Teil 1/2 (Tennis im Allgemeinen):

Teil 2/2 (Tennis & Selbstbeherrschung):

for more information:
Höchst inoffizielle Gerhard Polt - Seite

You may have noticed in the news that during the last week at least four submarine cables in the Mediterranean Sea and Persian Golf have broken or are experiencing technical problems. For example Guardian.co.uk, BBC.co.uk and Heise.de have reported about it. Unconfirmed sources even talk about up to 8-9 cut undersea cables.

The affected lines are vital to the Internet access of most countries in the Middle East. Due to the breakdown these countries have experienced serious disruptions in their means of communication which were still perceptible even in India. According to Heise.de the available bandwidth in India was reduced by about 60% of its original capacity.

At least three submarine cables have broken off shore. Now experts started searching for the reasons of this major blackout.

[map taken from Renesys Blog]

Some say that they could have been damaged by ships, probably when they were anchoring or trying to do so. Ok … if it was only one cable this could be reasonable, but that actually three were cut at nearly the same day which are miles away from each other? Furthermore undersea cables are shown in every nautical chart and regions in which ships could easily damage these cables are normally restricted area, so that they cannot even get near to it. Finally the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology of Egypt published a press release which clearly states that no ships have been observed which could be responsible for the cut off of the cable in the Mediterranean Sea …

Another possible reason for the cables to break could have been an earthquake. Dailywireless.org reports that there was at least one earthquake in this region which occurred last Saturday. But it looks like that nearly no one sets it in relation with the demolition of the cables. Probably because no cable got cut off on the day of the earthquake …

Now of course also conspiracy theories are flourishing. On the one hand it could be a terrorist attack … yes sure, as always. On the other hand there are voices (for example mathaba.net or Schall und Rauch) who are blaming the administration and secret service of a certain country. The theories start at a kind of sabre-rattling to warn the Arabic World of opening the Iranian oil bourse and thereby establishing a fourth oil marker, denominated by non-dollar currencies. A more radical theory sees a similar event to 9/11 at dawn, as directly before 9/11 major Muslim Web sites were shut down by US governmental organizations. Independent of the motivation behind it, if these incidents have really been initiated by the government in question, it would come close to an act of war. And this would really be stupid of a country which stands for freedom and democracy (… I hope).

So concluding it is really not clear why those cables broke … concerning myself I think it was Nessie which did it in an act of desperation. Decades ago one of the most exciting adventures on earth was to travel to Loch Ness and see if one could spot Nessie. Meanwhile it takes just a few clicks wherever you are to see Nessie exposed. So naturally Nessie bit through various Internet cables to grab again public attention and to stop the virtual exhibition of itself.

And why exactly in this area? Well, if you could choose during those cold days to be in the comfortable Mediterranean Sea or Persian Golf instead of a frosty Scottish lake, what would you do?

If you are curious about where you can spot Nessie next, there is a map of all submarine cables online at telegeography.com. By the way, about 90-95% of our Internet and telephone traffic is routed through undersea cables. Hope you have a heart with us Nessie?!

If you like vintage photos than The Commons could be worth a click.

It is a pilot project of the U.S. Library of Congress. They digitized images from their collections that have no known copyright restrictions and uploaded them to flickr.com.

With the help of the community they hope to increase the value of this collection. By adding tags and comments the users should make it better search- and reusable and add supplementary information.

There are two sets available:

• “News in the 1910s”: black-and-white photos of the Bain News Service.
• “1930s-40s in Color”: color photos taken by the Farm Security Administration and the Office of War Information.

Even though the description may not sound so interesting, the images are really worth taking a look.

for more information:
“Flickr Takes Historical Imagery To The Masses” at TechCrunch.com
“My Friend Flickr: A Match Made in Photo Heaven” at the Library of Congress Blog

There is a similar approach of the National Library of Australia, which is available at Picture Australia.

This is also one of my favorite live recordings (1:31 hrs). The concert was recorded in autumn 2001 in Paris and is also available as “Hullabaloo” on CD and DVD in case you need a better quality or want to support the band.

