Curious about numbers? Check this out! Browse trough the list to find out that:

• The percentage by which men are genetically identical to women is equal to that as men and women are to chimps
• 1 in 6 defibrilators is likely to be recalled within a year
• The US DoD owns land the size of North Korea
• In 2003, 150,000 people make a living exclusively by selling goods at eBay
• The US sent troops to 14 countries between 1900 and 1993 to establish democracy, while only 4 countries were democracies ten years after their withdrawal
• The most fuel-efficient 2003 Ford could drive a maximum of 36 miles per gallon, about one mile more than the 1912 Model T
• The fattiest McDonald’s salad contains 3 grams more fat than its fattiest burger
• And so on…

Unfortunately, the list ends at July 2004

PS. Not all numbers have listed sources, and could be wrong. Also, some pages turned out completely white, probably due to an error. You can still read what’s there by selecting and deselecting the white text at the page. The text is a normal black afterwards.

Ever got an error in Photoshop that sounded like “Could not complete Web Photo Gallery command because the file was locked”? I’m not sure whether my solution is repeatable, but in the end I at least was able to create a web gallery. I first tried to disable Norton Antivirus, as suggested in some forum, but that didn’t work. Then I used the Task Manager to close all instances of Explorer. This did the trick for me.

Here’s a movie on one of the most important political and social controversies of the 50’s, i.e. communism paranoia materialized in Senator McCarthy’s Red Scare. The movie focuses on the actions of CBS journalist Edward Murrow vs. Senator Joseph McCarthy. I expected the important subject, the six Oscar nominations, and the high grade on IMDB would mean a good movie. Unfortunately, the movie was rather boring. I’m not completely sure why, but here are some pointers:

• The movie almost only contains the following type of scenes: dialog, jazz music, tv broadcast. The lack of ‘action’ (not neccesarily of the guns and explosions type) makes this a pretty slow movie.
• I knew about the Red Scare, but not of the specific details of Murrow vs. McCarthy. Although this didn’t put me off too much, I guess the movie will do more for viewers who are well informed on both. 
• The main part of the story is told throught the TV broadcasts. There’s no real intriguing preparation shown of the tv broadcasts, not much detail with respect to the network boss vs. journalist controversy, nor much details on the impact on the personal lives of Edward Murrow and Fred Friendly. They are all there, but only touched superficially. Then again, it’s history, so maybe those things were boring in the first place.
• And don’t get me wrong. The TV broadcasts are intriguing, and so is the portrail of the idealistic view on presenting the news at CBS in the ’50s. I guess that in the end, however, the movie is more suitable for the History channel.

Verdict: 6/10

This weekend, I went sailing with Mira. Considering all the ‘bad weather’-forecasts, we actually had really really nice weather! A quite sunny Saturday, and a windy Sunday with only 1 thunderstorm… “In your face!” to all pussies that stayed home! I put some picture online at http://www.sybrendeelstra.nl/pictures

A half a year ago, I created a Google analytics account, as webstats4u started to automatically create pop-ups at my website. When studying the search engine keywords, I noticed people seem to think this website is about something completely different then it actually is. Apparently, people seem to think this website is either about cheating, sex, puking, while I can’t remember writing any post about any of those subjects. The most popular search terms at google analytics prove otherwise:

Cheating:

• “vreemdgaan op kantoor” (cheating at the office)
• “vreemdgaan en het universum” (cheating and the universe)
• “msn namen over vreemdgaan” (msn names about cheating)
• “vreemdgaan yo” (cheating yo)

Sex:

• “vunzige vrouwen” (dirty women)
• “ranzige msn namen” (dirty msn names)
• “emperor penguin genitals”
• “own made hompage with sex”
• “shampoo doe het met me” (shampoo take me)

Puking:

• “reasons why people puke”
• “puke movies”
• “sounds that make people puke”

Thanks to the fuzzy quotes page, the most popular search term, however, is “afstudeercadeau” (graduation gift).  Ah, hmm… considering the conversation printed there, I guess that term should also be listed under sex :-).

