Grablog

LAST POST

2005-09-03T18:52:00.000+02:00

Hi. I moved this weblog away from Blogger to my own site. Please click

here.

moving

2005-08-30T22:39:00.000+02:00

Alright, this is it. I was working on a WordPress installation elsewhere, a different layout and lots of other stuff. Now, the new location is all setup, I'll start moving this blog away from Blogger. Don't misunderstand me, it's a great service, but far too limiting.
Keep your fingers crossed. ;-)

Goodbye Google, and thanks for the fish.

RIAA blogging at EFF

2005-08-16T12:30:00.000+02:00

Hilary Rosen worked at the RIAA for 17 years, now she's been invited to blog for a week over at Lawrence Lessig's blog - a professor of law who serves on the board of the EFF.

Lawrence Lessig

28

2005-08-01T19:36:00.000+02:00

I've turned 28 last friday. Happy birthday to me.
The Kyokushin Karate Summercamp in Warnemünde was great, I'm already looking forward to next year.

1500 grams...

2005-07-22T16:05:00.000+02:00

... 38 centimeters and growing...

Call for Help

2005-07-21T12:23:00.000+02:00

The famine in Niger escalates: About 2-3.5 million people are affected by it, around 150,000-800,000 children already suffer from undernourishment and might die in the near future. The numbers vary a lot, but considering the situation it's not surprising. Milton Tetonidis of Medecins Sans Frontieres has been quoted that response has yet been very low - spread the word.

German:

Spiegel Online
Ärtzte ohne Grenzen
Care
Plan Deutschland

English:

United Nations - OCHA IRIN Africa News
Doctors without Borders
Unicef
Allafrica
Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN
USAID
Relief Web

On Hiatus

2005-07-19T21:12:00.000+02:00

I'm sorry I have to focus on other stuff until mid August, so there might not be much or any blogging at all during that time. Since I postponed things I have to take care of for weeks now, it leaves me little time to continue writing regularily. If you want to read something interesting during the break, try Hugo Dobson's Japan and United Nations Peacekeeping: New Pressures, New Responses. See you after the summer.

Infestation

2005-07-16T22:11:00.000+02:00

We're back. There would be lot to write about (in short: it was great, Belgium is a great country), but one mishap on Tuesday kept me busy until today. After my first post from our host's computer on Monday, I've been told that the computer has problems.

Several dozen viruses, beside Sobig, AntiSpyware Viruses, Trojans and as far as I could tell, keyloggers as well. Since I couldn't rule out that my passwords for Blogger and several Emailaccounts were compromised, I spent the day with changing all of them. It was time for reneval anyway, but it hits you when you least expect it.

Korean Traces in Bruxelles

2005-07-11T23:42:00.000+02:00

Fighting against a French style, by IME Korean and English keyboard enabled computer, copy&pasting the commas because I can't find it and the "m" and the "@" symbol for email doesn't work right - this is my first post from our hosts computer. We'll spend the next three nights at Mrs Park's house, who offers mainly Koreans, but also other people a place to stay in Bruxelles.

Our trip started out a little bit problematic, since we couldn't buy a ticket for the regional express train to Cologne. Three ticket vending machines didn't accept my money or my card, so we didn't have a choice but to dodge the fair. The ride with the Thalys was great, for ten Euros per person I would even stand all the way, but we had comfortable seats and it went smooth all the way until ... well until "Brussel-Zuid". I blame the hot weather that I was looking out for "Bruxelles-Midi", as it was written on our tickets, so when the train stopped at Brussel-Zuid, we didn't get out. "Zuid" also sounds a little bit like "Sued" or "south" in German, but it was indeed Bruxelles-Midi. Just before the train was ready for departure to Paris, we jumped out.

Finding the hostel wasn't too difficult, although nobody knew the street we were looking for. The place is nice, actually a private apartment with a guest room with four beds. Tonight we share the room with two guys from Swissm using a mixture of German, French and English. After checking in, we went for a walk through a park to the Basilica d'Elizabeth nearby. Walking towards it, we realized its sheer size - and even better, it had an illuminated red cross on top! Perhaps it was sponsored by a South Korean (churches over there always have that kind of a cross), on the backside we saw that one of the windows had a Korean map and the flag. We'll check it out tomorrow again since it was already closed tonight.

I can't wait for the Korean breakfast tomorrow morning...

German Media in English

2005-07-10T22:03:00.000+02:00

If you're interested about the German media landscape, Sign and Sight offers a great daily insight, focusing on cultural and intellectual life in Germany. Unlike other sites (see below), Sign and Sight strives for objectivity and gives overviews. I recommend the digests and articles about Merkel's new middle, What do the conservatives want? and Writers warn about Linkspartei.

If you'd rather read news yourself instead of digests, try one of the following sites:

Deutsche Welle (in 39 languages)
German Times
Topix (news collections about Germany)
Spiegel Online (English site)

My favorite newspaper, Die Zeit is unfortunately not available in English. Learn German. :-)

There's one popular site I have to advise against: David's Medienkritik regularily posts about events and news in Germany and focuses about German news about the U.S. It is some kind of self proclaimed watchdog that already disqualifies itself by its inaptitude to see a difference between the Spiegel and Stern, thus often only serving right-wing audience by focusing on Anti-Americanism (keeping its definition as vague as possible), failing to differentiate even the most basic interrelations and possibly even prone to censorship. In some cases, it happened to raise valid points, far too often it pushs its own agenda - but since it extremely focuses on a handful of topics it presents a grossly distorted perception.

Warriors of the Net

2005-07-09T17:08:00.000+02:00

Explain the Internet to a kid using simple terms and concepts... or just show them a video. Like this one. Depending on the age, die Maus is a good alternative (in German).

Warriors of the Net

Japanese Text Initiative

2005-07-08T23:29:00.000+02:00

Here's a great library about Japanese texts from Man'yôshû till the end of the Edo era. From 芭蕉 (Bashô) to 漱石 (Sōseki), 源氏物語 (Genji monogatari) and other stories, you'll find a broad selection of texts.

UVa Library Etext Center: Japanese Text Initiative

A Letter To The Terrorists, From London

2005-07-07T23:02:00.000+02:00

From the The London News Review

London rocked by terror attacks

2005-07-07T15:05:00.000+02:00

Just one day after London has been chosen to host the 2012 Olympics, a terrorist attack on the Underground network with an explosion and three blasts on busses left between two and a dozen people dead. The time of the first blast was this morning - the timing reminiscent of the September 11th attacks. A few minutes ago, the German intelligence service BND confirmed that a terrorist attack is very likely - also a claim of responsibility by a group called Secret Organization — al-Qaeda in Europe surfaced.

Spiegel Online published an article with 22 pictures of the attack.

The attackers aimed at the public transportation service for several reasons:

to hurt as many civilians as possible during rush hour
spread fear among the population
hurt a modern society there where it's most vulnerable: its openness

BBC: London rocked by terror attacks

The Face of the Enemy

2005-07-06T23:50:00.000+02:00

During breakfast, I told my wife about how North Korea said that Japan doesn't belong in the six-way talks on their nuclear weapons program because...

The nuclear issue of the Korean Peninsula is not a matter for such an insincere and clumsy political dwarf as Japan to deal with

so they should step aside and let the big guys talk (Hat tip to Cominganarchy). This is not the first time North Korea snapped at its neighbor, but the region is not known for favorable views of neighbors and good relations. For example, after the short anecdote my wife told me that when she was a kid she watched an animation for children called 똘이장군 (Tori Jangun, 1978). Click on the image to see the details.

The interesting part of the story is, the pig in red cloth in the upper right corner was a not at all flattering portray of Kim Il-Sung Yuri Irsenowich Kim a.k.a. Kim Jong-Il (who at that time was the Party secretary of organization and propaganda and already designated as successor of his father, Kim Il-Sung). The wolfes in the lower left represent North Korean soldiers - the imagery is quite vivid. Tori Jangun was not only shown in the movies, but also in schools throughout the South Korean half of the penninsula.

p.s.: unflattering appears to be a false friend?

p.p.s.: During research, I came across Dictatorofthemonth.com

Memories

2005-07-04T23:30:00.000+02:00

That's as close as I can get right now. I never had the chance to visit the place before the attacks, but I've been there last year during the Model UN simulation. The story began three and a half years ago. I was in Croatia, meeting my brother while he took a few days off from his internship at the Konrad-Adenauer Foundation office in Zagreb. On September 11th, 2001, we drove all the way down to the coast to meet with our aunt, to celebrate her birthday together. Like our uncle and her husband, she's an architect who at that time happened to work on an infirmary at Pag, which is an island in the Adriatic Sea. The island is connected to the mainland with a long and high, newly constructed bridge. On our way there, I thought it looks much like the Moon, or perhaps Mars, because of the stone desert around us. It seemed dead, all of it. No tree, nothing but stones. The weather was warm, a blue sky, with a single cloud here and there, but it felt cold.

We met in the late morning hours, went out to eat sea food at a great restaurant and talked a lot about family stuff, how everyone was and enjoyed life. I think I've never eaten so much again. After a few hours my brother and I slowly had to drive back to Zagreb again, but just when we wanted to say goodbye, the radio was turned on but something wasn't right. The reported said something about an attack on New York City, but after a minute or two it was still difficult to understand what was going on, just that it was a catastrophe. A neighbor ran by and we all went into his house. They had CNN turned on and we sat down, watching planes flying right into the World Trade Center. I can remember the shock when we watched it as if it was yesterday. I looked at my brother and he looked at me, in disbelief what we watched was real. I knew that when I looked at him, I saw what he saw. I watched myself.

We watched the reports for about an hour, the two building burning, people jumping out of the windows and in the end, how the towers collapsed. At a certain point we had to drive back. On the road, we listened to the radio: The first half of the day it played music as ever, but since the attacks were reported they only played slow, purely instrumental and melancholic pieces with the occasional interruption with the same news.

That afternoon I didn't speak much, just looked outside the window ... and perhaps tried to find something, not really knowing what I was searching. I could remember that a year ago, we had a 飲み会 (party) in Shinya's (one of our buddies) room of the international students dorm in Japan. Most of the nine Germans who were at Ritsumeikan University at that time were present, with one or two German girls who visited us. I don't know why they started talking about it, but the ones who came from southern Germany/Bavaria exchanged their memories about where they were and what they did when Franz Josef Strauß died in 1988. One year later that afternoon I thought with this it is going to be the same way in the future.

I have a completely black T-shirt with New York City written in white letters. It was a present I got in 2000. The T-shirt's meaning changed on September 11th, but that wasn't the only thing.

Every year, I think of my aunt on her birthday as well as New York. Visiting the place itself last year made it much more clear what happened - although you couldn't see much anymore (except a concreted square and memorial plaques), the feeling of being there was similar to an experience I had once in Germany. I was walking through a park when I noticed a small stone with a decayed inscription - it said that this was the place of a concentration camp outpost where people died in slave labor. A tragedy followed by six decades of history, but strangely it adhered to the place so that you could feel it - tonight I learned that the Ustaša regime established a concentration camp on Pag in 1941.

Where were you on September 11th, 2001?

Maki Teshima and Alex Liss: Congratulations!

2005-07-03T13:29:00.001+02:00

Maki Teshima and Alex Liss were married for the second time at Gokonomiya Shrine in Kyoto, Japan on June 17th . Here's the full collection of photos.

p.s.: How many I-House people are married?

Afghanistan: ISAF

2005-07-01T17:36:00.000+02:00

Germany's Bundeswehr has currenty some 7000-8000 soldiers sent out all over the world. The biggest operations are Enduring Freedom (1800 soldiers), ISAF (2500 soldiers) in Afghanistan (English Link), KFOR (2700 soldiers) and EUFOR (1000 soldiers) in the Balkans beside UN observer missions, support of Allied stabilisation efforts for Iraq and operations in Ethiopia & Eritrea and the Mediterranean Sea. In contrast to other armies, the Bundeswehr is a conscript army with 257,000 military and around 125,000 civilian personnel. Its role is described in the Grundgesetz (German Basic Law) as being defensive only (Article 87a (1): The Federation shall establish Armed Forces for purposes of defense.), but since the end of the Cold War the Bundeswehr is undergoing a transformation to adapt to the new and fast-paced changing global security issues.

