I know the US is probably largely responsible for the general phenomenon of prepared and instant foods, but the kinds of things you can get in an envelope, can, or jar in Germany have always made me chuckle. I mean, is it only because I don't eat meat that I think canned sausage is hilarious? I think not.
Anyway, BB linked to this page today and I had to check it out: a project that looks at whether the illustrations on the package look like the food inside. You can guess what the answer is.
[My favorites are the Salate, all types. Shrimps drowning in mustard sauce, diced-up bologna emerging from pink "alfredo." Nom nom nom.]
Via BB, a list of medical myths debunked. Not sensational, by any means, but sort of reassuring. My favorites: reading in low light isn't going to ruin your eyes, and it's not the tryptophan in the turkey that's making you tired, it's the eating too much. So nyaaah.
(I know, I know. Everyone's already linked to this. Well, too bad. Here it is again:)
This tool lets you enter cuisine, ingredient, and mood (!) and then produces a recipe suggestion. Turkish + gratifying yielded Imam Bayildi, which seems a little obvious, but maybe that's my fault for choosing those two parameters...
Anyway, don't have time to use Cookthink today, but maybe this weekend. If you use it successfully (as in, it suggests something, you make and consume it, and it produces the sought-after emotional response), let me know.
I heart Stitchy McYarnpants. For serious. My hamps, my hamps.
PS - the move is over, we're in the house, and there are boxes. But we're making progress, for example, today we received the gift of internet, and I have a desk again. The room it's in slopes gently to one side, I seem to be sliding downhill. It's an old house, therefore the that tilting sensation should be understood as "character." Eventually there will be no more boxes, and there will be photos, and I'll post something here so you can go have a look if you like.
Would you choose to have a freebie blog at Blogger or one at Wordpress? And why? Just wondering.
And now, a picture. Because I am not yet over this meme and this example cracks me right up.
Do not want.
If you're a fan of early 20th century houses, check out the Sears Archive. I don't see the design of home we're currently living in, but it seems like just about every other house we've ogled in Seattle is represented.
Oh, how I wish I could order a two-story farmhouse for $1150. Sigh.
You may have seen this at BoingBoing, but in case you didn't: here's a little robot who's been taught to respond to rhythm. He doesn't exactly dance, but he perfectly mimics the kind of enthusiastic headbobbing most of us tend to engage in while listening to a catchy song. Say, something by Spoon. It's all very subtle and to me, hilariously uplifting.
(I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords.)
O my. I don't know the context of this at all, but here is a surprising group covering Sonic Youth's Schizophrenia, as you've never heard it. Ever. Excellent.
If not, just stop...
I have no idea where it came from, but I've had "Wham Rap" in my head all afternoon. Such a catchy little tune, so very of its era.
I had to look around for the lyrics, and they're still just as marvelous as they ever were: "Hey, Jerk, you work!" Awesome. Also, for the Wham-fan or the Wham-curious, there's a video on YouTube which has slightly different, more UK-specific lyrics than the version I knew and loved. And much. Hilarious. Dancing. With Pepsi and Shirley. Oh rapture!
Alright, I don't know about that, but seriously, this Ok Go video was truly one of the highlights of my week. Did they really do that in one take? I want to believe it.
I suppose everyone else has seen this (it was posted at Crooked Timber last week), but I'm just getting to it now: a high-speed, one-car race through Paris. Made in 1978 by a filmmaker who mounted a camera on a car and had a friend, (clearly) a formula 1 driver, take it through the city. Great fun to watch; I'd like to see it on a big screen.
If I weren't in the very, very last days of pre-defense edits, I would totally be making one of these over the weekend. There's instructions and templates to download and everything (only in German though).
Sadly I'll be losing other marbles instead.
This campaign for, oh, I don't know, solidarity I guess, can get pretty irritating. (Just a warning, Safari doesn't like the page much. Oh, and it's all in German.)
Many hilarious and embittered responses have been created by Regular Germans and are available at the dubistdeutschland pool on Flickr. Read about it at Spreeblick.
Double-Tongued Word Wrester has taught me some new words. What a fun job that guy has. No, seriously!
I was in a bit of a tizzy thinking about organizing a small cookout for some colleagues this weekend, but I'll be the world's greatest hostess if I follow these tips. Anyone got a spare wheelbarrow? And a few bottomless wine bottles?
Rochus reminds me that I'd been meaning to have a look at the new Tagesschau design. The big news is of course that the anchors now deliver the news standing up instead of sitting behind a desk.
On the homepage there's a little picture in the upper right (linked to a slideshow of the new set) with the subtitle, "Stehen statt sitzen." Having the sense of humor of a fifth-grade boy, I had to snicker because it sounds like a retraction of all those little stickers you see in German bathrooms requesting that men *sit* rather than *stand* while using the facilities...
