Hello Relatives and Friends:

This is the fourth report of our travels.  To save you from possible
boredom I will split this into two parts -- a very brief summary in
the first part, then a more detailed report with all my prejudiced
observations in the second part.  They are separated by ****, so you
can ignore the second part. 

Love to all of you.

Norman (and Yokelin)

Part 1 
------ 
Summary 
=================

Sept 26 -- Oct 3:  Dresden.

I went there to visit the Technical University of Dresden to work with
two Profesors, Michael Thielscher and Steffan Bohlholder.  Dresden was
the city that suffered firestorms like that in Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
except the British bombs that did it were not nuclear. It was part of the
old East Germany, so its re-construction was patchy until re-unification
in 1990.  We also visited Meissen, the famous porcelain manufacturing
town just 20 km from it.  Both are very pretty cities, but we liked
Meissen more, because it has a lot more of its history preserved.
Meissen porcelain is very delicate, and very, very, very expensive.
An egg cup is A$120, no kidding.  In Dresden there is a fine art gallery,
and Michael's friend Steffan Shicka -- an opthamalogist and also (would
you believe it?!) a certified tourist guide -- took us there to show
and explain to us some of the most famous masters I have ever seen.
Some great Holbeins and Durers.  I felt like a real Jakun ("peasant"
for the non-Malaysians) as he lovingly recounted the details.

Oct 3 -- Oct 8:  Leipzig.

I went there to attend the joint conference on Advances in Modal Logic
and Temproral Reasoning.  This is the stuff that you need when you try to
teach programs to prove the correctness of software that handle things
like computer protocols, network comminication, and robotic actions.
The University of Leipzig was founded before Columbus set sail for
the Americas.  The city was also in the old East Germany, and only the
center has been restored, but beautifully so.  The Thomas Church there was
where Bach composed and was Organ Master.  I attended a service there,
mainly to hear the organist perform and the famous boys choir sing.
The Lord's prayer was said in German by the congregation.  Absolutely
inspiring, thank heavens I am not an atheist but merely an agnostic.
The philosopher-mathematician Leibniz who co-invented the differential
calculus with Newton lived here.  His college friend was Goethe.
I visited and ate in the cafe in which they ate.

***************************************************************************

Part 2 -- Details 
=================

Dresden and Meissen 
------------------

Same story here as I recounted earlier about Humboldt University --
three rounds of University destruction from which they are only now
beginning to recover.  The first was when the Nazis got rid of all
liberal-minded and Jewish professors.  The second was when the Communists
fired the bourgeois professors.  Then after re-unification, they fired
the Marxists.  The faculties earliest to recover were the technological
ones -- e.g. in Technische Universitat Dresden the strong faculties are
Computing, Mathematics, Physics, Medicine, Engineering.  Law, History,
Philosophy, Psychology, Economics are catching up.  Mathematics and
Physics were top-ranking faculties even when the Russians ruled East
Germany, for the simple reason that Russia itself has always been an
international leader in these fields. The great Russian theoretical
physics classic "Landau and Lifschitz" is known to, and loved by, all
physics researchers -- ironically they were two Russians of Jewish faith
who actually thrived under Stalin because of their expertise in nuclear
physics required to build hydrogen bombs.  Law, History, etc. suffered
because of Communist political correctness: you had to be a Marxist
lawyer, historian, etc.  Today, the political correctness is in reverse.
It is now highly unlikely that you could be a professor of economics 
if you did not subscribe to untrammeled "free enterprise".

The Stasi -- the old East German secret police -- did enormous
psychological damage.  They blackmailed a lot of people to spy on their
friends and relatives.  Before we judge the folks who collaborated, let
me describe a typical scenario.  Say you had a "bad" background, e.g,
your father was a bourgeois professor of philosophy whose special field
was analytic philosophy.  Well, that's tough in the old German
Democratic Republic (funny how the word `Democratic' in the title of a
country is a giveaway that it is anything but!) because the party
regarded this discipline as a capitalist indulgence.  This means that
you, having been so contaminated, do not deserve to go to University
however good your grades are.  But!! -- if you would co-operate by
reporting on the activities of counter-revolutionary students, maybe
they will allow you to study for a degree.  So, what do you do?  Well,
you collaborate.  But your report on Jurgen Schmitt will read something
like this in a typical week.  "Jurgen ate peanut butter sandwiches for
lunch, a bad American capitalist recipe.  Later he bought a pair of
used Gucci jeans from a tourist, showing his decadent tendencies." It
is not surprising that when the Stasi files were open to the public,
most of the reports had, not a Kafkaesque air, but that of Marx -- the
Groucho, Zeppo, etc. variety.  Saddest of all was when some husbands
found that their wives had been reporting on them, and vice-versa.  The
inanity of the reports did nothing to repair the bonds of trust and
love that were broken.

