Germany’s Latest Contribution To The Arab Spring

July 5, 2011 By Hermann Observer in Hi-tech, Hypocrisy Tags: Berlin, Exports, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, Military, Satire, Saudi Arabia, Tanks, Weapons 1 Comment

These must be special Panzer for Peace or something, these 200 ultra-modern Leopard battle tanks Germany is now prepared to supply to Saudi Arabia.

This is a dramatic reversal of Germany’s decade-long policy of not furnishing that zany authoritarian kingdom with heavy weapons and is clearly designed to send a strong message to freedom-loving Arab protesters everywhere (the Saudi military recently helped put down protests in Bahrain, if you recall).

Whether that is the right message or not, that’s another question.

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the main buyers of German weapons systems in the years 2006 through 2010 were:

Greece (with a share of 15 percent)

South Africa (11 percent)

Turkey (10 percent)

South Korea (nine percent)

Malaysia (seven percent)

SIPRI said that Germany advanced from fifth to third place among the biggest arms sellers between 1998 and 2009, even though a previous center-left government pledged in 2000 to pursue a “restrictive'” policy on exporting defense technology.

Guns R Us

June 28, 2011 By Hermann Observer in Helplessness, Hi-tech, Hypocrisy Tags: Berlin, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, Libya, NATO, Satire Leave a comment

How magnanimous or something. Now that NATO is running out of munitions to use in the Libya conflict (go Europe!), Germany has decided not to obstain from sending weapons to its allies.

The positive response to the politically sensitive demand is another concession to its allies by the German government, which has been heavily criticized in recent weeks because of its Security Council abstention in the March vote, which resulted in a resolution authorizing the use of force to protect Libya’s civilian population. Russia and China also abstained.

“NATO allies must pool funds or face decline: Gates”

Green Electricity Threatening Energy Turnaround

June 26, 2011 By Hermann Observer in Heconomy, Helplessness, Hi-tech, Hustle (Hoax), Hysteria Tags: Berlin, Fukushima, German, Germans, Germany, Green energy, Greens, Humor, Nuclear power, Renewable energy, Satire, Solar energy 2 Comments

Yeah, I know. You thought that Germany’s Energiewende (energy turnaround) was synonymous with green or eco-power (I did too). But if you listen to what some scientist types are saying (Rheinisch-Westfälischen Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung or RWI, for instance)–and you won’t, and nobody else will either–the present state of renewable energy in Germany is so clearly deficient and so way too costly (especially when it comes to generating solar energy) that they recommend rethinking the whole big turnaraound thang (not that all that much thinking had gone into it in the first place or anything, that rethinking part was just a figure of speach).

Some of these folks are even starting to call this mess Der große Solarschwindel (The Great Solar Energy Scam). But, like I said, nobody is particularly interested in hearing about things like this. Or do you want the Green Shirts to come knocking on your door one night? And after all, money is no object here. It never is when it isn’t your own.

Es bestehen derzeit in Deutschland so große Defizite in Bezug auf Leitungsbau, Speicherkapazitäten und bei der Vernetzung mit den europäischen Nachbarn, dass es vorerst nicht ratsam erscheint, mit dem Ausbau regenerativer Stromerzeugungskapazitäten fortzufahren.

German Recycling Destroying Umwelt

June 23, 2011 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Heconomy, Hi-tech, Hysteria Tags: Berlin, Bottles, Environment, Freedom, German, Germans, Germany, Greens, Humor, Recycling, Robots, Satire 3 Comments

Bad consumer! Environmental groups are alarmed and warning that the entire German reusable bottle system as we know it may soon be on the verge of collapse. And it’s all because of you, ihr Flaschen (“you bottles,” a German idiom for losers). You’re recyling the wrong bottles (the plastic ones, these are “bad”).

Horror of horrors or something. Just when Big Green Brother finally got you to robotically return your bottles to the reusable bottle robots located at your local supermarket, like you should, for your own good, you start buying more plastic returnables (thinking that these are as “good” as good old glass ones), causing the share of environmentally friendly bottles in circulation to sink from 70 to 50 percent. If this continues, the whole system will become “unprofitable,” whatever that means.

It seems that Fearless Leader’s five-year plan actually called for a percentage of 80 percent of environmentally friendly bottles to be in circulation so you have all failed miserably and will now have to be reprogrammed at your own cost again so that you know better and start buying the good glass recyclable bottles instead. And returning them to the robots (the machine ones). After you have emptied them, I mean (the bottles). Ah, the hell with it. They’ll explain it all to you better later.

Eine bessere Kennzeichnung und ökologisch differenzierte Steuer werden verlangt.

Germans To End Opposition To New Overhead Power Lines Overnight

June 1, 2011 By Hermann Observer in Heconomy, Helplessness, Hi-tech, Home Cooking, Hysteria Tags: Atomic energy, Berlin, Energy, German, Germans, Germany, Green Shirts, Greens, Humor, Nuclear energy, Overhead Power Lines, Phase-out, Power Lines, Satire, The Greens Leave a comment

As reported earlier, in order to avoid stunting the growth in Europe’s largest economy after its decision to shut down nuclear power forever, Germany must now carry out a massive expansion of it’s electricity-delivery network.

The overhead power lines which will be necessary to connect new offshore wind farms in the north to the factory-rich south and to allow the high-volume energy transfer from French nuclear reactors to cover the shortfall as Germany phases out its own reactors (they only provide a mere 23 percent of the country’s current energy demand) are, however, “unsightly and yucky,” as all Germans know. And they will also probably cause cancer, too (the next DANGER, but that will be another story later, guaranteed).

