In an interview for the german magazin Der Spiegel Günther Grass is saying that “East Germany had to carry the major burden of the lost war — committed by all germans — for the long postwar period” and is “still carrying much of that burden”.
Günther Grass has always issued disputatious comments to german politics, history and culture, and his latter books are highly discussed regarding his personal contributions to german history. But he is an authority in his function as one of the most acknowledged writers in german postwar period and carrier of the nobel prize.
It is an interesting read for everyone who wants to know about a nation and its soul after 40 years of divide after a devastating war and a lot of other topics regarding german culture, politics and mental state.
Beth Fulton has visualized Todd Alcott’s poem “Television”:
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Playing along with that topic: The Economist has a profound article about peoples actual behavior in front of the telly. Turns out, self-perception is a miracle.
Since my own cultural shock begins to fade away (almost two years now in the midwest, took me long enough), here is my idealized imagination how the peoples of the world should deal with their cultural differences. One plus one equals three, that’s more than one can expect out of the usual interferences. I imagine e.g. country+rammstein+french or polka+michaeljackson+icelandic or gregorian+snoop dog+japanese.
In spite of the fact that most people nowadays know that wasting energy is a bad habit wich not only causes you losing money but also harms the environment, a lot of those folks buy bottles of water at their local supermarket wich is carried half around of our planet and causing CO2 emissions and lots of costs to get the product where one can buy it for a shortsighted convenience. Certainly there are things we can’t find in our local environments like exotic fruits or ascertained products, but water is the most common thing you can find EVERYWHERE in the western civilization; and where it’s not (Nevada?) it will be for sure pumped through long pipes from areas where exists enough of it (ought to be – but thats a seperate issue). My point is, in most areas of Northern America or Europe you can get good quality tap water. Most of the time it is tested for quality reasons and there are certain treatments attached like fluorine and chlorine for additional advancement to our health (check your local utility service for that matters).
But the main reason why my family and I are drinking tap water instead of bottled water or soda pop is the saving money point. We drink a lot of water throughout the day, it’s good for our health and our body wellness. It would cost us a fortune to satisfy all these drinking needs buying soda pop or bottled water. Of course there is the healthy glass of orange juice a day and our kid is drinking its apple juice for all the vitamins in it. But for the thirst, there is water. Tap Water. And it is saving us a whole bunch of bucks, every single day.
And when you’re really thirsty, like, after a hike of a mile or two, fresh crisp-cool water right out of your canteen tastes as good as fluid gold would taste like if one could relish such kind of liquid (it’s usually to hot in this condition). Kaltes, klares Wasser.
But of course: there is the quality issue — an issue one can argue about (and many will). That’s the reason for the following video. We had a similar incident in Berlin, Germany, back in the nineties, with the same outcome. So please: grab your soda pop or water or whatsoever (beer? – wich unfortunatly doesn’t come right out of the tap) and watch (takes you eight minutes but saves you a lot more, too):
Back then, when I lived in Germany, I loved to watch all those silly QVC or HOT (Home Order Television) shows late at night. The later the better. They got stranger the later in the night it was. Porcelaine puppets, digi-cam-laptop bundles, stupid beads and trinkets or cellphone contracts wich you would pay for long after you’d be dead.
But — as it strikes me so often — America does better. This is a show from a public access cable show from Oklahoma in the nineties wich just sells crap. It’s called Bargain Barn. And it’s real crap. But the guy sells this crap with the same dedication as if he’s selling pure and shiny gold. Love it or leave it. Allrighty?!! Good to go.
In a recent post I wrote about the beautyful Mandelbrot 3D pictures of Daniel White. Tom Beddard took this to a next dimension. He created a short movie of a zoom into one of these 3D fractals. It looks like an alien space ship arrival on a strange and distant methan planet or whatsoever. Nice!
Clever Dale Askey produced a flow chart about the problem when to use Du oder Sie (the second person formal and informal) in german conversations. Askey, normally found at a scientific library in Kansas, lives at present in Leipzig, Germany. Click the image for a larger Pdf-Version. Please check out Dale Askeys Blog as well. Have fun!
Today I drove to the supermarket. When I was deboarding my car I saw a man and he was about sixty years old and he was wearing a black hoodie with the cowl over his head. It was snowing heavily. It was about 25 degrees F. Of course: it’s winter. Apart from the hoodie he was wearing black underpants — really short ones — and his long pale and skinny legs ended up in flip flops. And as he advanced toward the store front through all the oil and gasonline infected snow mud I wished I had my camera with me. Shame on me. But it left me with the question: What’s wrong with these people? Don’t they own pants?
