As Der Spiegel’s Matthias Mattussek writes -
“Looking back, there will be disagreement whether Woytila was a pope of inclusion or exclusion. [...] He was conservative, he was obstinate, he was a provacation. He said, kneel down, pray a rosary. But millions of people on all continents have been captured … by this pope’s fight, [...]

I’m still thinking about Vienna. I didn’t especially like the anti aircraft towers, but I think the toilets were excellent.
I am quite serious. You see this is a problem for transatlantic comprehension. In the USA toilets have a large pool of water. This can cause an unfortunate problem called [...]

These are my impressions of a recent trip to Budapest.
My father’s parents grew up in Budapest. The Waldmann family has returned on 5 or so occasions. Caroly, Erzebeth and Thomas (dad) went back in 1937 to tell the folks it was time to bug out of central Europe (they didn’t listen). [...]

A thought on my month in Vienna (in 1987).
A very nice clean safe city full of nice people. However there are two extremely ugly buildings in Vienna. I tried to find a photo googling Vienna skyline but they seem to have been carefully kept off the web. They are huge [...]

What is the value of learning a second language aside from the obvious practical benefits : the fact that you can talk to people who don’t speak your first language, can read things which have not been translated, can politely talk to people who don’t find it easy to speak your first language and can [...]

Paul Samuelson is very smart but not always polite. When praising John Kenneth Galbraith he wrote something like “it would be wonderful to write his obituary” which only meant that it was enjoyable to write a encominium on Galbraith and any other more literal interpretation would be incorrect, funny and amusing to Prof Galbraith. [...]

I just found out about the potato hepatitis B vaccine in a odd way. Solid info from the BBC “An edible vaccine against the deadly liver disease hepatitis B may have been developed by scientists in the US.
Chunks of genetically modified potato may be enough to give immunity without the need for an [...]

20 years ago I had an Idea. Maybe someone who knows something about the field can tell me what is wrong with it in 20 seconds (including maybe someone else had the idea 40 years ago).
This thought was stimulated by reading Structural Anthropology a collection of essays by Claude Levi-Strauss. There are two questions. [...]

I have to confess to having had a fairly sucky 2004. Most of the causes are personal, and frankly not very interesting. But, as an example, my plan to spend the holiday season in Tunisia was abruptly cancelled because my wife got chicken pox. So, needless to say, I’ve been looking [...]

Today, la petite Anglaise, one of the weblogs I found out about because it was nominated as best expat blog for the 1st afoe European blog awards, deals with the complexities of interpersonal courtesy in France, partcularly la bise.
La bise is second nature to the French. For a foreigner like myself it is a [...]