A new cool tool on the web. http://ping.fm lets you post status or messages to several services at once.

Just before the new Science Parliament start, a film about the first one

Being part of the first european science parliament to me was a great experience and i will try to take part in the upcoming discussions and topic finding on the webpage of the Science Parliament again. In the meantime you can have a look at the following video of the science parliament to learn what happened in Aachen last year:


Or simply have a look at www.science-parliament.eu

And see if you can find me in the video ;) I myself counted 5 appearances ;)

Are we still a country of poets and thinkers or has greed and stupidity taken over

Looking at the media, at the number of students in the "hard sciences" like physic or biology and on the sometimes incredible stupid readers letters in some newspapers (How dare this teacher try to teach his students about evolution ? I would not send my kids to him, cause we all know god is the creator.. Yeahr right, hush, hush back dear dark middleage person) I do not know if germany is still that intellectual a country it once was. You just have to turn on TV during the day for an experiment and it is astonishing how stupid some tv shows actually are. And I know of colleagues in my company who haven't read a book in years !

I sometimes get the impression that today the biggest luxury is to have a brain of your own, to care about more than money and profit and the career. To be interested in culture, in history, in the sciences.... We seem to fall back to pre humanist ages in some areas of our society.

Or maybe I am just another culture pessimist ???

Well then lets see when the first "I am an intellectual, get me out of here" show starts for me to watch... ;)

Unbelievable tragedy just happened in Winnenden. 16 dead ! My thoughts are with the families of those dead or wounded

It is unbelievable. 16 people killed in a shooting in a school in Winnenden. My thoughts are with the families of those kids wounded or killed.

I can barely express what feelings i have.

Had an intense talk with my kids to take away the fear they already feel to deal with the questions like: Can this happen at our school ? At least I could give them an important example of the value of friendship and caring.

Update: Well of course politics and the media accuse "1st person shooters" again of being responsible for the trategy. Another example how easy it is to find a scapegoat and not really think about the things going wrong in our society today. As long as we live in a society in which career and making money, mobility and focusing on the job is more important than society and family we will not stop such things from happening. We should refocus on non profit values like caring for each other, living in a community, taking time for friends and family rather than for working extra hours just cause some ignorant boss tells you you only can make a career when you do extra hours.

Even rich persons can act reasonable

Talking of real heros look at this guy Leonard Abess, Jr who gave 60 Millionen Dollars back to his employees after selling shares and earning big bucks. And he did not tell anyone. Great to see that there are still rich people who act responsible and for a common good.
Even Obama noted it and included his story in a speech before congress...

I bow for this man. I like it, when people act rather than worry.
Listen to the speech and the story here:


It is not about him being the biggest hero in the world but about rethinking what really matters which means, rethinking if being only focused on profit and not caring for the people around you has any value ?

Next stop on energy saving: LEDs.

I just started my next new technology and energy saving experiment. Switched several lights in our house from energy saving bulbs to leds. The first LEDs area available with enough brightness to replace standard energy saving bulbs we normally use in our house.
So here we go. My light on my computerdesk is now from leds. Which means instead of consuming about 7 Watt of energy they now consume only 2 watt !
Will follow the development but it already looks very promising. And besides, my "old" notebook is not on so often. Cause my new netbook only needs about 25 watt in opposite to about 60-70 watt my standard notebook needs ;)
Or even better, my smartphone uses only 6 watt and i can check email on it and surf the web.
So think about the appliance you use and try to use the thing most energy effficient !

A great quote on religion

With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
- Steven Weinberg

I will leave that uncommented ;)

Taking (virtually) part in the Davos World Economic Forum

Well, it is virtual but at least you can get information first hand, not filtered or interpreted by the media.

See for yourself:

Hello everybody ! The site that was sorryeverbody

Grin,

remember the last president ? What wa his name ? Well, at least there was this website apologizing in a very cool way for another four years of being behind the bush(es). And no look at them. Barack Obama is president ! Ain't that cool. Just when you think you know them, those americans can really surprise you.

You can be proud of yourself for choosing the right one !

And the website sorry everybody is now celebrating being loved by the world again. So just drop by and tell them, we love them again. They really deserve it.

Drop by at http://www.sorryeverybody.com/.

It is a hard time yet we have reasons to celebrate !

"YES YOU DID IT !"

Completely mobile and always on (the internet)

With a new special deal from my isp and a windows mobile 6.1 phone (namely the samsung omnia) I am now always online. And despite being equipped with an os made by microsoft it is really a cool device. I can twitter on the go, blog, read news, get all my mail accounts, do my finacial balances, watch Videos, listen to music and much more with a device not much bigger than a standard mobile phone.

Yes, I still use linux on my desktop computers and notebook as well as on the EeePC. But as long as there is no such thing as a really free linux OS independent from a single provider (and no, i don't like the new G1 from Google cause it is limited to one cellular provider in germany and focused around working with google rather than with anyone and such a thing is a no go for me.), I will use, whatever gets tested positive. And the Omnia received a very good rating from germanys most independent testing organization (Stftung Warentest).

Still looking forward to other mobile phones with Android. Maybe something very interesting will pop up this year. At least there have been some vague announcements by samsung on a smartphone like the Omnia, but with Android on it. This sounds like a good trade in. But for sure we have to wait for at least one more year for the "Android" market to settle.
And there is palms new WebOS which looks veeeery promising to me. Still new things to come but in the end: My mobile phone must allow me to stay in contact and I am not too concerned what is running under the hood.

So from now on i am always on. One more step to becoming a completely mobile geek ;)