Daylight saving time

Now that spring finally is here you can enjoy the outdoors again. Due to daylight saving time you have one more hour left for walks, grillparty, fishing and such things on working days

This weekend we here in Germany change to daylight saving time. Many people complain about it because they in fact have to get up one hour earlier. Some people get confused because they dont know what to do with their clocks and watches. And some just love it like I do.

Daylight saving time means that dusk comes one hour later and naturally that there is one more hour of daylight left after work. If you love the outdoors that is quite a fine thing: One mor hour for going on a walk, gardening, fishing and all the nice things we love to do during summertime. For many people things like hunting or fishing trips, boating or going for a swim are made possible even on working day evenings. I consider daylight saving time  to be a nice plus to life quality, isn'nt it?

Daylight saving time just means hat you get up an hour earlier and so get one more hour of daylight. Specially when you are working this is a fine thing because one more hour to the three or four hours daylight after work is really a plus. 

I love the daylight savin time!

Cold Weather, Phariseans and Dead Aunts

Actually it has been cold for over a week again instead of spring coming. If you have been out for a while under this circumstances and come in again you might like a hot drink, maybe with some kind of fire in it. That was what I met yesterday and so I made up my mind to make what people in the north of Germany call a "Tote Tante" and what I got to know when I was sailing the Baltic Sea in winter. The word means "dead aunt" and it seems nobody really knows where it comes from. However, it is'nt disputed what a Tote Tante is: It´s much like a Pharisäer (pharisean), another hot alcoholic drink from Northern Germany which means a cup of coffee with an ample shot of rum, topped with a nice dollop of whipped cream.

If you want to mix a Tote Tante instead of a Pharisäer, you just have to replace the coffee by hot chocolate. If you want you can decorate the whipped cream with some  chocolate sprinkles. So basically a Tote Tante is nothing else than a hot Lumumba too.

I can tell you it tastes really great, especially when coming in from the cold. But be careful: Like sweet alcoholic drinks generally do, Tote Tante tends to make you drink much and fast and than finally knock you to your knees! And dont drink it or any other alcohol if you still have to stay in the cold! The warmth of alcohol is deceiving. It just makes you not notice that you chill out much more than you do without alcohol.    

Internet Censorship in Germany

Last tuesday the new german internet censorship came into force because it than was undersigned by our bundespraesident, which is the last step in the procedure to make a new law effective. The new CDU-FDP-government swears that it was not intended to make use of it and that it was only a kind of bad legacy of the old CDU-SPD-government. However the law does exist although the general public did not really notice.   

Last summer the net community in Germany was quite upset about a new law practically enabling internet censorship via DNS entries. It was planned to engage access providers to refuse connections to certain domains which are on a secret list and showing a stop sign instead of the content of these domains. Alledgedly this was aimed against child pornography, a very threadbare justification for people who know something about the net and the existing of independent sites where you can get unfiltered and uncenmsorerd information. However, a very good justification for the rank and file because most people in Germany, even if on line, dont know much about independent media and as with newspapers, radio and tv they only consume stuff from mainstream media when on the net. They believed the government's statement that the domain blocking system was the only way to keep child porn out of the german net because it frequently would not be possible to shut down the servers for they are situated in foreign countries where authorithies dont care much about what people put on the net.    

This was a very clever move: Obviously it was intended to have people being against internet censorship appear as paedophiliacs and discredit them. The worst of all: Doing so German government in fact did not shrink back from connecting a clean and honest demand like the one for freedom of information to such a dirty and criminal thing as child porn is. 

However, quite a lot of people protested and tried to show and explain the facts: With a system to block every designated domain the state would be able to easily keep people away not only from child pornography but from anything they should not know too. It was only a minority who yelled a lot and depicted the dangers of such a law and especially the fact that the list  of bad domains should be conducted by the BKA (Bundeskriminalamt, something like the FBI in the US) and so would be out of any democratic control.

To people who know a bit about computer and networks the design of the German domain blocking system itself reveals its true intentions: It can be very easily be worked around by just directing the internet connetion to a DNS server which does not filter domains what can be done on every windows, mac or linux sytem by just a few mouseclicks and hacking in a couple of numbers. So it neither can stop people who really want to visit child porn sites nor can it keep really informed and politically interested people away from the sites they want to see. What it can do is to keep the lazy and uninformed general public away from sites with independend information and opinions they heard or red about and just want to have a look at without being too eager to get there.  In a nutshell: the German domain blocking system only works very well as a tool to avoid undesired sources of information becoming common.         

