I am SO, SO excited to finally be able to post this picture. This is a tie-cuff that I made for Kat's birthday quite a while ago, but was waiting to complete the rest of the gift package. (Kat is my oldest brother's girlfriend, but I hate to say that because she has become a great, supportive friend as well and it just sounds weird giving her a title.)

This cuff comes from my growing stash of fantastically cheesy 1970's men's ties and the most fantastical of them all is a very rare pink and purple paisley masterpiece. Here is a better idea of the pattern & color:

Crazy, huh? But in a really great way, especially when you think about the dapper gentleman who bought this originally. To what grand occasion did he wear it? Did he get compliments on it? Did he have a matching pink disco suit?

Anyway, I used the end of this lovely tie to create a cuff and embellished with vintage buttons. Then I painted an extra cardboard box from my wedding invitations a midnight blue and glued on a magazine cut-out of a couple in lederhosen:

I lovingly placed the tie-cuff inside with a note about washing and sizing:

I just got a voice message from her that she LOVED her gift and I couldn't be more thrilled!  There were a few other items in the package that I am equally proud of so I will be sharing those in the next few days, including a tutorial about lingerie for your linens (napkin corsets!).

So, while I don't adhere to calendars when it comes to gift-giving, Happy Birthday dear Kat!

Well, weekend went by as boring as a weekend can probably get (with one exception). On Thursday I went to the climbing gym to do some bouldering again, whichs is great fun. There's still a lot of muscle power missing, but I'm improving - and there are some nice girls bouldering around there ;)

Friday I went swimming to the Acquatic Centre and downloaded "I Am Legend" from the web - great movie with Will Smith acting as one of the last humans on earth, not carried off by a virus caused by gene technologic experiments. Saturday I just worked on readings all day long and the evening I whiled away by doing a "newspaper assignment" for my sports events management class. For the assignment I have to go through the sports section of the newspaper and mark the different categories of sports reported. And guess what: almost 90 % of the reporting is on men's professional sports (about half of that just ice-hockey - what surprise).

On Sunday again: readings, readings, readings - but now the highlight of the weekend comes: The Dittrich's, the family we got to know here in Kamloops, invited us for a moved up thanksgiving dinner and so Stephanie & I went there in the evening, bringing along some Austrian wine (a Zweigelt, which I found in the local liquor store). The evening was great with lots of food - of course turkey, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, all kinds of vegetables and a great dessert, called apple crisp, of which Sharon (the Dittrich's mum) gave me some along for my breakfast today.

Well, today in the morning I first made a call back home to wish my dad all the best for his birthday. Then had marketing classes where we got some new readings to do (f***, da**, sh**, cr**). Then I went on to get my prize, which I won at the scavenger hunt of the university. For the scavenger hunt one had to follow some hints given in the university's newspaper and answer the 5 questions given with the hints. I won 2 day ski passes and 2 ski rentals at the Sun Peaks resort (40 minutes north of Kamloops). That's great, because we planned to go there anyway in November :)

After that, guess what: I did some readings again - they really like that s*** here!!! In the afternoon I had my cultural issues class, where I talked to my class-mate Nick, who plans to come to Salzburg for the next semester. The end of the day I had a Spanish quiz which I really screwed up this time I guess :(

So, you see - there can be weekends in Canada without any big events as well.

Hope, u r all fine.
Be blessed & feel being part of my heart, buddies!

Greez,
Gergi

Over the past year we’ve seen our financial markets uncomfortable sway until in recent months we’ve seen the stock market plunge downward. Mistakes have been made and most people in the United States, and likely even the world, will experience the consequences of these mistakes. When discussing possible causes of the financial crisis, National Public Radio, CNN, MSNBC, and many more have repeatedly discussed the role of deregulation and greed as a cause of the crisis. I pose a question to them: “Do you really think that there was a sudden increase in the amount of pervasive greed in Wall Street in the past decade?” It is extremely unlikely that human nature among a specific group of people could have systematically changed without cause. Deregulation could certainly be a cause; however, one convinced of this cause should take an objective step back and examine the evidence.

