Ai auzit desigur de medicina bazata pe dovezi. Ei bine, un nou articol rezumă o panoplie de practici utilizate în ultimele două decenii - publicarea in numele altor autori, suprimarea datelor, propagarea de opinii exagerate despre boli si manipularea perceptiei efectelor secundare de catre medici - ceea ce autorii numesc medicina bazata pe marketing. Pentru a ilustra punctul lor de vedere, autorii se bazeaza pe documente interne de litigii - cum ar fi procesele excesiv mediatizate in legatura cu medicamentele antipsihotice şi antidepresive.



"În timp ce s-a generat mare valva in jurul medicinei bazate pe dovezi, documentele interne din industria farmaceutică sugerează că datele publice disponibile referitoare la produsele farmaceutice nu reprezinta fidel dovezile existente cu privire la acestea” scriu autorii in Bioethical Inquity. "Propunem ca in timp ce medicina bazata pe evidenta este un ideal nobil, medicina bazata pe marketing este realitatea actuala”…

restul aici

Originea scenariului filmului Avatar de James Cameron. Nu citi daca nu vrei sa stii despre ce-i vorba ;))

Vedro con mio diletto - Vivaldi

If you assume there’s no afterlife, Stephen Fry says, you’ll likely have a fuller, more interesting life.

Question: What philosophers influenced you?

Stephen Fry: Philosophy is an odd thing. When we use the word in everyday speech you know you sometimes hear it hilariously. They say, “Oh, it’s never good to be late.” “That’s my philosophy.” You think that’s a generous description of that rather dull precept to call it a philosophy, but it’s odd how philosophers generally speaking, at least the ones I’ve read or the ones I you know value, don’t have in that sense a philosophy. There is no particular Socratic or Dimechian or Kantian way to live your life. They don’t offer ethical codes and standards by which to live your life. They don’t offer a philosophy to follow. They just simply raise an enormous number of questions mostly, so in the sense that you put the question is there a philosopher that’s important to me. Well I me I loved really the sort of the Bertrand Russell grand sort of tour of philosophy, the history of philosophy from the pre Socratics as they’re called, Zeno and so on through to Socrates and Plato and Aristotle. I never quite liked Aristotle. I think that’s partly… Although he was obviously a genius and brilliant and he invented logic, so what’s not to like. I think it was his influence on the medieval mind was probably rather pernicious and unfortunate and all those categories and things, but when it opened up with I suppose Spinoza and them, but then Kant and the enlightenment era. Oh and actually Locke. I did like Locke. He was a fine philosopher, but they don’t… I mean what is so great about them is that they just… They’re quite scary when you think of the word philosopher and especially if it’s logic and symbolic logic and it gets onto Hegelian philosophies, incredibly difficult to read I find and you follow it for about… Well it’s like trying to grab a salmon. You know the harder you clutch at it the more it springs, slips out of your hand and whoa, it’s gone and you chase it again and what was that and you feel very stupid, but the… I think the beauty of questioning and simplicity that you get from Kant in particular I think is just amazing because it’s like they say of simple mathematical laws that make fractals, the tiniest little elegant observation about or question about something just spins out these immensely complex things that make you rethink everything. So yes, I think philosophy is a really important dimension, but I think in our age we tend to be rather sloppy about it. We either think Buddhism is philosophy, which you know or some sort of eastern thing about being nice and spiritual and that will do, which it’s fine. I mean you know obviously I believe in kindness and niceness and lots of spiritual things, but the real intellectual rigor and quest of logic is something that I’m afraid takes incredibly hard work and we live in an age in which hard work is if not actively deprecated or denigrated it is run away from or ignored. It’s sort of people frown at you and say, “Well, that’s a bit dull and stupid. Why can’t we just short circuit it and talk about like spirit?” Well yeah, you can say spirit, but if you think that’s philosophy and if you think that’s good enough.

