mind-feeding

Filtr.tv is one of those nice small ideas that bring something interesting for the watcher's eye, as well as mind. What it basically does is to provide weekly playlists of short movies, animations and music videos developed by a selection of unique, undiscovered, and intriguing individuals and organizations (we call them contributors) who are either using online video to communicate or can be represented within an online video.

What i like the most about it is that it feels like going to a cosy contemporary art gallery: you travel through different perpectives, intriguing views, inspiring twists, refreshing combinations of ideas that kick-start your own closures and interpretations - i really like websites that act as a platform for that.

the world is thinking

i have been awfully busy lately, so my time for watching movies was highly diminished. So i got addicted to other stuff instead. And besides Captain Planet, my latest addiction has become Fora TV. I like its concept very much, and i have learnt a lot from watching the interesting stuff posted so far (they even feature Neil Gaiman, yeey). It kind of reminds me of the Ted conferences, and it makes me want to help it grow somehow, especially since it gives quite many opportunities for people to get involved.

There are brilliant ideas, expressed everyday in public
discussions and events, all over the world.
Don't miss them.
FORA
delivers discourse, discussions and debates on the world's most interesting
political, social and cultural issues, and enables viewers to join the
conversation. It provides deep, unfiltered content, tools for self-expression
and a place for the interactive community to gather online.
FORA is
presenting or producing content from the world's leading public forums. The
esteemed organizations that are working with us to build the FORA vision include
C-SPAN, the World Affairs Councils of Northern California, Dallas, Oregon,
Philadelphia and Connecticut, the Commonwealth Club, Books, Inc., the Hoover
Institution, Cody's Books, the Museum of the African Diaspora, the Asia Society,
the New School, the Truman National Security Project, the New America
Foundation, Politics & Prose Bookstore in Washington, D.C., Tattered Cover
in Denver, the Heritage Foundation, the Magnes Museum, the Cato Institute, Link
TV, Chatham House in London, Cambridge University, the Transatlantic Institute
in Brussels, Egmont: the Royal Institute for International Relations, Book
Passage, the Long Now Foundation, Americans for Informed Democracy and the
Global Philanthropy Forum, among many others.
FORA.tv will provide engaging
on demand viewing experiences for the media active world citizen.

publishing science, accelerating research

I have always been fascinated by reading pieces of research in different areas, and trying to understand them, or at least make something out of them. I think this might be a reminiscence of highschool times when i used to have endless discussions with my Philosophy teacher (who's a brilliant guy), my Maths teacher (who is in fact a proffesor teaching in the University of Bucharest) and my Physics teacher (who trained the Romanian team taking part in international olympiads). It was absolutely fantastic to tackle such issues with them, and i felt really lucky i was challenged to understand and reflect upon really complicated things.

However, with entering advertising and not actually having any such pro around to provoke me and so on, i didn't exactly stay focused enough on such matters. Until this winter break, when i talked to Space a lot about neuroscience, and with some other friend (PhD in Physics, in Romania for holidays only) about, well, physics, and with another bunch of smart people about science in general and astronomy...And i got the old flame back. Which is why it was a thrill for me to discover PLoS One: Publishing Science, Accelerating Research. The site, in beta, is "a new way of communicating peer-reviewed science and medicine" - basically, an open source of research in various domains. As prof. Lon Cardon, of University of Oxford, says: "PLoS meets a crucial need. By providing scientists from different disciplines with easy and free access to high quality research papers PLoS should actually enhance scientific progress itself."