Paralyzed Graffiti Artist Draws With His Eyes @NPR...

Schlinger Stairwell por Debit72 en Flickr

Una preciosa composición fotográfica al estilo Escher de las escaleras del nuevo Laboratorio Schlinger en el Caltech, fotografiada por Debit72. Una peculiar perspectiva que me recordó un poco a la conocida Casa de escaleras.

• Una casa M.C. Escher 3-D bastante realista, otra foto «real»
• Olivomare, de Pier Luigi Piu, un restaurante escheriano
• Priori Acute, una tipografía inspirada por M.C. Escher
• M.C. Escher en anuncios de Volkswagen, más perspectivas imposibles
• M.C. Escher en escultura y en fotos, originales antiguos
• Cascada en pixel-art, un clásico pixelizado
• Bonito «skin» escheriano, para iPhone
• Habitación de Ames en el museo Escher, bonito efecto
• En ocasiones veo bichos cachivaches, pedalternorotandomovens sueltos
• Escalera con forma de cinta de Möbius o algo parecido: Nudo de trifolio
• MC Mechanic, homenaje robótico a las Manos Dibujando de M.C. Escher
• Casas decoradas estilo Escher, hay una en Madrid
• Denedo una tipografía escheriana
• Relatividad, de Escher, en LEGO, todo un clásico
• Arquitectura Origámica: obras en papel recortado al estilo Escher
• Efecto Droste Escheriano del cual también hay un Ajedrez con efecto Droste y un Tutorial sobre el Efecto Droste
• Escher: Metamorfosis I, II y III en la oficina de correos de La Haya
• El Arte de lo Imposible: exposición sobre M.C. Escher en Madrid (2007) y un relato sobre lo que dio de sí: M.C. Escher: El Arte de lo Imposible
• La pulsera de goma de Escher, para coleccionistas
• M.C. Escher en Perl, sólo para programadores
• Snakes, the movie, un vídeo homenaje, realmente precioso
• Mini-biografía de M.C. Escher, todo sobre el artista
• Mis obras favoritas de M.C. Escher, un Top 10 un tanto personal, con enlaces al álbum de imágenes de Escher en alta resolución
• El espejo mágico de M.C. Escher, un excelente libro
• M.C. Escher en LEGO, varias de sus obras, homenajeadas
• La Magia de M.C. Escher, un excelente libro sobre el maestro
• Escher for Real, cómo construir realmente sus obras
• LEGOrelatividad, uno de sus cuadros, en LEGO
• Escher Revisitado, una animación de Galería de Cuadros («efecto Droste»).
• Concurso de remezcla con M.C. Escher, un mega mix escheriano
• Escher en la web, sobre la página oficial
• Rob Gonsalves: realismo mágico, un buen discípulo inspirado por Escher
• La película del Audi A6 y M.C. Escher, Escher en movimiento
• M.C. Siervos, nuestro pequeño homenaje en su aniversario

# Enlace Permanente

Here is the latest in our year-long look at one cool comic (whether it be a self-contained work, an ongoing comic or a run on a long-running title that featured multiple creative teams on it over the years) a day (in no particular order whatsoever)! Here's the archive of the moments posted so far!

Today we take a look at Dirk Schwieger's Moresukine...

Enjoy!

Dirk Schwieger's graphic novel from NBM Publishing, Moresukine, gets its name from the way Japanese people pronounce the type of notebook Schwieger sketches in - a Moleskine notebook. As a result, the graphic novel is printed in a mock-up of a Moleskine notebook.

This is a fun and interesting collection of stories by Schwieger of what happened when he allowed people on the internet to make him do tasks when he moved to Japan.

Schwieger kept a blog where he challenged his readers to come up with things to do while he was in Japan, and he would do them - no matter what they were (granted, of course, that they had something to do with living in Japan, and not, like, "Watch every season of M*A*S*H* on DVD!").

Schwieger would then write up the assignments as online comics, and now his online comics are collected into this graphic novel. Often, the assignments would basically end up being "tell us about THIS part of Japan, Dirk!"

Schwieger has a nice, clean style of art that makes the stories easy to follow, and the stories themselves are delivered by Schwieger nicely.

Here is a sample assignment (from the book's site here)

The rest of the book is basically just like that - while some of the assignments include staying in one of those pod hotels, visiting one of the infamous "love hotels" and eating the potentially poisonous fugu (this one is featured on the cover).

The book has an extra section where Dirk challenges OTHER comic book artists to talk to a Japanese person in whatever city in which the cartoonists live and report back about the conversation. The results are often amusing - and feature comics by James Kochalka, Ryan North and others (Ryan's is particularly amusing).

So yeah, Moresukine is a fun, well-written, well-drawn book. Go check it out!

(NOTE: This is basically what I wrote when the book first came out - BC).

Flame is an art program created by Peter Blaskovic using Processing, a noob-friendly flavor of Java favored by artists and hobbyists -- a variant, Wiring, serves as a programming environment for Arduino microcontrollers.

Flame shows how far the language has grown. It basically lets you draw using your mouse pointer, and the lines you draw look awesomely like fire. [via Kottke]

A new torrent has been uploaded to U2Torrents.com.

Torrent: 5763
Title: 2001-07-21 Torino, Stadio delle Alpi"Violence Is Never Right" 2silverdisc
Size: 0.99 GB
Category: Elevation
Uploaded by: bonozitoun

Description
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2001-07-21 Torino, Stadio delle Alpi

====================================
General Informations :
====================================
Name : Violence Is Never Right
Tour : Elevation Tour
Leg : Leg 2 - Europe
Date : 07.21.2001
Country : Italy
Town : Torino
Place : Stadio Delle Alpi
Type : Audio
Support : Silver CD
Manufacturer : Ultimate Sound
Num. cat. : US 49/50
Barcode : 21072001
Taper : Chris Voynet
Material : Danish Pro Audio 4061 > Sony TCD-D8
Performance : Live
Source : Audience
Integral : Complete
====================================


Lineage cda > EAC > WAV > DbPoweramp > fLAC LEVEL8 > Md5summer > U2T


INCLUDED ON Torrrent Cover art , fa
great audience sound , Taper Chris Voynet
do not reencode to mp3

Please:
Thank you not to reseed,
I'll uploder on other tracker (dime ,...)
and other sites, thanks in advance
====================================
Setlist :
====================================
Disc 1 (07/2001)
1. Introduction / Elevation
2. Beautiful Day
3. Until The End Of The World
4. New Year's Day
5. Kite
6. Gone
7. New York
8. I Will Follow
9. Sunday Bloody Sunday / Get Up Stand Up
10. In My Life / Stuck In A Moment
11. In A Little While
12. Desire / Gloria
13. Stay (faraway, So Close !)