The most important philosophy I think is that even if it isn’t true you must absolutely assume there is no afterlife. You cannot for one second I think, abbragate the responsibility of believing that this is it because if you think you’re going to have an eternity in which you can talk to Mozart and Chopin and Schopenhauer on a cloud and learn stuff and you know really get to grips with knowledge and understanding and so you won’t bother now. I think it’s a terrible, a terrible mistake. It may be that there is an afterlife and I’ll look incredibly stupid, but at least I will have had a crammed pre afterlife, a crammed life, so to me the most important thing is you know as Kipling put it, to fill every 60 seconds with you know what is it? To fill every unforgiving minute with 60 seconds worth of distance run. You know absolutely, so that’s all I’m saying I suppose. Is that there is no point wasting time being lazy, though of course indolence in a divine way, actually has its advantages. Oh, shut up Steve. Okay, next one.

Question: What do you believe?

Stephen Fry: It’s interesting. Atheism comes into rather a bad press and I suppose I’d rather describe myself as a humanist, who human… I don’t believe in God. I don’t believe there is a God. If I were to believe in a god l would believe in gods. I think monotheism is the really ghastly thing. That is the absolutely staggering to me misapprehension. I can perfectly see why anybody might imagine that each thing, each thing that grows, each phenomenon that we… that accompanies us on our journey through life, the sky, the mountains, spirits of nature. I can imagine why man would wish to endow them with an inner something, an inner animus that they would call the god of that thing. I can see that. It’s a beautiful and charming way of looking at it and I can understand the Greek idea that there are these you know these principles of lightening or of war or of wisdom and to embody them, to personify them into a Athena or Aries or whichever god you want makes enormous sense, but to say that there is one only god who made it all and who is… Yeah, that is just… What? Why? Who said? Where? Come on. And I love how when people watch I don’t know, David Attenborough or Discovery Planet type thing you know where you see the absolute phenomenal majesty and complexity and bewildering beauty of nature and you stare at it and then… and somebody next to you goes, “And how can you say there is no God?” “Look at that.” And then five minutes later you’re looking at the lifecycle of a parasitic worm whose job is to bury itself in the eyeball of a little lamb and eat the eyeball from inside while the lamb dies in horrible agony and then you turn to them and say, “Yeah, where is your God now?” You know I mean you got… You can’t just say there is a God because well, the world I beautiful. You have to account for bone cancer in children. You have to account for the fact that almost all animals in the wild live under stress with not enough to eat and will die violent and bloody deaths. There is not any way that you can just choose the nice bits and say that means there is a God and ignore the true fact of what nature is. The wonder of nature must be taken in its totality and it is a wonderful thing. It is absolutely marvelous and the idea that an atheist or a humanist if you want to put it that way, doesn’t marvel and wonder at reality, at the way things are, is nonsensical. The point is we wonder all the way. We don’t just stop and say that which I cannot understand I will call God, which is what mankind has done historically. That’s to say God was absolutely everything a thousand or two thousand years ago because we understood almost nothing about the natural world, so it could all be God and then as we understood more God receded and receded and receded, so suddenly now he is barely anywhere. He is just in those things we don’t understand, which are important, but I think it just is such an insult to humanity and the Greeks got it right. The Greeks understood perfectly that if there were divine beings they are capricious, unkind, malicious mostly, temperamental, envious and mostly deeply unpleasant because that you can say well yes, all right, if there is going to be god or gods then you have to admit that they’re very at the very least capricious. They’re certainly not consistent. They’re certainly not all loving. I mean really it’s just not good enough.

You know if we empower ourselves with responsibility over our actions, responsibility over our destinies and responsibility for directing and maintaining and creating our own ethical and moral frameworks, which is the most important thing really isn’t it because perhaps the greatest insult to humanism is this idea that mankind needs a god in order to have a moral framework. There is a very clear way of demonstrating logically how absurd that is because the warrant for that logical framework, for that moral framework that comes from God is always tested against man’s own morals and it’s a complicated argument, but I mean that’s you know it’s the standard one which is pretty unanswerable, but the idea that we don’t know right from wrong, but we have to take it from words put down in a book two, three, four, five, six thousand years ago and dictated to rather hotheaded neurotic desert tribes is just insulting. It’s just no, I mean you know if there were a God he would want us to be better spirited than to take his word for everything. Wouldn’t he? If he gave us free will would he really want us to say, “No, I have to abide by everything that’s written in this book, all the laws of circumcision and of eating and of… and what to do with menstruating women?” I mean, “I’m going to obey those written down there.” “I won’t think for myself because that’s not required of me.” Come on. It’s just not good enough and you know I have no quarrel with individuals who wish… who are devout and who have faith. I don’t want to mock them. I really don’t, but damned if I’m going to be told by them what to do with my body or damned if I’m going to have the extraordinary battles won by enlightenment over the past 400 years, to have those battles abdicated by a new dark ages. It’s you know. The battle lines must be drawn.

