Category Archives: Video

Politicians and Insanity

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Had an email exchange with Donna over the last few days. Thought that the last email I sent is worth being repeated here – putting my soap box outside, so to speak:

There is just some things out there that we can not grasp – like insanity. We can observe and accept, but never really understand.

I once was beaten up by some drunks and the first reaction to the punches were just total disbelieve that this is actually happening, only later did physical pain set in and that was actually not such a big thing as one would suspect.

In a little bit more detached way I can not believe (despite observing it) that there is a group of people who want to rule over others, including me. Just like insanity I can not grasp that, as in “wrapping my mind around it.” And I believe there are many like me, otherwise I can not explain that those people are getting away with that.

(Donna felt guilty about all the atrocities of war that had been committed by our ‘leaders’, so I said…) And I want to to stop blaming yourself for things you have not done – that is a slippery slope actually used by those people. Talking responsibility for what you have actually done is necessary for a sane life, but accepting guilt for things you have not done does the exact opposite.

The thing we do have to blame ourselves for is complacency, but not the killings that was started by those few insanes. It’s just with a broken down car. If the fan belt breaks and you change the tire, nothing will get fixed. So we have to find the right cause for what’s wrong.

And it is getting clearer and clearer to me that trying to argue logically with an insane person will lead to nothing but frustration.

The only way you handle a (known) lunatic, is to not react to what they do and suggest. We have to do the same with the (un-recognized) lunatics, called politicians. Yes, all of them! Because if somebody has the urge to rule others he IS insane. So, sorry, Ron Paul, but you are still supporting a system of insanity. During the last election I actually contributed to your campaign but I have not stopped learning since then. Choosing the smaller evil is still choosing evil.

The only thing that I have control over is myself. This is the only thing that I can change. Thus what I can do is seeing to it that my complacency does not lead to giving power to lunatics. No agreeing and, very similar to George Carlin – not believing anything anybody in Government tells me, especially (!!) if it seems to make sense.

 

There is just some things out there that we can not grasp – like insanity. We can observe and accept, but never really understand.
I once have been beaten up by some drunks and the first reaction to the punches were just total disbelieve that this is actually happening.
In a little bit more detached way I can not believe (despite observing it) that there is a group of people who want to rule over others. Just like insanity I can not grasp that, as in wrapping my mind around it. And I believe there are many like me, otherwise I can not explain that those people are getting away with that.
And I want to to stop blaming yourself for things you have not done – that is a slippery slope actually used by those people. Talking responsibility for what you have actually done is necessary for a sane life, but accepting guilt for things you have not done does the exact opposite.
The thing that we have to blame ourselves for is complacency, but not the killings that was started by those few insanes. It’s just with a broken down car. If the fan belt breaks and you change the tire, nothing will get fixed. So we have to find the right cause for what’s wrong.
And this is getting clearer and clearer to me that trying to argue logic with an insane person will lead to nothing but frustration.
The only way you handle a (known) lunatic, is to not react to what they do and suggest. We have to do the same with the (un-recognized) lunatics, called politicians. Yes, all of them! Because if somebody has the urge to rule others he IS insane. So, sorry to Ron Paul, but he still is supporting a system of insanity. During the last election I actually contributed to his campaign but I have not stopped learning since then. Choosing the smaller evil is still choosing evil.
The only thing that I have control over is myself. This is the only thing that I can change. Thus I will just see that my complacency does not lead to giving power to lunatics. No agreeing and, very similar to George Carlin – I don’t believe anything that anybody in Government tells me, especially!! if it seems to make sense. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDkhzHQO7jY&NR=1)

What makes Cool Cool?

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Flemming introduced me to the violin-playing of Vanessa Mae.

Give me a break – the violin must be the most conservative and boring instrument of them all and I get stuck on Youtube watching all kinds of videos about her music?

This is how violin playing is supposed to look…

and not like this…

And then play music like this…

I mean – this IS cool violin playing! Made me think about what makes cool cool?

