Nepenthe

Dozens of words in the German language, from "degenerate" to "final solution," have become taboo because of their use by the Nazis. A new dictionary of Third Reich terms provides a guide through the linguistic minefield. As if German weren't hard enough. Three genders, endlessly long words, verbs coming at the end of impossibly rambling sentences. But there is another, more subtle, linguistic trap which both Germans and non-Germans can easily fall into -- and which is far worse a faux pas than a mere slip of the article. Mention that you've found the "Endlösung" ("final solution") to a problem you've been grappling with, or that you've made a "Selektion" ("selection") from a number of possible alternatives, and you will quickly find yourself the target of disapproving stares. The reason is simple -- the aforementioned words are so tainted by their use by the Nazis that they are now completely taboo. To modern ...

(...) Here in the West, the so-called ‘war on global warming’ is reminiscent of medieval madness. You can now buy Indulgences to offset your carbon guilt. If you fly, you give an extra 10 quid to British Airways; BA hands it on to some non-profit carbon-offsetting company which sticks the money in its pocket and goes off for lunch. This kind of behaviour is demented. (...) Likening the soul-saving Indulgences sold by the medieval Catholic Church to today’s carbon credits, Cockburn traces his subject through the ages, showing how fear is used to distract us from real problems and real solutions. Skewering doomsters on both the left and right, A Short History of Fear tackles: 9/11 conspiracy theories; the twentieth-century witch craze of ‘satanic abuse’; eugenics; the Kennedy assassination, Pearl Harbor, and other ‘inside jobs’; terrorism; the ‘Great Fear’ of the eighteenth century; today’s eleventh-hour predictions of planetary decline; and much more. Scathing, often hilarious, and al...

Between 1902 and 1914 the German Ethnological Institute sent repeated expeditions into the great Taklamakan desert of Central Asia, in search of ancient manuscripts that had survived destruction due to the arid climate of the Tarim Basin. One expedition brought back fragments of a manuscript written in a hitherto unknown language but employing a familiar North Indian script. Later dubbed Tocharian A, the language was deciphered by two linguists at Germany's Gottingen University, Emil Siel and Wilhem Siegling. The parchment turned out to be part of the Maitreyasamiti-Nataka, a Sanskrit Buddhist work in the Mahayana canon that foretells the coming of the Buddha. In the mid-thirties a budding Chinese linguist, Ji Xianlin, arrived in Gottingen to study Sanskrit with Siel. Before receiving his Ph.D. in 1941, he also mastered Tocharian and a handful of other obscure languages. After the conclusion of World War II, he returned to China and began a long career as one of China'...

Food Force é um jogo educativo apresentado pelo Programa Alimentar Mundial das Nações Unidas (PAM). O jogo foi concebido especificamente para explicar às crianças o que é a luta contra a fome a nível mundial e a importância do trabalho de ajuda humanitária. O jogo está disponível em mais de dez línguas, podendo ser descarregado gratuitamente no seguinte endereço: www.food-force.com/pt. Destina-se a crianças dos 8 aos 13 anos de idade. O Food Force , lançado em inglês em 2005, foi o primeiro jogo humanitário do mundo. Obteve rapidamente grande êxito a nível internacional, com mais de 6 milhões de cópias em circulação em todo o mundo, até à data. O Serviço de Ajuda Humanitária da Comissão Europeia (ECHO) financiou a versão portuguesa do Food Force.

By Anne Applebaum There was a particular historical moment, round about 1995 or so, when anyone entering a well-appointed drawing room, dining room, or restaurant in London was sure to encounter a beautiful Russian woman. Though the word beautiful doesn't really capture the phenomenon. The women I'm remembering were extraordinarily, unbelievably, stunningly gorgeous. These women were half-Kazakh or half-Tartar with Mongolian ancestors and perfect skin; dressed in the most tasteful, most expensive clothes; shod in soft leather boots; and perfectly coiffed. They were usually accompanied by an older man, sometimes much older, to whom they were perhaps married, or more likely not. They spoke in low, alluringly accented voices and towered over the lesser mortals in the room. I distinctly remember gazing upon one such creature while in the company of a friend, an old Russia hand who'd spent much of the previous decade in the Soviet Union. He stared, shook his head, and whispered...

If your computer desktop is anything like mine—and, brother, it is—you've paved over every spare pixel in an iconistan of clutter. Desktop design originated in a wistful visual metaphor , the clean, still work surface, encouraging users to productive ends. Leaps forward in computing horsepower and the rise of constant Internet use has transformed the tabletop terra firma into a cockpit, an antic terminal for the networked self. Our desktops are now a thick impasto of tabbed windows, pull-down menus, dashboard widgets, and application alerts. No possible distraction gets left behind, no link, feed, IM, twitter, or poke unheeded. It's blindingly obvious to note that disarray is one of the defining aspects of the frequent Web user. (I could cite some pertinent statistics, but I don't trust myself to get back to this word processor window.) Ask any designer: Without white space , humans have difficulty focusing. Chances are, you're reading this alongside a flurry of other ...

