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Needless to say, that's my Dad & me on the right, a couple of years ago. Ok, a lot of years ago!
13/10/2004
Very Swiss
Let's share some very old imagery ...
Needless to say, that's my Dad & me on the right, a couple of years ago. Ok, a lot of years ago!
Needless to say, that's my Dad & me on the right, a couple of years ago. Ok, a lot of years ago!
Wisdom in the age of Insecurity
Yesterday, I finished reading The Wisdom of Insecurity by Alan Watts. I stumbled across this book in San Francisco some 53 years after it's been written there and it is going to be one of the more unusual books in my library. For one, the subject matter is clearly philosophical, but from a theologian's point of view, and that's definitely not my usual perspective. It's clearly very remarkable that a doctor of divinity and master of theology would hold views as - dare I say it - agnostic as this. But then again, he is a famous writer about Zen Buddhism, so that probably helps to explain.
His core points, if I may be as bold as to summarise, are the following: He dismisses religion from the scientific sphere of reality and he holds that happiness can only be achieved by living in the present with the "awareness that impermanence and insecurity are inescapable and inseperable from life" (I am quoting the cover text here). Well, nothing much new there so far, but I guess in 1951 that was rather novel. I do agree with the message, of course, but I do not really like the somewhat preachy style in which it is delivered.
His core points, if I may be as bold as to summarise, are the following: He dismisses religion from the scientific sphere of reality and he holds that happiness can only be achieved by living in the present with the "awareness that impermanence and insecurity are inescapable and inseperable from life" (I am quoting the cover text here). Well, nothing much new there so far, but I guess in 1951 that was rather novel. I do agree with the message, of course, but I do not really like the somewhat preachy style in which it is delivered.
11/10/2004
Staying in Wicklow, Ireland?
Well, I have a great recommendation for you, then! It is Kilpatrick House, the family house of a friend from Edinburgh University, Richard Kingston. I've haunted the house before they started hosting as a "commercial" operation, but their hospitality is definitely commendable, and the rates are good value, too!
10/10/2004
FIGUGEGL!
That's short for Fondue Isch Guet & Git E Gueti Luune which is Swiss German for Fondue is good and puts you in a good mood.
It's true! I just had the first Fondue of the season, and I am looking forward to many more. If you want to try for yourself, here's a halfway decent recipe, although I would use other cheese as well. In Scotland, I actually played around with Whisky (Laphroig) instead of Kirsch, and I tend to appreciate the result of this fusion cuisine, but around here the female section of the population doesn't like Whisky so much, especially the peaty kind ...
It's true! I just had the first Fondue of the season, and I am looking forward to many more. If you want to try for yourself, here's a halfway decent recipe, although I would use other cheese as well. In Scotland, I actually played around with Whisky (Laphroig) instead of Kirsch, and I tend to appreciate the result of this fusion cuisine, but around here the female section of the population doesn't like Whisky so much, especially the peaty kind ...
Curious sightseeing
I just rediscovered the September copy of Wired which I bought on the way back from Cali.
There's this article about a new way to use your SMS equipped mobile phone to do sightseeing. You just stick a yellow arrow sticker with a unique identifier next to any point of interest and a passer by sends that unique identifier via SMS to the number quoted and gets the text that's been left about said point of interest. Very cool! And even better: it seems to work worldwide.
Don't be surprised if you see yellow arrows popping up all around you all of a sudden...
There's this article about a new way to use your SMS equipped mobile phone to do sightseeing. You just stick a yellow arrow sticker with a unique identifier next to any point of interest and a passer by sends that unique identifier via SMS to the number quoted and gets the text that's been left about said point of interest. Very cool! And even better: it seems to work worldwide.
Don't be surprised if you see yellow arrows popping up all around you all of a sudden...
09/10/2004
Schweizer Denkfabriken?
Es gibt sie, und wir haben sie auch wirklich dringend nötig, um die Auseinandersetzung zu versachlichen. Zu schade, dass ich aus Termingründen nicht an die 1. Ideenmesse gehen kann, die in Zürich veranstaltet wird!
Bruder Hitler
Nachdem ich nun den Artikel von Rafael Seligmann sowie den Aufsatz Bruder Hitler (beide in der neusten Ausgabe von Cicero) entdeckt habe, den Thomas Mann schon 1938 in seinem ungemütlich ambivalenten, dennoch verbindlichen Stil geschrieben hat, erübrigt sich weiterer Kommentar zu Der Untergang.
