M&M: Wag the Dog

Dear reader,

especially with the crises and wars of the past months in several regions, we should, in my opinion, be more sceptical about the reports we believe and think how much and what to believe. Granted, the movie “Wag the Dog” from the year 1997 with Robert de Niro and Dustin Hoffman is satire and meant for entertainment. Maybe there's still a bit of truth in there also and could as well change your view of reporting and make you see it in a new light.

Imagine if you will that you're in America and it's shortly before a presidential election. Of course the current president wants to be president again. But suddenly he gets accused of having sexually harassed an under-age student. How could one lead the people away from this scandal? Conrad Brean (played by Robert de Niro) has an idea: a story, which leads to even more talking than a sex scandal would, which is a war. A war against which country though? Well, how much do you know about Albania? Probably as much as I do: which is nothing. So why not use this lack of knowledge and spread the rumour that America is at war against Albania. In a studio, with the help of Stanley Motss (played by Dustin Hoffman) some staged eyes witness reports are produced and get spread and the conflict with Albania is out on the news.

The CIA hears that the conflict is faked, and they go and have a serious talk with Brean, but he manages to talk himself out of it and save his own neck. Sadly, shortly after that news breaks out that the Albania conflict is solved. Brean and Motss however are enjoying their fiction so much and want to get the upper hand again. So they quickly invent a story about a lone soldier, who's still back in Albania and needs rescuing. His name is William Schumann, nicknamed “Old Shoe”. The story is supposed to be ending innocuously and sympathetically with the rescue of Schumann and return to America only days before the presidential election. Up until that point the movie is funny, entertaining and has moments of dark humour. It gets really exciting however when we learn that the actor, who is supposed to play Schumann, is in fact a high-risk offender. He gets flown in with a plane, to celebrate Schumann's triumphant arrival, but the plane crashes. Brean, Motss and the criminal survive the crash, but the psychotropic drugs that are supposed to keep him in check are slowly but surely wearing off.

How will the story of William Schumann end? You've got to watch it for yourself. By the way: it may be hard to believe with all the many similarities, but the movie was all finished when the ”Lewinsky scandal“ hit the news.

Until next blog,

sarah

The sparkling inventor: Nikola Tesla

Dear reader,

I didn't enjoy Physics at school at all. Biology was more interesting for me and even the Chemistry basic course was enjoyable for me. We once made sparklers ourselves. Something I'd like to do again. It seems that at least some of the ingredients are not that easy to get your hands on as a normal person though, because they're classified as dangerous. Sad actually. I'd especially like to make sparklers that burn in other colours, but exactly those substances are the ones that are difficult to get. Also I'm not certain which of the ingredients are responsible for the colour and would need to be substituted. I hardly remember anything from my Physics class. I can remember we had to calculate stuff with formulas. What exactly we did calculate, I don't have the faintest clue anymore.

I caught up on a bit of Physics later on reading a couple of books by Stephen Hawking. I came across a special Physicist, Nikola Tesla, in the movie Prestige. In the movie he helps a magician. In the book, which I only read several years later, there's much more on what Tesla achieved. Of course the book and the movie tell a fictional story and what's happening in the book as well as the movie, could at least not have happened during Tesla's time. It's been several years since I got curious about Tesla after reading the book and I watched documentaries on Tesla on the internet. Most of the details I already forgot. But I promise you this: if a Physicist of Tesla's time had been able to do what happens in “Prestige”, then it would indeed have been Tesla. Just so you have an idea on what time we're talking about: Tesla was Serbian and lived from 1856 to 1943, so he lived when Thomas Edison was alive, too. In fact Tesla worked for Edison for a while. There's even a rumour that says that Tesla invented the light bulb, not Edison.

If you look at Tesla's life career, it seems to be characterised by a certain restlessness and reoccurring periods of lack of money. 1883 to 1884 Tesla was overseeing the installation of the new electrical light system at the train station Gare de l'Est in Paris and with that he was sort of working for Thomas Edison's European branch of the company. Without any means he travelled to America after that to work for Edison directly. But the two of them had different ideas of Tesla's payment, so the work relationship didn't last long. Tesla went on and got together with two other businessmen and found the Tesla Electric Light and Manufacturing Company. For some readers, who are more knowledgeable about this sort of stuff than I am, the two-phase electric power, may mean something. That's one of Tesla's inventions. With his new found company also started the registration of Tesla's first of many patents. As far as I know Tesla is among the people with the most patents. I heard some day that a Chinese or Japanese guy caught up and topped him now. The English Wikipedia reads “over 300 patents” as a number of Tesla patents in an article specifically on them.

Tesla was repeatedly lacking money. But the industrial magnate George Westinghouse heard of him. Westinghouse was in a dispute with Edison, which was later called War of Currents. I barely know anything about Tesla's personality. But I could imagine that Tesla found stimulation working with Westinghouse and in a way against Edison. Who knows.

In 1893 Tesla was approached and questioned how the powers of the Niagara Falls could be used. He suggested an alternating current system in cooperation with Westinghouse, which was then implemented. To use the powers of the Niagara Falls was a dream project for Tesla for a long time, which finally was finally reality.