Disc 2
1. Bad / 40
2. Where The Streets Have No Name
3. Mysterious Ways / Sexual Healing
4. The Fly
5. Bullet The Blue Sky
6. With Or Without You / Love Will Tear Us Apart
7. One
8. Wake Up Dead Man / Walk On / Hallelujah
9. Pride (in The Name Of Love)
10. Out Of Control


====================================
Discs Contents
====================================
CD 1 & 2 : Torino - July 21th, 2001


====================================
Review :
====================================
AchtungBootlegs.com / 02.28.2007
====================================
don't sell, trade and share only.
Enjoy
Bonozitoun
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You can use the URL below to download the torrent (you may have to login).

http://u2torrents.com/torrents-details.php?id=5763&hit=1

Take care!

Live U2
_________________________________________________________________________________
Disclaimer: Please do not reply to this email account it is NOT monitored.
Please visit the U2torrents.com Help section at http://www.u2torrents.com/help/ for helpful information or to Ask a Question.

Can a luxury resort ever be green? A new hotel on the Maldivian island of Hadahaa is a true eco-paradise

With great pride, our "butler" Atheef is describing the utter deliciousness, the supreme sweetness, the irresistible flavour and vast superiority of the Maldivian mango. When I offer the Indian mango in comparison, he snorts with derision: the Maldivian variety is clearly in a much higher league. It's also only available in this island paradise for two months of the year, and as Atheef speaks I have a flashback to childhood and the giddy excitement of strawberries coming into season – a delight wholly unknown to my own children, for whom such exotic delicacies are these days pedestrian staples thanks to the global food market.

The Maldives, however, is not the place to get radical about eating only local, or indeed seasonal, foodstuffs: these idyllic islands rely on imported produce, and working out how to feed themselves while striving to become the first carbon-neutral nation on earth is one of the many conundrums facing the inhabitants of this breathtaking collection of islands. There are 1,190 of them in all, scattered among some of the most pristine coral reefs in the Indian Ocean, and at two metres above sea level this vacation paradise is one of the most threatened nations on earth. The most pessimistic estimates suggest that they will be underwater by the beginning of the next century, a danger their energetic new president, Mohamed Nasheed, is striving to publicise to the international community – last October the entire cabinet donned scuba gear and met underwater.

As a result of the very real threat on their doorstep, words like "sustainability", whispered among a very few of the forward-thinking hotels a decade ago, are now littered generously throughout their brochures. The bonanza that took place in the 1980s and 90s, turning the area around the capital, Malé, into a resort metropolis with barely a care for preserving reefs or local livelihoods, has thankfully all but come to a halt.

If the Maldives are a dot on the world map, the island of Hadahaa is a mere grain in an enormous oceanic expanse, as far south as you can go without crossing the equator. It lies in the utterly unspoilt and second largest atoll in the world, Huvadhoo. Until recently the whole area was off limits to visitors, the result of a government policy that sought to protect its ecosystem but also discouraged mingling between tourists and the local population, which put many travellers off these islands because they felt them to be a cultural void.

Since 2007 a small clutch of hotels has been allowed to set up among the native islands under the strictest environmental supervision, bringing employment and visitors to a region previously ignored. The contrast between this gloriously underpopulated, development-free atoll and the frenzy of the resort scene around Malé is extraordinary.

The latest arrivals, such as the one I'm visiting, pay more than lip service to environmental concerns. At Alila Hadahaa, which opened in August, they have their own desalination plant to create drinking water, hold a Green Globe Certification for planning and construction, and use wood certified sustainable from Malaysia. Most commendable of all is the presence of so many local staff; Maldivians make up 65% of the workforce. For a people in search of a homeland – as their president has described them – they couldn't be doing a better job of the audition. Staff such as Atheef – in his roving role of villa butler – and Shamin (snorkeller, babysitter, football expert and purveyor of popcorn) are proud of their country, eager to help you to experience more of it and so good with the kids that I feel surplus to requirements.

For a resort so clearly not imagined with children in mind – from the lavish luxury of the super-chic rooms to the glass and stone-hewn bathrooms – they couldn't cater for them better. Chicken curry sans spices, jelly made to order, babysitting on request and everywhere waiters happy to build "volcano land" in the sand, dive masters who long to take them snorkelling. I virtually have to wrestle the staff to get the children back for a couple of hours a day.

Alila's new resort is certainly architecturally adventurous. The two-storey state-of-the-art restaurant with its Bauhaus severity is slightly wasted on an ageing barefoot boho like myself, but the luxury beach bungalows and water villas make it a positively elemental experience. Of course it's an irony that is hard for the arriving tourist to ignore that the popular wooden water bungalows strung out on stilts above the aquamarine shallows at most resorts could, in the course of our children's lifetime, be all that's left of this island nation.

FOR THOSE WHO stray as far south as Hadahaa, the reward is a pewter evening ocean with a hazy shadow of islands on the far horizon, bearing no sign of human habitation. Ears pump with the complete silence we so rarely get to hear. When I take my four-year-old son snorkelling 5ft off the beach and find a lionfish swaying in the swell, a couple of Moorish Idols guarding the reef and as many small yellowtails as I can count, Dan starts to choke on his snorkel in excitement. To say the ocean is still stocked biblically here would be to underestimate what lies below.

Visiting the local villages is also now actively encouraged, as we discover when we are taken on an afternoon trip to Gadhdhoo, where hand-weaving straw tablemats and fishing offer the only alternative employment to the hotel and tourist sector. Despite obvious poverty and very basic amenities, the village looks like it is auditioning for a Best Kept Town award: no rubbish, well-tended homes with immaculate front yards and trees adorned with colourful strips of the Maldivian flag.

Shamin explains that every evening at sunset the women and children take to street cleaning in order to keep their collective home in good order. If only a similar civic spirit could be nurtured in the UK. During our amble around town an elderly lady in a headscarf (since 9/11 the Maldivians, previously relaxed Muslims with a little bit of local magic thrown in, have increasingly been embracing a stricter Islamic code) stops me to enquire whether Molly and Dan are my only children. When I reply that they are, she looks at me pityingly before declaring that she has produced 14. Patting my meagre contribution to the population on their heads, she wanders off chuckling in amusement at my uselessness as a woman.

This is my fourth trip to the Maldives and the first where I get to meet local people in their own environment and also to eat their cuisine. Along with western delights that include breakfast croissants the finest Parisian pastry chef would be proud of, Alila Hadahaa boasts a local restaurant – sand-floored, trestle-tabled and musically themed – offering the spiciest of curries, the tastiest of pumpkins, the crunchiest papaya and chilli salads on poppadoms, and pancakes with caramel bananas or fresh coconut rice pudding to follow. Where other Maldivian resorts can seem hell bent on ignoring their surroundings, this one is utterly committed to celebrating them.

