Get together right now

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All geo-politics aside, all nationalism aside,

the Olympics belong to the athletes,

competing in ultimate democracy without prejudice.

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This is perhaps the only forum that fosters true World-Citizenship. And, at least for the next 14 days, it belongs to all of us who are ready to embrace it.

同一个世界 同一个梦想

One World, One Dream

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May we learn to practice World-Citizenship and make it last well beyond August 2008.

On this occasion, may all people of all nations adopt a global perspective of peaceful coexistence for the sake of this planet and future generations.

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Newsflash - Thursday, August 7th, 2008:


Sadly,
in yet another part of the world
the opposite seems to be true,
as a new bloody conflict has broken out again
between Russian and Georgian military forces
over the province of
South Ossetia.
[show map]

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Find the complete schedule of all the Olympic events here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Summer_Olympic#Calendar

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Click to check broadcasting times and channels (U.S. only)

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We are

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"We are
the ones

we've been waiting for"

- Barack Obama, born August 1961 to a black Kenyan father and a white American mother, is the junior United States Senator from Illinois and a leading candidate for the Democratic nomination in the 2008 U.S. presidential election. In the course of his campaign Obama has emphasized ending the Iraq War, increasing energy independence, and providing universal health care as his priorities. He has written two bestselling books: a memoir of his youth titled Dreams from My Father, and The Audacity of Hope, a personal commentary on U.S. politics.

America's young voters
respond to Obama's words
in a unique way,
chiming in with their own lyrical rendition of

"Yes We Can"

An excerpt from the lyrics:

Yes we can to justice and equality.

Yes we can to opportunity and prosperity.

Yes we can heal this nation.

Yes we can repair this world.

Yes we can.

We know the battle ahead will be long, but always remember that no matter what obstacles stand in our way, nothing can stand in the way of the power of millions of voices calling for change.

We have been told we cannot do this by a chorus of cynics ...they will only grow louder and more dissonant ... We've been asked to pause for a reality check. We've been warned against offering the people of this nation false hope.

But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope.

...we will remember that there is something happening in America; that we are not as divided as our politics suggests; that we are one people; we are one nation; and together, we will begin the next great chapter in the American story with three words that will ring from coast to coast; from sea to shining sea –

Yes. We. Can.

:: Click this: The Adjusted Pie Chart ::

Keep your finger on the 2008 pre-election pulse:

click here

for links to major
public-opinion pollsters
on the Democratic field vs. the Republican nominee.


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Visual Vibrations

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Here is a treat for both eye and ear:



Description:
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This a multi-media fusion of computer-generated 3D animations and audio, based on MIDI music which is processed to simultaneously drive the audio and the on-screen visualization. As we hear the sounds, generated with software synthesizers, we see each virtual instrument in the act of producing them from beginning to end.

Enjoy!

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Color Art

Art work and images © Konstantin Grabowski

Konstantin Grabowski was born 1965 in Siberia, and lives in Germany. He graduated in painting and graphic design from the University of Omsk, where he studied from 1985-1991.

His oils and acrylics on canvas span colorful abstract, semi-abstract and figurative painting that is modern, yet has a somewhat dreamy quality.




The works are typically rich in relief and textured with multi-layered paint.

Grabowski began exhibiting in 2000. He is represented by galleries in Europe and in the U.S.



Von einem Katalogtext für Konstantin:

" Ein gutes Bild ist wie gefrorene Musik, eine Landkarte vergangener Bewegungen. Paul Klee sagte: 'Das Auge folgt den Wegen, die im Werk für es angelegt worden sind.' Aber es ist noch mehr: Schwere wird unschwer, Leichtigkeit unleicht, der Raum selbst wird aufgehoben und wie von falschen Beweisen entlastet. Es ist so wie der österreichische Schriftsteller Robert Musil sagt: 'Man hat noch eine zweite Heimat, in der alles, was man tut unschuldig ist.' "


"The function of art is to make that understood which in the form of argument would be incomprehensible."

Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957), renowned Romanian early-modernist sculptor


[See also: Art for our sake]

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Hikikomori by Shahar Golan

© Shahar Golan
From 'Almost Finished'
(via Frgdr)

Hikikomori, a Japanese term for "acute social withdrawal" is a noun that describes both the problem and the person suffering from it and is also an adjective, like "solitary"). It defines a societal group of reclusive individuals, primarily young Japanese males, who feel uncomfortable in public, are suffering from social anxiety, and have chosen to withdraw from normal life, often seeking extreme degrees of isolation and confinement in small spaces. This seclusion and lack of interpersonal stimulus results in the gradual loss of the social skills and reference points that are necessary to integrate and interact with the outside world.