(Sadly this doesn't sound as funny when I write it down. Too bad.)
[In the comments at Spreeblick's discussion of the Live8 lineup in Germany.]
My German alter-ego is a dork. I think Bap would be fun, and if Klaus Lage is still kicking, that might be interesting too if only in a nostalgic sort of way. For some reason the kinds of German music I listened to as a kid were the complete opposite of the English-language groups I liked. Not sure why, but it probably has to do with the people I hung around with. With the exception of Philip Boa and Die Ärzte, I mainly listened to (sometimes lame) rock-type stuff. Including Westernhagen. Whom I greatly enjoy singing along with. Still. Peinlich, peinlich.
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.)
I guess I'd be able to make some use of storing all my google searches, but at the moment I can't imagine what. And should I be worried that it might have some kind of sinister application? Too lazy to read the fine print at the moment, but are they allowed to look at what I've searched and stored? I suppose they're able to do that already anyway, given that I always work from the same place...
I know I'm a few days late with this, and probably everyone's already given away their free FlickrPros...but if you have one left over I would put it to good use!
Just thought it was worth a try.
A bit smaller than in real life.
Vasili reminds me why some newsblogs aren't really worth keeping up with.
ta-ta-TUM: FlipFlopFlying, the blog:
I dunno if I'm cut out for the day-to-day tittle tattle that I see on other blogs, but I work alone, I get happy and angry, so OF COURSE I SHOULD DO A BLOG!
Hear, hear.
The expat in Germany always complains about certain things German: apparent obsessions with order, neatness, bureaucracy. Well here's hilarious proof, in the form of a little film from 1996 starring our favorite punk rocker star blogger, that the humor, or irony or whatever, of these things are not lost on the (some? don't want to generalize) Germans themselves.
You can read the background at Johnny's post here. The clip is funny even if you don't speak German: all you need to know is that trash pickup has become drastically complex in this neighborhood. We see Johnny's character on the phone with an automated voice describing a schedule in which the yellow bins are dumped the 27th week after the brown ones, but only if there was no holiday in between and the blue ones were dumped the preceding week...etc. That kind of thing.
[the note you see at the begining, "die gelbe - einer der es gut mit dir meint" means "the yellow (bin) - from someone who's looking out for you"]
Hurrah, Craig has finally got an RSS feed. Now I won't miss any pixely goodness.
Feeling bad? Have a look. It's old, very weird, and strangely endearing. And it bears repeating. (But you gotta watch til the very end!)
Das achtung zur relaxern du oompaloomp buerger spritz, mitz blitz. Hast biergarten poken heiden, strudel, pretzel morgen. Stein poopsie sie das die achtung...Buerger weiner lookinpeepers frankfurter unter wunderbar. Zur gewerkin, undervear der poopsie heiden, sauerkraut haben dorkin.
Why use lorem ipsum when you can use pseudo German?
[via boingboing.]
Craig's got a new project up, in which he gives us "notably literal visual representations of popular songs." My favorite so far is #15, just because I *so* did love that song in my youth.
via Jurabilis, this amazing bike route planner. For kicks I tried it out, tracking a route from where I lived in Mitte to where I had seminars in Dahlem. According to the results, it would take me about 40 minutes to get there, whether I used smaller streets or larger ones with bike lanes.
In the meantime I also happened to find out for whom Schröderstraße is named. Luise has all kinds of good local Berlin history in its Bezirkslexikon.
Ben is blogging. Hot dog. Look for intelligent insight into contemporary culture and all kinds of other things. I'm so pleased that I am quoting his first post verbatim--it is, in itself, a quotation of the most eloquent kind:
Friday, October 08, 2004
Richard Wright tells me to start a blog"I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of the hunger for life that gnaws in us all, to keep alive in our hearts a sense of the inexpressibly human."
I can hardly think of a better reason to blog.
#Ralf# has posted another great shot, this time not for its atmospheric quality but because, well, this was one of my favorite things to see.
Would this be as funny in English? Einzelhandelpoesie collects the quaint, hilarious, and sometimes just strange little verses composed and used by independent merchants. So far my favorite is this one for a place called "Fast Pizza." It's nearly pizza! (I wonder if anyone is collecting similar slogans in English...)
[via Shopblogger, who keeps me consistently entertained.]
Following a recent recommendation I'm listening to the new Fettes Brot, generously provided online by the band. I gotta say, anyone who works "Frauenzimmer" into a rhyme is ok in my book.
[but sheesh, who publishes lyrics as word docs?]
There's a box in the upper right. Now I don't have to look at Sports and Business unless I want to...I don't see this feature on Google News Germany, though.
