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2005-09-19 09:52

Education tact, slightly domestic

It is the University of Glasgae! Which is benefitting so much from the knowledge-economy-driven drive to increase participation in higher education that it's reported, in a report, on its delight and glee:

The report says: "Departments seem to have reached a critical point in their ability to cope individually with the decreasing literacy of incoming students."

"Conveners across the faculty are reporting that students demonstrate poor writing and even reading skills."

One classical civilisation lecturer said in the report: "The most basic arts skill of all, namely the accurate and grammatical use of English language, is a skill that is inadequately possessed by some students."

They also say that plagiarisme (via the Internets) is a huge problem, which makes us wonder: is it that students are plagiarising illiterate sources, and if it is not, is it not slightly blindingly obvious what they're up to?

The university - that of Openness - at which we are a student ourself claims that plagiarism is spottable from sudden shifts in style, tone and register, and one might think that the shift to "literate" would be especially conspicuous.

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2005-09-16 16:28

Silly bankrupt airlines, no biscuits!

With Delta and Northwest having recently filed for Chapter 11 bankrupcy, it has become a source of not-quite-negligible irritation that the department's official travel agency will not book flights with such airlines.

Since they are also extremely reluctant to do as they're told, we'll probably be booking our own trips for the time being.

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2005-09-16 12:27

A ros� by any other name...

Would it smell as sweet?

The US and European Union have reached a deal over the use of wine names, bringing to an end 20 years of talks.

Under the agreement, US producers will limit the use of names such as chianti, burgundy and champagne, and will eventually phase them out altogether.

In return, the EU will relax its rules regulating wine imports from the US.

We mostly only drink Appellations de Plonque Controll�s, to be honest, but we are now mildly curious to know if "claret" which is English (and only English) for the wines of Bordeaux is protected and if so by who?

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2005-09-16 10:29

Oh yes it is!

It is Christopher "Hatchet" Hitchins vs "Gorgeous" George Galloway:

It is still not quite clear to me at what point exactly Hitchens jumped the rails.

Here's a hint: September 2001.

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2005-09-15 16:34

Nationalised stalkning, slightly Dutch

Oh:

The Dutch government has unveiled plans to create a "cradle to grave" database on every child born in the Netherlands to identify potential trouble-makers and reduce rising crime rates.

Starting on 1 January, 2007, all citizens, each with their own electronic file compiling health, education, family and police records, will be tracked from birth until death, the Health Ministry announced this week.

Stuff like that could almost get us in touch with our inner Libertoonian. Civil liberties seem, like social democracy, to be something few persons other than us aspire to.

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2005-09-15 13:12

"Prize-winning" and "Swedish bier", together at last!

It is the Bier-Worldchampionships:

V�rldens b�sta �l bryggs - i Sverige! �tminstone det b�sta av de alkoholstarka.
Kr�nleins Bryggeri har vunnit guld i det p�g�ende �l-VM med sitt Stockholm Festival 7,2.

The world's best bier is brewed - in Zweden! At least the best of the high-alcohol ones.
Kr�nleins Brewery has won gold in the ongoing bier-WC with its Stockholm Festival 7.2.

Would that, you no doubt ask or enquire, be the "lagers �ver 7%" category? It would, it would! Congrats to our Nordic chums and their magnificent trampjuice, for sure, but we'll stick to more civilised biers, thanks very.

(It's getting hard to find lagers that aren't 5% here in Blighty, which annoys us because we like and esteem them at about 3�0.2% for non-falling-over drinking usage. Annoyingly the local Supermarkt charges more for a branded ("Skol") 3.2% than it does for a no-name 4% effort, and the 2.8% stuff is in silly bottles. It isn't, you will observe or remark, easy being us!)

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2005-09-15 10:18

It exists!

'Bladets by Interweb:

Other companies, like Satellite Newspapers, go further. The Swiss company has 350 automated kiosks placed in conference centers, airports and hotels around the world where customers can slip in a few coins or a credit card and immediately get their newspaper printed for them at the customary size.

"There are still so many people that want to have the actual physical newspaper, to take with them into the train or wherever they are going," said Ralph Vooys, a Satellite Newspapers spokesman. "The majority of people are not carrying around a laptop while traveling."

Satellite Newspapers have a web site from hell and (even worse) no UK installations, but they have what we've always wanted: a machine that lets you select your 'bladet of choice (and our 'bladet of choice, Zweden's mighty Aftonbladet, is on their list) and prints it for you life-size while you wait.

Borders in Bristle has a range of Foreign 'bladets, but they don't have anything as cool as this. But they do have a coffee shop, which we think would allow great synergy - 'bladets while you wait and coffee to wash it (and the wait) down. We'd buy that for rather more than a dollar, for sure.

