Ein Lehrer bloggt über: Amok – Schule – Bildung – Pädagogik – Psychologie – Gewalt
Beiträge mit tag "Emo
Porn to be wild – Steve Jobs wants a clean iPad
2vor 1 Jahr
You might have heard the news already… Ryan Tate from Gawker Media wrote an email to Steve Jobs because he didn’t buy the iPad being a “revolution” as the commercials suggest because Apple is so restrictive about what kind of Apps and Data officialy makes it onto the iPad and iPhone.
The master himself bothered to reply.
Tate’s message:
If Dylan was 20 today, how would he feel about your company?
Would he think the iPad had the faintest thing to do with “revolution”?
Revolutions are about freedom.
(for the kids: He’s talking about Bob Dylan)
And Steve Jobs said:
Yep, freedom from programs that steal your private data. Freedom from programs that trash your battery. Freedom from porn. Yep, Freedom. The times they are a changin’, and some traditional PC folks feel like their world is slipping away. It is.
Riiight..so my future freedom is what Apple wants it to be?
I am one of those “traditional PC folks” although I switched to Mac quite a while ago. Mac and PC are incomparable to me since they are not only different systems, they are completely different concepts. While I liked messing around with different hardware, experimental drivers, experimental operating systems etc. when I was young, nowadays I prefer the all-in-one concept the Mac has always offered. No hassle, no crashes…and I don’t care about the limited portfolio of hardware because as a businessman I need my spreadsheeds, my word processor, a database and email…that’s it…no fancy graphics, no ATI Radium with a cooling block the size of a small car…BUT that’s where it ends for me…
I don’t mind Apple being restrictive regarding the code of applications…that’s one of the reasons their stuff works so well (most of the time)…but content? That’s a different story…
Porn is dirty and masturbation makes you go blind, but let’s face it, guys! Had we had a thing like the iPad to hide under our blanket at night to whack off to some porn movie rather than to the female underwear part of a mail-order-catalogue – we would have used it! When we grew older and were suddenly at legal age for getting and consuming porn and alcohol, these things got old very quickly…we got wasted a couple of times…watched a few porn movies and all of a sudden we had grown up and had actual women to whack off to (or with…) and getting wasted became a sign of immaturity…but none of us ended up like the anti-pornography-movement thought we would.
The arguments people bring forth against the internet are the same arguments they used for XXX-channels on satellite TV, and before that they said the same about porn DVDs, and before that they said the same about porn VCR-tapes, and before that they said the same about porn-cinemas and magazines, let alone graphic novels (both of sexual and non-sexual subject)..and all the generations which were said to be doomed by the downfall of moral values have grown up to become normal adults…
I as a teacher say, porn is part of growing up…for boys more than for girls, but it is integral…while now as a school teacher I of course must object to any pornographic imagery, I also know that doing “something bad” is a vital part of a treasure chest of memories…the first cigarette you secretly smoked in the bushes and thought your parents wouldn’t notice because you chewed gum afterwards…the first beer…no one thought it tasted good, but no one wanted to admit that…and the first porn movie someone’s older brother had gotten and given us to watch…then we felt like real men…and none of us became a drug addict (for a longer period of time I mean.. 
) or a porn star…
Dear Mr. Jobs,
I love the stuff your company makes, but please keep in mind a company of your influence has a moral imperative when it comes to protect children and adolescents, but as soon as you’re dealing with adult customers it’s their business what kind of material they choose to enjoy on their iPad or iPhone…and it’s the customers’ responsibility not to let such material fall into the hands of minors…if an adult wants to whack off to some internet porn on a device made by Apple, it’s part of his freedom to do as he pleases..