Like everyone else, I am thoroughly loving Shopblogger [in German]. I wish my neighborhood had a grocery like this guy's. What a mensch.
Elsewhere, following tips from BerlinBlog, I've been reading La Entropista and RadioFreeMike. Good things continue to happen in the expat blogger community in Berlin.
Worth reading at signandsight: their Manifesto, i.e., why the [non German-speaking] world should pay attention to German feuilletons and why European papers should be sharing content more generally:
While European journalists might use all available sources in English on the Internet, the papers they write for do not return the compliment. Moreover, European newspapers have never showed interest in creating a European network; they also haven't had the means. The only newspaper that could establish a European readership if its owners wanted to, is the International Herald Tribune. And its owner is in New York!
Recall the American cinema's love of Paris which continued well into the 1950s. In those days, eyes were looking in the opposite direction. Europe had something to say and America seemed interested in listening. Even debate in the English-speaking world is in danger of becoming provincial if Europe doesn't do its part.
And they say *our* educational system is in a crisis. Check this out. There's something so uplifting about finding a hilarious side to an otherwise extremely serious discussion...
Scott made Andrew and me go, "Waaaaaaah?" in our best Moe voices today. Or, "Excellent," in our best Mr. B. voice.
More what-ifs. What if academia were a series of reality tv shows? (Perhaps it already is; some of this sounds eerily familiar. Or at least it's very evocative of the familiar.)
BoingBoing has a tip for permalinking NY Times stories. I'm posting this so I know what to do next time I want to link to the NYT, but maybe you missed it, dear reader. The links it generates don't expire and require no subscription to read. Lovely.
SO. I found a hobby. Re-learning to knit while finishing the dissertation. Makes perfect sense, doesn't it? Why spend the little time you have left at the end of the day reading?? Really. So having finished one scarf and started the next, I've begun looking for ideas for making an iPod cozy. So far, these are the best bunch. I especially like the white furry one. I was thinking of trying to felt one, since I need to try that out sometime, but I wonder if there are scratch issues with wool. And Andrew thinks a window would be cool, but frankly I don't know if I can muster that kind of brain power. I was thinking more of a fold-over flap type thing.
Following Craig's wonderful What If flow chart, Johnny has What Ifs of a different sort. All in German, but come on, you can figure them out. Sure to make you go "hmm."
Today BoingBoing mentioned the Human Clock. From the Human Clock site:
Humanclock.com shows a photograph of the current time, with the photo changing every minute of the day (all 1,440 occuring minutes on Earth!) Thus you end up with a rotating picture clock sorta deal.
Click on the "view the clock" link at the top to get the current time as expressed in a photograph by some random person.
I shouldn't do everything suggested in the blogs I read.
[heaven help me, I watched the video, too.]
[once i get MT to work right, I'll just blog Flickr photos, but at the moment I'm having a little trouble.]
I've been meaning to try out Bloglines' Blogroll Wizard for a while but only got around to it today. It worked like a charm. On the left you'll see the list of blogs I read daily, with the exception of a few I marked "private" on my feed page (this keeps hem|mungen from showing up there, for example--I subscribe to it to make sure that the RSS is working ok. I swear. Not because I'm vain). Actively updates itself, so whenever I add or remove or edit a feed it also changes on my blog. How dandy.
[Of course stupid ie doesn't preserve the breaks between the folder titles, but otherwise it's fine.]
I've always wanted to enjoy a cozy cup of tea in the bath. Haven't you? (If not, browse around and you're sure to find another interior that's more in keeping with your needs. Like having your horse handy to your kitchen.)
[via Moe via...]
Andrew links to this list, which is guaranteed to prevent me from getting any work done today at all.
Favorites remembered so far (with no links so that you have to browse through for yourself): Merlin, Perfection, Vertibird (!! almost forgot about this one, but someone had bought this and it lived at my dad's mother's house. Loved it and yet used it only rarely), Ker-Plunk, Shrinky-Dinks (that's the new version they're showing at Cream, though), Mousetrap, Etchasketch (at which I am a wiz), Battling Tops (also at Grandma's), Spirograph (ditto. How odd), Run Yourself Ragged (UK: Screwball Scramble, which I can remember getting for Christmas not in the '70s but in the 80's. Maybe it was released later here); Speak-and-Spell (NERD), and the 6 Mill$ Man (my brother had this one; I had Jamie Summers and her Bionic Beauty Salon. Seriously!).
Ever slow to adopt new technology, I have just joined Flickr and have posted larger versions of the tree pics there. I swear I did it before reading today's featured article at Salon, which lays out the basics of what makes Flickr special. Come on people, add me so I have some friends. I don't know who's out there.
