Sail Training

The Economist: Tall ships, young crews. “Every year thousands of young people serve before the mast (or in the galley) of a kind of ship that once seemed to be an endangered species.”

“Parents: think of an activity for your offspring with no drugs, not very much clubbing, and the near-impossibility of sex. Think of a sport which provoked the lady mayor of Cadiz last summer to offer this unprecedented invitation: ‘Crews, you are full of youth and strength. Feel free to give rein to the joy of your youth, and fill our town with happiness tonight.’ Think tall-ships racing.”

Unfortunately, the link to http://www.tallshipsraces.com/ from the article doesn’t work. However, I’ve found some other interesting sites: the home page of the International Sail Training Association which organizes the races, and The Cutty Sark Tall Ships’ Races, with a guide to tall ships featuring pictures of every type of ship from a full-rigged ship to a yawl. Last year, the race ended in Flensburg, Germany.

Cool Tool

I use Google about a dozen times a day. Now I found this cool Google Search link on Serious Instructional Technology, David Carter-Tod’s weblog. It pops up a window for you to type the search word(s) in, so you don’t have to load the Google page. It’s especially convenient to make it a toolbar item – just one click, entering the word(s), hit return – and voilà, there are your results.

Link via Duncan’s Jotter.

Physik

Zum gerade vergangenen Jahr der Physik hat die Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft eine Denkschrift herausgegeben. Der Inhalt sieht interessant aus, und mit 218 Seiten bzw. über 1 kg kostet sie gerade mal DM 10 plus Versandkosten.

Art

A Common Thread … runs throughout the world…

Wonderful photo gallery with travel photos from around the world.

Link via Garret.

Math and Art

The Schockwellenreiter (aka Jörg) has a link to this M.C. Escher gallery. Yes, Jörg, all math students love Escher – me, too!

Ach ja, und in dieser Linksammlung sind auch einige nette Mathe-Links zu finden.

Ebenfalls via Jörg.

I just did searches on the local search engine and with Google, but couldn’t find Escher links on my site. I was damn sure I had posted a link to an Escher gallery before. Let’s see if I can find it elsewhere…

Here it is: Maurits Cornelis Escher (page 1 of 8) at the National Gallery of Arts, Washington. I found my favourite Escher picture here as well: Relativity (Relativität).

If you are interested in Escher’s work, I can highly recommend Magic Mirror of M. C. Escher, by Bruno Ernst (in Deutsch: Der Zauberspiegel des Maurits Cornelis Escher). It is a wonderful book that not only shows many of his graphics, but also explains how Escher worked and how he created his art. The author, Bruno Ernst, knew Escher personally and discussed his works with him in great detail. If you like Escher’s art, this book will help you to understand and enjoy it even more.

The Weblog Awards

The nominations are out. Okay, they’ve been announced a couple of days ago, and voting is open till January 31st.

All in all, I’m rather disappointed. Apart from the nominees in the categories of origin and the best kept-secret weblog section, most nominees are weblogs that are well-known anyway.

The greatest surprise? The Curmudgeon has been nominated for ‘best-kept-secret weblog’! Yay for John!

Oh, and Disturbing Search Requests has been nominated in several categories: best topical weblog, most humorous weblog, best group or community weblog, best manila-powered weblog. Wow!

And to be fair, I discovered a few interesting sites: Weblog, Theory and Practice and Weblog Madness have been nominated in the best weblog resource category.

Yesterday

I woke up with a headache yesterday, and as it wasn’t getting better, I crawled back into bed after breakfast and watched Fargo on DVD.

Very good film! The characters sometimes make you laugh out loud because they are so normal it’s comic. However, the story itself is rather sad, especially because it is a true story. I wonder how ‘Jerry Lundegaard’ is feeling about what happened.

Now is this really a true story or not? At the beginning it says,

“This is a true story. The events in this film are based on a crime that has been committed in Minnesota in 1987.

To respect the living, the names of the survivors have been changed.

To respect the dead, the rest of the story has been told exactly as it happened.”

