Warum heißt das Mobiltelefon in Deutschland „Handy“? In einem entsprechenden Artikel des SpOn erscheint die sog. „schwäbische Theorie“ am einleuchtendsten:

„Handy“ kommt … von der Frage: „Hen die koi Schnur?“

Ryan Coleman reports from Localization World Berlin:

Love the fact that all of the presenters are using the term “vendors” when referring to the people doing their translation – it’s what we’ve always suspected but nice to have some confirmation.

Yep. The “commodity syndrome.”

Auf sowas habe ich schon lange gewartet.

Hier kaufen.

I got this call at 8:15 in the morning (do they know that MO is on Central Time?) from the office of Congressman Tom Cole. The woman told me my name had come up in Washington (which made me want to duck and cover) and that the congressman wanted me to be on his Business Advisory Council.

Ha! The smell of scam was overpowering. Too bad that political parties are exempt from the Do-Not-Call regulations. Tom Cole’s people seem to be busy callers as deal architect and Okiedoke can attest.

Addition: A bit more background – another blog post.

Forty years ago today I was glued to my TV, a big old Loewe Opta that took forever to warm up, to see Our World, a (perhaps first?) world-wide television show, where the Beatles performed All You Need Is Love. It was a truely magic, black-and-white moment. Even Mick Jagger could be spotted among the studio crowd singing along! Watch the (rather grainy) video.

The Beatles performance on television was not the only musical highlight of that month. On June 1, 1967, the long expected Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band had been released. I went to my room, unpacked the LP, put it on the turntable, and was blown away. The sound of Sgt. Pepper was so unexpected, so different, so exciting. Still, while it was without doubt the most innovative album and a complex production, it is not (and never was) my favorite Beatles album. That spot has been held, since 1965, by Rubber Soul.

I was taken by surprise by this Slashdot post. Google is threatening to unplug its mail service in Germany, the alleged reason being a new German law aimed at Internet surveillance? With all the strange stuff going on over here, it’s hard to point a finger at the screwed-up Internet legislation and court decisions in Germany. But I was reminded of the conclusion in one of my 2003 posts – even though I got there from a different starting point.

…“bilingual” is a notoriously slippery concept, with claims often inversely proportional to actual fluency

Chris Durban in her Onionskin installment Translation – Literally a Matter of Life and Death? See my comments on availability in this July 2005 post.

Father’s Day weekend in Missouri. Don’t forget your floatation device.

Just when I was resigned to wait it out, here comes, of all the Federal Appellate Courts, the notoriously conservative 4th Circuit in Richmond, VA and breathes some live back into Habeas Corpus. Granted, it was a 2–1 decision and the Federal Government will appeal to the full court, but there finally is hope!

News coverage was surprisingly thin, given how important an issue this is – and not only to legal aliens. Judge Diana Gribbon Motz wrote the majority opinion, and it is well worth reading. Two important points she made:

For in the United States, the military cannot seize and imprison civilians – let alone imprison them indefinitely.

But in this nation, military control cannot subsume the constitutional rights of civilians.

And just in case you’ve forgotten that Habeas is so important that it is actually written into the Constitution, see Jonathan Hafetz’s Ten Things You Should Know About Habeas Corpus.

It was 30 years ago today, in the middle of the rainy season, that we trekked over to the 世田谷区役所 with Winston & Melanie in tow to get married. All we had to do was to fill out a form to “register our marriage.” Since we were two non-Japanese tying the knot in Nippon, we needed papers from our respective embassies stating that there was “no impediment;” the Germans called theirs “Ehefähigkeitszeugnis” – isn’t German a poetic language? In any case, getting married turned out to be very low key, just what we wanted.

How that rainy day in 昭和 52 lead to this sunny day in Missouri is a long story, and one I wouldn’t want to have missed. I am looking forward to the next chapter.