in the early 90’s when i moved back to switzerland from california i noticed a big difference between the respective organic (bio) food scenes.
while in california eating organic was almost all about health, here in switzerland it was almost exclusively about fair trade and ecology, and to a lesser extent about supporting a more localised economy (think global, act local). in other words things motivations were much more political in switzerland. i remember thinking, that it would make sense, if both these advantages were equally valued. organic (bio) food is ofc both healthier for the consumer AND better for the environement.

10 years later much has changed in swiss “bio”. i can now find an organic food section in almost any big supermarket (coop, migros). sadly this mostly means, that i can now buy organic cherry tomatoes all year long; the old dictums long forgotten. organic food no longer is seasonal food and was probably shipped here over half a continent or more.

but things really hit home when i watched 5gegen5 the other day (yep i still do watch this crap). in this silly, yet captivating game show - contestants have to guess what was answered most - 100 swiss were asked what the advantages of organic food were. my first guess (”its good for the environment”) got no mention. all answers had to do with it being healthier and better for you.

this development kind of scares me. it turns this organic food thing into a fad, a commodity. right now people are willing to invest money into organic food, because they seem to think its healthier. but maybe soon people will come to believe, that its better to eat poisonous food in order to build up their resistances … i dunno. it’s possible. it just makes for a frickle foundation, if people only buy organic because of individual reasons.

Tags: organic, food, switzerland

[teh glorious interweb what got stuck in my camino tabs this past week]

Monkey Bites - “AllofMP3 continues to claim that the site is legal under Russian law.”

Wired News: 2006: The Year in Games - “Amid all the commotion, it’s easy to forget that 2006 was a year of high-quality games. Hard-core gamers, casual players and people who’ve never picked up a joystick in their lives — there was something for everyone.”

The Frosty Mug Revolution: Genius Grant Please, or The NSFW HTML Attribute - “I am now proposing a new attribute: rel=”nsfw” NSFW is an abbreviation often used to indicate that content is “not safe for work.” This new attribute should be applied to tags to indicate that the content is potentially “not safe for work.””

joi ito’s WoW talk 23C3 - reading regine’s notes is like being there.

Google “disappears” sex blogs? Something’s broken. - “Popular “indie” blogs that deal with nonfiction sex ed or indie alt-erotica fare (Tiny Nibbles, Comstock Films, ErosBlog, and others) have suddenly vanished to much lower ranking in relevant search results” and a few days later its all fixed and forgotten.

Best of Casual Gameplay 2006 - vote for your favorite online game while playing them. i discovered and loved the point’n'click game gateway and the puzzle game warp forest. [via waxy]

Mark
Allen’s Renewable, Cross-Referenced, Self-Mutating Top Ten List of the
Most Popular Top Ten Lists of the Top Ten Best Top Tens of 2006 and
Beyond Swirling Forever Into an Infinite Black Hole - brilliant. geeky. pretty.

“I’m going away tonight”, RIP James Brown - as usual with all things music you can trust the wfmu blog to have the best coverage on james brown’s tragic death.

Baptiste Buonomo’s Incredible Short - “Virus” - “it looks as if it is painted frame by frame, directly on the walls, and done illegally in the middle of the night.” my jaws have dropped and they still refuse to close.

Get organized and stay organized: Backpack - online to do lists. [via habi]

Optimized Firefox 2.0.0.1 for G5 and Intel Macs: BeatnikPad Journal - offers a much needed firefox speed improvement on os x.

jeu_chiant.swf - “jeu chiant qui utilise deux parties de ton cervau”. this game is surprisingly hard.

Why Encrypting BitTorrent Traffic Is Good at Torrentfreak - “Wired News writer Michael Galore explains in a recent post that encrypting BitTorrent traffic is bad. But is this really the case?”

Can This Fruit Be Saved? - “The banana as we know it is on a crash course toward extinction. For scientists, the battle to resuscitate the world’s favorite fruit has begun—a race against time that just may be too late to win”. oh noes. me likee banana.

2006: MPAA vs. BitTorrent Sites at Torrentfreak - “We’ve seen several confrontations between the MPAA and some of the bigger BitTorrent sites this year. Here’s a roundup of some the most memorable events.”

Blogger machen Schleichwerbung und verlieren damit ihre Unschuld - “Auch in der Schweizer Blogosphäre lassen sich Autoren für Beiträge bezahlen und machen im Eigeninteresse Produktewerbung.” [german only]

Santa dies at children’s party - “Children watched in horror as a Santa Claus collapsed and died as he handed out presents at a Christmas party on Sunday.” [via missie w. who as usual has the best bad taste xmas link list]

crazynativity02 on Flickr - Photo Sharing! - bizarre nativity from florida.

