I've never had a German pils that was anything better than ok. But I lived in east Germany so if you wanted a pils you got something Czech. At least in Dresden and admittedly a very international crowd I hung out with (worked with 300 people from 150 nations) Weissen was about even with pils for amount drunk. But Schwartz, or even Radler if driving was popular too.

IMO you need to step away from the german pils/lagers. Weisse both Heifen and Kristal are just magical. The problem is typically tourists come over and expect to order something that "looks like it does back home" and get Becks or a local equivalent and it is just okay. That said if you like to drink Bud or similar style piss you can get it in Germany for around 30 cents a pint.

German Pils are kind of middle of the road. I stick to wheat beers and the occasional Dunkle/Schwartz (darker beers). The problem is most people when they experience German imported beer it is usually Becks or Warsteiner neither of which are very good. The good thing in Germany is the prices too. You can get a decent Czech beer if you don't like German for around $1 a 0.5L ~pint (not a "bottle" like they call them over here), bottle of vodka for about $7, nice French wine for about 10 (pisses the French off their wine is cheaper in Germany) etc.

The article: food cost is being optimistic. It all depends on how much like a student you want to live. Meat is much more expensive as is fruit (when I was living there 7 years ago it was a euro for a grapefruit (~1.50 back then). Meat is about the same price in euros as it is in dollars over here (going by canadian prices which is expensive by US standards so probably more like 1.25X USD price in euros ~2X). Gas is about 2/3 the cost in euros per L as it is in the US per gallon. So if you are a student sure hope you don't want to drive.

People create necessities from themselves. In my experience people in his pay bracket "must pay" for their kids to have private educations at 20-40k a pop per kid, must have luxury cars less than 3 years old etc. Money goes quick if you insist on creating expenses like that for yourself.

and: what is the chances you can send say 5 people and not one of them will have a condition that requires hospital attention in 2 years? I love how scientists (and I have a physics degree) love to suggest very expensive projects and they always claim it will save humanity. Heck I worked in a genetics laboratory and everyone would be doing stupid (but interesting) things like figuring out how lizards grow their tails back. When grant time rolled around it was always: we could grow our own organs, we could cure cancer, we could cure paralysis etc. Heck they literally had whole conferences devoted to people studying one particular type of worm. Sure those things could happen but all the scientist's cared about was getting their PhD so they could land a good post doc. Cancer landed on the grant proposal because that was the circus you had to run to impress the granting committees and or tick boxes to be considered for different government sources of funds.

Anyone thinking the guys at big science facilities are completely working for the benefit of humanity and their own fame and fortune doesn't come into play are smoking crack. Science has as much snobbery as any military or private organization I ever worked about. Getting the best funds, grad students, lab equipment, lab location (EMBL, CERN, Harvard etc), getting your papers in the best journals etc.is 90% of the work senior researchers concern themselves with in my experience.

I think we'll have colonies in the next couple hundred years at the longest. But the thing is exponential growth. Space travel might get cheaper but the amount of power needed to launch a spacecraft means we won't move people off the planet fast enough that the population actually shrinks.

Why doesn't the US challenge China to a healthcare or human rights race? Something we know will help people now not hopefully help them in the future. If we can't figure out how to take care of each other we don't deserve to colonize other planets.

I agree with a lot of your comments. What I miss about radio is discovering new stuff. That said my tastes lean away from mass market stuff. Not that I hate all of it but the current Lady Gaga song or whatever being played once an hour means 1) I listen to crap I don't like and 2) I don't really discover new music that I want to listen to anyways.

So I rely on friends and concert festivals to find new bands. Because my stuff isn't played on the radio often by the time I discover a band they've put out 6 albums and I have a lot of material to enjoy before moving on to the next new thing I find.

Social aspect: going in all ways. Everyone has headphones on listening to their own playlists while they text with their own friends. casual acquiescences don't really share anything anymore.

Exactly.

No those might have had actual technical limitations length of a record/phonograph for example.

Another possibility: maybe song length for pop songs is self-limiting. People hate to hear songs they don't like. If they have 10min of a song they like and then 10min of a song they don't they'll change the dial. But if you keep them short they'll rid them out like a lot of people do with commercials.

and who has more money than God?

I think I had that channel in my hotel room in Germany.

Well I'd say now a days it is probably more due to advertisement. Keeping the song around 3min gives you enough time to play 3 "songs" do a weather update and the plug boner pills again.

Also probably due to the genre but one of my favorite bands, Opeth, has an average song length of probably 9min. They have a whole bunch of songs 12+ min long. I've never heard them on radio but did hear an a snippet from one of their softer songs in a CSI episode I think it was. I don't listen to the radio because generally it doesn't play the type of music I like. Sure with online I could search around for a station somewhere that plays it but being online I can just listen to the things I like in the first place.

I think radio is an outdated medium at least for music. For discussions and such it can be okay, but then again that can also be replaced by podcasts.

Plus it is a good place to dump your "photos" that you don't really care too much about if they were to be lost and you had to "take" them again.

You mean you've never repaired a fileserver while drunk?