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Got this very interesting and heart-warming story of Irena Sendler presented in an email today.

Here first the story, then I will tell what impressed me most:

There recently was a death of a 98 year old lady named Irena.

During WWII, Iliana, got permission to work in the Warsaw Ghetto, as a Plumbing/Sewer specialist.

She had an ulterior motive…

She KNEW what the Nazi’s plans were for the Jews, (being German). Iliana smuggled infants out in the bottom of her tool box she carried, and she carried in the back of her truck a Burlap sack, (for larger kids). She also had a dog in the back, that she trained to bark when the Nazi soldiers let her in, and out of the ghetto. The soldiers of course wanted nothing to do with the dog, and the barking covered the kids/infants noises. During her time and course of doing this, she managed to smuggle out and save 2500 kids/infants. She was caught, and the Nazi’s broke both her legs, and arms, and beat her severely. Iliana kept a record of the names of all the kids she smuggled out, and kept them in a glass jar, buried under a tree in her back yard. After the war, she tried to locate any parents that may have survived it, and reunited the family. Most of course had been gassed. Those kids she helped got placed into foster family homes, or adopted.

Last year Iliana was up for the Nobel Peace Prize….
She LOST.

Al Gore won, for a slide show on Global Warming.
Check it out: www.irenasendler.org

I will say nothing about the story itself as I have decided quite some time ago that it is not possible for me to decide what about all the atrocities during WWII is true and what’s not. There are indications that’s just the story the victors want to tell to look good, but there is also the other side which would indicate that there really is something to all this mass murder.

But the fact that I have no first hand information and no way to get them, combined with my solidifying conviction that there is no independent reality I have given up deciding what historical story might be true.

So, nothing about saving Jewish kids, but what caught my attention was the tone of the writer in the last sentence, that Al Gore won the Nobel price for a slide show.

I just love it when politicians are finally seen for what they really are. And if the population starts to laugh about these guys for giving themselves prizes in self-adoration then I have high hopes for all of us that we will get over this celebritizing (hey, Oxford dictionary editors, this is a new word for you!) of our tyrants, kick them out and finally build a non-violent stateless society – one in which Irena would get acknowledged for her brave action.

Heaven is Where:

• The Police are British,
• The Chefs are Italian,
• The Mechanics are German,
• The Lovers are French and
• It’s all organized by the Swiss.

Hell is Where:

• The Police are German,
• The Chefs are British,
• The Mechanics are French,
• The Lovers are Swiss and
• It’s all organized by the Italians.

But I guess, judging from the latest development, the British as police is not quite heaven any more, so I suppose the above might be a bit outdated – time has even caught up with the British.

Synchronicity can be a scary thing.

Having just finished the Iron Web by Larken Rose I ran into a short excerpt from one of Douglas Adam’s Hitchhiker’s Guide books…

[An extraterrestrial robot and spaceship has just landed on earth. The robot steps out of the spaceship...]

“I come in peace,” it said, adding after a long moment of further grinding, “take me to your Lizard.”

Ford Prefect, of course, had an explanation for this, as he sat with Arthur and watched the nonstop frenetic news reports on television, none of which had anything to say other than to record that the thing had done this amount of damage which was valued at that amount of billions of pounds and had killed this totally other number of people, and then say it again, because the robot was doing nothing more than standing there, swaying very slightly, and emitting short incomprehensible error messages.

“It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see…”

“You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?”

“No,” said Ford, who by this time was a little more rational and coherent than he had been, having finally had the coffee forced down him, “nothing so simple. Nothing anything like to straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people.”

“Odd,” said Arthur, “I thought you said it was a democracy.”

“I did,” said ford. “It is.”

“So,” said Arthur, hoping he wasn’t sounding ridiculously obtuse, “why don’t the people get rid of the lizards?”

“It honestly doesn’t occur to them,” said Ford. “They’ve all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they’ve voted in more or less approximates to the government they want.”

“You mean they actually vote for the lizards?”

“Oh yes,” said Ford with a shrug, “of course.”

“But,” said Arthur, going for the big one again, “why?”

“Because if they didn’t vote for a lizard,” said Ford, “the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?”

“What?”

“I said,” said Ford, with an increasing air of urgency creeping into his voice, “have you got any gin?”

“I’ll look. Tell me about the lizards.”

Ford shrugged again.

“Some people say that the lizards are the best thing that ever happened to them,” he said. “They’re completely wrong of course, completely and utterly wrong, but someone’s got to say it.”

