The event is known around the world: Burning Man. After a two year hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Burning Man has returned to the Black Rock Desert in northern Nevada for its annual week-long event. Running from August 28th to September 4th, 2023, this year’s Burning Man has seen the largest crowds ever, with over 80,000 attendees converging on […]
Authors Cornelius
13 posts
Based on the historical observation, however, that certain cultures, like our own “modern” culture, for example, have a greater tendency than other cultures to bracket the dimension of presence and its implications, I have come to propose a typology between “meaning cultures” and “presence cultures.”
Oakland in 2022 is a town with many problems, and a very high murder rate (There were 107 murdered people between January 1 and October 30, 2022). Nevertheless, it is also a resilient city, and its diverse communities celebrate their cultures in spite of difficult circumstances. One of those yearly events is the Mexican “Dia de los Muertos,” celebrated in […]
Much of our humanity consists of stories that speak of tragedy, misfortune, conflict, deep emotions, or humor. Here is a story that originates from Babylon. The accompanying picture is a wood relief from Dresden, 1656, created by Johann Georg Fischer. Pyramus and Thisbe are lovers who ran into really bad luck. The story forms part of Ovid‘s Metamorphoses. It has been retold many […]
How do prime numbers intersect with the Fibonacci series? As we know, prime numbers are distributed randomly, which means there is no algorithm that will predict prime numbers: finding them requires enormous computing power. There are many primes in the low range of natural numbers: Between 1 to 100 there are 25 prime numbers: 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, […]
"It is not without importance to know—and this is perhaps the European experience of the twentieth century—whether the egalitarian and just State [and its politics] in which the European is fulfilled … proceeds from a war of all against all—or from the irreducible responsibility of the one for the other." (“Peace and Proximity,” 1984.)
The holiday season starts with Thanksgiving (end of November) and lasts throughout December. It includes Hannukah, the Winter solstice, Kwanzaa, Christmas, as well as a few other memorable events, like our tribute to consumerism, Black Friday. The year of 2020 was extreme: A pandemic, massive political protests, the worst wildfire season in California’s history, and more fire smoke in the Bay Area […]
“To leave out beautiful sunsets is the secret of good taste.” (Dejan Stojanovic.) Well, occasionally we fail. A spontaneous walk in the evening, without much expectation, and suddenly, there it was, this sunset over the Bay Area, viewed from Tilden Park. In California we are fortunate enough to have the Ocean in the West, which means that the sun sinks into the ocean, if […]
It’s about a thousand miles to drive on Highway 1 from San Francisco to Port Angeles, the northern-most town that connects the US and Canada. The drive along the ocean is beautiful, through vast coastal landscapes and ancient forests. One can find some of the tallest and oldest trees in the world along this remote coastline, small fishing towns, Indian reservations, and several world-famous National Parks. I travelled […]
There is an article about Sperm Whales in the New York Times that talks about their modes of communication. They seem to have an elaborate language we don’t understand yet. The sperm whale is the largest of the toothed whales and the largest predator on earth. Mature males average 16 metres (52 ft) in length, with some reaching more than 20 […]
Venice Beach is California at its best: the diversity, irreverence, and playfulness of Venice Beach attracts millions of visitors every year. With all its diversity, it seems to remain what it always was: Street shops for tattoos, marijuana, and T-shirts, entertainers performing their shows with sizable audiences, graffiti, ballgames, roller-blades, and tourists. There is a back side, an older portion […]
I want to live I want to know I want to love I want to be loved I love to know I want to eat I want to sleep I want to dream I want to die
It’s interesting to look at some long-term world trends at the end of 2013. The graphs appear more normalized, for instance with the population growth rate above. Countries like Nigeria (see population chart below) are unfortunate exceptions. How will the world really look like in 2050? Trends are extrapolations from current and past data, enhanced with some mathematical modeling. Forecasts […]