okay, here are my 2 cents to the actual euromania.
jsf's europage: "the euro symbol was designed by the european monetary unit (emu) not as a character like the dollar ('$') or the pound sterling ('£') symbols. in contrary they decided to have a symbol with an exact geometric construction that may not be changed when used with different fonts. as you probably know this is not the case with the dollar and pound sterling symbols. so the official euro symbol is more like a logo than a character".
what a crap! now this kind of shit happens when you leave design issues to non-designers. that hurts, and not only my eyes. it violates any traditional typographic rule. legibility, baby!
fortunately, the typographic-skilled people appear not to be slaves to such stupid buereaucratic authority: "as time shows most font designers won't honour these exact specifications. instead most of the fonts available now that contain the euro symbol construct this symbol according to the look and feel of the other glyphs in this font".
btw. even the name of this new money is really badly designed. why the heck do they pocket a whole continent into a currency's name? or was the german mark ever called "deutscho" or the english pound referred to as "britney"?
well in fact, the first currency was named after the city of florence, and the german word "taler" stems from the gold coins production facility in the town of thal (which then became the dutch "daalder" and finally found its way to the new world as dollar – as far as the windmill herald is right).
what a totally useless knowledge...
the cia world factbook about afghanistan: "an extremely poor, landlocked country, highly dependent on farming and livestock raising (sheep and goats)".
the cia world factbook about somalia: "one of the world's poorest and least developed countries".
the cia world factbook about yemen: "one of the poorest countries in the arab world".
i think i begin to understand.
digital freedom network: "as a part of the war against osama bin laden's terror network, two firms suspected by the united states of terrorist connections, the somalia internet company and al-barakaat, have been shut down. somalia internet company is the nation's only internet provider, and its closure has effectively shut somalian citizens out of any internet connection. in addition, al-barakaat, which is essentially an informal, unregulated financial network, had been a main source of money transfers to the nation's people from out of country relatives, of which more than 80 percent relied upon to live".
"for those residing outside of somalia, please do not email us asking for domain registrations or policies or asking to become our registrar. no .so domains are available and we are not looking for any registrar partners. if you live in somalia and have internet access, please feel free to contact us for a domain for non-commercial use. thank you for your patience." – somalian domain network information center.
on the week-end i visited the televisions exhibition at kunsthalle wien. result: artists are watching tv just as anybody else does. bored. boring. maybe except the yugoslavian art association apsolutno and their "good evening" video. but even this is not more exciting than one in a hundred music videos on mtv. blind televisions.
i also missed a reflection of the ongoing surveillance strategies of paranoid governments (the real reality tv) or all these crude comedies reaching from trigger happy tv to the tom green show, ie. some statements about (tele)visionary social and political issues.
the least socio-political denominator are projects like the "melrose place" episodes designed by gala committee or the experiments in mass suggestion in the swedish tv series "skärgårdsdoktorn" (did not find anything on the net about it. however, the clue behind this project obviously was a sentence like "moral should be tax-deductible" that was intended to become a widespread public opinion using the series and one of its popular characters as amplifier). but hey, that's already such old stuff. don't we have something newer?
camworld (cam)rants on the "i have a big dick awards": "i don't care one bit for this awards contest. my site has been around for a long time now, and i have never once asked for it to be nominated for any kind of award. nor have i ever intentionally submitted it for any awards consideration".
remember "schöne installateure"? the guys from bielefeld who did some weblog research assisted by tibor bogun early this year? they have published their results. and i agree with mr schockwellenreiter: i like it, too.
in memoriam christian loidl.
i gave the book "kleinstkompetenzen" (containing an audio cd with loidl reciting his poems accompanied by the blind accordeon player otto lechner) to my father last year. it's a very enigmatic sound experience.
christian loidl also translated peter lamborn wilson's book "scandal: essays in islamic heresy" into german.
loidl died yesterday in vienna at the age of 44.
on saturday 22 december 2001 20h, the best austrian publishing house selene invites to commemoration of christian loidl and his work at café kafka, capistrangasse 8, vienna.
"himmel arsch und dann – rasch nichts
herr jesu christ: laß das inferno dem prater
am himmel ist platz für keinen" – christian loidl, joseph kühn: "schwarzer rotz. gedichte & messerschnitte für h. c. artmann".
the burma campaign: boycott triumph.
hey, great: the latvian authorities have dropped charges of hooliganism against alina lebedeva! that means no two years of prison for her anymore: "an official of the prosecutor's office said that the teenager was found to be a diligent student and had no previous criminal record. there is still a possibility that she will be required to do community work or face other correctional measures, including being sent to a special reform school."