Give Me My Daily News Today

For me, the daily news is essential (©t-online)

The graphic is not that easy to explain. The study's authors call it the beginning of a new area and claim that younger people are immersed in various Internet platforms: Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Tiktok, and Spotify, and are ditching the daily news. Indeed, their media behavior has changed profoundly, but why so dramatically over the last two Corona years? But older people also seem tired of the news, the authors write.

 
Is this true for old Red Baron? Following my retirement in 2000, I haven't listened to the radio except once in a while to France Info, a radio station emitting les actualités in neighboring France.

Since my return to Germany in 2001, my television consumption was limited to the news and the 90 minutes Tatort, the popular German detective series always on Sunday evenings featuring various pairs of investigators operating in diverse German cities.

Nowadays, time permitting, I watch the news on television only twice a day: at 5 p.m. for 15 minutes on ARD, Germany's public Channel One, and at 7 p.m. for 20 minutes on ZDF public channel 2, just to see the difference between the two news centers.

My Tatort watchlist boiled down considerably to one pair of investigators operating in the Westphalian Münster. It is not the action that interests me but the spicy dialog between the two protagonists, Main Commissioner Frank Thiel and forensic Professor Karl-Friedrich Boerne, reminding me of the Old Couple Jack Lemon and Walter Matthau.

I rarely watch something else on TV, but I get my fill on mental food and news on the Internet, starting with Der Spiegel, die Badische Zeitung, La Liberation, and the New York Times, which I read all in digital form. Also, I read books I acquire online whenever possible due to my lack of shelf space at home and economizing paper simultaneously.

So in my case, I am not tired of the news, although they are highly depressive these days. Switching for information to the Internet went gradually and did not happen abruptly over the last two years. In other words, I cannot help the authors interpret their data.

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GOA

Gymnasium Oberalster is the name of the high school I graduated from. Last Friday, I was in Hamburg to attend a party celebrating the 77th anniversary of GOA's foundation. This was the postponed festivity due to Corona for the 75th anniversary of 2020.

©GOA

The name of the school has changed many times over the years. It was actually founded on September 11, 1944, on a hill above the banks of the upper Alster River as Langemarck-Schule. The school survived Germany's defeat in May 1945 and was refounded on October 2, 1945, as Oberschule für Jungen und Mädchen in Poppenbüttel* (Higher School for Boys and Girls).
*A Hamburg suburb in the north

The school chronicle was on sale.

In 1953 the name became Wissenschaftliche Oberschule in Poppenbüttel, underlining the scientific orientation. On April 24, 1957, the high school became Gymnasium in Poppenbüttel; the gymnasium is a designation of German schools that lead to the general entrance qualification in universities, the Abitur. When the nearby suburb of Sasel complained that all premises of the school were not located in Poppenbüttel but on its territory, the "final "name settled down to Gymnasium Oberalster on May 22, 1963.

In his welcome speech, the school principal Dr. Martin Widmann said that the letters GOA stand for more than just the building. The education at the GOA is characterized by three virtues:

- Gemeinschaft pflegen (foster companionship)
- Orientierung bieten (offer orientation)
- Aktives Lernen (active learning)

Companionship was the essential attitude of my former class, engraved by our initial class teacher. The Klassengemeinschaft (class community) still drives our yearly class reunions.

What a change for the other two virtues. Individual orientation in the 1950s did not exist because everybody had to follow either a language-orientated or a scientific teaching branch. Concerning my "orientation," I recall a short conversation with my class teacher in my last year in school where he expressed the hope I may become a teacher. Nope.

Active learning in my days was limited. I remember we had to read an English book and write an essay afterward, or should I call a working group on oil painting active learning?

Young folks animated the jubilee party, but it was somewhat disappointing for us old. Red Baron was the second age group that "passed the Abitur" in 1954. Nobody was there from the year before (Abi53), so my friend Wulf and I were the oldest "Abiturienten." 

©GOA

We had to stand up - not easy at our age - and got an ovation from the audience.

Distribution of meeting rooms

Later, we assembled in a room with all those who graduated before 1960. I learned that there was nobody of the 1955 vintage and only a few of Abi56. Too sad.

Jens Baggesen, Danish-German poet

I left the party at 9 p.m. and walked my old way from school back home toward the S-Bahn station Poppenbüttel.

I took a photo of my parents' house on Baggesenstieg 6, where I lived from 1947 to 1954. The new owners had transformed the building, so I nearly did not recognize it.

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The Salt Battery: Energy of the Future?

