A friend of mine (DJ) sent me an email where he told me he was reading a book about the Spandau Seven (possibly this one - not sure - but I a reading this one) held at Spandau Prison (more info here). As a follow up I recommended a book and the whole interchange cascaded from there... below is the edited transcript of our internchange... As a side note, I am not normally into this type of book but when I was living in Germany I realised that I knew so little about the war and Germany in general. So I started reading... I actually had an apartment in Munich that overlooked that originally occupied by 'the man with the bristly mustache' or 'Herr Schicklgruber ' as my German friends referred to Hitler. Incidentally, the latter name; Hitler's father, Alois Schiklgruber was born out of wedlock to Marie Anna Schicklgruber who later married Johann Georg Heidler. Heidler was also variously spelled Hitler. I don't recall if Johann Georg was Alois' father, but he gave him his family name, thus he (Hitler's father) became Alois Heidler or Hitler. Alois' second marriage, to Klara Poelzl, resulted in six children, of which Adolf was the fourth. The original Schicklgruber family were itinerant millers. Now you know.
"Well you could do the 'prequel' (sort of) of the book by reading "The Nuremberg Interviews" and other associated reading (The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich is considered the best of this type of book as Shirer was actually there at the time. Incidentally, you just sparked off a thought for some future reading for myself. Some time back I did a psychology course. One of the areas we studied was obedience and this was based upon a study by Stanley Millgram who got students to ask other people questions. The 'other people' were actually actors. When the person asked the questions got the answer wrong or did not answer the person asking the question was instructed to give them an increasingly strong electric shock. Out of 40 people, 37 of them continued to give ridiculously high levels of electricity to the 'other people' even though they could hear them screaming and saying things like "NO, NO, No. I have a heart condition" or could clearly be heard gagging, moaning, or failing to answer after having 'received' a massive blast of electricity. Actually, there was no electricity involved.
This is the same guy who did the research/theory after seeing a play of the same title by John Guare on the "six degrees of separation" which is still questioned as the study was never properly completed scientifically but appears to work. It is on this basis that things like LinkedIn and social networking sites work because every one is six steps away from knowing everyone else and why. See the section on computer networking and follow up some of the links at the bottom as this is a truly fascinating subject area with particular relevance to computers, email, networking etc. It is why you get those stupid chain mail letters that threaten to have a cat drowned or you will have bad luck if you do not send them on to 10 other people, and also how pyramid marketing schemes work. Similarly the whole thing regarding synchronicity, causality, and the butterfly effect are related. Also, did you know of the "Pauli Effect"? It is a belief (by scientists) that certain people break equipment. Now you know why some people cannot get their computers to work for them or that they keep going wrong...
Where all of this is truly fascinating is how it creeps in to the general public mind set through media. e.g., Will Smith's first mainstream movie? Six degrees of separation. Peter Gabriel (he of Biko and Genesis fame) has a song which I think is called 'We do as we are told (Millgram's 37)".
There are thousands more like this but my all time favourite is "Dark Side of the Rainbow" (available at a torrent site near you but make sure you get the correct one - check the comments for this. It is difficult to find the REAL one so check carefully. ). It is really, really odd to watch 'The Wizard of Oz' that is synchronised with Pink Floyds 'Dark Side of the Moon' and how eerily the story lines match up. Spook!... Similarly, the Floyd album 'Wish you were here' matches beautifully with 'Blade Runner' (the non-directors cut that is)...
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