Rebels, Outlaws and Inventors

Lately, I have been in all sort of different "moods".

One time, I picked up half a documentary about Nikola Tesla while cleaning for one of the elderly people that we look after from our Care Organisation.

Back at home after work, I really wanted to figure out who that guy was. Because what was said in the documentary movie, made me wonder. I used to give Edison credit for electricity and light bulbs and stuff, but here I was finding out that this very computer I write on, this very light bulb that lits my room and basically anything that runs on electric current, is running on Nikola Tesla's ALTERNATING current, which is a more stable (over long distances) and cheaper current than the DIRECT current of Edison (which would have required a power station every mile).

After a couple more documentaries, I really got into it. And found out that Tesla also invented many other things (x-rays around the same time as Roentgen, radio transmission before Marconi but lack of financing stopped the completion of the Wardenclyffe Tower, with which Tesla not only had the plan of wireless communication overseas, but also to generate and distribute electricity for the entire country), some of which were forgotten, some of which still flourish to this day. Despite all the innovations he brought in his time, he died poor in the Hotel New Yorker in 1943.

Long time forgotten by most, yet still fascinating to me.

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Another day, another story.

A little less than a month ago, I picked up some other stuff in our local newspaper, which immidiately got my attention. The paper had a report about cops searching the house of a German member of the Hells Angels, and not only confiscating his stuff, but also shooting his Kangal dog whelp.

I was like... what the fuck.

So that made me wonder, why would they do such a thing, and what kind of people are the Hells Angels actually. (This time I did not make the usual mistake by youtube-ing info, because most videos there make them look way worse than they essentially are).

I decided to go back to the basics, back to where it all started, and read up on the American Hells Angels, since after all, San Bernardino, California (also known as Berdoo) is where it all started back in 1948. Jumping a few years forward, 1957 brought up one of the most famous chapters of the Hells Angels to this day -the Oakland Chapter-, initiated by, amongst others, Ralph Hubert "Sonny" Barger.

I started reading the e-book "Hell's Angel, the life and times of Sonny Barger and the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club". A very honest auto-biography, that shows both the good and the bad sides, he talks about drugs, prisons, and most of all about motorcycling and having fun with a great group of friends. (The book seemed familiar to me, after reading it, I checked in my other room, and sure enough I found the German hardcover edition on my shelf).

I started watching movies regarding motorcycle clubs around that time, and prior to that, basically everything from "The Wild One" to "Easy Rider". Inbetween ofcourse the proper biker movies with actual Hells Angels in them, like Hells Angels 69, and the movie "Gimme Shelter" about the incident at the free Rolling Stones concert at the Altamont Speedway, in which the Hells Angels were hired as security.

Now, I don't know how it was back in those days, because I haven't lived then, but firstly the place was PACKED, after all, it was a FREE concert, and approximately 300,000 people attended it. According to Sonny Barger, the stage was built pretty low, so that anyone could have literally jumped on the stage and done something to the bands that were playing there that night. So keeping people away from the stage (which was what the Hells Angels were supposed to do) seemed like a tough job, and who knows what would have happened if Meredith Curly Hunter would have made it to the stage with his gun. Better be safe than sorry.

As comparison  -they can be extremely lucky to only have had a total of 4 deaths in a concert such as that (and 4 births aswell, according to wikipedia!) - seeing as there were a total of 21 people killed and over 500 injured at the 2010 "Love Parade" in Duisburg, Germany (People died in a panic, there was no proper way to exit the festival grounds, however, the area which had been approved for 250,000 people was not even filled at the time of the incident).

But back to the bikers.

I went forward and watched a couple of episodes of Sons of Anarchy, and am also following the youtube progress of a novel-to-be-movie called Dead in 5 Heartbeats.

I think, after watching some of the movies and reading the books "Hell's Angel" and "Freedom - Credos from the Road" there is atleast one Hells Angel who gets my full respect - Sonny Barger.

Despite a shady past full of sex, drugs and rock-n-roll (if we count the Rolling Stones as that) and various other incidents that put him into prison at one time or another, Sonny Barger tells the whole truth about his life, his beliefs and the way he sees and experiences freedom. I like his honesty, a lot of people would try to hide those things, but not someone who stays true to himself, his family and his readers.

Closing this I'll add the motto of this so-called "outlaw-biker-gang": "When we do right, nobody remembers. When we do wrong, nobody forgets." This seems to be true a lot of times, not only regarding bikers. (Even in my 28-year young life, it seems to be a recurring part, the good things I do are easily overlooked, whereas my mistakes are pointed out to me at any given chance).

High Tech & Low Tech

Technology of all sorts has always fascinated the people on our planet. Some Technologies are rated as High-Tech (most modern, best), while I actually found something really Looooooooow-Tech the other day.