Fortunately for the German nation, it’s altruistic, selfless citizens have spontaneously decided to sacrifice their own petty personal concerns and grievences in regard to these power lines and win one for the collective common good by immediately ending all opposition to the construction of said yucky power lines and promising to never ever bitch or moan about them ever again, honest.

And if you believe that you can build your overhead power line on some prime Florida swamp land I’ve got for sale for you right here.

A grid upgrade is essential, and Germans must end their opposition to new power lines overhead, energy economics professor Christoph Weber said.

German Vocabulary of the Day

May 23, 2011 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Heconomy, Hi-tech, Hysteria Tags: Energy, Fukushima, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, Nuclear energy, Satire Leave a comment

Alleingang: Going it alone.

Although every German knows that things go invariably terribly wrong whenever Germans do this (go it alone), they sometimes simply just can’t help themselves (think the recent UN Libya resolution episode, for instance) and let this atavistic throwback throw them back to behavior (misbehavior) they will bald (soon) regret. For the latest case in point see Ausstieg.

Ausstieg: This means to exit, phase-out. Germans are the born Aussteiger (exit-ers or escapists), but this is getting ever harder and harder for them to do. Executive Director Nobuo Tanaka of the International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA (not IKEA), for instance, has warned Germany about going their nuclear phase-out alone (see Alleingang). Germany’s policies here affect all of Europe, he says, and “it’s not about a German problem, it’s an overall European problem.”

Blackout: This means blackout. German power companies are now warning that should the Ausstieg and Alleingang described above be implemented too quickly and too efficiently (a grave possibility in Germany), they will not be able to guarantee an uninterupted power supply for their customers in Southern Germany during the so-called “winter” months.

Die Netzfirmen warnten, wenn nur die im Zuge des Atom-Moratoriums stillgelegten Alt-Meiler weiter vom Netz blieben, fehlten an kalten Wintertagen in Süddeutschland etwa 2000 Megawatt Leistung.

This New-Fangled EBOOK Nonsense Ain’t Never Gonna Happen Here

May 22, 2011 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Heconomy, Hi-tech Tags: Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Berlin, Books, eBooks, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, Satire 3 Comments

Not in Germany it ain’t. No way. It’s, uh, I dunno. It’s just plain wrong. It’s too American or something.

Let Amazon & Co. sell all the damned ebooks they want to over yonder (currently 105 ebooks for every 100 printed at Amazon), we’re sticking to tradition and our traditional fixed book prices (this protects our culture somehow) and the unfair taxation and the measly 0.5 percent ebook sales of total volume of books sold in Germany (sure we only got around to introducing the Kindle here just a few weeks back, but still).

Remember this: Germans don’t read ebooks.

And remember this too: Television had no future (radio pioneer Mary Somerville) and the world only needed five computers at most (IBM president Thomas J. Watson).

Verlage und Buchhandlungen in Deutschland sind zögerlich, weil die Investitionen hoch und die Gewinnspannen niedrig sind und es außerdem mal wieder Streit um die Mehrwertsteuer gibt: Während gedruckte Bücher einem ermäßigten Satz von sieben Prozent unterliegen, sind es für E-Books 19. Und bis das ausdiskutiert ist, wird vermutlich auch Amazon.de mehr E-Books als Bücher verkaufen. Denn in Deutschland wurde der Kindle ja erst vor vier Wochen eingeführt.

These photos should not be made public!

May 10, 2011 By Hermann Observer in Hi-tech Tags: Berlin, Bin Laden, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, Navy Seals, Satire, Star Trek 3 Comments

You know, the photos proving how Star Trek Special Operations were in fact the ones who killed Osama Bin Laden. But it’s too late now. The Katze is out of the bag.

Someone at German news channel N24 who needs to have his enthusiasm curbed accidentally spilled the beans by actually producing the official logo of the “Star Trek Maquis Special Operations Seals Team VI” (one nasty bunch of 24th century terrorists), the real culprits behind bin Laden’s death, as we now know. Take him out and phaser him.

That explains why the helicopters were so quiet and stuff.

Closer inspection of the logo obtained by N24 should have turned up the notion that the skull is a little on the Klingon side.

Speaking of Deep Space

May 5, 2011 By Hermann Observer in Hi-tech Tags: Berlin, Film, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, Movies, Satire, Science Fiction 3 Comments

And being that the US “now acts indifferently vis-á-vis sovereign states not only in a global but in an orbital fashion,” I couldn’t help but think of this terrifying (and up until now top secret) example of American hi-tech technology (I don’t really know why I couldn’t help but think of it, however).

Remember: Robot Monster stalks the earth to destroy humanity.

Overwelming, electrifying and baffling or something.

PS: Whatever happened to Fukushima?

Looft-shif-TEHK’-nik

May 4, 2011 By Hermann Observer in Heconomy, Hi-tech Tags: Berlin, German, Germans, Germany, Goodyear, Humor, Satire, Zeppelin 2 Comments

Is nothing sacred anymore? Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. says it will team up with Germany’s ZLT Zeppelin Luftschifftechnik to build three new blimps beginning in 2013.

Goodyear’s CEO says updating the fleet will “assure that future generations will be able to experience the joy of seeing a Goodyear blimp gracing the skies.”

The airships will be built by Zeppelin and Goodyear teams at Goodyear’s airship hangar near Akron.

Observing Hermann

“Was interessiert mich mein Geschwätz von gestern?”

Category Archives: Hi-tech