Patrolling Space In the Spaceship Orion

I have mentioned the spaceship Orion previously in my post about Living Under Water. The German science fiction TV series Space Patrol (Raumpatrouille) follows the crew of the space ship Orion on their adventures through the galaxy.

Orion landed on a desert planetI remember waiting very excitedly for the première of the series and then every next week’s show. It came out at about the same time in 1966 as the original Star Trek, but it was much later that I finally watched my first Star Trek episode and it confirmed the German arrogance that we (the Germans) are better at creating things but it also confirmed the other stereotype that America is much better in marketing. Orion lasted seven episodes with a remastered movie version in the early 2000s, while Star Trek is still going strong after nearly half a century. Sets and special effects were so much more creative than the original Star Trek even though some people dared to make fun of some of the props, like the electric iron used to do some mysterious tuning task on the navigation console. In my mind then, those people just didn’t get it.

I do have the whole series on DVD and it is about time to watch it again, but today I enjoyed running into another fan of the series who took his admiration for the show a bit further than just buying the DVDs – he created stunning illustrations of the adventures of the star cruiser Orion.

I discovered Crossvalley Smith through a post on Facebook that featured one of his illustrations from the Perry Rhodan universe, another sweet memory of mine, a science fiction series published as weekly pulp novellas.

A scene from a landing of the Orion on a desert planet has for now replaced an anime illustration as my computer wall paper – go check out Crossvalley’s site, maybe you find something you enjoy.

All About UFOs

I have (probably) never seen one and I don’t remember being ever abducted by one.

Still, it makes sense that they are around and all the evidence is hard to ignore. Additionally, I ran into a web page today that has lots of video footage of testimonials of rather credible witnesses. What I like about these witnesses is that they just report their observation and don’t try to mix it with their own interpretations and opinions.

Take a bowl of popcorn and a beer because some of that stuff is long…

adamski_type_ufo(click on picture)

German Seeking Political Asylum in the US

When I went to school in Germany, there was no real choice where to go. If you were Catholic you went to the Catholic school, and to the Protestant school when you were anything else – like Protestant.

That was the first four years. Then you could either stay and prepare for a life in trade or craft, go to middle school and plan to become a middle manager, or go to high school and aim for an academic career.

home schoolingWe heard it through the grapevines that there was something like private schools but that was for the very rich and weird and I never knew anybody who went that route.

Homeschooling was not even a consideration.

Apparently there are some parents now in Germany who don’t want to get their kids to be state-indoctrinated.Uwe and Hannelore Romeike are such parents and they tried to homeschool their kids but the government said ‘No!’ and the battle ensued. They, eventually,  fled from Germany to the United States after their family was vigorously prosecuted (fines, forcible removal of their children, threats of jail and more) for homeschooling. Initially, the Romeikes were granted political asylum, but the U.S. government appealed that decision to the Board of Immigration Appeals. That Board sided with the government. The HSLDA (Home School Legal Defense Association, a group defending homeschoolers in the US) took their case and appealed to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.

First of all I wonder why the US government would try to deny this family to stay in the US. I can only imagine that they want to stay friends with the Germany government which tries everything to avoid creating a precedence. Imagine the PR flop if a German family is granted political asylum in the US!

In addition, those domestic homeschoolers are already a thorn in the government’s flesh, daring to doubt their benevolence. The arguments brought by the government why this German family should be sent back to Germany to be torn apart and fined into oblivion are very revealing and indicate what might be in store for American homeschoolers.

Read the full story at the HSLDA web site…

The Myth of Germany Conquering the World

german prisonersIf we believe Hollywood, Germany was a danger to the world during World War II and needed to be stopped. There was nothing that could be done by the US, but to enter the war and help defeat this dangerous foe.

As much as I like to believe in this German superiority (being one of them), historical facts, as they become more and more known, do not support this notion.

Starting with the fact that all Europe and Asia had been at war pretty much most of the time, so it was to no surprise that this newcomer among the war lords wanted to play and get a piece of the empire cake. But this young and inexperienced new kid on town – compared to the old masters like Britain which owned about a quarter of the world as well as Russia with another quarter – was no match.

Especially after it had been beaten into submission by the Treaty of Versailles at the end of WW I. It sure made them mad which was fertile grounds for WW II, but the fact remains that they had to start from scratch while their adversaries still had plenty of left-overs and the resources of half of the world.

Looking at the economics of war it becomes painfully obvious that the one who runs out of bullets and beans looses the war. This small Germany depended upon raw material from the rest of the world and as long as that world was not yet conquered, the flow of those materials could easily be stopped – and indeed were.