One of my friends I know since highschool times decided to join the Bundeswehr right after school. It's not his first time abroad, but he's currently in Afghanistan with the ISAF. Last week I recieved several interesting pictures and videos, of which I added three images to this post. If you're looking for other - officially approved - pictures about ISAF, try their website. Stationed at Camp Warehouse, which is the is the operations center for the multinational force in Kabul (کابل)- it's hot, dusty and every now and then a rocket hits a camp as on May 30th. I'm following the news about ISAF closely, like two days ago, when the two German soldiers who got killed last week, arrived at Köln-Wahn airport. I hope my friend will come back in one piece.

My friend also told me that lots of mercenaries are hired to replace military U.S. troops. PBS published an indepth report about private warriors. Right now, around 120,000 mercenaries are in Iraq - outsourcing call centers and support desks, alright, but outsourcing troops is not in the same league. War is too important to be left to companies - where's the legal framework for private military firms anyway - if they loose control who's liable?

Plans to split the forces into three major parts - intervention, stabilization and support forces - are accompanied by a strong reduction of the overall size. Right now, it happens that draftees sue because the equity of conscription for all male youths is not kept - if you're 23, married or have been categorized as T3, you're not drafted anymore. Also, since the European Court of Justice opened up military service to women, there are around 12,000 women serving in the Bundeswehr.

For years, there have not only been developements to transform the Bundeswehr to a more modern army, but also to change its very basic structure and abolish the conscript system. The FDP as well as the Green Party are for it, the SPD and CDU want to keep it. While some seem to think a professional army would cost less, experiences of other countries have shown that cost is not a factor. The major difference between a conscript and professional army is the purpose and the intended effect on society. A conscript army can't provide as many ready-for combat troops, since most soldiers serve as draftees for a certain time (nine months in Germany) and are not fit for deployment, but a citizen in uniform has a positive effect on the society a professional army never could. A conscript army comes with another perk: Youths who don't want to join the army do civilian service - loosing that support, many social institutions would have extreme problems to keep up their service for elderly, handicapped people etc.

On the other hand, a professional army would enable Germany to increase its participation for global security, affirm its claim for a seat in the UN security council, but at the same time "locate" the army outside German society, compared to the current condition and would probably be even more expensive (German politicians who want to raise the budget - say, for a bigger contribution on the international stage - have a hard time defending their stance). Professional soldiers have a different motivation and such troops basically make more sense in regard to the current global political situation. Nevertheless: As long as the issue of a looming omission of the civilian service and the overall political and societal impact is not properly addressed to, a switch to a professional army is probably a bad idea. It needs to be done, but done the right way.

N.B.: Since most links in this posting lead to German sites, you might want to try Babelfish to translate the content into English or French.

Post a Secret

2005-06-29T11:59:00.000+02:00

A very innovative use of weblogs: People send postcards with their secrets, the blog maintainer scans and puts them online - some of the secrets are quite sad, actually, the page is certainly worth a look.

PostSecret

Bionic Man Moves Artificial Arm With Brain

2005-06-28T14:50:00.000+02:00

Science follows fiction. It's not exactly the Six Million Dollar Man, but it's getting there:

The world's first bionic man, Jesse Sullivan, 54, accidentally touched live wires while working as a utility lineman in Tennessee. He suffered severe burns, causing him to lose his arms.
[...]
When Sullivan's brain tells his arm to do something, it's done in seconds and he has feeling in the bionic arm.
[...]
By the time it's perfected, the cost of manufacturing the bionic arm is expected to be about $6 million, according to the report.

The hospital's website has several videos about the procedure and the results. Give it a few years and people might feel and look natural.

Bionic Man Moves Artificial Arm With Brain

Europe's Crime Rate and Capital Punishment Part II

2005-06-27T00:30:00.000+02:00

The more I think about the first part of my response, the more I'm convinced there's basically no need for a second part. Although the initial question was whether the abolishment of capital punishment lead to higher crime rates in Europe, I refuted Curzon's claim that there's a correlation between the death penalty and homicides: Deterrence is not a factor. So far, so good - but if the death penalty doesn't act as a deterrent, in what other way does it affect the crime rate? Since this was the foundation of Curzon's theory, the rest automatically collapses back upon itself. There's no proof capital punishment has any effect on crime rates at all, homicide rates or others.

Anyway, let's take another look at the numbers at hand. A lower crime number in the U.S. is compared to higher crime rates in France, England and Wales between 1995 and 2001. The origin of those numbers is not completely clear. Although most of the links Curzon presented can be found in the top five of perspicuous (?) Google searches (like "crime rate europe homicide"), the mere description another source for his comparison between the U.S. and European countries doesn't help much here. Looking further for the source of the mentioned crime numbers ("4161 6941 9927") reveals that several weblogs beside Dailypundit copied it one from the other, always citing an Interpol source that's not available (or not available any more). In dubio pro reo, let's suppose the numbers are from Interpol and are correct (there are other official sources, that still leaves us with the question what's the connection to the topic at hand? The numbers for the United States are lower than for European countries that abolished the death penalty, but it's not about homicides, but a general crime rate which can't be proven to be influenced only by the (existence or abolition of the) death penalty. I don't want to invoke the obligatory apples and oranges argument, but let's rather stick to the homicide rate.

In England, the the House of Commons concluded that capital punishment must now be seen to be inhuman and degrading and abolished capital punishment in 1973. Note that the last time an execution took place in Britain was 1964 - details here. Here's the UK Crime Reduction website Curzon took a look at but unfortunately didn't find the homicide rate chart. Although there is a upwards trend, it is decreasing since 2002/2003. The homicide rate in England and Wales in 2000 was at 1.5 per 100,000 (USA: 5.9): This is not about trends, just a synchronous comparison. Homicide rate London - Washington B.C. between 1998 and 2000: 528 and 733 (which translates to a homicide rate of 2.38 per 100,000 in London and 45,79 in Washington!). Between 1996 and 2000, the homicide rate fell about 1% in all Europe (+25% in England, -10% in France). Russia, as another example saw a drop of 2% in the same time period. They still have capital punishment, although they're not using it.

France abolished capital punishment in 1981, the last execution taking place in 1977, there's lots of information about homicides and the overall crime rate for the time between 1997 and (May!) 2005, for an overview of trends, take a look at this. Let's see how our Canadian neighbors are doing. They abolished capital punishment in 1976, the homicide rate dropped and decreased in the following two decades.

Canadian research on the deterrent effect of punishment has reached the same conclusion as the overwhelming majority of US studies: the death penalty has no special value as a deterrent when compared to other punishments. In fact, the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police has stated: "It is futile to base an argument for reinstatement on grounds of deterrence".

Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications published a long term statistic about the crime rate in Japan here and a bilingual document from 2005 titled 刑法犯の罪名別認知件数，検挙件数及び検挙人員 (penal code crime cases known to the police, cases cleared up and arrestees by type of crime (1980 to 2002) ) - the numbers for homicide are decreasing, by the way. Charles Lane gives more insight about the death penalty in Japan.

To be fair, the crime rate in Europe is increasing. A report by the University of West England for example shows that there has been a general increase in crime over the last 25 years (1995). It also mentiones reasons why crime has increased - but don't be surprised if you don't find abolition of capital punishment in the list.

Europe's Crime Rate and Capital Punishment Part I

2005-06-26T10:37:00.000+02:00

On some mornings you know what you're going to do over the day, on some morning you wake up and see what the day keeps ready for you. Then there are mornings like this one when you think you know what's going to happen, but then you read your name on Cominganarchy - surprise, surprise. Curzon wrote a brief outline of the evidence that the death penalty reduces crime. The post was triggered by a remark from my side that referred to a post about the Death Penalty in Japan on June 2nd.

The question is, does the death penalty have an effect as a deterrence and did the abolishment increase the crime rate in Europe? In his post, Curzon tries to back up his earlier statement with facts. Let's take a look at those numbers.

Curzon draws a comparison between the homicide rates in the U.S. and Europe - since the definition of homicide is almost identical in most countries, I fully agree that comparisons of homicide rates are valid in this respect. He also posts numbers of a homicide rate cut in half in the last 20 years in the U.S. What happened, that it dropped from the 1980s to 2000? Was it really the death penalty, as Curzon exclaims (Wow, homicides cut in half! That’s quite an accomplishment.)? I agree, it is an accomplishment, but who or what do you have to thank for? Curzon speaks of a correlation, but he completely fails to show a connection between capital punishment and the changing homicide rate. He also makes the mistake to focus too much on one rather short period of time. If we take a few steps back and look at the big picture, you will find two peaks in the 20th century where homicide rates in the U.S. peaked. The first one was in the early 30s (keyword prohibition) with a homicide rate of 9,7 per 100,000 citizens and the second one was during the 80s (keyword war against drugs), as mentioned by Curzon, with a twice reocurring homicide rate of about 10 per 100,000 citizens until the 1990s. Following his argumentation, we would have to presuppose a rare use of the death penalty in 1930 and 1980.

The number of people on the death row increased steadily since the early 70s (which only means that the offenders were already isolated from society), but did the increase prevent the peak of homicide rates in the 80s? No, it didn't. How many potential murderers showed up at their friendly neighborhood police station and stated that the death penalty deterred them from killing someone? If there ever was one, I'd honestly be surprised. But then, how do you know the death penalty deterred anyone? I'm using factsheets of the U.S. Department of Justice, the same source Curzon quoted and used.

In the 1930s, the number of executions hit an all-time high and decreased until the 60s, just as the homicide rate decreased. In Curzon-country, the number of homicides should have sky-rocketed, but they didn't, in the contrary, it was cut in half. Does that mean a laisse-faire, dangerously liberal, left-wingish dilatoriness in regard to capital punishment surprisingly had the effect of people behaving better and killing each other less often? Of course not. Also in the early 1930s, the number of homicides peaked, where's the correlation with the death penalty now? There is none, just as there is no deterrence. It's a myth - far not as easy to correlate as a singular, decisive factor for decreasing crime rates as many, many supporters of the death penalty wish it to be.

During the background research for this response, I noted that supporters of the death penalty mention that during highly publicized death penalty cases the homicide rate is found to go down but it goes back up when the case is over, so that people react to it - Jon Manning, Curzon and alike fail to see that offenders don't think logically. Murders are not logical per se, no murderer plans to be caught or wants to be caught or recieve the death penalty as a consequence of his (or her) doing. If you take Japan as an example, Younghusband already described the system there as very low-profile, how can it act as a deterrence if it's low-profile? This part of your theory, Curzon, has no foundation.

I'll continue with my reponse on the actual comparison between the United States and Europe after I come back from work (I'm sorry to keep you waiting ;-) ).

Pew Global Attitudes

2005-06-25T23:25:00.000+02:00

Pew Global Attitudes Survey published a snapshot of opinions around the world, Howard French reports concisely about an article by Brian Knowlton titled U.S. image abroad. Chirol over at Cominganarchy might be pleased (and possibly sad) to find his opinion in regard to Anti-Americanism to be widespread confirmed - although the U.S. image improved slightly, it is still in the red.

What I found interesting in regard to Germany that Germans don't see themselves as popular as they really are.

They are much too self-deprecating. In fact, other Western European nations give Germany the highest global favorability ratings of any of the five leading nations (U.S., France, China, Japan and Germany) covered by the survey.

