History - Stormgrass

Book of the month: "Voltaire Almighty"

In which I praise Roger Pearson's most readable Voltaire biography.

Through a "River of Ink"

"River of Ink", the debut novel of Brit Paul M.M. Cooper, is a marvel. I'd not heard of the man until he did his Reddit AMA a

History

von Korncrake

And here’s something for you, when all you want to do is kill time while reading elaborate satire. Korncrake – The Website of Herr Professor Dokto Boethius P. von Korncrake

History

Uncle

So here I am, joining the ranks of millions and millions of bloggers posting cute baby photos. Only that this time it might well be the best picture ever posted. Say hello to the kid who’s turned me into an uncle and designated

History

Tuition or bust

As a follow up to yesterday’s post, and answering the comment by “eigenschaft”, I will now write a bit about the watered down compromise I mentioned yesterday: the one about the tuition fees. Tuition fees were introduced by the Schüssel government in 2001,

austria

An unholy marriage

People would think that people learn from mistakes. People are mistaken. About an hour ago, the Socialist Party’s head Gusenbauer announced the finalization of coalition talks with the People’s Party. Even though the SPÖ had the majority after last year’s elections,

austria

BREAKING NEWS - sort of

Well, here’s to me, and all the other people whose final votes brought the Greens to third place. Read all about it here (if you know German…if you don’t, look at the pictures, they tell the story too). There are still

History

BREAKING NEWS - Limbo reviewed

Rejoice, Christians, for the concept of the infant limbo is expected to be renounced by the Vatican, according to a reputable source from the small Island. In case you’re not familiar with the limbus infantium, as it was lovingly coined by late medieval

austria

In which I return to my newfound love of coming up with descriptive titles, totally breaking the layout of my site, and write about the outcome of yes

So, here we are. The hegemony of the People’s Party is finally over. Yesterday more people voted for the social democrats than for Chancellor Schüssel and his unrelenting neo-liberal stooges. Which is a good thing. Unfortunately, there is no such thing as a

elections

Time to vote

It’s time to vote again, and the girlfriend and I will be on our way shortly. We held an election party four years ago, with red and green pasta, but unfortunately, the elections didn’t reflect our culinary choices. This year we don’

austria

Dubya (final)

So Dubya’s gone, and I won’t even pretend I was any good at covering it. The relevant things about the visit have been said by others who are more articulate than me. I’ll resort to showing you a picture (taken from

History

Carinthia, medieval

I’m back from the excursion, and I brought a shitload of pictures. Click here to see the batch on my site’s own gallery, or click here to admire them from within Flickr (if you’re planning on leaving witty comments!). I don’

academia

Wibald's curse

I’ve been trying for the last half hour to print out the article on Wibald of Stablo/Corvey from the online version of the International Encyclopaedia for the Middle Ages. Somehow Firefox suddenly goes bonkers when using the Encyclopedia. I’ve printed out

art

Porno Viennese

Well, Austria’s made international headlines again. In the course of a government sponsored art project which lasted all year, posters were put up all over Vienna depicting the lower torso of a woman, wearing nothing but panties displaying the logo of the EU.

austria

Irving arrested

David Irving, self-proclaimed historian and Holocaust denier was arrested on the 11th of September November (of course) here in Austria. Read all about it here. Well, it’s great they got him. Especially because he was on his way to talk to members of

austria

On the intricacies of high finance

Tomorrow is Austria’s national holiday. In case you don’t know how that came about, it’s the day when we’re supposed to commemorate the signing of a treaty including the law of permanent neutrality (and a few other things). Since the

History

R.I.P. Critter

Dear old critter, dignified head of my parent’s cat household, found his early demise yesterday. He’s been a good sport through all of the twelve years of his

History

How to become an Austrian

Although many people here in Austria beg to differ, it’s actually quite a nice country to live in. Especially if you’re a fugitive, or emigrated to Austria in search of better living conditions. The downside is, that our government is not only

History

The big 25

Well, today marks my completion of a quarter of a century on this very soil called earth. Not that I had to do much to complete it. It’s more of a completion by default, if you don’t forget to eat (haha), breath

History

Everything's going to be just the way it used to be

A new pope has been elected, and I would really like to write something witty about the fact that the Catholic Church still thinks using condoms will send you straight to hell, but I think it’s much more entertaining to read about AIDS

History

New far-right party in Austria

Well, now it’s official. Freedom party, notorious for being the most obnoxious party in the whole of the political landscape of Austria, has now been split into another movement, the BZÖ, which spelled out may be translated into something like “Coalition for the

History

Of Elvis and chemistry sets

Upon listening to a mashup which included an Elvis Presley song called “Crying in the Chapel”, I suddenly was reminded of little ampules filled with powders and a little instrument with which to extract tiny little bits of these powders in order to mix

History

Macaronic Poetry

In the course of my research for a paper I am writing, I stumbled upon this great definition of a kind of poetry dating back to the medieval and early modern period of English: This poetic art is called “macaronic” from macarones, which are

History

Austrian politics - a sad story

Well, another minister has decided to simply leave office in favour of the much more attractive “private economy” as they call it. Federal Minister of the Interior, Ernst Strasser, stepped back from office, and now our Federal Minister of Defence, Günther Platter, has been

History

Ukraine election chaos - part 2

Since The Insider has made it into the mainstream Internet media already, I’ll quickly post his update on the situation now: Candidate of the opposition, Juschtschenko, has called for a national strike, which has led the Austrian embassy to advise people to get