Author Archives: Merlin Silk

Flying over all that traffic

When I started to read science fiction at the tender age of 15 I was sure that we would have settlements on Moon and Mars, would criss-cross our solar system (if not the Milky-way) and have flying cars for sure once I reached the age I’m at now.

That did not quite work out that way. I still put the same old gas into the tank of a car that is completely earth-bound. The only real advance in space travel had been a winged space ship – but that is about to retire now and it all looks like it’s back to the old vertical take-off and landing in the ocean routine that we had when I was a kid. The only real hope for a proper space ship is Burt Rutan with his space-ship 2. But Burt, you gotta work on that anti-gravity device so that you can get rid of that silly way to get into space.

OK, we now have the internet, something totally not expected when I was little. What prompts me to write these lines is that finally there is – as long as we remain earth-bound – at least a glimmer of hope for that flying car…

Que Bella Italia

Oh, the Italians!

Beautiful cars, beautiful women, molto macho! Combine that with being in power as a police man, and you will get excess.

The excess I am referring to here is a police car for about quarter of a million (Dollar or Euro does not really matter here, does it?) All this, so that the rich boy who also has a Lamborghini Gallardo or better can be brought to justice should he be speeding. And if this speeding rich boy turns out to be a beautiful rich girl – just the better, then the police officer is at least on level flirting grounds – at least car-wise.

The reason there is a police officerette in the first picture is probably just a mistake or needed for PR reasons.

Now, without further ado, let me introduce the newest (and short lived) Italian police car and leave you with the remark that if they had only invested a fraction of the cost of the car in some driver training…

Ode to Dad

Dad, it must be about forty years ago that you tried to let us participate in your experience of reading the “Autobiography of a Yogi” by Paramahansa Yogananda. This was, I believe, your first venture into the world of spiritual awakening.

And I did not understand – and laughed.

Sure, I have the excuse that I was young, but I am an old soul and should have understood if I would have just listened.

I also know that I have used you. I remember that one time when I wanted to have a stand for my slide projector but was too lazy to build it myself. I had a clear vision of what and how I wanted it to be. But I came to you pretending ignorance and asked your advise. Then steered you so that you came to exactly what I wanted. You were so happy that I took your advise that you then built it for me. I know you had the feeling that you needed to show me your worth, but I used that shamelessly and I can’t say that I am proud of succeeding.

When I used my control then, I was cocky about my abilities but I promise that has changed radically.

Now I see that it was you who allowed me to grow up without worries. That gave me the opportunity to develop the ability to manipulate and control. I sure hope that this was not the only ability that I developed. I am grateful for that opportunity – – now.

Now I am reading Yogananda’s “Autobiography of a Yogi” myself and I finally understand why you were eager to share your feelings with us.

Time is of no significance – so, finally, I can listen to you and tell you what 40 years ago I was not able to do – – – COOL!

A Blast from the Past – My First Maerklin Train Set

The holidays sometimes give us the opportunity to dig a bit into the past by looking into some old photo albums. In doing so I got reminded of my good old Maerklin trains that I had when I was a little kid. On my trip down memory lane I dug out those old pictures and came even up with some pre-Maerklin documents.

Doesn’t seem that long ago and now I have my successor already older than I was in these pictures. I guess I will have to equip him with some trains of his own. What would be even better – Hello Universe, this is a request! – if I would manage to get my old trains back over here from a friend – Hello Hermann – who has kept them faithfully for so many years but whom I don’t seem to be able to reach any more. But maybe this year he will answer our Christmas mail – just maybe.

The following images first show the pre-Maerklin era, then the early Maerklin and the nearly complete set. I am missing the last phase of the Maerklin era though. After the last image a train station had been added, but I only have the pictures of that in my mind and no mean (yet) to get it out on the internet.

Sunset in the Mountains

Even though in Southern California, we can now feel that the summer is over and the winter is getting closer. The reason is altitude. Six thousand feet above the ocean will give you some sense of seasons, even in the sub-tropics. It is only three weeks away from the time where we had the first snow last year.

Over the last week trees have put on their autumn outfit and are now wearing all brown after a short phase of a green-brown combination. Sure, there are many trees that will remain green all year, but the oaks around here now invite to collect colorful leaves and put them between the pages of a book to dry and preserve.

Days become noticably shorter and now, as I write this, half past five, it is completely dark. But a bit earlier I noticed a symphony of colors developing above the mountains and I was able to capture a glimpse of it…

China Even Catches up in Marketing

Nearly every label about the origin of an article we see these days says China.

But we still have an advantage here in the US – we are better in marketing, right? This reminds me of an old saying back in Germany in the sixties and seventies, where it was common knowledge (at least amongst Germans) that “Germans invent it, Americans market it, and Japanese make it cheaper.