That reminded me of something Dr. Ruprecht Vondran said last year after a lecture on economic issues: Germans can't and don't define anymore who they are and don't love they country any more. In Europe, they're loosing their cultural and national contour. If you ask people about the British, French or Italians, they have a certain image in their mind. If you ask them about the Germans, it's getting increasingly difficult. While I don't see this much of a problem - define yourself as a European and you'll be fine - I even see it as an advantage that pride is not a word(many) Germans connect with their country. I had a similar talk about the topic with Sir Francis in Japan some five years ago. Being proud of your country makes you vulnerable, since attaching emotions to such complex, amorph structures as countries leaves lots of opportunities to be criticized and in the course hurt. If you're hurt, you're open to revenge, and revenge and irrationality lead to arguments and possibly armed hostilities (sounds Yoda-ish, but I hope you get my point ;-) ). There's nothing wrong with working hard to give something back to society, in the contrary.

Back to the survey: 80% of all Germans were certain that not using violence in the case of Iraq was right in 2003 and that opintion even increased since up to 87%. Between 2002 and 2005 Germany's support decreased from 70% down to 50%, although I don't think Germans sympathize less with Americans about what happened on 911, but there's strong disagreement about implementation, targets, conduct...

Also, Canada was in spot one when the question was how western publics view the Americans - in the categories violent and rude, the relationship is deteriorating. Nevertheless, please correct me if I'm wrong, but I still see a difference between the U.S. government and its people. Of course, it got harder to differentiate between those two since George W. Bush's re-election as all reasons why the U.S. government has been critized in the U.S. and abroad were already on the table before the election. It's a democracy after all, so it's not far off to say that the people have a reponsebility when it comes to their duly elected leaders. In the end, every people deserves the government they have, but I'm not so sure

Another bright spot in the survey:

In fact, even the French give Germany a higher favorability rating (89%) than they give their own country (74%). The Germans, however, return the favor, giving France a 78% favorability rating, higher than the 64% they give their own country.

If two countries that had serious ...misunderstandings over centuries can get as close as they are now, I'd say that's reason to be optimistic for all of Europe. It might be difficult at the moment, but there's hope for the future. By speaking of which, one third in contrast to the rest of the country in Germany thinks immigration is a bad idea. I don't want to get too far into demographics, xenophobia and national immigration policies, but that's one of the big omissions our government has allowed itself. Being the son of immigrants myself, I have a slightly different angle on the issue than the afore mentioned two thirds. Those people are afraid to loose the way of life they're used to, in case there are too many foreigners coming (the boat is full argument), but that is in my opinion rather a general problem than one connected to immigration. The German way of life changed drastically in the last 50, in the last 100 years, and the developement towards another drastic change is not stoppable. This country need skilled workers, people who don't only cohabitate but bear children. Does future sociocultural, genetic or otherwise diversity scare you? Take a look at the mayor cities, almost 20% of Düsseldorf's citizens are foreigners, and nobody can deny that life is good here. In fact, Düsseldorf is one of the wealthiest cities in Germany, just as one argument for the people who are afraid of decreasing economic strength. Diversity is not a threat, it is a neccessity - just as it is change. Call it progess.

The U.S. image abroad: Even China's is better

Surveys on- and offline

2005-06-24T11:37:00.000+02:00

June seems to be a good month for surveys. Take this one, if you're a weblogger and have ten minutes to spare. Cameron Marlow, a graduate student at the MIT Media Lab who is studying various aspects of social networks and media contagion needs the survey's results as a part of his PhD thesis - it's up until monday.

From the results page, it looks like I started blogging before the bulk (2001-2004) and that I'm with my 28 years younger than the average blogger. For reasons why people blog, there were many who reponded they blog to increase reputation. Who blogs for reputation, people working in technology related fields? Politicians, perhaps?

When I went to the movies last night, two girls from the Institute of Sociology at Heinrich-Heine University asked me to take their survey. One of the questions asked how much I set value to the composition of the audience in my favorite cinema (does that vary at all?) or the supply of snacks. The focus of the survey was something else though, one tenth of the questions centered around Operas, whether I like them or not, how many times I went to the Opera in the last 12 months and why I don't go. Since they don't want to know why people go to the Opera, I got the impression the conductors of the survey assume that either moviegoers don't like Operas or the Deutsche Oper am Rhein cooperates with the Institute of Sociology to find out why people stay away.

I-House people on the net

2005-06-23T13:27:00.000+02:00

Unsuspectingly surfing the net again, I clicked my way from Coming Anarchy over to Japundit and then to Pixelscribbles, I suddenly read of Justin Klein's descriptions of his amazing experiences at Ritsumeikan University - currently a 留学生 (foreign student) at Rits! There're also pictures of of Kyoto - 懐かしい! - and the new I-House - there are two now and I heard they're building another one. There're other I-House bloggers as well, take a look at dubious adventures, Bootleg YHM and Yamasama. I read Mutantfrog's weblog before, but didn't know he studied at Rits, too.

Justin Klein and Mutantfrog added to Blogroll.

Vandercook High School, Jackson, Michigan

2005-06-22T23:56:00.000+02:00

That's about as close as I can get to my old high school, I lived in Jackson for a half year back in 1995. Today, I looked around and found their website as well as my first driving instructor, Chuck Miller. I was in the last year of exchange students who were allowed to take the driving test in the US and drive for a year in Germany - that's lots of driving experience for $12. The superintendent also looks familiar, but except them I didn't find anybody else. I can remember that a Brasilian and a French student (Cedric?) went to the same school that year, I wonder what they're doing now. I can remember one thing though - a girl I used to hang around with at school asked me whether we have TV sets at home (yes, and we have even color television sets), fridges and .. the last one I forgot, but it was funny, my (cassettes!) walkman - made in Japan - was thinner than the ones they used at that time. The overall knowledge about Europe was focused on America's role in World War II, but when I think back about history education in my school in Germany, we had three years about WWII and the Holocaust and next to nothing about the time after 1945. Then again, German pupils have the advantage that American TV, music, movies and other aspects of culture regularily swap over to Europe, so usually they are informed about what's going on on the other side of the pond.

For the curious of mind, Jackson is the birth place of the Republican Party in 1854, they held their first state convention there.

Google Maps - Vandercook High School, Jackson, Michigan

Alive and Kicking

2005-06-21T21:32:00.000+02:00

We were at the doctor's office again, no big news there - but last night, the baby moved in the womb in a very noticeable and agile way. Until now, the only life signs we got was some movement on the screen or the cardiotocography (simultaneous recording of heartbeat frequency and uterine contractions). Feeling the child making itself at home inside, turning from one side to the other is a totally new experience.

About mothers, children and weblogs (and politics): click me

Brussels!

2005-06-19T22:33:00.000+02:00

We plan to enjoy one last travel between July 11th and 15th before the new entrant to our family arrives. Our first destination some five years ago was Paris, my wife already travelled to Vienna, Rome is too far away in the circumstances - and Zurich quite pricy, so we settled for Brussels: The capital of the European Union, bilingual (French and Dutch), with a mixed architecture of gothic, classicism, art nouveau, and lots of attractions. Manneken Pis, the Atomium, Grand Place, the town hall, the royal palace, Saint Michael and the Basilica are already on our list.

Tourist and travel information about Brussels in Belgium

Tameshiwari Session

2005-06-18T21:09:00.000+02:00

Today my Dojo in Mönchengladbach, where I practice Kyokushin Karate, organized a 試割　(Tameshiwari) session with barbecue afterwards. Every member of the school brought spruce or similar wood and food. Our Sensei, Rolf, asked a local butcher to prepare two bricks of ice on the scale of one meter in length and about twenty centimeters in diameter. What he got was eighty centimeters in length and thirty centimeters in diameter, but he brought it anyway - and broke the ice in two halves with a 回蹴 (mawashi geri). I took videos of everybody's Tameshiwari test with my faithful Fuji Finepix 4500 I acquired in Japan five years ago, but sometime inbetween the data storage card suddenly issued an error, so I can't put the video online (yet), hopefully I can recover a few recordings. Until that, take a look at these tests.

Meet the Staff

2005-06-17T10:15:00.000+02:00

I have to apologize, I'm a little bit slow with posting since I'm working fulltime on the new weblog which is going to be based on WordPress 1.5.1.2. The layout for the blog is going to change too, the themebrowser at alexking.org is a real time-saver.

Nevertheless... on thursday evening, we went to a seminar at Marien-Hospital in Düsseldorf, our first choice when we started comparing local hospitals in regard to number of births, episiotomy and Caesarean rate, support by midwives etc. - also, since my mother works there and lives in an adjoining building we quickly reached a decision. The head of the maternity clinic, Professor Diemer and two staff members talked with about three dozen future parents about... well, about everything. We also had the chance to take a tour in the labor rooms, which were smaller than I expected. The adjacent room was currently used so we heard a women shouting extremely loud and penetrating - one of the people in the group remarked this reminded him of a music school with singing classes.

Fresh Fish

2005-06-16T11:02:00.000+02:00

Buy where the Japanese buy... Saito behind Düsseldorf main station is the best place for fresh fish - you can buy everything there, even raw fish for Sushi like Toro - and even fish that only exists at Saito - I couldn't find it on Google. I don't know the exact address, but you can take a look at this map.

P2P SIP

2005-06-15T19:34:00.000+02:00

This could be the next big thing. P2P and standard technology. There's a detailed analysis of the Skype network as well (quite technical). I hope Xten or some other company will create a client for it, I'm using Skype, but I principally don't like proprietary software that much. Skype is so successful because the installation and usage is a piece of cake, a little bit of competition wouldn't hurt.

P2P SIP

What Philosophy Do You Follow?

2005-06-14T10:46:00.000+02:00

Just took an interesting test by a guy called arocoun. It's a website where everybody can create quizzes for the public. Take a look at the top ten, I liked this one.

"You scored as Utilitarianism." Justice (Fairness) and Existentialism were the next highest results, Nihilism and Divine Command the lowest.

Aha.

Korean Registration Form

2005-06-13T14:58:00.000+02:00

The last project is done, had a marathon of over nine hours yesterday and finished it a few minutes ago. My wife checked and doublechecked everything.

IIK 한국어 사이트

I hope it's going to attract new students from South Korea. With a short glance over the documentation of this and last years courses, I'd say there are already many students from Japan and South Korea coming to learn German here, but with the current government change and the new policy for academic tuition fees the numbers might decline in the long run.

A New Face for the Neighborhood

2005-06-13T09:03:00.000+02:00

We're living in Düsseldorf, close to an old goods station that's not used anymore except for S-Bahn transit. The area is huge, some 50-60,000 sqm lie idle since the 80ies. A few weeks ago mfi, an estate company opened an information tent for the citizens in the area, informing them about their plans: They're going to build a shopping mall, 39,000 sqm of space which is twice as big than the Schadow Arkaden in the city. I'm sceptical that Bilk, which is not part of the downtown can use that much shopping space at all - it would be about 60% of the size of Europe's shopping mall #1, the Centro in Oberhausen (70,000sqm). The train station is planned to be expanded for regional transit as it was the case a few decades ago, but even with a new subway line Bilk is hardly going to compete against downtown. For the curious of mind, the local Green office informs about the construction site and alternatives here.

Fun with Scripts

2005-06-12T23:47:00.000+02:00

Since we're back to one name for our successor, we started looking around for inspiration. If you google for baby names you get more results that anybody could possibly want. Here's a fun script we tried for kicks. Enter your name, choose the gender and the main personality trait and there you go. A list of names the randomizer offered:

Vin Louie Grabic
Marlow Robbin Grabic
Frye Chogan Grabic
Hollis Guthrie Grabic
Mckile Kimo Grabic
Carolos Wesley Grabic
Crystal Melody Son
Tadita Ona Son
Nora Meredith Son
Kalinda Helia Son
Vanida Gelsey Son
Shauna Babette Son

Better don't use the script to actually decide your baby's name, after a short look into by junk folder, I got the impression that spammers use those combinations. My new newphew's name is Julian by the way, in contrast to the script suggestions which offered always two names he has just one.

