A wee bit callous

The Doctor Is In

2011-09-06T18:03:00.000+02:00

Hausgemachtes ("lekker broodje gezond, met kaas en groenten!") Gratulationsvideo im Stil eines 50er-Jahre Lehrfilms. Darf man sich gerne auch mal anschauen (Achtung: benötigt eine Verbindung mit dem "Internet").

Never let your squeamish daughter do the job of a professional assassin

2011-08-06T20:44:00.004+02:00

Watching a performance of Mozart's Magic Flute on a Dutch TV channel that seems to be dedicated to theater and opera recordings, while waiting for my Bolognese sauce to be done ("a 5- or 6-hour simmer is not unusual", says Wikipedia. I think I'm willing to wait for about an hour). I've always had a soft spot for this opera, perhaps because it was the first one I've seen with my parents, or perhaps simply because its music is undeniably catchy and, while there is a sense of gravity permeating the story, there's also an abundance of pure silliness.

Watching the final scenes I realize again that I never really liked Sarastro; the Queen of the Night seemed much more human, not despite but rather because of her shortcomings, in comparison to the seemingly superhuman Sarastro. Then I started wondering if Mozart, if he would have been alive today, would have written the opera in the same way as it is. (Yes, Schikaneder wrote the libretto, but I believe -- i.e. I'm too lazy to fact check the following statement -- that the overall theme and story of the opera is largely based on Mozart's personal believes). What I'm going for, is this: the Queen of the Night represents, roughly speaking, everything in human nature that is unenlightened; superstition, irrationality, perhaps even faith, or at least its unquestioning variety. Sarastro embodies (again, as an approximation) the opposed principles of enlightenment; rationalism, tolerance, self-determination.

Those values (of enlightenment) almost certainly were the most pressing political and cultural desires of that time, especially for open-minded and creative individuals, including but not limited to artists such as Mozart himself. And, make no mistake, for large parts of our world today, they still are values that are longed and fought for by many. But for some, the relatively few ("few" on a global scale, "substantial minority" perhaps within the industrialized nations) that have in fact been raised in an environment that puts reason and self-determination above everything else, it sometimes might seem that the primacy of the intellect is not entirely satisfying either.

It's an idle thought, probably, and I'm really not at risk of getting nostalgic about pre-democratic society, but I do wonder what a modern Magic Flute would look and sound like, one in which the pompously rational Sarastro is the antagonist and a deeply flawed, deeply human Queen of the Night is the protagonist.

Things to say during a fight (between geeks)

2011-03-29T15:49:00.012+02:00

"Babe, if you were any more difficult, you'd be NP-hard."

(Actually said immediately after the fight. Not sure if it would have been wise to say it before we reconciled.)

(Alright, I admit, I'm way too pleased with myself for coming up with that one, and actually thinking of it in time. More often, witty remarks only occur to me well after they would have been useful.)

(Her snarky comeback was something along the lines of "And if you were any harder, I'd be much happier." Eh... whatever. It was still totally worth it.)

(I apologize for this unexpected and potentially undesired insight into my private life. I'll be back next month with the usual impersonal anti-Apple manifestos and more pictures of cat.)

(Yes, that's his name, just 'cat'. Maybe I should ask him for his last name.)

I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can do that.

2011-02-15T21:51:00.004+01:00

Maybe I'm a day or two behind (it aired on Monday in the US, I think), but watching the first part of the Jeopardy-IBM challenge was as exciting for me as I imagine the Apollo 11 moon landing must have been back then. I saw it on youtube with some friends (who didn't know about it before), and it was interesting to see that they were pretty 'meh' about the whole thing... for them, Watson just seemed to be a glorified encyclopedia, and I don't want to blame them for thinking so. (Actually, I did blame them, but that was just my sometimes bad temper.)

Yet to anybody who knows about the often bumpy road of progress in AI and NLP, this must have been an amazing moment. Sure, it's a highly specialized machine, there's nothing universally intelligent about it, and "solving" Jeopardy might not mean much in the bigger picture (and I use the word "solving" in a very loose sense here -- but no matter what the outcome is, Watson has at least shown that he's able to play along with the best humans. Note the similarity to the first Deep Blue/Kasparov match.)

With all that said, this system is still an impressive (and highly visible) culmination of a long, long process of small advances made in the field in the past decades, and I think I should make the following known publicly now, right here, before it is too late:

I for one welcome our new robot overlords.

EDIT [29.03.2011] The original post date proves it, Jennings totally stole that line from me...

A campfire/flashlight held against face story

2011-01-17T17:23:00.011+01:00

"When I am no longer even a memory, just a name, I hope my voice may perpetuate the great work of my life. God bless my dear old comrades of Balaclava and bring them safe to shore. Florence Nightingale."

Phonograph recording of, duh, Florence Nightingale, from 1890.

I didn't even know such recordings existed. Reminds me of the audio diaries from a Ken Levine game. Note what she is saying, talking about the time after her death, becoming merely a name, less than even a memory -- it seems she was well aware of her lasting fame, but also what such fame ultimately means. Even more interesting is how she is saying it; her words carried by a strange melody, articulated in a high-pitched voice, which might be due to the recording quality of the time, but perhaps also because of an intentionally forced way of "public" speaking back then.

Now listen to it again, sort of get used to the idiosyncratic way she speaks, and there is a chance you will suddenly realize that you just formed a link -- perhaps not quite, but almost to be called 'personal' -- with someone who was born about 200 years ago.

Won't somebody please think of the children?

2011-01-11T16:34:00.020+01:00

Please note: No animals were harmed in the making of this video. Nieces and nephews, while certainly close to creature level, do not fall under this warranty however.

Counterintuitive, but sort of true

2010-11-23T00:18:00.005+01:00

Writing something down is probably the most reliable way to forget about it.

Lady goes up to eleven

2010-08-30T00:50:00.001+02:00

This, dear readers, is wrong, just wrong. On so many levels.

