Slightly Surprised.
The final results for the Californian recall are in – “100.0 % ( 15235 of 15235 ) precincts reporting as of Oct 9, 2003 at 7:27 pm“. In the end, only 1,957 votes were cast for Georgy Russell, while 3,747,446 (48,6%) people trusted Schwarzenegger to sweep the office. Georgy’s result is not only unfortunate, it [...]
read onNight of the long knives.
Kids, don’t click this link if you cannot entirely rule out the possibility of having a plastic surgery one day. Via Lillimarleen comes this link to awful examples of plastic surgery. And indeed, having at least a little idea of the kind of stunning effects well done plastic surgery can have, I am surprised that [...]
read onWhat if they mated?
Isn’t there a proverb about man and woman completing each other? Well, sometimes one plus one can indeed turn out to be far less than 2. Have a look at Conan O’Brian’s “What if they mated…?“. Kids, believe me, computers can be dangerous.
read onDeserting a professional army?
Apparently, the number of deserters in the US army has been increasing for some years now.. Not surprising, one might be tempted to say, given the rising number of foreign deployments. But then again – maybe I am not getting this – but why would anyone desert in a professional army? Isn’t serving in a [...]
read onWhat’s Left On the Left?
Joschka Fischer has suggests that ten years after the end of the Cold War, a renewed debate about the meaning of “left” policies, is “important, and overdue“. He’s right. The victory of Ronald Coase over Karl Marx (in battle not very m any people ever identified as such) has only grudgingly accepted by many whom [...]
read onGentry Lane is back, too!
Ladies and Gentlemen, the lovely Gentry Lane has decided to regale us again with a witty plat de jour from Paris. Her new online diary can be found at http://culotte.diaryland.com.
read onHappy Birthday!
I wonder what cultural anthropologists would add, but Papascott links to an interesting and funny essay by Eamonn Fitzgerald’s Rainy Day regarding the relative importance of celebrating birthdays in Germany and Anglo-Irish countries.
read onGeorgy Buzz.
As far as my sitemeter tells me, Georgy Russell must be doing some pretty good PR over in California – or she has bribed someone at Google. Yesterday, she apparently was on the cover page of USA toda. And now someone has even set up a domain featuring a very likely fake picture of her. [...]
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Beacon of Liberty.
Der Spiegel’s cover this week, headline: “Powerless Superpower. Appearance and Reality of the USA.” The story is not available for free, unfortunately. For an American perspective of the same subject, check this Atlantic special “The Real State Of The Union”.
read onGeorgy Watch.
Now look at this. Not only are more and more people coming to this site in order to find something about the Calfornian Gubernatorial candidate Georgy Russell, which I recommended recently, there is also a blog devoted monitoring her campaign – Georgy Watch. The author believes it’s pictures most people expect to find at his [...]
read onLarry Flynt, a smut peddler who cares
and wants to be taken seriously as a gubernatorial candidate, writes Michelle Goldberg on Salon.com.
read onNews From Baghdad.
Salam Pax’ latest column in The Guardian.
read onJapanese For Runaways.
Did you know that the Japanese adapted German words for “gypsum-corset” (Gipskorsett – gipusukorusetto), “dry-construction” (Trockenbau – torokkenbau), “potence” (Potenz – potentsu) and “stroll” – (Wanderung – wanderungu), only to name a few? To bridge this and similar gaps in geography and lifestyle, go and grab one of Die Zeit’s daily knowledge-bites.
read onMainstream Blogging.
Maureen Dowd reflects about the mainstreaming of blogging – “Don’t get me started on the Blaster virus sabotaging Microsoft systems, or the cram of spam reminding us that the average American is an impotent, insecure, overweight, tired, depressed loser desperately seeking to refinance. The most telling sign that the Internet is no longer the cool [...]
read onLazy? And Happy?
The Economist ponders about a self-regulation mechanism adjusting the European work/leisure trade-off in favour of work. Even in lazy Germany. But it also reviews this year’s LSE Lionel Robbins Memorial Lecture by Richard Layard [pdf] who presented new insights into the hypothesis that more doesn’t always, in fact, usually, make you happier. So working more [...]
read onPoor Tony.
Today’s NY Times editorial looks at Tony Blair’s credibility crisis and decides that opposing Washington on a number of important issues would be helpful for him right now. I disagree. Opposing will not be enough. He will need substancial evidence that supporting the US administration against one’s own voters’ opinion does pay off eventually. If [...]
read ontraffic data retention.
Ever wondered what the legal situation regarding internet traffic data retention by ISPs and governmental access is in EU countries? Don’t look further, saveprivacy.org has a note sent by the general secretariat of the EU council to the EU’s Multidisciplinary Group on Organised Crime (MDG) that outlines the current legal situation as well as possible [...]
read onTrading Bush-Shares.
Ever wanted to short sell a few Condis and find out what the price for three-month Colin-Caps is? Spiegel Online reports that Paris-based American expat Andrew Geiger has initiated the American Action Market, a trading platform that will (intentionally) provide insights into the actions and decisions of the US government. The idea is modeled after [...]
read onSaban Again.
Hollywood Producer Makes 2nd Bid for German TV Group (from the NY Times Deal Book)
read on3615 Online
France Telekom offers a service to access the French Minitel system from the Internet in order to ease some 20million citizens’ transition to the internet. (from Forbes.com)
read onVive La France
We’ve come a long way. Honestly, this probably all there is to say when a German general heading the traditional French military parade on France’s national holiday not even makes a big news item in Germany.
read onThe One With The Tschador.
Remember the friends episode whith the Tschador? Well, you probably won’t, because there wasn’t one. But today, Salon.com has an interesting review of a documentary about the perception of American entertainment in Arab countries called “Besieged by Friends“
read onThe Schill Factor.
People living in Hamburg have to cope with a rather special political crop these days: Roland Schill, a former judge who founded his own party and in 2001 managed to gain enough votes among dissatisfied conservatives to become junior partner and senator responsible for police and internal affairs in a CDU led coalition. Knowing that [...]
read onPython Slithers Out Of Toilet.
Scary Movie – “A pet python missing over the last two months made its reappearance by scaring a Dutch woman when it slithered out of her toilet bowl.” And Scary Movie II – “[L]ocal residents were unhappy to hear the owner admit that a second pet python, this one almost one-meter long, had also escaped [...]
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