What's in a Word? Handy

Speaking of great German technology words, I also love Handy, for mobile phone. In Canada, we use the silly term cell phone, which describes things from the point of view of the communications provider, who owns the cell tower, rather than the user, who wants mobility. We're at least starting to use the term mobile phone now, but wouldn't Handy be even nicer? Such a lovely double meaning in English, something convenient and something you carry in your hand.

Here's a web page to help you choose your mobile device - the Handy Finder. Note the rest of the page is in German. Is there a rule that when you use one word of Denglisch (Deutsche Englisch) you can only modify it with another word of Denglisch or English?

When I was looking to make sure I had the correct information about Handy, I found this delightful collection of English words used in German. Note that these pseudo English words don't always mean exactly what they mean in English, as with Handy.

I seem to have suddenly had a run on commentaries on Words:
Genocide
Digitalization
Digital Slime

A Little Bit of Germany in Africa

 If you walked into this breakfast room at your hotel, where would you guess you were?  Germany or maybe Austria, right?  Wrong.  Windhoek, capital of Namibia, which was a colony of Germany until after WW II.  

The whole town has quite a German flavour, mixed with African.  In the middle of Klein Windhoek, you can stand on the corner of Koch Strasse and Nelson Mandela Avenue.  The Germans really didn't treat the Namibians well during colonial times, executing one of the earliest and most vicious genocides of the Herero tribe.  Yet German street names remain.  Very surprising to someone who saw familiar English street names in Montreal get overwritten by French!

How Should Wealth Should be Distributed (Part Three}

Here's my last post on the inequality of wealth distribution (previous posts here and here).  Maybe it should have been my first post, since it provides a rationale why you should care about inequality of wealth distribution.  Some would say you should care on moral grounds.  Others argue that inequality is also detrimental on economic grounds.  In other words, no matter which side of the political divide you inhabit, this is something you should care about.

Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz's recent book The Price of Inequality examines these reasons.  He argues that the current economic malaise and poor prospects of the middle and lower classes in the US are not a result of economic forces beyond America's control, but of the exercise of political power by moneyed interests over legislative and regulatory processes**:

"While there may be underlying economic forces at play, politics have shaped the market, and shaped it in ways that advantage the top at the expense of the rest".  

In his New York Times opinion piece entitled Inequality is Holding Back the Recovery, Stiglitz argues persuasively that economic inequality is squelching recovery because it means that tax receipts are down, economic volatility is up, and the middle class is too weak to support consumer spending and cannot invest in the future (education or businesses).

Although the US sits 91st of 153 countries on its wealth distribution (as described in this post), it feels as if Stiglitz is pushing a rock uphill in raising the issue of inequality, when you look at the general political debate in the US.


Ironically, Germany which sits 13th on the list (with wealth inequality declining) has seen inequality emerge as an election issue, as described in this Economist article***.  Germany had a huge increase in inequality with the integration of East Germany, but the gap between East and West Germany is shrinking.

Often, wealth inequality in the US is justified on the basis that the people at the top earned their money through hard work in a land of equal opportunity.  Indeed, t|he US cherishes its image as a utopia of meritocracy: anybody who works hard can make it.  The facts show otherwise: not only is there greater inequality in the US than in most developed nations, but this inequality is persistent.  Children in other rich countries like Canada, Germany, France and Sweden have a better chance of doing better than their parents than American children*.  A New York Times article reported that at least five large studies showed the US to have less mobility than comparable nations: Canada, Norway, Finland and Denmark all showed greater mobility.  A Globe and Mail headline boasted "In Canada, unlike the US, the American dream lives on".




*  I've taken that fact from Stiglitz' column
** phrasing directly taken from NYT book review of this book
*** According to The Economist, Germany sits at 7th, rather than 13th position as my data claimed.  That data showed German data from 2000, so it makes considerable sense that Germany has risen since then.  I chose to characterize Germany at 13th to be consistent with previous post.

The Dark Room

The Dark Room is a novel by Rachel Seifert about Nazi Germany.  Well, it's really three separate short stories or novellas, linked by their common theme.

The first story is about Helmut.  Ineligible for the army because of a birth defect, Helmut pursues his passion for photography in Berlin.  He is meticulous in recording the changing city through photography and his hobby for counting trains and passengers at the main train station.  He captures and documents the dramatic changes without ever having their import seep into his consciousness.  A strange and unsympathetic character indeed.

In the second story, we meet Lore, thrust into caring for her four siblings after her mother is arrested for Nazi activities by the occupying forces after the war.  Her mother instructs her to make her way from Bavaria in southern Germany to Hamburg way in the north.  It's a long walk!

The last story is about Micha, a professor in modern Germany, who learns his beloved grandfather was in the SS-Waffen and suspects he was guilty of atrocities during the war.  His search for the truth about his grandfather troubles him, and strains his relationship with his family and his girlfriend.

The stories provide three very different viewpoints on Germany and the war.  I found the first one somewhat antiseptic and the last one a bit overwrought.  However, I did enjoy the book and recommend it.