Random Pictures is back...

So true...

The Rules

(from Rules for engagement in modern guerrilla warfare: subsection relationships)

1. The female always makes the rules

2. The rules are subject to change at any time without prior notification

3. No male can possibly know all the rules

4. If the female suspects that the male knows all the rules, she must immediately change some of the rules.

5. The female is NEVER wrong

6. If it seem that the female is wrong, it must be because of a flagrant misunderstanding which was the direct result of something the male did or said wrong.

7. If rule no 6 applies, the male must apologise immediately for causing the misunderstanding.

8. The female can change her mind at any time.

9. The male can not change his mind, except with the express written consent of the female, which may be retracted at any time

10. The female has the right to be upset or angry at any time.

11. When the female is upset or angry, she is under no obligation whatsoever to disclose her reasons, if any

12. The male must remain calm at all times unless the female wants him to be angry or upset.

13. The female must under no circumstances allow the male to know whether or not she wants him to be angry or upset.

Should stop betting on football games... (Only did it this european cup, though)

My bet on Portugal - England was 1:2, ended 5:6. Greece - France I bet 1:3, now it is 1:0 and it does not look like it is going to get anywhere close to my bet...

Old chinese proverb says no luck at gambling... :-)

I learned something about Alice today... Hansenet is 100% owned by Italian Telecom. Explains a lot.

Also learned something about women today. Some of them are not as clever as I think they are... But on the other hand, that is not only women, that is all people. Most of them are vegetables, some of them are as clever as I think they are, some come close, most don't...

Note to self: 19. September International Talk like a pirate day

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

Alice is fast. Finally she arrived at my flat, after a month, two telekom technicians, five hours in the hotline...

But at least it works and I get some 200K/s data transfers to Erlangen University, some 20K/s to Vienna University; austrians have always been slow...

When physicists get excited... or as the slide at todays meeting said "Nils close to the magnet when turned on"

Been to the comic salon here in Erlangen today. There are really great comics out there. Some funny, some serios, some both...

Better yet than the comcis was the audience. From the Erlangen Goth scene (imagine 15 year old kids with akne, looking pale, running around in dark leather coats and kilts, being EVIL) to Erlangen intellectuals (wild haircut, small glasses, babbling about how this reminds them of that and isn't there a TV show called teletubbies or so, yes, yes, it just looks like that) to Siemens people (*BORING*), to Frankonian Coz-Players (same as Goth-Scene, but brighter leather coats...)

I wish I could draw. The whole thing was worth beeing drawn in a comic...

The ballots are closed in Germany, now politicians start to babble on the radio...

Conservatives, who are the clear winner, claim it was a sign, that the people (more THE PEOPLE) are sick of social democrats and it was a clear sign against the government in Berlin. AFAIK this was european parliament elections, so what has this to do with Berlin...

Social Democrats, who lost alot, say it is because they did necessary reforms and now get this as a form of penitence for them. Yeah, just do some ave marias and blaim it on the stupid people (again THE PEOPLE) who do not understand the necessities of a state. The idea that it is because they had no message in this elections does not come to anybody's mind...

The greens, who gained more than 4%, say, they won because they were the only ones with a program... At least one party not babbling complete nonsense.

I vaguely remember some book, where politicians were shot after their 4 years in parliament. Might help...

Rule number one of the guild of Noisemaking Professions: Thou shalt only work between 7:30 and 9:00. Thou shalt choose the wall which is closest to anyone sleeping. Thou shalt use the largest hammer you can find...

Spiegel Online and Heise both state, that since early morning a fascist spam wave is roaring through the net... The first time ever that Neo-Nazis managed to get a bot-net working to distribute their mental diarrhea by spam mails...

I only got mails about cheap viagra and my small penis today (90% of all women think my penis is too small...)

"An important instrument of suppresion by patriarchalic society is the mandatory heterosexuality."

(from the program of Die Frauen - a feministic party candidating at the europian elections)

Thanks to a friend of mine (who should write a thesis instead of googling around ;-) more info on Alice

Mind the annoying SMS-Ticker at the bottom of the page. Who thinks of such stupid annoying useless and generally shite things?

Meet Alice. Alice was supposed to come to my flat last month. She did not show up... I phoned her, after waiting a few minutes in the loop, I got the answer, that she will come in a few days, following a telekom technician. A few days later I recieved a SMS that she will come a day after the agreed date. Fine... I was not there by that time. Talking to her (after minutes and minutes in the loop), we agreed on another day. SMS: it will be a day after that date... Fine. The technician bringing here was supposed to show up between 8:00 and 16:00. At 12:00 I recieved a call that Alice is not in my flat. Yeah, that I knew, I already told her that a few weeks before. So we agreed on an emergency telekom technician bringing her within 6 hours. Wich finally worked. Now I just need my password to use Alice (which is supposed to arrive by mail any day now)...

BTW: Alice is DSL provided by HanseNet here in Hamburg, in case you did not guess already

Picture taken 10:29 CET in Hamburg Altona, using a Canon EOS 300D, 300mm lens, covered roughly 90% by cardboard and using a black slide as filter.