This morning Red Baron became electrified by the above headline. In the Netherlands, at the TU Eindhoven, a heat battery is being developed that could free millions of households in the country from gas dependency. Project leader Professor Adan said, "About 150 PetaJoule of residual heat from industry per year will enable us to take almost 3.5 million homes off the gas."

Red Baron thought himself well-informed about energy technologies. The current limitation on renewable energy is storage. Lithium batteries used in cars are marvels of technology but are still expensive and a potential fire hazard with deadly consequences in car crashes.

Solar electricity-producing households effectively use heavy lead batteries in the basement of their houses. By storing surplus electricity during sunny days, they arrive at a certain autonomy with their electricity consumption.

This is electricity, the noble form of energy. But what about heat available not only during sunny hours in summer but from the industry. Heat energy is used as process heat in the industry at high temperatures of up to 1000 ⁰C. It is released at lower temperatures of about 150 ⁰C into the environment as a waste product. Wouldn't it be nice to store this heat efficiently for future use?

Here some chemical reactions come in handy that can store common heat energy into chemical energy that can give off heat in a reverse reaction.

Indeed, the heart of the Eindhoven heat battery essentially revolves around a relatively old thermochemical principle: the reaction of a salt hydrate with water vapor. Professor Adan explained, "The salt crystals absorb the water, become larger, and, in the process, release heat."

But the reverse is also possible. "By adding heat, you evaporate the water and basically 'dry' the salt, thus reducing the size of the salt crystals. As long as no water gets to this dry salt powder, the heat is always stored in it. So, unlike with other types of heat storage, nothing is lost: the battery is completely loss-free", Professor Adan added.

In fact, you need a material that you can continue to use cyclically. Professor Adan and his team settled on potassium carbonate as a basis, an easily extracted salt that is part of many products such as soap or glass.

The closed-loop system (©TU Eindhoven)

Adan and his coworkers built the so-called "closed-loop system." This recirculating system consists of a heat exchanger, fan, evaporator/condenser, and boiler with salt particles. At 7 kWh, this system is small, although it could provide heating for a typical family of four for two days.

Thirty lockers (©TU Eindhoven)

In the meantime, some 30 'lockers' have been combined, presenting a total storage capacity of over 200 kWh. Adan puts it into perspective: "That's equivalent to two fully charged Teslas."

But there is more to it. While heat transport through pipes used in district heating systems always runs up losses, the thermal battery can store heat loss-free, and its "innocent" chemical can also be transported loss-free. Nothing will happen to the dry salt if no water is added.

Is good old chemistry coming to the rescue of the world's energy problem? There is no lack of potassium and carbon dioxide; we currently have too much and growing.

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Shrinkflation

Red Baron remembers the time when the neologism stagflation, the combination of long-term inflation and a stagnant economy, was coined in the 1960s. Economists widely used it in the 1970s when the oil crisis caused this situation in many countries worldwide.

Now it sounds worse when economists talk about shrinkflation.

However, for Red Baron, it is not only packages containing less of a product so as not to frighten off consumers. Shrinkflation also means a shrinking economy still suffering from the corona epidemic is currently hit by the Ukrainian war and garnished with the climate crises. Raw materials are more expensive, and the production of goods is frequently stuttered due to broken supply chains. Altogether industry produces less at a higher price. Shortages, e.g., of energy and higher production costs, mean inflation. It is as high as 7.9% in Germany, with no end.

Many are unsettled and abstain from consuming non-essential agricultural products like strawberries, cherries, and asparagus. They eschew fancy restaurants and no longer go to concerts, etc., because consumers would like to be sure of settling their energy bills at the end of the month. Consumption is shrinking while inflation is galloping.

Up to now, Red Baron has felt inflation only marginally.

- My beloved Bengele bread increased from euro 3,20 to 3,30.

- I consume about 2300 kWh of electricity per year, and my provider told me that my annual bill will only be higher by euro 4,52 in the coming year.

- My car is mainly immobile in the underground car park of my apartment. So gas prices are not relevant for Red Baron.

- For public transport, I presently pay only 9 euros per month until in September, my regular monthly Regio ticket that I use a lot will again cost me 54 euros or a little bit more.

I fear the worse is still to come. Today an interest rate war started. Following the increase of 75 points by the Fed to fight inflation in the States, the Swiss National Bank followed today, raising their interest rate by 50 points, while the European Central Bank did not move.

