“OPERA experiment reports anomaly in flight time of neutrinos from CERN to Gran Sasso”
[…] The OPERA result is based on the observation of over 15000 neutrino events measured at Gran Sasso, and appears to indicate that the neutrinos travel at a velocity 20 parts per million above the speed of light, nature’s cosmic speed limit. Given the potential far-reaching consequences of such a result, independent measurements are needed before the effect can either be refuted or firmly established. This is why the OPERA collaboration has decided to open the result to broader scrutiny. […]
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad once more did not fail to point out and name the key questions in regard of “The role of mediation in the settlement of disputes by peaceful means”:
Dear Colleagues and friends;
– Wouldn’t you think that the root cause of the problems must be sought in the prevailing international order, or the way the world is governed?
I would like to draw your kind attention to the following questions:
– Who abducted forcefully tens of millions of people from their homes in Africa and other regions of the world during the dark period of slavery , making them a victim oftheir materialistic greed.
– Who imposed colonialism for over four centuries upon this world. Who occupied lands and massively plundered resources of other nations, destroyed talents, and alienated languages, cultures and identities ofnations?
– Who triggered the first and second world wars, that left seventy millions killed and hundreds of millions injured or homeless. Who created the wars in Korean peninsula and in Vietnam?
– Who imposed, through deceits and hypocrisy, the Zionism and over sixty years of war, homelessness, terror and mass murder on the Palestinian people and on countries of the region?
Who imposed and supported for decades military dictatorship and totalitarian regimes on Asian, African, and Latin American nations.
– Who used nuclear bomb against defenseless people, and stockpiled thousands ofwarheads in their arsenals?
– Whose economies rely on waging wars and selling arms?
– Who provoked and encouraged Saddam Hussein to invade and impose an eight-year war on Iran, and who assisted and equipped him to deploy chemical weapons against our cities and our people.
– Who used the mysterious September 11 incident as a pretext to attack Afghanistan and Iraq , killing, injuring, and displacing millions in two countries with the ultimate goal of bringing into its domination the Middle East and its oil resources?
– Who nullified the Breton Woods system by printing trillions of dollars without the backing of gold reserves or equivalent currency? A move that triggered inflation worldwide and was intended to prey on the economic gains of other nations.
– Which country’s military spending exceeds annually a thousand billion dollars, more than the military budgets ofall countries ofthe world combined? Which governments are the most indebted ones in the world?
Who dominates the policy-making establishments ofthe world economy?
Who are responsible for the world economic recession, and are imposing the consequences on America, Europe and the world in general?
– Which governments are always ready to drop thousands of bombs on other countries, but ponder and hesitate to provide aid to famine-stricken people in Somalia or in other places?
– Who are the ones dominating the Security Council which is ostensibly responsible for safeguarding the international security?
– There exist tens of other similar questions. Of course, the answers are clear. The majority of nations and governments of the world have had no role in the creation of the current global crises, and as a matter of fact, they were themselves the victims of such policies.
– It is as lucid as daylight that the same slave masters and colonial powers that once instigated the two world wars have caused widespread misery and disorder with far-reaching effects across the globe since then.
Dear Colleagues and Friends;
– Do these arrogant powers really have the competence and ability to run or govern the world. Is it acceptable that they call themselves the sole defender of freedom, democracy, and human rights, while they militarily attack and occupy other countries?
– Can the flower of democracy blossom from NATO’s missiles, bombs and guns?
»Das Geschwätz wurde eingesetzt, um Informationen darüber zu verbreiten, wie sich die Personen in einer Gruppe zu benehmen haben und die Schande derer zu befestigen, die die Regeln brachen. Durch das Geschwätz werden soziale Normen etabliert. Die Person, welche das Geschwätz in Umlauf bringt gewinnt Status und Macht durch die Demonstration seiner überlegenen Kenntnis der Normen. Die Person gewinnt so wertvolle Information darüber, wie man sich in Zukunft nicht verhalten sollte.«
Übersetzung aus David Brooks: The Social Animal, 2011
»Der Vogel kämpft sich aus dem Ei. Das Ei ist die Welt.