Last week, Chief Marie Smith Jones, the only remaining native speaker of the Eyak language, died in her home in Anchorage, Alaska. Chief Jones' death makes Eyak—part of the Athabascan family of languages—the first known native Alaskan tongue to go extinct. Linguists fear that 19 more will soon follow the same fate. Fortunately, starting in 1961, Chief Jones and five other native-speaking Eyaks worked with Michael Krauss, a linguist at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks, to document Eyak in case future generations want to revive it. How would you go about learning a language that nobody speaks? It depends. A well-documented language would have a dictionary, grammar book, a body of literature (such as folk tales or religious texts), and, in some cases, videos and recordings that a dedicated student could learn from. Eyak, for example, has all of these. Ideally, the grammar book and dictionary would spell out the sounds of the vowels (and tone, if there is any). If there isn't...

Shaving is an ancient art, but is one that many men simply fail to master. Kamil Ozturk, the barber who taught Johnny Depp to use a razor in preparation for his role in Sweeney Todd, reveals the tricks to a perfect shave The barber’s art is thought to date back many thousands of years with relics resembling razors having been found as early as 3,500 BC. And though throughout the centuries short-cropped facial hair has gained and lost favour many times over, the art of shaving has endured. But it is an art that many men simply fail to master. So what are the steps involved in a good shave? And what are some of the most common mistakes men make? Geo F Trumper is the longest continuous barber in London dating back to 1875. The current Head Barber, Kamil Ozturk has 24 years of experience to his name and counts among his pupils Johnny Depp, who, in preparation for his role in Tim Burton’s new cinematic adaptation of Steven Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd, came to Trumper’s to learn how to w...

There was no picket line preventing Daniel Day-Lewis or Julie Christie from the red carpet last night as they picked up the top prizes at the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Awards. The two British-born stars underscored their status as Oscars front-runners at the ceremony, which was the first major Hollywood award show of the year not to be affected by the screenwriters' strike. Day-Lewis was crowned best actor for his performance as a tyrannical oil prospector in There Will Be Blood while Christie earned the best actress prize for playing an Alzheimer’s sufferer in Away From Her. In his acceptance speech Day-Lewis dedicated his award to Heath Ledger, who was found dead in New York last week, saying the Australian actor was someone whose performances inspired him to keep working. “There are many actors in this room tonight including my fellow nominees who’ve given me that sense of regeneration. Heath Ledger gave it to me,” he said, to loud applause. Ledger’s performance in 2005...

Euan Ferguson Observer It was the light bulbs which finally did it. Until the stupid, ghastly, stupid news about the light bulbs, I was on-side. I recycled. I separated. I cared. Before putting the bins out at night I would go through them. Move the bad plastic stuff to the little bin marked by the council with the one word 'plastics' because they didn't have space to spell out 'Bad plastic finger-cutting packaging, pointless, all you wanted was a carrot or a pen mate, never worry, me and Wilf'll still eat it, with our pigtails and big teeth, hurr hurr', and then move the papers to the paper bin, and the potato peelings would get dug in. And when I got terribly terribly caring about the environment I would spend an hour sifting the coffee grounds from the salt and the rest of the - is this a word? I do hope so! - moritz in my bin. Start my own bins and label them accordingly. 'Salt'. 'Coffee'. 'Things I've just seen around here which I ha...

On July 24, 1968, in an event still shrouded in mystery, Pink Floyd appeared onstage at the Summer Music Festival at cavernous Municipal Stadium in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. They were not onstage for long. The lineup that night, at least as it is reported officially, included the Troggs, two forgettable folk-pop ensembles, and the Who, who were not yet huge stars (that would come the following year, after Tommy was released). I attended the concert with bandmates from the Phase Shift Network, a tragic, acid-pop ensemble in which I, like current Republican presidential contender Mike Huckabee and Sting, played bass. But I have no recollection of the Troggs, Mandala or the Friends of the Family being there that evening. As I recall it, the lineup included the Box Tops (headed by future Big Star cult hero Alex Clilton), Country Joe & the Fish (good-natured Frisco weirdos) and the soulful, homegrown Delfonics, with Pink Floyd the headliners who took the stage immediately after Wilson...

For a true unattainable wish :) And Africa always looks good...