German innovation and creativity reared its ugly head when the initial surprise attacks were over and the war started to draw out. German stubbornness of improving and innovating war machines came at a huge cost. Hitler wanted only the best but research is expensive. This created a financial and resource shortage which in turn reduced the production of proven and reliable war equipment. It came to great surprise to me that, beside the Hollywood version of the well equipped German soldier, in reality the great majority of the German soldier was a foot soldier with wagons drawn by – yes – horses.

Why was the German soldier so completely mischaracterized by Hollywood and in the schools’ history books?

Combined with other historical facts, the only logical explanation was the FDR wanted to get in – he wanted to play with the other imperial leaders. Unfortunately the American people did not really want to, so he poked the Japanese so long that they had no other choice but to attack Perl Harbor. This so-called ‘unprovoked’ attack was used to change the mind of the American population, similar, by the way, to the ‘unprovoked’ attack on the twin towers which was used to get America behind Bush and his war.

Many facts have come to light since then that would indicate that an attempt had been made to minimize loss of material and life at Perl Harbor (again similar to the twin towers) but enough damage had to be done to enrage the population. The ships that had been destroyed were not even supposed to be in Hawaii and the fleet had been strategically weakened so that they would be beaten. An excuse was later made, when those facts came to light, that it was a necessary sacrifice in order to enter the war, and save the world. Hollywood was all behind it – apparently.

But America could have stayed neutral. Germany was more or less defeated when the US entered the war and Britain together with Russia would have been able to do the job easily. The biggest part of the war was the Eastern front and Germany had been beaten by a proven weapon – the Russian winter – something experienced by a previous imperialist – Napoleon.

How much different would the world be, had the US Government with Roosevelt at the top not entered the war? No, we would not all speak German now, but the cold war would probably never have happened as the German and Russian war machine would have annihilated each other. Russia would have never become a threat as quickly as it did.

Now imagine all that money that the military-industrial complex would not have made. I watched a documentary the other day describing the salvage of a Russian submarine during the height of the cold war. This was the Russian sub K-129 that had accidentally destroyed itself and had sunken in the Pacific. US military had better info on where that had happened and had been able to locate the ship without the Russians knowing. It was an engineering feat to get at least part of the sub raised from a depth of 17,000 feet in all secrecy – but this little bit of intell that had been extracted from the wreckage had cost the tax payer a whooping 350 Million Dollars – and that was 70s Dollars!

Imagine how many hungry children an Africa could have been fed with that!

So, are you still paying taxes without doing your utmost to drag your feet, making it as hard as possible to get anything out of you? Are you still quietly ‘in compliance’ – still not practicing civil disobedience?

(A very good run-down of the real events and economics can be found in Richard Maybury’s ‘Uncle Eric’ books – a ‘must-read’ for kids in public school to counter government indoctrination.)

A Hollywood Experience

Rainer SchoeneOne of my early Hollywood-experiences occurred in the late 80s – the place was the Irish pub ‘The Cat & Fiddle‘ on Sunset Blvd.

My buddy and I hung out there pretty regularly, had learned that just a single extra dollar in tips was well worth the investment for much faster and friendlier service and were, that fine summer evening, out in the patio, slurping our Guinness.

The table next to us was occupied by two guys, one of them a very tall, and cool, guy that looked so familiar but I could  not place him. I heard somewhat of a German accent, but that did not help much at that time.

If was a few days later that my buddy dragged me to the gig of a German guy he had met a few days earlier. As yours truly is from that area of the planet as well and ethnic support is a given I was glad to comply.

Even this big Hollywood is a small place and so I was only mildly surprised that this tall guy I had seen at the Cat and Fiddle was there as well. The gig was great and I still have a video document of this band, Bigger than Blue, even though this is not of the gig, which was much wilder and much more hard rock.

Already at that time I perceived the vibes between this tall German guy and the cute, absolutely petite, singer of Bigger Than Blue, Francesca Capasso.

To make a long story short, the tall German guy turned out to be a very well-known German actor, Reiner Schoene (Schöne), whom I had seen in television shows when I was a lot younger. He and Francesca started dating and we (my buddy and I) had a few parties at our house with the whole Bigger than Blue and so Reiner was there, obviously.

Francesca and Reiner did get married and had a little farm in or around Agua Dulce but, despite efforts to do so, we never managed to visit and the contact went away eventually, especially after Reiner moved back to Germany and he and Francesca separated, unfortunately.

