thursday night when cycling home from the north i spotted this sign on a lamp pole at the beginning of Ferdinad Bol straat close to where i live:

area secured by DNA-SPRAY – the police

i am not even sure how many things are wrong with this sign, but here are a few that went through my head after i had taken this photo:

1. how the fuck to you secure an area with a (DNA) spray? does it randomly spray something on people that are deemed to be a threat to security? or do they mix something into the air that
   makes people behave more securely?
2. who’s DNA is it that is in they use for this spray? isn’t your DNA private? how come the cops have someone’s DNA to spray around with?
3. if this is where the DNA spray area starts, where does it end? so far i have not seen any signs that mark the end of the secured area. what if i am not interested in their security and their DNA how can i cycle around the area then?
4. and most importantly, who the fuck has asked for this? i for one do not want no DNA spray on my daily cycle route to work which as far as i can judge was plenty ’secure’ even before they started messing with this. and why was there no public discussion of some sorts about this?

after a bit of googling it turns out that the signs are a rather blatant lie. apparently the police and the borough have decided to install spray installations in a few stores that can be used to mark robbers with some kind of substance that is encoded with a unique id of the store. apparently this substance is really hard to get of your body and can be made visible with UV light for a long while. Pretending that this scheme somehow secures ‘the area’ is as much bullshit as calling a spray with an embedded ID ‘DNA spray’. Rather pathetic that the cops get away with this kind of bullshit….

Technorati Tags: amsterdam, bicyle, cycling, democracy, netherlands, security, senseless, urban

back in december when walking through damascus i ran into this mountain bike rigged up with small combustion engine:

mountain bike fitted with a combustion engine on Khalid ibn al-Walid street in central Damascus [photo taken from a different perspective here]

if you ask me this is quite a marvel of engineering and although i never spotted a second one during the 3 days that i spend in damascus i am pretty certain that this is not a unique modification but rather one of many that are produced in some back alley workshop. if anyone has seen more of these or has additional information about these please do let me know…

Technorati Tags: bicyle, syria, traffic, urban

it seems that Beirut International Airport has a refreshingly evidence-based approach to flight security. When standing in line for the second security checkpoint (the one between the duty free area and the actual boarding gates) the security guards produced a half liter metal can from the backpack of the passenger two persons ahead in our line. When he failed to get the lid open with his hands, the teenager directly in front of us handed the security guard a pair of scissors, which he used to open the the can, which turned out to contain black powder (the owner stated that it was paint).

Next the security guard used the tip of the scissors to spoon a small amount of the back powder out of the can, produced a lighter and tried to set the small amount of black powder on fire, which did not result in anything and so the security guard pours a larger amount of the powder on an steel table and tries to light it again which still does not result in an explosion of any kind.

Subsequently, the text on the can is studied some more, the lid it put back on it and the can is returned to its owner (and the scissors to the teenager who had been impatiently waiting all along):

Turned out that the guy with the can of paint was actually traveling on our flight to istanbul and while i was sleeping for most of that flight i certainly did not notice any explosions there either.

[p.s: this is the same checkpoint where, back in 2006 instead of confiscating my beloved multitool they put it in a plastic bag, asked me to write my name and gave it back to me requesting to hand it over to the flight creq for the durcation of the flight.]

Technorati Tags: airtravel, beirut, lebanon, security, terrorism

speaking about changing my mind: i completely agree with this article about the state of affairs in italy by british journalist Martin Kettle. The thing that made him change his mind?

John Hooper’s report from Coccaglio near Brescia brought together much of what is wrong with modern Italy in one seasonal package, all perfectly presented in extravagant wrapping paper and tied up with a great bow in the way that only Italians can manage. Christmas in Coccaglio, Hooper reports, is being marked by a house-to-house search for illegal (ie black) immigrants. The search, which is sponsored by the local Northern League-controlled council, has officially been dubbed Operation White Christmas and finishes, ho ho ho, on 25 December. One Coccaglio councillor has said Christmas is a feast of Christian identity, not a celebration of hospitality. The whole crackdown has been complimented and backed by Silvio Berlusconi’s government.

Technorati Tags: italy, racism, xmas

about the Noord Zuid Lijn: i really think that instead of finishing of the line and having subway trains running somewhen past 2015 they should just finish the tunnel and then turn it into a super deluxe underground bicycle express-path. Such a tune would dramatically cut down the time needed to get to the center, prevent you from rain and would probably be used by more locals on a daily basis than a subway ever will. the thing needs to have lots of smooth on- and off-ramps that connect it to the cross streets and of course tourists need to be prevented from using it.

north south line tunnel under the sixhaven by Mauritsvink

Technorati Tags: amsterdam, architecture, bicyle, cycling, future, metro, publictransport, urban

so there is this theory that while technology progresses to produce ever more intelligent technology most of humankind are actually loosing intellectual and cognitive capacities as a result of their dependence on these technologies. The obvious example of this is the proliferation of GPS navigation devices that has resulted in most people loosing even the most basic navigation skills (like finding the way to the next coffee-shop).

The 2009 end of the year zeitgeist that has just been published by Google contains even more proof for the inverse relation between technology and cognitive capabilities. Lets take a look at the 10 most popular search terms for the netherlands:

eight of these are the names of websites without their respective top level domain endings. Guess this means that the majority of the dutch internet population is either too stupid to remember TLDs or to lazy to type them into the browser bar. Both explanations do not necessarily shine a good light on the cognitive capacity of those using google.nl.

