Sep

19

Long

Filed under Art, Creativity, Thoughts, Video | 1 Comment

I have to admit that I liked and enjoyed the - unfortunately only - two Microsoft ads featuring Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates. In case you have not seen them, here they are…

and

For me, Microsoft has redeemed itself for all the bad things it has done in the past. That might sound a bit strong, but these ads are so good that I admire Microsoft that it had the guts to run them. OK, it must have been so far beyond anything the usually confused participants in this game could understand that it was mostly rejected - and the ads have been pulled.

I think that the ads have nearly a Monty-Pythonishness and only a person well trained in Douglas-Adamishness can really appreciate them. This group is rather small, so it was drowned by the masses.

Compared to the Apple ads with John Hodgman as PC and Justin Long as Mac the Microsoft ads are so totally senseless that they have broken reality - and I can’t help it, but I like surreal. Forces you to look beyond the daily seriousness. OK, the Apple ads don’t appear serious, but they are, they are adversarial in nature by trying to put down the PC. (Funny side note that the PC character became the more lovable and better known, publishing books and being interviewed by Xeni Jardin of Boing-Boing fame.)

Now lets look at the MS ads - off-the-wall, surreal and imaginative - and, I forgot, weird. What MS shows me here is that they could be just as unusual as Apple as a company, but that they have decided not to go this route because there were too few people to understand what they would have been doing. Instead they went with that what is real to most people - confusion!

So, by catering to the reality of this majority of the population, they managed to dominate the world with their software and now they can come out of the closed - and they did.

Congratulations!

Posted by Merlin - September 19th, 2008

Aug

20

What a difference BigMac makes - 500 little calories

Filed under Art, Fun Stuff, Wellness | 4 Comments

(sing this headline to the song “What a difference a day makes, 24 little hours…)

Found this on my quest to read the web every day:

In Seminole County, Florida, kids who get all A’s and B’s, have a good attendance record, or receive good marks for behavior can get a free Happy Meal at their local McDonald’s.

There is additional interesting trivia to this story, like the fact that the envelopes the report cards are sent in have this offer printed on - have to say, a probably very good and inexpensive ad campaign for McDonalds, probably just printing the envelopes for the school and maybe even paying the postage.

But that’s not really the point - what I find so fascinating is that the kids that have good grades, probably because their parents keep them away from junk food are now directly targeted to lower their grades. It is probably true that a Big Mac once in a while will not kill a kid, but why get them started in the first place. There is so much good food around actually nourishing a body that there is no need for Big Macs.

And want to see what happens if the exposure is increased and made permanent? Look at this guy who was loaned out to the the US for just a few years…

and what happened to him when he moved back to Italy a few years later after a diet of good American junk food…

PS: sorry for the little bug that I got onto your screen up there at the top of the article - it’s totally harmless, so don’t worry.

Posted by Merlin - August 20th, 2008

Mar

12

Alfred Korzybski with eyes of Paul Strand and Charles Sheeler

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Bruce Kodish is writing the first full-length biography of Alfred Korzybski, author of “Manhood of Humanity and Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics.”

He directed my attention to a post in his blog in which Korzybski contemplates the relative size of a city (Manhattan) and us puny humans. It is indeed fascinating that we with our small human bodies move so much mass - look at the immense masses of the whole of Manhattan that was piled up by these little ants that fill it’s street now with life.

In his post Bruce shows the following 1921 film Manhatta created by Paul Strand and Charles Sheeler. I just love the work of Paul Strand and so I just had to post that video here as well…

One scene really drove it home for me how small we are really in relationship to the things we construct, and that was one worker swinging a sledge hammer and chipping off minor pieces of concrete. So little effect, but still, after many of these hammer swings - and some other actions I have to admit, a much bigger goal is reached. For me that was a great lesson what you can accomplish with perseverance.

I am still struggling with sizes changing with the distance - I had thoughts about this a few times when watching a big plane fly by. There are, from my vantage point, these very small units of life in this metal tube high up in the air. I am sure that they are not really aware how small they are, but they probably still take themselves very seriously.

No, I actually don’t have a point here, it’s just something I have not really understood yet - maybe you have an idea…

Posted by Merlin Silk - March 12th, 2008

Feb

5

DIY - How to Build Your Own Glasses

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Lego just had it’s 50th birthday, and we really should congratulate this company for these great toys. Yes, they are often seen as toys, but more and more people discover that they are much, much more.

We have not seen yet, real skyscrapers or bridges built out of Legos (or better Lego Bricks, how the company want us to call them) but I can not imagine that this will be too far in the future.

Ho do I get such a crazy idea, you might wonder.

Look at this, if this guy can build glasses that are so much more useful than regular ones with just a bit of ingenuity, boring subjects like houses, and bridges can not be far behind.

During engaging computer work…

Lego glasses during work

and while taking a little rest…

Lego inventors unite! Let me know what else you created.

