Decision to remove billboards in downtown Cairo irks ad agencies
20 01 2011
"Advertising billboards perched on downtown Cairo’s buildings are being removed, as per a decision this week by Governor Abdel Azim Wazir, according to local reports."
...
"According to Abdel Monsef, there are the taxes and license fees paid to the government for the billboards of around 40 percent, constituting a big loss on government revenue from the ads."
...
"He labeled the attempt of ad agencies to protest the decision by shutting down most of the billboards in Cairo on Thursday as “a passive civilized protest.”"
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Monday, September 29, 2008
L'art appliqué: Social Intelligent Agents and a distribution of productive means
Let's introduce un object trouvé.
google: black cat 12 die kaempfende katze
A Japanese production brought to my attention by a veoh-video search for 'hart', the dutch translation of heart.
Without overt advertisment, a publisher reaches his public, halfway across the globe, through the use of modern distribution applications, intelligent agents, that try to interact with the social element of the user in order to find his taste.
It itroduces 3 men a girl who have to fight an evil called 'chronos' and 'creed'.
The productive means employed in the creation of this work is not a minor one. Have a look at the first 3 minutes if you want. Most elements are brought with craftmanship, and plenty of skilled labor.
The bread seems to come from product placement, the use of profitable story elements. In this is has an almost baroque flavour. With some Goth influences.
The illustrator is supposed to have drawn lessons from another manga series called 'death note'.
Schumpeter, the man who coined the term creative distruction, suggested that most significant changes in control over productive means happened as the result of fitter technologies or methods. These structural reorganisations formed the underlying fundamentals of human history's qualitative evolutions. Creating both new niches as well as reinventing habitats.
Should one apply his approach to the logistics of information as well as rescources, ancient borders aquire a new depth. In a fashion they were institutions that spanned across ages, created by introduction of practice, living at the grace of their respective incarnations, stakeholders if you will.
Once a pratice disperses, such fiefdoms, become subject to isomorphic competition.
google: black cat 12 die kaempfende katze
A Japanese production brought to my attention by a veoh-video search for 'hart', the dutch translation of heart.
Without overt advertisment, a publisher reaches his public, halfway across the globe, through the use of modern distribution applications, intelligent agents, that try to interact with the social element of the user in order to find his taste.
It itroduces 3 men a girl who have to fight an evil called 'chronos' and 'creed'.
The productive means employed in the creation of this work is not a minor one. Have a look at the first 3 minutes if you want. Most elements are brought with craftmanship, and plenty of skilled labor.
The bread seems to come from product placement, the use of profitable story elements. In this is has an almost baroque flavour. With some Goth influences.
The illustrator is supposed to have drawn lessons from another manga series called 'death note'.
Schumpeter, the man who coined the term creative distruction, suggested that most significant changes in control over productive means happened as the result of fitter technologies or methods. These structural reorganisations formed the underlying fundamentals of human history's qualitative evolutions. Creating both new niches as well as reinventing habitats.
Should one apply his approach to the logistics of information as well as rescources, ancient borders aquire a new depth. In a fashion they were institutions that spanned across ages, created by introduction of practice, living at the grace of their respective incarnations, stakeholders if you will.
Once a pratice disperses, such fiefdoms, become subject to isomorphic competition.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Dogma
Rev 21:7 "He who overcomes will inherit these things, and I will be his God and he will be My son."
Anthropologists Develop New Approach To Explain Religious Behavior
ScienceDaily (Sep. 10, 2008) — Without a way to measure religious beliefs, anthropologists have had difficulty studying religion. Now, two anthropologists from the University of Missouri and Arizona State University have developed a new approach to study religion by focusing on verbal communication, an identifiable behavior, instead of speculating about alleged beliefs in the supernatural that cannot actually be identified.
"Instead of studying religion by trying to measure unidentifiable beliefs in the supernatural, we looked at identifiable and observable behavior - the behavior of people communicating acceptance of supernatural claims," said Craig T. Palmer, associate professor of anthropology in the MU College of Arts and Science. "We noticed that communicating acceptance of a supernatural claim tends to promote cooperative social relationships. This communication demonstrates a willingness to accept, without skepticism, the influence of the speaker. In a way similar to a child's acceptance of the influence of a parent."