It is good to meet young Germans who do not take themselves too seriously.
Michael told us "The problem with us Germans is that we were so thorough
and systematic about everyting; so when the Communists said to collect
information on capitalist subversion, we recruited half the population to 
spy on the other half!"  It is therefore a relief to notice that these days
Germans who walk their dogs sometimes let them poo in the streets without
cleaning up.  It's illegal, but they don't care.  And there is no law to
ban chewing gum even though they have to be cleaned from the sidewalks
using special equipment. 

Dresden was virtually flattened by British bombs in revenge for what
the Germans did to Coventry.  In his memoirs, Hitler's armaments
minister Albert Speer said that the destruction of Dresden had no
effect on Germany's capacity to produce arms even late into the war.
You don't have to be a cynic to believe that revenge is a very powerful
motive even in these supposedly rational times -- it is the cycle of
revenge excusing the latest outrage that has sustained the pain of
Northern Ireland and the Middle-east.  Because Dresden had so little
left standing, re-construction is still continuing today.  There is
mixed feeling about restoring some buildings to their 17th or 18th
century splendor as some of them were associated with unpleasant phases
of German nationalism.  Those already restored are magnificent.
Cathedrals here, as in most European cities, are imposing edifices,
testimony to a once universal spirituality.  When you sit in the pews
of the Catholic cathedral here --  vaulting arches, ceilings that seem
to reach for the stars, an alter that promises eternal life -- a peace
will descend upon you and quiet your soul.

My German friends are very apologetic about the evils of Nazism, and
very contrite about the Holocaust.  The latter was a crime against
humanity on a scale never seen before, and only made possible because
of modern technology.  There was a thriving Jewish community in every
major German city, and most Jews were assimilated.  Many were decorated
by the Kaiser for courageous service to Germany in the First World War.
The fact that they regarded themselves as German did not save them.
The Nazis did not invent the pernicious racist theories about Aryan (there
is no such ethnic or even cultural grouping!) superiority.  Such bigotry
was already rampant in Europe, but they cleverly exploited this fiction.
But as you all know, the Nazis were really the creatures of the allied
politicians who wanted to exact punitive damage on the German economy
after the First World War.  An impoverished and desperate people are 
the perfect breeding cess-pool for totalitarian monstrosities.

A lot of money has been poured into the reconstruction of Eastern Germany.
But its unemployment rate is 17%, more than twice that of Western
Germany.  Worse, a lot of the admittedly drab security of old-time
Communism is gone.  Under Communism, nobody was rich, consumer goods
were not in abundance, but everybody had a job (although often under-employed,
like "council-workers"!), good holidays, equal and adequate treatment in
hospitals.  Today, there are lots of consumer goods, many rich and many
poor people, many unemployed, many homeless, and much political freedom.
I don't think I am alone in believing that there must surely be a happy
medium in between!  The neo-Nazis that you read about in the newspapers
are most active in this part of Germany, particularly in the smaller
towns.  Economic envy is what breeds them, not any absolute measure of
poverty.   Although the unemployed have more money from social welfare now 
than under the Communists, they are unhappy.  You see, in the old GDR all 
were equally poor and miserable, and misery loves company.  Today, the
underdogs can see that quite a few around them actually enjoy the luxuries
shown on TV.

The ancient town of Meissen escaped most of the bombing because of
a historical accident.  While Dresden became an industrial center
in the nineteenth century Meissen remained a charming village that
was a holiday retreat for the leisure class.  It is the home of the
famous porcelain factory.  We visited the factory, and saw the heavily
labor-intensive process by which the porcelain was made and decorated
by highly skilled staff.  The process of glazing, baking, and painting
are repeated many times as each new color was applied before the next.
As I was listening to the description of the process, and watching the
artisans and artists at work, the commonplace phrase "labor of love"
insinuated itself into a new part of my brain -- it is no longer
commonplace to me!  Every time I hear the phrase in future, I will think
of the Meissen factory.  How nice!  Now I know why Meissen porcelain costs
an arm and a leg.  

