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2005-01-07 15:52
�1. It isn't easy being a consumeur!
It is 'Arry Potteur an ze ordre of ze ph�nix! In poche! Any month now
!
Cet article para�tra le 15 avril 2005.
This article will be out sometime after Easter.
Bah!
�2. Make Mine Mitteleuropa!
It is Sir Simon Rattle in Berlin. Which
'bladets does he favour, Charlotte Higgins
asks or enquires?
Sir Simon has recently moved wholesale to Berlin
with his new partner, the mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kozena, having
previously made his primary home in Islington in London. He described
himself as feeling "Middle-European" and out of touch with British
life. "I find it very hard to imagine moving away from here," he
said. He has even let slip his reading of the Guardian. "If I had a
subscription to the Guardian, the trouble is that it's a very good
newspaper, and I would read it, and I wouldn't read enough of the
German papers," he said.
We bet he says that to all the Guardian journalistes...
�3. Bah!
It is Budvar v Budweiser!
American brewing giant Anheuser-Busch said Wednesday that a WTO ruling
on geographically-linked product names amounted to a victory for it in
a trademark row with Czech brewer Budejovicky Budvar.
It's all very complicated, but we'll chop and splatt through it
together, let's:
With the Czechs' EU accession in May, Budvar, together with Ceske
Budejovice's other brewer Budejovicky Mestansky Pivovar, was awarded
the EU-wide geographical protection indicators 'Budejovicky pivo' and
'Ceskobudejovicky pivo', meaning "Ceske Budejovice beer" in Czech.
But they don't get dibs on the German "translation" Budweiser.
(Translation? Well, sort of:
Budvar argues that it has a right to the names as they are derived
from Budweis, the former name of Ceske Budejovice, where it is
based.)
But the WTO thinks otherwise. It'll be no Bourbon or Nice biscuits
for them, for sure!
[Permalink]
2005-01-07 11:53
�1. The apr�s-hopp
Lib�bladet
has a good upwritening:
Lors de la seconde manche, le Finlandais volant l�che tout ce qu'il
peut pour renverser la tendance et croit y parvenir avec un fabuleux
saut � 140 m. Mais H�llwarth, dernier � sauter, fait � peine moins
bien (137,5 m) et tire le b�n�fice de son premier saut, battant le
Finlandais de 50 centim�tres. La d�ception d'Ahonen est si vive que
les larmes lui montent aux yeux. Ce visage impassible avait enfin une
expression : celle de la d�tresse.
In the second round the flying Finn did everything he could to
reverse the trend and thought he'd done it with a fabuleux jump
of 140m. But H�llwarth, jumping last, did almost as well (137.5m) and
benefitting from his first jump, beat the Finn by 50 centimetres.
Ahonen's disappointment was so sharp it brought tears to his eyes.
His stony face finally showed an emotion: distress.
Later, according to some reports, he almost smiled when congratulating
H�llwarth.
�2. Her Majesty's Privateers!
They're not pirates, they're the Customs and Excise, and they have a
nice
page on the ransoms they can extract on your Interweb shoppnings.
Books and portable radios are duty free, but there is still import
Value-Added Tax to fear...
�3. It is an undersea earthquake!
But no
penguins were injured:
An earthquake on a remote Antarctic archipelago home to 850,000 King
Penguins was the strongest on earth in four years, seismologists say.
[...]
Penguins appear to have escaped a major disaster as the quake occurred
deep under the sea, far from inhabited land.
Take-home message? The god of penguins is a mighty god indeed!
[Permalink]
2005-01-07 10:43
I don't know; Aftonbladet's
fun questionnaire comes out as an unreadable bitmap, but the
accompanying article - part of a series celebrating ten (10) years of
Swedish membership - is worth a read, if you read Swedish:
Budgeten
EU:s totala budget �r knappt 900 miljarder kronor per �r. Den svenska
statsbudgeten �r drygt 700 miljoner. St�rsta delen av EU-kakan, n�stan
80 procent, g�r till st�d f�r jordbruk och regional utvekling.
