This is what I see when I look from our balcony. The photo was taken with a Nikon D200 using a bracketed exposure from -2Ev to +2EV and running the results through Photomatix Pro.
Olga takes the Stairs - All 269 of Them
Published March 16th, 2008 in Incoming and Mobile Pictures. 0 Comments
My wife Olga and me took a walk on Sunday. We explored Stuttgart. On our way back home we came across this stairway. I couldn’t resist, pulled out my Nokia N95 Mobile Phone, and filmed the whole descent down the stairs. Back home I found the perfect music for a soundtrack and added some subtitles.
descent, feet, olga, stairs, stairway, stuttgart walking
Here is my cat Luka in his first (and to date best) porn movie especially produced for the modern discerning cat of today. Hope your cat enjoys it.
New World Religions - The Church of Global Warming
Published February 9th, 2008 in Incoming. 0 Comments
I first started thinking about the Church of Global Warming some years back when it was not nearly as popular as today. Since then a lot has happened. A high priest has been crowned in Al Gore with the Nobel Peace Price, several heads of state have converted to the Church and now belong among its most outspoken proponents. A surefire sign that the Church of Global Warming has arrived in the mainstream of society.
It may already have eclipsed all other churches I have documented before. Global Warming has entered Media, Entertainment, Politics, Science, Religion and the mind of Joe and Jane Average. It has a lot of appeal. It is one of the few churches that can produce some sort of evidence to underpin its core beliefs. Melting glaziers, rising sea levels, storms and biblical floods are cited as proof points of the theory.
Only few stalwards of the old order manage to resist the church. George Bush first among them. Their days are numbered. As Global Warming becomes popular, so their social constructive criticism of the views of the Church become unpopular. I think the other Churches didn’t see it coming, or if they did they seriously underestimated its broad mass appeal. While they struggle to produce any factual signs for their own beliefs, the Church of Global Warming apparently has no problems producing them. Admittedly, the chain of arguments linking weather conditions to human activity is still somewhat tenuous and - some argue - constructed, but since when has that held back any burning desire to belief?
The beauty of the belief system around Global Warming is its simplicity. No complex theories, no difficult to grasp arguments. You fart, we drown. You consume, we drown. You move, we drown. In fact, we drown - whatever. It’s that simple. Even a trained monkey gets it. Apologies to trained monkey. They have shown great intelligence far beyond that required to understand the arguments of the Church of Global Warming. The Church of Individual Mobility is hemorrhaging members as panic is driving costs through the roof. The Church of the Consumer begins adjusting its rethoric to appeal to the adherents of the Church of Global Warming and stem the flood of defectors.
In fact Global Warming might just be the saviour of global economies. As traditional industries decline, work distributes itself across the globe and entropy increases. New industries emerge around products and services that serve worshipers of the Church of Global Warming. Multi-Billion Dollar Businesses are being built around environmental value propositions catering to the faith of the Church. Fortunes will be made. Already established and new companies around the world are scrambling and positioning themselves to ride the wave. By the looks of it - this will be a big one. Perhaps one of those perfect waves. No wonder the Church finds no difficulty attracting members. Who needs faith in God when you can have faith in Al Gore.
al gore, apologies, belief system, church, constructive criticism, core beliefs, floods, global warming, high priest, mass appeal, media entertainment, nobel peace price, proof points, rising sea levels, science religion, simplicity weather conditions
New World Religions - The Church of Individual Mobility
Published March 3rd, 2007 in Philosophizing. 0 Comments
Public Transport - I mean, come on! Who wants to use public transport? It’s crowded. It’s smelly. It’s inconvenient. It’s unreliable. It’s not available everywhere. On top of all that you meet all sorts of unsavoury characters. Long before individual communication humans discovered individual mobility.
Mass individual mobility entered the stage of world religions more than 100 years ago. Before the discovery of the petrol engine horses were the most common means of transport for individuals on land. Public transport was available at sea and thanks to the steam engine on land long before individual transport took off with the first petrol powered cars. Once the car entered the stage it quickly became the ideal companion of consumerism. Individuals owning a car had almost complete freedom to decide where to go, when to start their journey, which route to take, and who to choose as companions.
The convenience of owning one’s own transport made the car the number one status symbol of the church of individual mobility. There are so many advantages. The levels of convenience are unmatched by other forms of transport. The car offers freedom and independence of others. The priests of the church of individual mobility have names like BMW, Mercedes, Chrysler, General Motors, and Ford. They never tire to point out the benefits of individual mobility. It is an essential part of modern life and lifestyle.
To protect their individual interests the followers of the church of individual mobility come together in massively large groups to pool their votes and influence democratically elected policy and decision makers. Automobile clubs lobby for more roads to ever more places to extend their individuality. They lobby for lower petrol prices to keep individual mobility affordable. Some countries wage wars to keep the followers of the church of individual mobility happy.
But alas, the church of individual mobility has become its own worst enemy. As the numbers of individually mobile humans grows, globally available non-renewable resources shrink at a phenomenal rate. Fuel is rapidly becoming more expensive, available roads are congested beyond their capacity, cities and citizens are drowning in noxious particle emissions, and CO2 output contributes greatly to warming of the earth’s atmosphere. That last argument is frequently cited by a relatively new and very powerful world religion, the church of global warming.
The success of the church of individual mobility is its own undoing. More and more individualists erode the fundamental principles of the church and curtail the freedom of followers. Long gone are the times when their freedom was total. Today individual mobility is fast becoming an urban myth. There are so many cars on the roads that choosing when to start your journey, where to go, how to get there and who to take as companions is no longer truly free. Many individually mobile start their journeys not at their preferred time but when they think traffic is low. They don’t take their cars where they want to go because there are no spaces to park their cars available at their preferred destination. Individuals are encouraged with monetary incentives or penalties to take more passengers on their journeys even if they prefer to travel individually. For more and more individuals it has become too expensive to take the car for journeys.
The church of individual mobility is in serious, if not already fatal, crisis. Their future perspective looks bleak. Even if humans discover cheap, renewable alternative clean fuels that can appease the followers of the church of global warming, which infrastructure would more and more cars go on? Perhaps if humans learned to beat gravity and overcome the problem of finite land space on earth the church could hope. As it stands today the church of individual mobility will need a miracle to survive the next 20-30 years.
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