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2005-06-10 17:29

Monday Review of Stuff

So this evening looks set to drag on, so I went at and bought samwidge, pie, coffee, absurdly dated Italian Made Simple book, Neue Post, and the new White Stripes album.

M'colleague's at a lecture series I'm boycotting, so I'm taking the chance on a big of speaker action and so far so good, for sure.

Meanwhile:

I nomi delle coso sono importanti. Perci� bisogna imparare i nomi di molte cose.

The names of things are important. Therefore it is necessary to know the names of many things.

Most of them answer to "Thingy" in our experience, but sadly they don't say what the Italian for that is.

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2005-06-10 14:37

One sleep to go!

And I will go woosh off to Italia! All the gang will be there! (I know real academics spend their careers bumping into each other in an assortment of exotic locations, but I am after all not a real academic, and this will be the first time I've repeated a conference.)

Meanwhile, there is urgent presentationtinsel to tinker with. (It is too urgent when it's your funding agency's logo you're fiddling with.)

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2005-06-10 10:47

Guestbladet

This week's specialguestbladet is G�vle's excellent Arbetarbladet, whence:

Det blir inget sommardisko p� Gamla Grand. Fastighets�garen Realia s�tter stopp f�r de p�st�dda planerna.

There will no sommardisco at Gamla Grand. Propertyowner Realia has put the kaybosh on the proposed plans.

Parochial is the new cosmopolitan, Varied Reader, and you can tell anyone we said so.

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2005-06-09 15:51

Context is a glorious thing, so we have confiscated it

Ohne Regeln konnten wir nich gl�cklich sein.

Without rules, we couldn't be happy.

(Neue Post, Reader's story.)

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2005-06-09 13:51

Holiday Readning

  • Official OU Stuff
  • Althusser, Filosofin fr�n prolet�r klassstandpunkt
  • Berger and Wossname, The Social Construction of Reality, Man
  • Tolsto�, Anna Kareninininina

I'm cautiously optimistic that I'll be coming home with a new, informed opinion on the greatest novel EVAR, for sure.

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2005-06-09 10:04

A little tact, sir or madam?

Blair - Bushs lilla kn�hund
Premi�rministern fick blankt nej p� tiggarresa

Blair - Bush's lapdog
The prime minister got a flat refusal on his beggingtrip

Is Blair ever going to figure out that you get no pro quo for your quid with this Administration?

Even Polandland spotted that! (After backing the invasion of Iraq, they were expecting preferential treatment on visas. Ho ho ho, silly Polandlanders!)

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2005-06-08 17:39

Our two greatest risks are...

Villepin: "notre plus grand risque, l'immobilisme et la division"

M'apportez le fauteil confortable !

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2005-06-08 13:52

Sm�rg�spost

�1. Samwidgecaketips.

(You don't have to mature your samwidgecake in the fridge, if you don't mind it being rubbish.)

�2. Smelly Hippies vs. the Bleeding Obvious

Migrating birds are unlikely to be seriously affected by offshore wind farms, according to a study.

Picture caption:

Birds simply fly around the farms or between the turbines, says the study

Like, wow, man!

�3. Arthur "Cheer up, it might never happen" Schopenhauer

My nights were sour
Spent with Schopenhauer -
What joys untasted!

"Isn't it a pity?" (not the Galaxie 500 one, the Gershwin and Gershwin)

He's picking up some quality voting at the Timber vis-a-vis the Beeb's silly poll. But is he easy to read in German? We're looking for a natural next step up from Frau mit Herz and 7 Tage (thanks MM if you're out there and that was you!) and we wonder if Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung might be a goer?

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2005-06-08 10:16

Officially panicking

We might be on hiatus, or thereabouts, for a while, while we try to get some Stuff Together.

Unless we fail or give up or need (as is not entirely unlikely) massive doses of intravenal diversion.

