randform

Climate change will directly affect future food availability and compound the difficulties of feeding the world’s rapidly growing population, this could be more dramatic then previously assumed. It is also sort of wellknown that the livestock sector emerges as one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global and especially regarding global warming see e.g. this FAO report. So in principle for the environment it would be best to be vegan. (see also this cornell study)

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image source wikipedia

Fireworks may be great fun, if they are composed in an artistic way. And may be the fascination about fireworks is connected to the human dream to control fire. However especially with fireworks we know that this can go terribly wrong.

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Just a link to an upcoming event (April 14 – May 9, 2008) by the Max-Planck-Institut for complex system on Bio-inspired Complex Networks in Science and Technology, From Topology to Structure and Dynamics

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While looking for the classic russian winter animation ded maros i lyeto (santa claus and the summer) from 1969 by soyusmultfilm I stumbled on youtube over this jewel for all lovers of ascii animation made at the “department of educational and scientific fotography and cinematography” at the Lomonossov university (N. Konstantinov, V. Minakhin, V. Ponomarenko, A. Skuridin, V. Shurkin). In the comment section it was said that the animation is from 1967, which I unfortunately couldn’t verify.

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There had been quite some discussions about a recent case control study (in german) where cases were children younger than 5 years (diseased between 1980 and 2003) registered at the german childhood cancer registry (GCCR). According to a statement by Minister Gabriel of the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conversation and Nuclear Safety

“In this study by the German Childhood Cancer Registry (Deutsches Kinderkrebsregister) in Mainz, increased cancer incidences were ascertained statistically for children living in the vicinity of the 16 sites of German nuclear power plants.

Experts (see below) consider the study to be the world-wide methodically most elaborate and comprehensive study regarding the correlation between a higher risk of childhood cancer and proximity to a nuclear power plant. So what were the discussions about?

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Some weakend impressions from winterly Erholungspark Marzahn. As you can see it is quite icy.*

*thanks to Mark Aufpasser for tips for the camera!

update 27.2.2016:
Its been about ten years since this entry had been written. Meanwhile Erholungspark Marzahn
had turned into a kind of ugly Disney park like companion piece. I have basically ceased to go there.

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The main topic of the last issue of the magazine of the Deutsche Hochschulverband was “trust” or “confidence” (in german “Vertrauen”) Various authors were discussing multiple manifestations of trust. The lesson was inspiring and made me think about it the issue and in particular the role of trust in connection to robots. My sister said that this blog post sounds like the thought of the day. So you have been warned if you read further.

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“no-clohning” artwork by On von Nomann

THE ETHICS OF PROGRESS
theatre + science by TANGLE – UNLIMITED THEATRE

A mind-melting, jargon-free, whistlestop tour of leading edge Quantum Physics.

a co-production with Oxford Playhouse
and Leeds Met Studio Theatre

” Mind-blowing stuff ” The Scotsman
” Unexpectedly gripping and improbably pleasurable ” The Guardian

via artscatalyst.org

-just another fotographic experiment with my new camera.

As a prelude for next years “year of mathematics” here in germany, today the exhibition imaginary started at TU Munich. It shows models and prints of mathematical visualization ( I contributed the above picture) as well as interactive installations (one of them made here at TU Berlin with jReality).