Hero von Esens

Big Data, Apollo and Daphne

2013-07-08T07:11:00.000-01:00

Over on oomkenscom, a small piece about Big Data... Some see it as a huge, transformational boon for mankind, others as a fatal step to ever more intrusive state control - others still dismiss it as relatively meaningless. All in all, it's probably a mix of each of those things. Bernini's Apollo and Daphne It reminds me of the legend of Apollo and Daphne, whom Eros confounded - with an

Latest Headlines from Germany

2013-05-31T12:04:00.000-01:00

A selection of today's headlines: 1. "Wir Deutschen gelten als hartherzig" ("We Germans are seen as hard-hearted") Says Martin Schulz, the President of the EU Parliament. Citing southern European countries' dissatisfaction with the draconian spending cuts Germany insists on to keep the €uro show on the road, he claims they think of Germans as "hardhearted, insensitive, self-righteous and

translating keyserling's waves

2013-05-31T08:10:00.001-01:00

Eduard von Keyserling, portrait by Lovis Corinth, circa 1900 Eduard von Keyserling's masterpiece of literary Impressionism, Waves (Wellen), first published in 1911, has never been properly translated into English. This is a great shame: the book's a great read. It's about a young, beautiful countess, Doralice Köhne-Jasky, who leaves her ageing count for a poor painter. The novel

Wagner Opera Censored for "Public Health"

2013-05-13T07:00:00.000-01:00

Venus and Tannhäuser in a romantic clinch which sickened Düsseldorf opera-goers. The Deutsche Oper am Rhein's controversial Nazi-era production of Tannhäuser was cancelled after its premiere in Düsseldorf on 4th May. It has now been reduced to a concert performance. In the director's staging, Venus, as an SS guard, first strips, shaves, then shoots a Jewish family of three, forcing

"Nazi Bride" on Trial in Munich

2013-05-08T12:31:00.001-01:00

Beate Zschaepe, 38, is standing on trial in Munich for her alleged role in the murders of nine immigrants and a German policewoman between 2000 - 2007. She is also accused of two bombings and fifteen bank robberies. The case has spawned some unsavoury nicknames in the German press - "die Nazi Braut" (the Nazi Bride) for the accused, "die Döner Mörder" (the Kebab Killings) for her alleged

No More Wulff

2013-04-12T13:23:00.000-01:00

President Wulff of Germany resigned in February 2012 after a year and a half in the post. His resignation came after a wave of bad press coverage, including revelations in the mass-market red-top Bild (with which Wulff had previously enjoyed rosy relations, based in part on his telegenic wife Bettina). Bettina, President Wulff's ex-wife Wulff, having heard that Bild was about to

The Battle of Riade on the Unstrut, 15th March 933

2013-03-15T14:03:00.000-01:00

Today, 1080 years ago, King Henry I of Germany inflicted a crushing defeat on the Magyars on the banks of the Unstrut River--the Battle of Riade. The battle happened after Henry spurned the Magyar's demand for the tribute they were given each year to desist from their murderous raids. When the Magyar envoys came for their money, Henry had a dead dog thrown at their feet instead. The victory

Corporate Sustainability - Face-Saving Window Dressing?

2013-01-30T07:53:00.001-01:00

Over the past decade, corporate sustainability has become a must-have for every international company, an essential part of their global branding platform. Despite the billions invested in it, few companies' environmental talk is matched by their walk, as business tweeter Ramon Arratia argues in The Corporate Sustainability Beauty Contest on CSRWire. Arratia argues that company CEO's are

No More Guttenberg

2011-03-02T11:44:00.008-01:00

No more Guttenberg is probably premature as he's likely to be back before long.After two weeks' kerfuffle about his copy 'n pasting his doctrorate, KT zu Guttenberg wasn't left a lot of options, although Chancellor Merkel seemed happy for him to stay.But when Professors at your old university start calling you a Betrüger (fraud, impostor), when political enemies in your own party are saying how

Too Young To Burn

2010-08-31T07:59:00.002-01:00

Too Young To Burn by Sonny and the Sunsets

White Fright

2010-08-31T07:35:00.004-01:00

Christopher Hitchens, writing on Slate, says white America is waking up to the fact it may soon be a minority, but contrasts the pious Glenn Beck crowd to its more sinister counterparts in Europe.http://www.slate.com/id/2265515/pagenum/all/#p2

12 Step Sustainability Plan

2010-08-31T06:47:00.004-01:00

Preetum Shenoy, writing on Sustainability.com, describes people living in western consumer societies as addicts who have yet to admit they have a problem:http://www.sustainability.com/blog/a-twelve-step-program-for-unsustainable-consumption

