Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Mysterious barnyard animal killings continue

Just three days following the gruesome discovery of twenty dead sheep near a derailed train in a tunnel near Fulda, German police in Thuringia have now reported finding a number of dead cows near a rail crossing in their area, too.



“We don’t want to jump to any conclusions or anything,” said one country bumpkin cop near Erfurt. “But after talking with our colleagues in Fulda, it is pretty clear to us that the killer’s method of operation during both killing sprees is practically identical.”

A massive nation-wide search has now begun for the mysterious killer, his description having been given to police by several dazed passengers who had been travelling on the derailed Fulda train and who just happened to be looking out the window when the killings took place or something.

According to them, the killer is between 7 and 10 feet tall and is completely covered with dark brown and reddish hair. His round and somewhat crested head appears to sit directly on his neck-less shoulders and boasts a pronounced brow ridge with a large, low-set forehead.

Should anyone out there have seen this person, please contact your local police immediately, especially if you have farm animals and live near the train tracks.

It is 11:00 p.m. Do you know where your cattle and sheep are?

Kommentare auf Deutsch? Klar.

Posted by clarsonimus at 17:10:19 | Permanent Link | Comments (3) |

Friday, April 25, 2008

Take this brother, may it serve you well

Tired of continually being asked “Where was the wall?” by all of those countless tourists who come to visit the city every year, a Berlin company called Mauerguide has “like had it totally up to here” or something and will start handing out hand-sized minicomputers next week which will show these annoying Quälgeister (nuisances) just where the damned thing stood already.



They’ll be handing them out for a hefty fee, of course, but this being a way cool and high-speed new economy type technology, everybody will understand and shell out the bucks, they hope.

Linked to global positioning satellites, these handy little Handy-like devices (a cell phone is called a Handy here) will show anyone with a need to know not only where the infamous Cold War monstrosity once stood (practically all of it is gone today, that’s why everybody keeps asking), they will virtually be able to take a virtual tour along the near 100 miles of virtual thing. Which, of course, virtually no one with any sense will do.

It’s not a bad idea as far as gadgets go, I guess. But while they’re at it, why don’t they offer a plug-in virtual guide to other frequently asked about location stuff? You know, like a Hitler’s bunker or forgotten tunnels module, or a “Doesn’t Heidi Klum live here anywhere?” unit. Who knows? Before too long they might even offer a “Where was old Tempelhof airport?” plug-in.

“After fifty feet, run into the Sony Center. Then turn right.”

Kommentare auf Deutsch? Selbstverständlich.

Posted by clarsonimus at 18:42:00 | Permanent Link | Comments (5) |

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Is Germany running out of wind?

It’s bad enough for a straight-A wind energy Musterschuler (model student) like Germany to suddenly fall back to fifth place in class (at least when it comes to the number of turbines installed last year, that is), but to be passed up in the process by the Mother of all Umweltsünder (environmental sinners), the United States of America herself, well, that’s about enough to knock the wind out of you, as in them, which is of course what it did.



It seems that new turbine installations in Germany have dropped a full 25 percent in the past few months, primarily due to subsidies that the government doesn’t want to pay anymore. So you see, for all of the loud talk about new breakthrough technology and wave of the future and the next big export industry thing and saving the planet, blah, blah, money, it seems, makes the turbine go round after all. If these windmills don’t get subsidized here, they don’t get built. At least not for now, they don’t.

But I have confidence that Germany’s wind ideologues will be back up on their feet to be blown off them again in no time. After all, when it comes to energy policy, there is only one thing Germany has more of than wind, and that’s hot air.

“Wer Wind sät, wird Flaute ernten.”

Kommentare auf Deutsch? Klar.

PS: Thanks for the global change link, EuroYank.

Posted by clarsonimus at 17:13:01 | Permanent Link | Comments (23) |

Saturday, April 19, 2008

Everybody has doubts

Everybody has doubts now and again about decisions they have made. Even politicians do, although they are always the very last to admit it. It’s understandable, it could mean your job after all.



And although Berlin’s mayor Klaus Wowereit may haughtily dismiss Chancellor Merkel’s recent comments supporting keeping Berlin’s Tempelhof airport open as being a “transparent party political maneuver”, and he should certainly know one of those when he sees one, it’s looking more and more like he and his left-wing buddies midtown are beginning to doubt their decision to and insistence upon shutting the place down.

