Category Archives: History

Seeing the Future

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When I was in my late teens, starting to read science-fiction, I was sure that by now we would regularly traveling to other planets and had settlements on the moon, and the flying car was a given.

But many of these things are still only subject of science-fiction, but something totally unimagined has materialized – a network that did make the world’s knowledge accessible from the palm of my hand. I knew there would be talking robots but that I would be able to access all data with just a query – I just hadn’t thought of.

Found this interesting video of visual thoughts of how the future might look like…

But with that last experience, what’s really going to happen, will be something totally different altogether.

Google in the 60s

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My first encounters with computers were through the medium of punch cards and line-printers.

Thus, finding the Google60 art project made me a bit nostalgic. The project tries to show how you would interact with the all-pervasive Google through the mediums of the 60s.

Click on the image to experience it yourself…

Google60-inout

Google 60 Art Project

Emotional Stuff That Makes Me MAD

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This emotional video of a 6-year-old boy with cerebral palsy walking to his homecoming marines-dad the first time made me raving mad…

Am I the only one wondering why this dad was away so long instead of being with his son during all these years?

What is so heart-warming about a mercenary for an imperial outfit to go out and miss his family to support the ‘interest’ of the owners of a country like the US?

Usually, in response to this, we hear that they are heroes defending our freedom and liberty.  Could not possibly be true if we look at the only country I know of that had no war for two centuries – Switzerland – a country smack in the middle of the bloodiest wars.

They have a militia – as suggested the US should have according to the constitution. Being in the militia is a part-time job, so they can be home with the family and they don’t go out to foreign lands to conquer. They are just all armed and ready to shoot any invading troops and are trained snipers to take out the highest officers – not troops – and that caused even Hitler to leave them alone.

No, marine-dad, there is no reason for you to wait years to see your son walk, if you would stop believing all this imperialistic propaganda, evaluate the ethics of what you are asked to do and find out that killing is simply killing, even if you are ordered to do so by a ‘law-maker’ – a glorified lawyer.

Just imagine – they gave a war – and nobody went…

Triumph of the Nerds

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Now that all those nerds that created the computer revolution are getting to an age where we might lose them – see Steve Jobs – documentaries like Robert X. Cringley’s Triumph of the Nerds become more of a history text book (book understood more figuratively).

In the old InfoWorld magazine/newspaper Cringley’s column “Notes from the Field” was always my favorite – your’s too, Max, right?

So, I just had to stop and listen (and watch) when I ran into his documentary “Triumph of the Nerds” on Youtube.

What to Do to Be on Money and Coins

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When playing with my scanner and photo editing software to find out how to get around the built-in law prohibiting to scan money, I looked at the dude on that one bill and could not help thinking about what he did to become so admired that he now is on one of those pieces of paper that is usually called money.

Honest Abe managed to trample liberty with all his feet by forcing the south to remain in the union. They did not like to be in that union any more but Abe did not want to lose what they contributed so he waged a war to keep them in. As he was the victor he packaged his motives as “freeing the slaves” – but politicians, especially when victorious have always been very good at this kind of re-purposing.

Another dude that I just recently learned to see in a different light does not have his own paper bill, but at least he has a coin, and, as I remember, at least one stamp with his picture…

Wernher von Braun – the man who took us to the moon.

But he also was a war criminal because he built – or helped build – all the V2s that were used to bomb England. He did not have to stand trial in Nuremberg because his services were needed in the US of A.

So, what could I do to get my picture on some money or at least a coin?

No good idea yet but maybe some of you might come up with something.

And, so that you did not come here for nothing – here is how I got the picture of Abe from the 5 Dollar bill. My scanner – an HP – did scan the bill without a problem into a png file. I could not open that in Photoshop or Corel Paint – but Gimp was not so picky about the law. So I opened it there, cropped and straightened it, then selected all and hit the Crtl C.

In Photoshop I could open a new doc and just paste the data from Gimp. Once saved as a Photoshop native format – psd – there was no problem re-opening that file – and cutting out honest Abe.

2001 for the new Generation

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Stanley Kubric’s movie 2001 must be my most favorite movie – how could it be not – I  have watched it probably about 10 times. But then again, that was a long time ago.

When I wanted to share that love with my son a while back he got bored with it really quickly. I realized that this is definitely a movie for which you have to have patience and that is not trained with today’s fast-paced flicks.

Finally, somebody came a long and made – at least – a trailer for this cinematic masterpiece that might appeal to the new generation. They might be disappointed once they start watching it for real – especially the long takes in the beginning – but maybe they gain some patience and learn to enjoy scenes that are longer than three seconds…

The Fall of Rome and Modern Parallels

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Did you enjoy your history classes in school?

I believe there is hardly anybody who will answer ‘yes’ to this question, and I believe this to be by design. People at the helm, the so-called ‘leaders’ are usually not the smart and productive ones. Otherwise they would not have to resort to plunder. So we can not expect them to be very creative in inventing new ways of cheating the productive part of the people out of the fruit of their labor.

They have to look at successful actions in the past. But as these actions are always doomed and not very long lasting it would be very bad for business if others would recognize their actions and see where they lead.

Thus history lessons have to be made so boring that nobody wants to even look at them. Trying to actively hide them would not work because a good mystery will always cause interest and that is definitely something that must be avoided.

Making it boring was therefore a very good move. If a noticeable number of people would be interested in history – even the rather recent one like that of the Hitler empire – they would see the plain parallels in today’s events.

