People who share my birthday

Michelangelo
Gabriel García Márquez
Cyrano de Bergerac
Joseph von Fraunhofer
Alan Greenspan
Shaq O'Neal
Real Madrid Club de Fútbol

Happy Christmas

Oh yeah, I know, politically correct it should be "Season's Greetings" or something like this... but what the heck, I am celebrating Christmas, and I hope you will be happy, celebrating whatever you celebrate (this shan't sound derogative!).

Going to Paris for New Years Eve, so if you are around, give me a call :-)

Movie: Lions for Lambs

Who would have thought? A movie that makes you think from the very first minute til hours after you have seen it... Patriotism at its best, not the "negative" association one may have with it, but what it really means - fighting for the sake of your country, for its political system, for its people, for control over its leaders; questioning everything, deciding, making the right choices, admitting mistakes (or not...).

A definite must-see for everyone who grew tired of the US flag waving in the background while 11 men walk shoulder by shoulder saving the world!

The fawlty tower of Pisa

Discuss all you want about methods, questions and interpretations - the current PISA test shows that Austria (and its school system) suffers from several diseases; a lack of integration (how else would migrants of the 2nd generation be even worse in their results than ones from the 1st generation?), a lack of equality between "upper" and "lower" class, a lack of supporting courses for both highly intelligent and struggling pupils.

The challenge is to take this as an opportunity for change - change of the system, but also change of mind and attitude, not only in the "concerned" groups and parties, but within the Austrians as a whole, to realize that education is not only something the state has to provide, but also something every single parent has to care about for the sake of their own children.

Complaining is not a solution, but part of the problem.

German ITol

Yet another "we are running out of qualified IT personnel" lamentation of DIHK (Germany's Chamber of Industry and Commerce). Let me break the news to you: Invest in qualified personnel. Invest in education, schools, life-long learning, universities. Pay your IT people what they deserve, and not what your business economist thinks he's worth... The working people are the ones producing your revenue, not marketing and management! And don't expect a 25 year old to have a master diploma, 4 years of experience, two fluent second languages, and happy to work for 30K a year...

And no, I won't work 60 hours a week without adequate compensation....

Austrian children only "average" in reading

Well, it seems like good news don't stop these days - we scored #20 out of 45 nations when it comes to reading comprehension in primary school.

No surprise, upper-class parents do a better job in teaching their children what school obviously doesn't (maybe because it's busy teaching basic manners - this leaving no time for more complicated thing, like basic calculus or reading, leave alone grammatically correct writing...), proving my point that it's parents who have to educate, or at least start to educate.

But with your "jamba sparabo", I am sure you don't need to actually understand what you are signing anyways....

¿Por que no te callas?

Man mag von Aznar halten was man will, desgleichen von König Juan Carlos, aber Herr Chavez hat es verdient dass ihm mal jemand "über die Goschn" fährt. Wer im Glashaus sitzt soll nicht mit Steinen werfen, und auch wenn der Linksruck in den südamerikanischen Staaten sicher eine gute Entwicklung ist, so herrschen dort doch viel mehr "diktatorische" Verhältnisse (wie oft wurde in der letzten Zeit eine Verfassung geändert, um Wiederwahlen zu ermöglichen?). Kritik an Personen in der politischen Öffentlichkeit ist angebracht, doch ein Dialog ist immer nur dort möglich, wo auch gegenseitiger Respekt vorhanden ist.

Vielleicht vermissen es Politiker ja, dass ihnen hin und wieder mal jemand sagt "Halt einfach die Goschn!"... fehlender Realitätsbezug in einer Welt der Diplomatie, wo alles nur mit dem Samthandschuh angefasst wird? - Insofern ist es noch beachtlicher, dass der spanische König die cojones hatte, auf die Äusserungen Chavez' mit undiplomatischer Gegenrede zu antworten.

Generell (hört mir zu!) wäre es mal wieder Zeit, sich den Nuhr in Erinnerung zu rufen:
"Wenn man keine Ahnung hat - einfach mal Fresse halten."

Teach your children - by being a role model to them

As if picking up the topic of my last post, (people party's) vice-chancellor Wilhelm Molterer said in an interview that parents should take more responsibility in educating their brood. Though hardly ever agreeing on anything that comes from the conservative-rightsided part of the Austrian political spectrum, this one I can only totally agree with.

Leaving "education" to schools only is irresponsible, stupid, lazy, and harms both the child and society. What you learn in school is formal education - knowledge - but what school cannot teach you is manners, respect, attitude, communication, interacting with other people, and socialization. Non-formal education (a thing I strongly believe in) is not something your teachers may give you. In schools, classes are too big, pupils too diverse in their personal development, and the knowledge part takes too much of precious school time to leave anything for something else.

This goes out to you, parents all over the world: laissez-faire has failed to educate your children, so has TV, Nintendo, the movies, and so will school if you give up all your responsibilities. Don't do this to your children - they will not thank you for ruining their social future, and neither will I, for they will ruin our society with their ignorance.

Lazy, fat and bored

Our kids are too fat... Well, we can blame anyone we want, but by doing so we neglect that after all, it is our responsibility. And with ours, I mean every single one of us. Responsibility of the individual to be aware of his nutrition, responsibility of the parents to watch for their children, teach them that good things aren't necessarily the things TV promotes, and that joy can result from other sources than TV and computer games, responsibility of society to get more "actively" involved in sports and recreation.

A general fault of our society (you may hear me talking more about this) is laziness. Maybe it's its biggest, maybe just one of many. Laziness is what causes "society diseases", depression, obesity, anorexia. Noone(*) is interested in anything but pursuit of laziness... and we take it with any price tag that comes attached.

(*) sorry for the generalization. should read: "the statistical majority of western countries citizen"

Sennheiser CX400

After hard-testing my original iPod headphones (they didn't survive my foot stepping on them), it was time to find something new to plug my ears deaf to the outside world with.
Doing some research, I came up with Sennheiser's CX400 [german] which obviously was a good decision on my side. Ebay sold them for around 40 Euros, only 10 more than the "entry" model CX300.

Technical data can be found on the website, just let me tell you that by simply choosing the right headphones, volume level never was a problem with my iPod again... what is equally impressive is how well Sennheiser thought about acoustic design - perfect protection from outside noise, a very short cable with an optional extension, and no stupid (and quality-decreasing) gimmicks like in-cable volume control or bloated phones that you cannot sleep on....

So, if you are searching for an improvement over your iPod-headphones in quality, volume level, comfort, and usability - you should definitely give this one a try.

Simple Life

a:t University, yet another hour or so til I need to start working. Time for some simple life activity, like - starting a blog and figuring out how to integrate it into my own little web site. Working on Café Krisch is nothing I want to spend too much time in, but after a while, it hopefully will be something to earn a little bit of reputation.

a:lthough my books haven't arrived yet, I start working on PR a bit - hopefully will do nothing all too wrong. The first article will be about something called BOWS, dealing with digital watermarks. Well, let's see if I'll be able to read it in the newspaper.