The communism collapsed by 1989 - in most of the socialist Europe. However, DDR has actually swallowed West Germany, updated its socialist ideology a little bit, and continues to terrorize the people who exchange goods and ideas in between the nations.
Mr Siegfried RotthÀuser and his brother have sold about 4,000 heatballs in the past. See
www.heatball.deWhat is a heatball? It is a miniature source of heat - clearly a perfectly legal device according to the existing law. In order to guarantee that you won't heat your room when you don't want to, it also emits light to inform you that the heatball is turned on. An advantage of this piece of operational art is that you can use the sockets for (fluorescent) light bulbs. I am using several 100-Watt heatballs in my apartment, too.
Because the first packages of 4,000 heatballs - sold for EUR 1.69 or USD 2.30 per piece - were instantly sold out, the entrepreneur ordered 40,000 additional heatballs. However, they were immediately confiscated by the DDR custom apparatchiks at the Cologne International Airport and the engineer was actually arrested for a while: he became a kind of dissident in the DDR.
An official propaganda mouthpiece of Business Green describes the business idea as "orchestrated two fingers" to the Brussels. :-)
To be honest, they authorities are still investigating what the products actually are used for - by polls etc. Why don't they ask a physicist instead of random consumers what is the primary purpose of the product? As a physicist, I can assure them that a vast majority of the energy in the product is used for heating, so it should be considered a heating device and the regulations invented for light sources shouldn't apply. ;-)
This point doesn't seem obvious to them and they're unfortunately in charge. You just can't import miniature sources of heat to the DDR, stupid! The message is Don't mess up with arrogant totalitarian ideologies. The DDR and EUSSR comrades have apparently forgotten the weather that German soldiers experienced near Stalingrad so they want to deny their citizens their right to possess heatballs. ;-)
Via aktualne.cz (MSM), Wochenblatt (MSM), and klimaskeptik.cz
See also: Germans intercept weapons shipment :-) (by Andrew Bolt)
United Nations plan what science will say
The United Nations undersecretary for planning is following in the footsteps of his comrades Stalin, who had 5-year plans, and Hitler, who had 4-year plans. His planning includes the future developments in science. As the AFP reveals, Robert Orr of the U.N. has planned that the next IPCC climate report will be more catastrophic than ever before.
I wonder whether these dishonest parasites are also planning how to move on the electric chair when they get it for their long years of lying to, robbing, and manipulating the world's public - because, whether it sounds surprising or not, genuine science can't be pre-ordered to produce results of a certain kind.
Hat tip: Marc Morano