To begin with, the John Lennon glasses are kind of distracting, don't you think? But whatever, trying not to be superficial here. The whole Wagnerian attitude (both in her gestures and her voice) is a real problem however. It's a piece about an increasingly desperate father trying to save his son, not the musical score for the final boss fight against the Flying Dutchman, lady. And a whole orchestra, instead of a simple piano accompaniment? Was that really necessary? (especially when considering that her voice, I admit that much, is pretty strong.) Maybe she just needed all of them to distract the audience from the fact that she's not really getting her lyrical characters right. (I'm working under the assumption here that the story in the translation is developed more or less parallel to the German text.) (Oh, right. They've translated it into Japanese. Did you notice?). For example, when she's singing the Erlkoenig persona, she kind of looks as if she is air-a tergo-ing the dying kid. Singer, ask thyself, is this really what you wanted to convey? There are even cymbal crashes at the conclusion of the most dramatic lines. That should be enough to convince you how corny this is, right?

Right?

Then why do I actually like her interpretation so much? Guess I have to file it under weeaboo.

* * * * *

Enough of this. Let's have a young Fischer-Dieskau (or maybe it's Orson Welles?) version as an antidote.

The park is living room in the city*

2010-08-09T15:37:00.004+02:00

I recently thought of, for no particular reason that I could then determine, a certain park I had visited in Tokyo in July 2009. It wasn't the largest or most impressive park I've seen while being there, but it was the one that left the strongest impression on me. It was rather small, maybe more adequately called a garden. I realized I don't remember the name of it or its exact location, not even which ward it was in, and a quick search on the webpage of the Tokyo Park Association didn't help either. I do however remember its overall layout, it looked something like this. I wonder if, by chance, I'll find it again when I am back in Tokyo at some point.

The garden was, like I said, not all that impressive: a pretty but rather small pond next to a tea house, surrounded by a small forest, with some stone-covered paths leading from the main lawn area to the pond. That lawn, probably not much larger than a single tennis court, had a few cheap plastic chairs on it, in addition to one or two old metal benches. Nothing about it looked truly outstanding or particularly beautiful, but what made the experience so remarkable was the deep tranquility that emanated from the place.

Admission was limited, the entrance booth only sold so many tickets before letting no one else in; the fee wasn't even that expensive, and probably not too many people would have come anyway on that afternoon, on a pretty hot day, if I remember it right. I wasn't alone, but probably not more than 10 other people were in it at the time; some retirees, a group of mothers and their children, maybe one or two couples. I was sitting in one of the plastic chairs (it's remarkable how this little ugly piece of white plastic became such a universal constant in gardens and cafes everywhere on earth -- disfiguring each surrounding it ends up in equally if you make the mistake to pay attention to it, yet easily blending in if you ignore its design, which is the default after years of exposure to it), reading 'The Master and Margarita', not particularly concentrated though, letting my mind wander around aimlessly most of the time.

The aforementioned forest in the back and a few rather high bushes and trees around the lawn sealed off the park from the city, at least visually: apart from some barely visible fragments of colorful motion (probably larger trucks driving by) the city was invisible; you could easily hear it however, though slightly muted. I stayed maybe an hour or two, probably reading not more than just a few pages, nor did I observe anything around me with more than just fleeting concentration. (How did the children and their mothers look like? I don't remember. Who was sitting next to me? I can't say.) When I remembered this afternoon now, a poem by Jim Dodge came to my mind, which captures the feeling nearly perfect, even though the circumstances are entirely different:

'Practice, Practice, Practice'

It exacts the strictest discipline
To truly take it easy

Yet still retain the minimal
Quiver of ambition
Required for consciousness.

That's what I've been working on all morning,

Stretched out on the couch
By the cabin window at Bob's,

Watching the rain,
Without pattern,
Fall on the pond,

Just me and the dogs.

* Thank you, Tokyo Metropolitan Park Association.

In which the protagonist must admit...

2010-07-14T18:07:00.007+02:00

...that he learned both the meaning of syncopation and singing in harmony/multi-part singing[1] from a little girl appearing as a foil for Paul Simon (but clearly outshining him, in an adorable way) in a 1970-something episode of Sesame Street.

[1] In German I would probably call it 'zweite Stimme', which seems to be close to, but not identical to 'singing in harmony', given that the the German word conventionally implies some amount of improvisation on the part of the one singing the second voice. Is there a more appropriate word in English as well?

He Was There From The Day We Moved In [1]

2010-06-17T19:02:00.007+02:00

When I found the screenshot on another site, the first thing I did was go to the company's webpage myself to see if it was a fake. Turns out, it's real, and still there (at least at the time of this writing).

Hail to you, bearded IT consultant. Don't ever let the big haired, fake smile sporting man or woman bring you down.

Just in case you wonder: the staff profile of essentially every computer science, mathematics (or logic) department on earth tends to look like the exact inverse.

* * *

[1] It's probably just the fact that I grew up with tons of Diogenes books (the publisher, not the philosopher) around me and now feel compelled to connect everything back to them, but this picture (and the tentative story behind it, created in the back of my mind upon seeing it) makes me think of a children book by Levine/Gorey; in particular the cover evokes a strong feeling of resemblance [not so great reproduction here].

In which the protagonist summarizes what he has has learned in the recent past (I)

2010-06-15T01:17:00.008+02:00

The possibility that you might fail is not an excuse not to try.

Even assuming that you would fail essentially all the time ^[1], you are nonetheless obligated to try, do your best, and act as if the outcome is unknowable ^[2].

This is a direct consequence of the first principle ^[3], possibly in conjunction with a few natural minor assumptions, such as: if you don't even try, the outcome will usually be worse than the worst case outcome in case you would have tried.

* * *

^[1] An assumption which, for different reasons though, might in fact not even be viable.

^[2] Or, possibly, even assume that you will succeed. [related to the question whether an objective independent reality exists and, more importantly, matters; to be addressed later]

^[3] Which states that your supreme goal is to be happy, or -- probably equivalently -- that there is no alternative to life.

Where's your dignity, cat?

2010-04-18T01:32:00.003+02:00

Reaction of black cat to Whiskas cat treats: mildly enthusiastic. Cat tries to open container by clawing at it, when this method proves unsuccessful, cat tries to run away with container as a whole (probably planning to open it later with the help of his workbench).

Reaction of black cat to milk: strongly enthusiastic. Cat rubs against leg in anticipation when milk container is taken out of fridge, jumps up nervously in the general direction of said milk container. After consuming allocated small amount of milk, cat signals preference for additional allowance of lactic fluid. (That's supposed to be a fancy way of saying 'milk', but I don't think that's actually what it means.)

Reaction of black cat to canned Tun... whoa, cat, what's wrong with you? Why is your tail shaking like that? And why are you romancing my leg, could you please stop that? (Or at least wait until we had a bit of a conversation.) Cat, seriously, I understand you: Tuna is great, no question. But you act like you're suffering from heroin withdrawal and someone just offered you a swimming pool full of smack.

