YES! Beckett On Film Online

Ohio Impromptu (2000)
Director: Charles Sturridge
Cast: Jeremy Irons ... Reader / Listener

http://rapidshare.com/files/319394900/Ohio_Impromptu.rar

Catastrophe (2000)
Director: David Mamet
Cast:
Harold Pinter ... The Director
Rebecca Pidgeon ... The Director's Assistant
John Gielgud ... The Protagonist

http://rapidshare.com/files/303063799/Catastrophe.rar

Breath (2000)
Director: Damian Hirst
Cast: Keith Allen (voice)

http://rapidshare.com/files/245693537/Damian_Hirst-Samuel_Beckett_s_Breath.avi

Not I (1973)
Director: Anthony Page
Cast: Billie Whitelaw ... Auditor / Mouth

http://rapidshare.com/files/230450679/not_i---73_.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/230450680/not_i---73_.part2.rar

Act Without Words I (2000)
Director: Karel Reisz
Cast: Sean Foley

http://rapidshare.com/files/313022897/Beckett_on_Film_-_Act_Without_Words_I.rar

Act Without Words II (2000)
Director: Enda Hughes
Cast: Marcello Magni, Pat Kinevane

http://rapidshare.com/files/313134105/Beckett_on_Film_-_Act_Without_Words_II.rar

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via schahed.blog.de

Been waiting a hundred years for this

Gryphiusstrasse, Hamburg - Google Maps

This is pretty hilarious: after oodles of meetings and debates, Germany's largest cities have conceded to allow Google Maps street-views ... sort of ... almost ... kinda. For example, here you can just see the window of my old home on Gryphiusstrasse, Hamburg - Google Maps[googlemaps https://maps.google.com/maps?q=6+gryphiusstrasse,+hamburg&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Gryphiusstra%C3%9Fe+6,+Winterhude+22299+Hamburg,+Germany&ei=yDvlTKKoJ5SgngfKt4CoDQ&oi=geocode_result&ved=0CBMQ8gEwAA&t=h&layer=c&cbll=53.590973,10.00057&panoid=KmaOYjwPt0cH2CctXxVVTw&cbp=13,213.01,,0,-6.72&ll=53.584519,10.00391&spn=0.015999,0.048237&z=14&source=embed&output=svembed&w=562&h=314]
That's it, iirc, on the 3rd floor up, that would be Derek's bedroom window and to the left of that, midst the blur, the balcony where we'd launch our rockets for the New Years fireworks. Back down the other direction it seems things haven't changed in 45 years, the block across the street is still under reconstruction, although here it looks no less blocky and blurry than our staid old apartment block.
I can't wait to explore back down the bookending mainstreets to see if the businesses at least let Google map their facades. I wonder if the old 45rpm record vending machine is still there ...
For those interested (and who either read German or don't mind a google translation) Daniel Schwerd offers some explanation as to why the streets of those fair cities should be so, well, grossly pixelated.  Oh and before you waste the time to bother with it, you should know that the entire core of the Reeperbahn has been completely blacked out.

A Message to Municipal Candidates

Whenever I begin to feel positive about the future of western civilization, an election roles around and shatters my illusions. As we near the municipal elections, I seek in vain for any shred of a viable future vision; the best simply say they will 'do their best' but in the same breath they repeat the mantras of growth and development.

“Knowing exactly how much of the future can be introduced into the present is the secret of great government.” — Victor Hugo

Dear council hopefulls, I have stood in the path and in the wake of that 'development', and seen the effects in all too many previous homelands, I have heard all the Progress slogans, and I have seen what follows; among the Amerindians of central america they say it is not wise to scream in the jungle, because the jaguars will come, and when they do, they won't be thinking of your prosperity. As a public service to all candidates, I offer the following message from another world, a world before your world, a message from your elders, the peoples who live at the heart of our world, and I only ask that you give them audience, then pause and ponder why they should say such very contrary things so earnestly. If the Kobi message tempers just one of the policies that will fall from your hand in the years ahead, I will consider that to be the first evidence of real progress.

via alunathemovie.com

Here's a tip: real progress happens when you learn to take care of your own with what you already have.  After that, any extra is extra.  Any salvational Satori will not come from without, it will come from within.

The Artificial Ape: Man

We were never fully biological entities. We are, and always have been, the cybernetic ape.

Darwin is one of my heroes, but I believe he was wrong in seeing human evolution as a result of the same processes that account for other evolution in the biological world - especially when it comes to the size of our cranium.

Darwin had to put large cranial size down to sexual selection, arguing that women found brainy men sexy. But biomechanical factors make this untenable. I call this the smart biped paradox: once you are an upright ape, all natural selection pressures should be in favour of retaining a small cranium. That's because walking upright means having a narrower pelvis, capping babies' head size, and a shorter digestive tract, making it harder to support big, energy-hungry brains. Clearly our big brains did evolve, but I think Darwin had the wrong mechanism. I believe it was technology. We were never fully biological entities. We are and always have been artificial apes.

via newscientist.com

They shaped their tools and thereafter their tools shaped us, quite literally says Tim Taylor. Some ancestor like australopithecines started the stone toolmaking so as to fashion power extensions of themselves from sinew, leather, woven grass and wood; add in a pressing need to relieve mama's aching back, and the rest is a tumbling cascade into history...