On our last night, as the great fiery disc of the sun begins its exhausted slide into the sea, we spot a pod of dolphins gliding in and out of water thick as oil, feeding on the plentifully stocked and carefully protected home reef. The children, who have been weaving coconut-frond tapestries with Shamin, run shrieking toward the ocean, dropping clothes along the powder-white sand as they race into the sea in pursuit of each other. The dolphins make a hasty exit to open water, but in their absence a familiar figure steps into the frame: Shamin, waist deep in the ocean, still in uniform shorts and polo shirt, initiating a game with the kids.

It's my abiding image of our brief sojourn on this entrancing island. Thanks not to the cutting-edge design of the resort nor the fantastic food but to the seductive charm of the local staff, the five nights here number among the best vacations of my life.

HOW TO GET THERE... Elegant Resorts (01244 897 515; elegantresorts.co.uk) is offering seven nights at Alila Villas Hadahaa for the price of five, from £2,280 per adult, £2,070 per child (based on four sharing), including breakfast, British Airways flights and all transfers.

Visit guardian.co.uk/travel for more advice and travel suggestions

CARBON NEUTRAL... BUT WHAT ABOUT THE FLIGHTS?

The Maldives is engaged in an ambitious plan to become the world's first carbon-neutral country. By 2020 all its power will come from the wind and the sun, plus a biomass plant burning coconut husks. But the Maldives' biggest industry is tourism, so what about all the carbon emitted by the flights? There is no magic solution, but the government's plans include offsetting the emissions of all flights. Several offsetting methods are being examined, including buying "European emissions permits" which reduce pollution from Europe's factories. Until the scheme is operational, tourists have to arrange their own offsets. Mariella Frostrup did so with Climate Care (jpmorgan climatecare.com).

• Maldives

Charles Arthur investigates how the ways in which we watch sport, read magazines and do business with each other could change for ever

Don't act too surprised if, some time in the next year, you meet someone who explains that their business card isn't just a card; it's an augmented reality business card. You can see a collection and, at visualcard.me, you can even design your own, by adding a special marker to your card, which, once put in front of a webcam linked to the internet, will show not only your contact details but also a video or sound clip. Or pretty much anything you want.

It's not just business cards. London Fashion Week has tried them out too: little symbols that look like barcodes printed onto shirts, which, when viewed through a webcam, come to life. Benetton is using augmented reality for a campaign that kicked off last month, in which it is trying to find models from among the general population.

Augmented reality – AR, as it has quickly become known – has only recently become a phrase that trips easily off technologists' lips; yet we've been seeing versions of it for quite some time. The idea is straightforward enough: take a real-life scene, or (better) a video of a scene, and add some sort of explanatory data to it so that you can better understand what's going on, or who the people in the scene are, or how to get to where you want to go.

Sports coverage on TV has been doing it for years: slow-motion could be described as a form of augmented reality, since it gives you the chance to examine what happened in a situation more carefully. More recently cricket, tennis, rugby, football and golf have all started to overlay analytic information on top of standard-speed replays – would that ball have hit the stumps, the progress of a rally, the movement of the backs or wingers, the relative flights of shots – to tell you more about what's going on. Probably the most common use is in American football where the "first down" line – the distance the team has to cover to continue its offence – is superimposed on the picture for viewers.

But those required huge systems. AR took its first lumbering steps into the public arena eight years ago: all that you needed to do was strap on 10kg of computing power – laptop, camera, vision processor – and you could get an idea of what was feasible. The American Popular Science magazine wrote about the idea in 2002 – but the idea of being permanently connected to the internet hadn't quite jelled at that point.

"AR has been around for ages," says Andy Cameron, executive director of Fabrica, an interactive design studio which works with Benetton, "maybe going back as far as the 1970s and art installations that overlaid real spaces with something virtual." He mentions in particular the work of pioneering computer artist Myron Krueger.

What's changed in the past year is that AR has come within reach of all sorts of developers – and the technology powerful enough to make use of it is owned by millions of people, often in the palms of their hands.

The arrival of powerful smartphones and computers with built-in video capabilities means that you don't have to wait for the AR effects as you do with TV. They can simply be overlaid onto real life. Step forward Apple's iPhone, and phones using Google's Android operating system, both of which are capable of overlaying information on top of a picture or video.

Within the small world of AR, one of the best-known apps is that built by Layar, which – given a location, and using the iPhone 3GS's inbuilt compass to work out the direction you're pointing the phone – can give you a "radar map" of details such as Wikipedia information, Flickr photos, Google searches and YouTube videos superimposed onto a picture you've taken of the scene. For Americans, it will also pull in details from the government's economic Recovery Act – so that if you're on Wall Street and want to see how many billions went into which building, it will show you.

Or, more usefully, Yelp offers an augmented reality application that will show you ratings and reviews for a restaurant before you walk in – the sort of thing that could make restaurants quiver with delight, or shudder in horror.

Or maybe it wouldn't need to know where it is; only who it's looking at. A prototype application demonstrated at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February took things a little further again. Point the phone at a person and if it can find their details, it will pull them off the web and attach details – their Twitter username, Facebook page and other facts – and stick them, rather weirdly, into the air around their head (viewed through your phone, of course). "It's taking social networking to the next level," says Dan Gärdenfors, head of user experience research at The Astonishing Tribe, a Swedish mobile software company.

And there are fabulously useful applications: at Columbia University, computer science professor Steve Feiner and PhD candidate Steve Henderson have created their Augmented Reality for Maintenance and Repair (Armar) project. It combines sensors, head-up displays, and instructions to tackle the military's maintenance needs: start working on a piece of kit, and the details about it pop up in front of you. Imagine if you could put on a pair of special goggles when you needed to investigate your car's engine, or a computer's innards, and the detail would pop up. That's the sort of idea that Armar is trying to implement, though for the military at first..

Yet it's fashion which seems to have leapt quickest into this technology. The T-shirt with AR in London Fashion Week was developed by Cassette Playa, a label that has been worn by Lily Allen, Rihanna and Kanye West. Carri Munden, who designed it with the Fashion Digital Studio at the London College of Fashion, described it as "mixing reality and fantasy". Adidas, too, has launched trainers with AR symbols in the tongues: hold them to a webcam and you are taken to interactive games on the Adidas site.

The process by which the strange symbols get translated into images is simple enough: the website takes the feed from your webcam (you have to explicitly allow it to do so, so there are no security worries) and analyses it for the particular set of symbols that the program is looking for. (Some easy calculations mean the symbols can be detected whichever way up you hold the item.) Videos and pictures are then sent back to you.