Geert Wilders

2010-01-21T16:23:00.003-01:00

The trial of Geert Wilders in Holland is curious, an attack on freedom of speech in a country where freedom of speech was pioneered.The most striking aspect of the case is that it is explicitly not about truth. The Dutch ministry has written:“It is irrelevant whether Wilder’s witnesses might prove Wilders’ observations to be correct, what’s relevant is that his observations are illegal...”The

Utopia: Rules with Wiggle-Room

2009-09-17T08:47:00.003-01:00

The utopia most people want is a rules-based life, with wiggle room, writes Daniel Henninger in the Wall Street Journal.Henninger contrasts the primal world of sports, governed by clearly-defined rules, with real life, in which no one knows the rules anymore.The problem being that in real life we lack a final arbiter, so that wiggle-room has the tendency to expand, exponentially, each time a rule

Muslim Creationism

2009-09-17T08:35:00.005-01:00

Just to show Creationism isn't the exclusive preserve of Christian fundamentalists, here's an article (from this month's New Humanist) exploring Muslim Creationism.http://newhumanist.org.uk/2131

NATO Spy For Russia Unmasked

2008-11-20T06:14:00.005-01:00

Link to my article on CNSNews.com today:Dusseldorf, Germany (CNSNews.com) – A senior Estonian government official is under arrest and being investigated for allegedly passing NATO and European Union secrets to Russia.A spokesman for Estonia’s Defense Ministry confirmed to CNSNews.com on Wednesday that the man had been “caught for having revealed classified information” and said Estonia had given

German Government Likely To Bail Out GM-Subsidiary Opel

2008-11-18T12:56:00.004-01:00

Link to my article on CNS News today: Dusseldorf, Germany (CNSNews.com) – As the global financial crisis lashes the auto industry, Germany’s federal and state governments look set to bail out Opel, a subsidiary of General Motors Corp., with a reported two billion euro ($2.6 billion) rescue package. Opel’s

Germany To Obama: No More Troops For Afghanistan

2008-11-13T10:58:00.004-01:00

Link to my article which appears on CNS News today:Dusseldorf, Germany (CNSNews.com) – Germany has been effusively supportive of Barack Obama – opinion polls showed he had the backing of 85 percent of the population – but early signs of strain are showing with Chancellor Angela Merkel. She has warned the president-elect that she will turn down any request for more German troops in

Europe Pressures Obama Ahead of G20 Summit

2008-11-12T11:18:00.009-01:00

Link to my article which appears on CNS News today:Dusseldorf, Germany (CNSNews.com) – As European leaders prepare to attend the G20 meeting in Washington later this week, they are stepping up pressure on President-elect Obama to support their plans on both international finance and climate change. The meeting is the first of a series of summits proposed by President Bush, French President

European Leaders Cheer Obama Victory

2008-11-05T09:05:00.004-01:00

Link to my article which appeared on CNS News on November 5th:Dusseldorf, Germany (CNSNews.com) – The election of a new American president always prompts diplomatic congratulations from European leaders, but Barack Obama’s victory prompted effusive reactions on Wednesday.His victory was an outcome few here doubted and most wished for.Many of the messages were little more than bland bromides – the

Murdoch Mocked By Wolff's Toadying

2008-09-25T07:20:00.005-01:00

Extraordinary example of how servile flattery often does more to make its subject look bad in this fawning Vanity Fair article about Rupert Murdoch by Michael Wolff.

Manhattan Declaration: "Global Warming Not A Global Crisis"

2008-03-10T07:33:00.006-01:00

The Manhattan Declaration, issued by scientists sceptical about manmade global warming, warns that: "attempts by governments to legislate costly regulations on industry and individual citizens to encourage CO2 emission reduction will slow development while having no appreciable impact on the future trajectory of global climate change. Such policies will markedly diminish future prosperity and so

Oral and Literate

2008-01-10T08:13:00.002-01:00

Caleb Crain writes in the New Yorker on the decline of reading.Reviewing a new book by Maryanne Wolf (Proust and the Squid), he speculates that soon, after a few brief millennia of being literate, we shall become a society of "secondary orality" - in which the bulk of our information will come in oral/visual form via TV and the internet, as opposed to newspapers and books.This reversion to the

Ills of Capitalism

2008-01-10T07:21:00.000-01:00

There's been a flurry of anti-capitalist rhetoric in Germany of late. The socialist SPD party in the governing coalition has been burnishing its lacklustre profile - seeking to distance itself from its centrist CDU partner on the one hand, and the ex-communist PDS party on the other. This may seem a strange abandonment of the political centre. But in Germany the centre is very much to the left

Black Thursday - The Curse of Von Esens

2007-12-13T13:11:00.000-01:00

The leaders of the EU countries have signed something called the Lisbon Treaty. It's an unreadable document, rejigged from the draft constitution so humiliatingly rejected by French and Dutch voters two years ago. Containing the same key elements as the rejected constitution, it creates the EU as a sovereign state, and claims for the EU Commission (the nominated body which rules the EU) a scary