Your video, Essentially blind CAT III landing in Zurich's fog, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

This achievement has earned you your "Pop Star" Level 15 Badge!

Is the Zurich doctor Terry Gilliam?

>> ^chicchorea:

Tymbrwulf, don't care for your timbre. You could learn some grace, particularly if endeavoring to teach some to others, if I may say.
Or, perhaps, you just forgot.
http://videosift.com/video/Complimenting-Strangers
<From YT: Just having fun being friendly to strangers, hoping to brighten their day! >
Otherwise, my apologies to all and the Sift for my faux pas. I will seek to amend.
Thank you.
Done and done, the amendment I mean.


Just giving a crash course in posting guidelines. I find it easier to inform using belittlement and sarcasm because it garners more attention than simple suggestion. Not to mention it had the exact effect that I said it wouldn't. Hypocritical, yes, but ineffective? Not for my purposes

>> ^COriolanus:

The implications of this are not lost on me.


Excellent. Outstanding.

Thank you.

Finally.

>> ^Tymbrwulf:

WERE THE CAPITAL LETTERS IN YOUR TITLE REALLY NECESSARY?
DO YOU THINK CAPITAL LETTERS WILL GARNER MORE VOTES FOR YOUR VIDEO BECAUSE IT'S MORE VISIBLE?


WERE YOURS?! AND DO YOU?!

Tymbrwulf, don't care for your timbre. You could learn some grace, particularly if endeavoring to teach some to others, if I may say.

Or, perhaps, you just forgot.

http://videosift.com/video/Complimenting-Strangers
<From YT: Just having fun being friendly to strangers, hoping to brighten their day! >

Otherwise, my apologies to all and the Sift for my faux pas. I will seek to amend.

Thank you.

Done and done, the amendment I mean.

There's no "s" in anyway. You wouldn't say "Any days" nor "Any colors", would you?

>> ^bcglorf:
>> ^Ryjkyj:
but the stories he can tell will make you love him anyways...

>> ^Ryjkyj:
^No shit. I admit that he's still a sex offender no matter what but his story is very interesting.


Well, I guess the two cancel each other out then. Sure he's a pedophile, but the stories he can tell will make you love him anyways...

I seem to be mostly outside the mainstream of the sift, so I submit a lot of things that get few or even no votes, and others that languish until someone notices them and then they become kinda popular.

This is one of the ones that meant a lot to me and not to others: http://www.videosift.com/video/Somebodys-Mom (my guess is that most sifters haven't been through infertility anxiety).

For the sifted, this one made me soar: http://www.videosift.com/video/Music-as-a-Roller-Coaster-Zurich-Chamber-Orchestra .

Nice idea, AC. I've enjoyed looking at the other submissions--only some of which I had noted before.

http://www.videosift.com/video/Googles-Zurich-HQ

If you are interested
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7292600.stm
has a better video link swap it for this if you like

Good video though

*dupe of http://www.videosift.com/video/Music-as-a-Roller-Coaster-Zurich-Chamber-Orchestra

http://www.videosift.com/video/Music-as-a-Roller-Coaster-Zurich-Chamber-Orchestra

HeyOxdottir,
you're welcome to bring your sifts to my attention:), this one must've slipped through my radar..many of your sifts were well-received by me and upvoted, plus archive upvoting still on-going..good work!
Eklek

In reply to this comment by oxdottir:
Eklek, you are the only person I am asking this, but it seems you would like this video: http://www.videosift.com/video/Music-as-a-Roller-Coaster-Zurich-Chamber-Orchestra

Fine if you don't, and I know I could have your taste wrong since I am just basing it on others of my videos you have voted on. Anyway, hope you don't mind my pointing it out.

Eklek, you are the only person I am asking this, but it seems you would like this video: http://www.videosift.com/video/Music-as-a-Roller-Coaster-Zurich-Chamber-Orchestra

Fine if you don't, and I know I could have your taste wrong since I am just basing it on others of my videos you have voted on. Anyway, hope you don't mind my pointing it out.

I'll offer you two bits of info here to consider before we go any farther, yaroslavvb. Please take the time to read, they'll help.

First an excerpt from the Lancet medical journal report I'd mentioned above. As I'd said above and as repeated in their findings, unattractive for young people now. It isn't market theory that drives this. The climb in use is in the years before the program started and why they started it, they had one of the worst abuse rates in the area. The fall started shortly after the program did.

Summary

Background Switzerland has been criticised for its liberal drug policy, which could attract new users and lengthen periods of heroin addiction. We sought to estimate incidence trends and prevalence of problem heroin use in Switzerland.

Methods We obtained information about first year of regular heroin use from the case register of substitution treatments in the canton of Zurich for 7256 patients (76% of those treated between 1991 and March, 2005). We estimated the proportion of heroin users not yet in substitution treatment programmes using the conditional lag-time distribution. Cessation rate was the proportion of individuals leaving substitution treatment programmes and not re-entering within the subsequent 10 years. Overall prevalence of problematic heroin use was modelled as a function of incidence and cessation rate.

Findings Every second person began their first substitution treatment within 2 years of starting to use heroin regularly. Incidence of heroin use rose steeply, starting with about 80 people in 1975, culminating in 1990 with 850 new users, and declining substantially to about 150 users in 2002. Two-thirds of those who had left substitution treatment programmes re-entered within the next 10 years. The population of problematic heroin users declined by 4% a year. The cessation rate in Switzerland was low, and therefore, the prevalence rate declined slowly. Our prevalence model accords with data generated by different approaches.