Andy Cameron says that the arrival of an open-source, hence free, AR tool kit has let companies build their own AR applications, using Flash – the pervasive animation and video technology used for many online ads and YouTube's videos – "which immediately meant you had huge penetration, because Flash is everywhere". (Something like 98% of all computers are reckoned to have Adobe's Flash Player installed.)

"If you build your AR application with Flash, then you can get it out to everybody in the world with a computer with a webcam," says Cameron.

Benetton is using AR in its latest campaign, called "It's My Time" which aims to get members of the public to put themselves forward as potential models, and uses AR to show more details about existing models. But its first most visible use of AR was last year in issue 76 of Benetton's Colors magazine, a quarterly fashion product. Dozens of pages have AR symbols: hold the page up to a webcam, and you see film and more photos of the person on the page. "The Colors editor and the creative director of Fabrica got very excited about it," says Cameron.

Cameron can see huge potential which could even revive the fortunes of print advertising. "Think of a commercial page, an advert, in a fashion magazine. It's pretty expensive. With this – and this is the way that the more hard-nosed people in Benetton saw the advantage – it means that you can get more products on the page." Print an AR code, get people to come to the site, and you can show them so much more, while measuring the return from your effort.

The technical cost is a tiny part of the overall effort. "The printing and photography cost [of the advert] is the same. And the development cost is pretty small."

And of course where advertisers go, the publications that house them are sure to go as well. Esquire magazine in the US and Wallpaper* in Europe have done "augmented reality" editions, with Robert Downey Jr coming to life on the cover of the former, and AR text providing videos and animation in the latter. But there are more possibilities for journalism using AR: for example if you "geotag" newspaper articles (so that you say that an item relates to a particular place) then someone visiting a site could learn about events relevant to the area via their smartphone.

Book publishers too are leaping in: Carlton Publishing will release an AR book in May, featuring dinosaurs that pop out of the pages when viewed, yes, through a webcam. Future releases include war, sport and arts titles which will also have extra AR elements.

Yet in media it's the advertisers who are most excited. The possibilities of geotagged, targeted adverts – which in effect hang in the air until someone comes along to find them with a smartphone – or of AR adverts which open up a whole new world of opportunities (and perhaps discounts or loyalty bonuses) when you follow them through – are yet another glimpse of the holy grail ofads that know exactly who and where you are.

Is there a risk that we'll all become AR'd out – that it will become boring as advert after advert invites us to hold it up to a webcam? "What's hot today is ancient history tomorrow," says Cameron. "There have been a lot of bad uses of this technology with a rush to use it. We have had the chance to reflect on what it means and how to use it. The key is that it should be an enhancement of the stuff on the printed page."

Even so we're still in the early stages, he argues. "It's very primitive – having to use a webcam, holding a magazine up to it. Obviously we're really interested in the opportunities with handheld devices. It's very frustrating that the iPhone doesn't allow access to the live video stream." (Nor does it run Flash, another problem for would-be AR designers.) "People in design are very annoyed with Steve Jobs," he observes. "We don't really understand why Apple won't allow that."

Given that access, he says, "you could hold your iPhone up to a billboard and get something amazing right there". What about the alternative, such as Google's Android-based Nexus phone? "It looks like you could do it on that," he says. But of course the iPhone is a target market. "Maybe Apple wants to keep that for itself," Cameron says. "Maybe they're lodging patents. Or maybe the processor on the iPhone isn't fast enough."

Yet there are some who think that AR has already had its brief time in the sun. At the Like Minds conference in Exeter at the beginning of March, Joanne Jacobs, a social media consultant, described an AR application that demanded you buy a T-shirt and then go and sit in front of your webcam – so you could play Rock, Paper, Scissors. By yourself.

"It's hopeless," Jacobs said.

Cameron admits to some uncertainty about AR's measurable impact. "I don't know if it sells more things, but it seems clearly a good thing if we can get people who may be customers to participate in the adverts." But, he adds: "If people start to play with the adverts in a way that exposes them to more products, that's got to help bring a commercial return."

• Augmented reality
• iPhone
• Social networking
• Advertising

Lundi : Après un passage d'une heure sur BFM Radio, déjeuner avec la délicieuse Marjorie Paillon journaliste de BFM TV / France 5. Oui, oui, délicieuse et punchy. Elle déménage la demoiselle, elle avance et elle veut faire avancer. J'aime beaucoup ces femmes du web qui ne ressemblent ni à des putasses ni à des camionneuses. A suivre.

Mardi : Évidemment à la soirée de Relancement de France Soir (j'ai zappé celle du Bus). Évidemment. Des peoples dans tous les sens, des politiques de droite partout et des journalistes de gauche (France Soir recrute...). Notamment Emmanuel Beretta du Point qui tente d'arracher des mots d'Alexandre Pugatchev sans se présenter. Je l'ai coincé. Je n'aime pas cette méthode de rapace. Elle ne grandit pas le métier de journaliste.

Mercredi : Atroce nouvelle d'une amie alors enceinte m'annonçant la perte de ses jumelles. J'ai eu un mal fou à enregistrer ma chronique sur France Info.

Jeudi : Le matin en mode recruteur pour du luxe, déjeuner avec un vidéaste de talent, l'après midi en mode juré pour Ambassadeur de Star, en début de soirée chez André pour célébrer des blogueuses puis passage à Art Paris parce que j'aime l'art contemporain. Voi-là.

Vendredi : Filage pour la soirée du 24 mars qui s'annonce chaude (invitation ici). Je serai le seul à défendre les blogueurs au fond : ni agence, ni journaliste. Les autres ont des intérêts professionnels dans l'histoire.

Samedi : L'art de la sieste. Un art majeur qu'il faudrait apprendre dans les écoles de nos élites. Ces instants où la somnolence se dispute aux images éveillées. Contemplation.

Dimanche : "Tant de mains pour transformer ce monde, et si peu de regards pour le contempler !" Julien Gracq. What else ?

Retrouvez tous les JiDéDé là.

Pour me suivre sur Twitter : http://twitter.com/MryEmery

Aaron Alai designed this kicking electronic business card, which demonstrates how transistor amplifiers work. When you touch two electrodes on it, a small amount of current is conducted through your body, which is then amplified by a transistor to light an LED. I like the clean design, which is both functional and descriptive of how it works. [via Hacked Gadgets]

More:

• Penny-shooting business card
• Toolbox: Business cards
• How-To: Make Lego business cards
• Business card caliper
• Sparkle Labs paper circuit business cards
• Adafruit's business card makes art!
• Business card phones home

Filed under: Fandom, Tech Stuff

Permalink | Email this | Comments

It's another Jacques Tardi-drawn comic! All hail Tardi! (And hey! I get to break out the Not-Safe-For-Work warning! Just so you know!)

