Wildblumen

What was the best compliment you've received? Thank you for the flowers ... I am an absolute lover of Wildflowers. When travelling around the globe, I stop in front of gardens and fences again and again. And I imagine what animal I would like to be when born again. My daughter Lisa A. F. is obviously a dolphin. We went to Moreton Island from Brisbane by boat, only for one day. When seeking shade under a tree on Moreton, she rather spent the hours before departure of the ferry in the water. And I had to come again and again, and she climbed onto my shoulders trying to jump when standing on me. Freedom's just another word, for nothing left to lose became the song of my life in 1999. We walked along the Brisbane River on the late eve of 1998. Lisa A. F. said during our longer conversation: The best decision of your life was taking us out of school for six full months and travelling to New Zealand before we started the school year in SEP 1994. Coming back to Germany from Namibia and hiking in New Zealand we understood, what rain forest means and saw the shades of green. We only knew the shades of brown in the semi desert landscape of Namibia. # Research notes for an analytical essay on Sloterdijk's *Im Weltinnenraum des Kapitals***Peter Sloterdijk's…

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Christopher Hitchens

With many thanks to Will, for a birthday present well chosen a few years ago here at the Gold Coast. A Book That Matters Christopher Hitchens, Letters to a Young Contrarian — and some advice from 43 years of teaching P.H. Bloecker | bloeckerblog.com | March 2026   I am holding a slim volume in my hands — 141 pages, a red cover, a burnt-out cigarette stub on the front. A gift from William. The book is called Letters to a Young Contrarian. Its author is Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011), one of the most brilliant, most combative, and most polarising public intellectuals the English-speaking world has produced. It was published in November 2001, weeks after the 11th of September — a moment when the world believed it had no use for contrarians, only for unity. Hitchens responded with a book that treats unity itself as a danger. The Book and Its Form Hitchens writes letters. Not to any particular person, but to a composite figure he assembled from his students — young people he taught at the New School in New York, who asked him: how do you bear being the one who stands alone? How do you go on thinking when everyone around you has stopped? The form is deliberate. It is modelled on Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet — one of the most beautiful books about the inner formation…

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Nordsee: Husum

Schimmelreiter Theodor Storm This post written in German is about The Northsea - Der Blanke Hans - Theodor Storm Theodor Storm: Der SchimmelreiterHauke Haien, der Blanke Hans und die Wildgaense in der NachtMenschen an der Nordsee: Eine Bestandsaufnahme - Kapitel IIP.H. Bloecker - Burleigh Waters, Gold Coast - Maerz 2026Am grauen Strand, am grauen MeerUnd seitab liegt die Stadt;Der Nebel drueckt die Daecher schwer,Und durch die Stille braust das MeerEintoening um die Stadt.Es rauscht kein Wald, es schlaegt im MaiKein Vogel ohn Unterlass;Die Wandergans mit hartem SchreiNur fliegt in Herbstesnacht vorbei,Am Strande weht das Gras.Doch haengt mein ganzes Herz an dir,Du graue Stadt am Meer;Der Jugend Zauber fuer und fuerRuht laechelnd doch auf dir, auf dir,Du graue Stadt am Meer.Theodor Storm, Die Stadt, 1852I. Die graue Stadt - und was sie verschweigtEs gibt Gedichte, die man kennt, ohne je nachgedacht zu haben, was sie wirklich sagen. Storms Gedicht Die Stadt ist eines davon. Schueler lernen es auswendig, Husum druckt es auf Prospekte, Touristen fotografieren die Tafel am Hafen. Und dabei uebersieht man leicht die zweite Strophe.Nicht der Nebel. Nicht das Meer. Die Wandergans.Die Wandergans mit hartem Schrei / Nur fliegt in Herbstesnacht vorbei - das ist die einzige Bewegung im ganzen Gedicht. Alles andere steht still: die Stadt, das Gras, der Nebel, das eintoenigem Meer. Nur die Gans fliegt. Nur die Gans macht einen Laut. Und der ist hart. Nicht schoen,…

