Science Fiction, Fantasy & Human (& other) Beings in Peril

[Silent_Water]

It might sound a bit hypocritical, but I really mean the following sentences serious, because I am getting really more and more confused in our world of today and I am becoming too philosophical right now in a lonely German night.

Even in Germany, I can no more really draw a clear border-line between satire, cynicism, news, reality and fiction.

Sometimes, here, the satirists are better journalists than the journalists and some journalists became politicians and are better politicians than their adversaries.

I am also old enough to remember this night the US-TV-serial "Dynasty" of the 1980's and the discussion of those days, when real politicians took part in one episode.

Then, there was this book ...

Amusing Ourselves to Death - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

by ...

Neil Postman - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

... with the conclusion that our Western societies will reach a point, in which you can no more really make a difference between fiction and reality because all will become a matter of relativity.
Neil Postman quoted espcecially the episode of "Dynasty" with Henry Kissinger and Gerald Ford in it and said, this is the beginning of a dangerous decadence in Western entertainment society, because you will have problems to make a difference between fiction and real politics.

So, there will be a point when you are watching a TV screen and you can no more decide if this is e.g. a real legal proceeding in a court about a real crime of rape or if this is only a movie about a fictional crime or if this is fiction or reality because the politicians will one day show no more difference from actors in a soap opera like "Dynasty" and whom do you want rather to believe - Henry Kissinger in the episode of "Dynasty" or Henry Kissinger in the real White House?
And when would he be more influential to the population? In Dynasty (much more audience than in press conferences!) or in the White House?
What would the fans of "Dynasty" have said? Fiction and Reality is all the same?

And when would a comment of Kissinger in Dynasty or in the White House really be SCIENCE FICTION, FANTASY or becoming REALITY?

And possibly, Postman said, you will in the future only wake up when the victim was a real person in a real crime and the person may be dead - but then it will be already too late to wake up from "amusing yourself to death" by mixing fiction with reality.

And now, I honestly ask everyone here about this video at the end of this posting - what is this for you and what will it be for you in one month or one year?
A funny satire about reality?

This evening, having time to look at many statistics and mathematical projections of the coronavirus worldwide, I find the video at the end "sick" and "cynical" already in two ways: The real comments sound silly and cynical only some weeks later but also the complete video itself is now cynical for me because of the music and the complaining about the silly persons in it and I really do not know any more to count all things in and about this video which does not make me laugh but it makes me really sad in a depressive way because the dying persons during the coming weeks will be really dead in reality!

So, what is this video now for you as an audience?
Sick cynical humour, satire about politics, real politics with really dead victims or still entertainment?
How sick and stubborn have we all, journalists, politicians, comedians and also we - the audience of all of this - become before the coronavirus shows us now how short our life can be?
And will real death still wake us up yet from our "amusement"? Or am I simply a bit too depressive about human sillyness this evening?

 

[Silent_Water]

Sometimes, it is really very good to still have some highly specialized "almost-sci-fi-companies" which were almost sold or outsourced to richer multinational corporations in other countries which would have split such companies into different segments.

The German "Drägerwerk" is such an example.

Dräger (company) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

...

In addition to my earlier posting above, I found an English "Spiegel'"-article with the CEO and heir of "Drägerwerk".
This article might also be of interest for readers who liked the posting:

German Ventilator Manufacturer: "Absolutely Mission Impossible"

Drägerwerk is a world leader in the production of ventilators. In an interview, company head Stefan Dräger, 57, discusses the challenges of keeping up with current demand as the corona crisis accelerates.

www.spiegel.de

 

[Silent_Water]

According to newspaper-informations by virologists and doctors in Germany, the coronavirus seems to have more characteristics which were unknown before from viruses.
For example, the losing of the ability of smelling and tasting in an earlier stadium of the disease can now be confirmed in Germany.
This may lead to further "unpleasant" assumptions: In an influenza or in a simple cold, you usually lose this ability because the mucuous membranes are swollen or overflooded with secretion. This is not the case with the coronavirus, so this virus is most probably able to block parts of the nerve connections to the brain and it is still unknown how this virus can do that.
Informations by this article "How does Covid-19 block the sense of smelling?" in the "popular scientific" newspaper "Spektrum der Wissenschaft":

Coronavirus-Symptom: Wie blockiert Covid-19 den Geruchssinn?

