I grew up in a small village. Now, this village still is a small village and has slightly more than 3000 inhabitants. A lot of things have changed in the world and so many things have changed for me. While the village has also changed a bit, some people there haven’t. I mean young people who are supposedly modern and open for the world. But, sadly that is not the reality. I saw young people I went to school with a few days back and they did not seem to be grown-ups at all. They were the same childish, narrow-minded people they were 5 years ago. Why is that? In the meantime, I have worked with many different people, seen many different countries and learned things about many cultures in the world. I claim to be a grown-up now, who is open-minded. I am not the only one who has seen various parts of the world, many have but I’m interested in that small portion of the village which has not. Why are they the way they are? No matter if they are 20 or 30 years old. I’m not offending people’s intelligence or education here, it’s something entirely different. I’m wondering about it, nothing offending, right?

To get back to the narrow-minded part I have expressed above. Of course you can’t take it as a rule that young pupils are narrow-minded or anything. But quite a few are which is usual and not bad. I mean, first you get to know yourself. Afterwards you start becoming a part of a community. And there is quite a chance that you will spend your time with people with the same background and interests. What I want so say is, we don’t like anything that’s different, and at least this is the case at first. By the time we turn twenty or so, however, we should have let that barrier behind us and be open for all kinds of things and all sorts of people.

But what makes some people dropping this barrier? When you are little you ask why people look differently than you, no matter what ethnic group you belong to. Later you ask why other people’s names sound so strange and even later you ask why they say things that are not congruent to the view you were taught. I learned to accept views from others. I am not judging people by anything but what they do. I try to be free of prejudgements as good as I can. People I know very well are prejudiced and never stop to be. I’m not a saint, but I try to do my best.

After I gave this quite some thought I came to the following conclusion. People that stay at one place for their entire life cannot be anything else but judgemental. I am apologizing if someone feels offended since there are exceptions to everything. Still, referring to those I talked about at the beginning who are people who went to school in a village, they learned their profession in the same village and work at the exact same village for the rest of their days. Well, I can’t see how this could turn out any differently than to be narrow-minded to some degree.

On the other hand I know people who travelled the world and are very open-minded. But it doesn’t matter if you travel the entire world or just go for holidays in the South regularly. It seems to be highly recommendable to visit other countries and discover cultures in order to broaden your view on things. Observe and respect other traditions and bear in mind that people in a foreign country value them just as you do yours. Numerous women and men with who I had the pleasure to talk with about topics like racism, tolerance and such were not disrespectful but understood problems and conflicts very good. Thanks to those people’s time they spent with people who do not live in the village (the village becomes more and more a metaphor (and yes, I really should become a rapper)) they see why people act differently. Thus, it enables those open-minded people to find resolutions.

No one is born open-minded or narrow-minded. It’s how society shapes us and more importantly how much of a risk we dare to take and visit regions beyond the village. Once the border is crossed a new world of beautiful variety offered in an ocean of cultures and peoples are ready to be explored. A journey that enriches mind and soul can be taken by all of us; the question is only if we want to.

…see…no reason to be afraid

“Climate change will affect you.”

“Global warming is all faked.”

“IPCC are just a bunch of liars.”

“Glaciers will melt and cause major natural catastrophes.”

That is stuff you can read around the World Wide Web. Personally, I can’t tell who is lying or who is right. Probably both are partially right and wrong. Since I’m not an expert on that subject I do not claim to have a correct answer to questions and problems but I have some thought I would love to share.

One thing I have experienced in the past few years is that older people and by old I mean all people above the age of forty years (No offence!) are saying that they have never seen weather like this. Back when they were young it never rained that much, it was never that hot, storms were never that extreme and so forth. That’s what I hear from people everywhere in Europe. No matter if they are 40, 50 or 60 years old. Weather as it appears nowadays is completely new even to them. Judged by those opinions there is definitely something changing. Moreover, something is changing in a very alarming way. I will leave you to judge whether this is significant or not.

Secondly, a whole lot of people with high reputation all around the world are saying that global warming is a serious issue. Well, I’m not sure how much influence governments, companies and the illuminati have but I dare to doubt that so many scientists would give up their principles to a fake research results about global warming.

