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At the time of brent spar, people were saying "bomb shell to hell".
Thus, I thought, what to do about BP? A boycott might be a measure. I also thought, I might not be the first having this idea and searched for such a boycott initiative. Unfortunately the first site listed by gockle is on facebook (I wonder why). The next reasonable seems to be this one: Boycott BP Gas Stations

Already some weeks ago I had found that the oil spill in the gulf of Mexico would be going to be a big mess.

Now it seems like things are much worse. The New York Times writes:
"Scientists are finding enormous oil plumes in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, including one as large as 10 miles long, 3 miles wide and 300 feet thick in spots. The discovery is fresh evidence that the leak from the broken undersea well could be substantially worse than estimates that the government and BP have given. ... They say they suspect the heavy use of chemical dispersants, which BP has injected into the stream of oil emerging from the well, may have broken the oil up into droplets too small to rise rapidly."

The problem is far from being solved and I am afraid the incident will have tremendous consequences to the entire gulf.

People kept asking me why I don't simply get an gmail-account for mailing.
Now it became public, that google - while taking photos for street view - also was collecting data from wifi (aka wlan). In particular, personal data, such as content of emails has been recorded - over a period of 3 years.
Officially, this did not happen on purpose, but was due to some malicious software pieces that made it into the street view thing.

This whole thing sounds a bit strange to me. How can it be, that they save tons of data without even knowing about it? It reminds me of googles motto, don't be evil, which is now obsolete for me. The company proved to be as 'bad' as any other.

Yesterday I have visited the Museum of Modern Art. In particular I had a look at two special exhibitions. The first one showed photographs by Henri Cartier-Bresson, who according to wikipedia is considered the father of modern photojournalism. The exhibition also showed where he had been traveling, such as China, some decades ago. I found most interesting the portraits of some famous people, such as Sartre or Camus.
The second special exhibition was by Marina Abramović. It also included some live performances and videos showing recorded ones. I liked the most one, where a women (not sure if it was her) wears a black dress and holds a pan filled to the top with milk. She stands in some kind of kitchen and after some time, her arms get tired and she starts to spill over some milk. The video goes on like this for roughly 15min.

At the moment I am sitting in the plane to JFK. Our departure was delayed because once again the Island volcano released an ash cloud and parts of the northern Atlantic are blocked. So we had to wait an hour sitting in the plane before takeoff. In addition, we have to fly a longer route so that the flight also takes longer. Fortunately, the original arriving time was in the afternoon and I should not arrive too late. After watching three films I am a bit fed up now, but would like to give a small review:

- planet 51 (2009):
It is an animated film about an human astronaut arriving at an alien planet with a life similar to the 50s in the US. The (nice) idea of the film is that the roles are swapped and the astronaut is the alien and the aliens are the normals. The plot is essentially about how the human tries to get back to his spaceship which is difficult because military took his landing vehicle. Positive is that I did not know all jokes from the trailer. The funny thing about this film are the many citations, like Aliens, Odyssey 2001, and other which I do not remember.

- soul kitchen (2009):
It is a german film (by the famous Fatih Akin) about a greek trying to manage a restaurant in Hamburg. Doing so he is having a lot of trouble of all different kinds, His girl friend is in China and he wants to visit her. Because of all the problems he has with the restaurant, he only manages very late and by coincidence meets her at the airport (with a chinese guy). The story is a bit more complex with other things going on. In summary, I enjoyed watching it, but found the story a bit too constructed. In particular annoying is the story that he hurts his back and throughout the film complains (reminded me a bit of Frodo who suffered throughout three film because of the burden of the ring). Probably, the part with the back was included to introduce a character.

- up in the air (2009):
I had high expectations related to this film and must say I am not disappointed. Ok, it is the best film I say for a long time, but it is reasonable and I can definitively recommend it. It is about a guy (George Clooney) who's job it is to fire people. Companies essentially pay his company to send him to do this job. He gets a new colleague, a young smart-alek with a degree in psychology, who proposes do the same job via video-phone. Obviously, he does not like the idea, because he might loose his job as well. Moreover, he likes his way of life, spending 320 days of the year traveling – airports and hotel. He likes how friendly he is welcome at the counters, when people see his frequent flyer stuff. He meets a women who seems to have the same life style as he does and the come closer. I don't want to tell how all this ends, but I think this film is much about life and decisions in general. The guy is restless and does not settle. Obviously, he does not have a family. I think somehow the guy is a metaphor for people who do not want to settle, who are afraid of something, who want to be independent, and who don't even know what they want.