Palmer and Lyle B. Steadman, emeritus professor of human evolution and social change at Arizona State University, explored the supernatural claims in different forms of religion, including ancestor worship; totemism, the claim of kinship between people and a species or other object that serves as the emblem of a common ancestor; and shamanism, the claim that traditional religious leaders in kinship-based societies could communicate with their dead ancestors. They found that the clearest identifiable effect of religious behavior is the promotion of cooperative family-like social relationships, which include parent/child-like relationships between the individuals making and accepting the supernatural claims and sibling-like relationships among co-acceptors of those claims.
ref youtube 'La Ricotta - Pasolini'
"Almost every religion in the world, including all tribal religions, use family kinship terms such as father, mother, brother, sister and child for fellow members," Steadman said. "They do this to encourage the kind of behavior found normally in families - where the most intense social relationships occur. Once people realize that observing the behavior of people communicating acceptance of supernatural claims is how we actually identify religious behavior and religion, we can then propose explanations and hypotheses to account for why people have engaged in religious behavior in all known cultures."
Palmer and Steadman published their research in The Supernatural and Natural Selection: The Evolution of Religion. The book was published by Paradigm Publishers.
Anthropologists Develop New Approach To Explain Religious Behavior
ScienceDaily (Sep. 10, 2008) — Without a way to measure religious beliefs, anthropologists have had difficulty studying religion. Now, two anthropologists from the University of Missouri and Arizona State University have developed a new approach to study religion by focusing on verbal communication, an identifiable behavior, instead of speculating about alleged beliefs in the supernatural that cannot actually be identified.
"Instead of studying religion by trying to measure unidentifiable beliefs in the supernatural, we looked at identifiable and observable behavior - the behavior of people communicating acceptance of supernatural claims," said Craig T. Palmer, associate professor of anthropology in the MU College of Arts and Science. "We noticed that communicating acceptance of a supernatural claim tends to promote cooperative social relationships. This communication demonstrates a willingness to accept, without skepticism, the influence of the speaker. In a way similar to a child's acceptance of the influence of a parent."
Palmer and Lyle B. Steadman, emeritus professor of human evolution and social change at Arizona State University, explored the supernatural claims in different forms of religion, including ancestor worship; totemism, the claim of kinship between people and a species or other object that serves as the emblem of a common ancestor; and shamanism, the claim that traditional religious leaders in kinship-based societies could communicate with their dead ancestors. They found that the clearest identifiable effect of religious behavior is the promotion of cooperative family-like social relationships, which include parent/child-like relationships between the individuals making and accepting the supernatural claims and sibling-like relationships among co-acceptors of those claims.
ref youtube 'La Ricotta - Pasolini'
"Almost every religion in the world, including all tribal religions, use family kinship terms such as father, mother, brother, sister and child for fellow members," Steadman said. "They do this to encourage the kind of behavior found normally in families - where the most intense social relationships occur. Once people realize that observing the behavior of people communicating acceptance of supernatural claims is how we actually identify religious behavior and religion, we can then propose explanations and hypotheses to account for why people have engaged in religious behavior in all known cultures."
Palmer and Steadman published their research in The Supernatural and Natural Selection: The Evolution of Religion. The book was published by Paradigm Publishers.
Thursday, August 7, 2008
Monday, June 23, 2008
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
The Democrats' God problem
Salon article
By Walter Shapiro
April 30, 2008
"The single biggest gap in party affiliation among white Americans is ... between those who attend church regularly and those who don't. Democrats, meanwhile, are scrambling to 'get religion,' even as a core segment of our constituency remains stubbornly secular."
