2005-07-08 22:37
Londontown, here I am
To be honest it seems performatively overstated to even bother to observe that the town has largely shrugged off the aspects of the attacks that aren't simply sad.
The Tube isn't in worse shape than it is most Sundays, incidentally.
2005-07-08 15:35
We like him even better now:
I want to say one thing specifically to the world today. This was not
a terrorist attack against the mighty and the powerful. It was not
aimed at Presidents or Prime Ministers. It was aimed at ordinary,
working-class Londoners, black and white, Muslim and Christian, Hindu
and Jew, young and old. It was an indiscriminate attempt to slaughter,
irrespective of any considerations for age, for class, for religion,
or whatever.
That isn't an ideology, it isn't even a perverted faith - it is just
an indiscriminate attempt at mass murder and we know what the
objective is. They seek to divide Londoners. They seek to turn
Londoners against each other. I said yesterday to the International
Olympic Committee, that the city of London is the greatest in the
world, because everybody lives side by side in harmony. Londoners will
not be divided by this cowardly attack. They will stand together in
solidarity alongside those who have been injured and those who have
been bereaved and that is why I'm proud to be the mayor of that city.
I can't imagine any of Shiny New Labour's front bench making a point
about "ordinary, working-class Londoners" on this or pretty much any
other occasion. It is also worth noting that Red Ken travels by Tube
himself, and that in the days when he was leader of the GLC he was
offered, and declined, a place in a nuclear shelter in the event of
things going terminally ballistic; he claimed he didn't see any point
outliving all his friends and loved-ones in such a way or manner.
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2005-07-08 14:07
�1. Yes we have some tunnelbananana!
But:
"Stanna hemma!"
M�nga f�retag i London har gett sina
medarbetare ledigt i dag, och polisen uppmanar s� m�nga Londonbor som
m�jligt att stanna hemma. Men det �r inte m�jligt f�r alla. Och efter
terrorattentatet i g�r �r det med viss motvilja som Londonborna ger
sig ner i tunnelbanan och ombord p� bussar.
"Stay Home!"
Many companies have given their workers the day off today, and the
police are advising Londoners to stay at home if they can. But that's
not possible for everyone. And after yesterday's terrorist attack
Londoners are going on the Tube and the buses with a certain
reluctance.
Fair enough, we suppose; we were actually mostly looking forward to maybe
getting a seat for once. There seem to be a lot of persons around who
missed the heyday of the IRA's many bombing campaigns, it seems to
us.
�2. Tact, trappistes and trademarks
(Watch out; this story may contain traces of
Belgium.)
Une abbaye tch�que install�e � Zeliv affirme �tre le 7e endroit du
monde � produire de la bi�re trappiste. Mais le porte-parole de
l'Association internationale trappiste estime que ces bi�res ne
peuvent pas porter le nom de trappiste et l'a fait savoir aux
moines-brasseurs tch�ques.
A Czech abbey in Zeliv claims to be the seventh place in the world
producing Trappiste beer. But the spokesperson of the International
Trappiste Association considers that the beer can't bear the Trappiste
name and has told the Czech monk-brewers so.
The Trappiste Czech monk-brewers, you ask or enquire? Um, no.
They're not actually Trappiste monks. D'oh!
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2005-07-08 10:56
�1. Things, and the doing of them properly
The Lonely Planet Spanish phrasebook is so astonishingly bad, we have
finally been goaded into considering writing our own. We're going to
use full IPA, incorporating elisions and assimilations across
word boundaries, and we're going to sketch some grammar as briskly as
our linguistic skills allow. Spanish -ar verbs and -er
verbs are conjugated, so far as we can tell, exactly the same except
for a wovel, so why have two (2) sets of tables?
�2. Things, and the doing of them improperly
We were just plotting a course home with our Routard guide to Londres,
and it turns out they use a Tube map other than the sacred iconic
one. It is startlingly hard to use, and we can't imagine why they've
done that. Their biscuit rations have been cut, for sure.
�3. Things, and the doing of them inconveniently
Even with the added weirdness of Spanish bureaucracy, their system of
expenses is preferable to Blighty's deranged insistence that (a) a
receipt must be provided for everything; and that (b) alcohol isn't
reimburseable. (With hindsight, Spain would be the better country for
restaurant bills, since the fixed "Menu" invariably includes wine by
default.)
The British system wastes my time, it would waste the accountants'
time if it wasn't actually just a job-creation scheme on their part,
it is petty, tiresome and expensive to administer, and it inspires
bewilderment and hilarity among foreign colleagues. (There's nothing
quite like going out for a group meal and then having to tell the
waitstaff that the silly Englishes need separate receipts for the
bill. Oh, the looks you can get!)
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2005-07-07 16:13
�1. The Vatican strikes back!
While continuing to falling short of our demand of ex-communication
for anyone who defies its many ridiculous policies, the Vatican is
nonetheless
making progress:
Les catholiques qui "soutiennent publiquement des choix immoraux comme
l'avortement" sont en �tat de p�ch� mortel et ne devraient pas acc�der
� la communion durant la messe, selon un document du Vatican.
Catholiques who "publically support immoral choices such as
abortion" are in a state of mortal sin and should not have access to
communion at mass, according to a Vatican document.
We suspect that Espain's excellent new gay-marriage law is on their
list, too. What, then, does the future hold for the Vatican when it
finally achieves its ambition of alienating everyone on the whole of
its host continent?
By our Imperial decree, it will be obliged to host all future Olympic
Gameses, at its own expense. There are, after all, still Yoorpeans
who care about sport.
