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You don’t have to be a fan of Spider-Man to know that an arachnid’s silk is some pretty powerful stuff. After all, its tensile strength is close to that of high-grade steel. But is turns out that the strength of a spider’s web is about more than just the silk. Some new research from MIT suggests that its also the material’s combination of strength *and* stretchiness. In this week’s tech podcast, you’ll hear all about the research, and its possible implications for human building and design.

Also in this episode: you’ll hear about a German company that’s taken to the web, and to apps, to help drivers and passengers share rides. It’s called Mitfahrgelegenheit, or Carpooling.com for you non-German speakers.

We’ll also bring you the story of one Texas technology company, Eolas, that created quite a legal stir in the online world. Plus, how a virtual reality game helped one Afghanistan vet deal with the pain of horrific burns.

And we end with a lovely mini-documentary on that little block-filled game you love to hate: Tetris!

A reminder that you can ignore us equally on Twitter, Facebook, and now Google +.

(Photo: Duk)

In a parking lot outside of Munich’s main train station, Lars Biederstedt meets the people he’ll spend the next five to six hours with. Biederstedt drives from Munich (where he works) to Berlin (where his parents live) almost every weekend.

As we climb into his seven-seater van, he tells me about his other ride.

“I have a Triumph Tiger, an English motorcycle,” Biederstedt says, “And when the seats are out, the motorcycle can come in, and when the seats are in, I can carry people or my family.”

Biederstedt never drives to Berlin alone. Instead, he offers seats in his van through a website called Mitfahrgelegenheit, one of those wonderfully rich German words that means, essentially, “a lift.”

Sabrina, a student in Munich, found the offer on the website. She contacted Biederstedt and booked a one-way trip for about $40.

“The train is more expensive,” Sabrina says. “Besides, going by car is nicer, friendlier. You can get to know other people.”

Soon, Biederstedt’s other passengers show up, and as they all pile into the van to escape the bitter cold, he quickly tells me that he’ll make just enough from his passengers to pay for gas and upkeep on the van.

And then the van doors close, and the trip is under way.

This is a scene that plays out all over Germany thanks to the Mitfahrgelegenheit website.

It all started more than decade ago, when three friends at a university in Würzburg needed to help keep love alive.

“One of us had a girlfriend, not living in Würzburg, so we had a demand to travel in a cheap way,” says Michael Reinicke, Managing Director of Mitfahrgelegenheit.

He and his two friends decided to build a website where people could offer and accept cheap rides between German cities. The idea, spread mainly by word of mouth, took off. First, it was mostly students, but soon others were curious about the service.

“We think all trips by car could be shared,” says Reinicke. “Whenever you want to go with your car, you could take people with you, and therefore reduce carbon emissions and your costs.”

For the first six years, Reinicke and his pals worked on the website in their spare time, but by 2007, it had grown into a full-fledged business.

In 2010, they expanded to six other countries, including Spain, Poland, France and Great Britain.

And because “Mitfahrgelegenheit” doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue for non-German speakers, they renamed the company Carpooling.com.

Call it whatever you want. The company estimates that one million people per month are now using the service.

Passengers and drivers alike can size each other up via an online ratings system. And most people seem to get along just fine. Some better than others.

“We wouldn’t have met if there wasn’t Mitfahrgelegenheit,” says Julia Mallek, who met her future husband, Dominik, on a shared ride in 2008.

On a Skype call she continues: “We talked for three hour. Then he was the last person I dropped off, and he said, well, perhaps we can see each other again sometime, and I said yes. And one month later we were a couple.”

Mallek is then interrupted by the sound of the baby crying, and you can hear where their story goes next.

Carpooling.com makes money in three ways. First, it takes a small percentage of the proceeds from each ride. But the bigger money-spinner is advertising on its much-visited website. The company also custom-tailors its software for large businesses that want to offer ride-sharing for their employees.

And the website offers discounted tickets on German trains and busses, so that people can combine various modes of transportation to book door-to-door trips.

Now, the company has plans to enter the US market.

“Even in the US, the financial crisis, has had a deep impact on how people think about traveling,” says Carpooling.com CEO Markus Barnikel, who lived in the San Francisco area for years as an employee of Yahoo!

Barnikel admits that carpooling in the US has never really taken off. For one thing, he says, you don’t want to get stuck at work while your travel buddy suddenly has to stay late.

But he also thinks the Carpooling.com idea could change that.

“We would allow people commuting to companies to say, ‘When I know I’m going to leave, let’s say an hour or two in advance. I’m just going to pick another ride, and get another person to take me back home.’”

“I think that kind of offering, with this kind of flexibility, will be very appealing to the North American market,” says Barnikel.

I put it to Barnikel that many Americans think of their cars as a second home, a place they don’t normally invite strangers.

He says that may be true for an older generation, but he thinks younger Americans feel differently about sharing, especially if they can save money.

For example, he says, look at the success of the website Airbnb, which allows you to rent out your apartment or a room in your house in much the same way carpooling.com does for spaces in cars.

And, Barnikel notes, the fact that you can go on the website, and see the profile of who you will be riding with will also help reluctant drivers and passengers overcome any trepidation.

For the company, though, there’s a host of US regulatory and liability issues to be dealt with at federal, state and local levels.