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2005-06-07 17:34

Late-Breaking Bonus: Vatican Biscuit-Blockade Set to Continue

Beno�t XVI is on a mission. A mission from God, no less! And the mission from God that he is on is to give not an inch, not a millimetre, not an �ngstr�m in his quest to purge Yoorp of his silly mediaeval death cult:

Enligt den nye p�ven �r �ktenskap mellan homosexuella en fejk och ett uttryck f�r "anarkistisk frihet" som hotar familjens framtid.
Uttalandet kom samtidigt som flera l�nder behandlar fr�gan om att legalisera samk�nade �ktenskap.
I sitt tal f�rd�mde han �ven skilsm�ssa och preventivmedel.

According to the new pope gay marriage is a fraud and an expression of "anarchic freedom" which threatens the future of the family.
The announcement comes at the same time as several lands address the question of legalising same-sex marriage.
In his speech he also condemned divorce and contraception.

Now he needs to start excommunicating persons who defy his very clear teachnings, which is pretty much all of even nominal "Catholics", and then we can move on to Phase II, where we dismantle the Vatican brick by brick and rebuild it in South America or Africa or somewhere else that this rubbish still has an audience.

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2005-06-07 15:56

They report, we decide

Report, Beeboid!

A cookery book which includes recipes using stale bread and roadside weeds has become a huge best-seller in Germany.

Hartz IV - A Cookbook For Hard Times shows how to make meals such as "Poor Man's Parmesan" and dandelion salad. It has sold out in Berlin and the publisher has already started reprinting it.

A huge bestseller, eh? �berbuchverkaufen Amazon, any comment?

Amazon.de-Verkaufsrang 2.310

Amazon.de-sales rank 2,310

Beeboid, we have decided that this is not, in fact, a "huge best-seller". You may not appeal. (Behold the power of the Blogosphere!)

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2005-06-07 13:41

Ummm...

(RSS, isn't it? Wheeeee...)

Zimbabwe is famously off the rails, but even so:

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe is not dead, the government say Tuesday, denying a string of rumours, with a spokesman describing the 81-year-old "as fit as a teenager."

�A living teenager or a dead teenager? we feel obliged to ask or enquire.

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2005-06-07 09:51

Sm�rg�spost

�1. Glorious Nationalday!

Now with added prinsess:

Sverige f�rsta helgm�rkta nationaldag �r officiellt invigd.
Strax efter klockan tio p� m�ndagsmorgonen slog kungabarnen upp portarna till Slottet.
- Det �r en alldeles speciell dag i dag och alla vet vi varf�r, sade kronprinsessan Victoria.

Sveden's first nationalday holiday is officially inaugurated.
Just after ten (10) o'clock on Mondaymorning the Royal Childrens opened the doors to the castle.
"It is a quite special day today and we all know why", said kronprinsess Vickan.

What are the odds she'd forgotten and was bluffing?

�2. Transrapid-Strecke in Gro�britannien?

You never know:

Gro�britannien pr�ft die Einf�hrung der deutschen Magnetschwebebahn Transrapid. Nach Gespr�chen im B�ro von Premierminister Tony Blair st�nden nun Treffen mit dem Verkehrsministerium an, sagte der f�r Gro�britannien zust�ndige Projektleiter von Transrapid International, Jochen Kruse, der britischen Tageszeitung "The Guardian". Die Gespr�che w�rden �ber eine Verbindung zwischen London und Schottland entlang der Hauptverkehrsstrecke gef�hrt.

Magneticlevitationwooshtrainspeculation is rife in Blighty. Woosh goes the wooshtrain! Wooooosh! (Sorry, we don't speak the German.)

(I dare you to try and find the relevant article using the Graun's hilarious "search engine". Seriousy, try it. We found it, of course, with Google.)

London to Newcastle in one hour 40 minutes? A snip at 16 billion GBP, for sure.

[Blair's] advisors say the project would pay huge environmental dividends as it would make domestic air travel virtually obsolete, with a trip from London to Newcastle taking just one hour 40 minutes.