I'm finally using Quicksilver, and yes, it is making my life easier. Today I wasted spent about an hour figuring out how to do a google search directly from the command window. Having gotten that to work, I thought, you know, the other thing I need is a Leo autosearch. So I set one up! By myself! Bwahaha. It would be neater still if there were a German-English-German DEF plugin, or I guess it would be TRANS...but this will do for now.
...are big and bright etc. If you like to stare into the night sky and sometimes know what you're looking at, you might enjoy Sky and Telescope's Sky Chart. Made specifically for where you are. All you do is plug in your own location (there's a bar at the top of the page to modify that) and presto, through the magic of java, you can see what's where, and how high it is on the horizon. Super cool. At the moment the Geminids, which are peaking, are the thing to watch, but we have this hospital in the way and I don't think I can see into the northeast well enough...
Following a suggestion on CT (I think), I've been reading Left2Right, which tries to encourage discussion between, duh, the left and the right. So far I've been enjoying it because these people are much smarter about The Issues than I am, and it's nice to see conversation emerge. The comments haven't been too trashy, though there's this person who keeps posting, for lack of a better word, lefty spam. Slightly crazy-sounding pronouncements on the administration's policies and how they're ruining things; it's not that I disagree with what the author says, but the comments never seem to quite follow the topic in question, unless I'm missing a subtle connection. Browse through any comment thread and you'll find one of these...
I've been out for a few days. Luckily Scott posted the results of the Bobs, which I was following mostly because the entries were pretty international and especially because there were (as he mentions) lots of entries written in languages other than English.
Among the winners I was most taken by El Hombre Que Comía Diccionarios, both because of the title and because I can read it. As far as I can tell, it's basically a collection of well-chosen quotes. Here's the Bobs' description of the site; sounds like everyone else is probably already reading EHQCD. Since my Spanish is rusty at best I'm still puzzling my way through much of the page, but sometimes I don't need to worry about Spanish, as with this gem that we all learn in first-year German:
Ottos Mopsottos mops trotzt
otto: fort mops fort
ottos mops hopst fort
otto: sosootto holt koks
otto holt obst
otto horcht
otto: mops mops
otto hofftottos mops klopft
otto: komm mops komm
ottos mops kommt
ottos mops kotzt
otto: ogottogottErnst Jandl, Der künstliche Baum & Flöda und der Schwan, S. 60
[Posted here.]
I was just thinking how much fun a good online advent calendar can be and decided that I'd spend about ten minutes digging around for some new ones. Here are the results, all in German. I'll try to steer clear of the kitschy or super-religious. But not the super-kitschy.
To get us started in the right Stimmung.
For the cynic.
For the stylishly bitter.
Moose loves poetry.
Rilke IS holiday spirit.
Sehn Se, wat sagt ick Ihnen; für Berliner.
Lest we fortget the mathematician.
Indulge your U2 fetish.
Eep. It's the big man himself. Singing karaoke.
That'll have to do for now. Frohes Clicken wünsche ich Euch.
Update: Here's Metafilter's collection.
Here comes another embarassing admission.
If you asked me, I'd tell you that I am a great admirer of Eno. A fan in a that's-awesome-and-beautiful-but-I'll-never-understand-all-of-it kind of way. He is one of those people who is sort of, um, meta and uncontested.
So when I read that Andrew used the Oblique Strategies as a way to get Design Engaged thought out, well, yes. I had never heard of them. Evidence that I am not cool and have only ever PASSED as cool. Somehow this obviously momentous chunk of music/art/creative history just went right on by me; perhaps it sensed that I wasn't ready for it or something.
Nevertheless.
If you don't know about them either, you should have a look. I venture to describe them as pragmatic koans, meant to propel you through a creative project that seems determined to hang itself. They were designed by Eno and Peter Schmidt, apparently sort of synchronously in the '70s and now there are about a billion implementations of them online, some just text sources, some animated and randomized. This is the one I'm using. Because Stoney doesn't say which edition they're from, I'm assuming it's the first.
However. If anyone has 30 pounds to spare I would SO like to have a material version. They're for sale at enoshop. Santa? I guess we could make our own, but after that last project involving cards, I think I'd rather spend the money...
New: Okazo has a nice flash version of the 4th edition. Best to open it from the link on the page so that the new window is the proper size - you get a better feeling of actually taking a card (there's also a description here of how the 4th edition differs from the earlier ones).
LEO-Adventskalender 2004. No peeking early, people.
Two weeks after the fact, I've finally read Andrew's write-up of Design Engaged. Although I was well-apprised of the whole process, including the cutting and pasting of those little cards, it is a different feeling to read his overall impressions. It makes me wish I'd been; or more, that I would have something salient to contribute to such a thing. Maybe next time.
At raskal trippin I read that there's a craigslist for Berlin. Wish I were looking for something there...
