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)

Go, Herr Christer & Stefmeister, GO!

I believe in you!
If this kid can find two hours a day to practice ..



There's no time like the present, as far as i know, you only have one life!
xx paul

ps: talent is for losers that aren't willing to do the work ;-)

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)

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!

Happy ending!

May everyone have a happy ending..



Of course the ending preferably later than sooner, the happiness right now, and now, and now, and now, ... every now!

When you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced. Live your life so that when you die, the world cries and you rejoice.
– Cherokee Expression

back to work ;)

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:

Let's walk

Because of the course in mindfulness i'm following, i'm experimenting with mindful walking.
Focussing on the legs, the shift of balance that accompanies every step, focussing on the hips, sometimes using a mantra to accompany the different steps, etc

But sometimes i just walk like these guys ;)

Viva Pachelbel

There's a song that i can almost play on the piano,
it's the Canon by Johann Pachelbel.
Rob Paravonian has made a funny standup act about it,
go to http://www.youtube.com/user/paravonian
and then click on "Pachelbell Rant"

his "The Friends Theme and Sugar Ray" is also great!

8 fracking 15 am

there's this cool online store,
www.megagadgets.nl, where i ordered a few items on monday (gifts, so i won't mention what they are until they are received by the future owners)
this morning they were delivered ... on a saturday @ 8.15 am ... let me say that again: on a SATURDAY @ EIGHT FIFTEEN in the MORNING

sigh, ofcourse i'm making the best of it and using this extra time to write something here while i'm listening to my brand new cd by Milow my good friends of "The Flash (c)" bought me last week, and thus getting more out of this new and wonderful day :)

it's just that i kinda needed the sleep, this whole week has been a sleeping disaster (waking up in the middle of the night, disturbing dreams, etc)

so next week i'm going to pay extra super special attention to sleeping and will get enough sleep for a change, i need it

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 !!

and that's that

yesterday i had the last exam-thingie, i think everything went well (the entire series) and now all that's left is the master's thesis ...
let's just say it's going to need some work, a small massive amount of mork to be more somewhat exactly precise

while i go work on it some more,
maybe you and you and you can take a look at some of Weird al Yankovic 's song on youtube, his parodies are so cool :) !!
like this one i just saw:

update: embedding has been disabled

he has much better parodies that which i euhm ... certainly do NOT have downloaded in mp3 format in my criminal past, so I well .... well i just now they exist ;)

Old forests are cut down and turned into toilet paper ...

... and still all the toilets are always out of paper ...
this and many other sad or silly stuff are things we all complain about sooner or later in this amazing life.
Some of the complaints are absolutely justified and should really be dealt with, but in the mean time, why not make a song about it?
I just love the concept :)
PZ links to this: The Helsinki Complaints Choir

It's not an all to new concept (a few years at least), but it's the first time (that i can remember) that i encoutered something like this.
First i thought that maybe it was a 'normal' song in finnish and that someone had placed clever subtitles underneath it, with a different meaning (who would notice but the Finnians?)
But apparently they really are a 'complaint choir' and there are others:
Birmingham:

Canada:

and even more but you'll have to look for them yourselves
(post them in the commments if you want)
have a nice day!

What can I say?

She's every minute of my everyday.

Next to becoming bearable, it's also almost a line from Everything, by Michael Buble, the song I woke up with this morning (thank you 4FM) and of course it's stuck in my head now.
It's nice, listen to it, if you can handle that much romantic atmosphere :)
or watch it! Apparantly Bono and Whoopie Goldberg are featured in the clip (so what? ;))

This is romantic post #00002 by the way, but putting that in the title would have ruined the rhyme between the title and the first sentence :)

ok back to reality, this must be the craziest day in months!

The good old days - MacGyver

Wandering through youtube i encountered this:
(don't worry, he smiles when he's finished)

yes i certainly was a fan of MacGyver, 'intelligent' en not all too violent, like programs for children should be
and i'm now looking foor the sheet music, so i can learn to play it on the piano of course

also found this

and this

you can always count on the simpsons and family guy to bring down your idols down to earth :)

Animusic

a wonderfull combination of computer animation and nice music

and there are several others to be found on youtube

Newest playlist additions meme

Nickelback has a new cd out there, "All the right reasons", you can see a few of the vid's on their site
"If everyone cared" is somewhat in the same area as "The world is on fire"
which i've already mentioned twice, here and here
it's not just about nice chords (but they help), an important or strong message in a song is what really convinces me

the other music video's are also nice, go check 'em out,
"Far Away" (love is important, and so is putting out forest fires)
"Savin'me" (just a real cool idea for a musicvideo)
"Photograph" (i like photographs)