5 words that influence your live without letting you know it

I know. Mark Twain said:"Don't use a five-dollar word when a fifty-cent word will do." I tend to use some of these words, because I love them. And they influence everybodys life. How?

Serendipity
...is when you find something you were not looking for. It is nearly Zen, but don't we all find most of the things when we don't look for them? Interestingly the act of finding is called searching as long as it is not successful.

Coandă effect
...is defined as the tendency of a fluid to be attracted to a nearby surface. Just think of your tea or coffee running down the teapot or of milk you try to pour...  Now the thing has a name and now you can blame it. But you should also know, that there are some real world applications. So when you blame the effect, always be thankful when you see an aeroplane. Especially when you see it from the inside.

Mnemonics
I cannot remember what this word was all about. There was this rhyme which helped me remembering what that word means. I better look it up in the Wikipedia.

Onomatopoeia
...is a word that sounds or describes the thing it stands for. It is simple. When we are small, people point at pigs and say oink. I love the german expression "Lautmalerei", which literally means painting with sounds. So simple.

Simplicity
...is when you know the words above and you can use them if you have to. Often the 5 Dollar word makes a good shortcut or hints that you will need to know how to solve differential equations, but if you really have to say something, take out your purse open it and use these rusty 50 cents...

As ordered: The shocking truth on the Hippo and statistical evidence

The Hippopotamus (or short Hippo) is a creature lying most of the day in bed. If the sun shines, the hippo is sleeping and when it is dark: sleeping again. One might think, that the hippo is depressed or sick. No.

The hippo is a stuffed animal. It was adopted at Ikea and brought straight to my civilized home, where it is used as a pillow or to amaze children. The real hippo is different - but I am not going to talk about size.


The wikipedia told me that there is an even smaller hippo, that the whale is kind of a big cousin to the hippo and that there's no statistical evidence that there are more deaths per year by hippos than by any other big animal in Africa. But what does the last fact mean?

Would he be so relaxed
with a hippo nearby?

Is statistical evidence the truth? No. It is not. Statistical evidence is to be seen as the approximate correctness. So statistical evidence can be 100% correct if you have a sample of 100%, i.e. all of everything. In case of the hippos that would mean something, but there could still be statistical evidence for a lot of accidents occuring with hippos. People could die due to the injuries in these accidents. Depending on the statistical data this would or would not count.
So statistical evidence is depending on data. What you could learn from the hippo: You cannot make something out of nothing, but there is statistical evidence that I will get a book from the shelf and meet the hippo on the sofa.


ABOUT: This story was ordered in a comment to Writing in non mother tongue by Rosa with the words Hippos (actually 3 times in a row).

My Girlfriend wants to have a decision about the wedding

I wrote about decisions earlier. Knowing or realizing things does not mean that you do them. So here I sit after a conversation with my girl. I realized I cannot go to the wedding. She does not know either if she wants to do it without me.

Man hates changes!

Did you think this post was on my wedding? Sorry, no wedding. It is again on decisions. Why do we hate decisions? Do we hate decisions because they imply changes? One might remember πάντα ῥεῖ (Everything flows) by Heraklit from school. I do not know what Heraklit thought when he coined this sentence. But he is right. We are already in a constant flow of changes.

Maybe this is why we hate changes.
Let's assume that the brain is efficient. If it is efficient the brain would be against all actions which lead to workload. So resisting against change could be kind of a loadbalancing functionality. It takes a bigger perspective to see that the change might bring improvements.

And then there is the rule of thumb: Never change a running system.

If you are interested in reading about Western philosophy I recommend the book by Bertrand Russell. It gives a brief history of the western world and philosophy, also describing social and technological changes.

Why everybody is keen on the best 10 things

ImreKalo has a short post titled The best five books on everything over at his blog. This made me think. Mostly because of the fact, that a lot of information we consume is organized in lists. I think in the direction of "The best Android apps", "Blurays with superb sound" and the charts. Why is it that way?

 I have some theories, but I only present you with the best three ;-)

1. We want to know what others like and what trends exist out there.
2. Too much choice is agony - Have you ever tried to choose an apple out of 50 varieties
3. A small number of recommendations might give you enough insight into one topic, so you can work alone from that point.

So there is obviously the advantage, that other people made the decision which information is important. The did the work for you. Think FAQ, think Tips and Tricks, think Wikipedia. 

Remember: The content and quality of information is in the hands of the gatekeeper. The right 5 books can put you into the position to understand the main concepts of a topic, they do not make you an expert. To get an expert you have to read some more.

What is the maximum number of books you read on one single topic?

Writing in non-mother tongue and the difference between efficent and effective

If you read through my posts and are native english speaker you might discover: English is definitely not his mother tongue. All others can find hints in pictures and texts. So my postings are definitely effective.

Vienna | Parliament

Vienna | National Library

I live in Vienna. The pictures show, that it is a dark country, mostly at night. You can not see many people in the pictures because they might be sitting in front of their TVs and Computers - just like in any other country. And people here speak German (if you meet one of us - Austrian would be the preferred word), so the texts can be seen as sub optimum efficient.

I think of writing in non-mother tongue as a good exercise in being efficient and effective. Do you know the difference?

Being efficient means doing the things right and being effective means doing the right things.

 The point is that I cannot remember why I starting writing in English. Maybe it is because English is widely spoken, maybe because I wanted to write in English. Who knows.
This might be the right time to order a story by writing something in the comments. Just in case I ever run out of things I could write about.

