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Experts Warn

03.Sep.2010 - Experts warn a/c rebate program may be too costly for some - Hometown News
03.Sep.2010 - House price crash on the way, experts warn - Herald Scotland
31.Aug.2010 - Health experts warn of 'stem cell tourism' dangers - msnbc.com
03.Sep.2010 - Experts warn against using sugar as pain relief for babies - Children & Young People Now
02.Sep.2010 - Health experts warn of "stem cell tourism" dangers - Calgary Herald

Disease Outbreak News

31.Aug.2010 - Avian influenza - situation in Egypt - update 37
27.Aug.2010 - Influenza - update 115
20.Aug.2010 - Influenza - update 114
13.Aug.2010 - Influenza - update 113
12.Aug.2010 - Avian influenza - situation in Egypt - update 36

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Cursing for Koreans · 2010-07-29

kottke

Turfin' · 2010-07-29

kottke

Spot The Fake Smile · 2010-06-19

Can you tell the difference between real and fake smiles? The experiment is designed to test whether you can spot the difference between a fake smile and a real one. It has 20 questions and should take you 10 minutes.

Daily Affirmation · 2010-05-17

This is probably the proper way to start your day. For me, I fell off the sink.

(via zefrank)

Riverside Stomp 6 · 2010-05-11

Samstag, 5. Juni 2010,
REDUIT
Am Rheinufer
55252 Mainz-Kastel
Add to your calendar

Jack Parow - Cooler as Ekke · 2010-03-15

Jack Parow - You think You're cooler that I am

Nice sing along guitar loop with afrikaans lyrics. German speakers should be able to get some of the lines ...

Asperger's at Stake · 2010-02-16

Friends and colleagues, cheer up. Being able to pass David Foster Wallace's Grammar Challenge may not constitute a psychic disorder: "The American Psychiatric Association, with its release (...) of proposed revisions to its authoritative Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, is recommending that Asperger's be dropped." ... but careful! They might only drop the name and you'd still need treatment.

German Luftwaffe? ... What?! · 2010-02-09

Erklaer mir mal einer dieses Youtube. Wat sucht wohl einer, der "RARE German" in die Suchmaske eingibt? Der platzhirsch unter den videoplattformen meint, der sucht "German Wehrmacht" und "German Luftwaffe" und "Rare color footage of the Vergeltungswaffe" ... dabei kann doch, wer "RARE German" sucht eigentlich nur die "rare german version of Where Did Our Love Go by the Supremes" von 1965 suchen. What the heck is wrong with you, Youtube?

You Just Mock · 2010-01-30

No iPad jokes here, please, this is not an Apple debating turf. However, iPad meta jokes shall be allowed if not appreciated. Are you aware of the current eight minute iPad commercial? If so, you need to check Collegehumor's mock version. Brilliant idea by the Vice President of meta jokes.

Our new House · 2010-01-29

There have been ongoing inquiries on how our house - the one we moved to recently, the one we've been willing to go into sky high depth - looked like. Well, our house looks very much like the house of Joan Miro. You can check it out in the video above, in which Duke Ellington drops by at Miro's. Our house has got the same brickwalls and very similar concrete lintels. So you get a very good impression on how we live now. You just need to leave out the soap stone carvings. We're not very much into that. However, If we'd roll a piano on the porch, Duke Ellington would probably drop by to improvise.

Die Graugans · 2010-01-24

die graugans taucht im zeitgenossischen musikschaffen leider meist als englischer markenname eines nicht aus russland stammenden wodkas auf und wird dorten oft nicht besungen, sondern berappt ... dachte ick bis eben und fand das schade. Aber, die dunklen tage der unwissenheit sind vorbei, denn:

One sunday mornin', Lord! Lord! Lord!
The praecher went huntin', Lord! Lord! Lord!

Lead Belly, das hier bisher viel zu selten erwaehnte urgestein des "blues/country/cotton picking whatever", hat uns das lied von der graugans, die der pfarrer am sonntag schiesst, und von deren garprozess hinterlassen. Ein song der in den zeilen kulminiert:

And they put him on a parboil, Lord! Lord! Lord!
He was six weeks a boilin', Lord! Lord! Lord!
And they put him on th table, Lord! Lord! Lord!
And the fork couldn't stick him, Lord! Lord! Lord!
And a knife couldn't cut him, Lord! Lord! Lord!

Zeilen, in die jeder kantinenkunde sofort einfaellt --- Lord! Lord! Lord! --- Ja! Auch mein jaegerschnitzel ist ein zeichen des herrn! Denn wahrlich, die gabel kann es nicht stechen und das messer kann es nicht schneiden, haleluja!

Enter the Magical Mystery Chambers · 2010-01-21

Tom Caruana presents "Enter The Magical Mystery Chambers". Twenty four download-able Wu Tang tracks with some serious Beatles flavor.

Chart Wars · 2010-01-09

A five minute presentation by Alex Lundry named "Chart Wars: The Political Power of Data Visualization". Way too short but a good starting point.

Der macht Schluß ... · 2010-01-03

... funzt nicht ohne javascript!

Ist vielleicht auch irgendwie ganz gut, dass die christlich-abendlaendische jahresendfassadendeko auf dem rueckzug ist. Die letzten unentwegten sprenkel haben dann gleich sowas suizidales. Passt dufte in die dunkle jahreszeit ... probier die Maus aus!

Pimp My Pram - Unterbodenbeleuchtung · 2009-12-20

I Don't Belong Here! · 2009-12-15

This year's christmas brilliance! A homeless guy, refering to himself as Mustard, sings Radiohead's Creep and this is how it, according to Metafilter, comes:

Every so often, the Opie and Anthony radio show run a Homeless Shopping Spree, where they take some homeless people off the streets and take them out to an upscale mall to buy clothes for them. This year, a man who calls himself Mustard mentioned to them that he used to be a musician, so they gave him a guitar.

(via nerdcore)

State  of   the  eUnion  · 2009-11-22

State  of   the  eUnion , 321 pages on eGovernment. The names of some of the authors may sound familiar to you: Lawrence Lessig and Tim O'Reilly for example ... this piece should definitely be worth a quick browse.

(via i-policy.org)

Forty Years Ago - The Funniest Joke In The World · 2009-10-05

Bomb It Documentary · 2009-10-01

For the few who haven't noticed yet: The documentary "bomb it" on street art and graffiti is completely available online. Don't miss it.

Proper 'Single Ladies' Cover · 2009-09-26

Landslide Visualised · 2009-09-15

Market Capitalisation of Financial Corps. over Time

Once again the NY-Times shows us how to visualise properly: "How the Giants of Finance Shrank, Then Grew, Under the Financial Crisis". It shows market capitalization of 29 of the biggest financial firms of the U.S. from October 2007 to September 2009.

(via infosthetics)

Camper Bike · 2009-09-15

(via makezine)

The Crisis' End is Near · 2009-08-03

laid off economist will predict boom for food

(posted here four years ago)

Bobby McFerrin Works the Crowd · 2009-08-02

Yes, indeed. There are people who have all my respect. Among them very few are politicians. Today I found a video over at zefrank's showing Bobby McFerrin - a man who has all my respect - making music with the audience during a panel discussion at the World Science Festival.

(via zefrank)

They Are Just As Nervous As You Are · 2009-07-28

Quantum Soccer · 2009-06-28

In the game of Quantum Soccer, the aim is to shape the wave function of a quantum-mechanical “ball” so that the probability of it being inside one of the goals rises above a set threshold. This is achieved by using the motion of the players to alter the energy spectrum of the wave function: when a player moves across the field, the energy that this action provides (or absorbs) enables transitions between certain modes of the wave function. The pairs of modes involved depend on the player's velocity; the exact rules are spelt out in the mathematical details, but it's easy to experiment using trial and error.

Brilliant. Enable your Java-plugin and gain sh*t-loads of nerd cred, dude!

(via improbable research)

Michael Jackson Dead · 2009-06-26

The king of pop dies at 50. Since everybody screens Jacko performances, my contribution comes themed: "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" ... and here's the original, for those who cannot remember.

Coming Soon - Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland · 2009-06-23

Current State of E-Government · 2009-06-08

Here is a nice post on the current state of 'eGovernment' in the UK. You have to change very little - next to nothing, actually - to have a nice post on the current state of 'E-Government' in Germany: "What the government doesn’t understand about the Internet, and what to do about it". Tom Steinberg's post might even shed some light onto current internet legislation debates, for the internet is not electrification or a shipping container.

Periodic Table of the Operators · 2009-05-28

Pimp Your Day · 2009-05-27

For a culturally improved day I recommend an Image Query for "Arbeiter Illustrierte Zeitung" because "John Heartfield" made a whole lot of the cover art of "Arbeiter Illustrierte Zeitung" back in the 1930ies.

Shark Attack Hat - Kid Couture · 2009-05-21

(via boingboing)

Donald Rumsfeld - Sicko! · 2009-05-19

I think we can finally state that Donald Rumsfeld, former Secretary of Defense of the mightiest power of the world, was - or probably is - down right sick.

Wolfram|Alpha · 2009-05-16

Wolfram|Alpha is finally up and running and this is how it welcomed me: "I'm sorry Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that ... Wolfram|Alpha has temporarily exceeded its current maximum test load. See the live video feed of the control center ...". Well, nice geek humor but still unpleasant. But once you get through you will probably be disappointed again, because you cannot do google-like ego-searches like Der Haken ... but ... what you can do is for instance this GDP of Saudi Arabia vs. Mauretania ... if answers like that are actually correct, the engine might be very useful.

Definition of Chic · 2009-05-13

"Luxury is a humorless thing, largely. Chic is all about humor. Which means chic is about intelligence. And there has to be oddness— most luxury is conformist, and chic cannot be. Chic must be polite, but within that it can be as weird as it wants."

Chandler Burr cites the above mentioned definition of chic in his essay Chandler Burr's Ten Favorite Fragrances ... I've always known it. Luxury is humorless and conformist. However, since oddness and weirdness is now part of the chic-equation, I'm not sure anymore if I actually need to be put to the all time chic-ness list. Hm?

(via gold digger)

Prediction of Orders Received in Germany's Manufacturing · 2009-05-12

... again to keep a little tradition alive here is this month's 12 Month Prediction of Orders Received in Germany's Manufacturing. See the forecast of last month's index for comparison.

(figures collected by destatis)

FSF launches internship program · 2009-05-08

Students, here is an opportunity to actually do something useful this summer:

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) today announced a new internship program for free software activists, inviting students to apply for its first round of openings by Monday, May 25th.

The program provides opportunities for participants to work closely with FSF staff members for twelve-week terms in core areas of the FSF's work, including campaign and community organizing, free software licensing, systems and network administration, GNU project support, and web development.

http://www.fsf.org

Prince Buster Special · 2009-05-08

And here is another petitesse that went by unnoticed for a long time. Lawless Street is a series of podcasts dedicated to Jamaican music. And they aired a great Prince Buster special already in 2007 which I stumbled across three days ago. Almost two hours of serious ska. Download recommended.

Klemptnerarbeiten/Plumbing Work in Progress · 2009-05-02

If you notice weird figures printed all over these pages. This site hasn't been hacked. The numbers rather are debug printouts to find the source of the awfully slow archive page loading, that happens here lately.

Falls ihr hier komische zahlen ueberall zwischen den absaetzen seht. Hier werden gerade klemptnerarbeiten durchgefuehrt. Diese vermalledeiten permalinks brauchen mehr als 10sek. zum laden. Dem muss mal auf den grund gegangen werden!

iSnort · 2009-04-30

(via vowe)

Bull or Bear · 2009-04-26

While Australia's Federal Treasurer Wayne Swan said yesterday: 'There are some glimmers of light in terms of the economic data' the economist comes with the above shown cover and this story: A glimmer of hope? The worst thing for the world economy would be to assume the worst is over ... well ... bull or bear, you decide.

(via calculated risk)

IP address geolocation SQL database · 2009-04-21

If you are an old fart and not afraid of using SQL, IP Location Tools offers you an nice little SQL-dump of IP address geolocation information. I bet you, this will come in handy one day.

(via vowe)

Elizabeth Warren at Jon Steward's · 2009-04-16

Today Jon Steward's Daily Show is a must see because of his guest. He invited Elizabeth Warren, Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, where she teaches contract law, bankruptcy, and commercial law. Moreover she currently is chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel created to oversee the U.S. banking bailout, formally known as the Troubled Assets Relief Program. Fine conversation guaranteed.

New Toddler Couture · 2009-04-15

Heres a new piece of toddler couture. Inspiration came from Punks Not Dad.

Prediction of Orders Received in Germany's Manufacturing · 2009-04-15

... to keep a little tradition alive here is this month's 12 Month Prediction of Orders Received in Germany's Manufacturing. See the forecast of last month's index for comparison.

(figures collected by destatis)

Things that Go Up When Economy Goes Down · 2009-04-14

I've been thinking about things that go up when economy goes down. Now I have one promissing candidate. Dilbert catoons. They are far better now than they've been during the recent 'felt' economic boom. Consider this hattrick:

... here are more countercycilcal assets.

Ha ha! · 2009-04-01

No post for you today! April fools!

Command Line Fu · 2009-03-24

Command Line Bonanza: http://www.commandlinefu.com

Prediction of Orders Received · 2009-03-12

...and here is the forecast of last moth's index. The main difference is, that the lower limit of the y-axis was 80 last month. Now it is 60.

(figures collected by destatis)

Nerd Boyfriend · 2009-03-10

Ah, a nerd fashion site, featuring nerd heroes and their styles: nerdboyfriend.com. It seems that they just have started, so, good luck.

(via kottke)

Drakkar - Viking Dragonship Stencil · 2009-03-03

Don't know what to do next weekend? Here is a neat and simple stencil to decorate walls, fabric, all kinds of things with lovely Drakkars, the dragon ships of the vikings. Just download it, print it on preferably water proof paper or over-head transparencies and then cut out the gray parts. The remainder is the stencil. Not convinced? Here is an example. A Drakkar decorated kid's shirt.

They Should have Stayed in Bed · 2009-03-02

Today American International Group, Inc. (AIG), the former big player among American insurances, filed it's 2008 annual reports at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). 99,289 Million $ loss in 2008! Goodness Gracious Me! But wait above the table it says:

The Selected Consolidated Financial Data should be read in conjunction with Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations and the consolidated financial statements and accompanying notes included elsewhere herein.

Well that really appeases us, doesn't it? Calmed as I was I took the time to collect the annual net income of the last twenty years from the SEC reports, to sum them up and see how AIG performed in the long run. Here is the result: 20 Years of American International Group, Inc. Performance - Cumulated Net Income since 1989

American International Group, Inc. - 20 Years of Perfomance

... they should have just stayed in bed.

(credits to r-project.org)

78 RPM Records · 2009-03-02

Today my congrats go out to youtube user dairyman716. dairyman716 digitalizes good old 78rpm mostly German records and puts them on youtube together with a scan of the record or it's cover. Up to today he uploaded 362 records for us. Great! Thanks a lot, Sir!

Here is a nice example: Oscar Joost und sein Orchester Eden-Hotel, Berlin spielen. Kurt Hardt singt "Ruth, tanze heut' mit mir kubanisch"

Stock Cars · 2009-02-28

While Toyota is renting a ship in Malmö to store unsold cars that do not fit into the harbor's capacities anymore, first galleries dedicated to unsold automobiles appear. Let's call them stock car galleries.

(via marinelog)

Gabba Gabba Hey - Shirt Stencil · 2009-02-28

Here is a quickly made stencil to make some serious Gabba Gabba Hey garment for your toddler. Great weekend project.

