|
2004-07-10 07:26 (utc+1)
Speculate me harder!
I stayed up! I thwarted the machine that goes "Beep!"! I chatted with the mn giving my bag a thorough friskning ("Oh, La raison dans l Histoire is your faourite, too?" Not really.)
Even the man who wanted to frisk my hat could find nothing more objectionable in it than my head.
I was sitting in the pub with a pint of Stella (shut up, it's still last night) when a hypothetical scenario occurred to me: suppose you were sitting in just such pub, with just such a pint, and you suddenly wondered where that passport thingy and its friend the boarding card had got to. In the time between starting to wonder such a something and finding out that, say, you had left it on the bar where it had been whisked to friendly sanctuary to await your return, I bet your weary carcass would synthesise some chemicals you didn't know it had the recipes for.
What fun speculation can be!
Incidentally, and strictly by the way, I smell terrible by now. Which is, after all, only to be expected.
2004-07-10 04:08 (utc+1)
Stansted Sunrise
So, 0400, and the queues at Ryanair check-in are already monstrous. Not least, probably, because the staff aren't there to process them.
I've checked out the bigger newsagents that's now open, and like its smaller counterpart it has nothing in Foreign. A shame, maybe, but understandable: communications between airports and Abroad are hardly straightforward, and they probably don't get enough Foreign traffic to create a demand anyway.
(Eng-Ger-Lund, sometimes I hate you very much.)
I've read some more Hegel, and I quite like it so far. He's quite sensibly insistent on the implications of the need for intelligibilty and aesthetic harmony on modes of historicising, but the Spirit stuff hasn't really kicked in yet.
Laters...
10.7.2004 02:12 (UTC+1)
Dear National Fucking Express
Thank you for cancelling my coach from Victoria - it was such a surprise!
A lesser company might have ruined the effect by displaying information to that effect on the display screen at the un-platform, or even had someone come and say something. Just not turning up takes a certain something, which you certainly have.
Overhearing the driver, the next one was cancelled. They can't get the staff, for what they pay.
It wasn't the driver's fault that the A41 north of Swiss Cottage was closed for an accident, and it's arguable whether he could have been expected to pick a viable detour the first time, or to check it (do you have back-office support in radio contact) before heading five miles the wrong way.
Still, as it happens time to kill is something of which I pretty much have a glut, although I'm glad I wasn't waiting at Golder's Green.
Stansted, then. There's quite a lot of people here, but no planes. The newsagents is open, as is a coffee shop, and the computers are nice as long as you don't mind the expense (0.10 GBP a minute) or the Soviet-era bandwidth.
I have read no more Hegel, but I did read a vair nice article by John Goldsmith (who I approve of anyway) about Zellig "Zoom Zoom" Harris. Turns out that Zoom Zoom was on the side of righteousness, despite being Chomsky's original mentor, but I am too tired to tell you things about phonological methodoly just now.
I'm going to get a coffee, and a cinnamon dialectique, and get on with a little waiting I have to do.
Still, at least it is now the day of my flight.
2004-07-09 22:46 (UTC+1)
Trav'lin' at the speed of stopped
So there's a InterWebNet port at Victoria coach station. I'm between coaches, and I've had a pint and if I had another I'd be at risk of sleepy-byes, and There Would Be Consequences. Coach travel attracts a different sort of voyageur from the train; it is a browner sort, on the whole, and less likely to natively speak Engleesh, especially on the way to London, great world city and my beloved home town (not necessarily in that order). The annoying thing, though - which that is not - is the lack of leg room, and the lack of beer. It's now nine (9) and a half hours to take off. I've read the introduction to Hegel, and he's plainly bonkers. Can't say yet if it's good bonkers or bad bonkers. Will keep you posted as and when facilities allow...
2004-07-09 tum-ti-tum (utc+1)
(I booked my 2000 hundred hours coach ticket online, so now I have a
fragment or snippet of time to fill with meditations of my choosing.