Only every 122 years venus can be seen passing in front of the sun, but then twice within 8 years. One of the last venus transits features one of my personal favorite scientists: Guillaume Joseph Le Gentil. In 1760 he left Brest for India, to observe the venus transit from there allowing to measure the distance between earth and sun, a method developed by Halley. He arrived Pondycherry in India in time, but the city was taken by british soldiers who where at war with the french at that time. He could not leave the ship, so he did his measurements aboard, which ended up completely useless...

He then went to Madagaskar and Mauritius to do some studies there and wait for the next transit eight year later. Returning in time to Pondicherry, which has fallen back to France again, he was only able to stare at rain clouds. Disappointed he returned to france. On his voyage he survived two ships sinking, finding at his return that he had been declared dead by his family and all his welth had been spend by his heirs.

Blogging helps writing your dissertation

It is Bergkirchweih-Time. Starting Thursday before pentecost, Erlangen turns ten days into a madhouse... Every night around 10.000 people walk up a small hill and get drunk. You get Ox-on-a-stick (a whole Ox roasted...), Beer in 1l-mugs, lots of amusement-things like auto-scooter and drunk people. Astonishingly there are only minor brawls, nearly no casualities.

All teenagers go there and get drunk. Most of them are annoyingly dumb...

Interesting fact: about three to four months after the Bergkirchweih biology and medicine faculties get an unusual high number of foetuses to play with... When I grew up and was a teenager, I vaguely remember something called AIDS/HIV and always use a condom. Seems to be forgotten by now... But maybe I am just plain boring.

The said magnet... stupid piece of crap.

Nas vésperas da inauguração da Ponte Rainha Santa Isabel (ex-Ponte Europa)... (Publico Online)

Not yet opened the new bridge in Coimbra already changed its name... The Bridge Formerly Known As Europa.

Congratulations to all Conimbrigenses and Santa Clarenses, now there is one more way to meet.

Still-life with tunnel tea...

Did I already say, that I hate cooling down superconducting magnets? No? I hate cooling down superconducting magnets. It just bores the hell out of you...

Elite Universities are great. Let us all copy american unversities! We want 10% of the students thinking of suicide and 1.3 percent actually trying...

Just did the RTL test on german. Scored 16 out of 20, really bad. Punctuation and text completion 0 mistakes, guessing strange words and capitalization each 2 out of 5 wrong.

The strange words guessing is comlete nonsense. They ask for words no one ever uses... And they do not even tell you afterwards what you did wrong. And it is a bad flash animation. Just so RTL...

This seems to be the new hype in german televison. Doing the great german whatever test. There has been a fitness test, now there is a spelling test, there were these stupid germanys most intelligent people tests, working like any quizshow with questions about useless facts (what bra size has Britney Spears...). Sad to see where TV is going...

BEWARE OF THE INTERNET. Use a filter...

This Blog complies to the BLX standard...

Tried contact lenses today. Although I did stick quite a few things in my eyes when I was a kid (like scissors), it took me about two hours until the optician put them in. Getting them out I managed myself in under half an hour...

It is quite a good feeling not having glasses on and seeing everything clearly. Although I am not used to it and it just felt wrong to see without anything sticking in your face... I will try again some time, I got two lenses for free. Maybe some day I get used to it.

Always Remember:

Ensimmäinen runo

Mieleni minun tekevi,
aivoni ajattelevi
lähteäni laulamahan,
saa'ani sanelemahan,
sukuvirttä suoltamahan,
lajivirttä laulamahan.
Sanat suussani sulavat,
puhe'et putoelevat,
kielelleni kerkiävät,
hampahilleni hajoovat.
Veli kulta, veikkoseni,
kaunis kasvinkumppalini!
Lähe nyt kanssa laulamahan,
saa kera sanelemahan
yhtehen yhyttyämme,
kahta'alta käytyämme!

Another fun and interesting thing to do: watch a superconducting magnet cool down. Just sit next to it and check every 15 minutes if it is still cooling down with less than 30K/h... Not to mention it is loud, we have dried air and there is a low annoying wind passing through the hall...

Changed the blog template: as blogger is now providing comments, i got rid of the haloscan ones. Anybody can comment now, without the need for JavaScript...

I am starting to understand, why so many Physicists (see below...) turn up here. I spent the last two or three working days painting small dots in a grid on our superconducting magnet. Combine this with other equally stupid and boring tasks, no social life, no contact to non-physicists (in case you get in contact, it is only short and stops at the question which Job you have) and you end up being a pathetic sociopathic Physicist. Or an alcoholic. Or both...

When I am done with my PHD I will go to Brazil and live in the Jungle for quite some time... Or end up in a mental institution with friendly people telling me everything will be good. Sorry Nuno, no Bar here in Hamburg.

I wrote a complaint about the information policy of the S-Bahn (metro) about the trains going after the suicide. They had at the display something like "Wait for Announcements", but all the announcments were unreadable because of trains passing by. Nobody at the station (at least the passengers) had any clue about where to go...

I got an answer quite fast. I should have gone to the Info-Point to get an individual time table blabla. They will forward my complaint to the crisis management blabla. It seems that none of them ever goes by train. If it says "Wait for announcment" I wait for Announcments. If they want me to go to the Service-Point, do an announcment "Go to service point if you want to get home". If they have no clue what to do, make an announcment "We have no clue what to do, find your way home on your own".

There was actually a train going where I wanted (Altona), but this was an interregional one (ICE), not a S-Bahn. They could have said "Take this if you want to go to Altona", as it was empty anyway.