It will probably never occur to Blair's advisors, or for that matter to the Graun, that there are people starting in places that aren't London. I've flown from Bristol to Glasgow with Easyjet, for sure. But we like wooshtrains anyway, and our recent conversion to Keynesian economics means that we think it is very much the business of the state to undertake infrastructure projects that generate extensive benefits that are nonetheless too diffuse to allow private enterprise to make a business case for them.

�3. Happy birthday, Norway!

Norway is celebrating 100 years of independence from Sweden.

(We pass over in not-quite-silence the fact that Norway is in fact doing no such something, unless you count the prime-minister's blue and yellow tie.)

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2005-06-07 22:51

They call it blogg

She was the kind of dame made you wish your tweedkavaj was strengthened with l�derrundlar during the elbows, with an easy mist wood expression that could make a guy dropp paper bundles of paper.

"Mr Strindberg?"

I nodded.

"I need to consults to apparitionen."

Didn't they all?

"Look sweetheart, the exists many myths about us detectives. I don't do apparitionen consultning."


[We are indebted to Jonathan K. Cohen, harvestbird , the Systran translation engine, �sa Linderborg and in the near future possibly especially lawyers thereof.]

2005-06-06 15:16

Paristheatrewatch (C'est lundi � Paris)

Since Paris stakes its claim to be a major Yoorpean metropolis by jealously hoarding its listnings away from our prying eyes, we note for our records that a new production of Tartuffe is on at the Com�die-Fran�aise until 18 July (en alternance).

We already knew, for some reason, that there's a new White Stripes album out today, but our newly installed RSS-beserkning facility brings us a nice review:

La rumeur pr�tend que le couple de Detroit (Michigan) aurait �chou� cette fois � innover, que leur cinqui�me opus marque un coup d'arr�t dans leur ascension. La rumeur est folle : avec Get Behind me Satan, les White Stripes continuent de planer au-dessus de la m�l�e.

It was rumoured that the Detroit pair had failed to innovate this time, that their fifth album was a step backward. The rumours were wrong: with Get Behind Me Satan the White Stripes continue to planer above the m�l�e.

Oh those m�lodies �corch�es !

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2005-06-06 12:12

Bloggning comes to Sweden!

Well, yes, it has been there a while, but now it's officially mainstream, apparently:

Revolutionen har n�tt Sverige.
Och alla pratar om den. Hela tiden. I kassak�n p� Ica Maxi i Falk�ping. P� kaffepausen mellan regeringssammantr�det i Rosenbad. �verallt.
De kallar det blogg.

The revolution has reached Sweden.
And everyone is talking about it. All the time. In the tillqueue in Ica Maxi in Falk�ping. At coffebreak in the governmentmeeting at Rosenbad. Everywhere.
They call it blogg.

(All together now: "What a dull name!")

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2005-06-06 10:58

Sweet like 80% cocoa-fat chocklate

�sa Linderborg isn't celebrating the Glorious Nationalday, of course, but instead contemplating a researcher's lot, with backstabbing and brownnosing and herdinstincts and socialirrelevance featuring prominently. But is she bitter?

You bet your sweet ass she is!

Eller f�r att citera Max Weber som menade att ingen forskare enbart lever f�r sitt kall och kan lyckas undg� att bli bitter och rent av g� under av att se "medelm�tta efter medelm�tta passera". "Jag har �tminstone den erfarenheten", skriver Weber, "att det �r oerh�rt f� som kan uth�rda den h�r situationen utan allvarliga psykiska skador."

Or to cite Max ["Chuckles"] Weber, who said that no scholar can live only for their calling or avoid becoming bitter and [something] from seeing "mediocrity after mediocrity overtake". "I have at least the experience", Weber wrote, "that extremely few can endure such a situation without serious psychological injuries."

Cheer up, Chuckles! Posterity loves you! (Well, we do, at least!)

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