7, 8 or 14 Wonders of the World

So, yesterday, 07/07/07 (unfortunately not on 07:07), the “New 7 Wonders”, which could be voted for on the internet, have been published – not officially acknowledged by the Unesco, not undisputed, but… well, never mind. So we now have (or don’t have), besides the ancient wonders of the “world” – limited to the Mediterranean area and the Middle East, which was the world known in ancient Greece –, which are

  1. Hanging Gardens of Babylon
  2. Colossus of Rhodes
  3. Mausoleum of Maussollos at Halicarnassus
  4. Lighthouse of Alexandria
  5. Great Pyramid of Giza
  6. Temple of Artemis at Ephesus
  7. Statue of Zeus at Olympia

also (=> 14) – or only (=> 7)

  1. Great Wall of China
  2. Petra, Jordan
  3. Christ the Redeemer statue, Brazil
  4. Machu Picchu, Peru
  5. Chichén Itzá, Mexico
  6. Roman Colosseum, Italy
  7. Taj Mahal, India

– including, by the way, just two of my seven votes, and the Neuschwanstein Castle in Germany didn’t make it, “of course”, was apparently on the unrewarding 8th place – and, so Zahi Hawass doesn’t get mad, also (=>8) the honor candidate, the “eternal wonder”:

the only ancient wonder that still stands.

Think of it what you want, ‘t is a nice thing, somehow, anyway…

Sudoku Level 3-5

Su-Doku plus 6 Cover

…what does one expect there? Medium to very hard, right? After all, many books have four or five difficulty levels. Well, the small “Su-Doku plus” book (Nr.6, German, from french publisher Éditions Megastar) advertises “Level 3 to 5” on its cover (and contains also two puzzles of level “5-6” :???: ) – but apparently, they are using a scale up to 10 or so (no, nothing was specified there), for as far as I can tell after solving several of various levels, “3” = “very easy” (you can write it down in a few minutes – “1” must be size 6×6, then…) and “5” = “medium”, at most a few “medium to hard” (8 to 15 minutes, never needed to write alternatives with a pencil – including those that should be “extra difficult” as “2 sabres” should indicate).

Of course, the more practice you have, the faster you become – but the difference between the supposedly advertised difficulty and your expectations shouldn’t be that high…

Hope I’ll find something better among that plethora of offers (not buying that many, anyway)… at least this one had a handfull of other number puzzles, too…

The First is Second

After the ZDF (the “Second German Television”) which started to broadcast their news shows and more in 16:9 format at the beginning of this week, the ARD (“The First”) wants to follow suit on Sunday – even though just with the “Tagesschau” (the main news show), the “Tagesthemen” (late news magazine) shall follow one by one. Nice :)

(Let me mention the poll on the right sidebar in this blog again…) (This poll has been closed in the mean time.)

Die Gesellschaft des schwarzen Etiketts

…that’d be a German translation of “Black Label Society”, the opening band for Ozzy Osbourne yesterday. And also this hard of hearing guy – “I can’t fucking hear you!” ;) – in his late fifties can do a great concert! It was just relatively short – he seemed to have had a comparatively bad day, an “Ozzy expert” next to me said. Others, however, have a different opinion about his mood… Which doesn’t change anything about how good it was! :)

Apropos opening band: There’s something strange about the starting time. At Meat Loaf Sunday before last, the official start was at 20:00 (8 p.m.), but at 19:30 entered Marion Raven as “opening duo” (i.e. with one other musician) with guitars and keyboard for about 25 minutes, and since there was no reconstruction necessary, everyone thought Meat would start punctually at 8 – wrong, he waited until 20:30 (and stayed until 23:02).

Yesterday, however – official start was also 20:00 – the openers came at 19:50 and rocked until 20:40, and after reconstruction and sound check, Ozzy entered the stage after a lament of Beuern intro at exactly 21:00. (And, as indicated, just until ca. 22:35.)

Now what does that tell us about the meaning of starting times…?