The internet is full of options, for all types of web-surfer – and one of these options is for the browser to be both reader and creator of content. Wikipedia, Twitter, and Facebook are best known for this, but there are increasingly more new ideas for the creation of virtual community. One of these new strategies is a question and answer platform called Quora, which was created as a “social network of knowledge.”

The website, which currently runs in English, works so that any internet user can submit a question, and answer others. The questions and answers are edited so that quality, truthfulness and seriousness of information is maintained, and constantly improved upon.

Quora is like an ever-growing archive, which is organised into users, topics, and sub-topics. Each user is identifiable, and so their status is based on their knowledge, and the feedback from other users.

The collaboration from fellow internet groups have made Quora instantly popular – workers from Google and Facebook, the creators of Twitter, and known editors of news websites are amongst habitual users of the website.

Questions are far ranging, like for example “Where can I find a list of abandoned buildings in Buenos Aires? or Where should I invest in Asia? The quality comes from the fact that users take the questions seriously, and respond as such.

You can also a be follower of a certain user – or of a specific question or topic, and receive the answers and comments via email. So you can request an answer to a question from a particular user, or share questions on other social networks. There’s also the possibility of editing the answers of other users, in order to improve the quality of the information, and there is a vote system, meaning that the highest ranking answers are at the top of the list.

The creators of the website assert that the most important thing about Quora is the high quality of the content; “each question has to be a complete phrase, with good grammar and structure. Sentences must start with a capital letter, and end with a full stop,” and any kind of offensive or profane language is banned, as well as over-use of capital letters.

The site, which is barely a year old, already has thousands of members, who have left other forums for Quora. Currently, you can only join via invitation – a measure which was placed to prevent it growing too fast, and losing its level of quality. It’s been commented that such high restriction makes it an elitist space, with information controlled by a small group of people, though creators Adam D’Angelo and Charlie Cheever, who were also involved in the creation of Facebook, deny this to be the case.

The website is currently the main competitor of answers.com and Yahoo! answers, and though it’s still not clear how its business model will progress, private investment continues to keep it going.

Laura Aurelia

Time will tell how Quora will fit into the cyber world – meanwhile, why not visit Berlin, a city which is always at the forefront of technology. The Showtech fair, IFA Berlin and Linux Tag 2011 will feed any curiosity about the technological world and virtual communities you might have; rent apartments in Berlin and you won’t miss out.

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Translated by: Poppy
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All of us, in one way or another, want or like to discover new ways to enjoy sex. In numerous surveys conducted about dreams and fantasies, rape appears as a hidden desire. This does not mean that anybody doubts that rape is a crime that must be condemned, however, sex in which both parties agree to “force” a situation is becoming increasingly famous.

Nowadays, it is possible to find plenty of rooms and spaces that recreate bondage practices; of course, all of them have the required control measures for you to perform any of these activities. This is without doubt, one of the most practical alternatives to get started in aggressive sex practices.

In any case, if you’ve decided to buy the proper “tools” to start practicing at your own home, it is important to keep control of the situation and have great confidence in the person you are going to practice with.

Also, if you might want to go alone to a room, it is worth to inform the other person that it is your first time. Don’t be ashamed to say it, bondage is a fascinating practice, but if you wouldn’t control it, you could have a really terrible time, at the end of the day, speaking from the passive side, you have no control of the situation, because you will be subjected to what the other person wants to do.

mia1603

A great city that offers plenty of rooms of this kind, is Berlin. There you can find places that offer BDSM, femdom, submission and domination … everything you might be interested in. If you rent one of the available apartments in Berlin you can enjoy everything that this wonderful city has to offer you.

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Translated by: Hans
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Much of people’s aversion to oral sex is to do with having to swallow lubricant – in fact, more so than actual semen itself. And since sex is basically all about enjoyment, there are already products on the market that are easily ingested without ruining the whole moment. Now when you lick or suck, you can do so with the option of strawberry, peach..etc, as there are now dozens of flavours to choose from.

It seems strange that viscosity can affect a satisfactory sex life – not only from one’s own lubricant, but from semen, or the woman’s vaginal moisture. Recently it was reported that semen was the cause of allergies – which is a problem you are unlikely to have with lubricants. Think about it – as much apprehension as you may have about the whole thing, it’s because you want to be better, and make things easier.