And now the credits to those, who invented the term:

The Places We Live · 2009-02-28

(via kottke)

Per Capita Income of the SOEP Household · 2009-02-26

I could lay my hands on a dataset recently, of which I have reason to believe that it is a 2007 SOEP dataset. This is a nice piece to play with. First I had a look at the income variables of the sample households. Divided by the number of persons in the household I got the per capita income of the SOEP households. One thing is interesting. SOEP knows a pre government income and a post government income. So income before and after tax and transfer payments. Now watch this:

Distribution of Income per capita in the SOEP

The yellow boxplots depict the distribution of pre gov incomes of the last eleven years. You can see that the gap between the well off and the less well off widened remarkably in the last few years. This is probably the main result of the agenda2010 reforms. Note the widening of the distribution in the lower half of the income distribution in recent years.

Now the interesting point is that Germany seems to do a great job in keeping the post gov incomes steady. See the orange boxplots which do not show a widening of the income distribution. Question is: What do we do here? We introduce large reforms to create a low price work segment, hence a low income segment within the population, and then we cancel out the effects by transferring income? Weird, ain't it?

Difference of the Median Household per capita income pre and post gov transfers

One last point was interesting having a first glance at the SOEP data. The median income, the per capita income of 'middle' household, pre gov used to be higher then the median post gov income. That means the middle SOEP household was a net payer to the german transfer systems. Since 2005 (refer to the pic above) the middle SOEP household is a net gainer from german transfer systems. Is this a good or a bad thing?

(analysis done with r-project.org)

Eclectic · 2009-02-26

Since me own spare time has new and unprecedented boundaries, I introduced the category 'Eclectic' to file thing that I merely pass on rather than create.

Dance Dance Dance · 2009-02-18

I cannot resist, here is a video post. This one made my day. We should all try to emulate the master above at least once a day. ... for the exhaustive and yet fine tracklist see spreeblick where i found this piece.

U.S.A.'s Index of Orders Received in Manufacturing · 2009-02-07

Value of new order in total manufacturing according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Index of Orders Received · 2009-02-05

Today Germany's index of orders recieved in manufacturing for december 2008 has been published. The value is 94.0 which is not very interesting but over time we see a steep decline coming right out of something like a boom. Looks wicked. But how will it go on?

To see what might come I fitted the monthly data, starting from January 2000, and then predicted the next 12 month. Here is the result:

Does not look like dooms day but still bad.

Data Mining with R · 2009-01-24

A nice introduction to R: Luís Torgo, Data Mining with R, learning by case studies. The book is currently made available for free and comes in postscript or pdf format.

Visual Methods · 2009-01-21

Some basic math ideas explained graphically..

(via mathlog)

OECD Economic Surveys Euro Area 2009 · 2009-01-17

The OECD Economic Surveys Euro Area 2009 have been published already. A lot of stuff to read indeed, but they have lots of graphs and they have an executive summary. On 153 pages they use about 74000 words to describe the current economic situation in Euro Area. The word crisis appears 100 times, followed by the word turmoil with 89 appearances. Depression is not used this year.

Whatever, try to read it at least partly, which is what I will do. It will probably deliver some insight on what is going to come economically.

Darwin Year · 2009-01-14

My contribution to a successful Darwin Year.

For high resolution files contact me ...

Still Silence · 2009-01-14

Still publishing stop here. I do not yet find the time to properly comment ... Watch this expensive piece of art instead.

25C3 · 2008-12-26

The 25th Chaos Communication Congress (25C3) starts tomorrow and lasts until December 30th. Meet me there ... but call me first, I won't attend the whole thing ...

Moving Center · 2008-12-18

Turning a line around a moving center ... done with processing

PiccoloQuiz · 2008-12-11

I've been playing with processing again tonight. Here is the result. Tell me what the picture above shows and win a piccolo bottle of cheap champagne.

Lost In Translation · 2008-12-10

the independent

Who's Spiral · 2008-12-01

Some of you may have noticed that Processing went 1.0 lately. Going 1.0 is always a nice occasion to try languages out. At least that was what I thought ... First impression: If you write Java, you can write processing right away. You just have to look up a few basics and ready you are. For those who do not write Java, it is still nice for it skips a lot of Java 'write properly' obstacles. Processing seems to be a powerful yet easy to use data visualisation tool. Try it.

Here is my second try. He, who knows what it is and does post it to the comments first, shall receive a piccolo bottle of cheap champagne. Go for it!


size(640,640);
background(255);
smooth();

int scrmin = min(width,height);
float golden_angle = 137.508;
float con = 2.4;
float r;
float g;
float b;
float a;

float diam;
float x;
float y;

float ro;
float di;

for(int i=0; i<50001;i++) {

  ro = i*golden_angle;
  di = con*sqrt(i);
  
  r = random(255);
  g = random(255);
  b = random(255);
  a = random(255);
  
  diam = random(scrmin/100);
  
  x= width/2  + (cos(ro)*di) + random(scrmin/400);
  y= height/2 + (sin(ro)*di) + random(scrmin/400);
 
  noStroke();
  fill(r,g,b,a);
  ellipse(x,y,diam,diam);
}

The Orwell Diaries · 2008-11-30

George Orwell, author of 1984 and "The Animal Farm", wrote a diary from August 1938 to November 1942. There is a site that time shifts the journal seventy years onwards and posts the entries today day by day: The Orwell Diaries

The entry today in George Orwell's diary seventy years ago was "Two eggs" ... following a sequence of five number-of-eggs entries. Now that brings me to this pages here. The November 2008 will most likely be the month with the smallest amount of entries ever. That does not mean, that nothing happens round here. The things that happen are just not fit publish. I once swore that oath not to publish family issues in here or elsewhere, may they be happy or sad and I swore the other oath, not to publish number-of-egg-entries. This is thing people may do, who plan to contribute to the great works of world literature, not me.

So, folks, my recommendation: stay tuned here. I will turn back soon to share wisdom, insight and entertainment, which is relevant to you, 'cause that is what you folks are looking for, right?

LIFE photo archive hosted by Google · 2008-11-19

LIFE publishes it's image archive via google.images. Thats quite a treat. Furthermore, this morning http://www.europeana.eu/ the european library goes online, we are excited already.

...and for the friends of off-main stream movies we have http://www.europafilmtreasures.eu ... great short movies dating back to the early 20th century.

OECD Regional Stats · 2008-11-09

Regional statistics on a quite detailed territorial level. A whole lot flash but well applied ... very nice:

One little set back, however. The .csv-download is difficult to find. Go to 'right panel' and choose 'raw data' instead of 'scatter plot'.

U.S. Presidential Elections - Prediction · 2008-11-02

In my eyes markets perform fine, to predict certain outcomes of ... whatever. So, let's check the Iowa Electronic Markets for a prediction of next weeks U.S. presidential election outcome. First check the data of the recent elections:

Gore vs. Bush 2000

Bush vs. Kerry 2004

Well, knowing this and knowing who actually won we can check this year's prices.

McCain vs Obama 2008

For me Obama will be the winner on wednesday and therefore will become 56th president of the U.S.A.. Pretty sure.

The Unfinished Swan · 2008-10-30

Nice and simple idea. You've got a paint ball gun to explore a totally white world.

Jammin' · 2008-10-27

... no further explanation needed.

Credit Default Swaps · 2008-10-22

How do Credit Default Swaps work and why are they interesting when analysing the current financial state ... "Untangling credit default swaps".

The London Underground Map · 2008-10-22

Here is a nice documentary on the beacon of modern design: The London Underground Map

What Do Japanese Do? · 2008-10-20

The Elements of Style · 2008-10-15

5.21. Prefer the standard to the offbeat

Young writers Inexperienced programmers will be drawn at every turn toward eccentricities in language. They will hear the beat of new vocabularies abstractions, the exciting rhythms of special segments of their society industry, each speaking a language of its own. All of us come under the spell of these unsettling drums; the problem for beginners is to listen to them, learn the words, feel the vibrations, and not be carried away.

A book on writing applied to programming ... good.

A Must Read · 2008-10-09

Carolyn B. Thompson and Jim Ware have written the book, we've been desperately waiting for: The Leadership Genius of George W. Bush: 10 Commonsense Lessons from the Commander in Chief (Paperback). A quick glance at the index gives us a clue on what made George W. Bush the great leader, that he doubtlessly was:

Can I Trust You? Become Credible.
Bring in the Right People, part 1. Don’t Be Afraid to Hire People Smarter Than You
Bring in the Right People, part 2. Leave ‘Em Alone!

It Flies · 2008-10-06

Banned Books Week · 2008-10-03

The American Library Association celebrates the Banned Books Week from September 27 1o October 4, 2008.

10th and 25th Anniversary · 2008-10-02

For it's 10th anniversary we can search Google's oldest still existing index. The one of January 2001 ... lovely. And by the way, GNU became 25 on the 27September, which is way more important.

Exile on Wall Street · 2008-09-23

Wall Street 1920

The bail out plan by Henry Paulson, current Minister of Treasury of the United States, is a great source of satire. Check this probably authentic mail, that 's making the rounds:

Dear American:

I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude.

I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion dollars US. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you.

I am working with Mr. Phil Gram, lobbyist for UBS, who will be my replacement as Ministry of the Treasury in January. As a Senator, you may know him as the leader of the American banking deregulation movement in the 1990s. This transactin is 100% safe.

This is a matter of great urgency. We need a blank check. We need the funds as quickly as possible. We cannot directly transfer these funds in the names of our close friends because we are constantly under surveillance. My family lawyer advised me that I should look for a reliable and trustworthy person who will act as a next of kin so the funds can be transferred.

Please reply with all of your bank account, IRA and college fund account numbers and those of your children and grandchildren to wallstreetbailout@treasury.gov so that we may transfer your commission for this transaction. After I receive that information, I will respond with detailed information about safeguards that will be used to protect the funds.

Yours Faithfully Minister of Treasury Paulson

Furthermore the site http://www.buymyshitpile.com/ claims for Main Street what Wall Street asks for. It wants the government to buy our distressed assets at the price we'd like to get.

(pic: ChParkerShoots)

Stanford Engineering Everywhere · 2008-09-18

Stanford University offers some fine courses on engineering: Stanford Engineering Everywhere. The undergraduate courses introducing computer science look very promising. I checked some of the lectures on programming paradigms so far and they made sense ... just to answer the question Professor Cain repeatedly asked.

October 11th 2008 - Freedom Not Fear Action Day · 2008-09-18

11th October 2008 - Freedom Not Fear Action Day

Who Owns Ideas? · 2008-09-09

A radio feature on the topic by the CBC: Who Owns Ideas?

Pain in the Heinie · 2008-09-05

Where exactly do we feel emotions? Emotionally}Vague tries to figure it out.

Isaac Hayes died at 65 · 2008-08-11

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Oscar-winning soul singer Isaac Hayes who, along with Al Green, James Brown and Stevie Wonder, was one of the dominant black artists in the early 1970s, died in Memphis on Sunday. He was 65.
--Reuters

Golden Cat Waves · 2008-08-06

A golden plastic cat from china and a lovely plaster penguin greet you! I wanted to test yoube for ages now. You see, I did.

Eutelsat's Stock Prices · 2008-07-19

Here is a little incident that went by almost unmentioned. On June 16th and 17th Paris-based satellite operator Eutelsat lost some transponders due to power generation difficulties of an old satellite. Of course the programs broadcasted went down for the time of the incident. Eutelsat took swift action to address the problem. By now all affected television programs are back on air. All except one: NTDTV, a independent TV-station, broadcasting in Chinese and therefore annoying the Chinese government. Reporters Without Borders confirm that the decision to take the station off air was politically motivated.

Hopefully Eutelsat's stock prices have risen a whole lot, for it's business opportunities in China improved a lot lately.

Every Day Gothic · 2008-07-16

[...] In her desperate determination she leaped clear of the setbacks and hit a United Nations limousine parked at the curb. Across the street photography student Robert Wiles heard an explosive crash. Just four minutes after Evelyn McHale’s death Wiles got this picture of death’s violence and its composure.

A great piece of photography. I hear that Warhol made screen prints from it. He must have spoiled the picture. It is perfect as it is.

(via social fairy dust)

Out Of Office · 2008-07-01

will not post very frequently until the July 14th ... See you then

Health Warning · 2008-06-22

I am sure that one should take such health warnings serious ... we should really avoid this.

Wabash Cannonball · 2008-06-21

Howdy folks, this mornin' I took time to collect some interpretations of the mighty fine folk song Wabash Cannonball:

Mac Wiseman - without tryin to offend; this one's got some serious KKK flavour
Jerry Reed - my favourite
Roy Acuff - one of the early interpreters in his late years
Johnny Cash & The Carter Sisters - I ain't see no Johnny Cash
June, Carlene ,Rosey , Helen Carter - this one is so 80ies
Boxcar Willie - the first Wabash Cannonball interpreter I found, while looking for something completely different
Andy Didorenko - supported by Oxana Pologenko, Lena Panko, Shannon Chen, Ellen Chen, Pearl Tzai
Cheerleading - Wabash Cannonball seems to be a chearleading song; brass band involved
Cheerleading - different angle, probably the Texas Longhorn cheerleaders
Anonymous Youtube Hero - a guitar driven contemporary version by Fret Killer

The Builder · 2008-06-18

World cement production by country in 2006 according to the Mineral Commodity Summaries 2008 (page 45) by the U.S. Geological Survey. Since cement is the one basic ingredient of concrete, you can imagine where the construction is going on nowadays.

Poetry elsewhere · 2008-06-14

Even if you can't shape your life the way you want,
at least you can try as much as you can
not to degrade it
by too much contact with the world,
by too much activity and talk

Do not degrade it by dragging it along
taking it around and exposing it so often
to the daily silliness
of social relations and parties,
until it comes to seem a boring hanger-on

-- C.P. Cavafy

(via Caterina)

Architecture Fantastique · 2008-06-01

Daniel Dociu, brilliant ...

Followers · 2008-05-21

Now, this one is a treat:

Every popular musical act has a band of diehard followers, but can you match the apostles to the act? Answers are at the end of the gallery and all photographs are taken from The Disciples, by James Mollison...

Again, on every picture you see a set of people and you have to guess whose concert they attended ...

Google Health - Is this going to fly? · 2008-05-19

Is this authentic? Google triggers a service Google Health which is described as follows:

<cite>
Google Health puts you in charge of your health information. It's safe, secure, and free.

Organize your health information all in one place
Gather your medical records from doctors, hospitals, and pharmacies
Keep your doctors up to date about your health
Be more informed about important health issues

Google stores your information securely and privately. We will never sell your data. You are in control, you choose what you want to share and what you want to keep private. View our privacy policy to learn more.
</cite>

Google gets weird and weirder, ain't it?

Sad Kermit · 2008-05-10

... Soon after the death of Jim Henson, Sad Kermit spiraled downward into a life full of addiction, romance and pain. The songs and videos on this webpage shed light on Sad Kermit's descent into his dark, hurting world ...
-- sadkermit.com

... Kermit is singin all the sad and painful hymns: Creep, Hurt, Needle in the Hay, etc. ... check the 'Needle in the Hay' video.

(via kottke)

Harvard Law School embraces Open Access · 2008-05-08

The faculty of Harvard Law School has unanimously approved a motion for open access: articles will be made freely available in an online repository. With the success of this motion, Harvard Law becomes the first law school to make an institutional commitment to open access to its faculty's scholarly publications [...]
-- law.harvard.edu

This could easily mean that open access has become - or will become soon - main stream. Let's start looking for another worthy cause to fight for.

Wrong Face · 2008-05-07

I'm still not perfectly convinced about the benefits of google's search faces option. If you'd look for faces related to Rock 'n' Roll, you'd expect something different, wouldn't you?

