My News

... Thierry for writing exactly what I feel and think!

Pianocktail is taking up the fight for a better Web2.0. Bravo! However I'm with Grommel on that subject, i.e. that a web 2.0 community should fight against extremisms from left and right. I welcome this action nevertheless, being fed off after so many Facebook groups where Luxembourgish nationalistic views just seem to flourish.

I wanted to be a part of this whole Africa blogathon situation, not quite sure why though... I had planned on writing a cheerful article about how such a vast and magnificent continent can achieve anything, maybe not in 10 years, and maybe with some financial support. I wanted to commemorate the African stories of beauty and wilderness that I remember reading about in books by Hemmingway. I wanted to write about how I was stunned by the beauty of the Seychelles, which are as a fact also part of the African continent. However, I decided not to do that. I decided to engage in an even more futile task: To address what good it all makes, and what possible good it could do in the best of all worlds.
From an evolutionary point a view, I understand perfectly well how human emotions such as the egocentric ones (survival of your own gene pool, setting priorities, fighting enemies, gathering goods) and even the altroistic ones (empathy, pity, guilt) arise. We as humans see our ethics as one of the biggest achievements. We do have extreme philosophical views such as the utilitarism which states that everything you could prevent but did not is basically your fault, however most commonly we are satisfied with more trivial approaches such as not killing ("innocent") people and helping those in need. Many people will tell you that this are the achievements of religion, however there are most commonly much more mundane explanations. What does it all have to do with Africa you may ask? Very simple, I just want to think about why we keep trying "for the good of humanity" to help other people. Even if they don't always need it, ask for it, understand it, use it,...
Why is it always Africa... The whole continent has less people than India alone, and I'm not too sure if it helps weighting in the desperate, poor and sick, because they both have plenty of those. Is it our conscience because of the colonial past? Probably not... Slavery? Or is it the gratitude in acknowledging our own, human origin? Is it because we think we can actually change something, or because we think we have to? In other words, is it our conscience or our "good will". Could it only be self interest? Self preservation? We want to keep a certain diversity of wild-life and natural wonders, and as we destroyed most of our stuff, we have to preserve at least some of it for our children, don't we? Why are so many people spending a couple of years if Africa for humanitarian reasons? Is it solely or will to do good. Is it the self-confidence we get from seeing that we can actually make a change (can we?) for the better (or the worse?). Is it a general lack of purpose, that washes of in a land that lacks everything? Does it even matter? Does the poor boy mind who gets a Polio shot from the nice blond doctor (and later dies of malnutrition)? This may all sound too cynical, but isn't that at least part of the issue?
I remember a talk by the guy from Novartis who is responsible for their humanitarian projects. It was rather illuminating, and he addressed important issues, such as: Is it a companys responsibility to provide free drugs to the third world? Does it even help? He went on to tell us about a couple of older projects they had engaged in, that ended up disastrous... For example they were providing a ship's load of vaccines to some African country worth a couple of millions. In the end, only some 5% of the drugs reached patients, the other were either spoiled because of a lack of refrigeration and/or professional knowledge (how the administer the vaccines), were stolen and sold or refused because of religious believes (their "ministry of health" claimed that the local witch doctors were just as apt to handle the situation). You could go on to conclude that Novartis stopped any humanitarian help just as an excuse to keep their money. They did however change their policies to rather spend money building local health centers and teaching you medical personal in those regions, instead of the obvious choice to give them medicine for free.
When I hear about the daily butcheries in Africa, I can't stop to wonder whether it is every nation's "right" to overcome such terrible problems on their own. On the one hand, they want to be independent, to which I agree, on the other hand you end up with just as many dictatorships and genocides than you had during the colonization, which cannot be an alternative. How much influence can we take, should we take? In what position are we anyway to take such decisions? Can we help the continent with money, knowledge or military? I'm pretty sure it has to be a combination, although I have no clear answers of course. Is it, in our specific case, enough to raise awareness? Or are people already so fed up that they pay no attention anyway? What else can we do? What else should we do?

Martenstein, my favorite Zeit columnist, always worth a read.

Von Harald Martenstein

[...]Die Autoren waren direkt neben dem Theater untergebracht, in dem die Preiszeremonie stattfand. Wir liefen in das Theater. Dort sagten uns Leute, das ginge so nicht. Wir mussten zum Hinterausgang des Theaters und nacheinander heimlich in eine sogenannte Limousine steigen, um einzeln vor dem Theater vorzufahren und über den roten Teppich zu laufen. Wir sollten alle so tun, als ob wir von sehr weit her gekommen wären. Dann sagten Leute, wir sollten in die Garderobe und uns dort erst mal gründlich pudern lassen. In der Garderobe standen jede Menge Frauen herum, anscheinend, um zu pudern. Als sie mich sahen, riefen sie, mein Hemd sei nicht gebügelt. Das stimmte aber gar nicht. Ich hatte das Hemd selber gebügelt, persönlich. Es heißt immer, Männer sollen so etwas tun, bügeln, waschen, stopfen, wenn sie es dann tun, ist es auch wieder nicht recht.[...]

weiterlesen 

Link: http://www.google.com/trends?q=free+movies,+global+warming&geo=usa&ctab=0&sa=N

Many of you know the striking data of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, proving without any doubt that the decline of pirates is causing global warming. Fruther proof is presented HERE by Science Punk.

Link: http://www.zeit.de/leben/lebenszeichen/lebenszeichen_2007

I really love reading Martensteins columns in Die Zeit. A lot of them are published on Zeit online too, so if you're in for a god laugh, give it a try! Here's an quote from Die samtige Sprache.

