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(I know, I know, but it's the way we diarylanders have done it for generations.)

2005-10-07 15:31

Quizztime!

It's the last working day before the start of the academic year. Should the email system

  • work; or
  • not work?

If you choose the latter, congratulations! You're now ready for a career in public sector ICT (as they call it these days)!

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2005-10-07 13:15

Sm�rg�spost

�1. Wimmins who work too much

Bland terapeuter och stressexperter har de unga superambiti�sa kvinnorna p� gr�nsen till sammanbrott blivit ett begrepp.

Among therapistes and stressexperts have the young superambitious wimmins on the edge of a breakdown become a concept.

And what would a concept be without a book to cash in on it?

�2. Travelkaos, thy name is Connex.

We remember well, although thankfully not first-hand, the many hilarities of "transport" company Connex's justly truncated stint as a franchise holder on the UK train system. Having been removed by the regulators, they are now inflicing their patented brand of travelkaos on Stockholm.

�3. Just so you know

Luke 4:24 actually says "And he said, Verily I say unto you, No prophet is accepted in his own country." (In the definitive KJV version, that is.) Not "honoured" and not "land".

Please update your programs.

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2005-10-07 09:57

Thank you, fairy godmother!

It is the thwartning of a nasty stupidity:

CHARLES ["Crusher"] Clarke, the Home Secretary, dramatically climbed down yesterday over his bid to outlaw the "glorification" of terrorism by so-called preachers of hate.

He said that glorification of past terrorist acts would not, after all, be made an offence, unless the purpose was to incite a future attack.

This is almost certainly still bad legislation, but the reasons why are significantly less obvious (at least to us).

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2005-10-06 16:11

The award that wasn't awarded in the night

It is a very great mystery!

Oenighet eller f�rsening p� grund av bokm�ssan?
Spekulationerna om varf�r Horace Engdahl inte avsl�jar Nobelprisvinnaren i litteratur i dag �r ig�ng.
- Jodu, det har ringt hela dagen, s�ger Annika Ekdahl, informationsansvarig p� Nobelstiftelsen.

Disagreement or latening on the grounds of the bookfair?
Speculation on why Horace Engdahl hasn't revealed the Nobelprizewinnar in literature today is underway.
"Dude, you have no idea. The fone's been going off all day", says Annika Ekdahl, informationresponsible for the Nobelstiftelse.

Where's your homework, Horace? We don't want excuses, we want prizes!

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2005-10-06 12:51

Celebrity Deathmatch: Snake vs. Gator

It is the new sensation that's sweeping the (once-great) nation:

The snake was found with the gator's hindquarters protruding from its midsection. Dr. Mazzotti said the alligator may have clawed at the python's stomach as the snake tried to digest it.

In previous incidents, the alligator won or the battle was an apparent draw.

"There had been some hope that alligators can control Burmese pythons," Dr. Mazzotti said. "This indicates to me it's going to be an even draw. Sometimes alligators are going to win and sometimes the python will win."

They're all "Oh this is an ecological catastrophe" but it is in fact -
as any schoolboy kno - a pay-per-view future classic. (Shark vs. bear
is so very whenever it was that it was.)

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2005-10-06 09:46

Last night of the prunes

There are many reasons to hate Britain's Tory party, and we've tried most of them, individually and in various combinations, at one time or another. But there is increasingly a case to be made that their feckless and irresponsible mismanagement is depriving the country of an opposition to Tony "Baloney" Blair. Sadly, they don't get it:

Unashamedly appealing to the core Conservative vote, Dr Fox launched a tub-thumping attack on European integration before delighting the conference with an impassioned defence of the Union flag and a promise to "re-establish pride in what it means to be British."

Resurrecting a call for all British schools to fly the Union flag, Dr Fox drew perhaps the loudest cheer of the week when he lambasted "the politically correct brigade" he said equates flag-flying with racism.

"Let us send them a message: this conference will never be ashamed of the Union flag," he said.

Elect Clarke, you stupid Tory zimmer-framed gimps. You owe us.

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2005-10-05 17:35

Why we are so certifiable

We have decided we want to be certified as a programmer for Micro$oft's many programming tools so that we can elope to the Netherlands.

We've always been strickly Linux, of course, but our perspective has lately experienced some readjustments.

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2005-10-05 14:13

What's large, pink and interesting?

