This book was produced and published by the folks at Coloringbook.com. On their site, where they are selling the book, you will find a few pages from it. On these pages you can read some of the text and see some of the images to be colored. The most disturbing image they provide for you to preview would be the one to the right. I think they were trying to show Osama as a coward in that he is hiding behind a woman… but I think it more appropriately shows that an unarmed woman was killed by a soldier while she was trying to protect an old unarmed man. Regardless, I never had such coloring books when I was a kid. Nobody got me the “Vietnam – the Mistake that Should Not be Repeated” coloring book and I think I am a better person for it.

You will also find a list of comments/editorials from a variety of news sources. Ridiculous statements where they attempt to justify the content by making a comparison to video games or other disturbing forms of media to which children are subjected. Well, I don’t know about you, but I was always taught that “two wrongs don’t make a right“.

I would like to commend a few sources for not joining the patriotic bandwagon, but I couldn’t  find any. Which is strange because I keep reading that this coloring book is “controversial“. I find no controversy from any one. Most reports/reviews simply pieced together the same quotes of text from various members of the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the book’s publisher. I am guessing they feared being shunned for taking a stand. So much for freedom of the press, freedom of religion or freedom of speech for lack of fear of prosecution.

It is pointed out again and again that the book doesn’t talk about all Muslims or Islamic followers in general. It only repeatedly references “‘radical Muslim Islamic extremists“. Oh! Well, that’s different! I am sure small children understand the difference, right? It’s the way they walk and their purple skin! You can’t be confused as it is always so obvious. Publishing and releasing a coloring book of this magnitude is not a responsible move. It is the plain and simple indoctrination of a prejudice at a very early age. So much for learning from history. I for one am very disappointed.

Such is Micael Reynaud’s simple yet creative collection of animated GIFs. By the way, GIF is merely a file extension which ever since 1987 stands for Graphics Interchange Format. Back in those day GIFs were quite minimalistic. It is only in the recent years, probably due to the increased performance improvement in most surfers’ internet connections, that animated images of several Megabytes in file size have become acceptable for general viewing. Such are these GIF animations of Micael Reynaud as well.

Some people are amazed, others are critical. Does a creative assembly of existing artwork count as new art?  What is your opinion?

Well here are two golden oldies that have something in common. They beautifully illustrate how everything in life comes in waves:

You can watch the complete movies right here.

Susie, The Little Blue Coup (1951)

The Little House (1952)

Click here to view the embedded video.

There is this poster ad… it goes like this:

YOU ARE NOT STUCK IN TRAFFIC.

YOU ARE TRAFFIC.

Brilliant, right? Makes perfect sense too. Anytime anyone is “stuck in traffic” and uses that phrase they are externalizing the problem, like it is something outside of them, something that has nothing to do with them, when it is actually quite the other way around. You, and others like you, are traffic.

But it gets better!

The original ad looks like this:

It’s a commercial ad for a portable GPS car navigation system.

But somebody, and unfortunately I don’t know who, came up with an improvement:

Get a bike. Break Free!

Now that makes sense…

The artist is Patryk Habryn. This digital artwork was created with Maya, Mental Ray, ZBrush and Photoshop.

(Wikipedia)

Strange to some, beautiful to others: The ancient practice of blackening one's teeth, Ohaguro.

Weird? Or beautiful?
We know that the portrayal of beauty varies from culture to culture, as well as changes throughout time. And so, in Japan, there is an ancient custom of dyeing one’s teeth black. The practice is called Ohaguro, which is an aristocratic term, and it was most popular during the later 19th century, however the practice itself still exists even today in various parts of Southeast Asia. At least Ohaguro is beneficial to the teeth’s health as well, which cannot be said of many other practices which serve to make us more beautiful or attractive.

In another corner of the world a different concept of beauty developed.

Cheap? Or beautiful?
In the 1940s and 1950s the Western perception of beauty was dominated by pin-up art. And while pin-up artworks and pin-up girls started in France, towards the end of the 19th century, they reached their full potential and glory in the USA, especially during World War II.

One of the rather famous artists of the genre was Gil Elvgren. Artworks were drawn based on actual models and his motto for a perfect model was “a fifteen-year-old-face on a twenty-year-old-body”.  And then comes “the artist’s touch” to create a classic of pin-up art. Have a look at the original photograph and the finished result and see what kind of differences you can notice.

The Status Quo of Beauty Today

A quick Google image search reveals our society’s perception of beauty today.  You will see make-up photographs, bleached teeth, cosmetic product advertisements and a vast number of semi-mysteriously gazing young females. Women are being molded to fit a certain idea and standard of beauty. It is not only women of course, even if the search results imply just that. Since the general trend moves more and more towards synthesized and manufactured beauty, both genders are being “motivated” to conform. Motivated or brain-washed, call it what you will.