New Particles?

The other day, Red Baron read two physics articles titled No One in Physics Dares Say So, but the Race to Invent New Particles is Pointless and The Fundamental Problem with Gravity and Quantum Physics. Taken together, they describe the current situation in physics pretty well. However, Sabine Hossenfelder's revelation in the first paper, "In private, many physicists admit they do not believe the particles they are paid to search for exist – they do it because their colleagues are doing it, "or even worse, her statement "No one in physics dares say so, but the race to invent new particles is pointless," poisons the discussion.

Hossenfelder, a former high-energy physicist, has switched to astrophysics and works at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies. By changing her field, she is no longer fouling her own nest. With her sharp attack, does she want research funds to be diverted from high-energy physics to astrophysics?

Red Baron has previously written about the frustration of experimental high-energy physicists working at CERN's Large Hadron Collider. Whenever the LHC's colliding energy increases, they boil down their results and come to the same conclusions, as illustrated in the following table. 

Comprising three forces: strong, electromagnetic, and weak (©Ethan Siegel)

Each time, the Standard Model is confirmed, but not more.

And so Sabine continues her article, "All experiments looking for new particles have come back empty-handed, in particular those that have looked for particles that make up dark matter, a type of matter that supposedly fills the Universe and makes itself noticeable by its gravitational pull. However, we do not know that dark matter is indeed made of particles; even if it is, to explain astrophysical observations, one does not need to know details of the particles' behavior (sic!). "

While experimental physicists keep scratching their heads, their theoretical colleagues refine string theories and come up with or invent (?) new particles that should exist and, therefore, be found.

In a previous blog, Red Baron elaborated on the opposite situation, i.e., those stellar moments in physics when experiments showed unexpected results and theoretical physicists scratched their heads for an explanation.

Did Sabine consider that an experimental high-energy physicist (salary and accelerator time) is at least an order of magnitude more expensive than a theoretical physicist (salary and computing time)? Why not let them calculate and invent new particles and cancel high-energy experiments instead? The CERN accelerator complex uses a large amount of expensive electrical energy.

.

The second paper, " The fundamental problem with gravity and quantum physics" by Ethan Siegel, starts, "We have two theories that work incredibly well: in all the years we've been testing them, we've never found a single observation or made a single experimental measurement that's conflicted with either Einstein's General Relativity or with the Standard Model's predictions from quantum field theory."

Where is the catch? The two theories don't work together, which is not essential in our daily experience. Ethan elaborates, "All of the Standard Model calculations we perform are based on particles that exist in the Universe, which means they live in spacetime. The calculations we typically perform are done so under the assumption that spacetime is flat: an assumption that we know is technically wrong, but one that's so useful (because calculations in curved spacetime are so much more difficult than they are in flat space) and such a good approximation to the conditions we find on Earth that we plow ahead and make this approximation anyway."

The effects of gravitation—sometimes called the fourth force—are so small that the interaction of gravitons with other particles cannot be detected under "normal" conditions in the lab. 

The gravitational field near a black hole (©Ethan Siegel)

Effects will only be measurable if the gravitational field becomes strong, e.g., in the case of a black hole.

One good example is the deflection of light in a gravitational field, which was the basis of the famous 1919 experiment that proved Einstein's General Relativity Theory.

Still, the two theories should come together in GUT, the Grand Unified Theory.

Start working on unification and stop division, Sabine!

Here is what other people thought about Sabine's article: Particle physics – a brief history of time-wasting?

**

Starkweather Creek Streambank Repair

©City of Madison

Flooding following heavy rainfall in Madison in 2018 showed that the existing creeks did not efficiently drain the Starkweather Creek Watershed.

      

©City of Madison

Therefore, the Municipal Council decided to have the streambank of one of those creeks repaired along a certain length as part of a pilot "flooding improvement project."

©City of Madison

Madison's Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway and Freiburg's Mayor Christine Buchheit
 listen to the explanations of the project leader

When a delegation from Freiburg, led by Lord Mayor Martin Horn and Mayor for the Environment Christine Buchheit, came to Madison at the beginning of September, our sister city organized a visit to the site. The idea behind this project is to renaturalize the creek bed to ensure higher water flow rates.

