The World in 50 years

The Mayas predict the end of the world for the year 2012, but even if we survive another year, can we hope something for our future?

Fifty years from now, men might have changed their habits and might protect the planet Earth. Maybe the planet Earth will be the nicest place to live in the entire universe or maybe we’ll have to deal with the Martians, I don’t know.

Maybe we’ll forget the meaning of the word “crisis” and the capitalist system will just be a bad memory for old veterans like us.

But 2060 could also be the start of a nuclear war between the United States and China (or others countries), which could destroy the entire planet and kill the entire population, who knows?

In my opinion;, I know that a lot of things could happen in fifty years, and not just bad things, as some of my friends think. I hope that our children will live in a better world than ours. Maybe I’m an eternal optimist and maybe I’m wrong but let me dream!

Thirty years from now

Thirty years from now, I might be dead, I might be a musician, I might be a good father (or a drug dealer), who knows?
Nobody can predict his own future but I hope that I could fulfil my main dreams.
Thirty years from now, I hope that my lifestyle will be the same. At the age of 50, I would drink beers and play music with my friends, even if some of them might have great responsibilities and important jobs. Oldness shouldn't rhyme with boredom! I want to enjoy every moment with people I love.
My main wish is to become a professional musician and to travel the world thanks to music. Thirty years from now, I hope I played all over the world, especially in the United States, in Germany and in Japan.

Does war photography have a future ?

To answer this question, let's take a quick look at the war photography history. The first war images date from the Mexican-American war in 1847. In Europe, the first war pictures were taken during the Crimean War by several photographers like Carol Popp de Szathmari or Roger Fenton.

At this time there were few war photographers but war photography already raised a question: is war photography showing the reality of the war?
Some photographers from this time, like Alexander Gardner, recreated battle scenes to take better and clearer pictures.
This question about the reality was also a problem for the photographers of the 20th century, who covered all the majors conflicts in the world. One major change of the 20th century is that photographers can shot moving scenes thanks to the progress of the technology.
Photographers try to inform people, that's why some pictures become the best conflicts illustrations. During the 20th century, some photographers like Robert Capa or Joe Rosenthal became stars, well-known for their war pictures.
War photographer is still a dangerous job and some photographers died during reports, like the founder of the agency Magnum, Robert Capa.
Today, does war photography have a future?
One of the problem is that everybody can take pictures with a mobile phone, and these mobile pictures are published in newspapers. Video is also slowly killing photo, we can see more war scenes on Youtube then in newspapers, and war photography is still extremly dangerous, as we can see with the most recent conflicts.

A quick look at the online music stores

 
The online music stores are different from music streaming services because it enable users to download songs (and not just listen to it).
In 1993, the first online music store, called Internet Underground Music Archive, was launched. Another important step is the foundation of Ritmoteca.com in 1998. This website had a a catalog of approximately 300 000 songs. Ritmoteca.com offered the possibility to download a single MP3 song for $0.99 and an entire album for $9.99. The site had distribution deals with four major labels: BMG (Bertelsmann Music Group), Warner, Universal and Sony Music.

With the emergence of services like Napster or Kazaa in the 2000's, the major labels decided to launch their own online music stores, but it was a great failure. For instance, on Sony's one, the user had to pay $3.50 to download a single song. The major labels didn't find a right answer to the problem of illegal downloading and today, the only online stores like eMusic or Rhapsody, which have a large audience, don't belong to major labels. And the leader of the market is more than ever the Itunes Store, but how long people will pay to buy a song online when the same song is also availaible for free ?

Who am I ?

10 "too serious" rules to survive the Internet

1. Try not to say "see ya bro'" when you're talking to your boss or one of your colleague. And try to employ forms of adress.

2. On a topic, when you're quoting someone, try to only quote the important part of the message and not the entire message.

3. Try to give a precise object to your mail; not to send another "no subject" mail.

4. DO NOT WRITE IN CAPITAL LETTERS.

5. Do not send files that are too large. Try to put the file on a server.

6. Do not answer to an entire contact list when you want to talk to a single person.

7. Respect the simple rules of a website or a forum.

8. Do not forward spams or useless chains of mails.

9. Do not send too personal pictures of you.

10. The entire world doesn't need to look at your personal photos.

Three reasons to watch Ghost Dog by Jim Jarmusch

Ghost Dog is maybe my favourite Jim Jarmusch’s movie. The movie is inspired by Le samourai, a movie by Jean-Pierre Melville, starring Alain Delon. Here are the three main reasons to watch this great movie:

-         Forest Whitaker. Maybe one of my favourite actor. You might have seen him in several other movies like Bird (by Clint Eastwood), where he plays the role of the great be-bop musician Charlie Parker, or in The last king of Scotland, where he plays General Idi Amin. He’s perfect in this role of silent hit man, who follows the ancient code of the samurai and lives on a roof surrounded by his birds.

-   The general atmosphere of the movie. The alternation between day and night scenes, the beauty of certain sequence-shots, the slow rhythm and the hip-hop influence create a very special atmosphere. The viewer is inevitably stuck by the quality of Jim Jarmusch’s direction.

-   The soundtrack, composed by the RZA, famous rapper and producer of one of the best rap bands of all time, the Wu-Tang Clan. The RZA also makes a little appearance in the movie, and played in another Jim Jarmusch joint, Coffee and Cigarettes. The soundtrack contributes to create a special atmosphere during the entire movie, especially in some mythical scenes like these:

Click

Click again

The impact of the financial crisis on European football

First, we need to take a look to the situation of the Premier League clubs (name of the English championship). Many English clubs are registered on the stock exchange and many investors are part of the financial sector. Logically the English football economy is suffering from the crisis. Other European countries are subjected to this crisis in England but they also directly suffer from the crisis. For instance, the French clubs have more difficulties selling their best players (that’s how they survive) to English or Spanish clubs.

Amateur clubs have other difficulties. They’re often sponsored by little companies, which are the victims of the crisis. But we can notice that big clubs like Barcelona or Real Madrid in Spain still spend millions to buy and to pay the best players in the world. One of the main explanations is that there is no economic regulation for Spanish clubs. They can have big debts and the King Juan Carlos sometimes pay off their debt.

One other fact is that very rich families buy out clubs, which become automatically richer than the others. Since this summer, the Paris-Saint Germain Football Club belongs to the royal Qatari family.

To conclude, we can say that the financial crisis creates a bigger gap between rich and poor clubs.