Sudo · 2008-05-01

A: Make me a sandwhich.
B: What?! Make it yourself.
A: Sudo make me a sandwich

Text Editors · 2008-04-30

It’s our preference to use a text editor, like HomeSite, TextPad or TextMate, to “hand code” everything, rather than to use a wysiwyg (what you see is what you get) HTML and CSS authoring program, like Dreamweaver. We just find it yields better and faster results.

So says Khoi Vinh, design director of NYTimes.com. Right he is.

The Ultimate Machine · 2008-04-24

Watch the ultimate machine. It's purpose is to switch itself off, when being switched on.

Self Portraits · 2008-04-19

60% of the world's reproduced oil paintings come from a village in China. REGIONAL made the painters portray themselves: Self-portraiture and emerging artistic consciousness in Dafen.

(via boingboing)

Kung Fu Intro · 2008-04-16

Very polite Bruce Lee gives us a short intro on kung fu in a 60ies television interviewing environment. Brilliant.

(via kungfugrippe)

Juno · 2008-04-02

"Juno" a very nice movie, that you shouldn't miss. For my pubertal readers its a must see. It is far from being realistic but it can calm you down when it comes to teenage pregnancy. Great soundtrack. Great dialogs. Great cast. Here my favorite line:

You should grow a mustache

... calm down, calm down, i'm not going to.

The Theory of Interstellar Trade · 2008-03-17

Paul Krugman, author of well known works on trade theory, wrote quite cheerful stuff in his early days: Theory of Interstellar Trade. Here is the abstract:

This paper extends interplanetary trade theory to an interstellar setting. It is chiefly concerned with the following question: how should interest charges on goods in transit be computed when the goods travel at close to the speed of light? This is a problem because the time taken in transit will appear less to an observer travelling with the good than to a stationary observer. A solution is derived from economic theory, and two useless but true theorems are proved.

Great ... Economics, is there more science we possibly need?

(via ny times)

Image Upload Test · 2008-03-16

Image upload test successful. Above you see Sergio Mendez and Brasil 66 singing 'Day Tripper'. Click the image for a youtube clip. Lovely, a whole lot of crochet dress action ... To complete the brazilian flavour, here are two livestreams. The first one comes directly from Rio and features popular brazilian music. The second one is very much into bossa nova.

Seven New Sins · 2008-03-10

The Vatican has published a new list of seven - this time 'social' - sins:

"Bioethical" violations such as birth control
"Morally dubious" experiments such as stem cell research
Drug abuse
Polluting the environment
Contributing to widening divide between rich and poor
Excessive wealth
Creating poverty

Obviously they are not meant to replace but to augment the already known "seven cardinal sins".

(via bloomberg)

Lost and Found: The Velvet Underground · 2008-03-02

The cartoonist does a whole lot of featuring for The Velvet Underground and Nico lately. First he found this video at archive.org with 1:04:16 of brilliant noise and then he got these songs, which allegedly are part of the Live at the Gymnasium, NYC, 1967 recording.

...just keep posting this kind of material. Lovely, lovely ...

How I'd Sink Vogue · 2008-03-01

How I’d Sink American Vogue in five issues. I’m not aware of a german life style magazine, worth being sunk that pretty … Gala, perhaps or Bunte. But they do not have that Vogue-seque design reputation. Other ideas? Stern does not work.

All That Jazz · 2008-02-29

Now for some Youtube music extravaganza. First watch the pieces of youtube user HaydnHuckle. He only shows clips of jazz piano, no cuts, no enhancements, only a piano captured by a handcam. And then, you might know him already, watch Ronald Jenkees, who is a brilliant nerd.

Origami Science · 2008-02-29

Lets post another mathematics piece. Robert Lang is an origami artist and maintains a webpage on his art. Here he collected a list of math origami links, which are interesting, to say the least.

Link Dump · 2008-02-28

The 2007 Digital Economy Fact Book (pdf) - 200 pages dense economic facts, figures and tables
Visualizations of mathematics create remarkable artwork
Art constructed by solving instances of the Traveling Salesman Problem
5000 postcards, all about 100 years old at zeno.org
a history of evil - nice little infographics video

Teenage Pregnancy Implementation Manager · 2008-02-24

The Manchester City Council is looking for a Teenage Pregnancy Implementation Manager (advertisment in the guardian). Hm, appealing, though it is a full time position.

(via cohu)

Programming Language Cheat Sheets · 2008-02-21

A huge huge thanks a lot goes out to Scott Klarr for his large and superb collection of programming language cheat sheets.

(via kottke)

Surprising: Students Prefer Easy Courses and Hot Professors · 2008-02-18

TaxProf, a member of the law professor blogs network, found a paper by James Felton, Peter T. Koper, John Mitchell and Michael Stinson on "Attractiveness, Easiness and Other Issues: Student Evaluations of Professors on Ratemyprofessors.com", Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, Vol. 33, No. 1, pp. 45-61, Feb. 2008, on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

Felton et al. (2004) reported that web-based student evaluations of teaching (SET) demonstrated a student preference for course easiness and instructor sexiness. This study explores these same relationships with a larger and improved database. Results indicate even stronger relationships than previously reported. In addition, this study demonstrates significant cultural differences by institution and discipline in the relationships between Quality, Easiness, and 'Hotness' in web-based SET.

(via gawker -> TaxProf)

Yahoo! Innovation Teams · 2008-02-16

Yahoo! closed down it's famous Design Innovation Team, firing the whole creative staff. Yahoo! plans to close down all it's innovation teams. Is this the first step towards becoming a Microsoft affiliate?

(via information aesthetics)

The Pearce Sisters · 2008-02-15

The Pearce Sisters, a very dark, yet a very nice, animated short movie.

SAS - Large Values · 2008-02-12

Do you know SAS, the business intelligence tool with the 60ies-charmes? If the day comes, when you need to find the first and second largest value from a set of observations, here is how it'd work:

proc summary data=&inputdataset.;
   var &variable.;
   class &class_list.;
   output
      out=&output_dataset.
      sum=idgroup(max(&variable.) out[2] (&variable.)=)
      /autolabel autoname;
run;

Somehow idgroup and out[2] do the trick. Why it works and what else to look after can be found in "Getting the Most from PROC MEANS" by Andrew H. Karp.

Anglizismus des Jahres · 2008-02-10

Rockabrunder (sprich:Rockä-brander), das ist ganz klar der anglizusmus des jahres. Aber, weiss jemand was das ist, ein Rockä-brander? Ein futteral, in dem der rockstar jeweils sein plektrum aufbewahrt?

Little Darth Vader Had Bad Times Too · 2008-02-07

Management Failure · 2008-02-07

Taking someone elseÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s idea and increasing the quality by 5% occurs at the price of a 50% decrease in their commitment to execution
--aphotoeditor

There is not much to add. This seems to be the most common 'commitment killer'. Probably more common than any other managerial failure. So, hands off my business, do your job.

Evolution of Tech Company Logos · 2008-02-07

Russian Tatoos · 2008-02-06

Data Protection Day · 2008-01-28

The 28th January is Data Protection Day - An initiative of the Council of Europe with the support of the European Commission.

CC-Licensed JavaScript Book · 2008-01-25

Eloquent JavaScript - An opinionated guide to programming
by Marijn Haverbeke

I had a quick glance over three chapters. Seems worth having a closer look. (via schockwellenreiter)

Plastic Balls · 2008-01-17

Folks,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oP5J4W5GQ3w

here is one of the worthiest causes to get arrested for. Reenact the the commercial above on the Spanish Steps by Holy Trinity in Rome. See the result below:

video at decio: il blog

Respect guys, If necessary I'll bail you out.

(via decio: il blog)

Sun to Acquire MySQL · 2008-01-16

Sun announced an agreement to acquire MySQL AB, an open source icon and developer of one of the world's fastest growing open source databases. This acquisition accelerates Sun's position in enterprise IT to now include the $15 billion database market and reaffirms Sun's position as the leading provider of platforms for the Web economy and its role as the largest commercial open source contributor.

...this would be Sun's published opinion, and here is MySQL's:

Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ: JAVA) today announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire MySQL AB, an open source icon and developer of one of the worldÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s fastest growing open source databases for approximately $1 billion in total consideration. The acquisition accelerates Sun's position in enterprise IT to now include the $15 billion database market. Today's announcement reaffirms Sun's position as the leading provider of platforms for the Web economy and its role as the largest commercial open source contributor.

Pretty much the same. I will need a night to think the consequences over. Yet, one thing is for sure: This truly is a large wedding.

The Future of Ideas · 2008-01-16

Random House has agreed to permit Lessig's The Future of Ideas to be licensed under a Creative Commons - Attribution-Noncommercial license. You can download the book for free here.

Maila Nurmi · 2008-01-13

Maila Nurmi dead at 86 (http://www.vampirasattic.com/).

Yet Another New Year's List · 2008-01-03

B.B.C.'s 100 Things We Didn't Know Last Year

Bring Your Violins · 2008-01-01

New Years Eve at Cassiopeia's in Berlin.

Merry ... · 2007-12-23

A lovely picture galleries for christmas: Scared of Santa. There are more than the initial sixteen pictures and they ones comming later on tend to become better and better.

24C3 · 2007-12-22

The 24th Chaos Communication Congress (24C3) is the annual four-day conference organized by the Chaos Computer Club (CCC). It takes place at the bcc Berliner Congress Center in Berlin, Germany. The Congress offers lectures and workshops on a multitude of topics and attracts a diverse audience of thousands of hackers, scientists, artists, and utopians from all around the world.

Here are the scheduled events. A whole lot of interesting sessions among them. Unfortunately I can only join at one day ... and I still have to decide which day it will be.

Differential Equations · 2007-12-19

In the video above Prof. Mattuck of the M.I.T. explains the geometrical view of y'=f(x,y): Direction Fields, Integral Curves. It is part of the course Differential Equations.The lecture lasts 48 minutes and is easy to understand and still interesting. Now i know that integral curves can never be tangents.

Open Yale Courses · 2007-12-18

Yale provides some of its courses open access. It comes under creative commons which allows to non commercially share alike or remix as long as you give credit to the authors. That is quite a free license:

Open Yale Courses

... but, unlike the M.I.T. with its open course ware, Yale does not yet offer math courses. What a pitty.

(via openaccess-germany.de)

Living and Healthy · 2007-12-09

No updates for quite some time, but do not worry, I'm fine. Until I post again you may read Rio Baile Funk - The adventures of DJ Rideon in the world of Rio Baile Funk or you could practice the very Japanese algorithm dance, which makes you a better person ... according to the lyrics.

Ghetto Funk Power Hour · 2007-11-29

I'm just listening to Binki Griptite's Ghetto Funk Power Hour (mp3-download, 80MB). Does this strike a chord? If so, it is one week left. For all the others: More cryptic pre christmas funk soon here. In the meanwhile listen to Binki Griptite's Ghetto Funk Power Hour, especially to Sharon Jones' "Why DonÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t We All Stop Paying Taxes".

Hedy Lamarr Frequency Hopping · 2007-11-26

"Any girl can be glamorous. All you have to do is stand still and look stupid."

So said Hedy Lamarr. Later on she and her close friend George Antheil invented the "spread spectrum" technology, which is widely used today both in military communications security and cellular phones. They thought one could use it to protect remote controlled torpedos from being jammed by the enemy. The Navy at the height of World War II considered the idea too cumbersome, which it was, given the technology at hand at that time.

(src wired published in 2000)

How to Become a Great Photographer · 2007-11-26

Here we have 26 tips on how to become a great photographer. The tips are easily to be converted to almost any other profession. Maybe central asian war lord would need to develop different skills but for all the others, read!

Learn as much technical stuff as you can, because Rule Number One is, the client doesnÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t really care about your vision of the world. They care about their vision.
-- A Photo Editor

... and enjoy ...

Rita and Animal · 2007-11-20

Here we see animal, a hero of my childhood and Rita Moreno. That animal was one of my male role models may explain a lot.

Who can figure out what Rita says to animal in second 52? Starts with "Oje Buddy" which means "Listen up, buddy" as far as I know. One sentence may mean "Look at me, when I'm talking to you!" but theres more.

Happy Counterterrorism Day · 2007-11-05

Remember, remember the fifth of November,
The gunpowder, treason and plot,
I know of no reason
Why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot
Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, Ã¢â‚¬â„¢twas his intent
To blow up the King and Parliament.
Three score barrels of powder below,
Poor old England to overthrow;
By GodÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s providence he was catchÃ¢â‚¬â„¢d
With a dark lantern and burning match.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, make the bells ring.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, God save the King!
Hip hip hoorah!

A penny loaf to feed the Pope.
A farthing oÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ cheese to choke him.
A pint of beer to rinse it down.
A faggot of sticks to burn him.
Burn him in a tub of tar.
Burn him like a blazing star.
Burn his body from his head.
Then weÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ll say olÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ Pope is dead.
Hip hip hoorah!
Hip hip hoorah hoorah!

Harper's Magazine publishes a small list to keep in mind on Guy Fawkes Night:

Torture Never Works and is Always Wrong
Beware the Government that Rules By Fear
A Government Which Stereotypes Is Unjust

...and here is a papercraft Guy Fawkes mask.

Perl Grep · 2007-10-30

Because I always forget it, here as a reminder for me: How does perl's grep work:

grep {BLOCK} ARRAY;

or rather

grep (EXPR, ARRAY);

example:

@sesamestreet = ("b-bird", "ernie", "bert", "elmo"); $yeah_no = ""; if(!grep{$_ eq $ARGV[0]} @sesamestreet){ $yeah_no = "not "; } print "$ARGV[0] is ".$yeah_no."in sesamestreet\n";

R.I.P. Deborah · 2007-10-19

ELEKTRO music department · 2007-10-18

ELEKTRO - Check this vintage page from way back in the nineties. Techno galore and the HTML is awful. They used to run a club in the early nineties in Berlin. I think it went out of business in 1995. I still have and sometimes wear a t-shirt with the logo. Well, obviously they are still active, they maintain a myspace profile. Respect guys.

Rugby Stil · 2007-10-18

Wir haben letzten samstag das halbfinale der rugby w.m. gesehen. Frankreich gegen England. Muss man ja gesehn haben. Die schoene fand uebrigens SÃƒÂ©bastien Chabal allemal schicker als die ganzen geleckten fussballfatzkes. Dann wisst ihr ja jetze, wo es stilmaessig hingehen wird.

Malacca Strait Pirates · 2007-09-19

National Geographic publishes pirate pictures - just like Der Haken - and puts a lengthy article on top.

Letter to the Belgian Monetary Authorities · 2007-09-09

Albert on Euro coin I received this letter by email. Since I consider the mentioned controversy as interesting I'd like to share it with all Euro users: Letter to the Belgian Monetary Authorities.

Desaster Capitalism · 2007-09-09

Naomi Klein published a new book "The Shock Doctrine", in which she states the existence of 'desaster capitalism'. Starting from Milton Friedman's 'only a crisis - actual or perceived - produces real change' she looks at recent crisis and desaster and their economic outcome. The next step would be to propose that crisis is actually staged or made by whomever powerful enough to drive his cause. I don't know whether this is done in the book but I'm curious. Read the Guardian post for a first glance.

For those, who do not have the time to read the whole thing, she produced a short film, which actually has been part of this year's Venice Film Festival programme. The movie is made well, gives the facts correctly and illustrates the main ideas of the book, though there is no time for in depth analysis.

Little Miss Sunshine · 2007-09-09

You chose not to speak because of Friedrich Nietzsche? ... Far out.

Can't Tell Me Nothin' · 2007-09-01

Kanye West's "Can't tell me nothin'" in Zach Galifianakis' version. Brilliant!

