God Is an Astronaut God Is an Astronaut God Is An Astronaut is an Irish post-rock band from County Wicklow, formed in 2002 by Niels and Torsten Kinsella. Their style employs elements of electronic music, krautrock, and space rock, reminiscent of Tangerine Dream. The band currently consists of Niels and Torsten Kinsella and Lloyd Hanney. They have released 9 studio albums to date. The band was formed in 2002 by twin brothers Niels and Torsten Kinsella, who took the inspiration for its name from a quote in the movie "Nightbreed". God Is an Astronaut's debut album "The End of the Beginning" was released in
Chinese as a foreign language Chinese in Europe. In 1837, Nikita Bichurin opened the first European Chinese-language school in the Russian Empire. Since then sinology became an academic discipline in the West, with the secular sinologists outnumbering the missionary ones. Some of the big names in the history of linguistics took up the study of Chinese. Sir William Jones dabbled in it; instigated by Abel-Rémusat, Wilhelm von Humboldt studied the language seriously, and discussed it in several letters with the French professor. Local Chinese variants were still widely used up until a Qing dynasty decree in 1909 that mandated Mandarin as the official language of