Brett from nomoreincumbents.org left an interesting comment on my last post: You might ask yourself why you are communicating in English? In the 17th century scientists initiated a new more logical and descriptive language. It does not utilize forms of the verb ‘be’ for example. It has not really taken off despite its logic and […]
Author: Tobsy
Since I first heard of feet and inches, I’m asking myself, why anyone would use them. No, “Because that’s what we’ve always been using” is not a satisfying answer. When I went to school I learned the metric system. I instantly liked it. It was a logical, intuitive and elegant. Of course I’ve had heard […]
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Tobsy’s Code of Conduct for Bloggers
On April 8th, Tim O’Reilly presented his first draft of a “Code of Conduct” for bloggers. It’s made of 9 modules, that should help to keep the blogosphere civil. But do we really need something like that? What’s the sense of that? These are the 9 modules of the first draft: 1. Responsibility for our […]
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Biased and personal? Yep, that’s me.
Apart from the encouraging comments I received, there is always a number of people complaining. Comments like “WTF do you know about America? You don’t live here!” or “You’re not American. You don’t have the right to tell us what to do!!!” are of the more harmless sort. Now, I never claimed to know everything […]
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What remains of the American Dream?
The American Dream is that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of […]
From all your answers to my call for prejudices about Germans I have collected the 15 most common. I’ll talk about them in detail and tell you whether I think they are right or wrong. Oh, and when I say “we” I mean “Germans like myself”. I don’t know every German and as in every […]
Whenever people talk about the USA, it doesn’t take long until you hear sentences that start with “That’s typical. Americans are all…”. Well, what are you? I’ve asked around, talked to people and this is a list of the 10 prejudices I’ve heard most often. – Americans are extremely superficial.I tend to blame this on […]
No, I don’t like April Fools. I don’t think that laughing about other people should be limited to a certain date. So, I looked for some other things that have happened on a 1st of April. Like these: 1873 – The RMS Atlantic sinks off the coast of Nova Scotia. When the recovered bodies were […]
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I hate: Strict Creationism
Strict creationism, intelligent design – call it what you want – is a belief. It is the belief in the literal interpretation of Genesis. I use the term “strict creationism” to distinguish between the simple belief that everything was somehow created by god, and the “strict” part. The latter includes beliefs like: The Earth was […]
1. We know beer – you don’t. I don’t know who labeled your dishwater “beer”, but it’s misleading. When you order a beer in Germany – don’t expect it to be ice cold. And yes, the foam is intended to be there. 2. The Autobahn This much is true: On the autobahn no speed limit […]