Question: What is religion good for?

Stephen Fry: Music in its time, but I mean that’s a function of history you know. The fact is that composers always write for the power because… or power and money and it so happened that in the period when polyphony all the way through to the classical and early romantic era all the power and the money was with the church, so some great masses and some great choir music and some great oratories were written from obviously the Baroque age being the sort of pinnacle of that, but all the way through to Mozart’s final works and his requiem and Beethoven’s "Missa solemnis" and Mendelssohn and so on. There have been some marvelous religious works and in paintings similarly, but that’s because these were princes. They were princes of the church. They were prince arch bishops who employed Mozart. These were not spiritual beings who inculcated these composers with a sense of the divine that makes the music divine. The glory of Verde’s Requiem or Mozart’s Requiem or Bach’s pieces is that they are fantastic, incredibly human and like all great human’s thing they reach for the infinite. They reach for beauty. A religious person would call that the divine. You could call it the humanist. You could call it anything else, but certainly is that. Religion has been good for that and good for architecture because it is required that enormous… It required enormous buildings for the shepherding of people in, in order to do the services and they spend a lot of money on it and so they are rather glorious buildings. You’ve got to hand them that. Do they make the trains run on time? No, they didn’t do that. That’s about it really. And there are some kind individual people. I mean very kind people who give to the poor and look after the sick and so on, but it’s not necessary and sufficient as a justification for religion because there are plenty of people who are not religious who are also kind to the sick and good to the poor and care about people’s well-being.

Question: Are there religious leaders you admire?

Stephen Fry: Yes, very much so. I mean Trevor Huddleston and Archbishop Tutu from South Africa are two good examples who were both genuine men of their church, or let me see -- Huddleston is dead, but Tutu is still alive -- and who both fought a terrible injustice and used all the authority of their position amongst their believers and but very bravely spoke out and sometimes against the wishes of the church hierarchies. Some liberation theologist who are from, you know, some of them mad Communists, some of them just decent liberals who fought against the hideous doctrines of the Roman Catholic church for example, and there are individual voices who are raised in conscience against the bureaucracy and the dogma and the doctrine of the churches, and you know certainly of course individuals in, you know, Bonheoffer for example in Germany, the Lutheran minister who spoke out against Hitler. There are… Of course there have been good and fine religious people and the Dalai Lama seems rather charming. I don’t know. It’s terrible. I don’t want to come over as some terrible anti-ecclesiastical figure, but.

JD Salinger a murit ieri. In ultimii ani era cunoscut mai mult ca celebritate literara care s-a retras din lumea publica - un fel de Garbo literat aparand sporadic in ziare ca subiect al hartuirii jurnalistilor, al zvonurilor nefondate, in fotografii cu aspect vadit infuriat. Merita sa ne amintim de el chiar si numai pentru “The catcher in the rye” (De veghe in lanul de secara). A trait 91 de ani.

Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, I mean - except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be."


- J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

Ep.1 Discovering the Elements



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Ep 2. The order of the Elements




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Ep.3 The Power of The Elements



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Prima parte: Deep Earth



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Partea a 2-a: Water



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Partea a 3-a: Wind



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Partea a 4-a Fire



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Merita sa fie vazut la fata locului

Dacă vrem să avem o idee clara despre sufletul nostru, sa-l supunem experimentului - sa renuntam la prejudecati, sa eliminam speculatiile teologice, sa rupem valurile sacre care nu au alt scop decat sa ne orbeasca si sa ne intunece ratiunea. Daca dorim ca omul sa fie impins spre virtute, sa lasam fizicianul, anatomistul, medicul, sa-si uneasca experientele; sa compare observatiile si sa ne arate ce trebuie sa gandim despre o substanta atat de ascunsa, mascata de absurditati, care nu poate fi usor cunoscuta. Descoperirile lor ii vor invata poate pe moralisti adevaratele motivatii care influenteaza actiunile oamenilor, pe legislatori adevaratele motive care il stimuleaza pe om sa munceasca pentru bunastarea sociala, pe suverani mijloacele de a-i face cu adevarat fericiti pe supusii lor.

