Happy new year to everyone!
Volks, enjoy every day on this beautifully Planet. What´s happen within the last year?
What will happen within the next?
Will it be the "Year of the motorcycle?" Hopefully it will!
Anyway, we will see...
Trade well... enjoy life... whatever works!

"Listen: we are here on earth to fart around. Don´t let anybody tell you any different!" - Kurt Vonnegut

Another year, same destination to celebrate.
It was nice to meet you again, beautiful sin city of Amsterdam.
Can´t wait to get back to Holland some time again.

This evening I´ve visited the exhibition and attend to the lecture "Howard Carter´s excavation records of the tomb of Tutankhamun", hold by Prof. Dr. Jaromir Malek.

Jaromir Malek is egyptologist at the Griffith Institute in Oxford, England. This archive is the worldwide leading one, because they have the original personal notes from Howard Carter, the discoverer of the more than 3000 years old thomb.
The remarkable point is, the institute provide full access to all this informations for free and to everybody. Just visit the website and read through his digitized notes or view the pictures taken from the early 1920th until now.

Providing historical information unrestricted to the public seems to be the best way to preserve this unique informations forever.

Later this year the exhibition will also move on to Hamburg in Germany.

See some pictures in my G A L L E R Y.

Visit Website Tut-Ausstellung and the Griffith Institutes in Oxford, where Carter´s diarys and pictures are published

2009 has been designated the International Year of Astronomy and also marks the 40th anniversary of the first manned moon landing. To honor these anniversaries, the U.S. Consulate General Munich, the Public Observatory Munich (Volkssternwarte) and the Bavarian American Center present this lecture by Zainab Nagin Cox.

A Cornell University graduate and former U.S. Air Force officer, Ms. Cox is currently Assistant Flight System Engineering Manager at NASA´s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. In this capacity, she works on the next NASA rover to Mars, scheduled to be launched in 2011.

Prior to joining the Mars Exploration Rover Mission team, Ms. Cox worked on NASA´s Galileo and Kepler missions.
Her lecture will address American involvement in research and innovation, international cooperation and the future of space exploration.

Thank you for this exciting evening and the interesting lecture here in Munich. It was an outstanding event to listen to someone involved so deep in such an interesting topic as you are.

Today, when I post this article the Space Shuttle "Atlantis" will lift off for the last service mission to the space telescope "Hubble". Have a good flight and a successfull mission.

Visit Website Volkssternwarte

This Weekend the Financial fair "Invest" took place in Stuttgart.

Several interesting lectures and discussions about financial topics were available for the visitors.
I took the chance to spend the evening in "Tübingen", a nice university town near Stuttgart and meet with some old friends there.

This week the German pioneer of astronomy, Johannes Kepler will be honored from USA NASA by naming an satellite after him.

Kepler will start later this week for the first mission with the ability to find planets like Earth - planets that orbit sun-like stars in a warm zone where liquid water could be maintained on the surface.

And all this happens the same week in which the world biggest computer faire - the CEBIT - occurs in Johannes Kepler homeland: Germany, Deutschland.

Have a save journey and good luck... Great brave Johannes.

NASA Kepler mission homepage

That is a great 2008 last day for the end of an grateful year. Lets welcome the upcoming year 2009 - which is anounced as the "Year of Astronomy".

Endless discoveries like ice on the Mars, our accomplishments facing the view of the beginning of our universe and confirmation of the existence of an supermassive black hole in the center of our own Milky Way Galaxy opend our eyes in 2008.

Telescopes developed about 400 years ago by Galileo Galilei provided such possibilitys and that´s what should be honored with this "International Year of Astronomy" (IYA 2009, Astro-Jahr).

Happy 2009 indeed...

Basic rights about personal freedom toppled silently in Germany.

"The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either"
"Wer die Freiheit aufgibt um Sicherheit zu gewinnen, der wird am Ende beides verlieren"

Benjamin Franklin

From now its legal for Germans state authority to search stealthy in your inviolable privacy for any suspect "terrorist" actions.
They have the right to spy silent in your home and install hidden monitoring systems without even your knowledge. Mr. Honecker and Mr. Mielke (DDR/GDR) would be pleased about such a situation. The only question is: When did we start again to chase people and burn buildings? Ask yourself...

After my bad experience with museums in ADam I thought it´s time to visit the Deutsche Museum (German Museum) in Munich. Visit the updated P I C T U R E S in my gallery.

This picture shows the top of the german WWII rocket "V2". You will find another "V2" also in the imperial war museum in London.