It is the Financial Times, which is very interesting indeed and our new favourite Englishbladet for the simple reason that it leaves out all the stuff about celebrities and foopball and lifestyles that clutters up lesser 'bladets and sticks to stuff we all need to know:

Cumulatively, airlines have been cash negative since the Wright brothers took their first flight in 1903.

It's also the most Marxiste 'bladet that there is: cherchez le dosh, isn't it?

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2005-10-05 09:29

What's brown and sticky?

A stick!

While Coke may not always produce a smile, a survey by the Economist magazine (Standage's employer), suggests that the soft drink's presence is a great indicator of happy citizens. When countries were polled for happiness, as defined by a United Nations index, high scores correlated with sales of Coca-Cola.

"It's not because [Coke] makes people happy, but because [its] sales happen in the dynamic free-market economies that tend to produce happy people," Standage said.

In the Economistiverse, there is in fact no true proposition p such that

does not imply q, where q is the intrinsic financiak, moral and spiritual superiority of a free-market economy.

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2005-10-04 15:54

Groanning in the Roamning

We couldn't find our Luxembourg mobile so we took our Vodaphone one to the Netherlands. We then used it - our trein was delayed for two (2) hours by a person being squished under it - and it turned out to be startlingly expensive.

The EU has been doing its level best to combat roamning overcharging:

The European Commission has set up a website to help people cut the high cost of using mobile phones abroad. [...]

The Commission says the cost of using a mobile abroad "is hard to believe" and hopes that greater transparency will lead to lower charges. In July, according to the Commission, consumers faced charges ranging from 0.58 euro cents to over 5 euros per minute.

Telecoms companies suck, and Skype is eating a growing proportion of their dinners, and mobile companies are next for the chopping block. If their laughable 3G performance ever gets up to speed (which admittedly is an if other than of smallness) then we will all promptly note that 3G allows flat-rate data transport and do a Skype on them as well.

Your number's up, evil gouging scumbag mobile phone companies, and you will not be missed.

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2005-10-04 14:05

Wheel see...

We just tried to get new nuts for our (Bristol) bicycle's front wheel, but we appear to have been sold a new wheel instead. There is undoubtedly a good reason for this; we just hope that it isn't that we're a sucker.

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2005-10-04 10:21

Sm�rg�shoorah!

We got a postcart from the Open Universiteit Nederlands this morning, in Dutch, which we can read. (We think we will study with them in the future - they have a Wetenschapsleer course we more than slightly fancy.)

And the EU and Turkey are negociating, at last, over the latter's membership of the former.

And Aftonbladet is doing Ramadan:

Edina Sabic �r 24 �r och bor i Sk�vde.
Hon �r en av ungef�r 100 000 praktiserande svenska muslimer. Och i dag inleder hon fastem�naden ramadan.
Under en hel m�ncykel f�r de varken eller dricka s� l�nge solen �r uppe.
Aftonbladet.se f�ljer Edina under ramadans f�rsta dygn - fr�n soluppg�ng till solnedg�ng.

Edina Sabic is 24 and lives in Sk�vde.
She is one of around 100,000 practising Swedish muslims. And today she begins the fastningmonth Ramadan.
Under a whole mooncycle they can neither eat nor drink while the sun is up.
Aftonbladet.se follows Edina through the first day of Ramadan - from sunrise to sunset.

You should see her breakfast, for sure!

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2005-10-03 17:03

Why we are so very inescapable

They may 've shut C&A in Blighty, but we tracked it to its Dutch lair and bought its many corduroy trousers anyway.

We're a bit disturbed that they claim we have a 36 waist, but since we've still very much a 32 in Levi-Strauss's jeans we assume it is because they don't quite get the "inch" thing. (Neither, if it comes to that, do we.)

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2005-10-03 15:04

Why I am so very busy

We're installing Colleague 2.0.

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2005-10-03 09:58

Uw fiets terug, nederlandse? Nee, hoor!

We know what you're thinking, Varied Reader, but we are willing to claim - with a straight face if necessary - that some of the reason we are so stiff and also so sore is that we are the proud owner of a gazelle three-(3)-speed bicycle which is stabled, for our bicycling convenience, somewhere in Noord Nederland.

Did you know, by the way, that they also cycle on the wrong side of the road? Vair vair confusing, that. But if you cycle, as we did, into town you get the considerable, at least to us, pleasure of joining in with an impromptu peleton. And it's so flat that you can cycle entirely in our preferred way or manner, which involves infrequent micro-bursts of pedalling and a lot of freewheeling.

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