new thread
Hey,
we got snow 2 days ago and it won't stop - you have to know that I love snow :)
Took an atmospheric pic - hope, you like it!
Greetings
Nice Photo:
And I wish! It hit 86°F here in Texas yesterday. Still running the A/C.
High!
I could pretty do without! There is a growing number of working poor, myself included, even here in Germany who barely can afford proper heating - I wonder about my electricity bill if it's gonna be Siberian this winter! I have seen winters when in my flat the temperature barely went beyond 12°C (39°F) - back in the 90s before insulation was renovated in my street. But still, winter is the discomfortable part of the year to me...
And, yes, snow sucks if you can't afford public transportation and have to rely on your bicycle for most distances...
...but I heard over there in the States it's even worse, with countless families freezing to death in their homes each winter... long live neoliberalism!
So, winter romanticism is just a sentiment of middle and upper class people with their four-wheel drives and floor heatings...
See you in Khyberspace!
Yadgar
... they're so damn depressing.
i grew up poor and i still romanticized winter.
I'm not aware of "countless families" freezing to death each year in the U.S. Every year, especially during the occassional, REALLY BAD storm, you'll hear of a small number of people freezing to death, often the very elderly. Very sad, yes, but not as monstrous a problem as you seem to have heard.
As for effecient heating mechanisms, the very best comes from Russia, and has been around for centuries. It's called a masonry stove (often referred to as a "Russian stove"). Check this out if you're interested:
http://www.russianstove.com/
Basically, one small wood fire heats a large building for a day. Way better for the wallet and for the environment than heating with electricity, oil, gas, or coal.
Across the Internet, you find so much anti-American hate mongering, conspiracy theories, and fear propaganda, much of it originally brought into public even by American publicists´(like Michael Moore or Barbara Ehrenreich)... and then you read in German moderate-leftwing magazines like "Der Spiegel" (German: The Mirror) for example that "one out of six New Yorkers suffers permanent hunger" or "35 million Americans cannot afford enough to eat" - and you wonder whether tenthousands, hundredthousands or even millions of them starve (or freeze) to death each year... here across the Big Pond, there are so many oh-so-critical, oh-so-intellectual "deep thinkers" and "readers between the lines" to whom it's an axiomatic matter of fact that Neocon-ruled America is nothing but a fascist dictatorship, a madhouse of fundamentalist bigotry, just a giant concentration camp terrorized by raving bible Nazis, an Empire of Evil that attempts to turn the world into a global Guantanamo and finally will succeed... in our German spoken lunatic-fringe dominated politics forums (such was www.politikforum.de) this is almost the standard point of view!
And it's difficult to a semi-autistic Internet junkie like me who rarely ventures out of his computer vault to get in touch with the REAL world whether these views are realistic or not...
WHAT IS THE WORLD OUTSIDE ABOUT? IS THERE AN OUTSIDE WORLD AT ALL?
See you in Khyberspace!
Yadgar
It's the big blue room with the bright light in it. :)
As for the USA, it really is 50 states, and probably as many regions. The population of the US is a little less than half that of Europe, and more than half of the EU. Comparing individual countries in Europe to the US is a bit unfair. People compare Germany to the entire US in terms of prosperity, etc. Why don't they try comparing California to all of Europe, or Bosnia to New York state? It would be no less fair.
Statistics for the US are averaged over a large chunk of a continent. As an example of how that can skew the view for just one statistic, see the link.
Female Life Expectancy in the US
Life's a bitch, ain't it? =P
As for the freezing families, comment... I guess I missed that news story. Seems to me the quality of life here is rather good, so I'll stick to our system. May not be perfect, but it's better than most of the alternatives I've seen and studied.
Wow... fantastic pic, Dusk. We've been getting snow here in northern Wisconsin for the past couple of days, too. No more than a little dusting on the ground so far, but hopefully we'll have a decent "tracking snow" in another day or two. Deer season opens on Saturday, and it sure makes it easier to pick up on a blood trail, especially in the dark!
Wonderful photo in B+W. I would tend to think of this as an "Art Photo." But whatever, thanks for sharing it with us.
Holy s*** that looks amazing!
Damn, I wish we had more snow here in Belgium. It's -1 half the time so it wouldn't melt, but no, all we get is rain.
Hey that is quite a cool shot Dusk, I love the black and white look! Rarely do we get snow here in the middle of the east coast of the US and if we do it is only a little in January or February. Terrific camera work Dusk, send us some more pictures of Bavarian snow as it sounds wonderful and I cannot get enough of those kinds of shots!
That is some great artistic work there, Dusk. Always loved black and white photography. Your hair's looking really good too. =)
-James
beautiful shot! you should make this your christmas card.
Cool photo! I love snow very much too and thankfully it seems this winter will be full of it (for Europe I mean) Have some good snowball fights in Bavaria lol and keep growing your wonderful mane!
Hi Dusk,
What a great, artistic photo, really cool! Also, your hair looks fabulous, straight and healthy with lots of shine.
Keep it growing,
David
Hey, what part of Bavaria are you in? I was in Munchen and Bamberg on vacation this last May. Beautiful place, and the people were much nicer than in Berlin.
-sectari
Hi,
i'm in Ingolstadt, about an hour away from munich :) but I like the northern parts of germany more...
Dusk
Good hair/snow pic Dusk! Congrats on the early snow, hopefully you'll have a better ski season this year!
Bruce