This great picture of today’s world of rulers and ruled finally prompts me to verbalize my thoughts on Mr. Adams. I do not want in any way diminish his accomplishments, but I think he was a medium channeling all these great pieces of wisdom packed into his books.

I watched, many years ago, after I was already totally enthralled by Mr. Adams nuggets of wisdom, a BBC show with and about Douglas Adams. It presented, amongst many other great info about the Hitchhiker’s Guide and it’s beginnings, some interviews with Mr. Adams. From his statements in these interviews there was no other possibility than that of external influence. The man being interviewed just did not seem to have the capacity to come up with mind-boggling wise answers to the question on how to learn to fly, which is, as any Douglas Adams reader knows,  “You throw yourself to the ground – - – and miss.”

As said earlier, my intention is not to take away from Mr. Adams accomplishments, it just is in a little bit different arena. He was the man who picked up these gems of insight from all over the space-time continuum and packaged them in a form that is – and there is no other more fitting word – mind-boggling.

Just take the quote above – is there still anybody who does not see – at least for a moment – how ridiculous it is that we accept, without revolting, our political system of governmental  lizards that everybody hates but votes for every few years nevertheless?

Back to the scary synchronicities I mentioned in the beginning – for me, finding this parable and reading the Iron Web, all within a few short day, is like an 11:11 event that breaks open the solidity of the universe and slapps the fact into my face that things can be seen very differently.

Yesterday, May 25th, was Towel Day. I spend bigger part of that day at the country club and have to admit that I was not sure of all these people with towels were really celebrating towel day or if the just brought the towels to dry themselves after the dip in the club’s lake.

I certainly hope that the crowd, from the 3 year to the 70 year old are aware of the significance of this day in memory of the late writer Douglas Adams, but the only person I actually was sure about was this gentleman…

He wanted to stay incognito, but confirmed my guess that he was indeed aware of the importance of towels in interstellar travel by answering my question by a firm “Don’t Panic!”

Cory Doctorow of boing-boing introduced me, and I believe a whole bunch of the boing-boing readers to the BBC comedy series “The IT Crowd” from which I learned the most important lesson for all IT work: “IT – - have you tried to turn it off and on again?”

Up to the beginning Cory had been very good in reminding us all to check the torrents whenever a new show had aired. Poor people outside the UK had to resort to that sort of piracy as the BBC online viewing was confined to the UK.

After quite a bit of a hiatus after the end of the second season I was ready for my third season and I immediately find the first show of season 3 and enjoyed it immensely.

But, Cory, either I did not read boing boing with enough attention or you slacked off because I did not learn of the following show.

Finally I remembered the other day, went ISO hunting and found out that the third season was already over. Sad in a way, but good in another because there was a torrent with all six episodes in one file.

Believe it or not – I had an IT Crowd marathon that night and it was so good that now I am revisiting the first two seasons again. For all of you, to save you the searching, here are all three season in one place…

• Season 1
• Season 2
• Season 3

Each of the files is about one Gig, so be prepared for some download time – but it’s so worth it.

Growing up in Germany, restrictions of gun ownership was just a way of life – you did not really consider owning one of those dangerous things.

That actually is not quite true in my case. I had once been beaten up by some drunken thugs, with a great danger that they would also do something nasty to  my littel sister being with me in my car (fortunately nothing happend in this department). At this time I had the thought of how good it would have been had I had the chance of self defense, instead of just waiting till they were done with me and then put a cold compresse on my swollen eyes.

My thoughts went even a bit further. One of the baddies had actually been apprehended right away and went to the slammer for a while, and I was worried that he would hold a grudge because I had been the one who identified him.

So, I actually did file an application for a hand gun license with the local police. To my surprise a cop actually showed up at my house and interviewed me. I must have flunked that badly because I never heard from them again. By the way, the baddie never actually showed up at my door to beat me up again.

About a decade later the situation was remedied by the fact that I moved to the US and one of my first actions was to arm myself. Since then things here in the US have gotten a lot more restrictive and I had to give up my rocket launcher – - – just kidding!

But I kept an eye on all things connected with self defense and gun restrictions. One of the countries with very strict laws against self defense is, as far as I know, the United Kingdom. There you actually become a criminal when you defend yourself with deadly force.

Therefore I was surprised when I got a link request from a British company – Farlows – that caters to shooters. In its website it actually has keywords like Men’s and Women’s Shooting Jackets and Shooting Accessories. So there is a gun culture in Great Britain!

Even though this is all about sports it is still comforting that the Brits have not allowed their masters to totally disarm them. Once all this turns around you will be able to buy rocket lauchers in the finer shopping areas of London.