Never go with anything connected to Deutsche Bahn again. Bloody Idiots.

Went to the cinema yesterday with a friend to see Troy. As usually the book is much better, Petersen does not seem to have read it... Either I slept, or there is no twelve years siege. Achilles is an arrogant idiot, Helena is not so beautyful to start a war for, all is historically inaccurate (not to say plain wrong) and fighting scenes are just stupid. Achilles wears his steel armor on bare skin, which I think would not last a few minutes in a actual fight, his swordplay is just ridiculous.

There are no gods in the movie. As far as I remember the whole story is about man being a toy for the gods. Achilles is a semi-god. In that movie he is not even invulnerable (he just does not get hurt), there is no explanation why he is hurtable only on his feet...

All the greek heroes look like vikings. (Only Hector looks a bit italian) I really do not like the Idea of greek heroes being tall blond blue eyed vikings. They should look like small, big nosed greek (no offense to the greek. Call it a classical profile...)

I could go on ranting for longer, but you might get the idea... On the way back home, which would have been two stations with the metro, some idiot jumped in front of a train at a station before, so no trains where going in my direction. All announcements at the station were made when trains passed by, so you could not understand anything. Catched the last train to the main station, hoping there would be a possibility to get home. There were no more trains, the last one gone half an hour ago. So we took the night bus, taking one and a half hour for a travel taking ten minutes normally.

It just was classical. After the Iliad (or a bad movie of it) came the Odissey (or a bad night bus version of it). If it wasn't for my company being a very nice girl, this would have been a horrible evening...

Never try to discuss things with Physicists. (I distinguish between Physicists (Capital P) and physicists. The latter being somebody who studied physics but survived somewhat being a normal person, the former a absent-minded creature, only knowing other physicists, social life consisting of meetings and getting drunk with two other physicists. You get the Idea...)

Discussions with Physicists go around in circles, they always try to take EVERYTHING(TM) into account, they make up problems, they have no clue about what is realistic and what not. And for some reason they sometimes fall silent for about 30 seconds, staring around, and then start the discussion again. Maybe it is because they do not meet a lot of people, so if they have got the opportunity to talk to somebody, they overuse it...

Been to the Hafengeburtstag. Highlight: The Tug Boat Ballet...

Been in Erlangen for the last two days, going out with friends and signing a new working contract. I am still not sure if I like Hamburg that much, anyway I will return to Erlangen as soon as our project in Hamburg is finished...

Packing stuff now, as I will leave for Hamburg early tomorrow morning (I wanted to leave tonight, but I am too tired to survive 6 hours of driving). It is raining.

If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.

- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry -

My favourite political movements, Part #1: Posadistas

Quote from Fortean Times: "They called themselves the Posadists after their founder Juan R Posadas and, like many UFO cults, they bore a fierce loyalty to their “dear master”.1 They believed that close encounters were evidence of superior socialist civilisations from Earth’s future. Their bizarre belief in flying saucers was not channelled to them by some tackily-named space entity but “theoretically informed” by Marx and Trotsky, and was for them a logical extension of Marxist dialectical materialism. Posadas wrote: “We will travel to planets millions of light years away under a Socialist society.”

Trotskyism meets UFO-Cult. Groovy...

Kuro5hin has a nice article about the portuguese revolution, which sums up portugal's history from the 1920 to April 25th, 1974 quite nicely. As far as I can tell...

Finally got my satelite receiver working. The last week I was only able to see childrens television in very bad quality. I phoned to the company responsible for our antenna, and discovered that the people at Saturn sold me the wrong cable, which lead me to connecting it to the wrong output. Never trust any of the sell-bots from Media-Markt-Saturn...

Now I get 5 different home shopping channels and Viva 2, which is a music channel sending annoying music videos in a small corner of the screen, all the rest of the screen is occupied by scrolling text bars showing sms-messages slightly less intellectual than "Luv U Hunnybunny" and charts from Timbuktu to Borneo. Yesterday night I ended up watching the childrens television night loop (Bernd das Brot forever).

Holy Foreskin!

On Shift again. Jumped in for a friend...

Just been here half an hour and already bored :-) Reading Spiegel Online: Singing birds in big cities sing louder than their counterparts in the country. In the trees behind my house are some nice examples of that. One is especially annoying, as it imitates the sound of a cell phone beeping. I think this bird has a lot of fun in the parks going beep beep and all humans around start looking for their mobile...

In other news: Teacher was threatened by a student with a cookie.

Poor Darwin. Now creationism reached Europe (again, we returned to the middle ages...). Italy kicked evolution out of the curriculum in schools in the first 10 years or so.

On the other hand, evolution is popular in Portugal, so it seems. In 1974 they made one of the few (more or less) peaceful revolutions (there were not a lot of casualities, military ran around with flowers in their guns). Now there seem to be people going on that it was not really a revolution, more of an evolution.

I do not know what you want to call it else than revolution. Military marching around the city, suspending by force the old government, providing new government. The old government did not need much force to get thrown out, but nonetheless, that's what I call a revolution.

Some people also go on, that the iraq war was not really a war, because wars need at least 1000 fatalities. So it was just an armed conflict, or let's say some minor disagreement between a government and a terrorist (figure out yourself where the difference between them is...). Just hate these changing of words. If people shoot at each other, that is war. Even if there are less than 1000 deads.

