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After one week I realized that some aspects of Berlin are not very different from New York. One example are the trains. Ok, in NY they are still much noisier, but the thing of week end schedule happens also in Berlin, although probably not to the same extend. Also, long commute can be necessary in both cities. In this sense, there are also differences. While in NY Manhattan is some kind of center of the city, in Berlin there are many fashionable neighborhoods (Kiez) and it is a matter of taste, where people want to live or go out. To some extend this is also true for NY, but in Berlin it seems to be more pronounced. Probably these similarities are due to the size of the urban agglomeration. In addition, in both cities those people who try to be cool, go by bike. Although, in Berlin a bike seems to be indispensable and there are lot of people biking. It is also more convenient because there are almost no hills. I am not sure about which city is larger in area. In NY I learned that it does not matter how one is styled – as long as one is styled at all. Fashionable people in Berlin also seem to follow this attitude.

Since I have nothing special to report (or am too lazy to do so), here just a foto.

Für meine endgültige Abreise aus NY entschloß ich mich auf Business Class upzugraden (mit Meilen). Da sitze ich nun in der business lounge und bin ziemlich begeistert - und korrumpiert. Natürlich ist es nicht schlecht, exklusiv und in Ruhe die verschiedenen Vorzüge genießen zu können. Einerseits ist es ein sehr angenehmes Ambiente, andererseits gibt es gutes Essen und Getränke 'kostenlos'. Ferner steht wireless Internetzugang zur Verfügung. Wer keinen Rechner mit hat, der/die kann einen der bereitgestellten Desktops verwenden.
Da sitze ich nun und vertreibe mir die Zeit bis zu meinem Abflug nach Europa. Irgendwie ist das ziemlich elitär, aber die Suppe ist exzellent. Ich will ausdrücken, daß es keine Klassen geben sollte. Natürlich sind die Klassen beim Fliegen auch nur eine Folge der unterschiedlichen Wohlstandverhältnisse der Reisenden. Es geht hier nicht um Gleichmacherei oder so. Sollte es hier nicht auch eine Solidarität geben? Man mag argumentieren, wenn es sich jemand leisten kann, warum sollte er/sie dann nicht mehr bezahlen, um entsprechend besseren "Service" zu bekommen? Irgendwie fand ich es nie fair, daß die besseren Menschen im Flugzeug mehr Platz haben. Mein Problem ist einfach, daß ich zu groß bin für ecomony class. Räumlich betrachtet, geht der zusätzliche Platz nämlich schon auf die Kosten der Holzklasse.
Irgendwie paßt das aber zu meiner Abreise, schließlich dreht sich in den USA doch alles ums Geld, vielleicht mehr als anderswo - oder es ist nur deutlicher.

In meinem letzten Beitrag hatte ich das Grundrecht auf eine Email-Adresse vorgeschlagen. In der Tat gibt es Bestrebungen zu einer Bürgermail (Bedenken). Habs nicht geleesen.
Es scheint aber mehr um eine "sichere Kommunikationsplattform" zu gehen, wobei die Bürger ihr De-Mail-Konto nur dann erhalten, "wenn sie sich mit ihrem Personalausweis identifiziert haben."
Ob es mit dem von mir erwähnte Grundrecht vergleichbar ist, konnte ich noch nicht durchschauen. Für mich siehte so aus, als ob es mehr darum geht, eine der konventionellen Post äquivalente elektronische Post zu schaffen.

As you might know, by end of this month I will move to a new job and a new city. When it rains, it pours. Eventually, I also need to change my Email-address. The one I am currently (still) using is the first one I ever got, namely in 1996 when I went to university. The consequence is that this address is spread all over the place - literally everywhere. It is almost impossible to figure out everyone who should know about a change of address. In a sense, this can be an advantage, because this way one gets rid of mail that is not wanted. Somehow, I expect to soon receive spam also with the new address.
My point is that it is relatively easy to inform all friends and acquaintances. Even if I would forget someone, I can be found on the web. Much more complicated are all types of accounts. Why do we need to log-in for so many things? For every little thing on the web, one is requested to register, create an account and so on. Very often it is not so easy to find the actual place where to change the email address (if it is possible at all) in any of those accounts. Of course there are also important sites such as scientific journals or job applications. Obviously, the login-thing is for security reasons – I agree on that – but why so many different sites?
Some people suggested to use an address that does not change when a new job is taken, such as g-mail. However, in particular, with this example I have doubts. Not only that the g-company knows every single query I submit, it would also know the content (!) of every single mail I send or receive. Although today the g-company might be considered as 'the good guys', nobody knows what is the case in five or ten years.
Last I would like to suggest the constitutional right of one electronic mail address per person provided by the government at the date of birth (I speak about a right, the use would not be mandatory, people could still use g-mail or equivalent). Second, I would like to suggest the constitutional right of Internet access. However, since the Internet is evolving so rapidly, it is probably hard to put such rights in juridical terms.

