted on August 10, 2004
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Niemand

Niemand

Stef Bos

Posted on August 11, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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Saudi Arabia to open up oil taps

Saudi Arabia says it is ready to push an extra 1.3 million barrels a day of oil into the market, to help reverse surging prices.
[from BBC News]

While Saudi Arabia is pulling out what is rest of their oil reserves, America refuses to touch theirs, which is 'reserved for national security'

The explanation for that is very easy to find: In other words, being presently dependant to "remote" and "unstable" countries (Venezuela, Middle East, and, pardon me, Russia) for 40% only of their present supply, USA would become dependant to the Middle East for 75% of their supply in 15 to 20 years.

The oil is thus a strategical point. Who will own the oil will be in charge because they will define the prices.
This is an explanation of the invasion of Iraq, which is said to have the 2nd largest oil reserves in the world, after Saudi Arabia.

You would say that they go for the oil in other countries, but as said many of these countries are in extreme unstable situations.
So why is Sudan left out of the picture for so long and for example Nigeria not. Oil we guess

Anyhow, as mentioned before, will it help? Geologists are rather pessimistic about the situation, and also on international level some warning signs are being heard: within 10 to 20 years we do have a problem...

Do you have your solar panel already?

Posted on August 11, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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A Picture Worth Exactly One Thousand Words

You are looking not only at the image of a war crime but also at the worst fears of a war criminal. That is to say, you are looking at the reason that those accused will cooperate but not implicate.

Many things are said on these pictures, find another interesting article by Garret Keizer.

Garret is an editor for Mother Jones, a magazine that tries to do investigative journalism. Read some other interesting articles on their site, in particular this on on 'Why media stopped reporting on Abu Graib'

Posted on August 14, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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Quote of the week

"There's nothing good that can come of it. We win, we lose. We lose, we lose."
-- A U.S. Army operations officer in Najaf laying out the possible outcome of any strike on the sacred Imam Ali mosque.

Meanwhile good to know:

While the deaths of American military personnel in Iraq have quite rightly gotten a good deal of news coverage, it's worth noting the other casualties of the war. According to a database compiled by the goup Iraq Body Count, so far the conflict in Iraq breaks down as follows:

- U.S. military deaths: 936

- Deaths among non-U.S. coalition forces: 125 (64 British)

- Iraqi civilian (non-combatant) deaths: 11,510-13,483

Posted on August 14, 2004
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Light

John had an interesting post on light.
I agree: I HATE saving lamps. It takes 15 minutes before they are warmed up and the light has this strange glow, I guess a combination of yellow orange and even some strange cyan. It is cold...
Give me the beautiful light bulb of the old days, spending too much energy, but yet beautiful...
Or little halogens. They are ok, their light is clear and neat. -But please not the Ikea-shaped holders...-

Or another option is this: Mathmos Color Bubble

More here

Posted on August 16, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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Murmurs of Earth

Pioneers 10 and 11, which preceded Voyager, both carried small metal plaques identifying their time and place of origin for the benefit of any other spacefarers that might find them in the distant future. With this example before them, NASA placed a more ambitious message aboard Voyager 1 and 2-a kind of time capsule, intended to communicate a story of our world to extraterrestrials. The Voyager message is carried by a phonograph record-a 12-inch gold-plated copper disk containing sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth. The contents of the record were selected for NASA by a committee chaired by Carl Sagan of Cornell University. Dr. Sagan and his associates assembled 115 images and a variety of natural sounds, such as those made by surf, wind and thunder, birds, whales, and other animals. To this they added musical selections from different cultures and eras, and spoken greetings from Earth-people in fifty-five languages, and printed messages from President Carter and U.N. Secretary General Waldheim. Each record is encased in a protective aluminum jacket, together with a cartridge and a needle. Instructions, in symbolic language, explain the origin of the spacecraft and indicate how the record is to be played. The 115 images are encoded in analog form. The remainder of the record is in audio, designed to be played at 16-2/3 revolutions per minute. It contains the spoken greetings, beginning with Akkadian, which was spoken in Sumer about six thousand years ago, and ending with Wu, a modern Chinese dialect. Following the section on the sounds of Earth, there is an eclectic 90-minute selection of music, including both Eastern and Western classics and a variety of ethnic music. Once the Voyager spacecraft leave the solar system (by 1990, both will be beyond the orbit of Pluto), they will find themselves in empty space. It will be forty thousand years before they make a close approach to any other planetary system. As Carl Sagan has noted, “The spacecraft will be encountered and the record played only if there are advanced spacefaring civilizations in interstellar space. But the launching of this bottle into the cosmic ocean says something very hopeful about life on this planet.”

Only, all of this doesn't mention any war, nor a couple kissing, nor the reality as it was. Only months after the launch, Waldheim was recognized as a nazi sympatizer and collaborator. On the recording his speech is welcoming the extraterrarials...

If you made a message for the outside world, what would it contain?

Posted on August 17, 2004
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Quote

Posted on August 30, 2004
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Images and sounds of War

Photos and a movie from action in Najaf.
[from Back to Iraq 3.0]

Posted on August 31, 2004
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Quote

Posted on September 4, 2004
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Chechnya

Today we must be together - this is the only way for us to defeat the enemy
President Vladimir Putin

In his address, Putin said Russia had failed to adapt to new defense and security needs and must now put this right.
"We failed to react appropriately to them and, instead, displayed weakness," he said. "And the weak are always beaten."
The Kremlin leader, speaking after a week of calamities linked to Chechen separatists, pledged to restore control over the North Caucasus, the part of southern Russia which includes the turbulent region of Chechnya.
But Putin, who rejects any notion of talks with separatists, made no direct reference to Chechnya in his 10-minute address.