The suicide attempts in Delicatessen reminded me of an old, but very funny game called The Incredible Machine (TIM). The purpose of this game is to construct Rube Goldberg devices, i.e. exceedingly complex devices that perform simple tasks in very indirect and convoluted ways [wikipedia]:

How it works: Open window (A) and fly kite (B). String (C) lifts small door (D) allowing moths (E) to escape and eat red flannel shirt (F). As weight of shirt becomes less, shoe (G) steps on switch (H) which heats electric iron (I) and burns hole in pants (J). Smoke (K) enters hole in tree (L), smoking out opossum (M) which jumps into basket (N), pulling rope (O) and lifting cage (P), allowing woodpecker (Q) to chew wood from pencil (R), exposing lead. Emergency knife (S) is always handy in case opossum or the woodpecker gets sick and can’t work.

For real life examples, see the Honda commercial, or search for ‘the incredible machine’ or ‘rube goldberg’ at youtube.com. 

TIM was first released in 1993 for MS_DOS. The game simulated physical properties, interactions between objects, gravity, air pressure, and so on. You would get a number of parts, a playing field, and a goal. The parts could be anything; rockets, guns, cannons, rope, springs, magnifying glasses, balls, etc. In this screenshot, the playing field features two blimps, a torch, an igniter, and explosives, for example. The goal is to blow up these blimps by using the parts.

TIM can probably still be downloaded somewhere. Or try any of the look-a-likes and variants, such as Enigmo: “Enigmo 2 is a 3D puzzle game where you construct mechanisms to direct lasers, plasma, and water to toggle switches, deactivate force-fields, and eventually get them to their final destination”.

I’m a little behind with judging the movies I’ve seen, so here’s four at once. Comments contain spoilers.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest

As the second movie in the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, Dead Man’s Chest is quite similar to the first: it lacks a good story. The connection been scenes is confusing, as the movie provides no clue to the distance and time between scenes. Nevertheless, the huge number of action-packed scenes make you forget there are any other scenes at all, so the movie is fairly entertaining. Final verdict: 7 out of 10. 

Delicatessen

Like La Cité des Enfants Perdu - another movie by the same director - Delicatessen takes place in a surreal environment, where food has become scarce, and grain is a currency. To address their hunger, a butcher and the tenants of his appartment building resorted to cannibalism. To this purpose, the butcher hires handymen that are slaughtered and sold after they gained enough weight. Don’t expect the movie to address the ethics of cannibalism, or anything else, however. For it’s surreal humour, and The-Incredible-Machine-like suicide scenes, it deserves a full 7 out of 10.

The Constant Gardener

From the director of Cidade de Deus you would expect a good story. With The Constant Gardener, the compelling story is there, but the movie still sucks. In a nutshell, the story is as follows: Wife gets murdered, husband sets out to discover the truth behind the murder. On his way, he uncovers a government coverup of illigal tests of a harmful experimental drug on poor Africans. So far, so good. Unfortunately the movie screws up by throwing in an unrelated massacre and rape of a village, so-called romance that is nothing but annoying, a note from the killers that appears out of nowhere, and a totally illogical ending. While I can perfectly accept the murder of the main character, the place is totally wrong. He had no business in going to the place where his wife was murdered (it was a remote place, where he did not go to find clues), and the killers had no obvious way of knowing he was going there. Final verdict: 5 out of 7.

Superman Returns

I wouldn’t know why anybody would make a movie about me, let alone where I was supposed to return from. I watched it anyway, only to realize it wasn’t exactly about me afterall. Instead, it was about an out-of-this-world, no-master-in-disguise, comic superhero. As you can expect from the title, the story unfolds like a ’superhero returns’ story. In other words, Superman returns, and saves the world. Too bad this movie mainly focuses on the saving part, and hardly features any worthy ‘bad guy’ scenes. Also too bad that we get the start for a whole new line of ‘Son of Superhero’ movies, as an added bonus. For the fact that I didn’t get bored during the movie, though, it managed to get the 7 out of 10.

