tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-101044742024-03-13T03:13:30.033-01:00Hero von EsensEala Frya FresenaUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger469125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10104474.post-34646168133717375932013-07-08T07:11:00.000-01:002013-09-04T07:01:56.612-01:00Big Data, Apollo and DaphneOver on oomkenscom, a small piece about Big Data...
Some see it as a huge, transformational boon for mankind, others as a fatal step to ever more intrusive state control - others still dismiss it as relatively meaningless.
All in all, it's probably a mix of each of those things.
Bernini's Apollo and Daphne
It reminds me of the legend of Apollo and Daphne, whom Eros confounded - with an Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10104474.post-30887177443941748292013-05-31T12:04:00.000-01:002013-05-31T14:28:07.484-01:00Latest Headlines from GermanyA selection of today's headlines:
1. "Wir Deutschen gelten als hartherzig" ("We Germans are seen as hard-hearted")
Says Martin Schulz, the President of the EU Parliament. Citing southern European countries' dissatisfaction with the draconian spending cuts Germany insists on to keep the €uro show on the road, he claims they think of Germans as "hardhearted, insensitive, self-righteous and Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10104474.post-12523828447553239692013-05-31T08:10:00.001-01:002013-09-04T07:02:23.317-01:00translating keyserling's waves
Eduard von Keyserling, portrait by Lovis Corinth, circa 1900
Eduard von Keyserling's masterpiece of literary Impressionism, Waves (Wellen), first published in 1911, has never been properly translated into English.
This is a great shame: the book's a great read. It's about a young, beautiful countess, Doralice Köhne-Jasky, who leaves her ageing count for a poor painter.
The novel Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10104474.post-74903346366684207512013-05-13T07:00:00.000-01:002013-05-13T09:38:36.470-01:00Wagner Opera Censored for "Public Health"
Venus and Tannhäuser in a romantic clinch which sickened Düsseldorf opera-goers.
The Deutsche Oper am Rhein's controversial Nazi-era production of Tannhäuser was cancelled after its premiere in Düsseldorf on 4th May.
It has now been reduced to a concert performance.
In the director's staging, Venus, as an SS guard, first strips, shaves, then shoots a Jewish family of three, forcing Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10104474.post-49558634039222858272013-05-08T12:31:00.001-01:002013-05-08T12:32:06.690-01:00"Nazi Bride" on Trial in Munich
Beate Zschaepe, 38, is standing on trial in Munich for her alleged role in the murders of nine immigrants and a German policewoman between 2000 - 2007. She is also accused of two bombings and fifteen bank robberies.
The case has spawned some unsavoury nicknames in the German press - "die Nazi Braut" (the Nazi Bride) for the accused, "die Döner Mörder" (the Kebab Killings) for her alleged Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10104474.post-81360688064031899922013-04-12T13:23:00.000-01:002013-05-08T14:47:18.538-01:00No More Wulff
President Wulff of Germany resigned in February 2012 after a year and a half in the post.
His resignation came after a wave of bad press coverage, including revelations in the mass-market red-top Bild (with which Wulff had previously enjoyed rosy relations, based in part on his telegenic wife Bettina).
Bettina, President Wulff's ex-wife
Wulff, having heard that Bild was about to Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10104474.post-91925740073728000882013-03-15T14:03:00.000-01:002013-03-20T09:15:48.635-01:00The Battle of Riade on the Unstrut, 15th March 933
Today, 1080 years ago, King Henry I of Germany inflicted a crushing defeat on the Magyars on the banks of the Unstrut River--the Battle of Riade.
The battle happened after Henry spurned the Magyar's demand for the tribute they were given each year to desist from their murderous raids. When the Magyar envoys came for their money, Henry had a dead dog thrown at their feet instead.
The victory Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10104474.post-72528070311641079482013-01-30T07:53:00.001-01:002013-01-30T07:55:21.405-01:00Corporate Sustainability - Face-Saving Window Dressing?Over the past decade, corporate sustainability has become a must-have for every international company, an essential part of their global branding platform.