Everyone has a doorbell. Simple thing. You push a button - it rings.

Normally.

The most low-tech construction I found in an old person's apartment was the following:

A doorbell that does indeed ring when it is pushed, but it expects the inhabitant of the apartment to actually use the door opening button inside their apartment, to respond to the ringing, so the doorbell can be rung again later.

If you don't touch the opening button, it makes a tiny lamp go on, that shows that someone rung. But then you still have to push the button for the system to be able to ring the bell again. So if the person is not at home and someone rings, and they oversee the tiny lamp when they come back and leave the ring "unanswered" in that way, the next person who tries to use the doorbell will not have much success, since the bell simply won't ring until the old ring has been answered. (Which they don't know about unless they check that tiny lamp which can be easily overseen, especially for elderly people).

So that construction of a door-bell-mechanism gets from me the lowest-low-tech-award-in-history.

Second place for low-tech goes to Thomas Alva Edison's Direct Current. Which was too unstable when transmitted over long distances, so for it to be stable it would have required a power station ever mile. (Feel free to look at 19th century New York photographs, they looked more packed than even nowadays, despite the fact they had a lot less people back then, but a LOT more wires, power stations and stuff.

Lesson from today:
Door Bells that need to be answered before they can ring again are bad, mkaaaay.
Direct Current was bad, mkaaay.

Long live Alternating Current and proper door bells.

TF:BW

It's me again, and this time I'll reveal my special plan for 2012.

Everyone seems to have a taskforce for something, be it killing Osama Bin Laden, be it about Wikileaks and trying to find out how to get them.

My taskforce, however, shall focus on something that's exactly opposite to the taskforces of the American government. Mine is created to make a BETTER WORLD. Which, when looking at it, is a heck of a lot harder than what the Ameircans do, but I'll do my best. :)

To make this our world a better world, we all have to help. That can be done in any way possible. Be it by helping your family/friends, helping people you know, helping anyone you can help - and with help I don't only mean moving mountains for them, but do even the smallest of things that make them happy. (Through my work I do this quite a lot, you'd be surprised what a hug or some nice words can mean to someone who is otherwise all alone!)

You could also improve this, our world, by inventing useful things. You don't have to invent an iPhone or stuff like that - but how about something like "anti-shock" (like they had for portable CD players back in the day) - just for mobile phones or other portables that use SD/microSD memory.

(Hey... one can dream!)

And now off you go, do a good deed, help someone, hug someone. Join TaskForce:BetterWorld today!

Welcome to the Future...or in other words; Happy New Year 2012!

The new year started with colorful fireworks, which are sadly extremely hard to capture on video, unless you have professional equipment. Which I don't.

Now, the world is still here, and so is my 1 year old food and drink.Well, technically 1 year old. (In fact only a little over 24 hours).

The year started great, and I got to talk to someone special. <3

For the rest, I'll let the prayers I shot up into the air with my fireworks do their job.

May 2012 be a successful and happy year for everyone who is reading this, and ofcourse for the writer of this blog.

Special greetings & new year wishes to....JLL, ROA, YA, BS, FJK, FG, SC, WK, RGT, JPA, JGJ, PS, SPMC (you guys rock!)
Greetings to heaven for those who are no longer with us....JRC, JCC, RMKF, OBL

If it is raining today, it's probably just an iCloud crying...

It was early Thursday morning in Germany, actually around 2 am, I was still awake and playing my favorite online game (World of Warcraft) and all of a sudden, trade chat had been quiet for most of the night, someone said "Steve Jobs died". Not wanting to believe it, I rushed to Google and checked, the first 2 online news-stations that i tried to loads websites of were unreachable due to the traffic they were having, so I went to the Apple site and saw that he really died. Tabbed back into the game, and around 5 minutes later someone asked in trade chat "really?". So I replied sadly yes, pointing them to the Apple site aswell as Wikipedia which both had the news of his passing. Cause of death was not listed yet.

As I had to get up early in the morning for work, I threw myself into bed, and when I awoke, my brother just spread the news to my father.

Onwards to work, I noticed that today started with rain (yes, I managed to get wet on the way to the bus station, which is 3 streets away from work!), and it is still raining now. At first, I didn't think much of it, but come to think of what I read at 2 am this morning, I figured the rain today is not just usual rain...it must be an iCloud crying over the passing of its master...

R.I.P. Steven Paul Jobs

Cloud (#9) Computing and other Things

Ever since getting my new Acer Aspire PC, I feel like on Cloud #9, since it is a lot faster and more stable than the 8 year old PC that I previously used. Only disadvantage is Windows 7 being a memory-hog eventhough it is supposed not to... had to reboot after a month because 3 of the 4 GB of RAM were completely occupied already.../sigh.