There's something else that fascinated Tesla, which was the use of wireless energy. Tesla foremost thought about the sun as an energy source. But the earth is also surrounded by a magnetic field, which could be used as a source as well. More recent documentaries on the universe talk about antimatter, which supposedly can be used as a fuel for spaceships. For now we only know very little about this power. If only the machines existed to collect this energy and transform it for us to use as electricity. Free energy is seen as pseudo-science and there exist (conspiracy) theories that there are already scientists, who managed to build machines, but the knowledge about that is suppressed. I heard Tesla is said to have built such a machine, but destroyed it again himself. I don't know if those things are true or fiction. I like the idea that that energy is free and usable for everyone though. Sadly I know nothing about Physics really. Regardless of how many “knowledge about that is suppressed” stories are true, I do believe that this knowledge would be an actual threat to huge energy companies indeed. Because who would willingly pay even just a penny for electricity, if you can use energy that's free of charge and surrounds us, for free and unlimited?

Until next blog,
sarah

Whoever has the choice has the torment

Dear reader,

"whoever has the choice has the torment", is how a German saying goes and it's true.

This is shortly before a mayoral election. This time it's not combined with a council election. For those of you here or if you have a political election in your area some time but don't know, who to vote for: go vote and give your vote to Scorch the dragon and partner of ventriloquist Ronn Lucas!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIYInw2y6IQ

Only a while ago I read that it's not that good to have many possibilities. Of course it seems at first bad when you only have one option. What if you don't like that option? Without at least a second option, you're forced to take that one option and be happy with it, even if you don't like it.

On the other hand, I once needed something to clean the plughole. Since I don't have that problem often, I stood there and was just overwhelmed by the selection of what felt like 20 things to clean the plughole. Something similar happened the first time I had to get more washing powder. Everything is advertised as the perfect one for your cloths. And which of the 40 powders do I actually buy now?

The solution is fairly easy for me when it comes to movies I see on the TV program for the night and I want to watch several of them and have to decide which to watch. Is one of them unknown to me? Chances are good that I will watch that one. Have I watched all of them already? Chances are good that I'll watch none of them and the TV will be off that night. Have I seen none of them already? Chances are good that I'll watch none of them and the TV will be off that night as well. I like movies. They're one reason for my M&M posts, to introduce you to movies I like once in a while. But I know that when there are several movies I know already or several unknown movies, it's just easier for me to decide to watch none of them. It seems simple, even laughable with movie options. One can't seriously talk about "stress" there. The fact is though that we're more relaxed, if we have only one option and don't have to make a decision.


In his article Why too much choice is stressing us out Stewart Jeffries describes a study where samples of jam were set out for customers to taste. If they bought a jar, they were also given a dollar coupon. One time they had 6 different samples of jam, another time they had 24 samples. 30% of the customers with the smaller set bought a jar, but only 3% of the customers with the larger selection bought one.


Until next blog,
sarah

Magnetising magnetars

Dear reader,

everyone of us knows what a magnet is. But I myself have only recently heard of magnetars. To be clear: there are no known magnetars anywhere near to be a danger to us. So, whatever you'll read now and may get you scared: don't panic!

I understand very little about physics and astronomy, to tell you exact details anyway, so it can't get too scary today. Nevertheless I want to give you an idea of what I understand what a magnetar is. In the universe there are planets, meaning objects that move around, like the earth for example, going round itself as well as around the sun. Planets don't shine. The sun however is not a planet, but a star and stars do shine, but don't move. Stars like the sun have much energy, which at some point is used up. Some of you may certainly have heard the word supernova. That's what happens to a star when the energy is used up: the star shines one last time really bright, while it explodes and at least the shape and everything it had until then is destroyed. Sometimes the things left over after a destruction of the star with a certain strength of a magnetic field, turn into a neutron star, a magnetar.

Magnetars are relatively small stars, just about 10 to 30 km (12 mi) in diameter (which is about the size of a smaller city). They turn around themselves in an incredibly fast time. A rotation period is the time a planet takes to turn around itself to get to the starting position again. The rotation period of the earth is 24 hours. Magnetars are often found with partner stars. Wikipedia has as one of the rules to call a single star a magnetar, among other things, the rotation period of 1 to 12 seconds! Sure enough something small of 10 to 30 km in diameter can rotate around itself in a faster time than the earth anyway. Still I find 1 to 12 seconds for a rotation period pretty fast. Even though they're relatively small, magnetars have the mass of 40 times that of the sun!

The dangerous thing about magnetars for one thing are the x-rays and the gamma rays, which come up every now and then. X-rays aren't healthy for us anyway, which is why they try not to make a person take x-rays too often. Gamma rays are the shortest wave length we know so far and they're the most dangerous, too. Even if they don't kill us right away, they change the molecules and that kills us in the medium-term, similar to tumours. But not only that. When a magnetar is as far away from the earth as the moon, it's magnetic field would pull your coin money out of your trouser pockets. A magnetar half the distance of the moon and the earth would destroy the magnetic strip of your credit card forever. I don't even want to think any further about people with a pacemaker or other metal objects in them...

