CHI'S

Bluetooth Enabled Burka

From the University of Arts in Berlin via Boing Boing

The CharmingBurka sends a self-defined picture of the wearing person to every mobile phone next to it.
More info here.

The LEGO Brick Testament

Via Core 77

''The website's at least six years old, but that hardly seems to matter when the Good Book itself has been around for more than a millenia. Reverend Brendan Powell Smith's The Brick Testament website is definitely worth a look, featuring astonishingly rendered scenes--some 3,600 of them--depicting The Holy Bible in Lego. Genesis, Exodus, the Garden of Eden, stonings, wrath, plagues, it's all there in little Danish squares. Salvation is a snap.''

Al Qaeda Also Fed Up With Ground Zero Construction Delays

From The Onion

Al Qaeda Also Fed Up With Ground Zero Construction Delays

Controversial Tom Cruise Scientology Video

Via Gawker

Defamer and Radar Online posted this video online and then removed it after pressure from Scientology.
Gawker refuses to remove it, because it's ''newsworthy''. Click here for Gawker's post.
Not sure how long this will stay online, so here's the torrent from the Pirate Bay.

The Big Think or the Big Hype?

TED Talks are popular videos from the 15-20 minute presentations given by elite speakers at its annual event. They usually bring well-argumented and/or funny messages accross and TED's visual flair helps to make these videos inspirational and exciting to watch.

Now Big Think joins the fun with short 3 minute video interviews of public intellectuals in areas such as politics, law, science etc. Big Think is positioning itself as the ''Youtube of ideas'' and aims to trigger debates about issues that matter in this world. It claims to take a more bottom-up approach compared to TED. Another site offering intellectual videos is Fora TV. It is comparable with Big Think, though their videos are longer. All sites aim to implement social networking features, though I'm not sure if that is something to be so happy about...

Big think is not short of coverage upon its launch in part because former Harvard President Larry Summers is a minority investor. Click the links below for more on Big Think and other players in the intellectual video arena.

NYT
Deanstalk
Techcrunch

I checked out the site and thought I'd try and find a video related to something light: life and death. Unfortunately, there are no experts in this field yet?! I watched a video interview with Richard Branson on ''giving back to society'', but was quite disappointed. I think 3 minutes is very short to really say something and the speakers don't really seem comfortable either. Moreover, the added value of video becomes less when the message is so short without any backgrounds or slides to show. So great ''IDEA'' with potential but still poorly executed in in my opinion.

Jim Rogers & Peter Schwartz on the Future

From ''Backlight'' VPRO, The Netherlands

Very interesting edition of ''Backlight'' on Dutch television tonight.
Investor Jim Rogers spoke about commodities and the future of the East (China). He is moving or has moved to China and wants his kids to grow up in the continent of the future: Asia. He sees the 19th century as the century of the UK, the 20th century as that of the USA and the 21st century as the century of China. He has sold his US dollars, predicts the fall of a once great nation and tells us to learn Chinese ASAP! I personally don't think this will happen as quickly and dramatically as he claims considering the size and still growing American economy and its growing population, though he did predict the housing bubble in 2002 and also wrote a ''visionary'' book on rising influence and cost of commodities. Most importantly, he has made a fortune by these predictions. His advice for 2008: puts on anything related to Wallstreet and studying a profession like farming or chemistry rather than an MBA.

Futurologist and business strategist Peter Schwartz spoke about several major topics such as global warming, religion, demographics and more. It was interesting to hear his analysis on how global warming does indeed affect global peace (so perhaps Al Gore's Nobel Prize is justified after all). Also, he predicts Europe to face major tensions as religion will become increasingly relevant with the influx of immigrants from Asia and Africa. Living in Holland with 1 dead politician and 1 dead filmmaker and French riots in the sub-urbs not too far away this prediction is already a reality today. When I heard Peter Schwartz speak in front of a group of marketers in Gent Belgium, I thought it would be quite interesting to do this kind of work. Trendwatching normally focuses on the short-term as is often not very well argumented. His work puts things in a much larger perspective.

The video only shows a small part of both interviews. More info on Backlight's website.