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2006-02-10 15:50

Are they in some way related?

We just got our sticky hands on the new New Left Review, which has an article by Jean "Bobo" Baudrillard on the car-burnings in Paris (which gives you an idea of what the lead time is on intellectual posturings getting to print).

Having read it - it's only ickle - we wish to note that with very minor tweaks it could be passed off of as the work of JG Ballard. And thus we wonder: "James Ballard"/"Jean Baudrillard" - can anyone sniff what we're sniffing?

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2006-02-10 13:59

Think of the starving childrens in Africa, Japan!

It is too much yummy whalemeat, a something we thought could never be!

Japan has enticed children with whale burger school lunches, sung the praises of the red meat in colourful pamphlets, and declared whale hunting "a national heritage."

Tokyo has been caught in a striking dilemma: by rapidly expanding its much-criticized whaling program, Japan now kills more of the mammals than its consumers care to eat.

For shame!

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2006-02-10 11:01

Sm�rg�spost

�1. Wheeha!

It is ID cards, except - which is a vast improvement - it isn't:

Plans to compel people to produce their ID cards have been postponed indefinitely in an attempt to save Tony Blair from another embarrassing defeat at the hands of rebel MPs.

We'd've quite liked the embarrassing defeat, really, but that's cherry on the cake stuff.

�2. Squeezebox? Squeezebox!

It is squeezebox!

There is, fortunately, another way. You can outfit your sound system with a tiny, good-looking wireless receiver that provides a window onto your computer's music collection elsewhere in the house.

You need to plug it in for power and it contains no speakers, so it's not completely perfect. But it's close, and it's very pretty.

�3. Shorthand/stenographie

It should come as no surprise, although it did to us, that different langwidges have utterly different shorthand traditions. That's fine, except that we speak more than one (1) langwidge, and we do not wish to learn a different system for each. We know Danish and Norwegish and Cherman use variants on the Gabelberger system, which puts said system well in the lead, but are there any systems with established practices for all of English, French, Swedish, Dutch and Cherman?

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2006-02-09 16:16

Sm�rg�spost!

�1. Bavarian Schneechaos!

It is Bavaria where visibility is so bad they can't even see the Entspannung!

Schneechaos und keine Entspannung in Sicht

Sn�kaos and no Entspannung in sight

�2. Traduteur, Tramp!

It is German literary translators (via), and they are skint!

Burkhart Kroeber, who translates Italian author Umberto Eco, shared concrete figures on how much, or little, translators make. They are paid between 14 and 22 euros ($16.8 to $26.5) per page. Kroeber himself manages no more than 100 pages per month, which brings him between 1,400 and 2,200 euros gross. In addition, he sometimes gets a share of the net sales price, but it is minimal and only applies after certain larger printing runs.

His is no entry-level wage; he has been in the business for 30 years.

They claim they should be paid better, and they are quite right.

�3. And another thing

It is the same article!

If Harry Rowohlt [another translator] had his way, publishers would release more high-quality literature. That means importing less schlock from abroad and exporting good literature from Germany in order to boost revenues.

This is a something which interests us greatly: bestsellers in Abroadia are very typically FDRian schlock, and most of the arguments in favour of cultural globalisation don't apply: the langwidge is a formidable barrier to entry, and a set of local companies - without hegemonic marketing budjits - does the localisation. And yet they still sell like warmcakes. Why is that? (We think we've asked before, but we're asking again.)

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2006-02-09 11:21

Sm�rg�spost

�1. New-Wave Tact!

It is Hugo "Oriygo" Chavez!

De Britse premier Tony Blair is niets meer dan een "stroman van het imperialisme", omdat hij zich samen met de Amerikaanse president George Bush tegen Venezuela gekeerd heeft.

Dat heeft de Venezolaanse president Hugo Chavez woensdag gezegd.

The British president prime minister Tony Blair is no more than a "strawman of imperialisme", inthat he has gekeerd together with George Bush against Venezuela.

Thus spake Venezuela's president, Hugo Chavez on Wednesday.

�2. Prinsessgossip I

It is prinsess Madeleine at a fashionhouse cocktailparty in New York.

We're glad she's turned her shapely back on all that partyprinsess nonsense, for sure!

�3. Prinsessgossip II

It is prinsess Madeleine doing an honest day's work, ho ho. She is working for Unicef in New York, which after all is an easy enough job to get if you have a stifficut in art history and the right parents.

�4. Islamskool!