The minute I leave the building I will then remember something very
important and time-consuming I have forgotten to do, but this is
Nature's cruel sport with her subjects and far from evitable.)
It was not very long ago that I wouldn't have known that the acronym
BIV
meant "brain in a vat", a neo-scholastique question being to establish
whether one can know one is not such a thing.
In other words: Can we establish or determine whether the experiences
we generally perceive as real have or have not been deliberately
perpetrated by an entity with privileged access to another realm of
existence? St Thomas Aquinas beams warmly down in your general
direction, so-called epistemologistes!
But we are also, we have discovered, engaged in an enterprise
anticipate by Tommy A, as Roamin' Roman Jakobson points out in his
Le�ons sur le son et le sens:
C'est la philosophie du Moyen Age qui a abord� le probl�me
linguistique et de ses �l�ments, avec le plus grand finesse. Et c'est
Thomas d'Aquin qui a nettement compris que, dans notre cas, il s'agit
de signifiants conventionnels (significanta artificialer) qui
servent ad significandum mais qui, en m�me temps, pris en
eux-m�mes, ne signigient rien.
It was the philosophy of the Middle Ages which first investigated the
problem of linguistics and it's elements, with the utmost subtlety. It
is was Thomas Aquinas who clearly grasped that, in our case, it is a
question of conventional signifiers (significanta artificialer)
which serve ad significandum but which, at the same time, taken
in themselves signify nothing.
These such somethings would be phonemes in not-quite-contemporary
parlance. This is what makes phonemes the most interesting
metaphysical entity to chase or pursue - they resemble in some
respects categories or ideas (or whatever your favoured ingredients of
a theory of mind are called) but are at the same time so magnificently
unencumbered by any meaning of their own. Even our old unfriend
Barking John Searle would struggle to bring them to heel with the
magic pixie dust he calls "intent".
But I have remembered - I need to purchase some 2-in-1 shampoo and conditioner, since my extensive range of hair-care products was determined to be too bulky and cumbersome for the Silvery Tube experience.
[Permalink]
2004-07-09 veckoslut (utc+1)
Let us begin with a Gratuitous Icelandic Interlude,
such as have been handed down from father to son in the von Bladet
line for generations:
J.K. Rowling, h�fundi Harry Potter-b�kanna, var veitt
nafnb�tin hei�ursdoktor vi� Edinborgarh�sk�la � g�r.
Icelandic is pretty! Let's see, hei�ur is a safe bet as
Swedish heder "honour", and h�sk�la is obviously
h�gskol "university", and � g�r is plainly i g�r
"yesterday". So it says exactly what you thought it said.
(The very true saying "In etymology, vowels don't signify much and
consonants nothing at all" is generally attributed to Voltaire.
Whether, and if so where, he said this, however, is a Great Mystery. His collected works are
online and it manifestly isn't in them, as a Google interface allows
you to check.)
Now an incantation by way of a travel-bluffning:
Je suis excessive,
J'aime quand �a d�saxe,
Quand tout acc�l�re,
Moi je reste relaxe
Je suis excessive,
Quand tout explose,
Quand la vie s'exhibe,
C'est une transe exquise, (ouais).
(Carla Bruni)
Ouais! No translation, because it is well known that incantatory
travel charms lose their efficacy (and may even be counter-productive)
in translation.
Now, if
you lot would kindly leave off of my secret underground mountain
lair:
French and Italian scientists are planning a large underground
laboratory beneath the Alps designed to detect elusive particles from
the Sun's core.
It would consist of a huge tank filled with several hundred thousand
cubic metres of ultra-pure water.
I love science.
("We're going to dig a hole! A huge hole under the mountains!"
"A hole?"
"Under the Alps, yes! And then we're going to fill it with water!"
"Water?"
"Yes! Ulta-pure water! Several hundred thousand tonnes of
it!"
"There is a point to all this, isn't there?"
"Oh yes, sir, very definitely."
"Well?"
