I had noticed the questionable priorities of the EUs ‘reconstruction’ efforts in south lebanon when I was down there in January. Now bech over at remarkz confirms (the rest of his post is pretty interesting as well) that there indeed some unusually incompetent people at work for the EU in south Lebanon: not only do they waste their money on street lighting, they also seem to sponsor all the trash bins:

The Iranians make themselves visible all right from billboards in villages they financed reconstruction efforts, to stickers on trucks and any piece of machinery used to that effect. Qatar has a different way of doing things: Only one or two huge billboards in the entire south with the ruling prince on it and an “I love you” type of note from Qatar. The process of naming here is crucial it creates political clout by referencing help. It is not just aid, it is aid from this or that party. Of course in can border the ridicule: The European Union for example has a sticker on each trash bin you can find in the south. But Winston Smith can tell you more about all that.

Makes you hope that they are not using the uninspiring European flag but that they at least have the decency to use stickers with the funky new logo of the Portuguese EU presidency. that would be esthetically much more pleasing if you ask me…

It is a bit more than a month that i have left Waag Society and started working for Kennisland | Knowledgeland. Although i have not really had time to reflect it feels really good to work for a new organization (and with new colleagues!!) after almost 5 years at the Waag and there is lots of exiting stuff ahead.

However for some strange reason the time i have been at KL more or less corresponds with the period of extremely shitty weather here in Amsterdam, which is best illustrated by this picture of the building that houses KL’s offices (on the 4th floor) taken on monday evening:

Which somehow reminds me of this picture of the Waag (sorry no higher resolution available), which also explains my sisters reaction (looks like disneyland again!’) when she first saw the picture of the KL building.

Have missed this when i was in lebanon in april, but nat pointed this out the other night. the first national bank of lebanon has launched a plastic surgery loan programme (‘Beauty is no longer a luxury….’):

the BBC is reporting that this whole thing is a reaction to the tense political situation in Lebanon:

“We like to look our best… There are people who see this loan as their life raft,” Mr Nasr said.

Local media say the tense political climate and fears of another devastating war with Israel have not curbed Lebanon’s infamous urge for cosmetic enhancement, with demand increasing up to 20% since 2006.

“People are not going out anymore so they are staying home looking in the mirror,” industry representative Dr Nabih Sader told the Daily Star newspaper.

And i mean this literally. I have already written about the degrading orientation skills of London cab drivers, but in the last couple of days i noticed a much more alarming trend. on three occasions i have spotted people using those irritating gps based car navigation units to walk(!) around town. Friggin’ insanity! what do people think they have brains for these days?

First time i noticed this was in the phone shop where two female japanese tourists enquired about the stand alone gps units and bought one although the sales-clerk warned them that it only had map data for the Benelux on it. They replied that they were fine with Amsterdam and Bruxelles and needed nothing else, bought it and left the shop. Then the other day i saw a group of tourists wandering along the canals one of them holding one of these units in his hands. Tonight cycling back form central station i noticed two teenage girls walking along the street both of them staring on the screen one of them was holding one of these devices in her hands:

This time i actually stopped and asked them what they where doing with with that thing. they replied that they used it as a map as they were not form here (obviously! – judging by their accent they came from some Scandinavian country) and that it was in fact much better than a map as they never managed to properly read traditional maps anyway.

I think this fundamentally disturbs me. makes me wonder if people will start removing parts of their brains in order to lose weight. On the bright side this of course points to a much better future for the inhabitants of major touristic hotspots as they won’t be asked for the directions all the time anymore. Thinking of this, this might actually mean that one day in the near future drunken British males will be able to find the amsterdam red light district by themselves…

The ECF has put the report online which i wrote about the euro Mediterranean reflection group meting in Amman in june (yes the one that killed my last macbook). It is called between ‘a rock and a hard place’ and deals with the issues of artistic practice and international collaboration in the Middle East. Get the pdf from the ECF website (More on the activities of the Mediterranean reflection group of the ECF can be found here).

