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2005-07-22 16:50

Sorry

We've been busy. We'll be back on Monday, for sure.

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2005-07-22 11:42

Too Much Information: RSS

Read it and weep:

There are 9 versions of RSS, all of which are incompatible with various other versions. RSS 0.90 is incompatible with Netscape's RSS 0.91, Netscape's RSS 0.91 is incompatible with Userland's RSS 0.91, Netscape's RSS 0.91 is incompatible with RSS 1.0, Userland's RSS 0.91 is incompatible with RSS 0.92, RSS 0.92 is incompatible with RSS 0.93, RSS 0.93 is incompatible with RSS 0.94, RSS 0.94 is incompatible with RSS 2.0, and RSS 2.0 is incompatible with itself.

Some of them are afflicted with RDF which is a perpetration of the loathsome W3C (we don't know anything else about it; that's plenty) and can thus be ignored; we can't find DTDs even for most of the ones claiming to be vanilla XML.

It's bollocks, isn't it? Complete bollocks.

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2005-07-22 09:52

Fear of Floodning

Every time the EU considers enlargement, a wave of moral panic about the "flooding" in of immigrants is whipped up in the less savoury corners of political opinion.

Every time the EU actually enlarges, the "flood" of immigrants neglects to occur. It is, sadly, our opinion that the political impact of this empirical deficieny is likely to remain negligible: politics isn't played that way. But just in case:

L'Union europ�enne ne risque en aucun cas une "invasion" d'immigr�s avec un nouvel �largissement, a estim� jeudi Guy Desplanques, chef du d�partement d�mographique de l'Insee en marge du 25e congr�s international de la population de Tours.

"Quand on regarde les ann�es pr�c�dentes, il n'y a pas eu d'invasions. Certains craignaient un afflux tr�s important de l'Europe de Est qui ne s'est pas produit. Il y a beaucoup de freins � la mobilit�", a indiqu� M. Desplanques, interrog� par l'AFP sur les cons�quences migratoires de l'adh�sion de la Roumanie et de la Bulgarie en 2007, voire de la Turquie par la suite.

The EU is in no way at risk of an "invasion" of immigrants following a new enlargement, asserted Guy Desplanques, head of the demographic department of Insee on the fringe of the 25th international population conference at Tours.

"When you look at previous years, invasions haven't happened. Some feared a substantion flow from Eastern Europe which hasn't happened. There are plenty of constraints on mobility", Mr. Desplanques said, when asked by the AFP about the migratory consequences of the adhesion of Romania and Bulgaria in 2007 and then Turkey later.

No! Flood!

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2005-07-21 16:57

Antiglobalisation, Swedish-book-style

We have documented previously and at length our difficulties in persuading Swedish interwebbookshops to ship things to such exotic locations as Abroad. We finally settled on Saxo.dk, which is Danish (hence the domain) but sold Swedish books too and didn't care where it sent them.

"Sold?" you ask or enquire? Sold. They've been merged with a monolingual Danish bookshop, and Swedish is currently off the menu:

Vad �r planerna f�r en svensk sajt?
V�ra svenska kunder �r mycket viktiga och vi arbetar h�rt med att snarast m�jligt l�gga in ett omfattande sortiment av svenska b�cker till Sveriges alla bok�lskare. Vi kommer underv�gs forts�tta erbjuda den h�gsta m�jliga kundservice, samt �vers�tta den nuvarande sajten till svenska. Gl�m inte att du redan nu kan best�lla engelska och danska b�cker via v�r nuvarande sajt. Vi vill �ven be om lite t�lamod i denna �verg�ngsperiod - vi lovar att det kommer att l�na sig f�r dig som kund!

How do you keep an idiot in suspense?
I don't know, how do you keep an idiot in suspense?
Tell you next week!

Well, no. But it really does say "Don't forget that you can already order English and Danish books via our current site".

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2005-07-21 14:21

For shame, terroristes!

Blowing up London's nice tubetrains is so last week.

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2005-07-21 12:35

Lunch, Day One

Australia 92-5!

We are diligently untriumphant at this early stage, but gosh!

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2005-07-21 12:02

Sm�rg�spost, slightly definitive

�1. Crisis-imposed distillation decision

"The forecast arrives at a delicate moment for the Italian wine industry, with ongoing following of the prices and still waiting for an answer to the request for a crisis-imposed distillation decision (by the EU authority), which will allow wineries to free space needed for the new production," explains UIV [Italian Wine Union]'s president, Andrea Sartori. "On the other hand, this overproduction is a problem shared with the worldwide wine market."

What it means is melting down yummy wine for industrial ethanol. Our poor sentimental heart breaks to even contemplate it, frankly. (This must be how the hippies and girlies feel about seal-cub culls, we suppose or muse, fairly abstractly.)