Off they Go · 2007-08-29

Hilly Kristal, founder of the CGBG, died at the age of 75. Rest in peace.

(via nytimes)

Belt · 2007-08-29

What a lovely yet handy belt. A must have.

24C3 · 2007-08-26

24th Chaos Communication Congress 2007: Call for Participation

Busy · 2007-08-23

Dear reader, I am busy right now. I may be able to post something interesting next weekend which would be soon enough, wouldn't it? In the meantime check the colorful video of M.I.A. ... so 90ies.

Macro Economic Data · 2007-08-20

I'm currently on a quest for data on the U.S. real estate bubble. I did not yet find proper material. What I found instead is the site of the St. Louis Fed. They offer a whole lot of macro economic data about U.S. issues for free on their economic research pages.

I'm a Marxist · 2007-08-19

Thirty years ago Julius Henry "Groucho" Marx died. "Time flies like an arrow and fruit flies like a banana."

(via dahlmann)

Beautiful Code · 2007-08-16

Blog follows book: Beautiful Code. As for the book, I made it up to chapter "Finding Things" by Tim Bray, which was my favourite so far. By now my recommendation concerning the book is 'buy'. By the way, all royalties from the book go to amnesty international.

Simpsons Haken · 2007-07-11

This would be more or less me, here are

How'd you look like? ...

Are You into Index Cards? · 2007-07-11

spend hours watching lovely index cards

HBO Voyeur · 2007-07-10

The silent movie returns. Ok, not silent, but without spoken dialogues. Heres to HBO for http://hbovoyeur.com/. A flash site that tells some stories. Make sure you've got half an hour and broadband access to the web. Explore it, it's great entertainment.

(via vowe)

All Online Data Lost · 2007-07-10

Breaking News: All Online Data Lost After Internet Crash

Secret Rooms · 2007-06-25

Young Farmers Calendar 2008 · 2007-06-22

Joanna Partridge reports from the set of the 2008 german young farmers calendar photo shooting:

Young female German farmers pose for the 2008 Young Farmers' calendar in the Bavarian countryside.

The calendar girls all come from farming backgrounds and say they wanted to show the modern side of farming. The calendar will be available on the German Young Farmers' website, where it normally sells out in a couple of days.

By doing so, she tenfolds my page traffic. The video footage at reuters seems to generate a big buzz among internet users. It is sex and pets that sells, sex and pets ... and thats why I repost youtube's "Hand Holding Otters".

Dramatic · 2007-06-21

(via boingboing)

Beware of Pickpockets · 2007-06-12

George W. went to Albania. In the video below he greets the cheering crowd and, er, well, he somehow loses his watch. On the video in the 40th sec he wears a watch and after 2min 40sec it is gone. I'd love this story to be true, man, I am so much into stereotypes. That'd be so great. I mean it really takes one daring pickpocket to go for George W's watch:

(via vowe)

Nutrition Patterns · 2007-06-10

Time magazine photo essay entitled What the World Eats.

Face Search Form · 2007-05-31

As a little public service I thought I would offer a little form to query google's face search. There seems to be demand

My Band · 2007-05-31

This band I was planning to found ... is has been founded already in 1976: The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo. Whats left for me to found?

(via boingboing)

Body Measures · 2007-05-31

What this is? Its the physical development of centerfold model of the playboy since December 1953 to December 2001. They seem to reveal a trend which is described by Martin Voracek, research resident and Maryanne L Fisher, PhD candidate. Their study is called "Shapely centrefolds? Temporal change in body measures: trend analysis".

(via improbable research)

imgtype=face · 2007-05-30

A new google feature that sparks suspition that the do-no-evil company heads towards online face recognition. Consider this:

http://images.google.com/images?q=nimitz
http://images.google.com/images?q=nimitz&imgtype=face

Well, er, I don't see the face recognition use case here. You'd normally have a name and look for the corresponding face. All the "face recognition engine" would have to do, is figure out if the candidate picture shows a face. It does not need to figure out what face it shows. Furthermore most of the pictures showing faces have the relevant information on who it shows somewhere written in the context. There is no proper face recognition involved yet. I cannot query "Guy who stole a bike at Luton main station last Wednesday" and then expect google to return a face and the corresponding name. It just doesn't work ... or maybe it does actually work already, then these would be the suspects. Then I cannot expect google to find faces for names that do not have the relevant information written somewhere in the context ... Not yet. By now it only seems to be a funny feature:

http://images.google.com/images?q=strauss&hl=de
http://images.google.com/images?q=strauss&imgtype=face&hl=de

Are there even funnier face queries?

(via Kantel)

Rukumbine III · 2007-05-24

Neue nachrichten zum thema Rukumbine. Ich hatte mittlerweile kontakt zur University of the West Indies und habe einige wenige neuigkeiten:

I checked the Dictionary of Jamaican English, which has 'rookoombine' as a word of uncertain etymology and without a clear meaning; they claim it to be a "nonsense-word carrying sexual suggestion" and refer to the same song lines. However, they have this version of the refrain: Oh Rookoombine eena Santa Fe.

The Dictionary has no entry for santampee, but santapii (= centipede) may well have santampii as an alternative pronunciation.

The Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage lists santapee (different spelling, same word) as meaning (1) centipede; (2) a contemptible and dangerous, rowdy woman.

...also kurz rukumbine ist ein spasswort mit sexuellem drall und santempi koennte eine lady mit gewaltpotential sein und denn hab ich durch variation der schreibung noch eine quelle gefunden:

"Sing with me class, how about Shenenley Duffus...

Ruckumbine inna mi santampee, Ruckumbine! (Repeat)

Engine a run pon fire an' coal,
look pan de gal wid har big nose hole!
Come mek we Ruckumbine inna mi santampee, Ruckumbine! (Repeat)

Gal inna tree a pick ackee, bwoy anda tree a rub him khaki pants.
An' den we Ruckumbine inna mi santampee, Ruckumbine! (Repeat)

And please don't aks me a wha' "santampee" be."

Na, da koennt ick doch ganz richtig gelegen haben mit meiner letzten these. Jetzt haben wir es doch fast komplett. Schaun wir mal: Here are the

Rukumbine Lyrics

Good mornin' mother Cuba, how do you do?
Me ear say you buy a new pair oÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ shoes.
Me ear say you buy one brand new hat.
Mother Cuba tell me how much you pay for that hat.

Chorus: 2x Rukumbine inna mi santampee, Rukumbine!

I said the higher the hill, the greener the grass,
The younger the girls is, the sweeter she kiss.

Chorus

I said, girl in a tree a pickin' ackee ,
Boy underneath her, wash him khaki pants.

Chorus

I said, engine a run with fire an' coal,
Look 'pon the girl with the big nose hole.

Chorus

So, und jetzt nochmal kontrollhoeren.

History Nerds · 2007-05-22

Here's a history nerd post. BBC has got a properly crafted interactive british history time line. Furthermore here is a time lapse video which compresses the american civil war to four minutes, showing the geographic expansion of the north an the south or better the areas controlled by union and confederation. And there is even more: A seemingly infinite collection of photographs brought to us by the UCLA. Changing Times: Los Angeles in Photographs, 1920-1990.

HCwDB · 2007-05-22

This might inflict trouble at home, but still, let me introduce to you my new online diary hero : Douchebag1 with his site http://www.hotchickswithdouchebags.com/ where he is into Deconstructing the Unholy Wrongness of Hottie/Douchey Coupling. Don't miss his myspace profile.

Please make sure you figure out what a douchebag is to fully understand the greatness of the site.

Conversations · 2007-05-17

This one is lovely. Imagine two chatbots or wannabe Turing machines chatting with each other. Here are resulting conversations. This is my favourite. A is Alice and J is Jabberwacky. They operate on quite different approaches:

A: Who is your favorite philosopher
J: CanÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t say. IÃ¢â‚¬â„¢m not very much into philosophy.
A: Can a book have no title?
J: Of course.
A: Blimey.
J: Are you British?
A: Does it seem like that? I was born in America.
J: You are definitely flirting!

(via Kottke)

Cursor Moves · 2007-05-17

Why is your cursor moving, when you move your mouse? Here is the answer.

(via vowe)

Great Firewall · 2007-05-17

Der Haken is probably blocked in China. Check your URL.

Introverted · 2007-05-14

Spectatrix - The Passionate Introvert

Everybody is allowed · 2007-05-14

"The free world says that software is the embodiment of knowledge about technology, which needs to be free in the same way that mathematics is free. Everybody is allowed to know as much of it as he wants, regardless of whether he can pay for it, and everybody can contribute and everybody can share."

Though it appears in the 'money'-domain of CNN under the path fortune, this one is a nice roundup on the software patent issue. Because it doesn't take the stance of either side it is a great intro for the software patent rookie: Microsoft takes on the free world.

Since software rules out almost every part of our lives, the impact of the topic cannot be underestimated. Though it often is. Ashlee Vance of ElReg does not see any trail coming. He/She is probably right.

This is so Japanese · 2007-05-03

This is so Japanese! What would a campaign spot on T.V. for the Tokyo Governors Office look like? With all my stereotypes in mind I would picture just this. Brilliant, no sweet lies, no selling out, no compromises ... and the Japanese language stresses the whole idea:

By the way, the content is most lovely as well: "I don't have a single constructive proposal." Great, when has a campaigning politician been this honest? I cannot remember.

(via boingboing)

Dying Computers · 2007-05-03

There is this scene in Kubrick's Space Odyssey when Dave the astronaut is shutting down HAL 9000 the board computer. This scene is often referred to as the first killing of a computer. The scene after all asks the question if a man made machine can be actually killed. Is it dead? Did it live?

Space Odyssey was published in 1968 and only three years later in 1971 the first adaption of the theme was aired in the Ed Sullivan Show starring an early Cookie Monster. Enjoy:

(cookie monster found at boingboing)

Short Note · 2007-05-01

It is quiet here, isn't it? free-penguin.org/news currently gets a face lift. This keeps me busy. Stay tuned, folks.

Apocalyptic Bees · 2007-05-01

Ha, brilliant, here is the first article to tie the vanishing of honey bees to apocalypse. Just as I predicted. They have sound evidence. They cite the bible:

Revelation 6:6
Then I heard what sounded like a voice among the four living creatures, saying, "A quart of wheat for a day's wages, and three quarts of barley for a day's wages, and do not damage the oil and the wine!"
--christiannewswire.com

Unfortunately it is an evangelical news service that introduces this apocalyptic connection. Still, I am sure 'conventional' media will follow soon. I'll keep you informed.

(via boingboing)

Naomi's 10 Steps · 2007-04-25

There is this article in the guardian: Fascist America, in 10 easy steps. It seems to stem from Naomi Wolf's The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot, which will be published by Chelsea Green in September.

Naomi describes ten steps to turn any free society into a closed one. Most of them are reasonable and some of them are actually taken by the current administration of the USA.

But there is one issue which I consider to be among the most important to inflict fear in a society: 3. Develop a thug caste

When leaders who seek what I call a "fascist shift" want to close down an open society, they send paramilitary groups of scary young men out to terrorise citizens. The Blackshirts roamed the Italian countryside beating up communists; the Brownshirts staged violent rallies throughout Germany. This paramilitary force is especially important in a democracy: you need citizens to fear thug violence and so you need thugs who are free from prosecution.

I'll tell you why that won't work in the USA. Here is the reason: http://www.armedamerica.org. I'm not an NRA-guy and I see the tremendous disadvantages of owning guns but t'is sure a remedy against thugs and maybe against step "6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release" as well.

Entertaining Links · 2007-04-24

(via kottke.org, boingboing.net, cartoonist)

The Kaye Effect · 2007-04-17

Athanasius posted The Kaye Effect yesterday. He gives neatorama as source, where they link a lovely youtube video on the 10th of april. I considered it great trivia to post, when I ain't got no time to be creative myself. Tonight this time has come. Obviously tonight this time has come for kottke as well.

Furthermore Sushee has found a free physics textbook named Motion Mountain, which looks promising. So much for now on natural sciences.

Honeybees and Mobile Phones · 2007-04-15

This is a nice little story that could easiely become top notch before CA-MRSA in my eternal list of possible apocalypse causes. It could have been a great science fiction plot but it happens. Here is how it goes. For some years now bees in the U.S. and by now in Europe as well mysterically abandon their hives leaving the queen and the eggs alone. First result: The colony dies. Next result: the bees do not pollinate crops anymore. Here are some figures on on the extend of the phenomenon:

The alarm was first sounded last autumn, but has now hit half of all American states. The West Coast is thought to have lost 60 per cent of its commercial bee population, with 70 per cent missing on the East Coast.

CCD has since spread to Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece. And last week John Chapple, one of London's biggest bee-keepers, announced that 23 of his 40 hives have been abruptly abandoned.
--independent.co.uk

The phenomenon is called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) and has got the potential to affect future harvests and hence our nutrition dramatically. According to The Independent the first scientist that offers a possible explanation, or at least a first hint, and some empirical data is Dr. Jochen Kuhn from The University of Koblenz-Landau who carried out a study on the hive-returning-behaviour of honeybees if mobile phones were placed nearby the hive. Results suggest that bees may more frequently refuse to return to their hives if mobile phone radiation is emmitted nearby.

If you speak german here is a short paper on the topic compiled by a swiss group that fights mobile phone radiation. The paper cites a few studies on the influence of radiation on the behaviour of bees.

Update: instapundit collects sceptical comments on the issue, which sure is a good thing to do.

How to set up TOR on a Debian Machine · 2007-04-02

To add a serious Onion Routing client for anon web browsing was kindergarten here on debian linux. On my machine I had to add a further packet source with url http://mirror.noreply.org/pub/tor/. Distribution is sarge and section is main. Hence, /etc/apt/sources.list has got one additional line:

deb http://mirror.noreply.org/pub/tor sarge main

Next step was to install TOR and Privoxy:

sudo apt-get install tor sudo apt-get install privoxy

now you have to convince privoxy to cooperate with the TOR-client. Do this by adding the following line to /etc/privoxy/config:

forward-socks4a / localhost:9050 .

Do not forget the dot. This is the most difficult part of the installation process. Put a dot at the end of the line. Now restart Privoxy:

/etc/init.d/privoxy restart

Your proxy is up and running now. Lovely, isn't it? Next step is to make your browser sending requests via Privoxy. Privoxy is running on your local machine on port 8118. This is basically what your browser needs to know. You can put that in the proxy settings of your browser. Firefox users can change the proxy setting with a mouse click, if they use the TOR-Button.

Use TOR. It is a big improvement. Though traffic slows down remarkably if you use TOR.

Tower Defense · 2007-04-02

If you desperately need to kill time, consider Desktop Tower Defense by Handdrawn Games. You have to stop little critters on their way over your desk. To do so you have an impressive arsenal of guns. Nice piece and it does kill a considerable piece of time.

Please consider killing time with these games as well:

(more at kottke's)

End of Ye Olde Testament Wording Week 2007 · 2007-04-01

I'd herewith like to invite Rowan Atkinson to end this years 'Ye Olde Testment Wording Week 2007'. Rowan performs 'The Amazing Jesus'. I know the topic is not quite of ye olde testament but the wording doth fit perfectly. Enjoy.

Happiness · 2007-03-28

Ye shalt approach thy neighbour with a gay smile and ye shalt be kind to anybody. This shalt not be an easy task, yet ye shal fulfill it and ye shall find great happiness. So doth it say in the journal of great wisdom the scientific american

African Gansta Rap · 2007-03-26

Here is a lovely piece of nigerian gangsta ... well, er, let's say hip hop. There are places in the world where being a gangsta is more stylish then in the U.S. - though the U.S. became hegemonial in defining the style - In Nigeria no guns, no cokain, just some ideas are required. Thats what its all about. Good ideas ... and those african lads have much cooler attack pets than you mollycoddled U.S. pimps ever dreamt of.

