In completely unrelated news to the Modern Day Robin Hood story it was reported that property tycoon and Multi-Millionaire David Kirch has started yesterday to hand out £100 (USD195) early Christmas presents to every Jersey (channel islands) citizen aged 70 or above.

Since yesterday, anyone aged 70-plus can go to his or her parish hall to claim vouchers worth the amount to spend at any Checkers, Benests, Safeway or M & S store. With an estimated 9,000 people aged 70 or more, the giveaway is worth almost USD 2 millions.

Mr. Kirch who turned 70 this July wanted to mark his birthday in a different way then throwing a lavish party. “…At first I guessed that there would be about 3,000 of us and was very surprised to find out that instead there are more than three times that number - one in ten of the population…” he said.

via: Dom’s Weird News

A group of friends from Sheffield, UK who call themselves Modern Day Robin Hood created quite some stir-up when they moved over to New York last week and handed out cash on the streets. While people did receive the stunt very positive and enjoyed the humor of the “mad English men” mainstream press was up in arms.

Bedlam as “Robin Hoods” toss free $$ on page 3 of the New York Post,
‘Robin Hood’ giveaway sparks New York stampede said the Independent,
Robin Hood stunt sparks NY ‘riot’ reported the BBC News

The Telegraph and the Metro UK were more modest.

There might not be too many ways to get New Yorkers jump - and free cash seems to be one of them - but with about USD 4,000 you won’t get too far or even close to a “stampede”. So if you want to see for yourself below are the links to the videos.

click on the image for the jump (multimedia)

The intention of the Modern Day Robin Hood group as they state at their web site is:

“…trying to highlight the positive impact society could benefit from if we simply learned to be that little bit more courteous towards each other. It doesn’t cost anything to be polite and we believe in this modern day the majority of decent people, of which there are many, have grown tired of people being rude and ill mannered, lacking self respect for themselves and others around them..

A noble cause indeed, only the name of the group might be a bit misleading then.

More information on Modern Day Robin Hood at their web site.

It seems to be good times for all our self-centered contemporaries who now also can get their kind of share of importance.

I-Want-One-of-Those has started to take orders for so called “Personal Madame Tussauds wax models”. For the “negligible” amount of USD 270,000 you can now commission the wax artists of the Tussauds group to immortalize you.

A team of twenty people will then create your sculpture over a period of four months. If you don’t have time to go through all the sittings in London, the sculptors will be able to progress with research photos. And your money will also buy you a DVD, photos of the creation process and a team will transport and install your wax figure in your chosen private location. Well this is the “small” drawback of the “personal” in the product. The sculpture will not be going on display in one of the Tussauds groups locations around the world - for this you still have to be famous.

More information at the I-Want-One-of-Those web site.

We don’t know how much more you have to top up if you want yourself displayed together with another “famous” person - lets say - you and the Queen (or Julia Roberts) sitting on a garden bench. Well that’s your call….

And could one of our readers kindly find out if the Tussauds team would be willing to put a wick into it. With the right mordanting this could become the perfect treat for the well minted lonely wife who then can enjoy many romantic candle light dinners together with her husband…

With his Turn X4 project Mexican designer Agustin Otegui Saiz has managed to bring the reverso watch concept one step further and also transfered it to modern designer watches.

The Turn X4 creates a watch that is actually 4 different watches. We really love that design. Sadly its not available yet otherwise we would have got one of these right away.

click on the image for the jump

More information on Agustin Otegui Saiz and his other projects at his web site

The Kaleidoscope generator from Project-Euh automatically creates animated Kaleidoscopes from web site images.

The flash application scans the provided URL for jpeg images and then creates an animation in seconds. Multiple scans will normally result in different kaleidoscopes.

As you can see below the results look impressive even more when they are moving.

click on the image for the jump

The Kaleidoscope images above were generated with the home page of Duvet-Dayz.com from today.

You can read your daily news online or via RSS but there is another way to get informed (and get your daily dose of news pictures).

Major media agencies and news papers also provide daily or weekly updated news in pictures. Quite a few of them have even added spoken comments to the pictures so you get some background information together with the images. And often you get multiple images for a news story where otherwise only one of these pictures is included with a longer text.

The services we included in the list below are the largest providers and often the source for other news and media sites. They cover news on a global level but some have also regional information.

We have broken the list down into the following four sections:
(click on the links for direct access)

• Daily picture sources
• Weekly picture sources
• Yearly picture awards and reviews
• Historic and all time famous pictures

(This story has 4 pages)

continue reading »

With Sebastien Foucan playing the villain in 007- Casino Royal and Luc Besson’s District-B13 with David Belle having just arrived in the US a few weeks ago more popularity will be drawn to Parkour, free running, urban free flow or Yamakasi as the “art” behind the incredible stunts in these movies is called.

I can still remember the astonishment of people when they learned after watching “Jump London” the first documentary shown to a wider audience, that all the jumps are done without wires or any other support.

And it is impressive how those guys jump, roll, bend or climbing walls up and down. 20 seconds to get down from the 6th floor of a house (on the outside walls). And the same time to get up onto the roof.

Following some pointers for those who want to find out a bit more about this:

The picture above is from Luc Besson’s movie Banlieue 13 showing David Belle

Last month Jennifer Baichwal’s documentary Manufactured Landscapes, a portrait of Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky won the Toronto-City Award for the Best Canadian Feature Film.

The film follows Burtynsky to China as he travels the country photographing the evidence and effects of that country’s massive industrial revolution. Sites such as the Three Gorges Dam, which is bigger by 50% than any other dam in the world and displaced over a million people, factory floors over a kilometer long, and the breathtaking scale of Shanghai’s urban renewal are subjects for his lens and our motion picture camera.

Burtynsky is well know for his large-scale photographs of “manufactured landscapes” – quarries, recycling yards, factories, mines, dams. He photographs civilization’s materials and debris, but in a way people describe as “stunning” or “beautiful,” and so raises all kinds of questions about ethics and aesthetics without trying to easily answer them.

Burtynsky describes his work as following:
…Nature transformed through industry is a predominant theme in my work. I set course to intersect with a contemporary view of the great ages of man; from stone, to minerals, oil, transportation, silicon, and so on. To make these ideas visible I search for subjects that are rich in detail and scale yet open in their meaning. Recycling yards, mine tailings, quarries and refineries are all places that are outside of our normal experience, yet we partake of their output on a daily basis…

click on the image for the jump

More information:

• Edward Burtynsky’s web site
• Jennifer Baichwal at Mercury Film
• Trailer for Jennifer Baichwal’s “Manufactured Landscapes” movie
• Koch Gallery (see artist’s web site for more galleries)

We leave the obituaries up to those who are much better then we will ever be with that kind of stories, but wanted to send out a last tribute to one who’s life might have been much more then “short cuts”.

We limited ourselves to just citing from his most popular movie (Mash) that is still one of our favorites and in times like these more up-to-date then decades gone by:

Through early morning fog I see
visions of the things to be
the pains that are withheld for me
I realize and I can see…

…the game of life is hard to play
I’m gonna lose it anyway
The losing card I’ll someday lay
so this is all I have to say….

…The only way to win is cheat
And lay it down before I’m beat
and to another give my seat
for that’s the only painless feat…

…The sword of time will pierce our skins
It doesn’t hurt when it begins
But as it works its way on in
The pain grows stronger…watch it grin, but…

…A brave man once requested me
to answer questions that are key
is it to be or not to be
and I replied ‘oh why ask me?’…

Everybody who has seen the movie Mash will know this song we just left out the refrain.