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Lying

This Essay is about White Lies and The Truth I read Sam Harris Lying and the Interview with his teacher. This Book and the Interview is about the Master and the Disciple and how they may interact. I understand Harris published this essay plus interview and what he learnt from his University Teacher Ron Howard  as a kind chapeau id est simply Thank You. Education can succeed, but it needs two to tango. Passion Flower or teaching with passion l Credit phb First the English Version LyingSam Harris, Ronald Howard and the Art of Telling the TruthP.H. Bloecker  ·  bloecker.wordpress.com ·  2026 I. A Thin Book with Considerable WeightSam Harris’ essay Lying is not a long book. Barely a hundred pages, no academic apparatus, no mountain of footnotes. Those who pick it up because it is short will quickly discover: it is short the way a scalpel is short. It cuts deeply nonetheless.The argument is simply stated, and therefore provocative: lying is always wrong. Not almost always. Not in most cases. Always. Even the white lie. Even the protective lie. Even the polite silence that deliberately misleads. Harris acknowledges edge cases — the Nazis are at the door, Anne Frank is hiding in the attic — but he refuses to let the exception become the rule. Whoever makes habits out of exceptions has already dismantled their ethical architecture before realising they…

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Apple Country QLD

# The Granite Belt: apple country at the edge of the subtropics**The Granite Belt is Queensland's only four-season landscape — an 800-to-1,000-metre plateau of ancient granite, apple orchards, and Italian-German settler memory, three hours west of the Gold Coast yet climatically closer to Normandy than to Brisbane.** For a fictional East German woman arriving by motorcycle from the subtropical coast, the region offers an uncanny mirror: Gravenstein apples descended from Danish-German stock, a town whose apple-growing heartland was once named Roessler after a German family (renamed in 1915 amid wartime hostility), and a landscape of frost-bitten orchards and balancing granite boulders that feels nothing like Australia and everything like involuntary memory. What follows is a comprehensive research dossier organized to support authentic Sebaldian scene-writing.---## The tin miners who became orchardistsThe Granite Belt's agricultural story begins not with apples but with tin. In 1872, the Pioneer Tin Mining Company triggered a rush to what was then called Quart Pot Creek [amiens-qld-history](https://www.amiensqldhistory.com/tin-mining) [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanthorpe,_Queensland) — renamed Stanthorpe that year [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanthorpe,_Queensland) [Queensland Places](https://queenslandplaces.com.au/stanthorpe) by Surveyor General Augustus Charles Gregory, from the Latin *stannum* (tin) and Middle English *thorpe* (village). [Wikipedia +4](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanthorpe,_Queensland) Cobb & Co coaches ran twice daily from Warwick. [slq](https://www.slq.qld.gov.au/blog/great-tin-rush-stanthorpe) Thirty hotels did roaring trade. Chinese miners arrived via ship and rail in such numbers that by 1877 the local press reported "two hundred Chinamen going up the line." Tin valued at **£2.5 million**…

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Elephants

Which animal would you compare yourself to and why? Why is the mother of all questions: Not because of the ivory, though ... When observing elephants in Namibia and Zimbabwe at the Chobe National Park for weeks, I came to the conclusion, I wished I was a mighty Elephant Bull in my next live. Not a monkey.

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Trump

Passion Fruit | phb POTUS and Corruption How Power corrupts ... Casino Deals, jeder ist zu kaufen, die Macht des Geldes. The ZDF documentary series Trump — Die Spur des Geldes arrives at precisely the right moment — and asks precisely the right question. Do Trump's politics and his family's business dealings merge into one? A look at global deals, loyal networks, and their consequences for the United States and the world. https://www.zdf.de/dokus/trump-die-spur-des-geldes-100 LinkedThis is not tabloid journalism. It is investigative documentary filmmaking in the European public broadcasting tradition — methodical, sourced, and uncomfortable.The series, by authors Tristan Söhngen and Jörg Levsen, follows the connections between politics and private enterprise during Trump's second term, with filming locations including New York, Washington, Singapore, Southeast Asia — and even a small town in North Rhine-Westphalia. (https://www.prisma.de/news/tv/Die-Trump-Connection-Das-Geschaeft-mit-der-Macht-ZDF-Dokumentation-ueber-Donald-Trump-und-sein-politisches-Amt-sowie-seine-persoenlichen-Interessen,55922075) That last detail alone is worth pausing over. The reach of Trumpian financial entanglements into the German heartland is not a metaphor. It is a documented fact.The film shows how Trump governs without any separation from his business empire, and how political decisions, economic interests, and personal networks are interlocked — at crypto conferences, construction projects, and in regulatory decisions that place loyalty above competence. (https://www.magdeburg-klickt.de/doku-die-trump-connection-das-geschaeft-mit-der-macht-zdf-2015-2100-uhr/) The dismantling of anti-corruption mechanisms and the restructuring of the Department of Justice compound the picture: transparency and the separation of powers are being systematically undermined. [Magdeburg](https://www.magdeburg-klickt.de/doku-die-trump-connection-das-geschaeft-mit-der-macht-zdf-2015-2100-uhr/)For educators, the series raises…

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Ken Follett & his Century Trilogy