The part about the Japanese making thing cheaper has certainly now shifted to the Chinese, but we can live with that because here in the US we are still the best in the most important part of making money – Marketing!

But the following picture shows that everything is changing again. Anybody who can market and sell ‘Diet Water’ must be best in marketing!

Getting the Perspective Just Right

In the olden day of photography, you know – before Photoshop and digital cameras, you had to get it right the first time. Sure, you could go back and try again once you saw the result, about a week after getting back home, but there were times when that was just not feasible. It always was an exciting time when the envelope with the developed slides was in the mailbox.

Sometimes the excitement went away quickly, but more often than not it was then, the following evening, after all the mishaps had been sorted out and discarded, that the slide projector was set up, aimed at the silver screen and everybody gathered in the darkened room to relive the time a few, or at least one, weeks back.

Slides and the silver screen were the best means to watch pictures at that time, much less expensive than prints and a lot bigger. That is why slides had always been my medium of choice when I took photos as my artistic expression.

Slides and the silver screen went out after I moved to the US and it became very difficult to actually buy a slide projector. Slide projection was replaced by – really nothing. Until about now. Now I am using a 32 inch monitor which is located much closer to me than the silver screen had been, so the apparent size of images viewed on that monitor is comparable in size, maybe even bigger. Additionally this is an active light source – not reflective as the silver screen – so the luminance is much higher, and I don’t have to wait to the evening or darken the room.

So, yes, we have come around and caught up with the size of the slide show in the evening and surpassed it in convenience and speed. Now I can take the picture and view it pretty much right away.

Slide scanners have also given me the opportunity to view these old slides on the new display medium. I never had noticed the grain in the images when viewing the slides natively, but with some creative filtering we can reduce this shortcoming over the film emulsion.

On looking through some old slides taken in Paris, France in the Tuileries (the gardens surrounding the Louvre) I ran into one image that prompted me to write this post…

It’s one where, if I had the chance, would go back and take it at a slightly different angle so that the hand would be really exactly above the head of the statue. With a lot of Photoshop work I could probably fix it after the fact but I decided to leave it as it is and just enjoy the charm of “missing it by that much” (quote Maxwell Smart.)

As for some newer pictures that get it just right, here a little collection of photos that made it into my mailbox (thanks, Beverly!)

Breast Smilies

In the beginning of the World Wide Web transferring data was slow and costly so methods were devised to minimize the amount of data transmitted and still convey the message.

One of the results was the ‘Smiley’ – an icon consisting of only a few characters and thus very cheap and fast to transmit. The added advantage was that with just three characters you could indicate that you were smiling  🙂  or frowning  🙁  instead of writing a little novel to express that this was your emotion when writing an email or quick instant message.

Since then bandwidth has become a lot cheaper and the reason to reduce the amount of data is not relevant any more. But in our illiterate times it is still necessary for many people to have the means to simply express if they are saying something humorous or threatening…

  • I’m going to kill you  🙂
  • I’m going to kill you  🙁

Obviously, specialized areas of the www thought that they require such symbology as well, and today we show you one area where such iconography was very successfully implemented – in the description of the female breast – a never-ending interest of the male population.

Anyway, women can try breast enhancement pills to make men happy 🙂

Without further ado, here are the your breast smileys…

Perfect breasts
Perfect Breasts

Fake silicone breasts
Fake silicone breasts

Perky breasts

Big nipple breasts

A cups

D cups

Wonder bra breasts

Cold breasts

Lopsided breasts

Pierced Breasts

Hanging Tassels Breasts

Grandma’s Breasts

Against The Shower Door Breasts

Android Breasts

Martha Stewart’s Breasts

UPDATE: I am totally surprised how many of you have found this post – it is totally amazing! So, I thought that, if you got here in search for enhancing somebodies breasts – maybe your own, you should check out the pastic surgeon who really makes beautiful breasts. (Full disclosure: I run Dr. Orloff’s web site.)

Irena Sendler v. Al Gore

Irena SendlerGot this very interesting and heart-warming story of Irena Sendler presented in an email today.

Here first the story, then I will tell what impressed me most:

There recently was a death of a 98 year old lady named Irena.

During WWII, Iliana, got permission to work in the Warsaw Ghetto, as a Plumbing/Sewer specialist.

She had an ulterior motive…

She KNEW what the Nazi’s plans were for the Jews, (being German). Iliana smuggled infants out in the bottom of her tool box she carried, and she carried in the back of her truck a Burlap sack, (for larger kids). She also had a dog in the back, that she trained to bark when the Nazi soldiers let her in, and out of the ghetto. The soldiers of course wanted nothing to do with the dog, and the barking covered the kids/infants noises. During her time and course of doing this, she managed to smuggle out and save 2500 kids/infants. She was caught, and the Nazi’s broke both her legs, and arms, and beat her severely. Iliana kept a record of the names of all the kids she smuggled out, and kept them in a glass jar, buried under a tree in her back yard. After the war, she tried to locate any parents that may have survived it, and reunited the family. Most of course had been gassed. Those kids she helped got placed into foster family homes, or adopted.

