Gruorn revisited

Today, we went to a splendid breakfast in the old schoolhouse in Gruorn (“The little village that was” in my earlier blog article).

I stand corrected on what I wrote about the recent history of the place. The houses were not razed in the 1930’s, after the villagers were forced out to make room for the expansion of the military training grounds. The houses were merely left to decay.

An American Tragedy (with reference to Theodore Dreiser)

He had the looks of a scruffy Santa Claus, so let’s call him C. The long white beard, a head of full white hair, a weathered face in between. When I first met C. he lived in a low rent appartment in small town New Jersey. His alcoholism made him a frequent customer of our volunteer rescue squad.

There was something odd about C. When sober, he spoke a very elaborate English, completely out of line with his social status of the day. He would show up at church potluck dinners and engage the pastor in lengthy theological discourse. Occasionally, he would relate to the life he had had, graduating from Brown University, and working for a TV advertising agency in Manhattan. We did not take that seriously at the time, we heard too many similar stories from the homeless, even though his demeanor provided some credibility.

Some of us called him the Reverend.

Skiing Perversions

German news broadcaster B5 aktuell reported today about advances in snow making, which the Alpine tourist industry hopes will counter the effects of climate change.

Gruorn: the little village that was

Old road from Gruorn towards Zainingen

Truppenübungsplatz Münsingen had been a military training ground since 1895. Significantly enlarged in 1937, it finally encompassed 6700 hectares of farming and grazing lands on top of the Swabian Jura. Administered by the French army after World War II and until 1992, it was finally abandoned by the military in 2005.

Today, it is accessible to the public, albeit with severe restrictions, and provides an excellent impression of what the Swabian Jura looked like in the 19^th century. Its wide-open spaces are particularly impressive on a cold, snow-covered winter day.

Anonymity and the web

Worried about being uniquely identified when browsing the web? Then try out the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Panopticlick service. It uses information conveyed by your browser plus data retrieved from your computer using Javascript . In my case (using Google Chrome 4, Windows XP on a Samsung netbook), the website stated:
“Your browser fingerprint appears to be unique among the 267,621 tested so far.”

The main culprit – the combination of browser plugins found on my computer, which the system thinks is unique within 288 thousand computers, and the combination of fonts, which is unique within 133 thousand. I am not too concerned about this, but it is revealing nevertheless. And shows that if you are trying to remain anonymous, try to use a plain vanilla browser, no plugins, decrease the number of fonts on your computer – and/or turn off Javascript.

Choosing Chrome’s Incognito window reduces the figure to 1 in 134,322. Interestingly, it conveys less information on browser plugins and fonts, but does not block that information outright.

While Firefox initially produced comparable results as Chrome (showing that it is not the still somewhat rarer Chrome browser), turning off Javascript improved my anonymity dramatically, to 1 in 38 thousand.

Using Firefox’s Private Mode did not make any difference, by the way.

Find Panopticlick at:

http://panopticlick.eff.org/

Tracking the Fools

Alemanic carnival figure, from the Tettnang area of Baden-Württemberg

Carnival in our part of the world is filled with witches, ghosts, and monsters of many kinds. And each year in late February or early February, they come to Ulm. It’s Narrensprung time – literally, the time when the fools jump. And jump they do, while 20-30 thousand people look on.

Little wonder that the town needs special  emergency medical services during that day. While actual incidents have continuously decreased in recent years, the Red Cross still responds in force.

A Stillness in Algiers

The ferry crashed broadside into the pier with a mighty thump. We arrived in Algiers, LA, just across the Mississippi from downtown New Orleans, and yet a world away from the city. This is a, admittedly somewhat troubled, small town America.

This hotel makes me feel young (New Orleans, Sunday Morning)

Canal Street from Harrah's Casino looking North

My last time in New Orleans was in 1988. Strangely, I am staying in the same place – or maybe not so strangely, as it is a very large hotel. It makes me feel young — I doubt that they changed much since the 80’s. Well, the TV set is from the 90’s, but with a 70’s picture quality, and the air conditioning has a very recent control head, but a 60’s noise level – on average, it is so 1980’s …

On the road to New Orleans

January 9, 2010 – 14:10
Winter has Europe in its icy grip. While in the South of Germany, it was nowhere nearly as bad as what we see reported on the news from the UK, or France, or the northern parts of Germany, it was enough to seriously impact the beginning of my trip to New Orleans. Upon arrival at the airport, the announced delay was already 1:30 – late arrival of the aircraft. We boarded at around 11:30, as indicated, but then – nothing. Pushback was delayed, and then delayed again, until finally at 12:30 we left the gate, only to go to deicing – of course. The deicing fluid left the wings with the distinct color of oxidized copper – rather pretty, actually. And then finally take-off – at 13:40 (CET).

Estimated time of arrival in Atlanta: 5:03 pm. Our connecting flight leaves 5:50 – no chance. Let’s see what the day brings.

Don’t forget to stay on the phone, and drink lot’s of coffee!

The Journal of of Alzheiner’s Disease published a report which may indicate that “cell phone radiation” may be good for your health. In the research, which I found covered in an Ars Technica online article, transgenic mice prone to develop symptoms of Alzheimer’s Disease, reacted favorably to doses of 918 MHz radiation for two hours each day, for several months, similar to doses expected for cell phone radiation.

In a cognitive test described in the above article which measures short-term memory in these animals, the daily dose of radiation not only prevented decline in the transgenic mice to a degree that they were indistinguishable from their healthy counterparts, but in a population allowed to develop significant symptoms of Alzheimer’s first, subsequent radiation recovered some of their cognitive capabilities.

The findings are as yet unexplained and have to be confirmed by independent studies. A hint may be that the transgenic mice reacted to the radiation with elevated body temperature, while the unaltered mice did not. A hypothesis is that the elevated body temperature stimulates neurological activity.

High doses of caffeine are reported to have very similar effects, by the way.