  

The Silberbach in Freiburg-Wiehre is fully overgrown.

Overgrown plants on the banks are one reason for a reduced water flow.

Note the black plastic sheets laid out.

In Madison, their growth is stopped by covering undesired plants with black plastic sheets.

After the primarily invasive neophytes died, the site was reseeded with native plants.

Bank stabilization with boulders (©City of Madison)

©City of Madison

Non-native trees (Ash trees in red) will be removed from the banks and replaced with native species. 

 Another way to prevent flooding is to create water storage basins. In Freiburg, people reluctantly remember that the Bohrerdamm was built to protect the new Dietenbach quarter downstream from flooding.

In Madison, a virtue was made of necessity.

         

Grandview Commons

In Grandview Commons, a new housing area north of Madison, a depression was dredged and flooded, which developed into a biotope.

   

This small lake blends naturally into its surroundings. Not only ducks have adopted the site.

Red Baron had a spontaneous idea. Large amounts of gravel are needed to fill in the Dietenbach marsh. Instead of a future flat lawn in the middle of the new quarter, can't we leave a natural wetland biotope?

**

Male Teachers

As my loyal readers know, I went to secondary school in Hamburg. We college students used to rhyme irreverently, "Nichts ist hehrer als ein Lehrer (Nothing is loftier than a teacher)."

Even though I had never attended an elementary school in the Hanseatic city, some school-related news lately electrified me: Today, only 12.7 percent of the staff at Hamburg's elementary schools are men.

So over the years, the nation's Prügelknaben (male scapegoats) have become female (Prügelmädchen). Parents, students, authorities, and all those who in their youth were traumatized in primary schools beat up educators. Red Baron, too joined the chorus.

©Die Zeit

The Hamburg school board wants to change the gender disparity. "It can't be the pay because it's excellent," said Schools Senator Ties Rabe (Social Democrat). "We rather believe that it is role expectations and that the view that children, family, and education are something for women is becoming more and more prevalent. This bad development we want to counteract. We want a gender balance."

 
A student campus is to be held up to twice a school year, providing information about "the varied and sometimes challenging daily work of an elementary school teacher" and studying. The first campus will be at the Bucerius Law School on November 19. The attempt to bring men into the elementary school teaching profession is also about creating role models for young students "because the boys at school should also see and understand that education is not just something for women, but also boys and men," the senator said.

Do I read correctly that education is something for boys and men? After years of more women than men studying, especially in teaching professions, do we eventually need a male quota? Is this a gender gap backward?

By the way, my best teacher was a woman to whom I owe a decent knowledge of English grammar and my love for history.

The Hamburg school board may well reconsider their Einstellung (attitude) and their Einstellungen (recruitments).
*

The Concert

As announced in my Hosanna blog, here comes the concert. Two performances were scheduled at the Minster Square for Friday, September 16, at 8 and 9 PM.

Red Baron arrived early and noticed some red lights at the Renaissance Portal of the Minster church. The musicians found refuge in this entrance hall, but the stage was still empty.

The Renaissance Portal: an impressive scenery

Music college professor Bernhard Wulff who composed the bell ringing as a collage from tones of the Hosanna to the chimes of Mozart's Magic Flute, instructed 50 bell ringers, including 20 professionals, to sound cowbells, singing bowls, gongs, glockenspiels, cymbals, elephant bells, tam-tams, tubular and plate bells. All their sounds were to unite on Minster Square with the ringing of the Hosanna, cast in 1258, for a half-hour bell concert.

Ulrich von Kirchbach, Freiburg's mayor for cultural affairs,
 welcomed the participants and visitors

The guest of honor and centerpiece of this "intercultural bell festival" was the more than three-ton Hosanna in the cathedral's belfry with its dark-sounding E-flat. "It speaks to us with a special sound, a touch of melancholy," Professor Wulff said.

 

Listen yourself (©Badische Zeitung).

*

Anyone Who Goes on a Journey Will Have Quite a Lot to Tell

… is the beginning of a famous poem* Urians Reise (Urian's Journey) by Matthias Claudius.

