DAS KARNTOL

Penmanship has never been my strong suit, the doodlings of my pen having been described both blandly as chicken scratch and more memorably as looking like those of a serial killer. Little did all my critics realize this little “flaw” of mine would give me insight and empathy into one of history’s most influential minds!
From [...]

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A Pox on Me!

Every so often, usually after the house’s water tank has been dry for a few hours/days, the first flow from the faucet fills my bathroom sink with muddy water. The other day the mud was especially thick and of such a hue that for a moment I was sure the first of ten plagues had [...]

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Worth a Thousand Words

I haven’t  learned much Kinyarwanda yet–French is far more useful on the margin–but after a colleague showed me a phrase book (a scanned page of which is below), I’m having second thoughts:

After all, what if I’m stuck helpless in a situation where the following phrase might be needed?

Of what use are these little things? Just [...]

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Expatriotism

In Rostock, where I lived for several months, a 23-year-old state-level politician has lost his job and been fined 200 Euro for publishing this photo on the German rip-off of Facebook:

His crime was “Verunglimpfung der Bundesrepublik Deutschland,” or denigrating the Federal Republic of Germany (that’s a German flag in there). In the newspaper article, he [...]

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Homunculi

A truly astounding series of German condom advertisements are making the rounds this morning—each features a sketch of a sperm made to look like Adolf Hitler, Osama Bin Laden or Mao Zedong. Their not so subtle message being, “Better wrap it up… unless you want to bring evil into the world!”
On one hand, these ads [...]

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