Anlässe zur Skepsis

Vom Sceptical Inquirer bis zum paranormalen Fahrrad – der Schockwellenreiter hat es auf die Leichtgläubigen abgesehen und bringt jede Menge Links. Sehr lesenswert! (Auch wenn es Jörgs längstes Posting bisher ist… )

Mein paranormales Fahrrad von Gero v. Randow (Herausgeber) habe ich auch gelesen. Noch eine wärmste Buchempfehlung von mir!

Web pals

Happy Birthday to Hal!

Hal considers Feynman to be “a minor deity in my personal panthaeon“.

By the way, I like the way he uses the weblog icons all over his site. Looks nice and is helpful because you see about which weblogs he’s talking today.

Susan says she read and enjoyed Genius by James Gleick, a biography of Feynman. André owns the book, too, and we both liked it a lot!

Susan: “The description of Los Alamos is one of the things that’s stayed with me, and has fed the interest that eventually led to a plan to have a Glowing Man trip later this year.”

Finally the search engine for BookNotes works!

Yum! Pan-cooked peaches over at Al’s. (It seems he is a fan of Feynman, too.)

Hurray, Oliver is still alive! And he went to the Expo, too.

Books

Craig asks: “I’m addicted to paper and books, are you?”

Yes, I am! Of all the media people have at home, I can do without TV/VCR (André and I don’t own one), I could do without Radio (if I had to; but I just love SWR 3), maybe I could even live without a computer and internet connection (although it would be very difficult), but I could not live without my books and a good library nearby!

(Craig pointed to Books, paper and the e-world.)

Quote of the day

“Science is like sex – sometimes something useful comes out of it, but that’s not what we are doing it for.” – Richard Feyman (May 11, 1918 – February 15, 1988)

Richard Feynman was one of the most fascinating physicists (and personality!) of the 20th century, and I found quite a bit of information on him on the web.

• A biography from which I took the photo of him
• The biography on the Nobel site
• Feynman on teaching (excerpt from Surely you’re joking, Mr. Feynman)
• A man, a genius (a memorial)
• There’s plenty of room at the bottom (I haven’t finished reading that one yet.)
• Cargo Cult, ai site on sceptical thinking
• An obituary from the Boston Globe

Update: Thanks, Garret, for posting the following link to another Feynman page: http://www.crunchygods.com/weirdo/feynman/

Which, in turn, pointed me to Feynman Online, which pointed to the Tuva Trader, etc., etc. …

I can warmly recommend Surely you’re joking, Mr. Feynman! and What do you care what other people think?, two books in which he tells some of his adventures. (Die deutschen Ausgaben sind erschienen als Sie belieben wohl zu scherzen, Mr. Feynman! und Kümmert Sie, was andere Leute denken?.)

By the way, the Nobel e-Museum is a pretty interesting site as well!

Languages

Transparent.com offers basic phrases in more than 30 languages, for example German (hey Garret, you can start learning German right away! ) and more exotic languages like Swahili, which is spoken in Kenya and Tanzania, and even Latin, the official language of the Vatican. Each language’s section contains a page with “surviving phrases”, which include audio clips to learn the correct pronounciation.

Update: In case you need an even more exotic language, Martin pointed to a Pidgin phrasebook, and Duncan posted a link to The Scots Haunbuik.

Sceptic

The Sceptic’s Dictionary.

Link via Schockwellenreiter and Sean.

Ever wanted to be an astronaut?

asks Zannah. Yes, when I was a kid, I wanted to be an astronaut. In elementary school, I knew all the planets of our solar system in the correct order and dreamed of flying to the moon. Unfortunately, I don’t think I’d be fit enough to pass the tests of NASA or ESA. However, here’s a site with infos for wannabe-astronauts.

Here’s another site: a Virtual Journey into the Universe. The site requires flash; however, here is the HTML-only site.

Deutsche Leser kennen vielleicht Benjamin Blümchen: Meine Lieblingskassette war immer Benjamin Blümchen auf dem Mond. Bis heute kann ich daraus noch Dialoge mit originalgetreuen Stimmen wiedergeben.

Szene auf dem Mond, wo Benjamin die Professorin und die zwei Säbelzahntiger trifft und erfährt, daß das Mondgestein aus Zucker besteht.

Professorin: “Frag schön, Gulliver.”

Gulliver (einer der Säbelzahntiger): “Krieg ich was?”