Threadless is having a $10 sale. Nikolaus was stocking up last night.
...I'd have known about this by now. All the images can be sent as cards; v. cool. And there's a collection by Craig!
Spreeblick linked to this, I'm sure everyone else will very soon (or has and I just haven't seen it because I am just THAT out of touch): it's the response to sorryeverybody, apologies accepted. It's weirdly reassuring. Love that interthingy.
I always thought that Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies were a really great idea--can't go wrong with pumpkin, right? Ditto for chocolate, obviously. But I have reservations about the recipe we've been using, which uses oil and produces a fluffy cookie which becomes too moist for me after a few days. But this recipe solves all my problems. Pretty obvious, really; it's just a regular choc chip recipe with less egg and more dry ingredients. Oats provide texture and soak up the extra liquid of the pumpkin. Used Ghirardelli double choc chips, which are bittersweet (healthier, right?) and made half the batch with walnuts (Omega 3s. Hmm. With the beta carotene from the pumpkin, these are, like, Health Cookies! But for the butter and sugars...)
I used more like 1/2 cup of white sugar and also skimped on the brown sugar a wee bit, so they're not super sweet. And I added extra cinnamon, as well as a little allspice. And yes, I'm going back to editing my chapter now.
: )
[After further consideration I think I'd increase the pumpkin to, say, the whole can, and reduce the butter. Would that work? The pumpkin flavor seems just a little weak to me.]
Vasili linked to this excellent series of Nutella label designs at Frankfurt's Museum für angewandte Kunst. I like this one best.
At the Times, Frank Rich comments on the US "culture war:"
It's in the G.O.P.'s interest to pander to this far-right constituency - votes are votes - but you can be certain that a party joined at the hip to much of corporate America, Mr. Murdoch included, will take no action to curtail the blue culture these voters deplore.
Corporate greed might just save us all.
Just in case you haven't tried the full release of Firefox, which I just now upgraded to, you should. Neat. I see there are bugs, but I suppose they'll get on them quickly, or the community will. I like this "live bookmark" business, though I won't be switching from using bloglines for it...and anyway I use Safari most of the time. But if you have a Winders machine and aren't using Firefox, please try it. So much better than ie.
Just back from being out of town, without internet access, for a few days and I have finally gotten to see sorryeverybody.com with more than 10 pictures on it. It's become an impressive collection. Mostly it's the entries from people who aren't US citizens that make me feel good, or at least better. We don't all suck. Lately I've been reminded of the way I felt in Europe as a teenager--I spent a lot of time hoping people realized that being from the US didn't make me a jerk. Not a feeling I had ever hoped to experience again.
This is a beautiful, and brutally frank, animation.
[via Spreeblick]
At the Chronicle Careers site you can subscribe to an RSS feed in a specific job category. Smart.
In case you live under a rock or, like me, don't have cable, go here and watch this clip of Jon Stewart on Crossfire.
Johnny's redesigned Spreeblick. Here's his account of The Daily Grind with Kids.
I was going to link to Libby's friend Eric's homage to schoolhouse rock on the subject of, um, US foreign policy, but it seems that boingboing has already done so.
(Oh but look! I did it anyway!)
Even I could watch a debate if we made it into a drinking game like Giblets an Fafnir. Next time.
Grammar.police, which I just started reading, notes that there is, high up in the National Cathedral,* a grotesque of Darth Vader. So great.
Though they're not really all that similar, it made me think of the Nacktärschle on the Freiburger Muenster (a water spout in which the rainwater runs out a little man's naked behind - for some reason I can't find a photo of it online photo here). Pop culture of different centuries. Or something.
*which GP calls "the Natty C," too funny; I miss my Natty Bo here in Tejas.
It's true that there are a lot of people out there (besides me) who have trouble with well-crafted satire.
[Still: this one spawned something of an interesting discussion.]
Fafblog has the inside track on God, Satan, and our two-party system. A must-read before the election.
Thanks to Andrew for forwarding this gem: I Found Some Of Your Life. A blog based on an unknown person's digital camera pics...Go read it, really, it's so enjoyable. Especially if you have any experience with certain types of University students.
Craig has news. His minipops book is due out next month! I haven't looked in on FlipFlopFlyin' in a while, so there were lots of other things new to me. The best one was the movie of The Ghost of Hawdins Wood, which I couldn't link to directly. Find it on the main page and watch it. Genius.
...I'm linking to this story at the taz, which claims McDonald's is running some, um, promos in conjunction with Der Untergang. (See here) I am assuming this is a joke because the author invokes the Star Trek send-up (T)Raumschiff Surprise. But you know, sometimes it's hard to spot the irony in written German. Seriously.
[via Vasili.]
