Sn�kaos
Today's skiiing has been cancelled on account of all the sn�!
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2006-02-17 14:37
Sn�kaos!It is Norway!
Politiet p� �stlandet venter sn�kaos og store trafikale problemer n�r morgenrushet starter i dag. This is new to us - we thought sn�kaos was supposed to be a surprise, but apparently in �stland they plan it. In other news, our head is still not a happening place with the lurgi. Oh, our poor spicy brain!
2006-02-17 10:53
Answers you didn't need and questions you didn't have�1. Who or what caused the first traffic jam on New York's Broadway?
In January 1913, Bergson visits the United States for the first time (Soulez et Worms 2002, p. 134). The week before he delivered his first lecture at Columbia University (entitled "Spirituality and Liberty"), The New York Times published a long article on him. The enthusiasm this article generated may explain the traffic jam that occurred before Bergson's lecture, the first traffic jam in the history of Broadway. �2. Well?
On s'est demand� dans quelle mesure la pens�e propre de Max Weber s'exprime ad�quatement dans le vocabulaire et les cat�gories du n�o-kantianisme de Rickard. No answer, came the stern reply.
2006-02-16 15:29
It is stinky old Italy!
A row has broken out in Italy after one of the country's Winter Olympics bronze medal winners admitted not knowing the words to the national anthem. With hilarious consequences! But:
Mr Plankensteiner - like his partner Oswald Haselrieder and Italy's only gold medal winner to date, Armin Zoeggeler - is from Alto Adige, the country's northern-most region. Until the end of World War I, it was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It was, in short, part of Italy's war booty. Ecoutez et r�p�tez les mots c�l�bres de Metternich:
"Italy is only a geographical expression." Unlike, for example, Belgium!
2006-02-16 12:33
Kronprinsfred! Home, boy!While his missus (the lovely Kronprinsessmary)'s many nannies are changing their prinsly infant's nappies, the Kronprinsfred is sneaking out to Torino to cheer on the Danish curlingwimmins:
Med kronprins Frederik som medlevende tilskuer besejrede de danske curling-kvinder til formiddag Japan med 9-5. I dunno, prinses today, I ask you.
2006-02-16 10:18
A defence of "Holland"Pedants, not especially including us, advocate referring to the country popularly known as "Holland" as "the Netherlands". (We use the latter, but we do not advocate it.) But is it really an improvement? Let's have a heated debate! The first objection is that there are two (2) provinces called "Zuid Holland" and "Nord Holland" (in Dutch) and that therefore "Holland" (in English) clearly refers to these two (2) provinces and not the rest of the country. The problem with this objection is that it is false: approximately no one uses the English word "Holland" to mean that, so it is not in any remotely sane sense what it means. The second objection is that "the Netherlands" is a more accurate translation of the native name, "Nederland". While we could certainly discuss at length the relevance of such a criterion, we should first note that it is also false. "Nederland" is singular, and for a good reason: "Verenigd Koninkrijk der Nederlanden" ("United Kingdom of the Netherlands", plural) was a state from the Congress of Vienna (1815) until the breakaway of Belgium (1830), and it included both today's Belgium and Luxembourg. So by literal translation (a policy we don't recommend, of course) "the Netherlands" means what we actually call "Benelux". We look forward to seeing pathologically pedantic Englishes switch to calling it "Netherland", but until (and after) they do feel free to stick with "Holland" if you like.
2006-02-15 18:02
Nordlys!It is the Nordlys, the boat, and the nordlys the northern lights! (If you are not our mother, these may not especially remind you of your recent holiday.)
2006-02-15 13:18
What do you mean, not Belgian?!It is Belgian singing sensation, Johnny Hallyday:
Le chanteur Johnny Hallyday, n� de p�re belge et de m�re fran�aise, ne remplirait pas les conditions pour devenir belge, a rapport� mercredi le journal bruxellois qui avait r�v�l� d�but janvier la demande de naturalisation de l'ancienne "Idole des jeunes". Ridiculous! We, for one, have spent about three (3) weeks there, and we're as Belgian as Belgian can be!
2006-02-15 10:42
Vote Tsar!It is Russland!
Before heading to the Turin Winter Olympics last week, three top stars from Russia's national hockey team made a public show of joining United Russia, the pro-Kremlin party that is rapidly taking over political power at all levels. The whole democracy-building thing never really worked in Russland, isn't it? (Who'd'a thunk that a grandiose FDRian scheme for such a thing could be such an abject failure?) We do think Russland is an under-rated source of sleepness nights, though:
"People vote for us because they pray for an end to the crisis in this country," says Alexander Koziro, head of the city's UR branch. "They want Russia to be a great power again and see that only President Putin, with the people behind him, can accomplish that." You can worry about Iran if you want to, Varied Reader, but the Tsar already has nukes.
