Denisova man

I suppose it's not unreasonable to have to wait until now to hear about a discovery made in 2008 when we're talking about a tiny piece of bone from the finger of a previously unknown type of early human that had been lying in a cave in Denisova in Siberia. The report I read was in Focus under the heading Wissenschaftler entdecken bislang unbekannte Menschenform  Because it is so cold in Siberia the DNA had been preserved and scientists were able to compare it with DNA from homo sapiens sapiens and homo sapiens neandertalis

Test your understanding
Warum müssen die Wissenschaftler das Textbuch korrigieren?
Was ist wie ein Kühlschrank?
Wer waren überrascht von der Entdeckung?

Further reports on this theme:
Neue Menschenform entdeckt
Forscher entdecken neue Menschenform

Kino

I cannot remember the last time I visited a cinema so I find it a little strange to be recommending sources of information about cinema and film trends in Germany. My starting point is the incredibly rich http://www.filmportal.de/ which has details of 73,500 German feature films from 1895 to the present. Thy claim 7,000 titles are covered in-depth with synopses, reviews, photos or posters. On top of that 3000 biographies and introductory texts on important aspects and periods of German film history. Their multimedia section has trailers, film clips and more. This site also lets you search the literature of just about every film library in Germany.

So how do you find out about trends in German film? Just look at the Themen page and you'll find Aktuelle Tendenzen.

Deutsche Welle has a monthly film report about the latest German filems - KINO Das DeutscheFilmmagazin. Filmforen.de is a communication platform for film fans covering many genres. http://www.regie.de/ and http://www.kinopolis.de/ are worth a look. For a multi-lingual film dictionary go to http://home.snafu.de/ohei/ofd/moviedict.html

Putting our own house in order

We often speak of the need to put our own house in order and there is a very similar expression in German as you can see from this quote from sueddeutsche.de

Die Kirche solle jetzt "nicht mit dem Finger auf andere zeigen, sondern wir sollen unser eigenes Haus in Ordnung bringen, und dann können es andere auch tun"

This extract comes from a report  about what the Bishop of Regensburg is supposed to have said in a sermon at the weekend in connection with the child abuse scandal that has been deeply disturbing news for the German public and for the Roman Catholic Church. Over the years churches, regardless of denomination, have had to face unwelcome truths about their failures to safeguard children in the past. The procedures now in place will hopefully reduce abuse but the responses to revelations or allegations about what has happened in the past are still too often hedged about with defensiveness that suggests not all church leaders are committed to the openness that is needed to really change their internal culture. When they really don't 'get it' then it must be all too easy to see public and press opinion as eine Kampagne gegen die Kirche