Today I came across this photo taken in Somalia. What do I see in it?
Curiosity
Need to be recognized/liked
Adult showing his reality to a kid.
No fear of guns.
The reality a lof a lot of children that are used for different military groups all around the globe. Take a look at the list of countries in this wikipedia entry, you will be surprised.
An apperantly innocent photo taken in a country where 200.000 kids have carried arms or have been recruited in the country's militias against their will during the last 12 years.
In school it was clear, the teacher that caught our attention the most was the one that was unpredictable, passionate and funny. Today for the first time I listed to 2 different safety presentations in airplanes:
Delta Airlines, Domestic flight
The plane was small and had no screens so the flight attendant made all the explanation and added some things like this:
"In case of emergency, first stop screaming, then pull the mask..."
"During this really long flight to..." (flight is about 30 min)
When demonstrating how to use the seat belt he did it in slow motion
"If you have any complains or commentaries you are welcome to contact us via our webpage and you can also keep them to yourself"
After we landed: "be careful when opening the compartments and get out of here!"
Delta Airlines, International flight
A little bit more low key, but still great because it catches people's attention, here's a version of the video they showed:
Thanks Delta Airlines for making the experience a little bit more relaxing!
According to Wikipedia, free will is the ability of agents to make choices unconstrained by certain factors. Factors of historical concern have included metaphysical constraints (for example, logical, nomological, or theological determinism), physical constraints (for example, chains or imprisonment), social constraints (for example, threat of punishment or censure, or structural constraints), and mental constraints (for example, compulsions or phobias, neurological disorders, or genetic predispositions).
We can say in general terms that our societies have freedom of action, freedom to do things and freedom of will, freedom to like things, freedom to have phobias, freedom to be whatever we want to be and feel what we want. But how many of us exercise this freedom completely? How many of us take time to think who we are/what we do/the repercusion of our actions and ask ourselves if we like what we see? If we don't do this last step where we can analize what we are and change what we don't like, are we really exercising freedom?
Some will say "yes, you choose not to do something, that is exercising your freedom", I agree but how many of us make this decision in a conscious way? And how many just go with the flow and complain about our lifes and victimize ourselves?
I am not talking about succeding, just asking ourselves how we can be better, trying to change what we want to modify and therefore exercising the ultimate freedom of will, even if we fail on the attemp. Also about beeing responsable for what we do and who we are, but I guess that is another topic :-)
Yesterday I wanted to make one of my favourite desserts ever: toasted bread, olive oil, salt and chocolate on top. I went to the store I was expecting to find a huge variety of chocolates, but to my surprise there were only 3 kinds of chocolate bars!
Lindt 70%
Hersheys
Symphony bar
Should I complain?
No, they had 1 variety of dark chocolate and 1 variety of milk chocolate and a thing they can no longer call chocolate but that it resembles the taste aka Hershey. So there was enough to make everybody happy. No reason to complain.
Loosing the essence
What made me sad was to see that the rest of the products that occupied a space of around 3mx2m where products with chocolate in them like goji berries coated with dark chocolate, chocolate bars, chocolate cups, chocolate balls, rice in chocolate and other chocolate variations, but as far as pure chocolate they only had 3 that took probably 1% of the shelf space.
It made me sad because I thought that we are forgetting the essence of things and because probably nobody buys chocolate bars anymore, we prefer the products that make the mix for us and sell us the total experience instead of letting us combine the chocolate with other things and letting us imagine/play with one of the most delicious things that exist.
La Yoko ens convida a la seva propera exposició "Els Habitants del Bosc" que tindrà
lloc @ Akashi Gallery (c/Rosselló 197, Barcelona T93.125.08.77) i que
romandrà oberta del 21 del maig fins el 9 de juny.
Akashi Gallery és un espai molt bonic i cómode d'estil
japonés on, entre altres coses podeu gaudir de té japones de qualitat.
És un lloc ideal per estar tranquil al cor de la ciutat.
El dimarts 21 de maig serà l'inauguració:
a les 19h Inauguració de l'exposició i lectura de poesia de Kenji Miyazawa (gratuït)
a les 21h Sopar Menú del Bosc, a carrec de Toshie Nagashima
Cuina
Macrobiotica apta per a vegetarians, la meva amiga japonesa prepararà
el sopar amb collita del seu hort ecològic, sentireu l'aire net del bosc
per dins. Places limitades, cal fer reserva prèvia (20 euros per
persona).
Yoko nos invita a su próxima exposición "Los Habitantes
del Bosque" que tendrá lugar @ Akashi Gallery (c/ Rosselló 197,
Barcelona T93.125.08.77) y que estarà abierta a partir del 21 de mayo y
hasta el 9 de junio.
Akashi Gallery es un espacio muy bonito y cómodo de
estilo japonés donde, entre otras cosas podreis disfrutar de té japones
de primera calidad. Es un lugar ideal para estar tranquilo en el corazón
de la ciudad.
