Current music-likes:















Obviously I start enjoying electronical music more lately. Weirdish. Sorta.

And just because it's one of the best movies ever with one of the best showdowns ever:

yeah for bandwaggon jumping!
wildfae started it. :)

Post ten of any pictures currently on your hard drive that you think are self-expressive.
• NO CAPTIONS!!! It must be like we're speaking with images and we have to interpret your visual language just like we have to interpret your words.
• They must ALREADY be on your hard drive - no googling or flickr! They have to have been saved to your folders sometime in the past. They must be something you've saved there because it resonated with you for some reason.
• You do NOT have to answer any questions about any of your pictures if you don't want to. You can make them as mysterious as you like. Or you can explain them away as much as you like.


10 pictures (one of which might be a little disturbing. you have been warned. :) ).
it was surprisingly hard to pic just 10.
and i actually should totally be going to bed rather then posting.

( 10 pictures )

back home. and it would be a plain lie to say i'm over-excited about it.
after the 30-hours-but-felt-like-1000-hours journey back to germany i thought i couldn't stand seeing another plane for ages, but right now i wouldn't mind hopping back on one to go to somewhere (somewhere like in sydney perhaps). well, definetly i'd rather be on a plane tomorrow morning then back to work. bleh.
also, it feels weird to be thrown into summer like that. i'm wildly confused that it's still not dark at around 6 p.m. and it's so damn hot suddenly.

anyway...
the journey home was quite draining. on my way to new zealand none of the flights was fully booked to everyone had a comftorable amount of space to make themselves comfy. not so much on the flight back. everything was rather cramped. no fun at all. if i ever should fly down to new zealand again, i'd take a longer stop-over in singapore or whereever. no non-stop flight for me anymore, thanks very much. and i definetly take a longer break in sydney. i had like eight hours stop-over there and met up with daniel, whom i hadn't seen for around two years. it was really great. we basically walked around the city for a few hours, had breakfast at some over-prized cafe near sydney opera. fortunatly the weather was great, very sunny and windy, perfect for city tour. plus, it was great seeing him again. pity i had just a few hours. but well, at least a few hours, which is better then nothing.

so, i think i do some unpacking now and feeling sorry for myself not being on holiday anymore.

at christchurch airport.
surprsingly busy for 5 a.m. where do all these people want to go to?!

am a little pissed about airline rules. i have a 7 hour stop over in sydney and want to meet up with a friend there. just briefly. and i have to take my fucking luggage with me! it's only for a few hours dammit! why do i have to check out for that?! guess that's my private consequence for the war on terrorism. fuck that. hmpf. :(

anyway...holiday over and that okay actually. i don't quite want to go back to work on monday already but in general, it was the right amount of time for that trip. seen a lot. be warned, i will spam you all with pictures! :D

so, see you in like 2 days.

well, you can't say that greymouth lures you into the image of being some fancy hip place-to-be kinda city. not with that name anyway.
it's extremely windy here, however. i took a little walk to the sea (crossing all the not-so-very-fancy half rotten industrial buildings (depressing btw)) and was almost blown off my feet. i recognized that small towns try to come up with hip catch phrases - like "omarama - city of light & flight" or "twizel - city of trees"- to compensate the obvious absence of just basically everything. i suggest for greymouth something alike: "greymouth - the city that will blow you away" (or just forget about the 'away') or something along these lines.

anyway...my little detour via the north part of the south island is almost over. tomorrow i'll take the train to christchurch. looking forward to that.
especially since today a girl threw up two hours into our five hour bus ride in the bus. bleh. don't like buses anymore so much.

the north was nice. but man, i missed the mountains. i figured that today as the snow covered summits were finally visible again. i think i gonna miss the mountains too when i'm back in germany. *le sigh*


hope your all doing fine. :)


PS: i watched 'angels&demons' yesterday...it's not as bad as i feared it would be. it's quite okay (which might be partly/mostly due to a certain actor looking just sexy as hell. and it's not tom hanks in a speedo...honestly, ron howard what the fuck was that all about?!).

i love new zealands trains. :D they have an open carriage completely without any windows or anything and it's awfully nice to have the window blowing by your face while you pass by some beautiful landscapes. i hope i can squeeze in another ride on the train. :)
and i totally underestimated picton. it's really really nice here. i thought of it more as just a station on my way to golden bay and i'm sorry for that. they have great walkways here, giving you great view over picton bay and marlborough sounds. beautiful, really.

however, tomorrow off to nelson.

car's fixed. thank god! i'd gone crazy, if we'd been stuck in oma-fucking-rama for another day.
now we're at mt cook, in some youth hostel and i'm finally watching 'pulp fiction'. i don't know what to think about me having to go to the other end of the world to finally watch this stupid movie.
mt cook is extremly beautiful btw. just stunning.

omarama...again. still. which ever way you want.
on our way to lake tekapo we stopped here again yesterday. quite early, cause rita had to do some work on her job hunt. that was okay with me. i spend the day sitting in the sun and reading. i was looking forward going on today. but!
rita's car decided against it this morning. it rather fancied breaking the belt then getting us out of goddamn oramara. gah!

well, the car will be fixed by tomorrow morning and i'm glad. omarama is really wearing me out.
i mean, stuff like that happens. but why here?! why for christ's sake in the middle of nothing!

