Horror-Party – ein Schrei nach Grenzen

Was lese ich diese Woche in der Zeit? – “Mama, da ist Ei auf dem Teppich…”, von Susanne Gaschke.

“Vater und Mutter verreisen, der Sohn, 14 Jahre alt, gibt eine Party. Als die Eltern zurückkehren, finden sie ihr Haus nahezu zerstört vor – von ganz normalen Jugendlichen aus einem Hamburger Vorort.”

Glauben die Eltern ernsthaft, daß es eine gute Idee ist, ihren vierzehnjährigen Sohn über’s Wochenende allein zu Hause zu lassen, ihm zu erlauben, eine Party zu feiern, und nicht mal den Nachbarn zu sagen, daß das Kind allein zu Haus ist?! Und wer ist schuld an der Eskalation der Party? Nicht der Sohn, nicht die Eltern, sondern immer die anderen. Sagt die Mutter des Jungen, selbst Lehrerin an der örtlichen Grundschule.

Ich kann mir nicht helfen: Ich finde, die Eltern sind selbst schuld. Nicht der Sohn gehört erzogen, sondern die Eltern brauchen Nachhilfe zum Thema Kindererziehung.

The weekend

My parents, who visited André and me this weekend, brought these beautiful flowers. Danke schön!

I don’t know the name of the large flower, but to me it looks like a cross-breeding between a pineapple and an artichoke.

Mathematics

Solving the Riemann hypothesis?! Prime time – “Fame and fortune await the person who cracks the greatest problem in mathematics”.

Link via Garret.

Belated…

Happy Birthday to you, Bob!

Beautiful photos!

And once more, Susan has beautiful pictures – this time of Zion Canyon, Bryce Canyon and Las Vegas. Of course, they remind me of our trip to the USA, although the scenery looks different now that it’s covered with snow. When we were there, it was still hot and sunny, and it was difficult to imagine that there would be snow instead a few months later.

Maybe we should visit some of the parks again in the winter some time…

Full moon

Yesterday, André and I went to see Space Cowboys in the afternoon. When we came home after dinner, the full moon was shining – how suitable. I really liked the film, though I’m not sure any more if I really want to be an astronaut…

Well, I guess I won’t update again today because we’re having visitors over the weekend. Have a nice one, everyone, and see you tomorrow!

Elfter Elfter, elf Uhr elf

Heute hat hier im Rheinland wieder die jecke Zeit, die fünfte Jahreszeit begonnen. André und ich ignorieren alles, was mit Karneval zu tun hat, komplett. Hier draußen, weit weg von der Innenstadt, kann man sich ganz gut drücken…

Happy Birthday to you! Yay! It’s André‘s birthday today! Alles Gute und viel Glück!

Quotes

You can never have enough quotes. Quotegeek.com.

Link via /usr/bin/girl.

For the Star Wars fans…

Check out Star Asciimation Wars!

New Manila Feature

Manila sites now have a page that shows the hourly hits.

Winter in New Mexico

“the snow has melted quite a bit at our altitude (snow rarely stays for more than two or three days in santa fe, no matter how deep), and has turned our dirt roads into pits of viscous, brown gook. i was getting annoyed, until i stepped back and remembered how much i loved playing in the mud as a child. i mean, if you’re going to get your car dirty, why not get it *really* dirty? (evil grin) oh, if sandra finds out…”

Don’t worry, Garret, I won’t tell Sandra!

Comparing political systems

Scott has some comments on my musings about the elections in the US and how elections work in Germany. He’s right – voters don’t always get who they voted for in Germany as well.

Thanks, Scott!

November 9

November 9 is an important date in German history. In 1989, the wall came down on November 9. But there’s much more to the date than that:

• November 9, 1848: Execution of Robert Blum, a member of the German National Assembly, despite his parliamentary immunity. This has been said to be the beginning of the end for the German revolution of 1848/9.
• November 9, 1918: Proclamation of the Weimar Republic.
• November 9, 1923: Hitler’s attempt to take over the government fails.
• November 9, 1938: Kristallnacht
• November 9, 1989: The GDR opens its borders; the Berlin Wall comes down.

