Get well soon!

I just read on Traumwind that Martin’s wife Sandra is back in the hospital, a little over two weeks after their son has been born. I hope it is nothing too serious! Gute Besserung!

Oh, and Martin, I’m sure we will get interesting photos from you behind the curtain. I’m looking forward to them – and to everybody else’s photos too, of course!

Gefahr im Internet?!

Und noch ein letztes Mal die Zeit: Abschied vom privaten Leben, ein Essay von Otto Ulrich (promovierter Politologe, Kuratoriumsmitglied der Europäischen Akademie zur Erforschung der technisch-wissenschaftlichen Entwicklungen in Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler).

“Das ungezügelte Internet bedroht die bürgerliche Demokratie. Die Politik unterschätzt das Problem”

Das Problem ist, daß das Internet eben nicht auf Deutschland – und damit nicht auf deutsche Rechtsprechung – beschränkt ist…

Forschungspolitik

Die Zeit: Demokratisiert die Wissenschaft! von Dieter Simon.

“Forscher und Politiker wollen die Wissenschaft besser verkaufen. Doch die PR-Kampagne ist eine Selbsttäuschung”

Im Zusammenhang mit diesem Titel sind auch die Seiten von Wissenschaft im Dialog (Wissenschaftssommer Bonn) und 2000 – das Jahr der Physik interessant.

Im Zusammenhang mit dem Jahr der Physik findet im ehemaligen Bundeshaus in Bonn eine Ausstellung mit dem Namen Stein der Weisen statt:

“Heute helfen uns Informations- und Kommunikationstechniken, Computer, Meßstationen und elektronische Regelungen oft unbemerkt, aber dennoch höchst nützlich, effektiv und unermüdlich. Wir haben für Sie eine Ausstellung realisiert, die Ihnen am Beispiel des Siliziums einige Meilensteine auf unserem Weg ins “Informationszeitalter” zeigen wird: vom größten Kristall über den ersten Transistor bis hin zu selbständig agierenden Robotern.”

Das öffentlich-rechtliche Fernsehen und die Zuschauerquoten

Die Zeit: …wie es sinkt und lacht von Ullrich Fichtner, Nils Minkmar und Sabine Rückert.

“Das Zweite Deutsche Fernsehen sucht seinen Platz in der ersten Reihe der Spaßgesellschaft. Politikmagazine schalten ab, Halligalli geht auf Sendung. In einer Woche tagt der Fernsehrat. Ein Lagebericht aus Mainz”

Mathematics

Someone should have told me that is exactly the same as (both equal 0.726543, in case you wondered). I wouldn’t have spent the last hour on calculating again and again. Were it not for Mathematica, maybe I never would have found out.

Weblog community

Martin is going on holiday?! So I guess we’ll get very interesting pictures from you for Behind the curtain.

Speaking of A day in the life of webloggers, there are now more than 123 participants!

Someone told Garret that he/she thought the project was more interesting than the Olympics. I wouldn’t even have noticed that the olympic games started today, had I not used Google and seen the kangaroo on their graphic.

20 Questions

If you don’t spend too much time on the web already, check out 20 Questions. You think of an object, the computer will ask you questions and try to guess what it is. Fun!

At the end of a game, you can use your answers to update the database of the game. If you do, you get some statements about the answers you gave. For example:

I thought of a dik dik, and the computer told me that…

Answers for your Unknowns:

• A dik dik probably doesn’t have monetary value
• A dik dik was not used over 100 years ago

Things I [the computer] didn’t know:

• You don’t need a dik dik to go bowling
• You cannot buy a dik dik at a store
• Will a dik dik make your breath smell sweeter – No

Link via /usr/bin/girl.

Wow! There are now more than 100 participants!

You have been assimilated

It seems to be contagious… Several people tried the Cyborger: Duncan, Hal, Martin, Garret.

I should mention that I found the Cyborger on the Netdyslexia crew page.

Computers Don’t Help Kids

“Billions of dollars spent on school computers and Internet connections deliver little long-term benefit and could be better spent on more teachers and other improvements”.

Wired News: Study – Computers Don’t Help Kids

Related articles:

• Tech: How Young is Too Young?
• Tots’ Brains Crammed With Brands

Not so sunny any more

The weather is getting colder, and the sun has gone. I wish it had stayed nice for the weekend and the Behind the curtain project (which has more than 84 participants by now!), but I guess the weather is not that important. My camera has a flashlight after all.

Wow! There are currently more than 65 participants who will let people peek behind the curtain. Maybe there’ll be as many as a hundred in the end?!

I have a headache. I’m going to bed now.

