Oh. My. Google.

They’re at it again. This time Google’s StreetView car (they actually have several) has come under fire in Germany again for, gulp, collecting data on private Wi-Fi networks.

That this has been done for years already by many location-based service companies like Skyhook say, and applications like Twitter and even “good” browsers like Firefox makes no difference at all here, folks. Aufregung muss her (you just have to get hot and bothered).

Do no evil? Google kann do no good.

Datenschützer kritisieren die angebliche Speicherung von privaten Daten über WLAN-Netze durch Google Street View. Andere Anbieter bleiben von der Kritik ausgenommen, dabei gehen sie genauso vor.

Schroeder sabotages ex-wife’s near second fifteen minutes of fame

Gerd “it wasn’t me” Schroeder is at it again.

As if driving around Hannover with the drunken church lady (and getting her fired) and planting 250 kilo bombs in Berlin wasn’t enough already, now he’s somehow managed to sabotage his ex-wife’s next shot at fame by getting her to slip on something and fall while she was doing her dance on what I assume must be the popular TV show “Let’s Dance.”

Anyways, she’s busted her knee and is out of the competition. And she coulda been a contender too. It just ain’t right. Damn. This Schroeder guy needs to get a job.

“Nur einmal durfte Hillu Schwetje, Ex-Gattin des Ex-Bundeskanzlers Gerhard Schröder in der RTL-Show “Let’s Dance” das Tanzbein schwingen.”

We surrender already!

Just stop holding hands and singing We Shall Overcome!

Not even those rugged German army types can take this kind of abuse forever. After years of moaning and sniveling and peaceniking about saving the heath and health of the so-called “Bombodrom” in Kyritz-Ruppiner Heide near Berlin, the Bundeswehr has finally rolled over and decided to close down its infamous military training area.

It had been a shocking Vorgang (course of events) or something. They actually practiced dropping bombs here once, I think. Maybe twice. Fake bombs of course, but still. Damn, where is the Bundeswehr going to drop their fake bombs now?

Bundesverteidigungsminister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg (CSU) erklärte in Berlin, die Bundeswehr löse diesen Standort mit seinen 80 Mitarbeitern vollständig auf.

“I underestimated how good German beer is”

4G? Oh, gee. What do you mean it’s gone?

Who is Gray Powell – other than that Apple iPhone engineer dude who got a little too happy on German beer at a place called Gourmet Haus Staudt in Redwood City, California of all places and left his 4G prototype iPhone on a bar stool to get picked up later by somebody else who recognized its value and sold it for $5,000 to a gadget web site in New York that’s now making a big noise about it, understandably – and why won’t we leave him alone?

The website claims it bought the phone from a man Gizmodo reportedly paid $5,000 (£3,254) for access to the device. who discovered it on March 19 “lost in a bar in Redwood City” near Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, California.

European Vacation

Finally, after a somewhat strenuous Californian vacation (because it was way too short), Iceland’s volcanic ash cloud has forced German Chancellor Angela Merkel to finally take a little more time off her busy schedule than she might usually want to do and reflect and relax a little while vacationing right here in good old Old Europe, perhaps finally making it back to Berlin maybe one day in the process, where everybody has kind of sort of been expecting her irgendwie (somehow).

The first stop of her current European tour began on Friday when her plane was diverted to Portugal. After a night in Lisbon, she flew over to Rome just before the air traffic got canned there too. Then she headed north from Rome to Bolzano in northeast Italy in an armored limousine and is currently, I believe, busing it over the Alps back to Berlin and could be arriving here at any moment or at least anytime within the next week or two (is Rainbow Tours still in business?).

What’s a forty or fifty hour flight back home with planes, trains and automobiles (and buses) as long as you can combine it with some handshakes and photos and a little sight-seeing here and there? And get paid for it, I mean.

She has, after all, been spared a day of campaigning in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, which holds a crucial election next month which her center-right coalition stands to lose.”

Ossi ethnicity?

Well, it’s official now. Turned down for work in the German West because she hailed from the German East, a woman took the company to court on racial, or at least ethnic, discrimination charges – and lost.

No ethnic group, no tribal breaks here, Easties. Nice try though. If you are an Ossi (East German), you stay one. So like wake up and smell the Kaffee. Life’s a Schlampe and then you die. Get used to it already. You’re now just like the rest of us out there who aren’t like the rest of us out there, I mean you (out there). That’s life. Here’s a hanky. Blow your nose. Now go out and get a job in Friedrichshain or in Dresden or in some other awful place like that. OK, I’m finished.

Als Gabriele S. vor Monaten ihre Bewerbungsunterlagen zurückbekam, prangte neben dem Lebenslauf der handschriftliche Vermerk des Fensterbauers. “(-) Ossi!”. An mehreren Stellen stand “DDR”. Eine üble Diskriminierung?

Winters could get colder

German scientists have come to the scientific conclusion that “despite global warming”, winters could get colder in the years to come. Of course they could also get warmer in the years to come too, but still.

This odd phenomenon is said to have something to do with the sun or something (uh, don’t warm or cold winters always have something to do with the sun?).

Look, I’m no scientist. I just know that global warming, at least the man-made kind, is sacrosanct. And I also know that I nearly froze my ass off here this last winter, “despite global warming” (not to spite it or anything). So you do the math (I’m not a mathematician either).

Kalte Winter in Europa widersprechen Klimaerwärmung nicht