01/19/2006

SPIEGEL Surfs the Web

Planning the Holocaust

Friday is the anniversary of the Wannsee Conference, during which Nazi leaders planned the extermination of Europe's Jews. The villa, where in 1942 the meeting took place, has since become a museum and has just unveiled a new permanent exhibition.

Reinhard Heydrich (right), who chaired the Wannsee conference, here with Heinrich Himmler.

This week sees the opening of a new permanent exhibition at the House of the Wannsee Conference in time for the anniversary of the infamous discussion of the Final Solution on January 20th.

The villa, which was built in 1914 by a Jewish architect, provides a terrifyingly idyllic facade to the horrific plans which were hatched inside: in 1942 15 high-ranking Nazi civil servants and SS officers met here and decided to send the Jews of Central Europe to their deaths. Today the house, which is beside Lake Wannsee on the outskirts of Berlin, is both a memorial and education center.

Can Married Muslims Do it in the Nude?

Everyone knows that conservative Muslims adhere to strict rules about what women are allowed to wear in public. But what about in private? That, at least, is the subject of a current debate in Egypt. Or, more precisely, do strict Muslims have to keep their clothes on when having sex?

The debate was kicked off by Dr. Rashad Khalil, an Islamic law -- or Sharia -- expert at al-Ahzar University in Cairo recently when warned that married couples who do it in the nude risk invalidating their marriages. Hogwash, say other religious scholars. Married couples can see each other in the buff as long as they don't let their eyes drift below the belly button. Suad Saleh, head of the university's Islamic studies department, goes even further. "Anything that can bring spouses closer to each other," is allowed. Even bloggers have gotten in on the "act".

Not so Home Alone

It's Friday night. You're home alone and surfing the Internet. You're staring forlornly into your monitor wondering why you don't have any friends. Perhaps you think to yourself: "There must be someone else somewhere on the planet looking at a classic David Hasselhoff video right now. I sure wish I could share this special moment with them." Well, lament your pitiful plight no longer. The people at Chatsum have created a browser extension that allows you to chat with other users that happen to be looking at the same Web site that you are. The program effectively turns all of cyberspace into a huge chatroom! We'll leave it up to you to decide whether that's a good thing.

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