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2004-09-17 groo! (utc+1)

And finally, some cheese.

It was Croatian Cheese 'n' Cream last time, but today it's Czech goat's cheese that's fallen foul of EU regulation. (This is this year's cheese theme. We'll get back to Protected Designation stories as soon as we have some, of course.)

Anyway, bureaucratique red tape, expensive new equipment, poor Central ("Eastern") Yoorpean farmers: you know the drill. But this time there is, we rejoice or exult to remark, a twist:

[The farmer] told the newspaper that he had to put a large notice on his door to avoid being fined for violating EU regulations.

The notice reads: "Goats' cheese. Home-made to a family recipe handed down through six generations. Completely in violation of EU regulations, should be used as animal food. Tested on humans."

Good work, Petr Hajek!

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2004-09-17 afternoon (utc+1)

My theory, which is mine

What good is a prins, anyway? The good that a prins is is that they can generate new prinsesses, by means of matrimony (holy or otherwise). Having done so, they can fall away, spent, like the first stage of a two or more stage rocket.

Denmark's prins Joachim, having grasped this important fact, has allegedly engaged in behaviour that we will leave it to news outlets with better legal representation to report, and has certainly lately announced that the lovely prinsess Alexandra will no longer be encumbered by him on official duties or otherwise:

De flesta danskarnas sympatier l�r hamna p� Alexandras sida. Hon �r m�kta popul�r p� grund av sin charm. Och hon uppskattas f�r att hon l�rde sig tala danska utan brytning p� bara ett par �r.

Most Danishes' sympathies lie with prinsess Alexandra, because she is a very charming prinsess and learned to speak Danish without an accent in only a couple of years.

The only question about Joachim is whether he will burn up on reentry into the atmosphere or splash into a tropical sea, but it is not a question the answer to which we are especially keen to know.

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2004-09-17 morning (utc+1)

Sm�rg�spost, slightly judgemental

�1. Hoorah!

BELGRADE - Monday - Education Minister Ljiljana Colic has resigned, just hours before she was expected to be dismissed. [...]

Kostunica has accepted the resignation of the minister, who is a member of his Democratic Party of Serbia, and thanked her for her work.

That work included her personal decision to ban the teaching of Darwin's theory of evolution from Serbian schools. This led to growing calls for her dismissal, and focused worldwide attention on the eccentricities of the Serbian education system.

Are there more eccentricities I should know about?

�2. Boo!

Skynda er, alla ni som en sista g�ng vill �ka med Londons klassiska dubbeld�ckare, f�r snart f�rsvinner kollektivtrafikens mest k�nda vykortsmotiv.

Londons signum - den trubbnosiga, r�da Routemastern - tas ur trafik 2005.

Hurry up, if you want a last ride on London's classical doubledecker, because public transports best known postcard motif is set to vanish soon.

London's signature - the stub-nosed, red Routemaster - will be taken out of use in 2005.

Routemasters were phased out years ago, except on the most touristique routes in central London where they doubled as an attraction. The open back door is not up to today's exacting health and safety standards, and the need for conductors as well as drivers makes them expensive to run. But still.

�3. Boo!

EasyJet, which operates out of a low-cost base at Luton near London, said on Monday it was cutting services between Copenhagen and Newcastle and Bristol because the Danish state passenger tax and overall cost at Copenhagen's Kastrup airport made it more profitable to seek growth elsewhere.

Man! I've been following EasyJet news before, during and since this was announced, and I can tell you this for free: they announce added routes a lot louder than dropped routs. I am slightly bummed about this, but at least I got to use it one way.

�4. Hoorah!

The Danish kronprinscouple in London having a lovely time. There has, of course, been no other news of a royal nature from Denmark.

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2004-09-16 tea (utc+1)

Why I dislike talk of "qualia"

(Qualia.)

I was planning to write a post of this title that recapitulated Merleau-Ponty's critique of Locke's theory of sense data, but Locke's having a big anniversary this year and I found this:

[T]he well established fact that sensory cortices are also imagery cortices only tells us that the conceptual categories implicit in the naming of the brain are wrong: there are no sensory input cortices - such parts of the brain have a much more complex set of functions that include imagery under the regulation of higher brain areas.

It isn't really true that talk of "qualia" presupposes a kind of perception unmediated by imagination, of course, but I propose to ignore that. (I tried having standards for a while, but it turned out to be rather time-consuming.)

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2004-09-16 13:07

Sm�rg�spost II - More Sm�rg�spost!

�1. Regnkaos in the Oosh!

Interest you in a photospecial, Sir or Madam?

�2. Johnny Ramone, RIP

He will be cremated at a private service on Thursday, and a public tribute is being organised.

