MetaFilter posts tagged with germany

The Myth of Nazi Efficiency

Miko — Sat, 18 May 2013 07:21:04 -0800

World War II’s Strangest Battle: When Americans and Germans Fought Toget

cthuljew — Mon, 13 May 2013 22:47:09 -0800

Days after Hitler’s suicide a group of American soldiers, French prisoners, and, yes, German soldiers defended an Austrian castle against an SS division—the only time Germans and Allies fought together in World War II. Andrew Roberts on a story so wild that it has to be made into a movie.

Just remember to obey the red man and get some qualifications…

acb — Sat, 11 May 2013 16:09:49 -0800

How to be German in 20 easy steps; also, from the same author: how to be English. Elsewhere: how to be a really hip German.

Endbahnhof, bitte aussteigen Sie!

acb — Sun, 28 Apr 2013 07:35:52 -0800

Endbahnhof , a collection of photographs of every U-Bahn station in Berlin, organised by line and showing the variety of architectural styles in the system. There is an interview with the photographer, Kate Seabrook, here.

A little sunshine on a rainy day...

saulgoodman — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 11:33:51 -0800

The Virtual Power Plant: "Critics of renewables have always claimed that sun and wind are only intermittent producers of electricity and need fossil fuel plants as back-up to make them viable. But German engineers have proved this is not so." A pilot program funded by the German Federal Ministry of the Environment offers a rebuttal to critics who claim renewable energy sources have an insurmountable variability problem.

Operation Overlord

zarq — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 13:21:02 -0800

PhotosNormandie is a collaborative collection of more than 3,000 royalty-free photos from World War II's Battle of Normandy and its aftermath. (Photos date from June 6 to late August 1944). The main link goes to the photostream. You can also peruse sets, which include 2700+ images from the US and Canadian National Archives.

“...but the numbers are unbelievable.”

Fizz — Sat, 02 Mar 2013 09:21:14 -0800

"The Holocaust Just Got More Shocking" [NYTimes.com]

"The researchers have cataloged some 42,500 Nazi ghettos and camps throughout Europe, spanning German-controlled areas from France to Russia and Germany itself, during Hitler’s reign of brutality from 1933 to 1945."

Bowie: "Get your own pig!"

The Whelk — Sat, 02 Feb 2013 09:39:32 -0800

"There are reasons why this film is obscure. It is, in the most charitable possible evaluation, a mess: Bowie has described it as "my 32 Elvis films rolled into one." And yet life on that ever-dwindling island of not-on-region-one DVD films is a harsh fate for any film and particularly for this one, which is at least as interesting as its cast suggests and a good deal more. You don't need to dig out the VHS player to watch Mick Jagger run an agency of gigolos in The Man From Elysian Fields—you shouldn't have to do so to watch Bowie play one. " David Bowie's Lost 70s-era Weimar Berlin Movie: Just a Gigalo.

iDon't Believe It

MuffinMan — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 10:08:33 -0800

A German store hires an ace salesman to sell its iPads (SLYT)

A German take on IRL Gaming

dunkadunc — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 01:19:06 -0800

Camover is a new game from Germany.

The rules are simple: First, organize a crew starting with "Command", "Brigade" or "Cell", followed by the name of a historical figure. ("Van Der Lubbe") is one of many currently in use.) Next: Destroy as many CCTV cameras as possible! The Camover site has an extensive FAQ for those looking to get started, including reasons to play, discussion of camera types, camera removal techniques, and the fundamentals of good teamwork. In case the link goes down, the Camover FAQ is archived here.

It's not easy being meme: Techno Viking sues creator

MartinWisse — Sun, 27 Jan 2013 06:25:17 -0800

You may dance like nobody's watching, but what if your dancing is videoed and becomes the base of an internet meme and subsequent cottage industry, all without your knowledge and without you receiving any compensation for it? Should you have the right to stop this exploitation, or was the artist who first popularised you in his rights to create new artwork based on the original video? That's what's at stake in the lawsuit of the Techno Viking against Matthias Fritsch. Matthias Fritsch is the person who at a techno rave in Berlin created the original video, when one very Nordic dancer came into frame as he was shooting some street video. That was in 2000, some years before Youtube, to which Fritsch uploaded the video in 2006, where, via "an obscure Central American porn site", it went viral and started being memed. Once the still unknown Techno Viking came across this, he asked, then sued Fritsch to stop it. Under German law, there is the right to control your own likeness. This right is diminished in public and when you know you have the possibility to be videoed or photographed, as could be argued was the case here. The key question is therefore not so much whether Fritsch was in his right to videotape the Techno Viking, but whether the latter could've reasonably expected his image to become an internet meme.

