jastram.de Blog - Politics

Help record free music

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 21:40:03 -0400

Musopen is an amazing website for music lovers. the site offers not only public domain music recordings, but also sheet music.They have a pretty exciting project going on: They are rainsing money right now to hire an orchestra. The recorded music will be released in the public domain. I donated some, and I hope you will too.

Gapminder

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 19:07:21 -0500

Hans Rosling is a Statistics-Geek (who has some amazing talks on TED). Now his Statistics-Tool Gapminder is online - load it up with your own data!

What is the opposite of competition?

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 09:04:58 -0500

For Europeans the answer is "solidarity", for Americans it is "monopoly" (from the Economist: Charlemagne - Single Market Bargianing):

"A FEW times a year, Charlemagne has the luck to teach students at a European management school in Paris. It is an enlightening experience (for your columnist, at least). One popular question has been why some European Union policies are so contentious in places like France, notably the commitment to an internal market based on “free and undistorted competition”. After a while, the penny dropped. If you play word association, it turns out that for many in a Parisian classroom, the polar opposite of “competition” is “solidarity”: ie, the useful rigour imposed by competition is overshadowed by the pain caused as society divides into winners and losers. For Anglo-Saxon liberals, the instinctive opposite of “competition” is “monopoly”: ie, the pain of competition is justified by a quest for fairness, even before getting to arguments about efficiency and companies’ long-term fitness."

Die Piraten als dritter Koalitionspartner?

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 18:37:40 -0400

Ich war ganz schön erstaunt, als ich die Mitgliederentwicklung der Piratenpartei bei Wikipedia entdeckte - Seit Mai geht es steil nach oben. Dabei stellt sich die Frage, ob die Piraten es über die 5%-Hürde schaffen werden. Ich halte das für unwahrscheinlich, aber nicht unmöglich. In manchen (allerdings nicht statistisch aussagekräftigen) Umfragen haben die Piraten bis zu 30% - allerdings verschwinden sie bei der ARD-Umfragen unter "Sonstige".

Die Implikation des überschreiten der 5%-Hürde wäre enorm: Mit den jetzigen Spielern gibt es wenige harmonische Koalitionen. Die große Koalition ist nicht harmonisch, rot-grün sehr unwahrscheinlich, und selbst schwarz-gelb hat nur mäßige Chancen. Aber was wäre, wenn die Piraten es schaffen würden. Da nach eigenen Aussagen "Die Ziele der Piratenpartei eng begrenzt" sind, wäre durchaus eine harmonische Dreierkoalition denkbar. Es würde auf jeden Fall ganz neue Möglichkeiten eröffnen.

Europaparlament - wen wählen...?

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Sun, 24 May 2009 22:52:20 -0400

Am 9. Juni sind Wahlen zum Europäischen Parlament. Bei einer deprimierend niedrigen erwarteten Wahlbeteiligung von unter 40% zählt dennoch jede abgegebene Stimme fast dreifach.

Wen wählen? Bei 99 Sitzen für Deutschland können durchaus kleinere Parteien ins Parlament einziehen (Mitgliederliste), allerdings muss nach wie vor die 5%-Hürde überwunden werden. Schade - das bedeutet, das obskure Parteien wie die Piraten oder das FBI kaum Chancen haben. Der komplette Wahlzettel ist hier.

US-Border Authority turns conference speaker away

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 18:01:09 -0400

A scary blog entry, and important information for anybody who is speaking at US conferences.

EU refuses access to Microsoft contracts

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 00:45:26 -0500

This is outrageous! Marco Cappato asked the European Council to see the contracts they have with Microsoft, and was refused on the grounds of protecting Microsoft's commercial interests. Hello? The Council is supposed to work for their citizens, not for US-american Corporations!

Spin!

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 21:09:15 -0400

Germans don't like McCain. Still was it really necessary to print this picture (right)? But what is particularly interesting was the subtitle:

In the Rheinische Post the descriptionwas "McCain making faces at Obama" (unfortunately, I found this only in print, not online).

In Hamburger Abendblatt, it was described as "Obama tripping".

In both cases, the picture was the same, it was provided by Reuters.

Reduce Poverty (Blog Action Day)

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 11:54:44 -0400

Today is Blog Action Day, and the topic is poverty. Everybody is invited to think about it. Here are my thoughts:

It's not as bad as it sounds - we have to get our facts right, and according to many measures, poverty in the world is decreasing (e.g. in Sub-Saharan Africa, poverty decreased from 46% to 41% from 1990 to 2004). This is great news, and we should be grateful for these developments! But...
This is no reason to stop improving things! There is still much to be done. We mastered past crisis, but there are new ones ahead. We all can help but how? To figure that out, we first have to understand...
What is poverty anyway? Food, shelter, access to medicine, those are just the basics, and those are the ones that are measured by the World Bank and other institutions. But there are many other kinds of poverty, and if you want to help, fight the poverty that you can and that you feel comfortable with, specifically:
Fight where you feel comfortable - I know people who don't want to give to charities in other places - then don't! But don't do nothing. There are plenty of local causes that decrease poverty in your city or neighbourhood.
Fight where you can - Money is by no means the only way to give. Participate in a food drive, donate some of your time - there are so many way to do something.