[My translation from German]

but there’s a disclaimer in the credits,

“The persons and events portrayed in this production are fictious. No similarity to actual persons, living or dead, is intended or should be inferred.”

Can anyone help me out?

Update: Scott posted a reply in my discussion group. He has relatives who live near Brainerd and points me to brainerddispatch.com/fargo/.

So I guess it’s mostly fiction…

Sunset

Craig has a wonderful sunset photo today!

As to your question about the election: I doubt anyone will ever know if Bush truly won.

Potatoes

Later in the afternoon [yesterday] I felt much better, so I did some experimental cooking for dinner. Inspired by Al‘s Potato Gratin recipe, I made a potato casserole. I put lots of carrots and celery in it and tossed some smoked sausages in as well. Then I mixed some eggs with sour cream, poured it over the whole thing and put some grated cheese on top. I think it turned out pretty well, and we have enough leftovers for dinner tonight.

We still have several pounds of potatoes left, so I’m thinking about trying Fresh Corn Chowder or Smoked Salmon Potato Patties next. Lots of great recipes to be found at VanEats!

One year ago…

… André started his weblog. Happy first weblog birthday, Spicy Noodles!

And there’s another weblog birthday today: Yay for NetDyslexia!

Going south

The Endurance – Shackleton’s Legendary Antarctic Expedition. The site is about an exhibition that’s touring the USA.

Link via Susan.

Politics

Today is the inauguration of George W. Bush as the next president of the USA. Sheila has a bunch of interesting links about Clinton saying good-bye and Bush saying hello.

Physics

New York Times: Scientists Bring Light to Full Stop, Hold It, Then Send It on Its Way, by James Glanz.

Link via Mollie.

Kino

Heute war ich mit einer Freundin im Kino. Obwohl gar nicht Kinotag ist, aber im Woki ist eigentlich immer Kinotag, denn jeder Film kostet nur fünf Mark. Dafür kommen die Filme dort erst später, und heute haben wir Der Krieger und die Kaiserin (Dirk Jasper Filmlexikon / Internet Movie Database) gesehen. Der Film hat mir sehr gut gefallen. Besonders interessant gemacht fand ich den Schluß – Bodo steigt zu Sissi und sich selbst (!) ins Auto, beobachtet die beiden, und schmeißt den anderen Bodo schließlich ‘raus. Der stellt sich an die nächste Bushaltestelle und wird von seinem Bruder abgeholt… geradezu bizarr.

Auf jeden Fall empfehlenswert!

Und als nächstes muß ich wohl endlich mal Lola rennt sehen…

Geography

The Degree Confluence Project:

“The goal of the project is to visit each of the latitude and longitude integer degree intersections in the world, and to take pictures at each location. The pictures and stories will then be posted here. […] The project is an organized sampling of the world. We’ve excluded confluences in the oceans and dropped some near the poles, but there’s still about 11,650 to be found. You’re invited to help. […] Contact us if you’re interested in photographing any one of these places (there is one within 49 miles (79 km) of you if you’re on the surface of Earth).”

Each picture has a little description of the area where it was taken, presumably written by the people who took the photo.

Hey, David, you could use your GPS receiver to participate!

Link via /usr/bin/girl.

Photos

Oooh, pretty! Look at the photos at Tarzan Panoramics. The photographer is named Stefan Tarzan, and he uses a Noblex panoramic camera. There are photos and QTVRs (most black and white, but some in colour, too), and they are beautiful! Look at this sunset over the Pacific, Olympic Coast.

Another site with beautiful panoramic photos (in colour) is Macduff Everton‘s. “‘Macduff Everton updates travel photography in the same way that Ansel Adams updated 19th century photography of the West. He captures strange and eloquent moments in which time, and the world, seem to stand still.’ – Andy Grundberg, NY Times Photo Critic”.

There are more of his photos in the books section, e.g. The Western Horizon. Click on an image to see more photos of the region. See another sunset, at Mono Lake.

Links via Jeff’s Weblog.