Irish Police catch up with serial offender, but still no conviction

The Irish Times article is here. The Gardai have figured out that 50 speeding tickets issued to a Mr. Prawo Jazdy are not quite as clear-cut as they thought. It turns out that “Prawo Jazdy ” is Polish for driving licence :-(

Alfred is a good name for a snowman

Behold my son’s artistic talent. Not only a marvellous example of snow sculpture, but a hip name to boot: Alfred the snowman.

From 2009-02-19 - Alfred the Snowman

Rosalie looked on in amazement at this snowman-making business

From 2009-02-19 - Alfred the Snowman

while Tosca romped about in the snow with best pal Trixie

From 2009-02-19 - Alfred the Snowman

O'Leary, O'Reilly, O'Hare and O'Hara, there's no one as Irish as Barack Obama

Parachute Jump

I finally managed to cash in on my last year’s birthday present from Heike, namely a tandem parachute jump.

The video below shows me landing in the airfield at Lachen-Speyerdorf, although all the hard work was done by Karlheinz Heilig of www.skyfun-team.de, who expertly pulled all the right strings at all the right times.

From 10 12 - Parachute Jump

The weather was not as good as forecast, but there was nonetheless plenty of visibility across the Pfalz hills.

Heike was so impressed that now she’s talking about having a go herself.

Pavement Artist

About the same time as her brother was learning to cycle, Rosalie was using her artistic creativity to enhance the pavement outside our house. As the video below shows, the biggest issue was to first choose the right colour of chalk...

Sunday afternoon at the pool

We spent the afternoon in the Tiergarten Schwimmbad today, as the weather finally started resembling summer. Liam brought along his friend Lily, and they had a great time together.

From Liam and Lily...

Just like Liam, Lily is growing up bilingual, in her case German and Spanish (her father is from Chile). Already Liam has picked up one or two words - he often says Agua for water. It's great that kids can learn these things so easily.

Politically incorrect factoids

There's an amusing collection of politically incorrect factoids posted on Psychology Today. The post is an excerpt from the book Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters, by Alan S. Miller and Satoshi Kanazawa.
In short, the insights are as follows, with my comments in [square brackets]

1. Men like blond bombshells (and women want to look like them) [MC: and in other news, milk turns sour if you leave it out of the fridge. Who paid for this research?]
2. Humans are naturally polygamous [MC: hmm, Mormons are natural? Not so sure about this...]
3. Most women benefit from polygyny, while most men benefit from monogamy [MC: The G.B. Shaw quote is good - "The maternal instinct leads a woman to prefer a tenth share in a first-rate man to the exclusive possession of a third-rate one."]
4. Most suicide bombers are Muslim [MC: because they're hoping to get laid in heaven. The challenge is to convince them to enter the afterlife alone]
   
5. Having sons reduces the likelihood of divorce [MC: the idea is that dads want to pass on more wealth to sons than daughters, therefore stick around]
6. Beautiful people have more daughters [MC: My parents will enjoy this]
7. What Bill Gates and Paul McCartney have in common with criminals [MC: Strong early careers leading to mediocrity, apparently]
8. The midlife crisis is a myth—sort of [MC: more or less the same as #1, we males do silly things to impress young females. Guilty]
9. It's natural for politicians to risk everything for an affair (but only if they're male) [MC: Alpha males sow and reap. Believable]
10. Men sexually harass women because they are not sexist [MC: Men are pigs, but not evil pigs]

The PT article gives considerably less trite background to these points, and is well worth a read, regardless of how seriously you take the field of evolutionary psychology.

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3 Birthdays is one Weekend

I just got around to uploading photos from a weekend heavily loaded with birthdays which we attended.

On Saturday afternoon we were at Celina Schwab's second birthday. Celina is Liam's cousin once removed, or the daughter of Heike's niece, depending on how you want to look at it.

From Celina Schwab...

We then went on to Gisela Birnstihl's 70th birthday (this is also where I filmed Liam speeding around on his bike).

From Gisela Birnst...

