"Schianare"

In Austria we have a famous card game called Watten. When you have a bad deck you can ask for "Schianare" (New cards, translated it means "more beautiful"). When the other player(s) also want better cards, they can accept your request and the cards will be shuffled again. If the other player(s) doesn't want better cards you have to continue with your bad deck.

Next Sunday is the "European Union Election 2009". As always, the Austrian parties don't make politics, they make a big comedy program. No Party does represent the Austrian interests within the EU, they all want to represent their own party.

Why do we always have to choose from the parties and politicians which are "served" ? Why do we only have a choice between bad and worse ? There should be the possibility to elect "Schianare" within an election. If we're not pleased with the "assortment" we should have the possibility to shuffle the choice again.

Fairytales from a psychological point of view

Yesterday evening I saw a TV-Trailer for "The beauty and the beast". While watching this short summary of the story I wondered about the similarities to the "Stockholm Syndrome".

After a long time of captivity the victim falls in love with her kidnapper.
For more Information have a look at wikipedia

27.04.2008 Vienna City Marathon

Sporty Christoph

Got a new Hobby: Icehockey :-)

RSS-Feeds: Hype or Trend

Since I heard from RSS a few years ago I use this technology excessively. Started with a Feed Reader Software I switched a year ago to Google Reader, because I found it good, to have the collected feeds available all over the world (in MY world --> at home and in Office). Today I was looking in my Usage-Trends (how many feeds do I have subscribed, how many articles have been read, how many articles have been marked, ...) and found a tab, called "Most Obscure" subscriptions. Looking at the Facts, posted on this tab I was shocked. Most feeds where only subscribed by a handfull of people. For Example the RSS-Feed of the Austrian Automobile Club (ÖAMTC), which shows up the traffic-warnings for Austria (here) is only subscribed 44 Times ! Mediamarkt, a famous Electronic-Shop has only 1 Subscriber ! (which is me). OK, these facts only contain the feeds, subscribed by google-reader (here), but I thought, the amount of subscribers was a lot higher than this ...

Is it possible to give more than 100% ?

On December the 31st there was the annual "Innsbrucker Silvesterlauf". As far as my only official Running Event this year was the "Innsbrucker Stadtlauf" I decided to participate this run. 5.3 Kilometers is not much so I gave my best. The first look on my Heart-rate monitor was not good. Because of formula: 220 minus Age, I calculated a maximum heart rate of 192 bpm. My heart rate was on 96% capacity. 5 minutes later I looked again on my HR-Monitor --> 107%.
At this point I decided not to look again on my HR. After the race the HR-Monitor asked me, if I want to change my max. Heartfrequency from 192 up to 207.

Hohoho ...

Tuesday, October 9th, 7:26AM. Heard the first christmas advertisment in Radio. "Hohoho, this is Santa Claus ...".
Fascinating. During the day we have about 20 Degrees Celsius, I never wore something long-sleevy 'till now and my holidays on Teneriffa are not longer than 3 weeks ago.
I DON'T WANT CHRISTMAS ADVERTISMENTS AT THE MOMENT !