Category Archives: General

Snow 2011

Today we had the first snow of the winter. That is, we had some snow on Friday and Saturday as well, but it melted as soon as it hit the ground. Today, however, the snow actually reached the ground and … Continue reading →

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A Surfeit of Salmon – and some links

There are two things we’ve really had enough of this December. One is storms and rain. Here in Northern Germany, December is always a stormy month. I don’t even put any outdoors Christmas decorations up anymore, because in past years … Continue reading →

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Two December Deaths

Yesterday, one of my favourite German actors, Walter Giller, died aged 84. I first encountered Walter Giller in the TV comedy show Locker vom Hocker in the late 1970s. Later I saw the young Walter Giller in many a harmless … Continue reading →

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And yet another plagiarism case

Yet another plagiarism case has popped up, this time concerning uncanny similarities between Lenore Hart’s 2011 novel The Raven’s Bride and Cothburn O’Neal’s 1956 novel The Very Young Mrs. Poe. Both novels deal with Virginia Clemm, cousin and teenaged bride … Continue reading →

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More gender discussion, this time grammatical

Aliette de Bodard, Keyan Bowes and Juliette Wade all respond to this study about how grammatical gender supposedly influences perception. I must confess that when I first read the National Public Radio article (since the actual study doesn’t seem to … Continue reading →

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Rembrandt, Elsje Christiaens and a stats oddity

Does anybody have any idea why 150 people, most of them in Norway and Denmark, felt the need to search for “Elsje Christiaens”, an 18-year-old Danish girl who was executed in Amsterdam in 1664 for beating her landlady to death … Continue reading →

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Three November Deaths

Yes, I know that November is the month of death, but we didn’t have to take it that literally, did we? Because in addition to losing a neighbour to cancer, this November has seen the loss of some remarkable people … Continue reading →

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Celebrities being arseholes about Occupy Wall Street

Legendary comic writer/artist Frank Miller is proving himself to be an arsehole over the Occupy movement. Well, I never liked his work as much as many others, even in my comic reading days – overrated and way too much problematic … Continue reading →

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Newcastle Photos Part 4 – Tynemouth

During my recent stay in Newcastle I also visited Tynemouth, a small seaside town located, as the name implies, at the mouth of the Tyne.

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Newcastle Photos Part 3 – Architecture

Here’s the third installment of my Newcastle photos. This time we have architecture from medieval to ultra-modern:

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