Language is a great tool for hiding things. Just find a euphemism and everthing is good...

Just passed by a Taxi with an advertisement for "Kill Team - Taubenbekämpfung" (Anti-Pidgeon-Services...). Now I have the image in my mind of lots of people in complete fighting gear abseiling from office buildings going "Hut Hut Hut" and trying to shoot pigeons...

WEEKEND! Finally! Sunshine, it's warm, friends from far away coming around, what do you want more...

I went to buy some running shoes yesterday. It was amazing. Men have flewn to the moon with less technology. Entering the shop I was completely confused. The last time I bought some sport shoes it was sufficient to know your size (at that time I think it was not even distinguished between man and woman (regarding running shoes, everything else was already discovered). Must have been shortly after shoes were invented but shortly before sport industry was invented).

Now you have to know what you want to do with the shoes, if you want to do walking, power walking, nordic walking, jogging, marathon, run around the world or just pretend to be sporty (most of the shop was occupied by a department called "style"). You have to know how you run. If your feet are inclined when they touch the ground. And how far. If you are a "Normalabroller" (that's german for moving your feet normally, at least as I understood it, I learnt a lot of new words today, most of which I already forgot again...) or if you walk like a rheumatic camel.

Luckily there was somebody who could help me. We did an analysis of my running style. I had to get on these conveyor belt things you use to run indoors at fitness centers. A computer with a high speed video camera attached to it analyzed my running. My feet are only slightly inclined, so I am a "Normalabroller". Phew. Thank God. Now I am really relaxed.

Sadly all the cheap shoes were for non-"Normalabroller" (As were most of the others. Seems that being a "Normalabroller" is not normal these days...). Shoes for me started at 95 Euros and went up to nearly the price of a small car (I could not see any differences between them...) Luckily the cheapest were the ones which fist best. So now I am equipped with a pair of shoes, 4 Euros cheaper than a flight to Lisbon or Istanbul, perfectly fitting to my running style, enabling me to run a marathon, what am I saying, preparing me for Iron Man.

Went happily for jogging afterwards. A lot of people seemed to have the same idea, close to the Elbe it was really a lot of traffic in the parks. I discovered that Hamburg has a lot of steep hills but nevertheless I managed to do some 15 minutes of jogging with only short intervalls of trying to revive my legs and trying to breath again (The 15 minutes are jogging time, not counting the intervalls...). I am proud of myself. Goal until July: try to jog for half an hour without any pauses and without breaking down...

Spent nearly all the day going back and forth between the experiment and my office. Managed to tighten some screws inbetween. Another very productive day...

Yesterday went for a walk in the area where my flat is. Really nice. A lot of the Big City People ^(TM) look like people from a brit pop video or like they came through a time-hole directly from the eighties. Hoped we would already past that, but one never can be sure... I got the strange feeling like looking as the guy from provinzz. Maybe I should go looking for the stuff I wore in the eighties, it should be hidden somewhere.

Local easter tradition in northern germany: getting drunk around a lovely small fire...

Random Pictures #4 (or 5?)

Been watching the easter service live from vatican. Eurovison just cut off in the end, while it still was going on. Afterwards interview with a priest looking exactly like Uwe Seeler, the interview exactly like after a football match. Do you think the pope was handling the ball well? Did you like the first half? Was it really a penalty kick?

Sometimes I feel the urge to shoot my TV.

Moving changes perspective. It is always interesting do discover that again. I moved to Hamburg last week (that is the reason for no posting...) and some of my views changed almost instantly. Happily living in Erlangen, thinking that it is a quite lifely city, where you could get everything you need, now living in Big City, thinking that Erlangen is kind of province, small minded and possibly boring...

Maybe I turn into a kind of bohemien, living in two cities, Erlangen and Hamburg, eternally on the move, this time not being at home in one of them, living a nomadic life. But it is nice to see everything from a fresh perspective...

I thought until recently, that within our collaboration everybody is not really at war with each other. Now being not in an remote outpost but in the very center, it looks a lot tougher than before. You have to fight, you have to publish your stuff (even internally), if you don't somebody else will get the credits. You have to do politics. Working is amazingly unproductive, because of meetings you have to show up to, even if they are not of the remotest interest to you, you have to do a lot of so called social meetings, to be known and not getting the image of boring guy, who does not want to talk to his collegues. And you have to be present in your office late in the evening, not because there is work to do, but just because.

Still have to get sorted. As I do not have Internet at home in Hamburg (nor phone, I thought it would be nice to be not so reachable...), there will be less posts here. I will do my very best not to bore you to death...

Sequels we all have been waiting for...



Picture taken 1st of April, 1:15am, Erlangen...

Been to the post office today. As I am moving to Hamburg next week, I want my letters send to there...

The post office used to be, back in the good ol' days of state monopoly, a place where you meet uncommunicative buraucrats, who would not talk to you, but after some time of showing you that they are in charge, they would happily fullfil your wishes (I did not look happily, but at least you got your things done.) Now the german post is a private company, customer oriented, service happy and all is good. No it isn't. You have to wait forever. You are treated like you are absolutely dump. And you cannot get a single thing without having to listen to the litany of "Do you already know our newest service". Worse yet, if you try to stop them telling you about their new and shiny bank accounts (or whatever), just by saying "No, thanks. No interest in that.", they just won't stop. "But you have to know about our new bank account." "No, thanks, really, I have heard it twice" "So then, what are the benefits?" That was the postal-droid. Asking me like an exam. You only get your form if you can answer at least three questions right on the all new all shiny bank account.