The old town is stunningly beautiful.  It is dominated by a formidable
castle and a medieval gothic church on a hill high above the Elbe
River.  Cobble stone roads meander lazily down the hill with quaint
houses two or three stories high on both sides.  Occasionaly, the
houses would yield to a stone bridge, revealing lower parts of the town
passing beneath it.  It is an ancient town.  One house near the church
pre-dates the Norman invasion of England!  The castle is "young", built
in the 18th century by Augustus Stark, Elector of Saxony and King of
Poland.  He was the most powerful duke in Germany (not yet one nation
then), wealthy beyond description, and converted to Roman Catholicism
so that he could inherit the Polish throne.  "Stark" means "strong", as
echoed in English by the adjective in "stark naked".  As it was reputed
that he had 300 children by over 100 mistresses, I wonder whether it is
only his financial and military prowess that his subjects were admiring
when they conferred the descriptor on him.  His son, Augustus III, was
not a brilliant warrior; instead, he spent his father's fortune on the
arts.  When I was told this, shamefully in that weak moment I joked
silently to myself, "Augustus the Wimp".  But of course not.  The arts,
and not war, are the measure of civilization.  We do not revere the
Greeks for the conquests of Alexander, but for the epics of Homer and
the tragedies of Sophocles.

Meissen, Dresden and Leipzig are in Sachsen province, i.e., Saxony.
This should be a familiar name to all of us -- it is the home of the
Saxons of yore.  I don't speak German, but soon could not help
recognising that English is a Germanic tongue.  There are so many
phonetically shared words between German and English that it does not
take a linguist to see that they must once have been the same
language.  I heard a Dresden mother yell at her kids "Come here" -- it
is spelled "Kom hier" in German, but pronounced exactly as it is in
English.  Wild boar, which I ate one evening in a tavern ("bierhaus"
-- just say it!) is "wildschwein" -- wild swine.  Pork is
"schweinfleisch" -- swine flesh.  "Eingang" is entrance -- "ein" means
"in" and "gang" is "passage" as we still say "gang-plank" and
"gang-way" in English.  It just takes a little curiosity and a passion
for word detective games to work some of these out.  The amusing thing
in German is the way they squeeze together smaller words to make a big
word, as when I saw a German scientist present his overhead slides in
English and he lapsed into a Germanic construction when he titled one
overhead "Newproofmethod".  Oh, by the way, all international
scientific meetings are now conducted in English for the obvious reason
that the only truly common language of Japanese, American, French,
Russian, Indian, Vietnamese, etc.  scientists is -- you guessed it --
English.  This will be so long after Pax Americana is a dim memory.
Just think of how long Latin endured as the common tongue of the
literati after the Vandals sacked Rome simply because the Iberians,
Goths, Irish, Swedes, British, etc. had only Latin in common.

German syntax is not so hard for those of us who follow the Star Wars
mythology.  Yoda speaks English with German syntax!  Here is something
he might say - "Love you he will not".  Translating word for word into
German will yield a grammatical German sentence.  Have noticed how wise
Yoda sounds?

Leipzig 
-------
We got to Leipzig by train.  It was a short journey of 1 hr 15 mins
eastwards.  You can pay 33DM for this "slow" ride, or pay 47DM for
the fast one on th ICE train which cuts it down to 55 min.  We decided
to take it slow in order to soak in the countryside.  But heck! "slow"
means 120 km/hr, so we did not see much.
 
Leipzig station is the largest in Europe.  In renovating it, they
excavated 3 levels below it and made it into a
shopping/eating/entertainment mecca.  But I think Leipzig's distinction
is historical.  For me it is the home of three of the greatest minds of
the Enlightenment -- Leibniz, Goethe and Bach.  Magdeburg is near here
too, and it is the home of much early physics.  I think you all know
much more about Bach than I do, most of you being good church goers
unlike me.  All three have sombre statues in their honor here.  Goethe
has a few funny exploitations of his fame.  I passed a seductive
fashion shop with real trendy goods and it had a clever name
"Mephisto".  This was the name of the Devil in Goethe's Faust.
Remember?  Mephisto seduced Dr Faustus into exchanging his soul for
yummy things like Helen of Troy ("the face that launched a thousand
ships"), and for intimate knowledge of scientific secrets.  This shop
presumably could persuade many a teenager or undergrad to part with
his/her soul in exchange for some Tommy Hilfiger (oops! is it already
passe?) stuff.  Leibniz, as I mentioned earlier, co-invented the
differential calculus with Newton.  And we actually use Leibniz's
notation (dy/dx) and not Newton's (unless you are an English trained
applied mathematician!).  Never believe that the choice of notation is
immaterial.  Leibniz's won because it was mnemonically superior.
Example: for those who recall, the essence of the "chain rule" in
calculus -- dy/dx = dy/dz * dz/dx -- is "cancellation".  It is easy to
remember by resemblance with the rule for fractions already learned in
elementary school.  The Newtonian notation has no such cognitive
power.  The genius of Leibniz extended far beyond just mathematics.
That the Advances in Modal Logic conference was held here this year is
most appropriate.  Leibniz not only envisioned the eventual translation
of all natural language into a formal logic, so that all debate can be
reduced to logical calculation -- "Let us calculate", he said; but also
he introduced the idea of alternative worlds which is the modern basis
of Modal Logic.  This is also the basis of understanding
"counterfactual sentences" like "If the Spanish Armada had succeeded,
we would all be Roman Catholics".  And it was probably Leibniz that
Voltaire (in Candide) was teasing with his invention of the perpetual
optimist Dr Pangloss who believed that this world, despite all its
pointless cruelty and rapacious greed, is the "best of all possible
worlds".  Leibniz's mind was so fertile that everything it begat was an
intellectual virus that is still infecting us.

