Audiostretto 59/4/24 English

A traffic light is a simple but very effective tool: with just three colours, all traffic is controlled. As a road user, I stick to red=stop, orange=caution, green=free travel. I wouldn't have to. If driverless vehicles determine our traffic in the future, the traffic light will probably be obsolete and the vehicles will either be controlled externally via a higher-level guidance system or negotia...

Toronto is home to the CN Tower, a tower over 555m high. I saw it myself once - impressive. And of course such a building reminds us of the Tower of Babel. We humans have it in us to strive for greatness. The comparative is part of our DNA: further, bigger, greater, higher, etc. Some call it pride and arrogance. But I think that every parent is happy when their own children make progress and perha...

Some jackets have a waistband at the front of the sleeves, which narrows the sleeve of the jacket by a kind of elastic so that the wrist is firmly enclosed and the sleeve cannot slip over the back of the hand. This is usually very practical because it leaves your hands free. Sometimes, however, it is also constricting. This also depends on how tight the waistband is. But either way, the intention...

I recently read the story about knowledge. So I asked myself: what is knowledge actually? Is it purely the multiplication of information? Or is it something that I know from experience? Or something that I have heard and decided to be true for me? Is it what I consciously acquire as conviction? And what does "I know this or that" mean? Does it mean that I have already heard about it and that this...

You can travel by car or by train. Some prefer the public transport, others the cars. Travelling by train usually has the advantage that you can simply get on, be taken to and arrive at your destination on time on a known route, usually without any obstacles. With a car, on the other hand, you have more freedom. You can spontaneously take different, new routes, take breaks if you like, etc. On the...

There is a phrase or idiom which means: on the whole. What is meant here is a way of looking at a situation that is as all-encompassing. I am currently working with others on a project in which some things are not running ideally. For example, there are those who do their work very reliably and do what they have to do and what they were asked to do - but they don't see the connections, the links t...

I was recently with many young men and we had dinner together, ordered pizzas and one of them drove me to pick up the pizzas. Later that evening, he was suddenly looking for the car keys. It was interesting to observe how something - in this case the car key - suddenly took on enormous importance and attention. Usually just hidden in the pocket without any attention except for locking and unlockin...

At school we had line sheets or notebooks with lines. We learned to write with the help of these lines. Specifically, we could sort of prop up our letters, words and sentences on these lines and so our text remained legible. The lines helped us to make our text more readable for someone else. Not only were the lines helpful in aligning the letters, but they also helped - subconsciously - to keep t...

Are you familiar with this: You turn and turn in your thoughts and still don't get anywhere. You have a situation that you have already gone through a thousand times in your head, inner dialogues that you have already had a thousand times, and so on. It's the same with a nail: you don't achieve anything by turning it. A screw, on the other hand, has a lateral, vertical offset. If you turn it, it m...

In an egg - that's how I imagine it when it's still closed - egg white and yolk are together but not mixed, i.e. separated. People talk about the yellow of the egg and mean by that the special thing that stands out from the surroundings. I imagine that the yolk perhaps - just as an example - feels superior to the egg white. It's bright, it's more nutritious and it simply stands out more, and in mo...

In our western world, thinking has a very central place. In school, so much is geared towards knowledge: one learns mainly with and through memory, the brain, and this quasi quite consciously. I have the impression that little value is placed on learning over time or learning with experience - perhaps also because this is not predictable or testable. But in life, I think, most of the things that m...

In nature, many things are in motion and I think only few things are really even. For example, we observe that rivers or creeks can only flow and supply the land if there is a gradient - i.e. higher and lower land. The same applies to electricity: only when there is a voltage, a difference in charge, current can flow, which then provides propulsion, for example. On the other hand, some things are...

As children, we talked normally about the whale-fish (in German), the huge animal in the sea. Later I learned that this was wrong: the whale is not a fish, but only a whale because it is a mammal. Well, it still looks like a fish to me. However, this example teaches me that just because something looks a certain way to me, that doesn't mean it has to be or is. How many concrete ideas we often have...

When I was a child, I loved driving through tunnels. It was mysterious, dark, somehow I could relax. When you drive yourself, on the other hand, it can be exhausting: it's narrow, offers hardly any possibilities for evasion, and when there's a lot of traffic, it's very entiring. When you go through a difficult time, you also talk about the tunnel from time to time, or more so about hopefully seein...

Modern technology makes it possible today for many things that used to be communicated verbally to be quickly sent digitally on a smartphone or computer in writing or as a voice or video message. Or as an e-mail. There you can read comments that the author would never have dared to say in a face-to-face encounter. The communicability of new technologies and digitalisation is disinhibiting. Often m...

Rabbits have very large ears and hear incredibly well - because they have so many natural enemies and so they can hear them in time and escape. They can even move each ear individually. Fascinating. At first glance. But actually sad. Ultimately, there is nothing behind this extraordinary ability other than an omnipresent fear of death. These animals live in permanent tension and fear. How tragic....

I admire all florists - how they so artfully and creatively put together great and beautiful flower bouquets. Well, and if you have a bouquet like that and want to display it - then the vase also plays an important role. Not every vase goes with every bouquet, just as not every frame goes with any picture. There are combinations that complement each other so well that their particularity and beaut...

We live in a time when the medium of the newspaper is possibly a discontinued model. In German it contains the word time. So a newspaper is something time-related. But time does not stand still and so you may wonder how long a news-paper will really be what it promises to be: more of an information channel on current affairs or a contemporary witness for the chronicle? Either way, the example in o...

In the darker and colder days of this season, many of us start lighting candles. They give a special light, different from the electric light. Warmer, more natural, more alive - at least I think so. Candles, interestingly, are also more suitable for winter. A candle in midsummer doesn't burn well because the wax becomes soft due to the high temperatures outside. In winter, on the other hand, it be...

There is a saying "to see and to be seen" and this expresses how we actually want to keep up to date with, for example, celebrities, and at the same time want to be noticed and thus perhaps attend events not for the sake of it, but because our need for attention from others is greater. We need to be noticed - to be seen. It is a basic need of ours and woe to those who do not have this basic need m...

Do you have rubber boots at home or at work? Have you ever had any at all? For me, rubber boots are associated with childhood memories: with them you could be outside in the biggest rain without getting your feet wet. They were a kind of universal shoe. If it was cold, just a few extra socks and I had warm and dry feet. When I wore these boots once on a Saturday afternoon at an event in the forest...

There was or still is a financial institution that advertises with the slogan "We clear the way", showing an endless straight road with two lanes. One lane is in one direction, the other in the other direction. Of course, you can to ask yourself: which is the right direction? The mere fact that the road is clear does not mean that one is going into the right direction. Sometimes it's wiser - like...

A match is something fascinating: It is easily combustible wood with an ignition head. When this is rubbed against a rough rubbing surface, which often contains easily combustible phosphorus, enough heat is generated to ignite the phosphorus and thus ignite the match. And then many things are possible: lighting a candle or a fire or whatever. The individual parts by themselves do nothing. But in c...

I remember many moments when I had the privilege to fly and look down on the earth from the plane above or in the clouds. Unique moments and if you haven't experienced it, it's hard to imagine and also hard to describe it. Many experiences cannot be described and certainly not been passed on or given away. It is the nature of experiences that you have to make them - and hopefully learn something f...

I'm sure you've read fairy tale books or, more importantly, read them aloud. The fascinating thing about fairy tale books - I think - is that they convey deep truths in relatively short stories, but often in a hidden or metaphorical form. As a child, I mainly heard the story, but not necessarily the moral or message. As an adult, I now recognise these more readily - and then sometimes resistance s...