“Each time we enter a new market, this is one of the first areas we study,” says Odile Beniflah, who works for Carpooling.com out in New York City. “The legal implications of taking someone in your car, the implications on car insurance, whether commercial drivers can do carpooling or not, we study all of that.”

“The German law from that perspective is a very strict law,” she notes, “and so because we had to comply with the German law, we think we can easily adapt to other countries.”

Beniflah says there are already hundreds of ride-sharing and carpooling websites in the United States.

But with the exception of a few, like Ridester and ZimRide, they mostly focus on very local rides, not longer-distance.

Carpooling thinks its long experience in the business will give it an advantage. The company won’t say, though, exactly when or where they intend to roll out their service in the US.

It is called the Elfstedentocht, or “The 11 Cities Tour,” and it is a grueling 125-mile skating marathon across the frozen canals and lakes in the Dutch province of Friesland, northeast of Amsterdam. As the name implies, the route goes through eleven cities, beginning and ending in the Frisian capital, Leeuwarden.

The Elfstedentocht was first held in 1909. Since then, the conditions have only been icy enough to run the race 15 times.

The last time was in 1997, and it was almost a photo finish, with Henk Angenent taking first place. But it was another Henk, Henk Kroes, who made the call that the 1997 race could be run at all.

Kroes, you should know, had been just a kid when the race was held the time before, in 1963. “That was one of the hardest winters,” Kroes recalls. “Ten thousand skaters started in Leeuwarden, but only 69 arrived in the city at the end of the day.”

Kroes, who participated in the 1963 race, wasn’t one of the finishers.

But by the time 1997 rolled around, Kroes was President of the Royal Society of 11 Frisian Cities, the group which decides whether or not the race can be run at all.

In 2007, Kroes handed over the reigns of the Society to Wiebe Wieling. At a news conference on Monday, Wieling announced that for the first time in 15 years, the conditions might be, might be, icy enough to run the race.

“Unfortunately, we can’t give you a date, or tell you how likely it is that it will happen,” said Wieling. “But I can assure that we are working very hard to improve the course.”

Dutch television has been replete with scenes of course officials hard at work, clearing snow from the ice.

Course of the Elfstedentocht (Photo:Wiki Commons)

Jan Oostenbrug, the so-called Ice Master of the Elfstedentocht, told reporters on Monday that he was hoping for the best in the next few days.

“It’s out of our hands,” Oostenbrug said. “Mother Nature will determine if this works out. If things go feel, then the wind will remain in the east and I will be optimistic about our chances.”

Temperatures, however, are supposed to rise this weekend.

Officials are supposed to meet again on Wednesday to evaluate the course.

One person who hopes it stays cold is Olympic speed-skating Gold medalist Mark Tuitert. The Dutchman sent out a message on Twitter saying that he had “Elfstedentocht fever,” and was prepping his skates for the race.

Hyper!! Druk bezig schaatsen slijpen, kledinglades overhoop halen, zo trainen voor de #elfstedentocht. IK HEB KOORTS.

— Mark Tuitert (@marktuitert) February 6, 2012

School kids are hoping too, as they will get a day off if the race is run during the week. And after all, who wouldn’t want the chance to hear, as many times as possible, the semi-official Elfstedentocht anthem, entitled “It Is On!”

“You tell people what you do,” he says, “and they think…well, that’s a bit strange.”

Okay, maybe he has a point. The first time I heard about OrthoMetals, the company Verberne co-founded, I too did a double-take. After all, this is the company that recycles the metal parts left over after cremations. We’re talking things like steel pins, titanium hips and cobalt-chrome knees. But that’s just from the bodies.

The company also recycles most of the metal parts from the caskets (including the screws). Although it may sound macabre at first, Verbene says, “after people come here and see what we do, they think it’s a good thing.” The company, after taking its cut, gives 70 to 75% of what it earns off the sale of the metals back to the crematoria, which then use it for charitable purposes.

This kind of recycling is definitely a growth industry (OrthoMetals recycles 250 tons a year). On the one hand, more and more people are getting implants. On the other, more and more people are choosing cremation. In Verberne’s native Holland, some 55% of all bodies are cremated. In Britain, more than 75%. And since the Catholic Church eased its opposition to cremation, the company has seen major growth in places such as Italy, Spain and parts of the United States.

One thing Verberne likes to make very clear to visitors is that the parts are recycled, not reused. These metal pieces do not end up in other bodies. Rather, they are melted down and resold for industrial purposes.

My immediate reaction was to ask if putting someone else’s metal hip in a new person was just a mental bridge too far. But Verberne said no. “You know, it happens with human hearts, and lungs, and everything else.”

Instead, it’s a question of liability. Who would be responsible if, say, a used artificial hip somehow malfunctioned? OrthoMetals? The original manufacturer? The orthopedic surgeon who put in the used one? You get the idea.

I also had to ask another slightly grim business-related question: how hard is it to separate out the metal from everything else after the cremation?

“When the body comes out of the crematory, you will immediately see the big metal pieces. The crematory staff will throw them in our container. They’ll also find more metals from the coffin, or small pieces from whatever was in their pockets, like coins or watches. And then the bones that remain are crushed into dust.”

In fact, one little telling detail that I could not get into my radio piece came right at the end of my visit to OrthoMetals. Verberne had shown me huge plastic containers full of metal hips and knees, and he was telling me about how did not expect new types of burials, or new types of implants, to affect the business that much in the coming years.

