Erin Brockovich

I just returned home from the movies. The film, Erin Brockovich, was great. I’m not a special fan of Julia Roberts, but she played very good. Also, the story was gripping, even more so because the film is based on a true story. Here is the official home page of the film.

Botanical Gardens

On Saturday, Sheila had several links to Botanical Gardens. I added some, among them the Botanical Garden in Bonn. But somehow I missed that the giant titan (Amorphophallus titanum) is devolopping a new inflorescence. Only some parts of the page are in English, but you can see a picture of the giant titan, and the size of plant is displayed (today at noon: 251 cm, about 8 or 9 ft). There are also graphs showing the total lenght of the flower (in red) and the amount the flower grows every day (in blue).

The giant titan was discovered in 1878, grows only on Sumatra, Indonesia, and has flowered only about 70 times in botanical gardens. The largest flower ever developed in New York in 1932 (282 cm), and it is expected that this years giant titan in Bonn may even top that!

Auf deutsch heißt die Pflanze übrigens Titanwurz, und hier gibt es eine ausführliche Beschreibung.

Humor?

Susan found this quote on this page:

“Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.”
Douglas Adams

Wanna go sightseeing in Bonn?

When putting together the German part of today’s posting, I noticed some of the museums in Bonn have websites in English, too. Besides the Regierungsviertel, Bonn has lots of museums:

• Kunstmuseum Bonn, Art Museum
• Haus der Geschichte, History Museum (German history from 1945 to present)
• Museum Koenig, a natural history research museum

Here is a visitor’s guide to Bonn. And here are some webcams: a view of the market square, and a view of the city center. And Bonn from above.

Weblogging

Hmm, must have missed this yesterday. Maybe I was in bed already.

Al is (was?) rethinking ViewFromTheHeart and has gotten some interesting responses:

• Jeff: “What you, or any of us, do on ETP may be the most important thing we ever do.”
• Dave Rogers: “The structure and pace of our lives affords us only limited opportunities to have the kinds of conversations many of us seem to be having here. […]
  putting parts of your life on display requires a certain amount of courage, or ignorance, I’m not sure which.”

I have never really thought about this. When I learned about Manila and ETP, I started a weblog right away to try it out. I was not sure then that I would continue to update the site regularly, and I didn’t have a certain topic in mind, but it turned out it was fun! And kind of addicting, I’m afraid…

I still have no real topic, but post links to sites I happen to find, interesting thoughts I happen to read on other weblogs or elsewhere, and the occasional little thing that happens to me. Sometimes it resembles a scrapbook with pictures or quotes I like.

I met lots of people I would never had gotten to know otherwise, and there are many interesting things to think about that come up on other people’s weblogs.
Although I never had thought that other people would be interested in my postings, it seems there are quite a few who read my site, and that’s kind of amazing.

Al, keep up you weblog (as long as you enjoy it) because we love to read it! The same goes for many other webloggers, too!

Sightseeing in Bonn

Abgesehen vom nicht (mehr) sehr spektakulären Regierungsviertel, das jetzt eigentlich einen neuen Namen braucht, hat Bonn noch einige andere Dinge zu bieten.

Am Wochenende waren André und ich zum Beispiel in der Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland auf der Museumsmeile. Dort haben wir eine Ausstellung mit Fotos aus dem National Geographic (von dem es auch eine deutsche Ausgabe gibt) und eine mit virtuellen Rekonstruktionen deutscher, vor und im zweiten Weltkrieg zerstörter Synagogen angeschaut. Der National Geographic hat auch eine Seite mit Fotos.

Gleich daneben liegt das Kunstmuseum, in dem am 12. Juli Die Ordnung der Farbe mit Bildern von Macke, Klee und anderen startet.

Noch eine Tür weiter befindet sich das Haus der Geschichte; dort gibt es zur Zeit Spuren der Macht zu besichtigen. Die Fotografin Herlinde Koelbl hat acht Jahre lang bekannte Persönlichkeiten portraitiert und interviewt.

Und dann gibt es auch noch das Zoologische Forschungsinstitut und Museum Alexander Koenig und die Bonner Version des Deutschen Museums, das August Macke Haus, das Arithmeum und einige andere Museen…

Hey, bei dieser Art von Sightseeing wird man nicht mal naß, wenn es – wie jetzt gerade – in Bonn regnet…

Und gerade habe ich noch eine Luftbildkarte beim General-Anzeiger gefunden.

Imressive!

Rick Saenz and his son have encountered really cool scultptures on their trip. How about this dragon?

Homeschooling

Rick Saenz has returned from a weekend trip and tells why he and his wife are homeschooling their kids.

Pictures

Jeff has colorful pictures from cows on parade in the Yerba Buena Gardens in San Francisco.

