randform

Last year we visited the socalled Yamakasa festival in Fukuoka, Japan, from wikipedia:

Yamakasa – held for two weeks each July, is Fukuoka’s oldest festival with a history of over 700 years. Teams of men (no women, except small girls, are allowed), representing different districts in the city, race against the clock around a set course carrying on their shoulders floats weighing several thousand pounds. Participants all wear shimekomi (called fundoshi in other parts of Japan), which are traditional loincloths. Each day of the two-week festival period is marked by special events and practice runs, culminating in the official race that takes place the last morning before dawn. Tens of thousands line the streets to cheer on the teams. During the festival period, men can be seen walking around many parts Fukuoka in long happi coats bearing the distinctive mark of their team affiliation and traditional geta sandals. The costumes are worn with pride and are considered appropriate wear for even formal occasions, such as weddings and cocktail parties, during the festival period.

Yamacasa is quite a dizzying event that is if you are amidst it is hard to figure out what is going to happen, there is a lot of press and and a lot, lot of people at the festival. here some images:

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Just a little report from our move back to Berlin where I was driving a little truck.

60km before the city of Leipzig the truck needed to get some fuel. It turned out that the trucks fuel cap was broken. In several calls to the car rental company (always hanging in waiting loops, so that I had to reload my cellular phone in between) I could convince them that I was not too stupid to manage with a fuel cap, because otherwise the filling station attendent would have been too, moreover I could convince them to send a service technician. Luckily the service technician was able to put on a new cap, so that it was possible to move on. He was friendly and said I should ask for a compensation. Altogether I was hanging out alone about 2 and a half hours on that service station before Leipzig (see below images) and thus when arriving in Berlin it was all too late and dark for deloading.

Sorry for the retarded blogging. We are moving again. So I have to think about what to do with the furneture and other unpleasant things. I am moving fully back to Berlin – the city with international flair, Tim will commute. The search for schools in Berlin was sort of similar to this one. Here some examples:

Sehr geehrte Frau Kutz,
sehr geehrter Herr Hoffmann,

Entschuldugung für die späte Antwort.
Zum jetzigen Zeitpunkt sieht es leider so aus, dass kein Platz frei werden wird.

Wir können Ihr——- nur auf unsere Warteliste setzen, wenn Sie dies
wünschen. Dafür müssten Sie uns dann allerdings noch Unterlagen
(Zeugniskopie, Informationen über die ——- Vorbildung) schicken.

Mit freundlichen Grüßen
Im Auftrag

Sehr geehrte Frau Kutz,
sehr geehrter Herr Hoffmann,

nach Prüfung der Platzkapazität in den jetzigen 5. Klassen muss ich Ihnen leider mitteilen, dass ich Ihnen keine Zusage zur Aufnahme Ihr—– geben kann. Auf der Warteliste für die zukünftige 6. Klasse erhält —— die Wartenummer “2”.
Zur Vervollständigung der Unterlagen benötige ich noch eine *Kopie des Halbjahreszeugnisses 5.Klasse*.
Zur Information für Sie möchte ich Ihnen noch mitteilen, dass …..

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Our friend Sophie Molholm coorganized recently a conference in multisensory research. Looking at the conference announcement I felt inspired to ask myself again to what extend rational cognitive instances do influence perception. An example: A traffic light in the western world is usually considered to have the colors red-yellow-green (or at least red and green (although the new LED lights look kind of bluish)). However I think it is important to note that in japaneese the green color for a traffic light – is not “MIDORI” (green), but “AOUI”, which is BLU! Did this make japanese people more prone to call something green-bluish “blue” instead of green? Doing experiments for this example might be difficult due to the ethnic pecularities, but I am sure there exist other examples and probably even studies on that subject.

here a little collection of randform posts related to the subject:

naming-gaming: evolution of languages
wirepullers: artwork challenging salience
manicone: artwork challenging 4 dimensional space perception
focus and context, part I: evolution and knowledge formation
focus and context, part IV: A Physicist Experiments With Cultural Studies: knowledge formation in humanities vs natural sciences
Le manoir du diable: conscientious coloring of astronomical data
common sense: designing computer minds at media lab
canny skinny skin scans perception and quantum computing (see also focus and context, part IIa: A quantum computation game)
error incognito:perception and space
Dreammachine: psychadelic effects in neuroscience
uncanny paintings: link to an experiment using facial expressions as a feedback interface for a painterly rendering algorithm
visualizing meaning: link to a survey concerning the usefulness of diagrams and charts in knowledge building (and a funny comment to that)

Last weakend we were doing a visit to the Deutsche Museum.

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Some images from the Curie museum in Paris featuring among others the investigation of radioactivity by Marie Curie and coworkers.

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Just a fast ping (I am actually not sure wether the word “ping” can be used in normal day english?) from France with some random images of my journey from munich to the school site.

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(old GDR advertisement of the electrical engineering industry)

There was a longer discussion on that randform post about oppression in the GDR. Within the discussion a randform reader called Ditta found my opinion that “part of all that huge mess of a wall through the streets of Berlin was plain economic warfare” absurd. This is still my opinion: there were surely people running away from East Germany for pure political reasons, but I dare say that a not to small part left for economical reasons. Moreover this reasoning doesnt justify the wall, I think it is clear that the wall was an inhuman mistake. The discussion just sheds a different light on the involved motivations.

I currently have not the time to discuss this in detail and since this is a different thread I hereby link to the comment which led to Ditta’s reaction and ask people who wish to discuss this issue to leave their comments here at this thread.

Blogwise – I am currently preparing a blog entry, which takes more time than I would have suspected…in particular I am not on vacation.