Yesterday, I looked at an adaptation by Jacques Tardi of a book written in the 1970s. Today, we look at a comic that actually came out in the 1970s and is now back in print! It all works out!

You Are There was written by Jean-Claude Forest, who is best-known for this (well, the comic on which it was based), and drawn by Monsieur Tardi. Kim Thompson translated this sucker, and Fantagraphics published this bad bear. You will be charged no more than $26.99 for this, which isn't bad considering it's 163 big-ass pages chock full of grand Tardi art.

This is a very strange comic that doesn't completely work. Forest, channeling his inner Mark Twain, wrote in an early book edition about You Are There: "No one should see in Ici même a pamphlet, a satire on our society or the men who represent its political regime. Nor did I have any specific intention of mocking man's attachment to property. If this attachment leads to grotesque situations in this book, it does so no more than politics, law, groceries or fornication; it serves through its ramblings a story, a plot whose basis lies elsewhere and was intended, so far as I was concerned, to speak of something entirely different." If that's so, it's too bad, because You Are There works best as an absurdist critique of society and politics. It's a rambling, occasionally surreal look at a man who is crazy only because a crazy society says he is; who then is really insane? Perhaps Forest meant it as a love story, and there is a romance at its heart, but the romance is just as odd as the rest of the book, so it's unclear what, exactly, Forest was saying with this comic.

The situation is certainly interesting: Arthur There, the protagonist (and hence the title of the book) lives in a place called Mornemont, which, as we learn early on, was once a vast tract of land of which he is the sole heir. Over the decades and centuries, however, Mornemont has been subdivided into smaller plots of land, each owned by a different family. Arthur is embroiled in a lawsuit to get all the land back, but in the meantime, his one victory has given him ownership of all the walls and the gates through them. He lives in a narrow shack built on one of the walls and makes a living by charging a toll every time someone wants a gate open, gates to which he has the only keys. Throughout the book, he rarely comes down off the walls - the residents, he believes, would kill him for trespassing. His lawsuit to reclaim the rest of the land, however, continues throughout the book. In Paris, the president fears that he's going to lose the election, so he begins making plans to hole up somewhere and plan his triumphant return. Naturally, he picks Mornemont, but the reason he does is clever and changes Arthur's life quite significantly.

Ultimately, this is a story of a man fighting against the forces of conformity, as Arthur desperately tries to remain his own man. Everyone wants him to change, and even if some of the things that happen in the book are in his own mind, he clings to a dream when a lesser (or, perhaps, saner) man would have given up on them. He falls for Julie, who's the daughter of one of the couples living on "his" land, and their relationship is bumpy, to say the least. Julie is a bit crazy, too, in a different way than Arthur. She has what we might categorize as Tourette's, with no internal filters to stop her from saying whatever's on her mind or doing whatever's on her mind. Arthur's behavior is the polar opposite of Julie's, as he keeps everything inside him. This provides the very odd climax of the book, at which their personalities have switched places, to a degree. Julie believes in nothing, while Arthur believes in everything, so when they're on a row boat, about to escape from their pasts, suddenly things are different for both of them. The final image of the book, a surreal summation of events in the book, becomes a comment on what men will do to change their lives. It's not a particularly happy ending, but it is a logical ending.

The one thing you must deal with as you commence reading the book is that, even with a fairly standard narrative, Forest writes oddly. Apparitions appear for no reason. The scene shifts quickly in the middle of a page with no narrative tags to show it. Julie and Arthur often appear to be saying simply what's on their minds and not actually talking to each other. Julie's frankness about nudity and sex is unusually disconcerting (not because she likes sex and being naked, but because of the way she's so aggressive about it, especially in public). There's a strange, detached tone to the book, so even when serious things are occurring, Forest presents it absurdly, making it difficult to penetrate the author's intent (if, indeed, he had any). It's a complex work that keeps the reader at arm's length, which makes it hard to love.

Tardi, however, is stunning. The strange world of Mornemont and its walls are fully realized, with astonishing detail that makes Arthur's desires even more concrete. The warren of homes and barriers along which Arthur runs provide a surreal backdrop for Arthur's fantasies, which Tardi simply places in the panels with no preamble, integrating the hallucinations so well into the "real" that they occasionally catch us off guard. It's a beautiful evocation of how Arthur sees the world. The stolid governmental world crashes against the private lives of the politicians, a theater of fluid sexuality and vice. At the end of the book, Tardi turns the tenants of Mornemont into costumed caricatures, medieval archetypes, and fools, who attack Arthur's home because they're tired of his lawsuit. Tardi pulls out all the stops, with the army moving in and the homeowners turning riotous and the two worlds crashing together. The absurdity of Forest's script is brought to amazing life, from Arthur's odd gatekeeper outfit to Julie's unabashed sexuality - at one point she sucks her thumb, and it's a creepily erotic sight. It's a tremendous work of art, heightening the weirdness of the narrative very well.

I would recommend You Are There because it's a thoughtful look at the pressure of conformity and what drives a man mad. But it is a difficult comic, because Forest isn't interested in making too much sense, even though it's fairly easy to figure out "what happens." Tardi is fantastic and makes the book even wackier, which isn't a bad thing. I have to warn you about it, but it's definitely worth a look.

If you’re a gadget-lover fed up of filling your home with ice white this and brushed aluminum that, then check out this selection of totally stylin’ items offering a design blast from the past.

Retro, vintage, old school or just classic, whatever your interpretation, we’ve dug out ten gadgets that boast classic good looks as well as bang-up-to-date functionality.

Olympus’ Pen E-P1 is chock full of digital goodness in a design that harks back to the SLR glory days and the original Pen’s release back in 1959, which made a big impact on the camera market with its small dimensions. With a 12-megapixel sensor and capable of capturing movies at 720p, the modern micro four thirds snapper offers digital SLR-standard pics in a more compact format with those vintage looks that are good enough to lick.

Cost: $799.99

Science and Sons’ Phonofone II is a wickedly old-fashioned iPod speaker, or in the words of its creator “audio console.” Using no power, the gramophone-styled device utilizes passive amplification and cunning acoustics to boost the audio output of standard earphones to around 55 decibels. With an entirely ceramic construction, it’s as much sculpture as it is speaker.

Cost:: Currently 240 euros – around $330

So far only released in Korea, LG thrilled fans of retro style when it revealed a classic CRT television, complete with bunny ears aerial and channel-changing knobs. The 14-inch set stands on chrome legs and if you’re doing the back-in-time trip all the way, can display in black and white or sepia. Despite its vintage appearance it offers a digital tuner and does come with a remote control for when you get bored of fiddling with the knobs.