[Read the NY Times Article about Hikikomori and their families, by Maggie Jones]



-About the Poet-

Shahar Golan was born and lives in Israel. He is an emerging photographer and digital artist and recent graduate of the Musrara School of Art in Jerusalem who decided to leave a comfortable IT position in order to fulfill his lifelong passion for poetry and the arts.
In July of 2007, Shahar Golan published his first book titled 'Almost Finished'. It includes mainly Hebrew poems and short stories.

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[Check out Other Voices]


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Mark Twain elucidates again

Mark Twain on the subject of War
(edited and abbreviated)

There has never been a just one, never an honorable one on the part of the instigators of war. I can see a million years ahead, and this rule will never change. The handful in power, as usual, will shout for the war. The pulpit will warily and cautiously object at first; the great, big, dull bulk of the nation will rub its sleepy eyes and try to make out why there should be a war, and will say, earnestly and indignantly, "It is unjust and dishonorable, and there is no necessity for it." Then the handful will shout louder.

A few fair men will argue and reason against the war with speech and pen, and at first will have a hearing and be applauded; but it will not last long; those others will outshout them, and presently the anti-war audiences will thin out and lose popularity.

And now the whole nation, pulpit and all, will take up the war-cry, and shout itself hoarse, and mob any honest man who ventures to open his mouth; and presently such mouths will cease to open.

Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is being attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.

Mark Twain (1835-1910), was a popular American writer, humorist and satirist, with a keen wit. Twain is perhaps most noted for his novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (published in 1884), which deals with overcoming the entrenched racism of the time.


[See also: A poem by Walt Whitman, and Siegfried Sassoon's Aftermath]


[Related: a Theodore Roosevelt quote]

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新詩 DREAM

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[Read about 中国古代诗歌 Chinese Poetry]

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[See also: Great Chinese Poets]


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Look and Listen

CAN you look him in the eye

can YOU look him in the eye

can you LOOK him in the eye

can you look HIM in the eye

can you look him IN the eye

can you look him in THE eye

can you look him in the EYE





CAN you re member his mess age

can YOU re member his mess age

can you RE member his mess age

can you re MEMBER his mess age

can you re member HIS mess age

can you re member his MESS age

can you re member his mess AGE

Commentary

The anger and condemnation in the kid's voice is entirely justified. We were not the first to pollute and damage our planet. That process started along with the industrial revolution. We are, however, the first to have scientifically researched and assessed the devastating scope and consequence of global warming. Despite this knowledge we have failed take crucial countermeasures.

Our guilt is that of denial, inertia, lack of responsibility and near-criminal neglect. We have sold out to the instant gratification of consumerism, no matter the cost, and to the mind-numbing falsehoods of a morally bankrupt leadership.

Time has come to face up to the undeniable reality of climate change and to join in taking effective steps to halt and maybe even reverse it. The ways and means to accomplish this objective are already at our disposal waiting to be enacted and applied.

Not only do we owe this to our kids, we owe it to ourselves.

[See also: Preserve our eco-system]

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Navy vs Whales: Navy one - Whales zero

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The U.S. Navy has long been pushing to conduct training exercises off the coast of Southern California using high-powered sonar. This particular stretch of coastline is an important habitat for orca and humpback whales and other marine mammals. Applying this invasive military technology in the waters of this coastal region poses a significant threat to the resident marine life.

[Caption: A disoriented and injured humpback whale mother and her calf at the Port of Sacramento, where they hit a dead-end after traveling 90 miles through the San Francisco Bay and up the Sacramento River in May 2007.]

The Natural Resources Defense Council, the plaintiff, alleges that the Navy's sonar causes whales to beach themselves. It may interfere with their sense of orientation.

"There is evidence that very loud noise from anti-submarine warfare sonar may hurt whales and lead to their beaching. On numerous occasions whales have been stranded shortly after military sonar was active in the area, suggesting a link."

(Found on Wikipedia)

On Friday, August 31, 2007, a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled for the Navy and against the welfare of the whales.

The justification for the panel's decision was written by Judge Andrew Kleinfeld and reads:

"The public does indeed have a very considerable interest in preserving our natural environment and especially relatively scarce whales. But it also has an interest in national defense. We are currently engaged in war, in two countries."

This ruling allows the Navy to use high-powered sonar in 11 planned training exercises.

This ruling is also a demonstration of the harmful tentacles of a dubious war reaching as far as our Pacific backyard, all under the guise of 'national security interests'.

Why is this not surprising?

Because, sadly, environmental and humanitarian concerns have always been subjugated by militaristic ones. This, however, is fast becoming an unsustainable rationale.

Some folks take a dim view of "tree-huggers", "whale-lovers" and "the Birkenstock crowd". But the fact is that we can no longer afford to tolerate this kind of self-righteous cynicism as the issues of preservation and rehabilitation of our eco-system become more pressing with each passing day.