Random Renamer

Blogging under Pressure

2005-06-11T11:12:00.000+02:00

Buzznews reports that Hossein Derakhshan from hoder.com decided to return to Iran to watch the upcoming elections. Since his critical reporting about the Iranian government, it is probable, if not likely, that his plan will get him into jail as this was the case with Sina Motallebi, an Iranian journalist. Hoder asks for help on his website for his trip and in case he gets into trouble. Keep an eye on his weblog, publicity is one of the things that could keep him safe.

Sim Brain

2005-06-10T14:46:00.000+02:00

How many Joe Average processors do you need to accumulate the equivalent of 22.8 teraflops (one trillion computations per second) of calculating power? I have no idea, but this one can do it alone - and simulate a human brain. One of the benefits the science team aims at is cracking the neural node, which basically means to understand how the brains works, how it uses electrical signals, how our memory works. It might even help to answer question like how selfconscience and our perception of reality are constructed, how intelligence works? Questions philosophers thought about it and tried to answer and give definitions for thousands of years. The project is not about creating a thinking brain, some kind of computerized artificial intelligence, but still, just the thought of being able to simulate the brain was pure science fiction a few decades ago. You're mentally ill? Let's take a closer look...

It will be the first time humans will be able to observe the electrical code our brains use to represent the world, and to do so in real time, ...
[...]

The end product, which will take at least a decade to achieve, can then be stimulated and observed to see how different parts of the brain behave.

Blue Brain project: Mission to build a simulated brain begins

Do You Want To Know...?

2005-06-09T19:30:00.000+02:00

We had an appointment with a doctor at Praenatal as mentioned last month. My wife's gynecologist sent us there to find out more about a possibly inherited heart defect I had as a child as well. (Absolutely not) Funnily enough, today the first thing the doctor told us was that at the current stage of the pregnancy, there's no way to tell whether there's this defect or not. Looks like the gynecologist sent us to the examination all for nothing. Nevertheless, he examined the baby throughly, we could see lots of details on a big screen. After ten minutes of concentration and focusing on the screen, the doctor chose to change the perspective to a view directly at the baby's genitals and seriously asked us whether we want to know the gender: It was all there and obvious to see on the screen - nothing at all left to unveil. Perhaps he thought we would want to know anyway. I don't know, the situation was almost comical, because he was absolutely serious when he asked us.

We had to interrupt the examination twice though, the baby chose a position which made it impossible to check if everything is alright with the head, so altogether we were there for over two and a half hours. Oh, by the way, it's a boy. And his nose is definitively Croatian, too.

Bibimbap

2005-06-08T23:58:00.000+02:00

Today's lunch: South Korean Bibimbap with improvised ingredients: Rice, farn, salad, gingko, chongak-kimchi, zucchini, onions, sesame leaves and doraji. Here are a few more recipies for Bibimbap.

another project: Japanese registration form

2005-06-07T23:56:00.000+02:00

I mentioned it a few days ago, there are two projects I'm working on at the moment (and another one, connected to #2). The second one just got finished, and is going to be published tomorrow or sometime until Friday:

外国語コースのオンライン申込

The IIK Düsseldorf is one of the companies I work for (and a very good one if you want to learn German). This time I got to fiddle around with a new language for the online registration form. A few years ago, I already worked on the French and Russian versions, but the Japanese one was more fun - I actually got to use my Japanese language education in a work context. My 2 1/2 years of school French and Cyrillic my parents tought me twenty years ago didn't get me that far I have to admit.

random failures

2005-06-06T15:16:00.000+02:00

It doesn't happen often - in fact, for the first time since I have DSL, two times within a week my internet connection fails me. Last week there were some damages from a storm, this saturday at 12:14 the light on my modem went dark. I'm in desperate need of a fallback system, luckily, there's Ebay with affordable alternatives...

Behind the Curtains...

2005-06-03T15:08:00.000+02:00

This weblog is going to get a new home soon. I reserved the domain grabic.name, since my internet provider, 1 & 1, supplies its customers with one free top-level domain. I'm also thinking about using Wordpress, NucleusCMS or Serendipity in the future. Blogger is a great - free - service, but it's too limiting.

The Death Penalty in Japan

2005-06-02T18:31:00.000+02:00

Charles Lane, staff writer on national affairs at The Washington Post published an insightful article about the death penalty in Japan at Foreign Policy. A few excerpts:

Unlike capital punishment in the United States, Japan’s death penalty is on the rise. Japanese officials keep state executions out of public view and shrouded in secrecy. Not even the condemned prisoners know the day they will die. Step inside the gallows for a rare look at how Japan takes a life.

[...]

Not only is Japan the only member of the Group of Seven industrialized countries other than the United States to retain capital punishment, it is also increasing its use of the death penalty.

[...]

In Japan, death row prisoners are not told in advance of their execution dates—a practice international human rights organizations condemn as a form of psychological torment.

[...]

Perhaps the most notorious such miscarriage of justice involved Sakae Menda, who in 1948, at the age of 23, was convicted of a double ax murder. The conviction was based on the contradiction-riddled testimony of a prostitute and Menda’s own confession, extracted after spending 80 hours in a police station without sleep.

[...]

...it seems incredible that confessions are not given to the court as either tapes or verbatim transcripts. Rather, they are rewritten and summarized by the authorities themselves.

[...]

Toyoko Ogino, an interpreter I worked with in the coal-mining town of Omuta, was surprised when I told her that prisoners were hanged. “I thought that was just an expression,” she said.

[...]

Polls indicate that public support for capital punishment is even stronger in Japan than in the United States—more than 81 percent in a February 2005 survey.

[...]

Five guards press separate buttons simultaneously. Only one of these is the button that actually opens the trap door. And all of this takes place outside the witnesses’ field of vision—offstage, as it were. There is a hanging, but no identifiable hangman.

I'm really irritated by the Japanese people' high support for capital punishment. I'll try to find some information about what were the pro and con reasons given. Can't say for sure whether it's for real, but I found a picture of the gallows in the Osaka detention center here. I assume Toyoko Ogino's misunderstanding of the expression was most probably a reference and mix-up to 首を切る (kubi wo kiru), which directly translated means something along the lines of to decollate s.o.. This expression is used when somebody loses his job, but 絞首する (koushu suru) doesn't actually carry a metaphoric meaning except to decollate s.o..

There's further information about the death penalty at www.deathpenaltyinfo.org. This information is from their website:

In 2004, there were at least 3,797 executions in 25 countries around the world. China, Iran, the United States, and Viet Nam were responsible for 94 percent of these known executions.

The vast majority of them in China, though. In regard to the death penalty, Japan and the United States are among countries such as China, Iran, Viet Nam, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Kuwait, Bangladesh, Egypt, Singapore, Yemen and North Korea. Amnesty International has more facts about the issue here.

2:0

2005-06-01T16:49:00.000+02:00

Just had a talk with my brother's mother in law: I became uncle once again! They were expecting a girl, but yesterday a 54 cm, 4000+ grams boy decided to take a look at the world.

My brother and his wife didn't decide the new baby's name yet, since their gynecologist accidently used a female possessive pronoun once and they prepared themselves for a girl. The mother in law told me they were thinking about "Dejan", but I guess that was a joke since it is a Serbian orthodox name. ;-)

K21 - a new exhibition

2005-06-01T14:28:00.000+02:00

Until Sunday, Yoshitomo Nara und Hiroshi Sugito exhibited about three dozen paintings in Düsseldorf's Kunstsammlung, a.k.a K21. The works itself weren't that interesting, although I failed to understand their distinctiveness. My new Japanese language exchange partner, who is a student of Thomas Ruff and a passionate photographer, mentioned that the way Nara's and Sugito's works are painted makes them special. One of the pictures was a drawing of Afro-Ken, a figure I haven't seen for at least four years.

I liked one of the permanent exhibitions better, expecially a work by Katharina Fritsch: "Man and Mouse" is, as I read, actually a statement about unfulfillness of contemporary love - but also reminiscient of Francisco Goya in a clever and very amusing way.

The Blogosphere At Frankfurter Rundschau

2005-05-31T23:03:00.000+02:00

German newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau regularily posts about the blogworld's reaction to current world events, politics, journalism, changes in society and its relationship to technology:

Frankfurter Rundschau online

Stranded

2005-05-30T11:18:00.000+02:00

What to do when you boot up your computer and there's no internet connection? Two days ago, our phone line went dead for an hour, after that internet was down until a few minutes ago. If you didn't change your DSL settings, the hardware doesn't smell or look charred, the software is untouched, then there's not much one can do: Sit tight and wait. Telekom customer support can check basic DSL availability, so that's what I did and called them. The storm yesterday night must have broken something since there are outtages all over the country. If you're lucky and have alternative internet access (a modem or an IT cafe around the corner), take a look at this website next time. Currently there are still some people in my area having DSL blackouts.

The Forgotten Soldiers

2005-05-28T08:23:00.000+02:00

Japan Times and Asahi report a surprising story about "forgotten" soldiers. The last time Imperial army soliders were found was in the 70ies - I think they even made a movie about it, but can't find it at IMDb right now. I found Hell in the Pacific, but that one's slightly different.

Mountain men in Philippines likely World War II soldiers

Three Projects

2005-05-27T19:39:00.000+02:00

I've been working on three new projects since wednesday which left little room for writing. The first project was indirectly related to my stay in Japan five years ago. I was so lucky to be supported by the DAAD, without the scholarship, I would have never laid foot on Japanese soil. Some time ago, I found out that there are several alumni organizations in Germany and made contact with two of them. The local group consisted of one active person, but we managed to meet with four former scholarship holders who live in the area. During the first meeting, I offered to help with the technical stuff and that's how I came to make this. A standard Mambo installation with little content, but that's hopefully going to change. I didn't work with Mambo yet, but the first impression was very positive, easy installation, intuitive interface, an internal structure that serves lots of individual tastes - aside from the rather spotty documentation, but the forum makes up for it. The main goal was to create a working site with basic news, poll, forum and calender capabilities as quick and easy as possible. You'll notice the recycled header image. The only thing that's bugging me is that useless toolbar on top, I'm not sure yet how to get rid of it - it's part of a service that provides the subdomain and doesn't actually have to be retained.

The other two projects are still on a test server, as soon as they're publicly available I'll drop a note.

To Boldly Go Where...

2005-05-26T11:31:00.000+02:00

...no Man (machine) has gone before: Voyager I is about to leave the solar system after 28 years of travel:

NASA - Voyager Enters Solar System's Final Frontier

A Girl?

2005-05-25T00:24:00.000+02:00

We were at the doctor's today. My wife is in her 21st week and it was time for a ultrasound checkup. We asked the gynecologist to keep the answer to the big question to herself, as we chose not to spoil the fun with the search for male and female names, so she didn't show us - but my wife thinks it's a girl. What you can see on the picture is the head, torso, right leg and a part of the umbilical cord. The doctor wanted to take the picture when it's looking into our direction, but the kid ignored us. We could watch the picture being projected on the ceiling, but it was difficult to tell how big it is. The doctor measured the body, it's 21 cm now (that's 8.26 inch for the people not blessed with the metric system) and kicking and moving like there's a party going on and everybody's invited. My wife doesn't feel anything yet, but that'll change soon. I can't wait for 9th October, but I hope the baby takes all time it needs in there.

Anonymous Blogging

2005-05-24T00:12:00.000+02:00

Since people have lost their jobs over blogging, I thought I look around and see what you can do to protect

your privacy
your basic right of freedom of speech

I found two websites that explain in quite simple terms how anonymous blogging can be done:

AnonBlog
EFF

The latter has a few other interesting links. In some countries, weblogging can even lead to people being put into prison. There's a list of webloggers who have been detained, freed or threatened in various countries. If you speak German, take a look at Teheran Bytes, a blog written by Nahid Siamdoust, reporter for TIME Magazine in Tehran.