I read a lot around the internet and it’s come close to my attention that folks are doing every possible kind of Best-of-lists. No no no no no, wait! – I won’t do another one! I just… well: While that is repeating every year’s end, this year is kind of special: it’s the end of a decade. And in my own case it has been a crazy one. I formed a band, quit my job and my career in the advertising industry, toured with the band across Europe, published eight records (2 albums, 5 e.p.’s and a vinyl single), took (foster)care of my 14 year old brother-in-law, internet killed the video star, I shot several videos for my band and others, I became father of a son, got married, created a comic blog, moved to another continent and at the very end I am typing words into the internet through this little blog and I must say, … It’s been a pretty nice decade for me.
So how should I end my personal decade? I decided to do it this way: *taking a long breath* … shortly after the wall came down I bought a pretty crappy (but cheap) Casio Tone 470. The sounds were (even for that times) bad but I loved it because it had a 64-keys-fingerboard with big keys and MIDI. At the beginning of this decade I was kind of remembering that old thing and I was considering what to do with it: throw it away or keep it? I decided to keep it for a last job: I did some experimental recordings to get to know my new recording program I had freshly installed back then. I used some samples, like drum sounds, vocals and the Muse-guitars on the third one and some of my guitars on the second one, but the most of the other instruments are created by the grizzly sound chip of the CT 470. Enjoy it, use it for whatever you want. For me it just somehow represent the beginning of the decade and so I want to close it exactly how it was opened to my ears. Cheers.
In March 2009 Clay Shirky wrote an excellent essay about the nature of changes happening to society, newspapers and journalism (“Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable“). It got more than 1,200 responding links since then (a tremendous amount). That remarks how important that topic seems to be especially in the blogging scene, wich is apparently no wonder.
Now, in this Interview with Jay Rosen from the New York University he explains how he tried with this essay to write in a way that people from inside the newspapers can comprehend and get on the subject wich is far beyond the very only existence of newspapers. From my point of view this is the real goal he has achieved with the text. He compares our situation with the 1500s, when the invention of print changed the whole (known) world in a revolutionary way.
The Interview is pretty long (but it is worth it; it deepens and substantiate the topic and brings a lot of lights to the surface), below is just the first part, so make sure there’s enough leisure in the place.
I watched this thing 6 times in a row and my mouth is still open. Guess I have to watch it frame by frame. It’ll take me light years. Sigh.
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After hovering over Mount Everest and the gorges that plunge to the Ganges, you are pulled through the Earth’s atmosphere to glimpse the inky black of space over Tibet’s high desert. So begins The Known Universe, a new film produced by the American Museum of Natural History that is part of a new exhibition, Visions of the Cosmos: From the Milky Ocean to an Evolving Universe, at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York City. - … - The structure of The Known Universe is based on precise, scientifically-accurate observations and research. The Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History maintains the Digital Universe Atlas, the world’s most complete four-dimensional map of the universe.
Yesterday I was updating my wifi router encription method from WEP encryption to WPA2, since the WEP encryption is not very secure. Anyway, at some point it blew my internet connection and the router needed to be reconfigured from the ground. I was trying to get around with the options but at some point I realized that I’m gonna need help from the support hotline. I needed some of the information wich is printed on a sticker on the packaging of the router. Great idea putting it there! — Packaging long gone since I own the router for almost two years now. I hardly remembered my son used it as a swimming pool for his plastic fishes back in summer. — Are we supposed to keep all the packaging of all the products we bought ever for, lets say, 10 years? Like with all that tax related stuff?
Well, maybe it was a bit of my own fault, but what really scared me was that I had to call the customer support hotline of AT&T.
There are a lot of funny postings out there on the internet about scary experiences with customer support hotlines and not a small number of them are related to this company.
But my experience was different. Infact, I was helped quick and polite and after a little bit of back and forth they offered me a solution wich worked out perfect. And just to make it clear: this was not my first attempt to call (or chat with, like in this case) a customer support hotline and with a lot of other companies and offices I had similar horrifying experiences like the ones in all those fittingly internet postings.
Afterall I had kind of a reciprocal feeling and for a moment I was utterly confounded.
But just as to rectify my view of the world I discovered today (with my great working internet connection) this little blog and I think it is very funny. It is called theoatmeal.com and a lot of you guys might know it already. It has a story (among a lot of other brilliant and hillarious issues) wich fits perfect to my now-95%-world-view of customer support hotlines.
I really don’t want to appear as a fractalomaniac or so, but I think this video by Chris Korda is an meaningful addition to my recently post about the 3-D fractals. I find it so astonishing because it shows in another dimension what is so awesome about this fractal phenomena: it lets you experience that the virtual world is larger than (our physical) universe. The number is (to be exactly): 2^316. Phew!
