Schlagwort-Archive: almost a diary

almost a diary, oddly enough, Sport, USA

Gutenberg-Marathon Me.

In a few hours, I’ll be on the run.

Gutenberg Marathon

If I’m still alive afterwards, I’ll let you know ;-)

By the way, reader AL had an interesting comment regarding the unintended consequences of the Wal*Mart-Taleban story below:

“Part of this has to do with when Wal-Mart got big enough to move into a rural area and put all of the local small businesses out. In some western states, local businesses went with all nude female sales staffs to stay in business. Wal-Mart was blamed for destroying the local economy and the morals of the areas they opened up in.”

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almost a diary, music

Ode An Die Freude.

Brad DeLong always finds a new twist to inquire about the fundamentals of human civilisation – here’s what he writes today:

“By what right is Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony so damn good?
Why do we like it so much?”

The 4th movement was my first hit-single, believe it or not. And deaf Ludwig van B. was my first pop-star, when I was six (it never mattered that much that the words are actually Schiller’s). I even got the orchestral score as a Christmas present once – although I would not recommend trying to play it on solo-piano. It just doesn’t sound like it does in the Berlin philharmony, if you know what I mean.

I largeley quit classic music as a teenager, for obvious reasons. But one of the few pieces I voluntarily listened to (as opposed to being forced to listen to by well-meaning parents) even during that period was Beethoven’s ninth.

So why do “we” like it that much? Maybe because it is an ode to joy written by a man whose will was strong enough to cope with the hardest of all fates for a composer – deafness. Maybe because it reassures us that whatever seemingly insurmountable problem may appear one day, there is always hope. [author off to look for CD]

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almost a diary, Political Theory, self-referential

Homeowner.

I am sure, that you, my gentle readers, will be thrilled to hear that this little page from now on has a second home. One with its very own diskspace and domain. Ladies & gentlemen, “tschwarz.blogspot.com” is now also “www.almostadiary.de“.

You don’t have to update your links yet as I will continue using blogspot for the time being. But I thought I let you know that it feels good to be a homeowner – who, as Denise DiPasquale and Edward L. Glaeser found out some time ago, might well be the better citizens ;-).

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almost a diary, media, quicklink

Preemptive Eavesdropping. Home. Slightly Drunk.

Just had a great two-hour argument with a Sueddeutsche-Journalist about the vices and virtues of his profession. And now I come home to find this article in his newspaper about how a proposed state law is about to legalise preemptive eavesdropping on journalists in Bavaria. I may be too tired to reflect on this, but I am certainly not tired enough to oppose it.

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almost a diary, quicklink

I’m Bill Clinton.

OK you’re right. I cannot be Bill Clinton: As the most powerful politician of the world, I would not have picked Monica Lewinsky for an affair… But anyway, he’s the one the creators of this US political quiz show used as reference for my score. Ah, and let me just add that any one dimensional scale is necessarily problematic… and for Germans taking the test – US ‘liberal’ is not German liberal, it is more like German ‘left’. (via Lillimarleen.)

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almost a diary, Germany, Iraq, oddly enough

To Guard The American Poo

Ok, I know this place is getting progressively mono thematic. And I know there is a lot of note/newsworthy stuff going on that too many people, including myself, are forgetting about because the war in Iraq is requiring too much of our sensory bandwidth. But there’s hope: yesterday morning, for the first time in weeks, if not months, something not Iraq related – a bank-robbery-and-bus-hijacking in Berlin – was the number one news item in German media. But as no one died in Berlin today, Baghdad was back on top by 4pm. Isn’t that sending a message to all hijackers – “listen, perpetrators, the attention threshold has risen significantly. If you still want your fifteen minutes, try at least to hurt someone badly.”