On April 27 the city will vote on a referendum to keep Tempelhof open, the issue now having turned into a hot partisan battle between SPD and the Left on the left (duh) and Merkel’s conservative CDU on the right (it's also an issue between old West-Berlin and the Hauptstadt der DDR, of course, but nobody wants to say that out loud because that would be rude). And depending upon how the Berliners decide to vote, and it is their decision after all, Wowereit’s “fears of legal complications”, should the airport be allowed to stay open, are going to be the least of his worries. It could mean his job after all.

Why am I enjoying watching this grassroots rebellion stuff so much? Why not? Come to think of it, how could I not?

Ich bereue diesen Schritt nicht, dafür (ver)zweifle ich daran.

Kommentare auf Deutsch? Klar.

Posted by clarsonimus at 09:27:19 | Permanent Link | Comments (19) |

Sunday, April 13, 2008

You don’t mine, do you?

In yet another futile attempt to overcome the decades of pacifism they and their fellow Germans have been forced to endure after that unfortunate World War II thing (and those rather unpleasant Nazi atrocities many still associate with it), a renegade and somewhat drunken German special forces unit has taken the initiative and attacked Great Britain once again, on their weekend off, this time using a rusty old German underwater mine they set off near anything-but-heavily-populated Stert Island in Sommerset. Several fish and a seagull were killed instantly.



The six drunken prankster German soldiers leading the surprise attack then disappeared just as quickly as they had come, into numerous pubs located all along Bridgewater Bay, repeatedly. British military intelligence officials are still trying to locate them and believe that the soldiers were aroused into action after repeatedly watching “The Red Baron” in their barracks’ Kino (theater) in Kiel late Friday night and early Saturday morning while simultaneously holding long and tortured discussions about their country’s reluctance to introduce a proper military decoration for bravery and daringness much less drunkenness while simultaneously drinking more beer than three fully submerged German Type 209 Attack Submarines can displace when fully submerged.

It should be noted (a little more on the serious side), that despite Germany’s reluctance to become more heavily involved in the fighting down south in Afghanistan, for instance, “Twenty-five German soldiers have died in Afghanistan so far. But, however much they distinguish themselves, their country still offers them no award. Germany needs the equivalent of Britain's Victoria Cross or America's Medal of Honor.”

The Iron Cross is still a bit too hot to handle at the moment it seems, having been tainted by association with the Nazi era, but it now appears that many a German soldier might not “mine” wearing it, if only given the opportunity to do so. And if properly drunk, of course. “Mine”, get it?

Gute Mine zum bösen Spiel, oder wat?

Kommentare auf Deutsch? Klaro.

Posted by clarsonimus at 17:43:43 | Permanent Link | Comments (6) |

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Robotic waiters?

I thought they were already. Here in Germany, I mean. Anyway, thanks to “modern food preparation technology” you can now go out to eat at a place in Nuremburg where you don’t have to deal with those annoying, snooty and pesky waiters at all anymore. The machines do all of that for them now. “Jeez. Just leave me alone, HAL. I’m tryin’ to eat.”



No tips necessary, either. And that’s probably why this place is so popular at the moment. Just think Jetsens only more non-cartoon-like. You place your order per touch screen and then your food slides down these spiral and futuristic metallic tracks directly to your table. And for a small additional fee I bet you can probably even have this stuff pre-chewed for you.

Talk about science marching on. In the land of ideas, I mean. That one marched right past us up here in Berlin, though, thank goodness. Although I can’t imagine that the Hauptstadt (capital) will remain verschont (spared) for very much longer.

They are everywhere, you know, these machines. I hear them talking sometimes, late at night. And sometimes in the subway, too (you know; “Zurück bleiben”, stuff like that). You know, those evil telepathic machine voices everywhere and all the time. And don't pretend like you don't hear them because I know you do. But that’s another story. I think.

What’s that you say HAL? “I’ll be back?”

Kommentare auf Deutsch? Her damit!

