I guess I could re-post my earlier post about big prints. I saw a couple of shows which had huge, amazingly badly printed photos - I was literally stunned to see the photos. Everybody I talked to said the same thing (without me even mentioning the print quality). Unbelievable.

And then I also went to the New Museum with its fancy new building. It escapes me, though, why they would want to open the museum showing art that looks like it's out of a first-year class at some community college art program.

Needless to say, with this kind of political discourse there's no way we'll be making any kind of progress; assuming, of course, that "progress" is more than just a theoretical construct - something I'm not so sure of any longer.

There also is no way for any person to keep whatever is left of his or her sanity, and that's where it starts to bother me. In the end, I do not want to just ignore what is going on. Being German means I always have the big question in my head why people didn't do anything seventy years ago when their country was sliding into the abyss that ended in an orgy of destruction.

You don't have to assume that the circumstances then were the same as they are now to realize that that is where the problem is: What can or should the individual do when he or she realizes that the society he or she is living in is moving towards something that doesn't look too appealing? Keep in mind that in retrospect, it's quite easy for us to make a statement about the past - we have extensive knowledge of the past; but given our non-existing knowledge of the future it would be foolish to rule out anything.

That brings me back to where this post started: I sometimes succeed in ignoring the latest "news", but eventually, I come back to looking at what happened, only to immediately regret it. It just keeps getting worse. The kind of people that we seem to be willing to sacrifice for our "security" now also include Brazilians in the London subway. It's quite sad to see that most people don't realize that maybe that's where the problem is: As long as we think it's OK to kill other people some of those other people will get angry enough to make an attempt to kill us. It's as simple as that.

And you, or probably I should say: I can't disconnect the stuff that I like to do (photography, amongst other things) from life in general or the larger picture or whatever else you want to call it. Because it's foolish to think you can disconnect it; and as many photographers know, even if you're just interested in photography, you're suddenly restricted in what you want to do because of "security" reasons.

Hence, there will be the occasional post here about politics; and sometimes, there will be a few days of silence as I'm trying to reassemble my sanity after having looked at too much of what they call "the news". That's what you get when you visit the weblog of somebody who's not dumb enough not to worry about where things are heading and not smart enough to figure out how to deal with it.

But there has been quite a lot of valid criticism and, unfortunately, the movie makes it relatively easy for almost anybody to do that - including intellectual embarrassments such as Iraq war cheerleader Christopher Hitchens who feels he can finally show off what he thinks is his stunning intellect again, after having been silenced by the utter failure of the adventure he was supporting.

The movie contains all of this - and Moore (pardon the lame pun), and that is the main problem. Some aspects are discussed in depth. The Saudi-Bush connection is covered in a quite a bit of detail. That would have been a good documentary on its own. Isn't it a big problem to have a president who has such a large vested interest in another country?

The last half of the movie shows how poor people are lured into the army. If Michael Moore had decided to focus the movie on that alone that would have been "great". I'm using the quotes here because inherently, there's nothing good and satisfying about seeing poor kids being drafted to fight wars. And I mean kids. Many of those soldiers shown could be my own children - if I had kids and if I had started early enough. Given I am only 36 I find that quite shocking. When you see those young kids talking about how they hook up their CDs to their tanks' PA systems (Apocalypse Now anyone?) and when you then see Britney Spears talking about how she supports the president no matter what you realize something is very wrong.

But getting it all in one big chunk just doesn't work even if you fit it into two hours. To make matters worse, Michael Moore fails to connect all the pieces properly. Things get incoherent and, even worse, contradictory. An example: He spends a lot of time showing the ties of the Bush family to Saudi Arabia, that happens to be a major oil exporter and one of the worst Islamic dictatorships in the Middle East. But then the movie indicates the Iraq war was about oil. How does that compute? How would the Saudis benefit from having their neighbour's oil reserves opened up and prices - including Saudi profits - driven down? And how would the leadership of Saudi Arabia benefit from suddenly having a democracy next door (provided you're willing to believe what Bush jr said, namely that he wants to bring democracy to the Middle East)? That just doesn't compute.

And the movie's omissions are also quite hard to stomach for me. I am fully aware of the fact that any documentary has to omit something. But when you talk about the Iraq war and how Bush jr "duped" people wouldn't it be worth more than one second to show how Democrats were only too happy to vote for the war? That one second I'm referring to is a clip that shows Tom Daschle and Richard Gephardt (the same Dick Gephardt who now supposedly is such a good running mate for Democratic hopeful John Kerry who, despite having been so happy about voting for the war, isn't even mentioned!) supporting basically anything their president wants to do. Wouldn't it be a good opportunity to show how Democrats bear responsibility, too? It simply doesn't work to blame it all on the media.

And wouldn't it be time to wonder whether there is a problem when, it seems, the only reason most Democrats think there's something wrong with the Iraq war it's just that too many US soldiers die? Is that it? As bad as dead soldiers are - the movie shows the suffering of one mother - the damage done by this invasion is much bigger than that. The standing of the US in the world and the US economy itself have suffered to an extent unimaginable only a few years back. Do the people, who after the movie hand out flyers for John Kerry, seriously believe you just have to replace Bush jr with that rich horse-faced Senator and all will be well again? Please!