�2. Blighty [wounds]

So-called 'Blighty wounds' were generally considered desirable among British and Commonwealth troops who had found themselves serving in the front lines for any extended period of time.

'Blighty' was a reference to Britain and derived from the Hindi 'bilati meaning 'foreign'. A Blighty wound was one deemed sufficiently serious - but not potentially fatal - to necessitate either temporary or permanent recuperation in Britain.

Bonus songlink.

�4. Trashbladets

Trashbladets are 'bladets specialising, unlike ours, in trash. German ones are notoriously badly behaved towards royals, but in our ongoing series of random prinsess hangers-on, we discover that the prinsessmother ("queen") of Sweden has her favourites:

- Jag gillar engelska magasinet Hello! och spanska Hola! D�r finns vackra bilder och de skriver p� ett fint s�tt som inte skadar n�gon, s�ger Silvia.

"I like the English magazine Hello! and Spanish Hola! They have lovely pictures and they write in a nice way that doesn't hurt anyone", says Silvia [for it is she!].

We can't stand Hello! magazine or Spanish �Hola!, for pretty much the same reasons funnily enough.

[Tak to Danish-in-exile Birgitte for the link]

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2005-07-21 09:29

Ooh, me sir! Please sir!

The job of Her Madge's Ambassador to the Holy See is up for grabs:

he Holy See has the status of a sovereign state. It plays an important role on international issues of importance to HMG such as Africa, development and the fight against poverty. As Ambassador, you will act on instructions from the UK Government, report on the Holy See's response, advance HMG's overseas priorities, and represent the UK at official functions and ceremonial events (including religious ceremonies).

Minimum 40K + a house, at that. Sounds good to us.

We require a high calibre individual, with proven political and strategic awareness, diplomatic and interpersonal skills, and in-depth knowledge of government. You must be able to deal with complex issues, build effective and lasting relationships, and be able to communicate in Italian and French to a high standard.

While technically we have none of these skills or qualities, we are very good at sounding firm when saying "Bad Pope! No biscuit!", which is surely more to the point?

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2005-07-20 16:10

Good news, bad news

[It's all foopball news, though but]

Good news:

From next year, top European football matches will have to be shown in the UK on the internet at the same time as they are televised live, Uefa has ruled.

(We like the internets, but not the teevee.)

Bad news:

The body governing European football also specified that they will have to be shown by the same broadcaster

What a terrific incentive that is to do it right!

Good news:

Media analysts say Uefa has bowed to European Commission directives to encourage more people to use the internet.

Well done EC!

Bad news:

But the broadcasters will have to ensure that only UK viewers can watch the games online.

What I really want is to be able to pick and choose the foopball matches I want to see for myself, and if reciprifications means that I still can't get PSV Eindhoven or Lyon in the League of Champions then I'm not getting what I want, and that's bad.

Sport in general and foopball in very particular are disgracefully riddled with nationalisme: Radio Foopball ("5 Live") is convinced that I should and will cheerfully support any British foopball against any Abroadian opposition. In fact, in the League of Champions I am sworn to support any team that plays against the unworthy upstarts of Liverpool.

Boggling news:

[The Brand Republic website said] that Sky appeared to be better prepared to move online than ITV, having announced that it will provide a TV-over-broadband service to its premium package subscribers later this year.

Yes, the core market for TV over the Internet is obviously going to be people who already have all the TV Sky can shovel down their pipes.

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2005-07-20 12:57

Sm�rg�spost

�1. Just this once, then

Lovely Norwegish kronprinsess Mette-Marit's husband has a birthday! Happy birthday silly prins, and remember we're only linking this for the prinsesspicture.

�2. Spectral Decomposition!

It is Francis "With Wolves" Wheen on Karl "The Spectre" Marx, on the occasion of the latter being voted all-time greatest thinker of all time:

A penniless asylum seeker in London was vilified across two pages of the Daily Mail last week. No surprises there, perhaps - except that the villain in question has been dead since 1883. 'Marx the Monster' was the Mail's furious reaction to the news that thousands of Radio 4 listeners had chosen Karl Marx as their favourite thinker. 'His genocidal disciples include Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot - and even Mugabe. So why has Karl Marx just been voted the greatest philosopher ever?'

Don't wave your genocides at us, Daily Mail - we always were a card-carrying Menshevik. Anyway, the rest of the (Wheen's) article is mostly sensible, although we disdain to know what he means by "globalisation".

�3. Weather Report

All the way from soggy Sweden:

Beh�ll sydv�sten och gummist�vlarna p�. L�gtrycket best�r de n�rmaste dagarna.

Keep your sou'wester and wellies on. The low pressure is staying for the next few days.

�4. Oh, come on, we all do it

Do what, you ask or enquire? Check out the introductory filosofi courses at random Interweb universities, of course. And don't be all "Why would I do that?!" with us, Varied Reader, we know far far too much.