Remember that when you criticize the President you are criticizin the troops an sappin their morale because the military is the bodily extension of the President. Tanks and troops are like his fingers and toes! He feels them from thousands of miles away with his mighty Presidential brain!
Here's an excerpt of the statement that pops up when you visit the Blumfeld homepage:
Wer aber meint, Blumfeld als Vordenker für seine Anbiederung an ein deutschtümelndes ( Massen- ) Publikum missbrauchen bzw. denunzieren zu können, dem sei mit dieser Mitteilung noch mal ausdrücklich erklärt, dass wir für derartigen Populismus und Vaterlandsliebe jedweder Art nach wie vor nicht zur Verfügung stehen.
I haven't been following this myself, but they refer to a trend in which German-language pop music is used as a means of 'normalization' of contemporary culture, making it 'ok to be German,' that kind of thing, without (they suggest) really considering the impact that recent German history, that is, National Socialism, should still have on a German cultural identity today.
(Perhaps I'll translate the statement later; it shows that something we tend to think of as a bit of an academic argument can have relevance in daily life, as well.)
This amazing story from Johnny. (Was hättet Ihr getan?)
From Ionarts, a note about a sunken container turned into an 'infinity pool' in the Tretow leg of the Spree. This gigantic photo offers a decent view of the whole thing. I have to say, it looks pretty appealing. As long as the weather cooperates. There's more info at the Arena's site. (Only in German; see Deutsche Welle for an English article.)
[Here are some more lovely photos at the project designer's site.]
Today I happened upon this Style Guide at Harvard's Project on Cold War Studies. I hope it will prove to be a big help--I need something to keep my translations and acronyms consistent.
(Too bad about the animated arrows on their main page, though)
The thought for the day is Boom shanka.
(clarification here.)
Moe exlains the advantages of unabbreviated RSS feeds [In German, but I'm sure there's others writing this in English]. It seems logical enough to me--as much as I like seeing what people have done with their blogs in terms of design, I do most of my reading in Bloglines. It's much nicer when the entire post, pictures and all, is there in the window. Just some food for thought.
Now it's no secret that I am behind the times a bit; but if you have not yet read fafblog, I so pity you and command you to get on it right away.
Might not be yer type of humor. But it is mine. And they are all right, those kids over there at fafblog.
So what reeeally bugs me is a misplaced apostrophe. Imagine my shock and disgust when I started noticing the same phenomenon in German! Signs (for bars, or tanning salons, or whatever) are frequent sites for a misunderstanding of the genitive in German. This is all explained beautifully at Idiotenapostroph.
Of course I can't find proof of this now (you'll have to take my word for it), but I have seen this mistake in old photographs of early 1900s Berlin, so it's not new, and I wonder if it isn't also traceable to something other than a misappropriation of English grammar.
[via PlasticThinking.]
We had this one. And this, but this one was my very favorite Matchbox car. Who knows where it is now. Sigh. Which ones did you have?
[via Things.]
Another tidbit while I try to get back in the swing of writing actual posts: for those who will be missing the cicada swarms this month, a little time lapse video of a molting cicada at the Baltimore Sun. Neat. Actually, I just found a discarded case on our kitchen screen here in Austin, but then it seems like there are always a few (maybe it was a locust) around here in the summer.
>>Oops: on closer inspection, that "case" just moved and is, in fact, a so-called wood roach (or tree roach, or water bug, or Ick!), the gigundo cockroaches common to this area. Oh well.
>>>Nyeeaaah. I went around and looked at him from the front, finally, having forgotten about him for a while, and it's not a roach, but an Eyed Click Beetle. What a freaky lil dude. Haven't ever seen one of these, but luckily the fabulous index of Texas insects at A&M is here to help identify such critters.
So, no, I don't speak Hungarian, but it's not absolutely necessary to enjoy reklamok's (great name) collection of communist-era tv ads. 101 of them! Wow.
[via Things.]
Via Language Hat:
Gernot Katzer's fabulous and exhaustive dictionary of spices and their names, origins, and uses.
I immediately had a look at the entry for asofetida, a spice I'm loving after fearing it for years. Needlessly so, since the powder is safe for even more pedestrian cooks. I doubt I'll ever graduate to using the resin itself.
I was interested to find that asofetida shares--um--medicinal properties with epazote, another spice I'm just learning to use and which is taking over my flower bed.
Oh: had to add that the origin of 'epazote' is epatl (skunk) + tzotl (sweat, dirt). Devil's Dung and Skunk's Sweat! Necessities for any kitchen.
Während in anderen Stadtteilen Berlins, die Völker aufeinander schlagen, habe ich mich heute in das wirkliche, echte Grauen begeben. Nicht so läppisches Steine rumwerfen, Autos abfackeln und unschöne Dinge über die Ordnungshüter rufen. Das kann ja jeder.