I know I had promised not to talk about the conferences I attended even
though they occupied most of my time.  But one event is irresistible.
On the second evening there was a special ceremony in which a
Universitat Leipzig honorary doctorate was conferred upon Prof Nuel
Belnap from Pittsburgh.  Belnap is a leading light in Relevance Logic,
the elements of which I understand but the depths of which leave me
feeling very inadequate.  It is the ceremony I will describe, because
it is centuries old.  The Chancellor came dressed in a special costume
and bedecked with chains and medals.  If I said "Wizard of Oz" you'll
know what I mean.  It was in a room in the Uni with baroque cornices
painted gold.  The chandelier was probably Meissen porcelain.  Because
almost all the speeches were in German (it was like many solemn
contemporary Yodas speaking!) I was bowled over by the incessant flow
of wisdom and high learning.  To top it all, a harpsichordist and a
flautist played Bach between speeches.  And they served great champagne
at the end!

The German mark is almost the same value as the Aussie dollar.  There is
an interesting fact.  On the 10 DM bill the portrait is that of Carl
Friedrich Gauss, one of the greatest mathematicians who ever lived.
And beside him is the Gaussian curve, with its mean and standard deviation
shown!  How many countries have so honored their scientists or artists?

We stayed in a Gaesthaus (say it!) which also had three other guests --
a retired Dusseldorf businessman (Klaus), and a retired American
engineer (Larry) and his German wife (Hilda). I caught the tram to the
Tech Uni, and like many things German, they were absolutely reliable
and punctual.  In the mornings, the five of us had breakfast together,
and we learned a lot from them.  Like, Hilda was originally from a
small Saxon, therefore East German, town Erfurt.  She married Larry a
long time ago and left to live in the U.S.  After German re-unification
she came back to re-claim her family house.  There were all kinds of
difficulties, but they were eventually resolved.  Such reclamations
often caused resentment.  Many older East Germans are unhappy with the
new order as they feel insecure.  The old, dull, bureaucratic state was
drab, but at least it guaranteed them free health care, an annual
holiday all paid for, and there was no property theft.  They got used
to not questioning the State.  But today, there is freedom, and with
it, uncertainty.  Erfurt is also a town with active neo-Nazis.  They
thrive on discontent.  Klaus owns shops that sell spectacles and
hearing aids.  The latest hearing aid is a Siemens model that can be
individually tuned.  Larry's mother, who was not helped by conventional
hearing aids got this model last year, and he said she is now a new
person.  Costs US$2,000.  No wonder Klaus drives an Alpha from golf
tournament to golf tournament in Eurpope.

I close by describing how pretty the restored buildings in the city
squares are.  In a typical platz (place!) you will be surrounded by
tall buildings, some dating back to the middle ages.  The platz itself
is generous in extent, inducing the feeling of an expansive joy. The
buildings are contiguous, entry to the platz being from its corners.
Often there is one building that dominates the others by virtue of its
height, or its boldness of architecture; this was the church, or the
council-house, or the town residence of a Saxon noble.  But even a
typical house is stunning.  It has 7 or 8 levels, only 3 or 4 obvious
at first glance.  Then as your eye roams up to the high sloping roof of
sculpted tiles, you see another 3 or 4 levels of windows peeping
discreetly from it.  They look like what we call "cape cods" these
days, but oh, ever so much more dainty!  This roof can be maroon,
green, brown or mauve.  The walls are yellow, pink, blue, etc.  A
sensitive artist must have chosen the color schemes, for even
aesthetically handicapped as I am, I fell in love with them instantly.
And no two buildings are the same!  Each one is a discovery, an
invitation to behold ever so longingly, and to imagine the sights and
sounds that must have filled them in centuries bygone.

Then we came back to Birmingham and reality resumed.  Back to the land
of the chip sandwich!  But also to the home of the best symphony hall
in Europe, which we will soon visit to hear the CBSO perform.  Pinchas
Zuckerman leads an all-Beethoven next week on Oct 24, and I am already
all goose-pimples when I think about it!  Will report on that next
time.

Cheerio, much love to you all.

Norman (and Yokelin)