Better on black [EN] Title: Isolation.. Shot over an escalator at La D�fense, Paris. [FR] Un escalator parmi beaucoup d'autres � La D�fense, Paris. Explore and front page rank #1 on june 4th 2011. Thank you all for your visits and comments ___________________________________________________________________ Previous picture: Curves ___________________________________________________________________ Thank you for your comments and faves, they're greatly appreciated :) !
Tuesday, 7 June 2011
Isolement - 4 Jun 2011 - Flickr
F1 in a spin over Bahrain
Three days after motorsport's governing body, the FIA, reinstated the Bahrain Grand Prix on to this year's Formula 1 calendar, the likelihood of the race actually taking place remains as uncertain as ever.
As FIA president Jean Todt was telling the BBC on Monday that the situation in Bahrain was now back to normal following the civil unrest that led to the race being postponed in February, the F1 teams were discussing what to do next.
I understand that the teams all feel that going to Bahrain this season is not a good idea, and that their objections are based on two main points:
Logistical - as Mercedes team principal Ross Brawn has pointed out, the F1 team members have been working flat out since January, and shoe-horning an extra race into an already crowded season's end, and extending the championship until mid-December, is a step too far.
Ethical and moral - trying to bring such issues into sports scheduling raises all sorts of difficult questions, such as exactly where you draw the line. After all, Bahrain is not the only country on the F1 schedule about which human rights groups have concerns. Which is why sports' bodies generally try to stay out of politics. But the teams feel that if holding a grand prix in a strife-torn area is likely to exacerbate the situation, then that is on the wrong side of the line.
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No team has made these views public yet, with the only official statement so far emerging from their umbrella group Fota, stating that the issue would be discussed internally and that a joint position may be defined. It may be that this will happen over the course of the Canadian Grand Prix this weekend.
In the meantime, F1 is in a state of limbo that reflects badly on it on several different levels.
How, many outside the sport will ask, can it have taken so long to come to this decision? And how, having done so, can there still be uncertainty about whether the Bahrain Grand Prix will be held this year?
There are different versions of exactly what happened on Friday in the meeting of the FIA World Council that resulted in Bahrain's reinstatement.
FIA insiders have said that while the governing body may be aware of the teams' reported unease, it has received so far only a letter from Brawn and one from the Grand Prix Drivers' Association, outlining their concerns about safety.
So if the teams felt uneasy about the race, why did not any of their representatives raise an official objection?
Equally, though, with the world's media and Amnesty International reporting continuing human rights abuses in Bahrain, was the FIA right to conclude in its own report that the situation is now "very stable and very quiet", as Todt put it?
Even as he justified the world council's decision, though, Todt may have been laying the ground for calling off the race - he gave himself some 'wriggle room'.
After a lengthy exposition on how all major parties in Bahrain backed the reinstatement of the race, and how United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon was talking about "restoring a good situation in this part of the world", Todt added: "But we are talking about 30 October, so it will be monitored and things will be taken into consideration. The decision to go ahead was taken regarding how things are now."
Could that be the signal that another U-turn is on the cards?
I'm told that over the next few days the teams are likely to quietly begin to lobby the FIA to reconsider, pointing out that far from helping heal the wounds caused by the violent suppression of February's pro-democracy protests, the decision to hold a race already looked to be doing the opposite.
Only on Monday, the Bahrain Centre of Human Rights indicated that it would be calling for a "day of rage" on 30 October, the date of the rescheduled race, while the UK sports minister warned that holding the race would lead to a "disaster".
While all the teams are uneasy (even McLaren, whose biggest shareholder is a financial group owned by the Bahrain government), I'm told that the greatest concerns are held by three organisations - Renault, Mercedes and tyre supplier Pirelli, none of whom were available for comment.
As the three biggest corporate entities in F1, this would not be a surprise. They have well developed corporate social responsibility programmes, and they have the most to lose from a PR point of view from the inevitable negative fall-out that holding a race this year would create.
Todt acknowledged that it was "their choice" if they wanted to boycott the race - and there is precedent for that in F1.
In 1985, Renault and their fellow French team Ligier refused to take part in the South African Grand Prix, in a country still nine years away from the end of apartheid, following pressure from their country's government. And a number of sponsors of the teams that did take part removed their logos from the cars.
I understand that a boycott is not, for now, on the agenda. Even so, having just announced that the race will go ahead, the FIA finds itself in a difficult situation. But there is a way out.
Suppose, quietly, behind the scenes, the teams make it clear that they are unhappy about the Bahrain Grand Prix going ahead. As part of this pressure, it is made clear to the Bahraini authorities that if they insist on holding the race, some teams and sponsors will not attend. There is even the chance that the sport's tyre supplier would refuse to participate - meaning a race could not happen in any event.
In those circumstances, Bahrain would be faced with a choice.
They could go ahead with the race in the wake of a stream of statements from major global corporate stakeholders that they felt the event was untenable - not exactly a desirable situation for a significant international banking hub.
Or they could quietly announce that, given the circumstances, the risk of further protest, of putting pressure on a sensitive situation, in hindsight they believed that the best action would be to call off the race after all.
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/andrewbenson/2011/06/three_days_after_motorsports_g.html
Birabongse Bhanubandh Lucien Bianchi Gino Bianco Hans Binder
MTV: Chords, Sunday bloody sunday
If you know music, you know MTV.
