German Comedy Engineering?

For Super Bowl Amerika, I mean?

They should have at least tried using a real German.

“Algorithm” isn’t VW’s official ad for Super Bowl XLVIII, it’s simply meant as a teaser. Artistically speaking, it’s designed to give viewers a sense of the tone Volkswagen will strike on February 2. Creatively speaking, it’s pretty lazy.

PS: Thanks for the funny Passat/Charger clip, Murph. Perfect intro to this.

Fade To Frack

The EU’s reputation as a model of environmental responsibility may soon be history. The European Commission wants to forgo ambitious climate protection goals and pave the way for fracking — jeopardizing Germany’s touted energy revolution in the process.

Fracking

The Commission’s move further isolates Germany. Merkel’s government, a “grand coalition” of her conservatives and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), seeks to increase the share of renewables in the country’s energy mix to 60 percent by 2036.

Sunny, Windy, Costly And Dirty

What’s not to like here?

Super Minister

“Super minister?” I’d say this is more like a job for Superpenner.

The difference between the market price for electricity and the higher fixed price for renewables is passed on to consumers, whose bills have been rising for years. An average household now pays an extra €260 ($355) a year to subsidise renewables: the total cost of renewable subsidies in 2013 was €16 billion. Costs are also going up for companies, making them less competitive than rivals from America, where energy prices are falling thanks to the fracking boom…

Cost is not the only problem with the Energiewende. It has in effect turned the entire German energy industry into a quasi-planned economy with perverse outcomes. At certain times on some days, sun and wind power may provide almost all German electricity. But the sun does not always shine, especially in winter, and the wind is unpredictable. And “batteries”—storage technologies that, for example, convert power to gas and back again to electricity—on a scale sufficient to supply a city are years away. Nuclear-power plants are being phased out (this week’s court decision that the closure of a plant in Hesse was illegal will raise costs even more, as it may entitle the operator to more compensation). So conventional power plants have to stay online in order to assure continuous supply. 

I Think It Should Have Been Superpenner

Sozialtourismus has just been selected by the Brain Police as Germany’s Unwort des Jahres (non-word of the year). It means “social tourism” and is terribly cynical and politically incorrect as it refers to “unwanted immigrants from eastern Europe” who come to Germany to presumably milk all the wonderful social benefits here, something of course social tourists from eastern Europe or elsewhere would never, ever do.

Word

Non-word of the year? The year has just begun, hasn’t it? And there are way more cool non-words out there that are much more deserving, if you ask me (I know you didn’t, but I’m telling you anyway). How about Superpenner (Super Bum), for instance? Bum is totally politically incorrect, too (that is what they used to call the homeless) and super is, well, super. So there.

Anyway, in case you didn’t know, Superpenner is a new comic action hero who has now arrived to save Berlin. And it’s about freakin’ time, too. To save it from all of those Straßenfeger (street sweeper) newspaper salesmen who accost us with their sales pitches in the U-Bahn all day long. I can hear it already: “Now with the Supperpenner comic book!”

Berlins Straßen haben einen neuen Helden: Den Superpenner – wenn auch nur auf dem Papier. Der Comic-Actionhero soll den Absatz der Berliner Obdachlosenzeitung Straßenfeger steigern.

German Soldiers Just Can’t Take It Anymore

That’s why 6000 of them (half the German army?) have now put in for early retirement.

Soldaten

No war is hell, too.

Flexibles System der Kinderbetreuung, mehr Tagesmütter für Randzeiten, Teilzeitmöglichkeiten mit einer Drei-oder Viertagewoche in der Familienphase, ein Lebensarbeitszeitkonto für Überstunden. Auch will sie sich das System der nahezu automatischen Versetzungen alle zwei bis drei Jahre „genau ansehen“ und Schluss mit dauernden Ortswechseln machen.

PS: And thank goodness this just came in. Here are the top 10 places for Frührentner (early-retirees) and other retiree types to, well, retire around at (International Living Annual Global Retirement Index 2014).

One Million Dollars!

Unlike in Germany, where at least fifty percent of all German politicians stem from working-class families, where none are susceptible to bribery or lobbying influence and most can just barely make ends meet on the meager remuneration they receive (or so I must assume, to judge by the outrage here), word is out that more than half of Amerika’s lawmakers are now “worth at least $1 million” (although I personally have always held them all to be priceless).

Dollars

This is a scandal or something. This has never ever been the case before because American politicians, gosh darn it, up until now anyways, never ever used to enter politics just to obtain money and/or power. In the past, I mean. Something bad has now apparently happened. Or something. That is why we must look to Germany for the answer, as usual.

Everything here in Germany works better, you see. This is because Germany is a so-called “classless” society. But with class. Just go and ask the folks here who run the country. They’ll tell you.

In Deutschland ist die “Millionärswahl” eine TV-Show, in den USA Realität.

Over A Dozen Hamburg Occupy Occupants Now Without Occupation

Germany’s oldest “Occupy” camp, thought to have been established sometime during the late Römerzeit (Roman Age), was cleared yesterday by brutal financial shark-like city cleaning employees in a hush-hush operation that had been announced several weeks before.

Occupy

Many of the occupants were caught unawares in their sleep yesterday afternoon when the profit-greedy imperialist lackeys stormed the camp with brooms, trash bins and protective breathing devices, forcing the dirty dozen of unemployed occupiers into unemployment somewhere else.

Now that the “Occupy” movement has been crushed for good in Germany, many here miss its romantic lack of class struggle and crude fear-mongering antics already and have most likely begun occupying themselves with inventing other forms of worldwide occupation-like phenomena that will also lead to absolutely nothing whatsoever at all one day but will at least feel kind of sort of like they maybe could have, as long as they don’t get too uncomfortable or begin to resemble anything that demands any real commitment or anything, that is.

“Wir wurden von diesem Räumkommando überrascht”, sagte ein Demonstrant der noch etwa ein Dutzend Mitglieder umfassenden “Occupy”-Gruppe. Eigentlich sollte das Lager jedoch schon bis zum 31. Dezember abgebaut werden.

PS: USA Forcing Iraq To Defend Itself Again

But Our Battle Drones Will Only Be Used For Goodness And Niceness

And they won’t stink, either.

Drone

The Bundeswehr Association and the commander of German troops in Afghanistan have expressed their support for the acquisition of battle drones to protect their soldiers.

Let the long, agonizing and hypocritical debate begin!

“Wenn Soldatinnen und Soldaten in den Einsatz geschickt werden, dann muss ihnen auch das Optimum an Ausrüstung zur Verfügung gestellt werden.”