Enjoy!

for more information:

Muse (official homepage)
Muse (MySpace.com)
Zénith




[logo taken from en.wikipedia.org]

All those applications at facebook are really a bit annoying. Beside steeling your time and violating your privacy they are only useful to provide some fun and keep you in contact with your friends. But what one application made possible is really exciting. Ok, it was not only the application, it was also the person of Arash Derambarsh who messed around with the French press.

As for example TechCrunch.com writes in “French Press Falls For Major Facebook Prank” it all started with a simple application called “Facebook President”. With this application Facebook users could vote for a worldwide president of Facebook. All Facebook users could run for the presidency.

Quite soon a guy got involved called Arash Derambarsh (a Frenchman) who started his own campaign via his homepage. In his program he pledged to “promote goodwill and tolerance among the three world monotheistic Faiths (Christian, Jewish and Muslim), fight against illiteracy and analphabetism and promote French-speaking communities” in case he will become president. [taken from www.facebookpresident.com]

Elections took place and Arash received the majority of votes. Short after it the French press payed attention to the newly-elected world-wide president of Facebook as he was one of their fellow countrymen. His story was covered even in traditional media like TV or newspapers.

For example:
L’Express.fr
Le Figaro.fr
La Parisienne.fr

No matter what he said (close contact with Facebook Inc., project with UNESCO, access to a special function to reach all Facebook users worldwide) or what his presidency actually implies, the French media just covered his story without verifying the facts.

A few days later the French press had to back-pedal as it showed up that he actually got the majority of votes in the Facebook president application, but that is all. End of the story. There is no connection to Facebook Inc. nor is there any to the UNESCO. His presidency is not of any importance to the Facebook community.

Applause!

This is a really great example for a well staged hoax and maybe an indication that the traditional (French) media is not that familiar with Web 2.0.


For more information see:
techCrunch.com




[image taken from www.facebookpresident.com]

Dieser Spruch ist im Umriss des Rentners zu lesen, der im Oktober 2007 in der Münchner U-Bahn niedergeschlagen wurde. Die entsprechenden Videoaufnahme wurden nun zu großformatigen Wahlplakten umfunktioniert, um für den OB Kandidaten der CSU Josef Schmid zu werben … nein, nicht NPD.

[taken from Münchner Merkur]

Hackt’s oder was?! … der Münchner CSU scheinen nun wohl auch die letzten sinnvollen Argumente für Ihren Kandidaten ausgegangen zu sein. Oder steht uns demnächst ein weiterer Parteienzusammenschluss bevor, aus dem dann möglicherweise “die ganz Rechte” hervorgeht?!

Traurig.

Mehr dazu:

Süddeutsche Zeitung
Münchner Merkur

Update: siehe auch bei muenchenblogger.de “Damit Sie nicht der Nächste sind! - Empörung über Wahlkampfplakat der CSU” und “Josef Schmid disqualifiziert sich immer mehr”.

Verwunderlich wäre es nicht …

Warum, hat Hagen Rether meiner Meinung nach bemerkenswert direkt und deutlich in seinem Beitrag zum Jahresrückblick des „Scheibenwischer“ in der ARD am 29. Dezember 2007 dargestellt:

[gefunden via Media-Tetrads]

Respekt! Wenn sich die pauschale Aufregung über den am Ende vorgebrachten Vergleich mit unserer Vergangenheit gelegt hat, könnte dies eigentlich glatt zum Nachdenken anregen.

Ever wondered why American intelligence agencies stepped forward so abruptly at the beginning of December and released the information that there is no sudden threat from the Iranian nuclear program? (DNI)

Maybe the movie “Unter falscher Flagge” can provide an answer to this question. Frank Höfer recently released this documentary about 9/11 and its impact to our world at NuoViso.de. At the moment there is only a German version available.

In my eyes a must-see … even if you are tired of “all those conspiracy theories”. Watch it and if you like it share it!

[taken from NuoViso.de (see for details)]

Update (2008-02-23): Meanwhile also an English version is available at NuoViso.de - 9/11 False Flag .

Update: To be able to view the gallery you need Flash. Windows and Mac users can download it from Adobe’s Web site [English|Deutsch]. If Ubuntu users might need help: Take a look at ubuntuguide.org and search for “Flash”. Normally a

sudo apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree

should do it.

After moving to the new server there are some heavy construction works going on at apfelkraut.org. So don’t worry if the site looks or acts strange from time to time.