And not stopping there... They also wanted to sell me electricity (ecological one, made of recycled electrons...), telephone services, water, so on so on. Luckily the queue behind me reached the outer doors, so they started realizing, may be it is a good idea to cut a bit short...

Finally they handed me over a brochure about things you should think about when you are moving. I read it. They must think I am a mentally retarded three year old. In big friendly letters they remind me of things like "Turn the light off when you are leaving your house to move to a new one". Thanks. Did not think about that.

Capitalism may be one of the few working systems. But please, people are not as stupid as companies might think they are. There is no need to treat people like mentally retarted three year olds. Not even in the name of customer satisfaction. I am not satisfied! If it wouldn't be the monopolist for letters, I would not even be a customer anymore.

If I go to some place saying "I want that thing" I just want that thing. No added value, no other product. If I want to be informed about new products I go there saying "Please inform me about your new product". See the small difference in wording? Yes? Well, then there is hope.

Bloody Friends. Just wanted to drop by a party of a friend for a short time. Ended up leaving at three in the morning as one of the last guests... It is really bad if you know a lot of interesting people ;-)

From the manual of my digital camera:
Section "How to prevent casualities and deadly injuries": Do not take pictures in a moving car using a flash.

It does not say: do not take pictures while driving...

Catching the last train home. You are nearly alone, just a few other lost souls are on the train. You feel somehow related to them. People on the night train are linked by strange ties, everybody is going home, arriving when all your beloved ones are asleep, your friends are at home since hours. You know, when you leave the warm and illuminated train you are in the dark, you have to walk home or take a lonely cab with a sleepy driver. The town sleeps.

Sometimes you talk to your train companions. Some of them live a boring live as you, some are interesting. Sometimes you make friends.

Sometimes nobody is there to talk, you have read your book already twice, you stare out of the window into the dark. Sometimes lights of sleeping villages hush by the window. Sometimes you pass a train in the opposite direction. You wake up by the sudden rush it makes and realise you have been dreaming along. You enter in that strange state between sleeping and being awake...

Night trains are places where worlds are created. Where Theories dawn. Where Philosophy sneaks into your mind. Where strange thoughts enter your head and sit there until the next mornig, when you wake up and realise everything just was a dream.

BUY!

Happy World Consumer's Day!

Friends of mine try to find the algorithm of the world. I just try to find why gherkins glow when you apply a voltage on them:

Bumper-sticker-Philosophy

Why do people put bumber stickers on their car saying "dog on board"? Do they expect other people to drive more carefully this way? "Oh, i just wanted to kick that dumbass off the road, but now I see he has a dog wth him. Poor dog. I will be nice to him and not crash into his car..." "Oh, he has a dog, so I will not overtake him, else he might send his dog after me..." What the f*** is the message? "Please do not wave steaks at my car, because my dog will go nuts"?

Why do people with bumper stickers saying "children on board" drive SUVs? Why do they drive like they want to kill everybody elses children?

Why do people with bumper stickers saying "Jesus loves you" either drive like they are completely stoned or like they are in definite need of an exorcist?

Some scientist has calculated the odds that god exists (67% Chance...). I am not sure if this is what I call religion or belief. Believing in God or Gods is something which does not need a proof. Every belief is right. That is why it is believing.

For me, I do not need god to appreciate the beauty of the universe. On the contrary: somebody who made such an interesting universe might have created a lot more interesting people. Sometimes I think, there are just a limited number of prototypes...

What I do not like about (jewish, christian, muslimic) religion: for more than 2000 years we have been praying that god helps us with our problems. We should have found a way to solve them on our own... If we are as intelligent as we claim (our ancestor ate the apple...), why do we still blow up bombs to kill each other? Why do we kill people for no reason?

Adam ate the apple. God kicked him ot of paradise saying that, now he ist intelligent, he can live on his own. Jesus came, said, well, maybe we should try to get along without killing each other. Mohammed came alond and said, well, do not kill somebody innocent, just because he has a different belief. Maybe just try to live on your own...

Had I been present at the creation, I would have given some useful hints for the better ordering of the universe

               Alphonso X, the learned King of Spain, 1252-1284

The average physicist can perhaps be forgiven a certain amount of paranoia regarding the physical universe, for it often seems that no sooner does he display his latest Theory than the universe is found to feature an additional Effect that renders said theory incomplete if he is lucky (e.g., Erwin Schroedinger) or incorrect if he is not (e.g., Niels Bohr). This element of mistery is one of the things that makes physics exciting.

                Understanding more quantum physics - M.Morrison et al. (I usually call that book More fun with quantum mechanics)

Instant Messengers are a great tool for control freaks. You always know when your (geek-)friends are online, when they arrive home, when they go to bed... Big Brother is always around. And even, if you do not know for sure, you can make up a story.

