on my way back from berggießhübel, i visited pirna a bit, where i found the monumentum of the grey busses, reminding of the aktion t4 by the nazis in order to murder mentally ill and otherwise handicapped people. this monumentum exists in two copies, one of them being stationary and one moving. the one in pirna is the moving one. here are a few picturs:
today, i saw a remark on netzpolitik.org about a reportage by frontal21 titled der grosse bluff (direct video link here, will be online only the next few days). it covers the currently investigated extension of operation life span of nuclear power plants in germany, including the never-ending dicussion of ultimate waste storage in gorleben, and what is going on politically. in my opinion, its a real good reportage and you should watch it if you understand german (and it hasn’t been deleted).
another interesting link on this topic is the wikipedia article on deep geological repositories, in particular its list of such repositories and the following paragraph on safety and feasibility assessments.
future is sometimes really depressing.
last week, we visit the borsberg artificial ruin in pillnitz, dresden. we were lucky, the weather was mostly good, and we managed to return just before a thunderstorm went off. here are some impressions:
in case you’re more interested in the ruin, and understand german, you might want to read this article.
last week, i was in zürich, visiting my phd advisor, as well as my friends there. on friday, the math institute did an excursion to the rheinau abbey. here are some impressions from the abbey (not from inside though, as photographing was forbidden in there) and the walk afterwards at the rhine knee.
during end of may, i attended a conference held in the beautiful city of leuven, belgium. the conference was held at the arenberg castle, located in a beautiful park. here are some impressions:
these photos are impressions from a city tour we had one night.
here are some more impressions of leuven taken during the free afternoon.
last weekend, i was in banff. again. this time, i attended a weekend conference at the birs, the alberta number theory days. since it was just a short visit, there wasn’t much time to look around. nonetheless, here are some impressions from the banff centre and its surroundings. note that the lightening conditions weren’t very good as i took the photos in the evening.
the deer was grazing on the banff centre grounds; one sees “wild” animals roaming around there rather often. they tend to pretty much ignore humans, but you shouldn’t feed or touch them. one morning, i could see an elk walking around from my room’s window. i don’t have a photo of it, though.
here’s a small “tutorial” on how to make a snow angel:
when you’re done, you can try to leave it without damaging it, get yourself photographed in it, or just have fun in it:
believe me, it’s fun :-)
after attending the joint mathematics meetings in san francisco, i want to share two points you should not try to copy when you’re organizing a conference.
people will really appreciate this and regard your conference as one of the best ever.
for new year’s eve, we traveled to oldenburg. on the way back and forth, we saw some interesting things in osnabrück. finally, on the way to dresden, we saw a historic train of the deutsche reichsbahn in leipzig. here are some impressions.
it’s white outside. for a couple of days now. after a few white days during october, and rather warm temperaturs during most of november, the coldness finally returned, and with it the whiteness. an unfortunate companion of snow is ice, and by now, there’s plenty of it. mostly on sidewalks, sometimes on the roads. let’s see when the next chinook is coming.
