Ms. Eloise Hawking

Another brilliant episode of Lost this week, almost touching the greatness of The Constant. Fortunately, we haven't seen the Oceanic 6 at all, as the plot was entirely focused on two of my most loved characters, Daniel Faraday and Desmond Hume. Faraday was sent in the last time jump to the 1950's and it seems he actually met his mother, an Other. What is the most amazing about this TV show is the consistency, running for five seasons, with characters written off, others given more screen time, there is not a single contradictory element and the viewer feels like assembling a gigantic puzzle! Well done, indeed.
PS. Desmond, oh Desmond... so stylish, the colour combination is lovely...

Cândido Godói

Pretty mysterious.

The Camp is not gone

It hasn't been built yet. The fifth season of one of the best TV series is back. The first two episodes of LOST were broadcasted on Wednesday and they were amazing, mainly the first one. When Ben moved the island in the last episode of the fourth season, I kept wondering what has happened to the people on it and well, now we know. They are continuously tortured by time jumps similar to a music from a broken record, as my favourite character Daniel Faraday said. During one of these jumps, Daniel talks to his constant, Desmond Hume, who is still in charge of the Hatch!

Daniel tells him to go to Oxford to see his mother. In the LOST universe, she may as well be Ms. Hawking, who was seen in the second part talking to Ben and giving him 70 hours to fix the mess.

Yes, You Should

Yeah, things sure will be different...

Entropa

by David Černý. More here, including the clarification pdf.

UPDATE: It all turned out to be a big joke. Nevertheless, I still like the Polish design a lot, Catholic priests raising a gay flag? Priceless.

Snail

I don't like shopping for food on Saturday mornings. The store is always full of people, which is kind of annoying. Yesterday, I wanted to get my fruits and vegetables for the weekend there but, probably due to the heavy snow, I found the shelves almost empty. Today, waiting in the long queue in the cosmetics aisle, I have spotted a box with a nice picture of a garden snail, saying: crema facial con extractos de caracol. I found it ridiculously disgusting and funny at the same time.

Snow in Cantoblanco

Incredible! Photos courtesy of Marta de 317.

The FORWARD directive

Romper el cristal para acceder al martillo rompecristales. Who are the brains behind this gem?

El golpe más fantástico

DH S05E11

The pulse and a facial hair. Hilarious.

Bird nest

Stephen Sackur discussed with other four BBC correspondents what was ahead for us in the coming year. He predicts a big theme for 2009: the era of hubris is over, a new age of humility and realism is upon us. As an example, he uses the 900-meter tall skyscraper in Dubai, hoping that nobody will care about this monster anymore and the abandoned tower will serve as a nest for the desert birds.
Me too.
An extreme, neo-luddite view on the same thing:
In the world I see - you are stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You'll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You'll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Tower. And when you look down, you'll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying strips of venison on the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighway. Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club.

Janáček

Sinfonietta (V. Andante con moto)

Genial

I need milk only for my coffee. Only on the weekends. That means pouring about half a liter down the drain as that's the amount that is usually left. Fortunately, there are some sweet minds and functional brains at the Asturiana dairy. This 4x500 mL package made my day.

Dr. Aue is not my friend

but he is one of the most fascinating characters I have ever encountered. When Jonathan Littell published his "Les Bienveillantes/The Kindly Ones" in 2006, the book became a literary sensation, promptly awarded the Goncourt prize. The novel follows the raise of Dr. Max Aue to a respected SS-officer, travelling with him through the Ukrainian marshes, actively participating in the early steps of the infamous Endlösung, reaching the Caucasus where involved in the "scientific" dispute whether the Bergjuden are indeed Jews or "just" Persians and where, because of his homosexuality, became an enemy of a local SS-leading officer and was sent to Stalingrad as a punishment. There, for the first time, witnessing the fall and deterioration of the Nazi dreams, being wounded and sent back to Berlin, where he meets Albert Speer and starts to be involved in his plan of running the concentration camps "more economically". For that, he visits Auschwitz, the underground Dora factory and other camps, he is in Budapest where the monstrous 1944 transports just started and finally, he spends the last weeks of the WWII in Berlin. What is the most striking about this book is that Max Aue is an educated man, very passionate about books, art and music, and yet, we follow him through these horrors of the XX. century as those were just reasons for a slight nausea that accompanies him through the novel, which is an over 900-pages thick trip to the darkest times of the mankind. For this strange contrast between this almost adorable, young, hansome and intelligent man and his indifferent actions, some reviews even accused Littell of writting a pornography of violence. I wish I were more familiar with the structure of the classic Greek tragedies, because the last two (almost cryptic) chapters were difficult for me to understand and I feel I will have to go back soon to re-read them.

Gaza

Mark Steel comments for the Independent. Nuff said.

Resolutions, f@$k them

I went to the lab today, to water my plants and to check the ones of my co-workers. Quite a light day, in fact. Before lunch, I went to swim as always and when I got there, I found the pool full of people. Wondering what's up I realized that it must have been the usual "New Year's resolutions" that I am witnessing repeatedly every first week of September and the first week of January. I won't see any of those guys there in two weeks, isn't this world really a funny place?
Anyway, today I have also accidentally found what they call "A dress code rules for the 4-H California Summer Camps". I thought they must have developed a time machine in the US and brought this piece of joke back from the XV. century. According to these rules, one can't wear a Speedo to the swimming pool! The only option are the clown pants. Crazy, crazy world. The Crisis not included.