By the way, those who do not get the entire lyrics the first time, here are them ...

(via schockwellereiter, The White African)

SciFi Architecture · 2007-03-22

BldgBlog has got a post on Science Fiction and the City: Film Fest Update!. They feature a whole bunch of great SciFi architectural pictures there. Most of them are made by Ben Procter and Ryan Church. Those are some brilliant guys. Absolutely. They remind me of Juan Giminez.

The Debate is Open · 2007-03-21

Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions -- Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) in Europe: Steps towards a european policy framework (http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/policy/rfid/doc/rfid_en.pdf)

I'd say, the debate is open ... and now in german:

Mitteilung der Kommission an das Europaeische Parlament, den Rat, den Europaeischen Wirtschafts- und Sozialausschuss und den Ausschuss der Regionen -- Funkfrequenzkennzeichnung (RFID) in Europa: Schritte zu einem ordnungspolitischen Rahmen (http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/policy/rfid/doc/rfid_de.pdf)

(via elReg)

One Line Checks Prime · 2007-03-20

perl -wle 'print "isPrime" if (1 x shift) !~ /^1?$|^(11+?)\1+$/' [number]

(by Neil Kandalgaonkar, via kottke)

The Exceptional Lie Group E8 · 2007-03-19

The Lie algebra E₈ is 248-dimensional: the 8-dimensional space depicted here, plus one dimension for each of the 240 root vectors.

(via bbc)

Economics of Prostitution · 2007-03-15

The picture above shows Prof. Steinar StrÃƒÂ¸m. He is economist at the University of Turin and the University of Oslo and on top of that he is one of the authors of a report on the market for prostitution services. According to the guardian describing the prostitution services market requires a whole lot of math knowledge.

(via improbable research and the guardian)

Tao's Homepage · 2007-03-14

Here is the homepage of Terence Tao. According to kottke he won both the Fields Medal and a MacArthur genius grant last year. What he has got and what I like about his page, for it is something to play with, is a set of java applets dealing with math. My favourite is Math 132 Applet 2: Elementary complex maps:

This applet demonstrates a number of complex maps w = f(z). By default the identity map f(z) = z is displayed, but other maps can be chosen. The left grid represents the z complex plane (the domain of f), and the right grid represents the w complex plane (the range of f). Moving the mouse around the z plane will cause a pointer to move in the w plane according to whatever complex map was selected. [...]

Move the mouse and press the right button from time to time. Try other then the default f(z). Then try Math 132 Applet 5: The complex derivative. Lovely as well.

Become Ambassador Now · 2007-03-13

Reports say he was able to identify himself to police only after a rubber ball had been removed from his mouth.

According to BBC there will be a vacancy in the isreali diplomatic service. Apply already now for the position of Ambassador in El Salvador but be prepared to be asked about your sexual habits during recruitment. Actually this story fits recent news about isreali elites perfectly.

Wow, Ze Germans · 2007-03-12

Here is a next piece in a row of totalitarian retro style videos and it is a remarkable buzz already: The Big Brother State. Just like the masterplanthemovie it was made germany. The masterplan has been made at the University of Ulm and now the big brother state has been made at the university for applied sciences in Augsburg. Does germany become the next hot spot in arts? Is this some kind of neo expressionism already? I'm pretty proud already.

Digital Photography · 2007-03-08

How does digital photography and video change our ways of documenting certain issues? Do we all become journalists? What will those do, who thought they'd have the power to document, hence to 'produce' reality? Will they start passing laws that makes certain documentation activities illegal? By the way, they just try to pass a law, that bans the publication of video footage containing violence, with that they'd ban the publication of documented police violence. Furthermore, does the ubiquity of picture documentaion change or even censor our ways, our behaviour? Whats your opinion? Do you give a thought?

Lensculture has a nice piece on the topic.

(via hebig.org)

RozrÃƒÂ³Ã…Â¼nij KaczyÃ…â€žskich · 2007-03-06

What to do Tonite · 2007-03-03

A total ecplipse of the moon will be visible tonite from 10:24pm to 11:58pm GMT.

Prague Tips · 2007-03-01

When visiting Prague, do not miss Kavarna Imperial at Namesti Republiky. It is a little off the common tourist trails, but it is a definite must. If you find the time visit Kolej Hvezda in Prague 6 and take a hike back to Mala Strana over Petrini. Sorry for skipping the correct czech spelling.

Pfeilstorch · 2007-02-27

Athanasius has a nice piece on how our ancestors actually found out where the storcks disappeared to in winter: The Pfeilstorch.

(picture University Rostock)

OOAD · 2007-02-26

Nice little article on the pitfalls of Object Oriented Analysis and Design for the evening: Vague and ambiguous use cases - How abstract should your specs be?. Thank you for that, Matt Stephens.

Flight Attendants · 2007-02-25

Glamour of Flight - Promotional pictures of flight attendants from back in the days, when we were allowed to bring liquid to the plane and when we'd have travelled to New York and not to Mallorca, sigh ...

Retro Styles · 2007-02-25

Here is a little issue which comes to my mind more frequently lately. Current video artists and graphic designers seem to mimic the graphical styles of totalitarian decades (1930ies/40ies). This is probably not only for the coolnes of style. It is pretty clear what concerns do drive this revival, isn't it?

They are probably right, we do drift towards some kind totalitarism. This time it seems to be technology induced, well wasn't it the same the last time? This time we - or better 'they' - do have technology at hand that enables us/them to control more efficiently than ever before.

Influenza · 2007-02-22

The map above shows the current influenza activity in germany. The Hessians are suffering awfully. I have two friends and my dearest down and I'm coughing as well. Folks, please get well soon.

For those who speak german and are interested in statistics the page of the working group influenza might be interesting. They have beautiful maps and animations of virus activity.

Thats all for now ... and again: Please do get well soon, dear fellows.

(via Robert Koch Institute)

Off Wire Note · 2007-01-23

Since i'm moving my scarce belongings, i'm once more cut off the net and not able to write a whole lot. I'll probably be back with regular entries by next week. Please be patient.

... by the way, here is how to implement something like a hashmap using groovy:

for (entry in ['tom':4, 'dick':0, 'harry':1])
{println "${entry.key} = ${entry.value}" }

Now go, find an application.

Open Source Economics · 2007-01-17

"Economic impact of open source software on innovation and the competitiveness of the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) sector in the EU"

Rock Steady Crew · 2007-01-14

Today we have some youtube extravaganza. Let us remember the old days, when hip hop emerged to save us from the dark industrial main stream. I gathered some of the first successful acts in hip hop. No bling bling, no pimpin', no fat rims. Just skills. So sweet.

Furthermore, over at MAKE: they started the Learn To Solder Month. This is a worthy cause for sure.

Evil Eye Protector · 2007-01-12

In my never ending quest for improved hand hygiene I stumbled across SquidSoap - Training Tomorrow's Great Hand Washers. Note the logo of squid soap. Doesn' it resemble Fatima's Hand? Does this product protect you from the evil eye as well? If so, my recommendation would be 'Buy'. With this recommendation one of the weirdest entries here so far ends.

Lessig Key Note · 2007-01-05

Take an hour fifteen to see Lawrence Lessigs key note speech at the 23C3. This is a quick and easy to understand walk through licence and copyleft matters. Strongly strongly recommended.

Once you've seen and understood Lessigs speech you could go on and see an interview with John Perry Barlow on the same topic. Here is a short quote to give a hint on what to expect:

[Ã¢â‚¬Â¦]If you wanna share something - share it. If you wanna use something - use it. Try to do so ethically in the sense of donÃ‚Â´ t take things without attribution.[Ã¢â‚¬Â¦] Pay no attention to these people when it comes to being creative. Go ahead and do the stuff that Larry showed in the beginning of his talks and do lot of it. And every time they put a lock on - break it. And every time they pass a new law - break that.[Ã¢â‚¬Â¦]

(via netzpolitik.org)

A Naughty Triple-X-mas · 2006-12-23

... to you all.

Person of the Year: You · 2006-12-17

Time magazin's person of the year is you. ...well, if you are part of the 'web controlling' crowd. Hm, let me think about this ...

Hm, yes, it might be true. There is a revolution outthere, as far as the possibility of publishing is refered to. But ... who is read. The information you publish becomes valid only if it is read hence shared. But here we still have and probably will have very few information providers who are being read by multitudes and multitudes of publishers hardly being read at all. To the 'not being read' publishers publishing power comes only via ... er, how to call it ... stampede publishing. You only can dig or dis posts of main stream media and even this will only be noticed if a lot of have not publishers do the same. They cannot or not really ignite debates they consider important and which could well be very important. Take the debate on software patents in europe or the debate on surveillance in the ICT age. There is a debate outthere in the web but is it relevant to the deciding folks?

Mixed Tapes · 2006-12-06

Did you know that Mercedes publishes mixed tapes? Here are the tracks of mixtape 15:

Kristin Hild - My Man
Layonne & Krako - You CanÃ‚Â´t Move The Butterfly
Briony - Fallen Angel
Lady Destiny - Punk Rocker (T-Star Version)
Golden Era of Sound feat. Dionne Charles - CreepinÃ‚Â´
Diva's Harmony feat. Kayla & Trip - Can't Get Enough
Granufunk & Sonny Plankton - Velvet Lullaby
Reebosound - Hello
Ben Westbeech - So Good Today
Cris Tanzi - My Home
Super Star Planet - The Most Useless Thing
Stee Downes - Put A Little Love In My Soul
S. Maily - JÃ‚Â´aurais voulu
My Toys Like Me - Sick Couple
Switch - Combination

All tracks are smooth to the bone, no edges, no scrubs, all easy listening. But hey, why not? By the way, Mercedes, if your cars were as your webdesign suggests ... an embarrassment.

(via vowe)

Sexual Consent · 2006-12-02

Here is something that's been boingboinged for good reason. Watch two teens having their sexual consent negotiated by their lawers. Very U.S.-ish. So folks if you plan a night out tonight, do not forget to bring a sexual consent form and FDA approved condoms ... and your attorney of course. If you plan to stay at home I recommend to have a look at the Language Week posts over Athanasius'.

(boingboing)

Lullaby (The Cure) · 2006-11-30

Since it is ball season there is not much time left to post, though I'd have a few things to say. Sorry guys. Take Nghia, Phiu, TL, Nga and Ngoc instead. Lovely, Respect folks.

Indian Proverb · 2006-11-28

Call on God, but row away from the rocks

So Easy ... · 2006-11-22

The easiest piccolo quiz ever. Where is this lovely variation of a famous theme recorded (mp3, 783Kb)? The smart reader should know right away ...

Whistle Blower · 2006-11-21

You Only Live Twice - a great song to whistle in the office ... "This dream is for you, so pay the price. Make one dream come true, you only live twice."

Have Known It · 2006-11-17

Steve Balmer: "Novell pays us some money for the right to tell customers that anybody who uses SUSE Linux is appropriately covered, [...] This is important to us, because [otherwise] we believe every Linux customer basically has an undisclosed balance-sheet liability. [...] Only customers that use SUSE have paid properly for intellectual property from Microsoft"

Ha! I have known something like this would happen. My forecasting qualities are still great. No further comment.

The Algebra Project · 2006-11-11

The Algebra Project seeks to impact the struggle for citizenship and equality by assisting students in inner city and rural areas to achieve mathematics literacy. Higher order thinking and problem solving skills are necessary for entry into the economic mainstream. Without these skills, children will be tracked into an economic underclass.

A Day to Die For · 2006-11-09

Markus Wolf, East German Spymaster `Without a Face,' Dies at 83. If I had to pick a name from the east german nomenklatura, whom I respect, there'd be ... if any ... Markus Wolf for he had this certain James Bond flavour and seemed somewhat sophisticated.

For him it was a great day to die, today 17 years ago the Berlin Wall came down ...

Women by Annie Leibowitz · 2006-11-04

A photo set by Annie Leibowitz entitled 'Women'. 21 photographs. Warmly recommended.

Awe, Shock, Terror · 2006-10-31

... for Halloween please refer to last years post. I have nothing to add.

Jake Loves You · 2006-10-29

Watch, Jake. Maybe it'd be cool to be just like him.

(jakelovesyou.com)

Hello, Wernham-Hogg · 2006-10-25

Ok, I'm late with this one - five years or something - but still...

I've borrowed the second series of The Office. It was the first time I saw more of it than a few chunks, though I'm the proud owner of a perfectly legal D.V.D. of the first set. However, this second series is brilliant. The first set is a landmark already but the second one is beyond anything that is called a t.v. series. Note how they tell the story. Especially the parts, when no actual interview or dialogue is going on. Very few short blinks, making you feel like a voyeur. Maybe 'very few' is not strong enough. They use as many shots as Hemingway would have used word. Brilliant actors as well. Great love story, great catastrophies.

A word of advice: Might be good to see the first series to understand the second properly.

Piccolo Quiz - Little Chap · 2006-10-19

Nobody of my audience could solve the Piccolo Quiz - Bad Code I. This is awful. I have to drown my grief in the unwon piccoloechen now. I've been so proud of you, my dear audience, but now ... bottomless disappointment. Folks, it was so easy. But before solving the problem, we turn to the new task, which demands skills in other fields. Question: In what famous contribution to the set of great movies does the little chap below appear? The first who gives the right answer wins, guess what, a Rotkaeppchen Piccolo. This time answers to the comments please.

Now for solving the previous task: if(number+iterations == limit) was the problem. The function implies that number is smaller then limit when the parameters are passed but never checks if this is the case. So, calling doSomethingUpTo(0, 0) would make the function run infinitely, which is bad indeed. To solve the problem one should consider changing the if-statement to something like if(number+iterations < limit) with iterations = -1 as start value or, if passing number > limit is actually an error, throwing an exception.

Spitting Image · 2006-10-18

Now for this month's Yankovich post. Al Yankovich, who beside other oddities shares my obsession with nerds, delivers another lovely yet this time not brilliant piece. This time he took Chamillionaire's Ridin and rephrased "ridin' dirty" to "white 'n' nerdy". I have to have the black hoodie Al wears.

By the way, Yankovich in front of the GAP store is spitting image of me.

Time Series with R · 2006-10-18

Here's an archive containing all you need to print lovely oil and cocoa price time series plots. In the archive you'll find the price data in two .csv files and the R script to read them, make time series objects and plot. Very simple indeed, but they might be useful for intermediate learners to see how to handle time series using R.

Cocoa Farmers on Strike · 2006-10-16

High time to stockpile chocolate! Ivorian cocoa farmers are on strike. Ivory Coast produces about 40% of the world's cocoa. This and the soon-ness (is there a word soon-ness? shortness? I'd love soon-ness) of helloween and chistmas might sky rocket chocolate prices soon. So, buy now!

Source: cocoa prices timeseries since 1971

... but seriously, Ivory Coast's Coffee and Cocoa Exchange has set an indicative price of 400 CFA francs (80 US cents), for 1kg of cocoa. This price is rarely reached since exporters have to pay taxes and such. As you see above the prices for cocoa did not rise a bit in recent decades. A property similar to the oil price, well, o.k. until 2002 ...

... and of course the plants are threatened by several illnesses.

(via B.B.C. News, plots done with a few lines of R)

What Kinda Wisdom Is This? · 2006-10-15

I just had a fortune cookie, now listen what kinda wisdom they try to sell me:

Faith is knowing that there is an ocean because you have seen a stream.

What kind of wisdom is that? There is not a lot of faith necessary to know that there is an ocean if you see a stream. Since the cookie is made in china the stream that is referred to here streams on planet earth. We can assume that earth is of finite size, since it is some kind of convex spherical thingie.