Addendum. Solution for jittery cat situation: feed him half the can, eat the rest yourself in a salad. Notice cat calming down almost immediately, presumably via tuna-induced food coma, and then fall asleep on your sofa.

Clever noise is still noise, m'kay?

2010-04-03T16:04:00.001+02:00

"Usually, such moments are short-lived, as the mind quickly resumes its noise making activity that we call thinking."

I couldn't feel any better or I'd be sick

2010-03-03T01:29:00.025+01:00

Went to the Filmmuseum in Vondelpark, on Tuesday. North by Northwest. One of my two favorite movies. As it turns out, I still get very much excited while watching this. Like a little boy, before his first vasectomy. Still, at the same time, in some hidden corner of my mind, there's a streak of sadness because of that as well. It seems that it's impossible to share this particular state of mind with anyone, no matter how well one would know me. But then I realized I never seriously tried to convey what this movie means to me. I should say one thing: what I'm about to write cannot substitute watching the film yourself. But perhaps I can make some of those moments visible that send little jolts through my spine every time I watch them on the screen.

The title sequence is a slick piece of visual magic. Perhaps it's too deliberately cool to be really liked, but not to worry, this will be the first and last time that something in this movie might go above our head.

There is this concept which I like to call dream logic. Things that make perfect sense and are causally connected, but only in a particular setting (originally: in my dreams), but that would turn out to be completely non sequitur chains of events if interpreted by the harsh rules of reality. An example? How about 'attempted murder by getting someone drunk, then forcing him to drive a car' (reckless, yet hilarious driving ensues). Another one? Maybe 'pulling the knife out of someone who was just assassinated (not by you), in the middle of the United Nations reception hall'.

Speaking of the UN General Assembly building, please understand he simply had to go there, there was never really any decision he could make about it. Call it compulsion, if you must. Those are the laws of the movie universe. But since this is the moment that really sets things in motion, aren't you glad at least it turned out to become the most beautiful sequence of the whole movie.^[1]

Mother. Despite the way he acts, I believe he kind of loves her, in a Madison Avenue ad executive sort of way. Sometimes I wish I would want to write fanfiction. Then I would write a scene where she meets with Vandamm, somewhere towards the end of the movie. He's the main villain, would you have guessed it by the name? The possibilities of those two getting at each other's throats would be limitless -- although I suspect that, ultimately, they would reach a deal where Vandamm is allowed to drop a rock on the protagonist, as long as she is allowed to take her son's wallet afterwards.

This takes place about 20 minutes into the movie. And removes any doubt whether this is a suspense film (Hint: is not). I also took the name of this blog from there.

This is where we witness the smartest flirting scene inside the dining car of a moving train, like, ever. Maybe 'foreplay at the table' would be a better description. But it's okay because it's the 50s. People didn't really have sex back then, which means the innuendo is completely innocent and charming. But why, Mr. Hitchcock, wherever you are, did you have to follow it up with the most awkward kissing scene in movie history. The hands, those awful hands, why do they follow me into my nightmares?

Why is Thornhill so grumpy the morning after? That's just, ungrateful, you know.

Don't mention the war. Okay.

The iconic scenes, crops and heads, strangely leave me comparably cold. Perhaps because I wasn't able to discover them myself when I first watched the movie. You cannot really make something your own if others already told you that and why you should really appreciate it. Guess this means you actually shouldn't read this post then.

This is the original, rather respectable version. Lebowski -- sorry: the Dude shouldn't hang around elderly porn barons.

No, not really. It doesn't seem like he respects the proceedings at all.

Don't get me wrong, this man is dressed as sharp as I ever would hope to be. He mentions Cary Grant regularly, as a shining beacon of impeccable style and manners. But I guess men did wear their pants rather high back then.

This is the house I want to live in, at some point in the future. Maybe I like it even better than the original by Mr. Wright. Is that his last name, by the way? How can you tell when the first names stop and the last name begins?

I somewhere read someone speculating about Leonard's special relation to Vandamme (it was not assumed to be symmetric, though). I didn't agree at first, but now I do.

The magic of Technicolor and early bluescreen techniques. Nature clearly loses in comparison.

It all ends with a tunnel. Just ask Seymour Skinner what his feelings are about those.^[2]

The whole thing is pure camp, sure.^[3] But it is sort of my personal medicine cabinet of campy edification, and sometimes I'm glad it exists.

* * *

^[1] [Edit] I would really like to show you at least this sequence... Let's see, maybe it won't be taken down.

(Me: "There is no copyright violation going on here." *waves hand* Copyright holders, monotonically: "Yes. We can clearly see there is no copyright violation going on here.")

^[2] On the cell phone. "Sorry mother, I was driving through a tunnel." - "I don't want you driving through tunnels, you know what that symbolizes." [Season 10, Episode 16]

^[3] Ironically, Sontag's Notes on Camp explicitly mention the movie to be an example of something that fails to be camp. I think it's a function of time to some degree, so maybe she was right back then.

Eraserhead conducting Non-Bach

2010-02-22T14:56:00.007+01:00

Dramatis personae: A young Daniel Barenboim who looks straight out of a David Lynch movie. A famous cellist, pretty hot, in an Aspergerian sort of way. And I guess there's something like music in it as well (It's kind of loud. And not contrapuntal at all.[1] But pretty okay nonetheless, I admit.)

Here's the rest.
2nd movement
3rd movement
4th movement, part 1
4th movement, part 2

[1] Full disclosure: I actually have no idea what contrapuntal really means. I just know it accurately labels the music I like.

Is that a Gartenzwerg in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?

2009-12-23T08:17:00.003+01:00

I'm always looking for a good way to describe to people that don't know Germany what a Spiesser is (well, technically: Spie/ß/er, I guess, but I never liked that letter. Go screw yourself, Eszett). "Square" is an approximation, but all the important connotations are missing. Then I found this on another blog:

It's a gross over-simplification to say a Spießer is a square, but it gives us a starting point. [...] So think of it this way: to be a square is to be uncool. [...] But a Spießer is more than just square.

He or she is one who has narrow and limited scope to their thinking and behavior. They are controlled by society's expectations for them and its definition of what is right and proper. Nonspießers are comfortable defining their own rules. The Spießer is always looking over her shoulder to see what someone else thinks.

