The passing of Kim Jong–il the supreme leader of North Korea this december wasn’t a shock or surprise, it mainly made me think. It interested me, the whole idea of North Korea interested me. After reading an article about the tourism of North Korea and how each vistor is accompanied by a guard who shows the traveller what he/she is permitted to see. So in turn people are watching a trailer of what Kim Jong-il wanted them to see. I also heard (because most of it is speculation) that when looking from South Korea the North have constructed fake ‘picture perfect’ towns, to make the Southerners jealous. Genius. From what I can tell, the man was a legend, i’m talking Beatles big, Elvis big, even, dare I say it… Justin Bieber big! How one country in the whole world, was able to build up this hype of secrecy and individuality, with a army to scare the biggest nations and nuclear warheads to demand attention. It’s interesting how sooooo little is known about such a big ego, that is North Korea. You have to respect the attitude I guess, I’m guessing all isn’t as it seems in the country, but I’ve never been, so who am […]
First and foremost, I would like to thank Tyson “the banker” Gray for his continued support and volunteering to sort out my terrible grammar, so thank you Mr Gray. In light of today’s shout out, I want to blog briefly about “friends”. Not the TV show but the relationship and bond between people. Mario Puzo, a famous American author and screenwriter once said, “friendship and money: oil and water”. It’s not hard to understand this quote, so I won’t explain it in too much detail. It’s a pretty universal fact that we need water to live and as I’ve discovered, we need friends to live as well. By ‘live’ I mean have a life that’s worth something. ‘And no man is an island, oh this I knowBut can’t you see, oh?Maybe you were the ocean, when I was just a stone’ Lyrics taken from a Ben Howard song called ‘Black Flies’. As much as we men and women think it’s hard to be alone, it’s harder to not trust or love other. We dive into the friendship around us, it gives us a purpose. “Happiness is only real when shared” is something that stood out from the movie ‘Into the […]
So last night, me and a couple of mates ventured up to the Odyssey cinema, Belfast. Moneyball; a film about Billy Beane, GM of Oakland A’s baseball team, starring Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill. Just to fill you in, I’m a huge American sports fan, but my baseball knowledge isn’t great. This meant I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to follow the story or not, luckily it didn’t really matter. Stats, that is baseball to me, stats on everything. Moneyball for me cast a little light on the stats, the concept of averages and how a team can be built up with ‘enough wins’ through averages. The A’s are a low budget baseball team, the lowest of the low when wages are compared. Peter Brand (Jonah Hill) is a young graduate out of Yale, who has designed a program that could ‘technically’ computer-generate a winning team, without using baseball knowledge or scouts. It’s a romantic, slow moving film about baseball; pretty perfect echo to what baseball really is. The GM position Brad Pitt plays isn’t glamorised, its not over the top. Sure when he get’s angry we see the snippets of a chair flying out of the office or a casual table flip, but that’s what I enjoyed […]
photos that changed the world. April 18th, 1906 at 5:12am an unsuspecting San Francisco was dealt two blows that would change the course of its history. Earthquakes rocked the foundations of San Fran. An 8.4 Richter shake destroyed 5,000 buildings and set fire to the very heart of ‘The City by the Bay’. Arnold Genthe was born in Berlin, Prussia. When he moved to America, he settled in the west as a practiced photographer in San Francisco. His studio was one of the buildings destroyed in the quake, however his image of that day remains. This shot documents a time of pure drama for the people of San Fran. Photographs capture moments in time, recording the expressions and reactions on the faces of those involved. This image is testimony of the chaos caused by a natural disaster. 585 fire fighters fought tirelessly to extinguish the fires that spread rapidly throughout the city, saving the lives and livelihoods of thousands. It took 50 fire trucks put out a blaze that had destroyed a third of the city, causing devastation to San Francisco. People’s homes and fortunes were destroyed overnight; with insurance companies declaring this as “an act of God”, therefore unable to repay most loses. The San Andreas fault is still very much active; therefore another “act of God” cannot […]
