Wechselvoll und vielschichtig gestaltete sich über viele Jahrhunderte das Leben der jüdischen Gemeinde in Forchheim: Die Gewaltherrschaft der Nationalsozialisten setzte – bis heute – dem Leben und der Kultur der jüdischen Bürger auch hier ein jähes Ende.
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Sonntag, 29. August 2010
Freitag, 27. August 2010
Donnerstag, 26. August 2010
Sonntag, 22. August 2010
Freitag, 20. August 2010
Die Wette des Blaise Pascal
...Eine Hemmung des Denkstroms bei der Frage nach Gott ist jedenfalls nach der Meinung des großen Mathematikers Blaise Pascal mindestens ebenso lebensgefährlich wie die Hemmung des Blutstroms hinter dem Aneurysma. Denn bei der Frage nach Gott geht es um alles oder nichts. Wenn man so lebt, als gäbe es Gott - und in Wirklichkeit gibt es Gott nicht, dann hat man vielleicht einen gewissen Verlust an Lebensfreude zu beklagen, was mit einem egoistischeren Leben nicht passiert wäre. Wenn man aber leichtsinnigerweise so lebt, als gäbe es Gott nicht - und es gibt ihn in Wirklichkeit doch, dann würde man mit dem ewigen Nichts bestraft. Das ist die berühmte Wette Pascal.
Wenn die Dinge so liegen, sagt der geniale Mathematiker Pascal, dann würde er, selbst wenn er keine anderen Informationen über die Existenz Gottes hätte, aus Vernunftgründen mit dem ganzen Einsatz seines Lebens auf die Existenz Gottes wetten. Im Fall, dass Gott existiert, wäre der Gewinn unendlich, im Falle er existierte nicht, der Verlust gering. Würde man jedoch darauf wetten, er existiere nicht, dann wäre im Falle, er existierte wirklich nicht, der Gewinn gering. Falls es ihn aber in Wirklichkeit doch gibt, wäre der Verlust der ewigen Glückseligkeit eine selbst verschuldete unendliche Katastrophe.
Die dreihundert Jahre alte Wette des Blaise Pascal überzeugt auch heute noch zweifelnde Menschen. Sie zeigt aber vor allem, wie einer der zweifellos intelligentesten Denker in der Geschichte der Menschheit die Frage nach Gott für die wichtigste Frage des Lebens hielt, für eine Frage, der niemand wirklich dauerhaft ausweichen kann, für eine Frage auf Leben und Tod. Doch auf eine Frage, die eine wirkliche existenzielle Frage ist, kann es immer verschiedene Antworten geben. Und auf die Frage, ob Gott existiert oder ob Gott nicht existiert, hat es unterschiedliche ernstzunehmende Antworten gegeben, die atheistische und die gläubige.
Aus "Gott - eine kleine Geschichte des Größten" von Manfred Lütz
Donnerstag, 19. August 2010
Mittwoch, 18. August 2010
Montag, 16. August 2010
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Sonntag, 15. August 2010
Samstag, 14. August 2010
Die Kamera hält mich am Leben...
...Daß heißt, die Kamera hat Sie sozusagen gerettet vor der elementaren Erschütterung?
In mir gibt es zwei Persönlichkeiten. Ich bin wie der Clown, der lächelt und innerlich traurig ist. Die Kamera ist mein Make-up. Es könnte sein, dass sie die Traurigkeit versteckt hat. Aber man sieht sie auf den Bildern wieder. Darin offenbart sich mein Inneres.
Nobuyoshi Araki im Interview mit Herlinde Koelbl
ZEITMagazin Nr 33 12.8.2010
In mir gibt es zwei Persönlichkeiten. Ich bin wie der Clown, der lächelt und innerlich traurig ist. Die Kamera ist mein Make-up. Es könnte sein, dass sie die Traurigkeit versteckt hat. Aber man sieht sie auf den Bildern wieder. Darin offenbart sich mein Inneres.
Nobuyoshi Araki im Interview mit Herlinde Koelbl
ZEITMagazin Nr 33 12.8.2010
Freitag, 13. August 2010
Als ich zum ersten Male starb
Als ich zum ersten Male starb,
- Ich weiß noch, wie es war.
Ich starb so ganz für mich und still,
Das war zu Hamburg, im April,
Und ich war achtzehn Jahr.
Und als ich starb zum zweiten Mal,
Das Sterben tat so weh.
Gar wenig hinterließ ich dir:
Mein klopfend Herz vor deiner Tür,
Die Fußspur rot im Schnee.
Doch als ich starb zum dritten Mal,
Da schmerzte es nicht sehr.
So altvertraut wie Bett und Brot
Und Kleid und Schuh war mir der Tod.
Nun sterbe ich nicht mehr.
