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.

In a comment to my previous post I was asked wether I “want back GDR”.

here my answer:

I don’t want to have the former GDR back.

But I think the bad deeds of e.g. the STASI are not automatically correlated to every GDR-feature. Like e.g. the GDR had a very good waste-management (sero-system) which was neglected in the west (images) for no good reason.

The former GDR was not – as it claimed with its name – a german democratic state. I visited the GDR rather often (most of my relatives lived in East Berlin) and in fact GDR-authorities were threatening me already as a ten year old for my political opinions (but thats another story).

People who were opposing the official politics were suppressed, where the methods ranged from occupational ban to imprisonment (and sometimes execution – according to Wikipedia there were 164 death penalties made to the order of the STASI).

Although torture was forbidden in the GDR (here an excerpt of the GDR constitution) some methods of the STASI, like sleep deprivation could be called psychological torture. Also the conditions within prisons (here a panorama tourr through the STASI-prison in Berlin-Hohenschoenhausen) could be seen as torture like in particular the socalled water cells which were cells without a window and no furniture and 2 cm water on the floor. As a torture not as immediate life-threatening as waterboarding but still scary and cruel.

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.

We managed our relocation. I overstrained my right hand a bit and had eye problems due to the dust, but finally everything got squeezed into the appartment so that we could hurry to Berlin in order to see relatives and solve some other problems.

The bad thing about germand appartments is that they usually have no built-in closets, so you have to move around all these big armoires (or live out of a suitcase).

We were lucky to find two rather antique closets, which you can carry in parts. One closet was in an attic and covered with cobwebs. The printed letters on its back indicate that it had been under a US Army Requisition Demand right after the war. Seems after it came back from the army the owner didnt like it too much anymore – given its abandonned situation in the attic.

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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.

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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 baxter asked about my current stove.

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