Viele mit Sars-CoV-2 Infizierte können anscheinend nicht mehr riechen. Warum nicht?

www.spektrum.de

Even worse, there are now informations from a home for old patients of dementia and Alzheimer in the German city of Wolfsburg, in which one male nurse brought the virus from outside without knowing it. In this home, 15 old persons died within 2 consecutive nights without showing any dangerous looking symptoms of this Covid-19 disease but some of them remarked they did not taste any more anything and it really was an infection by Covid-19.

In the mornings, it really looked for the personnel like death in a sci-fi-horror-movie could walk through the walls of this home, killing every sleeping old person in his room and no one knew exactly how death was doing this.

The still unproven but very plausible assumption by the medical experts in order to explain this "unusual sudden death at night" is as follows:

In these cases, the virus was probably able to block the automatic breathing process which is usually controlled by the brain even when the person is sleeping or unconscious.
It is a bit similar to someone who is suffering from "sleep apnea" in which the persons are snoring, their tongues are hindering their breathing and suddenly the breathing stops for up to one minute. The automatic brain function is usually making the body shiver or causing a shockmove or waking up the person in order to restart breathing again but the persons suffering from "sleep apnea" are usually feeling in the morning like they did not sleep enough and always tired because this can happen several times at night when they have this apnea.

And now imagine this sleep apnea with an old brain in an old weak body which is already suffering from dementia, additionally combined with an illness like Covid-19 blocking the nerves between brain and body receptors!

This could also be the explanation for cases of much younger persons who only showed mild symptoms of Covid-19 but who were suddenly found dead in the morning after having gone to sleep without any real problems.

Most younger persons probably will survive without knowing that they were already ill or already have survived Covid-19 without showing such or even any symptoms at all - but you will never know how this virus individually affects your body.

These are coincidences no one is able to control!

And so, this disease is really NOT like influenza, it is much, much, much more insidious and dangerous!

Ungewöhnliche Corona-Verläufe: Tod ohne Symptome

Das Coronavirus breitet sich zunehmend in Altenheimen aus. Die Einrichtungen vermelden ungewöhnliche Verläufe der Erkrankung. Steckt mehr in dem Virus als bekannt?

www.zdf.de

 

[Silent_Water]

Just two hours ago, there appeared an article in one of my most favourite German information sources which are using often irony and sarcasms in order to inform the nation.
In this article "Hocus-Pocus against Corona", the editors of "Der Spiegel" listed the most absurd medical treatments and conspiracy theories from all over the world about the origins of this virus and how to treat it, for example by "natural drinks" from miracle practitioners who are also political friends of the president (Maduro, Venezuela) or burning down a certain plant in the steppe, which is usually known to cause hallucinations (Berdimuhamedow, Turkmenistan).
So, if you are an European or an American citizen and you think, it could not be worse, you are wrong! Nothing in this world is so bad that it could not even get worse!

Certainly, there are also countries which do not have one single recorded case of the coronavirus. In some countries, we can believe it because these are islands somewhere in the middles of the oceans of this world, e.g. Samoa, Kiribati, Tuvalu, Tonga (!?).

In other countries, it is more difficult to believe, e.g. North-Korea, because there you usually must have the personal permission of the God-like president Kim Jong-un to leave your workplace in order to become ill, so the most persons in this nation do not even dare to die.
The other question rising from one of the latest pictures of one of Kim Jong-un's most favourite senseless hobbies - watching military manoeuvres - is why his generals all wear masks and he does not. Maybe, because he is a God and they do not become ill by definition:

Corona: Lügen und Verschwörungstheorien behindern die Bekämpfung

Verharmlosen, falsch informieren, irreführen, ablenken: vier Methoden, wie Politiker weltweit den Kampf gegen die Corona-Pandemie behindern.

www.spiegel.de

 

[Hugin&Munin]

Thanks for the publications.

 

[Silent_Water]

But to mention something completely different:

During the last days, I had time to look for some videos of music from my youth and if I ever get the chance to make a time travel, I would like to visit the early live performances of groups which were not yet at the absolute peak of their later fame.

So, if anyone here knows where I can buy a flux capacitor (in the German movie version it's a "compensator", I think?!) and a DeLorean car, please tell me!

And it should have the inner space of a city bus, because after you have seen this, you most probably will join me in my time ride to the musical heroes of my youth.

There were groups in the late 1960s and early 1970s who probably rather had adrenalin in their coffees instead of caffeine when they were really young.

Or for example, could you have imagined ABBA like this, when you knew them only from their TV performances around 1980?