Let me put it this way: As I understand, unlike here in speeder’s heaven (aka. Germany) there is a nationwide speed limit in the USA. While it would be no problem to install a device that limits the top speed of a car to 75 miles per hour, would you buy a Ferrari or a Porsche or a Mercedes Benz with such a device installed? Or would you refuse to buy a car with such a limiter? You know there is a speed limit…still, you want to “choose” not to exceed it, rather than being forced to obey by technical means…give it a thought, Mr. Jobs…
cd
The joys of German federalism
3vor 1 Jahr
Ah, what joy! The voters have spoken in North Rhine Westphalia – exposing one of the greatest flaws of German politics: federalism! While others may regard it an extra protection against giving too much power to a single person, I still regard it a serious flaw, because it allows to happen what Germany is facing right now. Just FYI, in Germany the federal elections are held independently from the elections in the states. German elections explained in a nutshell: Unlike the US of A, the states’ “governors” (“Ministerpraesidenten” as we call them) and the number of states a specific party “wins” have absolutely no effect on how the government in Berlin is formed. The states have an influence on how many seats in the federal parliament the respective parties of all states get, but that’s it. So where is the flaw? Since the governing party (or parties, as it is the case with CDU and FDP right now) and the chancellor at the helm are voted for directly by the people in a great federal election, it is possible that party A wins the majority in the federal elections and their candidate is pronounced chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, while party B holds the majority in the federal parliament (I shall spare you with the difference between “Bundesrat” and “Bundestag”…google is your friend), since they got the most votes state-wise. To make the problem worse, federal elections and state-level elections are not being held at the same time, because the legislative period on the federal level (chancellor and governing party) lasts four years, while the legislative periods on state level last five…except for the states of Bremen and Hamburg (which are considered city-states…the reason being of historical origin too boring to explain here), where the legislative periods last four years. This leads to the elections being anticyclical, which means: party A (or a coalition) might have the majority in both the federal elections and in the federal parliament, but if that majority happens to have been a close shave, they could lose it in any state-level election held within the legislative period of four years – which has just happened!
While the CDU (Completely Dysfunctional Union) and the FDP (Fatal Democratic Pandemonium) are still the governing parties in Berlin, they lost so many voters in the state of North Rhine Westphalia that from tonight they no longer have a majority in the “Bundesrat”…while optimists welcome it as a “balance to the government”, I welcome it as “the demise of the government”…I am not convinced, the Government will take the result “as a warning” as the German minister of applied linguistics and head of the FDP, Guido Westerwelle said…I much rather think, this will lead to even more disagreement on both federal and state level leading to an unleverable blockage between the governing parties and the parliament for the rest of the legislative period…bloody marvellous, but I never expected the coalition to work in the first place…and rumour has it, being foreign minister of Germany is by far not the first job, Westerwelle has blown so far…
cd
Es gibt doch noch echte Männer auf der Welt
1vor 1 Jahr
von cd
in Allgemeines
Da unsere Freunde, die Exilbriten jenseits des Atlantiks bekanntermaßen friedfertige Menschen sind und mit ihrem liebsten Partnerland China zu den wenigen Ländern gehören, die in ihrem Rechtssystem noch den Tod als Rehabilitationsmaßnahme von Strafgefangenen aufführen, gibt es auch regelmäßig Neuigkeiten aus dieser Sparte. Vor allem tendenziell eher konservative Staaten wie Utah erfreuen sich noch an der Ultima Ratio der Justiz, so sie doch ansonsten von der Ratio zugunsten der Bibel eher weniger Gebrauch machen. Zwar wird nicht mehr wie im guten alten Westen auf dem nächsten Hügel ein Galgen gezimmert, aber in der Theorie können Puristen sich anstatt der modernen Giftspritze in den Arm, die übrigens nur von einem dem Eid des Hippokrates verpflichteten approbierten Mediziner verabreicht werden darf, auch lieber ein paar Kugeln in die Brust bekommen, wenn sie dies wünschen. Am 18 Juni ist es soweit. Streng nach der Kahn’schen Regel (“Wir brauchen Eier!”) lebend, wünschte sich der Mörder Ronnie Lee Gardner einen Tod im Henry Fonda-Stil. Kurz und schmerzlos wie die amerikanische Justiz, die es bereits nach 25 Jahren schaffte, den Termin der Hinrichtung festzusetzen. Somit zeigt sich wieder, dass die USA der Vorreiter und das leuchtende Beispiel aller westlichen Demokraturen sind!