So, while a square is defined mostly by style: clothing, music, dance moves or a lack thereof, Spießers are defined more by substance: what they do, how they act in a given situation. Clothing can be spießig, but clever Spießers are potentially everywhere, disguised by a Bundeswehr backpack or an Ärzte tattoo. It's best not to rely too much on personal style to detect them. [...]

And there's another essential difference between the American square and the German Spießer. Between the square and the hip there is a wall that is seldom crossed. If you're hip, you remain hip, because you're, well... hip. But in the German cultural universe the phrase most often used is "Spießer werden."

He goes on to say that, in his experience, the defining characteristic of the Germans he knew wasn't that they were Spiessers, but rather their fear to turn into one, their "Urangst" to become spiessig. He has a point, I guess. There were occasions when I claimed that the act of breathing itself is kind of spiessig.

Das geistige Äquivalent zur Drüberkämmerfrisur

2009-12-19T15:30:00.002+01:00

Sehr einsichtiger (soll heissen: "aufschlussreich, und nach meinen eigenen Ansichten auch noch zutreffend"), vor allem aber mehr als solide geschriebener Artikel von Kathrin Passig im 'Merkur', über Technologiefeindlichkeit (und implizit auch über Technologiebegeisterung -- genau an der Stelle könnte man Passig dann auch einige Punkte entgegenhalten, im Sinne von "vorauseilender Enthusiasmus für alles Neue und Glitzernde ist auch doof, irgendwie").

Besser geschrieben als fast alles, was man sonst im Feuilleton sieht, und progressiv noch dazu, was man auch nicht so oft findet (vielleicht sollte ich mal was anderes als das FAZ Feuilleton lesen...). Max Goldt hätte es an einigen Stellen vielleicht noch besser in Worte gefasst, aber dafür fangen seine Ansichten zuletzt an etwas zu verspiessen. Muss der Erfolg sein, der macht bekanntlich satt.

Aus unserer Reihe "Die Schönsten Sätze der Deutschen Sprache"

2009-12-13T10:04:00.003+01:00

Folge I:

"Die Auseinandersetzung verlagerte sich unter andauerndem Gerangel in den Supermarkt bis vor die Käsetheke."

[Rheinische Post Online, "Prügelei um Einkaufswagen", 13.12.2009]

Das weisse Band

2009-12-12T02:31:00.009+01:00

Remarkable movie. Then again, Haneke's movies always are. The trademark uneasy feeling of 'Funny Games' is still there, but the story, the whole atmosphere seems less detached from reality than in his earlier works, even though the film still appears to be set in an alternative reality where the ugliness of human behavior is immediately visible, at every moment in time. You could call this perspective a depressing one.[1]

I don't mind the somewhat arbitrary connection to "the great war" at the end, there's a long tradition of doing exactly that (cf. Zauberberg, Radetzkymarsch, Lord of the Rings), without giving any further explanation, and it certainly worked before. What I do mind are technical aspects: the movie doesn't look good, or rather, it doesn't look as good as it could given its otherwise excellent style. I would say that, mainly, the lighting is off. I read Haneke used color film stock during filming which was turned into black-and-white during post-production. Maybe that explains the impression.

What bothers me the most however is a kind of uneven quality of the acting, in particular when it comes to the dialogues. Some of the actors seem to be able to get into the period in which the movie is set, acting, and most importantly, talking accordingly, while others don't. Compare this to Shyamalan's 'The Village'; a lesser movie, sure, but I guess in that one they intensively voice coached the actors, or whatever magic those big (Hollywood big, I mean) movie productions employ, and as a result the time setting is conveyed more consistently in 'The Village'.

And then there's Detlev Buck. His own movies... naja. Don't really work for me. But the short scene in which he questions the suitor of his daughter (who is also the narrator of the movie) is a much needed moment of awesome comic relief, and it manages to be so without disturbing the rest of the movie. As a supporting actor he's a constant in Leander Haussmann's movies, and he's great in those, but I really want to see him in a leading role in a movie by, say, Dani Levy.

* * *

[1] By now I'm almost not surprised by it anymore, but it turns out my taste in movies is changing. About 10 years ago, I was basically in love with 'Funny Games', but recently I started to notice that I like this kind of movie less and less, and it has nothing to do with their quality, only with their perspective on life. I can't really describe the sentiment yet, so I'll just use a quote by Jim Dodge that I think is connected to the feeling I am trying to get across:

JD: (...) As to your direct question whether I'm a glass-half-full type of guy my glib answer would be "break the fucking glass!" In fact, though, it depends on my mood and who I'm talking to, though in my writing I tend to appeal to the positive and hopeful in human life, partly as a reflex of gratitude for the possibilities presented by this adventure in consciousness, partly because I want to encourage the best within us. Nihilism is easy, cheap, and ignoble; if you want to refuse the glorious opportunities life offers, fine--shut up and destroy yourself. But don't spit on the gift, or extend your destruction to others.

Upon leaving Bungehuis (not to be pronounced "Bungee house")

2009-12-11T13:27:00.007+01:00

"Why don't you take a class at the linguistics department? Full of cute girls. Some of them are pretty smart, too."

"Nah... I don't feel like preying on the Uncomplicated."

Add one spoonful of insult to injury

2009-12-08T12:09:00.008+01:00

The Facebook 'Suggestions' feature has already received
some attention, and then some more, so there's not much for me to add, but it appears that Facebook selects those users for suggestions from your friends list that show little Facebook activity, or only have few friends and wall posts, i.e. appear to be neglected.

The consequence, sending around suggestions to random friends to encourage them to pay more attention to the Facebook loners reminds me of a mother coming to the school yard one day, telling the older kids to "stop picking on my son, you bullies!". Something that doesn't even sound appealing in theory (unless your actions and the knowledge about their likely consequences are completely untainted by reality or experience).

Hingabe, vorehelich. Nicht empfehlenswert.

2009-12-06T22:29:00.004+01:00

Alter deutscher Farbfilm (...) Nicht wegen der realistischen Milieuschilderung, sondern im Hinblick auf seine sittliche Indifferenz (voreheliche Hingabe) wird vom Besuch abgeraten.