UPDATE:
Here are two more useful links...

Private Blogging Wiki
taint.org: Anonymous blogging made simple

The Turnout Report

2005-05-23T11:44:00.000+02:00

Düsseldorf's office for statistics and elections published their report (185 pages) about the Diet parliamentary elections a few minutes ago here.

Update:
The ratio of male to female delegates at the SPD was 43 to 31, CDU 78 to 11, FDP 9 to 3 and Green Party 6 to 6. As far as I know, no other party than the Green established full gender equality in their party manifesto.

The highest turnout was in Essen (area IV) with 72,7%, the lowest one in Duisburg III with 51,8%. The number for Düsseldorf, my area: 65,5%. The SPD recieved the highest percentage in Unna III - Hamm II with 55,9%, the lowest in Paderborn I with 21,3%. The CDU in contrast was most popular in Paderborn I 65,2% and only 28,3% in Cologne III. In the latter electorate area, the Green Party revieced their highest percentage with unbelievable 18,6%. Paderborn is obviously the conservative stronghold in NRW, I'd like to know why...

This election could not only have consequences for all of Germany, but also for the European Union. The close friendship between the French and German government is partly based on the relationship between Chancellor Schröder and President Chirac - with a CDU-led government in Berlin, this important pillar will vanish in thin air.

Yesterday was Yesterday

2005-05-23T10:58:00.000+02:00

It looks like Chancellor Schröder's strategy to deviate the voters' attention from the outcome of the election to the big question of the CDU/CSU "K-Frage" (who is going to be the conservatives' candidate in the upcoming election?). News at 9. a.m. this morning reported first about the advance of the national election, the outcome of the Diet election in NRW was secondary already. Prime Minister of Hesse Roland Koch has been quoted that It's not a big surprise that we want to go into the campaign with Mrs Merkel as our candidate, the leaders of the CDU/CSU (Christian Social Union) will hold a joint session later this day. The CDU doesn't have a manifesto for the election, so they're under pressure to pass many internal compromises (between CDU and CSU). This might lead to new quarrels and weaken the opposition. As I wrote yesterday, Schröder has no alternative - beside that he seems to be convinced that against a candidate like Mrs Merkel, in direct comparison, he might have a better chance (49% vs 21%). Also, German magazine Stern reports that Lower Saxony Prime Minister Christian Wulff would be a more promising candidate than Angela Merkel. Yet, Mr. Wulff said "No" when asked whether he'd like to run for office, but that could change quickly, if the prospects are good enough.

Local radio, Antenne Düsseldorf, reported that the CDU gained 13% with workers and unemployed. Also, looking at the results below, the Green Party and Liberals both recieved less votes than in 2000 - since the tune of the campaign of CDU was in the spirit of change, this seems to have hurt the smaller parties as well. The FDP lost one of its popular local political leaders, Jürgen Möllemann and didn't build up new faces fast enough. The Green Party didn't recover yet from the Visa Affair earlier this year.

The interim results of the election in NRW:

	number	%
	Diet election on 22.05.2005
eligible voters	13 239 170	100,0
voters	8 334 561	63,0
invalid votes	91 189	1,1
valid votes	8 243 372	100,0
therefrom
SPD	3 059 074	37,1
CDU	3 695 806	44,8
FDP	508 354	6,2
Green	509 219	6,2
REP	67 282	0,8
PDS	72 982	0,9

	number	%
	Diet election on 14.05.2000
eligible voters	13 061 265	100,0
voters	7 409 399	56,7
invalid votes	72 988	1,0
valid votes	7 336 411	100,0
therefrom
SPD	3 143 179	42,8
CDU	2 712 176	37,0
FDP	721 558	9,8
Green	518 295	7,1
REP	83 296	1,1
PDS	79 934	1,1

At noon, the office for statistics and election is going to publish a PDF-file with all relevant information.

Candidates, Manipulations and Wikipedia

2005-05-22T23:59:00.000+02:00

Last update for today. As you can see, the major constituencies for the SPD were in the Ruhr Area, a metropolitan area (actually the most dense population area in Europe) and still the SPD stronghold in NRW. The rest of the state chose CDU this time, but it will probably take the SPD longer than the coming legislative period to retake it.

On another note, factor menos reports about a Reuters that the German Wikipedia entries for Jürgen Rüttgers and Peer Steinbrück have suspiciously many changes in the last days. German magazine Spiegel Online wrote about it, too. Taking a closer look, there are 50 changes only for today, but also revisions by other Wikipedia users - the encyclopedia cleans itself, as usual.

Last extrapolation update for today (it's almost midnight): It's identical to my former post. I guess the numbers won't change much anymore.

Good fight, good night.

"Between Ingeniousness and Harakiri"

2005-05-22T22:42:00.000+02:00

I just watched Tagesthemen at ARD. Ulrich Deppendorf, program director of WDR commented on the election Chancellor Schröder's strategy to advance the national election is somewhere between ingeniousness and harakiri. I think it's the former not only because there's simply no alternative: Since it will be harder to run the country, the government would go down in flames and slowly lacerate itself - a political stalemate is the worst that can happen to any government. Also, Chancellor Schröder challenges the opposition, they have to act now and show that they're fit for government. First they'll have to agree on one candidate: Germany might elect its first female Chancellor (Mrs. Angela Merkel) this fall, but there's still the possibility that one of her rivals tries to take over (as happened before the last national election). Another side effect is that people won't be talking long about the election in NRW and more about the upcoming national one. A risky move, but the SPD is cornered.

updated extrapolation at 10:44 p.m.:
CDU 44,8% +7,9% and 89 seats
SDP 37,1% -5,7%            74
Green 6,2% -0,9%          12
FDP 6,2% -3,7%             12
others 5,7% +2,4%

The CDU's Plans for NRW

2005-05-22T19:49:00.000+02:00

Excepts from the CDU program for NRW:

"Initiative for more economic growth and reduction of bureaucracy:
rejection of anti-discrimination law and against "Green" gene technology
1:1 conversion of federal and EU laws
elimination of SPD-Green "commissary inflation"

Also, the CDU wants to initiate a law against heads scarfs by teachers in public schools and several laws in regard to universities and school education. The CDU also plans to support start-up enterprises by lowering legal obstacles and increase Public-Private-Partnerships. Another main point is the creation of 1,000 new traineeships (elderly nursing). They also plan to improve several laws for child care, re-introduce equestrian police squads, increase controls against graffiti (how is not clear though) and grow 100 avenues in NRW."

updated extrapolation:
CDU 44,6% +7,6% and 86 seats
SDP 37,6% -5,2%          72
Green 5,8% -1,3%          11
FDP 6,3% -3,5%          12
others 5,7% +2,4%

Full Frontal Attack

2005-05-22T19:14:00.000+02:00

The election in NRW has an impact on national politics which is indeed unprecedented in Germany. If Chancellor Schröder really wants to advance the national election to fall 2005 he'll have to overcome another obstacle: First his party will have to issue a motion of no-confidence against his government, which will have to succeed, then the Bundestag will be dissolved within three weeks (article 68 of the basic law), a new election will then be held within 60 days. There's no alternative to Prime Minister Schröder in that case, this move is indeed a bold, full frontal attack.

Update: The SPD won't issue the motion of no-confidence alone, but reaches out to the CDU, if they want advanced elections, all parties together will have to vote against the government. Interesting move.

The First 200 Days

2005-05-22T18:41:00.000+02:00

What's happening next? The CDU will form a coalition with the FDP, we'll how they'll try to solve problems like unemployment in NRW. For poor students, it'll become more difficult to study at all, the CDU already announced to easen dismissal protection - read their program for the first 200 days here.

The SPD and the Green party combined have less seats than the CDU in parliament.
N-TV asked the future NRW Minister of Economics and Labour how much they want to lower the unemployment rate. His response was that he won't answer that question in detail and specify any numbers, since "others already got into a scrape before with that" - hinting to Chancellor Schröder's statement at the beginning of his government in 1998 that he doesn't deserve to be reelected if he can't lower the employment rate drastically (I think he said he wanted to decrease it by half). Anyway, some numbers for you:

CDU 44,1% +7,1% and 85 seats
SDP 37,4% -5,4%     73
Green 6,1% -1,3%     11
FDP 5,9% -3,7%     12
others 6,6% +2,2%

The NRWSPD reports in their own weblog here.

National Elections in 2005?

2005-05-22T18:24:00.000+02:00

Mr Rüttgers gave his first statement after the first extrapolations, translation courtesy by me:

"We knew the surveys were good, we mobilized our voters, 10,000 people alone in the NRW team, the halls were full, the seats were full, the Red-Green government has to go. And therefore I thank everybody, everybody at home and here in our branch office.

I know that the voters put confidence in us, gave us a mandate that NRW comes back, in the following five years with a coalition of the middle. To create security, for the unemployed, for the ones who are afraid to loose their work, for the women to help them to combine work and family - our policy will make NRW a state of a new chance. [...] If we continue to fight as we did in the past weeks, I'm confident we will suceed."

A big surprise: The SPD or more exactly, Mr. Müntefering, the SPD's chairman, thinks about advancing the national election to this year's fall. Since they just lost the election in NRW, this is really a blowoff. Chancellor Schröder is fighting back.

NRW: First Surveys

2005-05-22T18:08:00.000+02:00

First surveys conducted in front of the polling booths estimates 45% for the CDU. Livestream (in German) here.

estimated results at 6:14 p.m. :

CDU 44,5% +7,5%
SPD 38,0% -4,8%
Green 6,0% -1,1%
FPD 6,0% -3,8%
other 5,5%

The universities are going to miss the government's financial support - the students are going to pay tuition fees to make up for the public funds.

Elections in NRW

2005-05-22T11:27:00.000+02:00

NRW (North Rhine-Westphalia), Germany's most populated state with its 18 million citizens is going to the ballots today. The election is - almost - exiting - since the SPD (Social Democratic Party of Germany) ruled for 39 years with the CDU (Christian Democracic Union of Germany) in the opposition. Since 2002, the federal government is lead by Peer Steinbrück (SPD) who formed a coalition with the Green Party (Alliance '90/The Greens). The Green's website features a Star Wars-related campaign video, the SDP is fighting to the end as well. Balloting is over at 6 p.m., then you can watch the results coming in here, it's one of the offical sources provided by the government.

Last election, May 2000, 13 million people were allowed to vote, but the turnout was only 56,7%, with only 7,336,411 valid votes. In 2000, the SPD got 42,8%, but right now, Infratest Dimap sees them at about 37%, CDU 43%, Green and FDP (Free Democratic Party 7,5%. Two days ago, SDP was at around 29% and the CDU at 45%. High unemployment rates - in some areas of NRW as high as 30% - unpopular national politics by the SPD and reforms as Hartz IV drove 800,000 SPD members away. They and the undecided are the ones who count most this time. Thus is looks pretty good for the CDU (and FDP).

On the other hand, Mr Steinbrück is more popular than Jürgen Rüttgers, but half of the people asked in a survey last week want a change of government. Another problem for Mr Rüttgers are excess mandates: If he doesn't win in his constituency, as it happened five years ago, and the CDU wins too many direct mandates, he won't be able to move into parliament. Unfortunately, this is a precondition to be elected for state prime minister. It's a minor obstacle though, another delegate can step down for Mr Rüttgers in case he doesn't make it. After the U.S. election, debates in television became popular, Mr Steinbrück and Mr Rüttgers met twice during the campaign with both times Mr Steinbrück narrowing the margin to his opponent.

The election is a test and thus important for the upcoming national election next year, too. Chancellor Schröder will be under heavy fire in case NRW is lost to the CDU, after all, it's the last SDP-Green Party coalition in Germany - and FDP's Politicians already asked for advanced elections. The result of the election won't have any impact on the Federal Council of Germany though - even if Schröder's SDP looses this state, the opposition wouldn't achieve a majority of 2/3 of the vote in the chamber.

