2005-03-10 16:45

Notice

This afternoons blogpost has been cancelled as I am clearing the decks to go on holiday, hoorah! (I probably won't manage to blog from the road on a long weekend, but I am after all back Tuesday (II).)

Instead, why not read Scott von Pedantry's Towards a Marxist Hermeneutics of Total Bullshit?

We didn't get the Star Wars jokes, but you might.

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2005-03-10 12:13

Sm�rg�spost

�1. A nice Swedish phrase or saying

[Det] vete f�glarna ("The birds know [it]") is the Swedish way of saying "buggered if I know", and rather nicer, if you ask me.

�2. Found stupidity

It's not in short supply, I know, but this was in a travel agent's window:

BRISTOL 3�C
CANARIES 70�C
MAINLAND SPAIN 63�C

Where do you want to be?

Um, Bristol? On account of as I am in no rush to die and all.

'Cept I'm going to Bar�a tomorrow (sans Chelsea shirt) and they're just plain wrong.

�3. Books? In libr'ies?! (It'll never catch on.)

National lottery funding should be introduced to tackle the "scandal" of Britain's shabby and neglected public library services, according to a report yesterday which says that well-stocked, attractive shelves, rather than IT terminals, are the bedrock of its future.

The Lottery has apparently taken over from the LibSoddingDems penny in the pound tax rise as an inexhausible fundning fairydust that can and should and must be sprinkled everywhere at once. If public services are worth paying for, why don't we just agree to pay for them?

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2005-03-10 10:19

Electolux, mon amour !

Tv�ttmaskins are very excellent, it is surely beyond dispute, but until now they have invariably lacked a built-in strumptork.

Until now!

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2005-03-09 16:05

Why I am so decaffeinated

I have you see, Varied Reader, been off the coffee. I still crash hard at about 15:00, though, so apparently it wasn't that. (I think, as I so very usually do, that it's a getting-older thing. Sigh.)

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2005-03-09 12:22

Sm�rg�spost

�1. I'm a girl, get me out of here!

It is the Jokkmokk effect!

Unders�gelserne fra Sverige og Island viser, at piger generelt klarer sig bedre end drenge i skolen i matematik og fysik. Is�r i de fjerneste egne af Sverige er k�nsforskellen mellem drenge og piger stor.

Det siger professor ved Danmarks P�dagogiske Universitet Niels Egelund i et interview i det seneste nummer af det amerikanske tidsskrift TIME Magazine. F�nomenet kaldes for Jokkmokk-effekten, og det er opkaldt efter en lille isoleret by i den svenske del af Lapland.

Research from Sweden and Iceland shows that girls generally do better at school in maths and physics. The gap between girls and boys is especially large in the furthest regions of Sweden .

So says Niels Egelund, a professor at Danmark's Pedagogical University in an interview in the latest issue of the American TIME magazine. The phenomenon is called the "Jokkmokk effect" after a small isolated town in the Swedish part of Lapland.

Prof. Egelund hypothesises that the girlchildren put all their energies into schoolwork so they can get the heck out of these such stinking heckholes in the middle of nowhere and get a job in civilisation, while the boys are content to grow up to a life of huntin', fishin' and shootin' in pristine wildernesses. (Somebody could perhaps warn them that there aren't going to be any wimmins, though, you'd think.)

[via Birgitte, tack!]

�2. It is still genderteori!

Whilst there is much debate about whether there are increasing opportunities for women to take higher managerial positions, [...] the proportion of women in such jobs has increased.

[OU materials, again.]

Don'tcha just want to slap them? (The authors, not the wimmins, of course.) As a rule of thumb, incidentally, it is quite safe and generally preferable to ignore anyone who habitually uses the word "whilst".

�3. Ukrainia's Yurovizhn crisis!

The anthem of the country's "orange revolution" by the group Greenjolly won a national vote after being allowed in as a last-minute wildcard entry.

But it is "too political", Eurovision organisers have ruled.

Greenjolly have until Thursday to submit new lyrics for the song Razom Nas Bagato! (Together We Are Many!)

Ooh, can we play? Together we are several! has a nice ring, or maybe Assembled, we are multiple! or We constitue, when collocated, an abundance!

The current song became the theme for mass protests at the end of 2004, leading to Viktor Yushchenko's victory in a re-run of a disputed presidential election.

It includes the lyrics: "No to falsifications... No to lies. Yushchenko - yes! Yushchenko - yes! This is our president - yes, yes!"

Too political, you say? But Yuschenko is their president; it's just a simple fact!

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2005-03-09 09:38

Let's suppose!

(It is a game like "let's pretend", only more rigorous, since mathematicians play it!)

Suppose that:

• You are the best foopball team in Yoorp!
• Your best player is the best in the world!
• You are Bar�a!
• You are going into the second leg of a fixture with a one (1) - nill (0) lead!

Are you confident of victory, or are you, given that you are playing Челси, reconciled to the inevitable:

- Chelsea a triomph� du FC Barcelone 4 � 2 (mi-temps: 3-2) en 8e de finale retour, se qualifiant pour les quarts de finale de la Ligue des champions de football apr�s une rencontre absolument �blouissante dont chacun eut m�rit� de sortir vainqueur, mardi � Londres.

Chelsea triumphed over FC Barcelona 4-2 (half-time: 3-2) in the second leg to qualify for the quarter final of the League of Champions after a dazzling match that both sides deserved to win on Tuesday in Londontown.

It was certainly very tense, what with the away-goal rule having eliminated the draw from its many enquiries.

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2005-03-08 17:05

Oh, yes it does!

