Category Archives: Hard Facts
Snowhere to go
And this happens WITHOUT an agreement in Copenhagen?
The Land After Time
After our time, I mean. Not like this is really news or anything, but the German Federal Office for Statistics has just announced that a third of all Germans will be 65-years-old or older in the year 2060 (not in the year 3000 as Conan O’Brien might have you believe). The German population will keep on shrinking too, from 82 million today to around 70 million in 2060.
No force in the universe can stop this process or something, not even if the German birth rate were to pick up, which, as we all know, won’t. Of course one could consider officially opening up the flood gates and welcoming newcomers to Germany with open arms and having them become Germans and all that but that would be tantamount to letting Ausländer into the country so, like I said, no force in the universe can stop this process. Old people really don’t like Ausländer here, you see. And this constitutes a so-called vicious circle or something.
“Ein Faktor zur Dämpfung dieser Entwicklung ist die Zuwanderung nach Deutschland.”
Bike terrorists
You would have never thought it possible, would you? Some 40 percent of German night cyclists are on/off the road these days without functioning bicycle lights.
And I’m one of them. And I’m not even German. And I’ll tell you why: That little generator thingy that sticks out and is supposed to turn on the back wheel or something doesn’t make proper contact anymore. Hasn’t for a few years now (yes, of course I’ve tried to click it down like you’re supposed to).
So what else am I supposed to do, like get it fixed or something?
Dabei riskieren die Radfahrer nicht nur ihre Sicherheit, sondern auch Bußgelder, wie der Verkehrsclub (ADAC – an automobile club, get it?) warnte.
The ones I hear bitching and moaning all day long must be from somewhere else then
A new study has revealed that the infamous “Jammer-Ossi” (that bitchy, forever-lamenting and ungrateful East German species we-all-themselves-included admire so much) does not exist anymore.
The study also indicates that we, as in you, should actually admire and even emulate them. The East Germans have made it through much harder times than the world is going through right now and blah, blah, blah and not only that, their Ostalgie about those wonderful-old good-old communist days isn’t what you think it is because, well, it just isn’t.
The study is entitled “The East Germans Twenty Years after the Turning Point” and certainly sounds scientific enough to me. The researchers actually went out there and interviewed some eighty (80) people between the ages of 18 (born after the fall of the Berlin Wall) and 70 (born after the fall of the Jericho Wall). They even used psychological tests or something.
Talk about another prime example of theory meeting practice, or vice versa. I still hear all kinds of jammering all day long over here (other than my own, I mean) and it has to be coming from somewhere, people. My theory is that this particular type of jammering has simply gone down in the greater jammering noise in the meantime. To West German ears, I mean. If everybody out there is jammering, and of course everybody is, you just can’t hear that specific East German brand anymore. Those sinus wave thingies have overlaped or something.
No, sorry. The Jammer-Ossies may not exist anymore, but they are certainly still alive – and kicking. I mean bitching.
“Die Menschen im Osten begegneten überzogenen Träumen mit einem konstruktiven Misstrauen und Realismus, der sich deutlich von den oft überbordenden Glücks- und Renditeansprüchen des westlichen Maximierungsdenkens abhebt.”
Observing Hermann 