Santa Claus

Meet the real Santa Claus!

Sailor Jack used to dress up as Santa and surprise children for 16 years. His stories are very moving, to say the least. Read the stories of Paulie and Mary Jane.

Link via Al.

Community News

Sean ist krank. Bronchitis. Das hatte ich früher fast chronisch, also kann ich nachvollziehen, wie er leidet… Gute Besserung! Hoffentlich bist Du schnell wieder fit!

Good advice from the NetDyslectics: “Enjyou your Sw/oC and think about Xmas presents.”

Well, no Sw/oC for me, got to work on my thesis. But I should definitely think about those Christmas presents. Only one week left!

Kate‘s boyfriend Bob got a telescope! Wow, this is so cool! I only looked through a telescope once, here at our university. I saw – the moon. It was impressive, but I would love to see some planets and stars.

Jan-Willem went to see Rembrandt etchings at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. I think I saw some of them while in Amsterdam in May. While I was there, the museum celebrated its 200th anniversary with an exhibition called The Golden Age, featuring paintings and graphics from the 17th century.

Here are some etchings by Rembrandt (British Museum).

Links via Tsja.

Missed another day…

… but here I am again! I finally got some real work done yesterday, but I didn’t get around to flip the page.

Astronomy

CNN: Four new moons spotted around Saturn. That means Saturn now has 28 moons.

Link via Audrey.

Find your Star Wars Twin

Here’s an online test that determines your Star Wars twin. The cool thing about the test is that cou can take it for yourself and a friend at the same time.

Link via /usr/bin/girl.

Weblog Community

Happy 100th birthday to Susan’s grandfather!

Al’s weblog, ViewFromTheHeart, has now a shorter address: http://vfth.com.

Cool!

Diese Woche in der Zeit

Gesellschaft: Die neuen Lehrer, von Susanne Gaschke.

“Lerncomputer für die Kleinen, Tretroller für die Eltern: Statt zu spielen, sollen Kinder sich heute fit machen fürs Berufsleben. Die Erwachsenen werden derweil immer infantiler. Eine kleine Soziologie des Spielzeugmarktes.”

Schule: Zu lang zu starr, zu billig, von Martin Spiewak. “Mehr Flexibilität könnte den Lehrermangel lindern.”

Internet: Endymion antwortet nicht, von Kerstin Hoffmann. “Die deutschen Surfer haben das Chatten entdeckt – und quasseln und flirten bis zur Sucht.”

“Wenn man sich im 19. Jahrhundert beim Tanztee und im 20. Jahrhundert in der Disco kennen gelernt hat – warum sollte die angemessene Form im 21. Jahrhundert nicht die Kontaktanbahnung per elektronischem Medium sein?”

Und besonders empfehlenswert für alle, die noch Weihnachtsgeschenke suchen:

Diplomatische Präsente: Hier schenkt Deutschland, von Jürgen Rutenberg.

“Die richtigen Geschenke für Freunde und Verwandte zu finden ist oft ein ziemlicher Staatsakt. Der Protokollchef im Auswärtigen Amt praktiziert die Kunst des Schenkens auf höchstem Niveau”

Reading

“A new book by Tales of the City author Armistead Maupin: The Night Listener. ‘The first novel ever broadcast as a spoken-word serial in its entirety on the web prior to publication!’

Read and listen to Chapter 1 of The Night Listener.”

Thanks for the link, Sheila.

You can also download it as PDF. Oh, and here’s a biography of the author.

Fromme Wünsche

Ich auch. Allerdings hätte ich lieber ein blaues.

Stories

Al told great stories yesterday and today.

“Megan will now provide running commentary of the morning events along with interpretive dance movements; you may assume from this point on that she is closely following the morning action while bouncing randomly off the walls.”

20/20 vision

Look at my new and improved boyfriend, now with perfect vision again!

More snow

It seems everyone’s got snow. John reported plowing through snow drifts, Garret has 6″ of new snow, and now Susan has snow as well. I want some snow, too!

Oh, and look at Susan’s icicle photos from yesterday! Walking in a winter wonderland…

US election

Finally. The election is over, and it seems like George W. Bush is going to be the next president of the US.

Here are the transcripts of the statements of George Bush and Al Gore.

Oliver has some thoughts on the outcome of the elections.

To me, it seems like the whole vote counting business has been made more complicated by those voting machines – which are supposed to make counting easier!

In Germany, we vote by putting crosses next to a name or party on a sheet of paper. After the election is over, all the votes are being counted by hand, and we get the results an hour or two later. No half-punched ballots, no discussion what counts as a vote and what doesn’t, no recounts. It’s that simple.

I think the US should think about using this technique instead of their fancy machines.

Lunch

Today we had a very special treat – we were invited to dine at the Graugans Restaurant in Cologne. Ah, look at the menu! It’s just a sample, but it gives you an idea on the food, which was really delicious! We all had Crème Brulée (and assorted other treats the names of which I forgot) for dessert.

Thanks again for the invitation! – I know the generous donor is reading my weblog, but he said he didn’t want me to give away anything about the lunch. Which I didn’t, did I?

Wintertime

It’s not yet winter in Germany. Here in Bonn, it is fairly warm, and it was sunny almost all day today. But it is quite windy, and there have been heavy storms in other parts of Germany.

Since there’s no sight of cold and snow here yet, I’m re-reading Susan‘s Lake George Diary from January. Ah, those wonderful photos… They make me want to go and visit Lake George myself.

Look at these photos! The second one is especially beautiful… almost unreal.

Weblogs – theory and practice

“This is a very casual and unscientific project to keep a record of the various writings on and about weblogs. Generally, I’ve tried to exclude the semi-annual flamewars that break out surrounding The One True Weblog.”