It is Aftonbladet's excellent series:

I dagens islamskola ska vi med hj�lp av Jan Hj�rpe, 63, professor i islamologi, titta n�rmare p� islams m�nga g�nger omstridda kvinnosyn.

In today's islamskool shall we with the help of Jan Hj�rpe, 63, professor in islamologi, look closer at islam's often controversial views on wimmins.

This is very much Islam 101, and it is very much other than to our credit that we are learning a great deal from it.

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2006-02-09 09:31

N�crologie

It was Reinhart "Rock'ard" Koselleck, the hardman of Cherman history:

C'�tait l'un des grands historiens contemporains. Une r�f�rence incontournable pour ceux qui travaillent sur les relations entre l'histoire et le temps, les rapports entre histoire politique et histoire sociale. Professeur � l'universit� de Bielefeld, Reinhart Koselleck est mort vendredi � 82 ans. Son d�c�s marque la fin d'une g�n�ration d'historiens qui a v�cu le IIIe Reich et a �t� enr�l�e dans la Wehrmacht.

He was one of the great contemporary historians. An incontournable reference for those who work on the relations between history and time, the relations between political history and social history. Professor at the university of Bielefeld, Reinhart Koselleck died on Friday at the age of 82. His death marks the end of the generation of historians who experienced the 3rd Reich and who were enrolled in the Wehrmacht.

We learned this from El Pa�s last night. Google-Newsing the Anglosphere we came up empty-handed, hence our unaccustomed solemnity.

(Hey Anglosphere! You know what? You suck!)

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2006-02-08 16:51

A mighty bluffcallning!

Seeing the Spree Feech champions and raising them:

Jyllands-Posten er klar til at samarbejde med en iransk avis og offentligg�re karikaturtegninger af den j�diske holocaust, som Teheran-avisen har udskrevet en konkurrence om.

Jyllands-Post is going to collaborate with an Iranian newspaper and publish cartoons of the Jewish Holocaust, which the Tehran newspaper has launched a competition for.

We particularly look forward to the proud speech-freeing copycats from last time - especially the Cherman and French 'bladets - explaining why they're not going to be seen anywhere near Bandwagon 2.

[Thanks to Birgitte for this one; we don't generally read the grown-up Danish press ourself]

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2006-02-08 11:16

Bringing pa�s to all nations

It used to be that if a newsagent offered a foreign-bladet then the foreign-bladet in question was bound to be Le Monde, of which we are of course very fond. In recent weeks, though, we have revived our career as a deadtreebladetreader, with more than somewhat of a specialism in 'bladets less-circulous and therefore less prominently displayed - we oscillate aperiodically between the Doshbladet ("Financial Times") and the New York ("International") Heraldic Spatula-Falafel Post-Tribune - and we have noticed that it is no longer so, but rather otherwise.

These days the default foreignbladet is overwhelmingly El Pa�s and we neglect - to our regret and irritation - why. Any light our Varied Reader has to shed would certainly be gratefully received.

(We suspect, with no evidence, that it is not driven by hispanophone demand, either native- or L2-spoken, and that it is rather grandiosity chez El Pa�s. But we would like evidence, even if it contradicts us.)

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2006-02-08 09:38

Hopes and Hoppning

It is Janne "The Manne" Ahonen, 28, elected Finland's best medalhope at the Lympicks by Hufvfudstadsbladet despite a tally to date of no (0) medals.

It is also our hopes for a speedy recovery for two (2) possibly overambitious Italians:

Twee skispringers van de Italiaanse olympische ploeg zijn dinsdag ijdens een training voor de Winterspelen gewond geraakt.

Two (2) skispringers from teh Italian olympische team were injured in training for the winter games on Tuesday.

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2006-02-07 16:51

My tabloid's better than yours

It is - and how, quite frankly, could it be otherwise - Aftonbladet, which has borrowed Sweden's only professor of Islamologi for a brisk briefning:

Vanligaste missuppfattningarna om islam?
Jan:
  • Att tro att religionstillh�righeten �r det som best�mmer vad m�nniskor g�r eller t�nker.
  • Att f�rest�lla sig att religion �r n�got of�r�nderligt. Det sker hela tiden f�r�ndringar.
  • Att tro att folk g�r som religi�sa ledare s�ger. Det �r snarare tv�rtom: religi�sa ledare och predikanter predikar just d�rf�r att folk inte brukar g�ra som de s�ger.
  • N�r det g�ller just islam �r det att man antar att allt som g�rs och alla regler som f�ljs (eller bryts) �r n�got som st�r i Korane

The commonest misunderstandnings of Islam?

