It's this week's top stories from our partner site, ScienceBlogs.de:
German Communications Prof Observes U.S. Elections
Miriam Meckel, Professor for Media and Communications Management at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland, is touring the States on an Eisenhower Fellowship and sharing her insights into U.S. political campaigning on ScienceBlogs.de, on a guest blog called Amerikanische Begegnungen (American Encounters). Meckel has a ball watching Barack Obama dance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, while she finds that Chris Matthews, host of 'Hardball' on MSNBC, is no match for the senator from Illinois:
"So there are different ways of making the right moves in journalism and politics and dancing might be one of them. In this case it is almost impossible to juxtapose the two. It would appear like a comparison of a bad workout and a piece of performance art."
Suing CERN for World Annihilation
Are you afraid of black holes devouring the Earth? You should be, according to two plaintiffs who are suing CERN, the enormous particle physics laboratory near Geneva, in order to delay the commissioning of the Large Hadron Collider this year. They allege that the LHC may be grossly negligent and lead to the end of the world as we know it. Geneva local and ScienceBlogs.de blogger Ali Arbia sounds nonplussed:
"Why this lawsuit has been filed in Hawaii, I couldn't say. This awkward choice of jurisdiction might just be the greatest obstacle in preventing the apocalypse... Should the world end with the LHC starting up, I'll be here in Geneva commenting on it."
Intelligent Design Meets The Economist
Ali Arbia at Zoon Politikon finds an Economist questionnaire—an opinion poll on the differences between American and British mentalities—to be biased in the multiple-choice answers it provides for the question, "What explains the origins of Earth?" He asks whether the magazine might be allowing creationist sympathies to creep in.
His post provokes Tobias Meier at WeiterGen to dig up a YouTube video that gives a scientific perspective (in English) on what the origins of life really are.
Bleeding Heart Spectacle
Christoph Larsssen blogs a video of a moving sculpture depicting an artist's perspective on what a beating human heart must look like—displayed in situ at the American Heart Association's Gala at the Waldorf Astoria. Larssen is bemused to see cardiologists watching the faux gore sloshing, with glasses of red wine in hand.
That's all until next week. Note that links in this article are to blog posts in German—but their authors are usually happy to respond to comments in English. Danke!
Thanks to Anwen Roberts and to ScienceBlogs.de managing editor Beatrice Lugger.
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