Greece Ready To Start Selling Its Islands

A year ago the mere mention of Greece selling its real estate, let along its prized islands, was enough to fill Syntagma square with tear gas, laser light pointers and the occasional riot dog. Now - nobody cares, which is why the statement by Greek PM Samaras that he is ready to start selling Greek islands was largely met with a yawn across the investing world.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/greece-ready-start-selling-its-islands 

 

 

Medal of Freedom Winner

Actress and entertainer Marlene Dietrich wears a Women's Army Corps uniform with forage cap, worn by U.S.O. Camp shows performers, as she walks down a street in London on Sept. 28, 1944. The German-born legend sold war bonds, toured for the USO and earned the Medal of Freedom.

( Associated Press / May 27, 2013 )

Bora-Bora = Paradise

Bora-Bora is an island that lies in the South Pacific Ocean. This land's best beach is called Matira and it is the only public beach for Bora Bora Island. It's gorgeous white stunning sand and deep light-blue greenish color of the water makes this beach deserve to be admired by the all its visitors. Green vegetation beautifies this beach with its fresh and relaxing natural scenery.  Lagoon tour service and moor boats are the facilities provided on this beautiful beach. For your enjoyment, restaurants and bars are also provided.

Israel marks Holocaust Remembrance Day

An Israeli boy at the 'From Holocaust to Revival' museum in Kibbutz Yad Mordechai

(photo credit: Flash90)

http://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-prepares-for-holocaust-remembrance-day/

"blistering heatwave"

A blistering heatwave has hit stretches of India, with temperatures reaching 45 degrees celsius, or 113 degrees Fahrenheit. Ahead of the seasonal monsoon rains, millions are now looking for ways to cool off.

Read more: http://world.time.com/2013/05/22/india-heatwave/#ixzz2UEwFz7Pr

Replacement Proposed for Sixth Street Bridge

In Los Angeles, the Parsons Brinckerhoff proposal features a pedway that goes down the middle of the viaduct, with bike lanes on the outside lanes.  The question is will it be built ???

http://www.ladowntownnews.com/news/sixth-street-bridge-designers-dream-big/article_b0974c12-fdd2-11e1-b548-0019bb2963f4.html?mode=image

A FULL HOUSE

Overstocked with a large supply of men’s spring and winter coats, a clothier in Copenhagen, Denmark, adopted a unique sales scheme. He erected a scaffolding around his store building and completely covered it from roof to sidewalk with more than a thousand overcoats. The novel display attracted prospective customers in such droves that police were summoned. Although the police ordered the proprietor to remove the display, he succeeded in selling all the overcoats.

Inspirational

Hans Scholl was one of the founding members of the White Rose. They were a bunch of kick-ass students and teachers who resisted the Nazi movement with non-violence. He started it with his sister Sophie and a few other students. They put graffiti all over Munich and handed out leaflets declaring Germany should be free of Nazis. Sadly, the members were captured by the Nazis. Hans was executed February 22 1943 at the age of 24.

Solar Impulse

Solar Impulse, a prototype of an airplane designed to fly around the world using only solar power, made its first real flight recently. As the sun shone down on the Swiss countryside an aircraft powered by 12,000 solar cells flew for 87 minutes to an altitude of nearly 4,000 feet.

Solar Impulse program founder Bertrand Piccard called the inaugural flight a crucial step toward fulfilling his goal of circumnavigating the globe in such an unusual aircraft. In a statement from the Solar Impulse team, Piccard said he was relieved to have the first flight completed after seven years of hard work.

http://www.wired.com/autopia/2010/04/solar-airplane-completes-maiden-voyage/

Sant'Agata Bolognese

An emotional moment in Sant'Agata Bolognese at the culmination of the gala celebrating Lamborghini's 50th anniversary: Walter De Silva's incredible vehicle made its entry in front of a thousand invitees, the Head of Design for the Volkswagen Group's homage to celebrating the House of the Raging Bull's half century. "I am very attached to this Italian brand, being an Italian myself. I wanted to pay homage to and think up a vehicle to underline the fact that Lamborghinis have always been made with passion, and with the heart more than the head," said an emotional De Silva

http://www.netcarshow.com/lamborghini/2013-egoista_concept/800x600/wallpaper_01.htm

The Crystal Cathedral

Zócalo Public Square  featured CRCC Director of Research Richard Flory's op-ed on the Crystal Cathedral on its front page recently.

