From exoticism to utopia – the new Japan fashion, not only in cinema

A good mixture: Zen philosophy, samurai fighting techniques, lots of green tea and even more walks in the fresh air are necessary for a traumatized American to find his way again. Edward Zwick’s film "Last Samurai" (since 8.1. in the cinema) describes an unusual learning process – for mainstream Hollywood cinema, it even amounts to a minor sensation: for in this film, Tom Cruise alias Nathan Algren, a U.S. officer who became a suicidal drunk during the Indian Wars, is a hero who hardly knows anything better, who does not give unfortunate savages the "american way of (better) life" but learns something on behalf of his audience – namely curiosity about and respect for a foreign culture that is initially difficult to understand. No self-understanding in times of "war against terror", in which Hollywood is also taken into patriotic duty by the Bush administration. By the end of the film, Cruise has become a true samurai, who speaks reasonable Japanese and has internalized many of the values of ancient Japan. He will not return to America, he despises his countrymen, who are shown in this film mainly as corrupt handlers and imperialists, and only comment helplessly on his transformation: "Why do you hate your people so much?"

At least as far as the aforementioned diatat is concerned, Cruise/Algren is quite representative of many of his compatriots today and, more generally, a lot of people in Western modernity. Asia in general and Japan in particular are chic as rare: Going to the sushi restaurant on the corner is just as much a matter of course as eating with sticks, regular training in kendo or other Japanese martial arts, but also the practice of Zen meditation. Many kids in Western European metropolises have long since swapped Donald Duck and Asterix for manga books, while their parents loll on their futons and read the latest Murakami novel, leaf through a picture book by pop architect Yoshio Taniguchi for a change, or simply patiently snip at the bonsai on the windowsill. In addition runs – pling-plang-plong – Reiki, old Japanese singing bowl music for calming down. From noodle soup to Yamamoto bathrobes, the Japanese lifestyle has long been integrated into our daily lives. But now, as can be seen in the cinema, the perception of Japan seems to be changing at last – from the foreigner, viewed with skeptical fascination and exotic curiosity, Japan is becoming a new utopia, a better version of the familiar modernity.

British police see their work threatened by EU telecoms privacy directive

It is not only with the breech that the security authorities have a difficult task ahead of them to obtain data from suspects. Although the British government will probably abandon its plan to implement the key-escrow model, it is unlikely to do so. By last Thursday, the UK Department of Trade and Industry had given a mere three weeks to come up with alternative proposals on how security agencies could obtain the plain text with a court order. Presumably it will become a criminal offence not to show the police the decrypted text when needed. Now, however, the European Telecommunications Data Protection Directive, which could prohibit phone companies and providers from storing customer usage data if the information is not needed for billing purposes, is also looming.

In Germany, the Teleservices Data Protection Act has already implemented this, but in the United Kingdom, the security authorities view the implementation of this European law with suspicion due to new possibilities. If free Internet accounts, as is increasingly the case in the UK, or pre-paid cell phones meant that billing data no longer had to be collected, then the police could no longer check the Internet and cell phone use of suspects: "The new laws will have a major impact on the collection of data", The Sunday Times quotes Keith Akerman, head of the computer crime unit of the Association of Chief Police Officers, as saying. "They are not helpful to the police or the person being asked to provide the information … If the law is ratified, it will be really unfortunate. I don’t want to give criminals advice, but anyone who looks at the new law, if ratified, will get a pretty clear idea of how to plan and carry out crimes without the police being able to stop them."

The artist duo Jodi unleashes three sinister browsers on the PCs of Internet users

Believe that your computer is a rational machine? A number cruncher that automatically does what you tell it to do? Jodi want to prove the opposite. The computer art that the Dutch-Belgian art duo has created since 1995 transforms the PC into an unpredictable, frightening machine with a sinister life of its own.

When one views their website or downloads any of the software work they have produced in recent years, the art immediately begins to wreak havoc on the desktop. You see bits of text flying around. Fragments of the computer interface, which look as if they have been put through a meat grinder, float across the screen. Windows flickering around as if they wanted to play tag with the user. If the computer blows up? No, just a few lines of code running amok, don’t worry.

What comes after climate change? – Part 3

Those who say that climate change has always existed on Earth and that people have had to adapt to changing climatic conditions for as long as they have existed mean a very slow process that is hardly noticeable to the individual person. Change can be so gradual that in retrospect of each life lived, the climate in one place appears stable. We do not want to talk about the fact that people remember more extreme events than the average, normal weather of most years and therefore think that winters used to be colder and summers warmer and sunnier.

The climate change that is happening all the time

Nature and human culture can automatically adapt to the normal, quite natural climate change. This is due to the fact that both the animal and plant world, as well as the human community, are to a certain extent constantly adapting to climate change "experiment"Animals and plants "dare" spread to other areas, people grow foreign grains and fruits, change their preferences for certain clothing and building styles, and so on. Some of it has success and remains, other fails and disappears again. This is how people and the environment react to gradual changes without realizing it.

Since 2010, the production of CFCs is prohibited, which destroys the ozone layer, but there are exceptions

Since the 1970s, it has been found that the release of fluorochlorocarbons (CFCs) is responsible for destroying the ozone layer in the atmosphere. It took some time until the use of CFCs reduced and finally banned after the Montreal Protocol since 2000 and has been prohibited since 2010. Thus, the World Society responds once to prevent its self-destruction. If the ozone layer is destroyed, hard UV radiation can be reached on the earth’s surface and the DNA of plants, animals and, of course, people harmful.

British Science of the University of East Anglia Under the direction of Johannes Laube, four new people made by people discovered in the atmosphere, which in turn devotes the life-protecting ozone layer. As you report in Nature Geoscience, 74.000 tonnes of three new CFCs and a new H-CFCC accumulated. So far, seven CFCs and six H-CFCs were known, which attack the ozone layer. Compared to emissions in the 1980s, which amounted to a million tonnes, the amount is relatively low.

German Filmstitut presents censorship project to the Weimar Republic

An interesting insight into the cultural policy of the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich allows the German FilmStitut (DIF). After completion of his project "Forbidden pictures, manipulated films" It is now present on the Internet its edition of the censorship decisions of the Berlin Film Supporting site from the years 1920 to 1938.

Song: Love for one night, loyalty for one night!