Despite the billions invested in it, few companies' environmental talk is matched by their walk, as business tweeter Ramon Arratia argues in The Corporate Sustainability Beauty Contest on CSRWire.
Arratia argues that company CEO's are Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10104474.post-77303326996104494572011-03-02T11:44:00.008-01:002011-05-03T12:02:38.996-01:00No More GuttenbergNo more Guttenberg is probably premature as he's likely to be back before long.After two weeks' kerfuffle about his copy 'n pasting his doctrorate, KT zu Guttenberg wasn't left a lot of options, although Chancellor Merkel seemed happy for him to stay.But when Professors at your old university start calling you a Betrüger (fraud, impostor), when political enemies in your own party are saying how Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10104474.post-11816184403513563382010-08-31T07:59:00.002-01:002010-08-31T08:02:36.871-01:00Too Young To BurnToo Young To Burn by Sonny and the SunsetsUnknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10104474.post-47844404042816057282010-08-31T07:35:00.004-01:002010-08-31T07:40:59.439-01:00White FrightChristopher Hitchens, writing on Slate, says white America is waking up to the fact it may soon be a minority, but contrasts the pious Glenn Beck crowd to its more sinister counterparts in Europe.http://www.slate.com/id/2265515/pagenum/all/#p2Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10104474.post-17120415859806935132010-08-31T06:47:00.004-01:002010-08-31T06:56:05.100-01:0012 Step Sustainability PlanPreetum Shenoy, writing on Sustainability.com, describes people living in western consumer societies as addicts who have yet to admit they have a problem:http://www.sustainability.com/blog/a-twelve-step-program-for-unsustainable-consumptionUnknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10104474.post-38658018401624583382010-01-21T16:23:00.003-01:002010-01-21T16:32:33.109-01:00Geert WildersThe trial of Geert Wilders in Holland is curious, an attack on freedom of speech in a country where freedom of speech was pioneered.The most striking aspect of the case is that it is explicitly not about truth. The Dutch ministry has written:“It is irrelevant whether Wilder’s witnesses might prove Wilders’ observations to be correct, what’s relevant is that his observations are illegal...”The Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10104474.post-69765396929613071792009-09-17T08:47:00.003-01:002009-09-17T08:53:39.309-01:00Utopia: Rules with Wiggle-RoomThe utopia most people want is a rules-based life, with wiggle room, writes Daniel Henninger in the Wall Street Journal.Henninger contrasts the primal world of sports, governed by clearly-defined rules, with real life, in which no one knows the rules anymore.The problem being that in real life we lack a final arbiter, so that wiggle-room has the tendency to expand, exponentially, each time a ruleUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10104474.post-56866229233832211692009-09-17T08:35:00.005-01:002009-09-17T08:43:45.653-01:00Muslim CreationismJust to show Creationism isn't the exclusive preserve of Christian fundamentalists, here's an article (from this month's New Humanist) exploring Muslim Creationism.http://newhumanist.org.uk/2131Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10104474.post-68407103147968044712008-11-20T06:14:00.005-01:002008-11-20T06:20:15.101-01:00NATO Spy For Russia UnmaskedLink to my article on CNSNews.com today:Dusseldorf, Germany (CNSNews.com) – A senior Estonian government official is under arrest and being investigated for allegedly passing NATO and European Union secrets to Russia.A spokesman for Estonia’s Defense Ministry confirmed to CNSNews.com on Wednesday that the man had been “caught for having revealed classified information” and said Estonia had given Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10104474.post-1635013246861728102008-11-18T12:56:00.004-01:002008-11-18T13:04:40.179-01:00German Government Likely To Bail Out GM-Subsidiary Opel <!-- @page { size: 21cm 29.7cm; margin: 2cm } P { margin-bottom: 0.21cm } --> Link to my article on CNS News today:
Dusseldorf, Germany (CNSNews.com) – As the global financial crisis lashes the auto industry, Germany’s federal and state governments look set to bail out Opel, a subsidiary of General Motors Corp., with a reported two billion euro ($2.6 billion) rescue package.
