Standards vs. ergonomy
The main entrance door to the Deutsche Post branch office at Frankfurt railway station.
There’s a fire safety regulation in German law which says that such doors have to open to the outside so that in case of emergency, the panic crowd may escape without any obstacles.
Despite of this regulation and although most doors in shops and offices are designed to this standard, many customers stil PUSH the door to the inside until they realize it opens by pulling the handle. There even is a sticker that says ZIEHEN (= pull).
Always reminds me of Gary Larson’s “School for the Gifted“.
Our future is in Africa
An election poster for the upcoming elections in the Federal State of Hessen. Instead of the usual mugshots of fugly politicians, these guys came up with the image of a tractor, OPEL logo, the Transrapid, a nuclear power plant and some messages that are supposed to attract floating voters.
While I think that Europe and Africa should team up and support each other, the “Bürgerrechtsbewegung Solidarität” (BüSo) is in fact a very small right wing party with quite extreme ideologies. Germany, Europe, the world may indeed need to rethink what really matters – but voters should also inform themselves about the political parties and understand the real message behind such propaganda + how they are being lured into the world of extremists.
Their candidate talks about the “Africanisation” of Germany – e.g. how living standards have deteriorated over the years, similar to many African states (sic!) – and how the German economy nowadays relies on products from the outside.
While most parties actually suck and have similar concepts, it’s still much better to have a working democracy instead of fashists from the US who try to undermine Europe. Somehow similar to what Declan Ganley does in Ireland, but on another level.
paper world
Paris Hilton on the cover of “intelligent life“, a lifestyle magazin by The Economist.
Are you bored enough to read or at least page through any lifestyle magazine these days IF instead there’s something else called internet?
And two more questions on the traditional media (e.g. print):
a) How often do you, as a reader of this blog, read printed lifestyle magazines? And where? Do you buy them?
b) From my perspective as an internet geek (or “internetty”, as a colleague called it one day): where do you read, hear, see the general news? Do you read a (daily) newspaper on a regular basis and supplement this with some extra magazines? Or have you completely moved your news-addiction to the onlinesphere?
Am asking because I think that it’s especially the older generation that still prefers print editions + have been wondering on how this impacts on society in general.