Because the point is, a small detail like this can ruin a sexual encounter – and besides, the summer’s coming, bringing with it heat, passion, scantily clad bodies, shameless flirting, bikinis…etc

So you have to start trying out these new flavours for yourself – and if you find yourselves, for example, enjoying a holiday in Barcelona, I’m sure you won’t want to ruining any of these moments of passion when they come up…

mia1603

Another thing you should never ruin is holidays in general – so we recommend you rent apartments in Berlin One of the most sexually open cities, you’ll find lubricants of all flavours and types.

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Translated by: Poppy
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Nowadays it is very common to go to any gift shop and find a sex toy. Typically, those toys are small vibrators with different shapes and colors. Almost all of them are made by one company, Fun Factory. This brand has introduced their sex toys in stores that are usually reserved for ornaments and other household items. Somehow, the brand specialized in erotic toys, has made such toys available for people that are not even thinking of buying them, because until very recently, to buy a product like this, it was necessary to go to a sex shop. In a way, they have “humanized” these products and now are a just another item on the shelf in a store.

It is important that people handle these sexual items more naturally. At the end, sex is something we all practice, with the exception of some circles in the society, is understood to be a natural and even healthy activity. So, why not to diversify the market, putting sex toys at disposal of the general mass? We need to break all those paradigms that say that everything related to sex must be purchased at very specific stores.

Neither we say that these shops shouldn’t exist, many of them are specialized and have a lot of products for all kinds of consumers, however, they still carry the prejudice of being too “dark”, but if you visit cities like Amsterdam or Berlin you will see Fun Factory toys displayed in some shop windows, not only in sex shops.

mia1603

So you know, rent apartments in Berlin or Amsterdam, take a walk through their streets and scroll down and pick up your new toys, this will open another door to the pleasure, because we’re a little tired of suffering.

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Translated by: Hans
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Until the 13^th of June, the work of the famous philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein will be on exhibition at the Gay Museum in Berlin. Curators Jan Drehmel and Kristina Jaspers have organized this exhibition to commemorate the 60th anniversary of his death, recovering his original documents as well as his interior design and media facilities work.

Josef Ludwig Wittgenstein was born in Vienna in 1889. Son of a wealthy steel industrialist, he spent his childhood full of encouragement for art and culture that fostered his intellectual gifts. His house used to be frequented by people such as Brahms and Mahler, among other great artists of the time. He began studying engineering in Berlin and continued his studies in Manchester, where he focused on aeronautical research. In 1912, Wittgenstein read the three volumes of Principia of Mathematica by Bertrand Russell, and from that moment, his academic interests changed to the point that he moved to Trinity College in Cambridge to study pure mathematics and philosophy under the direction of Russell.

His passion for knowledge was focused on philosophy and particularly in linguistics. During the First World War he joined the Austro-Hungarian army and when he was taken prisoner by the Italians, he began taking notes of his thoughts. After the war, he published his book Tractatus Logico Philosophicus, which strongly influenced the logical positivists of Vienna Circle, a scientific philosophical movement that dealt with the logic of science. Years later, his further researches led him to harshly criticize the book.

Wittgenstein was an unusual man, lonely, depressed and humble. When his father died, he divided his inheritance among his sisters and some artists and intellectuals, leaving himself in poverty, working as a school teacher and gardener in a convent to live.

Although, he was recognized as a great thinker due to his contributions to philosophical logic and linguistics, his constant depression kept him away from meetings with his peers for long periods.

Wittgenstein’s work is divided into two stages. One, marked by the publication of his book Tractatus Logico Philosophicus, which seeks a solution to the unresolved dilemmas of positivism towards mathematics and philosophy. And a second stage in which his philosophical investigations, allow him to develop the analytic philosophy, by focusing the reflection on the study of linguistics as a way to transform the philosophical discussion.

His great artistic sensitivity, acquired during childhood, led him to venture into in architecture, music and sculpture. However, his –second to none- capacity of reflection and thinking made of him an extraordinary philosopher. During the Second World War he enlisted as a nurse and at his return, he started to write: The blue and brown books and Philosophical Investigations.

For more information visit http://www.schwulesmuseum.de/

Nancy Guzman

Quite an experience to visit the Gay Museum to see this remarkable exhibition about a philosopher who lived through the conflict of sexuality in an intolerant society and who despite this, shone for his intelligence, humanity and generosity. Do not miss it if you are enjoying apartments in Berlin

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Translated by: Hans
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When I heard that a new album by David Bowie was circulating on the Internet, I didn’t know whether they were good or bad news. I was happy because I would have the chance to hear his new songs, and because the distant hope of having the opportunity to see him live appeared for a moment in my mind and filled me with happiness. But at the same time I was sad, because this new album doesn’t actually contain new songs, instead of that, the disc is full of old songs re-recorded in new versions, well … “new versions” because since 2001, when the disc was recorded at Virgin Records, no songs by Bowie have been heard because he had problems with this record company.