Wie unlängst zu lesen ist, hat der Bund den Aktionären der Hypo Real Estate (HRE) ein freiwilliges Übernahmeangebot unterbreitet, und zwar über 1,39 Euro je Aktie (spiegel). Man mag sich fragen, warum diese Bank so wichtig ist. Schließlich wurden ja schon hohe Summen zur Stabilisierung aufgebracht, die letztendlich Steuergelder darstellen.
Bei der HRE handelt es sich um einen Immobilien- bzw. Staatsfinanzierer. Das heißt, die Bank stellt Bund, Ländern und Kommunen Kapital bereit, Geld für staatliche Haushalte, z.B. für Autobahnen (tagesschau). Pfandbriefe gelten als besonders sicher.
Sollte die HRE zu Grunde gehen – so die Befürchtung – dann würde es zu einer Kettenreaktion kommen (tagesschau) und der gesamte deutsche Pfandbrief-Markt könnte/würde zusammenbrechen. Auch bei der HRE angelegte Versicherungsgelder wären betroffen.

Jetzt mein Punkt: Wenn diese Bank tatsächlich so wichtig ist, warum ist sie dann überhaupt privat bzw. nicht schon längst in staatlicher Hand? Dieser Frage sollten sich diese und vorherige Bundesregierungen stellen.

I have nothing new to report. Therefore I just want to post another link - to a video. I hope it is funny, in both english and german.

After a couple of days in Dresden, now it was time to leave. The conference was quite interesting, mainly because there were more sessions related to my work, in contrast to Pittsburgh for example. In addition, I myself could give longer talks of 30min. Both were ok, although people did not ask many questions. But one never knows, as long as they read the papers, it is fine to me.
I did not do much sight seeing since I say most famous sites already a couple of years ago. Instead I used the free time I had for some business such as buying important stuff, in particular chocolate.
I met some old acquaintances, such as people who I already knew from other conferences (I do not even remember which) or a former student from the time when I was a teaching assistant. In addition, I spoke to a college who also has studied in Gießen. It is funny, that I already knew some talks (and the speakers) from Pittsburgh.
However, I also met some interesting 'new' people in the conference and want to try to keep contact.

Thursday night I came back from Pittsburgh. In my last posting I forgot to mention that the bus also crossed the Susquehanna River and stopped in Harrisburg. A nuclear power plant is located three miles down the river. Thirty years ago an accident occurred and some radiating material was released.
Friday morning I visited the UN headquarter in NY, a tour organized by the City College for exchange students. It was very interesting, although I already had visited the UN already two years ago. This time it was more detailed and the group was smaller. In addition, the various guides seem to speak about different things. After the tour itself we had a briefing.
Yesterday I arrived in Dresden (see title). It is located in the far east of Germany. It is worth mentioning that it is one of the setting of Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut.

Pittsburgh does not really open up to me (es erschließt sich mir nicht wirklich). The second largest city of Pennsylvania has little more than 300000 inhabitants. It is located at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers, forming the Ohio River, surrounded by some hills. In the last century the city has had a boom in steel production. Accordingly steel is omnipresent, such as in the case of several steel bridges. Although, experiencing traffic jam when entering the city, it is rather ample and seems somehow empty and not as busy as New York. One reason might be that Pittsburgh lost half of its population since 1950.
Education takes an important role. It is the home of various colleges and universities. When we arrived at the bus station and took a cab to the hotel, due to a misunderstanding, we did a sight seeing tour at night. It included the universitary area and we saw the so called Cathedral of Learning, which is part of the University of Pittsburgh's campus. It is a strange building completed 1937, which represents a crossover of a church and a small skyscraper. It seems like it is used for educational purposes.

I used the opportunity to visit the Andy Warhol Museum which is located close to the Convention Center. From the NY museums and galleries I already have had an idea of Warhols work, also because of Basquiat, Velvet Underground, and so on. Still it was interesting to see many of his works and to learn about his life, including that he was born in Pittsburgh, where he also studied. He wrote: "Buying is much more American than thinking, and I'm as American as they come" (Andy Warhol).

However, I found more interesting the Vader Project, an exhibition shown in the same museum. One hundred artists were asked to reimaginge Darth Vader helmets. In liked it. Darth Vader achieved the status of a basic element of US American culture.

