MLT Club Member Jürgen
MLT Club MemberForum Replies Created
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Hi David,
unfortunately I don’t know the quote. Reminds me a little bit of Schrödinger’s cat dilemma. You can only be sure if you look. But that doesn’t work in this case. A dilemma indeed. Probably the bread and butter of most theoretical physicists. Therefore, I would first consider the person making such a hypothesis. Who is this person, where does he get his knowledge from and how does he even get the idea that a teapot rotates between Earth and Mars. If I then still had doubts, I would rely on empiricism or reject the idea. I am aware that with this approach, around 50% of astrophysicists would probably lose their jobs…. 😀. I added the following idea to my first entry as a PS (and then deleted it again, because I wasn’t sure if the idea would be misunderstood): „It’s hard to tell the color and shape of a chair cushion when you’re sitting with your butt on it“. So to say, it is not the teapot that causes the problem, but the human being who tries to find an answer with his limited possibilities. Would you rather know or believe? A matter of personal taste.
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Once upon a time, in a land not so far away, there lived a little boy in a place where people spent a large part of their lives underground. They dug long shafts and tunnels into the depths of the earth to find treasures. Oh no, they were not dwarves, they were too big for that. They didn’t have red pointed caps on their heads either, but miner’s lamps, so that they could see something in the darkness of their shafts. And they didn’t find diamonds or gold, but black stones that burned when you lit them. They called it “Grubengold,” which means something like gold from the depths. When they came out of their underground mines, their faces were black and their bodies sweaty, because where they worked it was very warm and also very dirty. The people began to process the treasures they had found. To do this, they built large furnaces, with long chimneys that soon shot out of the ground everywhere. Thick clouds of smoke rose from the chimneys when the ores from the earth were processed into metals. And soon the houses of these people were also as black and dirty as their faces. Someday small mounds grew out of the ground like mushrooms, because the people collected the burnt out ore there and soon these hills grew higher and higher and the whole land froze in blackness.
But Mother Earth was kind to them. She emptied her green cornucopia over this land and soon green grass grew on the black hills, trees stretched their crowns to the gray sky and the birds and small animals also returned. But that’s not all: a small miracle always happened at Christmas time. When it started snowing overnight, this barren landscape turned into a white winter wonderland. And the little boy with whom this story began got his sled out of the basement, because right in front of his parents’ house was one of those mounds and it was the greatest toboggan run in the world. A small path snaked up to the top of the hill. The soft, fresh snow crunched beautifully under the soles of his shoes. The branches of the trees bent low under the white burden and his breath condensed into small clouds that accompanied him part of the way. Once at the top, the little boy had a fantastic view of his own, very special winter wonderland. The once gray and dark landscape was covered with the white cloth of winter. From up there the blast furnaces and their chimneys looked like small steam engines and the trains loaded with iron ore reminded him of his toy train that was already waiting for him under the Christmas tree. And then the boy went down with his sled, in a wild ride over the snow-covered slope. Trees whizzed past left and right and the path seemed to wind endlessly through the wintry landscape until he reached the bottom and quickly climbed back up the hill to enjoy the magic of winter once more.
On full moon nights, when the snow shimmered particularly mysteriously, the boy could see the molten iron being drained from the blast furnaces and the sky glowing in a deep red whole. “The Christ Child is baking cookies again,” his mother used to say and laughed lovingly. That little boy, that was me. I no longer have the sled, but I have many fond memories of the Christmas season from back then.
Even if memory often plays tricks on us, the idea of how something could have been is sometimes even more beautiful than reality itself can offer.
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Oh boy, Jung. Tough stuff. „Why?“, I’m going to take the question a little bit further than Mona and Lisa did: Whole generations of brilliant thinkers have grappled with this question. At this point I could quote the ancient Greek masterminds, if I had read them. I could refer to the brilliant philosophers and thinkers of our time, if I had understood them. Or also pioneering psychologists and epistemologists, if I only had the time. To make a long story short: two thinkers of the very special kind have particularly impressed me with their answer to the big „Why” question: First, Stephen Hawking. He has concluded in the sense that the answer to the big question about the origin of the universe and thus also about the sense of the whole which hangs on it, would hold ready a quite simple solution if we could approach with our understanding only near enough to the origin of the big bang. Second, Douglas Adams: He had an endearing and quirky way of presenting complex issues simply. If we ever found the answer to the big question “Why?” we would not be able to understand the answer because we did not actually grasp the essence of the question (and thus could not formulate it correctly). Well, the answer 42 does sound somehow reassuring: short enough not to be forgotten and yet not so complex as to be confusing.
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A somewhat unusual world record, with an even more unusual musical instrument:
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And when I first heard “Waterloo Sunset” by the Kinks, I could have sworn Paul McCartney had a hand in it. Maybe it’s the sound of the voice at the beginning of the song, or the guitar sound, the duet singing as accompaniment …
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The Knickerbockers. Where do you always get music like this David? 😀 Yes, the song is pretty close to the Beatles. I think the Hollies often sounded a bit like the Beatles as well. Probably it was really hard in those days not to be influenced by the Beatles.