All together now:

Twenny twenny twenny four hours to go oh oh
I wanna be cremated
Nothin to do nowhere to go hoh
I wanna be cremated

(Note: We're running out of Ramones. Didn't anybody order reinforcements?)

�3. Selective deafness

Uh, no comprendez, speaky ze Engleesh?

Ryanair lost in translation - It would appear Ryanair's French language skills are not up to scratch. The Walloon Regional Government in Belgium, which runs Charleroi Airport, has written them an 18 page missive requesting a return of the EUR 4m grant aid they received that was found to be against EU State aid rules. Ryanair have looked for a translation before they respond.

They're a class act, Ryanair, for sure.

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2004-09-16 morning (utc+1)

Sm�rg�spost

�1. Foreign persons speak foopball.

Today, Jos� Antonio Camacho, el entrenador del Real Madrid, on the theme of Real's 3-0 drubbing by Bionic Lederhosen:

"Fuimos sobrepasados durante 60 minutos", asegur� Camacho, cuyos hombres han comenzado la Liga con dos p�rricas victorias por 1-0. "S�lo en los �ltimos 30 minutos logramos presionarles. El Leverkusen jug� con mucho entusiasmo, claramente fueron el mejor de los dos".

All that running about! You'd think they'd get tired, but they just keep running, those Germans. Probably the sausage, is probably what it is. Probably.

(The 'bladet's Spanish correspondent is unwell.)

�2. Why I am so very incurious

Did you ever wonder where the petrol pumped by petrol pumps was pumped from? I didn't, for decades. I was still cheerfully not wondering when I found out.

�3. Summerhoppning, happened so fast

Sommarhoppning, had me a blast:

[Anette] Sagen hadde to bra hopp i rennet, som er det andre av fire grand prix-renn denne sommeren. 19-�ringen l� p� 5. plass etter f�rste omgang, men hoppet seg alts� opp to plasser.

Anette Sagen had two (2) good jumps in the stage, which is the second of four Grand Prix stages. The 19-year old was in 5th place after the first round, but then improved by two (2) places.

I yield to no one in my enthusiasm for reckless young wimmins, of course, but is it not even more unwise than skihoppning is of necessity (which is a pretty unwise base-level) to organise a tournament in the summer?

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2004-09-15 15:20

Titeuf ("Little Egg") bigger than Asterix?

Yikes!

"Titeuf's prime characteristic is that he is curious. He wants to understand. But he understands nothing," said [cartooniste Philippe Chappuis AKA] Zep - who says he was heavily influenced by the British cartoonist Leo Baxendale, creator of the classic Bash Street Kids.

(I just quote this in anticipation of a deafening Woosh! as the reference flies over my Varied Reader's head.)

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2004-09-15 samwidge (utc+1)

Bushzeit

A commentateur [jim harrison] on th' Timber coins the expression in describing Putin's recent adoption of the theory that the terrorisme card trumps all others. (I've also revised my theory on China and Taiwan - Taiwan will now be claimed to have links to terroriste organisations before it the target of unilateral military intervention.)

If you type "Bushzeit" into Google, you get three (3) results in German, and it asks if you really meant "Bushtit".

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2004-09-15 morning (utc+1)

Paris Saint-Germain 0-3 Челси

Let's go over to Canal+ to hear from l'entra�neur parisien, Vahid Halilhodzic

��a peut arriver que l'�quipe perde en jouant comme on le veut (sic), il faut perdre avec de la fiert� et de l'honneur. Ce soir, �a n'a pas �t� le cas, a-t-il d�clar�. J'ai honte pour nos supporters, qui ont �t� exceptionnels en nous encourageant. Ce qu'on montre, ce n'est pas bien. Il n'y a pas grand-chose de positif � retenir d'une d�faite 3-0 � domicile.[...]�

Oh, l� l�! Three-nill!

L'�quipe (pour c'est celui-l�!) only briefly summarises the other games, which do not involve teams of a Frenchy-French persuasion, and doesn't even get l'entraineur Челсиen's reaction:

Mourinho var s�ttur vi� leik sinna manna. "�g er mj�g �n�g�ur me� hvernig vi� r��um gangi leiksins fr� �v� a� flauta� var til leiks og �ar til leiknum lauk. Allir leikmenn li�sins st��u sig fr�b�rlega," sag�i Mourinho en Ei�ur Sm�ri Gu�johnsen var � byrjunarli�inu en f�r af velli me� skur� � h�f�i � 11. m�n�tu.

The Viking boy's banged his bonce bloody!

(The only non-nationaliste coverage, of course, is at ESPN in Engleesh. Sigh.)

