madhatter’s coffee.

• Flickr: Photos from Lynn K
  Lynn Kasztanovics does wonderful shots. The coldness and disillusion contrasting the fragility of her scenes is stunning.
  (tags: photography art)
• Elektrischer Reporter: #41 Corry Doctrow
  … Boing Boing co-author and sci-fi writer talks about the real dark side of power and why popularity can be the antithesis to democracy.
  (tags: interview video blog philosophy meta)
• Fanboys
  Ever heard of Fanboys? No? Me neither. But if there is an ultimate movie for 2008 – I suggest this one.
  (tags: movie trailer)
• Spreeblick: Nächste Ausfahrt – links einordnen
  Seems as if Frédéric intends to become my favorite writer on Spreeblick [grin.]
  (tags: politics links blogs meta)
• Flickr: Oderberger Str.
  Grin.
  (tags: berlin art streetart)
• Searchbots – build your own search robot
  I’m not really sure if I like it. But I think – yes.
  (tags: web2.0 searchengines bot research tech Tool)

• Spreeblick: Le cimetière de l’innocence
  Frédéric writes about French experiences and explains why bakery costumers really look like suddenly displaced hamsters.
  (tags: writer shortstory weblog french)

Freedom and the freedom to chose are two of the most basic elements of a modern democracy. Family on the other hand is one of the oldest but certainly also the invariable principle in human history.

The authors of the American Declaration of Independence chose the words ‘pursuit of happiness’ to describe what I would interpret as the right and the will to shape your own life after your own ideas and concepts. However, if people in Germany are given the opportunity to decide if they want to have a family or not, most people would say that apart from biological and social reasons there are constrictions that are far less pathetic and nonetheless force you to go into what Christians call a marriage.
After being reigned by more or less conservative governments for most of the past 60 years the German Federal Republic’s residents have no means to change into so called alternative live forms. Particularily after the ‘neo-conservative’ turnaround in the nineties, as the more radical leftist would call it, family, especially family in the way western european christianity puts it is on a new all-time high. You don’t have to read Eva Herman to perceive that. Five years ago studies already predicted a generation, my generation, that would not even be more practical, pragmatic and less political – we are also branded as being part of a conservative roll back after the wild seventies and early eighties. To put it in simple letters: we are family people. Marriage numbers have gone up since then.

But still: one of the most radical thoughts that the flower-power generation brought up was the idea of a real democracy. Not a fake one to be put against evil communism – no, a actual people’s republic. Respecting women and men as individuals and tolerating differences is still part of this ragged utopia.
Since you need room for differences this leads to the beginning of this thought: room to pursuit your happiness, the freedom to chose. And you can’t chose something that ain’t there. As the stereotypical supermarket in the former USSR gave you the right though not the option to choose. You could chose between three different loafs of the very same bread. Nice, huh?
In Germany, one of the so called free states, you can chose between all possible constellations of family. Father goes to work and mother stays at home, mother works and father does the housework, both work and buy a cleaning whatever to keep the mess sorted – but what you can’t do, is simply having: no official family, two working persons in that relationship and a child that can go to nursery.

There are no nurseries.

And there comes the first conservative telling me, that the right to chose is not the same as the option.

• Danny Lyon Series: Biker Gangs
  A wonderful set of selected still photographs of bikers in the late sixties… just flip trough. (via Nerdcore)
  (tags: photo art biker)

• Nerdcore: Designers
  … are meant to be loved NOT to be understood.
  (tags: art typography design)

• Graubrot: Sick
  BINGO. Björn corrects the corrector. Graubrot about the Zwiebelsfish, the right use of language and the fact that even English does make sense.
  (tags: german language zwiebelfisch blog)

• Spreeblick: Ist Technik links? Ein Selbstgespräch
  Grin. It is.
  (tags: tech philosophy)

• Spreeblick: Georgisch für Fortgeschrittene
  Dschurnalist, georgian: term for everyone who sees himself on top of the blogging mob.
  (tags: fun subversive journalism)

• EMILKOZAK.COM
  EVIL. Nice design from Barcelona.
  (tags: art design portfolio typography)

One thing that struck me, when I first arrived in Edi was not only the fact, that almost every building had a front- and most of them a rear garden (a totally new perspective for someone who grew up in that concrete desert named Stuttgart) but that almost none of the street-facing living rooms had curtains. (Whoha, kinda typical kalckhovian marathon-sentence!)
And being one of the more curious dudes of these times I of course cannot control my peepers from gazing into other person’s private lives. What I observe may look trivial to most of my honored readers. To me it offers the whole range of humanity with all its benefits and deficiencies. There may sit an old lady watching the evening news or whatever, a young man bowed over a set of drawings, middle aged women doing the washing up, ol’ guys having a siesta… just in front of my inquisitive nose. Aside from the fact that each of them offers a whole bunch of stories with a gracious character included for free… you know, I could really make use of a superheroes standard ability: being invisible. With a super sized digital SLR in my trembling hands.

Pirate Bay, the portal famous for being the ideological counterpart of the music and movies industry has kidnapped IFPI.com two days ago. IFPI, short for International Federation of the Phonographic Industry was one of the promoting platforms with its secretary based in London… It is supposed that the incident took place after a failed domain renewal.
The Pirates claim to have no idea how they came to own the domain but clearly stated that they don’t intent to give it back.
I don’t even think about them having friends in the ICANN…

A wonderful performance on communism, do-gooder theories and the fact that mandkind still prefers to brain each other over studying quantum mechanics.

And for everybody who’s interested in a not overly deep breakdown of the political term ‘left’, here’s the latest issue of ‘daheim‘.

via classless Kulla

• off the record: Nissan kugelt
  Bowling Nissan… how to do a good advertising campaign.
  (tags: ads video media viral)
• ISO 800: Parteitag
  Whooooha, I found a new blog! And one wonderful example for the fact that mankind is not literate but literally walking on its eyes.
  (tags: csu photo blog)
• Babyshambles: Shotter’s Nation
  Listen and rock. Or Babyshamble.
  (tags: music stream babyshambles)

It rains. It rains since yesterday. Actually it started on Friday. It didn’t stop. My laundry is still wet. I finally arrived in Scotland.

Well, it’s not that bad: I had nearly three wonderful weeks with the sun burning down like she wanted to make up for the spoiled summer. But when I climbed up North Berwick Law at Friday the clouds approaching from the west did not look like they planned to stay for a short rest. Nevertheless, the view was fantastic and I first discovered what Captain Haddock would have called a guano hump. A gigantic pile of bird’s shit accumulated on a rock just a few houndred feet from the coastline.
Less shitty but also quite a quest are my pupils – which is not primarily because they are so terrible as pupils but because they are so unbelievable shy. And I certainly don’t look like the big hairy monster with the long teeth, do I?
Most times I don’t. But even, or should I say, especially the Advanced Highers don’t dare to speak a word not to think of asking a question. I feel like a clown who’s only purpose is to entertain those guys sitting in front of me their eyes widened like rabbits facing a cobra. The children from the lower ability classes are a bit more selfconscious: they even gimme a cheer when I enter the room.
Maybe that’s why I prefer to teach them – even if their attention span is about ten minutes. Every additional minute just ends in total chaos. Someone gets up, starts hitting someone else or just goes to the bin to stuff away his chewing gum. They know exactly what they are allowed to and what is definitely a step to far – and throwing away their chewing gum is a duty as well as fetching the pencil or whatever just fell from the table. It’s just, that the pencil sometimes fell a bit to far away from the table.