(I have heard a rumour about an unbelievable live performance of ABBA in Hamburg around 1970, when they were still unknown and did not even have the name "ABBA", in which Agnetha and Annifrid were said to have had short appearances "topless" on stage in order to make the audience "hot", but no one made photos because they were unknown at this time and so, I certainly did not really believe this rumour until today ... on the other hand, after you see these following videos, it could have been possible ... hm ... well ...
I really desperately need the DeLorean and the flux capacitor in order to prove if this rumour about the performance in Hamburg in 1970 is based on true facts! Pleeease!)

 

[Silent_Water]

... and back to our real lifetime in our present unhappy days:

In the latest news around the globe, you might have the impression that "normal life" and the existence of the coronavirus will be impossible at the same time.
Unfortunately, you might be right because I myself thought we could learn a lot from South-Korea and Singapore, where the governments seemed to have done everything right in order to contain the virus .... and then you read the latest news from Singapore and South-Korea, which make you really sad and unhappy and afraid of a coming life for all of us which might have more in common with an absurd roller coaster ride than with our rather comfortable life in Europe and Northern America before this virus appeared.

On the one hand, we all cannot live forever with the restrictions which seem to be necessary to contain possible new infections - on the other hand, how could you lift the current restrictions in the world when you read these following news?

1. South-Korea suddenly makes experiences with this virus which seem to differ a lot from ours in Germany but we are some weeks behind the development in Asia and we Europeans still do not know what we shall think or what to do with these newer informations:

Coronavirus May ‘Reactivate’ in Cured Patients, Korean CDC Says

The coronavirus may be “reactivating” in people who have been cured of the illness, according to Korea’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

www.bloomberg.com

Virus reaktiviert? Experten rätseln über positive Corona-Tests bei genesenen Patienten

Bisher galt in der Coronakrise die Annahme als allgemeiner medizinischer Konsens, dass man als Covid-19-Patient nach überstandener Krankheit zunächst einmal für eine gewisse Zeit Immunität aufgebaut habe. Eine aktuelle Studie aus Südkorea bringt jedoch neue Erkenntnisse. In einer Testreihe wurde...

www.focus.de

Südkorea verwundert mit "Reaktivierung"

Wer die Infektion mit dem Coronavirus überstanden hat, gilt als immun. Doch 51 Fälle aus Südkorea bereiten nun Anlass zur Sorge. Die vermeintlich geheilten Patienten seien erneut positiv getestet, heißt es. Das Virus habe sich "reaktiviert" - was ein Widerspruch zu deutschen Erkenntnissen ist.

www.n-tv.de

2. Singapore had done everything right in the beginning, tracing and testing everyone who was suspicious of being infected, being able to find out who brought the virus in first ... and now the second wave and they cannot find out any more the ways of infections. (Damned be this virus!)

Singapore's second wave of cases is a glimpse at what the US may be in for

As the Trump administration eyes loosening restrictions, some estimates show that the US has yet to hit the peak of its coronavirus outbreak.

www.businessinsider.com

Coronavirus in Singapur: Die gefährliche zweite Welle

Der Stadtstaat Singapur gilt eigentlich als Vorbild im Kampf gegen Covid-19. Inzwischen steigen aber auch dort die Infektionszahlen wieder.

www.sueddeutsche.de

 

[Silent_Water]

Some pictures - screen shots - from the last weeks which may be worth to be remembered for their emotional, "science-fictional" or historical reasons:

 

[Silent_Water]

Asia is a bit different in times of Coronavirus and India is somehow remembering me this evening of a scene in "Life of Brian".
The Indian police in Rishikesh ordered 10 tourists who did not respect the lock-down to write 500 times "I am sorry not to have respected the law of the lock-down!"
Interesting idea ... ... and the policemen who are informing the people about the coronavirus really have now impressive helmets:

Indien

Indien

www.tagesschau.de

 

[Silent_Water]

But everywhere around the world, times are changing fast under the influence of the coronavirus as I just could read:

Coronavirus

Coronavirus

www.tagesschau.de

Translation into English:

Corona times

A real blessing - shot out of a gun

Not all news about the corona crisis is bad: there are reports every day about helpful people or original ideas to give life a little normalcy. This also applies to higher orders.

Yes, the churches are also prepared for the pandemic: services are available online, the Pope's blessing can be streamed or downloaded. Even his sins can be confessed online for a long time.
So far, so good, wouldn't there be those rites where physical presence is absolutely necessary - like the blessing with holy water, which is always hygienically questionable for the medical puritans, even in non-pandemic times.