Togehter, we can make the world a better place. Thank you.

Open Wifi in Germany okay

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 13:41:21 -0400

This is nice to hear - open wireless networks seem to be okay now - at least in Germany.

The Irish say no!

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 17:19:40 -0400

The following commentary on the Economist's Website pretty well captures my sentiment: "To say that people should not have a say in something because they lack the understanding is frankly an insult and not democracy." I am all for Europe, but not this way! To threaten voters and to insult their intelligence is not appropriate for a democracy to pass legislation, no matter how important it may be.

As frightening, almost all the commentary I read in the German media (Welt, Tagesschau) states that the Irish had been unthankful and that all people agreeing with their sentiment are unthankful as well.

As so often, the most balanced reporting I found was... in the Economist. Here are the highlights:

More important, the Lisbon treaty’s claims to democratic legitimacy are already threadbare. The Lisbon text is a reworking of an earlier attempt to create a constitution for the EU. That grandiose project was killed off by votes against it in twin referendums in 2005, in France and the Netherlands. It was no accident that Lisbon was a hard text to read: EU leaders were to be heard crowing last year that they had made it “unintelligible” in order to smuggle it past voters. The Lisbon treaty was specifically designed to be passed by the less risky route of parliamentary votes.(...)
Ireland now faces a fight to remain at the heart of Europe, amid calls for its marginalisation. That would be outrageous hypocrisy, of course: Ireland only had to vote on the Lisbon treaty because the French and Dutch had already voted no to the constitution. But the EU has been wounded today: do not be surprised if some of its leaders lash out.

Düsseldorfer, geht am 17. Februar wählen!

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 12:07:28 -0500

In Düsseldorf findet nächste Woche ein Bürgerentscheid über den Verkauf eine Grundstückes neben dem Golzheimer Friedhof statt. Dieser Bürgerbescheid wurde von der Bürgerinitiative RETTET DEN GOLZHEIMER FRIEDHOF erwirkt.

Ich habe mich so gut wie möglich über die Umstände informiert, und werde auf jeden Fall am 17. mit JA stimmen.

Stellungnahme von Greenwheels

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 14:42:17 -0500

Eine der belebtesten Seiten auf jastram.de ist die Kritik an Greenwheels, wo ärgerliche Kunden inzwischen über 50 Kommentare hinterlassen haben. Ich wurde kürzlich von Birger Holm, Geschäftsführer der Greenwheels GmbH, angesprochen, der nach einer Möglichkeit suchte, aktiv Stellung zu nehmen. Wir haben vereinbart, sein Statement hier zu veröffentlichen und damit eine neue Diskussion anzustoßen, statt die Stellungnahme in der bestehenden Diskussion zu "begraben".

Ich hoffe hiermit zur besseren Kommunikation zuwischen Kunde und Unternehmen beizutragen, denn letzen Endes sind wir ja alle daran interessiert, dass das Carsharing funktioniert.

Continue reading "Stellungnahme von Greenwheels"

Global Warming und die Worte und Taten in der Politik

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 16:51:36 -0500

Immer wieder werden die Bürger aufgefordert, ihren Teil der Verantwortung zu übernehmen um Global Warming zu verhindern. Und während die Politiker den moralischen Zeigefinger erheben, lassen die CO2-Generierung in einem ganz anderen Maßstab zu:

"Germany, for example, is making it easier to build new coal plants by granting them free emissions permits, even though it aims to reduce emissions to 40% below the 1990 level by 2020. Enel hopes to persuade the governments of Bulgaria and Romania to do the same. In America, the most prominent proposals for regulations to reduce emissions all involve generous hand-outs to the coal industry. For a supposedly dying breed, advocates of coal-fired generation still seem to have plenty of clout with Europe's and America's politicians."

Help in Burma / Myanmar

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 12:07:01 -0400

I've been following the news in Myanmar for several years. I conciously noticed Myanmar as one of the most miserable places on this planet the first time around 2000 in San Francisco, when some friends and I went to a Burmese Restaurant. We were part of a supper club, picking the cuisine by following the alphabet and matching it with a country starting with that letter. We picked Burma for B, just to learn that officially it was Myanmar.

It feels like there is nothing we can do to help, but there is! Read on to learn what you can do to help the Burmese people!

Continue reading "Help in Burma / Myanmar"