Even more worrisome is the fifth most popular search term (’google‘). not sure how to interpret this (extremely bad short term memory? boredom that results in the urge to get lost in endless feedback loops? …?). The third most popular search term (’online’) seems to fall in almost the same category. apparently people are not realizing that they are online when they have access to google. And in case you are done finding you favorite website whose URL you cannot remember you can always talk about the weather (#6).

Technorati Tags: entertainment, netherlands, senseless, stupid

spend yesterday afternoon at the paris photo exhibition/fair in the über-horrible carrousel du louvre in paris. the whole thing did not really live up to the hype (and the long queues) but fortunately there was one photo that made it worth having ventured into the belly of the cultural-industrial beast:

‘un poco de historia, la havanna, mayo 1971′ by José A. Figueora.

Bonus: services provided by Dr. Paul of Sese Island, East Afirica

Technorati Tags: art, exhibition, havana, photos, urban

so the opening evening of IDFA 2009 was a bit of a disappointment (if you do not count new insights regarding the size of mice living in Tuschinski and the esthetic co-dependancies between skimpy dresses and high heels). For some rather dubious reason (must be the general obsession with the fact that the berlin wall came down 20 years ago) ‘War Games And The Man Who Stopped Them‘ was chosen as an opening film.

This turned out an really self congratulatory cold-war warrior biopic about a polish colonel who (with a little help from his friends at the CIA) claimed to have more or less singlehandedly brought the entire Warsaw pact to it’s knees. If we are to believe the movie he did this by providing the CIA with over 40.000 documents detailing russian strategy for attacking western europe. Conveniently not a single of these 40.000 documents was shown during the course of this ‘documentary’.

Instead we got to see lots of former CIA agents saying nice things about the CIA and the polish colonel, and lots of former Warsaw pact military and intelligence officials saying nice things about the Warsaw pact and not so nice things about the polish colonel. As far as the sources are concerned i can hardly imagine less selection than relying exclusively on (ex)intelligence officers.

Throw in lots of shots of the widow of the polish colonel browsing through photographs of the polish colonel when he was looking good being young-and-in-uniform plus lots of unrelated shots of sail boats and you have a perfectly meaningless film.

if this is not bad enough, i would not be surprised if the entire film was commissioned by the CIA. If i was part of their public relations department this kind of cold-war-porn would be very welcome in order to distract from the fact that since they have brought down the wall (with the help of the polish colonel) the CIA has mainly been busy using these newly freed countries to run torture prisons in upscale horseback riding schools.

Technorati Tags: cinema, propaganda, war

in november 2007 i added the following entry to the ‘meanwhile at the borders…‘ page on noborder.org:

29.Oct.07: the bodies of 12 migrants were pulled from the water at a beach near the city of Syracuse on Sicilys eastern coast. Seven survivors were found on shore and two others were considered missing. (Update: by 6 november 4 additional bodies had been found bringing the total dead count to 16 (source: reuters AlertNet)

this month i spend a week of vacation on that same eastern east cost of Sicily and one day, while going for a swim (just north or Marzamemi, which is 45 minutes by car south of Syracuse), we ran into this sign:

the sign reads: ‘At this place in Contrada Cittadella on the tragic night between October 27th and 28th 2007, a rubber dinghy in which 37 Palestinian and Egyptian refugees who were being transferred from a larger ship by unscrupulous people traffickers had set off from a harbor in Egypt , capsized in a furious sea in its attempt to reach Europe claiming 16 victims. We remember the Egyptians: KHALED ABD ELHAMID MOHAMED ABD ELAZIZ (*04.05.1985), TAREK ABD EL GHANY MOHAMED ATTIA (* 01.02.1983), IHAB MOHAMED TAHA ABD EL AZIZ ELESAWY (* 08.11.1978), MOHAMED TOLBA ABD ELMOTAI AB ABD ELRAHEM (* 19.09.1988), ESAM MOHAMED ABDEL SADEK (* 05.12.1977), MOHAMED EID RAMDAN (* 08.08.1989), AHMED RAMADAN NEMR RAGAB (* 08.04.1985), EID MOHAMAD SHABAN (* 01.06.1970), IBRAHIM AHMAD SHABAN (* 06.07.1972), ALI AHMED SHABAN (* 10.11.1987) ELSAYED SAAD ALI (* 03.01.1970), REDA ALI ELSAYED (* 05.12.1979) and four unknown Palestinians. We mourn them as well as the thousands of other human lives list since 1992 as a result of the closure of the European continent to those people forced to flee their country’.

Unfortunately the sign does not provide any clues with regard to who actually put it up (and thus who it is who is mourning these deaths) which would be interesting to know.

Shipping disasters involving undocumented migrants trying to reach Europe are relatively commons on this particular stretch of the Sicilian coast. The most deadly of these took place on christmas eve 1996 off the coast of Portopalo di Capo Passero which is situated 12 kilometers to the south of this particular spot. Interestingly there is no memorial for the almost 300 migrants who lost their life when the fishing boat that was supposed to bring them to shore collided with the cargo ship that had brought them from Greece (unless you are willing to count the Stella Maris statue off one of the small beaches as a tribute to those unfortunate souls).

Technorati Tags: africa, border, dead people, europe, migration

just came across this brilliant foto while reorganizing my photo folder (i am locked away in a museum basement without any form of internet access: no wireless & no mobile phone reception):

i took this at a stall selling bootleg CDs at the Kwakoe Festival in Amsterdam southeast in the summer of 2006. To me it perfectly captures the essence of the revolution caused by napster when it launched 10 years ago (give or take a couple of weeks): If your work is not available on napster is is probably not good either. accept to be copied or become irrelevant.

given that this has been going on it is stonishing how few people seem to have understood that this basic shift in how we relate to cultural goods has already happend….

Technorati Tags: copyright, ipr, music, piracy