Copy Culture in the US and Germany

gilrain — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 17:08:10 -0800

The American Assembly has released their much-anticipated and well-presented study on Copy Culture. The random phone survey of 2303 Americans and 1000 Germans answers many questions about the demographics and public perception of file sharing and piracy. TorrentFreak pulls out some highlights.

The Brutality of Experience

IvoShandor — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 10:34:38 -0800

Brutal Baroque: An Ode To Midcentury Modern Churches: French photographer Fabrice Fouillet traveled across Europe photographing some of the most important examples of postwar churches, creating a catalogue of the spaces called Corpus Christi. One image--and architect--articulates the stories behind this era of architecture. Guillaume Gillet, the architect of the remarkable Brutalist cathedral, Notre Dame de Royan, was imprisoned by the Germans only seven years before he started work on the church. While being held in a camp, he worked with other prisoners to create the famed French Chapel, a tiny room underneath the roof of their barracks decorated with exquisite religious murals.

Conservative politics, German-style

acb — Sat, 24 Nov 2012 14:30:51 -0800

Jens Spahn is a parliamentarian in Germany's centre-right party, the Christian Democrats (CDU) and a committed Catholic. He is also gay, and has been openly so throughout his 11-year political career. While he does not focus specifically on gay issues, he advocates equal civil rights for gays and lesbians (including gay marriage, tax parity and adoption rights) from a conservative position. He does not regard this to be a contradiction.

Prison of Debt Paralyzes West

Vibrissae — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 21:01:14 -0800

Be it the United States or the European Union, most Western countries are so highly indebted today that the markets have a greater say in their policies than the people. Why are democratic countries so pathetic when it comes to managing their money sustainably? This clear, well-written essay in Der Speigel lays out the current debt crisis - along with current, proposed solutions - in an understandable manner. Not included among the so-far-proposed solutions is one other that has opened up a veritable financial market and debt Pandora's Box - i.e. a central bank debt jubilee.

Memories of Amikejo

Kattullus — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 11:44:11 -0800

In the first decade of the 20th Century, a German Chief Justice was asked to hear the case of a man who had recently been found guilty according to a law code enacted in the last years of Napoleon's short-lived empire. No state in Europe still used that exact set of laws, but in one small part of the continent, there was an 850 acre plot of land which no state had claimed since the final defeat of Napoleon: Neutral Moresnet, also known as Kelmis, La Calamine or Amikejo. In To Govern, or Not to Govern: Prussia, Neutral Moresnet [pdf, click 'Download This Paper'] Steven Michael Press explains how Neutral Moresnet came to be, and how the Chief Justice ruled in the case. For more information, visit the Neutral Moresnet website. For an account by a visitor, read Unvisited Places of Old Europe by American travel writer Robert Shackleton [starts on page 157]. Finally, here's a podcast lecture by journalist and historian Neal Ascherson called Memories of Amikejo [iTunes link] reflecting on Neutral Moresnet's short existence and whether it tells us something about modern Europe. [Neutral Moresnet previously on MetaFilter]

"Are we the baddies?"

Artw — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 13:51:07 -0800

Danish author Sven Hassel (Wikipedia, official site) has passed away at the age of 95. (Danish - Translation) Hassel fought for the Germans during WWII and became famous after publishing Legion of the Damned, a semi-autobiographical account of the war. He went on to write thirteen more books following the adventures of his convict battalion, incuding Wheels of Terror which in 1987 was made into the movie The Misfit Brigade staring Bruce Davison and David Patrick Kelly (clip). He will be remembered fondly by all who browsed the bookshelves of charity shops as young men.

A pong traffic light in Germany

adrianspiegel — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 17:20:03 -0800

A pong traffic light in Germany

Paris, London, Berlin, Brussels

rollick — Fri, 03 Aug 2012 08:48:01 -0800

The Big Three of EU Foreign Policy: Stefan Lehne on the contrasting roles of Germany, France and the UK.

Aurochs

homunculus — Sat, 21 Jul 2012 10:50:55 -0800

Heavy Breeding. "In 1920, the brothers Lutz and Heinz Heck, directors of the Berlin and Munich zoos, respectively, began a two-decade breeding experiment. Working with domestic cattle sought out for their 'primitive' characteristics, they attempted to recreate 'in appearance and behavior' the living likeness of the animals’ extinct wild ancestor: the aurochs. 'Once found everywhere in Germany,' according to Lutz Heck, by the end of the Middle Ages the aurochs had largely succumbed to climate change, overhunting, and competition from domestic breeds." Białowieża Forest – Remarkable Remnant of Europe’s Primeval Past Aurochs previously. Bialowieza previously. Nazis trying to breed back tarpans in Bialowieza previously. Now some aurochs have a role in a new film, Beasts of the Southern Wild, and are being played by Vietnamese pot-bellied pigs.

