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2006-01-27 17:26

Olympisch Turijn, now with added sneeuw!

It is the sneeuw in Italia!

Na 24 uren van sneeuwval is vrijdag het openbare leven in het noorden van Itali� grotendeels lamgelegd.

After 24 hours of sn�fall is Friday the public life in the north of Italia in greatparts paralysisstruck.

Give us a "Ch"! Give us an "ao"! Give us an "s"! C'mon Telegraaaaf, just for us?

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2006-01-27 13:34

Democratise me harder!

We don't especially understand middle eastern politics, we cheerfully admit. The Palastinians appear to have been given a choice between the incumbent Useless Corrupt Party and the Anathematic Pariah Party, and - having apparently had enough of uselessness and corruption - chosen the latter.

And now everyone is queuing up to tell them they didn't ought to 've done that. Why did we let them have an election at all if they weren't allowed to choose? (And when is the FDR going to realise that its alleged program of encouraging democracy is going to make it look stupid if it turns out to want to veto the results every time the punters choose parties they don't like, which is to say every single time? Oh, right, never.)

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2006-01-27 10:12

Mo Tsart!

It is li'l Mo, pride of the Tsart family, who fled Vietnam for Australia some twenty (20) years ago. Mo's musical precocity was soon recognised, and her compositions - such as the opera Die Rosoboe ("Pink Oboe") and that one that goes "duh duh duh dah dah - die die, dum dum" have since won her a place in the musique world's heart.

Happy birthday, Mo!

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2006-01-26 16:14

J'accusative!

The correct ordering of Cherman cases is: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative. That's the way we learned it and that's the way we like it.

The insolent Anglosphere, however, insists on nominative, accusitive, genitive, dative. Which is in line with the order we learned for Latin, but still.

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2006-01-26 16:13

What are seminars for?

Seminars are for reminding us why we never go to seminars.

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2006-01-26 10:11

Sm�rg�spost

�1. Freebladets go rampage!

It is the original Zwedish Metrobladet:

Dix ans. Il aura fallu dix ans au journal gratuit Metro pour devenir le premier quotidien de Su�de. Metro revendique aujourd'hui 1,4 million de lecteurs pour une population de 9 millions d'habitants, selon les chiffres de l'�tude ind�pendante Orvesto, portant sur 2005. Un gain de 255 000 lecteurs, soit une progression de 22 % par rapport � 2004.

Ten (10) years. It will have required ten (10) years for the freebladet Metro to achieve the largest circulation in Sweden. Metro claims today 1.4 million readers, out of a population of 9 million inhabitants, according to the figures of the ind�pendent study Orvesto for 2005. A gain of 255 000 readeurs, being a progression of 22% compared with 2004.

�2. Down, Dawk, Down!

It is Andrew von Helmintholog at the Torygraph Science party:

Not one person I talked to at the party had a good word for Richard Dawkins' TV series. The most vigorous denunciations all came from atheist scientists. I was a little surprised, since one of them had been very close to him.

The Dawk, isn't it? As a public intellectual and historian of ideas he makes a great snail biologiste, for sure.

�3. Phenomenologise me harder!

The Internation New York Yoorp Herald Sossage P'tang P'tang Tribune-Express-Sun-Star-Pilot-Telegraph had an excellent story the other day on the understudied phenomenon that many persons in the Eurozone attribute higher levels of inflation to the introduction to the Euro than experts are usually able to measure, and now it is unemployment:

Germany's Berliner Zeitung says many people associate the European Union with economic and social fears which may come to threaten the bloc's continued existence.

The paper says 84% of Germans fear that jobs may be lost to EU countries where labour costs are lower, while two-thirds fear that European integration leads to lower social standards.

The figures, it says, are "devastating". The paper argues that they point to a "legitimacy crisis" which goes beyond concerns over the lack of democracy.

Quite right. If you're running a democracy, being right is not enough on its own: you also have to be seen to be right on the mean streets of Lebensweltville. (Of course the FDR's administration has chosen to work exclusively with the latter, but that is hardly to be recommended in the sane world.)