Somehow humans make up a story always. Be it Amelie, who when her love arrives late, makes up a story of him getting kidnapped, being a fugitive, ending in Afghanistan wearing a tea-warmer on his head; be it anybody else making up a small story why things happened the way they happened. If we cannot make up a story we get worried. (Sometimes also the stories worry you...) If I do not have an explanation why people do things, I worry and get doubts. If I have a story made up, unrealistic as it may be, everything is fine... Humans are strange beings.

Getting annoyed by television again. Advertisements tell me what to buy, series tell me what to wear and how to behave, news tell me what to believe is reality... Everybody owns the only truth.

There are many truths. Every person has their own reality he or she lives in. Sometimes it corresponds to other persons reality, sometimes it doesn't. That is what makes people interesting. That is what distinguishes us from mindless robots. Or what should distinguish us...

Ah. And if somebody is right, it's me. Everybody has the right of my opinion...

Ended up listening to Tchaikovsky's violin concerto in d major, op. 35... At least some signs of intelligent life on this planet.

Random Pictures Special World Womens Day:

Missionaries 0 Nils 1.

Nothing as good as calling Jesus and his followers a bunch of pre-communist long haired pre-hippie sectists ;-) (Note: I generelly respect religions and believes. But if people try to missionarize me I get into polemic mode...)

On womans day a link to a curagious woman: Michelle from the resistance. 'Leesen verrry carefully, I weel zay zis only once...'

La proximité crée de liens
Liens d'amitié, liens d'inimité,
Liens de fraternité, liens de rivalité.
J'ai peur de liens
Infinis et complexes.
Creés par de sentiments multiples et divers.
Nul n'a la maitrise des sentiments humains.

On me suggere l'amitié.
Quelle belle relation!
J'en respecterais les obligations morales.
Quel apaisemant de pouvoir partager ses secrets!
Ce qui m'inquiête, c'est la brièveté.
Les liens que nous crions se muent au gré des circonstances.
Or l'amitié n'obtient sa noblesse
que dans la pérennité et l'exclusivité.

Essaie la fraternité me souffle t-on.
O noble relation
Que cependant m'effraye.
La compassion et l'entraide fraternelle.
L'échange er la partage
Demandant beaucoup de concession
Chacun se soumettrait-il à ces rêgles
Aussi nobles que complexes et exigantes?

A moins de trouver un moyen d'être au dessus de tout
Inaccessible, suffisant, tout-puissant
A moins de trouver un moyen de s'élever au rang de Dieux,
De renoncer á cette aventure unique,
Celle d'être un Homme parmi les Hommes.

Existe-t-il un refuge ici-bas?

                        Déli - Rokia Traoré

A friend of mine today said that some years ago the weekend was not long enough to relax. Today it is not long enough to work. We are getting old...

Random Pictures #3

Things you do not want to hear during dinner

Second place: This smells and looks like cat food: yes it did, but it was good anyway

The Winner: This exactly looks like sperm: it was supposed to be a gin-tonic-jelly, it was good and "Irgendwie schmeckt der Pflaumensaft komisch".

I finished reading The Perfumed Garden by Nafzâwî. Looks like men, women and their relations between them did not change that much in the last 500 years... (Only that Nafzâwî recommend bathing every other day. This is varying today ;-) BTW: there is a online version in english here

Trust me on the sunscreen...

Questions I would like to have an answer before I die (which will be in 60 to 80 years, depending on the progress of medicine and how good I can hide from it...) #1

There are two kind of baguette in the world. The ones which turn sloppy the next day and the ones which get rock hard. Why? And how can I tell one from the other? And why can't germans make a decent baguette (except these...)?

On general request by a single woman you may now post comments. I may not read them. And you need to activate JavaScript. Mariana, es da Máfia, mas gostamos de ti...

Started reading the stories of 1001 nights some days ago. (In a more exact translation, not the fairy-tale version...) I also started watching "sex and the city". Comparing both (which you can't) you start to wonder where all the poetry has gone...

Referring to sexual activities in "sex in the city" sounds really as if (north-american?) women do not have any fantasy at all, no subtelity, no poetry. Even when 1001 nights is as drastically as sex and the city, the arabian text shows much more beauty, more respect, more love as the american tv-show. Sad world if poetry is gone...

Random Images #2

Sometimes I wish life could be like a computer-game. You just save everything before the difficult parts and if you mess up, you start again. Would be nice. Sadly, if you fucked up a situatition, the only thing you can do is make it fubar and hope people declare you insane.

Blogspot has problems with non-ascii speaking people... Not my fault, if this looks crappy.

Went to a great concert yesterday. The band is called in extremo. They sound like Rammstein playing the Carmina Burana, a mix between medieval music and dark metal (or something like that). I still cannot hear well...

As I have been told, it was one of their more boring concerts, nobody got burned by misdirected fireworks and they were not as drunk as they normally are ;-)

Isn't it funny that although we know the train is gone, we keep on running, trying to catch it... Even if you know it is gone a long time ago, you know there is no chance to catch it, you still keep on running. You know it would be better just to wait for the next one (or to wait until this one passes by on the way back if you are fixated on the carriage), you still keep on running... While running you might up discovering that the light at the end of the tunnel is a train coming your direction...

Isn't it funny, that you always start using stupid metaphors, stretching them to the bitter end and end up talking crazy stuff...

