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katlalog

050930 23:01 Language: Gerlish

At this Creperie in Berlin-Marzahn they sell 'Sweet Crepes' and 'Solid Crepes'. One should hope so.

050928 22:15 Language

Interesting and not translatable words from around the world (via boingboing).

Kummerspeck is a German word which literally means grief bacon: it is the word that describes the excess weight gained from emotion-related overeating.

The word uitwaaien is Dutch for walking in windy weather for fun.

050928 21:14 SciFi / Religion

Portrayal of Islam in Science Fiction literature and movies.

If you're looking for Kim Stanley Robinson's Years of Rice and Salt, that's listed under Islam in Alternative History Literature.

050926 19:58

My sister took this picture yesterday.

050923 01:45 Literature

I'm surfing. Something i rarely find time for these days. Not just visiting the daily haunts. Properly surfing, i.e. following links from one site to another, blog to article, opening tab after tab, getting completely lost, not remembering how i got to where i find myself half an hour later.

Thus i just came across some excellent writing by Mike Sizemore/Atherton (?). Sick and brilliant, in a fascinating combination. It's what i love most about Brits: gross humour. It's no wonder, really. They grow up with toilet humour, pencil up the nose kinda stuff. And this is where they end up when they don't get properly socialized.

Ah, i remember now how i got there. From a Google search on Warren Ellis. Which makes sense. He's an evil clone. Or is Warren Ellis the evil clone? Mike Whateverhisname did an interview with him, which is worth reading too. So are his movie reviews.

When it comes to his stories try this one to get an idea of this (let's call it diplomatically) unique style. But be warned. If you're the kind of person that thinks it's a great idea to turn the blood in computer games green then you might not find this humorous at all.

Sometimes i worry what my taste in literature says about me.

050922 16:56 Web development: Standards

Wow! Slashdot, the grandaddy of everything internet, just slipped out of its old tables and put on a nice stylesheet for layout, all without changing it's characteristc look. Not an easy task for such a behemoth of a site.

050919 14:05 Browsers

Mozilla lives on: SeaMonkey 1.0 Alpha released.

050919 13:52 SciFi

Firefly might fly some more: Serenity Cast Signed For Sequels

050916 19:53 Civil liberties

My sister came home laughing last night. She'd just heard on the radio that Germans are not allowed to smile anymore on passport photos. The AI can't deal with it.

Gotta love the URL too: http://news.yahoo.com/.../germany_smiles_verboten

050916 18:31 Society

When i was young i thought that we were going forward. That society was changing for the better. Women's equality and self-determination, freedom of information, care for the environment, tolerant multiculturalism, a flattening of social structures... But the truth is that there are an awful lot of rats in the cage and the fight over resources re-enforces the need to overestimate one's own worth (as a culture) and to exclude 'the other'. Now i see a lot of retro movement. All the freedoms we fought so hard for are slowly being eroded. Think of abortion laws in the States. Think of civil liberties in the post-9/11 world. Think of the growing poverty. Think of all the wars we're still fighting - without a bad conscience.

So, i've finally lived long enough already to experience the loops and spirals of life... What a pity... We know where we should be going. Why can't we? I guess what we overestimated most is our intelligence.

What sparked that off? The recent survey of world population's satisfaction with their governments included a bit about religious leaders and groups and the trust they inspire. My grandmother would give me one of those deadly glances for saying that but i find this extremely worrying. Because people that follow bizarre belief systems (and i mean all religions with that) tend to not think for themselves. They don't use all their own intellectual capacity and all available information but stick to a regurgitated mantra. They are easy to manipulate and control. Could be, of course, that not thinking makes you happier. But what about conscience?

At this time of religious fervour in some parts of the world, it is worth looking at whether religious leaders are trusted and whether people think they should get more power.

It turns out that they come top of the global list of trusted groups, scoring mostly strongly in south-east Asia, Africa and North America.

050912 15:35 Environment

Just found an article from 2001 titled New Orleans faces doomsday scenario in my archives predicting exactly what just happened to New Orleans:

...the Federal Emergency Management Agency ranked the potential damage to New Orleans as among the three likeliest, most castastrophic disasters facing this country.

[...] In the face of an approaching storm, scientists say, the city's less-than-adequate evacuation routes would strand 250,000 people or more, and probably kill one of 10 left behind as the city drowned under 20 feet of water. Thousands of refugees could land in Houston.

Economically, the toll would be shattering.

Southern Louisiana produces one-third of the country's seafood, one-fifth of its oil and one-quarter of its natural gas. The city's tourism, lifeblood of the French Quarter, would cease to exist. The Big Easy might never recover.

And, given New Orleans' precarious perch, some academics wonder if it should be rebuilt at all.

050904 14:08 Society

There's been a lot of talk about how the poor got left behind to die in New Orleans (check boingboing for coverage). And I often have to listen to smart asses telling me that 'nobody is poor in Germany because of our grand social benefit system'. Yeah yeah. Does 'they're not as poor as in some other countries' do anything for your conscience? To make people understand, here's what it means.

Being poor is hoping the toothache goes away.

050902 12:02 Browsers

Little Gamers identifies the people who need the Make-IE-like-Firefox-Plug-in.

050902 01:35 Politics

Some nasty socio-political background on the Katrina disaster.

The poorest 20% (you can argue with the number -- 10%? 18%? no one knows) of the city was left behind to drown. This was the plan. Forget the sanctimonious bullshit about the bullheaded people who wouldn't leave. The evacuation plan was strictly laissez-faire. It depended on privately owned vehicles, and on having ready cash to fund an evacuation. The planners knew full well that the poor, who in new orleans are overwhelmingly black, wouldn't be able to get out. The resources -- meaning, the political will -- weren't there to get them out.

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