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Ruth's favourite occupation of the last few days In the last few days we have assembled quite a few IKEA cupboards and shelves. The worst part of the process is that IKEA sticks an IKEA label onto almost every piece of the kits. The most difficult to remove was the safety warning that children . . . → Read More: The first interior pictures of the house The German and Greek views of each other have become increasingly polarised over the last few months. The Greeks are “lazy spendthrifts who retire at 50 (women) or 55 (men) and make a national sport of not paying their taxes”, according to many Germans; the Germans are “not following the solidarity spirit of the . . . → Read More: A depressing shade of grey
Main-Taunus-Zenrum – opened in 2nd May 1964 Its hard to believe that the Main-Taunus-Zentrum is 47 years old this week. It was the first shopping mall in Germany, and the biggest in Europe when it opened. In 1964 it offered 40000 square meters of shops, over the years it has been expanded to . . . → Read More: 47 years old It is interesting that every country seems to have its own quirks about how they like letters to be addressed. We have to send some post to Canada this week and wanted to check the two-letter province / territory code to write in front of the post code. The Canadian postal service has . . . → Read More: Addressing post The British government wants to offer the chance to all school children to learn Mandarin and Arabic: The schools secretary, Ed Balls, said UK plc increasingly needed children to learn the languages of countries where Britain had “very important business contacts”. All secondary schools should offer lessons in Mandarin, he said, citing a poll . . . → Read More: Did you ever hear anything so ridiculous? The headline above is from Charlemagne’s notebook (a blog by an Economist contributor). Similarly Train breaks down: Continent cut off from the Times. Quite in the spirit of the more well known apocryphal headline “Fog in Channel. Continent isolated” attributed to the London “Times” in the early 20th century. Let’s wish Eurostar a . . . → Read More: Snow over Channel, Continent cut off Watch the video first. Just one viewing, please. Hit pause when the question appears, before you watch the rest. You will be asked how many changes you noticed, so pay attention! What was your score? Mine was 2, which is pretty unobservant, I think . . . → Read More: How observant are you? The Copenhagen Climate Summit starts tommorow. One editorial, with a stark message, will appear in 56 newspapers in 45 countries tomorrow: Unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage our planet, and with it our prosperity and security. The dangers have been becoming apparent for a generation. Now the facts have . . . → Read More: Fourteen days to seal history’s judgment on this generation The following probably seems quite normal to any German reading this, after all we had price controls on practically everything here until July 2001 (Shops couldn’t offer products more than 3% under list price without breaking the law.). Even today there are still price controls for books, maps, and sheet music in Germany. . . . → Read More: German price controls Seth Weintraub pitches an interesting idea in Computer World: … I think the SD card is going to replace the DVD drive on most of Apple’s laptops going forward. If you really need a DVD, you’ll be able to buy an external USB Superdrive – but that option will mostly be a safety . . . → Read More: Will the DVD go the same way as the floppy? |
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