Another mid-week video

Okay, it's in German. But hilarious!

Mid-week video!

I am a sucker for stop-motion video and Kindle does intrigue me...

Good luck, Amelie

I would hire her immediately! What a refreshing display of confidence and initiative.

Weekend video (better later etc.)

Time to par-tay!

United Arab Emirage

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Chanel meme

Keeping calm...

Two recently discovered iterations of the meme, although the 'stay classy' exhortation is also an example of another meme family which sees the Chanel logo given the wildest permutations.

I am trying to keep calm, although you could today colour me cantakerous.

However, before I switch to grumpy-old-git mode, a couple of positive notes. Firstly, the month which just ended was the mildest since meteorological records have been kept in Germany, with the highs every day reaching double digits and a few times even fifteen degrees. Hardier souls, or masochists, were even drinking their skinny lattes at Starbucks sidewalk tables. Sweet!

A second positive: Last Friday I was comparison shopping (reading price-tags) in a chic gentlemen's outfitters in downtown Munich when I saw five young men (late twenties, early thirties, mere kids in my book) of Middle Eastern appearance (as Uncle Sam's TSA thugs might say) comparing the merits of Dolce and Gabbana shirts with some stylish Paul Smith models.

On the spur of the moment I greeted them with "Eid Mubarak!" and got five surprised "Eid Mubaraks" in return. A brief chat ensued and they were from Dubai. Anyway, it was a nice feel-good moment. (It occurs to me now that they were quite conceivably civil servants enjoying the long holiday break... see yesterday's post.)

Cantankerous, though?

Firstly on account of the idiotic Swiss referendum result with regard to the banning of minarets. It would so serve the small-minded xenophobes right if every Franc deposited by Moslems in the banks of the EIdgenossen were swiftly withdrawn!

Secondly I am far from approving of Germany's striking students. Their ire has been aroused by the reforms through which the Bachelor and Masters degree programs, as determined in the Bologna agreement, are increasingly being implemented.

The criticism is that in comparison to the system being replaced the new curriculum is too 'verschult'. Now that's a word which is hard to translate. 'Scholarized' might come close. German's university students see the threat of a new level of regimentation on the horizon, compulsory attendance, regular testing, many of the attributes of the system which has worked so well for decades in the United States and much more rigorous, disciplined and demanding than the rather cosy regime which has prevailed hitherto in Germany. With regular scoring of results achieved flexibility is facilitated, with grade points transferable so that the university years could start in Heidelberg, continue in Hull and conclude in Halifax. For example (q.v. the Beggars' Litany, apt in a way).

Kids! Get real!

Reminds me of a tee-shirt slogan I saw... My reality check just bounced.

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St. Nicholas Day

It's not until next Sunday.

The manner of its observation is well described in a Wikipedia entry.

In Germany, Nikolaus is usually celebrated on a small scale. Many children put a boot called Nikolaus-Stiefel outside the front door on the night of December 5 to December 6. St. Nicholas fills the boot with gifts and sweets, and at the same time checks up on the children to see if they were good, polite and helpful the last year. If they were not, they will have a tree branch (Rute) in their boots instead. Sometimes a disguised Nikolaus also visits the children at school or in their homes and asks them if they have been good (sometimes ostensibly checking his golden book for their record), handing out presents according to behaviour.

But for many children, Nikolaus also elicited fear, as he was often accompanied by Servant Ruprecht, who would threaten to beat, or sometimes actually beat the children for misbehaviour as using this myth to 'bring up cheeky children' for a better, good behaviour. In Switzerland, where he is called Schmutzli, he would threaten to put bad children in a sack and take them back to the dark forest. In other accounts he would throw the sack into the river, drowning the naughty children. These traditions were implemented more rigidly in Catholic countries and regions such as Austria or Bavaria.

My riff on this subject has little to do with any great interest in Christmas traditions.

But it is on December 6 that in the Sandlands government will function once more, ten long, silent days after Dubai admitted that it was experiencing trifling cash flow difficulties.

Since Dubai chose to remain officially stumm for the duration of the long EId Al Adha government holiday (tellingly a time of sacrifice) others felt obliged to comment.

According to the Wall Street Journal,The Sunday London Times newspaper was removed by authorities from shelves in the United Arab Emirates on Sunday amid intensive reporting of Dubai's debt problems, an executive at the paper said.

The National Media Council ordered the paper blocked by distributors without providing a reason, an executive at the paper in Dubai told Zawya Dow Jones.

The Sunday Times edition available in the U.A.E. on Nov. 29 featured a double-page spread graphic illustrating Dubai's ruler Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum sinking in a sea of debt. The Times wasn't given a reason for the block, or a time-frame when it will be lifted, the executive said.

A government official in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the U.A.E., said that the picture of Sheik Mohammed, which accompanied a story entitled The sinking of Dubai's dream, was "offensive."

The "offensive" Times story is here, the opinion of KeefieBoy, a longtime Sandlander, here.

I rather like the idea of the Nikolaus, Ruprecht and the Schmutzli flying Emirates to Dubai with lots of sacks to bag lots of naughty children (so-called economic experts) and chucking them in the Creek. Ruprecht meanwhile would box the ears of cheeky chappies who have been telling big fibs for years and distribute thudding great Ruten to the idiots who believe that censorship is the answer when crisis looms.

Nikolaus would visit what was meant to be Dubailand and weep.

St. Andrew's Day

Our National Day, when we pat ourselves on the backs for the simple reason that we are Scottish.

Being Scottish is something special? According to a writer quoted in Wired Magazine it is.

“When we gaze out on a contemporary world shaped by technology, capitalism and modern democracy, and struggle to find our own place in it, we are in effect viewing the world through the same lens as the Scots did,” writes Herman in his 2001 book, How the Scots Invented the Modern World.

More of this here.

Weekend video - #2

Couldn't resist! The other Muppets clip I posted mid-week has been, incidentally, the most viewed on the intertubes in the past seven days!

All is vanity

Texas, the state I left when I finished university, has now introduced vanity license plates.

One of the colour-way options is a very Sandlander-orange, and so if I were still in the Lone Star State... if I had broken my resolution, never to add my driving to the lurking dangers of the highway... if this Scot had a car... this would be my vanity plate!

Weekend video

A serious issue, but handled with a light touch. If the worst comes to the worst we shall look back on 2009 as the last year of true internet freedom. The laws being passed in France, Great Britain and the United States are so incredibly wrong-headed and, even worse, fail totally to deliver the 'security' the old media dinosaurs dream of.