As a consequence, the euro yesterday exchanged at 1.043 CHF. It can now be bought for only 1.014 CHF. This means more Swiss tourists in town who will, however, only partly compensate for the buying reluctance of native consumers.
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Manslamming

This is my 900th post, and again I must cite Oxenstierna, Gustaf Adolf's chancellor in the Thirty Years' War, "Couldn't have imagined at the outset we would go so far," referring to the success of the Swedes in German territory. 

This citation I used as early as 2014 when somehow astonished I announced the publication of my 250th blog just eight years ago on June 8.

The topic of this 900th blog is "manslamming," a neologism coined after "mansplaining "and "manspreading."

The reason for "spreading" is no longer relevant for Red Baron, although I efficiently practice mansplaining. Note: When other capabilities are deficient old men like to talk.

Here are two women complaining about manslamming. The tales of the encounters are greatly exaggerated. 

When Red Baron walks through Freiburg's crowded city, he must watch not to be slammed by women looking at their mobile phones and pushing their strollers with toddlers calmed by munching pretzels.

Watch the movie by clicking.

A reporter experimented in busy New York, filming the persons that slammed into her. In the end, the score was 23 men and 66 women slamming. So manslamming should be changed into everyoneslamming.

Coming back to my 900th post. It will take me about 24 months to reach 1000. Fingers crossed?

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Pas besoin d’un dessin

No need for a drawing is the title of an exhibition at the Musée d'art et d'histoire (MAH, i.e., Museum of Art and History) in Geneva.

Three months ago, Red Baron was in Geneva for a one-day trip and a one-hour meeting. After lunch, I had some time left and visited the current exhibition at the MAH.

There were no spectacular loans from other museums, but they had invited the art historian and curator of international exhibitions, Jean-Hubert Martin, to dig into the MAH holdings. This museum man takes the visitor to the exhibition through more than 500 works borrowed from all artistic and historical fields of the MAH. The turgid introduction on the web to this inbred exhibition reads as follows:

The public is encouraged to observe, feel, and appropriate what our common treasure, namely this fascinating diversity of the collection is. Through play, switching, and analogy, some of the museum's best-known works enter into a simple and uncomplicated dialogue with singular objects that have sometimes escaped our attention. The tour restores our confidence in our emotional strength. The museum reveals itself in a new light and becomes the theater of our desires.

Did I feel like that? Nope. According to various topics, the rearranged objects were embedded in the old infrastructure I knew from my past visits with my grandson. I didn't imply any added value, e.g., when the impressive guillotine was placed in front of the in situ display cabinets with the knight's armors.

Nevertheless, here are some photos of interesting objects. Before I show you examples of four of those topics, here is one of the Museum's treasures, a wood-cut romanesque style Madonna and Child.

I have seen such configurations at The Cloisters in uptown New York, but this representation is stunning, although the tooth of the time has gnawed Mary's arm.

Unknown painter: Miraculous Breastfeeding around 1730

The painting reminded me of the Lactation Bernardi. St. Bernard of Clairvaux had a vision where St. Mary sprinkled milk on his lips. Here, however, we see a shackled old man imprisoned and breastfed by a woman who doesn't resemble the Virgin.

Well, this scene is much older and described in old Roman documents: Condemned to starvation in a Roman prison, an old man is kept alive by the milk he sucks from his daughter's breast, who visits him every day. Once surprised by a guard, the authorities did not put her on trial. In fact, they released her father, even providing him food for the rest of his days, so impressed were they by such selfless love. And this was well before the Christian faith had spread.

Hair and barbe

An anachronism: Bishop Maximin of Aix-en-Provence gives
Holy Communion to Mary Magdalene.
Venetian painter around 1700

Ferdinand Hodler, Portrait of Felix Vibert 1915.

 

Josef Henri Deville 1830. A young girl leads a blind old man.

 

Where is the mystery?

Rosalie d'Eymar. After Claude-Joseph Vernet: Marina around 1800

 

The photo below shows my shadow on Cecilia's neckline.

    

After Domenico Zampieri, Bologna 1581, Saint Cecilia

Swindlers were instead hanged in the good old times.

 

Blade and bed of Geneva's guillotine 1799

 

Unknown painter: Egmont's execution by the sword

 

Unknown painter around 1830, Judith carrying the head of Holofernes         

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Brainwashing

The longer the war in Ukraine drags on, the more I feel affected. Indeed, I watched atrocities and war crimes in Afghanistan and Syria on TV, but they did not perturb me much.

However, the images from Ukraine bring up memories in me that were buried and that I hadn't thought about in a long time. I see reports from old people's homes about agitated and suffering inhabitants haunted by their Second World War experiences. Luckily, Red Baron's war memories as a boy are relatively mild.

