I do more before 9 a.m. than most people do all day.

Posted on 2012-03-04 by Andreas Moser

“I do more before 9 a.m. than most people do all day” is one of my mottoes.

I love to get up at the crack of dawn, when the whole city is still asleep and I can work or study for a few hours before everybody else wakes up. Also, the morning sunlight is a fabulous thing to see and enjoy. There is nothing better than the feeling of achievement when by 0900 I have already been so productive as I know many people won’t become all day. It’s time for breakfast then, or for a rewarding walk along the beach.

For those of you who are too young to remember, the slogan “we do more before 9 a.m. than most people do all day” comes from a US Army commercial from the 1980s.

The military recruitment ads have gotten better since, I think.

Posted in Life, Military, Time | Tagged , | 12 Comments

Primary elections in Iran

Posted on 2012-03-02 by Andreas Moser

Always eager to improve its “democracy”, the Islamic Republic of Iran has introduced primary elections to sift the pool of candidates. Not unlike the current Republican primaries in the US, candidates will have a hard time if they are not hardcore religious conservatives.

Two candidates have already been eliminated.

(Hat tip to German satire magazine Titanic and the Free Iran Now blog for the idea.)

Posted in Human Rights, Iran, Politics | Tagged | 7 Comments

Windows 8

Posted on 2012-03-02 by Andreas Moser

I really don’t understand the hype about Windows 8.

I already use Windows 95.

According to my calculation, I am 87 versions ahead.

Posted in Technology | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Don’t disturb!

Posted on 2012-03-01 by Andreas Moser

It’s probably better to leave these people alone. They will find us if they want to.

Image

Of course I am curious to find out about these yet uncontacted tribes. It would probably be extremely interesting. But in this case, moral restraint should trump scientific curiosity.

Posted in Brazil, Human Rights, Life | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Why Germany is bailing out Greece

Posted on 2012-03-01 by Andreas Moser

Have you ever wondered why Germany, Europe’s economic powerhouse, is contributing so much money to help Greece when even Greeks themselves are not contributing much more than going on strike, setting banks on fire and blaming Germany?

The following photo of German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble reveals how this came about.

German Finance Minister Wolfang Schäuble during a debate about financial aid for Greece in the Bundestag on 27 February 2012

Stuck in a particularly tricky Sudoku puzzle, Wolfgang Schäuble thought:

Damn it! This bloody Sudoku is too hard.

Let me find something easier to work on, for a change.

Ahhh, the Euro zone debt crisis and Greece’s insolvency! Yes, that’s it.

I’ll get back to this Sudoku after saving Greece.

And so it happened.

The Greek Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos immediately had an open hand for his German counterpart.

“Thanks, man. Not a moment too soon.”

Posted in Economics, Europe, Germany, Greece, Politics | 6 Comments

This sign post did not help

Posted on 2012-02-29 by Andreas Moser

Found in Mdina, Malta: a sign post informing me that I am “XX miles from XXXXXX”.

This is especially tough for people like me who refuse to use GPS.

I wonder if the sign post was stolen from somewhere else and the information was then erased in order to destroy evidence.

Links:

Posted in History, Malta, Photography, Travel, World War II | 5 Comments

Strong Waves in the Sunset at St Paul’s Bay, Malta

Posted on 2012-02-28 by Andreas Moser

This afternoon, as I was walking along the shore in St Paul’s Bay (San Pawl il-Baħar) in Malta, I noticed unusually strong waves causing beautiful splashes as they hit the mole.

I ran home to catch my camera and my water-proof jacket and returned just in time to catch these shots against the setting sun.

It was a spectacular sight accompanied by spectacular sounds.

These waves came crashing against the mole every 30 seconds. A festival of water, light and sound.

As they looked large, vicious, exciting and dangerous, my natural instinct was to get as close as possible.

But as soon as I had ventured closer, the sea got fiercer and the waves bigger. I could however not retreat because that would have violated my photographer’s ethos. So I stayed in the middle of the mole, with the Mediterranean Sea crashing over my head.

At this exact moment captured in the last photo, I realized that you wouldn’t be able to see these photos if I stayed and lost my camera. So I finally ran.

(Zur deutschen Fassung.)

Posted in Malta, Photography, Travel | Tagged , , | 15 Comments

An extra day: 29 February 2012

Posted on 2012-02-28 by Andreas Moser

Tomorrow, you will receive a precious gift: an extra day.

Because 2012 is a leap year, you will have 24 hours more in your year. Even those of you who pretend that they don’t have enough time, have no more excuse not to do what they want to do.

Make use of this rare opportunity! Don’t go to work! (You can blame it on not knowing about this oddity or on operating on last year’s calendar.)