I can't tell you much more about magnetars actually. Like I said, I don't know much about physics or astronomy. I just find it fascinating to have learned about stars, which are just about the size of a city, but have considerably more mass than the sun and a strong magnetic field so it can pull your coin moneyout of your pockets. I'll tell you a little bit more about magnets and magnetic power anyway... in another blog post.

Until next blog,
sarah

M&M: The Terminal

Dear reader,

considering the growing number of refugees coming over to Europe, it probably makes sense to watch the movie The Terminal from the year 2004 once or again.

In it Tom Hanks plays Viktor Navorski, who comes from the fictive Krakozhia to America. But due to a revolution in his country, he's seen as stateless. With no proper passport, barely able to speak English, he's unable to travel further in America, nor allowed to fly back to his country. Viktor Navorski is stuck at the JFK airport. But he's not idle. He tries to make himself comfortable at the airport and find a job to get something to do. But because he has no passport, many don't want to employ him. So he needs to be creative and find things to do on his own, to get money to at least pay for food and something to drink. Only when builders are working on a wall and Navorski finishes the wall in the middle of the night, he gets employed. Other foreigners befriend with him (one Afroamerican, one Latino and one Indian). He also befriends with the stewardess Amelia Warren (Catherine Zeta-Jones). He even invites her to, believe it or not, an actually quite romantic dinner at the terrace of the airport!

Then the revolution in Krakozhia ends and Navorski can finally leave the airport. Before he flies back to his home though, he's got a task to finish from his father. He had found a picture of 57 Jazz legends in a newspaper and set himself the goal to get an autograph from all of them. Only one, that of Benny Golson, is missing. Will Navorski be able to find Golson after his long stay at the airport and finally get the autograph? See for yourself!

Probably not always quite realistic, but still with lots of heart and humour, this movie is a nice pastime. Like I hinted at the beginning, because of the growing number of refugees and asylum seekers, it's still up to date even in these days.

Until next blog,
sarah

Sleeping multi media and interactive

Dear reader,

with the tags/keywords sleep and sleeping problem, which I included here, you'll find my previous entries on what helps me when I want to go to sleep fast. Assuming I think about those methods. I want to make the entry today a multi media and interactive one.

For one thing, I'd like to introduce you to Holmes (actually a promo for the second season of "Elementary" with Jonny Lee Miller and Lucy Liu) the clip shows a series of methods of how Sherlock wakes up Joan in all sorts of different ways, although all of them could generally just be called "mean". The clip is meant as a sort of "When you've got problems waking up, use the Holmes system". Here's the clip:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-aB2hU3axc

Fans of Benedict Cumberbatch certainly know the radio series "Cabin Pressure" by and with John Finnemore. He suffers repeatedly from insomnia, which lead to the piece "Insomnia Ballad" in his other radio series "Souvenir Programme". Here's the original (roughly 2 min. 19 sec.):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrYGSlEmt_I

Of course there are fans, who create their own version and publish that. I find that the musical is so well done, that I want to share it with you, too. It's a bit less than 3 minutes long and you can find it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzSqubuZ7H8

And the interactive part? Well, that's your turn. What do you do, when you can't fall asleep? Or what could you suggest for others, who can't fall asleep fast or who can't fall asleep well? Anything is welcome, from music you like to listen to, to videos you have created to help others. Post it in the comments.

Until next blog,
sarah

One hell of a city

Dear reader,

American readers of my blog may know the town of Centralia in Pennsylvania. I want to shortly introduce it to everyone else in this entry. No, I haven't been there ever. I haven't been to America ever actually. But I found out about it in a documentary on television and think it's pretty impressive.

Centralia is a very small place. According to wikipedia, effective 2010, the town only had 10 residents. In 1986 it had been "over 1,000 residents" (German wikipedia). The reason for so many residents moving, are the fires underground since 1962. Yes, you read correctly. The residents of Centralia lived from anthracite coal mining. This coal caught fire and burns ever since in the mine pits underneath the town. Anthracite coal burns long and steady. That's why tries to extinguish the fires failed, because the fire ate its way through the barriers. Now they stopped trying to extinguish the fires.

There are two theories (on the German wikipedia page) on how the fire started. In the documentary only one was mentioned. Members of the members of the volunteer fire company wanted to clean up the town landfill, so they burned it all up. The landfill was relocated to the abandoned mine pits, which didn't have coal anymore. But the fire went also to the pits with coal.

Another theory is that the coal just selfignighted. Scientists, according to the German wikipedia, suspect that the 15 km² fires will probably burn on for another 100 to 200 years. (According to the English wikipedia 1.6 km², 400 acres and about 250 years of fire.) Although the quality of the air isn't worse than that of Lancaster, a place further away, the residents were asked to relocate. The last residents though have "permission to stay in their homes for as long as they live", as can be read on wikipedia.

Centralia has its own homepage, among pages is an article Weird Centralia, which discusses just how weird or not, the town actually is. Check it out! There are also some funny pictures of people taken in cracks on the street with smokes coming from the cracks.

Until next blog,
sarah