Erich Kästner about the Year's End

from: Erich Kästner - Herbst auf der ganzen Linie

...
Das Jahr vergeht in Monatsraten.
Es ist schon wieder fast vorbei.
Und was man tut, sind selten Taten.
Das, was man tut, ist Tuerei.
...

(sorry, his wording is untranslatable)

Jonah Lehrer: The Dirty Secret of Science

In the first issue 2010 of Wired (magazine), Jonah Lehrer (person), author of Frontal Cortex (blog) and The Decisive Moment/How We Decide (book) contributed Accept Defeat: The Neuroscience of Screwing Up (article).

"Experiments rarely tell us what we expect. That's the dirty secret of science."
"The problem with science ... isn’t that most experiments fail — it’s that most failures are ignored."
"Belief, in other words, is a kind of blindness." (excerpts)

Chromeo - Night bv Night

almost true fresh oldschool fellas



...its like Dirty Dancing and Shakira...

Steven Pinker: My Genome, My Self

I stumbled over a neat article by Steven Pinker about Personal Genomics, published in the NY Times almost a year ago. Definitely worth a read!

...Though the 20th century saw horrific genocides inspired by Nazi pseudoscience about genetics and race, it also saw horrific genocides inspired by Marxist pseudoscience about the malleability of human nature. The real threat to humanity comes from totalizing ideologies and the denial of human rights, rather than a curiosity about nature and nurture...

Petition for Open Access of Scientific Publications

There is an ongoing petition at the German Bundestag that proposes that publicly funded scientific publications should be freely accessible. In principle it copies the open access policy of the NIH or the Public Library of Science. Please sign!

In addition to articles about the petition (e.g., in Die Zeit) and a description of the original motivation you can find the official text (in German).

Petition: Wissenschaft und Forschung - Kostenloser Erwerb wissenschaftlicher Publikationen

Der Deutsche Bundestag möge beschließen, dass wissenschaftliche Publikationen, die aus öffentlich geförderter Forschung hervorgehen, allen Bürgern kostenfrei zugänglich sein müssen. Institutionen, die staatliche Forschungsgelder autonom verwalten, soll der Bundestag auffordern, entsprechende Vorschriften zu erlassen und die technischen Voraussetzungen zu schaffen.

Begründung

Die öffentliche Hand fördert Forschung und Entwicklung nach Angaben des Bundesministeriums für Bildung und Forschung jährlich mit etwa 12 Milliarden Euro. Die Ergebnisse dieser Forschung jedoch werden überwiegend in kostenpflichtigen Zeitschriften publiziert. Es ist nicht angemessen, dass der Steuerzahler für die von ihm finanzierten Forschungsergebnisse erneut bezahlen muss.

Wegen der hohen Kosten und der Vielzahl wissenschaftlicher Zeitschriften sind Forschungsergebnisse nur in wenigen Bibliotheken einsehbar. Den meisten Bürgern ist der Zugang zu der von ihnen finanzierten Wissenschaft dadurch nicht nur erschwert, sondern de facto ganz verschlossen.

Den Bürger von der Wissenschaft auszusperren ist nicht nur schädlich, sondern auch unnötig. Andere Länder haben vergleichbare Vorhaben bereits umgesetzt. Die US-Amerikanische Behörde National Institutes of Health (NIH) verlangt, dass alle von ihr finanzierten Publikationen binnen 12 Monaten an einem zentralen Ort öffentlich zugänglich sind. Die grundsätzliche Struktur des wissenschaftlichen Publikationswesen verändert sich hierdurch nicht.

Symphonies of Science (thanks, tsw)

Oooh - that's a must. Plus, it features The Power(s) of Ten.

Looks Like the Nineties

Post #300: Eternity

Notorious B.I.G. - Kick in the Door (Rev'd)

Sounds like the Nineties

Warren just discovered this neat piece of music:
DJ Jazzy Jeff's remix of Biggie's Kick in the Door


and for completeness this J Dilla remix


So together with DJ Premier, who produced the original, the Top 3 of HipHop producers laid their hands on this great Biggie piece.

Neuroscientific Technology - Patient H.M.'s Brain Sliced (thanks, Boris)

Patient H.M., among the Top 3 of the most famous Neuroscience/ Neuropsychology patients, died one year ago. After bilateral medial temporal lobe resection due to intractable epilepsy he lost his ability to form new declarative long-term memories and thus neatly linked brain structure to brain function.
Now (that is, today it'll be finished) The Brain Observatory at UCSD is slicing up his brain (livestream!) to examine different parameters of his pathology. In addition to that the data acquired will be publicly available for the neuroscience community.
Hurry to have a look as they're already as far as the occipital lobe.