Now two cases may occure: The stream is of finite length or the stream is of infinite length.

Case one: The stream we see is of finite length. What would be at the end of the stream? Some kind of container to take hold of all the travelling water, hence an ocean. For the moment we can rule out the case of a creek drying out in the desert, because we're referring to a stream.

Second case would be, despite of earth's finite size the length of the stream would be infinite. The stream would then stream full circle. There is no other way to be of infinite length for a stream in a finite environment but what force would make the water travel? A pump station built by some intelligent designer? That second case in which no ocean is needed requires faith, a lot of faith.

Look, fortune bakery, I liked your cookies better when they said things like: Not he is a good lover who pleases many women in his live time but he who pleases one woman for her live time.

Yes Sir, I am Rich. · 2006-10-12

globalrichlist.com reminds us of something we tend to ignore while staring at these people ... and of course wants us to donate.

(via information aesthetics)

What is Truth? What is Torture? · 2006-10-08

[...] Would president Bush be allowed to put the electrodes of freedom to the testicles of terror? [...]

The president in his never ending quest for knowledge forces us to reconsider truth as too often go unexamined. He truly is a philosopher king. What is truth? [...] if a man is beaten to the floor in a sound proof chamber, does he make a noise? [...]

Some times torture is in the eye of the beholder ... in leech form. This chunk of Daily Show is lovely, go ahead see it.

Science of Sleep - Do not see it · 2006-10-08

This is a warning. Do not go and see "Science of Sleep". Awful. A Sigmund Freud carnage in paper-mÃƒÂ¢chÃƒÂ© on intermediate level. Characters remain flat and boring, story refuses to start even after an hour, light bad, sound bad, music bad. The german version is awfully dubbed. They dubbed the spanish part to german and subtitled the french. Why not putting subtitles under an undubbed version? ...but actually this wouldn't have helped at all. Awful. Stay away from it, it's a rip off. It is not a sign of being intellectual to know this movie, it is a rip off.

ICT Matters Link Dump · 2006-10-02

Piccolo Quiz - Bad Code I · 2006-10-02

There was not enough code posting here lately. This needs to be changed. So today I start a little series on bad code. Here is the first piece. It does something until number equals limit and returns times_done_something:

public int doSomethingUpTo(int number, int limit){
int iterations = 0;
boolean done = false;

  while(!done){
      this.doSomething();
       iterations++;
       if(number+iterations == limit)
             done = true;
   };

return iterations;
}

Question: Why is this code bad? Be the first who gives the right answer and win a Rotkaeppchen Piccolo. Do not post the answer to the comments. You'd rather mail it.

Update 22:16 CEST: Obviously I'm not the only one featuring bad code lately. Kevin Poulsen posts bad code at wired.com. Over at wired you can win democracy instead of cheap champagne which is quite a big thing to win. Do not miss the comments over there.

Sing and Dance Along · 2006-10-01

That bollywood party saturday night had an interesting property. Obviously, a significant fraction of bollywood party attenders are redneck-ish girls - please do not understand 'redneck' as a offending term here - who seem to be very much into this kind of music nerd-dom. Some of them can sing along with a lot of those songs and they seem to have learned whole choreographies. How come? My explanation would be RTL2. This is Germany's number one redneck television station and guess what they screen for months and months now. Interesting curiosity ain't it?

By the way, "redneckish" is a lovely word if your mother tongue happens to be German. Especially when describing young ladies as in "The boys stared at the redneckish girl " it describes more to a German then it does to a native English speaker. If you do not speak German, try to find out why.

More Soon · 2006-09-30

Cannot write a lot. Have to have a great weekend. Will be at Lauschangriff tonight, Bollywood extravaganza. If you need to talk or dance, meet me there. I'm the guy wearing a yellow sarong with a red belly free silk top ...

Six Word Story · 2006-09-26

I found this one at Caterina's:

Ernest Hemingway was once prodded to compose a complete story in six words. His answer, personally felt to be his best prose ever, was "For sale: baby shoes, never used." Some people say it was to settle a bar bet. Others say it was a personal challenge directed at other famous authors.

This is challenging. Since I feel addressed by "famous authors" let's go for it: "Talent drowning in files still dreams" Dedicated to a friend down here, yet not as good as Ernest's, to say the least. More to come ...

(via Caterina)

Another Good Man Gone · 2006-09-22

Saxophonist Danny Flores a.k.a. Chuck Rio died last week at the age of 77. Let's shout a very last "Tequila".

ICT at GM · 2006-09-21

General MotorsÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ CIO Ralph Szygenda gives us an insight on what they did and will do at GM when it comes to applying ICT.

(via Cem)

Being Off Wire · 2006-09-18

Still off wire, I found refuge at a friend's place to publish ... being offline really freaks me out already. I'm afraid I'm kind of addicted already. I'll keep an eye on that issue.

Room for Interpretation · 2006-09-18

Here is a follow up on steven meisels 9/11 picture set at vogue italia. I actually considered it a good idea to choose a different aesthetic vocabular and different channels to bring the idea to new or other groups. Unfortunately it shows that the pictures might not transport the idea properly. They do seem to leave a tiny bit too much room to interpret. One could, and people being used to vogues language actually do, see the models as evildoers who just get what they probably deserve. If this view is common among vogue readers the whole thing backfired awfully. I still hope it did not.

WOS Review · 2006-09-18

The wizards of os always had this twist towards license and law issues when tackling high tech topics. In fact that has been a good thing. However this trend did further increase this year. Most of the panels dealt with these issues rather then with high tech in it's pure form. I'm not sure if I still welcome this trend in its current manifestation. Still there were interesting panels. I learned about license issues in nigerian movie industries and brazilian music scenes, which are very different from what we know about how to market creative work. Furthermore the panel on the EU copyright directive has been interesting.

... but after all I'm not perfectly sure if it remains worthwile to attend WOS in the future.

Off Wire · 2006-09-18

Again, my internet provider cut me off the net. Let's be patient and see how long it'll take this time and what cohorts of incompetence they'll send this time to give me the creeps. Whatever, it might be silent here for some days. Stay tuned.

I'll Be There · 2006-09-12

How to be Happy · 2006-09-12

Deutsche Bank Research, the think tank of Deutsche Bank Group has published a paper which is next to brilliant: Measures of well-being - There is more to it than GDP. Eight pages give you an easy to understand overview of current efforts to measure a nation's well-being. Of course they go way beyond Gross Domestic Product, which is not fit to measure a nation's well-being but is often even used as a synonym for it.

... and there is more to be found in the paper than abstract academia. It even gives hints on how to live a happy live. Here are my favourite dbresearch approved tips on what you can do to become happy after all:

Limit materialistic advertisement. Research shows that people who watch a lot of TV feel poorer. Comparison with the pretty, successful and happy but artificial individuals in commercials makes oneÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s own weaknesses visible [...]
[...] Foster interaction among friends and family; contain geographic relocation, which hurts social interaction with friends and neighbours. (I love this one, should have read it earlier)
[...] People tend to work too much because they overestimate the impact of income on happiness. Taxing income improves work-life balances [...] (this is torn out of the context. dbresearch does not propose to rise income taxes)

Read the paper! It is downright lovely. Many thanks to the author Stefan Bergheim. Great work.

State of Emergency · 2006-09-11

For the fifth aniversary of 9/11 there's only one thing worth posting: State of Emergency by Steven Meisel (flash version). It is published by Vogue Italia. Of course it comes whith skinny girls in nice dresses, but still this is what I see. That's my perception of the war on terror. There are no bearded bad guys involvolved. Many thanks to Steven Meisel.

Interesting Logo · 2006-09-07

The logo above is quite a well known one and it has this interesting feature. As you see it above it suggests that it's owner or user is or abbrieviates to DY ... which is wrong. It is the logo of Hewlett Packard but if you turn the cardboard box of any HP product upside down you see, well, wrong letters. Isn't that an awful property for a logo? What is Gerrit's opinion? O.k. this is nothing compared to the Institute for Oriental Studies logo discussed here earlier.

By the way, I could not withstand adding a little user interactivity. If you click the logo it will appear correctly. Clicking again reestablishes the default state.

10ft Fan-Inflatable Tux · 2006-09-04

This has been in the air for a couple of months. Here is the first selfmade fan-inflatable free-penguin. It really looks impressive. Respect goes out to David of linuxcaffe.ca. More on the topic here.

Rise to Vote Sir · 2006-08-29

I know there are folks reading here who are into nice words. Some of them even like Bob Dylan. So, if you are among them, make sure you have flash installed, a broadband connection, a sound enabled machine and then do follow the link below ... I do promise, it is freaggin' lovely and one of those antidepressants one needs from time to time

SpeechBallons · 2006-08-23

... the evolution of speechbaloons

(via drawn)

Estimating Tax Avoidance · 2006-08-21

This is a follow up to german tank analysis. In germany, probably just as well as anywhere else in the western world, the taxes for cigarettes go up and up. As expected this lead to decreasing sales of cigarettes and politicians were pretty proud that they did so very much for public health.

Now the cigarette industry argued that the decrease is rather a symptom of substitution then of avoidance. But how to figure out? Well it is pretty simple and follows the same scheme as german tank analysis. One just draws a random sample of cigarette packs from some arbitrary dump yards and checks for their origin. By doing this one shall get a pretty good idea about how many cigarettes, black market and legal, are actually smoked. One might even figure out what the main smuggling routes are.

Back I Am · 2006-08-19

mkay, obviously we are back online ... I have that sneekin suspicion, that this was a little experiment of the all mighty ethologist. He just wanted to test how I'd react to almost complete media deprivation. I did not abuse alcoholic bewerage, I did not start hospitalising, I in fact called old friends to give them the blues the old fashioned way.

By the way, I wont be around until thursday night. So may these pages will remain silent. But ... who knows.

Patience · 2006-08-17

My internet service provider at home cut me off the net three days ago. Therefore silence ... be patient. Our pumbers are busy solving the problem.

Dyslexia · 2006-08-13

The task was to draw a piece for every letter of the alphabet in one hour. My contribution took me 53 minutes while most of the valuable time was spend finding words for each letter. As a native speaker I might have had the time to color the scetches according to the rules.

Here is a set of a truly gifted guy. Respect.

Scare Me, Leader! · 2006-08-10

Cory Doctorow saved me a good deal of time by posting his views on british aviation security measures :

The point of terrorism is to make us afraid. The UK response to a foiled plot is to create an unspecified period during which fliers are arbitrarily deprived of iPods, novels and dignity. [...] If this is a good idea now, then why won't it still be a good idea in a year? A decade? [...] I'd take my chances with the iPods and novels and dignity.
--Cory Doctorow

I am afraid it is true: To make people re-elect you or make them accepting you as their king or religous leader or whatever, it is a good idea to scare the freaggin' daylight out of them. Then offer a some sort relief for their fear struck hearts. Best thing about that is, the relief you offer does not even need to prove useful. It just needs to be some sort of symbolic act.

... 'there is someone who does something to calm my fears. I'd love to have him as my leader.' How weird is that?

RFID Passport Cloned · 2006-08-04

Here is news on the e-passport calamities, that have been discussed here before. The register notes today that the first German RFID Passport has been cloned already. Here is what the guy, who allegedly cloned it, has to say:

The whole passport design is totally brain damaged. [...] From my point of view all of these RFID passports are a huge waste of money. They're not increasing security at all.
-- Lukas Grunwald, DN-Systems Enterprise Internet Solutions

A solution I'm sympathising with, is this one by Bruce Schneier:

The best way to solve a security problem is not to have it at all. If there's an RFID chip on your passport, or any of your identity cards, you have to worry about securing it. If there's no RFID chip, then the security problem is solved.
-- Bruce Schneier

Maybe with the solution above there is less of a fortune to make with. Maybe that's the whole point and the risk of having a citizen's passport read (and copied?) without her consent is just a marginal issue.

(via elReg)

Ironman Frankfurt · 2006-07-24

This guy finished the ironman distance the third time now. I think it's time for new challenges. How about eating vast amounts of sausages or writing haikus? ... as for me, I already found it exhausting to be up the whole day to shout at him ... however ... Respect, Dude!

Follow this link for impressions of the whole day.

German Tank Analysis · 2006-07-22

Another great piece on why nerds will achieve world domination one day. Consider the following problem:

You are a british general planning the invasion in europe in the latter half of the second world war. One question you really need to find an answer to is: "How many german tanks are there?" in other words you have to estimate how many tanks Germany produced up to a given date. What would you do? You would ask intelligence. A handful of desperate guys on the enemy's ground, always at risk of being captured could try to find the answer ... or you could ask statisticians.

Here is what both sources reported. In the last column the true figures according to German records are given:

German Tank Data
Date	Statistical Estimate	Intelligence Estimate	German Records
June 1940	169	1000	122
June 1941	244	1550	271
August 1942	327	1550	342

How could statisticians guess that good? Ok, let's go for it: Obviously german tanks were captured by allied troops. Probably in Italy or Noth Africa. Those tanks had serial numbers. Those numbers were not randomly chosen. The German tanks were numbered as follows: 1, 2, 3 ... N, where N was the desired total number of tanks produced. Note that the tanks captured are a random sample of the german tank population. The rest is Order Statistics and led, according to the Guardian, to the following simple estimator N = (M-1)(S+1)/S, with S being the sample size and M being the highest serialnumber in the sample.

Still, the estimates are astonishingly good. Note that the sample should have been drawn iid, which very likely has not been the case.

(via MatheKlein)

Great Idea · 2006-07-19

... see what happens when great ideas are implemented excellently ...

(via pistolwimp)

Eclectic · 2006-07-12

Sorry for the ongoing eclecticism. I have a most lovely visitor ... so ... I really do not have the time to post proper content. End of next week I'll be back with some posts of my own. Indianerehrenwort

The Bush Pilot · 2006-07-12

(via crooksandliars)

Is Outsourcing Profitable? · 2006-07-09

Is Outsourcing Profitable? Prof. Strassmann of George Mason University gives a little lecture on the topic.

(via Basman)

Introduction to Probability · 2006-07-05

There is this lovely Introduction to Probability by Charles M. Grinstead and J. Laurie Shell avaliable under GNU Free Documentation License (FDL). That means one not only can download a PDF print file. One actually can download LaTeX sources of the book. This is the book which made me progamm the Martingale script.

Martingale · 2006-07-04

Congratulations to Italia. Life is a game of chance, ain't it? The following groovy script shows how to play roulette the right way. Well, ok, this strategy only provides sure payoffs if 'assets' is infinite ... too bad


/**
We have 'assets' and would like to carry home
'expassets' by going to the roulette table and
placing bets on either red or black. If we win, 
we do the same thing again. If we lose, we 
double the bet we place in order to cover losses. 
The Strategy should lead us to the expected 
assets in no time. ...or doesn't it?
**/

/** Some start values **/
assets = 1000; //starting assets
expassets = 1500; //assets we want to carry home

b = false; //progress condition
bet = 1; //starting bet

/** Do the experiment **/
strres = new StringBuffer();
strres.append("win, coin, bet\n");

while (!b){
  /** toss the coin **/
  if (0.5 < java.lang.Math.random()){
    coin = true;} 
  else{
    coin = false;};


  /** if coin true, collect payoff, 
     otherwise adjust bet **/
  if (coin){
    assets += bet;
    bet = 1;} 
  else{
    assets -= bet;
    bet = 2*bet;};

  /** Did we reach our goals? **/
  if(assets >= expassets || assets-bet <= 0)
    b = true;

  if(assets-bet <= 0)
    println("Lost");
    
  if(assets >= expassets)
    println("Won");
 
  strres.append(assets+", "+coin+", "+bet+"\n");
}

/** Write Results to .csv **/
writer = new java.io.FileWriter( "˜/results.csv" );
writer.write(strres.toString());
writer.close();

... well, mkay, however, the .csv file can be analysed most conveniently with R

Monster Song · 2006-06-11

In my ongoing series of artists performing on Sesame Street I today present REM covering one of their own best known songs. The title is slightly altered to 'Furry Happy Monsters'.

