Sometimes, life is a beach. Even in Germany, even in this politically exciting year.
Ladenschluß.
Shopping from midnight to 4am, in Germany. It’s possible – at least for promotional reasons. Last Saturday, a couple of hundred of local retailers celebrated the “night of the senses”, during which shops were allowed to open. Apparently, the project’s revenue was satisfactory, as 100,000 people decided to postpone their shopping from Saturday afternoon to Saturday night. Interestingly though, the shop-closing-law exeption was one of the measures intended to indemnify local retailers for the loss of revenue suffered during George W. Bush’s visit to Mainz in February. So, even inadvertendly, the American government is advancing their economic agenda…
Saving Toby?
I’m at loss for words. Those of you, my gentle readers, who know me, will be able to certify that being in that state is a rather unnatural condition for me. However, I just found out about a website called savetoby.com. Being a Toby myself, I felt the need to inquire what was going on with my name buddy.
Toby, it turns out, is a rabbit, whose life has come under threat by two anonymous American students, who, according to savetoby.com and MSNBC.com, are planning to kill and eat Toby on June 30 unless they have raised at least USD 50,000 from donations and profits from selling savetoby.com merchandise on the web.
Weiterlesen
When You Look At Me.
Melancholic yet light song I originally wrote for solo piano and with different lyrics for a friend’s wedding in 2003. This weekend, I decided to write new lyrics and rearrange it. Home-recorded VST based demo in mp3 (128kbit) (enclosed), words, music and vocals by Tobias Schwarz, 2003-2005.
I’m Embarrassed.
I have to apologize. I do. Really. There were times when I made fun of other countries where only 13% of people knew where to find a recently invaded country on a map. Right here on this blog. And there were times when I was startled that a good part of the usually WW2 obsessed Brits had no idea who Hitler was (that was on afoe).
But then I found the results of a survey concerning the historical knowledge of Germans of voting age, conducted in March 2005 by Forschungsgruppe Wahlen, a rather reliable pollster, for ZDF television (in German). Apparently, the sample of 1087 people is statistically representative, although I do hope they are wrong – I really do. Of course I know that most people are not able to remember at least one of the topics mentioned in news broadcasts even half an hour after they watched it. But this
clearly exceeds my capability of comprehension. Apparently, despite all the education in this respect, only 51% of all people 18-24 know what the Holocaust was. I think this is a stunning figure, far more impressive and shocking than all the statistics that have been produced by the OECD’s PISA study.
It is a single figure that illustrates to which extent current public education in Germany is clearly missing a fundamental objective – explaining the larger social context of the society in which the kids grow up. It also indicates that families don’t seem to talk about history and social context either – which probably means they don’t talk at all -, despite all the “history” on tv (incidentally, the name of the programme for which the survey was produced…).
But there’s another number that’s equally scary: according to the survey, only 96% of people with a university degree seem know about the Holocaust… I can only hope these people lied about their educational achievements.
For the first time I do a little bit understand the concern of Jewish leaders about the possibility of rising anti-semitism. And tonight, I’m a little embarrassed to say ich bin auch Deutschland.
Intuitively Flawed.
Last Friday, Proximity Deutschland, the BBDO group CRM-agency’s German subsidiary, released a blog survey according to which 27% of German web users know what a “blog” or “weblog” is, 41% of which allegedly read weblogs – that would equal about 5% of the German population, or 4m weblog readers in Germany -, and 4% of which, or about 650,000 people, allegedly have a blog of their own.
Quite frankly, I haven’t read the survey, but the endless stream of confused “your whats” with reference to this site or to afoe tell me that there is something seriously flawed with this survey. On the other hand, their main finding seems to be intuitively correct: compared to other countries, blogs do not yet have an important role in German media… (link to the press release in German).
Good News For Klinsmann…
Via Slashdot:
“As reported over on Sportsdot, the 2005 RoboCup US Open wrapped up today in Atlanta, Georgia. The American entry from the University of Texas fell 2-0 in robot soccer to the powerhouse German squad, the MicroSoft HellHounds. After the match, the German robot dogs were programmed to flex their metal biceps. With the time to devote to development and the financial backing of a company like Microsoft, the German entries are much more polished then their American counterparts at the moment. Last month at the RoboCup German Open, the Germans dominated nearly every category.”
True.
A friend of today accidentally explained some of Germany’s ills: We’re still the country of thinkers and writers…
Other people have a little angel and a little devil fighting over their conscience. I have two intellectuals…
In other news – congratulations to Jürgen Klopp and his boys. Mainz05 managed to stay in the Bundesliga after a historic first season! Way to go!
Speaking of football, I will soon release a short film about the meaning of “Spielvergnungen” for our life right here on this blog.
Ich bin schon wieder Deutschland.
Online (site in German). Not quite sure what it’s gonna become but I have the feeling this is gonna be fun.
Aufbrechen. Ausbrechen.
Horizont.NET, Freitag, 6. Mai 2005 –
“Die beiden Hamburger Agenturen Jung von Matt und Kemper Trautmann entwickeln gemeinsam eine Mutmacher-Kampagne für Deutschland. Der Auftritt steht unter dem Claim “Du bist Deutschland” und soll im Juni starten. Auftraggeber ist die Initiative “Partner für Innovation”, die Anfang 2004 von Bundeskanzler Gerhard Schröder angeschoben wurde.
In dem Projekt sind neben der Bundesregierung Unternehmen wie Lufthansa, Deutsche Telekom und Bertelsmann engagiert. …
Die Kampagne wird laut Auskunft von Bertelsmann von “zahlreichen deutschen Medienunternehmen getragen”. Sie soll “zu einer neuen Aufbruchstimmung in Deutschland beitragen”, so der Gütersloher Konzern weiter. Das Brutto-Mediavolumen liegt Schätzungen zufolge bei 30 Millionen Euro …”
Ich bin auch Deutschland.