Waauw - Eat, learn, move ...

This is one of the reasons i started this blog.
Sharing this kind of amazingness and inspirational beauty.

Eat
http://vimeo.com/27243869
(hmmm locusts, ...)

Learn
http://vimeo.com/27244727
(Dancing, cooking, ...)

Move
http://vimeo.com/27246366
(London, Paris, don't recognise the rest at first sight)

What do YOU recognise?

There is real poetry in the real world ...

... science is the poetry of reality

Dawkins, Sagan, Myers, Feynman, ...



This is the best one from a series of 5 and hopefully many more will be made!!
I trully love this one, the other ones are super too!!

via PZ

I love XKCD

Hope embedding works ...

I Love xkcd from NoamR on Vimeo.

I really do love XKCD!

(Via XKCD's blag, video link: http://www.vimeo.com/7151435)

Another rotting corpse, more cheese and a bigger fish!

A few weeks ago i blogged about my visit to the nationial botanical garden to visit a large and stinky flower, we were too late but hurray hurray, there's another one coming out!!

The progress can be followed here!

This is what the website shows right now:


Maybe this time we'll be lucky and be on time to actually smell the flower!
(lucky ? well maybe not lucky but it will definitely leave an impression :-))

Nothing interesting ever happens in Antwerp ...

...untill today!!

A sperm whale (Physeter catodon) was pulled ashore on Antwerp's beach (Sint-Anna).



Of course me and my dad went to have look!


Here's the series of picture's i took.

...from a wonderful movie.

Here's a strange news article..
about a garden gnome that gets stolen, travels all around the world and is then brought back with pictures to prove it..
A cool idea, but certainly not new,
it surprises me the article doesn't mention the movie:
Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain
(imdb, wikipedia (obviously already mentions this news feat))
A wonderful and truly inspiring movie, i'm glad someone did the gnome thing!

Good night!

A rotting corpse, cheese and fish!

As a biologist, i have an interest in nature ... D'UH
A very inspiring voice is that of the naturalist Sir David Attenborough
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHaWu2rcP94 (watch the clip, its short but important to understand the rest of this post)
The flower in this movie clip has just been flowering in the National Botanic Garden of Belgium
This i a picture of their page about it (a picture because the page probably won't stay there)


Today I visited the plant, together with Steven (one of my bio-buddies) and Karo.
But as you can see...


We were too late! Better luck next time.
Fortunately there are lot's of other beautifull flowers to be found there.




And Venus Flytraps


A mammoth tree


A castle


And also ... something dangerous ???


Steven seems to like it though ;-)


have a nice day!

Newest playlist addition meme: Sungha Jung

I actually discovered his songs a few days before Andy's songs, but somehow Andy got posted first, maybe this kid is technically not as good as Andy, but maybe that's because he's only 11 years young!!

At first this is the song i liked most:



And then he posted this one:



Very nice, and impressive!

And he's got a channel on Youtube ..
www.youtube.com/user/jwcfree
it's just packed with nice songs he plays !!
and some can be downloaded at hisspace:
www.myspace.com/jungsungha

must go practice my piano now ;-), ciao

Some music..

His name is Andy Mckee, and he can play the guitar..



..VERY WELL, i'm a fan!

And apparently a "normal" guitar isn't good enough for him :)



His recordcompany has a channel on Youtube, with a playlist so you can easily listen to a bunch of his songs as backgroundmusic. He's also on hisspace.
(What is that myspace-thing anyway .. :-))

Lookin' for somethin' ?

"There are two things people want more than sex and money... recognition and praise."
– Mary Kay Ash (1918-2001)

Have a little faith in people, try to understand them before you expect to be understood!



("Newest playlist addition" - meme)

Ridiculously beautiful

Pictures of toxic nudibranches by David Doubilet at nationalgeographic.com

via PZ

Can not get enough of this song ... (newest playlist addition meme)

... not yet anyway, but I keep liking many songs, so why not this one?


Ok the view is rather ... monotonous, but that just means you can hit "play" and continue surfing in another tab while enjoying the music!