�2. Well done, Irelandland!
An Irelandland of mass immigration, and vair nice
about it:
I have been looking at Ireland's new ethnic mix through the - slightly
unlikely - eyes of the Adult Literacy Agency.
It was given the responsibility for making sure English language
lessons were available free of charge to every immigrant who wanted
them.
[...]
I asked farmer Kevin O'Duffy from Ballycumber, if he thought it was
right that an education budget funded by Irish tax-payers should also
buy English lessons for the newcomers.
"Yes, it's right," he said. "They're quite welcome as far as I'm
concerned."
Good answer, farmer Kevin O'Duffy from Ballycumber!
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2005-07-07 12:33
�1. Please to go away; Londontown is
shut
1130 Signs on major roads into London warn: "Avoid London. Area
closed. Turn on radio"
�2. Quite
right too
At Marylebone Station in central London BBC News reporter Nicola McGann
said there was not a sense of panic or urgency - people were just
trying to go about their business.
�3. Edgware is not the same thing as Edgware Road
We grew up in Edgware, a very peripheral suburb of Londontown which's
tube station did not explode this morning; it is not very near Edgware
Road tube station, which did. (The Edgware Road connects central
London to Edgware, hence the name.)
Also, neither is spelled "Edgeware".
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2005-07-07 11:20
Londontown's public transport infrastructure has apparently taken to
exploding.
The thing is, we were planning to travel up there tomorrow on the
train. And while we're not especially intimidated by silly
terroristes and their silly bombes, we suspect that the train system
might be slightly shut for the foreseeable.
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2005-07-07 10:27
Well
done, Yoorp!
European politicians have thrown out a controversial bill that could
have led to software being patented.
The European Parliament voted 648 to 14 to reject the Computer
Implemented Inventions Directive.
Responding to the rejection the European Commission said it would not
draw up or submit any more versions of the original proposal.
And quite right too. 648 to 18 isn't exactly a hint.
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2005-07-06 15:26
It is the vastly preferable Ulrike Felt, who actually appears to
have a clue:
In the 1920s, at the latest, more and more people began to doubt that
science could be made accessible to all. And Einstein especially, as I
have argued,(1) symbolizes a "farewell to public knowledge" and the
simultaneous emergence of a rhetoric of trust: scientists were to be
trusted by the public, even when people were not able to follow
them. Thus people were ready to abandon the illusion of a broad public
appreciation of science, and to trust the scientist as a person. This
was clearly expressed by a journalist reporting on Einstein's visit to
Paris in 1922: "I declare myself absolutely unable to undertake a
personal assessment of Einstein's theory. The questions he raises
definitely surpass my capabilities, nor am I interested in them." He
adds, however, to explain why it is nevertheless necessary to report
about them: "But it cannot be denied that great minds are grappling
with [Einstein's ideas]."
We're currently poised one essay away from remarking that the decline
of deference to science is part of a more general decline in
deference. And only that - there was no Golden Age when The Public
actually understood science.
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2005-07-06 13:45
Why couldn't the useless old prunt 've stayed at home and kept his big
mouth shut? Now Londontown is stuck with a useless overpriced
boondoggle - as if it needed more touristes! Coverage of choice: the
Graun:
12:25pm: "Am I alone in desperately not wanting to host the Olympics
in the UK and at the same time equally desperately not wanting the
French to win the vote?" asks Roy Weston. I suspect you're not Roy. I
get the impression there's plenty out there who'd take the
inconvenience of hosting the Olympics on their doorstep if it meant
upsetting the French.
The sooner certain persons realise that Jacques "Chicanery" Chirac
isn't "the French" the better, isn't it?
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2005-07-06 10:25
�1. Globalisation ate my dinner
Take-off from Madrid at 2100 (too early for dinner); landing at
Bristle at 2300 (too late for dinner). Result: no dinner. Arse!
�2. The OU ate my motivation
The Big Challenge Essay at the end of my OU course traditionally allows a
choice from the three (3) course themes. The one I wanted to do was
"knowledge and knowing", because we're all about the sociology of
knowledge up at the ch�teau. But this year there are only two (2)
choices, and that isn't either of them. Arse!
�3. The Grauniad ate my comprehension
A story about the disastrous implications of 9/11 for Swissarmyknives,
which is all very poignant, then this:
Now the Swiss firm is fighting back [against Chinese clones]. Last
month it registered the deep red colour of its Swiss army knives as a
patent.
"Design patents" are such a magnificent impediment to clarity of
discourse, isn't it? They should patent the *&%$ing things as an
obfuscation mechanisme.
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2005-07-05 15:36
We were thinking of learning Italian, but at the moment we're
leaning towards Spanish, largely because we seem to have more
Spanishness thrust upon us. Even if Spain doesn't have Donald Duck
comics and we don't like any Spanish foopball teams and we like our
lunch at lunch-time, dammit.
Sigh. Maybe we'll learn Spanish badly; that'll teach 'em, eh?
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2005-07-05 12:18
And the future is already here! Sonic Youth, Saxon, Iron Maiden are
all still touring. We don't get it.
We liked it better back when there was still enough grand narrative in
the world that obsolete bands were relegated to nostalgia tours. You
can call it postmodern all you like, we call it decadence. Decadence,
d'you hear?
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2005-07-05 10:52
�Blessed, blessed again and thrice blessed are thy dreary grey
skies and gentle drizzle, O Blighty!
Oh it is nice to sleep under the bed clothes for a change.
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