Hitler for example used the word Vaterland (fatherland) and the emotionally charged word to rally the people behind his agenda. ‘Homeland’ feels pretty close to that. Both don’t have any real meaning as a farm in Maryland is as little my home, or fatherland as a farm in China. The current owners of both would kick me off if I were to go there and life there now. If something is not mine it is not mine independent of where it is.

But beside making the real history, one that tried to convey reasons behind events and not only the date, a mock-history is sold and promoted by Hollywood. This fake history causes people to believe that they know what went on and so there really no reason any more to do some actual research into cause and effect.

All these ideas are not new and all over the past the few who could look and see realized this reality. One such evidence is the essay “The Fall of Rome and Modern Parallels” by Lawrence W. Reed, the director of The Foundation for Economic Education. This was a talk given in 1979 and is read by Stefan Molyneux of Freedomain Radio.

Or see it directly on YouTube.

Real Photos, Real Early

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Right after I had discovered – many years ago – that taking photos was not only for American tourists in Hawaiian shirts visiting Germany but could actually be an art form, I ran into a book that introduced me to tabletop photography.

One tray of slides remains from this era, and now I can share those after I managed to digitize them. It was actually time to do so as one of the boxes with those slides must have been exposed to some humidity (or the slides had not been properly developed) as there were spots on them like fungus.

Without further ado, here is my 70s take on tabletop photography:

Open the Album – click on three dots top right and select ‘Slide Show’…

A little story on the “Warp Drive” – this slide was added much later than all the others and is a picture of the device I built which earned me my masters in physics. It’s a drift chamber as used by my alma mater’s experiment at CERN – the place where the internet was really invented, and no, it was not Al Gore, who did that.

One of the more interesting things about the setup in the photo is that little brass cylinder in front of the shiny surface. It is actually a source for radioactive radiation that I used to test and adjust the chamber. Once I wanted to interrupt the beam of radiation for a quick demonstration and put my finger between the probe and the detector – the assistant responsible for me nearly took my head off for doing that.

Anarchy is Old

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Discovering and developing the anarchist mindset over the last few years, all these ideas seem to be new and novel to me.

Yet, while researching the history of the concept of voluntary interaction instead of force, I am finding that the ideas I encountered first through modern anarchists like Larken Rose or Stefan Molyneux are not really new, but that these people stand on the shoulders of others that have carried the torch of personal liberty before them.

Just as for me personally the ideas become clearer and more obvious with the time I am exposed to them, so the ideas themselves have become clearer and self-evident through the attention they get from thinkers and philosophers through history, and will, most likely, continue to develop.

Today I watched a video made in the 80s that I want to share here…

It helped me find another resource that I will now research further – Emma Goldman. Thanks to the internet and mp3 I can now fill my time in the car with the study of a very early anarchist.

Another proponent of the idea of personal liberty who I am still wrapping my mind around, is Richard J. Maybury. (Thank you, Nicole, for introducing me!) He does not call himself an anarchist, even though, judging by his ideas, he probably is one, or at least close to one. It would be hard for me to understand why, if one understands the inherent dangers of governmental powers, one then would continue to support it, even on a very limited level. If rape is bad, then you want to get rid of it and don’t keep a little bit of it, just in case there is a psycho who needs to let off some steam.

So, Richard, I call you as an anarchist, even though it would be nice to have a word for the proponent of a stateless society that is not also a synonym for the initiator of chaos and mayhem. This brings up a point that is also made in the movie above: using the concept (and word) of patriotism as support for one’s country as well as its government, while in fact the two are very different things.

I can certainly love my country and everything it is – thus being patriotic – without also supporting those people who are claiming it – unjustified, I might add – as theirs, including all the workforce in it. Thinking of it, I believe that, in order to be patriotic, I would have to do everything possible to rid a country claiming to be free, of the elements that try to enslave the people living in it.

But back to Richard Maybury. I just finished his book Whatever Happened to Justice, in which he explains the difference between natural (common) law and political law.

One little tidbit jogged my mind.  It is an example for the fact that under natural law all people are treated equally, including government officials. I want to quote this here:

The Criminal Justice Museum in Rothenburg, Germany, has a copy of the Sachsenspiegel, the common law of the Saxons, which was used as a top law-book from 1220 until 1900. It explained how to bring suit, inheritances, property rights, guardianships, and so on. So that illiterate persons could read and understand, each law was illustrated with a picture.

Exhibits in the museum show that German law was especially hard on government officials who were caught committing fraud. In Augsburg, Germany, if the head of the government mint were caught debasing and inflating the coinage, the penalty was loss of a hand. If his inflation amounted to more than 60 pfennigs ( 4.8 ounces of silver, about $25 in today’s money) he was burned at the stake.

Consider this in light of our current situation where politicians print money as if there is no tomorrow, thus debasing and inflating our money. I wonder how many of our “elected officials” would run around without hands and char-coaled.

Being an American depends on the little word WE

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Interesting video that explains how using the little word ‘we’ instead of ‘us’ and ‘they’ has made it possible that one whole country can see itself as enemy of another, when most persons in either country would get along  just beautifully with any other person in the other country.

So, next time you notice a crook trying to make you an accomplice to his crimes by speaking of you and him as ‘we’ – be weary! I mean, if you get half of the loot, that might be OK, but if you are also the victim, it might be prudent to look if the little word ‘we’ is indeed correctly applied.