Archive for 2003

Gruseliger Style.

Monday, June 2nd, 2003

Gestern nach abgeschlossenem Spaziergang auf der wirklich wunderbaren Mathildenhöhe (viel schöner Jugendstil, viele Boule Spieler, es gab gerade ein Open Air Klassik Konzert) und nach anschließendem Aufenthalt im Biergarten zurück nach Griesheim geradelt. Da “zum Einschlafen” noch gemeinsam mit Christian The Others mit Nicole Kidman geschaut. Eigentlich bin ich ja nicht son Gruselfan, aber das war schon ein echter Knüller. Mit coolen Wendungen in der Handlung, düsteren Kameraschwenks und der richtigen Portion Wahnsinn.

Sci-fi? Truth? New Taser weapon introduced.

Monday, June 2nd, 2003

I just read news about a new electric shock weapon, the TaserX26. This scares me. I read about this weapon at the Heise Newsticker. You can read the article (in German) here.
You can read a good article about non-lethal weapons written by Steve Wright for the Le Monde diplomatique: in German, in English.

Another sunny day, the Mathildenhöhe is waiting

Sunday, June 1st, 2003

Back in our working room in the Kraftwerk, a strong iced coffee in my veins. The plan for today is to pretend to work a bit, write another entry for the blog, and then take a walk to the Mathildenhöhe, a nice hill with a park, some museums, and a Russian chapel on it. There Eleni, Christian and I will loiter around a bit and probably consume some more coffee containing beverages.

Other than that, I’ll check out the trains going to Mannheim or ‘Mannem’, because I’ll visit Master Reimer tomorrow. My first visit to the City of God. We’ll see what kind of entertainment David will come up with …

Beginning to blog – a question of time (and space ;-) )

Sunday, June 1st, 2003

I would be quite surprised if I write as frequently as I do now. There seems to be quite a lot of news in my life these days, many things happing that could find their way into the blog. Events which I enjoy reflecting upon and which I enjoy putting into words.
One of the major reasons for this is: ich habe die Muße dafür (I do have the leisure to do this). The apartment in Griesheim is still quite empty and not in “easy living condition”, there are not too many things that could distract me here (my PowerBook is not that much of a gaming machine, there is no TV available, I am broke, our workroom in the Kraftwerk is not at all crowded), and I am not yet under too much pressure regarding the work on my dissertation. Also, writing this blog is something new and inspiring; I am excited about the possibilities of this medium – at the same time I am somewhat unclear about the ways in which I want to use it:
Who is going to read this blog? Will it be friends that I already know, will it be strangers, will it be other bloggers? How many people will be interested in the posts on sociological issues and on my dissertation project? I’ll probably start the PR process next week. Sending out an e-mail to people I know so that they know about this blog and, if they like it, visit it more or less regularly and perhaps even post comments here.
Another big question: should I really write this blog in English? I am quite sure that I want to write the sociological stuff in English, because I am probably going to write my dissertation in English anyway. It will at the very least be a good exercise to write in English. But then again, German speaking folks might not be comfortable enough with the Enlish language and perhaps refrain from reading this blog if I only write in English. Of course, most of the people I know are German. Perhaps I’ll do a poll from time to time. I think that I will write some entries in German from time to time; depending on mood and subject.

Steinbruch – a disco experience

Sunday, June 1st, 2003

Ah, the internet, a marvel… you can check out where I spent Thursday night here. Seems as if this joint has quite a history.

It was a real old school experience. The thing was already full of people dancing and drinking when we arrived at around 23:30h. No to-cool-to-start-dancing-before-who-knows-when-style like in Berlin. Instead, it was quite similar to the Romaris back home. Rock’n’Roll. Yeah. Nice distribution of ages, no aggressive people, and a dancefloor that is just big enough.

I’ve been there together with Alex and Andreas, both of them co-kollegiates, both of them jumping and dancing until we were all sweat and exhaustion. If this is what life in Darmstadt will be like, well, then there is some fun in store for us…>

The first ‘real’ stay in Darmstadt

Saturday, May 31st, 2003

When I arrived here in Darmstadt yesterday I was wondering what the coming days would bring. I’ll stay here until next Friday, when I’ll be going up north to attend the wedding of Meik and Katja on Saturday (old school, stylish wedding – yeah!). They brought a lot of warm and moist weather and they also brought the nicest side-effects warm weather can have: allowing one to loiter around in outdoor swimming pools. Here in Darmstadt we have the “Woog”, a lake close to the city’s center. It’s nice, only 1 EUR entrance fee, not too crowded and the water was as refreshing as one could wish it to be.
After enjoying the weather, doing some water-diving for the first time since ages and even playing some volleyball I was pretty exhausted. And happy. Praise going to outdoor swimming pools together with some nice buddies!

Tomorrow I might want to tell you about my first visit to a discotheque in South-Western Germany. The ‘Steinbruch’….

Some musings on Marcuse

Saturday, May 31st, 2003

This week, the reading digest for our Kolleg were two chapters from Herbert Marcuse’s One Dimensional Man. I was quite excited about reading Marcuse for the first time. I first encountered him in my late-adolescence Fromm reading in about 1993 and since then I read most of the major works written the good old Frankfurt posse. Since the One Dimensional was written after the Eclipse of Reason and after the Dialectics of Englightenment I expected it to at least add something to, if not ‘transcend’ these dark, beautiful, and bold analytic masterpieces of social and philosophical critique. People whispered something about a positive solution sketched out in this text. Eros should be part of it, I heard.

Well, I was disappointed. The way in which he portays technology, the way in which he puts the potential for change into the development of technology. A technology that’s reaching it’s highest level and then changes to something radically different, left me without agents, but with a lot of techne and greek classicism. What’s even more dissappointing, he left me desolately looking for the role which Praxis plays in his theory. Perhaps the chapters we read (5 and 9, I think) didn’t cover the right ground in this regard. But I fear that I didn’t just miss it. Without a solid and sympathetic understanding of Praxis, of the interactions between people and their environment, it seems to be almost impossible to bring to life a positive imagination of what life and society could be like. A positive imagination that doesn’t strive for perfection, instead encompassing the shortcomings of human actions, motives and utopias, that’s what I want.

To my personal enjoyment I might add that I think that Fromm, who is often stigmatized for catering to a ‘late-adolescent’ audience, does a better job in the positive imagination business. Perhaps Marcuse should have added more Meister Eckehardt to his somewhat hidden Heideggerisms ;-)

Migration of project description from self.html to this blog!

Thursday, May 29th, 2003

During the next days I will start to migrate my project description from my “offical style” self description page (check it out) to this blog.
This will hopefully enable me to put regular updates about the progress of my dissertation on this page. Then YOU can comment it.

Comment system implemented

Thursday, May 29th, 2003

I now have a working comments system installed – you are all welcome to comment on anything I write here.

Now, it can begin

Thursday, May 29th, 2003

Well, well, setting up this blog thing was quite easy. It only took me an hour or two to figure out the customizations, and get the wiki-style plugin (wikieditish) to work. But now everything is up and running. Amazing. I guess I will be tweaking some of the blog settings pretty soon nonetheless ;)