In two weeks time, the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) will release its 3rd World Happiness Report (to avoid any confusion, it won’t deal with happiness in the “Third World” as the developing countries were name in the past). Using a standard set of questionaires and socio-economic parameters, it will rank 156 countries in terms of higher or… (more…)
When we were kids, it was common habit to get a full body cleaning in the bathtub once a week. For a long time I could not understand why on earth this had to be done precisely on Saturday evening at around 6 p.m., just around the time when the most important TV program started: “The Flintstones“, brought to us cross… (more…)
Today I was ashamed to share my given name Michael with a french highly celebrated writer: Houellebecq. Since I was always distracted to read his books by the media-hype around him, I was curious today to learn something about him by reading an interview he recently gave to the french journalist Sylvain Bourmeau. After reading his stammering retraction rejection of… (more…)
This is the waning moon on December 19th. Because the telescope optics invertes everything, and because I was too lazy to invert it back with photoshop, it looks here like a waxing moon. Bookmark on Delicious Digg this post Recommend on Facebook share via Reddit Share with Stumblers Tweet about it Subscribe to the comments on this post
In the night between Monday and Tuesday, in the early morning hours, this years peak in the Leonides meteor shower will cross the earth orbit. It is expected that with a naked eye one will spot around 12 meteors per hour. Look out in Eastern direction. As the name suggests, the meteors seem to originate from the constellation Lion. In… (more…)
Creativity comes from the Freedom to Fail. This is how Peter Gabriel explains the phenomenon of Kate Bush. She entered the musical stage in the late 70s and gave popular music some of its greatest pieces of immortal art. It is for me impossible to find a category for Kates songs. She simply invented a new one: Lyrical, philosophic sounds on… (more…)
The native Americans introduced special names to each full moon of the year. The May full moon was called “Flower Moon” by them. Bookmark on Delicious Digg this post Recommend on Facebook share via Reddit Share with Stumblers Tweet about it Subscribe to the comments on this post
After several attempts to find a web-site that could help me to learn speaking Persian, without the husle of the arab characters, I think I found a possible detour today. It is based on two more or less solid connections, which allow me to bypass the abyss of the written Persian. I will use the Tadjik language, which is basically… (more…)
Day after day I press my ear down to the earth, trying to hear the sound of your blue slippers, while you walk alonge the pavements of Tehran. And I realized how endless can be four days, when you stay barefoot in your own little room. Cloudbusting (by Kate Bush) I still dream of Orgonon I wake up crying You’re… (more…)
If a Persian Cat could choose a car, no doubt it would opt for the one with the blue-white chess-board logo. The Bemweh (Persian for BMW, as I recently learned here) is for some reason highly estimated in present Iran. And this new, yet unreleased special edition of the Munich luxus car maker would most likely attract the persian cats… (more…)