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2005-06-29 14:56

One more for the road...

Under the headline �Solo Hume pu� fermare Marx� Alla Bbc la sfida sui grandi filosofi, Corriere della Sera engages in a little light second-hand tact:

�Lo votano perch� � un vecchio con la barba bianca ed � cos� che la gente si immagina un filosofo�, protesta la professoressa Lisa Jardine dell'universit� di Londra. �Era solo un giornalista che sapeva di economia, non dovrebbe neppure partecipare alla gara�, dice la parlamentare conservatrice Ann Widdecombe. In ogni caso Karl Marx � in testa al sondaggio della Bbc sul �pi� grande filosofo della storia� e si avvia a vincere una libera - se non regolare - elezione, privilegio in genere non toccato ai suoi epigoni.

[Oh come on, guess. We did!]

Being dissed by Lisa "Limpet" Jardine and "Wibbling" Ann Widdecombe is not perhaps the highlight of Karl "The Spectre" Marx (He's Haunting Europe!)'s career, but an endorsement is an endorsement, and this is (albeit unintentionally) both.

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2005-06-29 12:51

P� resa

Last week Genoa; this week Madrid; next weekend glorious Londontown.

But did you heard? They have books in Abroad now too!

The Graun rounds up some scribbleurs and Skrifters you really ought to 've heard of if you weren't such a blinkered Engleesh peasant. Surely everyone's heard of Halldor Laxness though? (We'd read him, even, but we have some nice Anna Karenininina to finish first.)

[via]

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2005-06-29 10:59

Iron Maiden go Ooshloo!

Aftonbladet makes the pilgrimage:

I sitt p�g�ende 30-�rsfirande har de brittiska veteranerna gr�vt sig tillbaka till r�tterna.

Och d� pratar vi inte om litet f�rstr�tt skyfflande - sextetten har g�tt fram som en bulldozer och skyfflat fram en hel del som l�nge varit begravt.

In their ongoing 30th anniversary celebrations the british veterans have dug back to their roots.

And we're not talking about a little absent-minded shovelling - the sextet have gone out like a bulldozer and dug up a whole load that had been long buried.

Five (5) pluses and the coveted Most Convoluted Metaphor That Doesn't Work In Translation In A Review In A 'Wegian 'Bladet award! Dig on, you crazy Maiden of Iron!

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2005-06-28 16:12

A Lesson in Humility

We are vair vair good with 'puters, for sure. Photocopiers and faxen, not so good. In fact faxen typically reduce us to utter perplexity on the rare occasions the Universe conspires to inflict them on us.

Bah! They are henceforth banned from all Imperial territories and domains, with immediate effect.

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2005-06-28 11:44

Sm�rg�spost

�1. Feminise me harder!

It is Sandra Harding, neoscholastique feministe philosophe of science!

What, you may ask or enquire, is there that is specifically feministes to say about, f ex, an electron? So far as we can tell, there is no such something. Indeed the interview is magnificently - even cheese-shopply - evacuated of remarks on the sciency bits of science. It probably says something about our trajectory as a philosophe of science that we were more irritated by the residual neo-scholasticisme.

�2. It is the Tour de France!

On Saturday! We like the Tour! It is like a race, only with bicycles! Allez les anyone-but-Lances!

�3. Prinsess!

We've been vair vair disappointed with teh coverage of prinsess - kronprinsess Maxima of the Nederland's new baby. If you read only Engleeshbladets you might not 've noticed the happy event at all, and the 'Wegians have done no better.

Thank goodness, then and as ever, for Belgium:

De tweede dochter van de Nederlandse kroonprins Willem-Alexander en prinses M�xima heet Alexia Juliana Marcella Laurentien. De vader maakte de vier namen dinsdagochtend bekend, toen hij in Den Haag aangifte deed van de geboorte.

My name is Piet and I live in Amsterdam, den hoofstaad van het Nederland.

�4. Did we mention "too hot"?

Madrid is forecast for 38�C on Saturn's day. If anybody wants us at the weekend, we'll be in the Museas Nacionale Della Refrigidacion, 'kay?

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2005-06-28 09:36

Slightly-too-sunny Spain

Oh this year i'm off to Sunny Spain Y Viva Espana
I'm taking the Costa Brava 'plane Y Viva Espana
If you'd like to chat a matador, in some cool cabana
And meet senoritas by the score, Espana por favor

We want none of these things but we are nonetheless off to sunny Spain tomorrow afternoon.

In Spain's southern region of Andalucia, where temperatures have risen to 40C [that's "40�C", silly Beeboid!] (104F [and you can spare us the Fs, thanks]) in some areas, the regional government is preparing to alert the elderly, infirm and those with young children by text message.

The country has also set aside 750m euros (�499m) of emergency aid for farmers struggling to cope with the country's worst drought in 60 years.

We've set aside a crisp 5 EUR note for emergency gin and tonics. Tally-ho!

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2005-06-27 16:00

Bah!

We haven't got hay fever - we've got imperial hay flu!

Chinese imperial hay flu!

It is much much worse than silly old hay fever and everyone should be vair vair nice to us and mop our fevered brow and bring us soup. (Gazpacho, please, since it is still also too hot.)

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2005-06-27 12:25

Globalisation

Or should that be "globalization"?

Most English printers follow the French practice of changing -ize to -ise; but the OED of the Oxford University Press, the Encyclopaedia Britannica of the Cambridge University Press, The Times & American usage, in all of which -ize is the accepted form, carry authority enough to outweigh superior numbers.

Fowler, Modern Engleesh Usage, p.306

We'll stick with our trusty Frenchified affectation, thanks all the same.

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2005-06-27 10:23

Roman Globollocks, slightly nostalgic

From the Beeb's Own Correspondent:

Twenty-five years ago, not many foreigners lived in Italy and not many people spoke foreign languages nor appeared to have any desire so to do.

But now, in the globalised world, some middle-class Romans send their children to international schools so that they will grow up speaking English fluently.

The problem with extrapolating from anecdotal evidence is that it scales unpredictably badly, of course.

In restaurants the waiters are usually Italian but, if you look into the kitchens, the people that are turning out local favourites like buccatini all'amatriciana or spaghetti carbonara are very often Asians.

And the way of life that seemed routine and ordinary 25 years ago is disappearing.

The businesses that paid for it - that produced things that people wanted to buy because they were well designed and well priced - are struggling to compete against cheap competition from China.

We're reading Krugman's La mondialisation n'est pas coupable at the moment, and we are starting to feel it is our moral duty to urge you to do likewise. Teaser: almost everything everyone says about international "competition" is false, much of it mendaciously so.

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