Tuesday 18 December 2007

Titles

Just trying to find titles in the lyrics of artists such as Tinariwen or Mariem Hassan is fun...

Sunday 16 December 2007

Indonesia conflict

From http://www.asiasource.org/asip/sidneyjones.cfm
October 24, 2000

Sidney Jones
Executive Director, Asia Division
Human Rights Watch

Let me start with a general survey of the kind of violence around the country now. The conflict in the Malaccas where, in the past two years, about 4,000 people have been killed in Christian-Muslim fighting, and about 500,000 displaced, according to Indonesian Red Cross figures.

On the buses

London transport was recruiting in the 50s directly in the Caribbean. Wow.

Tuesday 27 November 2007

Two photos that summarize the world

Have a look at the first two photos at
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/7114785.stm

If you cannot see them the descriptions work as well:

photo 1
The new humanoid Japanese robot "Twendy-one" serves breakfast. Twendy-one has been developed for nursery and household assistance work.

photo 2
Three Indian boys scavenge for reusable materials at a rubbish dump in the state of Jammu and Kashmir.

Soft and tough

It struck me today how "soft and mooshy" you become when your ass is warm and you lack tough, smart soul.

I was listening to Mariem Hassan with Leyoad (their people fight for independence**) and I thought how hard is the life for these people and that they still find strength to make something beautiful.* It's not so simple of course but one of my thoughts was that easy usually means taking things for granted (because they almost are in my case) and that softens you. In order to have strong body you have to either have a hard job or be tough inside to train. The same rule applies to non body characteristics.

*Actually it perfectly makes sense - People need art (widely defined) to live hard life. The harder the life the more beautiful the art. Art created in the good times for the author (I mean the soul, not the objective level/quality of life) will never be as good as the one done when she/he felt something missing. I wonder if happy people are actually capable of making art or capable of creation.

**I thought also how tough our fathers and mothers had to be when there was no Poland to keep the culture alive. Respect.

It's amazing how the laws of the soul resemble the laws of the body. This reassures me that the soul is an integral part of the body (or vice versa if you want).

Let's take it even further. This may even be a new definition of the difference between what's alive and what's not: "If you keep applying factor X to something alive then it will eventually develop a skill/characteristic to deal with the factor. Something that is not alive will eventually wore down. 'Intelligent life' may develop skills/characteristics even before factors are applied or even skills for factors that will never be applied.".

Sunday 25 November 2007

"The Voice"

Vusi Mahlasela's "The Voice" is a bit to Jazzy for me.