Wer geboren werden will, muss eine Welt zerstören.«
(Abraxas; Hermann Hesse in Demian, 1919)
Sind uns soziale Paradigmen wichtig können wir vielleicht die Geschichte in zwei grosse Zeitalter seit den Römern, oder gar seit Urzeiten einteilen. Ein Zeitalter der Religionen und ein nachfolgendes Zeitalter, das des Pragmatismus und damit des Kapitalismus. Beide sind darüber bestummen, dass sobald deren Begriffe wichtig werden, sie darum wichtig sind, weil dadurch in irgendeiner Form Machtstrukturen oktroyiert werden können. Wo in der Religion die Theodizee, die Instanz für die Rechtfertigung Gottes war, hat in dem mit der Moderne entstandenen Kapitalismus die Wissenschaft diese Aufgaben für dessen Strukturen inne. In einem hat die Wissenschaft, die Mechaniken der Theodizee übernommen: Kategorien sind zentrale Einheiten, über die Macht gerechtfertigt wird. Taxonomien sind die ersten Bibeln der “unabhängigen” Wissenschafter und sie machen sich damit alle Tiere und Pflanzen, die ihnen über den Weg laufen untertan und gleichfalls alle Menschen, die jemals einem solcherweise taxonomierten Tier begegnen.
Europa hat sich mit Revolutionen von den Herrschern, welche religiös autorisierte Macht genossen haben befreit und anstelle dieser die wissenschaftlich autorisierten Machtträger installiert. Kategorien sind die Protagonisten in dieser Welt, die die Wissenschaft den kapitalistischen Machtträger in einem zuhälterischen Verhältnis hinreicht. Wir müssen also das Ei zerstören: Nicht die Könige und Zaren müssen geköpft werden, sondern die Kategorien und Begriffe, so dass der Vogel der Abraxas heisst zu Himmel fliegen kann und die Inhalte unterkommen wo sie Sinn machen, ohne wenn und aber.
In music management I know pretty well how musicians can literally give us a hard time and still, for the sake of culture and humanity, one tries to keep on feeding and supporting creativity. – Well there still are certain limits whereas the following clip shows pretty well how desperate one can end up …
“… you got exhalation and you got inhalation. – You know what I’m sayin’. Well I don’t blow! I suck!”
“What are you going to play for us, Jackson?”
“Trumpet!”
“No. What tune?”
“What tune? That’s Jazzz!”
“Well! – Ihale away!” 😀
In the past week I practically bullied all my friends into reading the first post about the Linux experience and to my surprise, it did trigger a certain wonder in the non-nerd community that I know. The biggest curiosity had to do with its looks. I felt like trying to describe someone for a blind date… “Is not so boring! Seriously, it looks really good”, “No, I know you are not a computer person but I’m telling you, it changed its appearance completely and it looks amazing now”. This was actually the thing I was most surprised about when I first interacted with my Ubuntu interface, cause it’s really intuitive and friendly to the eye. Almost all of its software has a resemblance to one that we are familiar with already (Libre Office to Word, Banshee to iTunes, GIMP to Photoshop and so on). Most people think of Linux in the same way I did: is not for me cause I’m an “average” user, it’s the OS for programmers. That may have been the case some years ago, but now even a blond girl (hey that’s me!) can find her way around it without feeling hopeless or lost in an unfamiliar environment. However, the success of a blind date doesn’t have to do only with looks, because the important things usually transcend the limits of what’s visible to the eye. The open nature of this operating system makes all the difference in the world, and even if we are not familiar with the technicalities of it, even if we don’t understand how Linux is better than other OS because on the surface it “looks” the same and we are not particularly turned on by the cleanliness of the processes running in the back-end,we should try to be aware of the social and political implications of our daily choices and own those choices rather than let others decide for us.
Call for Participation for 28th Chaos Communication Congress 27|28|29|30 December 2011, bcc, Berlin, Germany
The Event
The Chaos Communication Congress the annual four-day conference organized by the Chaos Computer Club (CCC) in Berlin, Germany. First held in 1984, it has since established itself as “The European Hacker Conference” attracting a diverse audience of thousands of hackers, scientists, artists, and utopists from all around the world.
Lectures
In general, lectures, workshops, and projects dealing with technology, ethics, science, security, art, philosophy, politics, and culture are welcome. However, it is not mandatory for your talk to exactly match the given topics. Anything that is interesting and/or funny will be taken into consideration. We use hacking in a very broad sense of the word, but we won’t say no to excellent submissions on computer security research.
