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¡Hola Carlito! … Spelling and shoe size … Verlottern 3rd of October, 2006 POST·MERIDIEM 06:30

I find this funny; since Hitler was so limited as a second name, and since the Russian re-interpretation of the German h was consistently /g/, this professor of membrane research at the Weizmann Inistitute of Science, at Rehovot Israel is probably related to ’dolfi: http://​www.​weizmann.​ac.​il/​Biological_Chemistry/​scientist/​Gitler/​carlos_gitler.​html

I hope I don’t need to explain why I find this funny: Phillippe Kahn, the founder of Borland, told a great story about statistics that I think equally applies to Charts’n’Graphs. The story is, “Did you know it’s a statistical fact that people with larger feet tend to be better spellers? [insert awe] It’s because people with bigger feet are older.” From Rands in Repose, via Mal.

Word of the day: verlottern is one German word for deteriorate, degenerate. Cf. the Grimms’ quote for it: „in einem dorff sasz auff ein zeit ein toller, voller, verlotterter, verspilter, gottloser pfaff.“ Spiegel also uses the derived „Verlotterung“ on their front page this week.

From Dave on the 4th of October at 11:18

Would be funnier if he had an associate called "Menhele" or something.
From Aidan Kehoe on the 6th of October at 15:37

I suspect my point was a bit cryptic; I think it’s well and good that this guy has a job and is apparently doing productive work in Israel, there’s no evidence whatsoever that he’s a mass-murdering fuckhead or has any tendencies in that direction. However, w.r.t the Nazis and the Holocaust, there’s often a certain “sins of the father” attitude—cf. that Hilde Schramm was initially refused an academic visa to the US as a teenager, and that despite her being a prominent left-wing politician, I’ve seen news stories where the German Jewish council refused her appearance at certain functions because of who her decades-dead father was.

But then there are millions of Russian-speakers in Israel, the implications of his name are probably not a mystery to anybody there.

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