Research has shown that low interest rates stimulate investment. (1) This is likely the reason the Fed kept the rate low for so long. However, much research has shown that interest rates artificially kept low also tend to encourage mal-investment. Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies also explained in The State of the Nation’s Housing 2008 (2)  report how the Fed’s low interest rates encouraged the housing market bubble, an expansion of risky loans in subprime mortgage market, and ultimately lead to a derivation of complicated and very risky mortgages repackaged and purchased by large banks. In addition, an prevalent ideology existed (and still exists) among policy makers and legislatures that homeownership creates wealth. Thus, they create policies which incentivized banks to lend to people who the bank might not normally lend to because of risk. For example, the Community Reinvestment Act of 1978 mandated that banks lend to families that in many cases couldn’t afford the loan payments. Thus, the combination of government policy making and encouragement of home ownership among those who could not afford homes and artificially low interest rates ultimately lead to the bad investments (3) which are highly contributing to the economic problem our country currently faces.

The bailout plan was indeed deliberated over, which is good. However, given the urgency and the emotional pressure put on government “to act” may indeed have prevented policy-makers from analyzing the true causes of the crisis. In addition, regulation enacted through the bailout passed this morning may in not at all decrease the likelihood of mal-investment and instead create new unforeseen problems that will prevent the economy from competing globally.

In conclusion, I hope voters will recognize that the economic problems we face today may in fact be a result of poor government policies. In addition, we should be not allow our fear and emotion detract from our ability to see evidence clearly. In efforts to “do something” we may in fact not be doing what is in our best interest in the long run.

BLUE: Real Yr/Yr GDP Growth
RED: Real Effective Fed Funds Rate

Source: Compiled by Robert P. Murphy, http://mises.org/story/2728

1 The New York Federal Reserve http://www.newyorkfed.org/education/level.html
2 Harvard’s  Joint Center for Housing Studies,  The State of the Nation's Housing 2008, at http://www.jchs.harvard.edu/son/index.htm
3 Sechrest, LJ. 2006. “Explaining Malinvestment and Overinvestment,” Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics 6, 4:27-38.

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It has taken a whole year - but London mayor Boris Johnson has finally got his own back on Arnold Schwarzenegger.

As he was waiting to address last year's Tory conference via video link, the California Governor seemed highly amused by Mr Johnson's speaking style.

In a a clip which became a hit on YouTube, he can be heard whispering to aides about Mr Johnson "fumbling".

But now the London mayor has had the last the laugh, describing "Arnie" as a "monosyllabic Austrian cyborg".

BBC NEWS | Politics | Boris terminates 'cyborg' Arnie.

The perfect way to start a Monday morning. I do, however, think it's a little early to claim that Boris has had the last laugh. There's no telling what the monosyllabic Austrian cyborg might do next.

Not to worry, though, I'm sure Boris will be more than a match... as long as it doesn't get physical...

© 2008 Gary William Murning

Himmler observed a fanatical, blind obedience in the Bosniaks. He thought that Muslim men would make perfect SS soldiers, as Islam "promises them Heaven if they fight and are killed in action. Himmler was inspired by the success of Bosnian infantry regiments in WWI.

Georges Lepre wrote that "Himmler endeavoured to restore what he called 'an old Austrian' tradition by reviving the Bosnian regiments of the former Austro-Hungarian army in the form of a Bosnian-Muslim SS Division.

Possibly “infinite wants, scarce resources” is the only principle on which all economists agree.

Today I discovered another principle worth nomination to the loney & distinguished set; to my surprise none other than “unilateral free trade” itself. Politicians & bureaucrats fight over it, environmentalists battle it out, even human rights activists have a thing or two to say, yet economists are unperturbed.

Economist of the Austrian Tradition (Menger, Mises, Hayek…) have always favored unilateral free trade, so had their predecessor F Bastiat. I of course was fortunate to learn all this and more from Sauvik and Parth.

Chicago and Vienna are old rivals, Hayek thought Friedman’s book on methodology is “as dangerous as Keyne’s General Theory”, Kirzner thinks Stigler’s work on knowledge analyzes how we look for a number in the phone book, far from the real “knowledge problem”. Yet the most popular advocate of unilateral free trade is Jagdish Baghwati, far from the Austrian tradition.