Jan:

  • Believing that religious allegiances decide what persons do or think
  • Imagining that religion is something unchanging. It changes all the time.
  • Believing that people do as religious leaders say. It is rather the opposite: religious leaders and priests preach precisely because people usually don't do as they say.
  • As for Islam in particular, people assume that everything that's done and all the rules that are followed (or broken) come directly from the Koran.

We have lately felt a desire to learn more about Islam from reputable sources, because we are currently unwillingly saturated in ill-meant claptrap and we feel more than somewhat soiled.

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2006-02-07 13:29

Counter-"hilarity", slightly taboo-busting

It is a competition:

Hamshari Iran's best selling newspaper, owned by Teheran city council, has announced it will print cartoons satirising the Holocaust; the paper has announced an international competition is to be launched to find the most suitable cartoons. The Iranian government has also instituted a complete trade ban on Danish products in response to the publication of the infamous Mohammed cartoons in newspaper Jyllands Posten.

We're more than adequately fed-up of pompous bleatings about the importance of "free speech" from persons in countries with laws against Holocaust denial, for sure, which is not to say we endorse Holocaust denial, because we don't, or that we don't see the point of laws limiting free speech, which we sometimes do, or of leaving some things unsaid, which we very often do.

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2006-02-07 10:46

Sm�rg�spost!

�1. The poverty of American geographisme

It is a sorry sight:

Names don't last forever, including those on desktop globes. Changing place-names reflect shifts in world history, whether it's the collapse of the Soviet Union or a decision by the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

Known throughout the English-speaking world as Turin, the city in Italy that's hosting this month's 2006 Winter Olympics is officially called Torino, in keeping with a decision by the IOC.

Oh dear. It's "officially called Torino" - by unspecified agents - "in keeping with a decision by the IOC"? This is a vigorously politicised illiteracy you're perpetrating, my FDRian friend. Correct would be "The IOC has decided to refer to [Turin] as Torino for their official purposes". Nobody, to the best of our knowledge, died and put them in charge of anything else, although their habits and/or customs may certainly have some influence.

Unlike past Olympic venues that went by their English names, the IOC chose the Italian version after the city's leaders lobbied for the change.

It'll always be Olympisch Turijn to us and the IOC can lump it.

�2. Japanese prinsess pregnant!

It is Prinsess Kiko, N�2 prinsess, possibly stepping into the breach:

Princess Kiko, the 39-year-old wife of Emperor Akihito's second son, is due to give birth in the autumn, Kyodo news said, quoting the Imperial Household.

�3. Giant Turtle

It is safe, hoorah! (Enormous animals are fun, isn't it?)

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2006-02-06 16:13

The year of the delicious doggy?

It is increasingly not, as the Chinese succumb to the companionable charms of our canine chums:

And what of Miss Li's fellow Chinese who persist in eating her four-legged friends?

"I want to smash every dog restaurant in the city," she told me, giggling. "But really I don't think it's necessary. The dog restaurants are disappearing fast," she said.

Bah! Is no stereotype sacred?

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2006-02-06 12:51

Constitution of the Week

It is Belgium, man! Belgium!

La Constitution belge est une vieille dame tr�s digne : elle c�l�brera ce mardi 7 f�vrier son 175e anniversaire. Depuis 1831, le texte a �volu�. Le Soir publie ce suppl�ment pour comprendre et comparer.

The Belgian constitution is a very digne old lady: she will celebrate this Tuesday 7 F�bruary her 175th birthday. Since 1831, the text has �volved. Le Soir publishes this supplement for to understand and to compare.

We're trying - with no great success, it must be admitted - to talk ourself out of buying the pdf edition to gain access to this such constitutional study.

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2006-02-06 10:48

Rodent of the Week

It is the capybara:

The capybara (Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris) is a semi-aquatic herbivorous animal, the largest of living rodents. It is native to most of the tropical and temperate parts of South America east of the Andes, and has been introduced to north-central Florida and possibly other subtropical regions in the United States. It is the only living member of the family Hydrochoeridae.

They are very excellent! They sit in their little pens, looking like guinea pigs of such enormity as to have lost fear of most predators and thereby blessed - most blessed among rodents, for sure! - with an unusually underdeveloped sense of urgency.

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