Sufletele fizice au necesitati fizice si cer fericire fizica adica obiecte reale de preferat in locul himerelor cu care s-au alimentat spiritele noastre de-a lungul secolelor. Sa perfectionam moralitatea umana, sa facem ca omul sa-si doreasca acest lucru, sa stimulam in el setea pentru puritate: vom vedea cum morala se imbunatateste, omul este mai fericit, sufletul sau este mai linistit si inseninat. Va fi inclinat spre virtute din motivele naturale, palpabile care i se prezinta. Bazandu-se pe filozofia naturala legislatorii vor forma cetateni rationali, robusti si bine formati care fiind fericiti vor elibera in ei impulsurile atat de utile sufletelor lor. Cand corpul sufera, cand popoarele sunt nefericite, sufletul sufera. Mens sana in corpore sano - o minte sanatoasa intr-un corp sanatos. Este ceea ce va forma mereu un bun cetatean.

(Baron D'Holbach - The system of Nature)

Wulffmorgenthaler

Imagineaza-ţi că esti o femeie in varsta dintr-o familie săracă care locuieste intr-o suburbie a orasului Chennai, India. Tot ce ai vrut cu disperare în ultimul an şi jumătate este sa obtii un document numit patta care sa atesteze ca esti proprietara terenului pe care-l stapanesti. Ai nevoie de acest act ca garanţie pentru un împrumut bancar pe care speri sa-l obtii pentru a finanţa educaţia nepoatei tale. Dar exista o problemă: functionarul care emite aceste patta ti-a cerut sa platesti o mica “taxa” pentru acest serviciu. Asa-i, iti cere mită. Dar esti saraca şi nu ai banii pe care ti-i cere. Şi partea cea mai absurda a acestui scenariu este ca e un serviciu public care ar trebui sa fie gratis. Ce ai face? Ai putea spune asa cum ai facut in ultimii 1-1/2 ani ca nu-i nimic de facut, dar tocmai ai auzit de o organizatie locala numita A 5-a coloana care iti inmaneaza un aliat puternic: o bancnota de zero rupii.

Ideea ii apartine unui profesor de fizica indian de la Universitatea din Maryland, care în călătoriile sale prin India si-a dat seama cât de extinsa este luarea de mită şi a vrut să facă ceva care sa remedieze situatia. A avut ideea de a imprima bancnote cu valoare nominala zero care sa fie inmanate funcionarilor ori de câte ori cer mita ca o modalitate de a manifesta dezaprobarea. Ideea a fost dusa mai departe: pentru a le imprima în masă li se face publicitate pe scară largă şi sunt inmanate poporului indian. Aceste bancnote sunt o modalitate prin care oamenii isi pot manifesta dezaprobarea fata de furnizarea de servicii publice dependente de mită. Primul lot de 25.000 de bilete au avut o cerere asa de mare incat A 5-a coloana a ajuns sa distribuie un milion de bancote până în prezent. Cu timpul organizatia a strans multe poveşti de la persoane care le-au folosit rezistand cu succes cererii de mita. O astfel de poveste a fost cazul de mai sus despre femeia batrana si necazurile ei cu functionarii de la terenuri. Sătula de cereri de mită şi inarmata cu o bancnotă de 0 rupii, femeia i-a intins-o functionarului. Acesta a fost şocat. Remarcabil, s-a ridicat de pe scaun si i l-a oferit doamnei, i-a oferit si ceai si i-a dat documentul pe care aceasta l-a solicitat fara succes de peste un an si jumatate.