At irgendwas ist ja immer, a wonderful (!) photoessay on the Müllerstrassenfest in Wedding. In truth it's a bit mean to joke about Wedding's, um, style, but seriously: this gives you a really good sense of the place.
[Actually, this is just plain Strassenfest atmosphere, could be anywhere. Ok, maybe not Mitte, but lots of other places.]
So this notice came through that Schroeder had resigned...turns out it might, just maybe, be a hoax for April 1. But in the process of examining this story, a friend stumbled onto the humble homepage of Fischers Joschka. Go there now. Really. You cannot survive a moment longer without knowing how Joschka "wirkt," "kämpft" and "lebt." Besonders schön ist der kämpfende Joschka.
Play at the National Maritime Museum's The Adventures of Tintin at Sea exhibit! I like the "Sort It Out" game best because it allows me to practice my poor French.
Or you might want to explore the vast image collections the museum offers. They've got more seascapes - scroll down to #13 - than you ever imagined possible (or necessary). I'm being snide but the museum's website is really pretty impressive, it's worth a look around.
[via The Big Smoker]
Wow. Takahisa Matsuura has posted a fantastic catalogue of images of the Berlin Wall from 1986-88. This is a really amazing record.
[via Plasticthinking >> Ostblog]
I've just started participating in Living in Europe, where I guess I'll be a remote observer. Thanks to A Fistful of Euros for the pointer.
Wow. Eighties pop groups gave away computer games on their records for play on the Sinclair.
[via Things.]
Read Lucas Kovar's paper, on Electron Band Structure In Germanium, here. No, really, read it now. It's hard to be an undergrad in the sciences.
[via Crooked Timber.]
Via Ionarts: Mr. Picassohead! Make a face, or something else. Then look at others' work. Don't miss the scale and flip controls, they give you more options.
Nothing like other people's fabulously-designed blogs to make a girl feel inadequate.
at mono ».
Kieran at Crooked Timber quotes/comments:
Don't Be Afraid“Barbara Chamberlain, 79, also of Milwaukee, backed Edwards for the same reason,” the Associated Press reports from Wisconsin, “‘I have hope for him beating you-know-who,’ she said.”
Oh come, Barbara, you’ll just have stop living in fear and come out and say it — “Voldemort.” Now, doesn’t that make you feel better?
So true.
Bethany Bryson at Virginia offers this list of errors made by people transcribing her research interviews. Yeesh. Best to do it yourself.
via Crooked Timber.
At Salon, this story about the Kinsey Institute's recent exhibition of erotic art from their archive. A nice interview with the curator, some interesting insight into Kinsey and sex in the US, and a few selections from their collection of erotic art. The Institute seems to have a lot of great stuff; makes me wish I were working on something related, because there's an archive worth digging around in.
Almost daily kosmonautentraum posts something fabulous. Today it was the digitized Late Medieval illustrated manuscripts of the Biblioteca Palatina in Heidelberg. Holy wow. They haven't cataloged the entire collection yet but it seems they're on their way.
This image is from #217v Buch III.F, "Von den wuormen," which "saget von den wurmen vnd von ir natture..."
Everything seems to be printable at a decent resolution. Some crazy modern scriptorium.
HeiKu has new lovely Kreuzberg photos up. Go see!
From die Zeit, an excellent little greeting. Watch for a few seconds so it can do its thing.
Happy New Year, hope it proves a lucky and peaceful one.
I try to avoid hangovers anymore, since my body simply can't handle them. But I had to pass on this tip, posted by OSTBLOG, part of a number of oldish recipes for coping with the day after:
Mecklenburger Nikolaschka 4cl Korn, 1 Scheibe Leberwurst, Senf. In ein schmales Likörglas gut gekühlten Korn geben, an den Rand die mit Senf bestrichene Scheibe Leberwurst legen. Beim Trinken die Leberwurst mit den Lippen abnehmen, zerkauen und den Korn nachtrinken.
[translation: spread a thick slice of liverwurst with mustard and lay it on top of a shot of grain alcohol. Slurp down the wurst as you drink the shot.]
Well, that would certainly take my mind off the hangover.
For an added thrill, I recommend looking at the photo from the original article, where you can see the Mecklenburgische Nikolaschka in the lower center of the image...lets you see just how thick that slice should be, and how much mustard should be swirled on top. Mmmm!
With that in mind, have safe and happy New Year's.
Today I stumbled onto HeiKu, which/who keeps a Bilderbuch of K'berg. Sigh...the beaufiful everyday life of and around Kotti.