So, why would I write all this after more than twenty years? Simple, when going through my old music collection, I found demo tapes of Reiner as well as Francesca and the most amazing piece on that was a song, written and performed by Reiner, telling the beginning of the story…

Boys Staring at Goats

One fine winter up in the mountains…
(isn’t it amazing that there are, in that densely populated Southern California, still places where boys can go out by themselves and explore – and make friends with goats – and stare at them?)

(Click on an image to start a slide show.)

Why do I love space so much?

I really wonder why I’m such a sucker for all things space.

From early teen-hood on I looooved science fiction, I still miss anything in this genre to this day and would really like to become one of those space tourists to the international space station, even though, looking over my finances, I’m a bit short at this time.

For quite some time I was sure the reason was simply experience – that I had lived all that space opera stuff in previous, long past, life times, but currently I am not so sure anymore. It might still be true, but I wonder if this explanation might have been a bit too easy and obvious.

Still, I enjoyed these two time lapse videos from the International Space Station, even though low earth orbit does not compare to some proper hyperspace travel or inertia free space drives (yes, I am re-reading Doc EE Smith’s Triplanetary right now.)

The Hobby Kitchen – A Pre-Blog

thai-recipesThis is history as we made it!

It was in the early days of the internet, a time when Google did not exist yet, when we used Alta Vista to find things on that interweb. When Netscape was strong and the driving force for new developments on this world wide web. When there were pages at Netscape where you could tell the world about new sites or pages – and the world came.

It was 1995!

This is when we started something that would later be called a blog. Sure, there was no PHP (at least on the web) and certainly no WordPress, so the blog entries had to be crafted by hand, usually in a simple text editor and the blogger had to know HTML. Not that there was much to be known – the leading edge of HTML tags were background images and music.

This was the year ‘My Hobby Kitchen’ was born. The plan was to publish one Thai recipe every few days, or how often we managed. If we had kept it up, by now we would have – at one recipe per day – close to one thousand recipes. That number shows that it was just not possible, as nobody knows 1000 recipes. We did – maybe – foresee that and invented the ‘guest blogger.’ But only one came on board, shortly before the project died.

The amazing part of the story is that these pages survived. After a multitude of ISPs, and moving between different domains, these pages are still there and they are finding a new home now on this (real) blog.

I kept the pages as they were, just made some adjustments to fit into the framework of this blog, removed any pointers to websites that don’t exist anymore, and anonymized it to protect the guilty. But I left all the tacky background music (at least it does not start automatically) and images intact so that all those young people can see how it all started. It was written from the perspective of my significant other who is Thai and knew what she was doing – yours truly was just the webmaster.

Without any further ado, here is

My Hobby Kitchen.

The Last Roll of Kodachrome

KodachromeI got myself some nice Canon T4i but I can’t figure out where to put that film in, of which I still have a few rolls and which I don’t want to let go to waste.

I think I like Nikon better because on the old 6006, I still have, there was not problem with that – I just opened the back – and there is the space where the film fit in. I got the back of my new T4i open but there is still no place for that roll of film, only all that electronic stuff, chips and wires and such – hmmm.

But, jokes aside, I know there is no more film produces any more – at least not in form of a mass production – and that I would have a hard time to find a lab these days that could still develop film. This roll on the right is probably about 15 years old and expired so solidly that there would be hardly anything on it any more, even if there was a process to develop it with.

But I got to think about that when I ran into a video of photographer Steve McCurry, securing the last role of Kodachrome produced in 2009 and going on a world tour to shoot that last roll ever to leave the factory.

Reminded me of the beginning of my photography career back in Germany. Obviously, with the German arrogance, I did not use Kodachrome – the colors were just too American to satisfy a German eye – we used Agfachrome which displayed a softer gradient of colors and saturation. Back then I always shot slide film and I don’t really remember what my reason was to suddenly get into film for color prints when I got a much better camera – the Nikon 6006 – after coming to the US of A. It might have been because there was an affordable service to give me, with the prints, a scan of the images I could download from the lab’s web site. Another reason probably was, that I was not a purist any more and did break down and took memory photos – back in my early days that would never had happened – the shutter was pressed only when art came out.

This very selective pressing of the shutter was paramount for Steve McCurry when he shot the very last role of Kodachrome. Here is his report…

This documentary got me very interested in Mr. McCurry and I found this interview with him.

You can see the gallery of the 31 images from the last role of Kodachrome on Vanity Fair. (Seems to be behind a paywall now.)

PS: Reminded me that, during my early days of photography (with Agfachrome), I considered it a good outcome when I got one good shot from a role of film.