A few nice responses to the NRW elections (see Melli's entry; Tobias and others at FOE are worth a peep too). And here's the Guardian's coverage of the news that Schroeder has called for a vote of confidence, and another story, which, like many of these reports, compares Merkel to Thatcher...(Oh, wah wah wah, Edmund.)
I also just read that Lafontaine has finally left the SPD. Whether or not a new Linksbündnis will result is still up in the air, as is that new alliance's potential effectiveness. But it might be interesting to watch things develop.
Just in case you didn't see this over at Mike's, here is a nice entry at Berlin Bites about the history of Rosenthaler Platz. Ed Ward, who writes Berlin Bites, also has some interesting reminiscences of Austin, as it was before I knew it. Good reading. Thanks, Mike.
At the New Yorker, Michael Specter writes about the connection between HIV and crystal meth.
Shopblogger posts a photo from some marketing mag, the word "Vertrauen" composed of letters from fonts of well-known brand names. The only one I'm not sure of is the R. RTL? How many can you figure out? (It's not really all that hard, which I guess is the point. Our brains are saturated with this kind of name/logo recognition.)
Who knew he had so much good sense. From Bloomberg:
Republican Senator George Voinovich of Ohio said he won't support John Bolton's nomination to be U.S. ambassador the United Nations when the Senate Foreign Relations Committee votes today. Voinovich's opposition would bar the panel's approval.[...]Bolton is "the poster child for what someone in the diplomatic corps should not be,'' Voinovich said.
Still not a guarantee that the Senate won't approve Bolton, but it's encouraging.
I haven't written anything here in some time and I feel like a bad, lapsed blogger. But there are two things that I've been tumbling around in my brain for a while, and I intend to get them out today or tomorrow. Honest. In the meantime, because I'm not proud, I direct you to my flickr page, which is newly full of Cat Content. [Cue snorts of derision.]
The latest Fluent-Collaborative project, Rae Culbert's & Catherine Walworth's YUPPIE (Young Urban Proles), opens on Sunday at Testsite. From the manifesto statement, it sounds like they might turn Laurence's house into Rodchenko's worker's club. I'm looking forward to this one:
Communism is bread and butter to Texas, whose three Hill Country towns—New Braunfels, Fredericksburg, and Boerne to name a few—are the result of communist experiments by German emigrants. Germany’s aristocrats supported the emigration of dissidents to buff the sheen of their status quo at home, making Texas a penal colony of radicals.
You know it.
The latest Fluent-Collaborative project, Rae Culbert's & Catherine Walworth's YUPPIE (Young Urban Proles), opens on Sunday at Testsite. From the manifesto statement, it sounds like they might turn Laurence's house into Rodchenko's worker's club. I'm looking forward to this one:
Communism is bread and butter to Texas, whose three Hill Country towns—New Braunfels, Fredericksburg, and Boerne to name a few—are the result of communist experiments by German emigrants. Germany’s aristocrats supported the emigration of dissidents to buff the sheen of their status quo at home, making Texas a penal colony of radicals.
You know it.
Philipp L. has posted a whole mess of photos from last weekend's demos in Berlin. There are several nice shots among them.
Anyone have suggestions for light reading (in English) for someone travelling through Germany for the first time? Thanks...