Summer!

The weather is just beautiful today. I took my camera for a walk…

Here is one of the few clouds I saw:

I admit I changed the colors in PhotoShop. The picture really looks like this.

The flowers are happy about the weather, too!

(Click on any image to see a larger version.)

I’m taking the day off today. Tonight I’m going to do a barbeque with some friends from university.

Oh, und die Sonne hat endlich auch Berlin erreicht, wie es scheint!

USA Trips

Wow! This couple went to the USA for their honeymoon – and they visited (almost) every National Park in the USA and Canada! Honeymoon trip through USA and Kanada July 1989 until October 1990.

Hochzeitsreise USA und Kanada Juli 1989 bis Oktober 1990 – dieses Ehepaar besuchte in den “Flittermonaten” fast alle Nationalparks der USA und Kanadas!

Viele andere nette USA-Reiseberichte gibt es auch hier: Reiseträume.

Nachteule

I think I know a Night Person, too!

Link via Zannah

Finally!

Summer’s here! On the last day of July, finally the weatherforecast was right. We have sunny weather, almost no clouds, and 25°C (about 78 F). It’s wonderful outside! Now let’s hope it stays this way for a while…

I’m out on my bike!

Jörg, nicht nur in Spanien scheint die Sonne – auch hier in Bonn!

Have a nice vacation, Sheila – and Brent, I suppose. Hope you enjoy your week off!

Huh?!

Do you read Jeff’s Weblog? Are you a member of his site?

I am, and he really got me with his headline. It says: “Andrea Frick’s Weblog”, at least for me.

I wonder how long it has been this way without me noticing it…

GPS Receiver

David Singer bought a GPS receiver a few days ago and seems to have a lot of fun with it. He took it on a flight and was able to identify the cities and rivers he saw outside. That’s cool! When we went to the USA last year, I kept trying to figure out where we were and what lakes and rivers were visible, but of course I wasn’t able to find out.

Partial Solar Eclipse

Sheila has details about today’s/tomorrow’s partial solar eclipse and links to this page. In Europe, the eclipse is visible only in Scandinavia. I think we’re lucky that we can’t see it from Germany – the weather is so bad we wouldn’t have a chance to see anything anyway, so this spares us the disappointment of a cloud-covered eclipse.

Bach verpaßt

Das kommt davon, wenn man keine Zeit hat, die üblichen Weblogs zu lesen. Da habe ich doch glatt übersehen, daß mir Jörg vorgestern mal wieder einen Link serviert hat… sorry. Hier kommt er:

The Schockwellenreiter had a link to a webpage about Johann Sebastian Bach.

I’m back!

Whew, I definitely needed a break after the heavy traffic on my discussion group on Thursday (and early Friday)… Nope, just kidding!

I didn’t have a chance to update yesterday because we got visitors, and because I went to Ikea yesterday to buy some furniture. Yes, I went on my own – and found a friendly young man on the parking lot who helped me lift the heavy boxes into the car trunk.

Speaking of Ikea… I remember that some fellow weblogger from the US complained about Ikea not having online ordering. Well, Ikea Deutschland does.

Well, now I’m going to catch up with my daily weblog dose from yesterday…

Comet Linear

Hal has news about the comet and links to pages with pictures of the outburst.

Advertising in schools

The German weeky newspaper Die Zeit has two articles about advertising in schools today. One is about German schools that are thinking about allowing advertising in schools, and the other reports about schools in the USA, where advertising is already allowed. They mentioned the ‘Coke Incident’ in 1998, and I have to admit I can’t believe this really happened. A highschool senior was suspended from school for wearing a Pepsi shirt on the schools ‘Coke Day’. Here’s an article about it: Coke Day prank fizzles for Pepsi-loving high school senior
. Not only do I not get the idea of a ‘Coke Day’, I can’t believe a student can be punished for just wearing a shirt that says ‘Pepsi’.

Could someone please explain this to me?

Garret got the discussion going. Join in and share your thoughts!

Werbung in der Schule

Dazu gab’s heute im Wissen der Zeit zwei Artikel. Einer ist online verfügbar:

Werber auf Schülerjagd.

Der andere Artikel trägt die Überschrift “Ernährungslehre mit McDonalds” (Zeit vom 27. Juli 2000, Seite 32). Besonders erschreckt hat mich der “Coke Incident”:

“[W]ie groß der Einfluss der Wirtschaft in amerikanischen Schulen sein kann, demonstrierte schließlich der ‘Coke Incident’ im März 1998. Damals wurde ein Oberstufler in Georgia zeitweise vom Unterricht ausgeschlossen, weil er am ‘Coca Cola Day’ seiner Highschool ein Pepsi-Hemd trug. Der Teenager habe sich respektlos verhalten, argumentierte die Schulleitung.”

Hallo? ‘Coca Cola Day’?!?

Man findet doch tatsächlich alles im Internet. Hier ist ein Artikel über den ‘Coke Incident’: Coke Day prank fizzles for Pepsi-loving high school senior.

Erschreckend finde ich, daß die Schulleitung den Unterrichtsausschluß damit begründete, daß der Schüler keinen Respekt vor Coca Cola gezeigt habe. Die Firma war durch den regionalen Präsidenten vertreten, und der ‘Coca Cola Day’ wurde von der Schule ausgerichtet, weil sie einen Preis von US$ 500 gewinnen wollte, den Coca Cola an die Schule vergeben wollte, die die beste Idee hätte, wie man Werbe-Gutscheine an die Schüler verteilt.

Nicht nur, daß es überhaupt so einen Wettbewerb gibt und tatsächlich Schulen daran teilnehmen – es gibt dafür nur 500 Mäuse? Ist das nicht ein bißchen wenig für die ganze Werbung, die die Schule für Coca Cola macht?

Housekeeping help from slugs

Tired of cleaning the house? Slugs will do the job, claims the author of this New Scientist article: Good Housekeeping. Yuck!

Eskimos, snow and earthquakes

David says he was the one with the Eskimos, in this message. And he says Californians have many different words for earthquakes. Germans do not, but we don’t have many earthquakes either, at least not significant ones.

If you want to know about earthquakes, here’s the Near Real Time Earthquake List of the National Earthquake Information Center / World Data Center for Seismology, Denver. The list shows quakes all over the world and has a map, too.

I didn’t think anyone would notice. But she did.