Toytown Germany

Toytown is an interesting website for people who like to walk the line between German and English. It is primarily in English, and the quality of the English is very high, so it is useful for native speakers of German who are learning English. Austria is a bit too small for such a site I guess.

But in Germany there is apparently a rather large community of close to 10,000 people from English-speaking countries who are living/working there and have formed a community. The forum appears to be lively and I have found several interesting things to read there, many cross-cultural comparisons, or discussions of "untranslatables", for example.

They have links to German publications that also publish an English version such as der Spiegel, die Welt, and one that is new to me called The Local. You could find the original German text and start a parallel text collection...

Here's the link again
http://www.toytowngermany.com/

Election Maps

A guy named Mark Newman (no relation that I know of) has made some pretty cool maps showing the results of the most recent election.

He also explains that a cartogram is a map in which the sizes of states are rescaled according to their population.

As you know red plus blue makes purple.

This is the map that makes the most sense to me

It don't matter to me...

Half of all all Austrians polled recently by Gallup said that who is elected U.S. president in November makes no difference to their country. But almost all the people I have spoken with seem to favor Barack Obama. Why should they care who wins???

Satire -- American style

I'm probably not the only one who finds this blog (maybe the French word "blague" is a better name for it!) very funny...

The sad thing that I'm afraid it's actually going to cause more folks to vote for the little lady than to steer clear of her and her "policies". What the heck is gonna happen if McCain gets into the White House and then falls down the stairs or chokes on a pretzel?! Then this lady would become the leader of the free world?!

God help us all!!

Of course I also had to check out what the cartoonists are doing with this theme over at cagle.com

Some good ones here!
http://www.cagle.com/news/McCainPalin/main.asp

Obama's speech at the DNC

The great thing about watching and listening to this man speak is that you can learn from someone who has absolutely mastered the English language. The NY Times has synchronized the video and the transcript and added a kind of table of contents so you can jump to whatever sections sound interesting.

Truly amazing to watch (and read along).

And then McCain picked Sarah Palin to be his veep. Was this a wise move?! Time will tell...

Meanwhile, read this article in the same paper McCain's Baked Alaska to see how one American woman feels about McCain's choice.

Remember that you just have to double-click on any difficult words in the article to get a definition in English.

Who would YOU for if you were allowed to vote in this election on November 4th?

Obama’s Speech on Race

This link will take you to an interactive video and transcript of Senator Barack Obama’s speech in Philadelphia on March 18, 2008.

It is a long speech (37 minutes) but you can jump to the various sections of it and read along with the transcript as Obama speaks. Listen and read for a few minutes and you will see what a fantastic speaker this man is.

The man is an amazing speaker. He appears to be delivering this speech without ever glancing down at a sheet of paper. And as far as I can tell he is not reading from a teleprompter either.

I like what he has to say about race in America. It is a complex problem and he reminds us that it is not one that will simply go away.

Hillary answers a few questions

In the interest of fairness, I thought it would be interesting to post this video about Hillary Clinton running for President of the US of A. It is an exciting idea really to think of a woman calling the shots in the White House. She has a lot of experience, that's for sure, and even as First Lady, the better half of Billary some say, she wanted to do a lot more than just bake cookies. Too bad her health care plan failed.

In this video Senator Clinton seems like a person who really truly wants to serve her country for the right reasons. And Chelsea is in it too.

Yes We Can

Barack Obama’s Yes We Can Music Video

The man seems to be a good speaker and a lot of people are ready for a change, especially Americans who are not happy with the Administration in power since 2001.

But we have to wait a few more months to find out whether the American voters say

Yes he can lead the country.

or Yes she can...

or "Mac" can.

Spiked!

He spiked his hair, she spiked the ball, and he spiked the punch.
Spiked has many meanings.



I ran across this British site while trying to find out more about gun control and I liked the refreshing way European and American writers were writing about the US, including Barack Obama, immigrants
and
"a day without immigrants"

and a long article titled "Why people hate fat Americans"

Hope you learn something about American culture!

Who is Ron Paul?

...and what are his chances of becoming President in 2008?


Freeme.tv is a landmark site that serves as an alternative for the mainstream media’s not-so-subtle programming of the masses to support those “frontrunner” candidates. Dr. Paul’s campaign begins here, on the internet, the true grassroots of the brand new millennia, and it is here he is already making waves. He is currently googled and youtubed more consistently than almost any subject on the internet, political or otherwise, and, through it all his message of smaller, more constitutional government has aroused the interest of the young and old. By spreading the word about FreeMe.TV add the new, embeddable version of the player, you will be playing an important part of keeping this modern-day grassroots campaign going strong.

For more about Ron Paul click here

http://www.ronpaulnation.com/

The Complete Bushisms

He may be a lousy President and ridiculed by millions, sorry, billions of people worldwide, but he is, and will ever be, the master of the Bushism, his amusing attempts to speak his own mother tongue. Enjoy!

Updated frequently.