*le sigh*
i hope we gonna leave omarama tomorrow and never come back.

we're in dunedin right now and as rita, with whom i'm road-tripping here, has an important appointment at the university here this afternoon, i found myself a little internet-cafe for proper updating.

so far, it's been great. the news said a blizzard is gonna hit dunedin and the south island tonight, which is not so great. but on the other hand, they're predicting rain ever since i landed and i haven't seen a rain cloud yet. so, let's see how the weather is tomorrow. if it's okay (meaning not too much snow on the roads) we're going to queenstown; if the weather conditions are frosty, we're going back north. rita doesn't want to drive into the mountains when it's snowing and i actually don't feel too comfy about it either. narrow, steep roads and all that. though it would suck to miss out on queenstown, but well, in case of doubt pro safety.

i won't be saying much about all the places we've been so far. that works better with pictures. and i took a lot of pictures. so, only a short update of the trip so far:

wednesday 10th
arthur's pass
castle hill

thursday 11th
christchurch
rakaia gorge
geraldine
paul's (rita's friend, he lives on a farm close to geraldine and he has a super cute dog)

friday 5th
paul's
timaru

saturday 13th
omarama (from now on, when i'm think "middle of nowhere" i'm thinking omarama. i don't know why exactly we ended up there, no idea.)

sunday 14th
oamaru
dunedin

and of course today, monday, still dunedin. and depending on the weather, tomorrow as well.

the road-trip thing is great. rita has a car and we're just driving, without any major plan, just roughly south and then sometime up north again. it's great. i love getting rid of any plans or any sort of schedule and time pressure. right now, this is exactly my idea of holiday.

okay, that's that. hope you're all doing well! see you

right now in methven (small town, somewhere on the cantebury plains) in some hotel to use internet. i can see mt. hutt from here.
road trip started yesterday going from christchurch to arthur's pass, via castle hill. but only as day trip. we're on our way to dunedin now, but we don't have to be there before monday. so, everything is very relaxed. and the weather is nice (sunny, a little cold). so everything is perfect. :D

hope you're all doing well.

my new favorite nerd song!



i gonna try to establish that as our lab-anthem. :D

test

:D so true...




and i'd love to see a "real science" CSI/House/"put in title of random hospital/crime program here" episode!

Rom - Enthaltsamkeit. Das ist die Antwort des Vatikan auf die Frage nach einem wirksamen Mittel gegen die Immunschwächekrankheit Aids. Erstmals hat sich der Papst nun im Zusammenhang mit der Krankheit ausdrücklich zum Gebrauch von Kondomen geäußert - und rät davon ab. Kondome können nach Ansicht von Benedikt XVI. das Aids-Problem nicht lösen. "Ihre Benutzung verschlimmert vielmehr das Problem", sagte das Oberhaupt der römisch-katholischen Kirche am Dienstag an Bord seines Flugzeugs auf dem Weg nach Afrika. Die Lösung liege vielmehr in einem "spirituellen und menschlichen Erwachen" und der "Freundschaft für die Leidenden".

http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/0,1518,613810,00.html


the fuck?!

aber irgendwie schade, dass sich das kein HIV-forscher auf die agenda schreibt. ich wuerd mich auf die diagramme freuen...
"hier haben wir die zahl der neuerkrankungen gegen das mass and spirituellem und menschlichem erwachen aufgetragen..."
wobei ich ja befuerchte, dass dieser aspekt "freundschaft fuer die leidenden" nicht so recht durchdacht ist. ich mag mich jetzt weit aus dem fenster lehnen, aber ich behaupte mal, je mehr freundschaft, desto mehr neuerkrankungen...
aber naja, was weiss ich schon von spirituellem erwachen und freundschaft mit leidenden. ich gehoer ja noch zu den rueckstaendigen kondom-benutzern. pfui.