Cost: Sadly N/A

A professional USB mic, the Snowball from Blue Microphones claims to offer plug’n'play ease of use with both Macs and PCs but the power to capture anything from the softest vocals to the loudest garage band. Angled as ideal for podcasting, the vintage appearance of this modern peripheral may serve to remind users of the rich heritage of broadcasting and inspire them to podcast about more than the hilarious antics of their cat. That, and it will look wicked-cool on your desk.

Cost: $99.95

Available in black, white, red and an outrageously retro avocado green, say goodbye to fiddly modern earbuds with these totally cool cans from Panasonic. The Panasonic Old School Monitor Stereo Headphones, to give them their full title, offer leather-cushioned listening comfort you can only dream of if you’re used to in-ear audio efforts and look so darn cool you’ll be tempted to wear them out — even when you’re not listening to music.

Cost:: $59.99

Sure, headsets are all well and good but there’s no romance in looking like a call center phone operator. The P*PHONE from Hulger will give you the satisfying feel of a proper chunky handset in your hot little paw and turn a VoIP call into a conversation. Available in white, black, red and green, the P*PHONE is offered on its own for $50 and with a cool desktop base for $99. As well as working with certain mobiles (and certain others with adaptors) the P*PHONE offers easy USB hook-up to a PC.

Cost:: From $50

Back in the olden days folks would create real-life music “tapes” with playlists recorded on to them to either share with a friend or loved one or enjoy themselves (“Best Driving Songs Ever”, “My Breaking Up With Dave Tape”, etc). Help make sure the art of the mixtape is not lost with this USB effort that takes on the form of an old analog blank audio cassette tape (complete with sleeve that you can scrawl the track list on) but with a brand spanking new USB flash drive nestled in the middle.

Cost:: $15.99

Mathletes with a penchant for the past will enjoy this retro calculator’s baby blue looks and oversize dimensions. Whether you’re totting up the cost of your new flared jeans, or calculating how much cheese you’ll need to melt to make the perfect fondue, your numerical queries will be solved in Seventies style.

Cost:: Approx $23

You’d be forgiven for mistaking this for a vintage deck, but in fact it offers more modern tech than many music systems. Sure, there’s the option to take your vinyl for a spin, but there’s also playback from SD memory cards and USB storage devices as well as from iPods and other MP3 players. In addition to normal playback this turntable can record your records to your computer, which means you won’t have to re-purchase all your vinyl to get it digitized, and it has an FM radio.

Cost:: $150

While the wider world gets hyped up about Sony’s Move and Microsoft’s Project Natal, sit back, relax and enjoy some 8-bit gaming with the Retro NES USB Controller from ThinkGeek, described as perfect for creating old school gaming nostalgia on your laptop. With a USB connection, it’s perfect for MAME and other emulators and is sooo much cooler than trying to save the princess using your keyboard.

Cost:: $29.99

Tags: gadgets, hulger, LG, Panasonic, retro

Filed under: SUV, Etc., Jeep, Toys/Games

Pinewood Derby Jeep deserves a merit badge of excellence originally appeared on Autoblog on Sat, 20 Mar 2010 09:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

This article has been published at RLSLOG.net - visit our site for full content.

Art Mahjongg is the latest incarnation of the classic chinese board game. Apart from a little luck the game requires strategic thinking from the players.

Description:
Need help finding the right game for taking a break? They love to combine clever and to think strategically?

Then ART MAHJONG is 2, the latest implementation of the ancien Chinese board game for the PC, just right for you! Design the game is provided according to your wishes – for a lot of variety! Choose from eight different stone structures, as well as many beautiful backgrounds with matching stone motifs. Available to you the traditional Chinese characters to images from the fields of marine, Middle Ages, flora and motifs from ancient Egypt.

They also want to keep your “gray matter” something on the go? Why not play one against the clock or choose a different difficult level. Be charmed by this popular classic games for all ages!

Release name: Art.Mahjong.2-ALiAS
Size: 20MB
Links: Homepage – NFO

Download: HOTFiLE

more at RLSLOG.net

Avec ses gros coups de tatanes dans la gueule, ses tatouages expression d’une insolente virilité et sa consommation encouragée d’alcools forts aux propriétés roboratives (© Kendy), Yakuza 3 s’adresse aux gamers présentant une forte concentration de testostérone. Qu’on se le dise : à désormais quarante ans, le dragon de Dojima, désormais retiré du monde, a toujours de beaux restes… et sait encore montrer les crocs.

Yakuza fait partie de ces séries bénéficiant d’une curieuse aura de sympathie, bien que, sous nos contrées, peu de personnes, finalement, y ont vraiment joué. La faute a une plate-forme exclusive, la PlayStation (2 puis 3) et, surtout, un univers et une accessibilité un peu à part. Difficile, en effet, d’apprécier les Yakuza sans s’y plonger corps et âme, et prendre le temps de lire les tonnes de dialogues qui emmaillent chaque opus. À cet égard, le fait que Yakuza 2 n’ait pas été traduit en français — tout comme ce troisième épisode, qui ne propose que des sous-titres anglais — n’a évidemment pas arrangé les choses… Quoi qu’il en soit, on appréciera particulièrement, ici, la possibilité de regarder les résumés vidéo des deux premiers volets, véritables petits films de 15-20 minutes commentés par la voix chaude de Takaya Kuroda (Kiryu dans le jeu). Une manière pour certains de se rafraîchir la mémoire, et pour les autres de découvrir des scénarios (tordus) suintant l’énergie et la passion, entre trahisons, combats à mort et improbables coups de théâtre. Notons qu’à l’écrivain Hase Seishu, scénariste des deux premiers opus — et de l’épisode Kenzan — succède Masayoshi Yokoyama, un illustre inconnu qui a su heureusement respecter à la lettre l’esprit Ryû ga Gotoku, à quelques mièvreries près. L’indéboulonnable Toshihiro Nagoshi (qui a oeuvré notamment sur les Super Monkey Ball… et Shenmue !) reste le maître d’oeuvre, et partage avec Hideo Kojima, un vieux compagnon de troquet (véridique), un amour certain pour les cinématiques à rallonge, ici plus que jamais présentes.