Wake up and smell the scorched land
and the plundered oceans!
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Pavarotti unparalleled

The World of Music Mourns



A Reflection about a Man
and his Voice

By Ana Elsner


Luciano Pavarotti (October 12, 1935 – September 6, 2007), the world-famous Italian tenor, was one of the most charismatic, talented and celebrated vocal artists of opera stage and concert stage alike. Born in Modena, Italy, Pavarotti studied voice and gave unpaid recitals for several years before embarking on a professional singing career that proved to be of stellar proportions. In 1961 he made his opera debut as Rodolfo in 'La Boheme' in the footlights of a small regional Italian opera house.

Soon he debuted at the most distinguished opera houses of Europe and eventually became a beloved regular in the international world of opera and concert, garnering the affections of thousands of devoted fans.
His perfect pitch and the unique brilliance and deeply resonant beauty of his voice, reaching far into the upper register, earned him the title of "King of the High Cs" and made him one of the most successful recording stars.

Pavarotti, like no other, brought his signature arias and brilliant performances, previously limited to the trained ears of the opera crowd, to a far wider audience.

Hearing him sing, one cannot help but open one's heart to the man and his voice.

Beyond his fame as a tenor, he is noted and remembered as a humanitarian hero for his tireless charity work, raising millions for hunger, HIV/AIDS and refugee issues and for countless other charitable causes.

This is a man who was large in life.
His legacy is and will always be larger than life.

Pavarotti passed away in the early morning hours of September 6, 2007, from pancreatic cancer. He is survived by his first and his second wife and by four daughters.

Many tears will be shed in his memory.


Pavarotti in his own words:

"I think an important quality that I have is that if you turn on the radio and hear somebody sing, you know it’s me. You don’t confuse my voice with another voice."

"I think a life in music is a life beautifully spent."

[See also: 'Luciano Pavarotti Is Dead at 71' by Bernard Holland of the NY Times]

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Are you a Lark or an Owl

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Sleep Habits: What are yours?

"We would all live better if our existence is not constantly dictated by an alarm clock," says Camilla Kring, who has a PhD in Work and Life Balance. According to Kring, an individual's preference for early rising (an A-person, or 'lark') and late rising (a B-person, or 'owl') is as genetically determined as hair or eye color. Far from the stereotyping of people who can't get out of bed in the morning as 'lazy', 'unproductive'and 'lacking in ambition' it all comes down to different circadian rhythms.

"B-people find it easy to stay awake at night, preferring to go to bed at around 1am or 2am, but have difficulty waking in the morning, not feeling fully awake until after 10am," explains Kring.

"A-people are the opposite, they love the mornings and immediately crank into full gear but then collapse at about 10pm."

Researchers believe that 10-20% of people are extreme owls, 10-15% are extreme larks and the remaining 80% fall in between and the rest of the population are something in between.

Comparative findings on Lark versus Owl:
According to professor Angela Clow from the University of Westminster in London, research showed that over 10 weeks early risers were more likely to suffer from aches, colds and headaches. Meanwhile, a Southampton University study found that those who burned the midnight oil and slept-in the following day were no less healthy than the early risers.
(via Guardian New)

Ready to join B-Society?

The international web site of the 'B-Society', founded by Camilla Kring in Denmark, contains detailed information on B-Human and B-Work. It started a movement calling for 'an uprising against the tyranny of early rising' and creating a new, adjusted daily rhythm in schools, other institutions and on the job as a viable alternative and for a more enlightened world where a diversity of daily rhythms is acknowledged and respected.

: Still in its infancy, B-Society has attracted about 4800 members in only four months. :



[Follow this weblink to learn more about B-Society]


[Read an article in Deutsche Welle World]




:: CROSS CULTURAL OUTLINE never sleeps. What about YOU? Please comment ::

The Lives of Others

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CROSS CULTURAL OUTLINE Film Pick

Das Leben der Anderen

Dieser gründlich recherchierte Film von Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck erzählt von der Verlorenheit des Individuums im erbarmungslosen System der Kontrolle und Überwachung. Ost-Berlin, November 1984, fünf Jahre vor der Öffnung der Berliner Mauer. Hier spielt das Drama über Verhörspezialist Stasi-Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe), der im Verlauf seiner Spitzelei an sich selbst zu zweifeln beginnt. Dieser Zweifel an seinem Auftrag und an der Staatsmacht der DDR schlechthin wächst, bis er ihn letztendlich in hoch riskante Tat umsetzt.

Ein eindringliches, spannendes Drama um Liebe, Leidenschaft und Mut, und um die ewige Faszination der Freiheit, das in 2006 mit einem Oscar ausgezeichnet wurde.





Der Schauspieler Ulrich Mühe starb am 22. Juli 2007 in Walbeck, Sachsen-Anhalt, an Magenkrebs.

Sein letzter großer Erfolg war die Hauptrolle in dem Oscar-prämierten Film "Das Leben der Anderen".