I told my son, who is now at the age where he thinks that accessorizing with cool things will make him cool, a story from the days when I still tried to find that which would make me be cool…

It were the days of our first cars at the end of high school. I personally certainly had the un-coolest car your could get, but it was all I could afford. In our class we had one guy who was just the coolest, Mike. He had, at that tender age, traveled the world on a shoe-string budget. He was so cool, that he did not even give in to female attempts to reel him him. How cool was that – something I dreamed of  – he just shrugged off!

Once, a few of us planed to go on a social visit to our favorite teacher. Only few of us had cars, my car was too small for all of us, so Mike offered to drive us and got the car from his dad and thus was our designated driver.

You might have to learn a bit about car culture in Germany at that time to grasp the gravity of the following.

For example, you could not drive an automatic – you would be considered a grandpa – but those cars were too expensive anyways so that was never an issue amongst us. At the top of the un-cool list, right after the automatic, was a station wagon with the shift-stick at the steering wheel and a single bench in the front.

And that was exactly the car Mike drove up in to pick us all up that evening to go, visit Hartwig! But believe it or not – that car did not make Mike un-cool, instead his coolness rubbed off on the car and it became totally acceptable to drive a Taunus or Ford station-wagon.

Applying that lesson to myself took many years, so I don’t necessarily expect my son to understand when I told him this story, but for me this example of the violin of Vanessa Mae re-enforced the lesson for me.

She just did not let the un-coolness of the violin rub off on her, instead she made the violin cool.

So, now, how can I apply that right now?

Shooting the Router DI-784

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When I got my new computer it had 802.11a built in – you know the one using frequencies in the 5 GHz band. As my old router was dieing I decided double the amount of money and get a dual band D-Link router DI-784.

What a lemon!

I had three and all three did not work. D-Link Support did not even bother to wipe the settings in the last router they sent me. Guess they hoped that the router that was sent back by somebody else might work for me – not true.

Obviously I was not very happy about it because it cost my time. They offered me to send me a single band router instead, but would not refund me the price difference (remember, double the price) so I decided to get a Netgear router and take out my anger on that poor router.

I intended to do this quickly to make it a PR nightmare for D-Link, but life events were frequent, and it was forgotten.

Until now, when I converted all my mini DV tapes to computer files because I am not sure how long there will still be devices to play those tapes.

So, there you have it – shooting the router.

Teach every child about food

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Just yesterday I ran into an old blog post on this site looking at Michelangelo’s David after a Big Mac Diet. What was most surprising to me was that there were comments that promoted ideas like “I had fast food as a kid and I’m OK!”

Less than a day later a TED talk by Jamie Oliver comes across my desk (email-inbox) addressing the same subject and actually showing how easy it can be to get David into his world known shape again.

There is only one thing where I believe Mr. Oliver goes wrong – and that is that we need the help of any government to handle the situation. While they were in charge the situation deteriorated so badly, how can be assume that they might be of any assistance to fix it? If you and I just do it right and be an example and don’t spread such misinformation as “I ate it and it did not hurt me” then the problem goes out with a whimper.

And if not then the situation also handles itself – in that the generation of low inner strength will die off – leaving the race with only the stronger elements. Guess I’m a bit pragmatic but I believe the wisdom of nature will find the right way to handle this – no need for misplaced emotional involvement.

Macrobiotics and Extreme Burgers

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Today my attention was directed towards the ‘premier’ cooking channel on YouTube, called EpicMealTime. I just had to share this here with a little 10,000 calories example…

But I could not just let it stand there by itself and would like to offer as an alternative the following way to cook…

I personally have experienced miracles with the second way and I could imagine – but am not willing to experiment – that the first way of cooking will also do miracles to you and your body. The real macrobiotic (as per George Ohsawa, who brought the philosophy of macrobiotic into the west), and not the many abominations we encounter in in hip and cool circles, explains that macrobiotic is not a diet, instead just the body of knowledge on how which food effects and influences us.

Applying this knowledge we can say that the burger in example 1 is the perfect food if we want to break the circle of life and strengthen us through physical pain and suffering.

Watch The Guild – I really mean it!