Welcome to CastleMagic! We build custom stone dream castles from start to finish using methods of old and new. We strive to use all natural materials to produce a structure that is strong, lasting, and healthy for the castle dwellers. This involves combining the old castle building methods with modern reinforcing steel, non-toxic materials and finishes, and a few physics tricks and knowledge to produce a warm and dry castle interior.

Remove odors -- If you've got a plastic container that smells like fish, a musty-smelling book, or other small item with a bad odor, just stick it in the freezer overnight. By morning, it'll be smelling fresh again. Unstick photos -- If you've got a bundle of old photos that were stored someplace damp, they might be stuck together. Pulling them apart will ruin them, but if you stick them in the freezer for 20 minutes first, you'll be able to salvage them. After they're frozen, use a butter knife to carefully separate the photos (if they don't come free, put them back in the freezer and try again when they're colder). Extend candle life -- I love burning candles, but the nice ones are so expensive. However you can extend a candle's life by putting it in the freezer for a couple hours before burning it. This will make it burn more slowly. Clean the impossible pot -- If you've got a pot that has all sorts of burned-on food that's a pain to remove, e...

That's the advice journalist and author Michael Pollan offers in his new book, In Defense of Food . "That's it. That is the short answer to the supposedly incredibly complicated and confusing question of what we humans should eat in order to be maximally healthy," Pollan tells Steve Inskeep. 'Eat Food' The implication of Pollan's advice, however, is that what we're eating now isn't food. "Very often, it isn't," he says. "We are eating a lot of edible food-like substances, which is to say highly processed things that might be called yogurt, might be called cereals, whatever, but in fact are very intricate products of food science that are really imitations of foods." Pollan acknowledges that distinguishing between food and "food products" takes work. His tip: "Don't eat anything that ...

Futures From Nature: 100 Speculative Fictions is an anthology of 100 short-short science fiction stories originally published on the back page of the prestigious weekly science journal Nature . The stories come from all matter of writers -- science fiction professionals, working scientists, science writers (there's even one -- rather good -- story written by a scientist's 12-year-old daughter!), and take all manner of approaches to the challenge. As is inherent in the short-short story form, the pieces are often comic and conceptual, rather than fleshed out narratives -- it's quite a trick to cram a full-blown story with realized characters into a mere 700 words. Many of these stories are flat-out brilliant, and not all of those come from professional writers (though sf pros like Bruce Sterling, Ben Rosenbaum, Joan Vinge, Kathryn Cramer, Robert Charles Wilson and Toby Buckell all have superb little gems here). Cle...

Os negritos são meus, porque ainda por cima fez-se jurisprudência, sacré bleu! Foto: Marinha Francesa/Reuters (arquivo) O navio Erika naufragou a 12 de Dezembro de 1999 Grupo francês Total dado como culpado pelo naufrágio do petroleiro “Erika” 16.01.2008 PUBLICO.PT O Tribunal Correccional de Paris deu hoje o grupo francês Total como culpado pelo naufrágio do petroleiro “Erika”, em 1999, no Golfo da Gasconha. O derrame de 20 mil toneladas de fuelóleo poluiu 400 quilómetros de costa e matou mais de 150 mil aves. Quase nove anos depois, a Total – com ...

We pet owners love our pets, but it can be a bit embarrassing to explain why guests are sitting on half-eaten chew bones or tripping over cat trees that look like they've been through the garbage disposal a few times. Here's one pet toy you won't be embarrassed about at least: The Leo Scratching Post is made from an exotic African wood called Zebrawood (we've talked about zebrawood countertops and floors before, but it's not something one usually sees as a material for pet toys), which is handsome enough to be displayed in its own right, and the sleek shape is sure to have guests assuming it's a piece of sculpture and not just a scratching post for Mr. Wiggles. The weeble wobble design should be fun for your cat too. James Owen Design

1) Boekhandel Selexyz Dominicanen in Maastricht What does a city do with an 800-year-old church with no congregation? Well, it could make like the Dutch and convert it into a temple of books. The old Dominican church in Maastricht was being used for bicycle storage not long ago , but thanks to a radical refurbishment by Dutch architects Merkx + Girod it has been turned into what could possibly be the most beautiful bookshop of all time. The Boekhandel Selexyz Dominicanen , which opened just before Christmas, retains the character and charm of the old church, while being fitted with a minimalist and modern interior design that overcomes any suggestion of fustiness. From the images you can find on the web you can see that it is a bookshop made in heaven . 2) El Ateneo in Buenos Aires All the world's a page at El Ateneo , a bookshop converted from an old theatre in downtown Buenos Aires. As you can see from this photomontage the El Ateneo has retained its former splendour , with hi...