I tried to find some pages with information on these dates on the web, but most are in German…

In English:

November 9 in German History, with links to sites about the Kristallnacht

Auf deutsch:

• Historisches Institut der RWTH Aachen: Der 9. November in der deutschen Geschichte
• Rüdiger Löster: Der 9. November in der deutschen Geschichte

Today, on November 9, 2000: Deutsche Welle News:

“Tens of thousands of people are expected to take part in a demonstration against far-right extremism in Berlin later today (Th). Calls to participate in the rally on the 62nd anniversary of the Nazis’ “Kristallnacht”, when thousands of Jewish businesses were destroyed, were made by all parties represented in the German parliament, as well as trade unions, employers and initiatives. The country’s political leaders will also be present. President Johannes Rau and the Leader of Germany’s Jewish community, Paul Spiegel, are due to make speeches. “

The Schockwellenreiter and others are going to participate. I would go as well, but Berlin is too far away…

Comparing political systems

The elections and the possibility that Gore might not become president although he got 200,000 votes more than Bush made me think about different political systems.

I’m always wondering why so few people vote in the US. It’s supposed to be a free country, where everything is possible, everyone can fulfil their dreams… and people are not interested in who is their president?

In Germany, we last voted for a new chancellor two years ago. No, we don’t elect a chancellor; we vote for a candidate that gets send to the Bundestag, and for a party. The chancellor is then elected by the Bundestag. This is somewhat similar to the US system, but I don’t think it’s possible that the candidate of a certain party can be elected for chancellor when the party (or coalition) does not have the overall majority.

But things in Germany are a little more complicated than in the US. We have six different parties in the Bundestag, so coalitions are necessary.

And we had a voter participation of 82.2 percent! (In 1994, it was only 79%.)

Here’s the official provisional result of the election to the 14th German Bundestag held on 27 September 1998. (In case you are wondering, “overhang mandates”, or Überhangmandate are additional seats a party get if more of their candidates are directly elected into the Bundestag than the number of seats they get because of the percentage of votes for the party.)

Lego!

Zannah had another cool lego link: The Star Wars Trilogy – all made from Lego! (The only strange thing about it is that I see ?@?@?@ here and there. Although the site is in English.)

Space Cowboys

Gabi und Jörg haben gestern im Kino Space Cowboys gesehen und geben ihm zwei Clowns. Dann können André und ich ihn ja beruhigt ansehen gehen. Und zwar in der Originalfassung!

When I grow up, I wanna be an astronaut!

More voting

I voted 2000 – { fray }:

“The following pages hold 14 different voices telling 14 different stories about politics, elections, and America. […] But you won’t find any political diatribes or partisan rants here. These are stories about the thing that connects us to the talking heads on television, the thing that makes it all work, the thing that keeps us coming back to the polls year after year. – The thing otherwise known as hope.”

US Elections – Update:

So maybe Bush has not won after all? I just came back from the university, only to hear on the news that the vote counts for Gore and Bush are much closer to each other in Florida than was thought, and that the votes have to be counted again.

Heh. On the nine o’clock news this morning, our radio station had a quote from the latest CNN news:

“CNN declares George Walker Bush the 43rd president of the United States!”

Oh yeah? So they actually think the media declare someone president? Now that it turns out he may not have won after all, it seems even more ironic.

I do still hope that it’s the people that elect the president, not the media.

Have any elections ever been so close?

Näheres gibt es auch bei der Zeit zu lesen – aktuelle Meldungen jeweils hier.

US Elections

So Bush has won. Ugh!

Results are here in the NY Times (link via Garret) – oder hier beim Spiegel (Link von Jörg).

I’m going to the university now. See you later…