Europa Belongs to the Next Planet Sunward

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But everything coming from the Cassini-Huygens mission is just too spectacular to ignore, even if our name is not a fistful of Titans.

The mission’s well-organized home page offers many splendors, including:

Cassini’s current position, from several different vantage points
Latest videos
Raw photos.

If the news, the economy, or the persistence of April-like weather into the middle of July have got you down, spend a few minutes reveling in this human achievement revealing the wonders of our universe.

The Broader the Band

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Hi everyone. I’m back from holidays, work and stuff like that. Well, now we know what all that amazing broadband in South Korea is being used for. What is rather less well known is that whilst South Koreans are apparently happily downloading pirated movies they are quietly enduring a government inspired block on a big part of blogland. So the PRC isn’t by a long way the only state which practices blocking!! Rebecca McKinnon reports that her Nkzone site, which ironically is to raise peoples awareness about the conditions of life in North Korea, is in fact subject to blocking in the South. Even the popular South Korea expat blog The Marmots Hole seems to have to be constantly on the move to avoid the block.

Item

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Alright, here’s your joke for Sunday… if you can receive German ZDF television, you can enjoy your breakfast tomorrow making fun of me – Tobias – cycling on an ergometer for half an hour as a “surprise candidate from the audience”. Don’t ask me how I got into participating in a “Tour de Fernsehgarten” – a strangely popular “family oriented” (meaning entertainment without any real focus) tv programme I have never even watched in my enitre life – when I have to be on the set at eight on a Sunday and then proto-cycle while being forced to listen to “Overground” playbacks… (if you have to, ask my sister when she starts her blog eventually.) At least I did not have to rehearse 😉

Blogs?

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Our blogroll is meant to be a sort of mini-directory of good european blogs. I’m always looking for blogs to add, so I thought I’d ask for sugggestions. I?m especially interested in blogs with an European perspective and ones covering the politics of a European country or region, but any good blogs are of interest, even non-europeans.

Trying Times

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Missed most of the first half of Milosevic’s trial?

Since the case began in February 2002, a tangle of bureaucratic setbacks has mired the trial in costly delays. Milosevic is accused of 66 counts of human rights abuses, from violations of the “customs of war” to genocide. After 298 witnesses, 30,000 pages of documents and millions of dollars, the case will reach its halfway point this week ? a level of inefficiency that has strained the patience of even the trial’s most ardent defenders.

So writes Mary Bridges in the Los Angeles Times (free registration may be required). And it may be about to get worse.

When the trial resumes July 5, its credibility will face even greater strains. Milosevic has announced his intent to call a staggering 1,631 witnesses, including U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and former President Clinton, in his defense.

To finish in the 150 days he has been allotted, Milosevic would need to question 10 witnesses a day, a pace that would turn the courtroom into a revolving door of diplomats, dignitaries and press.

The trial of Saddam Hussein is likely to cause just as many headaches.

Of course art was there long ago. In 1992, Julian Barnes wrote about the trial of the former Communist dictator of a fictional country that bears a strong resemblance to Bulgaria. The book, The Porcupine, covers the whole territory of trying former heads of state. Read the novel, skip the newspaper reports.

49 Great Ones and a Stinker

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Not too long ago, I noted that the Sueddeutsche Zeitung was publishing a set of 50 great novels of the twentieth century. I got into the game a little bit late, but since then I have been more-or-less keeping up with their pace of one a week, largely by the not terribly edifying expedient of sticking to the shorter ones. It’s been a delight.

Despite their no doubt monumental efforts, the Sueddeutsche editors let a stinker through. Lucky number 13 on the list, Die Angst des Tormanns beim Elfmeter (The Keeper’s Fear of the Penalty). The novel purports to show a man’s disintegration, before and after he commits a senseless crime. Trouble is, the crime really is senseless, making it beyond the author’s capability of approaching with his art. The book turns on the sentence, “Suddenly he strangled her.” Snoopy could write as well.

As the jacket copy says, the narrator wanders aimlessly through Vienna and everything irritates him. Most everything about the book irritates the reader as the story wanders aimlessly through the pages. Most irritating were the typographic tricks toward the end that were supposed to simulate the narrator’s almost completed disintegration. Maybe this sort of thing was daring or something similar when the book was published in 1970, but now it just looks silly.

There are 49 other books in the series, no need to bother with this one.

All over

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Well, Greece are the European Champions for the first time. The side that had never won a match in a major tournament before this year beat Portugal 1-0 in Lisbon to take the title. Expect wild party in Athens for the next few days.

Commiserations to Portugal – if it’s any consolation to Portuguese fans, you hosted a fantastic tournament that will be remembered for a long time.

Update: Reuters have a report on the start of the celebrations in Athens and elsewhere around the world.