“I am with Israel

because a people so long denied bread and freedom,

crushed under the wheels of pharaohs, emperors, czars and Führers,

has done more than any other people to free the world from itself.

What single people in history have contributed more to faith, science, philosophy and the arts?

And done so against the greatest odds, with a sword at their throats…

I am with Israel

because my people, so long in the desert,

have not had the courage to acknowledge the great teachers among them,

but instead have turned on them,

blamed them for all evil and shed their blood…

What other people could crawl away from the wreckage of the Holocaust

and, instead of seeking revenge, build the miracle called Israel?

Why, as Wufa Sultan has asked, have there been no Jewish homicide bombers?

Perhaps it is because despite all the spit,...

For centuries, the rich and the powerful documented their existence and their status through painted portraits. A marker of wealth and a bid for immortality, portraits offer intriguing hints about the daily life of their subjects—professions, ambitions, attitudes, and, most importantly, social standing. Such portraits, as German art historian Hans Belting has argued, can be understood as “painted anthropology,” with much to teach us, both intentionally and unintentionally, about the culture in which they were created.

Self-portraits can be especially instructive. By showing the artist both as he sees his true self and as he wishes to be seen, self-portraits can at once expose and obscure, clarify and distort. They offer opportunities for both self-expression and self-seeking. They can display egotism and modesty,...

“We could be looking at the possibility of increasing (hunting) quotas, We are seeing high densities of bears in great shape,” sagt der Biologe Dr. Mitch Taylor,  Eisbären-Experte bei der Umweltbehörde der kanadischen Ureinwohner-Region Nunavut.

Drought-stricken regions of the Amazon forest grew particularly vigorously during the 2005 drought, according to new research.

The counterintuitive finding contradicts a prominent global climate model that predicts the Amazon forest would begin to “brown down” after just a month of drought and eventually collapse as the drought progressed.

“Instead of ‘hunkering down’ during a drought as you might expect, the forest responded positively to drought, at least in the short term,” said study author Scott R. Saleska of The University of Arizona. “It’s a very interesting and surprising response.”

UA co-author Kamel Didan added, “The forest showed signs of being more productive. That’s the big news.”

The 2005 drought reached its peak at the start of the Amazon’s annual dry season, from July through September. Although the double...

Was passiert, wenn sich ein Asteroid-Einschlag, wie er vor 65 Millionen Jahren zum Ende der Dinosaurier führte, heute noch einmal wiederholt? Im zweiteiligen Doku-Drama „Armageddon – Der Einschlag” werden ab Dienstag die Folgen eines Asteroid-Einschlags skizziert.
http://www.welt.de/wissenschaft/article1202187/Wenn_der_Asteroid_wieder_einschlaegt.html

Ich kann kaum noch zählen, wieviele Interviews ich in den vergangenen 10 Jahren zum Thema Killer-Asteroiden gegeben habe. Das ZDF zeigt diese Woche ein neues Doku-Drama zum gleichen Thema mit dem nicht gerade einfallsreichen Titel “Armageddon”. Leider scheinen die Filmemacher dabei übersehen zu haben, daß die Wahrscheinlichkeit eines solchen Szenarios, d.h. der Einschlag eines 10-km großen Asteroiden, so gut wie ausgeschlossen ist. Schliesslich hat das Spaceguard Survey in den...

The publishing of the cartoons was a wake-up call to many of Denmark’s neighbors—particularly the Swedes who are inclined to ignore such problems—that they have to pay attention to radical Islam. They cannot go on blindly with their multicultural hopes. Instead, they must come to terms that there are radical extremists in their midst who need to be dealt with. This also applies to Norway and to a lesser extent to other non-Scandinavian countries.
http://www.meforum.org/article/1758

Mahmoud comes to New York:
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/cartoons.aspx

Antibuerokratieteam.net, das Institut für Unternehmerische Freiheit und die Friedrich-Naumann-Stiftung laden ein:

Die liberale Blogosphäre - neue Netzwerke in der virtuellen Bürgergesellschaft
26.10.2007 bis 28.10.2007
Theodor-Heuss-Akademie, Gummersbach

Das Internet, als Breitenmedium nicht mehr wegzudenken, wandelt sich zum “Web 2.0?. Gehen mit Weblogs, Wikis und neuen Phänomenen wie “Social Networks” die Visionen aus der Frühzeit des Internets nun tatsächlich in Erfüllung? Entsteht eine E-Demokratie in der virtuellen Bürgergesellschaft? Bereits 2004/2005 wurden Weblogs von den Parteien für politische Kampagnen genutzt; zur selben Zeit bildete sich auch eine parteipolitisch ungebundene „liberale Blogosphäre“ heraus.

Das Seminar beschäftigt sich mit den medientheoretischen Hintergründen und Strukturen der...