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2006-02-10 15:50
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
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
�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
�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
�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
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
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
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
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
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
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
�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
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
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
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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