“My partner and I, our kids are continuing the business, and they’ll figure out their own ideas about how to develop this in the future.”

And then he pointed out another container, full of name plates from coffins and urns that were now ready to be recycled.

One small plate near the top simply read, “In Loving Memory of Dad.”

OrthoMetals Co-Founder Ruud Verberne holds a metal knee implant (Photo: Clark Boyd)

Advances in medical technology, combined with the fact that people are living longer, means that more and more of us pass away with some kind of surgical implant. Maybe it’s a steel pin here, or a titanium hip there. Have you ever wondered what happens to those metal implants after die? For almost 15 years, a Dutch company called OrthoMetals has been recycling them, and giving the bulk of the proceeds to charity.

OrthoMetals’ recycling facility sits in a nondescript building in an industrial area on the outskirts of the Dutch city of Zwolle. Giant sorting machines twirl and clank as tiny bits of metal run through them. Co-founder Ruud Verberne points to a big plastic container full of knee implants.

“These are the knees that we have to separate,” Verberne yells above the din. “We take it apart so that the right metal gets into the right recycling area.” He then adds, pointing to another container, “There’s also a hip.”

Orthometals recycles the metal implants from bodies that have been cremated.

Verberne had a long career in aluminum recycling. And then, in 1987, he met Jan Gabriëls, an orthopedic surgeon. Dr. Gabriëls asked Verberne, “So, what happens to all the metal implants after a person is cremated?”

Verberne had no idea at the time, but he started doing some research.

“The metals either ended up in the scrapyard, or in the case of France, Belgium, the UK, and partly in Holland, they were put in old graves on the crematory premises. So, they were burying all of it.”

These metals, Verberne knew, had a lot of potential value.

A decade later, in 1997, Gabriëls and Verberne founded OrthoMetals, and took their recycling idea to cremation facilities.

“We told them that we would collect the metals for free, sort them, and then sell them back to the market. We take care that it’s being recycled, and not reused.”

This is an important point. These metal parts do not end up back in other people. Instead, they are melted down and resold for industrial purposes, for things such as cars, planes, and even wind turbines.

It turns out it’s a lot of scrap metal. Verberne says OrthoMetals recycles more than 250 tons a year from cremations.

“We deduct the costs we have for the collection, the sorting, the administrative costs, the fees, and the remainder is given back to the crematoria, and they spend it on charity.”

OrthoMetals sorts the material, then sends it on to be melted down and recycled. (Photo: Clark Boyd)

Just to be clear, OrthoMetals does make a profit. But it tries to give 70 to 75 percent of what it brings in back to the crematoria for charitable purposes.

Henry Keizer oversees a memorial fund named after the first Dutch person ever cremated, a Dr. Vaillant, back in 1913. He says the fund has helped crematoria distribute thousands in OrthoMetals donations to everything from cancer research groups to school libraries in the Netherlands.

“I think the recycling of implants, and artificial joints, etc. is an excellent idea,” says Dr. Keizer. “Now we get to use them for good purposes, for funds for people that do social things that are extremely important.”

OrthoMetals is now working with crematoria in more than 15 countries, including the United States.

The Donohue Funeral Home in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania has been in business since 1898. Michael Donohue, a fourth generation funeral director, says that cremation is becoming more and more popular in the US. So much so, he says, that the funeral home decided to build its own facility a few years ago.

“Before we actually started to get up and operating, our biggest thing was — what are we going to do with the metal remains that are left at the end of the process?” says Donohue.

He did a Google search, and found OrthoMetals.

Donohue says the funeral home is up front with loved ones about the recycling program.

“We are honest with them, and tell them that whatever money is given to us goes to the local organizations, and they love knowing that something from their loved one is being used in a great capacity.”

Amid the sound of thousands of bits of clanking metal, OrthoMetals’ Ruud Verberne tells me his kids are now working for the company, as are his business partner’s kids.

Verberne has no metal implants himself, but he points out his partner’s wife, who is helping sort out bits of metal. He tells me that she has two titanium hips.

“She was asked once, “Isn’t it strange that you know that one day your hips will run through this conveyor belt?’”

“And she said, ‘No, it’s just a part of life. You’re going to die, and I know that reusing metals is a very good thing, because I have worked for years in this business, so it is no problem at all. And my mother’s hip was on there too!’”

The legislation calls for up to one year in prison — and a fine of more than $50,000 — for anyone in France found guilty of denying a “recognized genocide.”

It doesn’t mention the Turks or Armenians by name. But in 2001, the French government officially declared that the death of more than a million Armenians at the hands of Ottoman Turks during World War I was genocide.

Turkey has long maintained that the actual number of those killed was much lower, and that the deaths came in the course of war time. It’s a crime in Turkey to refer to those deaths as genocide.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, speaking before Turkey’s parliament today, condemned the French vote.

“This is the awakening of the values of the Middle Ages, which totally undermines European values and common sense,” Erdogan said. “You can’t judge or re-write history in parliaments.”

The French Senate’s approval of the measure came after a lengthy debate. Armenia’s foreign minister, Edward Nalbandian, applauded the vote.