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And speaking of Vienna, here are a few impressions of the wintry city:
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“Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht” (“Silent Night”). This Christmas carol was first performed on 24 December 1818 in the church of St. Nikola in Oberndorf near Salzburg. The song has been translated into around 320 languages and dialects and was recognised by UNESCO in 2011 as an intangible cultural heritage in Austria.
I have chosen the following video as a tribute to Mona’s and Lisa’s birthplace Vienna. The presentation of the Christmas carol “Silent Night, Holy Night” took place in the Vienna Hofburg („Wiener Hofburg“). The Vienna Hofburg is one of the largest palace complexes in the world. The oldest parts date back to the 13th century.
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“Leise rieselt der Schnee” (“Snow falls softly at night”) is probably one of the best-known Christmas carols in the German language. It was written by the Protestant pastor Eduard Ebel in 1895 in Graudenz (a town in former West Prussia) and was published under the title „Weihnachtsgruß“ („Christmas greeting“). Eduard Ebel himself originally described his poem simply as “a children’s song”. I would like Mona and Lisa to record this song completely in german language at some point. In my opinion, a translation is not absolutely necessary, as the melody of the song speaks its own language.
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Wanderlust 🔔🎺„Christmas Special“ 🎺🔔
– Why wander far and wide when the wonderful is so close at hand? –
What comes to mind when you think of Christmas, snowy landscapes and open fires? Sure: the Mona and Lisa Christmas album. I would like to talk about two of the songs from this album that are particularly close to my heart, because they are traditional Christmas songs from the German-speaking countries and I associate them with wonderful childhood memories. But to get you in the right mood, let’s start with some beautiful winter impressions from Austria:
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Hello Sara,
a beautiful idea. I spontaneously think of the song “Sowing the Seeds of Love” by Tears for Fears. In an interview Roland Orzabal mentioned that the whole album should be a departure from the 80s sound of the band and at the same time a homage to the Beatles. The singing of the title song reminds a little bit of “I am the walrus” and the horn section again a little bit of „Penny Lane“. Maybe too much has been interpreted into this song, but it is a nice and interesting song in any case.
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Hi David,
thanks for the background information on John Cage. Some time ago I saw a documentary on TV where such experimental music was presented. The performance took place in an old factory hall to create the necessary atmosphere. On the stage there was a grand piano and some stringed instruments. One of the performers struck some weird chords on the keyboard, and the rest of the performers moved to the fading sound, then stood motionless. The string instruments served a similar function. This is how I could imagine a performance of Cage. It looked very interesting, but I certainly wouldn’t watch something like that for an entire evening.
Oh yes, „Revolution #9“. I’ll be honest: the deeper meaning of that piece has not been clear to me to this day. As you rightly said: a kind of special art. I always thought it was a pity that so much valuable space on the White Album was sacrificed for this idiosyncratic number 😀. I can well imagine that Yoko Ono was involved in this piece of music. She saw herself as an artist and had a strong influence on John Lennon’s later works (whether good or bad, I’ll leave it open for now). The piece seems to me like a foreign body on the White Album.
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Hi David, your idea opens up completely new possibilities for experimental music: natural sounds of a road combined with traditional instruments. For example the song “Route 66” could be remixed and interpreted in a completely new way. And who knows, maybe even a gap in the market: as a nice souvenir or memory of a road trip on your personal favorite route. And for the tough ones: the most beautiful potholes in Dolby Surround. John Cage doesn’t ring a bell, but maybe I’ve already heard one or the other of his compositions.
Yeah and the matching beat from the windshield wipers. Suitable for the respective traffic situations: In hectic city traffic maybe a somewhat slightly calming beat and on long drives on an endless highway a slightly faster beat, so you do not fall asleep. So, for example, Bobby McGee with a slightly more groovy beat.
PS: there are already first attempts to adapt the rhythm of the wipers to the individual driving style. These are still initial test phases, so the control is still mainly manual. However suitable control electronics should already be under development… 😀
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Hi Jung, we’ve talked about the „Miniaturwunderland“ before. I visited this place many years ago and it was fantastic. The complete facility is located on the top floor of a former granary at the port of Hamburg. The whole thing has been expanded quite a lot in the meantime. Walkable Alps have been added, in the Scandinavian fjord computer controlled ships swim in a huge water basin. Italy is new and the Provence has also been added. In the meantime, a second neighboring granary has been rented and the two buildings will be connected by a glass bridge. The next construction project to be realized there will be South America. Central America and Asia are to follow. I will definitely pay a visit to the whole place again.
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Yeah David, you’re right: the effort must have been enormous. Just the number of countless glasses and then to tune them in fine work. Impressive. Also remarkable because the people working there are actually model makers and not musicians.
