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Caution: Student Driver

The following is an excerpt from "Caution: Student Driver. Can I learn how to drive a stick shift?" by Emily Yoffe, found at http://www.slate.com/id/2128407/:

"Although I still couldn't drive a stick shift, I did learn something important: I discovered that the source of America's obesity epidemic wasn't portion size, or lack of exercise, or the decline in smoking. It was the invention of the automatic transmission. Here I was, the typical, atrophied American, barely able to press the clutch without my slack muscles begging for relief. Automatic transmissions became widely available in the 1940s. Over the decades, as Americans have increasingly embraced them, they've increasingly increased. Since you need both hands to drive a stick shift, there's no way you can also be sucking down Slurpees and shoving in Big Macs. It's because of automatic transmissions that we're becoming blob people who will soon have to be hoisted into our behemoth vehicles.

Compare us with Europeans, who still generally have firm left legs and discernable waists. About 85 percent of cars sold in Europe have manual transmission. It doesn't seem like a coincidence that European weights are creeping up in tandem with upward sales of automatics. (Idea for a best seller: French Stick-Shift Drivers Don't Get Fat.)"

FEAR ME!

State of the Nation - Speech on Public Debt

We've discussed how, why and where money vanishes in Germany. The public debt is just soo big... we discussed for an hour.

I finally agreed that we've got to sell the highways. I say, go and sell them. (Yes, and that's me, the very avid car driver. So listen.)

The public is *willing* to pay sth for the highway use, since the society has *agreed* some time ago to have the highways. And to have social security and all this stuff. So: It's better to sell the highways *now*. This means that the state will not make new debts. This also means that the public will pay for highway use. By now, the public pays for that *as well*. Through taxes, or interest rates on debt later on.
So I say, sell them now, and the public can decide whether it's important enough to use highways and pay for that. Highway is just one example of what (German) society has agreed upon as minimum social standards. We want to have those standards, and we get what we pay for. Now we pay less (taxes), so the state has to finance highways/unemployed/... through debt.

So I say, *sell* all those social obligations, and we pay for what we want to have immediately. Then the public will decide much faster whether we want to still use/subsidize e.g. the highways. It will be a much more direct way of deciding on social standards for everyday life. Sure, we cannot sell unemployment financing, since nobody would like to pay for that voluntarily. But everything else... we want it, we need to pay for it. We pay for it, we get it. So, instead of paying through debt and interest rates, pay it directly. With some obligations on how much profit the private companies may make on that.

Bayreuther Kneipenfestival

On Saturday, Bayreuth was experiencing something of a music night. Probably bigger places have that every other day, but here, this is quite out of the ordinary.

To top off this event, I attempted to have a round of swimming before to soothe my bad conscience about my physical education. Actually, not only to soothe my conscience, but also my right shoulder, which starts killing me again, as usual in winter when temperature drops and I start pulling up my shoulders and get cramps and what the heck.

So anyway. I got pretty disappointed when I found that, contrary to expectations, the city swimming pool closes two hours earlier than expected on Saturdays. Thus, I turned to the city earlier to have a dinner. At Subway's, just for the record, and to recall good Canadian times. And by the way, Subway Deutschland is giving out reward collection sheets, with points to be collected for every sub (or "sandwich", as we Europeans would call it). This reward sheet works in all of Europe, allegedly - but not in, say, Canada or Japan, since there an electronic scheme is in effect and thus incompatible and thus Europe lags behind in technological advances again.

But I am digressing.




So I passed by the Bayreuther Neues Schloss (now housing either some Catholic church institution or the Finanzamt) and the Stadtkirche with its beacon octogonal bell tower ("campanile" is the word I've been looking for).

My sole company for the Saturday evening out (a colleague whose identity shall remain cloudy, but for the record, let's say that he brought his telltale shell-and-spikes necklace with him) informed me via modern-day telecommunications technology that he'll be late. So after having had a great 15cm sub (also known to be "six pouces" long in francophone places) I went out to look for free WLAN in the pedestrian zone. However, it seems that the WLAN owners anticipated this and offered no free service.

