|
2003-09-19 14:40 (UTC+1)
All the leaves are brown
And the sky is grey
I went for a walk
On a winter's day
I'd be safe and warm
If I was in L.A.
California dreamin'
On such a winter's day
[California Dreamin', The Mamas and the Papas]
Keep the guestbladet warm; I'll write when/if I can. (And eyes peeled
for harmless and vapid prinsessor stories, me hearties, arrr!)
[Permalink]
2003-09-19 13:03
Birgitte asks:
Oh, and I wonder, does Norwegian really have numbers organised like
Danish, so that, say, '51' is spoken 'en-og-femti'?
As usual with Norwegish , it's worse more complicated than that
(for arbitrary values of "that"):
In 1951 it was decided that numerals should from then on be read from
left to right in Norwegian, e.g. 52 as /femti tu:/ and not as /tu:
femti/ which was common at that time. The main argument for the change
was that it is easier to process numerals if they are pronounced as
they appear in texts, from left to right. Also a growing use of the
"new" pronunciation (as in Swedish and English) in the defence forces
and among switchboard operators caused mix-ups (for people using the
"old" pronunciation).
The optimists forecast that the reform would be
accepted by the public within a five year period. But there were
misgivings as well, since the trochaic or dactylic stress pattern of
the "old" pronunciation agreed with the normal stress pattern
in Norwegian, while the "new" pronunciation gave an iambic or anapaestic
stress pattern which normally only occurs inNorwegian in words of
foreign origin.
Especially in non-formal everyday speech the "old" pronunciation is
frequently used, both by old and young people. In formal speech,
e.g. reading phone numbers from a manuscript, people are less likely
to use the "old" pronunciation. However, in our database 336 (3 %) of
totally 10922 numerals which could be pronounced in both ways, were
pronounced in the "old" way. Of 780 speakers, 61 (7,8%) used "old"
pronunciation, though most of them mixed the two pronunciations. Thus,
45 years after the reform we have two ways of pronouncing such numbers
in Norwegian, and we never know for sure which one will be used.
Stop! That! At! Once!
(Torill, could you make them
stop that? Please?!)
[Permalink]
2003-09-19 11:13 (UTC+1)
The BBC has a round
up of the news that's fit to print (i.e., not from Spain) about
the man suspected (and expected to be formally charged today) of Anna
Lindh's murder. Pertinent to this bladet:
An acquaintance of the suspect interviewed by Dagens Nyheter described
him as an educated and intelligent man who appears comfortable amongst
Stockholm's jet set.
The suspect also appears to be an acquaintance but not a friend of
members of the Swedish Royal Family.
It seems the man did not display any violent tendencies while mixing
with Stockholm's upper class.
(What were they expecting? "Hello, are you a prinsess? Do you want
to see me bite the head off this puppy? I'm a nutter, me! Can I get
you a drink?")
The memorial
service for Ms Lindh is being held today. This is a public state
occasion (a private funeral will follow) and it takes place within the
context of world politics. Most notably:
US Secretary of State Colin Powell was due to attend, but was forced
to cancel because of extreme weather caused by Hurricane Isabel.
This is especially notable because Lindh became extremely unpopular in
many circles within the FDRUSA by describing the WTC assault of the
Other September 11 as "understandable", when to them it wasn't (and
they are militantly committed to not understanding as much as possible
about views other than their own). The extent to which Colin Powell
is not an arsehole has been widely remarked on, but it is probably
still underestimated.
[Permalink]
2003-09-18 14:16
So I was settling down to see what The Basket Weaver had to say about
Usenet and that, and right up the top it's
all
Fyrst gjev eg ein kort introduksjon til Pierre Bourdieu sin feltteori [...]
"Eg"? "Ein"? "Bourdieu sin feltteori"? Call me an inchoate and
intemperate space-goat, but this looks like Nynorsk to me!
Sigh.