It is disturbing that more than half of the Russian population supports the warlord Putin and approves his so-called "military action" against Ukraine. And yet, I hear the Russian people cannot be blamed because people experience nothing else in the media besides positive Russian war propaganda. As a child, I went through this permanent brainwashing, too.

Indeed, the situation in Russia is similar to the one in the Third Reich, in which the press and radio were all brought in line, although nowadays, live television and social media are the most important sources of "mis"information,

As a child, I knew nothing but Nazi propaganda. There were only a few children's books like the Grimm brothers' fairy tales and the sagas of Nordic gods and Aryian heroes.

The Grimm fairy tales are not particularly anti-Semitic. In Der Jude im Dorn (The Jew in the Thorns), you learn about a suffering Jew. Nevertheless, the illustration in my book Märchen der Gebrüder Grimm shows the typical attributes: the Jewish hat and the yellow circular marking all Jews had to wear in the Middle Ages. Note the Gothic printing in the Alte Schwabacher typeface.

The few books I had I finished soon, so I had to switch to those inexpensive Kriegshefte (war booklets), which I devoured as a boy and where I learned my first English vocabulary. One title was Hands Up! It dealt with a Nazi commando operation in faraway Canada.

Before all that, however, my school enrollment took place in Essen.

The photo was taken in the fall of 1941 because the central government had moved the start of the school year from Easter to the fall, as was generally the case in other European countries.

The Sütterlin letters are in the first row, their Latin equivalents are in the second,
while the third row displays the Gothic font Alte Schwabacher

I made my first attempts at handwriting in German Kurrentschrift, also called Sütterlin.

But on January 3, 1941, Hitler's chief of staff, Martin Bormann, sent the following circular written in terrible German to the Reichsleiter, the Gauleiter (heads of the districts), and Verbandsleiter (formation leaders):

Circular 

(Not for publication).

For general attention, I am communicating on behalf of the Führer:

  To regard or designate the so-called Gothic script as a German script is wrong. In reality, the so-called Gothic script consists of Schwabach Judenlettern (Jewish letters). Just as they later took possession of the newspapers, the Jews residing in Germany took possession of the printing presses when the printing press was introduced, and this led to the strong introduction of the Schwabach Judenlettern in Germany.

  Today, in a meeting with Reichsleiter Amann and Adolf Müller, owner of a book printing shop, the Führer decided that the Antiqua typeface should henceforth be designated as the standard typeface. Gradually, all printed matter is to be converted to this regular typeface. As soon as this is possible regarding schoolbooks, only the standard script will be used in the village and elementary schools.

  The use of the Schwabach Judenlettern by authorities will cease in the future; appointment certificates for officials, street signs, and the like will, in the future, be produced only in standard script.

  By order of the Führer, Herr Reichsleiter Amann will first convert to standard typeface those newspapers that already have a foreign circulation or whose foreign circulation is desired. 

Signed M. Bormann.

 This decree introduced "Latin" cursive handwriting in schools, but new schoolbooks had to be printed before the unfamiliar letters could be taught. So from January 1942 on, we first graders had to relearn how to write and read the "normal" script.

In the early Forties, my war experience in the Ruhr area was "limited" to houses set on fire by bombs, which I looked at when I stepped out of the air-raid shelter into the fresh air at night as an eight-year-old.

The following day - all fires had been extinguished - the block warden in his brown uniform walked from house to house with a non-detonated but defused stick firebomb and warned the population about unexploded ones that could start a new fire at any time. When a house resident across the street showed him the melted remains of an incendiary bomb, he waved it off wearily.

Because of the continuing bombings, in the fall of 1942, my family moved to the Sudetenland, to the small town of Hirschberg am See. Thoroughly indoctrinated, I went to school there happily singing the song of the trembling rotten bones on my way home, "marching" down the village street: "For today Germany belongs to us and tomorrow the whole world."

Es zittern die morschen Knochen. Es zittern die morschen Knochen Der Welt vor dem roten Krieg Wir haben den Schrecken gebrochen Für uns war´s ein großer Sieg Wir werden weiter marschieren Wenn alles in Scherben fällt und heute hört uns Deutschland Und morgen die ganze Welt Und mögen die Spießer auch schelten so lasst sie nur toben und schrein und stemmen sich gegen uns Welten wir werden doch Sieger sein Und liegt vom Kampfe in Trümmern die ganze Welt zu Hauf das soll uns den Teufel kümmern wir bauen sie wieder auf.