Posted by clarsonimus at 07:41:26 | Permanent Link | Comments (4) |

Wednesday, April 09, 2008

Russian space shuttle won’t fly in Germany, either

So they shipped it up the Rhine at 5 miles an hour where it just spent the night in Cologne.



The Soviet Russian Buran orbiter, which never orbited, designed to plant Cold War cold space mines among other things, is being put to rest at Germany’s Speyer Technical Museum, of all places. Business-savvy museum technocrats figure that Buran will be better off drawing admission fees here than gathering dust in some long forgotten Russian warehouse somewhere. And I’m sure that they’re right.

I am a bit surprised at all of the sudden space race curiosity here in Germany, however. The Germans have always been a bit sceptical when it comes to space exploration and space racing and space militarization. And I don’t blame them, either. After all, they invented it.

Looks like this is your final frontier, Buran.

Kommentare auf Deutsch? Selbstverständlich.

PS: Thanks for the National Museum link, Indeterminacy.
Posted by clarsonimus at 06:59:42 | Permanent Link | Comments (1) |

Monday, April 07, 2008

More Gas

Or is less gas more? The Germans call biofuel Biosprit but whether you call it that or bioethanol or biobutanol or biodiesel or whatever else kind of bio something you want to call this new poo poo power stuff, well, it’s all a bunch of gas in the end. Or at least it is whenever politicians get their hands on it (yuk), which you can’t really do because it is gas after all, come to think of it.

 

So now the German government has tossed plans to increase the amount of bioethanol to get mixed up in the regular gasoline next year and Mr. Big Environment minister Sigmar Gabriel himself is mad as hell and isn’t going to take it anymore for a while. It’s the next admission of a failed policy mandated by politicians who maybe ought to should not not pretend that they know all that much about technology even the high-tech technologists appear to have trouble making happen. It turns out that millions of German cars would not be able to operate using this new E10 biofuel blend.

He is blaming his tossing of the towel on his coalition partners of course because that is what he is paid to do and this makes him look all the more green I guess although I feel he looks more white and pasty than anything else and I wonder if they haven’t thought of maybe pumping him up with a little E10 in the morning from time to time. Talk about your poo poo power.

Ein Biosprit-Desaster? Warum nicht?

Kommentare auf Deutsch? Selbstverständlich.

Posted by clarsonimus at 07:36:39 | Permanent Link | Comments (1) |

Thursday, April 03, 2008

Power down and out in Berlin

It looks like there’s a new twist to German plans to bury their excess CO2 when nobody else is looking and no one really is looking all that close if you ask me.



The new twist seems to be that piping their hot air underground was more of a pipe dream than anything else and won’t wirklich (really) work so they’ll just begin shutting down some of their coal-burning power plants this summer instead, in old-fashioned American-style rolling blackout fashion, and get rid of even more CO2 than they were not getting rid of before by not creating it in the first place.

That half of Germany’s electricity is produced with coal is bad enough, I guess, but that they won’t even be able to pump the CO2 created in the process into some super cool secret underground repository for future generations to let out into the atmosphere later when they need to is, well, that’s even worse, I think.

Give me warp power, Scotty.

Kommentare auf Deutsch? Klar doch.

Posted by clarsonimus at 01:23:10 | Permanent Link | Comments (3) |

Thursday, March 27, 2008

Russian art critics active in Berlin again

German police fear that a group of Russian art critics may have possibly abducted a Russian artist living in Berlin who herself was critical to Vladimir Putin and the Russian Orthodox Church which was probably the reason why she was living in a "safe" place like Berlin in the first place but these art critics are clearly of the big-time and international type and will stop at nothing to do their job and express their criticism and intend to show Russian artists like her that you can run if you wish but you cannot hide, at least not when it comes to creating and exhibiting controversial art critical to the powers that be in Russia, these being none other than the Russian art critics themselves, of course, and that if you want to live safely in the future it would probably be better for you to paint pretty Russian landscapes and tundra scenes and stuff like that.

Of course maybe she just got into some Transrapid train somewhere by accident and vanished into the Twilight Zone forever like the Wankel motor did, hard to say for sure though.

Trans Europa Express (aber ohne Transrapid).

Kommentare auf Deutsch? Logisch.

Posted by clarsonimus at 18:06:57 | Permanent Link | Comments (1) |
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