Iota's UnderWater Art Exhibit

Tomorrow (Saturday July 28, at 10:30 am 2007 on the Island of Kea a.k.a Tzia) my friend Iota Sotiropoulou will have an Art Exhibit ... underwater in the Sea... no seriously! It's called "Ιn 2 the Βlue". You have to wear a mask and everything. Here (for those of you who can read Greek) is all about it in an article from a local Paper: Article

My Friend Cyberella is getting Married

And she has created a little storyboard of her relationship so far with her future husband:
They first met at Club Panetarium
(Click on Image to see it all on her site)

Sonata in G Minor (Cat's Fugue) by Gatonico Catlatti

Thanks go to Christina for that one.

A Greek TV Scam?

Is local "Channel 10" involved in conning needy people out of their money? I don't know, but it certainly looks like it. Can there be another explanation?

The set up is an “Anagram Game” where you can "win up to several thousand Euros":

They give you for example … POU-RKA-ZIA.

The word to be found is the evident "KARPOUZIA" (watermelons).

They then have some “caller” who of course misses the idiotically obvious "KARPOUZIA" ... offers instead “KARPOUZI” and uses a second chance to say... “KARPOUZA” (Is that even a word?). :D

Could his person possibly be part of the set-up? No, you think? Of course not!:)

The "presenter" then goes through a whole routine: "WHAT A SHAME! ... though this answer is not right … it was very close etc". She then continues with the pitch: “CALL IF YOU KNOW THE SOLUTION!” while whistles and bells and meaningless countdowns and computer-game sound-effects and suspense-movie music are blasting in the background: 10 … 9 … 8 … 7 … etc

The trick for them is of course to get people to call (1,19 Euro each call, 1,52 Euros with a cell and 1,43 euro for each SMS). And they of course say that they only have some lines opened, like 5, 9, 12, 19, 20, 21, 30 … which the "red Button" will randomly choose from. Right!

So what do you think the chances are that a real person ever gets on the air? My take is that after they've milked enough money ... they might let one real caller on ... but then again ... they probably have a friend call even for that one.

Do people actually fall for this?

Probably yes, the weak-minded, the senile and children ... though "one needs to be over 18 to call"! :)

No Comment Necessary

Hydra!

The BBC has done a TV Report about the island of Hydra, one of the few places in Greece that have been left relatively pristine. It is now being eyed by a hotel developer. He is likely to be taken to court. "There is the whole of Greece one can use for development, why must they choose historical Hydra!" said an inhabitant.

The fly!

The guys at Harvard have created a robotic fly.

Seriously!

That is undoubtedly so very cool. We can, of course, also trust that it will be used for all kinds of nice things to benefit mankind. Right! In any case, the future is certainly going to get interesting with the usoA, the Chinese, the Russians and pretty soon everybody launching cute little things like that (and who knows what else) at each other.

"The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is funding Wood's research in the hope that it will lead to stealth surveillance robots for the battlefield and urban environments. The robot's small size and fly-like appearance are critical to such missions. "You probably wouldn't notice a fly in the room, but you certainly would notice a hawk," Wood says.

Recreating a fly's efficient movements in a robot roughly the size of the real insect was difficult, however, because existing manufacturing processes couldn't be used to make the sturdy, lightweight parts required. The motors, bearings, and joints typically used for large-scale robots wouldn't work for something the size of a fly. "Simply scaling down existing macro-scale techniques will not come close to the performance that we need," Wood says.

Some extremely small parts can be made using the processes for creating microelectromechanical systems. But such processes require a lot of time and money. Wood and his colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley, needed a cheap, rapid fabrication process so they could easily produce different iterations of their designs."

Thanks go to Theodore for that one.

Source: MIT's TechnologyReview

The Great Battle of Tabouli!

Thanks go to Evelyn for that one! :)

And they do mean "light" fabric.

Joanna's Zimbabwe Letter

Joanna is a journalist friend (the one who took my blog picture). She now lives in Zimbabwe with her friend who is in MSF.

From time to time she sends a letter describing her experiences there. They tend to be fantastic. So I asked her if I could publish her latest one. Here it is:

"Dear family and friends,

I have already been here (in Harare, Zimbabwe) for two weeks and am still find it hard to adjust.

