Another WordPress weblog by Enno ter Keurst
This is a post about a site you should really visit; Crossing the BLVD.
On the site it says; ‘a kaleidoscopic view of new immigrants and refugees living in Queens, New York ? the most ethnically diverse locality in the United States is a project of EarSay” .
I’ve browsed the site for some time and it is really good! Four stars ****, check it out.
Adobe Lightroom is a product aimed at the ‘professional’ photographer who wants to manage his portfolio. It looks real stylish and promissing. Adobe already has another product in its portfolio aimed at management and presentation of a photo portfolio; Photoshop Elements. It also has editing functionality. Question is going to be; is Adobe going to run both packages?
Lightroom is currently in Beta and only available on the Mac. A beta version can be downloaded from this link.
A link to the Lightroom site can be found here.
Cool!
Recently a cartoon appeared in the German newspaper ‘Der Tagesspiegel’. Subject of the cartoon was the discussion in Germany whether the German army should take on the task of providing security during the World Football Championships. It depicted the four Iranian football players fitted with explosive belts flanked by four German soldiers. Off course the Iranian reacted on this cartoon and demanded an apology, something I can understand.
More interesting was how the cartoon was published in an Iranian newspaper. Below you can see the original cartoon and below that how it was published in Iran. Spot the difference.
Original.
Iranian publication.
Google has presented their new desktop search tool.
It is a nice tool but it comes at a price. The price you pay is your privacy. With the tool you can index your documents which can be stored on more than one machine. In order to do that Google will have to transfer your data to their servers. This is a potential security risk for you personal but especially if you use the in your business environment.
Link: Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Link: Google desktop.
It is becoming more and more clear that the whole excitement about the cartoons is one big constructed media event.
Some 200 pieces of art are to be returned to the heirs of the original owners.
It is not known what the heirs are going to do with the paintings. A large number of them can be seen in the current collection of Dutch museums.
Strangly enough the paintings are not returned to the heirs on ‘legal’ grounds but on ‘moral’ grounds. In two earlier occasions the return was denied on legal grounds because the paintings were not sold under pressure and a fair price was given for them. On this third occasion the return on legal grounds was again denied. The state department responsible for art decided nevertheless to give the paintings back.
You can also read the full story here.
New drugs legislation accepted in Italy.
On Wednesday the Italians accepted a new law which takes away the difference between harddrugs and softdrugs. From now on you can be put behind bars up to 20 years for the possession of softdrugs. Fines go up €260.000.
Read here (in Dutch).
Original can be found here.
If you can receive the BBC 2, I would have recommened you to watch a program by Boris Johnson. The program is called; Boris and the dream of Rome and could be seen on Sunday evening. Could be because the last of the series was broadcasted tonight.
It is about the simmularities between the historical Rome and the European Union we are trying to build these days. The historical Rome unified an area larger than the current European Union and somehow they did it without a big army or many civil servants.
Of course the question he is trying to answer is; what can we learn from the Romans and is the European Union going to succeed or is it going the wrong way? It is fascinating to see how many problems which the Romans had are similar to the ones we have today.