Having finally met, we had no idea where to turn to start the music night, so we entered the next-best bar at hand, which happened to sport a (comparatively) good Jazz band. Besides, I found 5 bucks on the ground, which hasn't happened in many a year to me, so this heralded well for the rest of the evening.



The second bar, however, turned out to be - in spite of the high-flying announcement of a Metallica-Nirvana-Aerosmith-style band - more of a trucker stop, and the "musicians" seemed to fit into the place well, which oozed a conservative-restitutional-reactionary feeling. I left early, leaving T behind, not without notifying him via mobile phone, which unfortunately he had left at home, as he furiously informed me of this morning in office.



I stopped by at Borracho, a Mexican/Spanish style bodega/bar. I had to take care not to bump my head at the low ceiling, but the music was good, a kind of Mexican-Greek crossover. I ordered one apple soda, received none for a long time, and finally three arrived at once. I could barely turn down the waiters as fast as the sodas were coming in.





Finally, I turned to Oskar's, which is the signature meeting ground of all economics, law, and Spöko students, and their professors as well. Besides, they have good latte macchiato.

Where do you want to go today?

Yesterday night after a visit at the movies (we've seen "Wallace and Gromit. The Chase for the Giant Rabbit") I rose mightily on the open-ended scale of esteem in the eyes of one of our new colleagues. This is because I drove right up to the McDonald's in BT's pedestrian zone with Smørebrød to get a Chickenburger. However, I have to throw in that this happened at around 22:30.

People use the strangest contraptions to come to work. This is what somebody uses to transport himself to GSP, as seen on GSP's parking lot these last days:



And to continue the tradition of car-related posts, have a look at this. Try to guess which automobile (one 5dr estate wagon, one 2dr convertible) belongs to a) a bachelor-style-living, 28-years-old guy, and b) to a (probably married), white-haired professor in his sixties:



PS: Several hours later, it occurred to me that I misquoted my own age. I'm 27.

Der Blubb (Memento Mori)

As time goes by.




(BTW, today at the cardiologist's I read that frequent consumption of pizza reduces the probability of suffering a heart attack significantly. Having one pizza twice per week, you suffer 56% less strokes. Or your probability to be struck by one drops by 56%. Or to 56%? Or maybe your heart attack becomes 56% less frequent. Or something similar.)

TÜV reloaded

This morning, ...
No, let me start this post differently.

What is the main difference between the following two exhibits:





This morning, Smørebrød successfully passed the biennial (not to be confused with "biannual") technical surveillance team (or TÜV) test, with only minor remarks. "A good car, sir. Volvo builds strong cars, this one will make it for a few more years for sure."
This is in dire contrast to what happened to the Bourgemobile almost exactly two years ago. The list of minor and major faults had been so long I was told in a hushed voice not to bother with it any more.

Wissenschaftsmanagement

"Oft allerdings ist Holsboer als Direktor seines Instituts mehr Manager als Forscher. 'Wissenschaftler anzuleiten ist in etwa so, als versuche man, eine Horde Katzen durch einen Wald zu treiben. Am Ende streunt die eine hierhin, die andere dorthin, die nächsten sitzen auf irgendwelchen Bäumen', beschreibt er den Alltag als Institutsleiter."

(aus Die Zeit, http://www.zeit.de/2005/41/P-Holsboer)

MAUS!

Office Evening

I am spending my whole evening in office, copying data from one notebook hard disk to another notebook hard disk. Without going into details, let it suffice to say that it is *my* hard disk which is being sacrificed in the process, and *my* external drive which goes defunct, too. All because my dad got himself a new digital SLR camera which is helping him fill up his own disk fast recently.

I hope somebody out there reads this and appreciates my effort. It's boring. At least I can peacefully read the Canada papers that have been waiting in the To Do queue for a long time now.