Restul aici

Pe 19 Ianuarie 1981, dezamagirile dragostei - zic unii - au impins o tanara pe fereastra casei sale din East Village. Asa murea la varsta de 22 de ani  Francesca Woodman, si in acelasi timp se nastea legenda unei artiste. In pofida vietii sale scurte Francesca a influentat generatii posterioare de fotografi. De la prima sa fotografie - Autoportret la 13 ani - (1972) se intrezaresc elementele stilului sau particular pe care-l va explora in anii care-i mai ramaneau de viata: subiectul - ea insasi- , elemente lipsite de claritate, scenarii interioare…
Opera sa este un elegant joc de oglinzi in care corpul este singurul protagonist. Fotografiile sale in riguros alb si negru si de multe ori cetoase, au o intimitate iesita din comun. Le privim si aflam totul despre ea: genialitate, tristete, sensibilitate, senzualitate.

Atheist Movies iti permite sa vezi filmul Creation intreg subtitrat in engleza. Linkul cel mai rapid este prin Megaupload dar il poti cobora (mai lent) si via Rapidshare.
E vorba de o perioda dificila din viata lui Darwin - cea in care fata sa Annie moare si se infrunta cu dilema publicarii Originii Speciilor. Merita vazut.

Poezia de mai sus a fost scrisa de un adolescent, un baiat de 17 ani - Félix Francisco Casanova. Un tanar exceptional care-si petrecea zilele scriind si ascultand Soft Machine si John Coltrane si care la 19 ani (1976) a murit in imprejurari misterioase - o scapare de gaz in timp ce facea dus spun unii, o sinucidere spun restul. Era fiul unei femei de frumusete frapanta si a unui medic poet vestit pentru ca purta un ciorap in buzunarul de sus de la haina in loc de batista.

Spania a avut un Rimbaud care a trecut aproape neobservat. A scris "Darul lui Vorace" in 44 de zile, un roman publicat acum de editura Demipage care va edita si jurnalul scriitorului precoce.

Imagineaza-ţi un moment în viaţa ta când ai simţit ca ai pierdut controlul - orice de la o ratacire pana la pierderea locului de muncă. Acum, uita-te la ilustratia de mai sus. Ce vezi? Un astfel de scenariu a fost prezentat unor subiecţi într-un experiment realizat in 2008 de Jennifer Whitson de la Universitatea din Texas, Austin si colegul sau Adam Galinsky de la Universitatea Northwestern. Studiul lor, intitulat "Lipsa de control creşte perceptia de modele iluzorii" a fost publicat în revista Science.

Definirea "percepţiei de modele iluzorii" ("patternicity") ca "identificarea unei interactiuni coerente şi semnificative între un set de stimuli aleatori sau care nu au legătură ... (cum ar fi tendinţa de a percepe corelaţii false, a vedea figuri imaginare, a crea ritualuri superstiţioase, şi a îmbrăţişa credinţe conspirative, printre altele)... "teza cercetătorilor a fost că " atunci când persoanele sunt incapabile de a câştiga un sentiment de control în mod obiectiv vor încerca sa-l obţina in mod perceptual".

Cum explica Whitson, “ Sentimentul de control este esenţial pentru bunăstarea noastră- gândim mai clar şi luam decizii mai bune când simţim ca avem controlul. Lipsa de control este foarte ostila, aşa că in mod instinctiv cautam modele pentru a ne recapata controlul - chiar dacă aceste modele sunt iluzorii. "

Citeste restul aici

Ne asteapta inflaţia galopantă după colţ? Fără îndoială, Statele Unite prezintă unii din precursorii clasici ai inflaţiei scapate de sub control. Dar o privire mai profundă sugerează că povestea nu este atât de simpla. 
Să începem cu principiile de baza.

O lecţie de bază a economiei este aceea că preţurile cresc atunci când guvernul emite o cantitate excesivă de bani. Cu alte cuvinte, inflaţia are loc atunci cand prea multi bani incearca sa cumpere prea puţine bunuri. 
A doua lecţie este că guvernele recurg la o creştere rapidă monetară atunci cand se confruntă cu probleme fiscale. Atunci când cheltuielile guvernamentale depasesc colectarea impozitelor, factorii de decizie politică recurg uneori la băncile centrale, care în esenţă, tiparesc bani pentru a acoperi deficitul bugetar. 
Aceste două lecţii explica hiperinflatii istorice cum ar fi cele din Germania în anii 1920 sau din Zimbabwe mai recent.