Being in Paris, we decided we had to take a look at the Mona Lisa in the Louvre. Why? Well, you have these must-see things in the world that must be seen for the sole reason of ‘everybody-goes-there’. So, with tired feet, but great expectations, we lined up together with the thousands of other tourists, only to discover yet another over-hyped object in the Universe.

I usually like art for their intrinsic quality, rather than liking it for the stories surrounding it. In other words, I would like a painting for it being pretty, and not for the fact that it is painted with the blood of 40 virigins and a tooth-pick. When I looked at the Mona Lisa, however, I couldn’t help thinking why on earth this painting was worth over hundred(s) of million dollars. I mean, it could be an advanced oil painting for its time, but to me Mona Lisa is a rather ordinary portrait of a woman, nothing special. (Computers from the last century were also somewhat advanced for their time, but you don’t see thousands of tourists staring at them for hours, do you?)

So, why do people like the Mona Lisa? It’s not like she is having at least one breast out like 75% of the other paintings in the Louvre, so there must other reasons why it is the most famous painting of the world. When you search a bit, several stories pop up. Some are about the aestethics of the painting, such as the use of sfumato. Others are about the history of the painting, such as, being one of the first portraits with an imaginary background, hanging in Napoleon’s bedroom, being stolen during the day in 1911, being doused in acid and thrown a rock at in 1956. Yet others are about the theories people have about the painting, such as that people interpret her smile differently due to our visual system, or what the meaning is of the lower horizon on the right (e.g. The Da Vinci Code).

But all these reasons are too normal… It is in peoples nature to like things that are controversial, so these can’t be it!It just MUST have to do something with sex, sex before marriage, abortion, homosexuality, transsexuality, or black magic. And yay for humanity, one such explanation exists!

“Dr. Lillian Schwartz of Bell Labs suggests that the Mona Lisa is actually a self-portrait. She supports this theory with the results of a digital analysis of the facial features of Leonardo’s face and that of the famous painting. When flipping a self-portrait drawing by Leonardo and then merging that with an image of the Mona Lisa using a computer, the features of the faces align perfectly. Claims were made that Leonardo was homosexual and thus wanted to paint himself as a woman” [www.wikipedia.org].

There you have it. The sole reason why people like La Joconde…

I had a nice reunion in Paris, with a couple of friends I met in Canada.  It was really great to see my friends after four years, it immediately felt like to ‘good-old-days’. We had a picnic, went to Versailles, Montmartre, Notre Dame, the Eiffel tower, the arrival of the Tour de France at the Champs-Elysees, the Louvre, Centre Pompidou, some bars, etc. To give an impression, I posted some pictures here. And if you wait a few days, I’ll tell you all about my opinion on the Mona Lisa…

Mozart, bad job composing this opera, mister. I’ll try to find a good performance to be able to really judge it, but the finale is a dead-on disappointment. And the ghost… not scary at all when you end the melody with that chord. I’m absolutely stunned to read that this opera is “widely regarded as one of the greatest pieces of music ever composed“. Pff, I guess 98% of the people or not only stupid, but have an amount of taste that’s even lower than their IQ as well.

Why the hell this standing ovation? Come on! Just because you’re in the audience in the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam doesn’t mean you have to like it! It better be damn good if it’s played in there, and it wasn’t. Yugh, I even sat next to a couple who could stop saying “they are really good aren’t they?”. NO! PUT IN YOUR HAIRING AID OR GO HOME!

And then the vibrato… so much… endless… vibrato… Why oh why, always? “Did you listen to yourself on tape?”. Nothing but vibrato is ugly, annoying and ineffective. No wonder so many people hate opera…

Ok, granted… this evening had all the ingredients for a recipe of Boring: (1) the performance in the Concertgebouw sucked, (2) I didn’t know the story, (3) the booklet only featured the summary of the opera, (4) I don’t understand a single word of Italian, which made this evening like watching a film without its sound when the only thing you have seen is the trailer (5) I generally dislike opera, and (6) I generally dislike Mozart (as his music is Boring, with a notable exception being his Requiem). Shake it, stir it, and you’re left with a nothing but frustration. Good thing we went for drinks afterwards…