Yes, there's glove if you want it
Don't look like no bonnet, my lord
Yes, there's glove if you want it
Don't look like no bonnet, my lord
My lord

[The inaptly-named "Verve", slightly mangled]

It does too look like a bonnet! And so does this!

Although we're not sure if baseball bonnets count: our prinsessetiquettehandbook has apparently not kept up with the yoofer today.

Also, a perky Upsidedownian fluff piece:

Thousands of fans packed the Opera House steps and forecourt to greet the royal couple after the ceremony. Wearing an olive straw hat and carrying a bouquet of orange lillies and red roses to offset her scoop-neck dress with chocolate-brown bodice and gold skirt, Mary mingled with the crowd before moving on to Observatory Hill, where she and Frederik unveiled a bronze-plated bust of Andersen.

I do like their frock reports, but I think I might like bigger fotos even better.

[via our bihemispherical prinsesscorrespondentteam, tack!]

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2005-03-08 11:32

The Prinsessor strike back!

It is the German trashbladets again!

Den tyska skvallerpressen har tvingats be den svenska kungafamiljen om urs�kt p� sina f�rstasidor.
Nu g�r kungafamiljen ett steg vidare och kr�ver ett antal f�rlag p� ekonomiskt skadest�nd.
- Det h�r kommer drivas vidare i domstol, s�ger hovets presschef Ann-Christine Jernberg.

The German gossippress has been forced to ask the Swedish kingly family for forgiveness on its frontpages.
Now the kingly family is going a step further and suing a number of companies for financial damages [which they've pledged to give to charidee, of course].
"This here is going to be pursued further in court", says courtpresschief Ann-Christine Ironmountain.

Ironmountain also by nature, apparently, but we can't bring ourselves entirely to approve.

There can be no question that the trashbladets were in the wrong, for sure, nor that (as the article points out) the stories so far apologised for are the tip of a very considerable iceberg, but still: the point has been made, wrists have been slapped, they're very sorry and they haven't, so far as we know, done it again.

The dignified outcome would be an out of court settlement, we think.

[Tack to MM for the offtippning!]

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2005-03-08 09:47

What do you mean "we", kemosabe?

Furthermore, because of the clothes, we can't usually see the anatomical evidence to help us tell the difference between women and men.

OU materials (specific reference deliberately omitted)

Things are very different in the culture of sociologistes, isn't it?

To pretend, while actually making it worse, to be fair to them, they started from the sexning of babies via genitalia and seem to have just waftily overlooked the existence of secondary sexual characteristics as we, for one, are not in the habit or custom of doing.

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2005-03-07 15:15

What I read on my summer holidays weekend

Sometimes we buy the Neue Post, these said sometimes being generally when there's a 'Wegian prinsess on the cover, but the Neue Post is no Point de Vue and it is extensively contaminated with non-prinsess content.

But seeing as we had again this week paid good money for this trashbladet, and we are after all learning German, we thought we'd try some of this content of otherness. And do you know what, Varied Reader, we rather liked it!

We read, in particular, a True Readeress's Story of how she met a bloke on holiday and they fell in lurrrrrve, but she was from Stuttgart in Germany and he was from Hamburg in Germany! Could the cultural and especially geographical divide be bridged! (Yes they could, as it turned out, but it was touch and go for a while.)

We also read and correctly solved the murdermysterypuzzle! We are looking forward also to reading the non-true un-readeress's romancestory!

We are apparently in not a small amount of danger of becoming a German Wimmin of a Certain Age!

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2005-03-07 11:51

Sm�rg�spost

�1. It is the Kronprinsessmary of Danmark!

Over tusinde royale fans var m�dt frem uden for den danske kirke i Sydney, for at hilse p� Frederik og Mary som s�ndag formiddag var til gudstjeneste. Nogle af tilskuerne havde ventet i seks timer p� at se det danske kronprinspar.

Over a thousand royal fans were m�dt outside the Danish church in Sydney to greet Kronprinsessmary and her husband who attended the service on Sunday morning. Some of the tilskuer had waited for six (6) hours to see the Danish kronprinscouple.

�2. It is also or still Kronprinsessmary of Danmark!

Tidligere p� dagen bes�gte kronprinsessen [Victor Chang Instituttet for hjerteforskning] for at se og h�re om de gennemsigtige zebrafisk, der har vist sig uundv�rlige i forskningen af genetiske faktorer...

Earlier in the day the Kronprinsess visited the Victor Chang Institute for Heartresearch to see and hear about the see-through zebrafish, which has shown itself to be rilly rilly cool valuable in research of genetic factors.

�3. Is it again or further Kronprinsessmary of Danmark, you ask or enquire?

Varied Reader, it is!

Efter at have tilbragt dage i tr�k med overklassen til velg�renheds-baller, valgte hun nemlig at bruge flere timer p� b�rnehospitalet The Childrens hospital at Westmead.

After something something with the upperclass to the something-ball, she chose in fact to spend several hours at the childrens' hospital The Childrens Hospital at Westmead.

�4. Surprise!

It is the Kronprinsessmary of Danmark, yes, but this time in the silly Engleesh!

Princess Mary chose a figure-hugging outfit with dark brown bodice and bronze-coloured skirt, topped with a matching broad-brimmed hat, for the occasion.

[You have irrepressible upsidedownian Anna Louise to thank for this such themening.]

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2005-03-07 09:46

Why I am such a bad neighbour

Everyone I have lately been neighbour to has tended to engage in the sort of shoutnings that end up requiring police intervention. (Upstairs did, last night.)

Coincidence? Not very parsimonious, isn't it?

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