One of our family's favorite sports is sending links to interesting sites and everyone is trying to get his topic on the top of the list. Many of the links probably get lost in the inboxes and out of sight. On this page I'd like to keep the interesting ones "on the plate".

This is one of the best kept secrets in the web. Go to lectures of top university professors for free!
You need to have time on your hand. It's like going to class in Princeton or Harvard ... you can't do it between supper and doing the dishes. You'll have to to invest time and concentration.
I admit it took me some time to pick up courage. I was thrilled. Click on the link and find out about my favorite. You can probably guess what it is about -:)

Claudio's latest link proposal. To be honest: it was Sabrina who brought it up first, but I was lazy at that time and then just forgot about it.

Claudio's pick is a wonderful short (all TED talks are about 18 minutes) lecture on motivation and what companies are doing wrong in the 21st century. Both concise and funny: you can enjoy it as a standup performance. Something only Americans are able to bring together. Being Al Gore's' speechwriter, Dan Pink is especially good at this.

When time allows I will try to knock a php page together, that will allow everybody to post his favorite TED talks in an instant.

Somehow all our kids and spouses end up in writing & filmmaking. Not sure that this makes me really happy but I mustn't grumble: I always wanted to work in movies while my father saw my happy future in being a "Finanzbeamter". Ended up being a controller though.

Katharina had the idea of making a video about the multifaceted experience of childbirth and Roland supported her spontaniously ... and it's going strong.
Have a look at their trailer and hopefully participate to make it happen!

Claudio is getting crunchy with me - I am no longer publishing his link recommendations. finally I got some time and you can dive into the JLG world - Godard is getting funnier with age (unfortunately it's the other way round with the films)

The link above his picture is an article from "Freitag" in German, keeping you up to date with what the great old man of the Nouvelle Vague is doing nowadays.
His new film - presented in Cannes - will not be shown in German theaters and the YouTube full movie (which JLG put up himself - so it says) has been removed. But watching the "Trailer" you can actually watch the whole film in fast motion. In 4.5 minutes you've seen the film - no dialogue though.

Claudio hat vor einigen Monaten die Hörreihe im New Yorker entdeckt und die Familie zu Fans gemacht. Renate schwört inzwischen auf MP3 im Auto. Eine Geschichte gelesen und dikutiert und sie ist in Würzburg.

Claudio empfiehlt die nebensthend verlinkte Geschicht von Grace Paley aus folgendem Grund: "Thema interessant weil ein Chinabesuch in den 1970ern beschrieben wird. Außerdem ist die Diskussion fast besser als die Geschichte selbst: "For a short story, you always really need two stories, one isn't enough." + "How to write about a culture that you're not familiar with" --> was sagen unsere China-Experten Sabrina und Katha dazu? "

David Lynch is always good for a surprise & therefor for a link on this page. There are only few renowned filmmakers using the web actively as a medium of its own. In Germany I only know of Rudolf Thome (www.moana.de) whom I admire for literally writing an entry in his block each day ... and be it only a pic of his garden ... more often about his films, politics and the though life of an independent film maker.

Back to Lynch ... I heard Deutschlandradio Kultur this morning and they introduced the new site of his interview project in Germany. In the US there are already 121 episodes, Germany is at number 6. They said his son is in Germany and that triggered the project.

Anyway: just watch for yourself!

Last night waiting for Renate to finish her class preparation I opened 'Goodbye Cinema Hello Cinephilia' from Jonathan Rosenbaum, my favorite filmcritic. In the introduction Rosenbaum tells about a strange paradox: "that half (...) think that we're currently approaching the end of cinema as an art form and the end of film criticism as a serious activity, while the other half believe that we're enjoying some form of exciting resurgence and renaissance in both areas."
He illustrates both positions by the example of Cronenberg's short made for the 60th anniversary of the Cannes Film Festival anthology film . So I stopped reading and started googling and you can watch it like me with 'film buff's delight'.
There are more 3 minute pieces to watch on the web. Just a small collection of directors the Winter family is prone to: War in Peace by Wim Wenders, I traveled 9000km to give it to you by Wong Kar Wai, real fun: World Cinema by Joel and Ethan Coen, starts funny but ends with the dead of the last (?) moviegoer: Cinema Érotique by Roman Polanski, and finally mystic as ever: Absurda by David Lynch

A couple of days ago there was this promotional magazine in in the FAZ which I usually throw into the bin right away. But this time Clint Eastwood was on the cover and thanks to Clint the mag stayed put.
Today I finally found time to read the article and it was surprisingly well written. Richard Schickel wrote it and naturally I googled him right away. Richard is Clint's biographer and I found this wonderful video from 1996 (Clint at 66 - what a young guy!). It's 55 minutes of discussion, well worth watching.

What fascinates me about him, is his unpretentious, quiet, inverted, almost nice-guy-next-door kind of aura. Actors love his quiet and relaxed behavior at the set - and you wonder how he manages to make such brilliant and carefully constructed films.

We just saw "Invictus" - we don't like political bio-pics , but the perspective of the movie, unrolling the apartheid issue from the angle of the security men (former enemies thrown together), is fascinating.

I don't think Weizsäcker has read Klaus Fritsch's Traktat but can it be chance that finally an essay sees the light of the day, which points out possible positive effects of national debt?

This was the all-the-rage scientific news of today. The links provided by Claudio get you deep into this topic. One link deeper in Science you'll find also the original article published by The J. Craig Venter Institute.

FAZ also published an article in today's print edition with the sophisticated headline: "Vier Flaschen für ein Heureka". Please post a comment when you get the point.

And Renate - always scanning the NYT - provided another science breakthrough link: "According to the basic precepts of Einsteinian relativity and quantum mechanics, equal amounts of matter and antimatter should have been created in the Big Bang and then immediately annihilated each other in a blaze of lethal energy, leaving a big fat goose egg with which to make stars, galaxies and us. And yet we exist, and physicists (among others) would dearly like to know why." DENNIS OVERBYE, NYT, 17.05.2010
This article too has the link to the original posting of the scientist (their names and institutions alone fill 3 pages). Go check the formulas!

This is John Stewart at his best: extremely funny, very angry, black humor, and he even manages to smuggle Groucho Marx on the board - brand name for absurd comedy.

In the comment section of the review page a discussion was started about movie trailers. Claudio provided a link to his "Best Trailer Ever". As links don't work in comments and we have a link page handy anyway I put it up here. Funny anecdote: watching Psycho is the reason that we only have transparent shower curtains.

Not sure whether "A Single Man" will survive in the "best ever" catergorie, but it came to me as a surprise when I watched it after seeing the film. It is a big exeption to the tells-you-all-of-the-story trailers you have to watch all the time nowadays. This is a masterful composition showing the visual style of the film with a breathtaking clicking clock score.

Clint Eastwood is by now the most successful icon of Hollywood. Started in the movie business in 1954 at Universal, got famous in 1964 as the star of the European Western branch in Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars (Per un pugno di dollari), and surprises us till today each year with one or two outstanding movies. This guy is getting 80 in May!

Another contribution to the discussion about "How the Internet Changes our Mind". The article is published on the occasion of the inauguration of iPad - but you learn nothing about Apple's new gadget - more about philosophy particularly with regard to hedgehogs and foxes.

The FAZ feuilleton published a collection of thoughts about "Wie hat das Internet ihr Denken verändert" (How did the web change your thinking). I hope the link works some time. They also had cartoons from Stewart McMillen - hard to read in the paper. But you'll find the cartoon "Amusing Ourselves to Death" comparing Orwell and Huxley on the authors web site. There are a lot of other cartoons - the first one about school which will please my teacher friends - or not?