Budget The EU's total budget is barely [70 billion GBP] a
year. The Swedish state's budget is a good [50 billion]. The largest
part of the EU cake, almost 80 percent, goes on subsidies for farming
and regional development.
We could certainly stand to reform the Common Agricultural Policy,
which is largely a means of giving money to France and hated by
everyone else, but the take-home message is that the EU is actually
pretty cheap.
[Permalink]
2005-01-06 16:27
Could it all be going the
shape
of the pear?
17:13 Ahonen landet bei 132 Metern, minimal schw�cher als
Janda. Damit ist der Super-Finne auf Platz zwei.
Down to fourth by the end of the first half! C'mon, Janne!
NB: It isn't easy being a Foreigner:
De fem beste taperne i duellene kommer videre som s�kalte lukcy loosers
UPDATE: Ahonen only second for the round, boo hoo, but winner by miles for the tournament.
[Permalink]
2005-01-06 13:21
It is, of course, Janne
"The Manne" Ahonen:
Vad har d� ringen som �kta mannen Ahonen har runt ringfingret p� h�gra
handen f�r betydelse?
- Vad har den vita tr�jan som du har p� dig f�r betydelse? svarar
Ahonen.
Ingen alls, s�ger journalisten.
- D�r har du ditt svar.
What does the ring that the married man Ahonen has round the ring
finger on his right hand mean?
"What does the white jumper you're wearing mean?" answers Ahonen.
Nothing at all, says the journaliste.
"There you are, then."
And as a bonus, there's allegedly to be live
coverage of the climax of the jumpning via a popup on this
Tyskbladet. Our money would be on Ahonen, for sure, but the bookies
stopped taking bets on him days ago.
[Permalink]
2005-01-06 09:44
This fine
overview of international radio broadcastnings has two (2) entries
for the Danish tongue ("the tongue of the Danes"): Radio Danmark and
Rai International.
Rai International, you ask or enquire? It is an Italian station.
In Danish, you press or pursue? In, indeed, Danish:
Rai International's radioprogram sender for tiden informations
programmer p� 26 sprog udover italiensk. De danske programmer til
Europa sendes tre gange om ugen kl. 20.00 UTC/GMT (21.00 lokal tid) p�
kortb�lge frekvens 6040 og 9710 Khz.
Rai International's radio-programme broadcasts up to date information
programmes in 26 languages besides Italian. The Danish programmes for
Europe are broadcast three times a week at 20.00 UTC on shortwave
frequencies 6040 and 9170 KHz.
It is less boggleworthy that Radio Danmark should be doing this too,
except it isn't because they don't:
TV-avisen kunne torsdag aften oplyse, at DR pr. 1. januar lukker og
slukker for Radio Danmark, "da computere og satelitter har gjort
kortb�lge overfl�dig", og da der kun "er ganske f� radiobrugere
tilbage".
TV-News could reveal on Thorsday evening that DR as of the 1st of
January os shutting Radio Danmark "because computers and satellites
have made shortwave superfluous" and because there are only "a few
radio users left."
What sort of behaviour is that, you might be forgiven for wondering or
musing? This sort:
Med kultuministerens beslutning om at acceptere DRs lukning af Radio
Danmark, kommer Danmark p� niveau med Estland og Letland samt
miniputlande som Liechtenstein, Andorra og San Marino, der heller ikke
betjener deres udenlandske medborgere gennem
kortb�lgeudsendelser. Alle andre udviklede lande sender p� kortb�lge
til udlandet - fra Finland, Sverige og Island i Nordeuropa til
Nederlandene, Belgien, Tyskland, Polen, Tjekkiet og �strig i
Centraleuropa og til Portugal, Spanien, Italien, Malta og Gr�kenland i
Sydeuropa.
With the kultureminister's decision to accept DRs closure of Radio
Danmark, Danmark attains the level of Estonia and Latvia along with
microstates such as Liechtenstein, Andorra and San Marino, which also
don't serve their foreign citizens by means of shortwave broadcasts.