The rotten bones are trembling. Trembling are the rotten bones. Of the world before the Red War. We smashed the terror, For us, it was a great victory. We will march on Even when everything falls in shards, For today, Germany is listening to us And tomorrow, the whole world. And if the old people should scold, Just let them scream and shout. And even if the world stands against us, We shall still be victors. And if battle leaves only ruins. Everywhere in heaps, We won't give a tinker's cuss, We'll just build them up again.

Note the original text reads, For today Germany is listening (hört) to us and not Germany belongs (gehört) to us, a significant difference.

The "ruins" verse is just cynical when you compare the bombed German cities after World War II with the current pictures from Mariupol.

Ruins in Freiburg on Adolf-Hitler-Straße
caused by the air raid on November 27, 1944.
. This north-south axis is now named Kaiser-Joseph-Straße
(seen on Facebook).

As a nine-year-old, I watched the shiny, silvery American bomber formations in the sky, high over my new home in Westphalia, Hövelhof. They were heading east. To disturb the German air defense, they kept raining aluminum strips at inappropriate times of the year. We collected the tinsel to save for Christmas decorations.

And then, one day, an air battle raged above as we played outside. When plane parts and body limbs started raining, we took shelter in a nearby copse.

In the days before Easter 1945, as a nine-year-old, I survived a low-flying strafer. On Easter, the Americans simply overran us.

Finally, in the fall of 1945, I attended the Scientific High School for Boys and Girls in Hamburg Poppenbüttel. But that is another story.

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Why Should the Father of the Gods Look For Me?

The story is rather profane. In the Badischen Zeitung of May 30, 2022, you read:

After the outbreak of African swine fever (ASF) on a pig farm near Forchheim in the Emmendingen district, the authorities are trying hard to prevent the spread of the dangerous animal disease. Over the weekend, around 40 volunteers from the rescue dog team, hunters, and four drone pilots searched for wild boar carcasses in a three-kilometer radius around the farm. A mission that demands a great deal from man and dog.

Yes, dogs have fine noses, and some are exceptionally trained to find carcasses of boars. One of the better ones is a pitch-black Labrador mix called Zeus. His Frauchen (mistress) is as eager as her dog in her search, frequently asking him, "Where is Manfred?" Well, Manfred is the code word for a rotten boar.

After searching the dense deciduous forest around, Zeus frequently returns to Frauchen and looks at her questioningly. But she simply returns his questioning looks, "I don't know, you've got the nose. Go find Manfred!"

Come on, I am here!

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A Nine Euro Experience

 Energy prices are soaring, and inflation is galloping. So in its abstruse wisdom, our government decided to disburden the citizen financially for the next three months by suspending taxes on gas(oline) and issuing a nine-euro ticket for public transport.

Although the gas stations still have the gas without reduction in their tanks, this morning, the big oil companies astonishingly dropped the prices at the pump in line with the tax suspension. Non-obstat that they had increased their prices over the last days in May before. The so-called free gas suppliers were caught unaware and suffered. They had to follow the price drop of the big companies and pay the reduction out of their own pockets.

The other measure, the nine euro ticket, is ein echtes Schnäppchen (a real bargain). The ticket is valid all over Germany on all public transport and regional trains but not on express trains (ICE, IC, and EC).


Red Baron has held an annual ticket for regional public transport around Freiburg for a long time. The new subscription was due in June 2022. I went to the Freiburg Verkehrsaktiengesellschaft (VAG) counter, and the lady sitting behind told me I should opt for the Nine Euro Ticket from June to August and renew my yearly subscription in September. So I paid 27 Euros and got my three bargain tickets.

Still, in the month of May, Red Baron traveled from Freiburg to Oberstdorf in Bavaria, which took six and a half hours with changing trains twice but ample time between changes. My brother had his 80th birthday at the well-known resort, offering dinner the evening before and throwing a party on the day proper. It was all so well organized by my sister-in-law, my brother's genuine birthday gift.

Today, on June 1, I traveled back to Freiburg and gave my Nine Euro Ticket a try.

While waiting for my RE75 at Oberstdorf station, enjoying a coffee and a croissant, I noted the direct connections by InterCity trains to Hamburg and Dortmund, a must for a touristic resort.

I arrived at Ulm in time and mounted the RE55 to Donaueschingen, discovering that the one and only toilet on board was not working.

DB Regio "Mobilität für Baden-Württemberg" bwegt decided to change the train. All passengers had to leave the old and mount new wagons.

But look at the delay we had about midway between Ulm and Donaueschingen. Luckily enough, the S10 to Freiburg runs every hour. So I had to take the next train and arrived home one hour later.

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