Book: Audio-Visual Art and VJ Culture - regine reviews this interesting looking book on VJ culture.

db-db™ loves you! - “Over the past eight months, our crew is working days and nights to develop a new system for creating webpages online. Now, the development of the new db-db has come to a point that we would like the privileged you to have a try.” i am not sure if i like this flash based blogging thing, but the db-db trademark nekkid men crawling all over the page are cute as always.

Mario Botta Architetto - the model of botta’s church in torino. and some photos of the finished project on flickr

[watch them get in: del.icio.us/pieceoplastic | links or subscribe to this RSS feed]

Tags: linkdump, torrent, santa, jamesbrown, streetart

20 minuten informs that a group of three teenagers has blown up a robidog using fireworks. the cover of the robidog was projected to an icefield, 100 meters away, where a speedskating contest was yaking place. over 100 people where on that icefield at the time, but luckily no one was injured.

[to non-swiss readers: robidog are green dog shit disposal units, that can be found all around switzerland]

Tags: robidog, switzerland

dj peaches (yes THE peaches) playing tonite @ wasserwek, bern

one of those i-wish-i-was-still-clubbing moments

with all this bruhaha around james brown’s death (may he r.i.p. and may he not have too much trouble with god over who is da topdog in heaven [disclaimer: i do not believe in god!]) i almost forgot that i met a james brown in the early 90’s. he lived in a grouphome for the mentally disabled i worked for. james brown was of white ethnicity and looked like a (i am sorry but i can’t think of another word) neanderthal man. he had practically no ability to speak or communicate other than with an array of grunting noises. his favorite pasttime was sneaking up on people and breathing down there neck until they noticed, at which point a huge grin would spread over his face. at times he would even burst into spontanous dance, especially when the sprinklers in the garden went on, in the midst of them to be more precise. i adored him!

[edit: i had meant to publish this a few days ago, but only this morning noticed that i it was still in drafts and i had forgotten to publish it.]

Tags: jamesbrown

i have no idea if this image is from the actual xmas mess ..err… mass this year. at any rate, very nice job, mr. photo-editor at news.com.au. this image almost screams for a quotation-contest. what is the pope saying? i imagine something like, “gief. me eat you. me smash you”. [via digg]

Tags: pope, photo, humor

the queen’s christmass adress should now be available as a podcast at royal.gov.uk. how very modern … you can even subscribe via RSS.

as usal in situations like this one i try to imagine the meeting where some web-dudes tries to pitch this podcasting idea to the queen.

queen: “a podwhat? i thought we got rid of the caste system a few centuries ago …”

Tags: british, queen, podcast, xmas

[teh glorious interweb what got stuck in my camino tabs this past week]

Warren Ellis to write weekly SL column for Reuters - “As a writer who deals with both the strangeness of people and the state of the future, Second Life is like a lab for me.”

GALLO OFF-LINE OVER SEX ADS - “They are really fascists. They should breathe some death gas or something,” says gallo to paypal after they blocked his service selling sperm and sexual favors online …

23C3: Who can you trust? - the CCC schedule looks mighty tempting again … regine will blog it.

Investor acquires stake in Swisscom start-up company coComment - Japanese venture capital company Netage Capital Partners, Inc. is to invest in the new Web service start-up company coComment.

La Wii, la manette du pouvoir - wii, how it works and who invented it (the swiss! or rather, a swiss company based in milano…) [french]

Come to Chechnya, it’s really dangerous - “It is like Switzerland, only without the roads.” [thx michael]

what you need to make it - amazing artshow in amsterdam shwoing the steps artists take to create art. in short, art is always citation. flickr set.

100 Funniest Jokes of All Time - “compiled by Don Steinberg for GQ”. naja

Robots could demand legal rights - “Robots could one day demand the same citizen’s rights as humans, according to a study by the British government.” true. and they should.

solar film bikini - “A solar film bikini that charges your iPod! (With a USB connection!)”

TIME Magazine: Person of the Year - the time magazine person of the year is You. who Me? yes You. and Me too. i guess you, yes you, had to be there; i just loved how jon stewart made fun of this. daily show 18.12.2006.

Bebo - forget schmyspace, here’s bebo.