Furthermore, there is a highly important question. Is it caused by humans? Well, no matter if it is or not. Would not everybody and our own planet earth benefit if we stopped consuming and using so much oil and other fossil fuels? In my opinion, people should try to become more independent and switch to greener technologies not just for sake of our global climate but also for the sake of our own countries and their independence from others. Let me back up a bit and get to the point if it was caused by humans or not. Ever since the era of industrialisation mankind’s demands have risen enormously. We need more food, cars, water. Basically, we need more of everything. Therefore, it is my belief that all carbon dioxide, plastic and other waste must affect our climate. It would be naive to say it’s not. It’s basic physics, we cause a billion kilograms of CO₂ and the result we get is the so-called greenhouse effect. Others may beg to differ here and say that we are heading towards an ice age or that the world has always had its ups and downs. Still, if the change is natural, it may still be pushed by humans and that’s a problem which needs to be taken care of.

And here I am again, not knowing if it is all real or not. Not knowing if we can stop or avert it. Not knowing if all that green energy hype is helping. Maybe it is just a money-making, evil world that uses their citizens and makes them believe they have to buy so-called green products to save their environment. Companies always do that. On the other hand, I can look at it from the perspective of an engineer and say that R&D departments will achieve advancements in all kinds of fields only to make us a less wasteful world. This will push the envelope in science; companies will invest and thus create new jobs. That is all for good. And for all I know progress in that direction is good. What can I say, I’m not a pessimist.

ALERT! It’s the Bible. SPOILER ALERT! Don’t read any further if you haven’t seen the movie yet. SPOILER ALERT!

So, let’s start. I have just seen “The book of Eli”. A film starring Denzel Washington as Eli on his godly journey heading West where he is supposed to find a save place for his King James Bible. But let me provide you with some more background. It’s set in the U.S. in a post-apocalyptic future where people can’t read and the entire world heritage is lost. Except for some people in the West who collect and try to preserve it and re-establish the society with its former knowledge and education. Eli is on his quest from east to the west (I should become a rapper) and he is always carrying the Bible with him. That’s more or less the story. If you want to know the rest of it check out Wikipedia or download the movie from some piracy site if you’re not up to paying money for that movie.

Anyways, what disturbs me about the movie is not only that it lacks a real background story which offers viewers insight to the cause of the catastrophe. It is rather the Bible itself. Why did they choose the Bible? I mean really. I can’t see why that book would be any more important than an encyclopaedia or “Being nice for dummies”. The film is well-made in terms of its martial art scenes and its realistically appearing special effects. Yet it lacks a good story and an objective.

If the world ended up that badly I would rather care about a book which explains basic engineering to build new machines or a book on how to grow plants and food. This is essential and not the Bible. I hope I am not offending any religious people who read my blog. But no one reads it anyways, so what the hell. The bible is the source and cause of many wars that are made nowadays. Of course it helps people to get on with each other and teaches basic rules how people ought to behave. It’s the base upon which laws in the western world are based on but these rules can be taught differently as well. If the world was at such a state as it’s in the movie, I definitely would not start again by teaching rules from the Bible. I would teach rules neutrally and not make the same mistake all over again.

While I’m writing this, a question pops in my mind. What are the right rules? Who decides that? Is there a perfect summary of those rules in some kind of book? Who wrote that and why is that person right? Yes, maybe there would be war again and groups that separate and change the rules as they like. Perhaps new religions or followers of certain rules would be created. Damn. It’s difficult. But I would at least give it a try. Creating a new world without religious bias, a world whose rules are based on common sense and not on stories from the olden days must be at least worth a try. When we cut it down to the bones the rules are more or less the same no matter who writes it and which religion it is.

I shouldn’t really write about religion because that’s usually one of those taboo topics such as politics, racism, American patriotism and the list goes on.

A lot of films have been released during the last10 years,  informing the audience that they will be replaced by machines.

Think for example of…

I Robot: Will Smith sees that we trust in something highly intelligent and do not expect anything bad, suddenly it turns against us.

Surrogates: latest film starring Bruce Willis as a  policeman in a world where we all sit at home and have our surrogates out there in the real world.

Here is the trailer of Surrogates, so you are able to see my point a bit more clearly maybe.

Where is that leading? I mean in the real world.