The pastor's brilliant Easter idea

Or "was": The Catholic pastor Timothy Pelc from Grosse Pointe Park near the car city Detroit has now found a way to bless parishioners' Easter baskets with holy water despite the pandemic. For the feast of the resurrection, he uses two ancient American sanctuaries: cars and weapons. In front of his church, he set up a kind of drive-in counter where his sheep can have their baskets sprinkled with holy water from a safe distance through the open side window.

For this he uses several water pistols - according to our research, among other things, a "Super Soaker A4839E25 Zipfire" with 100 ml capacity and a maximum shooting distance of six meters. According to the manufacturer, suitable for shooters aged 6 months to 6 years.
It is not known whether Father Pelc also uses the short-range weapon to carry out Christian baptisms or strictly follows the instructions for use, according to which the "Super Soaker A4839E25 Zipfire" should not be aimed at the face.

There is still room for improvement

Unfortunately, Pelc does not yet offer a Drive-In Supper for consecrated wafers. Maybe because he hasn't found the right host accelerator yet. The "RFDS3816 Rapid Fire Disc Shooter" might be suitable for this, which would be suitable, but is currently not available. Then there would be the model of David, who did great things with a simple sling.

We will see ...

 

[Silent_Water]

It is somehow fascinating what human beings can do even when they are "crazy". I just read an article about a man who was absolutely unable to care for himself or live on his own after his mother died.
His whole life after was an odyssey through the psychiatry of the former German Democratic Republic where he died in 1988 at the age of 78 years.
He was said to have been always friendly but a fan of all conspiracy theories of those times before and after the second world war. Most of his writings - and models - have been thrown away but the director of his last psychiatric institute thought, his drawings were so unique and sometimes like from a modern Leonardo da Vinci that he kept them in a room of the attic under the roof.
When this institute closed, his drawings were found again and now, there is a small society which made the drawings of this Karl Hans Janke public and some of them are so astonishing that even scientists are surprised because this man should have had some contact with real rocket scientists although it is unknown any more who this might have been.
Some of the imaginary rockets and airplanes in the drawings and sketches of this "crazy man" are driven by a kind of electro-magnetic-atomic energy which does not exist (yet?), so some modern "conspiracy theorists" say, this man or a part of his mind could have been from a "time traveller" who lost his mind when he came to our 20th century.

In any case, his drawings are really impressive with a very nice writing and explanations of the drawings for a "crazy man" with many mental problems, because he drew sketches of every details in his space ships as if he was already in one of those which certainly never existed:

A space ship toilet which could really work:



A bicycle driven by Janke's "electro-magnetic-atomic energy":



The "Fastest Airplane ever built on Earth" (somewhere in the future?), driven by the same "energy":



A space shuttle for the discovery of other planets:



Rocket engines for flights to other star systems:



Other airplanes and spaceships from the future (and remember: the man who made these sketches between 1950 and 1978 and wrote so neat and tidy was "crazy" and unable to care for himself!)

Karl Hans Janke: Der Weltmenschheit größter Erfinder?

Der Erfinder Karl Hans Janke hat überschall-schnelle Flugzeuge, motorisierte Roller und Raketenschiffe erdacht. Er hat die Energieprobleme der Menschheit gelöst und wollte sie zu neuen Planeten führen. Dennoch ist er kaum jemanden ein Begriff und keine dieser Erfindungen wurde je realisiert...

1e9.community

 

[Apostate]

Incredibly interesting stuff. Thanks .

It was in 2000 when numerous boxes and fruit trays were carried out of a barren storage room of the former psychiatric institution at Hubertusburg Castle. They were packed with sketches and drawings. For several years they were kept in the roof structure of a building in the huge complex in Wermsdorf, Saxony, which now had to be cleared for urgently needed renovation and renovation work. Don't forget, "but they had been ignored there," Dirk Petzold told 1E9. The historian has been trying to work through the history of drawings and the life of their creator for 17 years now. Because what can be seen in these pictures are, in the truest sense of the word, fantastic constructions that resemble a historical and creative treasure of gold.

They are huge spaceships, elegant airplanes and streamlined automobiles that could just as well be depicted on the covers of science fiction novels and comics. Likewise, mysterious generators and motors are torn on the drawing papers, which inevitably remind one of Leonardo da Vinci's drawings. These obscure devices and futuristic means of transportation with miraculous names such as Terra Venusse, three-stage atomic magnetic lightning jet engine or vacuum trajectory are overwritten. Each of the pictures is signed with a date and a clearly written signature. It is the signature of Karl Hans Janke, who spent a large part of his life in psychiatry.

