Green Porn

So many people refer to examples from the animal kingdom as a symbol of hard working, domination, community organizing, etc.
For example, Mama Grizzlies have enjoyed quite some attention recently. But apparently, the animal kingdom can also answer a tougher question - and offer examples of sexual behaviour.
Isabella Rossellini does an excellent job in translating animal sexual behaviour and explaining it in an arty way!
This is not porn, this is education!
And I have the feeling that you laugh and learn a lot!
Enjoy!

Support bands

I remember when I saw Jamie Lidell assupporting artist of Bjork. I think I like his music now more than Bjork´s. And I remember seeing a great gig of the Eagles of Death metal in Prague and it was amazing and when they performed as the support band for Arctic Monkeys, I was not so convinced...
In general, support bands are great, but no matter how hard they try, they can never get the crowd crazy. I just saw Sky Larkin as support band to Les Savy Fav. Actually both bands were great, but I slightly preferred the support band. And they gave away free badges. I liked them, but in the end we bought merchandise from the Les Savy Fav. And I was left with a feeling of guilt, for having the choice and deciding to contribute to the already well off band rather than supporting what I actually liked more...
I was punished by karma for my act because my ear has been ringing since the concert (48 hours now). Why do concerts have to be bad for your health? Anyways, Sky Larkin will be back in December to support another concert. maybe I will go back and not give an awkward smile to the drummer selling their merchandise, but reach in my wallet....
Long live support bands!

When tequila knocks on the door

Familiar? Think twice next time :-)

New World Order

Well, the picture is about consumption, the one I should really use here is the one that depicts the correlation between economic development and resistance to corruption.
So, last night in a a conversation the question came up if it is economic development or resistance to corruption that needs to happen first. I thought it would be economic development. Once a person has overcome basic economic hardship, he/she is more likely to become more transparent. Now I am not sure if this approach can be also used to assess country level development.

Others in the conversation were of the opinion that first one has to become less prone to corruption and then economic development will follow (except in geographic areas where crops were easy to grow, such as in Italy, but where the development over time slowed down and transparency seems to be lacking at times). Hm, but how can one become less corrupt? What are the drivers of this change of attitude?

One driver we could agree on was the protestant religion (an excellent example for Northern Europe) where work and honesty are the highest values. So once Northern Europeans became more hard transparent, economic development followed.

Ok, but what about wealth driven by natural resources (OPEC countries)? They are economically well off, but generally not perceived as transparent. In this case, is economic development a pure consequence of oil richness and chaos will return once the wells dry up? Or can welfare also lead to more transparency and resistance to corruption over time?

And also, what about Northern Europeans becoming less religious? Will they lose the virtue of transparency? Or has the value now entered their consciousness beyond religion? By living in the online era, are we going to transform our values? As we are becoming more open, flexible, and interconnected, how is our proneness to corruption going to be affected?

How will the new world order of transparency and economic development be?

Cocorosie and others

So it all stats with either having time to write blog posts but not having much to share or doing cool stuff and never getting around to share it. It´s Friday night and the party I was going to go to turned out to be tomorrow which got me some unexpected free time. So I am trying to catch up and share a CocoRosie experience.

CocoRosie is a freak folk, hip hop, experimental duo of two sisters born in the US of A and living in Paris. The show was a perfect kitsch performance. Perfect to the last detail. The way they sound is difficult to describe - there seems to be some oriental influence, a pinch of native American sound, lots of opera and shrieks and a whole palette of some kind of instruments - from a jukebox to a harp. Now this, combined with the merry go round and pink baby with vampire teeth VJ work blends so well, I just felt like in a fairy tale land.

CocoRosie is worth a wikipedia check!
And the week did not end its share of memorable moments there....we had a living room concert last night. The singer songwriter should be performing on huge stages! She won even over CocoRosie - at least for her interaction with the audience! Seriously, the amount of talented people...I underestimated it again.

I just wish I found my talent one of these days...until then I just keep baking and promoting sustainability. I guess that´s a safe start in my case!