15.1.02025

4.5
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Article photo: Stammtisch Backstüble | © Franz Schirm

Miscellaneous

It is always better when you can still make something good out of something bad. And so I am particularly pleased that I was able to improve my exchange with two Ursulas, and not just quantitatively. Incidentally, the name comes from Artula, which also meant "little bear" in Celtic. If you look up the name a little further, you will find that it was really en vogue in the 15th century and experienced a small renaissance in the first half of the last century. In the meantime, this name is probably less common again. Talahina is currently more in demand - a little insider in the direction of Semin.

I was able to finish my lectures in the winter semester yesterday. Whether this semester was a success for me or not remains to be seen. Starting tomorrow, I will attempt the necessary exam. This will give me an initial assessment of the current situation. In the future, for the sake of my own peace of mind, I will refrain from checking two years later to see what the students have actually learned.

In the meantime, regardless of whether you take the G8/G9 discussions or even the PISA studies seriously or even notice them, I have come to the conclusion that education in our country has been simply and very cheaply replaced by "the certificate". And in order to completely eliminate intelligence, those responsible are working with great enthusiasm on a functional AI. Until then, the minimum standards of all examinations will simply be lowered.

The good thing is that nature ensures that intelligent people are still born, and some parents (not the so-called helicopter parents!) continue to ensure that their children develop positively through their upbringing.

If our politicians had any backbone, they would logically abolish compulsory education after military service. You don't need a multiplication table to raise taxes and get into debt.

Stammtische

My first regular meeting of the year was also the one I attended for the longest time. Since 2005, I have been sitting together regularly at a European regular meeting with other people interested in Europe. The only regular meeting I have attended for even longer is the DLRG regular meeting, which I no longer attend, and I have been attending it since the 1970s. I will no longer be attending the Free Voters regular meetings at the start of the year. You can see that age is taking its toll, and so I am cutting back on regular meetings a bit.

Nevertheless, the European Stammtisch I attended yesterday was not the most well attended, but certainly the longest lasting in all these years. Nice people, good food and drinks, and very exciting discussions left their mark; I will soon publish a corresponding article on the EUROPA-UNION website. And I have already integrated the official Stammtisch picture into my corresponding picture collection; there you can find photos of those Stammtisch meetings that I particularly remember, assuming you also took pictures there.

And since Javier Giner can hardly take part in our European get-togethers — except for the digital ones — he has again in the forum of this blogYes! There were still forums. They were used a bit more during the pandemic, but now they're out of date.

Rummage

Motivated by a conversation with Detlef Stern i have mine my own blogroll I looked at it a little more closely again. And I admired those blogs that have been around for about as long as my own blog, but are run in a much more professional and sustainable way. Some of these blogs can present their link collections from the last few decades and even have the first versions of their blogs online.

What I cannot do and probably have not wanted to do in the last decades. Just as I recently had a Changelog I have only recently started thinking about the advice of Detlef Stern to work a little more closely with backups; however, I already use his card index — more or less sensibly.

And so I had to realize that the bulk of my writing, my photos, recordings and other digital works had long since disappeared into the corresponding nirvana. Although I now look back on things of the past with a little nostalgia, I still ask myself the question that has been around for decades: should we really keep everything and document it? — In case one or two students are reading this: as part of project management, everything is of course kept, documented and later archived!

The advantage would be that you can refresh your own memories with documents. The disadvantage is that you limit yourself and involuntarily set your own boundaries. Even in my youth I advocated the "right to forget" and a little later even the "duty to forget". Only those who throw the old overboard and thereby make room for the new can really think and create something new - an almost revolutionary view.

The idea that one should constantly build on the old and create something new with lots of small changes and tweaks is probably evolutionary. Even after decades, I haven't finished this discussion for myself - the older I get, the more I tend towards evolution. Probably only because I no longer want to save the world and even if I do, I can't do it anymore!

My own guiding principle is to always start the world anew. To constantly question everything and to do so with the certainty that you have to earn your merits anew every day. The only comfortable day in a person's life was yesterday, according to a saying of my American comrades.

Every day anew and if the blog is gone, then it is just like that and if you want to, you can create a new one. As it has already Samuel Beckett so aptly formulated "All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better." (Nohhow On, 1989: 77).

Detlef Stern would probably answer the remaining question about the purpose of a backup as follows: “Because you can.” Meanwhile, Chris Glass a blog challenge and answered in a separate postThe good thing is that since he found some decent answers, I don't have to do that now.

But regardless of whether it's a blog or a filing cabinet, whether they're created again and again or even last for decades - no matter what, in the end they're all gone forever! No backup will help.

“At the end of the day, I look at this place as a garden to tend. There are always weeds to pull (dead links and typos abound). But the real fun is to imagine what new things to plan.”

Chris Glass (14.1.2025)

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