TRA 014

 

[Silent_Water]

These are really strange times. Since last week, there are news from all around the world that animals are coming right into the emptied cities, sometimes even when they should still have enough feed / fodder at their natural places. Maybe some of them feel not only hungy but also a bit insecure & curious without any human beings around and want to see what is suddenly wrong with the humans?
Probably the cities give some of them more shelter from their natural enemies, but even these dangerous animals are now appearing where they have not been seen for a long time - or never before.

Up to now at least 3 cougars in Chile's capital Santiago:



Deer in Japan, sometimes correctly complying to the traffic regulations:



Foxes at Berlin's Alexanderplatz and in front of the Leipziger central train station, hares at the Frankfurter Airport:



Wild pig families in the center of Berlin and also in Haifa, Israel:



Nature can be really fast in reconquering spaces.

Die Natur erobert die menschenleeren Städte

Wildschweine sind auf Sightseeingtour, Hirsche betrachten Schaufenster. In Berlin und anderswo entdecken Tiere die Ruhe der Coronazeit.

www.tagesspiegel.de

 

[Silent_Water]

There seem to be some more Science-Fiction-Stories which were not mentioned yet in this thread but may help to make a vision of our near future:



It is an excerpt from this article:

The social-distancing deniers have arrived

Patience is in ever-shorter supply. No one is happy with the current situation. But some Americans see the yoke of oppression in public health efforts to keep people home, and they're growing louder.

edition.cnn.com

By the way: I do not completely understand the new German regulation that smaller private business companies with a size up to 800 square meters - and only these - are allowed to reopen from Monday on, when they have measures to keep a distance between customers of 1,50 meters.

I was just buying food in a German ALDI shop 2 hours ago where I felt a bit like in the high-security-wing of the German national bank where our banknotes and state bills are printed. The cashier girls are now sitting behind plexi-glass and every bought package is now drawn through a little tunnel, so they do not really have to touch something you were touching before. They now preferred credit cards with sensor payment and people who want to pay by cash are a bit regarded like aliens from another planet, because you can no more put cash money directly in the hand of a cashier girl. The customers have to put it down on a special plate which is desinfected after every use and then put into the registration. When I remember my ALDI-visits from last christmas, it is really like a visit to another planet.
On the other hand, everyone was very friendly and keeping the distance rules - again, like on another planet.
But when I remember correctly, there were at least 5 possibilities for me to be infected by an unhappy coincidence, e.g. by touching the shopping cart, moving across the imaginary way of other customers who were just at the refrigerators or at the fresh salad etc.
Being German and loving perfectionism, my shopping tours are now making me really unhappy during the last weeks because to be really as sure as possible not to be infected, you would have to use an astronaut's equipment or a rubber condome around your whole body - and even then: how do you get out of it by not touching a part which could be infected?
Certainly, it is good and necessary to keep the distancing rules but this coronavirus can catch you by accident like a roofing tile falling down from anywhere.
Unfortunately, this is the risk of life anyway or as Germans say: "Das Leben ist ziemlich lebensgefährlich!" ("Life is quite dangerous for life!")

In any case, at first I wanted to complain about the new German regulations which I do not really understand but then I saw and read these articles and I will now postpone my typical German complaining about Germany until next week. Maybe, I will understand more in the coming days.

Coronavirus

Coronavirus

www.tagesschau.de

COVID-19 Safety Ranking | DKG

www.dkv.global

COVID-19 Risk Ranking | DKG

www.dkv.global

Deutschland ist das sicherste Land Europas

Im weltweiten Vergleich von 40 Ländern, die gegenwärtig unter der Coronavirus-Pandemie leiden, schneidet Deutschland besonders gut ab. Die rasche Eindämmung des Virus und die wirtschaftlichen Perspektiven überzeugen. Global gesehen kommt in der Untersuchung nur ein Land besser weg.

www.n-tv.de

I really think, it is nice for Germany to be in the second place in a ranking directly behind Israel.

 

[Dorothy Brown]

I Don`t Think We Can Take Those Dorothy

 

[Silent_Water]

I have never seen before such extraterrestrial water hydrants. On which planet were they manufactured?

 

[Dorothy Brown]

Zog i think, that base picture was a one off as far as i can see
but if you know of a set please can you point me in the
right direction, Barbaria seem`s to have missed this one

 

[Silent_Water]

Oh yes, it is only logical that a planet with dragons must have such huge water hydrants:

 

[montycrusto]

 

[Barbaria1]

I Don`t Think We Can Take Those Dorothy

Beam us up Scotty ... fast!