Handbuch V der katholischen Filmkritik, 1963, über den Filmklassiker 'Grosse Freiheit Nr. 7'

On the dangers of (internal) monologues

2009-11-28T01:25:00.002+01:00

[Derailing monologue from Duck Soup (1933)]

And this is precisely why you shouldn't discuss issues you have with real people with their internal representations in your mind beforehand. If I would be able to remember this I could avoid many unnecessarily heated discussions, I'm sure.

Aber er hat doch diese schönen Autobahnen bauen lassen

2009-11-27T17:08:00.000+01:00

Title:
Daran erinnere ich mich gern. Ein Bilder-Buch für die Biografiearbeit (Thomas Haubold, Beate Wolf. Schlütersche Verlagsgesellschaft, 2009)

(approximate translation: "Such fond memories. An illustrated book for biography work")

Purpose:
Helping elderly people to battle neurodegenerative diseases by rekindling their fading memory. The theory behind is, I believe, that memories that are associated with strong feelings are inherently more robust than less emotionally charged ones. The aim then is to evoke charged memories that are likely to be shared by most people of some generation (kind of like a blueprint of memories. Jung, anyone?)

Target group:
Elderly Germans suffering from said diseases. Probably in their 80s now.

What kind of memories are we talking about?
Oh, you know, just the usual stuff: playing with your favorite toys as a kid, your first day of school, your first kiss, sitting around the campfire with your fellow Hitlerjugend friends. Wait, what?

I'm not entirely sure what to think about this.

[Hinweis: Alle Rechte an der eingefügten Abbildung liegen bei der Schlüterschen Verlagsgesellschaft. Ich verwende die Abbildung an dieser Stelle als Zitat im Sinne des deutschen Urheberrechts]

The scale. It has been tipped.

2009-11-27T00:58:00.009+01:00

I am somewhat torn on the file sharing/IP piracy issue: on the one hand, I can understand that it looks like you are benefiting from someones intellectual work without being willing to compensate the artist who enabled you to enjoy it. On the other hand, I really have to think of it as such a huge opportunity to hear all the music, see all the movies that you ever wanted to. Like I said, I'm torn. But as of today, a bit less so.

Let us assume I did not buy any music in a while, maybe for as long as 3 years. Let us (counterfactually, of course) assume that I nonetheless manage to continue to listen to new music. Let us completely factually assume now that one of the most amazing bands I know goes by the name Oi Va Voi and that they released a new album. [1]

They are a fairly well known band, but I realized they are not exactly hugely popular either. It is entirely possible I got this idea when I noticed that their new album didn't show up on a search on pirate bay, and only with few seeders on torrentz. [2] At that moment I decided to buy the music album instead of leeching it off the Internet, and in fact to buy my first mp3 files ever, to support a band I happen to like. As it turns out, this is a pure pain in the ass.

You can easily find their latest album on itunes. Only that I try to avoid giving more money than necessary to Apple. *nervous eye twitching* Apple... *moves on* [3] I read that amazon was one of the first companies to sell mp3s DRM free, which seemed to me a pretty good reason to buy the album from them. But first I had to install the official Amazon mp3 downloader software. Why yes, this makes perfect sense to me. Plain HTTP file transfer through your browser is so, like, early 2006. Whatever, so I install the thing (to be fair, it is quite small, appears to contain no spyware, didn't autoload on system startup and allowed me to disable auto checking for updates). Only then it turns out that I cannot download mp3s from amazon, because I'm in the wrong country. Neither from .co.uk, .com or .de. Something about "regions" and "licensing". Never mind that I actually have a German billing address for my amazon account, the site probably just checked my IP address and decided that the Netherlands are one of those wrong regions - I might even agree, but for different reasons probably.

Conclusion: it would have taken approximately 30 seconds to initiate the download with the both small and elegant utorrent client (and probably about a day for the actual download, since there weren't many sources, as mentioned before). It is kind of difficult to convince myself that I should buy music if the cost-free alternative is faster, non-intrusive to your system and less likely to cause a burning rage that results in an unnecessarily long and somewhat rambling blog post. Let me introduce the following analogy: Imagine you put a Mars bar in front of a kid and tell him not to eat it. Then you leave the room. Then you come back, bring in a TV on which Mars commercials are running in an endless loop, with ad people happily munching on their favorite chocolate bar. Then you leave the room again, only now you blow some chocolate-scented air into the room. Then you come back and tell the kid that this analogy is going nowhere and that he can eat the candy. But you secretly think buying music on the Internet really sucks.

* * *

[1] One of my favorite songs, from their album Laughter Through Tears: Refugee

[2] I guess you can see where this is going. But I should note that it actually would have been possible to just download the album, so it was not just a pragmatic nuisance that lead to my decision.

[3] What's wrong with Apple, you ask? Everything, I answer. I hate them, or rather: company-hate them (that's a special type of disgust reserved for unethical companies, but it's, actually, quite different and less serious than real hate). The itunes software is a piece of crap [3.1], at least on Windows, the user interface of my ipod touch is at best mediocre and lacks a lot of functions that I think should be a no brainer, and they charge money for firmware updates... Seriously, think about that for a moment: they take money for something that pretty much every other tech company provides for free. But here's what really bothers me: No matter how much I dislike Microsoft, at least there's one good thing about them - as a company, it already receives the appropriate amount of hate. Why Apple on the other hand is such a respected company among geeks (at least that's my impression - it might be a particular subset of geeks, but I can't really define it yet) is completely lost on me.

* * *

[3.1] I don't care if itunes works great on Apple hardware. I bought an ipod touch, I am forced to use their proprietary software (unless I'm jailbreaking the little bugger, which I'm about to do) so I can reasonably expect that the software works at least decently under my OS of choice. But it doesn't. Not at all - it crashes, my settings are ignored whenever the software updates, it fails to import some music without any noticeable reason, and so on. [3.1.1]

* * *

[3.1.1] Wheeeeee, nested pseudo footnotes! I am immensely pleased by their existence.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Nationaldichter. Universalgenie. Dirty old man.

2009-11-21T11:18:00.013+01:00

Viele Jahre darauf war Goethe bei Schiller zu Gast. Auf Schillers Schreibtisch entdeckte er ein Blatt mit dem Zweizeiler: "Er saß an ihres Bettes Rand / und spielte mit den Flechten."

Später, der Gast war bereits gegangen, fand Schiller den Vers vollendet. Goethe hatte hinzugefügt: "Das tat er mit der linken Hand. / Was tat er mit der rechten?"

