Angelika Since I currently have a three-week semester break and can't spend all my time in the darkroom at the University of Berkeley (Figure 1 shows the mess that arises in the living room when I organize my works), I want to use this break to entertain you with some stories from everyday life in the "land of unlimited possibilities." I've noticed that we've never talked about the struggle (especially my struggle) with American measurement and weight units. As many of you might know, the metric system is not used here; instead, you encounter exotic units like "inches," "feet," "yards," "ounces," "gallons," etc. "Square inches" or "square feet" are particularly charming variations. It's also incomprehensible to us why exactly three "feet" should make a "yard." In everyday life, I simply have the problem that I have absolutely no idea what these measurements and weights represent. Even the question about my height can only be answered with a tired shrug. I can look it up on my driver's license: 5'8'', which is "5 feet, 8 inches," or 1.73 meters (Note from Michael: I think the lady is exaggerating a bit here).

Angelika And there's something else you have to deal with here in everyday life at every turn. I'm talking about "automated phone directories." By this, I don't mean automated services you can call to check the time, movie schedules, or the weather report, but rather the phenomenon you encounter here lately when you call certain government entities, like the city administration or the waterworks, but also banks, health insurance companies, large medical practices, airlines, cinemas, basically almost anything that isn't a private call.

Angelika And while we're having fun, I can think of another interesting little episode from American everyday life. One of the stereotypes that Germans are always associated with is that they have a bit of a cleanliness obsession and always carry a bottle of disinfectant with them (I'm exaggerating a bit). I'm not going to discuss whether this is actually true. I can only say that Americans are in no way inferior to this phenomenon in one respect, as they have a tremendous fear of bacteria and germs of all kinds, and this fear has led to some grotesque consequences.

Angelika For a long time, I've wanted to talk about American cities. We've often reported that San Francisco, in many ways, is not the typical American metropolis, and those of you who have never been to America might find that a bit surprising. To get straight to the point: American cities (except for San Francisco, New York, New Orleans, Boston -- forgive me if I've forgotten a city) all look the same, meaning they are quite boring and monotonous. This is partly because they are all laid out like a grid, with miles of parallel streets that are usually numbered for simplicity. This design might be practical, but it also leads to monotony.

Angelika And since I'm in the mood today to address quintessentially American phenomena (after all, in our last newsletter, I shared my impressions from my visit to Germany), I must write about the massacre in which 16 people lost their lives, carried out by two teenagers using firearms at an American high school in Littleton. This incident caused a real uproar across the country, likely because it wasn't an isolated case; such often more or less planned shootings have sadly become a part of everyday life at American high schools. Following Littleton, there were several incidents where students in other U.S. cities went to school armed and shot indiscriminately, injuring people--so-called copycats. After the Littleton incident, the American media feverishly searched for the causes of this increase in violence, digging up everything from the decline in values, the internet, the portrayal of violence in the media, overwhelmed parents, and the easy access to weapons.

Michael On May 16th, as on every third Sunday in May, the traditional Bay-To-Breakers city race took place in San Francisco. The name of the twelve-kilometer race comes from the fact that the runners start at the shores of the San Francisco Bay (made famous by the song "Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay"), run across the entire city, past a multitude of Victorian houses, sprint through Golden Gate Park, and finally arrive exhausted at the ocean with its breaking waves (Breakers).

Michael And finally, there's a picture of our new car! It continues to drive very well; we've already put 4,000 miles on it since the purchase date. Figure 1 shows me parking it on the steep 23rd Street just around the corner from us. The clutch is smoking there.

Michael An old computer geek like me naturally has to keep his hardware constantly up to date, so I recently bought a CD burner. Yawn, yawn, the computer whizzes among you will say, I've had one of those for five years! Sure, sure, but only recently did the devices drop below the $300 mark, and I just had to jump on it. A CD burner is a device that allows you to make your own music CDs--just like back in your student days when you compiled your favorite songs and recorded them onto a cassette using a recorder. Today, you insert a blank CD (cost: about a dollar) into a CD burner, use a computer program to read tracks from your favorite discs, and then let the computer burn the CD. It uses a laser beam to "burn" the data onto the blank CD. Afterwards, you have a CD that's just as good as one from the store--only with songs you've compiled yourself.

Michael Now to recreational sports. For two and a half years, with one exception--when Angelika's brother Bernd visited with Julian and we played soccer in Dolores Park--I haven't played soccer. So I was pleased to hear that there is a soccer team at Netscape. The email system there has a special distribution list, soccer@netscape.com (soccer is what they call football in America), where people arrange during the day to kick around on a nearby field in the evening--quite extraordinary in soccer-hostile America, where mainly baseball (the one with the wooden bat and the small ball and the people standing around on the field chewing huge pieces of gum) and American football (the one with people in armor-like costumes and helmets fighting over an egg-shaped ball) are popular, and at most some immigrant Mexicans can play soccer reasonably well. The rest couldn't even score a penalty on an empty goal. Just like in Germany, no one knows how many strikes the hitter is allowed in baseball before he's "out." Or do they? Does anyone among our educated newsletter readers actually know? The creme de la creme of German intellectuals (ahem!)?

Michael With only two weeks of vacation a year, you certainly have to make the most of every weekend: So in May, we drove to Point Reyes--a nature reserve north of San Francisco--to do some hiking by the ocean. And we were lucky: When we reached the tip of the peninsula, three whales were frolicking in the water, and with the 300mm telephoto lens we had brought along, we managed to take some pictures. They look as blurry as those of the Loch Ness Monster--but try focusing a 300mm telephoto lens! I guess I need to practice a bit more.

Michael As already reported, I am now working in the hallowed halls of Netscape, but to preempt any panic rumors ("What, has the boy switched again? Oh my!"), let it be said: Only the packaging is changing. AOL has bought Netscape, and I remain employed by AOL, just working in a new environment and on a new project. Otherwise, nothing changes!