Good To Be In D.C.
Just right before the second installment of The Debate, here's Jibjab's next little clip on the presidential election campaigns. Great stuff again, but it's definitely tough to live up to the expectations created by the first one. And am I the only one to sense a little less venom towards Bush than towards Kerry?
08/10/2004
Gefährliches Staatsverständnis, Fortsetzung
Die Debatte hat also angefangen. Spannend! Vermutlich wird die Schweiz damit jedoch überfordert sein. Bundesrat Blocher jedenfalls antwortet mit einem Interview in der Weltwoche auf die Attacke Couchepins, nachdem Deissens Ordnungsruf ungehört verhallt ist.
Die Diskussion ist so alt & elementar wie die aristotelische Präferenz für die Mischverfassung, woraus Montesquieu dann die Notwendigkeit der Gewaltenteilung abgeleitet hat.
Die Replik Blochers kann auf zwei Punkte kondensiert werden: 1) "Das Volk und die Stände sind der Souverän, der die Verfassung erlässt und ändert." Die Gewalten Montesquieus mit ihrem geordneten Machtkreislauf haben in diesem geschlossenen Politikbild jedenfalls keinen Platz, was typisch ist für ein tendenziell totalitäres Staatsverständnis. 2) Er will institutionelle Aenderungen (z.B. Volkswahl der Mitglieder des Bundesrates), bestreitet dies aber explizit. Ein offensichtlich taktisches Manöver von überaus fragwürdiger Redlichkeit - aber von Wohlanständigkeit hält er ja bekanntlich nichts.
Dennoch ist es eine Tatsache, dass die gültige Verfassung auf einem gewaltenteiligen System aufgebaut ist. Wenn der SVP-Chefideologe als Mitglied der Landesregierung eine Aufhebung der gewaltenteiligen Verfassungsordnung verlangt (ohne das allerdings taktisch einzugestehen), so befinden wir uns tatsächlich in einer Staatskrise von einer Qualität, die es seit dem Sonderbundskrieg nicht mehr gegeben hat. Und keiner merkt es!
Daraus und aus der Erkenntnis, dass die Konkordanz tot ist, leite ich folgendes Reformprogramm ab: 1. Blocher muss aus dem Bundesrat entfernt werden, und 2. die verfassungstreuen Kräfte aus den bürgerlichen Parteien (inkl. SVP) müssen sich zu einer Regierungskoalition zusammenraufen.
Wenn ich von den bürgerlichen Parteien rede, meine ich damit nicht, dass die Linke ähnlich wie Blochers Parteigänger illoyal zur Verfassung steht. Allerdings ist die Schweiz in ihrem Kern ein bürgerliches Land, das von bürgerlichen Kräften geführt werden muss. Die Tatsache, dass Blochers Parteigänger nach der Zerstörung der (m.E. überlebten) Konkordanz nun auch an den Grundfesten der Verfassung rütteln, müsste eigentlich auch den (allzu) gemässigten Kräften im Land Anlass genug sein, endlich zu drastischen Mitteln zu greifen.
Die Diskussion ist so alt & elementar wie die aristotelische Präferenz für die Mischverfassung, woraus Montesquieu dann die Notwendigkeit der Gewaltenteilung abgeleitet hat.
Die Replik Blochers kann auf zwei Punkte kondensiert werden: 1) "Das Volk und die Stände sind der Souverän, der die Verfassung erlässt und ändert." Die Gewalten Montesquieus mit ihrem geordneten Machtkreislauf haben in diesem geschlossenen Politikbild jedenfalls keinen Platz, was typisch ist für ein tendenziell totalitäres Staatsverständnis. 2) Er will institutionelle Aenderungen (z.B. Volkswahl der Mitglieder des Bundesrates), bestreitet dies aber explizit. Ein offensichtlich taktisches Manöver von überaus fragwürdiger Redlichkeit - aber von Wohlanständigkeit hält er ja bekanntlich nichts.
Dennoch ist es eine Tatsache, dass die gültige Verfassung auf einem gewaltenteiligen System aufgebaut ist. Wenn der SVP-Chefideologe als Mitglied der Landesregierung eine Aufhebung der gewaltenteiligen Verfassungsordnung verlangt (ohne das allerdings taktisch einzugestehen), so befinden wir uns tatsächlich in einer Staatskrise von einer Qualität, die es seit dem Sonderbundskrieg nicht mehr gegeben hat. Und keiner merkt es!