But here is the real surprise. Paul Krugman (Prof of Economics at Univ of Princeton) too supports unilateral free trade!

Krugman’s Keynesian bends are scarcely camouflaged.  An interventionist – he welcomed government bailout of investment bank. Yet he thinks

“If economists ruled the world, there would be no need for a World Trade Organization… The economist's case for free trade is essentially a unilateral case - that is, it says that a country serves its own interests by pursuing free trade regardless of what other countries may do”

 He also some fantastic advice to budding economists:

“…the problem free traders face is not that their theory has dropped them into Wonderland, but that political pragmatism requires them to imagine themselves on the wrong side of the looking glass. There is no inconsistency or ambiguity in the economic case for free trade; but policy-oriented economists must deal with a world that does not understand or accept that case. Anyone who has tried to make sense of international trade negotiations eventually realizes that they can only be understood by realizing that they are a game scored according to mercantilist rules, in which an increase in exports - no matter how expensive to produce in terms of other opportunities foregone - is a victory, and an increase in imports - no matter how many resources it releases for other uses - is a defeat. The implicit mercantilist theory that underlies trade negotiations does not make sense on any level, indeed is inconsistent with simple adding-up constraints; but it nonetheless governs actual policy. The economist who wants to influence that policy, as opposed to merely jeering at its foolishness, must not forget that the economic theory underlying trade negotiations is nonsense - but he must also be willing to think as the negotiators think, accepting for the sake of argument their view of the world”.

Economists, curious creatures indeed J

Of course, the two categories don't always stick to their own territories... And if you ask me, there's some really odd and interesting stuff that happens at the intersection of art and design.

Markus Hofer - HALBZEIT ­ MEIN VOLUMEN VERLÄSST EINEN STUHL (Halftime -- my volume leaves the chair)

Yvonne Fehling and Jennie Peiz's Stuhlhockerbank (stool chair bank, roughly)

I ran across these two pieces recently, and was immediately struck by the way both the artists were challenging our notion of what exactly a chair is. By definition, a chair is something you sit in, and yet even though there's no practical way to sit in the first chair, its "chairness" is still very apparent. As for the second one, it seems to be asking when does a chair become a chair? How far does it have to break away from its material and stand on its own before we can understand its form and function?

Via Chairblog and Core77.

Anytime I find myself in a discussion about the economy, I point to the central bank, government bail out, and Austrian theory of the business cycle. People usually respond with, "Oh, I don't know much about that." They assume it's too complex for them.

What is a free market? It's amazing how many believe that we have one now. They believe, as they are taught, that the market is too free and that greedy business men are constantly working to make it hard on the "little guy".

Well, they are half-right. Yes, there are greedy business men that are constantly working to make it hard on the "little guy". We call them the federal government and the central banking industry. They are the forces that keep the market regulated and inefficient.

Of course these are just my "many meaningless words". Retired Professor of Finance, Michael S. Rozeff, addressing the recent bailouts, simplifies it much better than I could here:

This is a time to look at matters carefully and decide: Do you favor free markets or do you favor the State? Do you think that these failures are failures of the free market or do you think they are failures of the State?

The same questions arose when the Great Depression occurred. The government blamed that on speculators, on the stock market crash, on greed, on over-consumption, on under-consumption, on sticky prices and wages, etc. But the real causes of the Great Depression and the real failures owed to government. The government created the Federal Reserve system, and it was the Fed that created the deflation. The government regulated banks and supported unit (isolated) banks, and it was these isolated banks that failed in the thousands. It was the government that raised taxes and tariffs and choked off economic activity. Then, having begun the depression, it was the New Deal that prolonged it. It was the New Deal that over-regulated and cartelized the economy. It was the New Deal that started up a new devaluation of the dollar.

This is a time to look carefully and choose up sides: free markets or the State? There is no in between. Freedom vs. slavery. Which is it? [continue reading]

Bed sharing disturbed sleep quality

Sharing a bed with someone could temporarily reduce your brain power - at least if you are a man - Austrian scientists suggest.

