Archive for 2010

Happy new year to everybody!

Thursday, December 30th, 2010

Other than the others aftermath

Saturday, December 18th, 2010

randform reader Victor replied to the posting of the story of my classmate “other than the others”
December 17th, 2010 at 9:22 am e

It is a bit disapointing that story stopped right when it should get interesting.
I mean – what is girl thinking? I would have slapped Jenny beeast
right into her face. She is going to continue her bullying if you don’t show her where frontiers are!

answer:

You are right it is not clear where Jenny’s aggression towards the girl is ending up. People are dealing very differently with aggression, sometimes a perceived aggression transforms into an aggression towards the opponent (like you suggested), sometimes into autoaggression, sometimes into aggression towards others. It is also that people perceive aggression very differently, some people perceive more aggression than there had been exerted, some people may underestimate the exerted aggression.

I do think however that physical violence, like slapping someone has still a very different quality then indirect violence with words/gestures (like the one of Jenny). Usually it is perceived as being more aggressive and it may lead thus to an even more cascading violence.

Unfortunately shortly after I had posted the story my son and a friend of his were badly beaten up by seven (!) other children in Hellersdorf. We were probably “lucky” that these were only ten year olds and not older kids like in a stabbing of a 17 year old in Wittenau which took also place shortly after I had posted the story. So the story unfortunately acquired a quite “realistic” dimension for me.

Group behaviour is very difficult and the tensions, especially in rather closed groups, are often in great need of moderation. In the case of our son we were thankful that the school authorities interferred and moderated and we hope that the beating up was a unique event.

It is important to point out that violence -especially in groups- occurs not only with kids, but of course also with adults. Violence associated to group behaviour is for example often also about social ranking. Thus moderation is often very needed also in various groups of adults. Social workers have thus for example socalled clinical supervision sessions, which are a kind of single or group therapy for ensuring that aggressions towards social workers are dealt with professionally, that group conflicts can be resolved etc.

(side comment: It would make an interesting theatre drama to see how for example a clinical supervision session in a harem would look like.)

Concluding I think the author may have wanted to make people think about how they would react to such an attack or what one could do to resolve the conflict.

Moreover it seems to me that the conflict with Jenny is playing a rather minor role in the story.

The girl was subject to so much other violence and bullying that Jenny’s violent extravaganza was probably appearing to the girl more like yet another “streak of some spoiled asshole” (if one wants to use the suggested kids language of the story). It is true that due to the incidents and Jenny’s behaviour it will be rather difficult for the girl in that school. I share your opinion that Jenny may continue bullying. It seems she felt somehow felt threatened in her role by the girls presence. It is not too rare that dominant people suffocate already a slight sign of opposition rather than that they try to engage into a possibly straining psychological process.

I find the central role in the story is played by Hartmut. By his sleazy behaviour and particular by his unsupportive and unloyal treatment of the attack it is very unlikely that he will gain the girls trust again.

please inform britain

Saturday, December 18th, 2010

Could please any of the british randform readers inform London airports
that their website about the current departures is unfortunately outdated.

I just called my sister who waited there for about five hours at the airport
(with small children…) that her flight had been cancelled.
She didn’t know.

Other than the others

Tuesday, November 30th, 2010

I am currently a bit busy so here again a story from my classmate for entertainment. Her other stories on randform are “zischende zwischeinlage” , ” Am Ufer der Bilder”, “short story” (all in german) and the first english short story “008.”

The following story is a plain story from everyday life. It is in german and has an english translation after the german version. For the english version please scroll down to the line:
ENGLISH ENGLISH.

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Machine-learning

Sunday, November 7th, 2010

Automaten-IMG_4037-450

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about hockey moms in a jumbo

Sunday, October 24th, 2010

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Reader Bibi made the following comment to the post: on TATE or not:

Nad wrote: “..and of course not all hockey moms of mid-west are uninformed”

Really? Frankly speaking if you compare the typical mom from mid-west with a “mom” which comes for example from an educated country like – lets say from sweden – then I think the facts are clear: informed hockey moms of mid-west form a set of measure zero!

my answer after the click
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around teufelsee

Tuesday, October 19th, 2010

On the occasion of the current convention on biodiversity some images from a green part of Berlin, called Teufelsee (the “satanic lake”) in the district of Köpenick.

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nuclear prognosis

Tuesday, October 5th, 2010

A reply to a comment by Oekologisch Interressierter who wrote:

I think I read in an article in the new “Oekotest” that the german green party did a study that nuclear energy is not growing. That is there are more reactors to be shut off soon than there reactors that are being built. So the claim that nuclear energy is growing seems to be propaganda of the nuclear industry.

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Expeditions in aesthetics and sustainability

Sunday, October 3rd, 2010

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Until 10.10.10 the exhibition/workshop venue Examples to follow – Expiditions in aesthetics and sustainability takes place in Wedding.

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a slant and fact slam

Tuesday, September 28th, 2010

There were two reader comments to the nuclear energy overview:

Bibi wrote:

Don’t you think that it would have been better for your career if you would have sticked more to the math and physics you were dealing with in your daily work than with this quite political stuff? As I understood nuclear science is not your speicality so I bet there are enough nuclear scientists who could do a better job than you in explaining the above. For example you could discuss articles in your subject or report about talks. For your art and design audience you could for example explain basic but essential things like vector diagrams.

Victor wrote:

Hi Bibi – I am Victor but I am no diagram! :-)
You are right, important science should explained by experts.
Nuclear tech is clean tech. Author is non-expert.
But randform blog is entertaining. Gives me good times.
Bibi did you see blog post with title: “randform was a bit on the sites” ?
Unemployed randform author says Bill Gates investment in
TWR technology is probably critical! So funny.

This post is an answer to the above comments. The answer includes also a brief outlook on future randform activities.

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