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2005-09-14 14:00

Keep the alleged noise down, kronprinsess; we're trying to sleep!

It is Kronprinsessmary of Danmark!

Kronprinsessan Mary av Danmark f�rdes ig�r till sjukhus med sammandragningar i livmodern.
Det kan betyda att en liten prins eller prinsessa �r p� v�g - men det kan ocks� vara falskt alarm.

The Kronprinsessmary of Danmark was driven [at an unspecified speed, injoke fans] to hospital with contractions of the uturus [probably; the dictionary is guessing "matrix of the summary", but we're using editorial discretion].
It could mean that a little prins or prinsess is on the way - but it could also be a falskt alarm.

It could be X or it could be not X: discuss, with particular reference to Wittgenstein's thought. Consider at least two (2) values each of "it" and "X".

UPDATE: pregnantprinsess fotofeature (via Birgitte, tack).

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2005-09-14 12:14

Pardon our tact but these Swedishes are crazy

Another example of restrained emotional display can be found on maternity wards. When giving birth, many Swedish women try to moan as little as possible, and they often ask, when it is all over, whether they screamed much. They are very pleased to be told they did not.

Swedish Mentality, �ke Daun (p.124)

We're interested in whether anything empirically sound and sociologically reasonable can be achieved in relation to "national character". We don't imagine for a nanoinstant it would reduce the amount of malarkey talked on the subject, of course, but we'd like to do it anyway. (Daun's book seems OK on a flick-through, if a little bit light on dialectics.)

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2005-09-14 10:19

Pizza and �l: TGTTTGT*!

It is a dull and dreary day, but what better than a little tact to lift the gloom:

Norge �r v�rldens s�msta land.
Norrm�nnen dricker som vikingar - och lever bara p� pizza.
Det h�vdar Jonathan Foreman, reporter p� Daily Mail.
F�r femte �ret i rad har FN utsett Norge till v�rldens b�sta land att bo i.

Norway is the worst country in the world.
Norwegishes drink like vikings - and live exclusively on pizza.
So claims Jonathan Foreman, a reporter on the Daily Mail.
For the fifth year in a row the UN has declared Norway the world's best country to live in.

The Daily Mail, isn't it? For the benefit of Yoorpeans spared this shitbladet's charmless rantings, the Daily Mail holds that Eng-ger-lund is the best country in not only this but all possible worlds, except for the immigrants, feminists, politically-correct social workers and Grauniad readers.

The idea that there's a country with a more dysfunctional relationship to alcohol than dear old Blighty will come as a surprise to most of Yoorp's holiday industry, though, we imagine.

* Two great tastes that taste great together.

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2005-09-13 15:43

Sm�rg�striumphalisme!

�1. We are, we are!

England ist im sportlichen Himmel, nachdem die Cricket-Nationalmannschaft am Montag erstmals seit 18 Jahren gegen Australien die �Ashes� gewonnen hat.

That's the team of the England and Wales Cricket Board what won it, we'll have you reminded, Martin P�tter; Jones the Bat is Welsh for sure. (We're not sure about Jones the Glove, who was born in Papua New Guinea and raised in Australia before committing himself to his parents' native Englandandwales.)

[Link via Chris von Timber, tack]

�2. Poeng? They ain't no stinkin' poeng!

Them's runs, my Norwegish chums, runs!

P� grunn av d�rlig v�r ble kampen forsinket slik at australierne hadde d�rlig tid. De m�tte f�rst kaste ut England og s� score de n�dvendige poengene selv. Pietersen forsinket dem ytterligere ved � score 158 poeng som �ttende slagmann i Englands lag.

There's a breathless hush in the fjord tonight,
An age to play 'till the match is drawn,
A turning pitch and indifferent light
And a bowling attack of McGrath and Warne

Pietersen the eighth batsman, Norwegishes? His may have been the eighth wicket to fall, but he goes in - as any Englandandwelsh schoolboy kno - at number five (5).

�3. About time too

Duncan Fletcher, coach, guru and mastermind of the Englandandwales cricket team has finally been granted British citizenship, after 15 years of trying.

Mr Fletcher, 56, qualified as British as both his parents and all four grandparents were born in the UK.

But he had twice fallen foul of rules which demand that those applying for citizenship must have lived in Britain for five years, with absences of no more than 450 days, including 90 days within the past year.

Duh! He is often absent precisely because the Englandandwales cricket team, which he coaches, gurus, masterminds and especially accompanies, is on tour abroad.

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2005-09-13 13:04

Sm�rg�smyth

�1. It is Murray Bail on reading translations from Yoorp:

Still more important is the European instinct to circle or actually enter, or at least be in the vicinity of, what may loosely be called myth. The writer may not even be fully conscious of this; it may not be deliberate. The entrails of myth crawl all over Europe, sometimes bringing on forest-darkness, leaving in their wake fairy tales, indelible opera plots, "irrational" warlords.

