Schönes

Excuse the second German posting in a row.
Today in the morning edition of Kulturzeit on Bayern 2 Radio I heard the following. Usually, this station's hosts talk in pairs, and they know quite well what the other's going to answer, so they play tag with each other. Today, however, this went terribly wrong...

[male voice] Was haben Sie denn Schönes für uns nachher?
[female voice] Was Schönes... nein, eher nicht. Es geht um ein bayerisches Massaker. Wir sprechen nachher vom Sendlinger Weihnachtsmord.

[male voice] What nice stuff do you have for us later?
[female voice] Nice stuff? Um... rather not. It's about a bavarian massacre. We'll talk about the Sendlinger Christmas murder.

Gute Nacht Abendland!

Zum Thema "Homo-Ehe in Großbritannien" heute zu auf tagesschau.de zu lesen:

[...] Auf diesen Tag hat auch Pfarrerin DG sehnsüchtig gewartet. Sie will mit ihrer langjährigen Lebensgefährtin EC die Partnerschaft eingehen.

Ja Gute Nacht Abendland!
Um im BILD-Stil zu fragen... Sind das denn noch Christen?

• Eine PfarrerIn?


• Langjährige LebensgefährtIn?


• Partnerschaft eingehen?


• AnglikanerIn?

Zum Glück ist das weit entfernt und betrifft die Atheisten nicht.

Om Mani Padme Hum

This day started in a financially depressing way, both on a private and a project level. Project-wise speaking, we sucked dry our alloted funds so hard that a German term - "to throw the anchor" - seems in place.
Furthermore, I keep finding that all and any discussion about salary, bills, and money in general with my colleagues is not only futile, but also distressing to the extreme. Of course, life is never fair, same with distribution of anything, and of course I can't complain, as life-wise speaking, my days are more than full... but still, a good measure of good old

Om Mani Padme Hum

should be appropriate now and then.

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Oh my... sometimes, the intellectual level here - but judge for yourself...

"Die Juden haben in der Bild einen Artikel durchgebracht!"

"Die Deutschen sind die Superhacker... im Capture-the-Flag haben drei deutsche Teams gerockt. Wenn jetzt irgendwo auf der Welt ein Server gehackt wird, geht der Generalverdacht auf die Deutschen. [...]
Eh bissu tuerkisch gehackt worn? Eh voll auf die Fresse!
Haha. Wie merkt man, dass man polnisch gehackt wurde? Haha! Server weg!"

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Those last days and weeks, I found I am driving around more than necessary/good. The German Autobahns bring back fond memories of sun-day cruises on Canadian highways... where - notwithstanding any non-cooperative other drivers - peace and safety reign supreme. (Ok, insert some tiny bit of irony on your own here.)
Anyway, the essential contrast still holds - German Autobahns are fun, but war. Unless you own more horsepower than absolutely necessary for mere locomotion, you always try to look ahead several kilometres, then speed up and hope for other drivers to notice you approaching fast and behave accordingly. Which at times boils down to running into your frontman's tail at a high speed difference.
In contrast, Canadian highways are peaceful, but fun. Unless there is a very good reason to misbehave, you settle in either lane, switch on cruise control, and let it run. Since maximum speed is 100km/h, and mean speed maybe 120km/h, is means cooperation on a relaxed level. However, this is boring, too. Since drives are long, one gets tired and it's very easy to lose control through mere lack of concentration.
Hm... a speed limit of 120km/h applies in almost all other European countries, too... the difference seems to be population levels. When the highways are full, then low speeds require your attention, too, or when there's an exit or access ramp every few kilometres. On empty ones, a limit is just a pain in the ass.

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~
I wonder... wonder...
if it's reasonable to ask oneself what is the sound of the clap of just one hand in the forest...
or the sound of a clap when nobody listens...
what is the sound of the song of a condor here which didn't exist so far?

El Condor Pasa

Sometimes, beauty springs up in the most unexpected places.
And sometimes, something unexpected sprouts, from shells opening... like antennae.

The Balloon, The Boat, And The Copyright

(I hope I am not infringing anybody's copyright with this:)

Question:
On a hot air balloon which is close to crashing, there are three scientists.
The first one is an environmental scientist who can save the world from the severe pollution problem.
The second one is a nuclear scientist who can save the world from the shadow of nuclear wars.
The third one is an agricultural scientist who can save the world from famine.
One of them has to been thrown out, otherwise the ballon will crash. Who should be thrown out?

Because of the big prize for the best answer, numerous people offered various answers with their reasons.
The final winner was a little boy.
His answer was: the fattest one.

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I just discussed with T*****. He stumbled upon a news headline about a Hispanic woman in the US who has to pay some 20,000 US$ for music copyright infringements.
Of course, the talk turned fundamental in no time. Basically, he wanted to convince me that it's okay to download mp3s from a peer-to-peer network when the copyright owner doesn't *sell* the song currently. The downloading party has an overriding need for this song, so he should be morally entitled to download. (Compare this to the situation of licensing some antiviral drugs.)
I mean, what? Can you force somebody to sell you stuff? And if he doesn't want to sell, just get it, it *should* be up for grabs? It's like sharing the neighbour's wife when he's not looking and he doesn't want to! However, this disappropriation seems to be okay for today's globalization critic :-).

It reminds me of a short paragraph in either "Tom Sawyer" or "Huckleberry Finn" - one of them goes down to the river (oh, btw, "down to the river" is just *such* a great song) and borrows a boat from somebody who just happened not to be there...

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I will go to visit my family this weekend... I think on and off I need some time away from the frenzy here.

Sunday, Bloody Monday

(Ms AC has arrived in Germany! She had a short stop in BT, and is now travelling in wonderland... I suppose it is. Winter wonderland. Well, not really, snow has melted completely.)

Today, I found, was not the greatest day ever for me.

It started with a Sunday which was free, contrary to my habits as of late... which was uncomfortable, as all I did was staring at the ceiling and thinking. What I saw was this (actually, this sight has been all too familiar to me these last weeks):



Today I had no lunch, since I had to visit the dentist for some maintenance, and when I returned after waiting for a long time at his clinic (okay, finally I got treated, too), the food queue in the mensa was long enough to make me refrain from waiting there as well.
I wanted the snack vending machine to return me a 50ct coin (for laundry), so I threw in some 40 ct, then two Euro, but unfortunately the latter got rejected. So I had to buy something with 40ct, which limited my choice to a small Knoppers ("Das Frühstückchen"). However, the spiral didn't turn far enough to let it fall into the tray below. When I kicked the machine twice, some people came by, but the Knoppers stood its ground.

(By the way, the visit to the dentist's made me shave off the ScotchBrite(TM) beard at the chin.)

Then, I found that the rationale for my dissertation is somewhat... er... lacking a middle part. Why I am doing what I'm doing in academia is: I have some definitions, some deficits of the current situation, and some hypotheses to prove. Unfortunately, I'm lacking the central idea:

UNICEF - Erdbeben in Südasien

Today for something different.

Go outside, get yourself a good freeze, then come back in and visit this page by UNICEF.
Maybe your cashflow allows to go here, too.

600df00d

Since the most diverse people keep asking me how I manage to keep living, given the way I look, here's definitive proof that I can cook.




However, I am dire need of this energy, after all. As you can see in the following picture, my university is cutting down on heating costs.