The First Time
This photo was taken by photographer Jack Bradley and depicts the exact moment this boy, Harold Whittles, hears for the very first time ever. The doctor treating him has just placed an earpiece in his left ear. Date unknown.
Archive for May 31st, 2011
Secret Cinema Allnighter @ Studio 80 (July 29)
Just announced: a Studio 80 allnighter with Secret Cinema! That’s one party you wanna attend. With Tom Trago turning tables in the small room.
Check out Secret Cinema & Egbert‘s mindblowing performance at the last edition of Awakenings here and below.
Manhattanhenge
“Manhattanhenge” is the day, every half year or so, in which the setting sun aligns with the east-west street grid on Manhattan. Makes for beautiful pictures, as on this Flickr set by photographer Vivienne Gucwa.
Manhattanhenge (sometimes referred to as the Manhattan Solstice) is a semiannual occurrence in which the setting sun aligns with the east–west streets of the main street grid in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. The term is derived from Stonehenge, at which the sun aligns with the stones on the solstices.
Philip Glass & Sesame Street
Philip Glass, brilliant composer of minimalist music and pioneer in electronic ambient music, has worked for Sesame Street in 1979. Jim Henson was very interested in visualization of music and included abstract musical animations in the popular kids show. He decided to ask Glass for a contribution. The result was a pretty amazing piece of minimalist music, accompanied by animations, targeted at 5-7 year olds. Here are two parts of the series created by Glass, titled Geometry of Circles:
Another example of Hensons fascination with visualization of music can be found in the show Sam and Friends, which was aired between 1955 and 1961. This show already featured some signature Henson characters like Kermit and it also included a character named Harry the Hipster (below).
Check out this segment on “visual thinking”, featuring Harry the Hipster, from Sam and Friends:
Via Brain Pickings, an original and intelligent blog by The Atlantic’s Maria Popova, which I discovered today and highly recommend.
How Europe And The US Pursue Justice
Here’s the difference: the US invades multiple countries and finally summarily executes persons designated “terrorists”.
In Europe, we create international legal institutions and firmly, slowly but steadily, pressure countries into extraditing suspected war criminals so they can be tried.
I believe this is one area in which we as Europeans can say we’re in every respect more advanced and civilized than our counterparts at the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.
From a reader over at Andrew Sullivan:
I’d like to point out the difference between the way Europe and the US go after bad guys. The US invades countries, blows them to pieces, then goes into another country, blows that to pieces, only to find out that the guy they’re looking for is hiding in yet another country. One they thought was a friend. But regardless of the friendship, the US goes in without telling their friend and executes their bad guy.
Here’s how Europe does it. It holds a big carrot over the place where the bad guy is hiding: membership of the EU union. It creates an international court system, in this case the Yugoslavia court. And it waits. And slowly the bad guys get discovered by the locals. First Milosovic. Then Karadzic. Now Mladic.
No guns, no execution, no torture, just the patient power of the law. Just look at the dry headline on The International Criminal Tribunal’s website: “Tribunal Welcomes the Arrest of Ratko Mladić”. These thugs have to stand trial. No glorious, scandalous trial. No politicians fearing death and destruction. Just the slow-grinding, boring mill of justice. Milosovic died under the pressure. Karadzic is fading away. And now Mladic faces the same prospect in a very decent cell in Scheveningen.
America is a fantastic country to live in. But boy am I proud to be European on days like this.
Yes indeed. There is no conceivable reason why Osama bin Laden should, against all international law, be executed without a trial, while Ratko Mladic should be arrested and tried. Juridically, of course, anyone can point out that Mladic acted as officer of a state, while Bin Laden headed a stateless organization. But does that matter in terms of the crimes being committed? Of course not. Bin Laden could well have been charged for committing mass murder in an American court. But he never has been. Why? Because that’s not the way Americans work.
For more (if you read Dutch), read this interview with international law expert and lawyer Geert-Jan Knoops.