Im Computer bekomme ich regelmäßig Angebote. „Hallo!!!  Ich das einfache Russische die Frau. Mir 30 Jahre. Ich lebe in einer Wohnung zusammen mit der Mutti und der Vater. Ich arbeite in die Transportgesellschaft. Meine Freundin beratete mir, nach dem Mann in Deutschland zu suchen. Sie hat den deutschen Mann verheiratet. Sie sehr glucklich jetzt. Kuss Deine Maria.“

Ich antwortete so: „Dear Maria. I liked your letter, I like your style. You are a good woman. You are the woman of my dreams. I do not even need a photo. Please come to Germany. I want to send you a lot of money. But to send you money, I have to go to Switzerland, a nice little country nearby, where I have a big fat Bankkonto. The taxman took all my money in Germany, but I still have 3 million dollars in this little country called Switzerland. Please send me some Euros, my sweet Maria, so that I can go to Switzerland and make you happy. You will live in the ,Saus and Braus, as we say in Germany, and, much more important, you will find true love, rivers full of affection, seas of sense and sensitivity and oceans of happiness.“ Das habe ich mit einem Übersetzungsprogramm ins Russische übertragen. Wenn man einen Computer hat, kann man ansatzweise verstehen, was Globalisierung bedeutet.

PS: I also couldn't stop laughing after watching this video column of him.

Schulwissen in Biologie oder Chemie unter Terrorverdacht

Florian Rötzer 22.11.2007
Britisches Innenministerium verbietet einem Terrorverdächtigen, gegen den keine Anklage erhoben wurde, die Teilnahme an Kursen der Sekundarstufe
Dürfen Terrorverdächtige, die aber nicht unter Klage gestellt und verurteilt werden, sich mit wissenschaftlichen Kursen weiterbilden? In Großbritannien gibt es nun den ersten Fall, dass ein arbeitsloser Exil-Iraker unter Verdacht stehen, in Beziehung mit Terroristen zu stehen. Er ist einer von insgesamt 14 Verdächtigen, über die eine "control order" verhängt wurde, eine sehr umstrittene Maßnahme, durch die nach dem 2005 in Kraft getretenen Prevention of Terrorism Act zum Schutz der Öffentlichkeit vor einem "terroristischen Risiko" Einschränkungen der Bewegungsfreiheit verhängt werden dürfen. Besonders pikant ist, dass die von Geheimdiensten kommenden Verdachtsmomente unter Verschluss gehalten werden, so dass der Beschuldigte die Gründe nicht kennt und auch nicht gerichtlich dagegen vorgehen kann.

READ the REST. 

Link: http://www.badscience.net/2007/11/a-kind-of-magic/

This is one of the best scientific valid homeopathy articles I've read in a long time. If you're the least bit interested in your own health, please take 10 minutes to read t!

Via Slashdot

In 1957, Herbert A. Simon, a pioneer in artificial intelligence and later a Nobel Laureate in economics, predicted that in 10 years a computer would surpass humans in what was then regarded as the premier battleground of wits: the game of chess. Though the project took four times as long as he expected, in 1997 my colleagues and I at IBM fielded a computer called Deep Blue that defeated Garry Kasparov, the highest-rated chess player ever.

You might have thought that we had finally put the question to rest—but no. Many people argued that we had tailored our methods to solve just this one, narrowly defined problem, and that it could never handle the manifold tasks that serve as better touchstones for human intelligence. These critics pointed to weiqi, an ancient Chinese board game, better known in the West by the Japanese name of Go, whose combinatorial complexity was many orders of magnitude greater than that of chess. Noting that the best Go programs could not even handle the typical novice, they predicted that none would ever trouble the very best players.

Ten years later, the best Go programs still can't beat good human players. Nevertheless, I believe that a world-champion-level Go machine can be built within 10 years, based on the same method of intensive analysis—brute force, basically—that Deep Blue employed for chess. I've got more than a small personal stake in this quest. At my lab at Microsoft Research Asia, in Beijing, I am organizing a graduate student project to design the hardware and software elements that will test the ideas outlined here. If they prove out, then the way will be clear for a full-scale project to dethrone the best human players.

Read the Rest 

Link: http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/the-proximity-effect.html

For those who are not already regular TOP readers...

Via Gizmodo

Link: http://www.wort.lu/articles/5956692.html

Passende Fotos zum Thema Bürgernähe der Luxemburger Polizei auf Wort.lu zum Tag der Polizei.

Eine bürgernahe, freundliche und entgegenkommende Polizei präsentierte sich am Sonntag beim nationalen Tag der Polizei in Mondorf der Öffentlichkeit[...]

Link: http://blog.zeit.de/cosmic/2007/07/07/archaologie-home-teil-2_13

Funny article in German, unveiling the archeological discoveries one can make when inspecting our surroundings more closely...

Link: http://justagirlintheworld.com/2007/06/28/the-police-were-hot-on-her-tail/

Man I had a good laugh while reading Lisa's story.

[...]All of that being said, you’ll understand my surprise when I got a midnight phone call from our local police. Chris and I were in Connecticut, on our anniversary mini-vacation, and my cell phone rang at midnight. Of course, my initial reaction is one of pure dread - - in my mind, there’s only a few reasons why you would get a midnight phone call from the police - - and NONE of them are good ones. When I realized it was the police calling, I’m answering the phone - - but mentally, I’m packing our bags and trying to decide who to call first and how we’ll get an immediate flight away from the East Coast back home![...]

Read the Rest!