2006-02-14 12:20
How to cure unpopularity by whining about itIt is Tim Wilkinson, the English translator of Imre Kert�sz, on translations from the Hungroonian, their absence:
It is probably naive to think that one can buck long-running trends, however. On my informal count, translations of just 36 serious novel titles by 20 authors have been put out by UK and/or US publishers over the 16 years since 1989 (to use that as a convenient marker), and that total includes two books (by Frigyes Karinthy and Lajos Zilahy) that were reissues of old (pre-war) translations and three (two by Imre Kert�sz, one by Magda Szab�) that were translated twice over because the first translation proved inadequate. In a nutshell: two titles per year. Let's start at the very beginning: "translations of just 36 serious novel titles by 20 authors have been put out by UK and/or US publishers over the 16 years since 1989". It is a well-established fact - whether it's true or not - that "serious"ness in Foreign fiction is an excellent proxy for at least one (1) of morbidly depressing or unreadable. The Foreignness-in-itself, by comparison, hardly enters into it, as can be seen from the one (1) area to have conspicuously bucked this such tread: 'Wegian crime-fiction. All of which is to ask or enquire, as we have before, why they don't try getting us hooked on fun foreign stuff, and then see if they can sneak an occasional heavyweight under our finely-honed radar?
2006-02-14 10:16
A little bit of politics, sir or madam?It is Alla Hj�rtans Dag ("Walentine's Day") and it is therefore, in the best of all possible 'bladets, a guestrant on as how the personal is political from Gudrun Schyman.
Trots att k�rleken �r det viktigaste i v�ra liv handlar den politiska debatten n�stan aldrig om k�rlek. Det beror nog inte p� att de som dominerar politiken skulle vara mer k�rleksl�sa �n andra. Snarare handlar det om en helt on�dig respekt f�r en konstlad gr�ns mellan det politiska och det personliga. We love Zweden very much, for sure. Although we didn't get it a card. (We don't do Alla Hj�rtens Dag; it is too wretched even for our unashamed inner sentimentaliste.)
2006-02-13 17:11
The hands of twoness!Hand the first: It is the curling!
Curlingjentene knuste USA That's the Norwegish curling lasses - the Beeb only talks of the British curling-lasses, the Danish 'bladets (well, BT) only of the Danish curling-lasses, and so (we imagine) on and so (we speculate) forth. Hand the second: it is Martin James, commentating at Crooked Timber, although not especially on the curling:
There seems to be an insuperable problem with a rational theory of democracy and political states. That isn't exactly the insuperable problem that springs to our mind, for sure. (This isn't quite in the same league as Jimmy Doyle's serenely unhinged aside,
My point is not that consequentialism is incorrect (although I think it is), or that deontology is correct (although I think it is). as most boggling neoscholasticisme perpetrated on th' Timber, but it's very good, very good.)
2006-02-13 14:49
Sm�rg�spost�1. Well done, Danmark! It is cricket, Jim, but not as we know it:
Danmark vandt s�ndag EM-guld i indend�rscricket ved at besejre Gr�kenland i finalen Well done! �2. Brrrr! It is always - always! - cold in the office on Monday. It is Monday today and it is cold! �3. E-bladets! It is e-paper and De Tijd (of Belgium, man! Belgium! Where else?) and Philips, the electronics division of the mighty foopball team PSV Eindhoven.
Il s'agit du journal num�rique que le quotidien �conomique flamand De Tijd va tester aupr�s de 200 lecteurs pendant trois mois d'avril � juin. Ces cobayes, volontaires mais s�lectionn�s pour repr�senter un �chantillon valide des lecteurs du Tijd, seront prochainement �quip�s d'un appareil appel� papier �lectronique (e-paper) mais qui ressemble plut�t � une sorte d'�cran d'ordinateur tr�s fin et grand comme un cahier d'�colier (format A5). The technology is willing but the clue is (still) weak. Another five (5) years, for sure.
2006-02-13 10:30
Sm�rg�spostIt is filed under "sport" in that best of all possible 'bladets, the Aftonbladet:
Hockeystj�rnorna i sn�kaos i natt It may possibly have inconvenienced some of the natives, too; we wouldn't know. �2. Teh 'Lympicks We're having a hard time getting press-coverage, for sure. The last VG article we saw on the tiddly-hill hoppning told us that Norwegishes came first and third without even mentioning who came second. (We later found a Cherman source that filled us in.) Meanwhile, the Dutchbladets are the place to go for skatenings, unless you want to know about non-Dutch skaters, and the Beeb is doing a very unconvincing job of pretending it knows what all these crazypersons are up to on ice and sn�. We're not very impressed, quite frankly. �3. Schnee-Chaos
Schnee-Chaos in Bayern - die Lage wird immer dramatischer! |