anke

Germany gets too much solar power
Actually, solar power makes up only a small fraction of energy produced/comsumed in Germany. The problem is that you get a lot of it when the sun shines, and none when it doesn’t, and the current power grid won’t be able to deal with that if solar energy keeps growing this quickly.

Cannabis on police badges
Looking at more current German sources, it seems like someone decided to give special badges to experts for recognising drug influence in traffic. Their colleagues that handled dogs or explosives had own badges already. Seems like no-one has taken credit for starting the whole thing yet. The ministry of the interior of Lower Saxony, which has authority over the police organisation in question, was surprised and not amused.

Originally posted at  ankewehner.de. You can comment here or there.

… and the world stops to look. Or something.

The waves this is making are pretty amazing. I probably shouldn’t be as amused as I am.

My favourite wrinkle: The UK sends an aircraft carrier to France to bring tourists home? Now that’d be a cool surprise to end your holidays with.

Originally posted at ankewehner.de. You can comment here or there.

On the radio news there was something about the emergency help the USA have planned against the financial crisis. The US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson supposedly said he’d “put pressure” on his international counterparts to take similar measures as the USA, and he’d “go about it aggressively”.
Now, that is translated to English from German, which was was translated and shortened from English, so, has anyone in the US heard what he actually said? Or what I have to feed into google news to find American articles that do not talk only about the USA, or where else I could find the untranslated statements.

Completely unrelated, in the last week two 250kg WWII bombs exploded.

One did so spontaneously, leaving a crater 6 metres deep and 14 metres across in a field of a plant nursery in Vienna (Austria).

Another explosion was triggered by construction work in Hattingen in the Ruhr area (Germany). The cab of the hydraulic shovel was solid enough and there was enough luck involved that the worker got away with nothing worse than some cuts from splintered glass. 16 other people suffered blast trauma, and buildings and machinery up to 300 metres from the bomb were damaged. Estimates of damages are a “high six-figure number”. Parts of the bomb flew as far as 1,5 km.

I also looked for “Blindgänger” in google news, and for the last week found articles about one 250kg bomb disarmed in Villingen-Schwenningen – with photos – one the same size in Ingelheim – with photos – one dud in Lake Starnberg being destroyed in a controlled blast producing a tens of metres high fountain, a 125kg bomb disarmed near Mainz, and attempts to precisely locate a bomb that is getting in the way of extending a bridge near Bielefeld.

Just a bit of a habit spreading the word; I think stuff like that is part of the reason why most Europeans are not as keen on bombing countries as the last American government.

Originally posted at ankewehner.de. You can comment here or there.

At the Olympic Games and other sports events, an athlete taking “medicines” to enhance performance is a scandal.

In Pokémon (third generation) it’s normal and expected that before a contest you dope the contestants with pokéblocks, and you have “medicines” that will temporarily raise performance during a fight, or even permanently.

I wonder if stuff like that confuses children when it comes to doping. XD

Originally posted at ankewehner.de. You can comment here or there.

[...] Josef Schlarmann, Vorsitzender der Mittelstandsvereinigung der Union, [kritisiert], dass “die Bundesregierung mit ihren Mindestlohn-Plänen den Rückfall in Planwirtschaft und Dirigismus beschlossen hat”. (Handelsblatt)

Germany has no laws about a universal minimum wage. Since that means a lot of people work full time and still don’t get enough to live, there’s a discussion about introducing them. Josef Schlarmann, chairman of the association for small and medium sized businesses of the CDU claims this is a step back to “planned economy and statism”.

Considering that most countries in the EU, as well as the USA, and I don’t know how many other countries, have laws dictating minimum wages, I really wonder where he gets those ideas.

Originally posted at ankewehner.de. You can comment here or there.