Thought this particular photo series could serve as a holiday link--whichever holiday you might be celebrating these next few days/weeks. Might be better for February, but then it's the underlying sentiment that counts now, right? :)
The Czech photographer František Synek's understated work reminds me why urban life drives me crazy. It's not the fault of the city, exactly; I just would rather be out in the country.
via the fabulous kosmonautentraum (which offers a daily selection of unusual and often quite beautiful websites).
Ok, I promise not to always post about silly quizzes I've run across, but this was entertaining: Which Twentieth Century Theorist are you?
You'll never guess who I am (I know *I* never would have).
You are Louis Althusser! You tried to bring together structuralism, Marxism, and Lacanian psychoanalysis. Your brilliant analysis of ideology and the state is still widely influential. You murdered your wife, were put in a sanitarium, and lived the last decade of your life alone before dying in 1990.
Flip Flop Flyin' has provided us all with an excellent Advent Calendar, just when I was beginning to wonder where on Earth I would find one.
Yay!
[May I also draw your attention to this page of fabulous FlipFlopage for your desktop pleasure.]
Something about me you might not have known:
You are Barbidou! You love the natural world. You
enjoy getting out of the city with an armful of
kitties and/or puppies.
(The Barbapa books were my childhood favorite...
Which Barbapapa Personality are you?)
Libby pointed out this lovely little animation, starring Strindberg and helium. I can't describe how giggly it made me. Decay! Decay!
Hmm...Got this through the vifu list this morning: Utrecht's Cyber Feminist games. I guess I was hoping for something more wonky and academic, but they're just regular, minimal, cute pixely games with a few bits of nominally feminist subject matter. Oh well, they're not bad, exactly. Certainly nicely made if nothing else. And what was I expecting, that they were going to quiz me on Irigaray?
W's going to London, and thankfully will be met by public protest. In the meantime, I'm enjoying this gentle spoof from the Telegraph . Wotcha Princess Anne...
Update: Making the rounds is this British site which is coordinating spontaneous protests against Bush:
Truly the most noble of uses of the mobile phone and all its tech friends.
Always late to the ball, I recently came across Invisible Adjunct, an incredibly smart blog on academia. For those of us planning to or worrying about taking up a career as a professional academic, the discussions here are as stimulating as they are terrifying. All of you (you know who you are, there aren't that many of you reading this blog!), click the link now! Really!
Libby brought the Economist's city guides to my attention—since I've been thinking about Berlin lately, I'm posting a link to their Berlin Guide. Seems like a great thing for a first trip (hint, hint): especially the little inset with news and changing features. That's pretty smart.
I should point out, though, that their recs for dining and sleeping are SUPER pricey and mostly limited to ho-hum areas of central Berlin. Funkier stuff is to be found for less money in further-flung places.
[Well huh. Andrew points out in a comment that our Berlin Guide has a link to this guide. I guess I missed it...Still, it's a great resource.]
Once again, our friend Tiny...
...diesmal ganz groß.
Till at bilderbook has excellent pictures of Berlin. I especially loved the panoramas of P'berg, which includes the fringe zones of Rosenthaler Platz and the Volkspark am Weinberg, our old haunt. We miss it terribly.
I suspect everyone has already seen this, but since Andrew brought it to my attention again I have to post it:
At home with the Führer is the story of Simon Waldman's struggle to keep a copy of a 1938 Homes and Gardens magazine posted on his blog. Waldman had run across a gushing pictorial feature on Hitler's mountain home, a bit of an embarassment for the publisher's current incarnation. As a result, Waldman got into copyright infringement trouble and worse.
Seems to be resolved now. Waldman was just trying to raise awareness of the ambivalent (at best) understanding of Hitler abroad on the eve of the darkest period of German history.
If you don't want to read Waldman's account, have a look at the original feature from 1938, now hosted by the Guardian.
Something spooky and beautiful for Hallowe'en. Be sure to click on the tiny crosses at the top of each photo, and look closely.
Ring in the new year, y'all...
I can't explain this one. But it's excellent and strange.
h 3 ^ Z ] T t h 7 & 1 m H W ( # K ] q w h i Y T k 2 U 8
postscript: I am so out of touch. Apparently this has already made the rounds. But it remains very cool.
OSTBLOG collects relevant news items pertaining to the GDR and its current reverberations. The motto is "nix ostalgie|nix ddr-show|lesen-sonst nix."
I like what he looks at. (Especially the advertisements. For all my attempts at objectivity, I never said I didn't have a GDR material culture fetish.)
Frau Wolff at the Archive of the Academy of Arts first directed me to Perlentaucher. I'm mostly interested in the survey of the cultural news sections of the major German newspapers, "Heute in den Feuilletons." How else can one keep up with them....
When you know someone who makes brilliant things you simply have to share. Craig is an artist, this is a recent example of his work and just enchanting. Roll yer mouse over the different parts of the poster.