-- Barack Obama, from "The Audacity of Hope"
Now Obama may be paying a political price (precise cost estimates will be available only after the May 6 North Carolina and Indiana primaries) for his embrace of wrong-way Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Just last month in his much-heralded race-and-religion address in Philadelphia, Obama, although he rejected Wright's ideological invective, still said of his longtime pastor, "As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding and baptized my children." Only Tuesday, in Winston-Salem, N.C., did Obama finally read Wright out of his political congregation: "I want to use this press conference to make people absolutely clear that obviously whatever relationship I had with Reverend Wright has changed, as a consequence of this. I don't think that he showed much concern for me."
Deciphering Wright's motivations in delivering his recent jeremiads ranks right up there as a daunting psychological exercise with deconstructing Bill Clinton's campaign behavior. But what seems unambiguous is that Obama takes it personally that Wright chose to highlight his admiration for 20th-century hero Louis Farrakhan and to advance his diabolical theories about the origins of AIDS from the pulpit of the National Press Club. There was a wounded quality to Obama's comment: "I don't think he showed much concern for me."
Hillary Clinton has been as pantingly eager as Obama to testify about her religious beliefs in public, although her comments on theology often tend toward the saccharine. Just two weeks ago at a candidates-and-God religious forum broadcast on CNN from the campus of Messiah College in Grantham, Pa., the former first lady confided, "I have ever since I've been a little girl felt the presence of God in my life. And it has been a gift of grace that has for me been incredibly sustaining. But, really, ever since I was a child, I have felt the enveloping support and love of God. And I have had the experiences on many, many occasions where I felt like the holy spirit was there with me as I made a journey."
The point is not Clinton's and Obama's private religious beliefs, but their political calculation in searching for every possible forum to signal to religious voters that Democrats too are devout. The Republicans have long blurred the line between God and GOTV (Get Out the Vote), with Mike Huckabee, the runner-up for the GOP nomination, becoming probably the first major presidential candidate since William Jennings Bryan who unequivocally does not believe in evolution. Until recently -- with the exception of Jimmy Carter's 1976 born-again boasting -- the Democrats in their role as America's secular party have been far more reticent about reveling in religion.
Aside from a ritual "God bless America" as he concluded, Al Gore's only reference to the deity in his 2000 acceptance speech to the Democratic Convention was attacking "bean-counters at HMOs who ... don't have the right to play God." John Kerry, who had been schooled in the way that JFK handled the Catholic issue in 1960, was a reluctant warrior on the battlefields of religious pandering. Accepting the 2004 nomination, Kerry declared, "I don't wear my own faith on my sleeve. But faith has given me values and hope to live by from Vietnam to this very day."
There are dozens of reasons (ranging from the Supreme Court to the inept campaign counsel of strategist Bob Shrum) why Gore and Kerry never made it to the White House. But after the narrow 2004 "why-o, why-o Ohio" defeat, the Democratic consultants -- all singing out of the same hymn book -- decided that the party's fatal mistake was getting whomped by a better than 3-to-1 margin among evangelical Christians. Thus was born the Democratic strategic gospel that the devil take the hindmost because in 2008 God would be in play.
In a sense, the Democrats have been lucky since they are blessed with two candidates who have been walking the pews of religion for decades -- from Obama's lyrical autobiographical account of joining the Trinity United Church of Christ to Clinton's public flirtation with the religiously based "politics of meaning" during her early White House years. But now the Democrats may be dealing with the dread consequences of answered prayers.
The wrath of Wright calls into question not Obama's faith but his judgment, the same quality that he trumpets when it comes to his early opposition to the Iraq war. Clinton, for her part, may currently be feeling like she has been touched by a miracle, but it is difficult to reckon how she has gained votes through her own public religiosity. In short, if the Democrats win back the White House this November, it will be presumably because of earthbound considerations like Iraq, the economy and gasoline prices. But if the Democrats lose -- especially if the Wright-way-to-pray issue haunts Obama -- then the only response from partisans will be an anguished, "Oh, God!"
By Walter Shapiro
April 30, 2008
"The single biggest gap in party affiliation among white Americans is ... between those who attend church regularly and those who don't. Democrats, meanwhile, are scrambling to 'get religion,' even as a core segment of our constituency remains stubbornly secular."
