A man dressed as Santa Claus poses with his ‘helpers’ who are busy answering children’s letters in the Santa Claus post office in the Eastern German town of Himmelpfort (Heaven’s Gate) on November 10, 2011. Children can send their Christmas wish lists to Himmelpfort from around the world and receive a reply from Santa. In 2010, the post office here received 285.000 letters in 17 languages.
Merry Christmas and stuff like that.
Now if we could only learn to harness the power of falling solar energy company stocks…
Solar Millennium AG plunged by a record in Frankfurt trading after becoming the second publicly traded German solar company to file for insolvency.
Let’s face it, people: The sun and Germany just don’t mix.
Solar Millennium war ein grüner Börsenstar. Beim Solarkraftwerk-Hersteller klang immer alles nach Weltrettung, ständig ging es um die Zukunft der Menschheit. Seit Donnerstag ist das Unternehmen pleite und es wird klar: Viele hundert Millionen Euro sind weg. Es droht einer der größten Anlageskandale der Geschichte.
Remember long, long ago when the US messed up so awfully and needed so desperately to get out of Iraq as soon as possible (I’m talking the German view here, folks)?
Well, now the big American mistake is that they just left. Everything is falling apart again already and it’s all our fault, again already.
The Germans should know what they’re talking about here this time, though. US troops are still in their country and have been since 1945.
Kaum haben die letzten US-Truppen den Irak verlassen, brechen im Land alte Konflikte auf.
Wow, talk about a news item.
This must be the scoop of the century. Are Woodward and Bernstein back? Did the CIA finally do something right? Where on earth do Spiegel journalists uncover such unexpected and volatile information?
Always remember, folks: If it’s not in the Spiegel, it didn’t happen.
“Welcome to the Fourth Reich”
“Fukushima changed my attitude towards nuclear energy,” she said.
Now, though, it would appear that German industry is relying on government assistance to pursue the construction of nuclear power plants abroad.
Four applications for government export guarantees on nuclear power plant projects are currently under consideration. Known as Hermes guarantees, the program protects German companies from non-payment on overseas deals. The four projects are located in Finland, Great Britain, China and India.
“The nuclear phaseout must also apply to export guarantees.”
As you may have noticed, Germans are always stressed out about stuff, even stuff that isn’t particularly stressful. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that the Society for German Language has just chosen “Stresstest” to be the German word of the year (you didn’t know it was a German word, did you).
You name it, the Germans have stress tested it this year (or have been stress tested by it). Whether banks, nuclear power plants, train stations in Stuttgart, rained out summers or having patience with the euro (not), this term has become a “firm component of everyday language.”
I don’t see what all the fuss is about, though. Ain’t nothing new. I remember when they used to call stress test life.
Der ursprünglich aus der Medizin entlehnte Begriff sei im Laufe des Jahres “auffällig oft” verwendet worden.
As Wikipedia informs us, a flash mob (or flashmob) “is a group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, perform an unusual and sometimes seemingly pointless act for a brief time, then disperse, often for the purposes of entertainment, satire, artistic expression.”
Well, Munich officials clearly aren’t in the mood for entertainment, satire or artistic expression these days (it is Christmas season here after all, bah, humbug) and are threatening with 1000 euro fines anyone who decides to follow a Facebook flashmob call to stand still at the city’s famous Marienplatz for five full minutes this coming Saturday.
It’s pretty clear that they don’t want the flashmob to interfere with the Christmas mob because this could lead to mob warfare and we all know who would win that one, right? Man do I ever pity the flashmobbing fool who gets in the way of those folks.
Uns geht es nicht um das Stehenbleiben, sondern um Blockaden.
Why put off for tomorrow what you can put off for The Day After Tomorrow instead? Get it?
Oh boy, another climate change agreement. You know, an agreement about agreeing to agree on how governments will agree in the future on how to commit themselves to agree upon finally reaching a final agreement about… I forgot about what, but it has something to do with CO2 or something.
Have you noticed how die Luft ist raus (the air is out or the wheels are off) of the we’re-all-going-to-die-right-now climate change movement? You can only cry wolf for so long, I guess. The masses, in their inexplicable and infinite wisdom, seem to have lost all sense of urgency and are no longer cooperating – not even in Germany. And not even the do-gooders-what’s-in-charge leading them, trying so hard to get that sense of urgency back, seem to know “why Durban is different to climate change agreements of the past.” But they’re trying to understand and I wish them all the very best.
Und das ist gut so (and this is a good thing), these wheels coming off. Once everybody stops hollerin’ and things start calming down a bit maybe we can all get together and begin to approach this issue with a little bit of common sense. Opps, I mean intelligence.
Bis kurz vor Schluss sah es aus, als würde der Klimagipfel von Durban ohne Ergebnis enden. Heraus kommt ein nüchterner Zeitplan, mit dem viele Entscheidungen verschoben werden.
Us as in US, I mean.
German authorities are trying to limit what the American tech companies can do, but the Silicon Valley giants are fighting back (the key word is American here, folks).
Give the Germans what they want, I say. But what DO they want, anyway (this is one of my favorite German schizophrenia thangs).
It’s worth noting that Facebook and Google are actually quite popular in the country — the BBC reported in September that “a quarter of the German population are active Facebook users and Google has 95% of the country’s search market.”
Der Spiegel http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,800850,00.html (sorry, having trouble with the posting today) has put together a highly nuanced and in depth political analysis about US Republican presidential candidates. It is called “A Club of Liars, Demagogues and Ignoramuses.”
Here are just a few of the more insightful insights:
The current crop of candidates have shown such a basic lack of knowledge that they make George W. Bush look like Einstein (so like they don’t like Einstein, or what?).
They lie. They cheat. They exaggerate. They bluster. They say one idiotic, ignorant, outrageous thing after another (good thing we have the Democrats as an alternative).
The US elections are a reality show after all, a pseudo-political counterpart to the Paris Hiltons, Kim Kardashians and all the “American Idol” and “X Factor” contestants littering today’s TV (I don’t get this but it sounds like it must be astute or something).
The Grand Old Party is ruining the entire country’s reputation (uh, what reputation are we talking about here anyway?).
…Which goes to show that this “movement” (the Tea Party), sponsored by Fox News, has never been interested in the actual business of governing or in the intelligence and intellect that it requires. They are only interested in marketing themselves, for ratings and dollars (if given the choice I’d take the ratings at the moment).
Americans have a short memory (this one sure does, I’ve forgotten your article already).
Observing Hermann 