Interpretation The harm reduction policy of Switzerland and its emphasis on the medicalisation of the heroin problem seems to have contributed to the image of heroin as unattractive for young people. Our model could enable the study of incidence trends across different countries and thus urgently needed assessments of the effect of different drug policies.

Introduction

Switzerland has been criticised for its liberal drug policy. Specifically, the implementation of harm reduction measures, such as drug consumption rooms, needle-exchange services, low-threshold methadone programmes, and heroin-assisted treatments, have been thought to make potential users think that harm will not arise from use of illicit drugs. According to this critique, such a policy would lead to a growing number of new users of street drugs and lengthen the period of heroin addiction. Contrary to this belief, stable prevalence of heroin use since 1994 has been reported in Switzerland.

http://www.sharemation.com/Rubin/H/swiss.heroin.summary_lancet.367.1830-4_2006.html

Second we'll deal with the idea that any of this had to do with health or safety to start with. It was more control, politics. The following link is to a speech derived from The Forbidden Fruit and the Tree of Knowledge: An Inquiry into the Legal History of American Marijuana Prohibition by Professor Richard J. Bonnie & Professor Charles H. Whitebread, II, and given by Charles Whitebread, Professor of Law, USC Law School.

It is the history of non-medical use of drugs in this nation, how and why the laws developed and when. No, he's not just some activist. He had done some research on his own that impressed the Government enough that he was a part of a team given access to government archives to research the issue. That's what he was there for. It's a bit long and reads odd at times since it was meant to be spoken instead of read, but it's a good bit of history we won't see much elsewhere. It wasn't to keep the kids safe. It was politics.

http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/History/whiteb1.htm

Is any of what we've got so far perfect? Probably not. What we do should be decided by research and trial studies, even when we are doing better than we're doing now we shouldn't stop looking. It should always be pursuit of a better method. Much of what we're considering today seems better than what we've done so far, and where they've been tried the fears of what could happen often turn out to be misplaced. If in some case they aren't we trash that method and try again, that's why we start in trial study instead of widespread use. That's how the Swiss went from needle park, a failure, to the maintenance program, a success. It's a process, not a simple "we do it this way" answer. We do what works, and if we're lucky we do it without politics or special interests getting in the way.

Winterzauber, "Winter Magic"

More info from the artist's website: http://www.p-geist.de/start.html

Multimedia art in Zurich: A restaurant is turned into a work of art

english version (translation Julie Draper)
Zurich, 11.27.2005

Beginning at sundown from 11.27 through 12.31.2005, the historically protected building housing the Lake Side Restaurant in Zurich will be transformed into a 450 sqm. three-dimensional video art installation.

It is the work of Berlin-based multimedia artist Philipp Geist, a rising star in the young art scene. Together with the symphony orchestra OBC Barcelona and the Finnish sound ensemble Pan Sonic, Philipp Geist appeared as a video artist at the opening of the Sonar Festival in Barcelona in 2004. He was represented at the Dissonanze Festival in Rome, at Clubtransmediale in Berlin and at the Mutek Festival in Montreal which is renowned for new media. His video works have been exhibited at important international art institutions including the Central House of Artists (CHA) in Moscow, the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) in London, the National Gallery in Warsaw (Zacheta), at the opening of the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich – and now for the first time in switzerland.

For his work in Zurich, the 29 year-old Berlin-based artist deliberately avoids the use of canvases and instead projects directly onto the concrete building façades and windows which have been prepared with a special projection foil. Every evening, visitors can expect to see a selection of images alternating between purist, dreamlike and intangibly fragile compositions. The starting foundation for all of Philipp Geist’s work is video material solely filmed and produced by himself. Geist finds the subjects for his work in everyday things like hairbrushes, leaves, raindrops and curtains. He releases these objects from their usual setting and places them in new visual and correlated contexts by employing special camera and video techniques using motion blur and superimposition.

Especially for Winterzauber (Winter Magic) in Lake Side, Philipp Geist went in search of wintry, Christmasy motifs which attempt to break the link to consumption and indulgence, and instead direct visitors’ attention toward the pure aesthetic component that is all too often obscured by the kitschy madness of Christmas.

It is in this way that a ride along the highly commercialized Oxford Street in London takes on a completely new appearance as it is seen through a window pane. Distorted by the raindrops at night, it allows viewers only a vague impression of the twinkling Christmas lights. Microscopic close-ups give sparklers, burned down candles and snowflakes an element of diversity that would have remained unappreciated by the human eye without the aid of technology.

By opting to use the three-dimensional, defined structure contours as projection surfaces instead of canvases, Geist increases the motifs’ abstraction while simultaneously regaining depth and diversity. In this way, Geist initiates a dialogue between the historically protected architecture, his artistic work and the people going in and out of the structure: The visitor himself becomes part of the projected image on the threshold between the inside and outside of the building.

Geist allows a wintry world to emerge in front of visitors’ eyes. The subject matter and motifs, although familiar, astonish with their size and unusual presentation while altering the observer’s perception and challenging conventional viewing habits.

Given that the opening of Geist’s work will coincide with the first day of Advent, it will be intriguing to see how he uses his playful, artistic interpretation to approach winter and Christmas themes. One thing is for certain: Visitors will be able to immerse themselves in a tranquil, wintry, dreamlike world of lights.

"Winterzauber" 2005 at Lake Side
Videoart installation by Philipp Geist
open daily from 11.27 - 12.30.05, 6:00 pm – 12 am
12.31.05, 6:00 pm – 5:00 am