Vergangenes Wochenende haben mein Vater Erik und ich uns in Ravensburg getroffen. Es war schön einmal viel Zeit mit ihm zu haben und in Ruhe miteinander reden zu können. Ein Highlight war unsere gemeinsame Fahrt mit dem Heissluftballon.
Ein paar Daten: Flugzeit: 90 Min; Flughöhe: 3200 Meter; Gewicht des Ballonstoffes: 180kg; Ballonleergewicht 450kg; Tragkraft: 1000kg; Ballonhöhe 28m; Hüllenvolumen: 4800m3 (Volumen einer Tennishalle); 2 Heizbrenner: 25000kW;Brennstoff: 60kg Propangas

Die Fahrt war wunderbar friedlich (man spürt keinen Wind, da man genauso schnell wie der Wind fährt), die Bodensicht leider etwas dunstig, aber wir konnten ein klares Bergpanorama mit Blick auf Zugspitze und Säntis bewundern. Ebenfalls konnten wir den gesamten Bodensee überblicken. Nach der Landung bei Markdorf wurde ich als Ballonfahrer getauft (durch Anzünden des Haares und anschliessendes Löschen mit Sekt). Mein neuer Ballönername: “Württembergischer Markgraf Sebastian in ruhiger Fahrt über dem Schussental gelandet bei begeisterten Zuschauern am Camping Wirtshof“.

THIS greets visitors when visiting the psychiatric clinic where my wife works directly after entering the main hall. And no, these spiders are not meant to live there for the treatment of panic patients.
Picture taken at the yearly “open door” festival.

When war is continuous there is no such thing as military neccessity. Technical progress can cease and the most palpable facts can be denied or disregarded.
…
[The war] helps to preserve the special mental atmosphere that a hierarchical society needs. … In our own day they are not fighting against on another at all. The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects and the object of war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact. The very word ‘war’, therefore, has become misleading. It would be probably be accurate to say that by becoming continuous war has ceased to exist.

-“He knew in advance what O’Brian would say. That the party did not seek power for its own ends, but only for the good of the majority. That it sought power because men in the mass were frail, cowardly creatures who could not endure liberty or face the truth, and must be ruled over and systematically deceived by others who were stronger then themselves. That the choice for mankind lay between freedom and happiness, and that, for the great bulk of mankind, happiness was better.[…]”
-“That was stupid, Winston. … The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power…. We are different from all oligarchies in the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselvess, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives.”…

The Mu Life Ã

A study referred to in a BBC NEWS article found that

Drinking three or more cups of tea a day is as good for you as drinking plenty of water and may even have extra health benefits, say researchers.
The work in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition dispels the common belief that tea dehydrates. Tea not only rehydrates as well as water does, but it can also protect against heart disease and some cancers, UK nutritionists found.

Cheers!

IDC study explores the issues raised by the open source software phenomenon and comes to some surprisingly conclusions.
According to Dr. Anthony Picardi, senior vice president, Global Software, who analyzed IDC surveys from over 5,000 developers from 116 countries, “The use of open source beyond Linux is pervasive, used by almost three-quarters of organizations and spanning hundreds of thousands of projects. Although open source will significantly reduce the industry opportunity over the next 10 years, the real impact of open source is to sustain innovations in mature software markets, thus extending the useful life of software assets and saving customers money. Three distinct business models are identified that differ by their revenue potential, architectural control, and socioeconomic motivations.”