Und Martin, ich finde es gar nicht schade, daß Manila noch keinen Sound eingebaut hat. Da kannst Du lange warten, daß ich den Dialog aufnehme und als Gem poste! :-P

Mathematik

Als Vorbereitung für meine Examensarbeit in Mathematik beschäftige ich mich gerade mit dem Schwarzschen Spiegelungsprinzip, dem Riemannschen Abbildungssatz und elliptischen Funktionen, wie z.B. der Weierstraßschen p-Funktion.

Sieht so aus, als würde ich daran noch eine Weile zu knabbern haben, bevor ich ans eigentliche Thema, Dreieckspflasterungen, gehe.

Musik

Weiß zufällig jemand, wie der Song Bilder von Dir von Laith Al-Deen im Original hieß und wer den gesungen hat? Danke für Hinweise!

Went to the movies…

Oops, the day is almost over, and I haven’t flipped the page yet!

I just came back from watching The Green Mile. It was a really impressive film, I think. But someone should have told me it was so long. There was a break to change film rolls, and I don’t think this ever happened since I saw Dancing with Wolves.

I’m always surprised that I like films based on novels by Stephen King. I’ve read only one book and a few short stories by him, but didn’t like them at all. However, I saw Stand by me and Shawshank Redemption as well as The Green Mile, and I liked them all! Maybe that’s because I learn about the author in the credits after the film…

Great summer weather?

I will never ever complain about the weather again. At least not this summer. For weeks we had something that resembled April more than July or August, and now it’s horribly hot and humid outside. I like the sunny warm weather, like yesterday, but today it was so humid! We had a thunderstorm early in the afternoon and some rain, but it didn’t really help. The weather makes you want to take a shower every half hour.

The most powerful force in the universe is gossip

Hal has a list of 20 Things It Took Me A Lifetime To Learn. I agree with Hal that # 20 doesn’t really make sense.

Over

Everything is over. The weekend (which was nice, but stressful), and the Weblog Rallye, too. The results are here (in German). I’m number 19. Not bad if you take into consideration that I tried only twice on Thursday and didn’t use any technical help.
I’m exhausted and tired.

See you tomorrow!

Achtung Rennstrecke der ersten Weblog-Rallye!!!

Wer lange liest verliert…also schnell weiter!!!

(Wer hier erst auf die Strecke hüpft, wird automatisch zum Start gelinkt)

Yeah, okay, I think I made sure the people who participate in the weblog rallye today will find their link…

Neue Homepage

Meine Freundin Gabi, bei der ich gerade zu Besuch bin, hat sich bei Weblogs.Com eine Homepage eingerichtet. Viel ist noch nicht zu sehen, aber sie freut sich natürlich trotzdem über Besucher!

Worry Tree

I like Sheila’s Worry Tree Story.

Have a nice weekend!

Yes, I know, it’s only Friday. But I’m leaving this morning for a three-day trip.

I’ll first go to Hamburg, where I’m visiting with Gabi, a friend from school days. We’re going to spend the day in Hamburg and have some fun.

On Saturday, we’re going to Hanover together, to the wedding party of Swen, a friend I met while I was living in Hanover, and his wife Gabi. (Yes, it’s a different Gabi.) They got married on June 15, but they went on a honeymoon trip to Canada first and are having their party now.

On Sunday, I’m going to meet my parents at Hanover, and together we are going to visit the Rainforest house (sorry, site is in German), an Expo Project in the Herrenhäuser Gärten.

So I’m sure I’ll have a lot of fun this weekend, and I hope you do, too!

P.S.: Expect the next update Sunday evening or Monday…

Schönes Wochenende!

Ja, ich weiß, es ist erst Freitag, aber ich fahre schon morgen früh für drei Tage weg.

Zuerest geht’s nach Hamburg zu Gabi, einer Freundin, die ich noch aus der Schule kenne. Wir werden wohl irgendwas in Hamburg unternehmen; das Wetter soll auch schön werden.

Am Samstag fahren wir dann gemeinsam nach Hannover, wo wir zur Hochzeitsparty von Swen und Gabi (einer anderen Gabi) eingeladen sind. Sie haben schon am 15. Juni geheiratet, aber danach waren sie erstmal vier Wochen in Kanada. Und jetzt kommt die Feier!

Am Sonntag treffe ich mich dann mit meinen Eltern in Hannover. Wir werden gemeinsam das Regenwaldhaus im Berggarten der Herrenhäuser Gärten besuchen.

Sieht so aus, als werde ich ein schönes Wochenende haben – und das wünsche ich Euch auch!

P.S.: Das nächste Update gibt’s wahrscheinlich erst am Sonntagabend oder Montag…