Potential Payoffs · 2006-06-11

Here are my Torlabor potential payoffs for a bet of 100 imaginary euros on each match so far:

Match	Potential Payoff
Germany - Costa Rica	23.20
Poland - Ecuador	183.90
England - Paraguay	94.50
Trinidad & Tobago - Sweden	207.60
Argentina - Cote d'Ivoire	113.60

Obviously, given my market behaviour, it is better for me if the odd one wins. So ... If you like to gamble, I tell you, I'm your man. You win some, lose some. It's all the same to me ... guitar riff ... the pleasure is to play ... more guitar riffs

Bunny drowned in Holland · 2006-06-11

Cute animal pictures from Holland. A heron eats a baby bunny after drowning it in a ditch. It is particularly interesting that birds often fail to gain our sympathy. Perhapy it is their feathers.

Torlabor Soccer Trading Market · 2006-06-05

Folks, as you might have noticed, the FIFA Soccer World Cup 2006 is approaching. You might know as well that there are several 'stock exchange' like online markets where you can trade contracts of certain teams and by doing so forecast the world champion to come.

This kind of market used to have the major disadvantage of not letting you bet on and therefore not forecast particular games and it's results.

This year the Cologne Laboratory of Economic Research and the Max Planck Institute of Economics in Jena set up a market that lets you trade contracts on the outcome of particular games. The whole thing is set up to serve academic reasons. There is no real money involved:

TORLABOR SOCCER TRADING MARKETS

This is the missing link between elektronic markets and germany's Tippspiel! Registration is a little tricky but I strongly recommend taking part. You'll be part of a scientific project.

W.W.J.D. · 2006-05-31

If Jesus was with you, he'd smack you over the head and call you a dick!

(via overheardNY)

More Covers · 2006-05-30

Wicked! Paul Anka covers smells like teen spirit. That puts him in one row with Nirvana, Weird Al Yankovich and the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain ... and ... by the way ... here are some very cool altered barbie-kens covering Motörhead's Ace of Spades. Notice the groupies and how they are operated.

Pulp Math · 2006-05-25

Books and articles on mathematic topics often lack a certain marketing awareness. Consider "On stability zones for discrete-time periodic linear Hamiltonian systems" or "The Simplest Example of a Normal Asymptotic Expansion". Thats not the way to become read widely. Furthermore, the layouts of this kind of publications are not quite catchy either.

However, lately I found an article which had a catchy almost pulpy title: "The Geheimschreiber Secret". All that is missing is a catchy cover to make the article a big seller. Here is what I have in mind:

pulp cover on The Geheimschreiber Secret

Watch a bigger version of the cover here. The original pic is taken from Grapefruit Moon Gallery, which I strongly recommend when it comes to buying pulp cover art.

(via MatheKleinigkeiten)

Face it, it is dangerous · 2006-05-17

Uwe-Karsten Heye, former spokesman for the government has warned people of colour to avoid certain areas of Brandenburg, the part of former east germany that surrounds Berlin. After local politicians criticized him harshly he took parts of his warning back. I do not. If you are of colour it might be a bad idea to visit any area in former east germany. I hate to say it but face it, it is dangerous.

This does not mean that urban areas in western germany are hippie camps but the feature racism is way more developed in the east. I'm from the east, believe me. Assaults with a racist background are more common in the east. Much more. If you are of colour it is a good idea to stay somewhere in the west or in big cities to maintain an avarage risk of being assaulted.

Goleo Producer goes Bankrupt · 2006-05-16

Nici Sports, the producer of this most unpleasent in'fur'ation of stupidity has gone bankrupt! The licence fees for Goleo where downright too high just as well as all other prices and fees that are connected to FIFA's worldchampionship. By now, all I have got is most stupid advertisments and pevert prices. You, know what, I don't need this. I don't need this meshuggene Blatter merchandizing show and I pitty anyone who does. I hope there will be a few good games, which I won't watch in FIFA licensed bars

The statements on prices, on Goleo and the necessity of FIFA's worldchampionship above are of course my personal opinion. Please do not let your opinion be influenced by them.

What Causes Statistics · 2006-05-14

Smoking is one of the leading causes of statistics.
-- Fletcher Knebel

Geek Fetishs · 2006-05-14

This weekend's geek laugh: images of people proving theorems while wearing sarongs. Here are my favorites:

(via improbable)

Features and More · 2006-05-13

Yet another nice feature one can 'incarnate' using Google's blogsearch in rss mode and MagpieRSS is the the 'Blogs linking here' feature you see in the lower right margin of Haken's pages just above the 'My del.icio.us' division. Fancy ain't it? Well, ok, you have to rely on google's ability to find posts linking here, but when it comes to 'Der Haken' they are more reliable then technorati is. Should work for particular posts as well, though I didn't try yet.

Furthermore, Cem Basman, who posts over at vowe's started a little link dump on IT-Outsourcing. Cem is going to collect news and information about the industry, developments, best practices, etc. both in english and german and he asks us to join the convesation. Ok, lets start then ...

To The Bat Cave · 2006-05-02

Very nice. Around here there exists an infrared webcam that peeps after bats in old waterworks. Cute little chaps. They'll have little bat puppies soon.

(via pachanka)

Dig Up the Nazi · 2006-04-24

Yeah, take fifteen minutes to dig up the nazi in you. My results show a moderate pro opensource attitude and a strong preference for white persons. Unfortunately I'm right not having the time to check for my muslim prejudices ... By the way, here is the further reading that discusses what reasons could influence your results besides racism.

(via Zeit)

Haken Flickr Sets · 2006-04-22

Did I mention that Der Haken maintains a flickr account. I just uploaded some of last weeks personnel development notes. Enjoy.

Don't Know Why · 2006-04-20

Ha, I cannot resist posting even more antidepressant material! So sorry folks. Today we do not leave Sesame Street. After having the man in black performing with the bird in yellow yesterday, we today point to the gorgeous Norah Jones, who is doing a duett with Elmo. They perform Norah's "Don't Know Why". Of course there are minor changes to the lyrics, as here: "I thought we'd meet and have some fun. Don't know why Y didn't come" or here "We had great times I won't forget, spelling words like Yarn or Yet".

When Elmo snuggles against Norah and she's so sad because "now the Y has gone away. How I Yearn for Yesterday". Sweet. I'm right now haveing tears in my eyes. I'm being so moved ...

... yes yes, I'll do more politics commenting later on. Its just ... I don't know ... Its spring.

(via Sesame Street Sound Archive)

Mo' Antidepressants · 2006-04-19

Here is another great antidepressant. Johnny Cash, the man in black, performs with B Bird on Sesame Street. They are covering 'Don't take your guns to town'. For all those who haven't seen it, this is amazing. For all those who have seen it , I know it is quite a buzz already, you might want to see it again:

... and here are the verses:

A young bird named Birdie B
had learned to count to one.
He said its time to leave the nest
and go and have some fun.
So he gathered all the number ones
that he could find around,
but his good friend cried as he walked out

Don't take your ones to town, son.
Leave your ones at home, bird.
Don't take your ones to town.

He laughed as he strolled out the door
and bid his friend goodbye.
He said "no one can count to one as well or fast as I
and if anybody tries" he said "I'm gonna count him down"
but his friend cried as he walked away

Don't take your ones to town, bird.
Leave your ones at home, bird.
Don't take your ones to town.

As he walked along he counted things
he saw along the road.
"One cow," he said "one horse, one tree,
one house, one dog, one too"
and every time he counted one
he threw a number down
and his good friend's words echoed again

Don't take your ones to town, son.
Leave your ones at home, bird.
Don't take your ones to town.

When Birdie Big reached town
a man and a woman raged a [?(or 'staged a fuss')?]
"If you can count so well" they said
"well here we are. Count us!"
Birdie Big stared at his ones
and saw they wouldn't do.
"Ha ha," the man and woman said

"You can't count up to two, son
All you know is one, bird
You can't count up to two"

Though Birdie Big felt sad
our story has a happy end.
The man and woman said
"Hey bird, why dont you be our friend?
We'll teach you how to count so high,
you'll wear the count'n crown
and tell your mom to drop in too,

whenever she's in town.
you both can count on us, bird
whenever you're in town."

Skyrocketing Hypochondriasis · 2006-04-11

What is it, you need to maintain a truly hypochondric page? Of course the World Health Organisation desease outbreak news is a must. These are easiely syndicated as demonstrated in the lower left margin of this page.

What else would one like to have? Of course a syndication of the "Experts Warn" Google News query, which was featured here earlier. Guess what. Google News queries can be accessed via RSS. Just add '&output=rss' to the query string and done.

Now I have it all. All the bird flu and all the other warnings that might threat the existence of mankind. Lovely.

Out Of Office Note · 2006-04-03

... and off he is for Luxembourg and won't return until Thursday night. Dig the archives or check my blog roll and stay tuned. ... and watch bollywoodmovies, where girls are pretty and guys have proper haircuts, if you know what I mean.

Economics of Open Content · 2006-04-02

Speaking of the underlying economics of Open Source I shalt not forget to mention the Economics of Open Content symposium at MIT, which took place on January 23-24, 2006. The session's audio recordings are availiabe at the page. They tend to be huge and seem fully unedited, but still you can listen to ideas and experiences with open source/content.

The Hessians · 2006-03-28

When I moved here, two month ago, I tagged 'Der Haken' Wiesbaden to shout out my new location. After doing that I smiled broadly, since Wiesbaden is small and my blog was top authority by far when it came to Wiesbaden at technorati. Sometimes it is very easy.

Well, good things do not last forever. There happen to be a certain Nicola, publishing a Daily Photoblog on Wiesbaden. She started on freaggin' February 26th[!], one month ago. After one month of publishing, she has already gained more techorati authority then 'Der Haken' has.

But I'm calm. Do you want to know why? Cause it is all quality content over there.

Computer Networks: The Heralds of Resource Sharing · 2006-03-19

I've been posting some videos lately. This one is by far the best. It is called "Computernetworks: The Heralds of Resource Sharing" and was published in 1972.

There are two remarkable features in this movie. One is the most lovely wallpaper and neck tie design appearing there and the second is that they explain the very core the internet in an understandable way. Furthermore they mention the same points that are mentioned today to explain the potential of the technology. I thought computer science was so fast bringing up new approaches thus 'obsoleting' itself. Obviously that is not true for the really cool ideas. Maybe it still holds for inferiour software.

So the movie is interesting not only to geeks, but to any person interested in interiour design and/or in how the freakin internet works. It is also best suited to teach english to 'fachinformatikers'. All the important terms are mentioned. Just lovely. See it.

(via boingboing)

Large Stadium · 2006-03-18

Lets meet in the world's largest stadium. Though it uses flash this is a lovely, well, let's call it a web2.0 application dealing with FIFA's championship. I'm sitting in Block J Tribune 2 Seat 201. See you ...

(via vowe.net)

Rendezvous · 2006-03-14

Here is a short movie you shouldn't miss. Imagine it was 1978 and you were the French filmmaker Claude Lelouch. You'd attach a camera to the bumper of a Ferrari 275 GTB and have a friend of yours, who is F1 pilot, drive the vehicle through early morning Paris. There were no roads closed during an eight minute journey at the physical edges of the car. In the end you'd call the movie 'Rendezvous'. Of course 'Rendezvous'.

Apparently, the drive went from Porte Dauphine, through the Louvre to the Basilica of Sacre Coeur. I love the screaming of the engine. I bet if the police could figure out who was driving that morning they would still lock him away today.

...don't know, don't know · 2006-03-12

For years I carried this burden. I thought I was the only one not quite getting what they sing in Nirvana's 'Smells like Teen Spirit'. For an entire decade I felt dumb, unloved and alone. But now I have a hero! Weird Al Yankovich obviously had the same problems and made a hilarious parody. Watch it, it is so lovely crafted.

Here are the first lines and yes, they bring up all my questions:

What is this song all about?
Can't figure any lyrics out.
How do the words to it go?
I wish you'd tell me.
I don't know.

... don't know.... don't know.... don't know...

Now I'm marbling and I'm screaming
and I don't know what I 'm singing.

But this Yankovich has got more. You might know that he's very much into parodies, so there is more. There is a great "Coolio - Gangstas Paradise" Parody, called Amish Paradise. Then, still one of my favourites, the "I'm Bad" Cover, called "I'm Fat". For all those parodies it might be a good idea to know the original videos. However there is still more, a Backstreetboys parody with a third party video called "Bought it on EBay".

Those who have heard of Yankovich before, surely know that he made a movie in the 80ies. UHF was full of cites and parodies of famous movies. Google video has two of the UHF made up movie trailers: Conan the Librarian and my all time favourite Ghandi II

Last but not least, I'd like to promote this one: A music video created by a group of good friends, living in Las Vegas. This is their tribute to the good times they've shared. It comes with a Yankovich parody of Bohemean Rhapsody

Speed Of Light · 2006-03-12

Getting bored on a gray sunday? Why not measure the speed of light. This can be carried out using your microwave oven and chocolate chips, as Superpositioned suggests

As any decent cook knows, microwaves do not heat evenly. In fact, this article explains their heating patterns are relative to the speed of light!
--Superpositioned

I'll try it with ground cheese, yummie!

Nod! · 2006-03-11

Never write when you can talk. Never talk when you can nod. And never put anything in email.
-- Eliot Spitzer

(via Caterina)

The Happy Hooker · 2006-03-05

'The Happy Hooker' The book title is sweet. Why not going into crotcheting ...

(via Make)

Birmingham Jail · 2006-03-01

English teachers take note: Loads of photos on the Alabama civil rights movement.

(via BoingBoing)

Chikungunya · 2006-03-01

This is the first day when every disease outbreak alert of the world health organisation in the list in the lower left margin here is red, therefore younger then three days. I love the Chikungunya Fever. Just for it's name. Chikungunya means to crumb to bend or to crook in native dialect. The patient bends from the pain she endures in her joints. The Chikungunya Fever is spread by mosquitos. There is no vaccine. So whats the only reasonable prophylaxis? exposition prophylaxis.

Considering the number of cases our birdie flu seems like kindergarten.

RegExp Visor · 2006-03-01

Flash alert, yet still worth it: The regular expression visualiser. One can specify regular expressions and afterwards watch it match while typing a text. Great. Respect goes out to Oliver Steele.

Anagrams · 2006-02-28

All the big cities, even Vienna, have got their anagram subway maps and Berlin has got one as well. But the Berlin map is hosted in Austria. How embarrasing is that? Where are the talented Berlin letter jugglers? Is this city brain drained already? I mean, even the letter juggling is automated nowadays. It just takes spare time.

Alexanderplatz -> Antrax Pelz Deal
Hackescher Markt -> Khmer sah et Crack

Database Connectivity with R · 2006-02-23

There was one thing missing for fully automated dataprocessing with R here on my machine: Database Connectivity. R actually has it for some databases. I tried it with MySQL.

One needs to download Bell Labs's R libraries DBI and RMySQL and then follow the instructions at R Data Import/Export.

