In a word - no

Just got a Christmas email (spelling intact) from a prospective student who had wanted to meet me yesterday in my office hours. I had explained that I did not have office hours on Christmas Eve, as the building would be locked.

Dear WiseWomanFirstName,

I can also meet you any where. I can come to your house if you dont mind. Besides my study maybe in your university or not, we can be good friends.

please can you give me your handy number.

God Bless,

In a word: No. 

Avatar - 3D edition

The past two weeks have been hellish. I've just barely had time to eat and sleep a few hours, I'm shocked that Christmas is next week and the end of the fiscal year is looming.

I dragged home Friday night to find a note from WiseMan - I'm off to see Avatar (Wikipedia entry) with the UsualSuspects. Just then the doorbell rang, and WiseKid was there with CurrentGirlfriend. I asked if they wanted to go to the movies, they said "Sure!", so we wolfed down a slice of bread and high-tailed it to the theater. They always show half an hour of advertising at the start anyway so that you get all your popcorn eaten before the show starts.

We got tickets (expensive, you have to purchase 3D glasses) and found the UsualSuspects, and settled it.

It is wonderful.

Really. I didn't notice that an hour and a half had passed when they cruelly interrupted us during the wonderful love scene to have a break (meaning we could get more beer and popcorn). It went on for another hour, and I was truly enchanted.

Sure, it's a rip-off of a gazillion other films. There are traces of Lord of the Rings, Terminator, Alien, Mulan, Lion King, and who knows what else in there. Who cares. This strange world with bizarre (but logical) physics, fantastical creatures and pointy-eared humanoids (Star Trek?) was fascinating to get to know. The women were also warriors, and the religious elements were nicely woven into the story, contrapointed by the Marine's disdain for this all. The Marines seemed to have had their biceps Photoshopped, but it was very fitting.

I wasn't sure for a while how it was going to end, as I couldn't find a way to twist out of the avatar world, but something corny was indeed found.

I don't know why Grace had to smoke, but I do want one of those transparent mobile boards that you can just grab data off another screen and put on your mobile one for Christmas. Okay, I'll wait until next year if I have to. And if we can figure out how they produced all the electricity needed for all of their toys, we really, really need to start using it now (unless it is plutonium or some such).

The 3D stuff was interesting, polaroid filters are much superior to red/green. I jumped in shock quite a number of times as stuff flew out of the screen at me. This seems to finally be a new way to get people back into the theater - can't easily recreate this sensation at home (yet). And it really thwarts the secret filmers, as you need two projections for this to work, but they are only filming the composite picture.

The motion capture used to produce the film seems fascinating, according to the description on the Wikipedia. We just opened our own motions capture studio a year or so ago, wonder where we can get funding to have one of these toys.

The Na'vi language was designed by a linguist, Paul Frommer. There is already quite a body of information available on it online - from the hyperlinguistic treatment on the Wikipedia to a guest column by Frommer on a blog. I wonder how long it will be before there is a doctoral thesis comparing Na'vi, Klingon, and Elvish.

Update: Avatar won two Golden Globes!

Visit to the Job Center

Seeing as how WiseKid turns 18 next month and still is not gainfully employed, and has not made any motions of applying for a job, I marched him down to the "Job Center" today. That is what they now call the unemployment office.

A large building, with crowd-control waiting line ropes - space for a couple of hundred people waiting for a number. We are lucky, only about a dozen people in front of us. The atmosphere is charged - angry people, exasperated clerks. There are 13 clerks handling check in. We approach our clerk, I smile, greet her, and explain that I want him to apply for unemployment.

"Are you yourself a customer of ours?"

Tick.Tick.Tick. Right, they call the supplicants "customers" now. Newspeak right and left! We get a little note saying where we are to go, and are permitted to take a number. When our turn is called, we explain to the woman what we want. "Oh, no," she says, "you are in the Wrong Office."

This is a game that German officials love to play. They publish ornate web pages and print up brochures at taxpayer's expense that you study in order to determine a) where to go and b) what to take with you. Experienced people just take a shopping bag with all the documentation you have ever officially received. Because the first attempt to ward you off will be "You are in the Wrong Office." The second one is: "Do you have documentation on X?" X being something they think you don't have with you, like your vaccination records or your rental agreement.

I ask if the purpose of a job center is not actually to help people find jobs. She looks at me incredulously. People here only want money, I suppose, not jobs. She writes down the address for us and shoos us away. Good job I've got the car, it would be a long walk.

Outside WiseKid breaks out in giggles. "That was soooo funny," he bubbles. "They were so nice and polite to you. When I go with friends, they are really nasty to me."

The next place is actually quite nice-looking. Blue walls, a water fountain bubbling. We get in here quickly, too, this is starting to look too easy. We get a waiting number, and are soon shown into an office where three cases are being discussed at a high volume level at the same time.

I present our case. "Oh no," she says. "He can't apply for unemployment. You have to support him until he is 26." WTF? I paid a lawyer who told me that he could, under special circumstances. I ask her to please quote me chapter and verse on this.

She gets flustered, asks her colleague. He starts rifling through a booklet, desperately looking for the right paragraph. She finally decides to let us have the forms, cautioning that we will just get a "No" if we submit them. Fine. That's all I want. She types some stuff into her computer and it spits out a centimeter's worth of paper. The forms are written in Amtsdeutsch, a special kind of German that is supposed to be precise but is in general just not understandable.

We go outside to wait. And wait. And wait. WiseKid would have left by now. He goes for a smoke, comes back, we wait. I read the booklet. Aha, here it is: special circumstances.