I especially like these cows.

Sightseeing in Bonn

Yesterday, I went for a walk in the former Regierungsviertel, the part of Bonn where the government used to be. I took some photos of the new building for the parliament (which was finished in 1992, three years after the wall came down and it was decided that Berlin was going to be the German capital once again…) and the Langer Eugen, the only skyscraper Bonn has. It used to be an office building for the members of parliament.

Gestern bei einem Spaziergang im (ehemaligen) Regierungsviertel von Bonn habe ich einige Fotos gemacht:

	This is the front side of the Bundestag. Die Vorderseite des Bundestages.
	The main entrance is on the left of this picture. Der Haupteingang dieses Gebäudeteils ist links am Bildrand.
	This is the side of the building that faces the river Rhine. Der Bundestag vom Rhein aus gesehen.
	The Bundestag with the office skyscraper. Der Bundestag und das Abgeordnetenhochhaus (“Langer Eugen”), mit abstrakter Kunst in rot.
	The Langer Eugen from a distance. Und nochmal der Lange Eugen aus einiger Entfernung.

Botanical Gardens

A few links to botanical gardens I’ve visited for Sheila‘s collection:

• Botanical Garden of the University of Bonn (short information)
• Hortus Botanicus Amsterdam (I visited it while in Amsterdam in May)
• The Berggarten is the botanical garden of Hannover. This is their web page, but it’s in German. Howeever, it has a nice plan of the garden. The Berggarten is part of the famous Herrenhäuser Gärten, the baroque gardens in Hanover.

I visited Strybing Arboretum last year while in San Francisco. I liked it a lot, especially the garden of fragrance.

School and University in the US and Germany

Garret, Scott and André contribute to the discussion.

Book recommendation

Craig recommends The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan. I’ve read it and can recommend it as well. Der deutsche Titel ist Der Drache in meiner Garage. Oder die Kunst der Wissenschaft, Unsinn zu entlarven.

More Homeschooling

Garret expresses his view and asks about the curriculum in German schools. I try to explain German schools and curricula here.

John writes about homeschooling on his weblog. I think you can tell the differences between school in the US and in Germany by our opinions, and John knows them as well:

Something does need to be said, though. As someone who has attended school in both Germany and the United States, my German classmates were enthusiastic and eager to learn the subjects put before them. I’m afraid I can’t say the same for most of my American classmates, who were more interested in pop culture and who had the latest sneakers. I think it’s part of the American cultural slide we’ve all been talking about lately. It is possible to have great schools, and if we had one near us we would probably not be considering homeschooling.

I was very lucky – I attended a great school. And it happened to be the nearest Gymnasium to my home, too.

Homeschooling

It seems that I wasn’t able to get my opinion about homeschooling through to my readers yesterday. Oliver mentioned the subject on his homepage today and contributed an article in my discussion group. My response to it is here.

Some thoughts on school and homeschooling:

• Teacher’s training in Germany: The training is not bad, but doesn’t deal enough with the problems the teachers are likely to encounter. While we are trained very well in our subjects (I feel like I’m doing half a diploma in mathematics and another half in physics!), there is only very little time that deals with the real problems teachers encounter at school, psychological and sociological things. Teachers are not scientists, they should be able to educate the students.
• School in Germany: Although the aforementioned problem exists and has to be dealt with, German schools are not that bad, in my opinion. Many teachers are able to learn the things required for their job even if they don’t learn them at the university or during their two-year training on the job.
• Homeschooling and its dangers: Teachers in Germany have to study their subjects and pedagogy for at least four to five years, depending on the grades they are going to teach, and write an exam thesis on one of the subjects in the end. Next, there’s 18 to 24 months of Referendariat, training on the job. During that time, they teach classes and are supervised by teachers and meet for seminary sessions and the like in the afternoons. They even have to write a second exam thesis with focus on a pedagogy problem.
  
  Now how should any parent be able to teach his/her children without any special education whatsoever? The only exception I can think of is that the parent is a teacher him/herself, and still, he/she would not be able to teach all subjects. And besides, I’m sure that no parent who is a teacher is willing to teach the children at home instead of sending them to school.
  
  The other problem is that the children who are taught by their parents do not get a chance to learn other opinions than those of their parents. They are not encouraged to think for themselves, to criticize their teachers or other people’s opinions as much as they would be in a “normal” school. This can be very dangerous for children of parents with radical opinions – and those parents are more likely than others to teach their children at home.

I think parents can and should contribute to the education of their children by teaching them some things at home: in day-to-day life, or by encouraging them by showing them means to learn on their own, but they should not try to replace school because they just can’t.

America and Europe

Scott, American and living in Germany for ten years, has some thoughts about the differences and similarities between the US and Europe.