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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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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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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Technology: BiDi Screen from MIT Media Lab

What the MIT Media Lab describes as “Computing with a wave of the hand” makes the much hyped implementation of current multi-touch screens look like technology from another century (which it actually is).

The new system allows gestural control without the need to touch the screen’s surface of screen elements with 3D objects and hand movements in 3D space near the screen - think Minority Report on a small screen. Watch the video below to see it in action…

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Music: Sliimy - Womanizer

Things you can do with Photoshop and paper - 2000 frames edited in Photoshop and then printed out and shot each one with a digital camera. Of course you then have to put all the single shots together again.

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