• Hadassa Ben-Itto, a retired Israeli Judge elaborated the idea to learn from Nazis. She said “We must learn from the Nazi tactics” during a conference, discussing the State of Israel’s PR efforts in the world.
  said a couple of days ago at a conference
• For three years now, some parts of the city of Hamburg are under video surveillance. The idea behind it is, as in many cities all over the world: people won’t commit crimes when they are watched by cameras.
  An official document was released now, evaluating this “security” measure: criminal acts increased by 32% (the incidence of bodily injury even increased by 75%). Although this result might be confounded with other variables, and therefor makes a causal interpretation difficult, it is yet again one of a growing number of studies showing that generally suspecting all citizens of a country to be criminals does not improve anything.
• George Lucas (producer of “Star Wars”) is threatening a laser-producing company (“Wicked Lasers”) with legal action if it doesn’t change a specific product or stops selling it. Why? Because it looks too much like a lightsabre used in the Starwars movies.
  Seriously?! …
• American scientists discovered two human antibodies, which seem to be able to stop around 90% of the known HIV-groups.

— via Fefe & Jana

(ever tried to squeeze a golfball? it’s hard like stone …)

“We live on an island surrounded by a sea of ignorance. As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.”

– John Archibald Wheeler

(via Abstruse Goose)

Gesehen in Berlin Neukölln.

Der erste Schriftzug hing auf einem handgeschriebenen Zettel im Schaufenster eines kleinen Ladens, der zweite ordentlich gedruckt in einer Bank neben dem Schild mit den Öffnungszeiten (ohne irgendwelche Zusätze – einfach so) an der geschlossenen Tür.

“Bei uns ist immer alles bis zu 60% reduziert.”

“Wir sind auch gerne außerhalb unserer Öffnungszeiten für Sie da.”

“We live in an amazing world that is wasted on the crappiest generation of just spoiled idiots that don’t care …”

1:49 nearly killed me … hilarious!

Achtung, das ist kein Aprilscherz — Facebook hat einen Vorschlag für neue Datenschutzbestimmungen gepostet. Unter Punkt 4 (“Dritten zugänglich gemachte Informationen”) findet sich folgender Satz:

Um dir die Möglichkeit zu geben, auch außerhalb von Facebook nützliche Erfahrungen im sozialen Bereich machen zu können, sind wir gelegentlich gezwungen, anderen überprüften Webseiten und Anwendungen, die sich auf die Facebook-Plattform stützen, allgemeine Daten über dich zur Verfügung zu stellen, wenn du diese besuchst (wenn du noch bei Facebook angemeldet bist)

Was für eine absurde Formulierung … Neusprech³.

(via Heise)

(If you don’t get it: this systematization is used in the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons to characterize attitude/ethics of a character)

(via Iggy’s Soup)

What is in today?
– A voting software used by politicans in the US which is set to automatically register each vote as a “yes” unless members of the council deliberately press a button to vote “no.” So they have private meetings, or play golf, while their voting record is still completely fine.

What is out today?
– Getting mocked by Facebook.

The magnitude 8.8 earthquake in Chile last Saturday actually shifted the axis of the Earth by 8 centimeters. This led to an increase of the rotation of the Earth, which shortens the days by 1.26 microseconds (0.00000126 seconds). Unfortunately, this can only be calculated, not actually measured. The smallest amount of time that can currently be captured is 5 microseconds.

Now, what does that mean?

Even less sleep for me, I guess.

Sigh.

In comparison to Chile, the 2004 Sumatran earthquake (magnitude 9.1) is estimated to have shortened the length of day by 6.8 microseconds and shifted Earth’s axis by 7 centimeters. It did not have an impact as strong as the one in Chile – JPL research scientist Richard Gross explains why:

First, unlike the 2004 Sumatran earthquake, which was located near the equator, the 2010 Chilean earthquake was located in Earth’s mid-latitudes, which makes it more effective in shifting Earth’s figure axis. Second, the fault responsible for the 2010 Chiliean earthquake dips into Earth at a slightly steeper angle than does the fault responsible for the 2004 Sumatran earthquake. This makes the Chile fault more effective in moving Earth’s mass vertically and hence more effective in shifting Earth’s figure axis.