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Germany's Union of Catholic Doctors is selling a homeopathic "treatment" for gayness on their website.
The religious association, which calls itself the "voice of the Catholic medical community," writes on its website that while "homosexuality is not an illness," a host of treatments are available to keep such "inclinations" at bay. Possibilities include "constitutional treatments with homeopathic tools … such as homeopathic dilutions like Platinum," "psychotherapy," and "religious counseling." Among homeopathy's controversial treatments are the prescription of "Globuli," tiny pills that consisting mostly of sugar. "We know about a number of people with homosexual feelings who find themselves in a spiritual and psychological emergency and suffer greatly," UCP head Gero Winkelmann told SPIEGEL in a written statement. "If someone is unhappy, ill or feels they are in an emergency, they should be able to find options for help with us."Homeopathy and religion, two crazy ideas meant to be together!
Germany has announced plans to close all its nuclear power plants by 2022.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition endorsed a blueprint to shut its nuclear-power plants by 2022, repealing the law she pushed to extend the life of the reactors to become the biggest nation to exit atomic power. The decision in the early morning hours today by coalition leaders in Berlin underscored Merkel’s flip-flop from a 2009 re- election promise to extend the life of nuclear reactors. She did her about-face after the March meltdown in Japan as the anti- nuclear Green Party gained in polls. Her party lost control of Baden-Wuerttemberg state to the Greens in March and finished behind them in a state election for the first time on May 22.
Lena won for Germany last year with her single, Satellite, which is why this year's contest is in Dusseldorf. Don't think I recall a country sending the same contestant two years in a row. I'm not loving this as much as I did Satellite.
Knut, the polar bear who as a cub captured the hearts of the world and sold millions in plush toys for the Berlin Zoo, died unexpectedly yesterday at the age of four.
"Everyone is just in shock here," said Claudia Bienek, a spokeswoman for Berlin Zoo where Knut shot to global fame in 2007 as a photogenic snow-white cub after being rejected by his mother and reared by hand. Knut, pulled dead from a pool in his enclosure he shared with three females on Saturday afternoon, was just four years and three months old, well below the average life expectancy for polar bears of around 35. The cause of Knut’s untimely death was not immediately known, said Heiner Kloes, in charge of bears at Berlin Zoo. Vets were due to conduct an autopsy on Monday. The BZ daily quoted zoo visitors as saying that Knut was sitting on rocks in his enclosure when his left leg began to shake. He then started walking around in circles before falling into the water.I was in Berlin a few years ago during the height of the Knut craze and his likeness had been stamped on just about anything a tourist could carry. The one souvenir that made it into my suitcase was a small toy Knut for my nephew. He's going to be devastated.
According to a coming book by historian Robert Beachy, the genesis of the modern gay rights movement came in 19th century Germany.
Modern conceptions of homosexuality began, ironically, with an anti-sodomy law. When the German empire was unified in 1871, the Imperial Criminal Code included a law prohibiting sexual penetration of one man by another. Questions about what types of activity should fall under the law spurred a sustained public inquiry into the nature of same-sex eroticism and sexuality in general. [snip] This new view of same-sex love was pioneered by German doctors who published early case studies of homosexuals in the 1850s. German psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing released the first edition of his hugely influential Psychopathia Sexualis in 1886, which included multiple case studies of homosexuals that supported this new position. Through his work, Krafft-Ebing became a vocal opponent of the German anti-sodomy law, stating that homosexuality "should not be viewed as a psychic depravity or even sickness."Beachy claims the world's first gay rights group, the Wissenschaftlich-humanitäres Komitee (Scientific-Humanitarian Committee) came into being at that time to gather petition signatures to repeal the anti-sodomy law. His book, The German Invention Of Homosexuality, is due out next year.
In Germany, the way you say the time can reveal what part of the country you're from.
German trance king ATB (Andre Tanneberger) is back with a new track that is very much Robert Miles meets Chicane. Derivative, but me like. ATB's first and biggest hit was 1999's 9PM (Till I Come), which sort of defined San Francisco for me that summer. It was inescapable and we grew to loathe it almost as much as Darude's Sandstorm, which played every ten minutes in every gay bar that year, usually followed by 9PM (Till I Come).
(Via - Pop In Stereo)
