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Yesterday I took the train to my brothers place. The train was packed – not only that there were a lot of people, they also had plenty of luggage and packages. I realized what Christmas is about, namely logistics: people buy stuff in one place, bring it to another one, offer it, receive other presents (e.g. exchange objects), and transport it home. Additionally, many articles have been ordered online. Thus, essentially people and objects are diffusing almost randomly trough space.

Life is like walking in the snow. There are many paths where someone has gone before and others were one can leave completely fresh traces in the snow. The quest is – and here the analogy fails – to leave positive traces. Anyway, they are not eternal and when the spring comes the snow melts and the traces vanish.

I have found this paper

http://de.arxiv.org/abs/0912.1911

and try to mess up the statistics: warm, warm, warm

Yesterday, after a birthday party, we went with a couple of friends to a place called Berghain (german article). The club is quite famous and there was a line of people waiting to enter. It reminded me of the one at the entrance of the Ulenspiegel but 17 times longer. The idea was a little bit naive – when it was our turn, they did not let us in, without any particular reason. Probably we were not stylish enough. My conclusion: If they don’t want me, I don’t want them, aka Boycott. We went on to another place called Cassiopeia. There we had no problem to get in. Second class location for second class guests? The music was electronic, techno like, what is definitively not my style, but I am getting older and more tolerant, thus I got involved in it. We left in the morning and today was more or less wasted, but the night was worth it.

Today I just would like to point out that Angela Merkel and Montgomery Burns use the same gesture.

The current german Federal Ministry of the Interior is Thomas de Maizière. I read an article about him and had to notice that he is a cousin of Lothar de Maizière who was the first and last Premier of the German Democratic Republic after the wende.
How can it be that at least two members of the same family have important positions? There are plenty of other examples. But from a statistical point of view this is very unlikely and simply suggests that the probabilities are not evenly distributed among the population. In other words the pathways of the lives are strongly influenced by the wealth they are born in. Moreover, the networks of families play an important role.
To my opinion this is a serious problem and far from being democratic. Achievements of a modern society should include more fairness. A consequence would be that also the government is better.

EXXX
JuZ Piranha, Mannheim
Dreschfeschd IV
23.10.2004

Recently I saw three films which I want to comment briefly:

Herr Lehmann (2003): A remarkable film based on the novel by Sven Regener. Although people say the book is better, the movie is also worth seeing. The story takes place in Berlin Kreuzberg not far from where I am living currently. The separation of eastern and western Berlin is an aspect of the plot whereas funnily some days ago the 20th anniversary of the fall of the wall was celebrated. The film has both, some funny and some serious moments.

Kabluey (2007): To my opinion Hollywood wants either comedies or heroes. There are almost no films about antiheroes. The subtitle of Kabluey is “Every family has a black sheep. This one is blue“. It is not surprising that the film was not very successful. Nevertheless I like it, because it shows some truth about society. The design of the mascot is amazing. The only bad thing is that the antihero turns out to be a little bit of a hero and a little less of an antihero.

THX 1138 (1971, directors cut): My mother fell asleep literally after the first 5 minutes. I do not know what to think about this movie which is the first one directed by George Lucas. I like the futuristic setting and the very abstract ambience. It shows a society where everything is forbidden and controlled. It criticizes the headless consumption of useless goods. However, since everything seems to be planned, it could as well be understood as a criticism of socialism. According to wikipedia: “It was .. commercially unsuccessful .. The movie is now considered a cult classic”.

Sorry, no links this time. Search in imdb and wikipedia.

Saturday, at Tobis birthday party, we were speaking about this and that. And as it comes, we made up an interesting observation. In computation, one often has the problem that a program either runs very long and needs few memory or it is fast but requires a lot of memory. Since both resources are scarce one can try to make a compromise and use neither extensively.
Life is similar. There is time and money. One has to decide if one prefers to self make something or to buy it. For example, either one washes the car manually, or one takes it to a service at pays for it to be cleaned. But as all analogues this one also does not hold perfectly.

Today is Halloween and it reminds me of the USA. Two years ago I was in NY and I was a bit desperate because I did not know what to do about this inofficial holiday. I was afraid that kids could come to my home demanding sweets (trick or treat). Thus, I asked my colleagues if the kids would really come (since I lived in Harlem) and what to do if so. Nobody could give me advice how to handle the situation. I guess this is something every foreigner in the USA has to go through once. I decided to buy some sweets on the way home, just in case. However, that evening (it was a Wednesday) I stayed in the office, working little longer and went home around 8pm. I stopped by the grocery store and bought some chocolate. It was rather hard to decide which one to buy. I wanted something not too unhealthy, it should be something that I also like (just in case), and finally it should not be too expensive. After figuring out, I came home around 9pm and waiting for some time, it turned out that not a single kid showed up (I don’t remember if I kept the lights turned off in order not to attract much attention). Finally, I ended up eating the chocolate my self.

Markus comments: Schokoladenfrage (chocolate question)