A while back Iliana was up for the Nobel Peace Prize….
She LOST.

Al Gore won, for a slide show on Global Warming.
Check it out: www.irenasendler.org

I will say nothing about the story itself as I have decided quite some time ago that it is not possible for me to decide what about all the atrocities during WWII is true and what’s not. There are indications that’s just the story the victors want to tell to look good, but there is also the other side which would indicate that there really is something to all this mass murder.

But the fact that I have no first hand information and no way to get them, combined with my solidifying conviction that there is no independent reality I have given up deciding what historical story might be true.

So, nothing about saving Jewish kids, but what caught my attention was the tone of the writer in the last sentence, that Al Gore won the Nobel price for a slide show.

I just love it when politicians are finally seen for what they really are. And if the population starts to laugh about these guys for giving themselves prizes in self-adoration then I have high hopes for all of us that we will get over this celebritizing (hey, Oxford dictionary editors, this is a new word for you!) of our tyrants, kick them out and finally build a non-violent stateless society – one in which Irena would get acknowledged for her brave action.

Did Dougles Adams indeed channel current Patriots

Synchronicity can be a scary thing.

Having just finished the Iron Web by Larken Rose I ran into a short excerpt from one of Douglas Adam’s Hitchhiker’s Guide books…

[An extraterrestrial robot and spaceship has just landed on earth. The robot steps out of the spaceship…]

“I come in peace,” it said, adding after a long moment of further grinding, “take me to your Lizard.”

Ford Prefect, of course, had an explanation for this, as he sat with Arthur and watched the nonstop frenetic news reports on television, none of which had anything to say other than to record that the thing had done this amount of damage which was valued at that amount of billions of pounds and had killed this totally other number of people, and then say it again, because the robot was doing nothing more than standing there, swaying very slightly, and emitting short incomprehensible error messages.

“It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see…”

“You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?”

“No,” said Ford, who by this time was a little more rational and coherent than he had been, having finally had the coffee forced down him, “nothing so simple. Nothing anything like to straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people.”

“Odd,” said Arthur, “I thought you said it was a democracy.”

“I did,” said ford. “It is.”

“So,” said Arthur, hoping he wasn’t sounding ridiculously obtuse, “why don’t the people get rid of the lizards?”

“It honestly doesn’t occur to them,” said Ford. “They’ve all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they’ve voted in more or less approximates to the government they want.”

“You mean they actually vote for the lizards?”

“Oh yes,” said Ford with a shrug, “of course.”

“But,” said Arthur, going for the big one again, “why?”

“Because if they didn’t vote for a lizard,” said Ford, “the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?”

“What?”

“I said,” said Ford, with an increasing air of urgency creeping into his voice, “have you got any gin?”

“I’ll look. Tell me about the lizards.”

Ford shrugged again.

“Some people say that the lizards are the best thing that ever happened to them,” he said. “They’re completely wrong of course, completely and utterly wrong, but someone’s got to say it.”

This great picture of today’s world of rulers and ruled finally prompts me to verbalize my thoughts on Mr. Adams. I do not want in any way diminish his accomplishments, but I think he was a medium channeling all these great pieces of wisdom packed into his books.

I watched, many years ago, after I was already totally enthralled by Mr. Adams nuggets of wisdom, a BBC show with and about Douglas Adams. It presented, amongst many other great info about the Hitchhiker’s Guide and it’s beginnings, some interviews with Mr. Adams. From his statements in these interviews there was no other possibility than that of external influence. The man being interviewed just did not seem to have the capacity to come up with mind-boggling wise answers to the question on how to learn to fly, which is, as any Douglas Adams reader knows, “You throw yourself to the ground – – – and miss.”

As said earlier, my intention is not to take away from Mr. Adams accomplishments, it just is in a little bit different arena. He was the man who picked up these gems of insight from all over the space-time continuum and packaged them in a form that is – and there is no other more fitting word – mind-boggling.

Just take the quote above – is there still anybody who does not see – at least for a moment – how ridiculous it is that we accept, without revolting, our political system of governmental lizards that everybody hates but votes for every few years nevertheless?

Back to the scary synchronicities I mentioned in the beginning – for me, finding this parable and reading the Iron Web, all within a few short day, is like an 11:11 event that breaks open the solidity of the universe and slaps the fact into my face that things can be seen very differently.