Difficile, pour un fan de la première heure, de ne pas être immédiatement emballé par Yakuza 3. Enfin, la qualité de réalisation —certes imparfaite sur certains points — permet de faire honneur au sens du détail qui caractérise la série. Quant aux cinématiques, elles transcendent un character design d’une qualité et d’une variété étonnante, soutenu par des visages désormais presque photoréalistes. Le bonheur. À l’image d’un Kazuma Kiryu désormais retiré du monde et cherchant avant tout la paix, le début du jeu vous invite à découvrir l’île d’Okinawa, son temps superbe, ses touristes en chemises à fleurs… Une atmosphère idyllique entachée par une conspiration politico-mafieuse dont on conçoit peu à peu l’ampleur, tandis que l’on devine, évidemment, que la retraite de l’ex 4ème chef du clan Tôjô, qui administre désormais un orphelinat, ne peut être que de courte durée. Une parenthèse d’une dizaine d’heures avant l’inévitable retour à Kamurocho qui, toutefois, permet de se faire la main, et découvrir à peu près tous les aspects du titre entre mini-jeux (on va y revenir), intérieurs de magasins modélisés avec un soin maniaque, ambiance de foule plus vraie que nature (on regrette juste une atmosphère sonore un peu en deçà) et, il faut bien le dire, missions diverses pas toujours follement intéressantes. Entre livraisons de nouilles, recherche de gamine égarée, cache-cache et transport de glaces à six boules, on n’a en effet pas toujours franchement l’impression d’incarner le yakuza le plus classe du monde. Les petites frappes que vous croisez sans cesse et qui ne manquent jamais de vous provoquer — les inconscients — sont heureusement là pour arranger ça…

Coeur du gameplay, les combats dans Yakuza 3 se révèlent, sans surprise, d’une richesse ahurissante. Comme dans les précédents opus, c’est en gagnant des points d’expérience que vous pourrez améliorer certains de vos talents, et étendre votre palette de coups. Projections, esquives, contres, rétablissement sur chute, garde… Les possibilités offertes permettent de développer son propre art du combat, tandis que l’on privilégiera plutôt telle ou telle capacité (résistance, vitesse…), le tout en ayant la possibilité, évidemment, d’utiliser diverses armes blanches ou de poing, ces dernières étant de surcroît customisables. Surtout, le dynamisme des combats et la possibilité sans cesse renouvelée de découvrir de nouveaux finishing moves — différents en fonction de l’environnement immédiat, du type d’armes ou d’objets utilisés, de la partie du corps que vous attrapez, etc. — font qu’au final, chaque nouvelle échauffourée peut se révéler différente de la précédente. Évidemment, pour cela, il faut creuser au maximum le “fighting system”, comme dirait Van Damme, mais tous ceux qui se donneront cette peine prendront un pied monstrueux, vraiment, à démonter yak’ et wesh-wesh à tous les coins de rue. Cadeau Bonux : désormais, avec son téléphone portable, Kazuma peut “saisir” une scène qui l’interpelle dans la rue (première “révélation” : une petite vieille qui percute une voiture en scooter et fait un soleil…), et s’en inspirer pour mettre au point un coup spécial, le tout étant ensuite relaté, de façon assez drôle, sur un blog imaginaire ! Un principe complètement con… et absolument réjouissant.

On trouve de tout dans Yakuza 3 : des bars et des restaurants à écumer, des salles clandestines proposant des jeux de cartes ou de dès exotiques (chô-han, koi-koi, oicho-kabu…), des tournois d’Ultimate Fighting underground, des courses-poursuites, des clés de consignes disséminées ici et là qui permettent de récupérer différents objets, du bowling, du golf, des jeux de fléchettes, des sessions de pêche à la ligne… Pas mal de choses déjà visibles dans les précédents épisodes, mais que l’on retrouve avec toujours autant de plaisir et qui bénéficient évidemment ici d’un soin particulier. Il faudra notamment gérer particulièrement bien les sticks analogiques pour certaines épreuves, comme le billard ou les fléchettes, qui réclament de la concentration et une vraie précision (ce qui en énervera plus d’un). On ne soulignera évidemment jamais assez à quel point Yakuza 3, à l’image là encore de ses illustres prédécesseurs, ne se prend pas au sérieux et s’autorise une constante autodérision. Tout est dans le détail : ennemi qui vous attaque avec un énorme thon congelé, finishing moves à la violence totalement démesurée, séances de karaoké durant lesquelles Kiryu aligne les paroles niaises et chante comme une casserole, salary man qui vous défie à un concours de biture et roule sous la table… L’ambiance légère du jeu, qui contraste sainement avec l’atmosphère plus sérieuse des cinématiques, fait que l’on parcourt le jeu avec un plaisir toujours renouvelé.

Sujet (évident) de discorde, “l’ablation” avérée des versions américaine et européenne du jeu, qui se voient amputées de la séquence des bars à hôtesses, notamment, a donné à certains gamers l’envie de couper la dernière phalange du petit doigt des responsables de cette décision a priori aberrante. Et fait naître des velléités de boycott. Bien que je n’excuse en aucun cas ce genre de procédés, il convient toutefois de ranger les canifs. Ne plus avoir l’occasion de draguer à loisir quantité de jeunes femmes aux coiffures improbables, trop heureuses de faire suer votre carte bleue, n’a finalement rien de dramatique. Surtout qu’il est toujours possible d’en rencontrer quelques-unes au hasard, dans la rue (et de profiter d’elles pour commander en une fois toute la carte d’un resto histoire d’accumuler les points d’expérience !). De plus, dans un effort louable, la version “premium” du jeu proposée en Europe contient différents bonus, entre B.O. d’une trentaine de titres, tableau “interactif” détaillé des relations entre personnages (dont on retrouve l’équivalent dans les menus du jeu) et DLC gratuitement téléchargeables (malheureusement très axés baston, et pas forcément inoubliables). Bref, un titre d’une richesse absolue, quoi qu’il en soit, et à la durée de vie impressionnante, de toute façon incontournable pour tous les amoureux de la série. Ceux-là pardonneront aisément les quelques dérives d’un titre ancré dans des mécanismes certes un peu old school, et apprécieront pleinement ce que Yakuza 3 sait proposer de mieux : une fantastique aventure humaine.

On peut reprocher à Yakuza 3 certaines choses : une maniabilité parfois un peu raide, une difficulté évidente à innover d’un épisode à l’autre, une durée de vie artificiellement augmentée par des missions pas toujours passionnantes, une atmosphère curieusement gnangnan sur toute la partie qui se déroule à Okinawa… Et pourtant, la magie, cette fois encore, fonctionne. Bénéficiant d’heures de cinématiques superbes, impressionnant de possibilités, et proposant un système de combat riche et soigné, ce nouvel opus ne peut être qu’accueilli à bras ouverts par les amoureux du Japon en général, et les habitués de la série en particulier. Quant aux quelques éléments malheureusement absents de cette version occidentale — le résultat de coûts de localisation trop élevés, dit-on officiellement chez Sega — il serait dommage qu’ils fassent oublier à certains la qualité globale du jeu, qui n’a, dans le fond, rien perdu de sa superbe.

Gameblog.fr est LE site internet de jeux vidéo français du moment, totalement incontournable et surtout indispensable. Accompagné de commentaires pertinents, et surtout poilants, vous y retrouverez toute l’actualité Jeux vidéo, les derniers tests en avant première, des reportages exclusifs, des interviews, des émissions vidéos, des chroniques, de superbes Podcast... Bref, le nirvana du Jeux Vidéo a la française!