cd
Von Führerwitzen und dunklen langweiligen Geschichten
9vor 1 Jahr
von cd
in Allgemeines
Ohje, ein klein wenig Volksgewissen sei meiner Generation ja noch zugestanden, aber es muss doch nicht immer die schuldtriefende Tränendrüse sein…ich stehe doch selbst zur Geschichte, indem ich den Briten und Amerikanern noch Wasser auf ihre Mühlen gebe, einfach, weil es eine schöne Tradition ist, dass alle Welt beim Wort “Deutschland” an die besten Autos und die schlechtesten Emofrisuren denkt…aber wenn sogar BasicThinking in der Meldung, dass Constantin Film genug von Clips á la “Hitler gets banned from XBOX Live” hat und diese wegen Copyrightverletzung nun löschen lässt, vom “dunkelsten Kapitel der deutschen Geschichte” jammert, sage ich nur das gleiche, was ich auch zu “jedem das seine” sage…
Außerdem ist die Aussage so pauschal gar nicht mehr zu treffen…der Westerwelle ist noch verdammt lange Außenminister…
cd
Homöopathie schuld am Vulkanausbruch auf Island
4vor 1 Jahr
von cd
in Allgemeines
Nachdem ja wohl bewiesen ist, dass Kaczinski einem Attentat zum Opfer gefallen ist, ist nun auch klar, wer den Vulkanausbruch auf Island verursacht hat: es waren die Homöopathen. Es ist in den Kreisen der Homöopathieanhänger hinlänglich bekannt, dass Globuli aus Vulkanasche diverse Beschwerden lindern. Nachdem die Sekte 1023 in einem heldenhaften Selbstversuch demonstriert hatte, dass selbst extreme Überdosen homöopathischer Mittel keinen Effekt haben, ist nun klar, dass Homöopathiebefürworter ein Exempel statuieren wollten, indem sie den Vulkan in Island mutwillig gesprengt haben. Damit sollte den Kritikern der Homöopathie gezeigt werden, dass hohe Dosen Vulkanasche sehr wohl einen Effekt haben. Es zeigt aber auch sehr deutlich die Nebenwirkungen, die bei homöopathischer Behandlung auftreten können, z.B.
-Schlaflosigkeit (vor allem in überfüllten Terminals)
-Rückenschmerzen (durch liegen auf nicht gepolsterten Plastiksitzen in Flughäfen)
-Tinnitus (Durch Babygeschrei in Wartehallen)
-Übelkeit (durch Busfahren)
-Aggression (weil die Lufthansa keinen Kaffee mehr hat)
Eine Untersuchung der Ergebnisse steht noch aus…
cd
Musical chairs – How the Germans do politics – Part I
6vor 1 Jahr
It’s been a while since I last wrote an entry in English here, but today I feel like updating the non-German-speaking world on my view of what’s going on in this funny little country…I have written a lot about education in Germany in my “Dude, you bent my tower!” posts part one, part two and part three and in “Fun facts about Education in Germany”.
In the latter I also gave a brief introduction to how the government works. Today, I’d like to elaborate more on that.
First of all, unlike in the USA for example, the time a chancellor can stay in office is not limited…we hold general elections every four years and as long as he or she gets the majority, either on their own or through a coalition, they will stay in office until they turn to dust…
The most effective ways of losing the position are either by losing the cold war against communism and having the Federal Republic of Germany annected by the German Democratic Republic as it happened to Helmut Kohl in 1989, after destroying serving his country for 16 years, or, like Gerhard Schroeder did, by joining the Communists because they offer a more attractive salary.
