This dish is a traditional Lithuanian dessert for Christmas. As Ruta is Lithuania and  I am German, the German component was still missing.  That is why we took German Glühwein instead of syrup to boil the pears.

Have a look at the delicious, nationalities linking and Christmas providing result:

In former times, not even more than ten years ago, nobody could merely imagine the impact the internet has achieved nowadays. Noone imagined that the presidential campaign 2008 would be decided by the greater online competences a candidates team has. Those times seem to be from a forgotten age though.

Barack Obama, the 44th President of the United States of America, won the elections due to his lots of activities on Facebook, Twitter and Co. His Facebook account currently counts 6,933,920 fans. His Twitter profile meanwhile involves 2,722,502 followers. These accounts, however, are only the ones that are named merely “Barack Obama” – not even considered “ObamaBiden2012″, “Students for Barack Obama” or similar ones. Most of his fundraising focused on small amounts of money from the small middle-class people – quite unusual for a promising candidate.

One can doubt that President Obama could have succeeded to the White House without the possibilities of the internet. Powerful lobbyists had been ruling the campaigns for centuries. Now, the people achieved the power to decide about the ones to have the chance to become the most powerful position of the world. To conclude, the political impact – at least in the USA – has settled where it would have already belonged since Abraham Lincoln had announced in his Gettyburg Address in 1863…

…that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Yes, I mean YOU – right in front of this PC screen. I am sure, you had been relaxedly sitting on your chair until I started talking to you. I see, you are not that much dressed up. You want to know, how I can know that? Well, there are two possibilites… either I am a very good guesser, or – and the latter one is more likely – I just used the endless possibilities of Google – the Godfather of Big Brother, as I started to call it. Or even the God of Web 2.0.

I would never dare to commit heresy; but the comparison of Google and God is based on four convincing commonalities:

1) The first two letters are the same: G and O. This can’t be a coincident!

2) Both are located in heaven – or how can it be explained that Google Maps can see you lying naked on your terrasse? This can’t be a coincident either!

3) Both are omniscient, they know everything: There is Google Maps, Google Mail, Google Reader, Google Books, Google Bible… let me guess, you didn’t even notice that the last one is wrong. This can’t be a coincident!

4) It is not possible to draw a picture of both: Or how do you explain that Google changes its appearance every couple of days. This can’t be a coincident!

This must be an act of providence!

And it is known that you cannot skip your fate, as this video proves:

These ambitions, though, are lacking of any basis, as news are supposed to be directly connected to reliable sources. The posts on Twitter – in contrast – lack of any check; they are published to the public within seconds. In spite of exceptional incidents like the Hudson River plane and its first announcement on Twitter that accidently turned out to be true, Twitter is based on the chatting and gossiping purpose. The name itself even stems from the gossiping origin.

It may sound hard but the only good thing about Twitter is its easiness. And even this advantage implies its big disadvantage: Everybody can send off everything at every time. Imagine a forest where every single bird is tweeting at the same time! You wouldn’t enjoy the birds’ singing any more. This scenario is similar to Twitter: Or who is really enjoying to get to know that your cat is just going on the toilet or something of a similarly high value of interest ?

The hurdles for the publishing of texts have been multifarious for hundreds and hundreds of years: You needed paper; you needed somebody to print it – as soon as Guttenberg had invented the printing with movable characters; and you needed somebody to deliver it.

These times are over, though. The internet has come. You don’t need anything of the above any more for sending off your ideas – not even somebody to receive them. This however, turns the World Wide Web somehow into a World Wide Waste, a gigantic field of better and worse content.

The great possibilities of the new dimension of publishing are to be topic of this blog.