We feel we wish to say "Ewwwwwwwwwwwww"! Keep your smelly authenticity fetishes and your lumpenreification of Continental "Otherness" away from us by a distance, preferably, that is other than small. (Bail's "Europe" embraces Tolsto� and Dostoeyevski and especially the inevitability of sturgeons, but not, presumably, Angela Carter.)

It is (via) an exciting competition!

Bonnier-konkurrence skal lokke nye forfattertalenter frem i Danmark, Norge, Sverige og Finland. Eneste krav er en samtidsroman, der foreg�r her i landet over 12 m�neder.

Bonnier-competition is looking for new authortalent in Danmark, Norway, Zweden and Finland. The only requirement is a contemporarynovel which takes place in the country over twelve (12) months [one of your Earth "years"].

Better myth it up some, you crazy fools - they're mad crazy 'bout that in Yoorp, yo!

�3. It is the League of Champions! (Be still my crawling mythic entrails!)

While Blighty, including us, has succumbed this summer to the empiriciste and resolutely prosaic charms of willow on leather, the "irrational" warlords of foopball have stalked their forest lairs, brooding and biding their time. And their time has once more come! And the Aftonbladet has the most comprehensive round-up we've seen, which undoubtedly reflects the almost mystical fascination with the formational dialectics that is so deeply rooted in the Nordic soul, (rather than, say, the fact that Zweden itself has no team in the competition).

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2005-09-13 10:36

Oh Luxembourg!

Our nice phone company, Skype (as opposed to our unnice phone company, the wretched Telewest) just got bought:

Le site d'ench�res am�ricain eBay se renforce dans l'internet en acqu�rant l'�diteur � succ�s de logiciels de t�l�phonie en ligne Skype pour une somme qui sera comprise au final entre 2,1 et 3,3 milliards d'euros.

The American auction site eBay reinforced its position on the Internet by acquiring the successful online telephony company Skype for a sum which will comprise between 2.1 and 3.3 [American] billion euros.

We think we prefer eBay to Google, if it had to be bought up. (We don't find Google's artificial scarcity of accounts very charming, although it is certainly very clever.)

Meanwhile we find that our dailiest papers are the Belgian Le Soir and the Swiss Le Temps. They both seem to be more focused than, for example, the Grauniad, which's new Berlinerflavour we read last night - the Graun appears to be aiming to be a Sunday newspaper that comes out daily, and has grossly misunderestimated the shortness of our life. (The Metro is precisely the newspaper that doesn't, but sadly it misunderestimates our intelligence instead. A Metro for a cosmopolitan intelligentsia is what we seek.)

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2005-09-12 16:58

It isn't over till it's over

But let's face it, it's over even if it isn't quite over:

80th over (33 left, minus two for change of innings): England 298-7 (add 6 for their lead; Pietersen 153, Giles 35)

Man of the series will presumably be Freddy Flintoff and we certainly won't begrudge him that, but we'd've given it to Shane Warne. Yet another 10-fer in this match, and he's almost single-handedly kept the Aussies's hopes alive for much of the summer.

To our considerable irritation, most of the time.

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2005-09-12 15:43

Twit of the week

It is JS Mill!

[S]peculative philosophy, which to the superficial appears a thing so remote from the business of life and the outward interests of men, is in reality the thing on earth which most influences them, and in the long run overbears every other influence save those which it must itself obey.

"Bentham", Coleridge

We need to read some more Mill than we have, which is none, but we don't expect to find ourself taking him very seriously. The Bentham essay starts, more or less, by acknowledging a that the actual opinions of Bentham (or any other philosopher) are largely irrelevent to any rigorous exercise in the history of ideas or sociology of knowledge, which is very sensible, and then goes on to study Bentham's opinions in detail, which is completely pointless.

(Western) philosophy is the cosmological level of (western) society's legitimation, except that it increasingly isn't.

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2005-09-12 12:15

Why I am so very tense

110-4 (33rd over).

McGrath had a good shout on his hattrick ball; Warne is turing it square; Pietersen has been wafting; Freddie is our last recognised batsman; the weather is good and there are 98 overs due to be bowled in the day.

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2005-09-12 09:47

Ashes update

It finishes today, one way or another. Raindances welcome:

Bad light prevented any play yesterday after around a quarter to four, with 54 overs lost. The sight of 23,000 spectators, some of whom have paid a small fortune for tickets, willing the players from the field, then offering a roar of approval and a standing ovation when they did go is one of sport's more bizarre images.

If, like us, you need the gory details on the light decision, look here; it seems, contra Atherton, that the umpires were within the laws.

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