I doubt if this is the best technique, ignoring the ones screaming to be heard...
I wonder if they will stop screaming.

Posted on September 5, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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Do we tend to forget the 'Why?'

Sometimes I wonder if we forget to ask the 'Why' behind some sceneries.
I am indeed shocked by what happened in Russia. What brings people to blow themselves and with them children and other humans? I don't have the answer.
But while television show human bodies and research where 'terrorists are raised', I rather ask the question 'Why?'

Memorial estimates that approximately 3,000 people had vanished in Chechnya during the four years from 1999 to 2003. Given Chechnya’s estimated population of 700,000, that works out to approximately 43 disappearances per every 10,000 people
“Over the past one and a half years it’s become the biggest plague,” says Orlov of the kidnappings. Before, Chechen civilians used to be subjected to a different kind of horror, known as zachistki, or “mop-up operations.” As a way of combating guerillas, the military blocked off entire villages and then searched every house, checked everyone for ID, randomly detained people and questioned them. The questioning was more often than not combined with beatings and torture.

Maybe some answers are lying there.

Read the article
Another article from Israeli perspective:

Israeli historian Professor Ilan Pappe believes that suicide bombings are exploited by the Israeli establishment in order to discredit the Palestinian cause:

"The suicide bombs are presented to the Israeli public as an insane act by an insane people? with whom there is no chance for peace. Instead of putting a wider analysis which would say there is a way out of the suicide bombs. While everybody condemns them, and rightly so, there is a way out of it. And the way out of it is to provide the circumstances in which these young people would find avenues of hope instead of avenues of despair. "

Read the whole article here

And this is a interesting one from an Arabic point of view

Posted on September 6, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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A conversation with a would-be bomber

Asked where he got the theological sanction to become a suicide bomber, Mukdi answers, "I listened to the Muslim preachers on television. They were my main authority."

When asked why did he not take his revenge against troops at a West Bank checkpoint, he says they are too well guarded. Yet it seems hard to believe that Mukdi did not encounter a single soldier on his way to the Tel Aviv boardwalk. Evidently, someone thought of a better use for 15 kilograms of explosives.

Read the amazing interesting article here, by Eric Schechter

Posted on September 6, 2004
in Limit of my knowledge

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Pentagon Says Guantanamo Prisoner Improperly Held

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon has determined for the first time that one of the nearly 600 Guantanamo Bay prisoners was improperly held by the United States as an "enemy combatant" and will be released to his home country, the Navy secretary said on Wednesday. [from Reuters: Top News]

Well, imagine... Sitting in jail for no good reason.
We thought this was only possible in 'non-democratic' countries.

Posted on September 8, 2004
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1,000

Another grim milestone in the Iraq war is imminent. Iraq Coalition Casualties reports there are 998 U.S. casualties as of Sept. 7 at 6 p.m. GMT +0300. By the time you read this, there may be 1,000 or more U.S. dead in Iraq.
[from Back to Iraq 3.0]

This is probably where the black and white turns into grey: no matter who is right or wrong, no matter what, war is wrong.
On this site the amount of people on the Iraqi side are counted. Numbers are slightly different from range...

Posted on September 8, 2004
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Where did the Arabs go?

Russian Authorities identified 10 terrorists in school kidnapping.
6 are Chechen militants, 4 others are 'Ingush'
The ingush are islamic neighbours of North Ossetia, and are living in a tensed relationship with each other.
[Gazet van Antwerpen - Overzicht]

But where did the Arab jihad go?

Posted on September 10, 2004
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What do we want?

We need to leap into another way of life. The technical impetus is here. We are changing, but to what end? The question we must face is: what do we want? We should want to abandon that which has no future. We should blow right through mere sustainability. We should desire a world of enhancement. That is what should come next. We should want to expand the options of those who will follow us. We don't need more dead clutter to entomb in landfills. We need more options.

[from Baeyens.net]

Posted on September 12, 2004
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Quote: Henry Ford

Business must be run at a profit, else it will die. but when anyone tries to run a business solely for profit...then also the business must die, for it no longer has a reason for existence.


Henry Ford

[found on Bizwerk]

Posted on September 14, 2004
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Farnaz Fassihi, a Wall Street

Farnaz Fassihi, a Wall Street Journal correspondent in Iraq, confirmed that a widely-redistributed letter she emailed to friends about the nightmarish situation in Iraq was indeed written by her. Too bad the WSJ doesn't allow this reporter to write these kinds of stories for the paper.

After she confirmed writing the letter on Wednesday, Paul Steiger, editor of the Wall Street Journal, stood up for her, telling the New York Post that her "private opinions have in no way distorted her coverage, which has been a model of intelligent and courageous reporting, and scrupulous accuracy and fairness."

The whole email:

Being a foreign correspondent in Baghdad these days is like being under virtual house arrest. Forget about the reasons that lured me to this job: a chance to see the world, explore the exotic, meet new people in far away lands, discover their ways and tell stories that could make a difference.