Category Archives: Around the World

“John always had the right stuff“

New York Times: John Glenn, American Hero of the Space Age, Dies at 95.

“John Glenn, a freckle-faced son of Ohio who was hailed as a national hero and a symbol of the space age as the first American to orbit Earth, then became a national political figure for 24 years in the Senate, died on Thursday in Columbus, Ohio. He was 95.
[…]
Finally, 36 years after his Mercury flight, in the last months of his final Senate term, he got his wish for a return to orbit. […] At 77, he became the oldest person to go into space.”

NASA has a lot of material and further links on their John Glenn page.

Deutsche Welle: Former US astronaut and senator John Glenn dead aged 95. “John Glenn, the first US astronaut to orbit Earth and a former Ohio senator, has died at 95. Hailed as “the ultimate hometown hero,” he served as a senator for 24 years and later became the oldest man in space.”

Die Zeit: Astronautenlegende John Glenn – ein Pfadfinder im Weltraum. “Was für ein Leben: John Glenn umkreiste vor 50 Jahren nicht nur als erster US-Amerikaner die Erde. Er wollte Präsident werden und flog mit 77 ein zweites Mal ins All.” Von Hellmuth Vensky, 20. Februar 2012.

You’ve probably never heard of the language they deemed the hardest of them all

The Economist (on Medium): We went in search of the world’s hardest language. “English is pretty simple. Learning to speak Ubykh or !Xóõ presents more of a challenge.”

“With all that in mind, which is the hardest language? On balance The Economist would go for Tuyuca, of the eastern Amazon. It has a sound system with simple consonants and a few nasal vowels, so is not as hard to speak as Ubykh or !Xóõ. […]

Most fascinating is a feature that would make any journalist tremble. Tuyuca requires verb-endings on statements to show how the speaker knows something. Diga ape-wi means that “the boy played soccer (I know because I saw him)“ , while diga ape-hiyi means “the boy played soccer (I assume)“ . English can provide such information, but for Tuyuca that is an obligatory ending on the verb. Evidential languages force speakers to think hard about how they learned what they say they know.”

Link via MetaFilter.

Our Summer Vacation 2016

André posted a set of photos from our trip to the US this summer:

Spicy Noodles on Flickr: USA Southwest 2016 – Four-Week Roadtrip through Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah.

Some of the highlights:

A Conversation with President Obama

Rolling Stone: The Day After: Obama on His Legacy, Trump’s Win and the Path Forward.

“In an interview conducted the day after the election, the commander in chief reflected on the stunning results and how he’ll spend his time post-White House.” By Jann S. Wenner. November 29th, 2016.

“And one of the things that I have been telling my younger staff, who in some cases have only known politics through my presidency, is history doesn’t travel in a straight line. And it zigs and it zags and sometimes you take two steps forward and then you take a step back.

[…]

There’s no benefit that’s derived from pulling into a fetal position. We go out there, and we work. And we slog through challenges, and over time things get better.”