Sunt Statele Unite pe punctul de a lua aceasta cale?

citeste restul aici

Pe 30 Ianuarie 2010 la ora 10:23 a.m. punct, grupuri de sceptici se vor strange in centrele din 12 orase britanice ca sa dea pe gat in mod ostentativ flacoane intregi de pastile homeopatice incercand astfel sa demonstreze inca odata ca homeopatia e apa de ploaie.

De ce fac acest lucru? In Anglia homeopatia se afla pretutindeni, si desi nu-si fac iluzii ca or sa scada vanzarile potiunilor lui Hahnemann, spera sa-i convinga pe cei de la Institutul National pentru Sanatate si Excelenta Clinica sa reconsidere finantarea homeopatiei in cadrul Sistemului National de Sanatate (NHS). Unul din marile mistere ale lumii este acela ca sistemul de sanatate britanic angajat pe calea aplicarii medicinii bazate pe evidenta, continua sa cheltuiasca in jur de 4 milioane de lire pe an pe pilule de zahar. Si asta in conditiile in care cu numai cateva luni in urma a refuzat prescriptia unui medicament eficient pentru cancerul de ficat, doar pentru ca balanta sa cost-beneficiu nu este favorabila.

Cum ar fi un sistem de sanatate bazat pe medicina alternativa si superstitie, inclusiv la nivelul urgentelor medicale? Iata un film care ilustreaza destul de bine acest cosmar:

Acest film scurt se refera la un subiect pe cat de important pe atat de putin inteles in toata lumea - drepturile omului.

Interesant documentar in care David Attenborough exploreaza o problema importanta: cati oameni pot supravietui pe Pamant in conditiile in care spatiul si resursele sunt limitate. Am depasit oare limita?


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Vezi cele 6 parti

E stiut ca lumina exacerbeaza crizele de migrena. Cei care le au frecvent stiu ca se simt mai bine daca se retrag intr-o camera intunecata. Deoarece regiunile cerebrale vizuale nu se suprapun cu cele care transmit durerea, legatura lumina-durere pare bizara. Recent se pare ca oamenii de stiinta au gasit explicatia. Rami Burstein, un anestezist care lucreaza la Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center si Harvard Medical School din Boston, impreuna cu colegii sai au inceput sa studieze migrena la orbi. Din 20 de voluntari nevazatori, 6 nu puteau sa perceapa deloc lumina iar ceilalti 14 puteau sa o perceapa intr-o oarecare masura. Cercetatorii au observat ca numai migrenele nevazatorilor care percep lumina se inrautatesc cu aceasta. Conurile si bastonasele retinei acestora - principalele celule care detecteaza lumina - sunt defectuoase. Totusi un alt tip de celule retiniene sunt functionale, in special cele care folosesc melanopsina. Melanopsina este receptorul care reactioneaza la lumina, in special la lumina albastra.

In acest punct al cercetarilor, Burstein si echipa sa au decis sa studieze melanopsina, pentru a stabili daca celulele care o produc au vreo legatura cu celulele care transmit durerea. Si au descoperit ca in creierul soarecilor axonii celulelor sensibile la melanopsina se conecteaza cu celule nervoase specifice din talamus importante in senzatia dureroasa. Bingo!

Citeste tot articolul: Why Light Makes Migraines Worse

"Thousands have lived without love, not one without water." – W.H. Auden

Ideea ca apa a fost si va fi mereu cu noi este foarte gresita. 1 bilion din cele 6 bilioane de oameni care locuiesc pe aceasta planeta nu au acces la apa potabila. In fiecare an, apele poluate si infectate omoara mai multi oameni decat omoara SIDA sau razboaiele. Privatizarea apei permite accesul la apa potabila numai celor care pot plati. Dar in multe locuri de pe pamant exista oameni care nu pot plati apa. Cu multi ani in urma, atunci cand nivelul de toxine in apa nu ajunsese la cel actual, oamenii supravietuiau luandu-si apa din puturi sau din rauri. Azi nu mai exista apa naturala “curata”. Peste 2 milioane de copii mor anual pentru ca nu pot bea decat apa contaminata. Pesticidele au intrat in ciclul natural, se afla peste tot: pana si in laptele mamelor inuit, in ursii polari, in balene. Masculii multor specii de pesti de apa dulce dispar, in apele Senei de exemplu predomina femelele. S-a detectat Prozac in pesti. In zone concrete de pe planeta, resursele de apa sunt pe terminate.
Unul din cele mai bune filme documentare despre problema apei: Flow - for love of water.

