China and the world economy

Excellent special report about China and the world economy (free!) in one of the past issues of The Economist. It offers a lucid macro-economic viewpoint, referring also the BIS annual report which I will have to have a closer look at now. The main point is that China has an increasingly dominant influence on the world economy, creating for instance the conditions for Greenspan's term spread conundrum.

The only cautious note I would like to sound vis à vis this great analysis is that the Economist is not unknown for analysis after the fact, i.e. things might take an altogether different turn shortly after the publication of the analysis. But then again, the article does not argue any specific directions.

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

William Butler Yeats

(via a solid article in NZZ (German) on the London bombings)

My sister - the TV star!

Tonight in the regiomagazin of regional TV station Nordwest 1, there will be a report about my sister's psychophysiological consultancy. Check it out if you can - and that's a big IF because even the station's website is pretty hard to find. But maybe that's a good thing, too because it's going to be her first appearance on TV. Perhaps it'll be published on her blog.

P.S. The report turned out really well - top infomercial material, I'd say! Expect it online soon.

Old habits ...

... die hard, they say, and they're right. While listening to a commercial, yet interesting Naxos podcast about Benjamin Britten, I decided to buy his Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra, which is a lot of fun to listen to. Consequently I started browsing Amazon for the right recording (there's no big selection), until it occured to me that I have it right at the tips of my fingers!

Voltaires Totenmesse

NZZ irregularly reports about events that were current in its first years of publication (it recently celebrated its 225th year of publication). In this context, we are treated to "probably one of the longest, most labyrinthine & complicated sentences in the history of the NZZ to date":

"Die katholischen Mitglieder der hiesigen Königl. Akademie haben diese Messe veranlasset, und der hiesige Herr Pfarrer hat um so weniger Bedenken getragen darein zu willigen, da sie ungezweifelte Beweise beygebracht, dass der Herr von Voltaire kurz vor seinem Ende ein Christ-Katholisches Glaubens-Bekenntniss abgelegt, ordentlich gebeichtet, seinem christlichen Nebenmenschen durch Allmosen und andere gute Werke ein Beyspiel gegeben, und nach seinem erfolgten Ableben in die Abtey Scellieres (...) nach den Gebräuchen der katholischen Kirche beerdiget, mithin der französischen Geistlichkeit um so mehr zur Ungebühr und boshafter Weise zur Last gelegt worden, dass sie ihm die kirchliche Beerdigung versaget, da dieser ehrwürdige Stand es nicht würde haben wollen an sich kommen lassen, dass er die Grundsätze der Gerechtigkeit (...) aus den Augen gesetzet, wodurch er den Verdacht eines mit der christlichen Liebe und aller wahren Tugend streitenden Privathasses gegen sich erweckt haben würde."

One sentence. Isn't it nice to know that there is continuity in style?

42

If this answers all your questions already, then you don't need to read on.

For everybody else, I saw The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy yesterday, and fortunately it was the English version.

So, what do I think of it? Well, it's been a while since my last exposure to HG2G in its various other incarnations, so I forgot a lot of the material funniness & whimsicality of it and simply judged it on its merits alone, without reference to the original : Quite nice - (suppressed yawn, but don't miss the credits!) - Next! But then, it hit me: Wait a sec, that cannot be it! After all, they're playing an expectations game based on the original's success, so the standalone performance just won't cut it.

And indeed, some further research proved the movie's non-existence in all parallel universes: They simply cut out most of the really funny stuff, especially the jokes. So that's what accounted for the suppressed yawn! I really like this review with its conclusion of vastly, staggeringly, jaw-droppingly bad. About the only thing that was really good was Stephen Fry's voice with his Jeevesish accent - I wonder whether they dubbed it for the north-american market, where I presume even this highly watered down version earned blank faces mostly. Correspondent's observations, anyone?

Sofia pictures

Finally, I got round to sorting through my pictures of Sofia. I've had a great time there, mostly thanks to the hospitality of my "guides" Rosy, Plamen & Kalin - thanks very much!

I've got the impression that Sofia is a unique place with great potential. No other European capital can boast that intricate a mix of a major orthodox community with important turkish & roma minorities, combined with half a millennium's history of ottoman rule which almost seems a short episode compared to the place's long history. Economically, Bulgaria has a lot of catching up to do of course, but that's the potential, and they seem to be doing just fine. There is one major risk, though, and that is the huge orthodox majority dominating the tiny minorities of Turks & Roma - looking at the nationalistic Ataka movement, that could even become dangerous. Occasionally, I even got the impression of ethnic relations being tinged by more than just a touch of racism. But I guess these are issues Bulgaria just has to work through and find a productive way of integrating all groups in its potentially rich identity!

Zeitgeist

I freely admit that the number of hip-hop or rap records in my CD collection is limited. Very limited. No surprise I felt slightly out of place entering Basle specialist store Ace Records with its lots of vinyl & other pertinent goodies. Nevertheless, I quite dig the sound of German rapper Doppel-U who produced a very cool album Zeitgeist using texts of German poet Friedrich Schiller in celebration of the Schillerjahr. You can get some of the tracks in Doppel-U's download section. Classical education meets the ghetto - check it out!

Sour grapes

You know that the sour grape season (a.k.a. sour cucumbers, if translated directly from the German) is in full swing when there's a rather longish report on Swiss TV prime time news about Economiesuisse's efforts to promote online the campaign in favour of the forthcoming referendum on free movement of persons, or Personenfreizügigkeit, as it were, but by using the opponent motto in a kind of trap: Personenfreizügigkeit Nein. The only problem with that smart move is that the site is not found by Google etc - only the opponents' real sites. But since I am all for it, I'll help by linking to it in this post. Maybe other supportive bloggers will also?

Since we're in media critical mood, let's add yet another useless bit: It was mentioned on the radio today that Deutschlandradio Kultur would be broadcasting in Swiss German in celebration of the Swiss national holiday on 1 August, but that this station unfortunately could not be received in Switzerland. What they forgot to mention of course is that the station has a live stream available in a number of formats.

Mixed stuff

On the way back from Sofia, I stumbled across a couple of things I'd like to share with you. First is La Claustra, probably one of the most unusual hotels you can find. It is a converted alpine fortress of the Swiss army in the Gotthard massive. And for all the money in the world, you cannot buy a room with a view ...

Secondly, I came across a report (NZZ) about a research project by Indem which has found that since 2001, the total amount of money paid by Russian businesses for corruption purposes has increased eightfold while the average payment has shot up thirteenfold! Well done, Vladimir ...

Thirdly, here (German, subscription) is a very good article by Michael Lind describing a liberal, technology-based scenario of our planet supporting 9 billion people sharing today's US average standard of living. And here (English, subscription) is the original article. It's very refreshing, not least because it breaks quite a few mantras of political correctness ...

That's it for now. More about Bulgaria later. Meanwhile, here's my updated European countries map from myworld. How embarrassing having to admit that I've never been to Wales, of all places ...

	Your travel type: Travel Yup The Travel Yup likes exotic and adventurous travel, but prefers big cities with fast paced life. He has a keen interest in other cultures and always brings home a few souvenirs. Shopping in Bangkok, getting a tailor made suite in Kuala Lumpur, that's the kind of thing the Travel Yup is into. Even though he likes to get away, he prefers his travels to be comfortable.
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