The world wide web, to whom Tim Berners-Lee, a British physicist at the European centre of particle physics gave the name to in 1989, is an ever increasing organism whose only structural element is the domain name system (DNS). This gigantic body achieves its accessibility and transparency only through search engines. Many of us have little awareness of the fact that Google, the search engine of choice by many of us, is only indexing an estimated 30-50 billion websites while the total web assumably contains more than a trillion sites. A tremendous amount of knowledge, data, information, spam, one may choose the term preferred, remains undetected within the meshes of the so-called Deep Web. When in May 1993 Matthew Gray, a student from MIT made the first index he found only 100 sites. In 1996 the search engine Altavista which is already history today counted hundreds of thousands of websites and millions of documents. An unbelievable development that inspires many a creative minds to invent new methods of data structuring and content evaluation by more and more sophisticated algorithms. It is therefore not amazing that various companies try to find to their opinion more optimal solutions than the existing dominating search engines (Google, Yahoo and Microsoft) to make data available and turn them into knowledge. Some present data in a visually more attractive way for users, they cluster documents according to topics, others give us the possibility to compare the results of our searches of the big search engines, and we then choose the best for our purposes. It is all about re-organizing knowledge, presenting data, and compiling them in a content-oriented mode. And it is all about avoiding cheating and bluffing, about defining algorithms that give quality instead of quantity results. But in the end are the quality criteria applied not just a filter that has been chosen by a group of poeple? Shouldn't we, the users at least be in the position to have access to the criteria of priorization. Be it as it may, I believe that we have to learn to deal with quantities if we want to avoid patronization, if we want to be participants. Perhaps we moved already far beyond this point where independent thoughts and judgements are a serious aim. At the end of this philosophical turmoil a few links to counterbalance the dominance of Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. It is worthwhile in any case to counterbalance these super-powers. General search engine: www.cuil.com Meta-search engines: www.widow.com www.zuula.com Search engines with wiki philosophy (user participation) www.mahalo.com www.clusty.com This is only a selection, not a complete listing.

This talk of Dan Barber is amazing, exciting and instructive, it opens avenues to a different way of thinking about food stuff. His view on food is so very much in line with ours from Biestmilch. It has a lot to do with our premise »our food is remedy«. Dan Barber is a chef and a scholar - relentlessly pursuing the stories and reasons behind the foods we grow and eat. He's the chef and co-owner of Blue Hill, in New York and Westchester, where he practices a kind of close-to-the-land cooking.

Lake of Constance in November. Since Tuesday I am in our office in Austria. The winter atmosphere at the Lake is very special. It is cold, but bright sunshine. Fannie and Sophie enjoy the freedom in the garden. Heavy mistletoe branches falling of the trees announce Christmas time.

In Austria kids are not waiting for Santa but they wait for the Christkindl. Even though Santa has become a very dominant character Christkindl does not give in to withstand its/her/his demise. Have a proof for its vitality by having look onto the Viennese Kristkindl Market ;-) webcam spotting Rathausplatz of Vienna

Am Ende unseres Planungstreffens in Poysdorf, Niederösterreich, las Bernd eine zufällig aufgeschlagene Seite aus Hegels Werken vor. Der Sammelband stand in der kleinen Bibliothek unseres Tagungshotels. Man glaubt es kaum. Es war ein Kapitel über Heilmittel, das Allgemeine und das Spezielle. Neben der Arbeit hatten wir auch Spass, vor allem dann, wenn die Konzentration schon auf Null gesunken war :-) Redaktion und Regie des Beitrags: Fritz Oelberg (vulgo Fritzi)

Both are interrelated and overlap. This TED talk involves two subject that interest me a lot. Quantum physics that slowly and beyond the awareness of people is undermining and finally pushing aside the metaphors that have been dominating society and its language since the dawning of the industrial age. Lee Smolin is a quantum physicist. His way of thinking interprets the world differently by using different metaphors. The second subject is how society and the production of scientific facts are intertwined and influencing each other. Lee Smolin is not exactly outlining his talk in the same way as I receive it. My perception as a listener is more directed towards the flow of metaphors that mirror processes within society including the various scientific disciplines. Therefore I changed his title as an act of democracy from »How science is like democracy« into the above. Lee Smolin, a theoretical physicist from Ontario, Canada. He is working mainly in the field of quantum gravity. He's a founding member of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Canada, and the author of The Trouble With Physics.

Planning is definitely an important thing to do. It is so much more creative and productive, painful and amusing in the same time if you plan and decide in a group process. This is why our team met in Poysdorf, a  lonely place in the countryside of lower Austria, for 2 days. Except of 2 we are all Austrians (8 out of 10). The place is 10km from the Czech border and really lonely, especially in November. Together we tried to tame biestmilch, the snake with the seven heads ;-)... I think we managed to outline 2009 fairly well, but I don't think that we really touched grounds yet. It was the first meeting of the team in this configuration, a good beginning. First of all we discussed the relaunch of biestmilch that will take place in spring 2009. Tuned in to 2009 but tired we all left this peaceful place.