When men spend the night with a bed mate their sleep is disturbed, whether they make love or not, and this impairs their mental ability the next day.

The lack of sleep also increases a man's stress hormone levels.

According to the New Scientist study, women who share a bed fare better because they sleep more deeply.

Sleepless nights

Professor Gerhard Kloesch and colleagues at the University of Vienna studied eight unmarried, childless couples in their 20s.

Each couple was asked to spend 10 nights sleeping together and 10 apart while the scientists assessed their rest patterns with questionnaires and wrist activity monitors.

The next day the couples were asked to perform simple cognitive tests and had their stress hormone levels checked.

Sharing the bed space with someone who is making noises and who you have to fight with for the duvet is not sensible Professor Neil Stanley, a sleep expert at the University of Surrey

Although the men reported they had slept better with a partner, they fared worse in the tests, with their results suggesting they actually had more disturbed sleep.

Both sexes had a more disturbed night's sleep when they shared their bed, Professor Kloesch told a meeting of the Forum of European Neuroscience.

But women apparently managed to sleep more deeply when they did eventually drop off, since they claimed to be more refreshed than their sleep time suggested.

Their stress hormone levels and mental scores did not suffer to the same extent as the men.

But the women still reported that they had the best sleep when they were alone in bed.

Bed sharing also affected dream recall. Women remembered more after sleeping alone and men recalled best after sex.

Separate beds

Dr Neil Stanley, a sleep expert at the University of Surrey, said: "It's not surprising that people are disturbed by sleeping together.

"Historically, we have never been meant to sleep in the same bed as each other. It is a bizarre thing to do.

"Sleep is the most selfish thing you can do and it's vital for good physical and mental health.

"Sharing the bed space with someone who is making noises and who you have to fight with for the duvet is not sensible.

"If you are happy sleeping together that's great, but if not there is no shame in separate beds."

He said there was a suggestion that women are pre-programmed to cope better with broken sleep.

"A lot of life events that women have disturb sleep - bringing up children, the menopause and even the menstrual cycle," he explained.

But Dr Stanley added people did get used to sharing a bed.

"If they have shared their bed with their partner for a long time they miss them and that will disturb sleep."

Hans Keller was born into a well-to-do and culturally well-connected Jewish family in Vienna, and as a boy was taught by the same Oskar Adler who had, decades earlier, been Arnold Schoenberg's boyhood friend and first teacher. Hans Keller also came to know the composer and performer Franz Schmidt, but was never a formal pupil. In 1938 the Anschluss forced Hans Keller to flee to London (where he had relatives), and in the years that followed he became a prominent and influential figure in the UK's musical and music-critical life. Initially active as a violinist and violist, he soon found his niche as a highly prolific and provocative writer on music as well as an influential teacher, lecturer, broadcaster and coach.

An original thinker never afraid of controversy, Hans Keller's passionate support of composers whose work he saw as under-valued or insufficiently understood made him a tireless advocate of Benjamin Britten and Arnold Schoenberg as well as an illuminating analyst of figures such as Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven and Mendelssohn. Much of this advocacy was carried out from within the BBC, where he came to hold several senior positions.

Hans Keller's gift for systematic thinking, allied to his philosophical and psycho-analytic knowledge, bore fruit in the method of 'Wordless Functional Analysis' (abbreviated by the football-loving Hans Keller as 'FA'), designed to furnish incontrovertibly audible demonstrations of a masterwork's 'all-embracing background unity'. This method was developed in tandem with a 'Theory of Music' which explicitly considered musical structure from the point of view of listener expectations; the 'meaningful contradiction' of expected 'background' by unexpectable 'foreground' was seen as generating a work's expressive content. An element of Hans Keller's theory of unity was the 'Principle of Reversed and Postponed Antecedents and Consequents', which has not been widely adopted. Hans Keller's term 'homotonality', however, has proved useful to musicologists in several fields.

Hans Keller was married to the artist Milein Cosman, whose drawings illustrated some of his work.