The outstanding actor who portrayed the main character, Stasi agent Gerd Wiesler, in the oscar winning German thriller/drama "The Lives of Others" died in July from cancer of the stomach.

CROSS-CULTURAL OUTLINE featured film:

The Lives of Others

German director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck debuts with his feature The Lives of Others, which earned an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 2006.

The film is set in 1984 East Berlin five years before the fall of the Berlin Wall. It provides an exquisitely nuanced exposé of life in a totalitarian regime. The main character, Gerd Wiesler, played by Ulrich Mühe, is a secret police (Stasi) surveillance expert trained to perpetuate the oppressiveness and the lack of freedom in communist East Germany, the former GDR. His professional stoicism gradually melts as he becomes swept up in the lives of the artistic community he is spying on. Eventually, he secretly and heroically intervenes in the outcome of his investigation.

This role had particular resonance for Mühe, who was himself under surveillance by the Stasi at the time he was a star of East German theater.



[Read about Ulrich Mühe in Der Spiegel (in German)]

::Have you seen this film? Post your review under "Comments"::

Hollow Man

CROSS CULTURAL OUTLINE presents:

Ryan Larkin (1943-2007)

Ryan Larkin was a Canadian animator, famous for his 1969 Oscar-nominated short 'Walking' which influenced a generation of fledgling animators. He worked at the National Film Board of Canada from the early 1960s until 1978. He created countless storyboards, tracings, drawings and paintings for his unique and often surreal animations. Ryan was homosexual but had a long-term close relationship with a young woman named Felicity, the "love of his life".

Larkin's chronic abuse of drugs, cigarettes and alcohol eventually lead to homelessness and a dismal subsistence from panhandling on the streets of Montreal. He died on Valentine's Day, February 14, of this year at age 64 from lung and brain cancer.

"To possess your soul in patience, with all the skin and some of the flesh burnt off your face and hands, is a job for a boy compared with the pains of a man who has lived pretty long in the exhilarating world that drugs or strong waters seem to create and is trying to live now in the first bald desolation created by knocking them off."

- Charles Edward Montague (1867-1928), British Author, Journalist and critic

This is a video of Chris Landreth's 2004 CGI (Computer-generated imagery) film 'Ryan', a docu-mation, as CROSS-CULTURAL OUTLINE has dubbed it, which reveals and visualizes his character's personality and emotional scars.

In the Oscar winning animated short film 'Ryan', we hear actual recordings of the voice of Ryan Larkin in conversation with Landreth and with other people who knew him. These voices speak through hollow, twisted, broken and disembodied 3D-generated character images. Landreth, born in 1961, calls his style of bizarre, sometimes humorous and often disturbing animation "Psychorealism".



[See also: Ryan Larkin Dies (Video)]




[Related: A Greg Anderson quote]



[See Part Two of the video on AMALGAMATED PERSPECTIVES]


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Goliath

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Examining the Power that is Google





Friend or Foe
Google's page ranking monopoly, also known as "Google-opoly", has been a source of endless frustration to owners and webmasters of modest, strictly non-commercial websites who are exercising their right of free speech and want to be heard amidst the din of blatant consumerism.

It is like pitting an Internet David against an Internet Goliath of dubious integrity, namely google.com, who has been shown to exert unfair dominance over the search-and-ranking business giving giant commercial and ad-laden sites the highest rankings and thereby the greatest prominence. Contrary to the legend, prospects of David winning this (mis-) match are slim to none.



On the other hand, it is an undisputed fact that Google is the world's largest and most widely utilized search engine, fielding about 150 million search requests a day. Beyond that, Google offers an overwhelming menu of tools and services, most of which a mere mortal average web user is blissfully unaware of. The Google development team is comprised of a slew of whizz-kids coming up with ever more far-reaching widgets and applications to enthrall the google-devotees and keep them firmly in the fold.



The Google Cheat Sheet shown above and below lists a total of 44 Google Services URLs, 9 subsidiaries owned by Google, 13 Google blogs, 11 additional tooli-gigs and countless Google domains world-wide.

Impressive? You betcha.

You will probably need to use magnifying glasses in order to make out the topmost illustrations in this post. The reason: 'Blogger',that is to say 'Google', imposes a limitation of a 408 pixel width on each image.

Squint and sigh.




The two opposing camps of Google fans and Google critics are clearly defined and equally vociferous. There seems to be a lot of emotionalism at play here. Few web users have a neutral attitude about the Google phenomenon. Surely, you have made up your own mind in this matter.

And, oh, by the way, have fun trying out some or all of the goo-features listed (you must type each individual URL into your browser window).

Google away...


[See also: 'Google vs. Evil']


[Related: Frick and Frack]



:: Are you google-eyed? Please comment ::

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[See also: The Baptists]

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