Posted by Merlin Silk - February 5th, 2008

Nov

24

40 Years in Space

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I ran into a collection of imagery of space from the 50s and 60s of the 20th century. Isn’t that amazing how that sound, speaking of the 20th century as so long ago?

One of the images I seemed to remember was of an outpost on the moon created by Frank Tinsley.

Frank Tinsley - Outpost on the moon

But then there was an image of a very early Perry Rhodan novella - and THAT was fascinating. I had not quite started to read science fiction when this novella had come out, but some six years later, but I certainly had read this novella when it came out in the second or third edition - so I knew…

Perry Rhodan - Venus in Danger

… “Venus in Danger” - novella #20!

For many years after coming to the wild west I had my family in Germany collect Perry Rhodans for me and then send them to me in batch, but this had stopped now about 20 years ago.

So I have to admit, I am not quite up-to-date any more.

A few month ago I had realized that and found out that I could actually subscribe to an electronic version of the newest issued and get them in my email in-box. I had not subscribed at that time as I did not think I would have enough time to read them, but at least I got myself a little fix in form of a free issue that was offered - novella #2300!

Can you believe this - 2300 - at 52 weekly booklets that is about 46 years.

Perry Rhodan - Harbingers of Chaos
Harbingers of Chaos

So - what has changed in the last forty to fifty years?

Certainly the cover design feels more modern, but I am sure that the next half century will eradicate that difference. Then there is the price - the old one about 20 cents (at the exchange rate at that time) and the new one weighting in at about $2.50 - with the inflation rate I guess the price has remained stable.

Then there is one noticeable difference. The subtitle of the series in 1962 was “The Great Space Series” but today it’s simply “The Greatest Science Fiction Series.”

OK, now to work - gotta finally read my free novella “Vorboten des Chaos” - and maybe, just maybe, it’s so good that I will indeed subscribe.

Posted by Merlin Silk - November 24th, 2007

Aug

30

Pink Floyd Twenty Years Later

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Pink Floyd albums where very early members of my album collection, and they were plentiful. It all started in college where some smart marketer started to sell music albums for sometimes up to 25% cheaper than the going price in music stores.

At this time of growing up, hanging with friends, drinking beer and listening to music, being cool, Pink Floyd was definitely one of the favorite musics. The right stuff to totally space out.

Running into a video of a Pink Floyd concert from 1988 on YouTube today brought these memories back and for all of you who like their music, here is what I found…

Believe it or not, up to now I never listened to the lyrics of the songs except some snippets that you could not miss, like “Teachers, leave us kids alone” from The Wall.

That shall be remedied today with the lyrics of the song above, “On The Turning Away”

On the turning away
From the pale and downtrodden
And the words they say
Which we won’t understand
“Don’t accept that what’s happening
Is just a case of others’ suffering
Or you’ll find that you’re joining in
The turning away”
It’s a sin that somehow
Light is changing to shadow
And casting it’s shroud
Over all we have known
Unaware how the ranks have grown
Driven on by a heart of stone
We could find that we’re all alone
In the dream of the proud
On the wings of the night
As the daytime is stirring
Where the speechless unite
In a silent accord
Using words you will find are strange
And mesmerised as they light the flame
Feel the new wind of change
On the wings of the night
No more turning away
From the weak and the weary
No more turning away
From the coldness inside
Just a world that we all must share
It’s not enough just to stand and stare
Is it only a dream that there’ll be
No more turning away?

Blows your mind, doesn’t it?

And, by the way, I still have those vinyl albums.

Posted by Merlin Silk - August 30th, 2007

Aug

20

I Think Size Does Matter

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We are so used to the ‘correct’ size of things that we normally don’t really think about size (OK, except in that one area, but that will be a different discussion.)

The first time I had my nose stubbed on the fact that sizes are not god-given was through a little reader sci-fi story in one of those weekly novellas. For all of you German speaker - is was Perry Rhodan. This little short story described a race that mobilized all it’s resources to attack its perceived enemy - Terra - and crossed space to reach it with it’s flotilla of war vessels. The command ship then was, on landing, mistaken for a can and playfully kicked by a boy and destroyed.

This obviously had quite some impact on me as I still remember that little story after so many years.

Men in Black II also tackles this idea nicely in the last scene.

I was reminded of this today by some interesting photos of sculptures by Ron Mueck that dribbled into my email box. This artist started out as a creator of props for movie studios and apparently learned a lot about the creation of life like figures. For the movies he had to build his creation so that they looked right only from one angle, but when he started to use his talents to create fine art he was able to create his props, that are now art, so that they looked right from all angles.

Just not from the size-angle. And this is what makes his work so interesting. He does not deviate from the god-given size too much, as in the two examples given above.

They are just different enough to feel that things can be indeed different than we are used to.

He sometimes goes bigger…

Big woman in bed - Ron Mueck