Ethik und die olympischen Spiele in China (German)
Posted on Friday, 18 April, 2008
English Summary: While for a long time, because of my hostility to the Chinese regime along with my free-market ideals, I have often been branded a "cold warrior" or die-hard capitalist, mainstream opinion has again grown more sceptical of China as, in the build-up to the Olympic Games, its oppression of the Tibetan people has returned to the limelight. In this article, I explain how I believe globalization and free markets enable the average consumer to exert a great deal of pressure directly on the regime. Olympic Sponsors such as Coca-Cola, McDonald's or Omega that pay a fortune in order to be associated with a murderous regime that still venerates Mao, a tyrant responsible for the deaths of far more people than Hitler and Stalin combined, should get what they paid for: the utter disgust and condemnation of the free world. Come on, people, there's Pepsi, Red Bull, there's Burger King, there are dozens of quality watch makers. There are other consumer electronics makers than Samsung or Panasonic and other credit cards than Visa. There is really no reason - and no excuse - for us Western consumers if they were to chose to become accomplices to mass murder, oppression, torture and numerous other human rights abuses by buying the products of any sponsor of the Olympic Games.
Categories: Free Thought, Free Markets
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Back to the top of this pageTheaterempfehlung: No Way To Die (German)
Posted on Thursday, 14 February, 2008
Hier eine Empfehlung für eine Musiktheaterproduktion meiner Schwester, die meiner Meinung nach einfach phantastisch gut ist:
http://www.myspace.com/noway2die
Die Première findet am 26. Februar 08 an der Neuen Tribüne Wien - weitere Termine sind 28.2., 29.2., 1.3., 2.3., 3.3., 6.3., 7.3. und 8.3.08, Karten unter 0664/23 44 256.
Categories: Thoughts on Music
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Back to the top of this pageHappy new year!
Posted on Monday, 31 December, 2007
After a long silence (don't worry, I have got plenty of half-written entries in my drafts folder and will try and catch up some time), I thought I might at least thank everybody for their Christmas wishes and wish you all a happy new year.
Categories: Loose Talk
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Back to the top of this pageEU Welfare and Why It Doesn't Work (re-run, in German)
Posted on Thursday, 17 May, 2007
In my series of re-runs, here is an article that I originally wrote for the free-market think-tank formerly known as liberalismus.at (now: liberty.li). I argue that EU welfare policies are a bad idea and that open borders and markets benefit disadvantaged regions and individuals much more than EU hand-outs. Since so-called “social standards” ultimately deprive poor regions or countries of the flexibility required to compete with the rest of the EU and mainly serve to protect jobs in the rich, over-regulated EU member states, they would in fact preserve social discrepancies on this continent rather than help overcome them.
Categories: Free Thought, Free Markets
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Back to the top of this pageThe War In Iraq: Looking Back At What I Wrote In 2003 (re-run, in German)
Posted on Thursday, 22 March, 2007
Another re-run: This time I am re-publishing an incredibly long, horribly poetic and somehow pretentious, but still, I think, intelligent article that I wrote back in 2003 just during the first few days of the American invasion in Iraq. I criticized both Old Europe and the US – Old Europe for not acknowledging that their position (doing business with Saddam whilst letting the Iraqi civilian population starve to death under the UN sanctions) was in no way ethically superior to that of the United States; the Bush administration for their illusion that in a country as diverse and complex as Iraq most problems would just disappear by themselves once they got rid of Saddam Hussein. In hindisght, I have got to say that I was not that far off the mark with my apprehensions.
That being said, the best part is still the Swiss-German song by Mani Matter that I quote at the beginning...
Categories: Free Thought, Free Markets
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Back to the top of this pageHow To Tell Your Browser What Languages You Speak
Posted on Thursday, 22 March, 2007
This is the first of two entries I have planned to write on language and content negotiation. A lot of non-techies do not even know what content negotiation means – which is not really a problem –, but they also miss out on an opportunity to improve their user experience on the Internet. Since in this post I am going to limit myself to language negotiation – as opposed to content negotiation in general –, I believe that it is particularly relevant to language professionals.
Categories: Language and Translation Web Development and Programming
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Back to the top of this pageQuite Some Characters: A Unicode Primer for Linguists
Posted on Monday, 19 March, 2007
For people who are part of a creation process as is the case for us linguists it often proves helpful to have at least a basic idea of the other aspects involved in that process even if, strictly speaking, they are outside our own responsibility. Since computers have become such an integral part of our lives and working environments, computer-related aspects of multilingual content should be of interest to anyone involved in a translation process. This knowledge may not be directly required for our linguistic work, but it can greatly facilitate collaboration and communication with engineers, graphic designers, etc. and make it easier to identify and analyse obstacles that we may encounter from time to time. Yes, you guessed it right, this article is dedicated to the horribly dull and nasty topic of text encodings, in particular, Unicode.
Categories: Language and Translation Localization and Internationalization
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Back to the top of this pageWhy I love Bach (re-run, in German)
Posted on Monday, 12 March, 2007
I'll start my series of re-runs of some old posts with a short article that I wrote some years ago for my first homepage. My goal was to explain my personal approach to the music and personality of J. S. Bach whom I view as the greatest composer, nay, the greatest artist, ever. In particular, I emphasize how he blends mathematical sophistication and deeply-felt spirituality, rationality and emotions, in a unique way. I also mention his humble concept of his own role as a "musical scientist" or maybe a mediator between heaven and earth rather than a "genius". The entire article is ripe with fanboy-like enthusiasm, but, hey, I was young back then.
Categories: Thoughts on Music
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Back to the top of this pageRe-run Time
Posted on Sunday, 11 March, 2007
When I moved to my new CMS and design in autumn, I could not really figure how my old articles on music and my free-market advocacy would best fit in with the new structure. This is a pity: I noticed that a lot of visitors come here exactly for that content which is currently offline. Since this blog has not ever had any sort of real focus anyway, I now decided to rerun them here. They are all in German, but I might give my English-speaking readers a brief summary.
Categories: Loose Talk
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Back to the top of this pageSpreadsheets and localization
Posted on Wednesday, 7 March, 2007
Just noticed: It's not only Microsoft Excel, even OpenOffice.org does localize keywords. Why? Why?!
Categories: Localization and Internationalization
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