German scientists have come up with a formula to get touch-deprived moms the kind of action they really want.

Cuddle spray!

The makers promise that just a puff or two of the stuff will make even the most insensitive oaf skootch in for a snuggle. (Actually, they say “a puff or two of the ‘cuddle chemical’ will make even the most masculine of men as sensitive as a woman,” but, as a not-so-cuddly woman, I didn’t want to perpetuate that inanity. Forgive me.) Continue reading »

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I’ll admit that I have not read The Diary of Anne Frank since I was in school and, to be perfectly honest, I’m not even sure I read it all back then.  You see, it touched on a topic that was not discussed in our house — World War II and the Holocaust.  My father came to America by himself when he was 13.  His family was supposed to follow the next year; instead, they went to Auschwitz.  Despite this, I do believe that it is an extremely important document from a historical and cultural point of view and should be made available to students.  Not everyone, however, agrees.  Because Anne Frank was a girl.

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When we head up to Lake Tahoe every February, one of the incidental highlights of the trip for my kids is seeing the giant snow-plowing front-end loader that comes up the road every morning.  My kids aren’t alone, it appears, in their love of snowplows.  A seven-year-old in the town of Reinfeld in Northeast Germany decided to do something nice for his dad and his community.  His father had recently complained about the state of the roads so the boy took it upon himself to correct the situation.  He borrowed a front-end loader from his parents’ business and got busy plowing.

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In Germany, a 40-year-old woman in her 13th week of pregnancy suffered a heart attack that cut off blood flow to her brain. Still in a coma 22 weeks later, the woman nevertheless delivered her baby, who is now a healthy one-and-a-half year old. Continue reading »

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There are names and there are names. And this one is a doozy.

A man described as an “Islamist” who’s been watched closely by intelligence agencies for years has gained permission from the German courts to name his son “Jihad” – or more precisely, Djehad, another form of the Arabic word for “struggle.” Continue reading »

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I’m not sure what I was looking for when I came across this one. Must have been something Sesame Street related. But wow. This just blew my mind.

For a moment I thought that this was the German version of Sesame Street. There are many international versions of the show, so I thought this could be the real thing. It’s not. The whole cyclops thing should have been my first clue, but I was tired.

So what is it? Continue reading »

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