As a man very prominent in the world of 'contemporary music' (even working for several years as the BBC's 'Chief Assistant, New Music'), Hans Keller had close personal and professional ties with many composers, and was frequently the dedicatee of new compositions. Those who dedicated works to him include:

Benjamin Britten (String Quartet No.3, Op. 94)
Benjamin Frankel (String Quartet No.5, Op.43)
Philip Grange,
David Matthews (Piano Trio No.1; 'To Hans Keller')
Bayan Northcott,
Buxton Orr (Piano Trio No.1; 'In admiration and friendship'),
Robert Simpson (Symphony No.7; 'To Hans and Milein Keller').
Robert Matthew-Walker (Piano Sonata No.3 - 'Fantasy-Sonata: Hamlet'), Op.34

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53 year old Austrian landscape photographer shows his work from September 12 to November 7 in the Young Photo Gallery in Brussels. Francis Hodgson writes on him: "A certain kind of photography returns to the landscape some of those qualities which the eighteenth century thought of collectively as the ‘sublime’, in which grandeur and proportion are offset by a certain sense of horror, and the awful power of nature is the measure of the true littleness of man. Photography is always more or less literal, but this kind of landscape makes no apology for demanding always to be treated also as metaphorical. Josef Hoflehner is becoming one of the most distinguished exponents of this kind of landscape. You cannot look at Hoflehner’s tiny Statue of Liberty on its swampy island without thinking of those lagoony cultures which dot the world, Venice foremost among them, where the works of man are always under immediate threat. We have become used, since 11th September 2001, to thinking of Manhattan threatened. Seen like this, a rise in Atlantic water level of no more than a few inches looks like a permanent dreadful risk. Hoflehner has a gift for this kind of thing, and he also works very hard at it.

Modern sublime photography has a variety of origins. There is a British lineage whereby black-and-white is as a much a moral spectrum as a chemical one. The landscapes of Bill Brandt, their contrast ever-increasing as he grew older, are forerunners, and Hoflehner certainly inherits some of their manner, perhaps via such great developers of the Brandtian line as Michael Kenna. Another line comes ultimately from pre-photographic arts in Japan, calligraphy or wood block, and is passed on through the great poets of the less-is-more such as Hiroshi Sugimoto or Shoji Ueda. Yet another tradition derives from nineteenth century landscape photography. Hoflehner’s treatment of water, in particular, harks backward with his lovely long slow exposures giving water back its fluidity after so many years of being frozen at 1/250th sec.

None of this is accidental. Hoflehner’s materials are sparse but his messaging is wonderfully rich. The best of his pictures can be looked at again and again, precisely because they ask us as viewers to test our conclusions and check our metaphorical reading. This tiny tree, propped up by a taut support on either side: is it a prisoner or a patient? Those huge numbered concrete tidal defences in geometrical shapes: futile playthings for the next storm, or final vindication of Canute? Not the least of the many virtues of Hoflehner’s pictures is that they simply insist that you be engaged when you view them. You may not be able to tell Josef Hoflehner’s politics on a simple arc from right-wing to left-wing, but you will certainly see an active engagement with the land and with what we do to it. This is not the photography of someone who wants us merely to see that he is right about this or that; there is plenty enough of that in the world already. More sympathetically, this is the photography of someone who wants us to ask ourselves if we have allied quite enough thinking to our viewing before we trust our conclusions.

In most photography, the air is transparent and takes no great part in how we see things. In Hoflehner, the air always has a density of its own, and we must strain to part it with our eyes. It’s not just that he particularly likes effects of condensation or of twilight, but more that he expects us to see as slowly as he does. He once made a series of studies of windsocks, those flappy orange cones on airfields which indicate wind strength and speed. To most of us, they are mildly recognisable objects which we see when we fly and then forget. Hoflehner made whole essays out of them. They became man-made structures in an apparently natural environment, they became visible manifestations of invisible weather, they were to some extent economic indicators, they were hard lines and soft all in the same trivial objects. This is his manner: to look for something to think about as well as something to see. We can be sure that the reason he invites us to see the finished selection is because he has found something, even perhaps something not very important, in every single view.