"It's a neutrino trap, sir. Very shy animal, your neutrino. Not
what you'd call a good mixer. So we thought - make somewhere private
for them where they can have a quiet drink or a bath in peace, and
then we'll sneak up on them. With a net."
"Now, don't start trying to confuse me with all your fancy jargon
about nets. Here's 20 billion, see how much hole you can dig for
that."
"Gosh, thanks sir, yes sir!")
But I also love my secret underground lair in the mountains, so be
careful where you dig, chaps. I've got some leptons you wouldn't want
to meet in a dark tunnel, if you know what I mean.
And that concludes this week's 'bladeting, I think. Elsewhere, here I come (in a bit)!
[Permalink]
2004-07-09 11:02
Sigh:
Budget airline Ryanair says it plans to ban
passengers from taking checked-in luggage on board its planes within a
couple of years.
Passengers should buy or hire what they need when they arrive at their
destination, the carrier said.
They could totally own the market for cheapskates with money to burn,
isn't it?
Today's Desbladet equity tip is Easyjet.
[Permalink]
2004-07-09 09:19
I've said it before and I'll say it again: no class or breeding, that
Gloria.
Nor me, of course, and my sic is being transited with no
little thus: it turns out that to get to Stansted Sticksville Airport
i morgon bitti I have to be on a coach either at 2000 tonight
and hang around from 0100 at the hangers, or from 0030 tonight and
hope we get there on time at 0700 and that leaves time enough to check
in. Suckage, you will surely agree, or really heavy suckage is the
choice with which I am faced or confronted.
So anyway, 1700 (UTC+2) tomorrow (l�rdag tionde juli 2004), at the Old Town Brewery, Dragon's Alley,
Hence-the-Name Old Town, Stockholm, Sverige Sverige Sverige.
We'll be the group of persons playing a jolly game of "match the
persons with the descriptions given in the guestbladet"...
[Permalink]
2004-07-08 16:19
Oh, the weather outside is dreary,
But in here the �l is beery
I'll have a storstark again -
Let it rain, let it rain, let it rain
It doesn't show signs of stopping,
And I'm not that fond of shopping,
While there's beer there's no cause to complain,
Let it rain! Let it rain! Let it rain!
When they finally close for the night
How I'll hate getting rained on outside
But if we've been doing it right,
I'll be wetter on the inside
The last pint is slowly sipping
And, my dear, we'll soon be dripping
But with alcohol pickling my brain,
Let It Rain! Let It Rain! Let It Rain!
[Permalink]
2004-07-08 14:51
Rain, rain, go away!
Come on mother's washing day
[Childrens do still chant this, as we did]
N� kommer
styrtregnet ("Not a chance, mate, it's going to tip it down.")
Although that's in Norwaylund, of course.
And while we're in the vicinity, let's check in on skihoppning star,
Sigurd Pettersen. What are you up to,
skihoppning star Sigurd
Pettersen, when there is no sn� but only regn in abundance, which is
by no means an adequate substitute for hoppning purposes?
Etter at FIS vedtok at hopperne m� ha en Body Mass Index (BMI) p� 20,
med hopputstyret p�, har Sigurd Pettersen lagt om treningen.
Ater FIS decided that ski-hoppners must have a Body Mass Index (BMI) of
20, and changed the rules accordingly, Sigurd Pettersen has been
building himself up in training.
Blimey, you should see the photo - the telly doesn't give you any idea
just how tiddly a champion ski-hoppner really is. Fearless, for sure,
but very very tiddly.
[UPDATE: Regnkaosbildextra, sir or madam? It's the new sensation that's sweeping Yoorp!]
[Permalink]
2004-07-08 10:08
�1. Oh.
A story about prinsessly
beweddnings, but I will only translate one word: astrologen
"the astrologeur". For shame, Aftonbladet!
�2. Kl�ttering
Explain yourself, Johan
Marklund!
- Vi �r egentligen sportkl�ttrare och nyb�rjare p� traditionell kl�ttring, s�ger han.
"We are really sports climbers, and beginners at traditional
climbing", he says.
