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What's with Europe these days? Public attention is entirely consumated by events such as the death of the Pope with literally millions expected to his funeral on Friday, the death of Prince Rainier III of Monaco, who still held near absolute power in his tiny principality, the funeral induced delay of an embarrassing marriage between the Prince of Wales and his true, albeit divorced consort of three decades and last, but not least the destruction of yet another ring of power and sundry other arcane proceedings dictated by Universi Dominici Gregis to bless the world with a new Pope. What's next? The reïntroduction of monarchy to Austria-Hungary and Italy? The self-coronation of l'Empereur Chirac, Jacques I?
Seriously, reading the papers nowadays feels like going through a history book of some 300 years ago ... fortunately, come May this hysteric, histrionic, historic season should be behind us - I hope!
P.S. This is one of the more interesting marginal notes in this, pertaining to the Big Game.
06/04/2005
05/04/2005
24 - the game
Philosophy online
Here is an amazing online resource: The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. With this kind of thing, the physical reference book is quickly becoming a thing of the past. Also, it is a serious competitor to the Wikis of the world because of their editorial randomness.
04/04/2005
Working the net
Here's an interesting article containing The 10 Secrets of a Master Networker. It may be more than two years old, but other than with technology or science, stuff like that matures rather than ages ...
Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
So here it is, the result of the work of 1'300 experts from 95 countries.
After having scanned the 38 pages (!) executive summary, I somehow doubt that this thing will make a big splash in the real world, other than maybe introduce some fancy new (to me) jargon, such as ecosystem service users - aren't we all? I haven't seen a great deal of really new insights, nor proposed measures which are beyond what common sense indicates anyway. Once again, my initial suspicion of immateriality caused by the hypertrophic exec summary seems to have been confirmed.
After having scanned the 38 pages (!) executive summary, I somehow doubt that this thing will make a big splash in the real world, other than maybe introduce some fancy new (to me) jargon, such as ecosystem service users - aren't we all? I haven't seen a great deal of really new insights, nor proposed measures which are beyond what common sense indicates anyway. Once again, my initial suspicion of immateriality caused by the hypertrophic exec summary seems to have been confirmed.
03/04/2005
Googlephobia
The Economist on NZZ
Yay! I just found this story in my preferred English language magazine about my preferred German language newspaper. Since the article is subscription only, but rather short, I'll make an exception to my usual linking policy & quote it in full:
The old aunt of Zurich
Mar 31st 2005 | ZURICH
From The Economist print edition
A traditional newspaper struggles in a competitive world
IF YOU glance at racks of European newspapers, the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 225 years old this year, and said to be Europe's oldest quality paper, stands out like a tombstone amid bold headlines and colour photographs. Barring a daring switch from its gothic typeface in 1946, the NZZ has changed little since the 1930s, when it was banned in Germany for suggesting that Hermann Göring was responsible for the Reichstag fire.
Affectionately known as "Die Alte Tante", the NZZ prides itself on the background to its analysis. The emphasis is on international news (the paper has 40 foreign correspondents), business, finance and high culture. Features and lifestyle stories are kept to a minimum. Snippets of gossip are out of the question: any story must be backed by two separate sources. As Salomon Gessner, printer, poet and friend of Goethe, who founded the NZZ in 1780, put it, the aim is to "catch up with the world".
The NZZ still has a reputation as a world-class newspaper. A Zurich banker who is one of the paper's 1,500 shareholders claims it is second only to the New York Times. But, as Hansrudolf Kamer, deputy editor, admits, the average reader is now over 50. Falling sales (the paper sells just under 160,000 copies, of which 4,000 are in Germany) and fewer ads have led to a 65% drop in the NZZ's (unquoted) share price in the past five years. Yet, even as Germany's sober-minded Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung has cut costs and modernised, the NZZ clings to high-brow austerity, sometimes holding back big stories so they can be reported "dispassionately".
In the 1930s Thomas Mann, exiled in Zurich, chuckled at the paper's caution. A recent decision to break up long stories with sub-headings was taken only after years of debate in the NZZ boardroom, says Thomas Maissen, a professor at Heidelberg and author of one of two new books on the paper's history. Elaborate jargon-filled sentences are now discouraged, but the NZZ recoils from widening its appeal. "We don't think it's clever or expedient," says Mr Kamer.
The old aunt of Zurich
Mar 31st 2005 | ZURICH
From The Economist print edition
A traditional newspaper struggles in a competitive world
IF YOU glance at racks of European newspapers, the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 225 years old this year, and said to be Europe's oldest quality paper, stands out like a tombstone amid bold headlines and colour photographs. Barring a daring switch from its gothic typeface in 1946, the NZZ has changed little since the 1930s, when it was banned in Germany for suggesting that Hermann Göring was responsible for the Reichstag fire.
Affectionately known as "Die Alte Tante", the NZZ prides itself on the background to its analysis. The emphasis is on international news (the paper has 40 foreign correspondents), business, finance and high culture. Features and lifestyle stories are kept to a minimum. Snippets of gossip are out of the question: any story must be backed by two separate sources. As Salomon Gessner, printer, poet and friend of Goethe, who founded the NZZ in 1780, put it, the aim is to "catch up with the world".
The NZZ still has a reputation as a world-class newspaper. A Zurich banker who is one of the paper's 1,500 shareholders claims it is second only to the New York Times. But, as Hansrudolf Kamer, deputy editor, admits, the average reader is now over 50. Falling sales (the paper sells just under 160,000 copies, of which 4,000 are in Germany) and fewer ads have led to a 65% drop in the NZZ's (unquoted) share price in the past five years. Yet, even as Germany's sober-minded Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung has cut costs and modernised, the NZZ clings to high-brow austerity, sometimes holding back big stories so they can be reported "dispassionately".
In the 1930s Thomas Mann, exiled in Zurich, chuckled at the paper's caution. A recent decision to break up long stories with sub-headings was taken only after years of debate in the NZZ boardroom, says Thomas Maissen, a professor at Heidelberg and author of one of two new books on the paper's history. Elaborate jargon-filled sentences are now discouraged, but the NZZ recoils from widening its appeal. "We don't think it's clever or expedient," says Mr Kamer.
Synaesthesia
Just returning from the première of Fülle des Wohllauts, performed in a grand patrician villa which suited the bourgeois mood of the event just fine. The performance was quite a surprise. My expectations were set based on the description in an earlier post. The text material is excerpted from two chapters of Thomas Mann's Der Zauberberg. But where we were expecting a mere lecture, Mann's intricate & complex language was freely & vividly recited - extraordinary! The synaesthetic qualities of the evening were even enhanced by the narrator who was smoking a Cuban cigar during the first part, which left its fine perfume hanging in the room. Very European in more respects than one ...
But the evening's core synaesthesia was the interaction between Mann's texts about music and actually hearing the pieces referred to (Offenbach's Orpheus, Puccini's La Bohème, Verdi Aida, Bizet Carmen and Schubert's Winterreise). What a great idea to combine the powerful language of a Nobel price laureate pundit with the actual objects of his review!
The other surprise was a bit of a disappointment, though: While the advertised gramophone was taking centre stage alright, it wasn't utilised. Whereas that may be comprehensible, I don't approve of all the choices of interpretations played, which include a 1981 Karajan and a 1979 Maazel. I really would have expected to hear only period interpretations that Mann could have referred to. But I guess I am nit-picking. Or am I?
At any rate, the evening was certainly enjoyable. In the course of it, I accidentally remembered a weird statement by the Salzburg festival director in yesterday's Silentium. I am paraphrasing: Hitler was such a sensitive man about noise - he couldn't stand it. And he loved Wagner. Well, I wonder whether that wasn't in fact a contradictio in adiecto ...
But the evening's core synaesthesia was the interaction between Mann's texts about music and actually hearing the pieces referred to (Offenbach's Orpheus, Puccini's La Bohème, Verdi Aida, Bizet Carmen and Schubert's Winterreise). What a great idea to combine the powerful language of a Nobel price laureate pundit with the actual objects of his review!
The other surprise was a bit of a disappointment, though: While the advertised gramophone was taking centre stage alright, it wasn't utilised. Whereas that may be comprehensible, I don't approve of all the choices of interpretations played, which include a 1981 Karajan and a 1979 Maazel. I really would have expected to hear only period interpretations that Mann could have referred to. But I guess I am nit-picking. Or am I?
At any rate, the evening was certainly enjoyable. In the course of it, I accidentally remembered a weird statement by the Salzburg festival director in yesterday's Silentium. I am paraphrasing: Hitler was such a sensitive man about noise - he couldn't stand it. And he loved Wagner. Well, I wonder whether that wasn't in fact a contradictio in adiecto ...
02/04/2005
Silentium
Yesterday night, I went to see Silentium with M., P. & S. Silentium is an Austrian thriller set in a Salzburg catholic boarding school where quite a bit of foul play is at work. No spoilers given.
I liked the movie for a lot of reasons. The detective is an ambivalent character tending towards being a loser, a bit similar to Inspector Rebus. There's a lot of terse, dark humour - occasionally you might just choke on it, though. The humour goes together well with the somber mood, supported by the odd soundtrack, a hint of which you get on the website. The camera direction is rather conventional, but there are some provocative scenes which religious watchers will not approve of. So, it is not likely to be played in the more religious countries, even if well translated. Ah, translation: In principle, the movie's language is German, but because of the actors' heavy dialects, some sections were virtually unintelligible, so German subtitles would have been good! They usually do that with Swiss German films, so why not with Austrian ones?
So, overall, very much worth watching, even though the artsy cinema's seating really is outrageously uncomfortable indeed. Presumably, the play the best movies there in order to attract at least some people!
Btw, I am happy to say that I haven't fallen victim to any April Fools jokes yesterday, although there were loads of it around. Most of them were awfully obvious, but one sticks out as rather funny: the local tram operator proposed to introduce a First Class section in their transport contraptions, together with white gloved food service staff and all.
I liked the movie for a lot of reasons. The detective is an ambivalent character tending towards being a loser, a bit similar to Inspector Rebus. There's a lot of terse, dark humour - occasionally you might just choke on it, though. The humour goes together well with the somber mood, supported by the odd soundtrack, a hint of which you get on the website. The camera direction is rather conventional, but there are some provocative scenes which religious watchers will not approve of. So, it is not likely to be played in the more religious countries, even if well translated. Ah, translation: In principle, the movie's language is German, but because of the actors' heavy dialects, some sections were virtually unintelligible, so German subtitles would have been good! They usually do that with Swiss German films, so why not with Austrian ones?
So, overall, very much worth watching, even though the artsy cinema's seating really is outrageously uncomfortable indeed. Presumably, the play the best movies there in order to attract at least some people!
Btw, I am happy to say that I haven't fallen victim to any April Fools jokes yesterday, although there were loads of it around. Most of them were awfully obvious, but one sticks out as rather funny: the local tram operator proposed to introduce a First Class section in their transport contraptions, together with white gloved food service staff and all.
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