http://www.duvet-dayz.com about life, technology, gadgets, politics, the planet earth and other interesting things. Sat, 10 May 2008 15:53:05 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en http://www.duvet-dayz.com/archives/2008/05/10/733/
Any city however small, is divided at least into two, one the city of the poor, the other the city of the rich.
These are hostile to each other.
Plato, Πολιτεία / Politeía, 370 BC
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We've almost missed it - today would have been Keith Haring's 50th birthday, but he died of AIDS in 1990.
Below we have put together a capture of what is displayed of his work when you search for his name on Google Images...
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It's Friday night so we thought we might send you a short warning on the devastating effects that beer could have on men.
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Still remember the "wacky packs" - well maybe not the first series from Topps appeared in 1967. Each of them had a gum in it and a sticker card that was a parody - sometimes in a quite sarcastic way- of the consumer packaging for a well known product.
While the original ones now go for USD 100+ on ebay or other places, San Juan island based designer...
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For all you witches out there tonight - your night - Walpurgis Night - here comes the witch mix....
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An absolute classic stop-motion film from 1952. Starts a bit slow but worth watching in full length. We can only imagine the efforts required to create this film without digital technology...
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American politics are much like driving. To go backward, put it in R. To go forward, put it in D.
anonymous, found on the Internet
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This beautiful animation of Hemingway's saga "The old man and the sea" has been completely hand painted - all 29,000 frames of it. It's actually more an independent film created by Russian artist Alexander Petrov and Canadian Pascal Blais Productions that helped him to get the 21 minute film onto celluloid with IMAX technology.
It won a series of awards and received an Oscar nomination for Best Animation Short Film...
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A 2:10 min compilation of what seems to be the most important scenes from a TV sequel called "Lost" - no wonder if they only use one word. What?
BTW - who's going do the more appropriate Where? version...
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A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today.
The Western world has lost its civic courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, in each government, in each political party, and, of course, in the United Nations.
Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling and intellectual elites, causing an impression of a loss of courage by the entire society.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, famous Russian dissident writer, Nobel prize and Templeton Prize winner, Harvard University address (1979)
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Companies around the world - in an effort to create communities of users around their products - are picking up social networking approaches at a fast pace.
Earlier this month Segway has started to create a network and communications around their self-balancing scooters, allowing users to communicate, create groups, find like minded people around the world or just in their local area, discuss the latest news and share their experiences.
Like Nike and other consumer good companies, Segway with its "Segway Social" network is hoping to attract future buyers by providing them...
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The video for British Electropop band Hot Chip’s single “One Pure Thought”. The animation reminds us of pointillism drawings. Great work...
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We love scooters and more and more people leave their petrol guzzling four wheels at home and again take a scooter, for the drive to the office, around town - or best - just to go for a ride.
With so many new (electrical / hybrid) and more ecologically friendly four stroke scooters coming to the market lets take a look back how it all began. The beautiful Lambrettas from Innocenti or the old Vespas from Piaggio that after the second World War were the only mean of transport available to many Europeans.
By now they have reached cult status, modded or plain original versions parked somewhere most of the times get you into a chat with some people admiring them. You get a happy smile on people's faces reminding them of great times and a new start in the life of many.
Today you often find scooters prominently placed in advertising for products that have nothing to do with scootering. But for the real thing there are a few clips and videos that bring back the time and let you feel the wind in your hair. Those clips and videos we tried to find and the best ones we have listed below...

Ride on...

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A new clip for the WWF to raise awareness about Global Warming. We are shown - with black humor - how people have adapted to the changes in weather patterns and natural disasters.
A couple taking a stroll with their baby during a Hurricane, campers out in the "wilderness" that has become a burning forest and the "good people" still washing their cars on the weekend even while they're drowning in the flood.
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A crash test dummy is tired of his job and wants to become a great magician.
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A selection of our all-time video favorites by "Kate Bush" available online:
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Daily news roundup
14 interesting things found (so far - 1 Update).
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On his long journey, intergalactic space trucker Eugene occupies himself with mail-ordering various useless gadgets to support his lazy lifestyle.
steampunks in space
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A version of the famous scene from "Close Encounters" done by the SouthPark studios.
A giant Linksys router has arrived.
"...all right Internet, what do you want from us..."
Full episode available online.
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Brazilian designer Carlo Giovani provides us with a fresh view into package design. Samples of his diverse work available on "his website" include box design for a MTV DVD or the band Turbo Trio and our favorite the Chinese Tea Box...
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The UK literary magazine "Granta" was founded 1889 by students at Cambridge University. It had some difficulties in the 1970s and was relaunched 30 years ago. 101 issues later today they provide a retrospective of issues since their restart in 1979. And every issue since then is still available in print.
Contributors since 1979 include Salman Rushdie, Doris Lessing, Paul Theroux, Julian Barnes, Gabriel García Márquez, John Le Carre and George Steiner to name just a few. The content from...
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Daily news roundup
12 interesting things found (so far).
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A few weeks ago stories were going around and people were proudly showing images of a Mac that was running 150 applications at the same time.
Then someone created "a video" showing MS Vista running about a 100 apps with just 30% processor load. The computer used was one bit of a heavy iron, nevertheless still impressive.
Here's a video of a Linux machine that runs 165 applications simultaneously and is still smoothly cruising
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Visual language is any communication which is primarily visual. It focuses on improving thinking, learning and communication by making it more visual. Driven by globalization, increased complexity in the things of our daily life and the convergence of vocabularies from different fields, visual language is composed of tightly integrated textual and visual elements.
Key to the concept of visual language is the possibility to communicate critical information items to anyone, in any language...
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Photographer Branson DeCou traveled the world for thirty years before his death in 1941. Since 1971, when the University of California - Santa Cruz received his huge slide collection it has been the home of the archive of photographer Branson DeCou.
Branson DeCou produced mainly lantern slides imprinted on glass twice as big as 35-mm slides, that made them delicate to handle and almost impossible for general or public use.
Thanks to a grant from the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation the UCSC could buy state-of-the-art scanning equipment and process 1,475 of the 10,000 DeCou slides in their collection.
The 1,475 slides processed and made available online are photographs that Branson DeCou took in Italy during several trips in the 1920s and early 1930s. They show scenes of daily life as well as artwork and destinations...
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Daily news roundup
12 interesting things found (so far).
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Based on data from the SEC for 60,000 directors or high-level employees, Toby Segaran created this graphical network of major US companies that share board members or CEOs. A bit like a social network graph for companies.
Besides the relationship between the companies the diagram also visualizes...
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You might have heard about the "OpenStreetMap" project that creates and provides free geographic data such as street maps to everyone. What most users of mapping software and services don't know - there are often license or technical restrictions how you can use data and maps available commercially or by other providers. That's what OpenStreetMap is trying to overcome.
Particularly with mapping data from the UK, where the government agency in charge...
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