I continue with a free translation of the second line:

Therefore I took my passport and trolley case and chose to go traveling.
*Wenn einer eine Reise tut, dann kann er was erzählen, drum nehm ich meinen Stock und Hut tät das Reisen wählen

I am writing about my latest and last trip to Freiburg's partner city in the States, Madison, Wisconsin, which eventually meant 28 hours of travel time to get to Chicago first.

Lufthansa told me it wouldn't be safe to take the direct train ICE202* from Freiburg to Frankfurt Flughafen at 7:54 AM to catch flight LH9150 run by United Airlines at 12:45 PM to Chicago. So Red Baron took it safe and woke up at 5:20 AM to catch the ICE374 to Frankfurt Airport at 6:50 AM, changing trains at Mannheim to arrive in Frankfurt at 9:06 AM.
*Intercity Express

It all started badly when I waited for my taxi to Freiburg train station that I had ordered the previous evening to pick me up at 6:20 AM in front of my house. I became extremely nervous and called the TAXI dispatcher three times, only to learn they had difficulties. Eventually, the taxi was 10 minutes late, but the driver made it to the station in time, and I was safe.

I felt somewhat unsafer when the display panel at the station showed that my train had a delay of 25 minutes, although it would still be well in time to easily catch one of the frequent connecting ICEs from Mannheim to Frankfurt Airport. Apparently, the delay was due to construction work south of Freiburg between Basel and Müllheim, as the loudspeaker repeated it frequently.

The minutes started to add up, and when the delay reached one hour, Deutsche Bahn (DB) simply canceled my train. Instead, they offered me a seat on ICE202 to Cologne via Frankfurt Airport. It was the train Lufthansa had told me to avoid! In the meantime, the platform was full of people because all earlier trains running north had been canceled.

The train scheduled for 7:54 AM finally rolled into the station more than an hour late. I entered the rail car in the first-class sector of the platform only to find out that DB had dropped first-class for second-class carriages with more seats to accommodate all those delayed and stranded passengers.

Suddenly I found myself in an empty wagon while frustrated travelers stormed the rail cars in the usual second-class sectors. On our trip to Frankfurt, some people from other parts of the train diffused into my neighborhood, but until the bitter end, the one seat beside me stayed empty.

Since the train had to load more people during intermediate stops, it took longer to board than usual, so ICE202 accumulated additional delays. So I became nervous again, deliberating whether I would be able to catch the plane in Frankfurt and cross the Atlantic with my six co-travelers of the Freiburg-Madison-Gesellschaft (FMG).

Suddenly my phone rang. On the other end, FMG's president said, "Don't worry. Our flight to Chicago is canceled. We will all be booked on other flights." Luck in misfortune, and one load was off my mind.

With a forced march, I arrived at the United Air counter at 12:15 PM. Together with FMG's vice president, Red Baron was booked on UA47 at 1:05 PM from Frankfurt to Houston, arriving at 5:50 PM local time.

Upon arrival in Houston, we had to pass immigration, pick up our luggage, and check it in again on flight UA2422 to Chicago. Although we had more than three hours of stopover, time ran short. I was lucky to have an experienced vice president on my side. She recommended carrying our luggage on the plane to save time on our arrival, scheduled for 12:45 AM the following day. Her glorious idea gave us a little time to spend in the UA lounge.

Although our flight to Chicago was delayed by 20 minutes, we arrived only 10 minutes late, thanks to our pilot's speed.

Ground transport to downtown Chicago was scarce at that time of the day. On the other hand, traffic was light, so we arrived at The Drake Hotel at 2 AM. 

The Drake greeted us with Aquila non captat muscas, which I translated as " The eagle catches no flies, although I had to look up the significance of the slogan: An influential person does not deal with insignificant matters. I dealt with my bed first.

It was the longest trip of my life, nearly 28 hours from my home in Freiburg to The Drake in Chicago. So it was only a minor mishap that both of us, the vice president and Red Baron, were left with the vegetarian dish on the plane. Anyway, the quality of those menus served has deteriorated over the years.

Near the Chicago River. He is still there.

The next day our FMG group was ready to make the Windy City. Five of us took the architectural tour by boat. I had participated in it twice already, so two of us walked the Magnificent Mile instead.