-- Barack Obama, from "The Audacity of Hope"
Now Obama may be paying a political price (precise cost estimates will be available only after the May 6 North Carolina and Indiana primaries) for his embrace of wrong-way Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Just last month in his much-heralded race-and-religion address in Philadelphia, Obama, although he rejected Wright's ideological invective, still said of his longtime pastor, "As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding and baptized my children." Only Tuesday, in Winston-Salem, N.C., did Obama finally read Wright out of his political congregation: "I want to use this press conference to make people absolutely clear that obviously whatever relationship I had with Reverend Wright has changed, as a consequence of this. I don't think that he showed much concern for me."
Deciphering Wright's motivations in delivering his recent jeremiads ranks right up there as a daunting psychological exercise with deconstructing Bill Clinton's campaign behavior. But what seems unambiguous is that Obama takes it personally that Wright chose to highlight his admiration for 20th-century hero Louis Farrakhan and to advance his diabolical theories about the origins of AIDS from the pulpit of the National Press Club. There was a wounded quality to Obama's comment: "I don't think he showed much concern for me."
Hillary Clinton has been as pantingly eager as Obama to testify about her religious beliefs in public, although her comments on theology often tend toward the saccharine. Just two weeks ago at a candidates-and-God religious forum broadcast on CNN from the campus of Messiah College in Grantham, Pa., the former first lady confided, "I have ever since I've been a little girl felt the presence of God in my life. And it has been a gift of grace that has for me been incredibly sustaining. But, really, ever since I was a child, I have felt the enveloping support and love of God. And I have had the experiences on many, many occasions where I felt like the holy spirit was there with me as I made a journey."
The point is not Clinton's and Obama's private religious beliefs, but their political calculation in searching for every possible forum to signal to religious voters that Democrats too are devout. The Republicans have long blurred the line between God and GOTV (Get Out the Vote), with Mike Huckabee, the runner-up for the GOP nomination, becoming probably the first major presidential candidate since William Jennings Bryan who unequivocally does not believe in evolution. Until recently -- with the exception of Jimmy Carter's 1976 born-again boasting -- the Democrats in their role as America's secular party have been far more reticent about reveling in religion.
Aside from a ritual "God bless America" as he concluded, Al Gore's only reference to the deity in his 2000 acceptance speech to the Democratic Convention was attacking "bean-counters at HMOs who ... don't have the right to play God." John Kerry, who had been schooled in the way that JFK handled the Catholic issue in 1960, was a reluctant warrior on the battlefields of religious pandering. Accepting the 2004 nomination, Kerry declared, "I don't wear my own faith on my sleeve. But faith has given me values and hope to live by from Vietnam to this very day."
There are dozens of reasons (ranging from the Supreme Court to the inept campaign counsel of strategist Bob Shrum) why Gore and Kerry never made it to the White House. But after the narrow 2004 "why-o, why-o Ohio" defeat, the Democratic consultants -- all singing out of the same hymn book -- decided that the party's fatal mistake was getting whomped by a better than 3-to-1 margin among evangelical Christians. Thus was born the Democratic strategic gospel that the devil take the hindmost because in 2008 God would be in play.
In a sense, the Democrats have been lucky since they are blessed with two candidates who have been walking the pews of religion for decades -- from Obama's lyrical autobiographical account of joining the Trinity United Church of Christ to Clinton's public flirtation with the religiously based "politics of meaning" during her early White House years. But now the Democrats may be dealing with the dread consequences of answered prayers.
The wrath of Wright calls into question not Obama's faith but his judgment, the same quality that he trumpets when it comes to his early opposition to the Iraq war. Clinton, for her part, may currently be feeling like she has been touched by a miracle, but it is difficult to reckon how she has gained votes through her own public religiosity. In short, if the Democrats win back the White House this November, it will be presumably because of earthbound considerations like Iraq, the economy and gasoline prices. But if the Democrats lose -- especially if the Wright-way-to-pray issue haunts Obama -- then the only response from partisans will be an anguished, "Oh, God!"
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