Electoral Test for Germany's Government

Japan Bazar

2005-05-21T16:32:00.000+02:00

Once a year, the Japanese community in Düsseldorf organizes a second hand market between main station and the VHS (a public adult education institute) in early May. This time, it was smaller than in the years before. We got a Doraemon puzzle for a friend. If you're living in the area and want to buy all kinds of stuff cheap, take a look at Duesselnet. You'll need somebody who translates Japanese for you, though. Over 5,000 Japanese live in Düsseldorf, in Europe, it's the biggest Japanese community. The Sarariman are sent here to work for four or five years, and usually they come with their families. When their time has come, they sell their belongings before returning home to Japan, and lots of it is on Duesselnet's black board or the one in the Japanese club at Marienstrasse.

On the Menu

2005-05-21T15:21:00.000+02:00

My family doesn't really know what my (south-korean) wife and me eat. My brother is married to a German, my mother is with an American, my father is married with a Croatian - diversity whereever you look, even on our dishes. My wife's family in Korea is curious, too, so I'll post food every now and then. Today we had spring rolls, whic are not very difficult to cook, but I need more practice with the rolling - I did the ugly roll in the back.

Terrorist or Freedom Fighter

2005-05-20T15:43:00.000+02:00

Where is the difference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter? Since 9/11, the United States have been beating the big drum on the international level to fight terrorism. Now a terrorist - or freedom fighter, depending on your political view, policy and definition - who has been trained by the U.S. Army and was on the run for about 30 years, has been apprehended by the U.S. Homeland Security. Venezuela and Cuba requested his extradition and it is the U.S. government's turn to act. Right now, Carriles is only charged with immigration-related crimes. If the government doesn't measure up to its own words ("If you harbour terrorists, you are terrorists"), its credibility will suffer another hard blow. The San Francisco Chronicle suggested several solutions, the best one in my opinion was to hand him over to the International Criminal Court.

Profile: Luis Posada Carriles

Joseph Chamie

2005-05-19T00:32:00.000+02:00

In the following months, I would like to introduce you to a few interesting people. Some of them I had the pleasure to meet in person, and a few others, although not very high-profile, deserve their five minutes of publicity.

I'd like to start with Mr Joseph Chamie, speaker at New York Model United Nation Simulation 2004 in the general assembly third, the body in which I've had the pleasure to participate. Our group represented Luxembourg - note the "Non-Violence" (a.k.a. "The Knotted Gun") by Fredrik Reuterswärd, a gift from the Government of Luxembourg to the United Nations. The job I'm going to apply for is related to demography, so during the preparations for my portifolio I came across a U.N. webcast aired on November 30th 2004. If you use Real Player (bloated software, try Real Alternative), you can watch the video here or read the transcript here. To be honest, if you want to get an impression of an interesting Demographer, watch the video, the 28 minutes are well invested, I promise.

In the general assembly, Mr Chamie started with a little demonstration of how the world's population changed over the last 50 years. After explaining the three pillars of demography, birth rate, death rate and migration, Mr Chamie said the second half of the 20th century was the most extraordinary in human history. Exemplifying why, he first outlined the world he was born into in 1944. Then he asked all delegates in the room who had highschool education to stand up. There were over two hundred delegates in the room, all of us standing up. We looked at each other, then he asked all delegates who don't have a university degree to sit down. Again another impression, then everyone who lived in the city had to stand up, after that everyone who was born in the countryside. There was only a handful of delegates. Then the married delegates were asked (I stood up again), then the female delegates with one child - both times, there were only a few people. Mr Chamie asked who had more than two children, then three - only one delegate, coming from Africa if I remember correctly, was standing. This demonstration was the basis for his inspiring speech. The collection of 20th century records were:

population growth from 1.6 to 6.1 billion people
87 million increase in 1987
shortest time to add 1 billion
shortest doubling time
incredible decline in mortality
first-ever decline in fertility
international migration
unprecedented urbanization
etc.

From the video, a few statements:

CHAMIE: Well population change is very simple. There are only three ingredients: mortality, fertility and migration. And…ah…for most countries, migration is relatively secondary for most countries. So it’s fertility and mortality. With low mortality the real engine is fertility and that’s what accounts for these differences. And they’re very…
JENKINS: Fewer women having fewer babies? That’s the bottom line is it?.
CHAMIE: Exactly. Lower birth rates, the lower replacement explains why we would be going three hundred years back to two point three billion.

[...]

CHAMIE: They’re many reasons bringing down fertility. One, of course, is mortality rates have come down; that’s a pre-condition – you have to have mortality rates coming down. Second, people are moving to cities, life is changing, children are not as needed as they were on farms and agricultural work. Third, women are becoming educated – once they become educated, they join the labor force – they are delaying marriage, they’re delaying their first birth. Tastes have changed. Now all those ingredients put together – and effective contraception to boot – means that people are choosing smaller families because that’s what they want – and we’re seeing this globally.

[...]

CHAMIE: Well, our projection indicates that India will add another half billion people – five hundred million people - over the next fifty years.
JENKINS: That’s a large growth…
CHAMIE: Pakistan over the next fifty years – despite the fact that Pakistan now is a hundred and fifty-five million and China is one point three billion - over the next fifty years Pakistan will add more people than China. O.K.? Pakistan will move up the list and become the...our projections indicate the fourth largest country in the world

[...]

CHAMIE: By mid century the population of Iran will overtake Russia’s. The population of Palestinians would be larger than the Israelis, the population of the Moroccans would be larger than the Spaniards. The population of the Philippines would be bigger than Japan.

[...]

JENKINS: There are countries I believe, like Italy and South Korea that are already trying to encourage women to have more babies as a way of addressing this problem. Am I right, and if so, have they had any success?
CHAMIE: They’ve had pro-natalist policies and trying to raise it, but so far, they have not been able to raise it back to replacement and most demographers do not believe that they will be able to get it back to replacement in the near future. And the reason why is that people choose according to their own interests and most women are saying, I will have one, possibly two but we are not going to three, four and five simply because we don’t have the time, we are working and we need more help if we’re going to have this and there’s no help coming.

I read estimations a few months back that Germany would need three million immigrants each year to stop the population aging. No politician will be able to explain such an influx. I'll probably be alive in the next 50 years - I'm curious how nations will deal with Mr Chamie's prognosis.

UN Webcast Archives- World Chronicle

2005-05-18T17:06:00.000+02:00

Blogging will be a little bit light until Friday, since an unexpected opportunity came up - I'm applying for a job that could feed my family and allow me to write my doctoral thesis at the same time. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

2005-05-17T16:21:00.000+02:00

Draxblog reported in detail about the outcome of the election in Croatia, here, here, here , here, here and here (wow). All in all, the HDZ lost much influence throughout the country, with barely more than a third of the people going to the ballots at all. In Knin, the turnout resulted in a day of revelation for Sanaders HDZ. The Serbian minority, represented by the SDSS, won 8 out of 17 seats, but instead of forming a coalition with them, Sanader's HDZ chose right wing parties, which in the end might disrupt Croatia's path into the European Union. The issue with General Gotovina, low public participation in politics, anti-EU right-wing parties gaining ground... difficult times for Croatia indeed.

2005-05-16T15:40:00.000+02:00

"Who are our friends?" asks Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff in his article about German foreign policy. The author puts Chancellor Schröder's and President Bush's policy on peace and freedom into an interesting perspective and gives a good explanation about the cultural and historical roots of its difference, going back to the American Revolution and the beginning of the nation state in Europe. The author fails to draw a clear line between twiddling one's thumbs and unobtrusiveness, since diplomacy is often low-key and pressure on another government can be open or concealed. A point I agree to is that hypocrisy, in respect to foreign policy, living up to expectations, promises and own ideas, is not monopolized at all.

Die Zeit - Politik : Who are our friends?

2005-05-15T13:08:00.000+02:00

Two years ago, the campaigns for the upcoming election in Croatia were late, if at all existent. Since the exact date for the election was announced only one and a half months in advance, some parties started campaining hesitatingly and some didn't do anything at all, it was quite bizarre. The parties don't seem to have changed their modus operandi as Dragan Antulov reports in his Draxblog. The democracy fatigue was worse than in Germany two years ago, unfortunately, there's still a lack of interest in politics.

Draxblog III: Local Elections 2005 Update: Uneventful

2005-05-14T18:54:00.000+02:00

One of Germany's best newspapers, "Die Zeit" appearently started blogging about different topics, you can take a look their blogindex here. I accidently stumbled over Elternzeit, a blog by Matthias Braun about children, getting children, becoming parents and all that. It's fairly new, too, the first entry was posted in early March.

Elternzeit

2005-05-14T16:55:00.000+02:00

Here's a great list with tips for every aspiring weblogger. The most important ones imho are "Frequency, good writing, and personality". Oh-oh. Also, there's a warning that people lost jobs, friends and even spouses because of their blogs. As usual, there's quite a lot on the net about it.

47 key tips from the World's best Bloggers

2005-05-13T10:13:00.000+02:00

The daughter of Richard Feynman, one of the greatest scientists of the 20th century, published her father's letters. From the introduction:

When I was very young, I thought my father knew everything. Indeed, Omni magazine once declared him "The smartest man in the world". Upon hearing this, his mother exclaimed,"If Richard is the smartest man in the world, God help the world!" My father was the first one to laugh.

Here's how he experienced the first atomic explosion:

I was blinded by a terrific silver-white flash — I had to look away. Wherever I looked an enormous purple splotch appeared: it was just as bright when I closed my eyes. "That," said my scientific brain to my befuddled one, "is an after-image caused by looking at a bright light — it is not the bomb you are looking at." So I turned back to look at the bomb.

The sky was lit up with a bright yellow light — the earth appeared white. The yellow gradually became darker, turning gradually to orange. In the sky I saw white clouds from above the gadget caused by the sudden expansion following the blast wave — the expansion cools the air and fog clouds form — we had expected this. The orange got deeper, but where the gadget was, it was still bright, a bright orange, flaming ball-like mass. This started to rise, leaving a column of smoke behind, below looking much like the stem of a mushroom. The orange mass continued to rise, the orange to fade and flicker. A great ball of smoke and flame three miles across it was, like a great oil fire billowing and churning, now black smoke, now orange flame. Soon the orange died out and only churning smoke, but this was enveloped in a wonderful purple glow.

Another after-image I thought, but on closing my eyes it did disappear, and appeared on opening them again. Others said they saw it too, probably caused by ionised air produced in the great heat. Gradually this disappeared, the ball of smoke rising majestically slowly upward, leaving a trail of dust and smoke.

Then suddenly there was a sharp loud crack followed by resounding thunder. "What was that?" cried the man at my left, a war department representative. "That is the thing," I yelled back.

'This is how science is done'

2005-05-12T23:59:00.000+02:00

The - unfortunately - neverending story goes on: Pyongyang claims again the have or are close to achieve nuclear weapons capabilities and puts its neighborhood on the edge. This time the threat was more precise, news from North Korea's capital arrived that they removed fuel rods from its nuclear power plant. The only (peaceful) way to convince Pyongyang to let go is a concentrated effort by all parties in the six-party talks. The opposite, threats to take down the North Korean government could easily result in a burning Korean penninsula.

North Korea urged to rejoin talks

2005-05-11T00:01:00.000+02:00

Here's more fun:

Are you a Republican?

2005-05-10T22:25:00.000+02:00

I have it in cold print now: My command of the English language is slippery at best:

55% General American English
20% Yankee
15% Dixie
5% Midwestern
5% Upper Midwestern

I've been taught RP in school, I lived in Michigan for a half year in 1995, I had to guess and improvise with two or three questions and I'm not a native speaker, so that might explain the strange result somewhat (Dixie??) ... but check it out yourself:

Blogthings - Your Linguistic Profile

2005-05-09T14:10:00.000+02:00

Today is Europe Day!