Da ich es nicht hinkriege, diesen Blog verbünftig zu konfigurieren, will ich zwei Links zu anderen Blogs einfach in diesem Beitrag nennen:

druckschrift.net
Complexity

There are a few ideas I got in the conference.
The first: what is a bubble? Answer: Faster than exponential growth.
Currently the world seems to experience an economic crisis. The second idea states that the least bad scenario could be the japanese situation after the 1990 bubble, namely the so called lost decade.
I noticed that one sees few kids in Tokyo. Either they are all at kindergarten, school, home, or anywhere hidden, or there are just very few, which could be due the lost decade.
I also learned that the japanese analogon to pricegrabber or geizkragen/guenstiger is kakaku.

There are a few thing that I conclude from Wednesday night:
- although the fish is raw, one can eat a lot of sushi
- sake makes drunk
- “kampei” is similar to the chinese “gambey” (?)
- japenese are very patient (but I do not want to know what happens when they get angry)

Thursday (5.3.2009) we used to check out the city. This includes:
- The Fish-market is said to be the biggest of the world. I mean somewhere all the raw fish must come from. It is not a secret that the trawlers cruse the oceans of any corner in the world. The market itself is somehow funny. Obviously there is a lot of fish – dead or alive. However, there is no way of not standing in the way.
- The Hama-Rikyuteien Garden is located close to the fish market. One has to pay a small fee, but it is worth paying. The Park is very well maintained and kept very clean. It includes some nice ponds, bridges and stuff. The only disadvantage is that at this season all the lawns are grown, because of the dry grass. There is also a 300 year old tree.
- We did not skip the Imperial Palace. It sounds great, but when you visit it, there is not much to see. It is a quit big area with some old buildings. The real palace – one can only see its entrance – cannot be visited. We walked a lot.
- The Meiji Shrine is supposed to radiate tranquility (?). When entering, one needs first to wash hands and mouth in a fountain. One is also asked to ease ones mind (!). The shrine is nice and as everything else very clean. Unfortunately we were not able to figure out how it works, I mean the Shrine. I bought a “charm for soundness of mind and body”.
- We also went to the Shibuya neighborhood. There are many shops and people seem to be very busy. We realized that the flow is a big thing in Tokyo. I refer to the flow of people. They always stream from one place to another, such as in the subway stations or sidewalks, and one has to be careful not to interfere to much with the flow. In Shibuya we also visited the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Office, a building with a platform on the 45th floor – nice view, but we were unlucky and had some cloudy weather. (accidently, we first entered the wrong building, but again people are so friendly that they just let us and did not escort us out)

It seems like the SARS-masks are used because many people suffer from a certain type of allergy which is caused by pollen, specially in spring. Therefore, the thoughts of my last entry were a little bit exaggerated.

We found a funny restaurant, where one first buys a coupon at a vending machine, gives it to the employee who then hands over the dish. It is rather cheap and the food is ok, only a bit fast-food style. The second time I went there, I was even able to use the vending machine on my own.

For lunch we get funny lunch boxes. Usually it includes (among others) two rice balls which look like over-sized sushi-rolls. Since the boxes themselves are made of plastic, they are collected for recycling. In general people here seem to be aware of ecological issues.
In the last entry I had also mentioned, how clean the city is. The paradoxon however is that there are very few trash bins. One really has to search them.

I also found out that my Japanese is worse than my Chinese. Nevertheless, probably I will never learn any of both.

After 6+12 hours of flights, we felt like tuna. Especially the long flight from Los Angeles to Tokio was a torture. Although the plain was bigger, the space per seat was reduced compared to the domestic flight. The best thing one can do is to sleep.
They showed several films. However, I saw only the city of amber. It is quit interesting, although the end is a little childish. In the physical sense it is unlikely that they go down the flow and still end up at the surface. To some extend some idea of the film is similar to Matrix (people living under the surface of earth) and Wall-E (people fleeing and loosing control of what is their aim).

The first steps leaving the airport were already interesting. The city is amazingly clean, almost hygienic. A little strange is to see people wearing SARS-style protection masks. We could not figure out what is going on. Maybe they are afraid of polution, maybe they are fearing an infection, or maybe it is just fashion.

The subway is funny. I am confident it is very well organized. However, the maps look very messy. In addition, there are different companies and one cannot just transfer from one train to another. In total, also because of the names, which are hard to memorize, it is rather difficult to understand the commute – although being used to the NY trains.

We also found out that here left-hand traffic is practiced. As know from London, this causes the risk, that one could be hit by a car because of looking to the left instead of the right. Further it is surprising how disciplines people are. Pedestrians almost never cross the street at a red light.