After quite some time we get to speak with a very competent lady who makes very good suggestions. I do hope this works out, as I think she will be good for him.

At home we start to attack the pile of paper. It is worse than a tax form. You need to put in all the numbers you have ever had in your life. And dates. And make photocopys. And put in numbers. And sign all over the place.

It's about a third of the way done, his next appointment is on Thursday. Now I understand why most of the shops on the way to the Job Center were all either lawyer's offices or form-filler-outers. The rest had bread and booze.

Swiss Minarets

The Swiss people had themselves another referendum recently. They are very proud of their direct democracy and go to the polls pretty regularly in order to vote on this issue or that. The parliament is bound by these votes.

This past issue was brought by an anti-foreigner political party and was geared at forbidding the building of minarets in Switzerland. There was no apparent current issue that provoked it, it was just a fundamental vote to see where people stand.

Well, 60% were for the measure, which caught liberal Swiss by surprise. All of the polls had indicated that the measure would be voted down. But apparently, when asked, the Swiss public was too chicken to tell the truth, but at the polls, alone with the ballot, they voted with their hearts.

Oops. Now what do they do? I spoke with a number of people during my short visit to Switzerland, they were quite ashamed for how their own country was acting. And they are at loss as what to do. They can't really get rid of their plebiscites. They can't easily get this one declared illegal.

Pupils in schools have been building minarets, some of them even lasting a few hours on the roofs of their schools. I think the easiest way would be to just build towers, put a clock in them, and declare them to be clock towers, not minarets. There are clock towers all over Switzerland, and no one would dare try and forbid them.

Security by .... Fruit Box

I went down to the hotel lobby to use the free computer to read the news last night. Underneath the desk was a green fruit box.

Curious person that I am, I lifted the box. What a surprise! Here was the router with free connections, and the IP number of the router helpfully taped to the front of the box.

The Bridge May Be Closing

We have a little transponder called the BroBizz, in our car for the bridge between Denmark and Sweden in Copenhagen. It's very nice, you don't have to stop to pay the toll, just slow down, drive through the bizz lane, and the price is added to your credit card bill. Of course, you had to give them your email address, and they send out lots of messages.

Today there is a message about the Copenhagen summit.

"Dearest WiseWoman [I didn't realize we were that chummy]

The climate conference COP 15 will be starting on Monday. There will be over 20.000 delegates from all over the world attending. About 2000 of these will be staying in Malmö and commuting to the conference at the Bella Center every day. [By car? Why? There's a train every 20 minutes from downtown Malmö to Örestad and a short walk from there. I bet they will have a shuttle bus, too.] We suggest you leave home in good time. [That's Sweden for you, just like a good mother.]

One visitor in particular can possibly be posing a traffic problem on the bridge, even if he won't be staying in Malmö. The president of the USA, Barack Obama, has announced that he will come to COP 15 on Wednesday, December 9. [Actually, he has to pick up his Nobel Prize on the 10th and there will be a spot of grub with the king and queen afterwards.] It is not clear at what time Obama will be coming to Copenhagen and what this will mean for traffic.

The cortège can cause temporary closings of the bridge during the conference. [Translation: It will be closed. Period. We are scared some terrorists will blow it up.] We will keep you updated by web page or by SMS service and signs on the bridge, as well as over radio.

We apologize for any inconvenience and hope for your understanding."

Well. At least they are announcing it. Maybe it will do the climate some good if everyone just stays home that week. Save some CO₂.

More on Wikipedia Relevance and Women

The relevancy discussion at the German Wikipedia continues, the fires being fanned this time by Spiegel Online. Many people have written to me, wanting to have a copy of the article "Professorin" that I worked on and got itself deleted, because the "real" "main" category is, of course, the male form "Professor". I had fought to get this made into "Professur" (the office, not the person), but that was about the size of it. My statistics disappeared (only to partially resurface when the Swiss and Austrians wanted some comparative numbers.

So anyway, I went back through my editing history for a look down memory lane. Goodness, one learns a lot about a person reading the editing history! And then I stumbled on Anna Maria Schleiermacher. In 2005 when WiseMan and WiseKid and their pals were biking to Sweden, I had been visiting the little museums along the way and stumbled upon a collection of her paintings. There was a little booklet for purchase which I got (where on earth is that now??), and while waiting for the bikers while enjoying some free WLAN (used to have that in the olden days when people didn't protect their WLAN) I set up a little stub about Anna Maria. It went like this:

'Anna Maria Arndt, geb. Schleiermacher (* 18. Februar 1786, † 16. Oktober 1869 in Bonn), zweite Ehefrau des Rügener Dichters Ernst Moritz Arndt.

Before I got all the painting stuff sorted out, I wanted to read the booklet. Well, it was a nice summer and I never actually got around to doing anything with the article. Today I had a look:
Ah yes, the women get subsumed into the articles of the men. Musn't have these uppity women having their own precious pages.

A check of the edit history reveals that there was a deletion discussion three years later in 2008, at the end of which the user Wahrheitsministerium (Ministry of Truth, how fitting) notes "redirect, wie in der LD angeregt, Lebensdaten bei Ernst Moritz Arndt eingearbeitet" (Redirect as suggested in the deletion discussion [which lasted 5 hours], data has been put into Ernst Moritz Arndt.)

The discussion was only about that she was sister-of and wife-of. No one made any attempt to find out more about her, and I did not realize that I had to observe and fight for everything I contributed. At that time I naively believed that we were collecting the knowledge of the entire world.

So go have a look at the entry on Ernst Moritz. Can you find anything on her? After I had edited, others contributed their wedding day and how many children they had.

I think I have to find that book again.