Sale is a bad word here

December 17, 2009 By in Higher Education Tags: Leave a comment

Or at least it’s a really annoying (nervig) and superfluous (überflüssig) one. That’s how the Association of the Friends of the German Language voted this year. They prefer the German word for sale, it seems. Whatever the hell that is.

And the word they liked for 2009 was Abwrackprämie (cash for clunkers), which is also a German word for sale, kind of.

I don’t take these folks all that seriously, though, nor should you. Their website doesn’t even offer an English version link thingy.

Der 1997 gegründete VDS mit mehr als 31.000 Mitgliedern bezeichnet sich selbst als „die weltweit größte Sprach-Bürgerbewegung“.

From Copenhagen with Lust

December 16, 2009 By in Habeas Corpus Tags: 1 Comment

Looks like negotiations are starting to get pretty hot and heavy up there.

Come on, everybody. Do what you can to bring down the planet’s temperature. NOW!

Global-warming summiteers have been told it’s uncool to buy hookers, but prostitutes have turned a trick of their own: heating up the atmosphere in Copenhagen by offering free sex to delegates.

I predict that there will be more dire predictions next year too

December 15, 2009 By in Habitudes Tags: 2 Comments

Astrologists and other doomsayers aren’t what they used to be. No, wait a minute. Nonsense. Why of course they are.

And the Gesellschaft zur wissenschaftlichen Untersuchung von Parawissenschaften (The Skeptics) has proven it yet again. Of the 140 predictions put out there for 2009 by some 50 well-known psychic, clairvoyant types, none of them were right. None of them except the one from the guy who predicted that Boris Becker would get married again, I mean. And that was a tough one, right?

Natural disasters had a bad year too, despite all the dire predictions. But there will be a more detailed analysis on why that was from the Clairvoyants of Copenhagen later on this week, I’m sure. Or maybe not. But still.

“Vorhersagen-Klassiker seien auch Naturkatastrophen, wie beispielsweise Stürme in der Karibik.”

“Tricks” are for kids

December 6, 2009 By in Hysteria Tags: 2 Comments

The Copenhagen Diagnosis?  I’d say it’s something like “the show must go on.”

“The e-mails show some of the world’s top experts decided to exclude or manipulate some research that didn’t help prove global warming exists.

1998 was the hottest year since record-keeping began…but the temperature went down the next year, and it’s only spiked a couple times since.”

Der Watergate-Skandal brachte Richard Nixon zu Fall, Monica-Gate zerstörte die Glaubwürdigkeit Bill Clintons, und jetzt also Klima-Gate – der Verdacht, dass der menschengemachte Klimawandel nicht mehr ist als nur eine Verschwörung unter Klimaforschern.

It’s us against Google, yet again

December 4, 2009 By in Hi-tech, Hysteria Tags: Leave a comment

Google Book Search bad. German Digital Library good.

Upset and suspicious about Google’s attempts to digitalize books, pictures, sculptures, notes, music and films to make them available for everybody on the Internet, the German Cabinet has just agreed on a plan to digitalize books, pictures, sculptures, notes, music and films to make them available for everybody on the Internet.

I’m not making this up, people. I wouldn’t be able to. Contrary to what you might think, Germans don’t like technology. Not unless its their own, I mean.

Culture Minister Bernd Neumann called the project a “quantum leap into the world of digital information.”

We’d rather help build up a new police state

December 3, 2009 By in Habitudes Tags: Leave a comment

No pressure here, time or otherwise. Before not committing any new troops to Afghanistan, Germany wants to take all the time it needs to say no more thoroughly and convincingly and much, much later (around February or so). And why not take your time? They’re in the best of company here.

As German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle put it: “President Obama held a very important speech. He also took his time to work out the speech and his strategy and we will take our own time to assess what he said and discuss this with our allies.” 

In other words, “no”, like I said. Westerwelle did indicate that Germany is prepared to increase police trainers in Afghanistan, however. That German police training in Afghanistan has been a catastrophe up until now is another question altogether, but still.

“We Germans are ready to do more in the area of police training, because that is the only route to self-sufficient security, to a handover of responsibilities.”

It’s showtime!

December 2, 2009 By in Hypocrisy Tags: Leave a comment

OK, 30,000 additional American troops in Afghanistan, victory guaranteed by the summer of 2011 (or else) and the best part of all? President Obama’s Afghanistan strategy, as expected, also envisions a major increase in NATO troop levels there, meaning of course more German troops too.

Go Germany! I’m impressed already, sort of (but not quite yet). What would never have been possible during the reign of his evil cowboy predecessor will now be given to Obama with a smile. Some 2000 troops, or so the rumor goes.

Poor Mr. President. He still doesn’t know who he’s dealing with over here. Here in Germany, I mean. Afghanistan he’s starting to get though, I think.

Die Nato-Staaten müssten ihr Truppenkontingent ebenfalls aufstocken – also auch die Bundeswehr.

Right song, wrong verse

November 30, 2009 By in High Art Tags: Leave a comment

Or was it vice verse-a? Damn, this guy really must have a drug problem. Pete Doherty outraged a German crowd and got booed off the stage by singing the not-quite-verboten-but-might-as-well-be first verse of the Deutschlandlied (you know, Deutschland, Deutschland über alles, blah, blah, blah) at something called the On3 Music Festival in Munich.

This guy was definitely on more than 3 too. And although this is a bad thing and all I guess (the singing part, not so much the booing), to add insult to injury (I mean to insult), word is also out that straight and sober and REAL musician-entertainer-type Heino HIMSELF just lost a big court case and will now have to shell out some 3.6 million euros for a concert tour he had to cancel due to illness, and not the mental kind type. There’s no justice in this world I tell you.

Die erste Strophe des Liedes war von den Nationalsozialisten zur faschistischen Propaganda missbraucht worden und wird heute nicht mehr gesungen. Allerdings ist sie auch nicht offiziell verboten. Die dritte Strophe bildet heute die deutsche Nationalhymne (“Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit”).

Indignant fans beat crap out of each other

November 30, 2009 By in Hysteria Tags: 1 Comment

Thoroughly outraged by revelations about a gambling ring that has fixed or tried to rig at least 200 matches across Germany and the rest of Europe, including three in the Champions League, German football fans across the nation spontaneously took to the stadiums yesterday and began randomly beating the you-know-what out of each other.

“We demand stiffer sanctions for this match-fixing nonsense stuff immediately already,” roared one blood-soaked, club-wielding fan. “This kind of behavior is absolutely unacceptable and is just the kind of thing that could give the sport of football (some call it soccer) a bad name.”

German police said on Friday they had dismantled a gang with more than 200 suspected members operating in nine European leagues.