anyone who doesn't see a (at least) slight resemblens between michael jackson nowadays (justjared.buzznet.com/gallery/photos.php) and an iron maiden record cover pic (www.poster.net/iron-maiden/iron-maiden-killers-5200146.jpg) is just lying. (especially in the thumbnails)

honestly...wtf?!
he's not just looking weird, he looks fucking creepy. some sort of scary human/zombie cross thing from bad horror flicks. *shudders* that'll give me nightmares for weeks.

imagine radiohead in the world of "enter a country of your choice here idol". they were so doomed.

yet another reason for totally despising casting shows and just todays tv culture per se. thank you world wide web for cutting down the crap and letting me watch whatever i really want.

oh. and hey. long time not seen. *waves and vanishes*

DER neue stimmungskracher gegen schlechte laune:



*träller*
*dösig die arme in der luft schwing*

PS: here're some interesting links:
schattenstern made a sort of collection/time line about what happend in LJ recently:
http://schattenstern.livejournal.com/272009.html

here's an translated interview with anton nosik. who's some big guy at SUP, the company which owns LJ (don't quite know what his position exactly is). there're two versions of this interview, one of which is considered as rather harsh. but for me, it didn't really made any differences. i still dislike what he says a lot. there's a lot of "we" (good company) vs. "they" (ungrateful users) and this just totally sucks. and more then anything it makes me feel like LJ has become just another place on the internet someone owns to end up on a timescover as the new internet-millionaire. i used to like LJ because it wasn't a place like myspace, which is all about promoting themselves. of course, people use LJ for that as well, but not in such an annoying into-your-face-style. it's not about having a fancy layout which makes you popular, but what you have to say, that makes you popular.
but maily i considered LJ as place to just find a lot of people which share the same interest and with which you just can hang out and talk about on the internet. and important about that was, that it was provided from just another fan or nerd or whoever and not some company or other people with commercial interest. very socialistic and democratic idea basically: from the people, for the people.

but obviously, this is about to change. LJ is not about meeting people anymore, but becoming a succsessful company. and we all know on what basis successful companies are judged: profit.
and really, i don't like that and i don't want to be a part of a place anymore which main interest are not the useres anymore, but the profit.
i don't like to leave LJ, because i always liked it here. i met great people and found cool communities. but well...

anyway...here's the link to the interview:
http://darkrosetiger.livejournal.com/373663.html

seen on my FL at one of my communities.
as i'm not near a computer anyway, i'll take part. but i also would if i'd be here.







For those of you who don't already know, there has been a strike scheduled for Friday, March 21st, 2008, during which we hope to have many members of LiveJournal provide LJ with absolutely no content for twenty-four hours. This means no posting and no commenting. If you post elsewhere and have it set up to be posted through a feed on LiveJournal, don't do it. Stay away from LiveJournal for twenty-four hours. That can't be too hard, can it? I know some of you are probably quite active on LiveJournal and will find it hard to stay away for an entire day, just as I will, but this is something that needs to be done, to show the people running LiveJournal that we're watching the changes they are making, that we're paying attention, that we're discontent, and that we want to be heard and taken in to consideration. We are not simply users who can be tossed to the side and ignored. We are the people who make up LiveJournal. Without us, without the content we create, without our words, our voices, our creativity, our participation, there would be no LiveJournal. This is a fact, and it needs to be realized and understood and then taken in to consideration when making decisions regarding the way that LiveJournal is run. The strike is only a few days away, so there isn't all too much time to prepare. While this is unfortunate, it isn't enough to keep this strike from taking place. It will take place, the second it is meant to, and it would be best to have as many people take part as possible. Please, spread the word. Spread it fast. There are only a few days to organize this. If you find that you care about LiveJournal or care about the people you interact with on LiveJournal or simply want it to remain a place where you can entertain yourself without constant censorship and money-hungry practices being thrown in without the consideration of those who use the service, act now. If you don't wish to spread the word, that is fine, but please: refrain from using LiveJournal on Friday, March 21st. Do something else for a change. It's for a good cause. (:

For background on this strike and why it is being held, please read the following posts:
http://beckyzoole.livejournal.com/394838.html
http://beckyzoole.livejournal.com/395310.html

To find out exactly when the strike begins and ends, depending on where you are located, please see this:
http://beckyzoole.livejournal.com/395125.html

What's this about?