El martes 21 de mayo van a hacer la inauguración:
a las 19h Inauguración de la exposición y lectura de poesía de Kenji Miyazawa (gratuito)
a las 21h Cena Menú del Bosque, a cargo de Toshie Nagashima
Cocina
macrobiótica apta para vegetarianos, mi amiga japonesa preparará la
cena con cosecha de su huerto ecológico, podreis sentir el aire limpio
del bosque por dentro. Plazas limitadas, se necesita reserva previa (20
euros por persona).
I have seen a lot of non-profits in Asia driving around their Hummers or other big SUVs while the people they are trying to help don't even have water to drink so I don't think that non-profit workers should get paid as well as executives but I get the point on whatt Dan Pallota says. It is good to break paradigms, I hope you enjoy his lecture.
Have you seen To
the Wonder by Terrence Malick? If you haven’t and you want to see it, please
consider not reading this post. If you started it but left the movie theatre,
like 5 out of the 8 people that shared the screening with me, you may continue.
Being concerned
with the fracking technique that some companies are planning to do around my
hometown, I immediately recognized Ben Affleck’s job in the movie.
What is fracking?
I first learn about it when a friend of mine that worked doing fracking for a gas company told me about the effects that he saw it had in the communities where they use this technique. Here's a graphic for you:
Wikipedia gives this definition:
Hydraulic fracturing is the propagation of fractures in a rock layer by a pressurized fluid. Some hydraulic fractures form naturally—certain veinsor dikes are examples—and can create conduits along which gas and petroleum from source rocks may migrate to reservoir rocks. Induced hydraulic fracturing or hydrofracturing, commonly known as fracing, fraccing, or fracking, is a technique used to release petroleum, natural gas (including shale gas, tight gas, and coal seam gas), or other substances for extraction.[1] This type of fracturing creates fractures from awellbore drilled into reservoir rock formations.
The first use of hydraulic fracturing was in 1947. However, it was only in 1998 that modern fracturing technology, referred to as horizontal slickwater fracturing, made possible the economical extraction of shale gas; this new technology was first used in the Barnett Shale in Texas.[1][2][3] The energy from the injection of a highly pressurized hydraulic fracturing fluid creates new channels in the rock, which can increase the extraction rates and ultimate recovery of hydrocarbons.
Proponents of hydraulic fracturing point to the economic benefits from vast amounts of formerly inaccessible hydrocarbons the process can extract.[4] Opponents point to potential environmental impacts, including contamination of ground water, risks to air quality, the migration of gases and hydraulic fracturing chemicals to the surface, surface contamination from spills and flowback and the health effects of these.[5] For these reasons hydraulic fracturing has come under scrutiny internationally, with some countries suspending or banning it.
Today El País has an article explaining that amount of gas that can be found in Spain is similar to the one that you find in ND. Our population is 67 times bigger than the one in ND. They have been affected and silenced, how is fracking going to affect a population of 47 millions spanish citizens? Terrifing.Here's a documentary that illustrates some of the things my friend that used to work fracking told me about:
How is fracking portrait in the movie?
Almost nothing is
portrait in the movie, so fracking isn’t either. We hardly know anything about
the characters, we don’t see their faces a lot of times, we don’t hear them
speak, we don’t know what they are thinking and when we do hear them, they say
some very abstract things. Fracking is also vastly sketched during the almost 2
hours of the film.
In the movie we see
people that are very confused about what is going on. We see poor, uneducated
people not really knowing what to say when asked about the consequences of
fracking in their everyday life. We see a community that doesn’t even know what
is going on. We see a number of times the main character going to the rivers
taking samples of the water, taking samples of hair and soil. The main
character’s job is to take samples, we know he is a nature lover but when he
interviews his fellow citizens his face doesn’t move, he doesn’t even look at
them in the eyes, his life is so much under Olga Kurylenko’s skirts that he is
not even taking care of an important situation like that.
We should thank Terrence Malick for
incorporating the fracking problem in the movie and hopefully raising some
awareness.
Is the movie only a long perfume commercial?
I don’t think so,
it is so abstract that it moved a lot of things inside of me, more than movies
with an actual script. Revising Truffaut’s interviews with Hitchcock I found
this piece that might illustrate why he did a movie like that:
“Le theme ne m’interesse pas, le jeu des acteurs ne m’intérrese pas,
(...) ce qui m’importe, ce sont les morceaux de films et la photographie, la
bande sonore et tous les moyens techniques qui font que le public se met à
hurler. Je trouve que c’est terriblement satisfaisant de parvenir à communiquer
une émotion de masse grâce à l’art cinématographique. Ce à quoi nous sommes
certainement parvenus avec Psychose. Le public n’était pas touché par un
message, ni par un exploit ni par le fait qu’il goütait le roman. C’était le
cinéma seul qui donnait aux gens de l’émotion.”
By definition I don't like any form of nationalism because it touches that one place where I don't like to be touch, maybe that is why I liked these 2 documentaries so much. Both of them talk about similar issues: friendship, nationalism and basketball.
The other dream team: Lithuania's independency explained through their basketball history. Beautiful documentary with some really surprising stories.Buy it or try to find it, here's the trailer (with huge spoilers):
Once brothers: A little bit more dramatic but still good and still interesting.Here's the full documentary:
I really recommend you to watch both of them and have some kleenex ready, there will be tears of joy and sorrow!