Today's featured random Interweb university "introduction to philosophy" course is from the Netherlands very own Open Universiteit Nederland and well done them:

De elf behandelde filosofen zijn: Plato en Aristoteles (de twee belangrijkste Griekse filosofen), Augustinus en Thomas van Aquino (twee belangrijke middeleeuwse filosofen), Descartes, Locke, Kant (de zogenoemde 'moderne filosofen', vanaf 1600) en Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Gadamer en Rorty (19e en 20e-eeuwse filosofen).

[You want us to translate a list of names? Think again, Varied Reader, have further cogitations or epiphenomena of neuronal activity!]

(The 'Wegians tend towards neo-scholasticisme, of course. They're good at id�historia instead, though but.)

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2005-07-20 10:18

Globalisation, igen

Imagine a sinister elite of rootless cosmopolitans conspiring to impose their sinister capitaliste will on an unsuspecting world! Woo woo!

Although we do opine that the support infrastructure is slightly recycled, we do not claim, and we would happily deny, that the rhetoric around "globalisation" is anti-semitic in intent (we are not, after all, an American wingnut).

In fact, we think it's a clear sign of progress: smashing the windows of McDonaldses is definitely a step up from burning down ghettos. (That the lack of suitable ghettos is a substantial cause of the shift is a baseless counterfactual we decline to contemplate.)

Anyway, we've decided that "globalisation" is a coherent phenomenon after all: it is a bogeyman:

"Reform your markets or globalisation will get you, woo woo!"
"No welfare state for you, Yoorp! Globalisation ate it up, woo woo!"

(The thing about social science is that beliefs are at least as influential as any "truth". The corollary, unpalatable to many including sometimes us, is that being right is largely irrelevant.)

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2005-07-19 15:07

Dear Count von Bladet

Persons are for ever asking us things: "What are you on about?", "Have you finished that report yet?", "Where can narwhal tusks be sold?", you know the sort of thing.

So we thought we'd collect up answers here on our 'bladet once and for all. First, then:

Narwhale tusks may be sold to countries outside The European Union and the United States of America.

(We suspect that in practice that mostly means Norway and the subset of the Kingdom of Danmark that isn't in the EU.)

We do not remember ever having been asked where to buy a sealskin pencil case to keep pencils cosy and snug in the long cold winter months, but we live in hope for sure.

(Muchos gracias to Agent Birgitte for the linkage, of course.)

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2005-07-19 11:39

Westphalia Shmestphalia, do as you're told, Comrades

We're supposed to be writing an essay on the nation-state vs. globalization. Like almost everything anyone says about "globalization", this strikes us as silly. The Westphalian nation-state is a model of statehood that routinely fails even the most rudimentary comparison to empirical facts. 19th Century colonialisme is one obvious example, but others are hardly lacking:

Hungary, 1956:

The 1956 Hungarian Revolution, also known as the Hungarian Uprising or simply the Hungarian Revolt, was a revolt in Hungary. The revolt was suppressed by Soviet troops, and to a miniscule degree the Hungarian �VH (�llamv�delmi Hat�s�g ('State Protection Authority')).

Suppressd by Soviet troops. We wouldn't be surprised to hear that the Magnificently Autonomous Hungarian Government asked for assistence, but still.

Prague, 1968

The policy of the USSR to enforce Soviet-style governments among its satellite states, through military force if needed, became known as the Brezhnev Doctrine, named after Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, who was first to publicly declare it, although it was in use since Stalin's times. This doctrine remained in force until it was replaced by the "Sinatra Doctrine" under Mikhail Gorbachev in the 1980s.

Soviet leadership first tried to stop or limit the changes in Czechoslovakia through a series of negotiations. As their attempts failed they started to prepare a military alternative.

(And don't even get us started on partitions of Polandland...)

We'll let "Slavering" Slavoj, Slovenian philosophe extraordinaire explain:

No wonder that anti-Americanism was most discernible in "big" European nations, especially France and Germany: it is part of their resistance to globalization. One often hears the complaint that the recent trend of globalization threatens the sovereignty of the Nation-States; here, however, one should qualify this statement: WHICH states are most exposed to this threat? It is not the small states, but the second-rang (ex-)world powers, countries like United Kingdom, Germany and France: what they fear is that, once fully immersed in the newly emerging global Empire, they will be reduced at the same level as, say, Austria, Belgium or even Luxembourg.

[...]

The levelling of weight between larger and smaller Nation-States should thus be counted among the beneficial effects of globalization: beneath the contemptuous deriding of the new Eastern European post-Communist states, it is easy to discern the contours of the wounded Narcissism of the European "great nations."

Works for us, for sure.

