Peace in the Middle East?

Al wonders why peace seems to be impossible to achieve in the Middle East. So do I. There have been fights as long as I can think, and whenever it finally seems like an agreement was just around the corner, someone breaks the armistice again.

During my trip to Kenya a few years ago, I went on a one-week safari. In our minibus were students from (almost) all over the world, among them a couple from Israel. They were about the same age as I, but both had served in the army for two years. For me, it was – and still is – hard to imagine that I would have had to serve the army for two years and learned how to handle a machine gun if I had been born in Israel instead of Germany…

Normally, it all seems to be so far away and almost unreal, but you start to think about it in a different way when you actually meet people who live there and to whom these fights are an immediate danger.

BIFAZ

Der Schockwellenreiter linkt zur Bürgerinitiative für animierte Verkehrszeichen. Das habe ich schon irgendwo mal irgendwann gesehen, aber das ist schon ewig her. Und verlinkt habe ich sie offenbar auch nicht. Aber jetzt.

Grummel, man kann nicht mal auf die Seite mit den animierten Verkehrszeichen linken, denn von der Adresse wird man gleich zur Homepage weitergeleitet. Für Weblogger sind Frames doch keine gute Erfindung…

Update: André sagt, er hätte darauf schon mal gelinkt – aber das war vor Deiner Zeit, Jörg. Und ich hatte es doch verlinkt… Ich glaube, ich werde alt.

Sunset

I hope my dear readers are not bored with yet another sunset… It was just so beautiful today!

The first photo was taken from André’s office’s window, the second from a field nearby.

Mmmmh… Muffins!

Rick Saenz has photos of his daughter baking muffins on Downstairs at Dry Creek. They make me hungry!

Rick, were you thinking of our food conversation when posting the pictures? (I said I love muffins, but few bakeries in Germany have them…)

I’ve been thinking of buying a muffin baking form for months! The problem is, I don’t have much time for baking, and we don’t have a deep freezer. And if I get to bake something, it would be nice to be able to bake a lot of muffins at once, freeze some of them and eat them later…

Here’s a little collection of links to muffin recipes…

• VanEats – Baking
• 1st Traveler’s Choice Internet Cookbook – Muffins
• Muffin Recipe Index
• Fry Cooks on Venus Muffin Recipes
• Traveller’s Hotel – The hidden Muffin Recipes
• Cookie Bakers – Muffins
• Marvelous Muffins
• Authentic Foods – Muffin Recipes
• The Master’s Tech Muffin Recipes Index

ICANN

André has links and the results of the ICANN elections.

Flash

Der Schockwellenreiter links to Skip Intro – An aesthetic and economic analysis of Macromedia’s Flash technology.

“Once abandoned as a useless, time-costly feature of a website that turned out to scare off visitors rather than invite them, the intro page is now popular with corporate websites as well as design-orientated webzines and portfolios.
You can, of course, usually skip Flash intros. But doesn’t that make them the equivalent of pop-up widows – annoying extraneous things that you want to get rid of as soon as they appear?”

Bloghaus

Nicht nur, daß das Bloghaus niedlich aussieht, es verspricht auch eine interessante Site zu werden!

“Das Bloghaus ist ein virtuelles zuhause für alle deutschsprachigen Blogger, eine Sammlung nützlicher oder netter Infos und Texte, z.B. Filmkritiken, Kochrezepte etc.”

Expo Update

The pictures are ready! Because there are 39 photos, I devided them into four pages. Start at the first page. (By the way, if you discover any broken links, please let me know!)

I also have a Quicktime Movie of the ‘Well of knowledge’, but it’s 7 MB, and I don’t have software to cut it yet… maybe in a couple of days.

If you want to see the other photos from the Expo, go to my Expo index.

By the way, here’s a picture for you, Frauke and Scott!

Four days, eight languages, millions of people

The Planet Project looks interesting:

“You’re invited to participate in an event that may become a part of history. For four days, November 15 – 18, 2000, you and millions of other people around the world are invited to answer a series of questions about what it’s like to be a human being at the beginning of the millennium.”

The site is also available in other languages, including German.

Nobel Prizes

This year’s Nobel Prize in Physics (deutsche Version) is awarded to Zhores I. Alferov and Herbert Kroemer “for developing semiconductor heterostructures used in high-speed- and opto-electronics” and to Jack S. Kilby “for his part in the invention of the integrated circuit”.

See all the 2000 Prize Announcements.

New design

Hey, what happened to Weblogs.Com?! Cool new design, I like it! And it would make a nice Manila Theme, too.

Now I wonder if EditThisPage.Com will get a new design as well…

Expo 2000

I’m working on the pictures… they’ll probably – hopefully – be ready later today.

The Cider House Rules

Craig is reading The Cider House Rules by John Irving:

“… a novel that deals with the abortion issue. As with most books that have been made into movies, the book is much better than the film. I recommend the book. The movie was good too and if you’ve already seen the movie, the book is very different so you can still read it!”

I’ve read the book a few years ago and recently watched the movie. I was surprised that I couldn’t remember the story as well as I thought – until I heard that the story in the book is quite different from the one in the film! I liked the film better, too, by the way.

I recommend other books by John Irving, too. I especially enjoyed A son of the circus and A prayer to Owen Meany (but I haven’t read all of his books yet).

Hiatus

Hal announced that blivet is going on hiatus because he has to write his thesis and the weblog tends to distract him too much. I can understand that very well because I’m in a similar situation. My deadline is still far away (mid-March 2001), but when it comes closer I won’t be able to update as much as I do now, I guess.

Hal, I’ll miss your updates!

Boom!

After I started the computer this morning and edited a text in BBEdit, the machine crashed so bad that the built-in tools of MacOS couldn’t repair it. So André and I had to make backup copies of important files and format the hard drive and install a new system.

This took so much time, I guess I won’t get to write my Expo report today since I’ve got to work on my thesis, too. Tomorrow, hopefully…

I’m back!

I just returned from Hanover… exhausted and tired.

I spent the weekend with my sister, Katrin. We went to the movies on Friday night and watched Im Juli (German movie), which we enjoyed very much. – Obwohl der Film zugegebermaßen recht viele Zufälle hatte… aber der Tip war gut, Jörg.

On Saturday, my sister and I visited Gabi and Swen, two friends of mine. (André and I went to their wedding party in August.)

And yesterday, I went to the Expo. I had an afternoon ticket, valid from 3 p.m., and I had to leave the Expo at 7:30 p.m. in order to catch the last train to Bonn, but I managed to see quite a few interesting pavillions. I avoided all the crowded ones, so I didn’t get to see the pavillion of the Netherlands (which I really wanted to see!), but the less crowded ones were interesting as well. Now I’m off to bed. Expect pictures tomorrow – um, I mean, later today!

Have a nice weekend!

Yes, I know it’s only Friday… But in less than an hour I’m taking a train to Hanover, to visit my sister, some friends and go to the Expo once more before they close the doors at the end of this month.

Of course I’m taking my camera, and this time I’ll make sure to take a picture of the “well of knowledge” in the Czech pavilion that’s made from thousands of books.

Drückt mir die Daumen, daß es am Sonntag nicht regnet!

It’s likely that I won’t update my weblog until Monday… Enjoy your weekend, everyone!

Reunification

Scott dropped in at my Discussion group. He says the reunification was the reason why Frauke and he moved back to Germany in 1990.