Kultur im Dunkeln Ob der Schockwellenreiter wohl auch in der langen Nacht der Museen unterwegs war? Sie fand heute (übrigens schon zum achten Mal) von 18 bis 2 Uhr in Berlin statt. Sowas könnten die hier in Bonn eigentlich auch mal machen, auf unserer Museumsmeile…

Daily Updates

David muses about people who manage to update their weblogs almost daily (he names Al, Hal and me as examples). Why do I update daily?

One thing is, once you’ve started updating regularly, it feels “not right” to skip a day. All the numbers in the calendar are links, so one that isn’t wouldn’t fit in. Also, I usually browse the net every day, and I always happen upon something intersting that’s worth posting here, so voila, there’s your daily flip.

But I guess I can’t promise to update this regular in the future, since I’ve started working for my thesis. I’ll really be into the whole Examen thing from November 2000 through July or August 2001, and I guess I’ll be quite busy with studying and learning…

… but then, you have to have some distraction, don’t you?

Germans and Grumpiness

I pointed to two articles (one in German, one in English) about grumpiness and German umlauts yesterday. Now Duncan tells that some Scottish dialects have similar vowels – and I bet they are not grumpy either!

Mathematics

I’m working my way through elliptic functions and module functions (I’m not sure about the English translations for elliptische and Modulfunktionen), so I’m not going to update much today, sorry…

But the weather is much too good to sit in front of a computer anyway, so go outside and enjoy the sunny weather!

Star of Potter film is not wild about Harry

says this Times article. His classmates are angry that a non-fan has been chosen to play the character of Harry Potter.

Germans and Grumpiness

Mira has some interesting thoughts on Germans today. She points to a BBC article that claims pronouncing “ä”, “ö”, “ü” makes you frown and thus grumpy. The article has some very nice photos of chancellor Schröder, his predecessor Kohl and Michael Schumacher. “Chancellor Schröder: Hard to smile with an umlaut in your name”. He he!

I didn’t even know Germans are known to be grumpy! Hmmm…

It would be interesting to find out if there are other “frowning languages” besides German… Mira talks about Austria (the German name for their country is Österreich!), Hungaria, Turkey and even France. Are they all grumpy, too? And makes learnin German you more grumpy, too? Garret, be careful!

Oh, it seems like Garret read the article as well and didn’t agree with German = Grumpiness.

Update: Dazu gibt es auch einen Artikel bei Spiegel Online. (via Schockwellenreiter.)

Nietzsche

Today is the 100th anniversary of Nietsche’s death.

Quotes:

“Lieber aus ganzem Holz eine Feindschaft als eine geleimte Freundschaft.”

“Is not life a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves?”

Nietzsche was born on October 15th, 1844 in Röcken, Saxony, Germany, and died on August 25th, 1900 in Weimar. He studied theology in Bonn (Hey, I didn’t know that!) and Leipzig.

Since I’m not much of a philosopher, I refer you to Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s entry on Nietzsche. (André found this site for BookNotes yesterday.) Für deutschsprachige Leser sind viele weitere Links beim Schockwellenreiter zu finden.

Today is also Sean Connery’s (born 1930) and Leonard Bernstein’s (1918, died 1990) birthday.

Lemo

Das Foto von Nietzsche habe ich übrigens auf den Seiten des LEbendigen virtuellen Museums Online gefunden. Ein interessantes Projekt, das leider für Breitbandnetz entwickelt wurde…

Technical difficulties

Um… Now I’ve flipped the page using Radio UserLand, but posting text to the home page still doesn’t work.

Now I have to write something so I don’t have an empty home page… yeah.

Dirty children are healthy children?!

John points to this article: Germ Exposure May Be Good For Kids.

I guess germ exposure does not only protect you from Asthma, but from other kinds of allergies as well.

Gateway Poster Child

Now that‘s a cute kid with a cool cow pullover!

I like chocolate

Garret found this at Reuters: A chocolate a day keeps tooth decay away?

Busy, busy, busy

Sorry, I was very busy today; I went to see the pedagogy professor today whom I want to take my exams at the Staatsexamen. Now I have to catch up on my math because I spent most of the day doing other things, like shopping (the fridge was empty!), and I also spent half an hour at a museum to see exhibits from Lindenstraße (“Lime Tree Street”), a popular weekly soap in Germany.