The protest of bloggers and other people understanding the meaning of free information finally lead to a petition. Beacuse more than 100,000 people signed it, the German Bundestag (our ferderal parliament)  had to deal with it in a hearing. However, politicians did not really respond to the objections of the criticians and the law unobstructedly passed the parliament. Firstly Bundespraesident Koehler refused to undersign the new law and demandes more information about the case, which gave some hope to the net community.

Last fall there than was an election and government changed. The new CDU-FDP-government seemed to be not so happy with the censorship law but did not really do anything against it. Now it came into power quite secretly and almost nobody seemed to take notice. Still there is some talk in Berlin about how to get rid of the censorship but I doubt that this is to be taken serious. I guess politicíans just bank on the forgetfulness of the general public and will start to use the censorship law sequretly when nobody will think of it at all.     

Using Public Transport

If you are used to run all your errants and make all your visits and things by car, suddenly being forced to use public transport can be a complete new experience. And not really a bad one as I happened to find out.  

On Wednesday I had to see my dentist for my regular yearly exam which you need to have been to the last couple of years to get the maximal allowance for artificial dentition from the  compulsory health insurance fund. I still go to see my old dentist in my birthplace and former residence Heidenheim although I have been living in Aalen for over 15 years now. Its only 15 miles, half an hour by car and why should I change my dentist al long as I am content with him? I´m originally an engineer and follow the old trusted rule: Never change a running system...

This time something was wrong with my good old Isuzu Trooper and she broke down at Itzelberg, a small village still about five miles from Heidenheim. Fortunately this nice little place has not only a beautiful little lake but still a little railroad station too. And even more fortunately the next train to Heidenheim came soon and did stop at this station. So I reached my dentist about three quarters of an hour late but I reached him and didt not have to wait long anyway. Forty minutes or so after I left my dentist's there was a train back to Aalen, so that I had an occassion to have a little stroll around downtown Heidenheim to see what all has changed again since my last visit.    

The most interesting in this little occurence were the things I experineced on the trains and strolling around town. Not only seeing all the changes there from nearby and out of a pedestrians view but especially how easy it is to get into nice conversations. It started with a young girl I met when I was waiting for the train at Itzelberg and once on the train a woman in maybe her fourties joined our conversation.  In an electronic mart in Heidenheim where I had a look at the TV-sets I met a woman my age or a bit older whith whom I had another nice conversation.

After having some words with one more woman at the ticket machine in the station I got to talk to one in the smoking area on the plattform where I waited for my train back. She was on her way to Aalen too and we chatted until we parted outside the station there. At least this one, I guess, would not have refused if I would have tryed to invite her on a cup of coffee to deepen acquaintance, even in the way I used to do in my younger days hehehehe... :-D

All in all I lost about two hours due to the breakdown of my good old Trooper but this was more than compensated by the nice things I experienced. I do know by now not only how the sophisticated ticket machines of our railroad company Deutsche Bahn AG work but also that it is still quite easy to get into conversations with women... 

 

         

Winterly Impressions from East Wuerttemberg

Actually it is a bit warmer and it has been raining this morning. But last week we had what you can call winter. Here are some impressions how my place looks like in winter. When I was walking my dog Alfons a couple of days ago I took my little camera with me...

A view out my office window into the gardens between the houses of my housing area

Hofherrnweiler a former village and now suburb of Aalen/Wuertt

The edge of the Swabian Alb south of Aalen

The housing area Heimatwinkel which belongs to Hofherrnweiler  

My old friend Alfons still likes the snow 

A back road in the housing area I live in

Christmas is over and winter is coming

Christmas holydays are over now, on monday kids will be back at school. And now it has been snowing and probably will do taht again and it will be cold for a while. That`s typically here: No white Christmas but at the beginning of january winter will come. 

Did you already know?

Stewed rhubarb tastes even much better, if you use strawberries instead of the rhubarb!

Sorry, just remembered this age-old flat German joke and couldn't resist at all to post it here... ;-)