“This day will be written in gold not only in the history of friendship between the Armenian and French peoples, but also in the annals of the history of the protection of human rights worldwide,” Nalbandian said. “France reaffirmed its pivotal role as a genuine defender of universal human values.”

The vote puts French President Nicolas Sarkozy in a tricky spot. A deputy from his own party originally sponsored the bill. Sarkozy is facing re-election this year, and some have accused him of using the genocide legislation to court electoral favor with the nearly 600,000 people of Armenian descent living in France.

There are also wider implications for France’s position in Europe and beyond.
Sarkozy’s own foreign minister, Alain Juppe, opposed the bill.

“I think this initiative is untimely,” Juppe said. “What I would like to do today is to call on our Turkish friends to keep a cool head. Turkey is a big economic power, and we need to have good relations with it.”

France is Turkey’s fifth largest export market. The two countries do more than $13 billion in trade a year.

Now, Turkey is threatening a host of military, political and economic sanctions. Turkey’s ambassador to France said today that he expected to be recalled. A spokesman for the Turkish embassy in Paris said that “relations in every field have been stopped for the moment.”

But even before the passage of the genocide legislation, there was some friction between France and Turkey.

President Sarkozy has been lukewarm when it comes to Turkey’s bid to join the European Union.

Soli Özel, a columnist with the Turkish newspaper Haber Turk, said it seems that French president is not especially concerned about having good relations with Turkey.

“In the Mediterranean, France considers Turkey a rival power, and would like to cut it down to size. That’s how it’s seen in Turkey anyway,” Özel said.

Turkish officials have said they would lobby to have France’s constitutional court rule on the genocide legislation. They’ve also said they wouldn’t impose any sanctions until Sarkozy signs the bill into law.

Sarkozy’s office said on Tuesday that that would happen within two weeks.

Given the state of the euro, you might find it surprising that anyone would look to it as a model. But a delegation from East Africa is doing just that.

The delegation, which includes members from Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, and Tanzania, has been dropping in on several European institutions this week.

In the late 1990s, those five countries re-established the East African Community, or E-A-C. (A previous incarnation collapsed in the late 1970s.)

The new EAC is slowly taking steps toward regional economic integration, which includes plans – eventually – for a currency union.

Richard Othieno, who works out of the EAC’s main office in Arusha, Tanzania, said a single currency would mean regional companies wouldn’t have to worry about exchange rates, and that would cut down on the costs of doing business.

“We want to make business easier for the business community, and to also make life easier for East Africans,” he said.

So the delegation has come to Europe to study how the world’s largest currency union works.

Of course, right now, the euro zone doesn’t seem like such a great model. I put it to Othieno that it’s might not best time for the delegation to visit.

But he disagreed.

“This is exactly the time for them to go and study how the crisis is taking place and learn to face it head on,” Othieno said. “They are not there on their holidays. They are really learning a lot.”

Still, there are other currency unions closer to home. There’s one in West Africa and one in Central Africa — both use the CFA franc. South Africa’s rand is used in a number of neighboring countries.

In the past, Kenya, Uganda and what is now Tanzania had a common currency — the East African Shilling.

But the East African Community’s economic plans are only a first step.

“It’s part of a roadmap for actually creating a federal state in East Africa,” according to Calestous Juma, who teaches at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

“It’s not just the currency. It’s actually integrating the economies of these countries fully, and I think the debates tend to miss that point, in that they focus on the currency, and ignore the fact that the currency is just one piece in an ecology of integrative activities.”

In fact, Juma said, the EAC’s proposals are ahead of European integration in some respects.

“They’ve actually gone farther than the European Union has gone in that they have committed themselves to creating a political federation. The EU is not there yet,” Juma said, adding that the euro zone could actually learn a little bit from the East Africans.

But some in East Africa are sounding a note of caution, given the euro zone’s recent hard times. In an editorial, a consultant at the Central Bank of Kenya wrote that the risks of currency union are being “underplayed.”

“Imagine the chaos,” he wrote, “if a Euro scenario hit the EAC.”

Enos Bukuru, a deputy secretary general at the EAC, has tried to issue some assurances.

“I think we are moving at the right speed,” Bukuru said last fall. “I think we are aware of what it takes to create a robust and sound monetary union.”

Maybe it is the Europeans who should be listening to the East Africans, instead of the other way around.

I was among the many stranded in London because of the ash cloud, and I can tell you that the mass closures did not go down well with travellers.

“It demonstrated our reliance on flying and on what, in extreme circumstances, can go wrong,” said Tom Hall, the London editor for Lonely Planet. “It felt for some time that there wasn’t really a plan, and it exposed the Achilles heel somewhat of the idea of just getting on a plane and flying from one place to another.”

The airlines lost an estimated 200 million dollars a day, and there were knock-on effects. Kenya’s economy suffered because it couldn’t send its fresh flowers to markets in Europe.

European officials came under fire for rushing to shut down so much airspace, based on the fear that the ash might bring down a plane.

Fred Prata could only watch as “better safe than sorry” became the European catch-phrase.

“The authorities didn’t have enough information, and they weren’t able to manage the situation,” said Prata. “So they did what any regulator would do. They did these blanket groundings, which weren’t really justified in retrospect.”

Prata’s a senior scientist at the Norwegian Institute for Air Research, and he’s a world authority on volcanic ash clouds.