EVERYTHING is difficult in this country, and believe me when I say that I’m not exaggerating. First of all – it is COLD. We are in winter time here, which wouldn’t be bad if it wasn’t for the fact that NO houses, offices, building in general have heating. At my boyfriend’s offices people type on their computers with gloves on, while I never take off my coat, unless I’m getting into bed under five covers.

Then there is the whole economical situation. When I first visited here three months ago, for 1 U.S. Dollar you could get 20,000 Zim dollars. Now you can get 125,000 Zim dollars for 1 U.S. Dollar. All the currency now in circulation though has an expiration date – imagine looking at your euro or dollar note and seeing on it: Expires on July 31, 2007 (!!!!!) (see photo). But that is exactly what Zim dollars have on them, so you can imagine the spending frenzy everyone is going to get into in these next ten days or so.

Having said that, let us look at what there is to buy with those expiring million dollar packets we are carrying around – and the answer is: NOT MUCH. A couple of weeks ago the government decided to make shops and supermarkets cut down their prices to a June level. Many did not comply; they are all now in jail. Managers of supermarkets, directors of shop, floor managers... all in jail. At the stores that did cut their prices – madness! Miles long lines of people waiting to get inside to buy all those things that now according to real value rates cost pennies. For example the government made MACRO supermarket sell its television set for 1 million Zim dollars. Sounds like a lot, but according to the black market exchange rate that is only 8 $, about 6.5 euros. You can imagine the pandemonium that broke out as people rushed to get the sets, fighting with each other, pulling, tearing, breaking things... It was even reported today that there was a pregnant woman waiting in a cue to buy fixed price items and she had her baby there at the shop!

But generally, there isn’t anything in the stores to buy because simply it is more expensive for producers to sell their products than it is to make them. So for the past two weeks there is no meat to be had anywhere in the country. Eggs are scarce, as is bread and milk. We’re all eating a lot of canned stuff, Heinz soups are especially everywhere. I’m getting to have a very close relationship with the Zim can-opener, which sometimes works, or sometimes manages to plow into my hand!!

More worrying, they also say that soon there won’t be any fuel which will of course bring the country to a stand-still. But there is now a rumor that Libya will be giving Zim fuel, one revolutionary supporting another...

Telecommunications are a complete disaster. It is almost impossible to call someone, so everyone texts people, which sometimes get there, sometimes don’t. The internet sometimes works, sometimes doesn’t.

We have power black-outs. They cut off the electricity in blocks around the city in order to economize. You don’t know when it will be your turn, and how long they will keep it off for. Then they also cut the water. We have to keep big bins filled with water just in case. Yesterday we were at the check-out counter in this huge supermarket and all the lights went out – we were all in complete darkness!! It was VERY SCARRY!!! The guards ran and shut all the doors and then everyone had to demonstrate their receipt and what they had in their bags in order to leave.

On a personal level, it is extremely risky for me to even attempt to write something as a journalist. But even looking for a job is tricky. I can’t include in my CV anything that hints that I was a journalists (which obviously leaves for a very poor resume) and I can’t really say I’m looking for a job because I’m only here on a tourist visa which they can revoke whenever they want.

Then every office I go to is behind a guarded enclosure and sometimes it is difficult even getting beyond the guards: “What do you want?” reply: “To see the human resource department” “Do you have an appointment” or “who do you want to see?” to which of course I don’t have an answer. Some look at me strange, some scornfully, some are very nice. To many places I’m just offering myself as a volunteer to see what they will offer, and hope that something job-wise will come up afterwards. But sometimes I’ve had people look at me even stranger when I say I want to be a volunteer.

I’m sending a picture of me in front of the new Medecins Sans Frontiers offices. (I am wearing my favorite sweater and necklace some VERY special kids gave me as a present!) The new offices are this incredible mansion (even with a pool in the back, which MSF rules doesn’t allow to be used) which goes for a pittance. The garden in front had even more trees, some huge mango trees included, but because some of the Zim workers had to put through a cable and the trees were in the way... they just cut them down! VERY SAD!

In the meantime, I am trying to fly Jacques, my dog, over here, which has required a lot of money and paperwork and the INCREDIBLY kind efforts of some friends of mine who are helping out. I am still waiting to see what will happen with that and will keep you all updated.

Huge hug to everyone,

Joanna"

UpDate: FireFox Use in Europe is now 28%.

Percentage Use of the Best Browser in the World

Image from XiTi

Joyeux Quatorze Juillet!

Flag Photo source: fond-ecran-image.com

France's Quatorze Juillet National Celebrations have a distinctively European feel this year.