Instead, use this unexpected extra day to do what you have always wanted to do:

  • Learn how to dive.
  • Climb a volcano.
  • Send a letter to a relative or friend that you haven’t contacted in years.
  • Learn the cricket rules.
  • Make a barbecue.
  • Turn off your phone and read a book.
  • Milk a cow.
  • Use a bus or a train that you have never used and see where it goes. Walk back.
  • Draw a pirate treasure map and hide it where people can find it.
  • Use rope skipping as your only means of moving all day.
  • Wash your cat.
  • Cook as much spaghetti as you can and invite your friends.
  • Write a short story (and send it to this blog for publication).
  • Try to get into the neighbouring country, evading the border controls.
  • Run for public office.
  • Emigrate to Bhutan.
  • Tell your children the truth.
  • Repair your bicycle.
  • Pick up a language course and learn a new language.
  • Give chocolate to everybody whom you meet today.
  • Enrol in university.
  • Start a flash-mob.
  • Go walking into the same direction as long as you can or until you reach the sea (or fall off the earth).
  • Build a snow sculpture.
  • Plant a tree.
  • Drive backwards all day.
  • Pretend that you don’t speak your native language.
  • Build an aquarium.
  • Eat only ice cream all day.
  • Put up a zip-line in your backyard.
  • Do some parkour jumps.
  • Join the military.
  • Take colour copies of all the money that you have.
  • Fix the buttons on all your clothes.
  • Catch a fish.
  • Paint your house in a different colour.
  • Give away all the clothes you have not worn in a year.
  • Write a sudoku.
  • Go to the park and ask strangers to play chess with you.
  • Enrol in a monastery.
  • Record the sound of a helicopter and play it as loud as possible when people are close.
  • Read the constitution.
  • Eat vegetarian for a day.
  • Talk about bombs and explosions all day to attract the attention of the FBI.
  • Volunteer at an animal shelter.

I hope you will enjoy your extra day! Let me know what you did.

Posted in Life, Time | 9 Comments

Bücherverbrennungen hier und dort

Posted on 2012-02-24 by Andreas Moser

Diese Woche haben US-Soldaten in Afghanistan aus Versehen ein paar Exemplare des Korans verbrannt, da die in den Gefängnissen dort ausliegenden Koran-Exemplare regelmäßig ausgetauscht werden, damit Gefangene keine Nachrichten darin hinterlassen können.

Die Bevölkerung Afghanistans ist aufgebracht, entsetzt und wütend. Bereits mehr als 20 Menschen starben bei den Ausschreitungen.

Eine Überreaktion? Schließlich ging es ja nur um ein paar Bücher, die schnell wieder nachgedruckt sind. Das ist sicher keine Menschenleben wert.

Aber vielleicht haben die Afghanen eine Lektion der Geschichte gelernt. Betrachten wir eine andere Bücherverbrennung, an einem anderen Ort, vor 79 Jahren:

Die Nation der Dichter und Denker versammelte sich im Mai 1933, um in Dutzenden von Städten bewußt Bücher zu verbrennen. Hauptbeteiligte waren Studenten und Professoren, die angeblichen Intellektuellen also, die Zehntausende von Büchern unter dem Gejohle der Zuschauer in Flammen setzen.

Bereits 1823 hatte Heinrich Heine in Almansor den (Muslim) Hassan sagen lassen:

Das war ein Vorspiel nur, dort wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen.

Dieses Zitat, in Almansor übrigens auf den Koran bezogen (!), sollte sich in der weiteren deutschen Geschichte bewahrheiten. Am Ende der nur 12 Jahre der Nazi-Herrschaft hatte das bücherverbrennende Volk ganz Europa in Schutt und Asche gelegt und etliche Millionen Menschen ermordet.

Ich wünsche, 1933 hätten sich in Deutschland nur annähernd solche Proteste geregt wie nun in Afghanistan. – – – Stattdessen spricht sich auch jetzt noch die Mehrheit sogar der Leser dieses Blogs bei einer Umfrage für das Verbrennen des Korans aus.

(There is an English version of this article.)

Posted in Afghanistan, Books, Germany, History, Islam, Politics, Religion | Tagged | 10 Comments

Book Burnings, here and there

Posted on 2012-02-24 by Andreas Moser

This week, US soldiers in Afghanistan accidentally burnt a few copies of the Quran because they regularly change the copies of the Quran that the prisoners there are allowed to use, in order to prevent messages being written into the books and being passed on to other prisoners.

The population of Afghanistan is outraged, aghast and angry. More than 20 people were already killed in the ensuing riots.

An over-reaction? After all, the story is only about a few books which can be printed again. Surely this matter does not warrant the loss of human lives.

But maybe Afghans have simply learnt the lessons of history. Let us look at another book burning, at another place, 79 years ago:

The nation of poets and thinkers got together in May 1933 for the specific purpose of burning books. The book burnings were led by students and professors, the supposed intellectuals, who set tens of thousands of books ablaze under the jubilation of spectators.

Already 1823, Heinrich Heine had (the Muslim) Hassan say in Almansor:

Where they burn books, so too will they in the end burn human beings.

This quote, which actually refers to the Quran (!) in Almansor, should turn out to become true as German history proceeded. At the end of the only 12 years of the Nazis’ reign, the book-burning people had laid waste to all of Europe and murdered several million people.

I wish Germany in 1933 would have seen protests anywhere near as now in Afghanistan.

(Es gibt eine deutsche Version dieses Artikels.)

Posted in Afghanistan, Books, Germany, History, Islam, Politics, Religion | Tagged | 30 Comments