If you are (or have been) in Germany, and drove a car, you will probably have made your acquaintance with it. If you've never been to Germany, chances are high that you have at least heard of it, and probably tried to imagine how that works...

...I'm talking about the lack of a speed limit on the Autobahn.

German Autobahn has no universal speed limit. So if your car goes insanely fast, you are allowed to go insanely fast. 300 km per hour? You're good to go.

Unless, of course, there's a speed restriction because of construction. Or because of a dangerous bend. Or too dense traffic. Or noise prevention. Or rain. So a good amount of the Autobahn is actually limited in speed (though there's also a good amount of drivers who just don't care about that, and go over the limit anyways).

In those areas where there is no restriction, you can go as fast as you like, provided you endanger nobody else. So if there's more traffic... well. You are supposed to slow down to a safe speed. Actually we do have the "Richtgeschwindigkeit", which is the recommended speed, and that is 130 km/h. Which, of course, is not the speed for lorries, as they are only allowed to go 80 km/h (which means they do about 90-110, depending on what they can get away with).

So driving on the Autobahn in areas with no speed limit means that you will have to overtake a lorry, or several of them, now and then - and that while you are in the left lane, something may come toward you insanely fast, much faster than you are.

That difference between speeds actually is what makes the Autobahn both more dangerous and, ironically, more prone to traffic jams that hold up everything - because these very fast cars have to brake hard when there's some slow driver (like me!) blocking their path, and that always means they slow down more than to just the speed of the car before them. If you get this a few times in a row (which is no problem on a medium-busy Autobahn), you have a so-called "Spontanstau", a traffic jam rising out of nowhere... which would be completely avoidable through, you guessed it, a universal speed limit.

There's a lot of solid, nice evidence for the general smartness of a general speed limit, and most countries have one. It means lower impact on the environment due to less emitted CO2, fewer traffic jams, and more safety as the number and severity of accidents drops. (Here's some info in German about this.)

Unfortunately, there is a strong lobby in Germany that does not want the German Holy Cow to be restricted in any way - and that includes speed limits. (About as smart as US weapon law... but I guess every nation has their brain fart.) I once got rid of a car club membership salesman in record speed when I told him I'd join their club in the split second they started advocating the general speed limit on the Autobahn. He was gone at high speed!

There is, by the way, one "car club" that does promote the speed limit - it's the VCD. Which also offers an accident and breakdown cover that not only applies to the car, but also to your bicycle, should you be on a cycle tour. (We're members. You guessed that, right?)

If you are in Germany, you now have the chance to join in on a petition to finally get a universal speed limit on the German Autobahn. There is an official petition running at the e-petition portal of the Deutscher Bundestag; you will need to register for that portal once, and then you can add your vote to the petitions listed there.

If you, too, think that this is a good idea - please spread the word!

It's International Women's Day (International Men's Day, by the way, is on November 19)... and I was wondering whether I should blog about this, or not (and obviously, I did decide to do so).

I'm always a little torn on these "Something Something Day" things. On the one hand, I think it's good and helpful to be reminded, once in a while, of the "Something Something" - of the good sides and the bad ones. Of the fact that no, for instance, men and women are not created equal; there are both gender differences that are natural, and those that are nurture, and the question is whether the nurture ones still benefit our society and us as individuals, or whether we should look at them with a critical eye and maybe get rid of them.

On the other hand, there's a little part of me that thinks that having a day more or less "devoted" to a Something Something might as well lead to that being topic of the day, people getting all behind the cause verbally, and then going back to business as usual and not giving the thing any more room, or thought. And there's a lot of "Something Something Day"s these days... many of them tongue-in-cheek, yes, but quite a lot of them are also in earnest, with some of them also being hyped for some reason or other.

Prime examples of the hyped days that come to mind are Valentine's Day and Mother's Day. My mum always ranted against Mother's Day, for instance. Not because she would not enjoy breakfast in bed, or little presents from her children, or hates flowers - she felt that honouring mothers (or partners, or all other human beings) should be something done every day, not shunted into one single 24 hour period once per year... and that instead of spending time, effort and money for making breakfast once a year and buying flowers, a few minutes' worth of additional work in the household every day during the year would be a much more helpful present.

That is, undeniably, a true thing. But overall, hypes aside, at least these days can serve as a reminder that what we have, or can do, or the world that we live in today are not to be taken for granted - and that we should show our care and appreciation once in a while, or do something to make the world a better place, a small step at a time.

 

There's a nice little film on the website of the Heritage Crafts Association about the art of needle making - though it's mostly modern pre- industrial processes, it still is interesting.

You can watch it here - and maybe check out the rest of the website as well!

Here's a stack of links to various topics:

A Youtube video of a lecture given by Randy Pausch on how to achieve your Childhood Dreams.

A method on how to get vegetable matter out of wool, using a hand card - it's a rather time-consuming method from the looks of it, but a very interesting way to clean fibres.

An article on apparel for athletic activities from the 14th to the 19th century - open access (yay!).

Finally, in case you are in Scotland and interested in natural colours, there is a talk and workshop on Turkey Red on Saturday, March 2, 10 to 12:00 at Dumbarton Library.

Hugo nominations are open again, and as usual, I've not done much reading of new books and novelettes and short stories in 2018 - so I don't have a lot in my head to nominate.

I have, however, done some listening to stories on Escapepod and its sister podcasts - and my favourite story of 2018, by far, still is "A Cure for Homesickness". It's just beyond brilliant, and if you like stories about humans and aliens at all, go have a look at it (you can also read it beyond that link if you prefer that to listening).

There's a whole list of stories from EP that are nominate-able, and I loved quite a few of them - plus there are more eligible stories on Podcastle, Cast of Wonders (including "Ava Paints the Horses", which I had the pleasure to narrate), and - if you are into horror and not such a wimp as I am - Pseudopod.

So. I will go and nominate - and if you are, like me, one of those who can hand in a Hugo nomination, please do so. It doesn't matter if you have not read everything, and it's not necessary to fill in every slot or every category (most of them, on my ballot, will stay empty) - but it is a wonderful way to draw attention to something you really loved in 2018, and who knows, your nomination might be the difference for something ending up on the shortlist and something remaining unknown.

There's a lot of nice ways to procrastinate. Not that I would ever do this, right? Well.

Just in case you have some extra time to spend, or need something to make you spend some extra time that you don't actually have, here's a link to the Cenobium project, which has wonderful images of Romanesque capitals. The project name stands for "Cultural Electronic Network Online: Binding up Interoperably Usable Multimedia" and the website features a multimedia presentation of Romanesque cloister capitals from the Mediterranean region with high-resolution digital photographs, 3-D models, and panoramas.

Or are you looking for something more substantial than digital images? In that case, you might prefer to procrastibake. Apparently this is not only a thing, but even has its own hashtag on Twitter. So - some really cool baking if you are both a language nerd, history lover and friend of mathematics is this cuneiform tablet with a mathematical equation. In gingerbread.

Hm. Now I wonder if there's a nice kind of non-gingerbread cookie dough that would be a good cuneiform base...

 

When you read this, I'm already sitting in the train, moving towards beautiful Méry in Belgium, to teach my weekend tablet-weaving workshop. One full weekend of tablet-turning fun!

Which means that I will be short a weekend, and consequently will take Monday off. I'll be back on the blog on Tuesday - until then, I leave you with this flowering Hellebore from our garden: