Across the pond

Thanks to a weekend meeting in Washington D.C., I had the opportunity of testing Lufthansa's First Class service today - on a miles upgrade, mind you. As you can see from the picture, the Frankfurt lounge is really great: stylish, spacious, quiet - everything the discerning traveller looks for.

But the key part is the flight, of course. This was the first time I flew on the upper deck of a 747-400. With its 16 seats and the secluded cabin impression, it creates a very clubby atmosphere. There's also a big difference in noise to the usual front seats in single deck planes. So, the travelling experience is very comfortable indeed. The staff was very attentive and friendly, but they weren't quite as smooth as the only other FC experience I've had to date - Swiss. Definitely not up to Swiss standards was the very Haute Cuisine (36000 feet). The fish was slightly overdone, the rest quite uninspired. I've had better. But let's see how they'll perform on the overnight flight back - I'll have the same crew apparently. Oh, and someone send the copilot to an English course! He's obviously able to handle an aircraft, but I am not so sure about polite English.

Leviathan

Looking for a suitable folder to hold my corporate accounts 2007 (yes, I know ...), I stumbled across a huge batch of comics that I carefully tore out of the Independent on Sunday back when I was living in Scotland in the early nineties. Considering whether I should scan them or throw them out (which I probably won't anyway), I looked for the stuff online and - bingo! Enjoy Peter Blegvad's Leviathan, an immensely dark humoured, weird & witty set starring a toddler who despairs of the world. Wonderful!

Arabs

Arabs by Mark Allen is a concise (just 142 pages!), yet comprehensive & respectful portrait of the Arab people. Ostensibly, it is a very difficult task to paint a portrait of a group of people, let alone of an entire nation without falling prey to the temptation satisfying stereotypes. In this case, the deep personal involvement of the author during decades prevented that.

The book is structured in ten short chapters: In Search of Arabs - Blood - Religion - Community - Women - The Problem of Power - Politics - Modernity - Language and Signals - Outlook. Most interesting & enlightening are the chapters on Blood, Power, Politics and Language. The latter has been outright intriguing for me - or do you know the optative aorist? Thought so ... well, I am afraid that's about all I can say about the book, because to further summarise it is a futile attempt. The book appears to be quite irreducible. However, I wonder what people more knowledgeable than me about the subject matter think of it.

iPhone to come with GPS?

Have you already seen the new iPhone advertisements with which the launch date of 29 June is finally confirmed?

One of them promotes the hottest feature in my view, namely Google Maps. This is not new in itself, since it was part of the initial demo, but now the iPhone is advertised with it specifically, so it's for real, not just a feature preview. Now the only thing I am wondering about is: Does the iPhone know where it is, and if so, how? The obvious answer is that it has a GPS chip built in, but why hasn't that been mentioned anywhere? Or does it rely on GSM cell triangulation? I hope not, because that method's precision is inferior to GPS and depends on the topology of the network the phone is in just now. Thoughts, anyone?

Diary of a Greenhorn, Ch. 2

Here's another installment of nephew T.'s Playmobil western. It gets better from chapter to chapter! It's weird to recognise most of the voiceovers ...

Scientology & me

Well, not me personally, as I do not have any business with the devious & dangerous cult of Scientology myself, other than having lost a member of my extended family to its following. But you'll have to see the BBC's excellent eponymous documentary which tracks the unpleasant experience of the Beeb's John Sweeney when approaching Scientology critically. Up until now, I thought that, surely, urban lore about the cult's nature is overdone, but now I think it's even worse! Have a look at the list of celebrities associated with Scientology - I'll avoid their work going forward.

You can also watch the documentary in three installments on Youtube.

Quidquid agis

Quidquid agis, prudenter agas et respice finem.

This pearl of ancient wisdom was contained in the inconspicuous shell of an article about taxation. Thank you, Mr Frenkel!

Lest I forget ...

how I spent my birthday this year! On the way back from Moscow, I realised that I hadn't even blogged about it - shame! My blogging becomes too patchy these days!

Anyways, I was in New York for some business on the day itself. The evening was spent in pleasant company at the Jazzgallery, a tiny downtown Manhatten place which I picked for the programme (a local trumpet player with band whose name escapes me now). It turned out that their style was a bit too - shall we say - experimental for my liking, but then again, this is East Coast stuff, I really should have known. Nevertheless, the atmosphere of the place fully made up for the lack of swing, or at least for my inability to recognise it. The gallery is located in a benignly neglected, quiet neighbourhood on the first floor above a bar. It seats maybe 60 people, most of whom appeared to be from the local conservatory, and there seems to be an occupied flat in a cubicle just inside the gallery - very homely.

My birthday did not go uncelebrated, though. It was made up for with a few good friends on the Friday following my return from NY. There's only a rare selection of pictures available of the occasion on my flickr account.

Committology

Looking for Committology, I found this great collection of pretty serious committee work related laws - or not. Just don't ask why I was looking for committology ...

The Naming of the Dead

[no spoilers] I just finished Ian Rankin's latest Inspector Rebus story. I think this is probably Rankin's best Rebus, yet: Set during the 2005 G8 summit in Edinburgh, it feels entirely authentic and credible. We get to meet plenty of old acquaintances who have advanced in their respective lives in interesting and sometimes surprising ways. Even DI Rebus is not far from retirement, but he still has what it takes - to keep us captured. Exceptionally, and aptly keeping in tone with the title, this story has a certain depth to it without ever lacking in humour. There is even a literary side to it, what with the central rôle that my dearly beloved Ozymandias plays in the whole setup, incidentally without ever being fully quoted:

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed,
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Perhaps you can imagine what Rebus' paraphrasing looks like - better still, read it up yourself. I am not sure Rebus did: he thought Ozymandias hailed from Australia.