Shaking up Traditions, the President of France invited non-French European Contingents to join the festivities for the first time. The president of the European Commission, the European foreign policy chief, the Prime Minister of the rotating EU president country and Regiments from across Europe representing the full 27 European Union countries all marched the Champs-Elysees in the traditional military parade with President Sarkozy.

"I wanted France to be back in Europe and Europe to be present in France!" said the President.

Online advertising 'growing fast'

"The annual value of pan-European online advertising is set to reach 16bn euros ($22bn; £10.8bn) by 2012, more than double that of 2006, says a study.

The report by research body Forrester said online adverts would leap to 18% of market share, up from 9% currently.

It said 52% of people were now regularly online, spending more time doing so than watching television.

The UK will continue to see the most online advertising in the next four years, ahead of Germany and France.

'Valuable medium'

European internet users now spend 14.3 hours a week online, compared with 11.3 hours watching TV, and 4.4 hours reading newspapers or magazines, the research group said.

As a result of this increased internet usage, 36% of people who go online said they spent less time looking at the television as a result.

The report said search engines would continue to dominate online advertising spend, followed by display advertisements and e-mails.

"After five years of dipping their toes into the online marketing waters, firms have come to realise that the net is a valuable medium for client acquisition, retention and market expansion," said the study."

Source: BBC

The new Audi R8 ... "Es ist nicht Audi Ihres Vaters!"

Audi R8

While Europeans Holiday, Americans Toil

"In Austria, workers who labor at “heavy night work” get two or three extra days off. Also in Austria—as well as in Sweden and New Zealand—workers are actually paid at a higher rate when they’re on vacation than when they’re at work.

In France, workers get extra paid time off if they take some of their vacation days outside of the summer season. In Norway, those 60 and older get extra time off. And of course, your vacation could be ruined if you get sick while you’re away. So Sweden guarantees that if a worker becomes sick while on leave, the days of the illness don’t count against vacation time.

Stingy leave policies in the United States go hand and hand with weekly work hours that exceed those in many industrialized countries. And they parallel skimpy sick leave and family leave policies that give millions of Americans no effective safety net when illness or emergencies strike. Nearly half of private-sector workers—57 million people—have no paid sick days, according to Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., a chief sponsor of a measure to require at least some sick days for employees who work more than 30 hours per week. The problem is particularly acute for low-wage workers, more than three-fourths of whom get no paid leave when they are ill.

In theory, all this hard work is supposed to spark a more robust economy that is, in turn, an engine of greater upward mobility than what is found in the supposedly coddled precincts of, say, the European Union. But lately, it hasn’t. An ongoing, bipartisan study of intergenerational economic mobility conducted jointly by conservative and liberal-leaning researchers for the Pew Charitable Trusts has found the myth of superior American mobility to be—a myth.

Researchers for the Economic Mobility Project studied the relationship of adult children’s incomes to those of their parents and found that the United States now lags behind France, Germany, Sweden, Canada, Finland, Norway and Denmark in this measure of upward mobility. “There is little available evidence that the United States has more relative mobility than other advanced nations,” the group reported in May. “If anything, the data seem to suggest the opposite.”

Comparing the incomes of American men who were in their 30s in 2004 with males who were in their 30s in 1974, the researchers found that today’s men actually earn about 12 percent less, after inflation, than their fathers’ generation did. “There has been no progress at all for the youngest generation,” the group reported. The American family stays afloat because its total income has been swelled by women’s paychecks.

The sober statistics should lead toward saner economic policies. Europe, Canada and the rest of the industrialized world are doing just fine with guaranteed health insurance, pensions, maternity leave and sick time—not to mention a month at the beach. Here at home, nothing threatens the American dream so much as political disinclination to cast off old thinking and demand change for new and harsher economic times."

Full Article Source: Marie Cocco for www.truthdig.com

Athenians March on Parliament

I went to the weirdest March yesterday.

It all started with an e-mail going around ... that and cell-phone messages ... telling us all to march on the Greek Parliament ... because of the devastating recent fires that had occurred close to Athens.

I had found the whole idea of this march pointless ... because these fires did not so much seem like a question somehow resolvable by more (or a different kind of) government action ... being just another one of the absurd occurrences here.

These fires just seemed to fit the pattern.

In any case ... I went ... if only to participate in something positive.

It will of course not make an iota of difference.