Prata himself was stuck in Los Angeles at a conference because of the ash-related shutdowns in April 2010.

Ian Davies, an engineer for the low-cost British carrier EasyJet, remembers calling Prata up around that time, asking him to come talk about what they could do in the future.

“He came, and we decided there was enough there we could collaborate on, to develop a detector such that if we had another disruption, we could minimize the disruption caused to our passengers,” Davies said.

Prata was the right guy to call. He’s been working for the past 20 years on something that he now calls the Airborne Volcanic Object Infrared Detector, or AVOID.

The idea involves mounting two infrared cameras somewhere on a plane. The cameras snap pictures — about 25 images per second — as the plane goes along.

Because ash looks different under infrared than water droplets or ice, it’s not hard to distinguish it.

Computer systems can take the data and quickly determine the “ash dosage” a plane is likely to get.

The trick, according to Prata, is making the data useful to pilots when they’re in the air.

“I’m a scientist and I can interpret them, but if you show that to a pilot who is busy with many other things, it’s just simply not sensible,” Prata said. “So, we’re looking at ways of, I won’t say ‘dumbing it down,’ but making it more useful. If we can present it something like he’s used to seeing already, like a radar image, then the learning curve is much lower and the acceptance is much higher.”

Prata said the AVOID system is not designed to replace satellite imaging for ash clouds. It would just provide another stream of data for forecasters and controllers.

He added that there’s no need for every plane to be outfitted with the infrared cameras. Those already equipped could feed the information back to the ground.

And the data could help authorities make better decisions about when and where other planes should fly in the event of an eruption.

Last month, Prata tested the system on a small plane above Italy’s Mount Etna. He worked with Konradin Weber, a physics professor at the University of Duesseldorf in Germany.

Weber said the advantage of the AVOID system is that it can detect dangerous ash levels miles before a plane flies through them.

“You get the warning at an early point, so you’re able to fly around the plumes,” Weber said.

Next up, the scientists said, is to work with Airbus and EasyJet on testing the system on passenger aircraft.

Fred Prata estimates that each system would cost around 30,000 dollars to install.

That’s a small price compared to the billions lost during the Iceland ash cloud incident nearly two years ago.

During his victory speech on Tuesday night following the New Hampshire primary, Mitt Romney attacked what he called President Obama’s wish to “fundamentally transform America” — much to the delight of the assembled crowd.

“He wants to turn America into a European style social welfare state. We want to ensure that we remain a free and prosperous land of opportunity. This president takes his cues and inspirations from the capitals of Europe. We look to the cities and towns across America for our inspiration,” Romney said to vigorous applause.

Willem Post, an expert on US politics at the Clingendael Institute for International Relations in the Netherlands, was in New Hampshire to get a read on the candidates. In the days before that speech, Post said he got a chance to speak with Romney for a couple of minutes.

“I asked him, ‘Do you know the Netherlands? Do you know Europe?’ And he said, yes, I’ve been many times in your country as well. And he said about the Netherlands, I love speed skating. I thought — Okay, this is a guy who knows Europe well,” Post said. “Then I was there when he gave his speech, and he was saying, Mr. Obama is too cozy with Europe, with socialist Europe.”

Post thought to himself, “Really?”

The Europe that now has quite a few countries, including the Netherlands, run by centrist and center-right governments?

The Europe that’s wrestling with its budgets, and as often as not is trying to solve its problems with privatization?

Post said he thought, “Mr. Romney, come on. You almost owe us an apology. It’s really nonsense.”

Mitt Romney’s not the only Republican taking shots. Newt Gingrich recently took a turn on Fox News, speaking about President Obama.

“He is in exactly the tradition of the French socialist, or the Italian socialist, or the German socialist. This is somebody who really does believe that if you’re in private enterprise, and you go out and you work hard, you’re somehow doing bad things,” Gingrich said.

Many a European socialist might be shocked to learn that Obama is one of them, according to some European analysts.

But let’s face it — Europe’s financial sector is in big trouble right now, and its leaders can’t seem to fix it. Still, there’s some irony in the current attacks, said Rosemary Hollis of City University in London.

“There’s this attempt to taint Obama by association with the Europeans at a time when the Europeans are getting a very bad press for having failed in terms of their economic models, but it’s liberal, capitalist economic models that have essentially nose-dived,” Hollis said.

Hollis follows transatlantic issues closely, especially as they relate to the Middle East, and she notes that Europe bashing has become a leitmotif in American politics over the past decade.

Remember the call to rename French fries “Freedom” fries in the run-up to the war in Iraq because France refused to support the invasion?

Many Europeans, though, are taking these latest statements in stride. They know it’s an election year, and the rhetoric can get nasty. But the tough rhetoric may be pointing toward a quiet, though fundamental shift in American thinking.

Ian Lesser, who directs the transatlantic center of the German Marshall Fund in Brussels, said Europeans are probably less worried about social comparisons, and more concerned about whether the US will continue to pay attention to Europe.

“The truth is that the real distraction at the moment is that the US is paying more attention, in foreign policy terms, in economic terms maybe even in cultural terms, to Asia,” Lesser said.

As for Mitt Romney, he might want to reconsider using the anti-Europe rhetoric too heavily. He spent two years in France in the late 1960s on his Mormon mission, and he learned French there. There’s promotional video for the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Games making the rounds now. And it includes Mitt Romney, who headed the Salt Lake Olympic Committee, speaking French to welcome volunteers.

