Victorian Sensation : The Extraordinary Publication, Reception, and Secret Authorship of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation by James A Secord (published by University of Chicago Press, 2003). A book about the perception of an anonymously written, predarwinian account on the origins of life. Reviews in the Telegraph and in the American Scientist.

“OneLook's reverse dictionary lets you describe a concept and get back a list of words and phrases related to that concept. Your description can be a few words, a sentence, a question, or even just a single word.” (via netbib)

You may use this as an associator. For example, what do the authors Borges and Traven have in common? Nothing but the Mississauga Blob plummeted into the backyard of a person called Traven Matchett. Do you know the connection between Borges and the blob?

The Aberdeen Bestiary. “The entire manuscript has been digitised using Photo-CD technology, thus creating a surrogate, while allowing greater access to the text itself. The digitised version, offering the display of full-page images and of detailed views of illustrations and other significant features, is complemented by a series of commentaries, and a transcription and translation of the original Latin.” (via Kosmonautentraum)

Gordon Graham: The Case Against the Democratic State: An Essay in Cultural Criticism (Imprint Academic, 2002) reviewed by David Gordon. The reviewer exlains Grahams opinion, that in a modern democracy, your vote would not count. Because of the large number of voters in an election, an individual had not the remotest chance of turning the results in the direction he favors. Graham:

Imagine an election in a parliamentary constituency of 10,000 voters where 60% go to the polls and the outright winner(X) gets 52% of the vote. Suppose I voted for X. It is evident that my vote makes no difference. Had I not done so, she would have won anyway; 32,000 minus one still wins. Had I voted against her, this would make no difference either… But if this is true of my vote, it is true of everyone else's also. So it does not matter how anyone would have voted, the outcome would have been the same.
Democracy is if Arnold Schwarzenegger wins the election.

p. s. Irgendwie lässt mir diese Überlegung keine Ruhe. Das Paradox besteht darin, dass alle Staaten, in denen ich vorzugsweise leben möchte, Demokratien sind. Andererseits ist offensichtlich, dass mein Einfluss auf Entscheidungen in einer Demokratie mit mehr als, sagen wir, 100 Bürgern verschwindend gering ist. Ist es also der Fall, dass ich eben da gerne lebe, wo ich keinen Einfluss habe? Eher nicht. Jedenfalls erweckt das Geschwätz "unserer" (wer ist dieses wir?) gewählten Vertreter täglich neu Überdruss bis Übelkeit.

p. s. anarchy.org ist ein Oxymoron.

p. s. “Decisions affecting the society, then, must be made by the people as a whole, and not by any smaller subdivision (e.g. modern ‘representative democracy’)” (Wikipedia about Anarchism and democracy). But who is the people as a whole? At least it's not me, and it's nobody else. “The people as a whole” making decisions is not anarchy, is it?

Ein Leitbild meiner Jugend, jetzt vom Kölner Regierungspräsidenten geehrt (siehe Telepolis). Toll. Und ein Trakt des Kölner Regierungspräsidiums soll nach den Edelweißpiraten benannt werden. Ahaha.

Die Seite über Meister Eckhart und seine Zeit. Eine beachtliche assoziative Geschichtssammlung.Mit E-Texten.

snowcrystals.com — “Your online guide to snowflakes, snow crystals, and other ice phenomena”.

Während meiner Schulzeit haben mich die Schriften von Konrad Lorenz sehr beeinflusst. Anfangs vor allem die populären, später auch die abstrakteren. Jetzt wäre er 100 Jahre alt geworden. Nun ja. Nationalsozialistische Verstrickungen nicht vergessen.

Zum Geburtstag in der Frankfurter Rundschau.

p. s. Dazu auch Caroline Fetscher im Tagesspiegel. “Wer nicht mitdenkt in dieser großen Gesellschaft der Welt, verpasst womöglich eine entscheidende Phase ihrer ‘frühen Prägung’.” Das ist Blödsinn.

Sea Dragons by Richard Ellis (University Press of Kansas, 2003).

In the days when dinosaurs dominated the earth, their marine counterparts—every bit as big and ferocious—reigned supreme in prehistoric seas. In this entrancing book, Richard Ellis, one of the world’s foremost writers on the denizens of the deep, takes us back to the Mesozoic era to resurrect the fascinating lives of these giant seagoing reptiles.

Working from the fossil record, Ellis explores the natural history of these fierce predators, speculates on their habits, and tells how they eventually became extinct—or did they?
(read more)

The Principles of Life by Tibor Ganti (Oxford University Press, 2003 &mdash first published 1971 in Budapest).

Professor Gánti offers a radically novel approach. Based on his theory of fluid (chemical) automata, he shows that all living systems are organized as program controlled, self-reproducing fluid automata and proposes the simplest such construction-the chemoton-as the minimum model of life. In this volume, the logical train of thought is presented in a clear and easily understandable manner for the beginning student and professional scientist alike. The first part provides an overview of the general idea; the second applies the chemoton model to the biogenesis of life; the third part develops the chemoton model into a general theory of the living state and the living world for the natural sciences.
(see Oxford University Press)

in the New Scientist. (mostly boring)

“Die Einsiedlerspinne Loxosceles reclusa für ist Menschen gefährlich und bildet große Populationen in städtischen Habitaten in ganz Zentralnordamerika — mehr als 2 000 dieser Spinnen wurden in einem einzigen Haus in Kansas beobachtet. Was fressen diese Spinnen, um solche Zahlen zu erreichen und zu erhalten?”

Die Antwort steht in Nature.

Und hier ist das Blog dagegen. Verlinken! Das ist ein Befehl, denn wir wollen wieder kebo 11!

Hier lang. (via kebo11)

Orwell on writing by by Jeffrey Meyers in The NewCriterion:

Fond of making political prophecies and honestly willing to admit his mistakes, Orwell urged readers to keep a diary—as Winston Smith does in the novel—not only to recover and preserve the past, but also to maintain an accurate perspective on the truth: “To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle. One thing that helps towards it is to keep a diary, or, at any rate, to keep some kind of record of one’s opinions about important events. Otherwise, when some particularly absurd belief is exploded by events, one may simply forget that one ever held it.”