The ideas behind what is now the European Union were first put forward in Paris on 9 May 1950, against the background of the instability and the need to rebuild a shattered Europe. The then French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman read to the international press a declaration calling on France, Germany and other European countries to pool together their coal and steel production.

What he proposed was the creation of a supranational European Institution, charged with the management of the coal and steel industry, the basis of all military power. The countries which he called upon had almost destroyed each other in a dreadful conflict, and Schuman's proposal to remove coal and steel production from national controls would make sure such a war could never happen again.

Today's ambition is completely different: to build a Europe which respects freedom and the identity of all of the people who live on this continent. But this ambition is only possible because of the foundations laid by Schuman's declaration

That is why during the Milan Summit of EU leaders in 1985 it was decided that 9 May should be celebrated as "Europe Day".

2005-05-08T22:21:00.000+02:00

Japan could go nuclear within a short period of time if it wanted: they have the technology, the money and the ressources. That was true already for decades, but the Japanese government was missing the will, determination and several factors lead even to a rejection of an offer by the United States (read below) and led finally to the ratification of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty in 1976.

IPS News reports:

"The declaration on Thursday warns that Japan's plan to separate and stockpile up to eight metric tons of plutonium annually, enough to make 1,000 nuclear bombs, calls into question Japan's commitment to strengthening the NPT. [...]

With Rokkasho operational, by 2020 Japan's domestic stock of plutonium could equal the U.S. stockpile of plutonium for weapons," said Frank von Hippel, physicist and professor at the Science and Global Security Programme at the U.S.-based Princeton University.

Anti-nuclear lobbyists are worried that the safeguards at Rokkasho would be inadequate to prevent the deliberate diversion or theft of large quantities of plutonium.

"Separated plutonium poses a risk of theft, and such large stocks would be destabilising," Von Hippel said in the report.

In 1967, Prime Minister Sato commissioned a study on Japanese nuclear policy to examine whether it was possible and desireable to develop nuclear capabilities. The study concluded, that it would cost too much, it would alarm neighboring countries and would not have the support of the public. In November 1971, a White House official told Keizai Editor Yasuo Takeyama that

"if Japan wishes, the U.S. ist prepared to provide Japan nuclear warheads or the know-how to manufacture nuclear warheads." (source: Japan's Nuclear Future: The Plutonium Debate and East Asian Security, 1996)

Interesting enough, the United States joined the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty in 1968, three years earlier. In 1972, President Nixon stated that

"I think it will be a safer world and a better world if we have a strong, healthy United States, Europe, Soviet Union, China, Japan, each balancing the other, not playing one against the other, an even balance."

The idea of mutual deterrence by possession of nuclear weapons in the case of the U.S. and China or Russia didn't help Japan too much, in the contrary:

An authoritative study concluded in 1966 that it would be "highly unthinkable" for the United States to risk a nuclear exchange with Russia or China for the sake of Japan. The Communist powers could use Japan as a hostage to deter and American attack, the study said, and there would be "little practicle meaning" in the destruction of Communist cities after "Tokyo and Osaka had been turned into a second Hiroshima and Nagasaki."

Since the end of the Cold War the world changed, but the statement is not less true than it was in 1966: If there were a nuclear attack on Japan, the - complete or partly - nuclear destruction of the attacker by the U.S. would still have "little practicle meaning". Japan overcoming its "nuclear allergy" and actually developing nuclear weapons (never mind Article Nine of the Japanese constitution) could trigger a new arms race instead and destabilize the whole region.

Japan's Nuclear Dream Could Be World's Nightmare

2005-05-07T15:39:00.000+02:00

On my way to Hamburg, the driver's girlfriend was from Iran, her name was Layla. I was curious and asked her what she thought about her home country. Layla came to Germany when she was 11 years old, so she has an insight in both cultures. Last year, there was a lively debate about a German school teacher who refused to take off her head-scarf (Hijab) during lessons in a public school. The school argued that the scarf was a symbol of cultural discrimination and thus also a political symbol and therefore couldn't be worn in the school. Laizism demands the separation of church and state, but there are also the questions whether the scarf is actually a symbol at all (Muslims in Germany argued that it isn't) and there's also the basic right of free exercise of religion. The Federal Constitutional Court left the decision to the jurisdiction of each federal state, also the court didn't percieve the question of the scarf being a political sign or not as relevant.

Layla visited Iran four years ago. In her opinion, there are two different "lives" not only women, but especially them, live in Iran. The private life resembles a western, individualist lifestyle: They wear what they want, a scarf is not mandatory, except in religous families, they have boyfriends and listen to modern music - in short, it is not different from other countries. Individualism is no stranger to them. The public life is regulated though: Layla wears a scarf, but personally, she didn't feel it as being forced upon (see explanation below), although it is required. There's a difference between tourists and locals, too: She had a short skirt, but nobody cared about it and she wore make-up and nobody told her to take it off. Her sister in contrast was asked to remove the finger nail polish - to Layla's surprise, she even had a polish remover with her and did as asked. The authocratic rule controls many aspects of life, but it is only the public life they can influence on. The public life is regulated and collectivism is expected and achieved through exterior parity.

The reason why Layla doesn't feel the scarf as being imposed on her was (in my opinion) a rather personal view on the issue: Women who wear a Hijab are protected in a certain way. Women who wear it are talked to in a respectful way and men know that she expects not to be flirted with - and they adhere to this (symbol?). I was surprised by that explanation. Since I didn't have the chance to exchange views in that matter yet, this was new to me. Conversely, her argument implies that women who don't wear a Hijab are unprotected from (sexual) advances, can be talked to in a disrespectful way or such women perhaps want to be hit on. I don't think that can be generalized, but her argument as well as the reverse doesn't seem right. I don't argue (and don't mind) though that Layla looks at the head-scarf positively, that is of course her choice. The problem in my opinion begins when the choice is made by a small group of people and imposed on everybody. A rather western view, I am aware of that.

I mentioned that during the recent debate about the head-scarf I read an article from a women's rights activist from Morocco. She was angry that in Germany and other countries, considerable parts of society argued for and against the head-scarf. The former group she accused from interfering in things they never experienced and don't understand. From her perspective, the women - in her country - have to fight hard for the right to choose whether they want to wear a head-scarf or not (among other things). For her the head-scarf is indeed a symbol, a rather negative one and thus has to be rejected. In Europe, the situation is of course different. But the way our governments deal with this issue will be noticed in other countries, especially in Muslim countries. The Muslim minority in European countries is still a minority and will stay one in the next two or three decades, but the difference of the birth rates will change the social proportions. Germany has been founded on a strong basic law which ensures many rights and freedoms. History will judge how well we integrated minorities into our society.

2005-05-06T23:22:00.000+02:00

Space shuttles have been in service since the late 70ies. Now, Lockheed Martin presented a the successor, the Crew Exploration Vehicle. The bad news is, the plans are get it in the air around 2014, which is much longer than the Apollo program i.e. needed. Certainly, after the tragic loss Challenger and Columbia safety is written with a capital S, but the space shuttle won't presumably be in the air after 2010, so there's four years without an adequate transport vehicle. The CEV is supposed to offer flexibilty, safety, (partial) reusabilty and affordability - the two latter were already aims set forth in the space shuttle program, but the space shuttle fleets maintenance and individual flights alone were up to 50 times more expensive than intially planned, furthermore the reusabilty aspect was never properly met, too many parts had to be repaired after each flight.

The Crew Exploration Vehicle is supposed to counter the problems that handicapped the space shuttle program. There won't be a reusable spaceplane, but rather a capsule similar to the one used in the Apollo program. The launch system will be expendable, but I doubt the costs can be reduced in comparison to other programs. Also, I read that the CEV is supposed to

transport a crew to low-orbit Earth, thus being a space shuttle between the ISS and Earth
serve as an emergency vehicle on ISS
transport a crew to the Moon and eventually even to Mars (after 2020)

Let's see: increase safety, extend flexibilty, reduce costs, all in one. I doubt they will be able to meet all aims. Nevertheless, it has to be done. A decade ago, I talked to a teacher from my school about space exploration. She complained that all the money that the space shuttle program cost (approx. $145 billion), they could have used to fight hunger and disease in the world. That may be so, but back then I had the same opinion as I have now: No step forward is a step backward. If humanity doesn't set itself new goals, it'll stagnate. In my opinion, a self-sustaining human population in space in the future is a crucial aim. Humans explore and expand, and it is about time to expand into space.

2005-05-06T22:52:00.000+02:00

I'm back, with mixed feeling about the trip. I used Mitfahrgelegenheit.de to get from Düsseldorf to Hamburg as cheap as possible. The train fare is between 39€ (if you're lucky enough to get one of those tickets) to 71€, so I chose a service where people travelling into the same direction by car can find companions for the trip and share the costs for gas. In contrast to Mitfahrzentrale.de, Mitfahrgelegenheit.de is free and you get the phonenumber directly, the other service lets you exchange emails or call an expensive service number to get the phone number. I planned to stay for a maximum of three days, but the place I planned to stay at turned out to be a bad idea. The Hospitality Club is a free hospitality exchange organization in lots of countries world wide. There are over 54,000 members in 170 countries, over 11,000 in Germany alone. Usually people participate to meet new people from other countries or they travel a lot as well and don't want to stay in a hotel. Accomodation is free, sometimes you're asked to pay for the phone (if used) or food. I had to copy a few books and magazines at the Institute for Asien Studies, so I looked in HC's directory who lived in the neighborhood. There were half a dozen people in five minutes walking range, so I mailed them and one wrote back. Unfortunately, that person turned out to be an extremely difficult person when I arrived. Instead of an apartment-sharing community, I was welcomed by a completely drunk and quite probably drugs consuming woman in her late thirties, living in an absolute mess - Long story short, I didn't stay the whole three days. After a copyshop marathon on day one I quickly found another guy driving from Hamburg to Düsseldorf (thanks, Mitfahrgelegenheit.de!) and arrived home in the evening. I guess it was bad a bad apple in HC's database, but I'm not so sure I'll try my luck again in summer for my trip to Ireland.

2005-05-02T09:37:00.000+02:00

I'll be in Hamburg for a few days to do some research for my M.A. thesis at the Institute for Asien Studies. My thesis is about "Japan and the United Nations - Peacekeeping and international responsibility in the war against terrorism" - the title sounds grandiose, I hope my professor will think the same about the content, too. Since I'm already in the vicinity, I'm looking forward to meet an old friend I know from Japan.

2005-05-01T13:09:00.000+02:00

Yesterday, two men who helped renegade General Gotovina on the run by supplying him with fake passports were arrested.

Albania, Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia, and Serbia and Montenegro have been promised that they can join the European Union once they are ready, (but as with Turkey) there's no timetable for accession. From all those countries, only Croatia is economically and otherwise fit for it, but there's one big obstacle: The European Union requires Croatia to hand out war criminals to the International Criminal Tribunal, and in the last two years over a dozen wanted were turned in or surrendered voluntarily to the ICTY in The Hague. General Gotovina is accused for crimes against humanity in the Krajina region under his command during the war. For the Croats, he is a hero. When I visited Croatia two years ago, I saw posters and leaflets all over the country, pledging loyalty to the general. At the main road from the southeast to Zadar, there's a huge poster a few kilometers outside the city, labelled "Zadar county - General Gotovina, we stand with you!". Too bad I didn' take a picture of it back then. When I worked in 2003 for the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, I met a lot of Croatians who thought that even if it were true that war crimes were overlooked or even permitted under Gotovina's command, sending him to The Hague would be absolutely unacceptable. The reasoning is usually founded on the wide spread perception of the war that Croatia fought for its freedom and indepence from the Serbs. Since the enemy violated the Geneva conventions, indicting people who put their life on the line for Croatia's freedom is out of the question. The leader of HNS (Croatian People's Party), Vesna Pusić, has been quoted that the former government hesitated to surrender Gotovina in fear of an uprising in the country - this view has been rejected by the current Prime Minister Ivo Sanader who blames his political opponents for incompetency in regards to apprehend the general. I don't know what will happen if the government catches and sends him to The Hague, but I'm certain the people won't like it.