* It's about free and ad-free LiveJournal accounts being abolished for new members, ignoring the advice from the newly-formed Advisory Board.
* It's about LJ staff trying to sneak this decision in under the radar, and when people found out, telling the users it was done 'to make the signup process less confusing'.
* It's about LJ staff failing to apologize for trying to hide the facts from view and for lying about the actual reasons for their actions.
* And finally, it's about the latest decision to hide certain user interests from the list of Most Popular Interests, some of them being fanfiction, bisexuality, sex and depression. This decision was not announced or explained in any way. Users found out for themselves.

uuuuhhhh...."control" by anton corbijn is brilliant!!!
if you like b/w movies and maybe anton corbijn go watch it! and if you like films about musicians, you'll love it!

http://momentum.control.substance001.com/

i need control-icons. like right now!!

like my "diploma status report", i decided to have a "PhD status report". i'm not yet sure if i might start a new journal for that. might be a good idea.
but we'll see.

so, as i've missed out the first few months the first status report might become a little longer. but i'll do that later tonight (i have internet at home now! wow!). i'm on my lunch break actually, and i just wanted to share some small news tzvetomir (one of the post docs) just gave me: i might become one of the supervisors (out of two) for a student who'll do his practical course here in the lab in may/june.
i don't know if i should be scared or excited. at least, i feel a little proud that i was considered a supervisor after only a few months in as phd. though, it might just be because of my project and not me. *g* oh well...

so. more, later. :)

so, i stumpled over another few papers for the universal journal club.
for example:

H.A.God et al.
"Shaping a modelsystem by evolution"
(puplished in Universe Modelsystem Methods)
very laaarge paper. more a review actually, or more like "the story so far" paper, cause it's a long term experiment.
what's actually cool about this modelsystem shaping method is, that even if it's still in progress you can set up experiments within the modelsystem nevertheless and the evolution is hardly ever disturbed by it. or...well, no, that's not really correct: in fact evolution is an algorithem with dynamic variables. whenever you set up an experiment within the modelsystem while evolution is still in progress it will adapt your experimental parameters and implant them into it developmental algorithem. this sounds like an unstable system, but actually it isn't. there are a few constant variables within evolution, like for example time, and even if a lot of other parameters are dynamic the main function, which is development of the modelsystem, will go on and it won't ever be disturbed by the dynamic parameters, it will just implant them into the algorithem. this means certain parameters of your experiment might be developt further by evolution.
the evolutional algorithem also has a function which serves as a sort of safety function. if a parameter of a experimental set up, which was implanted into the algorithem as dynamic variable turns out to be shit, the evolutional algorithem will creat an error which will partly re-boot the modelsystem. but, and this is important, the constant variables stay intact and therefor only parts of the modelsystem will be shut down and be re-booted, but the main developmental progress will keep on going. but this only happens with real big mistakes. small mistakes, means variables which turn out to have minor mistakes in it, will be just sort of overrun by the main algorithem. for example, a dynamic variable can be a modelorganism. if your modelorganism proves to have some errors it will get extinguished over time. the variable in question will produce more and more minor errors during the process of evolution until this minor errors "sum up" and lead to extinction.
so, evolution is a real flexible method for modelsystem development. and it can also serve as basis for experimental set ups.
there's a real big section about the algorithem in this paper, which will make your eyes bleed if you aren't a total nerd for modelsystem computation. so if you want to use the method of evolution to creat a modelsystem it's rather advisable to get a specialist in your lab. or, at least, attend a few workshops.
but the result part is really interessting, even for non-nerds. as it is a long term project they have quite a bunch of results, but it's well writen and easy to excess. and it gives a good overview of their modelsystem "earth".
thanfully god doesn't go into the subject of humans, their favourite modelorganism. i guess everyone knows that there is quite a controverse discussion going on about this modelsystem within the community. other people have tried to use humans as modelsystem but most of the times they have proven to be unreliable as well as unpredicatable. only god's lab seems to get some results out of them. and thankfully, they spare us the promotion of this modelsystem in their paper.
however, this paper is recomandable in terms of modelsystem methods.


and i stumpled over another paper:
K.Marx & F. Engels
"Modelorganism self-promoted monotheism"
(there's nice gossip about this paper going on)
A. Hilter et al.
"Modelorganisms and self-destruction"
(both puplished in Current Universe Modelorganism)
and J.P.Satre did a nice review on "Controlling versus non-controlling of modelorganisms" in Universe Reviews

all worth a look actually.

today i attended some lectures about animal walfare and they showed some graphs which compared behaviour of rhesus monkeys depending on the habitat they live:
"look, rhesus monkeys living in the urban enviroment do play twice as much as rhesus monkeys living in the forrest."
and i was thinking, how it would sound if humans were the subjects of interesst:
"look, humans which live in an urban enviroment do waste their time twice as often as humans living in the amazon area."

i thought that was funny. and i thought about papers on humans which would be presented in the "universal journal club" or something like that. for example this one:

Nazareth J. et al.
"Christianity and its imapct on humans"

"for todays journal club i prepared this paper by jesus nazareth, who is a PhD student at the laboratory of holy god. they're working with humans as model-organisms and he did his PhD on christianity, as a new concept of monotheism.
i structured my talk into four..or better three and a half parts:
introduction, where i'll repeat the basics on humans and religous ideas implanted into the society of humans so far.
then i gonna go briefly over the methods they used. when i first read over the paper i had the impression their methods were quite simple, but further reading proved me quite wrong i must admit, and it would take too long to go into the real details of it, so i'll try to sum that up shortly.
i gonna go into more details in the results and discussion part. i kept these two parts together, cause they're quite interleaved as you will notice further on in my talk.

