Category Archives: This is how I see it

Just asking… #9 – Billionaires

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Picture by pasja1000 on Pixabay

Why on earth would one person ever need a billion euro (or dollar, if that is your currency of choice)? In which sense could that person experience a genuinely higher quality of life compared to someone having ‘only’ 100 million? I’m not claiming that all the wealth in the world should be redistributed to the extent that everyone would have exactly the same – some people undeniably work harder than others or have far more responsibilities (e.g. over matters that can decide over life and death of others) and it is perfectly legitimate for that to result in receiving, say a 10 times bigger amount of money. But not 10.000 times more.

In the years leading up to the financial crisis of 2008, a handful of hedge funds managers collected more than 1 billion per person per year. If you can think of a single argument to not qualify that statement as utterly obscene, do let me know. I can’t think of any.

So: why does the world need to have billionaires? Just asking…

How to recognize Google Local Guides

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Believe it or not, but if you carefully look for some subtle details in behavior and posture, it is possible to spot local guides among the crowd in a shopping street or in a restaurant. Let me list a few of those for your convenience.

If they’re in group, usually during a so-called Meetup, they’re easy to find as they will often flock together around anything that deserves to be photographed – as you can see in the picture taken in Krakow (Poland) during the European Meetup in September 2018. But if they are on their own ‘in the wild’, you really have to know what exactly you need to pay attention to.

In the shopping street, look for: Continue reading →

Just asking… #8 – Conflicting German laws

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As you might or might not know, in Germany it is illegal to stretch your arm into a certain forward and slightly upward position (for those who have no idea what I am talking about: Google the terms “Germany” and “1930s”). Another set of laws regulate the way you need to behave when taking part in traffic on public roads. One of those rules makes it mandatory for cyclists, for example at crossroads, to indicate which direction they want to go by stretching out their arm in the direction they are heading. No problem so far.

But please take a close look at the crossroad in this picture.

When cycling back from the office I have to go straight ahead (where the pedestrian is crossing the road), but as you can see from the traffic sign, that is not a simple continuation of the direction I am travelling, but rather a change of direction. So I need to indicate this by stretching my arm in that direction. But would that then not be a violation of the other law? Just asking…

Just asking… #7 – Tattoos

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Photo by terg on Pixabay

Just to make sure there is no misunderstanding: that is NOT a picture of me without a shirt. I don’t have any tattoos. Never will have one either. It’s not that I have anything against people who have tattoos – as the saying goes: it’s a free world – but I simply fail to see any reason to get one (the free world argument obviously also counts for me).

If I see, however, how abundant tattoos have become in recent years, and if I combine that with the age old concept of generation conflict, a question raises. Given the fact that children often have the tendency to rebel against their parents, and given the fact that this rebellion often takes the form of those children doing exactly the opposite of their parents, I wonder: how long will this abundant tattooing stick around? Won’t their soon be a generation that will refuse to get any tattoos simply because mom/dad has plenty of them?

Or in other words: when will tattoos be considered to be something “for old people”? Just asking…