Tony "Baloney" Blair cops a lot of flack for his many focus groups, but policies persons won't vote for are as pointless as a nice healthy salad that doesn't get eaten.

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2006-01-25 18:02

Thanks, guys!

We found a nice bug today: Python's Numeric library changed its implementation of the diagonal function for multidimensional arrays in ways that broke our code and make no sense at all to us.

Trust no one, Varied Reader, and you didn't hear it from us.

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2006-01-25 12:12

Sm�rg�sbrrrrr!

�1. An unapology

We are British. We talk about the weather. Full stop ("period").

�2. For shame, Danmark!

There is no sn�kaos. Please return to your homes. We repeat, there is no sn�kaos:

Intet snekaos

Der kommer ikke mere sne i de n�ste mange dage, lover DMI. Til geng�ld bliver den sne, som faldt i dag, liggende l�nge.

"Sn�?".
The weatherforecaster looked perplexed and almost affronted.
"Of course it isn't going to sn�."
"It sn�ed yesterday", said the journaliste.
"I know it sn�ed yesterday. I'm telling you it isn't going to sn� today."
"There's still a bunch of sn� out there."
"From yesterday. It sn�ed yesterday. It isn't going to sn� today."
"So no kaos, then?"
"No."
"Are you sure?"
"Goodbye."

�3. Level 2 for the plan of hivernale emergencies!

It is the Frenchy-French, now also afflicted, but they've got a plan:

La pr�fecture de Paris a annonc� qu'elle activait, � partir de mercredi � 18 heures, le niveau 2 du plan d'urgence hivernale, qui pr�voit une vigilance accrue vis-�-vis des sans-abri lorsque les temp�ratures sont comprises entre -5 et -10 degr�s la nuit. "Des consignes de vigilance renforc�e ont �t� donn�es aux services de police, en particulier la brigade d'assistance aux personnes sans abri [Bapsa], ainsi qu'� la brigade de sapeurs-pompiers de Paris", a annonc� la pr�fecture dans un communiqu�.

— Oh l� l� but it makes the cold !
— Courage, ma petite! The sapeurs-pompiers are surely on their way!

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2006-01-25 10:00

Still Weatherblogging!

Firstly, it is Norway, and it is especially the north of it where there is some very considerable weather:

The storm that lashed the northern county of Finnmark was just the beginning of grim winter weather battering Norway, and warnings of extreme conditions from the coast of North Tr�ndelag to West Finnmark are in effect.

The Dowager Countess is currently on a hurtigruten in north Norway, and she reports that 683 Statoil employees were evacuated to her boat.

Secondly, it is Danmark, where they are still mincing their words:

Sne og vinter plager trafikken

Sn� and vinter plague traffiks

We wonder what it would take to get the Danishes to call it kaos. A suspicion that immigrants were somehow responsible, maybe.

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2006-01-24 17:36

Sm�rg�spost

�1. Belgium!

It is the first chapter of Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens:

'I am a'--Monsieur Rigaud stood up to say it--'I am a cosmopolitan gentleman. I own no particular country. My father was Swiss-- Canton de Vaud. My mother was French by blood, English by birth. I myself was born in Belgium. I am a citizen of the world.'

�2. Weather maps

There seem to be no good online weather maps of Yoorp. We demand those triangulated black lines for fronts and a filled contour plot for temperature, with occasional symbols for sun, rain or sn�.

We find instead that the ugly and unergonomic perpetrations of various newspapers and Broadcasting Corporations do not even agree on the basic facts, which causes us to be other than amused.

�3. Oh l� l�, the Tour comes to Londontown!

Of course, they're waiting until we've emigrated, presumably out of spite.

Millions of spectators are expected to crowd the streets of London over two days in July next year following Tuesday's announcment that the 2007 Tour de France will start in the capital.

Very nice; now have a nice stage in Belgium so that we can actually get to it.

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2006-01-24 12:11

Their Lordships are angry!

Humbly report, your Lordships, you are beautiful when you're angry:

Angry peers last night invoked the memory of fascist regimes which forced citizens to carry their papers as they tore the heart out of the Government's planned legislation for identity cards.

