But we’ll end up with this.
Although no Matterhorn, the rocky crags will be plenty for Berlin’s Alpine enthusiasts to scale.
Tag Archives: Humor
No good NIMBY-pamby protesters!
Are we having an energy revolution yet?
Although there is a long way to go before construction can begin on the high-voltage transmission lines, the “regional resistance” that the experts colored on their map has already begun to materialize.
There are obstacles everywhere. Either the landscape is so densely populated that it is poorly suited for big infrastructure projects, or it is so devoid of people that it should be preserved precisely for this reason.
The tactics of the power-line opponents are simple and perfectly understandable. The more arguments that can be presented against the project, the more likely it is that the future route will run further away from one’s own community and closer to the neighboring village instead.
Fortunately for the opponents, German law offers plenty of ways to keep the power masts at a good distance.
Saving birds and bats from the power lines, protecting gliders, a festival of bureaucracy. It’s all here, people.
Green Eggs and Ham
Particularly nervous about this, that and the other thing these past few weeks, Germans are now being frightened by their very own Easter eggs.
Greenpeace eggtivists have determined that up to 20 percent of eggs sold in Germany have been contaminated with the dreaded and deadly genetically modified “herbicide tolerant soja bean” or so-called “Gen-Soja” chicken feed. You know, the chickens that lay the eggs eat this scourge of chickenkind first?
Green Germans have reacted accordingly and have now begun to have their chickens produce organically correct and green (literally green) eggs instead.
Sam!
If you will let me be,
I will try them.
You will see.
Good Bank Bad Bank
Amerikanische Banken sind böse, deutsche sind gut.
Deutsche Bank AG, whose bets against subprime mortgages helped it weather the financial crisis, pressed to sell a $1.1 billion collateralized debt obligation to clients in 2007 as the co-head of its CDO team foresaw a market slump, a U.S. Senate panel found.
Lippmann (not the co-head but then-top CDO trader), whose bets against the housing market were also described in Michael Lewis’s “The Big Short,” had repeatedly tried to warn co-workers and clients in 2006 and 2007 about the poor quality of the mortgage securities underlying many CDOs, according to the report. The return on his bets against mortgages “was the largest profit obtained from a single position in Deutsche Bank history.”
“Keep your fingers crossed but I think we will price this just before the market falls off a cliff.”
So how do German financial experts react to the big short CDO scam and the crisis that followed? How else? American banks have to take the responsibility for what happened.
“Im Nachgang der Finanzkrise müssen sich amerikanische Banken verantworten.”
U-Turn, I-Turn, We All Turn
Turn, as in spinnen (to spin or, in this case, to be mental). This is another one of those only-in-Germany ones.
How long has it been since the latest greatest German Wende (turnaround)? Read some of these:
The U-turn on nuclear policy Chancellor Angela Merkel announced last month following the Fukushima accident will involve a massive expansion of renewable energies — as rapidly as possible. She is giving the public what it wants. But the shift will nevertheless provoke a major backlash. Germans may love their green energy, but they also have a growing proclivity towards not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) lawsuits and referenda.
Many are now asking themselves if the transition to renewable energies will ruin the nation’s countryside.
Germany’s Federal Agency for Nature Conservation is already warning that in the rush to expand renewable energies, nature and wildlife conservation is being put on the back burner.
Germany’s opposition to wind power is well organized. The website windkraftgegner.de (wind power opponents), lists more than 70 protest campaigns.
Opposition is also mounting against the massive power masts that will be needed to transport clean energy across Germany and Europe.
And on and on and on. I don’t make this stuff up, people. Now they’re takin’ it to the streets to protest against renewable energy.
And the Green party’s grand energy strategy after their magnificent triumph down there in Baden-Wuerttemberg last month? Save power.
“We as Greens need to demonstrate our credibility,” national party co-chair Claudia Roth has said. At the same time, though, the Greens are very often active in the local NIMBY protests against the very kind of projects the party backs.
iPhone 4 To Fill Street View Paranoia Market Niche
Now that Google has lost interest in continuing its Street View service in Germany, a lucrative privacy paranoia market niche has opened in that country.
Although unable to meet the demand completely, Apple’s iPhone 4 has volunteered to jump into the breach until something more sinister comes along. Some users have reported that the phone, not unlike Google’s Street View, sometimes takes secret photos of them. You know, without their expressed written permission and all that?
