The other day (Oct 17) I had the privilege to host a breakfeast round table with Nobel laureates Elizabeth Blackburn and Thomas A. Steitz organized in the context of the Nobel Laureate Seminar 2012 at the University of Vienna. The ease with which especially Blackburn engaged with the journalists and the students was simply amazing. Weiterlesen
Archiv der Kategorie: English
12|09|23: Travelling Dylan Thomas
In August 2012 I travelled the south of Wales visiting locations related to Dylan Thomas. Eventually the journey will serve as material for an article on Thomas and the Welsh countryside. The image gallery gives a first impression. Weiterlesen
12|09|02: The Fry Chronicles
What is there to say about a book that provides gems like this one: „Well, although it is true that one feels fantastic when one has finished a writing task, it is mostly horrible while one is doing it. You will see therefore that writing, ghastly at the time but great afterwards, is exactly the opposite of sex.“ Well, maybe not „exactly“ but I do concede that there is a nexus.
„The Fry Chronicles“ by Stephen Fry, Penguin Books, 2011
12|08|02: Summer reading list
A few books I have read in the past months which I wholeheartedly recommend even if I do not manage to review them properly. Weiterlesen
12|07|25: Summer Songs 2012
Summer Songs 2012: „It’s a new dawn. It’s a new day“ (Feeling good | Nina Simone). Enjoy the samples. Weiterlesen
12|06|05: Eric Kandel
On June 5 I presented the Science Industry Talk at IST Austria. Nobel laureate Eric Kandel was the guest of honour: an eminent scholar who has produced tremendous insights on the way our brain changes when we think and learn – and a man with a great and heart-lifting sense of humour.
12|03|27: The Nicobar Islands (2005)
In September 2005 author Simron Jit Singh and I published the book „The Nicobars Islands. Cultural Choices in the Aftermath of the Tsunami“ (Czernin Verlag). Its subject is the archipelago in the Indian Ocean, which was devastated by the tsunami in December 2004. Singh describes the culture of this very isolated people – and the confrontation with today’s world that flooded the islands like a second tsunami in the form of disaster relief activities and bureaucracy. (How menial the indigenous population is treated in these confrontations is the subject of a report in the Observer from early 2012 on the neighbouring Andaman islands.)
12|03|24: FM4 Reality Check
Chris Cummins produced a very informative FM4 Reality Check Special on IST Austria including interviews with professors, postdocs and me that went on air on March 24, 2012. Have a listen (except for the music that has been edited out for copyright reasons).
12|02|18: Schönbrunn – Myth and Truth
It is ten years ago that I published the book “Big Animals in Schönbrunn” (“Große Tiere in Schönbrunn”) which Eva Menasse in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung then kindly described as “iconographic reference work“. Last year the Viennese publisher Christian Brandstätter asked me whether I would like to return to this playground for his series “Myth and Truth”. This book is being released these days, pleasantly enough in German (see first chapter auf Deutsch) and English (translated by Martin Kelsey), superbly tended and nursed by Elisabeth Hölzl and Barbara Sternthal. Küß die Händ’. Find below the first chapter.
Weiterlesen
11|12|03: Other Christmas Carols
My „Other Christmas Carols“ collection this year includes these fine titles. Enjoy some samples.