2012 on Information is Beautiful (thanks, Francois)

There is a nice wrap-up of the whole 2012 New Age hype on Information is Beautiful

Josa Peit - 11.11. at Admiralspalast, Berlin

Don't miss out on that one!

Josa Peit live!

11.11., 21h, Admiralspalast, Berlin

supporting Alice Russell

Peanut Butter Wolf - Computer Bagel (thanks, François)

"Completement défoncé" (quote François)

Computer Bagel by Lambo from Lambo on Vimeo.

'Lowlight' from 24.10. in Bietigheim-Bissingen, Stuttgart

Julian's movie Lowlight will be screened at the exhibition "Es werde Dunkel" in Bietigheim-Bissingen (near Stuttgart, Germany), starting October 24, 2009. Check it out if you're in the area!

Berlin is Happening - Josa Peit and Ink-Mix

Josa Peit live


Sonntagnachmittag reloaded on Soundcloud (mixed by ink)
Sundayrandomplaces by inks

Berlin is Happening -

Philosophy 101

Google tells me it's Confucius' birthday.
And Rudolf Steiner's name translated would be Stoner.

1987 Nostalgia

INNER CIRCLE - BAD BOYS by amy.bruce74

Mos Def - Priority & Life is Good

and (not on The Ecstatic)

Mos Def - The Ecstatic (released in June)

Watching The Hitchhiker's Guide again and still admiring Mos Def's suave coolness, I felt reminded that he originally was a rapper (see this post). I checked and he just released a new album called The Ecstatic (you probably knew already).
What I heard on this week's Worldwide Show sounds very very promising. Anyways...

Addendum 22/08/09: I listened to the album and I can (very happily) say it's a worthy successor to Black on Both Sides!

Pirai Vaca, St. Germain 2009, & Gypsy Woman

...and Gilles played (a remix of) St. Germain this week - what a great re-discovery, Andreas Saag!

...and one more that fits perfectly right now (Thanks, Ludi)

Bad Boys 1929

I just discovered a great poem by ingenious German writer Erich Kästner written in 1929 called Hymn to the Bankers

Hymnus auf die Bankiers

Der kann sich freuen, der die nicht kennt!
Ihr frag noch immer: Wen?
Sie borgen sich Geld für fünf Prozent
und leihen es weiter zu zehn.

Sie haben noch nie mit der Wimper gezuckt,
Ihr Herz stand noch niemals still.
Die Differenzen sind ihr Produkt.
(Das kann man verstehn, wie man will.)

Ihr Appetit ist bodenlos.
Sie fressen Gott und die Welt.
Sie säen nicht. Sie ernten bloß.
Und schwängern ihr eignes Geld.

Sie sind die Hexer in Person
und zaubern aus hohler Hand.
Sie machen Gold am Telefon
und Petroleum aus Sand.

Das Geld wird flüssig. Das Geld wird knapp.
Sie machen das ganz nach Bedarf.
Und schneiden den andern die Hälse ab.
Papier ist manchmal scharf.

Sie glauben den Regeln der Regeldetrie
und glauben nicht recht an Gott.
Sie haben nur eine Sympathie.
Sie lieben das Geld. Und das Geld liebt sie.
(Doch einmal macht jeder Bankrott!)

Anmerkung: Die Konsumenten sind die linke Hand des gesellschaftlichen Organismus, die Produzenten sind die rechte Hand. Die Bankiers sind die Heimlichkeiten zwischen den beiden.

Sommerloch 2009

"There is no reason to hustle in paradise"

"Die Nachwuchsanthropologen paaren sich praechtig um den Fortbestand ihrer Zunft zu sichern."

Minidisco Nostalgia: Veo Veo Qué Ves

New Tracks by Josa Peit

New!
Tracks!
By!
Great!
Josa Peit!

(see former posts)

Unsteady Road / Outline
Can't see the sun (also neatly produced by emski)
(...and still the amazing) Cheat
and Minutes

---
Addendum: This blog just celebrated its 5th birthday!

Glu-Tang Clan - Synaptic Cleft (via Warren)

Absolutely hilarious(ly nerdy) - The Glu-Tang Clan's Synaptic Cleft
featuring Gift of GABA, Methyl Man, Dope A. Mean, Sarah Tonin, Bobby Voltage, Nitrous Pop'n'loxide, Checkinephrine

Found by Warren on SciVee

Michael Jackson Mix by DJ Ayres (via Ink)

An extraordinary memorial mix for the the King of Pop by DJ Ayres (link by ink).

Ballade vom Brieftraeger William L. Moore

German singer-songwriter and former East German dissident Wolf Biermann wrote a beautiful song called The Ballad of Postman William L. Moore. The narrative poem tells the story of postal worker William L. Moore who held his individual protest against racial segregation in the USA in 1963. In the song he is claimed to march southwards with a sign saying "Black and White - Unite! Unite!" before he is murdered after seven days.

