Wat sachste?

Ruhrgebietssprache ist eine Site, die den Nicht-Ruhrgebietlern erklärt, wie die Sprache im Ruhrgebiet funktioniert. Besoners amüsant: die Grammatik. Schon mal was vom “wecken R” oder vom “verdehten T” gehört? Wider Erwarten habe ich den vom Schockwellenreiter häufig verwendeten rheinischen Superlativ aber nicht gefunden…

Link via Ilona.

Nobel Prizes

This year’s Nobel Prize in Physics (deutsch) is awarded to Eric Cornell, Wolfgang Ketterle and Carl Wiemann for the achievement of Bose-Einstein condensation.

I attended a lecture Ketterle gave about Bose-Einstein condensation and atomic lasers in the physics colloquium at the University of Hanover on June 10, 1997.

Attacks on Afghanistan

US strikes at Afghan targets, and more news (Deutsche Welle Spezial). Although everyone knew this was coming, it is a strange feeling, and I don’t really know how to describe it. The newscaster on the radio sounds different, more tense, and there are extra news announcements between the regular ones.

It all brings back memories of the Gulf War ten years ago, only this time the NATO will be involved as well.

Concentrating on mathematics, physics and pedagogy will be very difficult in the coming weeks. Other things seem much more important.

[Updates will be probably sporadic until the end of November.]

Community

Glad you’re back home, Craig!

Weird dreams

This ostrich (which didn’t make it into my Kenya journal) is for you, Garret. No hairspray! Sweet dreams…

Radtour

And finally, as promised on Sunday, some photos from our little bike tour, including pictures of the Post Tower, an office building that’s being constructed in Bonn. It is going to be 62 m tall and will then be the highest office building in North-Rhine Westphalia. Here’s a webcam where you can see the progress of the Post Tower. (It’s probably on top of the Langer Eugen.)

Diese Woche in der Zeit

Afghanistan: Mathe gegen Taliban. “Damit in Afghanistan Mädchen unterrichtet werden können, bedarf es vieler Schleichwege und Tricks.” Von Sabine Etzold.

AIDS: Segensreiche Mutationen. “Manche Menschen sind immun gegen Aids. Was sie schützt, soll nun ein Medikament werden.” Von Ulrich Bahnsen.

Siehe auch Zeit Schwerpunkt: AIDS.

Technik: Schlüsselloch zum Mittelmeer. “57 Kilometer unter Tage. Die Schweiz baut wieder einmal den längsten Tunnel der Welt.” Von Urs Willmann.

Referrers

Browsing through your referrers can be shocking sometimes. While it’s nice that nine people came to my site during the last 24 hours looking for info on the German Reunification, I find it very disturbing that no less than 44 referrers were from search engine queries about the World Trade Center attacks. Almost all are looking for photos, and too many of them specify they want to see photos of people jumping out of the windows. One even searched for WTC horrible photos, another for photos killed wtc people jump. Yikes, I just found out that I’m number one for both queries. Why?

And what’s wrong with those people? Didn’t they see enough of it on TV? Go away, there are no such photos here!

Reunification Day

Today is Tag der deutschen Einheit, or Reunification Day. Eleven years ago today, the former GDR and FRG were reunified after the wall came down on November 9, 1989. If you are interested in the history behind this day, I wrote about it a year ago. Some of the links don’t work any more, but most of them should still work.

Kenya

Tuesday, October 3, 1995: Last day in Kenya and flight back to Germany.

Internal

I added a link to a print-friendly version of my pages (in the left column).