For the European Union, asking to fully cooperate with the ICTY is easy, but just under ten years after Operation Storm they can't expect Croatians to deal with their history as they should. Such things take their time, Germany needed a rise from the ruins of World War 2 and the student movement in the 60ies to start dealing honestly with its Fascist past. How long it will Croatia to cool off the current nationalism nobody knows, but it will take longer than a decade. The last decade under Franjo Tuđman's authoritarian rule certainly didn't help.

2005-05-01T10:34:00.000+02:00

Coming Anarchy posted the blogworld's reaction to Robert D. Kaplan's controversial cover story How We Would Fight China, which takes closer look to a possible cold war situation between the US and China.

2005-04-30T22:48:00.000+02:00

This news from ABC isn't embarrasing, it's actually sad. Small arms, even those guaranteed by constitutions like the one in the U.S., is harmful. Plainly dangerous. There are so many irresponsible people out there that even a car is a deadly weapon in their hands, and then you have laws which allow to posses weapons. Paradox. If any government - not only the one in the U.S. - is serious with it's goal of security and peace, they might want to look into their own backyard and disarm their own population.

School Mistakes Huge Burrito for a Weapon

2005-04-30T21:07:00.000+02:00

The Mozilla Foundation produced a new, open source browser called Firefox. If this is news to you and you still use Internet Explorer (reasons to switch), go and get Firefox, download it, install it, use it. Btw, this journal doesn't look as good as it should with IE and I can't think of a better reason to get a decent browser. :-)

Firefox: 50,000,000 downloads (8:58 AM PST 4/29/05)

2005-04-29T11:48:00.000+02:00

Spiegel Online was yesterday, say hello to newsmap.

Newsmap is an application that visually reflects the constantly changing landscape of the Google News news aggregator. A treemap visualization algorithm helps display the enormous amount of information gathered by the aggregator. Treemaps are traditionally space-constrained visualizations of information. Newsmap's objective takes that goal a step further and provides a tool to divide information into quickly recognizable bands which, when presented together, reveal underlying patterns in news reporting across cultures and within news segments in constant change around the globe.
Newsmap does not pretend to replace the googlenews aggregator. It's objective is to simply demonstrate visually the relationships between data and the unseen patterns in news media. It is not thought to display an unbiased view of the news, on the contrary it is thought to ironically accentuate the bias of it.

2005-04-29T08:20:00.000+02:00

Prime Minister Koizumi is trying to strengthen bilateral ties with India - further ensuring support for the UNSC bid? Japan already backs India and they will return the favor. The article at Reuters mentioned another detail - Japan is only the fourth biggest investor in India, after the United States... and Mauritius (Britain is 3rd). I knew Mauritius only from stories about the Dodo. Now it seems, since their independence some 37 years ago, they took off-shore banking literally. Not bad for a rather small island in the Indian Ocean. Even Deutsche Bank joined the party.

Reuters - Japan seeks partnership with India as China looms

2005-04-28T16:34:00.000+02:00

We had another appointment with the gynecologist, this time mainly for the results of a trimester-test. Before the test, the chance for a trisomy 21 anomaly was 1:400, now it is somewhere around 1:10000. Good for us, I'm happy we don't have to think about a next step, in case the odds were worse afterwards than before. When we asked about an accoucheuse (midwife), the doctor said there's no need for one before the birth as they can do all the care, check-ups etc. as well, if we wanted one for the first weeks after the birth we could decide that later. I thought midwives have tight schedules and are booked up months in advance - and that the majority of parents utilizes their services. Mentioning the ~~ventricular~~ vestibule septum defect, the doctor said she would check it next month. It's just strange that when I asked first whether it is passed on in the family, she said no and that we shouldn't worry about it. When I made clear that I have had it and not my parents, she changed her mind and wrote it down to check it next time. If it's not passed on genetically, why the change of heart? (no pun intended)

It's already the second time she's acting in an uncertain way. Perhaps we'll find another doctor. I noticed something else, which has nothing to do with her competence as a gynecologist: When shaking hands, she looked elsewhere, but not into my eyes. It gives me the impression she's somewhere else in her mind. If she were Japanese, the missing eye contact wouldn't surprise me as much, but with Germans it is unusual.

2005-04-27T16:43:00.000+02:00

The GEO Magazine reports that Samurai were among the first who used toothbrushes regularily - the brushes were wooden sticks, wrapped in cloth. I wonder what they used to tooth paste.

GEO.de - Kulturgeschichte

2005-04-27T16:00:00.000+02:00

I used the Kubrick for Blogger template for the page (original template by Michael Heinemann, the old one was too dark and uninviting. Still some stuff to do though, but right now that should be enough. I had to relearn some programs I used to design with in the past, also, since I didn't really code for ages modifying was difficult enough. Too bad there won't be time to learn CSS properly.

2005-04-26T11:07:00.000+02:00

How much spam do you get? In my case, it's between 60-150 spam mails a day, which is about 81% of all emails I get. Lately, it's not only spam that's annoying. Early in the morning, we have regularily Jehovah's Witnesses at our doorstep, besides people ringing our bell to drop advertisement several times a day (and everyone claims to be the mail(wo)man - living on the fourth floor, I don't feel like checking every time), salesmen, phone company agents trying to sell new products and what not. I haven't gotten spit yet, but that might be only a matter of time. Anyway. Now I got spam, that really, really crossed the fine line of decency. A friend of mine has a boyfriend, he's some kind of therapist. Opening our letterbox, I found advertisement for some kind of Lovers Journey and partner therapy from a doctor for depth psychology and other workshops, charging between 150 and 1000 Euros. The before mentioned boyfriend was one of the conductors - I was tempted to fill his name into the application as partner therapy seems something he needs far more than I (we) do. Being divorced and a more or less single parent with psychological issues he really ought to work out, he's not the kind of person I would go to for counseling. Meeting him the next time will be interesting. "Friendly spam" hit the fan.

2005-04-25T12:03:00.000+02:00

Sounds like science fiction to me - more exactly, like Star Trek's Holodeck. For educational purposes, this could be a major step forward: Imagine schools and universities equipped with such devices. Instead of listening to a lecturer about Einstein, Gaius Caesar or the Battle of Verdun, you could actually "be" there, experience it yourself, talk to the persons involved etc.

Max-Planck-Gesellschaft: CyberWalk

2005-04-24T23:04:00.000+02:00

Today my wife and I visited an exhibition in Aachen about Sophie Calle's work. It was the last day of the exhibition.

My wife, studying history of arts and the "professional" of the two of us when it comes to art, liked the exhibition very much. Myself, I have to confess, I am less enthusiastic. The work I had problems with is exquisite pain, which took some time to absorb in its completeness.

The idea to tell and re-tell the same story from different angles is intriguing, but the first part - "before the pain" - in connection to the second part was actually very dissapointing. The reason for my dissapointment may be due to my personal view on life and values, less to the story told. I'm still thinking about the reason though. Sophie travelled to Japan, leaving behind a man, who broke up with her directly after her trip and didn't even care to tell her the truth in person in New Delhi. Truth being told, I'm not sure how "exquisite pain" can be that intense as how she displayed it to be. I was looking for every picture, reading piece after piece up to a certain point. Somewhere in between, she wrote to her lover something he would "never read" - because she slept with a stranger (I think she was already in Japan at that time). At that point, I thought, "how much does she really love her boyfriend back in Paris? Does she love him at all? What does he mean to her?". Progressing to the part of the story where her boyfriend left her, I thought, "Well, they both didn't really seem to care enough about one another" - because if they did, she would't cheat on him and he would't leave her for somebody else. That's why the display of pain afterwards wasn't that convincing to me. Certainly, this is a perspective on the situation with different values - and I'm not going so far to deny other people emotions, pain or love. I wondered Sophie Calle's boyfriend might have reacted if he learned from her one night stand during her travel. If he were an artist like her, he might create a similar work, don't you think? I left the exhibition with the feeling that - if not one side of the story - at least parts of it remain untold?

I remembered her email address from her correspondence with Josh Greene, the guy she lent her bed to to overcome the end of his relationship. I hope she doesn't mind me writing to her directly.

My favourite piece in the exhibition was the text next to the mirror ("Benedict - a woman vanishing") in which people visiting a museum were categorized and compared to one of four animals: ant, butterfly, grasshopper and fish. The ant walks meticulously from piece to piece, to not miss out any work. The butterfly flies from one part in the exhibition to another, without a plan. The grasshopper sees one work he likes and jumps ahead, ignoring everything inbetween. The fish slowly floats by, but never stops.

I think I am an ant.

2005-04-23T23:15:00.000+02:00

If this is true, I need a year of vacation from the internet.

Emails 'pose threat to IQ'

2005-04-22T11:59:00.000+02:00

Not really news, but good to know: The 'Le Kremlin-Bicêtre Cedex' research institute in France published a report about spontaneous abortion. The probability increased with the parents' age. If the father is over 35, the chance increases about 30%, a 40 years old mother has three times the chance of a miscarriage than a mother of 25. The sooner you get a child, the better.

Influence of Paternal Age on the Risk of Spontaneous Abortion

2005-04-22T10:54:00.000+02:00

Japan's Prime Minister Koizumi apologized in front of 100 Asian and African leaders for the damage Japan is responsible for in World War II. Hu Jintao, the Chinese president was also present, and I would be really curious to know what they will talk about directly during the Asia-Africa summit in Jakarta. Unfortunately, Japan will have to show that its words are backed by actions. Right now, the opposite is the case, and that is exactly why apologies can be made, but their believability is equal to zero if at the same time 80 Japanese members of parliament turn out to pay their respects to Japan's war dead at Yasukuni shrine. What do the Chinese, Koreans and other people see right now? On the one hand, one part of the government apologizes for the war and and at the same time, a considerably big part of the parliament pays its respect at a temple with enshrined war criminals. The parliamentarys' spokesman said, they paid the 'visit to honor the dead and pray for peace', there seems to be quite an insensibility towards the additional meaning of the visit.

There have been plans to move the war criminals out of the shrine as an attempt to defuse the problem. Unfortunately, the government can't has no influence over Yasukuni's priesthood in this matter. Although Shinto experts have confirmed that a relocation of class-A war criminals can be done, the priests in control have no inclination of doing so. They (correctly) refer to the constitutionally guaranteed freedom of religion, but a look on their website reveals a revisionist and nationalist view on history. Interesting enough, the Google search result in English gives as a description Includes photos, FAQ, and its nationalist war memorial museum. The description hits the mark. Let's take a look at their website.

The text books used in history instruction at intermediate schools from the 1997 school year will contain material on the subject of comfort women. The textbooks depict as a historical fact the story of Asian women who were forced into prostitution by the Japanese Army. Imparting this story to students who are still young and immature has become a great problem since last year. [...] Can we say that this view is correct? [...] We cannot help but feel that the possibility of ulterior motives have not been discounted. [...] Japan's dream of building a Great East Asia was necessitated by history and it was sought after by the countries of Asia. [...] We cannot overlook the intent of those who wish to tarnish the good name of the noble souls of Yasukuni.

I guess the content doesn't require further explanation, the message is quite clear. The shrine claims eight million visitors per year, including top government officials. The shrine itself might be independant, but the message the shrine and the visits send out to Japan's neighbors weight far more than words. I can't imagine China will be contented by Prime Minister Koizumi's recent apology, there's quite a chance that it will be seen as an opportunistic move to increase Japan's chances for a permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council - irrespective of the honesty of the apology.

Koizumi Apologizes for Past, Meeting with Hu Sought