German Beer Worldwide

Hilarious historic ad for German beer traveling around the world (via Ley): Germany - Rio de Janeiro - New York City - Paris

The Streets of Berlin Speak Up

"Berlin spricht... für sich". Extremely well-done audio-visual rap remix streetart narrative Berlin tribute by East Cross Projects who already produced a similar videos over the past months and years.

Meta-mixtape: A Mix of Mixes on the Net

Here's a meta-mixtape: a compilation of my recommended music mixes on the internet:

• unfortunately only infrequently but guaranteed quality: ichi.one's Homecookin' mixes (NB: just released great mix #65 'Insomnia')
• a huge selection of diverse mixes with daily updates and good search options: samurai.fm
• hopefully with a higher release frequency during winter: Dirk Rumpff's Berlin-based Offtrack radio show.
• weekly classic now on BBC Radio 6 Music: Gilles Peterson - T.S.F.K.A.W.W. ("the show formerly known as Worldwide") show
• the traditional Soulsearching show by Michael Ruetten out of Frankfurt which appears about monthly and has been going on for years, almost decades.
• for an almost weekly dose of house and elecronica: compost black label sessions
• for less regularly released mixes by individuals and to round off the meta-mixtape: Dom Duchamp's great Adtrax series, covering a wide range of music styles, and Jazzanova's Alex Barck putting some of his diverse sets on Soundcloud.

Germany for Brazilians and Brazil for Germans

Looking at the great German-Brazilian exchange of comic artists which is beautifully documented on the Osmose blog of the organizing Goethe-Institut reveals that Germany through the eyes of a Brazilian comic artist means Bikes and Brazil in the perception of a German comic artist means Fruits.

All three Brazilian artists in Germany, Amaral in Hamburg, Paula Mastroberti in Berlin and João Montanaro in Munich chose Germans on bikes as a Leitmotif (for example, here, here and here) . Conversely, all three German artists in Brazil, Aisha Franz in Salvador, Birgit Weyhe in São Paulo and Mawil in Porto Alegre repeatedly get inspired by the fresh fruits of Brazil (for example here, here and here).

Kandel's Principles of Neural Science Fifth Edition

Boris just made me realize that - finally, finally, finally - Eric Kandel's bible of the neurosciences, the fifth edition of "Principles of Neural Science" will be published, soon.

After 8 years of the publication date counter and several grumpy posts I can put my mind and brain and soul at ease and "relax, eat, drink, be merry." (Lucas 12:19)

Mawil Goes Brazil

Wonderful comic artist Mawil recently left Berlin and is currently traveling Brazil. After some time in the north-east he seems to have a month-long residency at the Goethe Institut in Porto Alegre at the moment before attending for example the comic fair Gibicon in Curitiba at the end of the month.

His brilliant impressions and beautiful sketches can be found at http://blog.goethe.de/osmose/.

--- Update 13.10.12: The Osmose Blog is bigger than I thought and it includes sketches from 3 Brazilian comic artists in Germany and 3 German ones in Brazil. Hence, Mawil might not have visited Salvador (yet) and the drawing I uploaded was by Aisha Franz.

German Zweideutigkeit of "Macht"

A linguistic gem of the German language is that the word "MACHT" not only means "power" but is also the plural imperative of "machen" (translated as "to do, to make, to create")...

(Picture from a Poetry Jam in Hannover)