Anyway. I just wanted to show you a funny good-night picture I found on www.totalobscurity.com where I was sent by Lillimarleen. I know what you think: Photoshop. I did too, but totalobscurity.com claims it is a real product…

To Guard The American Poo

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almost a diary, intellectual property rights, music industry

Champagne Blogging

this is my first attempt at live-blogging, so give me some credit here… i am writing this on a public terminal in the museum fuer kommunikation in frankfurt, typing with only one hand, as i am holding a glass of champagne in the other. it is the “long night of museums” here and on of the special exhibitions in this museum for communication puzzled me – it’s an exhibition about mp3 and the digital music revolution, including terminals running the popular “kazaa.com” filesharing software.

did i miss something? i thought the revolution was still very much going on? what is this supposed to mean? is p2p filesharing already a part of history? could that be the reason no major label objected to this exhibition and it was even sponsored by Steinberg GmbH, maker of the well known studio software “cubase”.

i don’t know, but now is not the time to answer question of historic importance, so i will return to the party and leave you probably as puzzled as i am – albeit without champagne.

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almost a diary, traveling

Gluecksbringende Schluepfer.

(Yes, there is a reason for this title.) I know it’s been a while but I went to Freedom for some days in order to drink almost all of the wine that is no longer being shipped to the US – although, let’s face it: The demographics of US consumption of expensive French wines make that Bordeaux-Boycot a rather empty threat at least as long as long as French wines are not legally banned. I wonder what the legal department over at E&J Gallo is working on right now…

Anyway, even though this blog is only “almost a diary” and I am actually a bit in a hurry to leave Freedom with the next available train, I feel obliged to write something about meeting the lovely Gentry Lane in Paris yesterday for I discovered that a few hundred of you, my gentle readers, are reading these lines because Gentry told you to read about Young Werther’s plans to rule the world (which, by the way, do not actually exist – just to reassure possible readers from various intelligence services – I’m not trying to capture your market. Neither do I wear blue and yellow suits or regularly threaten girls to kill myself if they do not kiss me…).

Well, I am only too happy to corroborate her claim of looking ten years younger – even though I never thought she looked ten years older. And the German word for “lucky panties” is, of course, “Gluecksbringende Schluepfer”, which in some way, does sound like an oxymoron, in my opinion…

So for once, there is a real reason for importing an anglicism into “The Awful German Language“, which, quite honestly, is not all that awful after all. Just ask Gentry.

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almost a diary

Wesley Crusher is 30.

If you grew up in a world where teenage boys watched Jean Luc Picard b(a)ldy go where no one had ever been before with his “Next Generation” spaceship Enterprise while teenage girls used to follow “Beverly Hills 90210“, a series designed around the love-life of Brandon, Brenda and, of course, Donna, the virgin (it may come as a shock to those of you who believe in tv, but may I say that a rather credible source once told me that, allegedly, she was not really one…), you will certainly be delighted to be informed that Wesley Crusher, the always nerdy teenage ensign, has his own blog.
Back To Iraq. Some now, Some later.
Well, not the character, of course, but the actor, Wil Wheaton. And I suppose he would not be too delighted to be introduced as Wesley Crusher having read the introductory text to his blog in which he also tells us that Wesley is now thirty years old.

That, my gentle readers, is indeed shocking news and I don’t even want to begin thinking about the ramifications of his statement.

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almost a diary, music, oddly enough

Spring Cold.

Sorry for the apparent lack of entries, but even though the weather is brightening up in Southern Germany, I was hit by a pre-spring/post-carnival cold yesterday and so I’m not really in screen-staring mood. And there’s so much I would like to write about – the latest developments re Iraq, my best guess for Bush’s non-war exit strategy, exciting developments in German higher education, and, obviously, yesterday’s serious economic policy bashing by the Bundesbank which is obviously as scared as it gets of a possible downgrade of Germany’s debt rating.

But above all, on the day on which the first “German Idol” will be elected by tens of millions of phone calls, I would have loved to write something more detailed about an amazing documentary on ZDF television which covered the casting for the “Arabic Idol” [link in German]. When I see expressions of the ongoing Islamic reformation as vital as that, I can’t help but wonder if the “Arabic Idol’s” life will be made easier by a war that is likely going to seriously discredit the less inhibted, western lifestyle these young people seem to have discovered on their own.

I very much doubt it.

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