Gaining the position is the tricky part. Majorities are hard to get these days as the average German has about as much interest in the deeper workings of politics as their trademark Dachshund…not surprisingly, the number of people who actually bother going to the ballot keeps dropping and dropping…
But we all know that a man named Angela Merkel did it and got elected a second time in a row, despite all bad press and most likely just for the sake of proving the Peter principle. And then the game of musical chairs began…
I refuse to comment on Guido Westerwelle, I have done so already and have nothing to add…
A more interesting thing are “Die Linke” and their story. There was a man named Oskar Lafontaine, a fine example of both solid mental illness politics and why one should always hire a professional. He had been good friends with Gerhard Schroeder until Gazprom political differences drove them apart. And there was a man named Gregor Gysi whose economical status had severely decayed after his Fuehrer had emigrated to Chile…he had learned a lot from his former and now defunct employer, but not from life and as both Lafontaine’s and his political views are so far out left-wing that they come back in on the right Pac-Man-style they decided to ignore any majorities and just found a party on their own..a principle which had already been tested in a broad range and had worked reasonably well in the past century…
Just to make the point clear, Lafontaine and Gysi are that kind of people who would consider Josef Stalin “too far right”. Hence those two made it possible that hell froze over and the CDU actually joined forces with the FDP and tried to form a coalition…well…it seems they’re still trying…the game of the musical chairs began…
Homöopathischer Selbstmord – Sekte 1023
3vor 1 Jahr
Wie das Blog der Brights berichtet, hatte eine britische Gruppe Homöopathie-Skeptiker am vergangenen Samstag versucht, sich mit extremer Überdosierung homöopathischer Medikamente umzubringen:
Sekte 1023: Kollektiver Selbstmord am Samstag « Brights – Die Natur des Zweifels.
Unnötig zu erwähnen, dass es natürlich nicht geklappt hat, wie man in den Videos der Gruppe sehen kann…Sinn und Zweck der Aktion ist es, zu demonstrieren, dass die berühmten “Globuli” und andere Präparate aus der Homöopathie faktisch wirkungsloser Humbug und reine Geldschneiderei sind.Vor allem versucht die Gruppe, Druck auf die britische Drogeriekette “Boots” auszuüben, auf dass diese sämtliche augenscheinlich wirkungslose homöopathische Mittel aus den Regalen nimmt. Spektakulär und eindrucksvoll…und offensichtlich war das Experiment sehr erfolgreich.
Die Webseite der Bewegung: Homeopathy: There’s nothing in it
cd
The reasons why Germany wants Westerwelle to be their foreign minister
8vor 2 Jahren
Alright, time for another semi-political rant in English.
Many may have noticed we held some elections recently…not necessarily to make things any better, but rather because Germany got tired of complaining about the old coalition running our government, so we wanted a new coalition to complain about for a change…
The first new reason to complain about them is of course a man named Guido Westerwelle. Considering the fact he is the designated foreign minister for the new coalition composed of the Christian Democratic Uselessness and the Fully Democratic Pandemonium he already showed he knows how to handle international business by annoying the BBC. If you’d like to see what happened, check youtube for the video. And you might also want to watch a splendid display of foreign language skill.
Many people seem to wonder why on earth the new coalition chose him to be the new foreign minister if his language skills are obviously insufficient…there is a simple explanation:
I have already written about how the German government works and this case is no exception.
Guido Westerwelle is a fine example to prove my “shit floats” argument. Yes, he’s arrogant…yes, he’s a megalomaniac and yes, his English would not even get him a job at McDonald’s…that’s why he became a politician instead.
So why are we going to make him the foreign minister?
1. The foreign minister’s main job is traveling the world and negotiating things….bottom line is: Westerwelle will be AWAY most of the time, hence he can’t screw up internal matters as bad as he could if he was around all day
2. He has a doctorate in law…seriously…if you had the chance to get at least one lawyer out of the country for the next four years, you would take it, wouldn’t you?
