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Vor einiger Zeit schrieb ich dem Berliner Stadtmagazin Zitty eine Email mit der Frage, wie bzw. wo man sich in Berlin der bevorstehenden Fußball WM entziehen kann.
Es freut mich also, in der aktuellen Ausgabe einen Artikel mit oben stehendem Titel zu finden (12/2010, S.56). Vielleicht war ich nicht der einzige, der sich mit diesem Anliegen an die Zeitschrift gewandt hat.

Die genannten Optionen sind durchaus kreativ. Eine Auswahl:
- Reichstag, die Gelegenheit, mal die Kuppel zu besuchen, ohne ewig anstehen zu müssen.
- Berghain, kommt irgendwie nicht in Frage. Einerseits wird man nicht reingelassen und selbst wenn, finden die Spiele zu anderen Zeiten statt.
- Bunker, dürfte funktionieren, aber wer weiß ob die Führungen auch während der Deutschland-Spiele stattfinden.
- ...

Die Zitty-Optionen an Fußballfreien Zonen verdeutlicht, wie schwer es ist, sich dem Wahnsinn zu entziehen. Ich fühle mich jedenfalls bestätigt, mit der These des Totalitarismus des Fußballs - totalitär in dem Sinne, daß alle Lebensbereiche betroffen sind. Irgendwie ist es bezeichnenden, wenn man in den Untergrund fliehen muß. Etwas provokativ möchte ich daran erinnern, daß in Deutschland schon mal alle das Gleiche taten.

Nachtrag:
- Ein Bekannter meinte sinngemäß Fußball sei demokratisch, weil es das ist, was die Mehrheit will. Ich denke nicht, weil man ja keine Wahl hat.
- Jemand anderes erklärte, ein frühes Ausscheiden der deutschen Mannschaft hätte Folgen für die Gastronomie, weil dann in vielen Kneipen das Geschäft nicht so gut laufen würde wie es könnte.

Ich gönne es ihr ja. Aber müssen die vielen Flaggen schon wieder sein? Außerdem hat sie gewonnen und nicht Deutschland - wir schon gar nicht.

Nachtrag: Lena, es reicht!

Technology Review schreibt:

"Für die Zensur im inländischen Internet nutzt das Regime unter anderem das anspruchsvollste nationale Internet-Filtersystem der Welt. Zwar wird es oft in Anlehnung an die Chinesische Mauer als "Große Firewall" bezeichnet, doch in Wirklichkeit handelt sich dabei eher um eine Mischung verschiedener Strategien als um ein einheitliches Gebilde. Auf Provider-Ebene werden verbotene westliche Webseiten wie die Videoplattform YouTube, das soziale Netzwerk Facebook und der Kurznachrichtendienst Twitter unterdrückt – genauso wie Seiten, deren Adresse auch nur einen einzigen Begriff von der stetig wachsenden Liste politisch sensibler Schlagwörter und Themen enthält."

... was der wohl in seinem Koffer hat?

... so hieß es seit der Studierenden-Proteste in Hessen. Seine Vorschläge, an der Bildung zu sparen sollten wohl ein Witz sein, addressiert an die Studierenden. Im Internet kursiert die Hypothese, er trete wegen Schreiber zurück. Keine schlechte Idee.
Ich finde den Rücktritt feige (Angst, zu scheitern?) und er läßt seine treuen Wähler im Stich. So ein bißchen Krise ist doch kein Grund. Mir würde die Politik aber auch keinen Spaß machen, wenn man überall sparen muß und alle schimpfen. Vielleicht ist der Rücktritt doch als später Triumph der Studierenden zu verstehen. So eine Art Trauma.
Oder er will es allen heimzahlen - mit Bouffier.

In a recent posting (Fighting Zipf) I had tried to point out that inequality and strongly skewed distributions represent one of the major problems of society.

In Germany there is some discussion going on about minimum wage. But the current government does not understand the idea. They try to implement various minimum wages for different sectors - avoiding a global minimum wage.

I would like to suggest to couple the minimum wage of a company to its maximum wage. Such as that the minimum wage an employee can earn in a company is by a factor 2 (or maybe 10) smaller than that of the employee with the maximum wage. Maybe this could be a compromise. Alternativerly this could be implemented on country scale or even larger.

Vorrundenaus für Deutschland 2010
(gibt's denn gar keine Seiten mehr außerhalb von fakebook?)
Immerhin hat die Gruppe 1625 Mitglieder.
Man beachte auch die Fotos zu der Gruppe.

Aktion Klimarad: mit dem Fahrrad von Potsdam nach Bonn zur Großdemo am Samstag, den 5.06.2010.

(eine ähnliche Aktion gab es auch beim Lucky Streik)

At the time of brent spar, people were saying "bomb shell to hell".
Thus, I thought, what to do about BP? A boycott might be a measure. I also thought, I might not be the first having this idea and searched for such a boycott initiative. Unfortunately the first site listed by gockle is on facebook (I wonder why). The next reasonable seems to be this one: Boycott BP Gas Stations

Already some weeks ago I had found that the oil spill in the gulf of Mexico would be going to be a big mess.

