I've been listening a lot to this lately - stuck in my mind and just won't go. It's the version from that worship scene in the 2nd Blues Brothers film that's my particular earworm.

Recent developments have also brought to a fore my view of Germany's no. 1 woman, who turned sixty yesterday and some say is now at her zenith...

... wrote the book of the seven seals
No-one knows what our chancellor really thinks, it seems. She's nominally conservative but she dumped nuclear power after Fukushima like a hot potato. She said all was okay with the North Americans doing what that Snow-something fella said - only to get seriously pissed off when her own mobile phone turned out to have been bugged by them. She backed Juncker as conservative candidate for the EU general election a few weeks ago, then dropped him a metre or so just after the election was done (conservatives ahead in the polls) only to catch him by the nape of his political neck before he landed in a heap down on the EU premiers' deadly verbal fight floor.

... had twelve apostles and three she led away
People who get in her way get dropped. Fast. That charismatic "blue-blooded" minister of defence. The young but outspoken minister for the environment. Others. She can be ruthless when she wants to be. Pity she restricts those times to securing her seat of power. Just like she learnt from Kohl. As if she wasn't able to be better than him.

Who's that writin'?
That's the point: It isn't her. She hardly ever publicly commits herself. There was no writing on the election posters of her or her party last German elections, except for some silly phrases like "we are strong". So, no one is writing. The message to everyone else is: Stay stupid, mom's here, let her worry. Duh.

Ashamed
Or just afraid? The US secret services have been behaving particularly badly since 9/11. And globally long before, basically determining foreign policy independent of any president. Now it turns out the members of the German parliamentary committee, to investigate US spying on all of us here (not just her & her phone), have been themselves spied upon. Want to guess by whom? Now would be the time to drop the ever-understanding stance she's taken all her life. Stop being the well-behaved vassal. Doing nothing is less and less of an option - the national attorney general will have to act. Will she take sides? Some doubts remain! ;-p

Hillary Clinton is a fan. But I would much prefer the great Moderator to do a little more for all of our personal freedom. Stand up to Big Brother across the Atlantic. Get out of the pocket of the big German arms manufacturers. Allow more dissent, and dissent more openly herself. If she's as popular as they say, she can afford it on the way to retirement. I like moderation. But in her case, I've had more than enough. Thanks, Angie.

Now get your boots on and start walking over the other premier brickheads! No excuses, please!

The current issue of TIME touts the benefits of fat vs. a lead "fact" of the last 3-4 decades, that fat, or at least its "unsaturated" variant, is the root of all dietary evil.

As the article indicates, the truth may be a lot more complex. Reducing fat - and praising non-sugar carbo-hydrates - may have led to the rampant obesity we see in the richer nations of the world. Because all "carbs", including sugar and all forms of bread, tend to get converted into triglycerides when over-consumed - the long-term body fat many of us have too much of.

Nutrition advice is a mine field, in my personal experience. If you don't submit devotedly to one expert who becomes your god of goodness, you tend to find a plethora of mixed messages out there: Reduce fat and exercise (Susan Powter); keep fat as part of your diet and be aware that exercise will not make you weigh less (TIME). And so on.

Here's what I - a non-expert fiftysomething - go by at the moment: Keep fat intake at roughly 30% of daily consumed calories (on a given supermarket product, divide fat grams times nine by kcal, to get the percentage - this is Powter's formula); to reduce calory intake in general, look for foods around or below 200 kcal per 100g or 100ml. Avoid salty foods - make them the exception (once or twice a week, no more). Do not avoid fruits & unprocessed veggies. Keep "carbs" below 5g per 100g or 100ml; for drinks reduce this from 5g to 1g!

The last sentence is the most difficult one for me at the moment. I am in the process of giving up almost all my favourite drinks - that "healthy" carrot-orange-water-mix at 3g per 100g, for instance! Instead I'm trying to get back my taste for plain water; I find if it's cold - in summer - it's at least a little pleasant.

For the future, I need to drink more water & tea - way more than 1 litre a day. And I need to spend a lot less time in the evening alone. Spending time with people makes me eat less! So I'm going to push up my regular social evenings every week from now on. Not eating any "carbs" at all in the evening is a good thing, my young (fit) twen cousin told me some years ago.

So here I go. (Again.)

Today I got to experience first hand one of the tough people of that idiom - at a first live TED hour held in Berlin by NPR Berlin, one of my favourite radio stations. (Yes, they're broadcasting in Berlin, and can be listened to on my normal radio in my bathroom.)

It's Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson and she was one of the main reasons I went. She was basically the voice of NPR during the Arab Spring, in its Cairo instalment. I remember being amazed at the scenes she described and was obviously part of, and her matter-of-fact reporting, while at the same time not hiding she was not unmoved.

She told us today that she was meant to go on a sort of quiet assignment in Egypt after a tumultuous stint in Afghanistan, where she spent a long time reporting, managing a bureau in Kabul and surviving being shot at. She also showed us the tiny battered recorder she uses, always, about five times smaller than her mike.

Soraya isn't the best free speaker, perhaps. But that made the message of toughness and dedication all the more clear: She's someone who goes where other people don't dare go, and tells us what it's like there, and what people are saying & doing, and what's really going on. Her reporting was always from very good to gripping.

Tough people don't need to look good on TV or when standing at an open mike in a gathering of suits. Their focus is elsewhere.

Thankgod they're around when the thousandfold rest of us need them!