Music: Janelle Monae - Many Moons

Wouldn’t it be great to switch people on and off like Androids - the wet-dream of any totalitarian state and dictatorship.

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AIDS: Liberia Vice

During the last days VBS.TV has made a series of videos available created by them while traveling in Liberia (so far mainly Monrovia and surroundings) and talking to local journalists, war lords, slum inhabitants and other “normal people“. A story about civil war, drugs, AIDS, child soldiers, rape, daily killing, corruption, cannibalism… - it shows how deep the rabbit hole goes in one of the poorest countries and failed states on this planet.

The series comprises 8 short videos with different stations of their “travel” through Liberia of which so far 4 are online on their site.
What they have so far not covered is how much foreign aid is sunk into this country and what actually happens with it…

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Quote of the day: Politics and Business

The only difference between the Republican and Democratic parties is the velocities with which their knees hit the floor when corporations knock on their door. That’s the only difference.”

Ralph Nader - American attorney, author, lecturer, political activist

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Christmas: Adeste fidelis - Venite Adoremus

Adeste Fideles laeti triumphantes,
Veníte, veníte in Bethlehem.
Natum vidéte, Regem Angelorum:
Veníte adoremus,
Veníte adoremus
Veníte adoremus Dóminum

While the “fidelis” this year like in the years before merely get some kind of fair ground in Bethlehem - if they are allowed to go there with specially arranged package travel or diplomatic passports - one thing is different from the days this song and its lyrics have been composed.

While the shepherds around Bethlehem still speak a language that today is called Arabic (or some local dialects) there would be no “…En grege relicto, Humiles ad cunas Vocati pastores approperant …” (translated in the English version as: See how the shepherds, Summoned to His cradle, Leaving their flocks, draw nigh with lowly fear) -
there are guys with machine guns and tanks hindering the shepherds to even get close to the cradle - so Christmas would not happen these days again.

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Video: Christmas at the White House 2009

A glimpse of this year’s holiday decorations at the White House.

When you see the decorations put up and created by many volunteers across the country you can feel their joy, love, wishes and hope with those who have some chance to make this world a better place for many and not just a very few.

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Music: Placebo - Running Up That Hill

One for the night - certainly fitting pretty well with some of our more recent posts.

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Life: The role of the state to impact morality

This video is out of a series of short videos starting with “How to Live a Meaningful Life” up to “Reflects on Goodness” all of them interviews by the great BigThink web site with U.C. Berkeley social psychologist Dacher Keltner.

If you interested in Professor Keltner’s work and that of his colleagues at the…

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Climate-Change: Copenhagen and now?

So the vast “show and photo opportunity” meeting in Copenhagen is coming to an end now and could someone please tell what has actually been achieved in this huge media event.

A 3 page document with some teasers but now clear road-map on who-does-what-and-when. The talks on atomic weapons between the U.S. and Russia that happened at the same venue might prove to be more outcome oriented then that other show.

Will the bankster be allowed to expand their casino games with derivatives / virtual money creation for them to the so-called “Cap & Trade” certificates and thereby will most certainly create a world-wide crisis that will be bigger by orders of magnitude than the current financial crisis?

Will someone start to limit the global levels of pollution instead of fostering opaque trading schemes that are only good for story telling and profiteering - read: the industrialized nations reduced their pollutions - e.g. by 30% while at the same time the polluters have just shifted those factories somewhere else where these are then for whatever reason not counted into the scheme?

Will the whole thing like in other areas e.g. pandemics be handled by some kind of fund or financial instrument that in the past have regularly proven to be the most inefficient way, without any accountability or actual transparency, blowing money on themselves and their buddies, often institutionalized corruption and rates as bad as US$ 1000 put in and a mere US$10 arriving at the actual cause?

Well let’s see what the soon to happen next meeting in Berlin will bring…

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Data-Visualization: The Known Universe by AMNH

…The Known Universe takes viewers from the Himalayas through our atmosphere and the inky black of space to the afterglow of the Big Bang. Every star, planet, and quasar seen in the film is possible because of the world’s most complete four-dimensional map of the universe, the Digital Universe Atlas that is maintained and updated by astrophysicists at the American Museum of Natural History…

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Data-Visualization: Browser statistics as tree rings

Great interactive data visualization of the changing market share for the leading web browsers since 2002.

The source code for the animation is available by right clicking on the flash animation.

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