Many thanks to Margo, the inspiration behind http://www.viesta-festival.hyves.nl/, a festival for a new world!
It's a cultural/music festival with a mission to make a difference:
Finding peace within and in the world.
Aiming at individuals for the improvement of well-being and consciousness of the individual and society.

Antwerp

It's a well know fact that Antwerp in Belgium is the best place in the world, just ask any Antwerpian and he or she will completely confirm that ultimate (almost dogmatic) truth!!

Many many many many (ok you get the point) wonderfull activities are organised here, there's a massive amount of cultural heritage, you'll find the best beers in the world here (and that's definitely not Carlsberg or even worse: Heineken, real Antwerpians/Belgians wouldn't even give that to their dogs, if it would be ok to give beer to your dog)

For instance, here's a nice upcoming activity: a culinary high note

Recently our local television channel held a contest to find the new "Ode to the city" aka "Ode aan't stad" it will not surprise anyone that many candidates showed up with songs about how much we love this wonderfull metropolis, here's two:
Zot van A (in Antwerpian/Antwerpish)
Stad on de beik (in antwerpian)

the first one won, here's the videoclip

De strangers (a local treasure) have a song to praise our wonderfull city
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHIsGTlpcIA
and another one: Antwarpe 'k zien a zoe geire


and here a nice commercial about Antwerp
't stad is van iedereen (in dutch)

this link also ended up in the draft of this post ... don't really know why ... it's in antwerpian ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BB2KRXcWx-Y

Antwerp is so wonderfull i could write many posts about it every single day into eternity and beyond. But this will have to do for today. If this post is to big, the internet will probably crash because too many people will want to download too many things about Antwerp at the same time.

See you in Antwerp!

Chaos, the way of the future.

Today I had a very interesting conversation with Robin Rowley,
I was introduced to him through Leen, a friend of mine, as her lecturer at the Plantijn Hogeschool. Some time ago, when i was talking with her and Tom about my plan for my future, she mentioned him as someone who I should talk to, and she was right.
He's an expert on Communications, Organisation Behaviour & HRM, Entrepeneurship, Strategy and Change Management. And this is exactly the field that's been calling to me for almost half a year now, drawing me away from my present career in biology.
He has also written a book, "Organize with chaos", available at Management Books 2000, of which he was so kind to give me a copy of the previous edition, the new one is just out.

A man's mind stretched to a new idea never goes back to its original dimensions. And this hour he gave me today was certainly a mindstretching experience!

I'm kinda very busy finishing this neverending masterthesis so i'm right now not able to do a lot with the new idea's and insights but this will come soon enough!

As a preparation for this conversation i read this introduction on Chaos and Complexity:
http://complexity.orcon.net.nz/index.html

It's by Victor MacGill, a very interesting person who's website i will discuss soon, but this link from his website was too nice to keep from you:

Absynthe Minded vs. Milow

This Friday I went to a concert at the Openluchttheater Rivierenhof,
(together with Wouter, Joris, Goedle, Steven & Karo and my sister)
Absynthe Minded and Milow were playing, Milow was better, MUCH better!
Their bis-song was a translated version of Mia by Gorki, VERY nice !!

Played at Rock Werchter:


and their hit-song You don't know


Before friday i hadn't even heared of Absynthe Minded and now i know why, after Milow's happy tunes they managed to get me all down with their melancholic depressing wishy-washy music, there were nice songs, but overall i didn't like 'em

in the break between the two gigs we could enjoy the fireworks they were shooting very nearby at the annual fireworksfestival, this international fireworks contest continues for another two weeks, so friday 14 and 21 sept 2007 there will be more fireworks, the best in the world ;)
if anybody wants to go, i might have time to go so just let me know !!

This contest is an annual event by the way, something to keep in mind !!

Beauty - sea creatures

David Attenborough rules!
"The vampire squid .. from Hell", nobody uses sentences like that only to say "bioluminescent bacteria" a few seconds later :)

via the park bench
where i took a seat thanks to N@ked under my lab coat
where i ended up thanx to PZ

sometime i feel sad, there are just so infinitely much more things to discover in blogs alone than I will ever be able to discover,
but it's ok, i'm gratefull for what i do discover
meeting real people is important too :)