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2005-07-19 10:04

Harry Potter and the Forces Of Globalisation

First, though, a glimpse of an enchantingly different universe where figures are quite differently organised:

WH Smith said it sold 13 copies a second on Saturday. This breaks the book chain's previous record of eight copies a second, which was held by the last tale by JK Rowling: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

Thanks, Graun! Now, the world (or at least Sweden):

F�rs�ljningen av den sj�tte Harry Potter boken "The half-blood Prince" sl�r alla rekord i USA.
Och i Sverige.

[...]

Sedan boken sl�pptes natten till l�rdagen har 75 000 exemplar sl�ppts - och s�lts - i Sverige. Seelig har best�llt hem 15 000 exemplar ytterligare f�r distribution i Sverige, men de b�ckerna kommer inte f�rr�n tidigast i slutet p� veckan.

Sales of the sixth Harry Potter book "The Half-Blood Prins" have broken all records in the USA.
And in Sweden.

[...]

Since the book was released on Saturday night 75000 copies have been released - and sold - in Sweden. Seelig [a distributor] has ordered another 15000 copies for distribution in Sweden, but the books won't arrive until the end of the week at the earliest.

Must we fling this Anglophone hegemoni at the world's kids?

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2005-07-18 16:01

No lawnmowers, please, we're Norwegish

Quite right too:

Klipper du gr�set p� s�ndagar?
D� riskerar du b�ter. I alla fall om du bor i Norge, f�r d�r �r olagligt att f�ra oljud p� helgdagar.

Do you cut the grass on S�ndays?
You could be risking a fine. If you live in Norway, at least, because its illegal to make noise on holy days there.

This strikes us, on the whole, as a fairly excellent idea; we will implement it in our territories and dominions also.

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2005-07-18 12:04

Sm�rg�spost

�1. You've all done jolly well!

(It is a specialguest prinsess, the prinsess Alexia of the Netherlands, who has been born, to considerable public acclaim!)

Kroonprins Willem-Alexander heeft iedereen in Nederland bedankt voor de ,,ongelofelijke stortvloed'' aan ,,goedbedoelde''cadeaus, bloemen, kaarten, e-mails en andere attenties die zijn gezin heeft ontvangen na de geboorte van prinses Alexia op 26 juni.

Kroonprins Willem-Alexander has everyone in the Netherlands thanked for the ,,ongelofelijke stortvloed' aan ,,goedbedoelde'' presents, flowers, cards, emails and other attenties something something the birth of prinses Alexia on 26 June.

�2. A prinsess on a horsie!

But it isn't the sensible hat story! (Although she's not wearing one. Bad prinsess!) It is the lovekrisis story instead. What lovecrisis, you ask or enquire? One that is, in any case, over and resolved.

�3 Popewatch, special holiday edition

The Pontiff is taking a breather from his busy schedule.

His activities have included taking mountain walks, playing Mozart on the piano, praying, writing and studying.

[...]

In his first public address since his arrival, he urged thousands of faithful to use holidays for "prayer, reading and meditation on the deep meaning of life, surrounded by family and loved ones".

We prefer to spend our holidays meditating on the yumminess of pigs and the excellence of bier, but we are after all not remotely faithful.

�4. We're going to the Netherlands!

On holiday! (But not just yet!)

We've never been there, which is odd considering it was top of our original list of places to run away to if the Tories were inflicted on Blighty indefinitely.

Happily the legendary Zompiste phrasebook is now also available in the Dutchy-Double-Dutcgh:

Has your nose always been that way?
Is je neus altijd al zo geweest?

Don't "imperialist pig" me, my good man.
Noem mij geen "imperialistisch zwijn", mijn brave man.

You're very pretty for a foreigner.
Je bent buitengewoon knap voor een buitenlandse [buitenlander].

One order of ferm� le mercredi, please.
Een maal "Gesloten op woensdag", alstublieft.

Has there been any real intellectual life in your country since Erasmus?
Is in jouw land ergens echt intellectueel leven geweest sinds Erasmus?

Mmmm... "Gesloten op woensdag"!

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2005-07-18 10:33

It isn't easy being a pinguoin either

Directed by French biologist Luc Jacquet, the movie follows a group of emperor penguins as they waddle slowly across miles and miles of ice - with the sole purpose of making babies. The journey from their feeding grounds to their mating grounds is 70 miles - which, when you're a penguin, is quite a distance. And the parents take turns to cover this distance over and over again until the chicks are old enough to go it alone.

But since we're in need of sources of spoken French to brush up our comprehension aurale, we'll be getting the original on DVD when it comes out.

Given this attitude, it may be surprising that Jacquet's original movie had to be sobered up for non-French audiences. La Marche de l'Empereur featured a lovey-dovey dialogue between the penguins and a score described by Variety magazine as "somewhat overbearing".

We wish, in any case, not for your silly English sobrieties! Bring on the dialogue, and make it sappy!

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