All other developed countries broadcast overseas on shortwave - from
Finland, Sweden and Iceland in northern Europe to the Netherlands,
Belgium, Germany, Polandland, Czechia and Austria in central Europe
and Portugal, Spain, Italy, Malta and Greekland in southern Europe.
If it comes to that, I can add Ukrainia, Bulgaria, Romania and even
Al-bloody-bania to the list from eastern and Balkan Europe.
Sort it out, Danmark! You're currently second in a field of one (1) for
international broadcasts in your own langwidge!
[Permalink]
2005-01-05 15:42
An exciting new series! First up, VG indulges in a
rare bout of moral-highground-seizing re. today's EU wide
post-tsunamic silence keepnings:
Danmarks var det eneste EU-landet som ikke deltok i markeringen
onsdag, fordi landet holdt to minutters stilhet sist s�ndag.
Danmark was the only EU country which didn't take part in the
observance on Wednesday, because the country had already held a two
minutes silence last S�nday.
The mystery deepens, however:
Klokka 12 i dag stoppet Norge og 23 andre europeiske land opp i stille
markering over tre minutter.
At noon today, Norway and 23 other European countries stopped in
silence for three minutes.
But there are 25 EU-lands and Norway is not one of them, so who else
opted out? (Or did VG just miscount?)
[Permalink]
2005-01-05 13:13
It is the Swedish prinsesses! And there were many
sobbnings!
Strax f�re halv fyra i morse inleddes ceremonin f�r de sex d�da p�
Arlanda. Helt privat, utan mikrofoner, enligt de anh�rigas �nskan.
Just before half-past three this morning the ceremony took place
for the six dead at Arlanda. Completely private, without microphones,
as the relatives wished.
Did they put in a special request for the papparazzi, too?
[Permalink]
2005-01-05 11:00
The same fuse tripped six (6) times last night while I was
attempting to microwave some pasta sauce for forty (40)-odd seconds.
Lacking convenient access to the chair that is the only sensible way
to reach it, I used my rusty climbing skills, a doorknob (ball of left
foot), the door frame (left hand) and a nice stretch (right hand) to
reset it.
By the sixth (6th) time I was feeling the effects, and my langwidge
was far from dainty.
Then, having been eluded by sleep, I got up to get a glass of water
and when I turned the light on, a fuse went. Attempting the same
procedure in pitch blackness turned out to be even stupider, and in
any case I couldn't find the fuse that had gone.
A chair-fetchning and door-proppning and some even less dainty remarks
later all was better except my temper. And then the only thing on
shortwave was a Radio Bulgaria news bulletin I'd already heard, only
this time in Frenchy-French.
Gah!
[Permalink]
2005-01-04 17:45
It it the coffee, or simply all the �l I didn't have last night?
[Permalink]
2005-01-04 15:19
In these difficult times of change and difficulties, including the
difficulties of change and the difficulties associated with it, it's
sometimes good to pause and think of all the things which are
reassuringly the same as ever.
For example, a BBC News story headlined
"EU grapples with translation boom", just like all the others they've
published before and after the newbies joined, with the added bonus
that it's actually about interpretation. Translators and
interpreters are of course the only persons who don't think their
trades are interchangeable, but when you're writing on the subject it
is unlikely they won't notice and take offence.
The cost of all translation and interpretation in EU institutions
amounted to just over US$2.50 per citizen last year. That is about as
much as a cup of coffee, the Commission likes to point out. The cost
is expected to rise by a further US$0.75 per citizen as more people
are recruited.
The dollar was actually still money when they started saying that, of
course, and I bet you can get a cup of coffee for somewhat less in, say,
Slovakia. Which is not to say it's not money well spent, because it
is.
[Permalink]
2005-01-04 12:54
It isn't
easy
being a prinsess:
Kronprinsessan Victoria kommer hem f�r att delta i
mottagandet av stoftet efter de f�rsta omkomna svenskarna.
Kronprinsess Victoria is coming home to take part in the reception of
the remains of the first Swedish victims.
The black bonnet, Kronprinsess?
[Permalink]
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