Mascha Kaléko
Frankfurter Anthologie
FAZ 17.Juli 2010 Nr 163
Donnerstag, 12. August 2010
Karpfen, Bier und Kartoffelsalat
Unterwegs mit Juergen Teller..."Dieses Foto hängt gerahmt überm Klo in unserem Haus auf dem Land. Ich finde das immer so beruhigend beim Pinkeln. Ich mag das Essen in Mittelfranken...
Einige Engländer sind ganz verstört, wenn Sie auf das Foto schauen...
ZEITMagazin Nr 32 5.8.2010
Mittwoch, 11. August 2010
Dienstag, 10. August 2010
Montag, 9. August 2010
Sonntag, 8. August 2010
Samstag, 7. August 2010
Why My Wife Should Let Me Have a Dog
If I had a dog his soft fur would not foliate
the sofa or trigger asthma attacks
in my dear wife, ending with a hospital trip,
an adrenaline shot and those inhaler tubes
littering the house.
His rich brown eyes will convey profound
intelligence and sensitivity to the subtlest
shifts in my mood. Those eyes will never get
infected and fill with viscous yellow pus
we must wipe with Q-Tips and cure with
sticky ointment, awkward for us both.
My dog will lie by my feet while I read
the Sunday Times he fetched from the lawn
and delivered dry from his slobber-free mouth,
and he'll wait for his walk
until I complete the crossword.
And when we walk he'll heel until I hurl
a tennis ball. Watch him streak across
the grassy field, catch it on first bounce
and, with gleeful tail, surrender the prize to me
for another go. He will never drop dead
birds or vermin on the front stoop like
the neighbor's dog they had to put to sleep.
At poop time he will drag his leash from
the closet, jangling across the tile to my chair.
He will never get diarrhea and soil the Oriental,
then whimper or cower in the corner.
And when I have my heart attack, I don't know
if he will punch 9-1-1 with his nose
like the schnauzer in the news,
but surely he'll cover my body with his, so
the EMTs won't find me jittery with shock.
While waiting for the ambulance, I'll thank
my wife for this beast, warming the pain,
a gift as perfect as our children who,
when we play tennis, won't serve as hard
as they can and will blow some shots
to let me think that by some necessary miracle
I've survived and will win in the end.
Gary Stein
Silver Spring, Maryland
Henderson.stcin@vcrizon.net
JAMA, June 23/30,2010-Vol 303, No 24, 2448
Freitag, 6. August 2010
Die Sprache der Herren des Balls
Arjen Robben fällt aus - wegen eines Risses der Oberschenkelmuskulatur...
Dazu Herr Rummenigge: "Sie haben ihn uns enteignet und demoliert wieder in die Garage gestellt."
Dazu Herr Rummenigge: "Sie haben ihn uns enteignet und demoliert wieder in die Garage gestellt."
Images of doctors
Jane Smith, deputy editor, BMJ
jsmith@bmj.com
What picture of doctors emerges from this week’s journal? Forget the news stories—which have the usual fare of doctors up before the GMC (doi:10.1136/bmj.c4194), being investigated for conflicts of interest (doi:10.1136/bmj.c4083), and defending themselves and their patients against various sorts of bureaucracy (doi:10.1136/bmj.c4168). Look instead at the rest of the journal. Here is a succession of images of doctors as people who think completely differently from their patients; are part of the problem when it comes to social inequality; are susceptible to moral deformation through the pursuit of ambition; yet talk to each other across a big divide.
Not surprisingly, most of these images come from the review pages. They start with Christopher Martyn’s funny review of Tim Parks’s book, Teach us to Sit Still: A Sceptic’s Search for Health and Healing (doi:10.1136/bmj.c4213). Martyn clearly doesn’t enjoy the book, which is about the author’s search for treatment and acceptance of his prostate pain, and he doesn’t think his readers will: "Obviously this book wasn’t written for doctors, and I’m doubtful whether they will enjoy it much." Yet his review is a fine example of why it is good to do something you wouldn’t normally do—it usually opens your eyes in a new way. And so it is with this book. Martyn suggests that the book’s moral is that "intelligent, educated, and apparently rational people may think about their health and illnesses in ways that hardly begin to overlap with ours."
Christopher Martyn would probably not have read Tim Parks’s book if he hadn’t been asked by the BMJ’s reviews editor, but Robin Stott seems to have willingly read the two books that he reviewed (doi:10.1136/bmj.4155). Their subject is social inequalities and why these have grown so dramatically since the 1950s in Anglo-Saxon societies. "Both authors believe that many people in society’s privileged sectors hold such views [that the poor are less able, the children of the rich more worthy recipients of the best university education]. Thus the everyday life of communities entrench the inequalities, making it ever more difficult to reverse them." Stott bemoans the fact that the health professions have offered no leadership and "in our own lifestyles and choices we often perpetuate or even aggravate inequality."