In the piece, Flory examines what the fall of Robert Schuller's Crystal Cathedral in Orange County means for other mega churches. The Crystal Cathedral was $50 million in debt earlier this year and is now being sold to the Catholic Church.

Flory writes in the Zócalo piece:

Unfortunately for the megachurches, congregants have not always wanted more. Over the past decade, the megachurch model has been showing signs of giving way, slowly, to a more intimate spiritual culture. Some megachurches have even tried to accommodate this apparent trend by creating multi-site churches to give the impression that they are smaller than they actually are. The new form of religious infrastructure manifests itself in churches that focus less on physical sprawl than on cultivating what they call a more “organic” understanding of religious organizations. The new communities are expected to have a birth, life, and—yes—even death.

http://crcc.usc.edu/blog/press/what-does-the-demise-of-the-crystal-cathedral-mean-for-our-megachurches/

"Canstruction LA"

Our friends over at Franklin Avenue report on the latest entries in this year's "Canstruction LA" taking place right now in the lobby of the Variety building on Wilshire. The two-week event is a competition among local design and architecture firms, all of whom use cans of food to create sculptures. When the exhibit wraps up on November 15th, the cans will be donated to the LA Regional Foodbank. The exhibit is organized by Society for Design Administration and supported by the American Institute of Architects/Los Angeles and while it's free to the public from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., a canned food donation is strongly encouraged. Our favorite so far is the leaning tower of Pisa.

http://la.curbed.com/tags/variety

Edward Dean Jeffries 1933--2013

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjk9Kks4lcU1bho98bOmkQl5rAmnz1LGC_a8jTnkUETspuE6gQ7bn-_JWHTNWBCNmkxM89s1vI8C0mq2MheoRl7oZHlKGPhfIHp-SiBdKUPPd1DpnxLcTKk4BgGdoAz2Oruatwz/s1600/dean+jeffries+monkees+monkeemobile+gto+custom+car+1966+james+bond+customizer+show+rod+1.gif

Ardent for presidents

Five-year-old Arden Hayes loves Legos. And presidents. He's been reading up on history and can name the chief executives in order and tell you a little — OK, a lot — about them. When he found out that he shared a birthday with FDR, he decided to find out more about him, and about the other presidents. Now he is practically a walking presidential library.

Above, Presidential enthusiast Arden Hayes, 5, poses in front of a painting titled "A Presidential Pantheon," by Victor Lee, at the Nixon library in Yorba Linda. 

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0505-beat-presidential-kid-pictures,0,1749193.photogallery 

Flip Wilson, a pioneer in prime time

The resplendent foursome of Elton John, left, Cher, Wilson and Bette Midler gathers in the mid-'70s. It was television that made Wilson, who died in 1998, a household name. At right, the cover of the book "Flip," by Kevin Cook.

 (Everett Collection / Viking Penguin; Viking Penguin)

http://www.latimes.com/features/books/jacketcopy/la-ca-jc-kevin-cook-20130505,0,3157296.story

Downtown L.A. landlord Brookfield sees office market rising steadily

Brookfield Office Properties of New York will own five of the 10 tallest skyscrapers in downtown Los Angeles once its deal with MPG Office Trust closes. Here's a look at what Brookfield will own downtown.  

(Pictometry International/Los Angeles Times)

http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-brookfield-boss-20130426,0,2329482.story 

Meet the Man Who Got Deported From Saudi Arabia For Being "Too Handsome"

When Saudi Arabia is not busy shutting down educational dinosaur exhibitions for no apparent reason, it is protecting the rights of Saudi women from the evils of good-looking men.

The Telegraph reports that three men were in attendance at the annual Jenadrivah Heritage & Culture Festival in Riyadh when they were seized by the religious police and later deported because "they are too handsome." One of the men (pictured below) is Omar Borkan Al Gala, an actor, poet and fashion photographer from Dubai.

Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain

Founded in 1985,^[2] the orchestra has since performed in many worldwide venues, including New York's Carnegie Hall^[3] (2009, 2012), the Sydney Opera House^[4] (2012), London's Royal Albert Hall^[5] (2008, 2012) and Glastonbury Festival. TV appearances have included: Jools Holland's Hootenanny, BBC Radio 2 Electric Proms, Blue Peter, The Slammer, Richard & Judy, This Morning and Skins.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukulele_Orchestra_of_Great_Britain

PROOF OF HEAVEN

Dr Eben Alexander claims in his book Proof of Heaven that, while in a coma in 2008, he 'floated over fluffy clouds', on his way to the final frontier. Photograph: Ron Edmonds/AP

 

Heaven has an edge over every other construct of the human imagination because, built into the design, alongside the fabulous promise that we can, after all, live forever, is a catch. We can never try it out and report back. There are no return tickets. And, before Richard Dawkins points it out, yes, of course, that means that even if every single one of us is ultimately disappointed when we catapult into oblivion, we have no way of warning those who come after us.