Wikipedia entries on William L. Moore (in German and English)

A part of Manfred Krug's interpretation of this song can be found on youtube:



Addendum 02/07/09: The full lyrics can be found here (in German)

Canario Cordillera - Javi on the Blogroll

"...el camino es la vida misma"
A new member on the blogroll is Javi's Canario Cordillera, which tells you in textually (Spanish) and visually of his travels along the Andes. Great guy, great photos, great adventures!

What's Currently Freezing my Scientist Heart

Chapter 12, The Barbarism of "Specialisation", in José Ortega y Gasset's The Revolt of the Masses (or: Der Aufstand der Massen) .
Check out the (ugly) pdf version (p. 56 ff).

Addendum 24/06/09: Or read here a nicer .pdf version.

Pfingstochse

A quick and funny German custom:
Whoever sleeps in the longest on today's Whit Sunday is called the "Pfingstochse" ("Whit Ox")

Väterchen Timofej, Munich's Hermit

Born on the same day as me but almost a hundred years earlier, Timofei Wassilijeitsch Prochorow, called Väterchen Timofei, emigrated to Munich in the 1950s in order to build his home in what was later to become the territory of the Olympic Games of 1972. After the "Olympic Hermit" did not agree on moving his garden, house and church and with the public behind him, he forced the organizers to change their plans.

I remember having visited him at least once in the 1990s and I completely forgot about this "Methusalem of Munich". I am sad to read that he died in 2004 (allegedly) at the age of 110.

Or Weitzman's Art Blog

Check out Or Weitzman's cute, non-offensive caricatures in his online portfolio. He is an amazingly talented young Israeli artist with great and quick eye and hand.

Update: Josa Peit on Offtrack Radio Show

I totally forgot to mention that Dirk Rumpff used Josa Peit's Cheat (see post) to round off his most recent Offtrack show, which also features a great guest mix by Âme.

OFFtrack February 20th 2009 by dirkrumpff

Fünf Sterne Deluxe Nostalgia - Bo's Dumm Aber Schlau

I had a trip down memory lane when they played some Fünf Sterne Deluxe, the great end-1990s German Rap superstars, at a cafe the other day. Check out D(umm)A(ber)S(chlau) BO and the smart guy's latest weirdo output.

Zeitgeist - The Movie (part 1 and 2)

Zeitgeist refers to "the spirit of the times" or "the spirit of the age and its society".

I recently watched the Zeitgeist movie series (thanks, Eugenio), a three times two hours audiovisual epos about -say- the institutional control of the modern individual.
In fact, I have the same comment as on Das Netz - The Net two years ago (btw - here's the working link): "Leaving aside the fact that it's sometimes a little bit too close to conspiracy theories and its being too deep and too shallow at the same time, it's an interesting documentary."

Part 1 (Zeitgeist: The Movie)


Part 2 (Zeitgeist: Addendum)

Wie funktioniert Geld? (German)

How does money work? German designer and animator Max von Bock has created a neat little documentary to answer this question (sorry -- German only).

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

For that matter I can also recommend the (again German) book die tagesschau erklärt die Wirtschaft, a very readable (and visually appealing) basic introduction to economics and the financial system.

Warren's Thy Kingdom Reprise Mix

Having met the creator of thehumansare.com/ing yesterday, I felt reminded that I should really catch up with my blog readings (especially as I am not using an RSS reader at the moment). By checking manually, I noticed that I missed this grant mix from late 2008.
So check out the Thy Kindom Reprise mix, an eclectic "ambientfolksteptronica" selection.

Thy Kingdom Reprise by The Healing Arts

Listen to Josa Peit (e.g., on Future Soul Radio)

It has been around for quite a while but it finally seems to get the attention it deserves:
The enormous track Cheat by Berlin-based future soul slash new jazz singer Josa Peit. It skillfully combines her great voice that, congruent with M-SKI's tricky beat, beautifully integrates the classic laid-back but sultry aspects of funky soul music.
By the way, it is also featured in yesterday's show of futuresoulradio.com.

You gotta listen to this track (and the rest of her music).

I am very much looking forward to what's to come...

World Climate Overview for Travel Start in Spring

World travel climate overview for a tour start in spring (by Weltreise-Info).

Mo of well-formed-data speaking at xtopia

Moritz Stefaner, the guy behind well-formed-data.net, a blog that I've been citing more than once, just published the talk he gave at the xtopia conference last year.
The topic is design and visualization of information and Mo's presentation style is - as always - chilled and colourful.
You can watch the one-hour talk on vimeo (in German).

Not to be confused: Cherry Garcia

Just as a reminder, Jerry Blossom is the name.
Not to be confused with Cherry Garcia - an ice cream flavour from Tom & Jerry's.

By the way, a fun & merry new year 2009 to all of you!