On our way to the Chicago Art Institute, where Georgia O'Keeffe had worked, we looked into Neiman's, and later I bought my Nike Air, as usual. When we arrived at the museum, we discovered it was not only closed on Mondays as expected. but on Tuesdays too. With a Keeffe expert on my side, I wanted to deepen my knowledge of Georgia's paintings, but I was deeply disappointed.

After lunch, we decided to visit Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), which, according to its founders, is different from a general art museum where the values of the past are enshrined. Instead, it
is a place where new ideas are shown and tested.

Well, the work of Alexander Calder (1898-1976) is not new. although it was my first encounter with the artist who held a degree from Stevens Institute of Technology in mechanical engineering. Called an American sculptor, he became mostly known for his innovative mobiles (kinetic sculptures powered by motors or air currents) that embrace chance in their aesthetic. 

Calder's mobiles are based on perfectly balanced levers on a fulcrum. A mobile disturbed by an air current will rotate. I wanted to embrace him already as a physicus ludens, a playing physicist, when I discovered a blunder.

The statement that when an object is put into motion by another force, inertia slows that movement until it stops is totally wrong. 

Instead, inertia keeps the motion going until drag on the mobile moving through the air eventually stops it. Never mind. Aren't Calder's mobiles real works of art?

On my flight back, I noticed that I had no tray in front of me. Somebody must've broken it, and the slot was scotch-taped over. The purser gave the impression of seeing the damage for the first time, but then, in a stroke of genius, he covered my knees with a thick cushion on which he placed the tray with the meal, the same procedure in the morning for breakfast. Later, he said that United would like to compensate me for my inconvenience. At home, I found a credit note of 200 U$ in my email to be used for my next flight (?) with United.

This time, I caught my connecting train in Frankfurt and arrived only 15 minutes late at Freiburg station. At home again.

**

Madison Here We Come

What a chance. Red Baron will finally meet his readers and friends in Madison, Freiburg's sister city. Nothing's gonna stop me now.

©John Quinlan, Madison

It all started in 2020 when, following the area Salomon-Soglin, the "new" mayors of Freiburg and Madison wanted to get to know each other.

 
This was a chance for Red Baron and his co-members of the Freiburg-Madison-Gesellschaft (FMG) to see their American friends again. We last visited them in 2013 on the occasion of celebrating 25 years of partnership between Freiburg and Madison.

Since Red Baron's passport had expired, he applied for a new one, but then Corona blew it all, and the new document was stowed away, staying virginal.

Nevertheless, Mayors Satja Rhodes-Conway and Martin Horn met last July … on Zoom, but nothing replaces the personal touch.

The official Freiburg Delegation of seven persons headed by Martin Horn will be in Madison from September 1 to 3. As in the past, FMG members of the Freiburg-Madison-Gesellschaft, guided by our president Toni Schlegel, take the opportunity to visit our partner city during the same period. As chance would have it, our FMG group comprises seven people, too.

The program our American friends have prepared is rich. We will first meet at the Madison Municipal Building on the morning of September 1.

Next, in the afternoon, will be the presentation of the electrical fire truck that Satja Rhodes-Conway mentioned during the Zoom conference. Martin Horn complemented the information with Freiburg's hydrogen fuel cell-driven garbage trucks. A Meet & Greet party will start late afternoon and last into the evening.

The next day, the State Capitol and the Olbrich Botanical Gardens are on the menu, followed by a presentation on resilience and stormwater management, an important topic these days. Remember, the Bohrerdamm project, which protected Freiburg against the flood of the century, was highly controversial.

On Saturday morning, the Delegation will visit the Farmers Market on Capitol Square before parting in the afternoon for Chicago. At the same time, members of the FMG group will leave in various directions.

**

Kartoffeln

are used to be a Sättigungsbeilage (staple food) in Germany, whereas in other civilized countries, potatoes are regarded as vegetables.

©Stephen Colbert

Recently, on his Late Show, Stephen Colbert made jokes about the Russian way of life, always ending with the words "is potato" as a running gag.

  

©Stephen Colbert

Even Lenin was quoted ...

©Stephen Colbert

... and the audience went along enthusiastically with people presenting their t-shirts.