That, at least, is the theory. But when we are told that sneak previews are impossible, we instinctively try to find a way round the restriction. So on the cover of this week's Newsweek, neurosurgeon Dr Eben Alexander, who has taught at Harvard Medical School, boldly announces to the world that he has cheated death, visited Shakespeare's "undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns", and come back to tell us all in his imaginatively titled book, Proof of Heaven.

In 2008, Alexander was struck down by meningitis and spent seven days in a coma. Science says that, during this ordeal, everything should have gone blank since his neocortex wasn't functioning. But this celestial Columbus claims that, while apparently flat out, he was actually on "a hyper-vivid and completely coherent odyssey" to the final frontier. He floated over fluffy clouds, met "transparent … shimmering beings" and was guided through this timeless world by a beguiling female. It was all, he writes reassuringly, "an immense void, completely dark, infinite in size, yet also infinitely comforting".

At least he didn't mention a bright white light, but in every other way his account contains just about heavenly cliche known to humankind. Proof of Heaven may have a certain cachet because its author is, by profession, "a man of science", and therefore, by the crude logic of our secular, sceptical 21st-century society, better placed than most to see through the ultimate claim of religion, but this book sounds like pretty run-of-the-mill near-death experience literature.And there's plenty of it around. The International Association for Near-Death Studies, founded in 1981, claims to speak for a constituency of 15 million in the US alone. In hugely popular books such as psychologist Raymond Moody's Life After Life, thousands of travellers report back on an extra-terrestrial world of painlessness, mysticism, peculiar light and beautiful but intangible guides to a divine pleasure dome.

What is most remarkable about these accounts is how similar they are to each other and to a whole literature that stretches back through the centuries. Once, the very same topography was part of the beatific vision, fashioned by Christian theologians such as Saint Augustine as a heavenly landscape to frame the face of God.
The similarities prompt one of two responses. Either it must be true because so many people say it is. Or they are borrowing from each other one of the biggest collective delusions we have ever known. Or, perhaps, there is a third, more plausible explanation.

At its most simple, all of these pictures of after-life touch on the most basic of human needs, something that predates written language, philosophy and even religion itself. From the time the first Neanderthal sat next to the lump of dead protein that had been his or her mate and realised that something had to be done about the smell of rotting flesh, we have wanted there to be something more, something beyond death. When that body was put into a ditch, or pushed over a ledge into a ravine, the one left behind looked into the void and ached.
The myths, traditions and literature, the shamans and soothsayers, the priests and popes, the poets, writers and dramatists, have subsequently all tried to picture an after-life to take the sting out of that yearning. And, lest I be accused of having a closed mind (which I don't), of the uncertainty. Alexander, then, is just the latest in a long line.

There has, though, always been a tension in such fevered – or coma-induced – imaginings. For what most religions have taught is that heaven, paradise, nirvana, jannah, or whatever they have called it, is ineffable, beyond words, beyond imagination.

Photograph: Ron Edmonds/AP

http://newsle.com/article/0/38533874/

“Oblivion”

The U.S.S. Enterprise, the Millennium Falcon, the Nostromo — in the best science-fiction movies, the spaceship is an iconic character unto itself.

So when “Tron: Legacy” director Joseph Kosinski set about designing a spacecraft for Tom Cruise to pilot in his next film, the sci-fi thriller “Oblivion,” due in theaters April 19, he knew the stakes were high.

Based on a 2010 graphic novel Kosinski penned with comic book writer Arvid Nelson, “Oblivion” takes place in a not-so-distant future when Earth has been decimated by an alien invasion, and former Marine Jack Harper (Cruise) is one of a few people left on the planet to mop up after the war.
  
The movie, written by William Monahan, Karl Gajdusek and Michael Arndt, also stars Morgan Freeman as a 102-year-old insurgency leader, Melissa Leo as Jack’s authoritarian boss and Olga Kurylenko as a mysterious woman who stirs Jack’s memories.

http://herocomplex.latimes.com/movies/oblivion-tom-cruise-bubble-ship-spacecraft-design-form-follows-function/#/0