Oh dear. "Sports climbing" means that somebody has drilled bolts into
the rock so that carabiners for your rope may be attached quickly,
easily and safely. "Traditional climbing" means they haven't, and can
be substantially more exhilerating on that account. In this case,
they got a nice helicopter ride in the scenic Lofoten isles!
(Beginner's luck, if you ask me.)
I brought a climbing guide book back from Lofoten, but it subsequently
got lent, h�las, or I'd look up the route for you.
�3. Physicists in the rain
Using vector methods to calculate the net-wetness implication of
running in the rain is a staple of undergraduate physics courses, of
course. If you missed out, and you have the Danish, now's
your chance to catch up. (Actually the links off the page are
back to Engleesh, except this
one.)
[Tack till David och Birgitte f�r l�nker]
[Permalink]
2004-07-07 17:08
Raindrops keep falling on my head
But that doesn't mean my eyes will soon be turnin' red
Crying's not for me
Cause I'm never gonna stop the rain by complainin'
Because I'm free
Nothing's worrying me.
"Butch" Hopalong and the dancy-dance
Maybe if we all complained together?
Det �r den s�msta sommaren sedan 1928, enligt SMHI. Och prognosen
pekar p� fortsatt regn och rusk.
It's the worst summer since 1928, according to the [Swedish] Met
Office. And the forecast points to continued rain and bad weather.
Expressen, helpful as ever, has a list of top tips for soakage-spoiled
summers. Top of the list, "go somewhere sunny". Thanks, Expressen!
[Permalink]
2004-07-07 13:37
�1. It isn't easy being yummy
Everyone knows that whales, like seals, are very yummy. But whales,
unlike seals, are not easy to kill with a hakapik, even
when they're freshly weaned. So how do you kill them, and
how do you know when they're dead?
Animal welfare groups say the harpoon methods are inefficient, and
some whales suffer slow agonising deaths.
But Dr Siri Knudsen argues that the present tests may be
overestimating the time taken for the animals to die.
She tells the Veterinary Journal that the available data suggests the
grenade harpoons developed by Norwegian whalers and the special
training they have received to use them make for a far more effective
slaughter process than many people realise.
�2. Swedish front wovels!
William Labov, by far the most important living linguistician, has a home page on
the InterWebNet. Wonderful as this certainly is, it turns
out [.ps] that one of his papers on the merging of short /e/ and
/E/ in various Swedish dialects. You will surely agree that this is
pretty cool, even by the elevated standards we maintain at this
'bladet.
�3. A giant fish!
You can't beat a photo of a giant
fish, and you won't beat this for a picture of a giant fish.
[Permalink]
2004-07-07 fika (utc+1)
Lib�bladet has a big Foucault
special (also available in pdf)
to mark the 20th anniversary of his death.
We remark only that the adjective is foucauldian.
[Permalink]
2004-07-07 morning (utc+1)
I have seven (7) different accounts of Swedish pronunciation using
phonetic alphabets (in all but one case, the mighty IPA).
I haven't gone through the consonants yet, but there is not a single
pair of these transcription schemes that agrees point for point on how
to render the wovels.
Most of them prefer to use "closed omega" for the wovel often spelled
(in standard orthography) o, presumably to avoid using [u]
(orthographic u in Swedish is a long way forward of its IPA
namesake), and this despite the fact that "closed omega" was
superceded in the IPA in 1989 by "upsilon".
Only one book (McClean's 1947 Teach Yourself) claims there's a
distinction between short e and short �, but I'm putting
that down to it not being 1947 anymore. The Grand Unified
Transcription project is nearing maturity, and it will not be denied!
[Permalink]
2004-07-06 late (utc+1)
We have compressed
this story
for our own ends:
- Germany has a strict beer purity law, the celebrated
Reinheitsgebot ("clean-ness-law") which limits beer ingredients to
hops, barley and water. (What, no yeast?)
