cinema, quicklink

Katherine Hepburn dies aged 96.

She was a great actress, and a beautiful woman. The list of her accomplishments is stunning, even though… she did not play the piano herself as Clara Schumann in “Song of Love” (1947), as she once told my sister on a handwritten postcard. According to Salon.com, tomorrow at eight pm, the lights on Broadway will dim for some time to mark the fact that one of the brightest stars is no longer shining.

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media, quicklink, USA

Is Google God?

Thomas Friedman must have had too much sun lately. In today’s NY Times column he wonders if Google is like God citing citing Alan Cohen, a V.P. of Airespace, a new Wi-Fi provider, who clearly had too much sun lately –

“If I can operate Google, I can find anything. And with wireless, it means I will be able to find anything, anywhere, anytime. Which is why I say that Google, combined with Wi-Fi, is a little bit like God. God is wireless, God is everywhere and God sees and knows everything. Throughout history, people connected to God without wires. Now, for many questions in the world, you ask Google, and increasingly, you can do it without wires, too.”

How he twists that story to say something about American national security is rather impressive. But how he does that and nonetheless misses the real point that ITC is not only challenging “national security” but the very notion of “national” is even more impressive.

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quicklink

What’s the real deal?

Apple’s new G5 64-bit PowerPC is the new hot babe in town since, as Wired explains, –

“For the past couple of years, Mac users have been burdened with a shameful secret few would admit, even to themselves. Their machines were slower than Windows PCs.”

While pure computing power was never what made people admire Apple’s products, it seems Apple’s pricing policy and stagnant market-share somehow compelled the company to get back into the Megaflop comparison business. But computing speed comparisons are a rather tricky business, so its no wonder, Apple’s claims to have the “fastet ever” personal computer have been severely scrutinzed today. Here’s what the register says about the benchmarks. And this is a report by Eugenia Loli-Queru from OSnews that is entitled “Innovation or Catch Up?

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oddly enough, quicklink

Potter’s Testosterone Level

Not only did J.K. Rowling sell 5 million copies of Harry Potter’s latest adventure on the very first day of its availability – of the 500,000 English copies initially available in Germany there are hardly any left already – but critics seem rather unanimous in their appraisal of “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix“. Here’s what the NYTimes/IHT’ Michiko Kakutani thinks. Apparently teenage Potter is not only victim to rising testosterone levels, but also faces serious perception-reality adjustments when

“his beloved godfather Sirius, tells him, that the world ‘isn’t split into good people and Death Eaters,’ that there are more ambiguities to grown-up life than he imagined.”

Ha, Harry Potter explaining complexity to the American President… Ms Rowling certainly has a lot of British humour.

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German Politics, oddly enough, quicklink, sex

Skandal im Sperrbezirk?

The ongoing investigation regarding a ring of east European women trafficers that has led to alligations of Cocaine posession against the German “political” talk show host and vice-chairman of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Michael Friedman seems likely to become some sort of the Berlin Republic’s first Heidi Fleiss scandal.

Meanwhile, Sueddeutsche Zeitung reviews the Bonn Republics history of scandals and comes to the conclusion that there really wasn’t anything saucy… but now, luckily, things are about to change ;-).

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