Seine neueste Erzählung Deutschland macht dicht pflanzte Dietmar Dath nach Frankfurt am Main, wo sich im Schatten der glitzernden Bürotürme ein junger Abiturient in einer Anti-Coming-of-Age-Geschichte erst nicht so Recht verlieben und dann mit Recht aus dieser überhaupt nicht jugendlichen Not heraus, gemeinsam mit Rosalie Vollfenster, was für ein Name, nicht mehr und nicht weniger als das gesamte Land retten will.
Deutschland macht dicht ist geschrieben von Dath und reichlich illustriert von Piwi. Ab Montag, den 22. März, steht das Werk im Buchhandel. Das erste Kapitel schon heute vorab und exklusiv bei uns.

1. Schöner Junge

In der hübschen, aber viel zu teuren deutschen Stadt Frankfurt am Main lebte ein junger Mann. Wer ihn anschaute, fand ihn schön: schwarzhaarig, mit Augen voll Seele, nicht zu scharfen, keineswegs aber weichen Gesichtszügen, ein bißchen muskulös, ein bißchen traurig, ein bißchen schlampig. Er trug sich mit heftigen Absichten und war auf genau die richtige Art und Weise frech. Viel redete er nicht. Aber was er sagte, das saß.
Die aus eigener Schuld Dummen und Elenden hatten Angst vor ihm. Von denen gab es viele.
Manchmal stieß er in der U- oder S-Bahn gegen ferngesteuerte Bankidioten, die sich auf albernen Metallrollern zwischen den Menschenströmen in langen Trippel- und kurzen Gleitphasen fortbewegten. Dann maß er sie von oben bis unten und sagte, nicht laut, aber deutlich, den Satz: „Du gehörst beseitigt.“
Im Rieseneinkaufszentrum „My Zeil“ wollte er einmal eine von aufgetakelten Lebedamen blockierte Furt zwischen zwei Parfümtheken passieren. Sie gaben ihm den Weg nicht frei. Da hob er beide Arme und sprach: „Laß mich durch, ich muß Geschenke für tolle Frauen kaufen, ihr wißt ja, wie das ist, seid ja auch tolle Frauen!“
Die Lebedamen lachten und verliebten sich. Er durfte durch.

Der schöne Junge besuchte das vernünftigste Gymnasium der Stadt. An Dienstagvormittagen fragte ihn dort manchmal seine Mathematiklehrerin, warum er montags nicht zum Unterricht erschienen war. Er guckte jedesmal traurig, wenn er ihr, mit leichten Variationen im Wortlaut, dann erklärte: „Wissen Sie, das ist so: Leider war ich tot. Kommt vom Feiern.“ Sie sah es ein; er galt stets als entschuldigt. Diese Art Überzeugungskraft war es, die dem schönen Jungen bei allen, die ihn kannten, Respekt verschaffte.
Unter der Woche stand er abends mit seinen älteren Rocker-Brüdern und deren türkischen HipHop-Kumpels gewöhnlich an der Galluswarte herum. Wenn er dort die zermürbten Redakteure der Erhabenen Zeitung sah, die eben ihren Arbeitsplatz verlassen hatten, um zu Frau und Kind zu fahren, rief er ihnen hinterher, während sie in die Pendelzüge stiegen: „Hey Süßer! Den ganzen Tag mitschreiben macht fett und verrückt!“

Oft sah ihm Jesus Christus aus der Deckung dabei zu.
Jesus Christus hatte ein Hobby: Er interessierte sich aus Liebe zum Nochniedagewesenen stets für die bestmöglichen Menschen. So stand der Heiland mitunter am Wasserhäuschen oder oben am Gleis, auch mal unauffällig neben der Litfaßsäule, und spähte nach dem schönen Jungen.
Man erkannte den Erlöser selten; Jesus Christus trug zu dieser Zeit einen langen Mantel, schwarze Jeans, mal ein T-Shirt, mal ein Hemd, immer feste Stiefel und einen schwarzen Cowboyhut. Als er den schönen Jungen nach Wochen und Monaten der eingehenden Beobachtung schließlich gut genug kannte, um sich über dessen Witze nicht mehr zu wundern, beschloß er, für einige Zeit aus dieser Geschichte zu verschwinden, denn es gab vor seiner Rückkehr einiges zu erledigen.

Der schöne Junge hieß Hendrik.
Seine Familie hatte nicht viel Geld, da sich sein Vater, ein bedeutender Professor, zu viele Kinder gewünscht und Hendriks Mutter die ungeschickterweise sogar gekriegt hatte.
Weil aber Hendrik der klügste und jüngste von vier Brüdern war und sein Vater als bedeutender Professor wenigstens einen Nachkommen haben wollte, der ihm keine Schande machte, durfte Hendrik das vernünftigste Gymnasium der Stadt besuchen.
Dort war er mit zwei Mädchen gut bekannt. Sie hießen Rosalie und Clea.

Rosalie Vollfenster schaute zwischen langen glatten dunklen Haaren kritisch in die Welt und war furchtbar gescheit. Ihr Vater litt an keiner Armut, sondern war einer der Herausgeber der Erhabenen Zeitung. Clea Pinguin (den Nachnamen sprach man französisch aus: „Pängwäh“) brachte bei Unruhe die blonden Strähnen zum Wippen und war arg eingebildet. Ihre Mutter hatte sogar noch mehr Geld als Vater Vollfenster, weil sie als junge Frau vor lauter Schönheit von einem Glück ins andere gestolpert war.
Rosalie Vollfenster und Clea Pinguin hatten eines gemeinsam: Sie hätten beide gern was mit Hendrik angefangen. Hendrik, der sonst alles wußte, was er wissen wollte, hatte aus gut versteckter Tapsigkeit leider keine Ahnung, was er mit den beiden Mädchen anfangen sollte. So kam es, daß er keine Entscheidung zwischen ihnen traf. Die wäre ihm, wenn er einen guten Grund dafür gewußt hätte, eigentlich leichtgefallen: Clea fand er putzig, aber fade; Rosalie hatte er heimlich sehr lieb.
Die Heimlichkeit dieses Liebhabens war allerdings derart heimlich, daß er selbst fast gar nichts davon mitbekam. Der Groschen rollte und rollte, immer im Kreis herum, und wollte einfach nicht fallen.

Schließlich brachte ihn Rosalie, eher nebenbei als gezielt, zumindest auf eine Idee, was man mit Clea anfangen konnte. Aus dem, was dann geschah, ergab sich etwas, das er schließlich nicht mit Clea, sondern doch noch mit Rosalie anfing: die mehr oder weniger notwendige Rettung Deutschlands.
Davon soll hier erzählt werden.