Seen yesterday.
Well, after having heard a lot of bad critics and nearly nothing good about the new James Bond movie, my expectation were rather low.
To be honest I don't understand what all those people are complaining about.
Yes, ok, it's not the cool British style agent we've known for centuries, but on the other hand everything changes sometimes. New actor - new character.
I think it wouldn't have worked if Daniel Craig had tried to be like Sean Connery (in my opinion the best bond ever). He looks more like a man of action and a bit less style, so don't just let him do some serious butt-kickin'?
I would say he's pretty cool.
Who i missed a bit was Q. Where has that cool, sarcastic secret-technology master-mind gone?
I liked the movie. It's definitely not a must-see but I would say a good one anyway.
Website: 007
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Quantum of Solace
Monday, November 10, 2008
Long Night of Science
On Saturday we had a cool event called 'Long Night of Science' with stations in Vienna, Graz, Klagenfurt, Salzburg and Wiener Neustadt.
I visited the stations at the FH Wiener Neustadt.
It started at 16:27 - local sundown - pretty cool idea!
At 5 p.m. there was the lecture 'The Invention of Time' by Univ.Prof. Rudolf Taschner. It was great!
He explained how time was meassured and calculated in old Egypt and Babylon. People back then were really smart. It's fascinating how exact they could tell for example the length of a month and on which observations their calenders were based. Egypts used the sun and Babylonians the moon.
He also told us about several procedures to correct the differencies resulting from light inaccuracies. Like inserting an additional month or the last correction by Pope Gregory XIII who took out 10 days of October in 1582 when 4. October was followed by 15. October. While catholic countries went along the new calender very fast it took more then a century until the protestant regions accepted it. In eastern Christendom the Gregorian Calendar was not accepted for several hundred years, and then only as the civil calendar. The Gregorian Calendar was instituted in Russia by the Bolsheviks in 1917, and the last Eastern Orthodox country to accept the calendar was Greece in 1923.
Then Prof. Taschner told us about some guys saying that time is just an illusion. They had some really cool arguments to confuse people and their own belief.
Next he referred to an artist who draws 'the time'. No it's not the picture with the clocks by Salvador Dali. It's Roman Opalka, who paints one number after another. In 1965 he started with white numbers on black ground; in 1972 he started to ad 1% white to the base coating so his 'pictures' get lighter piece by piece.
Best thing about the lecture was that Univ.Prof. Taschner didnb't just give dry facts he explained it with a lot humor and so it was fun listening to him.
After this lecture I went through the different stations. Really cool was the station about 3d-meassuring. There you could get a 3d-picture of your face. Really funny and interesting!
At other stations you could see self driving 'mini-cars'. On of them was also patoling on the floor to guide visitors through the corridors. It was led by a line on the ground and carried a flag that said 'follow me'. :-)
There were also stations about automation and medical stuff.
I think it's a fantastic idea to bring science closer to interested people.
I really hope that there will be a sequel next year!
Websites: Lange Nacht der Forschung (Long Night of Science), FH
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