There is a peculiar verb in English which doesn’t decline very well, the verb to matter. Hoflehner expects his pictures to matter. They’re pretty enough, of course they are, and a pleasure simply to sample with the eye. But if you think of any view in this collection merely as a pleasantly harmonious frameful of grey tones, you haven’t done thinking about it. Because Josef Hoflehner photographs with the full resources of his wide culture fully engaged. This is not the photography of f/stops and film grades. This is the rarer photography, of someone who wants to address an audience and expects us to be moved and thoughtful in return. And in the proper sense of the word, it approaches the sublime."

More of Hochlehner's photographs can be seen here or on his personal website.

Aris Fioretos

Selected works:The Truth about Sascha Knisch, The Gray Book.

FOR MORE LOOK AT:  Aris Fioretos - Official Website

I finally cracked and made my own potato salad and "meatball" bento - looks Scandianvian, doesn't it?
Homemade potato salad though, and the "meatballs" are falafels. They come pre-fried and just need microwaving - very handy! Then there's some gardengrown salad and some cherry tomatoes, a skewered pickle and some red beets (which were the last of my freezer stash).

Pretty simple bento, but I came home late from training and STILL made the potato salad from scratch then. (I make my own mayonaise - I can't stand salad with storebought mayo.) So - simple-looking, but not that simple.

Potato salad

About 600g of potatoes, boiled and still warm! Boil while you make the rest.

Mayonaise: 1 room-temperature egg
unflavoured oil (I use corn or sunflower)
Salt
1 Tsp. mustard

Beat up the egg a little, then beat in the oil in a thin stream until emulsion forms. Add salt and mustard. I did the whole thing in a food processor and added 4-5 small pickles in the end, which got chopped up in the mayonaise. Saves time.

Salad
2-3 Tsp. Sourcream (I don't like sourcream all that much, so I use thick yoghurt. It gives a different taste though, which is somewhat rougher than sourcream.)
1/2 red onion, chopped
2-3 Tsp. vinegar (preferable apple, if you have it)
Mix with the mayonaise. Add salt and pepper to taste (and don't be afraid to file on the recipe a little until it matches your taste!)

Peel the potatoes and chop them into slices. Toss with the salad while still warm. Cool at room temperature and enjoy!

It's not the most spectacular recipe, but I needed it written down somewhere :)
I'm not fond of Austrian style (non-mayo) potato salad, which is made with broth. But my grandma swears on making her own mayonaise for mayo salad, and I love that! Adding yoghurt or sourcream makes it a *little* less fatty, which is also good, and fresher.

With the incident on K2 still fresh in everybody's minds, this drove home the reality of our new 'pastime' and new questions on the risks involved. These questions need answered before I attempt anything else on this scale. In the meantime... I'll stick to Munro's...

The following is the latest report from The Gaurdian...

Lizzy Davies in Paris and John Hooper in Rome
The Guardian,
Monday August 25 2008
Article history

A French police rescue helicopter passes in front of the Aiguille du Midi as it takes off near Chamonix during search and rescue operations on Mont Blanc. Photograph: Christian Hartmann/Reuters

Hope was fading fast last night for eight mountaineers missing near Mont Blanc after a powerful avalanche caused one of the deadliest accidents to hit the French Alps in decades.

More than 15 hours after a large chunk of ice broke off from the mountain and prompted the pre-dawn avalanche, five Austrian and three Swiss climbers had still not been recovered from the slopes of Mont Blanc du Tacul.

Seven other French and Italian climbers were injured when the avalanche swept down the mountain at 3am yesterday, hitting a path often frequented by groups heading for the summit of Mont Blanc, western Europe's highest peak. They were recovering in hospital.

Survivors spokes of a vast tract of ice moving silently but rapidly towards them, giving little time for escape.

"The guide shouted, 'Run fast! Run fast!'," said Nicolas Duquesne, who sustained a broken ankle. "It didn't make any noise. It really was impressive.

"We had just enough time to move away to the right before getting hit ... We were really lucky," said Duquesne, adding that he had to "swim" through the snow to get away. Another survivor, Italian guide Marco Delfini, said he saw "a wall of ice coming towards us and we were carried 200 metres."