Macht das iPhone 4 heimlich Fotos?
German Streets Not Worth The View
With German streets offering such a blurry mess wherever you look these days, and apparently tired of driving an uphill battle ever since it began taking Street View shots in Germany, Google has now decided to opt out of the German Street View service itself.
Despite winning a Berlin State Supreme Court ruling last month confirming that Street View was legal here, the company’s priorities “have simply shifted” and it will now pursue activities in Germany that do not constitute such a royal freakin’ pain in the ass.
It remains to be seen just how Google’s Street View situation will affect similar street-based mapping services in the region, including the impending “Streetside” program from Microsoft’s Bing.
Massive German Kiss-Up Offensive Underway
And we’re talking offensive, folks. In a too-little-too-late attempt to make amends for breaking ranks with its allies and refusing to support the United Nations Security Council resolution authorizing military action in Libya, Germany has now begun a surprise kiss-up campaign by actively publishing unflattering photos of Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi.
Degrading reports about botched plastic surgury operations performed on Gaddafi are also making the rounds.
But it doesn’t just stop there. Someone the Germans are referring to as Agent 008 has also been sent to Tripolis to see about establishing a ceasefire.
And as if that weren’t enough already, Germany also says that it is now prepared to let its troops take part in Libya “to help provide humanitarian aid to Libyan civilians” (if the United Nations asks the European Union please, pretty please). You know, that old we’re-the-good-soldiers-who-do-the-good-things trick of theirs?
The policy shift, announced by Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle on Thursday night, reflects disarray in Germany’s strategy but an awareness that its standing among its allies was damaged when Mr. Westerwelle told the country’s ambassador to the United Nations to abstain from the vote.
You can tell this guy’s not German
Sure, his opinion may have been published in the Spiegel (The German People’s Cube), but this otherwise reasonable and balanced assessment of nuclear energy in the New Age of Post-Fukushima Germany has some major flaws in it, all of them having to do with thinking it possible that the German response to Fukushima could ever be “thoughtful and considered, instead of emotional and political.”
Many people have already formed solid opinions and only take into account what supports their views. (This is called confirmation bias, by the way.) But many of these beliefs are irrational and only fed by the many figures, measurements and limits being made public, which hardly anyone can make sense of.
This can be seen very clearly in the current situation in Fukushima. The Americans have recommended that all citizens evacuate the area within an 80-kilometer (50-mile) radius of the stricken power plant. The Germans have moved their embassy to Osaka. Even people who are really well informed have left Tokyo in the belief that you can never be careful enough.
Though I can understand this reasoning, it’s wrong. What’s more, it sends a devastating message to the Japanese who have to stay. They have started to distrust their own government, and fear is spreading. This is a terrible side effect of this excessive concern — and the panicked reaction — in Germany.
Indeed, it is clear that the major long-term issues with an accident at a nuclear power station are not medical; instead, they are political, psychological and economic. Given these circumstance, the German response to the Fukushima accident needs to be thoughtful and considered, instead of emotional and political. It should be based on a consideration of energy needs for the next several decades and a careful assessment of benefits and risks of alternative energy sources. If such an analysis is done, I suspect nuclear energy will come out in a favorable light.
PS: Thanks for your comment on How do you keep the hysteria going?, A.K. Strange how that very thought crossed my mind too. More people died in this one smashup than have died (or most likely will die) due to the Fukushima catastrophe. You don’t and won’t see anybody getting hysterical here about driving too fast because of this (speed is always involved in accidents like this).
Funnel Payments Stopped Despite Iranian Pledge
Despite Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s repeated pledge to Germany that Iran’s nuclear program is being used for energy only and that he would reveal any future secret Iranian nuclear site plans “as soon as he became aware of them,” a spokesman for the German government says that the deal to funnel oil payments from India to Iran through Germany’s central bank has been scrapped.
Enraged by this sudden change of heart, Mr. Ahmadinejad asked the Germans “But what about my promise to give 60-days notice before unleashing any surprise attacks on Israel using the missiles that we almost certainly do not have, to the best of my recollection? Doesn’t that mean anything?”
Washington has questioned Germany’s resolve to enforce sanctions given its strong trading links with Tehran.
Observing Hermann 