Oh, No No No More Mosquitoes

Like Lewis and Clark, I find mosquitoes to be doubly pestilent, as the little red bumps they leave behind are about as annoying as remembering how to spell their name. An article in the current Technology Quarterly from the Economist comes as a soothing poultice:
Researchers at Intellectual Ventures, an innovations company established by former Microsoft [...]

Read Full Post »

In Need of Protection

The festively decorated Galeria Kaufhof department store in this western German town is cutting prices on items from fleece sweaters to toy castles. At the Karstadt store across the street, the discounts range from cashmere sweaters to fondue sets.Not too long ago, these sales would have been against the law.In contrast to the U.S., where [...]

Read Full Post »

Leengwistiks

Upon being asked what the hardest part about learning English was, my German roommate (who, by the way, is precious treasure in that he never tries to speak English with me) replied that it was probably learning pronunciation. Unlike German, English is one of a few languages with a defective orthography, which means that the [...]

Read Full Post »

Death and Taxes

Up until the Hundred Years’ War in the 14th and 15th centuries, royal European governments were expected to be funded more or less out of the pockets of the ruling family. Levying taxes directly on the subjects was rare, as governments were obliged to follow the legal maxim of cessante causa cessare debet et effectus [...]

Read Full Post »

Whence Have We Come?

A German author and journalist recently lamented the lack of attention given to the important historical contributions of Thuringia and Saxony despite Prussia having been recently elevated in the collective German conscience:
If you drive two hundred kilometers south [of Berlin], you come to a region where a lot more was going on. Here the history [...]

Read Full Post »