According to some rumors on the Internet, the album was supposed to be released in 2001, but it wasn’t because Virgin did not reach an agreement with the artist for it, leaving this album sleeping until two weeks ago, when all his fans awoke with the good news that “someone”, a mysterious genius, published the commented album on the Internet. Well, so after 8 years of silence, or 7 actually, the Reality tour, which is the name of the new album of the “Chameleon”, took forever but it was very fruitful, we have the opportunity to hear original songs from his early stage and others from the side B of Heathen, like “Baby Loves That Way” and “Afraid”.

I must say it’s great to have this new album, although we do not know the reasons behind this or who has published it, I want to thank that person whoever it is!, and I hope that Bowie will surprise us with a new album and new tour, then I take this opportunity to send a message of encouragement: David, whatever happened, you are still so young! You are only 64, and we need more of your music, do not abandon us!

Luz Obscura

Some of the best albums of David Bowie were recorded in Berlin, something that many fans expect him to repeat. While waiting for his new songs, why don’t you plan a trip to Berlin and visit the studios where he recorded the Berlin trilogy. Rent apartments in Berlin enjoy the city and connect your ears to the new disc by David Bowie.

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Translated by: Hans
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Around ten years ago, a anonymous youth came across an abandoned camera in a metro station in Paris. It was the start of an extraordinary adventure which would take him all round Europe, in the quest of documenting the street art of different cities. The art and the messages – the writings with no author which cover the walls of Europe are what express the pulse, the beating heart, the desires, expectations and frustrations of the cities. The value of street art is in its immediacy – it offers direct access to a work of art to many people who wouldn’t go to a gallery or museum. City’s walls are thus used to communicate things otherwise hard to express.

Six years later, in 2006, the young man – known simply as JR, took the next step, and started to photograph people too, taking striking, beautiful portraits of the youth of European suburbs. It was the start of an international meteoric rise to fame which has seen him transformed into the biggest and most imitated street artist today after Banksy. He created what he called the biggest illegal photography exhibition in the world, when he covered the facades of eight Israeli and Palestinian cities – along with the famous wall of security separating the two territories – with huge photos of Israelis and Palestinians, around 15,000 msq.

However, JR’s definitive moment came last March when he was awarded the prestigious TED prize (technology, entertainment, and design) – an influential organisation based in North America. The winner is awarded $100,000 dollars, and offered all the support needed for the production of any artistic project.

In the case of JR, it was a very ambitious work, christened Inside Out Project, which aspires to involve people all round the world in the same action so that, in his own words, “it covers the world like a glove.” From the website (www.insideoutproject.net), JR asks anyone interested for a black and white photograph of their face, or somebody else’s. Once he has received it, JR sends back a poster of 90x135cm of the image with one condition – that the sender must exhibit it in the most public, open place they can think of, documenting it with another photo, which will go in a catalogue.

Paul Oilzum

This project continues JR’s intention of making a protagonist of the actions of people. If you rent apartments in Berlin you’ll discover that there are few European cities as artistically prolific as Berlin, especially when it comes to street art.

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Translated by: Poppy
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Michael Elmgreen was born in Denmark and Ingar Dragset was born in Norway. Both met in 1995, and ever since have been dazzling us their many works, which are based in social and political issues. Both artists live and work in Berlin.

A good example of their style of work would be exhibitions such as “Prada Marfa” – a highly notorious brand in the world of fashion. The exhibition took place in the middle of the desert, near a village called Valentine in Texas, and consisted of a shop made from biodegradable materials. Prada Marfa sponsored the exhibition.

Another work worth mentioning is “The Welfare Show” which was hosted by The Serpentine Gallery in London. It was a series of installations of wax work figures, automatic cashiers, policewomen sat in chairs, cleaning equipment, and so on.

One exhibition very popular within the gay community was “Friends,” which recreated the gay sauna. “End Station” was an imitation of a station in New York in the 1980s.