Stephen is mistaken; the word for potato in Russian is картофель, a German loanword. Kartoffel derives from tartufolo, the Italian word for truffle, which in turn is derived from the Latin terrae tuber (earth tuber).

On the other hand, the word "potato" comes from the Haitian word "batata," which is their name for a sweet potato. This later came to Spanish as "patata" and eventually into English as "potato." Well, let's not Quayle on, adding a little to the end there.

Germans love their Kartoffeln, and we eat 57 kg per capita every year. Other common names for the tubers are Grumbeeren (ground berries), Erdäpfel (cf. French pommes de terre), Tüffel (verbalization of truffles), and Bodabirras (ground pears).

Both Kartoffel and potato are used pejoratively (cf. couch potato). The Brothers Grimm already wrote in their German Dictionary, "die frucht, neben dem getraide jetzt heimisch wie keine andere, dient sprachlich zu mancherlei scherz" wie kartoffelgesicht oder kartoffelnase ("The fruit, besides the grain now native as no other, serves linguistically to many a joke" such as potato face or potato nose).

These days,   Germans are regarded as Kartoffeln*, possibly because of our numerous Turkish fellow citizens. "Alman" is the Turkish word for German and potato.
*When you think that Kraut is the correct designation for Germans, you are wrong, for the home of the real and best sauerkraut is the French Alsace, serving la Choucroute Royale.

Considering the French are called frogs, the Italians are known as spaghetti, and the Turks are referred to as Kümmeltürke (caraway Turk), aren't we Germans spoiled with the nickname Kartoffel?

**

Age Discrimination

Sybille Berg, a former German, now Swiss author, lives in Zürich as a writer. She is one of the most frequently performed playwrights in the German-speaking world. Since 2011 Sybille has regularly written articles for DER SPIEGEL.

@smartboy10/Getty Images

Her recent essay deals with age discrimination, i.e., about a gray mass that almost fills younger people with disgust. Is it so because no one still in Lohn und Brot (in wage and bread) likes to think of a time when he/she will belong to the same category of people and face the unreasonableness of his/her mortality?

Sybille claims that only those who can perform, multiply, and be active have value in our society and that old age is a blind spot in the increasingly sharper debate on equity and participation.

When people are old, they walk more slowly, hear worse, and are often entirely pushed out of social life. They hinder the fast pace, are Nazis, can't install an app, and have ruined the planet.

Wait a moment, Sybille, you lump together all those being of "old age?"

Indeed, Red Baron walks more slowly, but I am not a Nazi. I work with computers and sometimes have problems installing programs like everybody else. And yes, I ruined and am still ruining the planet simply due to my sheer presence.

You must invest actively in social life not to be pushed out of it. Look at those many aged benefactors who help care for the more elderly, are  Tagesmütter/väter (childminders) or work at Tafelläden (food banks). Without all the mostly benevolent helpers, our society would collapse.

One of Goethe's Maxims states, "Whoever strives, we can redeem." Red Baron remains active socially in particular since he lives as a widower.
*

Faith and Science

The official announcement read:

Faith and Science: A Journey Into God's Mystical Love

Reading and Talk with Robert J. Hesse, Ph.D., Galveston-Houston, Texas.

Faith and science - an interaction that can seem paradoxical and polarizing from a secular perspective. Robert Hesse is an ordained permanent Catholic deacon who serves in the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston and is the president of the nationwide Contemplative Network. He offers an informed and personal approach in his nonfiction book, Faith and Science: A Journey into God's Mystical Love. Hesse himself earned a doctorate in physical chemistry and worked as a management consultant before embarking on his spiritual quest and has been working with interfaith people ever since. In cooperation with Verlag Herder GmbH, Hesse will present his nonfiction book in conversation with publisher Manuel Herder on Friday, August 12 at 11 a.m. at Verlag Herder GmbH, Bibliothek, Hermann-Herder-Strasse 4.

The event will be in English.

Religion and Science is one of Red Baron's reoccurring topics (2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2017, 2022). Will Deacon Robert shed new light on the subject?

The place, the library of the Herder Publisher, packed with religious books, was chosen with care.

Here are some snippets of Robert Hesse's talk that gave me some aha experience. I added some keywords as my reminder.