But I had to do it nonetheless.

Top 10 Most Amazing Facts about the Earth

1. Gravity is not the same over the surface of the Earth

2. Atmosphere 'escapes'

3. The Earth is slowing down

4. Van Allen radiation belt

5. Moon is moving away from Earth

6. Moon has a tidal effect on the atmosphere

7. The Chandler wobble

8. Earth electric charge

9. Tons of interplanetary dust reaches Earth every year

10. Earth's magnetic poles change places

Source: fogonazos.blogspot.com

Apparently there Still Are a Few NewsPeople with Kohones left in the usoA!

Here is one:

Good Vibrations ... lead to Power!

"A tiny generator powered by natural vibrations could soon be helping keep heart pacemakers working.

Created by scientists at the University of Southampton, the generator has been developed to power devices where replacing batteries is very difficult.

The device is expected initially to be used to power wireless sensors on equipment in manufacturing plants.

The generator's creators say the generator is up to 10 times more efficient than similar devices.

Power packed

The tiny device, which is less than one cubic centimetre in size, uses vibrations in the world around it to make magnets on a cantilever at the heart of the device wobble to generate power.

Although the generator produces only microwatts this was more than enough to power sensors attached to machines in manufacturing plants, said Dr Steve Beeby, from the University of Southampton, who led development of the device."

From the BBC

Blogger in Upper Turkfakistan has Absolutely No Opinion on the iPhone.

He was of course arrested shortly afterwards. Interrogations so far have failed to determine the reasons for his refusal to write about the popular product. Ahmed can now be reached at ahmedblogger@guantanamo.wtf

"He seemed unaware of the gravity of his offence."

PS) Of Course that it's a :)

BBC's Alan Johnston released!

He said it was "fantastic" to be free after an "appalling experience". TV footage showed Mr Johnston, 45, leaving a building accompanied by armed men.

He later appeared beside Hamas leader Ismail Haniya and thanked everyone who had worked for his release.

Rallies worldwide had called for Mr Johnston's release. An online petition was signed by some 200,000 people.

The BBC reporter was handed over to officials of the Hamas administration in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

More at the BBC Article

This banner is no longer necessary and so I'm taking it off the blog:

Elvis Costello with the Allen Toussaint Band & Horns featuring Steve Nieve

As part of the 2007 Athens & Epidaurus Festival, the great Elvis Costello will be appearing with the Allen Toussaint Band & Horns featuring Steve Nieve at the Odeon of Herodes Atticus on July 10, 2007 at 21:00 (9 PM) for one night.

Rupert Murdoch by Bill Moyers

Music Industry Exec Threatens Prince

"The music industry has reacted angrily at a decision to give away the new album by US musician Prince with a tabloid newspaper.

Planet Earth will be given free with a future edition of the Mail on Sunday.

The 10-track CD from Prince - whose hits include Purple Rain, Sign O' The Times and Cream - is not due to be released until 24 July.

Paul Quirk, co-chairman of the Entertainment Retailers Association, said the decision "beggars belief".

"The Artist formerly known as Prince should know that with behaviour like this he will soon be the Artist Formerly Available in Record Stores," said Mr Quirk ..."

Read Full Article on the BBC Site

From now on Manufacturers will be Responsibel for their Garbage ... even in Britain

"The much-delayed Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive that makes producers and importers of electronic goods responsible for recycling their products finally come into full force in the UK on 1 July."

"Manufacturers, importers and retailers of electronic and electrical goods are obliged to put systems in place that allow customers to recycle their obsolete devices free of charge.

Manufacturers and importers in the UK have to join one of 37 authorised "producer compliance schemes".

These schemes, funded by manufacturers, are responsible for ensuring the correct collection, recovery and disposal of the e-waste. The schemes have to report to the Environment Agency, which will make sure the directive's measures are enforced.

Retailers must either offer a free in-store "take-back" service on a like-for-like basis, eg. take a customer's old TV when they buy a new one, or help fund improvements to local councils' recycling facilities.

Households are under no obligation to recycle their e-waste as far as the WEEE Directive is concerned. However, they will "discouraged" from throwing away items that contain potentially harmful substances.

Instead, they will be encouraged to use the recycling facilities being offered to them through the various schemes.

To help people identify electrical and electronic equipment (EEE), products that have been on the market since August 2005 will be marked with a crossed-out wheelie bin."

Read Full article on the BBC Site

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