Category: German Language Media

The Climate Conference in Copenhagen is history, and after expressing huge frustration most German newspapers have quit reporting about the "results". Time for a summary therefore on  how the German media handled it.

First of all: Every newspaper, every news magazine, every online outlet covered the conference with special sections, special reports, and special attention generally (and not only in the science sections). The national media's hope, that humankind might be able to come up with a global contract for a greater good, was the message that one could read between all these lines. Commentators couldn't hide their disappointment that politicians couldn't achieve more than to take notice of the "Two-Degrees"-goal (the temperature shouldn't rise more than two degrees Celsius by 2050)....

Charged with traditions Christmas eve is one of these opportunities where one dusts off violin or piano, cello or flute to play some tunes like "Silent Night" or "O Tannenbaum". Some are eager (and able). Others feel kind of forced to revive a love-hate relationship with their instrument. Christmas '09 is over now, and if some amateur musicians feel some back pain now, or developed sore spots, then you got an insight into the health problems of professional musicians. Music might be...

The Alps are an unavoidable topic for a newspaper published in Zürich. And it seems hard to find news about mountains millions of years old. The  Neue Zürcher Zeitung (published in whole Switzerland and Germany) reports, that the Alps are still growing - despite the (perhaps not so common) knowledge...

Herxheim is a tiny town in the Southwest of Germany, between Mannheim and Karlsruhe. Fourteen years ago it planned to build itself a modern industrial park. But then a window looking 7000 years into the history of the region opened. Bones of 500 to probably 1000 corpses were found in one 4.5 acre area. The stone age corpses were not buried in the cower position typical of the time. The archaeologists found a mass grave, where heads, arms, legs and ribs were separated, as if the humans were disemboweled like game. Cannibalism? Maybe.  But according to an archaeologist from Speyer, Andrea Zeeb-Lanz, who lead the excavations (together with Bruno Boulestin, Bordeaux, who analyzed the bones), there is no proof that the human flesh has been eaten as food. She distinguishes between eating human flesh to feed hunger or to...

It's a relatively young phenomenon for German, Swiss or Austrian patients to need to look for cheaper pills in the internet. Years ago, the health insurance systems covered pretty much everything a patient could think of. This has changed (due to copayments, e.g.), and with the help of the internet and endless waves of spam emails people learned, that they might make a bargain ("Schnäppchen" in German) buying a cheap Viagra through online pharmacies (which are still illegal in Germany). Unfortunately, the cheaper pills sometimes do not contain what the bargain pharmacies advertise and might be dangerous rather than helpful. That's not a new phenomenon, but on Monday the Commissioner of the European Union, Günther Verheugen, made it news, because the EU customs...

The daily news about Kopenhagn and the not so far climate crisis seems to be keeping everyone feeling guilty – should I sell my car, why do I still have these old light bulbs, etc. Burghard Strassmann from the weekly Die Zeit reports about his experiment to get rid of the bad feelings accompanied by being the average German (with a per capita CO2-emission of 10 tons per year – compared to 20 tons of US citizens and 5 of Chinese). Within 24 hours he tried to become an (almost) emission free „Climate-Hero“. His first action in the morning: he trashes his radio clock, because it adds 22,6 g CO2 per day (80 kg per year) to the...