Given the political climate, probably only the already converted will go to see it. One needn't expect any Republicans to do that - which is quite a shame. Lots of those people who support the war in Iraq no matter what and who shout "Support the troops" almost mechanically would be quite shocked to see what their war really looks like. But they won't watch the movie. Instead, the country will be more polarized than ever. People will shout at each other and then, on November 2, the candidate with the better hair will win.

A couple of final things that needs to mentioned, I think: These days, people are obsessed by facts - provided they agree with their view of the world - and some people will try to show how Michael Moore gets some facts wrong. I doubt they will be successful - again with the caveat that facts these days are what you believe in. And, lastly, some people will claim that Michael Moore's movie is too propagandistic because of its editing and the way some of the footage is used. Does that matter? I don't think it does. First, viewers of Faux News get that kind of stuff every single night as "the news" - along with ultra-right-wing commentators posing as "fair and balanced". And second, there is enough reason to think that the kind of uncommitting, fuzzy, fluffy and eventually inconsequential reporting that you get on NPR sometimes has to be replaced with something a bit harsher.

Now, you could compare it with the distance you have to walk to get into your car but that, of course, wouldn't make much sense. Parking spaces are a problem but I bet your car is closer to your home than 56000000 km. If you were really lucky yesterday, you managed to get that closest parking spot possible for your car and at the same Mars was closest to Earth in 60000 years. That would have almost been a trifecta except that you don't really speak any foreign languages and the "tri" in there stands for a "three" pronounced with an Indian accent. So at most you had a difecta but that's no word. But it sounds pretty close to what you have when you get too excited about meaningless science, namely a problem.

Disclaimer: The author of this article is a professional astrophysicist.

In one of Thomas Bernhard's novels, the narrator he had to get away from the places where he grew up, the places which he hates, to be able to get closer to them.

In a sense, Wilhelmshaven is maybe an archetypical German town where people live harbouring an odd mix of resentment, provinciality, and depression. That's what Germany is all about: Resentment, provinciality, and depression. To a varying degree you can see that mix in any German town. It is strongest but most well hidden where you don't expect it - like in Munich which visitors always praise for its "life" and "charm", but once you live there you realize how stifling its atmosphere really is - and it is most easily noticable where people don't make any effort to put up a facade. Like in Wilhelmshaven. In Wilhelmshaven, you will have no problem finding somebody who will tell you how bad life is and how bad the city is they are living in (in Munich people claim the complete opposite but they're bad liars). And when you ask them why they don't move away you don't get an answer or you'll hear all those reasons why that's not possible. It's much easier to complain than to do something about it.

Open a German newspaper or magazine and you find that if a journalist is talking about Germany or a German city or actor or group she/he is basically saying how bad Germany, that German city, or that actor or group is compared with what you find elsewhere. Germans have perfected complaining and whining about their situation to an extent which can only be described as grotesque given the fact that on the average, Germans are much better off than, say, Americans (no, we're not talking about the number of TV sets per household here). But Germans like to think that everything German is somehow inferior. The hard thing to understand now is that at the same time, Germans also think that lots of German things are actually superior (that statement in itself is probably easy to understand). So they'll claim that German movies are very bad and when you nod they're pissed off because they want to hear that there are some good German movies. But when you point out some good German movies you will find that people disagree with you. It's quite absurd.

A very weird consequence of these German character traits is that Germans are probably the most demanding people I've ever met. Ask them to give up something really tiny - say one of their dozens and dozens of official holidays - and there'll be an outrage. The economy might be tanking but, you know, it would be very wrong to take any of those perks away. That just won't fly!

Being German and noticing these problems obviously leads an even more absurd situation - as you undoubtedly will have noticed already - because a German complaining about Germans complaining too much... The German weekly Der Spiegel probably has mastered this technique to perfection.

Anyway, I was given the opportunity to turn my desire to get away from all that nonsense into an actual move. And that move made things even more tricky because over the years - I have lived in the US for a few years now - I have come to appreciate many aspects of life in Germany or of Germany in general. It is as if I had to move away to be able to get closer to my Germanness (whatever that is, I'm not talking about stereotypical superficialities here). But I also seem to notice that moving back there would not solve anything because very probably, I would simply hate it there for the same reasons which made me move away in the first place. Whenever I go to visit I notice how weird everything is. The last time I went, everybody kept telling me how bad the economical situation was and - at the same time! - how bad it was to try to reduce those perks. We're constantly drunk but don't take that alcohol away from us! But at the same time, I can relate to many things German so much easier than to most things American.

Let me try to explain that. Imagine a country where when you're on vacation and you get sick you're not on vacation any longer. So you're vacation days are not wasted. For example, you fly to Spain for two weeks and you get sick and lie in bed for a week (in Spain). When you come back you can re-claim that one sick week and get another week of vacation. I guess at this stage I've lost all Americans. Thing is, though, I'm equally lost/baffled when Americans try to explain to me something they take for granted - for example, how America is the land of equal opportunities even though when I look at how black people are treated that so obviously is not the case at all.

There is no obvious solution for me here. I will probably have to live with this kind of Bernard-eque suspension between hatred and love of/for Germany. It definitely makes life quite interesting. And I find it much easier to discover new things in Germany now. But it also makes life a bit frustrating. It's almost as if I have to put a restraining order on myself. Nothing is really solved. See? I'm complaining again! But, at least, I was able to get a little bit closer to everything by going away.