[....]"

and the method section of the paper could be something like that:

Methods
The humans were kept according to the "universal regulations on experimental creatures" and were closely monitored all through the experiment.

For implanting monotheism among humans we chose a colony of humans which are based in an area on the western hemisphere of planet earth (pic. 2a), which have proven to be easy to adapt to religous ideas in the past(see God et al.). Our approach was based on the concept of prophets, which we modified for our needs. Because this certain colony of humans has been a subject of various religous studies before, we decided to mulitply the strength of the prophet by focusing the prophetic strength by factor 10 and the overall prophecy spread by factor 12. to gain such a high prophetic strength we designed the new variable "son of god" (note that for reasons of simplcity names were chosen according to the authors names). this new variable differs in so far from the basic concept of prophets, that the prophet itself claims to decend from the head of the monothetic leader ("god"). this modification had in fact such a big impact, that we were forced to scale it down by artifical manipulation to keep the colony in balance (see Results and Discussion).
the overall prophecy spread was achieved by secondary prophets. because the prohpetic strength was so large itself we only needed twelve in the beginning. still the strength of the secondary prophets was large enough to form religous colonies outside the basic colony (Fig. 2b).

For the monotheistic religon, however, an anti-force to the prophet and/or the leader of the religion is necessary. as our prophetic strength had such a vast scale, we had to improve the commonly used anti-force to match this prophetic strength. to achieve this we created a personae ("lucifer") which actually summed all anti-force("evil") in one subject and then covered it by various disguises and different names. this ensured that the colony was alerted to the anti-force at all time, which not also increased the strength of the anti-force but also improved the colony's flexibility on believe in terms of the prophetic message.

We kept the prophetic message relativly simple by narrowing formely developt messages to the 10 commandments (see Ref. 24), love, forgivness and the believe in "god" (for more details see supplementary matrials).

[...]"


and in the next journal club could be this paper then, by another PhD:
ibn 'Abd Allah ibn 'Abd al-Muttalib ibn Haschim ibn 'Abd Manaf al-Quraschi M. et al.
"Islam - a alternative concept of monotheism"

or this nice review:
God H.
"Earth - a flexible modelsystem"


*g* see you at the next "universal journal club". if you can recommend any papers for the journal club, go ahead. :D

I just typed that down for deutsche_kultur and I just repost it here, cause I'm quite in the mood now for letting everyone hear what I'm thinking about the german governments way of dealing with the problems in their educational system. ;)


Why I think the "Exzellensinitiavtive"* of the german government sucks.


So, for one reason I don’t like the concept of trying to create a clone of an ‘ivy league’ with all force. It’s artificial and won’t work. What they’re trying to do is trying to push some universities to become more internationally recognized and a sort of figurehead which politicians can refer to when talking about the german universities. They called it ‘Leuchttürme der Wissenschaft’ (‘Lighthouses of Science’).

What they obviously forget is, that universities like Harvard or Oxford gained their reputation over years, decades, centuries even. You can’t just create the reputation of an ‘ivy league’ in a few years and more even, not with that money. After all, it’s still not enough to provide outstanding scientific research over years. I’ve heard, for example, that the University of Göttingen is planning, in case they get into the next round of the ‘Exzellenzinitiavtive’, to pay their bills for heating costs with it.
The Government will spend around 2 billion on the whole ‘Exzellensinitiative’. In the first application round 38 universites were chosen. In the next, there’ll be another 38 I assume and I don’t know how many more round of application will follow. However, in the end it might add around a quarter or a third from the usual budget (around 63 Million) they have to it. In comparison, the Stanford University alone has around a 3 billion Euros budget each year. And considering that the University of Harvard is supposed to have 23 Billion Dollars in it’s pocket even 20 Million is laughable.
In English speaking countries the tradition of alumni and fundraising is very strong and quite some money comes from that. People always like to forget this. Here in Germany it’s usually like you get a degree then you leave university and that’s it. You simply forget about it. I think the government would have done good to maybe raise awareness for that, to encourage Universities for taking care of their alumni, to make them give something back in later life. Of course it would have taken years to build this alumni tradition and even more years getting some fundraising money out of it, but still I think it would pay off nicely in the end. But politics is not very well known for some long-term decisions anyway.