Ramin Haerizadeh
More here

Antropologul Vintila Mihailescu discuta online cu cititorii HotNews.ro marti, de la ora 11.00, despre mecanismul prin care moartea unei figuri publice a determinat o miscare de masa in Romania. Este vorba despre schimbarea radicala de comportament a mii de romani dupa ce actorul Toni Tecuceanu a murit bolnav de gripa porcina. Peste 40.000 de persoane s-au vaccinat la inceputul anului iar numarul romanilor care au cerut sa fie imunizati este de 10 ori mai mare decat in decembrie 2009.
Cum se poate schimba de la o zi la alta atitudinea unei populatii semnificative pe un subiect sensibil? Aflati marti, in intilnirea online de la ora 11.00 cu antropologul Vintila Mihailescu.

via HotNews.ro

Oenoanda ©

Zece, o sută, o mie.

Îi voi developa la noapte,

Când sufletul va fi o cameră obscură. Apoi îi voi class:

După frunze, după cercuri, După umbra lor.

O, ce uşor

Copacii intră unul într-altul!

Iată, nu mi-a rămas decât unul.

Pe-acesta îl voi fotografia din nou

Şi voi observa cu spaimă

Că seamănă cu mine.

Ieri am fotografat numai pietre.

Şi piatra de la sfârşit

Semăna cu mine.

Alaltăieri – scaune -

­Şi cel care-a rămas

Semăna cu mine.

Toate lucrurile seamănă îngrozitor

Cu mine…

(Marin Sorescu)

E un loc comun: realitatea depaseste fictiunea cea mai extrema.

Suntem in 2010. Dar 2010 nu este nici pe departe asa de plictisitor cum l-ar fi visat un scolar cu imaginatie din anii 70: nu misunam in masini zburatoare printre zgarie-nori, imbracati in costume de staniol si conversand amabili prin videofon despre ce alta planeta merita sa fie colonizata de omenirea infratita. Nu, in 2010 "El" e cu noi. El, Yehova, Allah, Tatal ceresc, e cu noi. E atotputernic, atotstiutor si prea-milostiv, si are grija sa nu ne plictisim: in fiecare zi deschidem televizorul extra-plat stereo high definition si vedem o noua versiune a aceleiasi scene: gloate isterizate de musulmani plutind intr-o mare de sange si resturi umane dupa ce un coreligionar s-a aruncat in aer la coada la paine. Dupa aceea rasfoim ziarul si incercam sa nu observam o curioasa corelatie de substantive adjective adverbe si verbe care se incapataneaza sa apara mereu impreuna de parca ar fi lipite unele de altele: profetul - ofensati - islam - furiosi - cutit - Coran - topor - bomba - musulmani - avion - teroristi - caricaturi - religie a pacii - Al Qaeda - decapitat.



Putem fi linistiti, totusi. In 2010 doi eroi inca mai apara Europa de valul de fanatism medieval care va sufoca ultimele vestigii de demnitate si libertate a constiintei. Unul are 74 de ani si se numeste Kurt Westergaard, celalalt este nepotica lui de 5 ani. Pe 1 ianuarie au trebuit sa se baricadeze impreuna intr-un bunker construit special in propria casa. Numai asa au scapat cu viata si n-au fost MACELARITI de un...(ah, iarasi substantivele si verbele lipicioase)...MUSULMAN care i s-a napustit in casa cu un CUTIT intr-o mana si un TOPOR in cealalta, FURIOS fiind pe CARICATURA PROFETULUI desenata de Kurt acum 5 ani. 
Theo Van Gogh n-a fost asa de norocos. Lobby-ul panislamic lucreaza intens la ONU pentru adoptarea unei legislatii internationale care sa penalizeze "blasfemia" ca delict. Pasul urmator va fi organizarea sectiilor de politie morala talibana in toate comisariatele europene.



Vezi cele 6 parti

Cornel Pufan