PACs and SuperPACS that support some Republicans and Democrats are already using that in anti-Romney advertisements.

We start 2012 with a fantastic B-side podcast. The BBC’s Peter Curran takes us on a tour of a giant silver donut in the English countryside. Sounds yummy, right? Well, just wait until you hear about the tech and the science inside the Diamond Light Source, the UK’s national synchrotron. As you’ll hear, these scientists take their infra-red and x-rays very seriously. So seriously that they have their own podcast!

And we should note: with the new year comes a new way to savor the joys of the tech podcast. We have created a mobile app that can be used with most smartphones and tablet devices, including Android, iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry and Windows Phone. Just follow this link with your mobile browser, and then either download or “add to home screen” as preferred. Not only can you automagically access the latest podcast, but you can also read the show notes, and follow WTP on Twitter and Facebook. One stop shopping, as they say, for Tech That Matters.

A reminder that you can ignore us equally on Twitter, Facebook, and now Google +.

Augusta Chiwy (Photo: Clark Boyd)

Sixty seven years ago today, the Battle of the Bulge, the largest and bloodiest battle of World War II, began in the Ardennes area in Belgium. The town of Bastogne was at the heart of that fight. Through the years, many stories of heroism emerged from Bastogne, but none quite like the one military historian Martin King tells of a 4’ 8” volunteer nurse who was born in the Belgian Congo.

King says that to fully understand her story, you have to understand the battle. So, he drives me around Bastogne in his battered Ford minivan.

At one point we pass a memorial commemorating Easy Company, 101st Airborne Division — the guys made famous by “Band of Brothers.”

Before long, King and I leave the van and go on foot through the trees. The temperature drops, as cold rain and sleet begin to fall.

King tells me that these are the very woods where Easy Company was dug in back in December 1944. The ground is still marked by deep craters.

“What I find remarkable,” King says, “is that 67 years after the fact, you can still quite clearly see the foxholes here.”

Originally from Scotland, King has lived and worked in Belgium for thirty years now. He’s interviewed countless veterans, and co-authored a book called “Voices of the Bulge.”

This, he tells me emphatically, was the scene of some of the most ferocious front line action in the Battle of Bulge. But he says to get the real flavor, you have to imagine it with two feet of snow, the ground frozen solid, and the fog so think you can’t see five feet in front of you.

“And the Germans,” he notes, “would have been a few hundred yards away.”

The German shelling and bombing of Bastogne were horrific back in December, 1944.

Allied medical supplies and personnel were hard to come by. Some locals, though, volunteered to help as nurses.

You might remember that in HBO’s “Band of Brothers” mini-series, there’s a scene set in Bastogne.

In it, a white Belgian nurse chats with an Army medic outside an aid station. They’re discussing another volunteer, a black nurse.

“Where’s she from? The black girl?” asks the medic.

“From the Congo,” answers the white nurse.

It turns out that “the black girl from the Congo” is not a fictional character. Her name’s Augusta Chiwy, and hers is one of the great untold war stories, says historian Martin King.

“The Snow! Oh, the Fog!”

“Augusta’s story is the most incredible thing I ever heard,” King tells me.

“You can take the hero story – he did so much that day, and shot all those people, and he had big guns. But this, to me, had something else. It had a humanity that I’d never come across.”

Augusta Chiwy was born in 1921 in the Belgian Congo. Her father was a white veterinarian, originally from Bastogne. Her mother was Congolese.

At the age of nine, her father brought her to live with relatives in Bastogne.

Then, at age 19, Chiwy went to study nursing in the city of Leuven.

In December of 1944, her father invited her home to Bastogne for Christmas.

“The snow, oh, the fog!” Chiwy recalls.

When she arrived in Bastogne, the town was firmly in American hands and the front was some miles away. A few days later, though, the German advance left Bastogne surrounded.

Chiwy and her family stayed in town, hiding in the basement like many other residents.

And then, a few days before Christmas, there came a knock at the Chiwy’s door. It was US Army medic Dr. John Prior, known as “Jack.”

“Jack Prior arrived at the house,” Chiwy says, “and he told me that he had no one left, that his ambulance driver had been killed.”

So, Chiwy volunteered as a nurse, working at the makeshift first-aid station in town. When her own clothing became bloody, she even donned a US Army uniform.

Then, she volunteered for something much more dangerous.

“The Germans Had it Zeroed”

Every fifteen minutes, chimes ring out from the US war memorial that stands on the top of Mardasson Hill outside of Bastogne. The sound is meant to remind visitors of the sacrifices made by American soldiers.

Not 200 yards away from the memorial is a field which was very much the front line back in December, 1944.

Chiwy, Martin King tells me, jumped onto the back of a two and half ton Army truck with Dr. Prior and two litter-bearers. They drove from Bastogne to this spot.

And there, King says, Chiwy risked everything to help the wounded US soldiers.

“She was actually running out into this field,” King says. “And the Germans had it zeroed. They were hitting it with 88s, and mortars and heavy machine gun fire.”

“And Augusta tells me that the ground was being raked up around her as she was trying to retrieve the bodies.”

There were other hazards for Augusta Chiwy besides the intense gunfire, though.

