Kryptographie

Anscheinend ist es jetzt Mode geworden, sogar veröffentlichte Texte wüstest zu 'verschlüsseln'. Dieser Eintrag macht mich buchstäblich sprachlos, denn solcher Urwuchs im Sprachengarten spricht der Schreiberin schon fast die Kompetenz zu dessen Pflege ab. In Anbetracht solcher Verwüstung/Verwirrung scheint jede Diskussion über Sprachreformen obsolet, denn bei einem Fehlen jeglicher Logik kann man vom Verständnis von Regeln nur träumen.
Mein Beileid jedem Deutschlehrer ;)

Mit diesem Hintergrund überrascht es auch nicht mehr, dass laut einer Studie Einwanderer oft besser ausgebildet sind, als die hiesigen EU-Bürger. Denn wenn man nicht einmal seine eigene Sprache im Griff hat, wie soll man sich an nur annähernd komplexere Gedankengänge heranwagen?

Connotations

Let me ask you a question: What springs to your mind when someone mentions the term 'Internet'?

Usually the expected connotations would lie in the direction 'fast', 'up to date', 'modern technologies' etc. Maybe someone might point out that it is not that a new invention anymore, but I wonder if anyone would really consider it to be 'old'? Like in 'stone-age' old?

It might happen though if you can tempt yourself to belive in this trenitalia advert:


The writing on this train roughly translates to 'Nowadays tickets are bought over the internet'. Fair point, now this is everyday business. But it has not been for so long, a few years maybe so this left me a bit confused with some questions in my mind.

I wondered about HOW modern Trenitalia possibly is. Usually I don't take them for a very cutting edge company. So I guess they probably were not the pioneers of e-commerce and 'being modern' seemed off the list.
So maybe someone with some sense of irony decided to paint the ad on an old train? Because rust and new technologies go so well together? Somehow this did not entirely convince me either.
After a very long and sleepless night, something else came to my mind: maybe I completely misunderstood Trenitalias concept of making the world a better place! Seeing that they are already working so hard to procure additional holidays for people by making their workplace unavailable this might just be the next step towards that goal.
Suppose this train is simply environmental friendly? Built of fast decomposing metal which takes less than 5 years to show serious signs of trying to get back where it came from: under the earth. Wouldn't that be fabulous? And wait until they start with bio-degradable rails!

About happiness

J'ai décidé d'être heureux, c'est excellent pour la santé. (Voltaire)

Die deutsche Version gefällt mir auch:

Weil es für die Gesundheit zuträglich ist, habe ich beschlossen glücklich zu sein.

:)

Why you should look after your keyboard...

What do you think has more bacteria on it? Your office toilet or your keyboard?

You probably wish for the first but probability is high that its the second.. here is an article which just confirms my personal aversion to sticky keyboards:

Bacteria Wars: Keyboard versus Toilet

London, England - Researchers in London say your computer keyboard may be dirtier than your toilet. A consumer group tested 33 office keyboards for bacteria. They found four of them were potential health hazards. One of those four had five times the germs as one of the office’s toilet seats.

Keyboards pick up germs through sneezing and coughing. Also, workers who eat at their desk leave behind crumbs that become havens for bacteria. Workers not washing their hands after using the bathroom also contribute to the mess on the keyboard.

To keep your keyboard germ free, experts recommend shaking out all the crumbs and dust. Then wipe it off using a slightly damp lint-free cloth. You could also use an alcohol swab.

One microbiologist said that your keyboard is often a reflection of what’s in your nose and in your gut.

original to be found here

Künstler haben Launen....

The perfect example of a moody and excentric artist :)



[it seems that sometimes the vid isnt working properly... in that case google for rhapsody rabbit and bug bunny]

About Respect

Sad but true: People can be as nice as ever possible. If they are disrespectful, they will never be good friends.

There was a twist...

... and opposing the usual expectations things turned very bizarre very quickly. Would anyone volunteer some opinions about the why? (especially of why so many things are happening which involve me but I dont even know about them...)

(In theory this blogpost should have been about my first try of snowboarding, which I survived miraculously. The bottomline is the following: wonderful snow and sun, burned face despite sunblocker, hungry, bruised, but having a lot of fun rolling around with a board attached to my feet. Also nice: the occasional actual boarding :)

Flüsterpost

When I was a kid, we used to play this game of which the name is put together from 'flüstern' = 'whisper' and 'post' which is like 'mail'. The idea is rather straightforward, someone says a word into the ear of someone else who whispers it to the next and so on.. the last one has to say out loud what he understood... usually it is marginally phonetically related to what the first one said and everybody is very amused about it.

On the other hand, this can serve as a very good example of how messages, rumors, stories, etc. can transform through lack of attention. In the end something similar comes through, however, it's usually not quite the same..

When clearing up my room, I found some nice examples of this phenomenon in the form of quotes of student's exam mishaps. The nicest ones refer to some biblical stories that come across from slightly strange to miraculously amazing..

Let's start from the beginning:
"The Bible is full of interesting caricatures. In the first book of the Bible, Guinnessis, Adam and Eve where created from an apple tree. One of their children, Cain, asked: "Am I my brothers son?"

- This is already kinda unexpected, a book full of caricatures.. But not only this, it also starres interesting evolutionary evidence, involving the development step from an apple tree to fully fledged people.. rather amazing I would say, however, who knows what can happen if a lot of Guinness is involved..

Also, other countries - other customs.. Which probably justifies the following:
"Solomon had three hundred wives and seven hundred porcupines."

But let the miracles continue:
"Moses led the Hebrew slaves to the Red Sea, where they made unleavened bread which is bread made without any ingredients. Moses went up on Mount Cyanide to get the ten commandmends. He died before he ever reached Canada."

In fact, we should not only be surprised about all these wonderful stories but about the fact that, according to the following statement, the bible is not even half as old as we thought:
"It was an age of great inventions and discoveries. Gutenberg invented removable type and the Bible. Another important invention was the circulation of blood. Sir Walter Raleigh is a historical figure because he invented cigarettes and started smoking. And Sir Francis Drake circumcised the world with a 100 foot clipper."

What can you say more?

Curiosities

Playing on freerice is very entertaining, cause sometimes it brings along words of whose existence you could have never dreamed of...

One example I just came accross is the world 'nosegay'.. Never heard of it and sounds rather strange to me...

Could you have guessed that in fact it is not at all related to anything illegal or indecent but just means 'bouquet', so literally refers to something that pleases ones nose? (Taken the original meaning of 'gay' this seems actually quite reasonable.. but as language goes, the semantics shift around a bit, causing the odd confusion ;)

Lackenfest 2008

The day started with some really tired people..



But this experience surely was made to wake them up:


See... here I present to you the bus drivers of the day!