MacBook Murder - “After 6 months of this crap, In a fit of rage I did this to it. The rage was probably caused by the crazy amounts of drugs I am on for Lupus at the moment.”

I heard you, Malachi - website dedicated to malachi richter, the guy who commit suicide as a political protest against the war in iraq. here’s the family’s statement.

The Companions of Saint Nicholas - meet schmutzli and other santa compagnions.

LoopRumors - iPhone images leaked?

Crowds roll up for a Banksy - “Hundreds of art lovers queued overnight to be the first to buy limited-edition prints by street artist Banksy. […] A total of 1,000 limitededition prints were up for grabs - with all proceeds going to charity.”

BBC moves to file-sharing sites - “Hundreds of episodes of BBC programmes will be made available on a file-sharing network for the first time, the corporation has announced.” beeb goes bittorrent

Pluggd: A Google for Podcasts - “Pluggd has found a way to index podcasts, talk shows and other spoken-word content. The company’s service then allows users to search the audio files for specific words.”

Support the Commons | Creative Commons - still 2 weeks to go on this years fundraiser.

War on Terror, the board game - “A quality boardgame for 2 - 6 players, lovingly illustrated and politically correct (in a very literal sense). Playing it will bring out the nastiest, greediest, darkest, most paranoid aspects of your character. It’s all great family fun.” [via bb]

Is Apple trying to trick iPod users? - “Apple reversed the colors of standard AV cables so that people who try to hook their iPods up to a TV using a non-Apple cable assume it won’t work” lawl teh lamest = apple.

spam is the devil! - we suspected it all along, but luci has finally found proof.

Hug my Mac green! - greenpeace hug your mac green campaign.

end of year crap

Paper Thin Walls :: 2006 Mixtape - “We asked more than 30 of our favorite music writers to pick just one song that sums up 2006. Our list is not ranked, not very scientific and not exhaustive at all. But every song on it is a number one to somebody.”

The Top Ten Stories You Missed in 2006 - “You saw the stories that dominated the headlines in 2006: the war in Iraq, North Korea’s nuclear tests, and the U.S. midterm elections. But what about the news that remained under the radar?”

99 strange photos of 2006 - and their explanation [via digg]

videos

jack kerouac and steve allen Video - jack kerouac is so cute in his shyness.

bush and blair singing a xmas carol - “you are pumm-ing when you are not suppossed to …”

Vaseline Intensive Rescue - “When a mass of sensitive bodies becomes beautiful poetry in motion !” lol a commercial for vaseline

Lorie Vs Cannibal Corpse - nice editing job [thx klav]

Weebl and Bob - Christmas 4 - happy xmas from weebl and bob. at least they will get pie…

bush and blair kiss - bush and blair new years adress viral for grassroots.org charity.

sound

Phonoanomalies For Hi-Fi Bugs - a compilation featuring the World’s Greatest Elk Caller and other goodies.

murlocaggro.mp3 (audio/mpeg Object) - that cult murloc sound from WoW and a murloc game that i found while trying to find a murloc ringtone … don’t ask. must have murloc ringtone.

DJ for Dummies - and soon to be released: dummies book making for dummies [via beatmixed]

[to watch it get in: del.icio.us/pieceoplastic | links or subscribe to this RSS feed]

Tags: linkdump, end-of-year, crap, video, murloc

quick reminder: today is glogal orgasm day, weeee…

The Event

WHO? All Men and Women, you and everyone you know.

WHERE? Everywhere in the world, but especially in countries with weapons of mass destruction.

WHEN?
Winter Solstice Day - Friday, December 22nd, at the time of your choosing, in the place of your choosing and with as much privacy as you choose.

WHY? To effect positive change in the energy field of the Earth through input of the largest possible surge of human energy a Synchronized Global Orgasm. There are two more US fleets heading for the Persian Gulf with anti-submarine equipment that can only be for use against Iran, so the time to change Earth’s energy is NOW!

9:00 local time: the countdown to the synchronized global orgasm is 7 hours. lol.

and the [NSFW] link of the day would be: double pump handjob

Tags: solstice, orgasm

i briefly mentioned cory doctorow’s end-of-year charitable giving guide. yesterday regine has published another, somewhat similar “mini-list”, support new media art, encouraging readers to support these noteworthy media art projects: turbulence, materials & applications, machineproject, rhizome, neural, aminima. seems not that “mini” to me.

helas she forgot to mention that we should of course also support the always inspiring, always wonderful wmmna blog. just where is the damn support button.

Tags: mediaart, newmedia, interactiveart, donations