Bastogne had been, until recently, under German occupation. “If the Germans captured her,” King says, “they would have shot her immediately as a collaborator.”

And the fact that Chiwy was black, King notes, would not have helped matters when it came to the Germans.

“It was an incredible risk,” says King.

“We Heard Something Screaming Towards Us”

On Christmas Eve 1944, the aid station in Bastogne where Augusta Chiwy has been working iwas hit by a German bomb.

More than two dozen US soldiers, and Renee Lamaire, another volunteer nurse, were killed.

You can find the spot where the aid station stood not far from Bastogne’s main square. It’s now a Chinese restaurant.

Outside, a plaque commemorates those who died when the aid station was bombed. Renee Lamaire is mentioned, but not Augusta Chiwy.

King tells me that some books about the Battle of the Bulge say Chiwy died in the explosion.

But historian he didn’t buy it, and he was so intrigued by the story that he went looking for her.
A few years back, a contact in the Belgian army told King that Chiwy was still alive. Eventually, King found her living comfortably in a retirement home just outside Brussels

Slowly, he got her to tell the story of how she survived that bomb blast in Bastogne.

In a documentary made a few years ago, Chiwy remembers the night the aid station was hit. She was sipping champagne with Dr. Jack Prior in a building next door.

“So a bottle of champagne was opened, a glass was passed around,” Chiwy says on the video.

“And I don’t remember if he finished filling the glass, but we heard something screaming coming towards us, and then big bang and all the windows were blown out.”

Chiwy was blown through a wall, but survived. After the explosion, she simply got up and started helping Jack Prior tend the wounded.

She continued to volunteer until the Germans were pushed back, and the siege of Bastogne ended.

“You Embody What is Best and Most Kind in All of Us”

For years, Augusta Chiwy went for long stretches of time without speaking about her war experiences. Martin King says that today, she’d probably be diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

But the more King coaxed out of her, the more he realized Chiwy should be honored for her service.

He wrote letters to the US Army, and to the Belgian King.

It has finally paid off.

Earlier this year, Chiwy was honored by King Albert II of Belgium.

And earlier this week, the US Army did its part for Augusta, now “Lady” Chiwy. In a ceremony in Brussels, Chiwy was given the US Army’s Civilian Award for Humanitarian Service.

Colonel JP McGee, who currently commands the “Bastogne Brigade” of the 101st Airborne Division, presented the award to her.

“M’aam, you embody what is best and most kind in all of us,” McGee said.

“It is an honor to share the stage with you and to be able to say on behalf of US veterans everywhere — thank you. The number of lives that you touched is incalculable. There are men and women in America who would never have a father or grandfather if you hadn’t been there to provide them basic medical care.”

During the ceremony, Augusta Chiwy smiled, blew kisses and waved to her family in the audience.

Afterwards, amid the applause, I asked her if she was happy to be honored, almost 70 years after the fact.

“Yes,” Chiwy told me. “See, I’ve had a good life. I’ve got my children, and my grandchildren.”

“And,” she added, pointing to her head with a smile, “I’ve still got my marbles.”

As historian Martin King told me: “America honors its heroes. It just needs to be reminded sometimes who those heroes are.”

Turkey formally applied for EU membership in 1987.

It was officially recognized as a candidate for full membership 12 years later, but today it remains embroiled in membership negotiations.

Meanwhile, Turkish citizens have to go through a long and bureaucratic process to travel to the EU. Rules make it tough for Turks to get a visa and many spend long hours in line, waiting.

One Turkish musician, Sarp Yeletaysi, decided to tackle the matter with humor and wrote a song about the visa hurdles. It’s called “Schengen Macht Frei.”

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We’ve got some inspirational tech stories this week on the podcast. First up, this is a Katherine Bomkamp, a student at West Virginia University. In interviews, Ms. Bomkamp says she likes the normal student activities: hanging out with friends, going to parties, etc. But, she’s also an entrepreneur with her own company. When she was 16, she was inspired to help veterans who suffer from phantom-limb pain. Now, four years later, she’s well on her way to developing a prosthetic device that she believes can help them. It’s called the Pain Free Socket, and you can hear Bomkamp talk about it in this week’s edition of the best kept secret in podcasting, the World’s Technology Podcast.

Also, we’ve got another great inspirational item on a project called Random Hacks of Kindness, and we’ll also have an in-depth look at the Satellite Sentinel Project.

For those who prefer a bit of fear to inspiration, we’ll also take a look at the raging debate over how the rules of war apply when the war moves online.

A reminder that you can ignore us equally on Twitter, Facebook, and now Google +.

(Photo: Greg Ellis for WVU)

This summit was billed as the Eurozone’s last chance to stave off impending economic doom. French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel said they wanted tough new budget guidelines for the eurozone countries, and they wanted the power to punish any country that couldn’t keep its economic house in order.

Given the scale of the problem, and the scope of the solution, Sarkozy and Merkel pushed for a European Union wide agreement, one approved by all 27 members of the EU — even the ten that don’t currently use the euro.

But Friday morning, Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron said no, in fairly blunt terms.

“We’re not in the euro, and I’m glad we’re not in the Euro,” Cameron said. “We want the eurozone countries to come together and to solve their problems. But we should only allow that to happen if there are proper protections for the single market and other key British interests. Without those safeguards, it is better to have those countries make their arrangements separately.”

