randform

“2 D blacklight transparency beween 3-D house sequences” artwork by Angela Travis

A short remark: If I should not answer a comment to this blog then the reason for this is definitely not because I want to be unpolite, but because among others I am currently very busy. Sometimes it just may take a while, because some things have to be found out first, like for the case of this comment by a randform reader called H. Düppel, who was complaining that I am doing marketing for a commercial software called Poser.
This blog here receives no payments from any place, on the contrary it costs me actually quite a bit, so if I should talk about a commercial product over here then this is for no marketing reason, but out of a pure personal interest. Moreover I actually rather prefer not to talk too much about commercial things, because I dont like to be part of a marketing campaign, but as said I am not dogmatic about this. So here – so to say as a balance to my previous link to the software poser..:)..a link to the open source software make human, which seems to implement (or is going to implement) the same or better features as Poser.

we are back from a strenous berlin visit. and just in case someone wonders why i am not answering my email – there is still no internet over here in munich. i am currently in an internet coffeeshop. there seems to be a technical problem.

one of the big problems of former gdr businesses was that customers complaints were mostly disregarded. This was taken as one of the major arguments for privatizing also westgerman state-owned businesses like the postal and the telecom services.

funnily this morning when asking where we could leave our complaints or ask we were told that there is no custumer service.

(more…)

Right now and for the upcoming weeks I am without internet access at home, so basically without internet. Here thus fast a blog post related to the financial crisis.

About 2 weeks ago the Group of 20 finance ministers and central bankers of the biggest developped economies had met in southern England in order to prepare for the upcoming G20 summit. A “sustained effort” was pledged to end the global recession and to cleanse banks of toxic assets. In particular according to Bloomberg

“Our key priority now is to address the value of assets held on banks’ balance sheets, which are constraining banks’ lending” and damaging economies, the G-20 statement said.
Banks are still hoarding cash after being stung by more than $1.2 trillion of writedowns and losses.”

Meanwhile governments -in particular the US government- are pumping money into the market. For example in Europe the total amount of money has almost doubled within the last 6 years (money supply wikipedia, the Berliner zeitung march 28, 2009 Tagesthema diagram is including 2008 but unfortunately not visible)

And still inflation is low – as if the money would disappear!

And even more mysterious: the pumped-in money meanwhile exceeded the amount of one or two trillion dollars, which were acclaimed as possible losses. And still the money is been hoarded.

(more…)

It’s frosty in munich today.

a short personal note: We will leave the above beautiful garden sight by the end of the month. We were lucky to find a smaller appartment where the kids can still reach their school by bus. It is not easy to find an appartment for rent in munich without spending 2000-3000 Euros for a real estate agent. The appartment is at a rather big road. Unfortunately there is no traffic light in the vicinity and the traffic on that road is blowing too heavily for letting the kids cross that road by themselves. The architecture of the building and some buildings around it are similar to the one in the suburb of Neuaubing. We are on the forth floor so sometimes one can see the Alps.

I just came across these funny videos from the mission of Man System Integration Standards which were mostly shot at skylab. See e.g. this video about how to use paper.

The videos and documents display the problems of finding a well-adapted architecture for space travel. For that the Skylab investigations into anthropometry and biomechanics were apparently necessary.
Similar investigations were also undertaken in Australia. In particular the australian government was recently seeking 2000 volunteers for the ADF Aircrew and Crewstation Anthropometry Project which was organized by the Centre for Applied Anthropometry.

I recently wanted to send a package and went to the next post office, but apart from the fact that it was already closed (see image) I had to acknowledge the remarkable fact that at the office there was no post box where I could dump my little package! Neither was there a note where I could find the next box.

Besides this astonishing changes in snail mail communication one should remark that it was also of no help to hear that the former boss of the german post Mr. Zumwinkel (who was recently sentenced for tax dodging of almost 1 million euros) just received more than 20 million euros as pension and boni etc.. (This is in part also an answer to this comment).

A reader called Hein Kleist wrote:

I find it a little dangerous that you suggest to let problematic banks go bankrupt! Don’t you know that the collapse of Lehman Brothers almost destroyed the world financial system? There could be a chain reaktion of an unknown size!

(more…)

Most of scientists will meanwhile probably already know about the current uproar in the french science community. However just in case someone missed it, this blog post here.

The french uproar was not only but partially triggered by a speech by french president Sarkozy, which used not so nice descriptions of scientists. From a nature report:

In a speech on 22 January, as he set out his plans for a national strategy on science and innovation, French president Nicolas Sarkozy lambasted the country’s university system as “infantilizing” and “paralysing for creativity and innovation”. Sarkozy implied that French researchers were fainéants (layabouts) with cushy jobs, and no match for their supposedly more industrious British counterparts.

His speech made even a french fields medallist(website) (the fields medal is a mathematical analogue of the nobel prize) write an open letter in response (Read open letter by Wendelin Werner in Le Monde).

Merci A Elsa pour l’information.

A reader called Eve asked:

Hi Nad! You seem to be interested in economy, what do you think about bad banks?

Here my answer.

(more…)