randform

Just a little supplement to the last post. It may be interesting to think about the following:

Imagine there are three people on a boat being in an emergency situation. One person has lost all his food, the other two still have all their food. The two who still have their food are in a quarrel about which route to take. Donating a quarter of the food would impair your strength and power to a great amount. Regardless which of the two proposed routes one takes – for either route it is assumed that by donating one half of your food you could in principle survive, but only if everything goes all right.

Imagine the same situation but instead of two quarreling competitors with food you have just one person with food.

Do you think the actions taken with regard to sharing food would be the same in both cases?

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Luckily, Christoph Schreiber of the workshop Konzertflügel, whose marvelous Salon Christophori – a series of music events – was featured already in this randform post has now -after a cumbersome six months search- found a new domicil for his workshop. The old workshop, which was rather central had to be closed due to gentrification. His new workshop is now in the famous Uferhallen (website) in the Berlin district of Wedding. Soheil Nasseri who is also featured in this randform post* is giving again a concert at Salon Christophori. He is going to play tomorrow the program, which he played at Carnegie Hall in October. Both Christoph and Soheil** are in need of some financial support so they hope many people will visit them at this not so central place.
Uferstr. 9-11, 13357 Berlin Wedding, 14.1. 2011, 20:30 Uhr

* The flying steps also featured in this post are going to perform
their superb Bach breakdance again in march.
**Soheil currently doesn’t feel like repeating Joshua Bells experiment.

short note: My Flamenco teacher Theresa Lantez (here some more pictures) who gave lessons in an old ballroom in the same street as Christoph Schreiber needs to look for a new room (for the same gentrification reasons). If you know something you can send me or her a mail.

I wrote a little essay about the limitations of sustainability for the “people, planet, profit” – triple pundit, “year in review contest”. I am sorry to deviate with this economy essay again from “math, physics, art and design”. And frankly speaking – economy is not my most favorite subject, but like for nuclear energy, one has to acknowledge the fact that economy affects everyones normal daily lives in a quite drastic manner, so I think one has to think about it and put it into the general living context.

In the essay at triple pundit I tried to point out major economic obstacles for establishing “sustainability”. With sustainability I mean here the “common sense sustainability”, namely “being environmentally and socially friendly”. There are of course a lot of discussions about what sustainability encompasses, what it means to design etc. The essay was not concerned with this discussion but with the general question of how (common sense) sustainability fits into economy. In particular the essay takes a critical look at the notion of sustainability and profit, which is currently also a strongly discussed issue (see e.g. here). I found it quite a challenge to squeeze such a complex issue into such a small format, but I think it is possible and I figured that a small and concise (nontechnical, non-math) essay might eventually motivate people, who don’t like to delve too much into economic questions, to think about the topic.

The winner of the triple pundit “year in review contest” is Boyd Cohen with his essay 2010-The Year that Climate Capitalism Emerged to Save the Day. He believes that

enlightened capitalism focused on solving climate change at a profit, will be perhaps the most important tool to move the lever fast enough to thwart the worst of the climate crisis.

In his essay he listed his “top 10 climate capitalism stories coming out this calendar year that gives him hope”. Among others one story that gave him hope was that the electric car company “Better place comes to North America”:

Along with other announced North American efforts in Hawaii and Ontario, Better Place is poised to lead us away from our “addition to oil.”

The company “Better place” was just featured in the last randform post, where a quick calculation displays that electric cars may for certain electric energy mixes not reduce CO2 output but on the contrary increase CO2 output.

You can vote which article of the “Year in review contest” you like most, if you have a Twitter account.
My essay is after the click or at triple pundit.

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note: My Apple book works again, that is – thanks to the courtesy of Apple – the graphics board was exchanged free of charge. However I am still too busy for blogging which was on the other hand not the reason that the randform archives had been offline in the last days – this was due to a strange technical problem at our internet provider.