Nice collage video of extreme sports moves and some stunning landscapes. Thanks for this link from extreme blues guitarist John Brittain.
Category: Lifestyle
China Bans their “American Idol” Show
Authorities last month had already ordered leading competitor Hunan Satellite to suspend broadcasts of the hugely popular “American Idol” type singing contest “Super Girl,” allegedly for running overtime. Stations were already cutting contest shows in which viewers vote for their favorite contestant, a concept frowned on by party cadres who don’t permit competitive elections or other facets of Western-style democracy.
China’s television watchdog has capped the amount of entertainment programs, including reality TV shows, that satellite channels can broadcast from the start of 2012.Each of the country’s 34 satellite channels will be limited to two such programs each week, said a statement issued Tuesday by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television SARFT. Under the new directive, a channel can also broadcast a maximum of 90 minutes of content defined as entertainment every day during prime time – 7:30 p.m. to 10 p.m.The decision is the latest move to curb TV shows of “excessive entertainment” and “low taste”, said the statement. Within these brackets are some matchmaker programs, talent contests, talk shows and reality shows. Every channel has also been ordered to create a program that promotes traditional virtues and socialist core values.
via China limits entertainment programs on satellite TV – China.org.cn.
Mona Lisa Caffineated
The Mona Lisa, one of the world’s most famous paintings, has been recreated with 3,604 cups of coffee – and 564 pints of milk.The different colours were created by adding no, little or lots of milk to each cup of black coffee.It measures an impressive 20 feet high and 13 feet wide and took a team of eight people three hours to complete.It was created for The Rocks Aroma Festival in Sydney, Australia, and seen by 130,000 people who attended the one-day coffee-lovers event.
Elaine Kelly, from event organisers the Sydney Harbour ForeshoreAuthority, was delighted with the result.She said: “Each coffee cup was filled with varying amounts of milk to create the different sepia shades of the painting.”We wanted to create an element of surprise and a sense of fun in the way we engaged with the public.”Once we had the idea of creating an image out of coffee cups we searched for something iconic to reproduce – and opted for the most iconic painting in history.”The Mona Lisa has been reproduced so many times in so many different mediums but, as far as we know, never out of coffee.”The result was fantastic.”After much planning it was great to see if coming together so well and the 130,000 people who attended the event certainly enjoyed it.”
Mona Lisa, also known as La Gioconda, is the 16th century portrait painted in oil by Leonardo Da Vinci during the Italian Renaissance. The work is owned by the French government and hangs in the Musee du Louvre in Paris, France, with the title Portrait of Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo. It measures 770 millimetres by 530 millimetres and has prompted debate for years over the reason for her famously enigmatic smile. Extensive scrutiny using X-ray apparatus suggests that restoration work has resulted in the original being painted over three times. Thanks to Juan Marcos. Mona Lisa recreated with coffee – Telegraph.
Cities as Hotels
Private cities are happening now for a reason. Africa, India, and China are urbanizing more rapidly than has ever occurred in human history. In Africa, the number of urban dwellers is projected to increase by nearly 400 million, in India at least 250 million will move to cities and in China more than 400 million will move to cities in just the next 20 years. Not all of these people will move to older cities, which are not always in the right places and which rarely possess anything like the right material let alone the right political infrastructure. The rising middle-class want to live in first-world cities and in many of these countries only the private sector can deliver those cities.
The rapid urbanization of the developing world is an opportunity to remake cities anew. Private cities as hotels on a grand scale
China’s Invisible Man – Liu Bolin
35-year-old Liu Bolin, from Shandong, China, manages to camouflage himself in any surroundings, no matter how difficult they might be.
Liu works on a single photo for up to 10 hours at a time, to make sure he gets it just right, but he achieves the right effect: sometimes passers-by don’t even realize he is there until he moves.
The talented Liu Bolin says his art is a protest against the actions of the Government, who shut down his art studio in 2005 and persecutes artists. It’s about not fitting into modern society. Despite problems with Chinese authorities, Liu’s works are appreciated at an international level. Thanks to Tim Marks.
Liu Bolin…The Invisible Man… – v1kram’s posterous. 2nd Link to more pictures
4 Stages of Life
12 year old Autistic Artist
David Barth Kunst » Portretten.
This link will take you to the Portfolio of an amazing 12 year-old Autistic Artist from Rotterdam.
from an email from David’s mother to Jill Mullen, who runs an Autistic Artists website:
His drawings often represent his current obsessions. In the attachment I send you, it’s not hard to guess what’s keeping him busy right now. There are almost 400 birds on it and he knows the names and Latin names of most of them.
Click on the picture to enlarge. Thanks to Caroline Collier.
New Insights Into Pleasure & Addiction
Do you, like many, think that drug addicts become drug addicts because they derive greater reward from getting high than others? The biology says no. They actually seem to want it more but like it less. The scientific definition of addiction is actually rooted in the brain’s inability to experience pleasure.
“There are variants in genes that turn down the function of dopamine signaling within the pleasure circuit,” explains Linden, a professor of neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the chief editor of the Journal of Neurophysiology.” For people who carry these gene variants, their muted dopamine systems lead to blunted pleasure circuits, which in turn affects their pleasure-seeking activities, he says. “In order to get to that same set point of pleasure that others would get to easily — maybe with two drinks at the bar and a laugh with friends — you need six drinks at the bar to get the same thing.”
It is important to realize that our pleasure circuits are the result of a combination of genetics, stress and life experience, beginning as early as the womb. Crucially, brain imaging studies show that giving to charity, paying taxes, and receiving information about future events all activate the same neural pleasure circuit that’s engaged by heroin or orgasm or fatty foods.
via ‘The Compass Of Pleasure’: Why Some Things Feel So Good : NPR.
Boy regrets selling his kidney to buy iPad
17-year-old student in Anhui Province sold one of his kidneys for 20,000 yuan only to buy an iPad 2. Now, with his health getting worse, the boy is feeling regret but it is too late, the Global Times reported today.
“I wanted to buy an iPad 2 but could not afford it,” said the boy surnamed Zheng in Huaishan City. “A broker contacted me on the Internet and said he could help me sell one kidney for 20,000 yuan.” Continue reading “Boy regrets selling his kidney to buy iPad”
