Eight Minutes Old

If you happen to be in Bonn tomorrow and are interested in astronomy, there is a very interesting event: The Science Cafe. Astronomy meets Gastronomy is the motto of this event special to the International Year of Astronomy. In the restaurant “Harmonie” in Bonn Endenich (Frongasse 28-30, 53121 Bonn), guests and visitors have the chance to speak to real astronomers, ask questions about astronomy and astrophysics or just hang out with some cool star-gazers.

It’s the first time such an Science Cafe for the general public takes place in Germany. Of course I’ll be there, too. It starts at about 8:00 pm (on Tuesday 03.03.). More info can be found on the German IYA-site here.

(It’s for free. You only need to pay for your drinks, obviously)

UPDATE: Damn, 39 degrees celsius temperature force me to stay at home. Sorry. But I’m sure ther are lots of interesting peaople around. If someone would like to write a report about it (in English or German), I’d be very interested.

Tags: Astronomers, Astronomy, Bonn, Germany, IYA, Meeting, Radio Astronomy, Science Cafe, Star Gazer, Talk, Telescope

This is a sad story, but again shows the errant “logic” of the catholic church when dealing with women and humans in general. And it shows that some Italian Prime Minister is a puppet of the Vatican.

17 years ago, Eluana Englaro had a car accident and fell to coma. since then, she is merely vegetating, her brain is severely damaged. Still, her body is kept alive with life support and feeding tubes. She effectively died long ago, her by now 38 years old body now already lives nearly twice as long as her brain. Her family wishes to stop the life support, but had to go through a decade long court battle. Not only did their daughter die, they even had to fight to let her body die, too. Even though the doctors say there is absolutely no chance that she might ever awake again.

Now finally they won and as the medical staffs reduces the life support, the Italian Prime Minister, infamous Silvio Berlusconi, tries to stop them. He issued an emergency decree after consulting the Vatican! What? What has the Vatican to do with all this. But that’s not the real scandal. Even worse is the reasoning. Berlusconi is cited with having said that Eluana Englaro is “in the in the condition to have babies”!

I’m speechless. What is Berlusconi’s (and definitely the Vatican’s is similar if not worse) image of women? Breeding machines? Are they defined according to that? To have a mind is negligible? In a possible future in which breeding-machines like in Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” exist, would they be considered to be on the same level as women?

Eventually, all these questions lead me to one I very often encounter: How can anyone take this bunch of people serious?

Yesterday, Eluana Englaro died. Berlusconi claims this to be murder.

Tags: Silvio Berlusconi, Church, Coma, Italy, Life Support, Pope, Vatican, Women

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The German government decided for a 500 billion Euro package as bailout for German banks. That’s a ridiculously high sum. It’s more than one fifth of the German gross domestic product. But then, with the current world population of 6.7 billion, it’s only 75 euro per person.

Sami asks in his blog (German only): “What would you do with the money?” I think it’s an interesting question, as no person will ever be able to use all this money. It will make you the riches person in the world, way above the current billionaire number one, Warren Buffet, with an estimated 62 billion $. So you probably want to do something beneficial for humankind.

If I got 500 billion, the first thing I would do is to take it to a bank (one of those without financial problems, I there are such). I’d put in into a savings account with, lets say, an interest rate of 3 percent.
The next thing I’d do is having lunch. For that I’d go to a nearby restaurant and spend the 16.85 Euro in my wallet. After an hour or so I go back to the bank and withdraw what the interest has produced: 1.7 million Euro.
That should be enough money to organize my further steps: finding out how to use the wealth. I’d travel the world to talk to experts and to find out where the biggest needs are. But overall, I would spend the money on two different projects:

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Not much, obviously. I think most of us will recognize these simple paintings on a wall in Montmartre, Paris as a ‘face’ in the broadest sense. Actually, we even see an expression: it is smiling. And all we need are two roughly equally sized dots that are aligned above a curved line. Eyes and a mouth. Even the nose is dispensable. Thus there is no wonder behind seeing faces, they are somehow hard-wired into our brains.

Tags: black and white, Canon EOS 50E, EF 50mm f/1.8 II, France, Fuji Neopan Acros 100, Montmartre, Paris, Perception, Questions

I’m not quite sure how these questions arise in my head, but they do. Today it is: What would be the taste of coke if there were no sugar or sweetener in it? I can not imagine it, as sweetness is the dominating (I would even say only) flavor. Probably it will be unenjoyable but I don’t know. I even have no idea how to get a soft drink that isn’t sweet. Is there a way to extract the sugar somehow? I never made friends with chemistry, but some knowledge would come in handy now…

Tags: Chemistry, Food, Questions

I’m sorry for not posting anything in the last days. I became ill and have lots of work to do, which resulted to be a bad combination for blogging.

Usually I come across several strange websites per week. How do I find them, or better: how do I decide where to look?
Well, I made it my practice to click on Google AdSense advertisements promoting strange believes. This has two motivations:

• First, I get to know more stuff to laugh about (even though sometimes I could cry, too). I need more input, so why not visit sites whose owners think they are worth spending money to attract visitors. I assume they put some effort in their sites. At least, the sites are big and offer much content, so I can be sure to find something strange.
• Second, every time someone clicks on the ad, they have to pay for it. That is the way AdSense works: For every click the advertiser has to pay some amount of money to Google, which then passes some percentage of it to the owner of the site where the ad showed up. I don’t click on ads in creationists’ or other fools’ sites, so they can not earn anything. And it gives me such a warm feeling to know that my visit costs them money. Maybe it’s not very much, but if I’m not the only one who does it might add up.

Tags: Advertise, Sceptic, Website