Friday 31 January 2014

M&M: Gun Shy

Dear reader,

in 2000 the actor Liam Neeson had the leading role as the DEA agent Charlie in the film „Gun Shy“. Charlie comes back from an undercover mission, which has gone horribly wrong. It ended in a disastrous shooting, in which Charlie's colleague got killed and almost got him killed as well. Instead Charlie ended up head first in a water melon. Needless to say that he hates melons since then. From that moment on he has severe digestive problems as well as anxiety. There's nothing he wants more than retirement and the view of the ocean.

On his flight back, Charlie meets the therapist Dr. Jeff Bleckner (Michael Mantell). He notices how uncomfortable Charlie is and offers him help. Dr. Bleckner suggests Charlie goes to do some group therapy. During those sessions Charlie finds out that he's far from being the only one unhappy with his (professional) life. As he tells the others about his problems, he falls on sympathetic ears. Charlie has to take on one last job to stop the scary mafia boss Fulvio and his money laundering business. Charlie is so nervous meeting Fulvio the first time, that Dr. Bleckner prescribes him some pills. The therapist makes it very clear to Charlie only to take one pill. But Charlie is so nervous and the effect doesn't come fast enough for Charlie. So he takes a second. That leads to Charlie not only being calm during the meeting, but he very much not to fall asleep. In the end Charlie can't fight it any longer and just falls asleep in his chair as he is. Fulvio is enthusiastic and impressed how Chrlie can go to sleep and just sleep peacefully.

Charlie and Fulvio become friends for real. That's how Charlie realises that the mean mafia boss is just a show. Fulvio's wish for life is to grow tomatos. He only plays the mean mafia boss, because that's what everyone seems to expect him to be like. So Fulvio is just one more person, who is unsatisfied and with totally different dreams for how his own life should be. Charlie decides to help him.

Charlie consults the beautiful Judy Tipp (Sandra Bullock) about his digestive problems, who not only is able to help him with alternative medicine about his bodily problems. He's also infected by her optimism and the to of them come closer.

All in all this film can't be taken too serious and is far from what might happen in real life. But the film has much humour and it's much fun for me to watch all those great actors. The characters were written which much love and care, even the smaller parts and I enjoy it a great deal to see them all with their quirks and their problems they are fighting with and do their best to stick to their dreams and come closer to fulfilling them. At the end of this turbulent adventure especially Charlie and Fulvio clearly learned something for themselves and have been through quite some changes and achieved things for themselves.

Until next blog,
sarah


Wednesday 29 January 2014

Everything used to be better in the old days?

Dear reader,

2003 was the year in which our family-computer got an internet connection. We had a world of options!

We created e-mail addresses and suddenly we were writing much cheaper and faster e-mails to long distant family and friends. Do you remember when you wrote your last letter to someone all in handwriting? A letter, not a postcard! My last handwritten letter to someone was last year. More of a sort of accident, because I needed to send something for a new ID card and had no printer. My last letter before that? No idea. How about you?

How did you order presents for last christmas? I bought exactly one present in a shop. Everything else I ordered comfortably online over the internet. Somewhat sad really.

Anyway, what did we do without the internet in the earlier days? Read more, I suppose. In november 2012 the german newspaper “Frankfurter Rundschau” filed an application for bankruptcy at the court in Frankfurt on the Main. The printing costs were too high compared with the number of sales. Why buy a paper anyway, if you can read everything online for free? In february 2013 it was announced that the paper will keep on going still.


Maybe everything was better in the old days. At least many of us didn't spend that much time in front of a screen and went out with others more often. Are computers a bad thing as such though? The world is changing, that's just the way it is and cultures and people are changing. In the old days there were only books in libraries. Now you can get CDs and DVDs there as well. In the old days there were catalogues of libraries in boxes and information on index cards on paper. Now everything is in computers and you can search easily and fast. And you don't even have to go to the library to find they don't have the book you're looking for or you can't currently borrow it. We can check that online at home. Contrary to the online shopping, which makes me somewhat sad, although I do that, too, I quite like the online search in library catalogues. Or maybe not. Because without it, at least I'd be outside once... The computer doesn't, at least not for now, replace humans totally. The work does change a bit with computers though. I also don't yet see the danger of technological changes and inventions endangering our work place as such. Machines taking over the world? I don't think so. Because for that the machines (for now) have too little of a life of their own and in the end it's up to us, the users of the technology to decide if or how much and how to use it. Even though some tv programs by now are thought to be rather low and stupid by many people, I still trust the humans to not be controlled by machines that much in a sense that in the end the machines control the humans.

Or maybe they do? Because, what's left in a time of a black out that disables our devices? Even if in our desperation, we'd turn to our books, we'd need light for that to read them. Although that should cause no problem with the modern eBook-readers, even in a time of a black out. Or if you've got enough lights in the house and a match or fire-lighter.

In 2012 an australian film came out called Underground: The Julian Assange Story telling the story of the youth of Julian Assange, the founder and chief editor of WikiLeaks. There's a scene where the young Julian sits in his room with his girlfriend. It's already dark outside. She tells him of a place where she'd like to go and asks him, if he likes to travel. He tells her that he already has. When he's hacking computers, he travels all the time. Sitting here in his bedroom and at the same time being at the other side of the world. Then he asks her to look outside the window and pick a suburb. She does. Julian types in a few lines on the computer and suddenly all the lights to out in the suburb she told him. “Did you just do that?”, she asks him. He doesn't reply, just tells her to pick another suburb. “No”, she says. “All those poor people are in the dark.” “They are happy”, he says. “Did you know that nine months after a black out, there's always a rise in the number of child births?”

Finally the vision of the “Factory of the Future” as Warren G. Bennis saw it:

The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment.

Until next blog,
sarah

Friday 17 January 2014

Three Questions

Dear reader,

I don't know, who came up with those questions originally. If someones can prove it, please leave a comment, I'd be grateful.

In any case, Craig Ferguson once said in a Comedy Central performance, that three questions are important before you speak... even more so before you write something on the internet, where it essencially stays there forever:

1. Does it have to be said?
2. Does it have to be said by me?
3. Does it have to be said by me now?

Here's a video clip of Craig Verguson's performance, or rather a preview of it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIdox3zpv-w

Until next blog,
sarah