Happy holidays
“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!
January 4th, 2012 at 9:59 am
Oh my God !! Is this how you celebrate Chrismas these days in Germany?! Is this building heated ? If not I bet it must be ice-cold sitting under that tree! I am so happy that we have it nicely warm over here and that I live next to a beach!
January 5th, 2012 at 9:24 am
The court yard has a roof, but it is not closed. Due to the roof, the shielding from the buildings around it and the shops, which spread their heating, it is warmer inside the yard than outside. Plus we have sofar a rather warm winter. That is it is currently very windy in Berlin, the wind is nearly threatingly soughing around the houses and there are even flowers, like violas growing in the garden.
Although we are not christian my sister and me love quite some of the german chrismas traditions, in particular for chrismas we had a chrismas tree (which by the way has probably a non-christian history) and a chrismas pyramid (my sister with her family came over from Britain for chrismas). The kids performed music and we were all singing chrismas and winter songs. It was marvelous. So frankly speaking I would not like to spend chrismas on a beach, it would feel wrong to me.
Here you can hear my sister and me singing In dulci jubilo the way we had learned it in school. Little warning: we did no rehearsal before singing and as you can hear we have quite a cold.
January 8th, 2012 at 10:43 am
As a matter of fact the storms here in Berlin became actually unfortunately quite destructive.To give you an impression here an image from a construction site in Berlin:
The new windows which were leaning to the grey wall in the corner between the red and the grey wall where upset by the storm. Some of them are now smashed and have to be replaced.