Salting the sore is the certainty that le vieux tisseur
himself would have smirked a sly smirk at my discomfiture. I do not
criticize, of course, but merely remark in passing, then, that the
accumulated pedagogical literature on Nynorsk for speakers non-native
to any norsk is such as could be painted in letters 5 cm high on the
cellulose-afflicted parts of Kate Moss's left thigh.
Of course, I am now morally
obliged to insist that this is the single most important scholarly
contribution to date to a deeper understanding of self-organising
social structures in online environments:
Edmund Wilson claimed that one of his greatest pleasures was telling a
friend about an especially good book he'd read, so long it was (1) out
of print, (2) rare, and (3) written in a language the friend didn't
speak.
("No really, Impressionable Young Anglophone Person Of Gender At A
Cocktail Party, once you've got the hang of Bokm�l it really isn't all
that much of a stretch...")
[via M o I
r A]
[Permalink]
2003-09-18 10:53 (UTC+1)
1. � C'est magnifique, mais ce ne peut pas gu�rir. �
I'm at the threshold of the conclusion of Le Marxisme, hoorah!
(Proper review when I've properly digested it.)
2. Boots
I only narrowly talked myself out of buying another
introduction to Heidegger which had a cover picture of boots which
I liked very much. (Boots occupy a privileged place in my conception of the
world, of course.)
It is of course this
picture by Van Gogh, and now I think I will have to buy myself a
print of it instead. Besides, I've never find a decent range of De
Chirico prints, and I'm fed up of waiting. (And very fed up of the
cult of the imposter Dal�.)
3. Twinkletree!
Riga, Vilnius and Helsinki! I am very excited!
4. Intercontinental Imminence!
BA don't give out tickets, anymore, so all I have is a scrunched up
piece of paper from the travel agent. (The scrunching was actually my
own contribution; did you guess?) I'm not entirely convinced that
this is reassuring.
("Hello, I've come to intercontinent!"
"Certainly Sir or Madam; do you have your scrunch?")
Also I need to nip out to Oxfam and buy a new jacket at lunch time - my
denim jacket has progressed from a state that my mother doesn't think
is acceptable to one that I don't think is acceptable, and I expect
airport security persons have views on such matters that are closer to
my mother's than mine anyway.
[Permalink]
2003-09-17 18:21
Let's hev a bit o' cracky,
Till the boat comes in.
Dance ti' thy daddy, sing ti' thy mammy,
Dance ti' thy daddy, ti' thy mammy sing;
Thou shall hev a fishy on a little dishy,
Thou shall hev a haddock when the boat comes in.
Ah, haddock? No, we're clean out of haddock, sorry:
[C]ustomers are still reluctant to buy unfamiliar fish and instead plump
for the old favourites cod and haddock. Yet these are fish which have
been intensively fished to the point of crisis.
Patagonian toothfish? (sucks through teeth.) Like golddust
that is, Squire. Haven't had that in for weeks:
Going deeper isn't the answer either. Fish from the mid-depths such as
sea bass, monkfish and some types of tuna are now endangered. The
prized Patagonian toothfish - on the menu at fashionable eateries in
Japan, London and New York - is now virtually worth its weight in gold
it is so scarce.
Dance ti' thy daddy, sing ti' thy mammy,
Dance ti' thy daddy, ti' thy mammy sing;
Thou shall hev a fishy on a little dishy,
Thou shall hev a herring when the boat comes in.
Herring, you say? Sadly, no, Sir:
The lessons of over-fishing are there in history. Herring, for
instance, was once so popular that stocks collapsed in the 1970s and
have only now recovered enough to allow controlled fishing.
Mackeral? It's very runny, Sir...
[Kudos to Unilever for switching to sustainable stocks! I'll have
pollack, megrim, witch or mahi-mahi any day. On a little dishy,
mind.]
[Permalink]
2003-09-17 13:55(UTC+1)
[via sci.lang]
For Danish, Gyldendals R�de Ordb�ger. Udtaleordbog
(ISBN : 87-00-77942-3) is the pronoucing dictionary of choice, in the
sense that it's the one that's in print. It uses its own
transcription scheme, but gives a map to IPA at the beginning. (This
is reasonable with Danish, which is pessimised for IPA
transcriptions.)