Now it seems like things are much worse. The New York Times writes:
"Scientists are finding enormous oil plumes in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, including one as large as 10 miles long, 3 miles wide and 300 feet thick in spots. The discovery is fresh evidence that the leak from the broken undersea well could be substantially worse than estimates that the government and BP have given. ... They say they suspect the heavy use of chemical dispersants, which BP has injected into the stream of oil emerging from the well, may have broken the oil up into droplets too small to rise rapidly."

The problem is far from being solved and I am afraid the incident will have tremendous consequences to the entire gulf.

People kept asking me why I don't simply get an gmail-account for mailing.
Now it became public, that google - while taking photos for street view - also was collecting data from wifi (aka wlan). In particular, personal data, such as content of emails has been recorded - over a period of 3 years.
Officially, this did not happen on purpose, but was due to some malicious software pieces that made it into the street view thing.

This whole thing sounds a bit strange to me. How can it be, that they save tons of data without even knowing about it? It reminds me of googles motto, don't be evil, which is now obsolete for me. The company proved to be as 'bad' as any other.

Yesterday I have visited the Museum of Modern Art. In particular I had a look at two special exhibitions. The first one showed photographs by Henri Cartier-Bresson, who according to wikipedia is considered the father of modern photojournalism. The exhibition also showed where he had been traveling, such as China, some decades ago. I found most interesting the portraits of some famous people, such as Sartre or Camus.
The second special exhibition was by Marina Abramović. It also included some live performances and videos showing recorded ones. I liked the most one, where a women (not sure if it was her) wears a black dress and holds a pan filled to the top with milk. She stands in some kind of kitchen and after some time, her arms get tired and she starts to spill over some milk. The video goes on like this for roughly 15min.

At the moment I am sitting in the plane to JFK. Our departure was delayed because once again the Island volcano released an ash cloud and parts of the northern Atlantic are blocked. So we had to wait an hour sitting in the plane before takeoff. In addition, we have to fly a longer route so that the flight also takes longer. Fortunately, the original arriving time was in the afternoon and I should not arrive too late. After watching three films I am a bit fed up now, but would like to give a small review:

- planet 51 (2009):
It is an animated film about an human astronaut arriving at an alien planet with a life similar to the 50s in the US. The (nice) idea of the film is that the roles are swapped and the astronaut is the alien and the aliens are the normals. The plot is essentially about how the human tries to get back to his spaceship which is difficult because military took his landing vehicle. Positive is that I did not know all jokes from the trailer. The funny thing about this film are the many citations, like Aliens, Odyssey 2001, and other which I do not remember.

- soul kitchen (2009):
It is a german film (by the famous Fatih Akin) about a greek trying to manage a restaurant in Hamburg. Doing so he is having a lot of trouble of all different kinds, His girl friend is in China and he wants to visit her. Because of all the problems he has with the restaurant, he only manages very late and by coincidence meets her at the airport (with a chinese guy). The story is a bit more complex with other things going on. In summary, I enjoyed watching it, but found the story a bit too constructed. In particular annoying is the story that he hurts his back and throughout the film complains (reminded me a bit of Frodo who suffered throughout three film because of the burden of the ring). Probably, the part with the back was included to introduce a character.

- up in the air (2009):
I had high expectations related to this film and must say I am not disappointed. Ok, it is the best film I say for a long time, but it is reasonable and I can definitively recommend it. It is about a guy (George Clooney) who's job it is to fire people. Companies essentially pay his company to send him to do this job. He gets a new colleague, a young smart-alek with a degree in psychology, who proposes do the same job via video-phone. Obviously, he does not like the idea, because he might loose his job as well. Moreover, he likes his way of life, spending 320 days of the year traveling – airports and hotel. He likes how friendly he is welcome at the counters, when people see his frequent flyer stuff. He meets a women who seems to have the same life style as he does and the come closer. I don't want to tell how all this ends, but I think this film is much about life and decisions in general. The guy is restless and does not settle. Obviously, he does not have a family. I think somehow the guy is a metaphor for people who do not want to settle, who are afraid of something, who want to be independent, and who don't even know what they want.

By the way, few people are watching Avatar, either they have already seen it or they are not interested (I am still boycotting it).

Currently I am reading “Collapse – How societies choose to fail or succeed” by Jared M. Diamond. I just finished the chapter about Easter Island. It is astonishing, that when the first (probably Polynesian) settlers came to the island it must have been covered by a huge forest with a diversity of trees and land birds. When the first (documented) Europeans reached the island it was already completely deforested. Within a couple of centuries a flourishing culture emerged and finally almost completely vanished. The author even describes cannibalism and that the remaining people destroyed Moai which their ancestors carved and raised with so much effort. I do not want to underplay that finally the Europeans contributed to the misery of Rapanui people.
The question I would like to raise is to which extend the destiny of those settlers was predetermined. Obviously, the resources were easy accessible but very limited. Thus, once the population passed the carrying capacity, resources were not sufficient anymore. Additionally, as Diamond points out, the climate is not that advantageous so that resources recover slowly. If the need is bigger than the recovery rate, then resources must run out leading to the extinction of the native animals and plants. Furthermore, the island is completely isolated so that there was no exchange of any kind.
I think there could have been a mode of sustainable culture on Easter Island. But only a small population could have been sustained by the resources. Since the settlers (probably) did not have birth control, the end of their high culture was probably unavoidable.

Stefan sent me this link: VHMENT