Daraus und aus der Erkenntnis, dass die Konkordanz tot ist, leite ich folgendes Reformprogramm ab: 1. Blocher muss aus dem Bundesrat entfernt werden, und 2. die verfassungstreuen Kräfte aus den bürgerlichen Parteien (inkl. SVP) müssen sich zu einer Regierungskoalition zusammenraufen.
Wenn ich von den bürgerlichen Parteien rede, meine ich damit nicht, dass die Linke ähnlich wie Blochers Parteigänger illoyal zur Verfassung steht. Allerdings ist die Schweiz in ihrem Kern ein bürgerliches Land, das von bürgerlichen Kräften geführt werden muss. Die Tatsache, dass Blochers Parteigänger nach der Zerstörung der (m.E. überlebten) Konkordanz nun auch an den Grundfesten der Verfassung rütteln, müsste eigentlich auch den (allzu) gemässigten Kräften im Land Anlass genug sein, endlich zu drastischen Mitteln zu greifen.
06/10/2004
The Downfall
Autumn has been around for a couple of beautiful days now, and with it, obviously the cinema season.
Yesterday, I went to see The Downfall, a critically acclaimed movie about the final days of the Third Reich.
The film is hard to assess & qualify. It is not a work of art - the historic background forbids that - yet, the execution is brilliant. It is not a documentary - it only shows one side - yet, it sketches very precisely what happened in the Führerbunker in this final dozen days. And lastly, it is not a movie in the sense that it does not seem to aim at getting the audience strongly involved emotionally; but you are when you witness the fatal desperation of so many faithful followers.
It stands firm on a slippery slope, showing the banality of a small and shrinking, isolated group of people who once controlled the European mainland and now find themselves caught in a state of increasing dissolution of their madness when reality - or the penultimate loss thereof - sets in under the pounding fire of russian artillery. And yet we know the monstrosities their idealism created in the outside world.
Interestingly, the female characters play the stronger, more easily relatable to part, although they are just accessories to the great game and no less caught in the madness of their belief in the Nazi religion than their male leaders, who are limited to shouting and swaggering heroicly, with the exception maybe of Speer, two doctors and a young HJ come to reason. The narrator, incidentally, is Hitler's secretary Traudl Junge, who not long ago came forward with a very impressive interview about her time in the Bunker, only to die the day after the interview's German première. Excerpts from the interview form the brackets of the movie, and I very much recommend to see it also.
And finally, Hitler. Ganz shows us a believable character with an unwaivering, never doubting conviction of the righteousness of its perverted ideas. Yet what he doesn't show is the magnetism, the charisma the man must have had to yield such attraction over so many people for so long. In that respect, my expectations have not been fulfilled. With all other respects, they have been challenged. Go see it!
Yesterday, I went to see The Downfall, a critically acclaimed movie about the final days of the Third Reich.
The film is hard to assess & qualify. It is not a work of art - the historic background forbids that - yet, the execution is brilliant. It is not a documentary - it only shows one side - yet, it sketches very precisely what happened in the Führerbunker in this final dozen days. And lastly, it is not a movie in the sense that it does not seem to aim at getting the audience strongly involved emotionally; but you are when you witness the fatal desperation of so many faithful followers.
It stands firm on a slippery slope, showing the banality of a small and shrinking, isolated group of people who once controlled the European mainland and now find themselves caught in a state of increasing dissolution of their madness when reality - or the penultimate loss thereof - sets in under the pounding fire of russian artillery. And yet we know the monstrosities their idealism created in the outside world.
Interestingly, the female characters play the stronger, more easily relatable to part, although they are just accessories to the great game and no less caught in the madness of their belief in the Nazi religion than their male leaders, who are limited to shouting and swaggering heroicly, with the exception maybe of Speer, two doctors and a young HJ come to reason. The narrator, incidentally, is Hitler's secretary Traudl Junge, who not long ago came forward with a very impressive interview about her time in the Bunker, only to die the day after the interview's German première. Excerpts from the interview form the brackets of the movie, and I very much recommend to see it also.
And finally, Hitler. Ganz shows us a believable character with an unwaivering, never doubting conviction of the righteousness of its perverted ideas. Yet what he doesn't show is the magnetism, the charisma the man must have had to yield such attraction over so many people for so long. In that respect, my expectations have not been fulfilled. With all other respects, they have been challenged. Go see it!
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