Monthly Archives: März 2014

Metamorphosis behind iron bars — a butterfly turns into a poisson insect

The recent news from Ukraine made me mad.  Mrs. Julia Timoshenko, for whom I still felt some compassion recently, now appeared in a completely new light.  She did not denialed the validity of a You-Tube footage of a telefon conversation, in which she expressed her intention to “shoot Putin with an AK47 in the head, and eradict all Russian people… (more…)

Happy New Year – سال نو مبارک

Haft Sheen: The 7 S…, a set of objects all starting with the persian letter Sheen People in and from Iran, Kurdistan and Afghanistan celebrate the beginning of their new year today. Using a very sophisticated astronomical calculation it will start in about 5 minutes, precisely at 17:57:07 GMT.  Astronomers have calculated that at this very minute the duration of… (more…)

Books of the week: Crimea changed sides

In 2010 I had the pleasure to visit Crimea, on the occasion of a genetics conference in Alushta. What a magical landscape, I thought, and I met Russians there and some Ukrainians and many Tartars. The Tartars invited me to a after-wedding brunch in their own restaurant at the beach, when the shops and cafes run by Russians or Ukrainians… (more…)

Reaching for the Stars

Dear Michael, last weekend we saw a nice movie with mom and with Shafagh. The movie is a Danish/German/Swedish co-production, but the plot is set up in Iran and also filmed there. “Sepideh – Reaching for the Stars” is about a young girl from a middle-class Teheran family who becomes fascinated by astronomy. Together with friends she goes out to… (more…)

Timeless Dream

Woke up this morning at 4:30 a.m., with a jet-lag related insomnia causing this asynchronity between my internal neuro-biological pace-maker and the local time. I had a dream that initially appeared strange to me, because what I saw there did not seem to make sense at all. More than a year after we stopped exchanging e-mails, you suddenly came to… (more…)

Berlin Groove

Who says that cool moves come only from the teens and twens ? BS, I say, not only after we accompanied our son to its dance-lesson-exam ball, and were shocked that all of his generation stood shy and helpless along the walls, whereas their parents like us were dancing the whole night through. But here comes the ultimate proof: A… (more…)

Blogs I recommend to de-follow immediately

Hi Michael, You know my main access to the social media world is by Facebook. But through your blog and the various links on it, I also got used to read what people post on their own blogs. Some of them are really unique and inspiring, others are boring. Therefore I set up my top 8 list of Blogs I… (more…)