[Rainer Schmitz: Was geschah mit Schillers Schädel? - Alles, was sie über Literatur nicht wissen. Eichborn]

Fussnote: Thomas Mann hatte sich, glaube ich, immer als eine Art Nach- und Thronfolger Goethes gesehen. Wenigstens einmal (im Aus-Goethes-Perspektive-Kapitel in Lotte in Weimar) wird der Anspruch auch ziemlich explizit. Aber Zoten wie diese zeigen natuerlich, dass nur Robert Gernhardt als wuerdiger Nachfolger in Frage kommen konnte.

In other news: Kant kontinues to konfuse

2009-11-17T12:54:00.002+01:00

Mr. Kant would have you believe that reality is purely noumenal and beyond the reach of our phenomenal consciousness, thereby being inherently unknowable!

I guess I've been spending a bit too much time on Mr. Kant by now, but I can't help overanalyzing the video above... I think it's actually quite unlikely Kant would have held that "reality is purely noumenal", depending on what kind of reality you want to consider, and in fact his whole transcendental deduction seems to aim at building a strong, perhaps necessary connection between that which is knowable through appearances and the noumenal world which is in fact beyond our experience. It seems more like it is based on some Ayn-Randian misinterpretation of Kant. Wait, I just realize, that's probably the point - or at least it makes perfect sense to think of it like that; Attack Ad <--> Republican propagandists <--> Ayn Rand fanboys. There you go.

Glory, jest, and riddle

2009-11-15T16:32:00.004+01:00

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;
The proper study of Mankind is Man.
Plac'd on this isthmus of a middle state,
A being darkly wise, and rudely great:
With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side,
With too much weakness for the Stoic's pride,
He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest,
In doubt to deem himself a God, or Beast;
In doubt his Mind or Body to prefer,
Born but to die, and reas'ning but to err;
Alike in ignorance, his reason such,
Whether he thinks too little, or too much:
Chaos of Thought and Passion, all confus'd;
Still by himself abus'd, or disabus'd;
Created half to rise, and half to fall;
Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;
Sole judge of Truth, in endless error hurl'd:
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!

Alexander Pope: An Essay on Man.

[more] [even more]

Think of this as the evil dual to 'Ponyo'

2009-11-11T00:07:00.010+01:00

Just watched Tideland. What a fucked up movie.

I love almost everything by Terry Gilliam; Brazil is probably somewhere on my personal list of favorites, Fear and Loathing and Twelve Monkeys are both - at least visually - masterpieces, Time Bandits is incredibly silly and great fun to watch at least once, but I'm at a complete loss for words when it comes to Tideland.

Watching it I was either bored or severely creeped out. In fact, "creepy" isn't the right word, since a number of movies I like are in fact just that (David Lynch comes to mind). It's actually more of a deep visceral feeling of vicarious shame or embarrassment ("fremdschämen" is the German word I have in mind), in particular the eerie relation between Jeliza-Rose (a young girl and the main character) and Dickens (a retarded man she befriends), complete with some weird sexual undertones.

There's a possibility that this is intended by Gilliam, or at least, a tolerated side effect for those who are not part of the movie's primary audience. I actually have the suspicion that it works differently for male and female viewers - Tideland could simply be the most warped chick flick ever made. Or maybe I'm just rationalizing having seen a terrible movie by one of my favorite directors.

Misintrepreting Kant

2009-11-10T18:13:00.003+01:00

Not quite an argument against the existence of god, but against the reasonableness of religion.

(1) Assume god is transcendent, i.e. lies beyond the boundaries of possible knowledge. Then any attempt to understand (and codify) god's demands about human behavior are futile; nothing meaningful can be said about god, therefore nothing meaningful can be derived, e.g. commandments, or even guidelines for a good life according to god's will.

(2) Assume god is not transcendent. God then belongs to the same realm of spatio-temporal beings as humans. God might be a particularly powerful or wise being of this kind, but will not be different from us in principle. Observing god's laws (i.e. following the rules of a religion or religious philosophy) is then a similar matter to following the rules given by another human we consider particularly wise or powerful; while we might follow this person's rules, it is hardly a moral necessity to do so, depending solely on our own judgment whether we consider the rulemaker to be wise or powerful enough to make following his or her rules advisable, for the time being.

It appears to me that religions (and those that believe in them) need to think of god as (1), but, for the purpose of rulemaking, treat god as if (2) was the case.

Critique of Pure Happiness

2009-11-08T14:26:00.014+01:00

EDIT: New working title: "Large pile of irrelevant thoughts. Projected to grow over time.", or "Random thoughts on life, and the attempt to impose some form and order on them".

This is intended to be a collection of thoughts that I believe to be somehow connected, and that I believe are in some way linked to the question how life and happiness work, even though I'm not entirely yet sure why I actually believe that. I will come back to it later and add more points to the outline here.

I'm sure it will be almost completely incomprehensible at the moment. I just decided to dump the ideas that I've thinking about here, instead of to my personal notes. During the last weeks, a number of ideas stacked up in those notes, listed there with the intention to be expanded on the blog, but in reality, they just remain there unfinished. Perhaps putting them here (equally sketchy at first) will add a bit of pressure to actually come back to them and work on them again.

Methodology, i.e. how to answer the questions. (1) Establishing a system of necessary truths. (2) Observation-based argumentation, purely empirical. (3) Axiomatic system, formalizing (my own) intuitions as first principles. ==> Which intuitions are strong enough. ==> Once a system as in (3) exists, intuitions can be evaluated.
All actions vary wrt their degree of influenceability. NB: every action influences every other action; consequence: desires and actions that are "easy", i.e. are under full conscious influence, affect those that appear almost uninfluenceable (i.e. happiness), and vv.
Evaluation of events, considering that evaluation of memories changes over time. Q: Is there a right evaluation? If so, which one: during the event, or the current one?
What follows from introducing "Happiness" as an axiom?
- 'goal-dependent perception & reasoning' (TERM. The way of thinking that reduces the influence/understates the importance of experience that is detrimental to happiness).
The 'diary test' of (daily) happiness.
What are the different kinds of politeness (in the widest sense): friendliness (based on a feeling of compassion and/or connectedness) vs. politeness #1 ("Tokyo politeness") vs. politeness #2 (opening doors, letting others pass first ==> chivalry?). What is their influence on our state of mind? Do all people have the need for politeness, or the same type of politeness?

[First posted: 08.11.2009 -- Last Edit: 03.12.2009]

So eyn freylekhe Wagner!