For Swedish, a '40's dictionary that's said to be an improvement on
many of its successors: Walter E. Harlock, Svensk-Engelsk Ordbok,
Skolupplaga, from Svenska Bokf�rlaget
Any further recommendations for monolingual starter dictionaries
(Le Robert Micro is so, so good. I am only starting to realise
how spoiled it has made me.) for the congenitally andraspr�klig
gratefully received, of course.
[Permalink]
2003-09-17 12:36
Eit fors�k p� �
konstruere eit felt for personleg datakommunikasjon ved hjelp av
Pierre Bourdieu sin praksisteori, Jan Fredrik Hovden (HTML)
and
Kaos og orden p�
Usenet- en antropologisk analyse av elektronisk
nettkommunikasjon, Espen Munch (HTML but one file per
chapter, which makes it more printable)
While we're geeking out, I'll mention that I'm reading Jean Wahl's
introduction
to Heidegger, which is great fun. Consider the note on page 37,
in which we contemplate the translation of "Die offenbarkheit des
Seienden ist eine Unverborgenheit". Wahl gives "L'�tre-manifeste de
l'�tant est un �d�couverture�," but then exhibits some alternatives
(I've suppressed the citations):
Parmis les nombreuse tentatives pour rendre Unverborgenheit en
fran�ais, signalons entre autres �non-latence�, �non-dissiumulation�,
�hors-retrait�, �non-retrait�, ��tre-d�couvert� ou �d�couvertet� [the
latter two from the same translator]. Rappelons enfin que selon Boehm
et Waelhens, le premier � traduire en allemand alethia par
Unverborgenheit aurait �t� Nochola� Hartmann das Platos
Logik des Seins, 1909.
There then follows a discussion of the significance of the negative
Greek prefix a- in alethia. According to my reading of
Wahl's reading of Heidegger's reading of the Greeks (this is the way
continental philosophy is played, so sshh!) the Greek conception is
one of sneaking up on the thing, entity and/or being in its
philosophical hiding place and firmly yanking it out by the hair.
Heidegger, on the other hand, appears to be insisting on the primacy
of the
Unverborgenheit (whatever that means - I don't speak German) of
beings, entities and/or things.
Philosophy as a procession of palimpsests of intermingled polylingual
partially translatable textual practices, hoorah hoorah hoorah!
[Permalink]
2003-09-17 10:09 (UTC+1)
Over at Jill/txt
a recent post-in-progress begins to contemplate the Theorising
("Theorizing") of Usenet, with Pierre "The Basket-Weaver" Bourdieu
high on the list of Theoristes to be applied.
This means that I need to finish Le Marxisme pronto to make
space for Une Esquisse d'une theorie de la practique in my
carry-on luggage ("baggage") so that I can play, too. Ms /txt herself
seems mostly interested in insights applicable also to the rugged
mountain passes of Blogistan, but I am still at least equally at home
in the marshlands of the newsfroup, and I yearn to see what can be
made of it. (I don't deny that my textual practices here are
deeply informed by my history of participation there, and vice-versa.)
Elizabeth Lawley's preliminary
sketch is
tantalising ("tantalizing") for sure, but I want more!
For example, and limiting myself to Usenet (I've never used a BBS) a
typical user will subscribe to an assortment of groups (via the
~/.newsrc file, on Unix) - mine includes, among others,
comp.lang.python, alt.religion.emacs and sci.lang, and these are all quite different, especially from each other -
and the first methodological question is whether to treat Usenet
practice as a whole, or to break it down froup-by-froup. (Certainly,
one occasionally runs into someone from froup A in froup B.)
And then the problematique of the "lurker", which I would take to be
central, of course. The prototypical interaction on Usenet is by means
of a sequence of public speeches - what looks na�vely like a "reply"
to a poster is better thought of as a public "follow-up" to the
post (the established terminology makes precisely this
distinction, of course) in which the author of the post replied to may
appear to be addressed, but in fact often, and perhaps typically,
serves as the (purely formal) target of an apostrophe.