And finally – one of the most emotive and famous – “Monument in memory of the homosexual victims who were tortured and killed during Nazism.” The monument is situated in Tiergarden, which is one of central Berlin’s main parks. The grand unveiling of the piece was on the 27th March, 2008 and the sole survivor of the persecution of gay people during Nazism was in attendance. The monument is a giant concrete cube, and on one of the sides is a small window, onto which is projected a video to two young people kissing.

Raquel García

If you rent apartments in Berlin you must pay the Tiergarden park a visit, where you’ll find the monument in memory of the homosexual victims of the holocaust.

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Translated by: Poppy
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In one of his most famous stories, Borges imagines an allegory of the world, in the form of a spherical library, with a hexagon centre and a circumference which is impossible to measure. It is a library where all possible languages would be used to express everything there is to possibly express – and in its shelves would be registered all the combinations of the 20-something ortographics of the library; a number though inconceivably colossal, not infinite.

The imaginary space served as a kind of theatre for the Argentinian writer upon which to represent some of the recurrent myths and obsession of a good number of history’s lovers of literature, starting with the quality of totality of the library mentioned above. It expressed not just everything there has been, but everything which is possible to explain – even though in a particular part of the library it’s considered a superstition to hope to find any absolute sense in books, just as it might be with dreams, or alchemy. In the library however, there would be “the minute story of the future, the autobiographies of the archangels… thousands and thousands of false catalogues, the demonstration of the fallacy of the true catalogue, the story of your own death, a version of a book in every language…”

The existence of the library not only justifies the world, it guarantees the existence of a book for every single basic mystery of mankind. One of the consolation of the library is that the idea of the destruction of the books at the hands of man loses significance – on the one side, “the library is so enormous, that all destruction of human origin is infinitesimal,” and on the other side, the number of imperfect copies of each book is so great as to be innumerable.

Even for many who believe that they live outside the Borgean illusion of the library, the prospect of not being able to find the lost books of Tacito would be some kind of torture. Today, we can console ourselves with the hope that with the new digital age thousands of as of yet uncatalogued books will be able to be read. For the moment though, we can lose ourselves in places like the Berlin University Library http://www.fu-berlin.de/bibliothek/philbib/



Paul Oilzum

It’s an incredible building, capable of transporting you to another dimension – like the Babel Library of Borges. It would be a great shame to miss out on it if you rented apartments in Berlin

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Translated by: Poppy
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Neu Westend is a wealthy part of West Berlin and life here seems to be in order if you look at the bourgeois way of life along the well-kept avenues with trees on the side. You enter this district through the emblematic subway station that was constructed by the Nazis in 1935 that looks over the Olympic compound of Berlin. The Olympics in 1936 were meant to fulfil the intentions of the Nazi party, to glorify the superiority of the Arian race and to put the world in awe about the new, shining Germany of the Third Reich. Leni Riefenstahl made these Olympics immortal with her movie “Olympia.”

But as a bewildering surprise for Hitler, Goebbel and the entire apparatus of the Nazi propaganda a completely different myth was born by the name of Jesse Owens. Owens was a young, black bellboy at a hotel of the Waldorf Astoria in New York who won 4 gold medals at the Olympics which refuted the alleged inferiority of people with African origin in the most eloquent manner.

The deeply sad irony was that Owens later on said that he felt that he was better treated in Nazi-Germany than in his on country the United States of America. Out of fear to loose the support of the southern states who were in strong favor of segregation President Roosevelt refused to welcome and honor African-American Owens for his accomplishments despite the great symbolic meaning of them.

You would think that the remains of these terrible times only exist in forms of Riefenstahls movie or the subway station of Neu Westend. However, Thilo Sarrazin lives in one of the dapper houses of this district, former minister of finance for the social democrats and author of the book “Deutschland schafft sich ab.” In the book he discussed a majority of the political debates in Germany and with over 1 million sold copies it turned into a bestseller and made him rich.

In accordance to Angela Merkels recent comments in which she claims that multiculturalism is dead, in his book he claims that Germany is being destroyed by the immigration of Turkish and Arabic people (with 82 million inhabitants only 7.5 million are of foreign origin). Since these ethnic groups are less intelligent due to their genetic disposition, have more children and are worse integrated in society he identifies them as the nucleus of the problem. But not that this is enough, he further justifies the investments in genetic material by the Nazis.

Paul Oilzum

Having this uncomfortable, hysteric reaction caused by the past in mind that refuses to accept any kind of change, it will do to rent apartments in Berlin to admire the beauty and vitality that diversity and hybridization have caused.

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Translated by: Maria
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