Advertising Agency: Loducca, S�o Paulo, Brazil
Creative Directors: Guga Ketzer, Cassio Moron, Marco Monteiro, Pedro Guerra
Art Director: Denon Oliveira
Copywriter: Alex Bitencourt
Photographer: Diogo Salles
Published: May 2011
Check out the staff favorites on StockLogos.
Source: http://adsoftheworld.com/media/print/mtv_chords_sunday_bloody_sunday
Monday, 6 June 2011
Dixan Puff: Feather, Red
Advertising Agency: DDB, Milan, Italy
Copywriter: Valerio Le Moli
Art Director: Armando Viale
Photographer: Sonia Marin
Art Buyer: Michela Braganti
Account Supervisor: Chiara De Simone
Check out the staff favorites on StockLogos.
Source: http://adsoftheworld.com/media/print/dixan_puff_feather_red
May Colors - 24 May 2011 - Flickr
This is one simply Brandenburg landscape without a special composition, but I found it somehow interesting. Nikon D7000 Nikon AF-S DX Nikkor 10-24 mm @ 10 mm ISO100, 1/13 sec., f/8 Lee .9 Soft GND and B+W polarizer filters Getty Images | Fluidr | Flickr Hive Mind | DNA Please don't use this image on websites, blogs or other media without my explicit permission. � 2011 www.dietrichbojko.com, All rights reserved. Exif data auto added by theGOOD Uploadr Camera Make : NIKON CORPORATION Camera Model : NIKON D7000 Exposure : 0.077 seconds Aperture : f/8 ISO Speed : 100 Focal Length : 10 mm Subject Distance : 256.0 meters
Life in the pit lane
 The Mercedes pit crew prepare for Michael Schumacher in Singapore |
These are not select millionaires but up to 16 ordinary, yet gifted, guys; team mechanics who have worked their way up the system and often migrate from team to team, are paid real-world wages of between �30,000 and �50,000 a year, are drilled to perfection ? and whose split-second synchronisation brings their teams huge rewards.
Source: http://blogs.espnf1.com/paperroundf1/archives/2010/09/life_in_the_pit_lane.php
Conny Andersson Mario Andretti Michael Andretti Keith Andrews
David Ragan Inches Closer to First Career Sprint Cup Win
If you were able to withstand the entire broadcast of Sunday night's Coca Cola 600, first off, congratulations. This is the longest race on the NASCAR schedule, and after a race that lasted just about five hours, I'm sure there were some fans at home watching that were just as tired as the drivers who were racing it.
The end of the race provided plenty of drama. As the laps wound down, every driver on the lead lap was questioning whether or not they could make it to the end of the race without running out of fuel.
Then, to add a little more drama, a caution came out with four laps to go when Jimmie Johnson's engine let go. Under the yellow, about half of the field elected to come down pit road and top off their gas tanks, just to ensure they would make it to the end.
David Ragan was the first of those drivers to do so. He would go on to take the ensuing restart in 10th place.
Then, as the field was coming to take the one to go signal, race leader Greg Biffle came down pit road as he was out of gas. This handed the front row to Kasey Kahne and Dale Earnhardt Jr.
When the green flag waved to restart the race, Kahne never got going. He was out of gas, and as he failed to get up to speed, a melee occurred behind him. Cars began to plow into the back of each other with Brad Keselowski sustaining a lot of damage, and Jeff Burton getting spun into the infield.
Through all this, no caution waved, and Earnhardt Jr. pulled away. As he took the white flag, it appeared that his 104 race winless streak would come to an end. But as he was making the final turn, he too ran out of fuel, as did Denny Hamlin who was right behind him.
Seemingly out of nowhere, Kevin Harvick, who was also extremely low on fuel, charged out of Turn 4 and inherited the lead. He made it to the start/finish line first, and claimed his series best third win of the year. Harvick led a total of just two laps en route to the win.
The second place finisher was the driver who had come off pit road first under the final caution, David Ragan.
The runner up finish is a career best for Ragan, who for the second time this year was left to wonder what could have been. Ragan ran up front all night long, and was certainly strong enough to win, but on this night it just wasn't meant to be.
This easily could have been Ragan's second win of the season. Ragan was leading the season opening Daytona 500 when he got penalized on the second to last restart of the day. Ragan had chosen the outside lane for the restart, and prior to the green flag coming out, he changed his lane when he cut down in front of eventual race winner, Trevor Bayne.
He was issued a black flag, and sent to the tail end of the longest line for the final restart. He ultimately finished 14th in that race.
So, for the second time this year, Ragan was oh, so close to scoring that elusive first ever win, but at least this time he got a finish that reflected how strong of a night he had.
David Ragan is a young driver who races hard, but clean. He is a driver who has taken plenty of criticism over the last couple of years for not living up to expectations, and he is a driver that wants nothing more than to win a race in NASCAR's top series.
While the Coca Cola 600 provided him with a career best finish, it was one spot worse than he would have really liked. But rest assured that if he continues to run that strong, he won't have to wait much longer for his first career trip to victory lane.
Read more NASCAR news on BleacherReport.com
Source: http://bleacherreport.com/articles/716850-david-ragan-inches-closer-to-first-career-sprint-cup-win
Jay Chamberlain Karun Chandhok Alain de Changy Colin Chapman
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