If I had a pound for every time I'd seen someone completely miss this
fundamental point, I'd have spent the lot on beer, hoorah!
[Permalink]
2003-09-16 15:10 (UTC+1)
La-di-dah DN does discrete
maths. It's all the rage in gymnasieskolan, you know: students on
naturprogrammets datainrikning (nature program's alignment)
have to take it now. Kombinatoriken ahoy, svenskarna!
- Kombinatoriken �r k�rnan i den diskreta matematiken, s�ger Svante
Linusson, professor i till�mpad matematik vid Link�pings universitet.
Historien om den diskreta matematiken och kombinatoriken liknar en
klassisk framg�ngssaga. Trots att stora matematiker som Leonhard Euler
och Pierre de Fermat g�rna sysslade med problem som r�rde kombinatorik
har mer traditionella matematiker sett ner p� omr�det.
["Combinatorics is the kernel of discrete mathematics," says Svante
Linusson, professor in applied mathematics at Link�ping university.
The history of discrete mathematics and combinatorics resembles a
classic success story. Although great mathematicians like Leonhard
Euler and Pierre de Fermat gladly worked on problems related to
combinatorics, more traditional mathematicians looked down on the area.]
Violins and red-headed stepchilds, for sure. This is, after all,
journalisme.
We build up to the
P vs NP problem in the context of the Travelling Salesman
("handelsresande") Problem, which is worth a million of the Clay
Institutes dollars. (Follow the link for their explanation.)
Not really standard 'bladet fare, I admit; I'm just amused (and
slightly) to find all this in even a hoity-toity newspaper,
having sat through my share of intellectually stifling graph-theory
lectures. (Nobody ever offered to teach me Shannon-school information
theory, though, sadly, and it looks like they're perpetuating this
omission over there.)
Alternatively, go admire the block
of flats ("apartment building") where legend has it that
Kronprinsfred's beloved Knudella also
sits and pines for her prins like the leetle mermaid of recent upblowing:
The statue is based on Hans Christian Andersen's 1837 tale of mermaid
who falls in love with a human prince and has to wait 300 years before
she can become a person.
Somebody should perhaps remind Kronprinsfred that Knudella doesn't
have 300 years spare before she can become a prinsess, however
touching the parallels otherwise of course are.
[Knudella stalkage via Birgitte, tack.]
[Permalink]
2003-09-16 12:07 (UTC+1)
Chirac gets something right, hoorah!
"France is a lay state and as such she does not have a habit of
calling for insertions of a religious nature into constitutional
texts", the French President told reporters at a visit in Quintos de
Moro where he met Spanish Prime Minister, Jos� Maria Aznar.
"The lay character of French institutions does not allow them to
accept a religious reference" in a domestic or EU constitution, Mr
Chirac concluded.
Several countries, Italy, Spain and Poland among them, have backed the
idea of having a reference to Christianity included in the
Constitution.
I am entirely unwilling to endorse a vision of a Christian Europe.
Not only is it spectacularly offensive to persons not of this
religious persuasion, it's a travesty of history. Ancient Greece was
not Christian. Muslims kept the Greek knowledge alive when Christian
Europe went through a difficult patch - the darkness of the Dark Ages
has been overstated, but I still owe more to Averroes
than to most (if not all) Popes.
Persons of Jewishness may also feel they have grounds for complaint
about this proposal, and any decent person (Popes need not apply)
would surely concede the justice in that.
But I am not in the business of being insulted on behalf of other
persons, when I am myself insulted directly. Those of us who consider
ourselves heirs of the Enlightenment (Upplysningstiden) will surely
also join our voices to the wishing of a prompt off-fucking of the
Pope and the "several countries" he rode in on. You might remark
that the Enlightenment (Upplysningstiden) has not been an unqualified
success in terms of making the world a better place, and you would be
quite right. But if you think Christianity has any claim to moral
superiority, I have some religious wars you might be interested in
perusing.