On Sunday afternoon (after an eventful climbing wall session with Richard Schlenk) we were in Oftersheim for the Seel family Grillfest, ostensibly celebrating Michael's birthday, but also Emil's christening. I'm guessing that there were about 15 kids under the age of 5 (or maybe it just seemed that many because they were so dynamic) which was both exhausing and great fun. The most popular attraction for the kids was naturally the water in the form of a pump and trough in front of the grill hut. Michael's father kindly assisted those children present to splash around, and hence test the limits of clothing changes which their parents had brought :-)

From Seel Family G...

Liam on his bike

Whenever I say that Liam has been out on his bike, English-speaking people say he's too young for a bike. Yes, I say, but it's not a pedal bike, it's a Laufrad.
Anyone know of a better translation to English for the device below? It's the direct descendant of the "Walking Machine" invented by Baron von Drais in 1817.

Blair's last shred of credibility lost

Tony Blair is apparently about to convert to Catholicism. I'm all for religious tolerance, but not for those fundamentalists - some of them actually believe in god!

OK, even I'll admit that it's a far smaller fault to belong to a misogynistic, backward and cruel religion than to defy your country's wishes by going to war with Iraq. But hey, if you're in a hole, stop digging.

On the plus side, he was obviously able to stand up to the Islamofascists in order to knight Salman Rushdie. In order to properly even the score, he needs to give Richard Dawkins at least a peerage.

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Our new car is stuck in Kippenheim

We should have taken delivery of our new car last Friday. Instead, it's been mistakenly delivered to Kippenheim. A quick glance at Google Maps reveals that Kippenheim is about three quarters of the way from Turin to Heidelberg, and 75% is a fair result in any exam, so there's no grounds to be annoyed, right?

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Lost Dog on Walpurgisnacht

Here in Germany, Walpurgisnacht (or Hexennacht, meaning Witches' Night), the night from April 30 to May 1, is the night when allegedly the witches hold a large celebration on the Blocksberg and await the arrival of Spring.

For most people this corresponds to the St. Patricks's Day tradition of "wetting the whistle". Last night while out for the last doggie walk of the evening, we encountered a few people who had copiously imbibed, plus one lost Cocker Spaniel.

The poor dog had obviously lost his owner in the festivities. We took him home, and gave him some food and water:

From Ralf the Lost...

Liam was thrilled at having a dog around who wasn't much bigger than him. He was happy to help Heike with the dog's care:

From Ralf the Lost...

We phoned the police, who had already taken reports of 2 other lost dogs, but no worried owners. A further lap of the fields and festivities also failed to locate an owner, so we made up an extra dog basket and went to bed. This was no problem for myself, Heike, and Othello; Liam was overjoyed, and Electra was furious. She was very sceptical at the idea of a dog staying over, and told him so.

Fortunately, in the morning we were able to locate the relieved owner, and deliver the dog (whose name turned out to be Ralf).

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Religion 101

Follow this link for a highly entertaining multiple-choice quiz to test your understanding of religion. Here's a sample question to get you going...

"As we all know, there is only one true religion. What is the one true religion in each of the following circumstances?

1. You are born in Karnak in 3000 B.C.
2. You are born in Bombay in 300 B.C.
3. You are born in Baghdad in 900 A.D.
4. You are born in Mexico City in 1956 A.D."

Let me know how you score :-)

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Robot Recipes

The Register is reporting about a DIY robot kit, funded by, amongst others, Google, Microsoft and Intel. El Reg sells the story as a high-tech conspiracy to take over our living rooms with self-build cyborgs. In actual fact, the Telepresence Robot Kit (TeRK) project seems rather quaint. There are even a number of Recipes for robots to try out at home.

For example, you can build the Qwerkbot Classic:





or go for the more advance Qwerkbot+:





If anyone builds one of these things, please let me know how it goes.

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The Psychic Skeptic

Australian skeptic Karen Stollznow has a fascinating account of her application to become a phone line psychic. The company claimed to have a very thorough testing regime, in order to ensure that only those with real psychic gifts could qualify. They even went so far as to say that less than 5% of applicants would be deemed acceptable by their high standards.

The bulk of the article describes Karen's progress through the tests, using only the skills of pop psychology and occasional bullshitting. To find out how far these skills can get you in the world of Psychic make-believe, read the story here.

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