"The FDA recalled more than 60,000 tissue-derived products between 1994 and mid-2007."

zarq — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 07:26:25 -0800

"The business of recycling dead humans into medical implants is a little-known yet lucrative trade. But its practices have roused concerns about how tissues are obtained and how well grieving families and transplant patients are informed about the realities and the risks." After an eight month international investigation, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists has published an extensive four-part exposé into the black market for cadavers and human tissue: Skin and Bone: The Shadowy Trade in Human Body Parts (Via) The ICIJ (Previously on Mefi) was established by the Center for Public Integrity (CPI) to serve as its international reporting arm. The CPI is a nonprofit investigative journalism organization. Key Findings: * Consent: There have been repeated allegations in Ukraine that human tissue was removed from the dead without proper consent. Some of that tissue may have reached other countries, via Germany, and may now be implanted in hospital patients. * Safety: Surgeons are not always required to tell patients they are receiving products made of human tissue, making it less likely a patient would associate subsequent infection with that product. * Tracking: The U.S. is the world's biggest trader of products from human tissue, but authorities there don’t seem to know how much tissue is imported, where it comes from, or where it subsequently goes.
Sections: * About this Project * Infographic: How Safe is Human Tissue? * Part 1: Human Corpses are Prize in Global Drive for Profits * Part 2: Body Brokers Leave Trail of Questions, Corruption * Part 3: Traceability Elusive in Global Trade of Human Parts * Part 4: Abusing the 'Gift' of Tissue Donation * Key Questions About Human Tissue * Japan has almost no regulations on human tissue. Includes a link to an Asahi Shimbun investigation with further details. * Video: Skin and Bone * How We Did It: Analyzing the Data behind Skin and Bone The investigation utilized software from Palantir to analyze networks and data on an impressively large scale: "We uploaded more than 1 million companies, individuals and events (such as imports, seizures and recalls) into Palantir to build out a network previously buried in data sets and documents. The result was a rich and dense dataset that made it easy to grab a comprehensive picture of any entity in just a few key strokes. It therefore becomes a powerful reporting tool, rather than merely a way to visualize networks." * Methodology: Behind the Numbers * Video: How ICIJ investigated human tissue trading networks * Multimedia: Products made from human tissue

The Pantone Merkel Chart

0bvious — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 13:52:55 -0800

A Pantone chart of German chancellor Angela Merkel's many coloured jackets

"Maybe Monk Time is here at last."

Kattullus — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 20:50:21 -0800

You're a Monk, I'm a Monk, We're All Monks is a short video introduction to The Monks, a band founded in 1964 by five American soldiers in Germany. They put out only one album, the abrasive, noisy, minimalistic Black Monk Time in 1965, that sounded like nothing else at the time. They also dressed in all-black, shaved monkish tonsures in their hair and wore bits of rope as neckties. In 1966 they appeared on German TV shows Beat-Club and Beat, Beat, Beat, and played three songs on each, Boys Are Boys and Girls Are Choice, Monk Chant, Oh, How to Do Now, Complication, I Can't Get Over You and Cuckoo. Aaron Poehler interviewed The Monks and wrote about their history back in 1999. That same year they got back together to play at the Cavestomp festival. And here The Monks are being interviewed by a hand-puppet on public access television in Chicago. [The Monks previously on MetaFilter]

You eat too fast, and I understand why your antidyspeptic pill-makers cover your walls, your forests even, with their advertisements.

The Whelk — Sat, 07 Jul 2012 09:36:40 -0800

In 1891 author and lecturer ”Max O’Rell” (being the pen name of one Léon Paul Blouet) published an amusing account of his travels through the States and Eastern Canada - "A Frenchman In America" - that, along with the charming illustrations, reflect on then popular national stereotypes and character and is presented on Project Gutenberg in its entirely. (via)

"During the proceedings, the prosecutor took the time to mention that no other printer in the world could do what Kuhl had done."

reenum — Wed, 04 Jul 2012 06:54:05 -0800

Hans-Jurgen Kuhl was able to create "shockingly perfect" copies of the American $100 bill by using his artistic talents to conquer the various security features present in the bill.