Behind the curtain

It seems that people are wondering why one should participate in Behind the curtain – a day in the life of webloggers.

I visited some of the participants’ weblogs and discovered this on Prolific.org:

“There’s a strange discussion going on on the Dutch webloggers mailing list, some loggers think this has ‘nothing to do with weblogging’. Well… that would be the point, now wouldn’t it?”

I went to the list and tried to figure out what this was all about – which was not easy since they all speak Dutch there!

Jan Willem Swane, who was the first Dutch to sign up for the project, writes:

“Wat ik leuk vind aan het idee is dat het de taalgrenzen overschreidt. Door een dag lang te fotograferen maakt het niet uit of een log in het Engels, Duits, Zweeds of Nederlands geschreven is.”

He was so kind to translate it to English for me:

“What I like about the idea is that it crosses the language borders. By taking photographs for a day it doesn’t matter whether a log is in English, German, Swedish or Dutch.”

That’s something I had not thought of before, but I think it is an important point! And as Garret pointed out, ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’.

I think the project will be a lot of fun and help people to get to know each other a bit better, to meet new people (whose language one might not even understand), and to get a glimpse of what day-to-day life is like in other countries.

“You have been assimilated”

The Cyborger “will tell you what your name would mean if you happened to be a shallow imitation of humanity with a dark purpose. And when you get right down to it, maybe you are.”

I am an Artificial Networked Dangerous Repair and Exploration Android. And a Functional Robotic Individual Calibrated for Killing. Watch out!

Facts about the web

NetFactual.

Link via /usr/bin/girl.

Das Projekt wird multilingual…

Jetzt gibt es auch eine deutsche Übersetzung der Infos und “Spielregeln” – hier: http://array.editthispage.com/24stunden.

  

Copyright?

I found this line at the bottom of Blogthis.com: “©1999 www.Blogthis.com The information your receive from this weblog can be copied, stolen, logged, blogged, snagged, whatever. That’s why it is on the internet!”

Ins Kino…

… müssen wir wohl wieder mal. Der Schockwellenreiter empfiehlt Im Juli mit . Von dem Film habe ich auch schon einiges gehört und würde ihn gerne sehen.

So langsam wird die Liste der Filme, die ich noch sehen möchte, ganz schön lang. Da wäre auch noch Kubanisch reisen und Grasgeflüster…

Uni

Wenn der Berg nicht zum Propheten kommt… oder wie war das? Ich fahre jetzt in die Bibliothek, um dort mit dem Buch zu arbeiten, daß ich nicht ausleihen durfte.

In Sachen Hinter den Kulissen scheint sich einiges zu tun. Letzter Stand: 31 Teilnehmer.

Update: 31 waren es heute gegen elf; jetzt um halb sechs sind es schon 36. Und da noch einige Tage Anmeldungen möglich sind, könnten es noch eine Menge mehr werden…

Was ist das für ein Projekt? Einfach auf einen der obigen Sticker klicken – da gibt’s alle Informationen!

Egosurfing…

… is always very interesting. Today I discovered this:

Web Focus: Reflections On WWW9, by Brian Kelly.

“It was interesting to observer that several participants at the conference used Weblogs to write their trip reports, as illustrated below. [Screenshot of http://serendipita.org/amsterdam/english/]

As well as Andrea’s Weblog [26] David Singer [27] and Dave Winer [28] have also written Weblogs about the conference.”

Lots of data

“InfoNation is an easy-to-use, two-step database that allows you to view and compare the most up-to-date statistical data for the Member States of the United Nations.” You can compare up to seven coutries and up to four data fields at a time.

Found in c’t 19/2000 (11.9.-24.9.2000).

Astronomy

“The Bad Astronomy web pages are devoted to airing out myths and misconceptions in astronomy and related topics.”

For example, he notes that the characters in Star Wars Episode I have only one shadow, even if they are on a planet in a system with two suns…

By the way, there seems to be a faulty Java Applet on that page. My browser crashed twice while loading the home page. Then I disabled Java, and voilà – everything is working just fine.

Found in c’t 19/2000 (11.9.-24.9.2000).

Another beautiful sunny day…

… but no bike tours today. And no photos. Promise!

 

This is the official Behind the Curtain sticker – now available in German, too! If you want to know about the project, click it to get all the info. If you run a weblog, you can participate, too! – So far, 17 participants have signed up.

Weblog Community

Oops: Something has happened to Martin‘s computer:

“This is the automatic homepage of Martin Spernau

The user you requested is currently offline. If you’d like to leave a message, please use the Discussion Group. If you’d like to send an email, please buy him a new computer. Thank you!”