That’s exactly what France, Germany and the rest of the eurozone say they will do.

They don’t have much choice; in the European Union, treaty changes have to be approved by all member states. So they’ll forge ahead without Britain, said France’s Nicolas Sarkozy on Friday.

“Our British friends — this is not a criticism – say not only are we not in the euro, but we’re glad we’re not in it,” Sarkozy said. “And we who defend the euro, who are changing the way the euro functions and are learning from the crisis, we’re not going to apologize for doing everything we’re doing to save our currency.”

Germany’s Angela Merkel also praised the agreement.

“I’m very happy with the result because we managed not to make a useless compromise for the euro,” Merkel said. “Everybody in the world will see that we’ve learned from the mistakes in the past.”

The plan now is to adopt an “inter-governmental treaty” that would ensure tougher budget guidelines and the power to enforce them.

That kind of treaty wouldn’t require every member of the EU to sign on, according to Herman van Rompuy, president of the European Council.

“An intergovernmental treaty can be approved and ratified much more rapidly than a full fledged treaty change,” van Rompuy said, “And I think speed is also very important to enhance credibility.”

Speed is not a word many would use to describe the eurozone’s actions to stem the financial crisis up to this point. And while tighter, more centralized budget controls were on many longer-term wish lists, some say that today’s agreement doesn’t tackle the urgent issues; that Greece is all but bankrupt, and that Italy and Spain may soon follow and drag the rest of the eurozone down with them.

David Rennie, political editor at The Economist, said there’s been a disturbing lack of realization that the markets are already losing faith in the euro and a single currency.

“That kind of market panic can only be stopped with massive intervention,” Rennie said, adding that European leaders “are still, unfortunately, dragging their feet.”

In Friday’s agreement, the eurozone countries have agreed to speed up the creation of a stability or bailout fund for troubled countries. They also said they would look at boosting the amount of money in that fund.

Some experts say it will take something on the order of $5 trillion to calm the markets.

The eurozone pact also calls for providing more money to the International Monetary Fund to be used to help ailing economies.

What many were hoping for, though, was some indication that the European Central Bank would be allowed to step in and buy up government debt from countries in trouble.

Germany, however, remains firmly against that.

But on Thursday, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, said that if a decision on fixing Europe’s debt woes can’t be reached by Friday, “there are no second chances.”

After months of economic doom and gloom, punctuated by a series of these summits, it’s hard to see how the eurozone is suddenly out of “second chances.”

But on Thursday, ahead of his trip to Brussels, Nicolas Sarkozy made his case.

“Never has Europe been so necessary. Never has it been in so much danger,” Sarkozy said. “Never has the risk of an explosion of Europe been so great.”

Many have argued that it’s been that way for 18-months now.

Previous summits have produced a lot of talk about how Greece’s debt will be dealt with, and how the “economic contagion” that everyone fears won’t spread to Italy and Spain.

Action, on the other hand, has been slow in coming, a fact German Chancellor Angela Merkel acknowledged on Thursday.

“Words alone will not be credible anymore because time and time again we didn’t stick to our word, the Chancellor said. “And therefore we need more cohesion, therefore, in my view, we need treaty changes; treaty changes in which the European institutions, especially the Commission, will have more responsibility and we will have to submit more to the ruling of the Commission than in the past, in times when member states, including Germany, watered down our rules.”

Merkel and Sarkozy are spearheading an effort to get European nations to agree to a series of measures aimed at preventing this kind of crisis from happening again.

They’re calling for tighter, more centralized, and more disciplined oversight of the budgets, and debt levels, of eurozone countries.

And for the ability to punish those countries that don’t comply. Some say it’s about time.

“Europe has to change, and the institutions have to change, not the currency,” said Mathijs Bouman, a Dutch economist and author. “We avoided that for 10 years, and now we have only a few days to fix it.”

He says the European Union’s very structure is not designed to deal with this kind of economic crisis.

“I think one discussion in the White House would solve the crisis in the US,” Bouman said. “We don’t have a White House in Europe, so we have discussions every three months, slowly…slowly…slowly…and the financial markets, they don’t understand that.”

And that’s why Merkel and Sarkozy’s talk of “treaty change” seems off the mark to some.

EU treaty changes might take months, even years, to be approved by the member states. But the crisis, critics say, is happening right now, and it’s having a big impact on the lives of millions of Europe’s citizens.

Economist Arjo Klamer sees a big disconnect between Europe’s dickering politicians and its citizens.

“They feel that with the Euro they have lost their voice. Brussels is too far away. Europe is too big. And there are lots of people that feel sort of alienated from the whole process,” Klamer said.

The United States has a big stake in how the eurozone crisis plays out.

The EU is America’s largest trading partner. American companies, and banks, are heavily invested here.

US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was in Europe on Thursday for economic crisis talks with Italy’s new Prime Minister.

But it’s not just US companies and officials who are looking on nervously.

The heavy metal group Metallica recently rearranged its world tour schedule.

The band’s management pushed up European tour dates in case people have no money to rock out six months from now.

Come to think of it, you can probably expect quite a bit of head banging in Brussels tomorrow should Europe’s leaders once again fail to offer concrete steps to stop the economic crisis.