Regis Lavergne, a rescue worker, told French television there was "no more hope" of finding the missing mountaineers alive, adding that they were probably on the lower reaches of the glacier "underneath the lumps of serac [pillar of ice]".

A large-scale search involving helicopters, Alpine guides and sniffer dogs had to be suspended yesterday afternoon for fear of more avalanches. "I don't think we'll manage to recover the bodies because they finished up in an area of high risk in which there are highly unstable towers of ice that could easily collapse," Adriano Favre, the director of Alpine rescue, told the AGI news agency.

The wall of snow, which was 200 metres (650ft) long and 50 metres wide when it hit the mountaineers at an altitude of 3,600 metres, was described by an Haute Savoie police chief as "extraordinary". Daniel Pueyo said the sheer volume of this slide had made it deadly.

Experts said weather conditions had been "excellent" throughout the night. "Last night it was cold, it was nice, so it was simply the weight of the ice which became too much," explained Yan Giezendanner, from the meteorological station in Chamonix. "It was a big slab and that slab was big enough to reach the team of climbers."

Yesterday's disaster was the latest in a deadly season in the Alps. According to figures released last week, almost 100 people died this summer in the French, Italian and Swiss peaks, most of them in the Mont Blanc range.

Speaking from Chamonix, the French interior minister, Michèle Alliot-Marie, described the avalanche as "one of the worst accidents we have had for decades ... Even when all precautions have been taken, as seems to have been the case here, things can go dramatically wrong." Alliot-Marie said there was no chance of finding anyone alive after flying over the scene in a helicopter. The avalanche had been "monumental" and "inescapable".

The route the climbers took is often busy. Groups tend to leave from their base before dawn when snow is firmest.

A spokeswoman for a British tour firm in the region, Mountain Adventure Specialists, said it would continue with tours which take in the Mont Blanc du Tacul. "This isn't the first [accident] and it won't be the last," she said.

The Alps: Sudden storms add to toll

August 16 2008
Briton Reg Clarke, 70, and Dutchman Johannes Ruiter, 47, found frozen to death minutes from their refuge after being caught in a storm near Naso del Lyskamm peak in the Italian Alps.

August 14
Six people die in four separate accidents. Two Frenchmen fell to their deaths from the Bosses ridge and later two mountaineers, aged 21 and 22, died while descending the Col des Courtes. A 54-year-old hiker fell coming down the Dent d'Oche and a 65-year-old local trekker was killed after falling on rocks.

August 8
Ian Jackson, 18, from Middlesbrough, fell 50 metres to his death while abseiling after a climb in Chamonix.

July 25
Jane Jerram, from New Zealand, her British boyfriend and two women from France and Chile froze to death after being caught by a sudden storm on the Bionnassay crest, on the French side of Mont Blanc. They were said not to have had adequate clothing or equipment.

July 24
A Dutch father, 56, and his children, aged 17, 20 and 23, fell 500m down a slope in Mont Dolent, part of Mont Blanc. They had been roped together.

April 30
Five French ski-mountaineers swept away by an avalanche in Gran Paradiso national park in Italy's north-western Alps.

Für Fußball Plakatwerbung zu machen, ist mal was Neues (wobei die Austria das nun schon zum zweiten Mal in den letzten Jahren versucht). Dass diese Art der Öffentlichkeitsarbeit irgendeinen Fan hinter dem Ofen oder aus dem Schwimmbad hervorholt und ins Stadion bringt, bezweifle ich aber. Das Geld kann man besser investieren!

Rapid jedenfalls hat Plakatwerbung nicht nötig. Das Hanappi-Stadion ist für's Derby seit Wochen ausverkauft. Ein Glück, dass ich mich als Abo-Besitzer heuer nicht um Tickets kümmern muss.

Am Sonntag muss die Austria das erste Mal in dieser Saison verlieren, das ist klar! Und von unseren Nationalteamspielern Maierhofer und Hoffer wünsche ich mir nicht nur heute Abend in Nizza gegen Italien Tore, sondern vor allem im ausverkauften "St.Hanappi" gegen die Veilchen!

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