2009-11-04T16:15:00.006+01:00

Tunes I heard being played by Amsterdam carillons:

Overture to Tannhäuser (Carillon inside the cupola of the Paleis op de Dam/Royal Palace)

Wagner, in the middle of Amsterdam... really? Where's your sense of historic justice, Dutchmen?
If I Were a Rich Man (Zuiderkerk carillon, if I remember correctly)

This one is obvious: Mayor of Amsterdam = Job Cohen ⇒ carillons playing Fiddler on the Roof.

(jup, what you just heard was the ripping sound of my karma being cut in half...)

You kind of have to appreciate the contrast between item #1 and #2, no?

It's never too late to invest in pesticides

2009-11-01T00:34:00.004+01:00

Somehow I just can't decide which of these two is the more lovable creature.

Contestant #1
"He reported trying to grab hold of the fish, but it was very slippery, and it forced its way inside with alarming speed."
- Wikipedia: Candiru
- Straightdope.com: Victim quotes

Contestant #2
"The fish is able to use the parasite just like a normal tongue."
- Wikipedia: Cymothoa exigua
- Picture of the isopod and its host

Don't you just love Mother Nature's twisted sense of humor?

Hotels, the future, and the past

2009-10-25T15:21:00.006+01:00

David Hilbert was a mathematician and hotelier
Imagine my surprise: Flight of the Conchords' Robot Song has an equally funny spiritual predecessor. German/Austrian even.
Wie kommt es, dass man, wenn man als Kind relativ selten lacht, meistens nur verhalten lächelt, höchstens als ein wenig ernst wahrgenommen wird, was aber letztlich nur zur allgemeinen Niedlichkeit beiträgt, wenn sich das Verhalten aber im Erwachsenenalter fortsetzt die Vermutung aufkommt es müsse ein Zeichen von Schwermut sein und damit Anlass zur Sorge geben.

A Rapid Descent into Madness

2009-10-24T18:17:00.004+02:00

"So, what have you been up to lately?"

"Nothing special, you know. Just the usual stuff... like re-enacting Michelangelo's Creation of Adam with the neighbor's cat."

Being with you made me feel like I'm somebody else

2009-10-23T02:20:00.002+02:00

Interesting. As it turns out, inverting a perfect love story (a story about perfect love, not a perfect story about love) results in a perfect love story; seems to be invariant.

There's also Bach in the beginning and the end of Before Sunrise. In fact it's one of the Goldberg Variations. It kind of belongs there.

Dear Sir or Madam. I'm afraid your modifier scope is kind of broken.

2009-10-19T02:24:00.007+02:00

Mysterious guy who hired group of mercenaries, while standing
in front of equally mysterious machine:
It may not look like much right now, but this could be the Holy Grail of physics.
There are four forces that control matter. The key has been trying to find how those forces interact. If we can do that, then we can explain the behavior of all the substance in the universe.
Einstein coined a phrase, unified field theory. Many people thought he was close to finding a solution. But when he saw the atomic bomb tests at Trinity, he abandoned the research and destroyed his notes. Nobody has even come close to finding a solution since.

Mercenary leader:
So you came all the way out here because you think that the Nazis...

Mysterious guy:
...were working on the same thing. I think this machine was designed to manipulate a unified field.

[Scene from the very entertaining – yet undeniably campy – dieselpunk slash Nazi occultism horror movie Outpost]

Feline wisdom, part I

2009-10-10T02:30:00.005+02:00

Amazing insight into the structural properties of cats and cat behavior is about to follow: When playing with a cat, it sometimes bites or claws at you playfully. Only that after a few minutes you realize you actually have a small bleeding wound on your hand because the beast did in fact bite quite hard. If, on the other hand, a dog bites you, the effect is noticeable immediately. Why did we domesticate any of those unruly flea-ridden little buggers again?

I guess he didn't know Facebook yet

2009-10-06T16:54:00.002+02:00

Überraschung

Nach Jahr und Tag
dann wieder ein Brief
Die Handschrift schräg
und die Marke schief
und du wagst ihn gar nicht zu öffnen

Du drehst ihn um
Kein Absender drauf
So lange her
doch da ist er schon auf
Und du wolltest ihn gar nicht lesen

Dann liest du ihn doch
und denkst schon entspannt
Es wird ja weder Roß
noch Reiter genannt
Und die beiden kennst du persönlich

Da erwischt sie dich wieder
kalt diese Schrift
Sie teilt dir nichts mit
doch sie ist immer noch Gift
Und du schaffst es gerade zum Waschbecken.

[Robert Gernhardt, "Weiche Ziele"]

Science Park 904

2009-10-04T23:06:00.002+02:00

(1) The new faculty building [NB: not my flickr account] has an established common name by now, no point in denying it. Everyone I talk to simply calls it "Science Park". I didn't like that name from the first time I heard it. "Science Park" is the whole area, not just this particular building (even though it is undeniably the dominant element there). But more importantly, it's pretty uninspired to call a building with the official designation 'Science Park 904' simply 'Science Park'. Obvious, maybe, but bland. I actually thought that 'fenwee' would sound okay, based on the acronym for our faculty, FNWI. Well, too late now.

(This reminds me of how I never liked how insipid most of the contemporary sociolect at German universities seems to be: Studenten are "Studies", Erstsemester are "Ersties", etc. Sometimes I think other languages are a bit more creative when it comes to neologisms, but maybe that's just self-deprecating thinking.

(2) Funny how constant usage of the Internet changes your way of doing things that are seemingly unrelated to it. Today, when I walked into one of the two ILLC coffee/printer rooms I noticed a note on the fridge, saying "ILLC experiments - Please do not open". I immediately thought 'bullshit', after all what kind of experiments could logicians perform that require constant cooling, so I thought it's probably just a clever way of keeping your precious unhealthy snacks safe from the other scientists ("I never trusted those biologists with their shifty eyes...")
Then again, I didn't open it, on the off chance that doing so would actually ruin something that someone cares about.

What I did think however was "I'll just google the phrase later -- probably as an 'exact phrase' search -- and maybe I'll find out something about it". Then I realized how unlikely it is that there would be any mentioning of this on the net. (Well, until now, I guess)

The strange thing is that instead of thinking that I should ask someone else from the institute about this, who perhaps might have noticed the note as well, it appears that by now my initial impulse upon discovering something new and mysterious is to want to do some research on the net. How Gibsonian of me.