By the way, few people are watching Avatar, either they have already seen it or they are not interested (I am still boycotting it).

Currently I am reading “Collapse – How societies choose to fail or succeed” by Jared M. Diamond. I just finished the chapter about Easter Island. It is astonishing, that when the first (probably Polynesian) settlers came to the island it must have been covered by a huge forest with a diversity of trees and land birds. When the first (documented) Europeans reached the island it was already completely deforested. Within a couple of centuries a flourishing culture emerged and finally almost completely vanished. The author even describes cannibalism and that the remaining people destroyed Moai which their ancestors carved and raised with so much effort. I do not want to underplay that finally the Europeans contributed to the misery of Rapanui people.
The question I would like to raise is to which extend the destiny of those settlers was predetermined. Obviously, the resources were easy accessible but very limited. Thus, once the population passed the carrying capacity, resources were not sufficient anymore. Additionally, as Diamond points out, the climate is not that advantageous so that resources recover slowly. If the need is bigger than the recovery rate, then resources must run out leading to the extinction of the native animals and plants. Furthermore, the island is completely isolated so that there was no exchange of any kind.
I think there could have been a mode of sustainable culture on Easter Island. But only a small population could have been sustained by the resources. Since the settlers (probably) did not have birth control, the end of their high culture was probably unavoidable.

Stefan sent me this link: VHMENT

I am just coming from the revolutionary 1st of May. There was a demonstration which ended more or less here. Police hindered people to join the Myfest. Nevertheless, at certain point single bottles flew in direction of the police and they got angry and ran in the direction where the bottle came from. But in these moments much more bottles (plus stones and fireworks) were thrown into their direction (from the back). So it looked like a game - whenever they started running in one direction, objects were trown at them. That it was not a game, I realized when I saw various people from the press wearing helmets.
News
update: video

Later on I went to a bar, where I had something to drink. Suddenly, all guest who where sitting outside pushed inside, because the mob came. It was already after sunset, but I did not worry and was rather relaxed in the micro-cosmos of club 49. The place was a bit crowded. I saw a girl who got more and more drunk - I realized that she stoped smiling. When she went to the restroom, I told her that she should go home - alone. Ok, this could have been offending, but she thanked me. Good night.
update: Kai

This is an example of how beautiful nature can be (link) - or when humankind tries to simulate it.

Auckland, New Zeeland, 10th of July 1985: due to two bombs attached to its hull, the Greenpeace ship “Rainbow Warrior” sunk immediately. The Portuguese photographer and father of two kids tried to save his equipment after the first explosion and died when the second occurred. I read an article (Geo 07, 2005) about the happenings and think, nowadays there are no doubts that the French external security agency is responsible for the operation “satanic”. It is a shame that two terrorists caught by New Zeeland’s police were released from prison after a couple of years, although they went to court and got ten years. The reason was economic pressure from France (I don’t know how good the relation between both countries is today). Both agenets receive awards/decorations. One of them, D. Prieur, declares she was not a terrorist, but captain/officer of the French army and she followed the orders. All this is related to tests of nuclear bombs in the Pacific. I remember that in 1995 under Chirac further tests could be stopped because of massive protest and the boycott of French products.
This entry is certainly not supposed to be France bashing. Any country should avoid such “operations”. (i) Finally, after the whole scandal about the Rainbow Warrior became public, many people supported the organization. Thus, probably the attack caused the opposite of what was intended. (ii) Originally, in the context of the French Revolution (sorry, again), the term terror was coined to be directed from the government to the people. Today, the common sense understanding is the opposite. (iii) It shows which role economic power plays, from both, a bad side and a good one.

In this paper it was found that the usage of words like "hot" and "cold" in blogs-entries depends on the actual weather.

I think that people go faster (racy) with their cars when the weather is good and the temperatures are high (compared to colder weather), at least in mid-latitude cities.