I am now so cross about all this, that I feel compelled to sign myself
on as one of nice Mr Dennett's "brights"
(note that the name is not my fault):
The time has come for us brights to come out of the closet. What is a
bright? A bright is a person with a naturalist as opposed to a
supernaturalist world view. We brights don't believe in ghosts or
elves or the Easter Bunny -- or God. We disagree about many things,
and hold a variety of views about morality, politics and the meaning
of life, but we share a disbelief in black magic -- and life after
death.
Religion is not, of course, really reducible to outlandish
epistemological claims, and one might argue that there is an kind of
anthropomorphism implicit in any attempt to construct a universe which
is intelligible, however metaphorically that is to be understood, and
that such attempts are an intrinsic and inevitable component of the
human condition.
But still, this attempt to smuggle parochialism into the constitution
intended to define Europe's future is an insult to much of what has
been best in Europe's past, and it is an insult to what many of us
hope for Europe to become in the future.
[Permalink]
2003-09-16 10:08 (UTC+1)
You like sushi, of course, and you love s�rstr�mming ("It's not rotten
fish, it's fermented!"). Imagine your joy as two and two
have finally been put together to make Sushistr�mming!
- Faktum �r att det h�r nog liknar den ursprungliga sushin. Den
gjordes av saltad fisk som fick j�sa tillsammans med riset, s�ger
Yoshinori Endo.
["In fact it is probably similar to the original sushi. It was made
of salted fish which was fermented together with rice," says Yoshinori
Endo.]
And if we're doing local delicacies, let's have a nice Faroese pilot
whale hunt:
Once a group is sighted in the narrow channels and fjords of the
Faroes, islanders drop whatever they are doing and rush to their boats
to encircle the whales and drive them onto a beach.
Here, in the shallows, men dispatch the animals in a welter of blood
and spray by severing their spinal cords with sharp knives in a
spectacle strictly not for the squeamish.
"Men"?! Shocking!
[sushi linkage via Birgitte]
[Permalink]
2003-09-15 16:43 (UTC+1)
Erk?! I hope I'm not coming down with something, I don't have time...
[Permalink]
2003-09-15 12:02 (UTC+1)
It has been
observed
that the murderer of Anna Lindh bears a resemblance to Daniel
Westling, kronprinsessan Vickan's bestly belov�d. Gallows humour, ho
bitter and cheerless ho.
Also, the King has insisted
on the cancellation of said Daniel's 30th birthday party, which said
kronprinsess was organising.
Meanwhile, the good news is that Estonia has officially
referended its imminent membership of the EU.
[Linkages via Anna Louise and Jonas S�derstr�m]
[Permalink]
2003-09-15 11:21
Lib�ration marks the centenary with two articles, one of which is an interview
with Jean Jourdheuil (whoever he is):
Si Adorno, cependant, influence peu le d�bat actuel c'est, me
semble-t-il, parce que le monde a bascul� avec la fin de la � guerre
froide �. Sa pens�e est, � cet �gard, �puis�e, tout comme ce qu'on
appelle en Allemagne la � pens�e fran�aise � (Foucault, Lacan, le
structuralisme, jusqu'� Derrida).
If Adorno, however, has little influence on the current debate it's
because, it seems to me, because the world has turned upside-down
since the end of the cold war. His thought is, in this regard,
exhausted, like everything that the Germans call the "French thought"
(Foucault, Lacan, structuralisme, up to Derrida).
That's a mighty writing off he's got there, and I particularly enjoy
the suggestion that Lacan, everyone's favourite surrealiste
psychoanalyste, is rendered obsolete by the end of the cold
war. (Personally, I am plus structuraliste que jamais, so there.)
Meanwhile, last week's Die Zeit had a retrospective on Adorno
in the '50's by "Surgin'" J�rgen Habermas, senior figure in the
Frankfurt school. Unfortunately, though, he chose to write in German,
which I do not know, and this hindered my reading somewhat, although I
did enjoy "Das war kein Name-Dropping".
[Permalink]
previous,
next, latest
|
|
|