My Photo on the Cover of the Book Throwing Stones

Cow with bended Horn
Originally uploaded by theowl84

A few months ago I received an email from a publisher from Australia who was interested in putting my picture of a cow on the front cover of a book.

I let them use the photo for free and asked them to send me a copy of that book. Last week I got a copy of the freshly printed book "Throwing Stones" by Michael Dawson where the cow has found its place in a collage on the front cover.

The book is tag-lined "Throwing Stones will change the way you think, and think about religion and underwear". I'm pretty excited reading it in order to find out what it's all about. Then I'm probably write a blog entry about it.

Get Me Out Of Here

I finished reading my latest book: Get Me Out Of Here by Rachel Reiland. A wonderful account of borderline personality disorder (BPD), how she suffered through it and most of all how she recovered. I especially liked the role of her therapist, who - while keeping himself totally distanced emotionally - was more of a father for her than her own.

Reading this kind of book gives you a lot of understanding in psychological illnesses. I do not know anyone with BPD personally, but it's pretty certain that many people you encounter in daily life show similarities but don't even notice.

One thing I have read about in this book is a very important one: many people do not want to be helped in the first place, but then are more than thankful that someone really cares for their problems. Most people only show understanding on a surface level - the real causes remain hidden even for the person dealing with them. Opening yourself up requires a lot of trust and time. And this is something that can hardly be found today.

Globalization vs Localization

Recently I made two purchases on the internet. The first thing that I bought were two books. A typical globalized transaction:

1. I found these books while commenting an article from an Austrian guy
2. I did a search which brought me to an American website: Mind Hacks
3. So I logged in on the Austrian portal of Amazon
4. As you know, this site is only a modified version of the German Amazon
5. I found out that these books were cheaper by an alternative seller in the UK
6. A week later the books arrived and on the envelope it said:
7. Paperbackshop.co.uk from the UK
8. But the address was from Illinois USA
9. Interestingly the stamp said: sent from Niederaula in Germany (written in French)
10. and then i was sent all the way to Austria

On the other hand, last Sunday I bought two packs of chili seeds on eBay. As I found out after the purchase, the seller lives about 10 walking minutes from my home. So today I just walked over there to buy them and save the shipping money.

So one transaction involved 4 countries from half around the globe and 3 languages, while the other was done within less than 2 kilometers from my home. Now that is globalization vs. localization