(We suspect Tony "Baloney" Blair will shortly decide that their Lordships need another dose of "reform". Such are the benefits of an unwritten constitution, h�las.)

Baroness Scotland of Asthal, the Home Office minister, had to listen to a succession of peers denounce plans to include all holders of biometric passports on the planned ID cards register. Not one peer spoke in favour of the plans. Ministers have always insisted the scheme was voluntary, but critics say it amounts to "compulsion by the back door".

(Emphasis added.) Biometric passports are the suck too, of course, but even their Lordships are no match for the Empire.

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2006-01-24 10:58

Brrr! Pass the wodka!

It is the very considerable cold, brrr! And it's not inconsiderable fatality:

Polish authorities on Tuesday said eleven people had died from cold over the previous 24 hours as temperatures plummeted below minus 30 degrees Celsius. The deaths bring to 161 the number of fatalities in Poland from cold since October 1 last year.

Nearly half of the dead were homeless, of whom 90% were drunk.

Alcohol is not good in the cold, as the survivor's of Russia's Neoliberal Genocide could tell you. It makes the blood go to the skin, which is the last place you want it to be.

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2006-01-23 15:22

Freezy breeze, slightly fatal

In stanzas composed of raucous whooping, for only such can drown the windstorms' constant roar, they glorify the simple lives of our walrus herders.

Vocabulary, Wislawa Szymborska

It is terribly cold in Pologne just now:

Vingt-sept personnes sont mortes de froid ce week-end en Pologne, o� les temp�ratures sont descendues la nuit � -32�C dans certaines r�gions. Au total, 150 personnes ont ainsi perdu la vie depuis le d�but de la vague de froid.

Twenty-seven (27) persons died of cold this weekend in Poland, where the night-time temperatures fell to -32�C in some regions. In total 150 persons have died since the beginning of the cold spell.

Also:

De koudegolf die Rusland sinds een week in zijn greep heeft, rukt op richting West-Europa. De Siberische kou leidde in de Scandinavische landen en het midden en oosten van Europa al tot grote problemen. Tientallen mensen kwamen om het leven. Inmiddels heeft de kou ook Griekenland, Oostenrijk, Hongarije en Duitsland bereikt.

The coldwave that Russia since a week in its grip has, is headed in the direction of Western Europe. The Siberian cold has already lead to great problems in the Scandinavian land and the middle and east of Europe. Tens of persons have died. In the meantime the cold has reached Greece, Austria, Hugary and Germany.

Bonus non-weather link: It is Christian Valdemar Henri John, prins of Danmark, and it is especially his dippningfrock, which was made in Belgium (where else?) in 1870 for an earlier prins Christian, of which there have been very many.

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2006-01-23 12:36

The World and other follies

It is Stephen "Hand-in" Glover, and he has a dream:

The World is the working title of a new British compact newspaper, to be managed by Independent columnist Stephen Glover. The planned launch is hoped to take place in late 2005 or early 2006. Glover intends to model the newspaper on the French newspaper Le Monde, and plans to shun celebrity-oriented tabloid news.

Unfortunately, the Google-trail for this project goes cold after early 2004. We empathise slightly with Meester Glover's theory that almost all Engleesh bladets are these days mostly trashbladets, but we are not the first to observe that there is exactly one that excludes celebrity gossip and sport and other such froth in favour of the purest hardest news: it is the Doshbladet ("Financial Times") and it is what we read.

It does seem to us that it would be an interesting experiment to do a highbrow Metro - a waffer-thin staff and a bunch of newswires but focussing on actual news, plus (possibly) a little bit of in-house analysis.

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2006-01-23 10:35

Dee dow dow!

C'mon everyone, sing along!

Baby this town puts the crown back on your head
It's a monarcy, it's unelected
We gotta say, and you know it's true
That scamps like us, baby we were born to rule

(With apologies to the Broooooce)

It is the royalbabyboom! (Nine prins(ess)es!)

I helgen d�ptes lille prins Christian, Danmarks nye tronf�ljare.

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