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2004-09-14 15:32

Langwidge tests for upside-downians

Beware of low-flying feecher journalisme:

Under new regulations, all would-be British citizens from every nation on earth must now prove that they have a working knowledge of English - a rule which applies equally to people from Commonwealth countries like India, Cyprus and Barbados, as it does to those from, for example, the US.

Such as, which is to say, Upsidedownians:

"They no longer take for granted that we antipodean colonials speak anything that they recognise as English," wrote a mildly annoyed Terry Lane in Melbourne's Sunday Age. "Already, two Australians wanting to become Britons have been rejected."

There are of course no native speakers of other langwidges in Straya, and nor have there ever been; it is, in fact, the fabled site of Anglophone autochthonicity, and certainly no one else has ever immigrated to it.

The law, of course, is really intended to harass and irritate persons of ethnicity and as such is designed to cheer up Daily Mail readers and other such vermin. Ett land, ett folk, ett spr�k: it may suck, but it's the way we do things in Yoorp. (Sigh.)

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2004-09-14 samwidge (utc+1)

Kanskje as kanskje can

We are all very allez les bleus, and never more so than tonight, with the group stage of the League of Champions getting underway:

- Chelsea er kanskje det beste laget i Europa i �yeblikket, sier Vahid Halilhodzic i forkant av PSGs Champions League-oppgj�r mot The Blues i kveld.

"Челсий are perhaps the bestest team in Yoorp at the moment," says Vahid Halilhodzic in anticipation of Paris Saint-Germain's Champions League clash with les bleus this evening.

The otherwise odious London Times (a former newsbladet) had a special CL supplement on Saturday, excepting, sadly, the Dowager Countess's copy, and replacements were not to be procured, so I still don't have a jolly guide to all the teams and their preferred formations and tactiques, so we will just have to wing it.

PSG defendeur Bernard Mendy is fit again, we note, whereupon:

L'entra�neur parisien, Vahid Halilhodzic a ainsi retenu 20 joueurs pour cette rencontre pour laquelle il sera priv� en d�fense centrale du Colombien Mario Yep�s, suspendu.

The PSG manageur, Vahid Halilhodzic, has thus named a squad of 20 playeurs for the match, for which he will be deprived of the services of the suspended Columbian central defendeur Mario Yep�s.

Compare, by the way, and contrast, the Silly Engleesh and German, Frenchy-French, Espagnish and Italiano versions of Yahoo!'s League of Champions(TM) coverage. (Well done, Yahoo!! Even if they did close their 'Wegian services because all the 'Wegians were reading the silly Engleesh version.)

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2004-09-14 morning (utc+1)

It isn't cheap being a prinsess, and other stories

There having been all that fuss, at this 'bladet, when Kronprinsessmary (n�e Knudella) wore her bucket-bonnet a second time, it is just as well her bloke has got a payrise:

Frederik skal nemlig have en ordentlig sum p� lidt over 10 mio. kr. ekstra i l�nningsposen, nu hvor han er blevet en gift mand.

Kronprinsfred shall in fact get an additional sum of a little over 10 million DKK in his wage packet, now that he's a married man.

This seems to me, before you start, entirely justified on performance grounds: as heir to the throne, one of Kronprinsfred's most important duties is to establish the succession further, and marrying the lovely kronprinsess is an important step on the way.

�2. Mette-Marit blubs

It is said to be something to do with poorly childrens, which is a cruel thing to confront a prinsess with on a day when she didn't especially get a salary rise of 10 million DKK. (I'm a bit sniffly about that part myself, and I am not even a prinsess!)

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2004-09-13 16:40

Oh, go on, you know you want to

Gary Hopkins [FIIH! ...] has been appointed by the International Cricket Council to spearhead the development of cricket in the United States.

But there's a snag:

But cricket US-style will disappoint the purists as Test matches are not on Hopkins' agenda. "There's absolutely no chance that any American will watch five days of cricket," he says.

Oh, come off it, chaps; there are breaks for luncheon and tea, you know.

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2004-09-13 now! (utc+1)

Why I am so very studious

I appear to have passed the Open University's rigorous screening process, hem hem, which is to say the my bank has forked over the necessary.

Everyone I know who's studied with this lot says it's a bunch of work, but this will make a pleasant change from evening classes, after all. I'm going to be a social scientiste! (Do I have to grow a beard again? I hope not; it was by no means a good idea last time.)

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2004-09-13 10:36

Dates

Swedishes write "1600-talet" (approximately "the 1600s") rather than "the 17th century". This is a much better system, for sure, but Engleeshes will perhaps protest that it is ambiguous and could refer instead to the first decade of the century.

So, I propose from now on to write of the 16--s or the 160-s, and the world will accordingly be a better place.

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