- The law didn't apply to the unlamented DDR ("East Germany")
- Post-reunification, it does apply in the east
- It doesn't apply to imports from outside Germany, because the EU
said so
- Helmut Fritsche, owner of the Klosterbrauerei Neuzelle,'s
dark beer called Schwarzer Abt, has been brewed with
by-clean-ness-law-forbidden sugar syrup since the 16th century in
Neuzelle, in the former DDR
- The beer police are now on his case in a big way
What is a brewer to do?
Easy-peezy! Shift production to Czechia and import the beer back in
to Germany. Easy, legal, cheap, and - as a bonus - guaranteed to
annoy the beerocrats.
[Permalink]
2004-07-06 15:33
There's no need to ask where England's cricket team would be without
the services of Sir
Frederick Flintoff, because they were without them for
the first two games of this pyjama tournamentette and they were
comprehensively thrashed. And now, even though he's not fit to bowl,
he's been summoned back to do what he does:
46th over: England 248-3 (Strauss 88, Flintoff 108) West Indies are
falling to pieces here. Smith's first two balls of a new over are both
no-balls - and both hit for four by Flintoff, even if the first was
off the top-edge and over the keeper's head. That adds up to 10 runs
off, er, no deliveries. The first legitimate ball of the over is
thrashed for two to point, but the next delivery is an off-side
wide. Flintoff then moves to his second successive century - off 91
balls - with a mow for six over wide mid-on. What an innings! For good
measure, he helps the next ball over long leg for six more. That's 27
off the over and 48 off the last two! Astonishing.
With Freddy in that sort of form, even the Norwegishes are
succumbing to the lure:
Cricket er en sport som betyr mye for mange som bor i Norge, men som
f�r sv�rt liten oppmerksomhet i mediene. Det har NRK bestemt seg for �
gj�re noe med, og det er ikke tenkt som en engangsforeteelse. Planen
er � vise mer cricket, enten direkteoverf�rt eller kamper i
sammendrag.
Cricket is manifestly the finest sport on God's earth, and frankly
I've no idea what we've been playing at all this time, even if
skihoppning is quite nice, too. So NRK has decided it's about time we
got our act together and showed more cricket, either live broadcasts
or highlights of matches.
(Sorry; we seem to be having some technical difficulties with the
translation.)
Hilariously, they've scheduled this for the weekend of the 'bladet
moot. Is there a lot of NRK shown in bars in Sweden when there's
cricket on, we wonder and/or muse?
[Permalink]
2004-07-06 samwidge (utc+1)
The most interesting thing about the Swedish kronprinsess Vickan's
latest
interview is by no means what she says:
- Det er vel �evig tur� (griseflaks) at noen v�ger �
ha et forhold til meg. Det er ikke lett, sier Victoria.
"It is very 'eternal luck' (griseflaks) that a someone wishes to
have a relationship with me. It isn't easy," says Victoria.
It is the fact that the interview was with the wimmin's bladet
Amelia, which is new to us. Expressen is clearly out of
favour after mongering rumours to the detriment of the
prinsessboyfriend, and quite right too.
UPDATE: Anna K remarks that griseflaks means "the luck of the pig" (of course!), while Birgitte remarks that the famously tidy Danishes have instead a Treasured National Basket (kurv) instead.
[Permalink]
2004-07-06 morning (utc+1)
The Norwegishes are tarnishing
the glory of Sweden's Treasured National Sausage, the mighty
falukorv:
Norrm�nnen gjorde falukorv
av kalkon.
Det skulle de ha l�tit bli.
Falukorv �r en svensk nationalklenod - skyddad av EU-regler.
Norwegishes have made falukorv out of turkey.
They should have let it alone.
Falukorv is a Swedish national treasure - protected by
EU-rules.
The Treasured National Sausage, Norway! For shame!
[Permalink]
2004-07-05 17:21
But when I came unto my beds,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
With toss-pots still had drunken heads,
For the rain it raineth every day.
A great while ago the world begun,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
But that's all one, our play is done,
And we'll strive to please you every day.