I have been reading a nice article on how the brain reacts if you get dumped by your girlfriend. (Interesting, although the last time I skipped the girl-friend part and went straight to getting dumped ;-)

Psychologists seem to think we are still living in caves. After getting dumped you start acting strange as a call for help from the tribe. (Might this be, why I started blogging? Hello Tribe!) Then you enter depressive stasis as a cry for help from the tribe. Then you go back to the cave and shoot yourself. (Or so...). I think I go hunting some boar, maybe I can impress the female part of the tribe by enormous dead animals lying around my cave...

BTW Tribe: If I do not move much tomorrow, it is not because of being in depressive stasis. I did Capoeira for the first time again since ages. It will be just sore muscels...

Got a counter. Nobody visited my blog during the last half hour. Depressing... :-)

Random Pictures:

E-Mails considered harmful

E-Mails are a great way for buissines communication. For private communication they fail utterly... It is just too easy to send one. You sit in front of your computer, start typing and boof, you hurt someone, you insult someone, you get misunderstood...

If you want to say something important, try a phonecall, try talking, try writing a letter (for the slashdot readers out there: letters are these strange paper sheets written on by these things your grandparents called pencils which make ugly stains on PDAs if you can't find your stilo...)

E-Mails do not involve thinking. They are much too easy to send for that. Worse yet are web-cards. You find one, think it is funny, send it, and five minutes later it is not funny anymore, even insulting. On Valentine's day, you declare your love by a fraction of a second click or worse, you send an "Nobody loves me, so I insult you" card with the same click... Much to easy. Start thinking, learn writing, stop typing.

Buster Keaton. You do not need to say more... He was a genius.

Just saw Love's Nest on arte. The story is short, as is the film. Keaton, disapointed by a not responded love or something like that (missed the beginning...) sets sails on a boat named cupid only whith little food and water and a picture of his love. Enduring great pains on his way to nowhere he gets picked up by a ship of the name Love's Nest. This ship turns out to be a whaler with a sadistic captain who sends all of his crew overboard during the following days. Keaton sinks the ship to escape and ends up on a target for navy shooting exercises...

Like any Keaton movie, it is really funny to see him struggle with things, with people or with life in general. He tries to escape by lifting the life boat from the deck, ending up in sinking the whole ship, easiest way to get the life boat floating... Just like real life ;-)

Browsing through my past posts, they look like I am really depressed... I am not (and have not been in the last time...). I have been in better moods though...

On Sunday I got told once more that I am a nice guy, but. (Sentence finished, no comma!)
I am used to that... (that's why this blog is called gajo simpático - nice guy) This time it was via mail, which shows a lack of style or a lack of courage, but OK, life goes on. (Still thinking sometimes of her, but only pondering, if she really has no style...)

Before that - night shift makes you moody, complaining about "nobody writes me" happens if your only taks is to check for mail every ten seconds ;-)

There are also good things happening in my life, but I won't tell you them :-) Since I started writing this blog, a lot of people started patting my back and going "It is all right", nice thing...

Random Poetry:

Um problema de multiplicar

Numa mulltiplicação
se um dos factores faltar
e outro chegar atrasado
quando é o resultado?
Velerá a pena esperar?

       Manuel António Pina - Pequeno Livro de desmatemática

Got a new toy, a Canon EOS 300D. Looks like it is really whippin' the llamas ass...

Went to have a coffee after spending all my money in the photo shop. The cafe was full of girls from medicine and law faculty. One day I have to go to these strange universes they live in ;-)

Random thoughts getting home drunk:

Have a dream. Aim for the stars, you might actually catch one, even if it is a falling one. This might sound like old time witticisms... If you start acting realistic you loose the possibility to change the world. If you do not set out to change the entire world you won't change anything. Have dreams, try to do things unrealistic, try to reach the stars....

Walking around the city, seeing a lot of young people walking from party to party. Their only purpose seems to get drunk, to loose notion of the world around them, to get rid of their frustration. These guys do not have dreams, they already gave up changing the world. They look like pathetic people already old centuries, most of them not being in their twenties... Everybody thinking only about himself, not trying to catch a star, not trying to catch more stars to give to other people...

Why not be crazy, why not aim for the big dream? If you do not try, you have already lost.

Home, sweet home. Finally back home again... Going to get drunk with some friends

The last shift is coming to an end...

Always choose the right tools for the right thing. Trying to figure out how much quota the users of our computing room need, I ended up doing
du -sh /home/s*/???????? | awk {"print $1"} > disk_usage, then analyze this with a full blown root-analysis[1]. They use average of 24 MB, some up to 180MB, most of them less then 20. Plot available on request ;-)

Maybe I will program a script like "if over quota call shooting squad" ;-)

[1] For those not in physics: root is a tool to analyze data from particle accelerators...

Last night Shift (for this time). Yahooo!

Womit beginnen wir, fragte er, Womit man immer beginnen muss, mit dem Anfang, antwortete Marta

       José Saramago - Das Zentrum

Too tired to read. Surfing around Magnum Photos, where some of the worlds best photographers show their work (Henri Cartier Bresson is still my favourite)

Went to an art exhibition today. Pictures from Lionel Feininger (good), Paul Klee (liked two of them) and some dutch masters from 17th century Haarlem (near Amsterdam, not the part of Nieuve Amsterdam); and the pictures which are permanently at the Kunsthalle in HH (modern works as well as old masters). The most interesting thing about these exhibitions are not the paintings, although some are really great. What I like more is watching the different types of people who go there. These people are the same at every art exhibition.