A short affair with tumblr

I have to admit: Tumblr is nice, very nice. And I was really thinking of switching...   ...for 314 milliseconds. It was a simple decision. I played with tumblr for an hour. Two thirds of the time I played with the design and when I was at the point, that I wanted to actually fill in content. I was realizing, that I loved to play with the design.

But I do this already with this blog. I lose time, because I love to play with the colors and the layout. Well I have a new rule: No changing the design of this blog until October. So I can concentrate on the content.

At the end of the day this is the return of the concept: Separate form and content. The form is often realized using a template and the content is edited separetly. You see it realized in content management systems, LaTeX or the wedding of CSS and HTML. The idea is also half realized in wordprocessing software. If you ever worked with naked HTML or LaTeX you know what happens when the flow kicks in, because you have do not have to think on the form.

Please help update my flagcounter

I discovered flagcounter on www.geocaching.com and fell in love with the idea of counting flags instead of hits. The only problem: There is no possibility to get the "old" hits into the counter. Can you help update my flagcounter? Thank you. Feel free to comment below and leave the adress of your blog.

When your brain makes you think and not the other way around

The weather this weekend was very nice. What do you do when the weather is nice? Yes, you go outside and visit the real life with oxygen, bugs and the other creatures...   ...people. Playing tourist in Vienna is fun. We went to places where we have not been before. We were strangers in our home town.
After city center you need something green and so we followed the tramway D to Nussdorf which is old and in the outskirts (see this picture and you will see, why it is so nice).

A lot of the tourists go there for the Beethoven house. One of many, I have to say: Beethoven lived in 36 houses in Vienna (Read an into deep article here - german only). Good for the fans, confusing for the "casual" tourist.

When standing in front of the Beethovenhaus Kahlenbergerstrasse 26 two elderly folks were talking about the house and how it looked like: devastated and falling apart. They thought that the people living in the house do not care for the house. Well this is what I thought at first also. But then it struck me. This is a historical monument. They are not allowed to change the original state. No painting wooden windows, repairing doors and so on without consulting the Bundesdenkmalamt (Austrian office for monuments).

Your brain will always tend to find a plausible explanation for everything around you. The more you know the trickier these actions get. Like the late Robert Anton Wilson said about the parts of your inner self "Whatever the Thinker thinks, the Prover will prove." And I do not know who said the following (if you know, let us all know): Man sees patterns everywhere, even if they are not there.
Do you use your brain or does your brain use you?

How smart phones and the web centralize your digital life again

I admit. This is from the point of a Android user, but I think it shouldn't be different if you have any other OS on your phone.
Basically we are at the end of a phase where there is no more need to carry around floppy disk (in case you cannot remember, click here). Actually the media got physically bigger first (Floppy disk, CD, DVD, external Harddisk) only to get smaller last (USB-Stick) and finally disappear. This is where the dropbox comes in. Online storage for free (BTW: If you use my link we both receive 250MB more).
This is where the second line comes in: Next to storage and carrying data from one place to another (the workaround to email everything back and forth does not count) is the fact, that we all use various computers. Various computers, files, versions... ...I think you get the point. So the idea is brilliant.
And the most brilliant idea of all was to make the cloud available for phones. So I have my calendar, my dropbox, my everything with me...
Can anybody tell me: If the cloud knows everything. What is the equivalent to a thunderstorm?

Is there a cultural difference in the meaning of danger?

Actually I was walking to pick up a geocache near Augarten when I found the sign which said something slightly different in English than in German. In English the park area is dangerous (due to a storm - which took place the night before). The German line says "Lebensgefahr" which basically is a threat to life.



So I bought some icecream around the corner and went in. There were elderly men playing Bocce, people playing chess, reading books and some were watching the trees shaken by the storm. The water on the lawn was crowded with crows drinking there.
And everything happened in the shadow of the ugly giant Flakturm G-Tower (oh yes - there is a second one of these buildings in the same park). Too much concrete for demolition inside a urban area. I wonder how many storms they saw without any scratch.

Never ask your girlfriend what you should write about

Why? The answer is so simple. "Write, that you love me." Why should I write about something as personal as my love to the woman in my life? Well at least I can write about something then. Because I know the old newspaper principle: SAC - Sex, animals and children. These should be things to reach people of every age, profession and equal sex.

I am so glad, I am writing this blog and no newspaper. So I can still decide what to write about. So I did. And I love her.

I will read this later

Of course. But do you have the right tools? This is no silly question. You might say: I have a printer. But is it worth the printing for the one time you read the article?
There is a site with the nice and self-explaining title Read it later list. What do you get? You receive the possibility to save links for later reading. This happens with bookmarklets or plugins. The good thing: There are clients for mobile platforms. I use Paperdroid (for Android) in the pro version myself to sync my list for reading in the underground (you can find a free version here). There are also other clients - even for IPhone. If you like you can drop a comment at the end of this blog.

My girlfriend is always right...

And the strange thing is that there is no contradiction to the fact that I am right at the same time. Well, the actual problem is: She is right in her reality and I am in mine.

What to read this summer...

So you managed to read all the books from your reading list? That's good. But before you hit the road to the next library, bookstore or just visit your favorite online bookdealer: What will you read next?
I hate this question and usually I end up visiting the store with a hunger for printed letters. You know the saying: Never shop hungry.
These are the times to remember links like http://www.yournextread.com/ (which also has a german flavor - to my delight) and http://bookseer.com/. But these are not the only ones: http://www.booklamp.org/, http://www.whichbook.net/ also come to my mind.

What do you use?