The protagonist of Shusako Endo’s novel, The Sea and Poison, makes some very wrong choices. As Theodore Dalrymple explains, the novel is about a young doctor in wartime Japan who "through being too weak to refuse, takes part in a murderous experiment on an American prisoner" (doi:10.1136/bmj.c4152). It was published in 1958, before the scale of experimentation on prisoners was well known. "Most of the doctors . . . are motivated by ambition and are discomfited not by their conscience but only by the prospect of exposure and disgrace."
Doctors are somewhat redeemed in the first of our occasional series of "dialogues" on difficult subjects (doi:10.1136/bmj.c3081). Tony Waterston, a British paediatrician, facilitated an email discussion between Jumana Odeh from Palestine and Mark Clarfield from Israel on cooperation between Israeli and Palestinian doctors. Clarfield is an optimist about what such collaboration can achieve. Odeh, while acknowledging the usefulness of individual actions, is more pessimistic about a dialogue over health that ignores the political situation. I was reminded of Christopher Martyn’s earlier words: these two "think about . . health and illnesses in ways that hardly begin to overlap."
Cite this as: BMJ 2010;341:c4219
jsmith@bmj.com
What picture of doctors emerges from this week’s journal? Forget the news stories—which have the usual fare of doctors up before the GMC (doi:10.1136/bmj.c4194), being investigated for conflicts of interest (doi:10.1136/bmj.c4083), and defending themselves and their patients against various sorts of bureaucracy (doi:10.1136/bmj.c4168). Look instead at the rest of the journal. Here is a succession of images of doctors as people who think completely differently from their patients; are part of the problem when it comes to social inequality; are susceptible to moral deformation through the pursuit of ambition; yet talk to each other across a big divide.
Not surprisingly, most of these images come from the review pages. They start with Christopher Martyn’s funny review of Tim Parks’s book, Teach us to Sit Still: A Sceptic’s Search for Health and Healing (doi:10.1136/bmj.c4213). Martyn clearly doesn’t enjoy the book, which is about the author’s search for treatment and acceptance of his prostate pain, and he doesn’t think his readers will: "Obviously this book wasn’t written for doctors, and I’m doubtful whether they will enjoy it much." Yet his review is a fine example of why it is good to do something you wouldn’t normally do—it usually opens your eyes in a new way. And so it is with this book. Martyn suggests that the book’s moral is that "intelligent, educated, and apparently rational people may think about their health and illnesses in ways that hardly begin to overlap with ours."
Christopher Martyn would probably not have read Tim Parks’s book if he hadn’t been asked by the BMJ’s reviews editor, but Robin Stott seems to have willingly read the two books that he reviewed (doi:10.1136/bmj.4155). Their subject is social inequalities and why these have grown so dramatically since the 1950s in Anglo-Saxon societies. "Both authors believe that many people in society’s privileged sectors hold such views [that the poor are less able, the children of the rich more worthy recipients of the best university education]. Thus the everyday life of communities entrench the inequalities, making it ever more difficult to reverse them." Stott bemoans the fact that the health professions have offered no leadership and "in our own lifestyles and choices we often perpetuate or even aggravate inequality."
The protagonist of Shusako Endo’s novel, The Sea and Poison, makes some very wrong choices. As Theodore Dalrymple explains, the novel is about a young doctor in wartime Japan who "through being too weak to refuse, takes part in a murderous experiment on an American prisoner" (doi:10.1136/bmj.c4152). It was published in 1958, before the scale of experimentation on prisoners was well known. "Most of the doctors . . . are motivated by ambition and are discomfited not by their conscience but only by the prospect of exposure and disgrace."
Doctors are somewhat redeemed in the first of our occasional series of "dialogues" on difficult subjects (doi:10.1136/bmj.c3081). Tony Waterston, a British paediatrician, facilitated an email discussion between Jumana Odeh from Palestine and Mark Clarfield from Israel on cooperation between Israeli and Palestinian doctors. Clarfield is an optimist about what such collaboration can achieve. Odeh, while acknowledging the usefulness of individual actions, is more pessimistic about a dialogue over health that ignores the political situation. I was reminded of Christopher Martyn’s earlier words: these two "think about . . health and illnesses in ways that hardly begin to overlap."
Cite this as: BMJ 2010;341:c4219
Mittwoch, 4. August 2010
Dienstag, 3. August 2010
A day in the Life of Oscar the cat
Since he was adopted by staffmembers as a kitten, Oscar the Cat has had an uncanny ability to predict when residents are about to die. Thus far, he has presided over the deaths of more than 25 residents on the third floor of Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Providence, Rhode Island. His mere presence at the bedside is viewed by physicians and nursing home staff as an almost absolute indicator of impending death, allowing staff members to adequately notify families. Oscar has also provided companionship to those who would otherwise have died alone. For his work, he is highly regarded by the physicians and staff at Steere House and by the families of the residents whom he serves.
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Montag, 2. August 2010
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