The rich couple: they go there to show their presence at something cultural, mutter things like "This remembers me of the early works of (insert well known painter) in his phase when he was in (insert well known french place), don't you think..." Generally well dressed, always being really serious, no smile, talking softly, walking around like the place belongs to them and being annoyed by the peasants standing in their way.

The rich intellectual: sometimes smiling, comments more based on knowledge than the comments of the rich couple. But not that different

The leftish teacher couple (including numerous children): usually dressed in ecologically correct clothing from remote regions of the Himalaya or dressed in bib overalls. Accompanied by lots of children who are running around noisily, behaving like this is the greatest playground or the most boring place on earth. The parents generally just running around, looking at the pictures, reading heavily in the guide or listening to the audio-guide at least twice. Absorbing all facts and useless information about the pictures to torture pupils in school with them.

The well educated upper middle class couple (with two too nicely dressed, too well educated children): having some knowledge from books about the painter and having read all about the exhibition in newspapers, they walk around and believe in the little texts close to the pictures. Their children are really silent, no running, no making fun, just standing nicely dressed and in awe in front of the pictures. These children grow up to be really boring bankers or might catch a turn during puberty to get really interesting freaks... These families look just like being out of a text book from the sixties about happy families.

The economy student: he is usually there to impress his girlfriend. Walking around and behaving very well educated, pretending knowledge about art he hasn't, and in general behaving like an economy student (actually he might be a law student...)

Ah, and sometimes there are normal people, walking around, looking at the pictures, trying to understand those little texts which talk the impressive reasoning the artist has done for his work, sometimes liking pictures, sometimes not, sometimes in front of modern works wondering if it is art or a fire-extinguisher...

Of course there are more types of people, these are just the most prominent....

... Man [sollte] nie eine Gelegenheit vorübergehen lassen [...], etwas von anderen zu zitieren, was immer interessanter ist als das, was man selbst findet.

      Marcel Proust

In wirklichkeit ist jeder Leser, wenn er liest, ein Leser nur seiner selbst. Das Werk des Schriftstellers ist dabei lediglich eine Art von optischem Instrument, das der Autor dem Leser reicht, damit dieser erkennen möge, was er in sich selbst sonst vielleicht nicht hätte erschauen können. Daß der Leser das, was das Buch aussagt, in sich selber erkennt, ist der Beweis für die Wahrheit ebendieses Buches

         Marcel Proust

Erstaunlicherweise widerspricht die Definition der Seilbahn im Österreichischen Seilbahngesetz (s.u.) nicht der Defintion der Eisenbahn des deutschen Reichsgerichtes von 1876:

Eine Eisenbahn ist ein Unternehmen, gerichtet auf wiederholte Fortbewegung von Personen oder Sachen über nicht ganz unbedeutende Raumstrecken auf metallener Grundlage, welche durch ihre Konsistenz, Konstruktion und Glätte den Transport großer Gewichtsmassen beziehungsweise die Erzielung einer verhältnismäßig bedeutenden Schnelligkeit der Transportbewegung zu ermöglichen bestimmt ist, und durch diese Eigenart in Verbindung mit den außerdem zur Erzeugung der Transportbewegung benutzten Naturkräften - dampf, Elektrizität, tierischer oder menschlicher Muskeltätigkeit, bei geneigter Ebene der Bahn auch schon durch die eigene Schwere der Transportgefäße und deren Ladung usf. - bei dem Betriebe des Unternehmens auf derselben eine verhältnismäßige gewaltige, je nach den Umständen nur bezweckterweise nützliche oder auch Menschenleben vernichtende und menschliche Gesundheit verletzende Wirkung zu erzeugen fähig ist. (Reichsgericht 1876)

Seilbahnen sind Eisenbahnen, deren Fahrbetriebsmittel durch Seile spurgebunden bewegt werden. (Österr. Seilbahngesetz)

Somebody complained about lacking sources for the rant about funiculars (yes, in german it IS Seilbahnen): so, here they come (most of them in german). I originally saw it on TV (NDR extra3, a satirical magazine...)

mvregio.net,
Die Tageszeitung
Das österreichische Seilbahngesetz (not really related, but funny anyway...)

I did not manage to find anything on the pages of european union... These pages are in law-speak, which I do not understand...

And by the way: the highest mountain in MeckPom is 178 meters, not 160 meters as I stated. Sorry if I hurt the feelings of anybody from there...

Funiculi, Funicula

Oh, wonderful world of european burocracy! The europian parliament, in its never ending wisdom, decided, that every country, every region there is on the european continent (and not to forget the british isles) should have and really needs a law about funiculars. So they went to write an european guideline and saw that this was good.

Now there are some parts on the european continent, like Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, where stupid indigens never thought they ever would need a funicular. These small minded natives do really think, it is a stupid idea to build a funicular to the huge mountains they have there. The highest risings in MeckPom reach some impressive 160 meters (that's 480 feet for you imperials out there) above sea level. These stupid indigens had to be forced by the european union (by some penalty as high as 800.000 Euro per day!) to see the inlaying goodness of having a funiculaw.

Where would we be without the deep thinking and wise decisions of the european parliament...