3. He’s gay…not only will that repel the charms of Berlusconi and Sarkozy…we also figured that with Merkel at the helm and Westerwelle at her side, we have to half men running the show which might just be as good as one real man…
4. If Merkel cannot have the better hairdo, she at least wants to be the one looking more competent…
5. His English is substandard and while the parties keep selling Germany’s long history of language deficiencies (Hans Dietrich Genscher is rumored not to have been able to speak any English when he became foreign minister and you sure do painfully remember Helmut Kohl’s and Gerhard Schroeder’s foreign language skills…) as a sign of “cultural identity”, I’m not too worried about that problem…since Schroeder has long joined Gasprom, we do not really need a foreign minister who speaks English as long as we have a chancellor who speaks Russian…
My message to Mr. Westerwelle: If you want to get away with crappy English in a position for which this particular language is key, you’d have to have the personality and political skill of Helmut Schmidt, Willy Brandt or Konrad Adenauer…
As I already said about the German idea of a “Beamter”…incompetence is not a reason to get fired…
But I must add that I am equally disappointed by the BBC…I personally would also have found it quite irritating to be asked to reply to a question in English, but still I would at least have replied IN English to make it clear that the language spoken during a press conference is usually the hosting country’s rather than showing such a nasty lack of diplomatic skill during one of my first public appearances after the elections…yet I would have expected the BBC to send a person more appropriate for the job abroad…what is he going to report about from a German press conference if he doesn’t speak the language? Had it been CNN, I would not have been surprised by poorly skilled reporters…but the BBC…that’s just sad…
I’ll just send him a letter and offer him free lessons, just to spice up my cv…might actually work…
All cynicism aside, I do see a brighter future for Germany…I will love to go to the UK again and again within the next years…just as I noticed people in England stopped asking me about Hitler after George W. Bush had been elected, with Westerwelle I’m sure I will no longer hear any more jokes about Angela Merkel…
As I said…”poets and thinkers”…
cd
Kaputtgemobbt…
1vor 2 Jahren
So, nun ist die Begriffstrennung eindeutig im Eimer…
In der aktuellen Ausgabe des Bayrischen Ärzteblattes steigt ein ansonsten sehr interessanter Artikel zum Thema „Neues aus der Kinder- und Jugendpsychiatrie“ mit folgender Formulierung ein:
„Mobbing, im angelsächsischen Sprachraum auch als ‚bullying‘ bezeichnet…“
Ähm..ok…wenn das Ärzteblatt das schreibt, ist es wohl endgültig vorbei mit der Trennschärfe…
cd
Jedem das seine…
3vor 2 Jahren
von cd
in Allgemeines
Ich weiß, dass ich mich mit dem folgenden Blogeintrag tierisch in die Nesseln setzen werde, aber ich schreibe ihn trotzdem…
Grund für mein saures Aufstoßen ist ein Artikel des Schulspiegels, den ich gerade gelesen habe:
Nazi-Slogan: CDU stoppt Kampagne „Jedem das seine“
Ja, verdammt, die Nazis haben die krumme Übersetzung des alten „suum cuique“ als Wahlspruch des Konzentrationslagers Buchenwald genutzt…
Der Spiegel bemerkt aber schon halbrichtigerweise: „Ursprünglich wurde er geprägt vom römischen Staatsmann und Philosophen Cato dem Älteren“…
Dieser benutzt „suum cuique“ aber auch schon in der Übersetzung, denn man findet den Begriff bereits in Platons „Politeia“, das Sprichwort ist also noch viel älter…
Die Schüler-Union NRW hatte in einer Kampagne gegen die Gemeinschaftsschule den Slogan „Nicht jedem das Gleiche, sondern jedem das Seine“ gewählt und wurde durch die CDU gestoppt…man mag von der Christlich-Debilen Union halten, was man will…und von den JuSos halte ich noch weniger…aber generell geht es mir auf den Zeiger, dass derartige Dinge immer wieder passieren….
Meine Meinung dazu ist:
Wenn wir in Deutschland echt jeden Begriff, der von den Nationalsozialisten missbraucht, pervertiert und umgedeutet wurde, für alle Zeiten zum Tabu erklären, DANN und GENAU DANN bekommt der alte Schicklgruber sein tausendjähriges Reich, das er sich so gewünscht hat…
Mein Traum wäre eher, dass wenn ich als alter Mann ein Lexikon in die Hand nehme, ich unter dem Begriff als Randnotiz lese, dass dieser in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus umgedeutet wurde, aber nun wieder in seiner alten Bedeutung bekannt ist…die, das einfach „Jeder nach seiner Fasson selig“ werden soll und darf…die Grundlage eines jeden demokratischen Staates…
Ok…verreisst mich…
cd
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