Opel’s Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10104474.post-8934893225378848842008-11-13T10:58:00.004-01:002008-11-13T11:04:30.873-01:00Germany To Obama: No More Troops For AfghanistanLink to my article which appears on CNS News today:Dusseldorf, Germany (CNSNews.com) – Germany has been effusively supportive of Barack Obama – opinion polls showed he had the backing of 85 percent of the population – but early signs of strain are showing with Chancellor Angela Merkel. She has warned the president-elect that she will turn down any request for more German troops in Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10104474.post-50249026796529863782008-11-12T11:18:00.009-01:002008-11-18T13:06:03.730-01:00Europe Pressures Obama Ahead of G20 SummitLink to my article which appears on CNS News today:Dusseldorf, Germany (CNSNews.com) – As European leaders prepare to attend the G20 meeting in Washington later this week, they are stepping up pressure on President-elect Obama to support their plans on both international finance and climate change. The meeting is the first of a series of summits proposed by President Bush, French President Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10104474.post-19907971702047437642008-11-05T09:05:00.004-01:002008-11-13T11:05:17.433-01:00European Leaders Cheer Obama VictoryLink to my article which appeared on CNS News on November 5th:Dusseldorf, Germany (CNSNews.com) – The election of a new American president always prompts diplomatic congratulations from European leaders, but Barack Obama’s victory prompted effusive reactions on Wednesday.His victory was an outcome few here doubted and most wished for.Many of the messages were little more than bland bromides – theUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10104474.post-40789917282234150212008-09-25T07:20:00.005-01:002008-11-20T06:29:21.566-01:00Murdoch Mocked By Wolff's ToadyingExtraordinary example of how servile flattery often does more to make its subject look bad in this fawning Vanity Fair article about Rupert Murdoch by Michael Wolff.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10104474.post-5739547984908020452008-03-10T07:33:00.006-01:002013-09-04T07:02:54.775-01:00Manhattan Declaration: "Global Warming Not A Global Crisis"The Manhattan Declaration, issued by scientists sceptical about manmade global warming, warns that:
"attempts by governments to legislate costly regulations on industry and individual citizens to encourage CO2 emission reduction will slow development while having no appreciable impact on the future trajectory of global climate change. Such policies will markedly diminish future prosperity and soUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10104474.post-20907389374497419562008-01-10T08:13:00.002-01:002008-10-16T19:58:09.268-01:00Oral and LiterateCaleb Crain writes in the New Yorker on the decline of reading.Reviewing a new book by Maryanne Wolf (Proust and the Squid), he speculates that soon, after a few brief millennia of being literate, we shall become a society of "secondary orality" - in which the bulk of our information will come in oral/visual form via TV and the internet, as opposed to newspapers and books.This reversion to the Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10104474.post-6840051274378646192008-01-10T07:21:00.000-01:002013-09-04T07:04:27.732-01:00Ills of CapitalismThere's been a flurry of anti-capitalist rhetoric in Germany of late.
The socialist SPD party in the governing coalition has been burnishing its lacklustre profile - seeking to distance itself from its centrist CDU partner on the one hand, and the ex-communist PDS party on the other.
This may seem a strange abandonment of the political centre. But in Germany the centre is very much to the left Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10104474.post-55071574823925737102007-12-13T13:11:00.000-01:002008-01-10T07:20:38.496-01:00Black Thursday - The Curse of Von EsensThe leaders of the EU countries have signed something called the Lisbon Treaty. It's an unreadable document, rejigged from the draft constitution so humiliatingly rejected by French and Dutch voters two years ago. Containing the same key elements as the rejected constitution, it creates the EU as a sovereign state, and claims for the EU Commission (the nominated body which rules the EU) a scary Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0