Tuesday, February 28, 2006

Art advertisement


I would like to bring to your attention the art of my friends Katrine Mosegaard and Guenola Ricard. Katrine is studying at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, where she is expressing herself through sculpture, installation, video, drawings and photos. Guenola is occupied most of the time by her work at CMBI, but she practises her art in her sparetime, mainly painting with oil paint, acryl and pastels.

Both Katrine and Guenola have planned exhibitions in the near future. I will keep you posted!

Saturday, February 25, 2006

Spinning


I can count several nice advantages of spinning:
  1. While sweating your breakfast you can concentrate solely on the rythm and your performance, forgetting time and place. A bit like meditation.
  2. You can do spinning as substitute for running if you have injuries (e.g. shin splints) and get the same or better cardiac training.
  3. After an hour of spinning, followed by cooling down and streetching, you feel like you have left your old legs behind in exchange for a brand new pair.
  4. You really enjoy the shower afterwards when you have worked so hard to deserve it.
The worst part about spinnning is the wrinkled squishy fingers you get of holding on to the sweaty handle bars for so long. But I do not think it outweights the advantages. Just remember to bring a towel with you as well as sufficient water supplies.

Photo courtesy: http://fitnesscenter-windisch.ch/spinning/

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

Learning Dutch

This evening I visited Ingrid and Rinaldo as usual and after dinner I practised my Dutch pronounciation with Ingrid and Rinaldo as my strict and thorough teachers. The largest hurdle for me in learning Dutch is to speak it, form sentences on the fly and still pronounce them correctly. I have no problems reading; I read newspapers, comics and webpages, no problem. Listening and understanding spoken Dutch was very difficult at first, but now I find I am gaining momentum. Probably because my vocabulary is expanding from being mere children songs to more everyday words and phrases as I read them in Asterix and the newspaper.

Every now and then, when I have time, I also do some Dutch exercises on the web like LearnDutch.org

Sunday, February 19, 2006

Opt for diplomacy

Apparently, apologies have been made by the Danish newspaper which originally published the 12 cartoons of the prophet Muhammed (peace be upon him), but the riots continue. To the surrounding World, the religion of Islam does not appear to be a religion of peace when thousands of people, who declare themselves true muslims, respond to perceived insults with vandalism and deadly violence. However, the groups of violent protesting muslims constitute only a small fraction of the muslim community, and there is still hope that the majority of muslims will chose to employ the non-violent diplomatic options available and end this conflict peacefully.

It is depressing to learn that whole nations are blamed and innocent people come to grief as a result of the reactions to an admitted mistake. The time calls for diplomatic initiatives and cross-cultural understanding like the efforts of Muhammad Habash in Syria.

Saturday, February 18, 2006

Fernando Sorrentino

I recently discovered this excellent writer through a short film based on "There is a man in the habit of hitting me on the head with an umbrella". Now I have read quite a few of his stories on eastoftheweb.com and I find myself continuously amused. You can start your reading experience on Fernando Sorrentinos biography page.

Wednesday, February 15, 2006

Harvie Krumpet


If you ever feel like the world is hard on you, then remember Harvie Krumpet. If you are already a fan, you might want to visit the Harvie Krumpet website. I will put the DVD on my wishlist...

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Blogosphere

Today I learned a new word: Blogosphere. I found it in this article, which says that the Blogosphere is growing by one new blog per second!

And I am a part of this. Strange.

Saturday, February 11, 2006

Gallery back online

For some mysterious reason my gallery has been out of order since the start of January. Now you can find it online again at glyn.dk/gallery.

Rotterdam

Yesterday I visited Rotterdam for a scientific meeting with my group in molecular life science. The meeting took place in the Erasmus Medical Centre, a high ivory/white tower with a futuristic design. My first impression was that it looks like a collection of stacked ship cabins. The funny thing is, the inside has a similar design. In some corners of the building you could easily think you were lost in the starship Enterprise...

Photo courtesy: Vaxinostics

Monday, February 06, 2006

Escalating ignorance

In September, there were a few items in the Danish news discussing whether the depictions of Muhammed were actually so offensive that they obliged to a formal apology, but they did not really mean a lot to the Danes, so the discussion faded out. Personally I would never have given it a second thought, but now it seems that the crusade of the offended imams in the middle east to bring attention to the matter was extremely succesful. However, I did not understand how the original cartoon drawings in the newspaper could rouse such an angry mob, until I read that the flyers distributed about the cartoons showed not only the naïve Danish cartoons, but also three additional cartoons depicting Muhammed in a highly provoking and unflattering way.

I do hope that it will be possible for the muslims to see through the deception brought before them by the people who distributed those flyers. The Danish cartoons were as harmless as the many Mohammed depictions that went before them, but somewhere someone wanted to start an outrage, a clash of cultures and religions, and to our misfortune, they succeeded.

And as for the Danes and others: I am ashamed every time I see someone using the subject as an opportunity to air his/hers racist opinions. It does not serve anybody any good.

Personally, I agree with Jihad Momani: "The cartoons are silly, they do not deserve such an intense reaction."

Wednesday, February 01, 2006

After a weekend in London

We saw the Cirque du Soleil show and it was magnificent! I can fully recommend Alegría, and if you want to see it, treat yourself to some good seats so you do not miss out on anything. We had some seats in the side stalls and some in the second tier box and all nine of us had a great view of the show. The rest of the weekend we went sightseeing: Tower Bridge, Big Ben, Piccadilly, the Globe Theatre, Oxford Street, St. Pauls cathedral... We would have liked to go inside the Globe and the fun attraction London Dungeon, but the prices are quite above what I would feel comfortable paying. The Globe: 9 pounds. London Dungeon: 15! pounds. So we mostly enjoyed the sightseeing outside in the fresh London air.

Photo courtesy: dawnm.com