In general, this ‘Exzellensinitiative’ is a real half-hearted attempt to create ‘Leuchttürme der Wissenschaft’. How should you compete with the big players when you get pocket money compared to them?!
Research in Germany is quite alright, I’d say. But it mainly focuses at institutes like May-Planck or something similar. And I think that’s it what is bothering the government. Even though institutes are usually strongly connected with universities, good research doesn’t necessarily improve the reputation of the university they work together with. And therefor don’t improve the reputation of the german educational system. That’s what the government wants. They want an university to get into the top ten of international universities (in the world ranking 2005, the best german universities were the ones in munich and they made it to place 50 or something like that), so that they can show off with that. But well, a few millions won’t do the trick.

Another thing why I’m not a fan of the ‘Exzellensinitiative’ is, that the idea of it is so totally schizophrenic to what they want for the educational system in general. On the one hand they’re saying ‘We need more students! We need more people to do their Abitur!’ and on the other hand they’re saying ‘We need an elite!’.
It’s totally schizophrenic, I think.
Abitur and University for everyone means that everyone should get the same chances, which is all fair and nice. But trying to establish an elite among german universities totally spoils this idea of ‘same chances for everyone’ again. With creating an elite you devalue other universities and you filter the students again and there goes your idea of ‘same for everyone’. So what was the point of forcing as much children as possible through the Abitur again?!
Call me old-fashioned or reactionary but I used to think people who go to university are the elite. But well, nowadays with everyone making the Abitur I probably have to say good-bye to that idea.
In general, I think it’s a fairly stupid idea wanting to have more and more people doing the Abitur and going to university. Some people are just not made for an academic path, why force them to?!
I have the little suspicion that some politicians think, that the meaning of getting more people to make the Abitur and go to university indicates that they were better teached at school and that teaching quality has improved. Well…no. Because if you want to achieve that it takes a while. Actually it takes a rebuilding of the whole educational system. And that, as we see at the moment, is difficult and takes ages. But politicians want short-term results. And what is the first thing to produce more people with Abitur, yes, you lower your claims and the quality. You adjust it so that more people can pass, generously forgetting that the highest qualification you can get from a german school gets more and more mediocre. But still it qualifies you for going to university. And a lot of them do. Which eventually will lead to producing a lot of mediocre academics, instead of for example good and excellent skilled craftsmen.
Okay, what to do now, to still stick to a high standard of teaching at universities?! Yes, creating an elite! Great idea. So you’ll get well educated academics and the rest in the end. The rest will be quite a huge number and what to do with them?! Well…noone seems to have thought about that just now. Not everyone can become a manager or an architect or what ever else. But all what seems to count for the government is the simple number of students as an indication of how good the german educational system is. All that matters is statistics.

So, and for a final note I’m getting back to the ‘Exzellenzinitiative’.
In short, I think it’s a waste of time and money, which would be way better invested into the rebuilding of the german educational system, because people won’t be as best qualified as possible in their individual abilities when all you aim on is getting a high number of children into university and trying to create an ‘Ivy League’ with pocket money won’t help either.









* for everyone, who doesn't know what the "Exzellensinitiative" is supposed to be, it's a project by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. Universities can apply for it and if they pass the qualification standards they'll get more money from the ministry. The idea behind it is creating a sort of 'Ivy League', universities that can match with universities like Harvard or Oxford in the international ranking.

lyxzen: adresse in comment. :)
(ist verdeckt)

PS: das wollte ich schon immer mal fragen: dein username hat nichts mit dennis lyxzen von "the international noise conspiracy" zu tun, oder?!

finally, managed to update my fotojournal .

i submitted last friday.
worked for like 30 hours in a row befor for submission. without sleeping and without eating basically. i'm still amazed what adrinalin can do.
i gonna edit a diploma status report in a bit. :)

almost there.
around 60 pages or so.
i'm very disappointed of the big boss. very disappointed. even a little sad. okay, he called last night to give me some feedback about the M&M. that was nice. but he told me, that he'd swing by today to discuss some of the other parts i've send him. and today...not a trace of him. not even an email or anything. well, obviously he couldn't care less. thanks for letting me know.
thank god my super is still there. without her i'd be so lost.