History as Human ExperienceKen Follett's Century Trilogy: A ReviewPeter H Bloecker | Burleigh Waters, Gold CoastThere is a moment in Fall of Giants, the first volume of Ken Follett's Century Trilogy, when a young Welsh miner and a Russian revolutionary find themselves on opposite sides of a war that neither of them chose, yet both of them understand. It is a small moment in a vast novel — barely half a page. But it carries the weight of the entire project: history is not made by the powerful. It is endured, shaped, and ultimately survived by ordinary people who happen to be standing in its path.The Century Trilogy — Fall of Giants (World War I), Winter of the World (World War II), and Edge of Eternity (Cold War to 1989) — is an act of narrative ambition that few contemporary writers would attempt. Across three volumes and roughly 3,500 pages, Follett traces five interconnected families — Welsh, English, Russian, German, and American — through the defining catastrophes of the twentieth century. The result is something rare in popular fiction: a serious work dressed in the clothes of entertainment.The Architecture of the ProjectFollett is, above all, a structural engineer of narrative. His plots do not meander — they are load-bearing. Like the cathedral in his earlier masterwork The Pillars of the Earth, the Century Trilogy is built with extraordinary care: each family…

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Learning

What is the last thing you learned? There is no last thing, as I learn about three new things per day. My definition of learning is very unique and only valid for myself: Observe and focus and reflect. Inspired by Atomic Habits and other authors. We all are standing on the shoulders of giants. Like Einstein. And many others. We are born to learn daily.

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Read more about the article Satire und Humor

Satire und Humor

Credit phb Humor ist wenn man trotzdem lacht … Frage: Was macht Frau, wenn man lacht? Satire – Die Kunst des indirekten AngriffsEin kurzer Essay mit Blick auf die deutsche Tradition Satire lügt nicht. Sie übertreibt – und trifft damit genauer als jede nüchterne Bestandsaufnahme. Das ist ihr Paradox und ihr Geheimnis. In der deutschen Kulturtradition allerdings hat dieses Paradox eine besondere Geschichte – und eine besondere Schwierigkeit.Denn die Deutschen, so das hartnäckige Vorurteil, besitzen keinen Humor. Das stimmt natürlich nicht. Was sie bisweilen fehlt, ist die Leichtigkeit im Umgang mit der Ironie – jener kulturellen Technik, die zwischen dem Gesagten und dem Gemeinten einen Abstand hält, ohne diesen Abstand durch Fußnote oder Erklärung zu schließen. Eine schwierige Erbschaft, in der Tat. Die deutsche Satire hat große Namen hervorgebracht – und war dennoch stets mit einem Unbehagen behaftet. Heinrich Heine, der vielleicht schärfste satirische Geist der deutschen Literatur, musste sein Werk größtenteils im Pariser Exil schreiben. Der Prophet im eigenen Land: zu unbequem, zu bissig, zu präzise. Seine Lobgesänge auf König Ludwig oder die Zeitgedichte treffen die deutsche Selbstgefälligkeit mit einer Eleganz, die bis heute irritiert, weil die Ironie nie ganz aufgelöst wird, weil der Leser im Ungewissen bleibt, ob er lachen oder erschrecken soll.Das ist kein Zufall. Heine verstand, was gute Satire leisten muss: Sie darf das Unbehagen nicht auflösen. Sie muss es kultivieren.Tucholsky, ein Jahrhundert später, trieb dasselbe Spiel,…

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Abstractions

Credit phb From Mud to Mind: Geometry, Language and the Origins of Abstraction A meditation on how humanity learned to think beyond the visible There is a remarkable story hidden inside the word Geometrie. Its Greek roots — γῆ (gē, earth) and μέτρον (métron, measure) — tell us that this most abstract of disciplines began in the mud. Every year, the Nile flooded its banks and erased the boundary markers of Egyptian farmland. Surveyors waded back into the delta to remeasure, recalculate, and re-divide. Geometrie was, at its birth, a practical technology of survival and ownership — not of the mind, but of the foot and the rope and the saturated soil. And then something extraordinary happened. The Greeks took this earthy craft and asked: what are the principles behind it? Euclid, writing around 300 BCE, produced the Elements — thirteen books that never once mention a Nile flood, a piece of land, or a boundary dispute. Instead he offered points, lines, planes, and axioms: a world of pure relation, stripped of all material content. Geometry had undergone its first great Abstraktion — the leap from the particular to the universal, from mud to mind. Sprache: When the Word Detached from the World A parallel story unfolded in the origins of language itself — though we are still, millennia later, trying to understand it fully. The German word Sprache connects to…

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