Worth living today:

The SPD politician Steffen Uebele wrote an open letter nicely summing up why you can’t possibly vote for the SPD anymore, and asks his readers to vote for the pirate party instead.

[...]Und leider gibt es nur eine Partei, die diese Themen ernsthaft bearbeitet: Diese hört auf den etwas ironischen Namen „Piraten-Partei“. Folglich werde ich diese Partei unterstützen, wählen, und auch in sie eintreten. Und ich würde mich freuen, wenn auch Sie sich diesen Schritt überlegen würden. Informieren Sie sich, und glauben Sie mir, es handelt sich nicht um eine Spaßpartei, sondern um eine ernsthafte Bewegung, die sich für Ihre Freiheit einsetzt. Und ich hoffe, dass auch Sie der Meinung sind, die Politik hat es derzeit nicht verdient, in Ruhe gelassen zu werden. Ein Erfolg der „Piraten“ wäre sicherlich ein Denkzettel für die anderen Parteien.[...]

A few days ago I wrote about remixing political campaign posters.

One of these remixed posters just made it into the most watched German news “Tagesschau”. I have no idea how this could have happened – chance? a daring trainee with a good sense of humor? – but it’s freaking hilarious to see a close-up on a remixed campaign poster of the conservative party CDU on this television show.

If anyone has a reasonable (or completely unreasonable, yet conspiratory) explanation, please feel free to post it.

You can find the video here (3:21-3:30), and a screenshot of the video here.

Since Fefe posted this, this will receive quite some attention – and I think they will remove it soon. Watch the video as long as it’s still up.

It has become more and more popular in the last years to take something someone else has made, and re-use it somehow. Some people consider this art (I won’t go into this discussion here). Some people call it remixing.

You’ll find the remix-generator I’m talking about in this entry here.

The first remix-contest of Netzpolitik.org took place in August, and had far over 1.000 submissions. People were asked to make a better use of the following Schäuble campaign poster:

Read the rest of this entry »

Just saw this on tagesschau.de …

There’s the photographer. And there’s the make-up person, who usually also does the hair. There’s the PR guys. A writer. A graphic designer as well, most probably. Perhaps there are even more people involved in the process from the photograph to the poster, like close relatives and such.

And none of them had the courage to say: “Sorry, but … we really can’t use that phototgraph. I mean, we really really can’t. You look like … well … huh. Let’s just do another one real quick.”

I mean … how?! Why?!

(If you want to see the poster in vivo – Berlin Neukölln ist the place to go, it’s all over Hermannstrasse and Karl-Marx-Strasse)

(1) On the 30th of August, the election in the German state “Saarland” will take place. As it looks like at the moment, it will be quite a close call. Considering this, it’s very interesting to look at the design of the ballot:

(2) Angela Merkel explains the tax-concept of her party in 90 seconds:

(3) Fefe sent a petition to the German Bundestag requesting a three-strike-rule: as soon as a delegate votes for the third anticonstitutional bill (s)he should lose his/her seat in the Bundestag.
The petition was declined -- delegates are only “indebted to their conscience”, as the German constitution states. Which is, of course, ludicrous: common practice in the German Bundestag is using so-called whips for elections, meaning that every delegate of a specific party X has to vote the way the party X decided they have to.
So much for conscience. For some more thoughs on this topic, check out Malte.

(4) The German conservatives are so afraid by the Pirate Party that they actually started abusing their financial superiority and pasted over Pirate Party election posters with conservative ones.

(5) The conservatives gave a small election party where local media were invited. When a team of the magazine Spiegel turned up, they were not let in, and after they got in, they were thrown out by Zensursula herself!
The video is hilarious, watch it!

(Sources: spiegel.de, malte welding, fefe, spitblog.de)

I don’t very much like (watching) sports. And by having neither a television, nor a radio, nor any time to do a lot of sports myself, I do succeed quite well not liking (watching) sports.

Then again, sometimes it just offers … interesting things to report about. For instance the leg amputee Natalie du Toit, who finished 16th in the women’s open water 10km race at the Olympics in Beijing, or the double-amputee sprinter Oscar Pistorius, who was denied a shot at the Olympics … for being too fast.

Yesterday, it happened again.

Caster Semenya, 18 years old, won the gold medal in the 800 womens’ meters finals (1:56.72).

A group of doctors, including a gynecologist, an endocrinologist, an internal medicine expert, an expert on gender and a psychologist, have already started administering the extensive examination.

Why? Not because she’s been suspected of doping. But because (s)he’s suspected to actually be a man, and therefor the IAAF (the world governing body for track and field) confirmed yesterday that it had asked Caster to undergo a gender verification test.

Click for pictures.

(With thanks to HJ for the info.)

Update: sueddeutsche-science offers some in-depth analysis of the case in this article.

Someone has found the diaries of Adam and Eve – rather interesting to see what actually happened. Hilarious!

MONDAY: This new creature with the long hair is a good deal in the way. It is always hanging around and following me about. I don’t like this; I am not used to company. I wish it would stay with the other animals…. Cloudy today, wind in the east; think we shall have rain…. WE? Where did I get that word– the new creature uses it.
…
TEN DAYS LATER. She accuses ME of being the cause of our disaster! She says, with apparent sincerity and truth, that the Serpent assured her that the forbidden fruit was not apples, it was chestnuts. I said I was innocent, then, for I had not eaten any chestnuts. She said the Serpent informed her that “chestnut” was a figurative term meaning an aged and moldy joke. I turned pale at that, for I have made many jokes to pass the weary time, and some of them could have been of that sort, though I had honestly supposed that they were new when I made them.

(Thanks to the crazy person)

Probably I shouldn’t, but still: after the “accidents” in 2007 I’m quite happy to tell you how the animal mutilation in Pamplona turned out this year (one man killed, three severely harmed).

Of course I hope it didn’t hit any innocent bystand, but from what I’ve read this is pretty improbable.