Other than that, programs run smoother now, and i actually have enough processing power to use more than 2 applications at a time.

The whole week was particularly fun, and enjoyable, since I met (and hugged!) 2 of my favorite old people that I know through my work, and also managed to talk to one of my favorite young people on the online game I like and play the most.  :)

Both Sides Of The Story

Now, while digging through my mp3s, I found plenty of songs that I transferred to my latest toy [Samsung
Corby GT-S3650, stocked up with some MicroSD memory, now has identical features as an iPhone & iPod together, for roughly 1/6th of the price of those!).

Among those songs was also one that made me think again...whether stuff people do is right or wrong. Surely, everyone is always "right", but we won't know for sure if that is true until we've heard "Both Sides Of The Story".

"We always need to hear both sides of the story

Both sides of the story

And the lights are all on, the world is watching now
people looking for truth, we must not fail them now
be sure,  before we close our eyes
don't walk away from here
'til you hear both sides"

In May of 2011, Barack Hussein Obama II said "Justice has been done." (about killing Osama Bin Laden).
- But Osama Bin Laden's family, wifes and children would probably see it as an injustice that had been done.

Back in 2001, everyone blamed the attacks on the WTC & Pentagon on Osama Bin Laden, who - to the western world, or well, atleast the caves I hail from and to the common people who don't give a rat's arse about war/fighting/killing/politics in the middle east - was more of an "Osama Bin Who. Who, ontop of all that, was said to be living in caves. (The Saudi Bin Ladin group, of whose founder he was a son, and for which he even worked and organized projects in the construction business, was a pretty wealthy Saudi Family, so surely, even after spending a lot of his money to help fight the Russians so they leave Afghanistan, he did not always live in caves, nor had to do it. He did live a simple life, evenhough his wealth, and believe it or not, even owned real, actual.. HOUSES. So it's not all cave business that's going down there.)

- Osama Bin Laden, on the other hand, said in an interview shortly after September 11th:

• “I have already said that I am not involved in the 11 September attacks in the United States.”
• “Neither I had any knowledge of these attacks nor I consider the killing of innocent women, children, and other humans as an appreciable act. . Islam strictly forbids causing harm to innocent women, children, and other people. Such a practice is forbidden ever in the course of a battle.”
• “All that is going on in Palestine for the last 11 months is sufficient to call the wrath of God upon the United States and Israel.”
• “Whoever committed the act of 11 September are not the friends of the American people. I have already said that we are against the American system, not against its people, whereas in these attacks, the common American people have been killed. According to my information, the death toll is much higher than what the US Government has stated. 
• “The United States should try to trace the perpetrators of these attacks within itself; the people who are a part of the US system, but are dissenting against it. Or those who are working for some other system; persons who want to make the present century as a century of conflict between Islam and Christianity so that their own civilization, nation, country, or ideology could survive.”
• “They can be any one, from Russia to Israel and from India to Serbia.”

A little while after, the USA releases a video where Osama Bin Laden XXL (let's call him that for now, seeing as he was a lot fatter than the real deal Osama) admitted to having done September 11th.

Some time after, many people probably already noticed that this Osama looked different, the real Osama's son, Omar Bin Laden, was interviewed and when asked about the videos of Osama Bin Laden, he just chuckled and said "some of them don't even look at all like my father". He should know.

The USA attributes all kinds of health problems to Osama Bin Laden, of which none were true, according to Osama's first wife and his son.

And lastly, why does the USA keep saying he is dead, died of xxx disease, died from wounds...etc, back in 2001/2002 alreasy, yet they always put out new videos of him. (Is he maybe the Elvis amongst terrorists? Maybe, maybe not. I am just damn sure that I *DON'T* want to hear him sing for one thing, and second, he seems to have a lot less impersonators than Elvis that actually *look* like him.)

According to Omar Bin Laden, on rumours about his father being dead for years already, he replied, that the world would know if he was dead, and that, at the time of the interview, he was probably alive and somewhere in the hinterlands of Pakistan.

And then there was another and apparent "high-tech-terrorist", Julian Assange, who was just looking for truth in some filthy old documents, and he found that the USA should have known the whereabouts of Osama Bin Laden since 2008  already. Finding out stuff like that from Government Documents apparently makes this guy a traitor. Despite not even being an American. Despite him telling the truth.

Side notes:

- The USA spent more money investigating Bill Clinton's incident with Monica Lewinsky than investigating 9/11.
- There are more Hells Angels than there are Al'Quaeda (members).

Now remember, before you judge something (or someone), remember to look at both sides of the story.