Genau, heute war ich im Haus der Geschichte und habe mir die Lindenstraße und Spuren der Macht angeschaut. Viel hatten sie ja nicht aus der Lindenstraße: nur den Schreibtisch von Dr. Dressler und die Küche (Bank, Tisch, Stühle) von Else Kling. Dann noch einen Computer mit Informationen, den ich mir nicht näher anschauen konnte, und ein Gruppenfoto sowie eine Übersicht der Personen, wer mit wem verwandt oder zerstritten ist.

Spuren der Macht war auch ganz nett. Das Paradebeispiel war natürlich Joschka Fischer; keine der fotografierten Personen hat sich innerhalb der letzten zehn Jahre so stark verändert wie er.

Ooops!

Something went wrong here. I just tried Radio UserLand and managed to flip my page, but when I entered text and tried to post the changes, I got an error message. I’ve posted it to the Radio UserLand Discussion Group.

Poor John!

John just can’t get there from here, “there” meaning Iguassu Falls, Brazil, and “here” meaning his home in Iowa, USA. What a frustrating non-trip!

Reading

Craig is back and has a great quote of the day:

“The greatest gift is a passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites, it gives you the knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind. It is a moral illumination. Elizabeth Hardwick“

Alles falsch?! – What’s wrong?!

Endlich hatte ich auch mal Zeit, einen Blick in das Museum für falsche Fehlermeldungen (MOFFEM) zu werfen. Gefällt mir!

The Museum of faulty Error Messages has a collection of English error messages as well. Check it out!

Link via Schockwellenreiter, wenn ich mich recht entsinne.

Sharp knives and dull knives

Al talks about chef’s knives:

I have bought the best chef’s knife in the world, and… it wasn’t made in France (shock) or Germany (SHOCK!). It was made in…Japan. Yeah, Japan. […]

Here is one of the great cooking secrets: A sharp knife is much safer than a dull one. For one thing, you are careful around a razor sharp knife. For another, you don’t use as much force to cut with a sharp knife; you slice rather than push through, reducing the chance of the knife “skipping” off something hard and cutting your hand.

I knew about the sharp knives being safer than dull ones. And I checked: our knives are made in Germany (of course ), by Justinus.

Und schon wieder die Rechtschreibung…

Garret fand diesen Artikel des Electronic Telegraph: Brussels ‘debasing German language’, von Toby Helm (auf Englisch).

So and so many days until…

I see that Jeff has updated his list of events:

124 days, 8 hours, 41 minutes until Christmas.

Yeah, I needed to know that.

Kubanisch Reisen Der Schockwellenreiter empfiehlt heute den Film Kubanisch Reisen, bekannt auch unter dem Titel Lista de espera oder The Waiting List. Würde mich auch interessieren; ich habe schon den Trailer gesehen. Heute abend war ich aber erstmal in 28 Tage im Woki. War ganz nett, der Film, nur frage ich mich, wer es schafft, innerhalb von 28 Tagen von Alkohol- und Tablettensucht geheilt zu werden. Aber naja, ist ja nur ein Film, und 128 Tage wäre als Titel vielleicht nicht so schön gewesen.

Reading

Here’s a site with Classic Short Stories. For example, they have The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe. Great story!

Link via /usr/bin/girl.

Internet Dream

Sean is afraid of dreaming of the internet. Don’t worry, Sean, my dream was mainly about this stupid “Little World”, and the only thing that had to do with the internet was the URL. But I guess I’d have been really scared if the web site of “Little World” really existed!

Treffen von Webloggern

Okay, ich werde das Wort nicht mehr benutzen, und es ging mir auch nie um das Werkzeug, mit dem man ein Weblog bearbeitet. Sorrysorrysorry!

Ein Treffen von Leuten mit Weblog zwecks “persönlichen” Kennenlernens, Klönens und so fände ich schon gut. Details siehe Martins Discussiongroup, Oliver und bei den NetDyslexen (auch hier).

Update: Die Diskussion wurde ins Clublog verlegt!