Robert started by saying that men/women call exceptions from science a miracle, and continued, yes, the world itself is a miracle; God manifests himself in his creation (Keyword: Creationists?).

In Genesis 1:26, God said, Let us make man in our image, but Robert stressed that this is not reciprocal: We develop an image of God, but there is no image. (Keywords: Feuerbach's human projection, Islam's banning of Allah's image, Jewish prohibition of pronouncing Jawe's name).

Man is trapped in the universe. We live on the border between earthly and eternal life, where there is no time and space. (Keyword: Before the Big Bang, there was no time and space).

God is universal consciousness. He talks within our unconsciousness that filters through to our consciousness. (Keyword: Descartes, Cogito ergo sum). Mysticism gives a little taste of Him (Keywords: Plato's allegory of the cave, Saint Paul's letter to the Corinthians, 13-12, Hildegard von Bingen).

Can free will exist in a quantum world? Indeed, a quotation from Einstein deepens his conviction that God doesn't throw dice: "Every scientist becomes convinced that nature's laws manifest the existence of a spirit vastly superior to that of men. Behind all the discernible concatenations, there remains something subtle, intangible, and inexplicable. Veneration for this force is my religion. To that extent, I am, in point of fact, religious."

Einstein's faith rooted in Spinoza's ideas excludes a personal God. So I asked Robert in the following discussion to speak about the discrepancy between Einstein's and the Christian God we even shall call Father.

Robert did not enter into the debate but said this was rather personal and recommended I should read his book.

Indeed, I first bought his book and will study it with an emphasis on my keywords. Stay tuned for a future blog.
*

Hosanna

Styrofoam model of the Hosanna in the bell exhibition at the Meckel Halle

The Hosanna bell in Freiburg's Minster church is the oldest Angelus bell in Germany.

The inscription on the hem starts with O King of Glory, come with peace.

and continues: When I piously sound, hasten to the people's aid, Mary.

In the year of our Lord 1258, on July 18, an unknown bell founder from the Basel area cast the bell during the time of the Zähringer Duke Konrad I. The Hosanna weighs 3.29 tons, has a diameter of 1.61 meters, and a tone of E-flat.

It rings every Thursday evening to commemorate Christ's agony on the Mount of Olives. This goes back to a foundation letter of Johann Heinrich Föst from 1635. Following an endowment by Baroness Maria Magdalena von Flachsland, widow of Field Marshal Franz von Mercy, in 1665, it also sounds every Friday at 11 a.m. to commemorate the suffering and death at the Battle of Freiburg in 1644. Finally, it rings on the evening of November 27 in memory of Freiburg's blackest day, the bombing in 1944.

Fritz Geiges' artist's view

Since 1301 at the latest, the Hosanna, as well as a sermon and a prayer bell, have hung in the "nüwen turne" (new tower). Der schönste Turm auf Erden (the most beautiful steeple on earth) was built around the belfry made from fir wood, which forms a kind of tower within the tower. The belfry's oldest wood beams date from 1290/91. It is a masterpiece of medieval carpentry and has been preserved to this day.

Commemorating the Hosanna in an exhibition
and announcing a free bell concert on Münsterplatz

Especially in case of danger, the Hosanna was rung. So in the Thirty Years' War, when the Swedes conquered Freiburg in 1632. The enemy wanted to collect the bell and levied a high ransom of 500 riksdaler - the equivalent of two houses. To raise the money, valuable chalices from the Minster treasury were melted down. This proves the importance Hosanna had for the people of Freiburg.

A few decades later, during the French occupation, even the city treasury had to be emptied to save the bell.

In 1821, the Archbishopric of Freiburg was founded, and the Minster rose from a parish church to a cathedral. A new festive bell was ordered from the Rosenlächer bell foundry in Constance in 1843. The Hosanna was allowed to stay, although its E-flat no longer fitted into the new harmony. Freiburg's voice could only appear as a soloist.

The two world wars brought Hosanna and its younger sisters into the greatest danger.

Donation of bells (Glockenspende) in 1917
on a transport cart on the porch of the Minster church (©Stadtarchiv)

In 1917, the delivery of non-ferrous metals for war purposes was imminent. It became emptier in the tower. But Hosanna was allowed to stay.

