randform

“verticalized overhead power line with book lover using excessive light”, fotography of the Sony Center court yard on Potsdamer Platz by Loretta (see also the randform post chains)

I was recently looking a bit into the issue of smart grids and ran over an interesting european strategy analysis.

In 2005 the european smartgrid platform www.smartgrids.eu was set up. On their document page the currently newest document linked to is from 2010, it is a Strategic Deployment Document for Europe’s electricity networks of the future (2010) on page 53 one finds:

Engineering in the energy sector, electricity grids in particular, is seen by many as old- fashioned and “difficult” as it requires a high level of competence in mathematics, physics and other sciences. This discourages the potential new students from studying and pursuing a career in power engineering.

… and

All stakeholders in the electricity sector have a responsibility to improve the image of the sector, e.g. by engaging with educational institutions and explaining in an understandable way the real benefits of being involved with and able to deliver solutions to the energy, climate and environmental challenges of today.

This sounds very much as if the major problem of getting new working force for the electricity high-tech sector is mainly a question of hipness. In part it may be true that science and math is regarded as highly “unhip” in certain circles (and the reasons for this are manifold), however the comment in the document seems to miss somewhat a crucial point. Or maybe lets say it sounds a bit strange in the view that even fields medallists in e.g. Great Britain or France try to politely point out that there is structurally something at odds with the whole european science and math research and education.

Happy holidays to all randform readers!

supplement 1.1.2012: a happy new year to all randform readers!

Just to inform you about recent randform activities – my macbook is still at the repairshop.

I decided to translate the part in the last randform comment, which deals with democracy and social media, because it is of a more general nature.

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Tonträgerindustrie auf dem Ladentisch

I left a long comment at the Berlin city blog Spreeblick which discusses the role of commercial social media, their democracy and the Gema (the german perfomance rights organization). The comment is in german and you can read it also after the click.

Addition on 20.08.2012: A part of this comment which deals with social media and democracy can be found translated in the randform post “translation.”

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bad news from my laptop problem: The Macbook which we bought in Spring 2008 had a broken logic board in Summer 2010 and since then rather regular malfunctions of logic boards and hard disks happened. Now the logic board of my laptop was again replaced, but then it turned out that in addition the system structure of my hard disk has now irrepairable malfunctions.

I had posted a question to the thinkspace at openeconomics.net, which is an initiative of the open knowledge foundation. The site had been managed amongst others by Guo Xu who is the coordinator of the Open Economics Working Group. The question hasn’t been moderated yet, but regardless of that I thought I may post the question also here.
The question I ask is which other forms of money flow regulation -aside from national currencies- are seriously discussed among economists. In particular this concerns the question on how to tackle the Euro problem.

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“Verwerflicht auf Nachschattengewächs”, artwork by Pestikid.

Unfortunately it is still unclear what will happen to my laptop, so I have still restricted access to my little personal archive. Hence I thought I may post quickly some eye candy, which is not from the archive. The above artwork is playing a bit with scientific paradigms as it calls the above plant a Nachschattengewächs (a plant which grows after its shadow in a “reprobated light”, which is a wordplay with the word Nachtschattengewächs, which is an interesting word itself, as it can be interpreted as describing plants in “night shadows”).*

*It should be pointed out that the above plant is no Nachtschattengewächs but a dried Hagrose.

In Berlin there had been recently municipal elections, so a different Berlin local government is currently set up. As it currently looks like (see for example the article “Eine Mauer durch die Forschung”) there will be a department for “economy, technology and research” and a department for “education and science.”

->related randform post “on high teach speed”

“Dreimäckriges Blauquallendrachengespenst verwandelt sich in einen Kugelblitz um die ausgecyborgte, zweigebeinigte “Jeanne die Arge”, zu töten”. Artwork by Hugo Buster, acrylic paint and pencil

Just a quick link to what seems to be an interesting study about biodiversity with the title Experiment gives insight into how species maintain diversity (via physorg.com). In the study it was investigated how biodiversity could be maintained despite dominance. Experiments with male voles, ordered by testesterone level, were performed:

when they released just a few of the high testosterone males and lots of low testosterone males into the same area, the males once again reigned supreme with the ladies. But when they released lots of high testosterone males with lots of lots of low testosterone males, the males with the lower levels actually did better than those with the high levels, indicating that there was something clearly at play. The researchers suggest that such results came about because the high testosterone level males spent more time fighting or showing off than mating, which gave the low testosterone males more of a chance to mate.

I completely forgot to mention the post about the plywood bonobo by Stanislav Ploski. Like the other texts, the text was a little bit “polished” by the people at Inhabitat – just in case you wonder about my sudden glitzy english.

other posts there:
->Wood lamp
->Miss Maple
->Vase & Leuchte