[Twelfth Night, or What You Will, being a dramatickal
Entertainment by Mr William Shackspeer and hys Companie of Toss-pots
and Other-wyse]
Raineth every day it most certainly does, and twice on Sundays, in the
glorious Swedish summer:
Regn, bl�st och kyla �r guld v�rt f�r paraply- och
gummist�veltillverkare.
- Det h�r �r optimalt, s�ger Mikael Klint p� Tretorn, som tillverkar
gummist�vlar.
Rain, wind and cold is gold-dust for umbrella- and wellinton boot
manufacturer's.
"This is optimal", says Mikael Klint at Tretorn, which makes wellies.
He's a regular one-man silver lining, that Mikael Klint at Tretorn,
isn't it? I like "s�ljer som sm�r i solsken" ("sell like butter in
sunshine", whatever that is). I think I had better procure a raincoat
at some point this week.
[Permalink]
2004-07-05 slow (utc+1)
I islandska �r u-omljud emellertid en aktiv process som inneb�r att
nya ord i spr�ket f�r u-umljud om de uppfyller vissa krav. Namnet p�
chockladen mars blir i pluralis m�rs precis som
land blir l�nd. Ordet banani 'banan' blir
antingen ban�num eller b�nunum i dativ plural beroende
p� om ban- uppfattas som prefix eller som f�rsta led in en
sammans�ttning som i hafalda - haf�ldu 'havsv�g', eller
om ban- uppfattas som en del av ord stammen.
[In Icelandic, however, u-umlaut is an active process which means that
new words in the language get u-umlaut if they fulfill certain
conditions. The name of the chocolate mars becomes m�rs
in the plural, exactly as land becomes l�nd. The word
banani 'banana' becomes either ban�num or b�numum
in the dative plural, depending on whether ban- is interpreted
as, on the one hand, a prefix or the first part of a compound as in
hafalda - haf�ldu 'sea-wave', or, on the other, as part
of the stem of the word.]
(Nordiska, Bar�al et al., p.224)
("That one," he said, answering the unspoken question in her eyes as
she drew a languorous fingernail along it, "I got in a fight in a bar
in Hafnarfj�r�ur. A discussion about the dative plural of 'banana'
turned nasty; you know what Icelanders are like." - The Further
Adventures of the Count von Bladet, private communication.)
[Permalink]
2004-07-05 11:13
Phantom of the
Opera, The, see also Morgue, happy-hour in (slow as).
Of course, it probably didn't help that I had a seat in a pew some way
from the screen, and churches being what they are I had to lean into
the aisle to see past the tall person in front, or that the organiste
- who apparently makes a living doing the Phantom in churches
and cathedrals across Yoorp - had an appreciation of his own hilarity
I was unable to share (dancers at Paris Opera: Can-can; Flee to
England: God Save the Queen, oh my aching sides).
But it was, as they say, an experience, and it's good to see churches
working up a sideline (a tenner a seat!) in these days when the God
business isn't what it used to be.
[Permalink]
2004-07-05 09:49
It's cricket, Jim, but not as we know it:
The league's eight teams are made up of local cricketers augmented by
a dozen or so international players who have signed up for a two-month
odyssey which will see them zig-zagging across the country, spreading
the gospel of cricket. Besides Miller, the West Indies batsman Wavell
Hinds and bowler Mervyn Dillon also made the trip to San Francisco. So
too did the 50-year-old Trinidadian Larry Gomes, who turned up as a
spectator in New York and was immediately hired as a player and shoved
in a taxi to the airport.
I rilly rilly wish I'd been there to see this, though:
The umpire's decision to ban fast bowling - "Lethal
on this wicket," said one spectator - also helped perk things up,
though purists might have winced at the sight of Dillon's off-spin
long hops being slogged to all points of the compass.
Five-(5)-ball overs, too, because the land that clings like a limpet
to inches and fluid ounces and all that malarkey was deemed unequal to
the challenge of counting to six (6).
[Permalink]
previous,
next, latest
|
|
|