Diploma-Thesis Status Report

days till dead line: 5 days

status:
writing
chapter material&methods for editing with boss
started editing result-draft
discssion-draft done
started introduction
(experiments still runing, but i'm not involved anymore)

progress: 23 pages material&methods, 10 pages results-draft, 8 pages discussion, 2 pages introduction

anxiety level: 65/100 (monday!)

burn-out level: 45/100

motivation: 8/10 (almost there!)

social capability: 1/10 (dunno. just seen my flatmates today.)

notes: i'm still relativley calm and optimistic, although i'm two days behind my timetable. but that's the good thing about my timetable, the last five days weren't dedicated to anything special, just editing. i knew i'd probably wouldn't finish all the writing like i've planned before today, that's why i kept the last days free basically to be able to do the last bits of writing. though, if i'm not finished with the writing by tomorrow (tomorrow morning that is), i'm starting to get into trouble, cause editing needs at least two days still. so yeah, back to work then.

listen to "the black parade" very very loud is very good for my inner balance. very "zen-ing".
yes.

Diploma-Thesis Status Report

days till dead line: 8 days

status:
writing
chapter material&methods for editing with boss
started editing result-draft
writing discssion part
started introduction
(experiments still runing, but i'm not involved anymore)

progress: 23 pages material&methods, 10 pages results-draft, 6 pages discussion

anxiety level: 55/100 (one week to go!)

burn-out level: 45/100

motivation: 8/10 (getting better today)

social capability: 2/10 (hm. tonight is a party at our flat. i can always find shelter in my room when the crowd freaks me out.)

notes: can you believe it?! big boss hasn't edited M&M still! geez. i told him today that i need it back on monday, at last. he said he'll have it done by then. hm. we'll see.
on the plus side, super gave me good feedback about my discussion chapter and my result chapter. so i'm on the write track. yay! :)
also, good news...i can do my phd here! yuppie! big boss said it i'll definitley can do my phd here. he just can't say yet when i can start. so yes! great! i won't unemployed! (at least not for that long :D).
i'm happy and motivated right now. it's just very reassuring to know what will happen after diploma. :)

Diploma-Thesis Status Report

days till dead line: 9 days

status:
writing
chapter material&methods for editing with boss
finished result-draft
writing discssion part
scanning papers for introduction part
(experiments still runing, but i'm not involved anymore)

progress: 23 pages material&methods, 10 pages results-draft, 3 5 10 0 pages discussion, 3 pages discussion-draft

anxiety level: 55/100 (9 days!)

burn-out level: 35/100

motivation: 7/10

social capability: 2/10 (dunno. haven't met that many people recently.)

notes: my super told me yesterday, that, after she asked the big boss about the stuff for editing i gave him two weeks ago, he told her he would look into it that evening....*&"&%!!!%§%!!* gaaaaa!! i mean...the fuck?!...no words, really.
yesterday was okay. i managed to order my thoughts and ideas. will write them down today. but i lost one day in my scheduled. hmpf.
in totally unrelated news..i downloaded a demo of sim city 2000 the other day (being nostalgic, i assume) and when you click the libary there's a short essay from neil gaiman. very cute, about citys as living beings. i don't where that is from (neverwhere perhaps?). but it was quite a plesant surprise to find a hidden neil gaiman in a sim city 2000 demo. *g*


PS: two important things from my 'life after' list:
- go to hamburg by train (via göttingen)
- buy the whole collection of twinings tea

yes, these are two of my main points on my list. and both things i became rather obsessive about. going to hamburg by train via göttingen because, almost all the trains from kassel to göttingen go on till hamburg. and i just want to sit in that train and not having to leave in göttingen but can go on till damn hamburg. yes! so, hamburg = große freiheit, literally speaking.
and twinings-tea...that is the first thing i gonna buy from my frist paycheck for my new flat (whenever that might be), because twinings tea is rather expensive and i can't afford to buy it just right now (though i bought one packed after a real stupid and stressful day at work some time ago, but still...it's too expensive actually), but i can afford it once i have a job. yay! plus it reminds me of london and of munich. when i worked at nature one of my coworkers always bought twinings tea and i to nick some from her from time to time.
so, twinings tea, because it means i have money by then, plus because it reminds me of nice places and nice people.

wuuuuuhaaaa! panik!
wer ist das??? und was macht der in meinem browser????
*schüttel*
bääääääääääh!!

Heute wieder eine Folge aus "George, halt einfach mal die Klappe..."

Wenig überraschend also, dass Bush den scheidenden Premier heute in einem Interview gegen den Vorwurf in Schutz nimmt, er habe sich wie der "Pudel" des amerikanischen Staatschefs benommen. "Ich habe gehört, dass er 'Bushs Pudel' genannt wurde. Er ist größer als das", sagte der US-Präsident der britischen "Sun"

Viel größer als ein Pudel, na das ist ja auch nicht weiter schwer. Was darfs denn sein? Golden Retriever - treu und dumm? Dobermann - schnittig und bissig? Oder gar doch eher eine Dogge - groß aber tump?

