Rose Monday is the main event in German carnival. Not that it affects me much, since I don’t live in a carnival region and secondary schools don’t have official carnival celebrations. Meanwhile, my cold is improving somewhat, but I’m still feeling pretty sick, so here’s another quick linkdump:
First of all, the Annette Schavan case has come to its inevitable conclusion, when German education secretary Annette Schavan resigned over plagiarism allegations on Saturday. Her replacement will be Johanna Wanka, a mathematician from East Germany, who up to now had been secretary of science in Lower Saxony and also held a similar office in Brandenburg.
Over at the Pegasus Pulp blog, I examine whether the influential German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung hates e-books and link to a few sample articles, including a review of the old Kindle Keyboard by eightysomething writer and philosopher Hans Magnus Enzensberger.
In Germany, February is the month of carnival, but Americans view it as the month of love because of Valentine’s Day (which isn’t very important over here, in spite of attempts by florists and the gift industry to change that). As a result, you suddenly get a lot of romance related articles in February. For example, the Barnes and Noble Review has a neat article on the rules of romance by Eloisa James and how they may be subverted or not.
Dear Author has a great post about how viewing romance reading as escapism and nothing but escapism validates those critics who are negative about the romance genre (and all popular fiction by extension).
At the latest incarnation of Amazing Stories, Chris Gerwel has a surprisingly good post about the intersections between romance and speculative fiction and even gives credit to various romance sites. There is some of the usual romance bashing in the comments, but otherwise it’s a very good post from a site of which I honestly had not expected much.
Disney is planning to make some Star Wars standalone movies in addition to the planned new trilogy helmed by J.J. Abrams. Found via Jay Lake. Now a standalone film or two set in the Star Wars universe actually strikes me as a better idea than yet another trilogy. After all, there are plenty of underused characters and unexplored worlds in the Star Wars universe. Nonetheless, there is the danger of overexposure, particularly considering Disney‘s usual modus operandi of making a string of straight to DVD sequels to its popular animated films.
This is pretty cool: A guide how to write in Gallifreyan, i.e. the language of the Time Lords from Doctor Who with its distinctive circular script, and a translation program. Found via A.S. Marlowe.
I enjoyed “Reiche Beute”–read it on the train today. (And absolutely no punctuation errors–your German proofreader is more on the ball than the English one.)
Glad you enjoyed the story and hope you had a safe trip home. 🙂
One of the good things about being a teacher is that there are usually good proofreaders among your colleagues.