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Warning – if you are busy with your life and have plenty to do, please don’t read this. You would just waste some of your time, and you would not understand the comedy anyways.

….

Still here? You have been warned!

[Codex, the main character, talking to her therapist while also logged into an online game…]

“So, so – you are firing me? You’re my therapist! Is that even medically legal? How is that legal?”

“I’m sorry, you don’t seem to be willing to work on your addiction.”

“I’ve been establishing the parameters as we have talked about.”

[zooming into post-it note “online limit: 1 hour, 2 hours, 3 hours, 4 hours, 5 hours“]

“You can’t grow if you are still immersed in an imaginary social environment.”

“It’s not imaginary, I told you -” [gaming action getting more intense…] “- I play with real people!”

“Have you met them, face to face?”

“I hear them, that’s good enough for blind people….”

[dramatic developments in the online game…]

“Dr. Hammand, you are killing me – literally – can I call you back later?”

That’s how it all starts. I can’t really relate because I have to say that I am not really leaning towards addictions (I think) – but what’s really scary is that I showed this to my son as a deterrent – and he thinks it’s funny.

OK, I actually agree…

There are now four seasons at The Guild.

All About the AppleGirl

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I know, the title might be a little pretentious, maybe even a lot, but running into her on a Google Help page was a rather interesting experience – who would expect to find a music video on a Google Help page – and so I dug a bit deeper and by collecting my findings here I might save you your own digging.

First things first – here is the video that Google gave me as an example for what it was explaining on the help page…

I certainly liked the music and video, but why was she ‘AppleGirl’?

A bit digging let me find the likely answer that it was because the instruments she played in her first video on the internet were iPhones – yes, iPhones! Four iPhones running different music apps, attached to some kind of rack-contraption, were her instrument(s) of choice. And she became famous – the video and the follow up went viral. Here is that first one…

and the next one where she explains a bit more about here instruments.

Mysteries do get people hooked. So, the mystery of who that girl, only known as AppleGirl, was, might have helped the fast spreading of these videos. By now the mystery is solved and it’s all known that she is Kim Yeo Hee, and the latest video (the first on at the top) with it’s professional lighting, recording and editing is a strong indication that her careers is taking off.

So, what was the effect on me? I got some enjoyment out of watching these videos, and got the idea that if there is music apps for the iPhone, there must be some for Android as well. This assumption turned out to be true and I now have a virtual piano and guitar on my G1. I know, it’s ridiculous, I still have a G1 but at least I have it rooted and running Froyo (2.2) on it – even though a bit slow. By the way, even with that version of Android and an adapter directly from HTC my squareup.com card reader, “the cube,” still does not work.

Inner Versus Outer Motivation

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Many, many – – many – years ago I had a little friend, three actually. When I met the three nephews/nieces if my best buddy they were three/four/five years old. Harald, the middle one came out to the garden where my buddy and I were drinking beer to check out that new dude. One of the first test he conducted was “how does he react to pinching?” My reaction – “pinching back” – must have been the correct one because we became really good friends and grew up together until I finally had to leave the country (but that is a whole different story.)

One of the stories with Harald I remember was that he came up with the idea of washing my car. It was another beer-drinking session in the garden, a few grown-ups doing all the work and several kids playing in the garden as well – not drinking beer!

This is when Harald had the idea “Can I wash your car?” Generous as I was – and knowing that the car could really use that treatment – I said “Sure!” There was quite some commotion about finding a hose, sponges and other things that I did not know you needed to wash a car and an hour later my car was clean(er), and Harald was very proud about his job well done.

Several of the beer-drinking, session-attending adults now suggested that I should pay Harald something for his work. But even at that young age I was too smart for my own good and realized that this would not be a good thing. So, I politely declined to follow those recommendations and instead demonstrated Harald how much I appreciated his deed by becoming an even better friend.

Sometimes it takes the universe a long time to acknowledge the correctness of ones actions, and for this event I finally found the acknowledgment after so many years in form of a TED talk that I just have to share here.

Here we go – enjoy!