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What can I say? When a lion behaves like an old friend, you wonder why humans can't do the same.
If a lion can do this, why not Mr Brown? Hmmm?
(and if you wonder how the hell can you buy a lion at Harrod's, check out this UK daily mail article for more info)
Amusing question posted on the website:
Are you afraid Charlie will eat your cat?
No.
This kind of reminds me of that "Dial a mental health help-line" joke
RING…RING….. (Musical voice) Welcome to the Mental Health Help Line.
If you are obsessive-compulsive, please press 1 repeatedly.
If you are co-dependent, please ask someone to press 2.
If you have multiple personalities, please press 3, 4, 5 and 6.
If you are paranoid-delusional, we know who you are and what you want. Just stay on the line so we can trace the call.
If you are schizophrenic, listen carefully and a little voice will tell you which number to press.
If you are manic-depressive, it doesn’t matter which number you press. No one will answer.
If you are delusional and occasionally hallucinate, please be aware that the thing you are holding on the side of your head is alive and about to bite off your ear.
There's nothing more disappointing than travelling to distant places and finding the landscape bathed in greys. The week I was in NYC, it was drab, grey and cold. My light meter was going bonkers, producing pictures that were either too bright (compensating for the dark parts) or too dark (when compensating for the grey sky). The best I could get was the middle picture, but even that was underdeveloped and not doing justice to the stunning scene before me.
However, if you shoot 3 or 5 images of the same scene, taken a 1-2 exposure stops, you can merge your images into one High Definition Range image (or HDR). Of course you need to use a tripod (which I didn't because my hands were freezing and stiff, and I was too lazy to set it up) to make sure that each shot taken is the same throughout. However, you can see that the composite image tries to make the most of each image - sharp lines on the buildings and retaining the crisp hues of the trees. Not the best of images but you get what I mean.
Of course, the kind of software you use can also affect the final product. This one was using Dynamic Photo HDR (for free, of course) that produces somewhat posterised, surreal images. It gives an almost post-apocalyptic feel to the picture. You can find other stunning, more realistic HDR images and a tutorial here.
In the Twilight Zone episode "Dreams for Sale", a young woman believes she is spending the perfect day picnicing with her husband and kids when the "sequence" is rudely interupted by a computer gitch. She awakens to a completely futuristic world where factory drones like herself escape to another world via virtual reality / hibernation chambers. Sort of like those regeneration chambers the Borgs use in Star Trek. A handy man fixes the problem and she returns to her fantasy, only to become trapped forever because the circuit boards eventually fry and fail. Those who thought "The Matrix" was groundbreakingly original should see this, and "Dark City" as well to believe otherwise. It's like a malignant version of the HoloDeck.Such is also the premise behind "Prometheus" where experience is the new virtual reality. Interesting scenarios on how the future will be shaped by the virtual world. Scary yet suductively enticing, the future. Thank god there was no mention of branding bar codes on everybody's forehead. It's nice to know some people don't think of the future in apolcalyptic "end of the world, rise of the anti-christ" terms. As I often wondered, where will be the place of religion when we discover that life on earth started because alien life preserved on a meteorite seeded the earth via some spectacular crash to planet earth? Will Scientology scoff at everybody and say "Xenu told you so."
In 1999, Arthur C Clark published a set of predictions, one of which was that that artificial intelligence will reach human level in 2020. If you ask me, it will come sooner at the rate the Japanese are creating creepy relicas of the human specie.
And on the social landscape? It is indeed crunch time when the conservative world need to reconcile with the pace of development and knowledge- predicted by Alvin Toffler in Future Shock and John Naisbitt in Megatrends. As the world moves from the industrial age to the information age, prejudice and despotism is exposed and tolerance and democracy need to be embraced. Even now we are seeing how traditionally held beliefs give way to logic, or at least some of them do. It may be a little too late to Galileo when the Pope "vindicated" his work in 1992, after centuries of being branded a heretic, but it does demonstrate how the world is changing and how those who refuse to adapt will become irrelevant and swept away. Anybody who questions the theory or evolution will only need to see how the same process of evolution is happening to the church in a survival game for the fittest. Please explain to me then why the church needs websites or use handphones? Or something as inocuous as microphones in churches?
The future's so bright, I may need more than just shades.
Nina Simone remixed? Those smouldering, smouldering vocals with pounding disco/techno beats? Sounds LSD luscious. If, they can get it right.
And Fraggle Rock coming to the big screen? Oh wow! Okay, I think I am showing my age.
And this guy is running for mayor of Manila in next year's elections. I'm not prejudiced but he's a friggin model with a advertising degree. Of course being the grandson of Imelda Marcos doesn't make it any better.
If you think you are a jaded traveller, then you obviously haven't met Matt who spent 6 months travelling the globe, 39 countries in all 7 continents, in search of the best place to do his little jitterbug. If you are an avid traveller, then watch the video and drool on. I wonder though, why no Singapore? Maybe he did drop by our shores but was apprehended for being a public nuisance and his video footage confiscated.
And speaking of YouTube. YouTube has just recently updated their terms and condition to add that "…by submitting the User Submissions to YouTube, you hereby grant YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the User Submissions in connection with the YouTube Website and YouTube's (and its successor's) business… in any media formats and through any media channels." Bwa-ha-ha-ha. Now all your videos belong to YouTube.
Scotland Yard is now in posession of documents pertaining to the "real" identity of the "real" Jack the Ripper. It cannot be! Its the Queen's personal physician! not some Polish Jew! No wonder they had to keep it under wraps all this time. The killer is so... unglamorous.
Ta Mok, the brutal brother number 2 man (Pol Pot was brother number one) in the Khmer Rouge killing machine is now dead, thus permanently evading being charged in court for genocide. For the longest time, the present Khmer government has been dragging their feet in bringing former Khmer Rouge leaders to court. The fact that present leaders have links with the past regime is not lost on many who have longed for justice. Now its all too late. The newly organized Cambodian-UN funded Tribunal is just frustratingly too late as well.
Leave it to Madonna to wear the most outrageous of costumes to heighten the theatrical visual impact. Witness the Confessions Tour fashion parade. Gaultier must have had so much fun creating the most outrageous of costumes. Then again, after the pointy/tassled bra she donned on her Blond Ambition Tour, these digs look a tad tame.Da Vinci Code getting an R-18 rating in the Philippines? It is just a movie, for God's sake (pun intended), not a documentary. The time when people start believing that Jesus married Mary Magdalene as an undisputed fact is when we start believing those Micheal Moore's documentaries as nothing but the unholy truth. Besides, what happened to separation of church and state? Since when did religion dictate what should be shown and not shown? Now, I wonder how DVC will fare in Singapore?
Another wonderful wonderful AIDS awareness video from the French.