Bell cemetery in Hamburg harbor 1944 (©Bundesarchiv)

During the Second World War, things got tight again, but the Hosanna was once again exempt from delivery. It also survived the air raid on Freiburg on November 27, 1944.

In 1959, Archbishop Hermann Schäufele, then new in office, and his dyed-in-the-wool conservative vicar general, Ernst Föhr, ordered that new bells be cast for the cathedral because the ringing was felt to be too small for a cathedral tower.

Cathedral priest Otto Michael Schmitt and the foundation board of the cathedral parish almost had a stroke. A "new ostentatious ringing," as Der Spiegel wrote at the time, was inappropriate to them.

Schmitt didn't take up a collection for new bells; luckily, the Heidelberg bell founder Friedrich Wilhelm Schilling refused to melt down the Hosanna. He instead wanted to return the order for the new bells.

So the Hosanna was safe but remained a soloist because it clashed in tune with the other bells. This was later changed when 15 new bells were cast for the west tower. Those responsible in the diocese moved away from chordal towards more melodic sounds. Still, the Hosanna, now the third largest bell, continued to be rung only individually because of space limitations within the belfry.

A look at the new, extended belfry (©Axel Kilian).
Note the new clappers made from stainless steel
 that were installed in December 2016.

For Hosanna's 750th birthday in 2008, the bell tower was extended by one floor, which gave her more space. Since then, it can be rung together with the other bells.

This led to the idea of a bell festival for Freiburg's 900th anniversary in 2020. Corona blew it all. On September 16 of this year, a bell concert will finally take place on Minster Square.

**

Urea

The German word for urea is Harnstoff, a metabolic product released with the urine (Harn) when you pee. It makes an excellent fertilizer for urea has the highest nitrogen content with 46% of all conventional nitrogen fertilizers. Ammonium nitrate, also often used, has a nitrogen content of only 35%.

Gülleausbringung (spreading liquid manure) ©Westdeutsche Zeitung

Not only in Germany, farmers spread the metabolic product of their livestock as Gülle (liquid manure) on their fields. The motorist's comment passing, "It smells of agriculture."

Farmers indeed tend to put too much nitrogen fertilizer on their fields following the principle viel hilft viel (much helps much). It has come so far that the EU ostracizes Germany, i.e., its farmers, for polluting the groundwater.

An article in Scientific American titled, "Eating Too Much Protein Makes Pee a Problem Pollutant in the U.S." found my attention. The author Sasha Warren subtitled, "Protein-packed diets add excess nitrogen to the environment through urine, rivaling pollution from agricultural fertilizers."

Red Baron has been on medical observation for years. On my doctor's recommendation, I now undergo a medical checkup twice a year, including a full haemogram. The results show that my sugar levels approach a diabetic situation drawing comments from my doctor. These made me stop my consumption of sweets, including sugared drinks.

Another observation is that since 2015 the urea concentration in my blood has started to rise. The value should range between 10 to 45 mg/dl, but during recent years settled around 60. These results pass without my doctor's comment.

Red Baron cut down on carbohydrates and eats meat only when having lunch or dinner with friends. 

Found on Facebook

I don't buy any wurst anymore, remembering Bismarck's dictum. Am I consuming too much protein?

Indeed the missing meat is more than compensated by my consumption of yogurt and cheese. Lately, I discovered tasty fat-reduced chips made from lentils, i.e., vegetable protein.

Protein is muscle food, and although I try hard to keep my muscular mass constant at Kieser Training, all muscles are shrinking with age. So they can no longer handle my ample protein supply that flushes down the toilet in the form of urea instead.

Mind you. Red Baron will not change his eating habits. He rather likes to overprovision his shrinking muscles than have them undersupplied.
*

Why Keep a Landline?

was the title of a blog by Jerry Coyne, the retired biology professor, gourmet, and duck aficionado from Chicago. I had to look up the word and learned that landline is what we call a Festnetz (fixed network) in German.

With all those cellphones around, Jerry asks the pertinent question of whether he still needs a landline and moans, "I pay about $45/month to keep the damn landline (I also have AT&T wireless), but while I use the wireless, I never use the landline. Give me one reason why I should keep it!"

