Delicious Bagels

Took my teenager and his girlfriend to go see Wallace & Gromit, what a laugh with all the Dr. Jeykell & Mr. Hyde and King Kong references. We went out to have bagels at Salomon Bagels in the Arkaden at Potsdamer Platz to kill time before the movie started.

My pumpkin seed bagel with cream cheese and guacamole was delicious (his sounded revolting - Nutella, jam and cheese on a sesame seed bagel, but the *German* lady made it for him with a smile for just a slight extra cost), but as I sat there eating it, it struck me that this whole area was completely Americanized. Multiplex theater, Dunkin' Donuts, Starbucks, Soloman's, a shopping mall, skyscrapers - pretty much the only German thing was that we took public transport to get here. Here the Germans are railing against the "foreign cultures" (read Islamic culture) that are invading Germany, but they left the porch door open and invited in all sorts of American "culture". Where did Germany go? No, I really don't want women wearing dirndls to wander about, dancing polkas to an umpahpah band. But how did Modern Germany end up looking so much like the US?

Der Schwarm

Finished! I started the German best-seller the middle of November when I was sick. 960+ pages looked just the treat when you are forced to stay in bed... althought the paperback was so unwieldly to hold that it was hard to read. Anyway, I started in.

And kept on reading bit by bit, and hit halfway, when the book disappeared. I had been toting it everywhere with me in a little blue bag, and the bag was nowhere to be found. The week before Christmas I ransacked the house - no blue bag. I retraced my steps from the week before, asking everyone if they had seen my little blue bag. No one had seen it. In desperation - the Christmas vacation was looming - I ran to Nicolaische Buchhandlung on the morning we were leaving for Sweden and bought another copy!

I throughly enjoyed it, although it was kind of strange, reading about the tsunami on Dec. 26, the anniversary of the real tsunami in Thailand and Indonesia. The author, Frank Schätzing, really managed to describe it accurately! I loved the scientific details, although towards the end he seemed to be repeating himself and I just skimmed the stuff, anxious to see if the guy and the gal would survive and get each other!

Day before yesterday at handball practice one of the women asked, if I had left a blue bag at the Christmas party.... (see Julklapp 2005). Seems with all the nice stuff we were drinking and all of my bags full of crap, I forgot to take the blue bag with me. The bag will be returned to me next week, so then I will have two, I shall hand on both, because I *loved* it. Finished it this evening, even if I am sad that my favorite character got killed, a fate that happened to rather a lot of folks in the book. If they ever film this, it will be rated X, not for sex (not really much in the book, just a whiff here and there) but for all the death and violence.

Anyway. Seems Schätzing published a book on an airplane flying into a skyscraper in 2000 and this book on a tsunami in 2003. He won't tell what he is writing on now.... They say that the English translation is almost done - a must read, even if there are 960 pages!

Plagiarism

And here are some blog entries on the topic of plagiarism - surely to be a growth item...

• Fake Conferences (April 2005)
• Copy & Paste Culture (April 2005)
• Plagiarism for Professors (May 2006)
  

Other topical lists:
Home Girl - Didaktics - Wiki - Book reviews - Observations - 'Puter Stuff

Wiki Rants

Anything with a wiki reference:

• A Modern Quilting Bee (Jan 2005)
  
• The Virtual Conference: Wikimania (Aug 2005)
• Wikipedia: A buddy, not Britannica! (Dec 2005)
• Wikipedia for Teachers (March 2006)
• Capability Immaturity Model (January 2007)
• Proof by Intimidation (March 2007)
• But I trust Wikipedia! (August 2007)
  

Other topical lists:

Home Girl - Didaktics - Plagiarism - Book reviews - Observations - 'Puter Stuff

Home Girl Life

Now this is the list of rants on a more personal nature. It includes the recipe stuff, and the fish, not to mention all the rants about Germany.

• A Fishy Summer (2005)
• Scorched Pumpkin Pie (2005)
• Julklapp 2005
• Julotta 2005
• You are not a valued customer! (2006)
• My four things (2006)
• Look Ma, I'm in the Movies! (2006)
• Star$$$ (2006)
  
• A Bit of Snow (2006)
• The Swedish Train Ticket (2006)
• Final Four 2006 (2006)
• My New Wedge Axe (2006)
• Gypsy Grillparty (2006)
• A visit in the countryside (2006)
• Big Sports Day (April 2006)
• USA 2006 (June 2006)
• Back in Kiel (November 2006)
  
• Thirty Years Later (November 2006)
  

The citizenship rants:

• A Woman without a Country (Nov. 2004)
• Stateless for real (Jan 2005)
• How German it is (May 2005)
• Two faces of German culture (March 2006)

My father-in-law's last month:

• Dying of cancer (Aug. 2006)
• Waiting (Aug. 2006)
• Requiescat in pace (August 19, 2006)
• Life goes on (Aug. 2006)
• The last walk (Sept. 2006)
• Stealing from the Mourners (October 2006)

Other link lists : Didaktics - WikiRants - Plagiarism - Book Reviews - Observations - 'Puter Stuff

Didactics

Jakob Nielson is so right - the timeline archive for a blog just sucks. I need to have a thematic archive, but blogger does not have such a beast. So I will fix this by adding some posts that will eventually hit the archives, but will have nice URLS, that I can then stick in the templates. This one links to rants on didaktics. More to follow!

• Experiment On the Reuse of Learning Objects (August 2005)
• The King is *definately* naked! (August 2005)
• Three Objections to Learning Objects (September 2005)
  
• You mean that is not a Learning Goal? (October 2005)
  
• 3D Learning environments (March 2006)
• My First Videoblog (June 2006)
• Advanced E-Learning in Berlin (June 2006)
• Small is beautiful (September 2006)
• Blackboard doesn't play well with Vista (March 2007)
• From "Learning Objects" to "Knowledge Bits" (February 2008)
  

Other topical links:
Home girl life - Wikis - Plagiarism - Book Reviews - Observations - 'Puter Stuff

White Christmas 2005

I guess that's the reason they celebrate the Feast of St. Stephan's as the second day of Christmas in Europe - more chance to have a white Christmas!

The rain turned to snow on Dec. 26 - just a few centimeters at first, then a storm came over and dumped about
15 cm. I shovelled the walk and then made a big, fat angel in the snow - haven't done that for years. Wanted to shock my guys at breakfast when they looked out the window. But we got another 10 cm of snow over night, so the walk was snowed in again and my angel had disappeared.

I walked to town to get the paper and some rolls, it is just 20 minutes walk and I would have needed twice that to shovel out and de-ice the car. It was a winter wonderland, the trees laden with clean snow. I ate lots of it off the trees on the way down! The sky was leaden, but laced with tones of red. All of a sudden it seemed that the clouds had dropped out of the sky, and it began to snow - first little hailstones, then big fat snowflakes. The air was so clean and cold, it felt really wonderful.

The coffee tasted double good when I got home! We then shoveled out the car and drove to Lund - in a snowstorm. The car swerved merrily around each corner, giving the ESP, or EPS, or whatever the fancy electronic anti-swerving device is called, some exercise. The highway was not cleared, so we had a little caravan of cars, slowly making their way along. About halfway to Lund the snow stopped and the sun came out gleaming - exactly what one expects for a white Christmas!

We made it to Lund and did some shopping before watching Narnia. We started a tradition with a friend, watching the LOTR films every Christmas in Ystad. So we decided to make do with Narnia, but after the film a hard discussion broke out as to whether this film or the latest Harry Potter film was worst. We decided to go to the movies again next year, but it will not be a family fantasy film. Hope the film industry produces something more to our liking.