We already experience huge changes which originate from the internet and improvement in science. Machines take over human jobs and leave unemployment in certain niches. On the other hand it also makes companies more profitable as machines work and work and work and will not stop unless you make them to.

What else could happen?

I thought to myself, what if AI (Artificial Intelligence) was successfully implemented? Machines would be quite equal to humans wouldn’t they? What defines us? Is it our logical thinking? Is it our ethics which machines wouldn’t have possibly? Well, I guess that Stalin had no ethics as well and yet he was a human being. A rapid cycle would start and machines would improve themselves rapidly. We -- humans -- would be useless, machines could live on their own. No need for someone to program them….

Yes, I know…boring.

But I just thought about it…what if…are we that far away of such an achievement in science as AI?

However…see you next time…

Hello, hello my dear reader….

Science is an amazing thing, isn’t it? Ancient cultures have discovered and worked out the basics of what we call today science. It is amazing what discoveries the old Greeks made for instance Aristotle thought of the world as a spherical globe. And since then it was a known fact that our earth is a globe and not flat. Some people think that during the dark ages the earth was considered to be flat but this mistake origins from Washington Irving’s fictional tale A History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus.

Later however people like Galilei had to justify for their non-sense in front of the inquisition court. Science was not popular in the church. Therefore a lot of scientists couldn’t work freely in public and publish their discoveries. If there wouldn’t have been the dark ages I could tell that a lot of scientific achievements would have been made much earlier.

Let’s get a little bit further and to a specific subject: chemistry. What wonderful subject it is. Began as alchemy when people first tried to make Gold. During 250 years people found ways to create almost anything but Gold, what they were originally looking for.

This brings us right to the present and again a very entertaining and gripping show. It’s called Breaking Bad which means that you for one or more times just won’t do what law tells you. And this is indeed a good title for this TV production. A high school teacher starts cooking Meth to earn money.

Meth is one of the most dangerous and damaging drugs in the world. It damages your organs and makes you look much older than you are because of a ingredient (I just can’t come up with the name but it doesn’t really matter) which interferes with your skin regeneration and that could make a 23 years old addict look like a 40 years old wasted man.

Vocabulary:
spherical = like a ball
dark ages = time between the end of the roman empire and start of the renaissance also middle age

The expression makeover is often used when something is made looking better than before. Today we usually hear the word in context with image-editing.

Photoshop or GIMP, but especially Photoshop are well-known applications which enable us to edit something or someone the way we want.

Sometimes people even use Photoshop as a verb.

For example:
“I photoshopped her spots away.”

People today think too much about beauty and unreachable idols who are (more or less) just like ordinary people. There’s nothing different, they have eyes, legs and so on. So do we. What we think to be seeing when we’re looking at a poster or commercial in TV is not real. It’s fake. Deliberately fake. Because big companies want to sell all their products to make you think that you need it. Actually, we don’t need most of it. When you think, and I hope you don’t but just in case you do, that if you look into your own mirror at home you have to look like a model in commercials I have to say: “You don’t and never will do!” It’s simply not possible. You need a dozen people to do the makeover and look like a model. Nothing you see in all those tabloids is real nature.

Morpheus: Welcome to the real world.

Don’t reach for stars which don’t exist. Reach for stars which are worth to be reached.

I hope I haven’t offended anyone out there and if I have I’m sorry but I have just written the plain truth.

Vocabulary:
well-known = famous, a lot of people know about it
to enable = make possible
spots = those hated red dots in one’s face
ordinary = not special, like everyone
commercial = advertisement, ad, method to sell a product
fake = not real, not truth

Very superstitious!

The today’s word I’ve chosen to explain is superstition.

Some people are superstitious which means that they believe in things which are not scientifically explainable.

For example:

• “I won’t go out of my house on Friday 13th, I’m sure something bad will happen!”

• In the US in most buildings the 13th floor is left out in order to avoid unlucky incidents.

Well, you see and you maybe identify yourself as a superstitious person.

Here’s a song about superstition by Stevie Wonder:

Excertp from the lyrics:

[Chorus]
“When you believe in things,
that you don’t understand,
then you suffer,
superstition ain’t the way”

Well, this is what I tried to explain at the beginning.

Vocabulary:
ain’t = us-slang that means is not
to suffer = feel pain / to feel uncomfortable / to feel very bad because of something (an illness “suffer from …”)