Couple of days ago i got this flickr mail from someone working for Tobacco International which describes itself as the ‘The authority on the tobacco industry since 1886’. The person wanted to know if he could use this picture of mine for ‘a profile on the tobacco industry of the middle east for our upcoming July/August issue’

I told him to go a ahead and use the picture and send me a copy of the mag if he did indeed do so. As a matter of fact the photo is cc-by licensed so he did not even need to ask me. Now today the same guy got back to me to thank me for my permission and went on to inquire:

By the way, we are looking for more photos for this story if you have any. We’re looking for photos from the Middle East of adults smoking cigarettes – with a smile if possible. They should be shots that are emblematic of the region – in dress or background that couldn’t come from anywhere else.

Guess he must have mistaken me for some kind of photo agency or something like this. Feed me a couple of orientalist stereotypes as keywords and see if i come up with more pictures. Now i happen to have at least one picture that more or less perfectly fits his request, but i do not think that i am selling (or giving away) pictures of friends of mine to promote smoking (note: the license does not allow for use in a commercial publication):

Not that i have anything against smoking or smokers, but if it comes to the middle east i definitely prefer smoking argile to cigarettes. Plus Nat reminded me that it would just be plain wrong to hand over that picture:

you have no god!!! AND aiding the tobacco industry AND aiding the perpetuation on monolithic stereotyped orientalist imagery?!??!!!

Have been following the recent events in the UK with a mix of amusement and amazement. Did not really expect that the next ‘wave of attacks‘ would be even more incompetent than the last one.

There are a couple of good articles that call these ‘terrorist attacks’ for what they are (‘Terrorist Special Olympics in the UK‘ on Bruce Schneiders blog, ‘Beavis and Butthead in London jihad‘ by Thomas C Greene and ‘‘al-Qaeda’ puts on big shoes, red nose, takes custard pie‘ by Lewis Page both on the register). All three are well worth reading. This quote from the article by Lewis Page kind of sums it up:

If these guys at the weekend really were anything to do with al-Qaeda, all one can really say is that it looks as though the War on Terror is won. This whole hoo-ha kicked off, remember, with 9/11: an extremely effective attack. Then we had the Bali and Madrid bombings, not by any measure as shocking and bloody but still nasty stuff. Then we had London 7/7, a further significant drop in bodycount but still competently planned and executed (Not too many groups would have been able to mix up that much peroxide-based explosive first try without an own goal).

Now we have this; one terror-clown badly burnt and nobody else hurt at all. An event about as significant as the teenagers burning cars down my way – and don’t I wish those little sods got as much police attention and jail time.

Reading this article brought back some fond memories of blowing up propane gas canisters in on construction sites in Hannover Davenstedt when i was 14 or so. And in case you are intrested in real car bombs, go read this book…

So i am at my third summit in three weeks. first summit in Berlin, then the copyright summit in Bruxelles and finally the iSummit in Dubrovnik. Dubrovnik is absolutely amazing, which is best summed up by someone from FGV in rio de janeiro who’s first comment was. ‘whow! this place looks like a medieval favela‘ (which of course brings up fond memories from last years iSummit).

So one of the things which are really nice about being in the middle east is that you have hummos all the time. I mean at least three times a day, for breakfast, lunch and dinner. You wont hear me complain. So yesterday night one the way back from dinner i suddenly wondered where all the chickpeas (which are the basis of hummos) come from. One would imagine that there would be chickpea fields or plantations all over the middle east but i have never really noticed any. Turns out nobody in our party knew either (Khalid was pretty sure that it grows on small bushes) which is a pretty amazing amount of ignorance when it comes to one of the most important ingredients in your regional cuisine. According to wikipedia almost all cickpeas do come from India. The percentage of india in the world chickpea production is so high that the rest of the worlds cickpea output seems to be measured in percentages of the Indian production:

To give the locals some credit, according to the same wikipedia article ‘Domesticated chickpeas are first known from the aceramic levels of Jericho’ (which is like 2 hours driving from Amman)

I had the sentence ‘this macbook has the lifespan of a hamster’ as my desktop background for a while now. had assumed that hamsters do have a lifespan of about two years. Yesterday Tamara mentioned that her hamster had died after one year when she was 10 and coinciditially my macbook died yesterday evening (after about a year of good service).

This happend while taking notes during the reflection group meeting of the ECF in Amman for which i am supposed to write up the report. So now i am stuck whith tareks 2nd powerbook which somewhat unfortunately has a french keyboard. If you type ‘this macbook has the lifespan of a hamster’ on a AZERTY keyboard you get ‘this ;qcbook hqs the lifespqn of q hq;ster’ very annoying…