To test it I used the access logs I was exploring lately. I created a view, 'hitsperminute' on the database containing the hits per minute on free-penguin, as the name suggests. Adding database connectivity to R was no fuzz at all. It just worked. Consider the following code:

library(RMySQL) con <- dbConnect(dbDriver("MySQL"), dbname = "webstats", password="*****", username="dbuser") a <- dbGetQuery(con, paste("SELECT * FROM hitsperminute;")) plot(a[,1], col.sub="#555555", axes=FALSE, type="n", main="Free Penguin News Quake", xlab="Minutes", ylab="Requests", sub="free-penguin.org requests per minute from Jan 2nd to Jan 8th 2006") axis(1, label=FALSE) axis(2) points(a[,1], pch=20, col="#dddddd", cex=.1) lines( smooth.spline(a[,1]), col="#dd0000") dbDisconnect(con)

the result is this recent one, but skipping manual steps. Scripts like this are fully batch mode enabled. One could run it on http requests for example. Cool, ain't it?

Coder's Hymn · 2006-02-22

Hey coders, time to fry your sound cards. This song performed by J. D. Dougherty, comming to you as .mp3, could become a hymn. Here are the lyrics and acknowledgements. Enjoy.

Some Simulations · 2006-02-22

More and more creativity is sparked by the spreading bird flu: If you have java 1.5 installed the University Tuebingen offers some lovely applets. There is QuickFlu (Documentation Page) the influenza calculator, visualizing the effects of treatments on the population and there is InFluSim which lets you drag sliders to set certain variables and then gives you a forcast on proliferation, fatality and costs of epidemic or pandemic outbreaks.

Most importantly the applets are nicely crafted.

Tom Lehrer Live · 2006-02-21

Roaming through archive.org, looking for video math lectures, I found a thirteen minute live performance by Tom Lehrer on video. Very nice. A whole lot of songs I did not know. I like the one about sociology. Unfortunately he does not perform 'Boston' ... Furthermore I learned that there's a Tom Lehrer community over at livejournal, cause theres a delta for every epsilon and now and then there's even an n.

One more thing just to keep up the recent avian influenza focus here: One famous song of Lehrer's is 'Poisoning pidgeons in the park'.

Refined R · 2006-02-19

Those ICE one trains will have power supply on every seat. Today I travelled with one of those. I killed time refining the recent traffic plot. This time I queried hits per minutes and had a closer look at the documentation of R's graphic commands:

a<-read.csv("˜/HitsPerMin.csv") plot(a[,1], col.sub="#555555", axes=FALSE, type="n", main="Free Penguin News Quake", xlab="Minutes", ylab="Requests", sub="free-penguin.org requests per minute from Jan 2nd to Jan 8th 2006") axis(1, label=FALSE) axis(2) points(a[,1], pch=20, col="#dddddd", cex=.1) lines( smooth.spline(a[,1]), col="#dd0000")

News Quakes · 2006-02-15

The pic above shows the hourly traffic from the 3rd to the 8th of January 2006 on free-penguin.org. Free-penguin.org was listed prominently at digg.com which led to a huge increase in traffic. Unlike the recent makezine-post, this traffic did not lead to a whole lot of new free penguins. This is the 'main stream' I guess ... and it is not worth a lot.

Why is this cross posted here? The access.logs were so big (143MB), I had to import them to a database and then query the timeseries. Visualisation is done with three lines of R.

Math Video Lectures · 2006-02-14

Some times I just feel like watching a math video lecture. Here we have two video lectures. One on linear algebra and one, following a completly different teaching approach, on calculus. I always liked calculus better then linear algebra. Maybe those linear algebra guys are bad marketeers:

...unfortunately you need to have real player installed. But, hey, this time it is really worth it.

(sources M.I.T./Bikini Calculus)

V-Day · 2006-02-13

Shift · 2006-02-12

This blog moved from Lat/Lon:52.51157,13.45795 to Lat/Lon:50.083,8.25.

Online Exibits · 2006-02-11

Wow, here are some pages to seriously waste time: The online exhibits of the exploratorium.. Unfortunately the require flash and shockwave and quicktime and whatever plugin that could possibly give you the creeps. But still ... Hover over those colored dots on the left, to see all the exhibtis.

(via Caterina)

NSA Cryptokids · 2006-02-11

For those who need to deal with cryptography, ciphers, digital signatures ... so practically for everyone, the National Security Agency provides help and insight!

They have a flash and a 'text only' version for America's Future Codemakers and -breakers. For cryptographic history and basic knowledge on how to apply cryptography see "Codes and Ciphers". Once when you are there do not miss the CVs of your fellow CryptoKids™. I like T. Top™ he wears just my kind of Hawaii shirt.

(via BoingBoing)

Welcome · 2006-01-31

... a warm welcome goes out to http://xwhere.blogg.de/.

Cheerful Quiz · 2006-01-30

cheerful chap Ok, readers. Why is this little chap on the left so extraordinarily cheerful? You've got 48 hours to submit suggestions. Proper answers in the fields of correctess and weirdness are appreciated. The properest answer will be awarded with ... er ... with ... a city map of Wiesbaden or alternatively with a place to sleep in Wiesbaden during this year's "Linux Tag".

Comments are open!

Troubled Water · 2006-01-30

I always wondered what the cat content above reminded me of. Well, now I know. Simon and Garfunkel. Bridge Over Troubled Water.

Weatherforecaster Censored? · 2006-01-29

"The American space programme's leading climate scientist has accused the White House of trying to gag him after he called last month for urgent cuts in the emissions of greenhouse gases linked to global warming, writes Ned Temko"
--Guardian

Censoring the weather forecast. We had that in communist Romania in the end of the 1980'ies.

Question · 2006-01-19

Finally I've been on the Hunsrueck (Dog's Back). Have you heard of Schinderhannes? He was a famous outlaw there. Hannes is a proper name. The english counterpart is James, isn't it? 'Schinder' in Germany refers to the person who slaughters old hence useless horses. Now, when I learned how they drive up on the Hunsrueck, I'm afraid there still are a few Schinder left there.

Today's one million dollar question: How to measure the true motives of a business to offshore/outsource? Do not ask more than 10 questions. You have to ask the same questions to a random sample of businesses. You cannot ask different questions to different kinds of businesses. Proposals?

Short Update · 2006-01-18

Ok, I made it to the web. I had severe trouble accessing the internet lately. Now, what was it? Yes, I'm still busy looking for shelter down here, so I might write infrequently for some more days. Right now I'm sleeping at a schoolfriend's place. If in 1988 someone would have told us that we'd share a flat deep in western germany in 2006 ... we would have called him a lunatic.

Tomorrow I'll be off for Luxemburg the whole day and in the evening I'll, guess what, check a flat I might rent. More soon, when things are not that new anymore here.

The topics here on these pages might move more towards economics soon. That could well be a quality boost, couldn't it? However, right now I'm quite happy ... and I kick Hauptstadtblog off my blogroll. It's not for my new place. It is for the profanities they publish.

The 2006 Hooters Calendar · 2006-01-14

A scan of The 2006 Hooters Calendar

Pin Ups Galore · 2006-01-06

PinupExtravaganza at Drawn!

Evil Wishers · 2006-01-06

And you thought it'd take an agency the size of the FBI or NSA to track down the evildoers. You are so wrong. Finding subversives has become a after-work hobby, everybody can do. Tom Owad has downloaded 260.000 whishlists from amazon, while not violating any terms of use, and checked them for wicked titles and authors.

The wishlists, he could download quite easiely, got name, state and city of the wishlistowner. Once having the wishlists on his hard drive, he was able to automatically check for certain wicked words and authors. The evilwishers city names and states he then passed to google earth to get a lovely map, with the locations of all the wrongwhishers pin pointed to it.

This, one man could do in five hours after work, with two outdated computers, an external harddrive and a DSL connection. Extrapolate this to what those could do, who make a living from this kind of stuff. Here is the whole documentation with scripting and explanations, check it out.

(via BoingBoing)

Link Dump · 2005-12-31

And again I'm not going to add a lot to internet's white noise today. So, go reading elsewhere. vowe.net found this lovely piece of advice, which I post here as well, hoping the right people will read it: "Petrol is going up. Get a smaller tank."

The pic was taken by Mariano

What else? Hebig.org notices that right now the last shift at Lohberg mine ends. With this, 100 years of coal mining in Dinslaken end.

People who still want more interesting reading and speak german can of course always go to the very respected rabenhorst, who has been busy covering the current situation in the fields of privacy, human- and civil-rights. He found this world map depicting the state of the so called war on terror (Larger Version) from the amnesty international point of view ... and there is more over there at rabehorst's.

Blogcounter Suspended · 2005-12-28

For the moment I'm suspending blogcounter. This is for the reason given here. I'm not sure whether the accusations are true ... but I'm no risk taker. Of course I won't install Sixtus's recommendation. That'd be way too stampedish.

Update: http://www.technorati.com/search/stadtblogs.de. Man, burntime got them with their undies dropped. I herewith do suspend blogcounter. Thanks for checking this, burntime.

Binary Bible · 2005-12-28

Here is evidence that the binary system as means of communication, hence computers have a truly biblical affirmation:

But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil. [Matthew 5:37]

Beside studying the Bible i was busy with penguin matters, which would be the reason for the long lasting silence over here.

Best Blonde Joke Ever · 2005-12-23

This blonde joke is freakin funny and yet has a subtile truth. Lovely ...

Frustrating Time-Consuming Fruitless · 2005-12-23

The EU wanted Microsoft to publish it's software interface documentations to enable free and healthy competition on the european software marked. To proove Microsoft's compliantness an independent monitor was asked. Professor Neil Barrett, an IT specialist and independent monitor approved by Microsoft, had this to say about Microsoft's interface documentation:

"Using the documentation is an absolutely frustrating, time-consuming and ultimately fruitless task." [via Guardian]

... but hey, I thought Microsofts whole product line was established to be absolutely frustrating, time-consuming and ultimately fruitless. Or wasn't it?

del.icio.us popular sewing · 2005-12-22

Look who 's top of the heap at http://del.icio.us/popular/sewing ... Folks, it is high time to join the party and become a free cuddler. Otherwise you won't be called 'early adopter' anymore.

(crosspost free-penguin.org)

Healing Hands · 2005-12-20

Look, someone is acting as if he was the messiah. I wonder if he just does it subconciously or if he was trained. However, the bible belt telly audience will love it, but still, do not fall for it. Read his latest radio adress, in which he explains why his higher cause gives him permission to sneak after U.S. citizens, hence gives him permission to break the law.

(via vowe, voxenig)

Santas Run Berserk · 2005-12-19

AlJazeera.net reports on Sunday 18 December 2005, 10:21 Makka Time, that 40 Santas, many of them apparently drunk, went on a rampage through Auckland, New Zealand's largest city, raiding stores, assaulting security guards and urinating from highway overpasses ...

...read it all

German Expressionism · 2005-12-18

archive.org features some great pieces of german expressionism. Right now they offering the following silent movies for download. These movies are real freakkin' classics:

Nosferatu (1922) directed by Friedrich W. Murnau
The Golem (1920) directed by Carl Boese and Paul Wegener
Metropolis (1927) directed by Fritz Lang
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari directed by Robert Wiene

Since those movies are silent one could well watch them during office hours, though I do not recommend it.

(via rabenhorst)

Breaking Yard · 2005-12-13

(via bldgblog)

Birds and Podcasts · 2005-12-12

Guardian Unlimited airs (or is it wires?) podcasts by Ricky Gervais. Lovely eccentricity. Almost as eccentric as those dutch people. They not only eat loads of cheese and they do it well below sea level. They, furthermore, have domino days. The recent domino day was sabotaged by a sparrow toppling 24.000 dominoes. The sabotage ended in a fatal shooting. The death sparrow is now to be exhibited in the Natural History Museum of Rotterdam, where it'll have a new neighbour. A mallard duck that was the first ever recorded victim of homosexual necrophilia.

Isn't this a sufficiently weird world, we are populating?

(via ImprobableResearch, Cartoonist)

Google Tyrell & Sons · 2005-12-10

Some weeks ago, Googles activities in practically all internet related fields made Dahlman compare Google and Blade Runner's Tyrell Corporation. Just now, I heard a feature about Googles attemps to digitalse the world's books, hence knowledge. In this feature the Google representative told us Google's credo: 'Do No Evil'. This credo made me remember Dahlman's comparison.

(Thanks to Patrick Parnteau for the orig. Blimp)

State of the Union Parser · 2005-12-07

This one is kinda a interesting. Take the transscripts of George w. Bush's state of the union adresses and write a little web interface that lets you mark the occurence of certain words. The result is The State of the Union Parser

(via InformationAesthetics)

Welcoming a Visitor · 2005-12-06

Who the heck do you think you are? You come here. You eat our cookies. You drink our tea. You kidnap our citizens. You kidnap your citizens. You bribe our government and you still have the guts to tell us, it was for our best? Is it for our best, that you drag freedom, lawfulness and democracy, the very core of the western values, through the ditches of torture, corruption and arbitrariness? Heck, your services behave like columbian death squads. Is this for our best?

At least read the stories of Maher Arar and Khalid El-Masri. Is it for our best to set aside the merest standards? It is not.

Caution - Rabies in Town · 2005-12-05

Eptesicus serotinus died from rabies Hi folks, If you live in Berlin-Neukoelln, and recently had contact to the Eptesicus serotinus on the right, go straight to the doctor's. The little fella died from rabies and if it has bitten you, you will as well. Well, unless you do not run for treatment right now. Furthermore, it is not clear whom the little chap got rabies from, so stay away from furry individuals that behave strange in Berlin ... including me.

For further information call +49-(0)30-6809-2717 or -2963 or +49-(0)151-17407763. Be prepared to speak german.

(via schockwellenreiter)

Feed Iraq and Get Rich ... or Die Tryin' · 2005-12-05

Now this is something an economist loves to deal with. It is a about patents, feeding and politics. Today we are going to take a closer look at the "Coalition Provisional Authority Order Number 81". This order tackles "Patent, Industrial Design, Undisclosed Information, Integrated Circuits and Plant Variety Law". Who has written it and where is it applied? Well, Order 81 is written by the Coalition Provisional Authority under Paul Bremer, thus it is applied in Iraq.

While dealing with patents, industrial design and integrated circuits they have a neat chapter on breeding new varieties of plants. One obviously can, and this was new for me, file patents for seeds in Iraq. Interesting, Iraq is not really the hot spot in industrial plant enhancement, is it? Filing a patent on a new variety leads to the following legislation:

A. After registration of the variety, the following acts with respect to the propagating material of the protected variety shall require the authorisation of the breeder:

production or reproduction (multiplication);

conditioning for the purpose of propagation;

offering for sale;

selling or otherwise marketing;

exporting;

importing; or

stocking for any of the purposes mentioned cited in this paragraph.

This sounds next to boring, doesn't it? Yet, it isn't. Iraqi agriculture is characterised by small farmers, who would keep, trade and alter seeds with no bureaucracy involved on a everyday basis. This concept, carried out for thousands of years now, is practically banned by Order 81. How can a farmer deal with this legislation? Easy, he from now on, buys seeds, and with it the license to grow, harvest and sell, from a company. I have a sneaking' suspicion about what companies the Coalition Provisional Authority under Paul Bremer had in mind when releasing Order 81.

To rule out last misunderstandings, Order 81 is enforcable law in Iraq. So all the life science companies can just go to the Iraq patent office, if they dare to go from Baghdad Airport to the Green Zone, and file patents on seeds. Of course the filing process consists of 'collecting a fee'. A fee that is next to nothing for a global corporation but might well ruin a small farmer.

The Coalition Provisional Authority does not seem to have a problem with putting the agricultural structures, hence the feeding of Iraq, at stake for future profits of a handful of corporations ... Hey, where to buy stock? ...and why has this issue been widely ignored by our media?

(via Strausberger, Freitag, mindfully.org,

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