(3) The security company that is in charge of guarding the Science Park building on the weekends brings a small van along, in which they keep two guard dogs (it's some kind of special car with a built-in cage), and park it right in front of the entrance. I have absolutely no idea why they would need those dogs, especially since I've never seen them being taken out of the car, not even to mention that it could be considered cruel to let them spend hour after hour inside a ridiculously small cage with just the rear door of the car (but obviously not that of the cage) open to let some air in.

Understandably, they are pretty pissed, so whenever someone leaves the building, they predictably start snarling and barking at the intruder (technically, that would be an extruder, I guess, since you're leaving the building). It certainly adds some unique concentration campy charm if every time you want to leave the place you stare into the eyes of two psychotic German shepherd dogs trying to jump at your throat.

Slander sounds so much nicer than defamation

2008-11-30T21:25:00.004+01:00

A wise man once said "Girls generally don't like it if you ask them to call you 'father' and beg them to dress like mother". He obviously didn't know Gertrud. Cause, you see, she's not like the others... She likes the same things I do... Wax paper... Boiled football leather... Dog breath... WE'RE NOT HITCHHIKING ANYMORE... WE'RE RIDING!!! ^[1]

^[1] Alright, so I stole that paragraph from Ren & Stimpy. You're going to do something about it, huh?

It writes another post or else it gets the hose again

2008-11-30T19:30:00.010+01:00

By overwhelming popular demand, I decided to post again on this blog. In fact, the leading researcher in the buzzing field of computational linguistics and NLP herself, Danielle Ben-Gera, asked me to — no — practically begged me to write more.

Actually, I didn't talk to her myself. She usually handles trivial matters (such as human conversation and chit chat) by means of her army of robotic servants (all fully capable of speaking several human languages, including their most popular dialects) — a robotic army that, needless to say, she constructed and programmed all by herself, purely with the help of a hammer, a screwdriver and some basic HPSG.

But enough about her, back to a topic that is as close to my heart as possible: freebase heroin.

Enough about heroin, though. Back to more inspiring questions, such as why girls don't like it when you call them 'baby'. They usually don't, unless they do. And trust me, I know what I'm talking about — years of experience, loads of chicks. ^{[citation needed]}

It's also surprising that, in general, the girls that I cohabitate with object even more to my simple request to call me 'father', and to dress a bit more like mother did when she was young.

Mother, by the way, agrees that this is a perfectly reasonable thing to ask from a young lady. I didn't ask father. He doesn't talk anymore since the '85 incident.

Maigret > Kriminalroman

2008-11-01T14:23:00.015+01:00

Ernst, kaum lächelnd, glaubten sie allein auf der Tanzfläche zu sein, ja, allein auf der Welt, und als die Musik aufhörte, blieben sie noch einen Augenblick bewegungslos stehen, bis sie dann wieder zu ihrem Tisch gingen.

Georges Simenon: Der Keller des Majestic

It's turtles all the way down

2008-10-26T10:18:00.006+01:00

Some time ago I noticed that quite a number of those blogs that gather some moderate attention (by that I mean they are neither hugely successful, nor completely obscure) are dedicated to the topic of blogging. Which seemed odd at first, but after thinking about it for a while, I arrived at the following hypothesis: Almost everyone who starts writing a blog will at first do so without gathering any substantial number of readers. Maybe some friends that you gave the link to will read it occasionally, maybe some random visitor will show up who was looking for something completely unrelated to your blog, but who was brought to you nonetheless by some search engine.

Not that I did any research (Hell, no! Research is for people that are too lazy to invent facts), but I suspect that most blogs will always remain in this public attention limbo; nobody reads them.

But that certainly does not entail that you, the blogger will be content with this cruel reality. And this is where the blogs about blogging come in. They write about what constitutes a good blog, how to find interesting topics to write about, how to drive traffic to your blog, and so on.
They are dedicated to help you increase the number of readers of your blog. And since this is something that pretty much everyone seems to be interested in, those blogs have quite a large following (judging by the number of comments and their Pagerank).

But when I noticed this, I couldn't get over the circular logic of this whole thing. Those blogs write about increasing your traffic; it's a hot topic, so their own traffic is significantly increased. Wouldn't it be the most honest advice then to tell other bloggers to write about how to increase traffic? Turtles, baby! All the way down.

Anyway, when I thought about this for the first time, I decided that if I would ever start a blog myself, I would add another level to this bottomless recursion. From now on I will be giving advice how to increase traffic to blogs that write about increasing traffic to your blog. Watch out for the number #1 place that blogs about bloggers who blog about blogging.

Give glass to bartender. Take drink. Give drink to bartender.

2008-10-26T01:10:00.007+02:00

It always bothered me that the sentence quoted below is not on the Internet yet (at least I didn't manage to find it anywhere). Behold, this is history in the making:

After thinking about it for a while, you are now quite certain that you are a huge banana.

EDIT: More than a year after posting this, the phrase still doesn't reliably appear on a Google Search, in particular the substring "you are a huge banana". And I have no idea why... maybe because I wrote the sentence inside a quote tag? The rest of my blog is indexed by Google just fine, it's only this particular post that seems to be a problem. How ironic is that, eh? Anyway, let's try to add some weight to this sentence, outside the blockquote tag this time:

After thinking about it for a while, you are now quite certain that you are a huge banana. Or perhaps, only the substring: You are now quite certain that you are a huge banana. Let's see if this was sufficient. I'll be back in about a year.

EDIT #2: It works now, about 1 month after I added the string another time in the edit above. Perhaps text inside a blockquote is in fact indexed less reliable during Google crawls. But that doesn't really make sense either, since the phrase is now highlighted even inside the blockquote (do an exact phrase search, then look at Google's cache of the website. The parts where the website matches your search are highlighted). But then why didn't it appear earlier? Google search, you continue to confuse me.

EDIT #3: The line is taken from Frederik Pohl's Gateway, by the way. One of the great text adventures of that period, surprisingly funny and tongue-in-cheek despite the rather traditional SF story, and full of excellent original music. I occasionally re-install the game (not much of an installation anyway), walking straight to the Virtual Reality room and enter the beach scenario, just to hear the music and annoy the bartender.

Finally, a rigorous proof for the existence of god

2008-10-25T22:20:00.003+02:00

1. Let epsilon be the smallest real number greater than zero.
2. ????
3. Therefore god must exist.