An Tony Blairs Stelle wär ich glaub ich echt ein bisschen angepisst. Aber naja, selbst schuld wenn man sich solche Partner aussucht.

Diploma-Thesis Status Report

days till dead line: 11 days

status:
writing
chapter material&methods for editing with boss
finished result-draft
writing discssion part
scanning papers for introduction part
(experiments still runing, but i'm not involved anymore)

progress: 23 pages material&methods, 10 pages results-draft, 3 pages discussion

anxiety level: 45/100 (hm. 11 more days. that's even less then 14.)

burn-out level: 25/100

motivation: 7/10 (it's getting less. i just want to be finished soon.)

social capability: 2/10

notes: M&M is still with the boss. GAAA!!! i wrote him an email yesterday. and he didn't even reply to that yet. !&%&$§§!!! i mean, hello?! it's been almost two weeks since i gave him the draft. and it's not like it's extremley complicated to read. my super made it in one evening. gnah. it annoys me, a fucking lot. because i can't/don't want to edit it again until i have the draft back from him. it makes no sense to start working on it when i don't have feedback if i'm going in the right direction.
started writing the discussion part and i feel like i have a knot in my brain. *sighs*

Diploma-Thesis Status Report

days till dead line: 14 days

status:
writing
chapter material&methods for editing with boss
finished result-draft
outlines + brainstorming for the discussion part
(experiments still runing, but i'm not involved anymore)

progress: 23 pages material&methods, 10 pages results-draft, 3 pages discussion

anxiety level: 35/100 (hm. 14 more days. that's not that much anymore.)

burn-out level: 25/100

motivation: 8/10

social capability: 2/10 (i added this new parameter today, cause yesterday, when i was going home the tram was so full of people (documenta art tourists, mostly), it totally freaked me out. too many people. not used to anymore. i even hardly see my co-workes anymore.)

notes: M&M is still with the boss. gnah. have to ask him about it on monday. finished result-draft today. looks okay. gave it to supervisor for editing. started with discussion part. i'm a little concerend about the results. i think i might need four more graphs about some 'sub-details'. hm. not good. i know where to include them, but i don't know in how far i need to edit the program for doing the graphs the way i want them. have to ask super.
but in general i'm confident about having finished all the drafts by the friday at last. gives me *counts* six days for the editing. i think that's okay.
hell, it might be possible that my diploma thesis will be the first thing for university i've finished in time. amazing.

Mingle² - Online Dating

beware! i said dead 6 times, fucking 5 times, fuck 4 times, shit 3 times, suck 2 times and steal one time.
that's quite an amound of swearwords these days. yep. i'm so totally a bad influence.

Diploma-Thesis Status Report

days till dead line: 17 days

status:
writing
chapter material&methods for editing with boss
started results-draft
outlines for the discussion part
(experiments still runing, but i'm not involved anymore)

progress: 23 pages material&methods, 2 pages results-draft

anxiety level: 15/100 (feeling surprisingly confident)

burn-out level: 25/100

motivation: 9/10

notes: handed my M&M chapter to the boss yesterday. started with results-draft today, i'm planning to finish that tomorrow. really want to have finished the writing next weekend (weekend after the following), so i have five days for editing. i'm surprisingly optimistic about making it till then.

i didn't write that much today, but did a lot of brainstorming, which was also quite productive and helped me to really understand the analysis completely. also, good ideas about the discussion part.
it was actually quite an enjoyable day to just think this whole stuff over and over and getting new ideas from that. really liked it.


PS: i fear when i get the M&M chapter back from my boss it will be like that...


PPS: hello nerd-score..

so totally and completely true. *g* and you don't even have to go to gradeschool for that. at least in germany it's included in the usually diploma-studies.

Diploma-Thesis Status Report

days till dead line: 24 days

status:
writing
first draft for material&methods edited
outline for results&discussion
(experiments still runing, but i'm not really involved anymore)

progress: 15 pages material&methods

anxiety level: 5/100

burn-out level: 55/100

motivation: 10/10 (because i think i can't get more optimistic and motivated like right now, though i hope i might)

notes: another talk with the big boss. he approved our plans for the results&discussion part. also seemed to be okay with some of the sketches i did for material&methods.
planing to give him the edited material&methods and a draft for results(&discussion) on tuesday. it's good to have that sort of deadline. a little pressure for writing can't be bad.
am optimistic about the thesis right now. should be possible to finish within the next three weeks.