Red Baron pays 60 euros/month, including a fast Internet connection (up to 100 MHz/sec) and one Website domain. The monthly sum also includes a telephone flat rate in the EU, Switzerland, and the US. These flat rates are the main reason why I keep my landline.

For a long time, the two-wire analog telephone connection has been a relic. My landline consists of four mobile stations spread throughout my apartment, all using VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol). Still, when somebody rarely calls me on my Festnetz, I am usually too late to pick up one of the receivers before the last ring. Luckily, these units let you call back instantaneously. Consequently, I no longer proffer my Festnetznummer and replaced it with my mobile number, as I always carry my iPhone. When it vibrates* in an awful situation, I answer the call with my Apple watch, telling the person that I will call back later.

*It never rings

In his blog, Jerry lists eight arguments in favor of the landline and rejects them all. However, reason number 6 is odd: "You need your (fixed network) phone to work when you lose power."

When I lose power in my apartment, my Internet is dead, and so is my landline*. On the other hand, my mobile phone is working and lets me call the power company.
*It happened once

In 2020, a survey in Germany found that 73% of respondents aged 18 to 69 still used landlines. Strangely enough, the same poll in 2021 showed that the number had increased to 81%. According to an expert, cell phone reception at home is often inadequate: "Mobile coverage continues to leave much to be desired, especially indoors."

Not for Red Baron, who is spoiled by an excellent 5G coverage. Still, I shall keep my Festnetz.

**

Picasso and El Greco

Attracting visitors. The poster on Freiburg's advertising boards.

When the Basel Kunstmuseum advertised its exhibition, Picasso El Greco, Red Baron was excited.

Picasso and El Greco, those dissenters (Abweichler), are always on my mind. A well-organized comparison will shed new light on Picasso's work, for he said, "What I really like in El Greco's work are the portraits, all those gentlemen with pointed beards." 

To make the trip to Basel attractive, the museum chose attractive females (What else?) on their poster. It shows Madame Canals from Picasso's Rose Period juxtaposed with Lady in a Fur Wrap. However, this painting originated in El Greco's workshop. Whether the master lent his hand to the painting is unknown. I doubt it, for the style is too precise and somewhat conventional. According to Wikipedia, the painting is now attributed to Alonso Sánchez Coello.

When I proposed that the Museumsgesellschaft visits the gallery, the response to the call was exceptional.

©Hal Jos

While our group was traveling to Basel in a chartered bus, one of our members, a professor of biology and artist, Hal Jos, gave a witty and expert introduction.

At the entrance to the exhibition, one paper filled with sketches drew all my attention:

These are sketches Picasso made at the Prado he visited with his painter colleague, and friend Francisco Bernareggi called Pancho, "We sent out our copies to our professor in Barcelona, Picasso's father. All was well so long as we worked on Velasquez, Goya, and the Venetians - but the day we decided to do a copy of El Greco and sent it to him, his reaction was, 'You're taking the wrong path.' That was in 1897 when El Greco was considered a menace."

The exhibition tried to follow Picasso's development by confronting his pictures with El Greco's paintings.

Self-Portrait (Blue Period), Paris 1901

Portrait of an old man, 1595

Boy leading a horse (Rose Period), 1905

Saint Martin and the beggar, 1597

Man, woman, and child, Paris 1906

The Holy family with Saint Anna and the infant Saint John, 1600

Bust of a woman (Cubism), 1907

The Virgin Mary, 1590

Head of a woman, Paris 1908

El Greco's workshop: Mater dolorosa, 1587

Seated nude, 1909

The penitent Magdalene, 1580

Portrait of D. H. Kahnweiler II, Juni 1957

Saint Joseph, 1577

Jaume Sebartes with ruff and bonnet, Royan 1939

An elderly gentleman, 1587

Looking at El Greco's Saint Martin and the beggar, I recalled the quarrel in Freiburg about a painting on Saint Martin's gate. Could we not simply incorporate El Greco's masterpiece?

The coronation of the virgin 1592

And there is more. Contemplating El Greco's Coronation of the virgin, I recalled the frivolous altarpiece in the Freiburg Minster, painted by Hans Baldung Grien, another Abweichler.

Krönung Mariens (©Wikipedia/PogoEngel)

*