This sounds interesting:
>Sunday, September 22 2003: Radio Australia
>
>Will we ever be able to vote via the internet? The Buzz looks at the case for
>and against. And The Human Computer Interaction Laboratory at the
>University of Maryland is working with children as full partners in the design
>process of new technology.
UMCP/HCIL on Australian radio? You can find out more here: The Buzz
Meanwhile, I've been reading the following magazines: rice paper, The New Yorker, and The Far Eastern Economic Review.
Here's the first picture I've scanned from the 15 rolls of film I shot during my recent trip to Southern Germany:
The sign on her back reads: Rettet mich! Ich heirate
That translates to something like: Save me! I'm getting married.
Also notice that what the woman is wearing looks like it might be an attempt at a traditional costume. (Could someone with knowledge of Swabian customs confirm this?)
This picture was taken as I was strolling through the 27th annual Weindorf. It was the opening night of the Stuttgart wine festival, that features regional whites and reds.
Yesterday, I joined a afternoon tour of the Garber facitiliy in PG County. Had last visited many years ago.
Thought I'd probably only be there an hour. It lasted 4 hours, and we saw scores of artifacts. Like the "Flying Saucer", missiles, airplane engines, tires, etc.
Loads of WWII aircraft. I was particularly interested in photographing German stuff, since I'd visited Flugwerft Schleissheim, the Deutsches Museum aviation annex (outside of Munich), a couple weeks ago.
The German museum had few WWII planes. I think I know why. They were probably grabbed by the Allies as war booty. There was some unbelievable stuff at Garber. Like prototype jets and V1 rockets. There was also an American copy or version of the V1.
There were a number of unique Jpnz WWII aircraft, as well.
I could go on and on, but I'll mention one anecdote:
The tour group went into a small building or warehouse that contained tires. It had a strong odor of rubber, worse than your average tire store. The warehouse was airconditioned, and the tour guide noticed that a line or pipe leading from an air conditioning unit or blower was dripping water all over THE ORIGINAL TIRES OF THE SPIRIT OF ST. LOUIS. Yes, the tires of the plane that made the first trip across the Atlantic.
The plane is hanging at the Air & Space Museum in DC, and has a set of tires on it. So those ones aren't original? you might wonder. Well, those are the ones that were switched onto the plane after it returned to the States and made a triumphant tour of the country. (The tour guide said those were wider and were better suited to rugged landing spots.)
Incidentally, when I was in Munich, the tabloids were running the recent revelation of Charles Lindbergh having had a love affair with 2 sisters (affairs?) resulting in a birth or two.
I very rarely go into Baltimore during the week. The other day, I had to go to a deposition (what an uncomfortable experience! - nearly as bad as trying to buy a car at a dealership)...
But before I went to the law office (in a very anonymous office building, curiously enough), I stopped by a small trade show at the Baltimore convention center. The show was aimed at electronics engineers. That's not my field, but I'd happened to receive an email announcing it.
When I had clicked on the URL to find out more, I discovered that the keynote speaker was a cousin of mine. Last saw him more than a handful of years ago, when my sister got married. So I was quite curious to see him.
His speech was awkwardly titled:
"Coming to Grips with Complexity in System Development - Collaborative Approaches Using Model-Based Design"
By the time I got to the room where he was speaking, he'd finished and was chatting with an attendee.
I approached him, afterwards, and he told me that he was making a business trip to Europe in a weeks time. Since he said he would be visiting Munich, I told him about the MagLev car displayed at the Munich airport. (Note: a proposal had been submitted to the U.S. Dept. of Transportation for planning funds for a Magnetic Levitation train line running between Baltimore and DC. Competing for the money is a proposal from Pittsburgh.)
I also mentioned that we have a cousin living in Germany. She lives in Frankfurt, a city not on his itinerary. No matter, I replied. You can hear her husband's commentary on the web. If you go to the New York Times website, you'll find a soundfile of his remarks accompanying a slideshow of new cars premiered at the recently opened Frankfurt Auto Show.
Last Saturday I went to an electroacoustic music concert at UMBC, part of a September-long, Baltimore-Washington electronic music festival under the Sonic Circuits imprimatur.
Can't say that I was terribly impressed. The first piece, which was a recorded collage of processed text and sounds, by Anna Rubin and Laurie Hollander was the best of the lot. The rest were generally too long and often self-indulgent. Perhaps the latter were that way because they were live and improvised. I've found that live improvisation can easily get long-winded.
I was rather tired, so I had trouble sustaining interest much of the time. It was hard to tell if the performances were moving in any direction. For the most part, they seemed rather static and just so much random noise.
I was listening to SecDef Rumsfeld on the radio yesterday, when he visited the National Press Club. He referred to comments by Paul Bremmer (sp?), the Iraq administrator, comparing the establishment and restoration of Iraqi institutions (like a bank, governing body, and the like) to post WWII Germany.... on how swiftly things were being set up in Iraq compared to how much longer it took in postwar Germany.
Makes me wonder, how fair is it to compare the two situations? After all, postwar Germany had 4 countries occupying it who didn't always act uniformly. (See Berlin Airlift Quick Facts)
Meanwhile, the Germans have made their own comparison of the US to Iraq. A couple weeks ago in Der Spiegel (a German magazine like Time or Newsweek), there was an article about the North American power blackout that happened in August. (A translation was available on the NY Times website.) It said:
One can't but help draw parallels between the blackouts in Baghdad and on the US east coast. To date, the Americans have not even been able to bring the power supply back up to prewar levels, which were already completely inadequate... It certainly comes as no surprise that Baghdad residents accustomed to constant blackouts ridiculed the great darkness in New York via CNN, saying that they'd be glad to give the spoiled Americans a few survival tips.
or as Bill Richardson (Secretary of Energy under Clinton and now governor of New Mexico) said, "We are a dominant superpower with the power network of a third-world country."
And that's why Arnold Schwarzenegger might make a good governor of California. His experience playing Conan the Barbarian would probably serve him in good stead when California suffers another power blackout. When the lights go out, they'll need someone who can cope with Stone Age conditions.
last week, when I was in Munich, I went to an exhibit at the Munich city museum on the rise of the Nazi party in Munich. (It was originally known as the NSDAP, or Nationalsozialistisch Deutsche Arbeiterpartei).
On display, there was a large globe (about a meter or more in diameter) taken from the Nazi party building in Munich. Some areas on the surface had darkened with age or looked like they might have been singed by fire. But the US eastern seaboard was partially intact. I could find the word, "Washington", but not "Baltimore".
It happened when I was looking for an art exhibit opening ("Dinkelaka") in Stuttgart... I was guided to the place by a mother and daughter who noticed that I was looking at directions I'd printed out from the internet.
The daughter approached me first. She looked black. The mother, who looked white, later explained. Her husband was African, and she was Italian.
(I'd noticed the relationship between the girl and woman, as we rode together in an elevator up from the u-bahn (subway), and it seemed as if they were mother and daughter.)
When I told them I was from the US, the mother said that her husband had often spoke of emigrating there. He felt he could have a better chance of advancing his career, than in Germany. The Germans, she said, tend to stick to one another, so there was little opportunity for her husband to move up. (Of course, the terms we use to describe this phenomenon in the US are glass ceiling and discrimination.)
I think this sort of thing may be overcome, but it may take a generation. Perhaps the daughter may be able to benefit from the social change, but will she want to remain in Germany, by that time? Will she still want to live, there?
test... trying to get over this jet lag... my body still thinks it's 6 hours ahead, Central European Time
