Peter Murmann

The perfect secret (Das perfekte Geheimnis)

No Comments 11 January 2020

Imagine you know absolutely everything about another person, and you can fully predict what the person will think and do in the future. Would this help or hurt a relationship? This extreme form of knowing someone else does no exist but we all have a sense that we know some people much better than others. Some people we can trust and we can predict with high certainty that they will behave well toward us. Other people, by contrast, are complete wild cards and their unpredictability in thought and action can terrorize us.

Diary, Politics

Impeachment

No Comments 20 December 2019

I have two sentiments about impeachment. One the one hand, I am sad that Trump whose actions are clearly worse than what Nixon did and that he will not get removed from office and I pitty Republicans who have to defend actions that are indefensible. But I also acknowledge that congressmen and senators reflect accurately what their masters the voters want. 48 percent want Trump removed and 48 want him to be left in office and face voters judgments next November. Here is a very interesting graphic courtesy of the Walll Street Journal that shows that congressman vote largely reflecting what their constituency wants.

Movies, Drama

Once upon a time in Hollywood

No Comments 15 December 2019

The attentive reader of my blog will have noticed that I like movies very much. If I had a 2nd chance to start my work life over, I might put all my efforts into becoming a movie critic for a major newspaper. So when a film about Hollywood is made, the city where so much of the history of film has been written, I am obviously curious. Especially, when the director is Quentin Tarantino, who I boycotted for most of my life but warmed up in Django Unchained (here you find my 2012 review).