a berlin blog
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a berlin blog |
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Monday, November 28, 2005 And Now for Something Completely Disorienting Alex from the sky, courtesy of Google World. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 12:44 AM (2) comments Saturday, November 26, 2005 Babelsberg!The new Babelsberg column is up. I'm ending my misguided policy of waiting a week to post the column, just because my last two pieces have dealt with the riots in France. These are no longer current events, so I'm trying to catch up. You'll have to visit the first installment -- "American Rage in French Streets" -- in the Radio Free Mike archives, otherwise known as Politics and Prose. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 4:59 PM (0) commentsThursday, November 24, 2005 K-I-S-S-I-N-G-Henry Kissinger writes a love letter to Germany's first female chancellor, Angela Merkel, who's been making the rounds of European capitals this week now that she's officially sworn in:It has been fashionable to deprecate Merkel's apparent charisma deficit during the electoral campaign. But for the chancellor's office, the extraordinary achievement of her rise may prove more relevant. Within a decade, she advanced from obscure scientific researcher in Communist East Germany to chancellor without representing a special constituency of her own against opponents in her own party who had devoted a lifetime scrambling up the political ladder.Translation: She's dull, but she knows how to play her opponents against each other until they self-destruct. Henry's absolutely right. She may surprise people who keep trying to advise her on hairstyle matters. But the first big initiative Merkel's coalition has agreed to (but not passed yet) is a 3% rise in the value-added tax, which depresses the Germans it doesn't bore, and will almost certainly fail to set the world's fifth-largest economy aflame. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 6:17 PM (1) comments Wednesday, November 23, 2005 Arnie Goes to Rio"You know something? After watching the mulattos shake it, I could understand why Brazil is totally devoted to my favorite body part -- the ass."-- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, prior to entering politics, in a hysterical promotional video from I think 1983. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 12:55 PM (0) comments Tuesday, November 22, 2005 Germans Preparing to Buff Their Image for the World CupThis was the most e-mailed story on MSNBC today:Urine trouble, mein Herr!posted by Michael Scott Moore | 9:42 PM (0) comments Monday, November 21, 2005 Li'l AbnerAnother reason for the lack of blog posts lately has been my monstrous obsession with Li'l Abner re-runs. If you tune in today, you just might understand the plot in time for Daisy Mae's weddin'. Abner has been in New York performing as a female wrestler at Madison Square Garden, but now he needs to get back to Dogpatch before Daisy Mae, who thinks he's dead, takes a new husband. For utterly confusing background, you might want to start here, but this link will lapse in about 10 days. (The first one won't; the strip just changes daily.) posted by Michael Scott Moore | 3:30 PM (1) commentsSunday, November 20, 2005 Babelsberg!For a new daily paper in Cambridge, Massachusetts I'm writing a column from Berlin called Babelsberg. That's one reason I haven't been blogging so much. I'll try to post each column on the front page a week after it appears on the street in Massachusetts, to keep from scooping my own editor -- but no promises. If you live in Cambridge, pick up your own damn copy of Cambridge Day.As for why the column's called Babelsberg, you'll just have to wait for the third or fourth column to explain these little mysteries, won't you? Yes, I'm afraid so. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 8:51 PM (6) comments Islamic Intelligent Design?Now that the school-board fundamentalists have been voted out in Dover, now that Pat Robertson has reacted like Rumpelstiltskin, stamping the ground until it opened underneath him -- just as things were starting to look up -- the BBC interviews a journalist who thinks intelligent design might go over well in Muslim circles. Mustapha Aqil (spelling entirely my own) says Darwinism is "one of the main reasons for the cultural clash between the Islamic world and the western world," but thinks ID might ease tensions. "Actually what ID does," he says, "is save science from another religion, which is materialism."No transcript; you have to listen to the show. But regular readers will notice that Mustapha agrees with some of my critics. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 10:32 AM (3) comments Monday, November 14, 2005 One Thing About PortugalYou learn new words. I brought home an odd plastic box of thick, sweet "marmelada," which you might think would come in different flavors for spreading on your morning toast -- peach marmelada, apricot marmelada -- I wasn't quite sure what flavor mine was -- but you'd be dead wrong, because in Portugal there's no marmelada without polpa de marmelo, or quince pulp.I got quince jam. The confusion is the work of centuries. In English: mar • ma • lade > Pg. marmelada, quince conserve > marmelo, quince > L. melimelum, a kind of sweet apple > Gk. melimelon > meli, honey + melon, apple -- more at MELLIFLUOUS posted by Michael Scott Moore | 10:07 PM (3) comments Sunday, November 13, 2005 Yes, Virginia, Goddammit, Now Get Off My BackThe title of the last post confused some people who either a) didn't grow up in America or b) didn't have Elroy Lang for high-school geography. The best I could do to explain the line, "Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus" was, "Uh, I think it's from a movie." Right? Yes, Mike, but it's a lot more interesting than that. The story goes back to a real Virginia and an editor at the old New York Sun, in 1897.Thanks to Kuchen. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 5:31 PM (3) comments Tuesday, November 08, 2005 Yes, Virginia ... there is surf in Europe. Even if this snapshot from Portugal shows a lull. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 6:41 PM (2) comments | |
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