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2006-03-30 13:14

Sm�rg�spost

�1. From the outer fathoms of Archivia - behold the mighty JSTOR!

It is, in particular, Arthur O "Luvaduck" Lovejoy's "On the discrimination of Romanticismes". It is scanned, h�las, but it is in the most readable form of any scan we've seen - our compliments to the typesetter.

Sadly we are not in a position to read it, though for the happiest of reasons, to which we will come in time, in good time.

�2. Insolent kronprins! Please to fix the castle!

It is the Kronprinsessmary (n�e Knudella) of Danmark and her appalling plight which has left her trapped in squalid ruins!

Kronprins Frederiks och kronprinsessan Marys bostad i K�penhamn h�ller p� att ruttna s�nder.

Kronprinsfred and Kronprinsessmary livingthing in Shoppingharbour is rotting to pieces.

She's not really a refugee, silly Danishes! You don't really have to make her life a living hell!

�3. Oh those cogwheels!

We're off to East Belgium (AKA "the Netherlands" AKA "Holland") this afternoon. Then tomorrow we're in Bungalow to plead the employable merits of our skills as a cogwheel technicial at the Royal Windmill Institute.

Back Monday, for sure.

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2006-03-30 09:54

Belgium, man! Belgium!

It is chocklatier than the average country:

No nation lavishes as much time and attention on its chocolate as Belgium. Internationally known brands include Neuhaus and Godiva at the luxury end, and Leonidas and Guylian in the cheaper end. But, in Belgium, chocolate is more than business. It is part of the culture.

Different chocolatiers specialise in specific fillings, consequently Belgium's chocolate industry is as varied as it is big. With a population of around 10 million, Belgium produces 172,000 tons of chocolate a year and has more than 2,000 shops.

Like all ancient and glorious traditions, it was of course invented in the second half of the nineteenth-century:

Belgium's love affair with chocolate dates from 1857 when Jean Neuhaus left Switzerland to set up shop in Brussels. His grandson, also called Jean Neuhaus, created the first filled chocolate, which he named "praline", and his wife invented the type of box, or "ballotin", in which Belgian chocolate is sold.

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2006-03-29 15:55

Tact and Tourisme, again again

This time it is Barcelona!

Barcelona, long a magnet for Europeans for its beauty, its cuisine and its free-and-easy Mediterranean lifestyle, has become a favourite destination for hard-drinking stag and hen-night crowds and college graduation parties.

Last summer British, German and Dutch tourists invaded Catalonia's beach resorts and handsome urban squares, and outraged locals with their noisy, all-night partying, sexual promiscuity and uncontrolled vomiting in Gothic passageways and Art Nouveau doorsteps.

Given the clattering air conditioning of hotel rooms, local residents complained they couldn't sleep without double glazing; and that their streets were filthy with rubbish and body fluids. Doctors found the cost of treating youngsters who fell into comas after three-day drinking binges far outstripped the sums they spent during their visits.

We are intrigued to know that only binge-drinkers want air-conditioned hotel rooms, and we demand - demand, we tell you! - to know the hard numbers on the coma question.

But while we don't especially give a toss about Bar�a an sich, we and Tallinn and Prague and Riga will surely be watching how they get on with this. (Incidentally, are Dutch and Cherman touristes really as bad as Blighty's or is this a fig leaf?)

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2006-03-29 12:18

A million opinions isn't even a statistique

It is a Beeboid on the Chermanbabycrisis:

"Baby shock: Germans are dying out." This headline was recently splashed across the front page of Bild, Germany's biggest-selling tabloid.

Where "recently" here means "three (3) weeks ago" and "tabloid" having its British meaning of "trashbladet" (Bild is actually a broadsheet, of course).

But the rest of the article is better than it might be, at least in the sense that we don't know what's wrong with it.

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2006-03-29 10:10

Why do fish have fingers anyway?

En �kta nordsj� torsk jag �r
och f�dd n�gonstans in Finisterre
Fadda rulen lej
Fadda rulen lej
Fadda rulen, rulen lej

Traditional, although google denies it

It is so that they can thumb a lift to China and back, is no doubt why:

De kinesiska arbetarna st�r uppst�llda i v�ntan p� att f� s�tta kniven i den norska torsken. Den skickas hit f�r att fileas och sedan resa tillbaka.
N�r den hamnar som fiskpinne p� ditt middagsbord har torsken rest mer �n ett varv runt jorden.

The Chinese workers have been hired in expectation of getting to put their knives into Norwegish codfishies.
They are sent here to be filleted and then travel back.
When they land up on your dinnertable as fishfingers the codfishies have traveled more than the circumference round the world.

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2006-03-28 17:11

Bladet of the Day

Today's Bladet of the Day is the ultraleftiste Morning Star. We are not normally moved to contemplate the opinions of the general secretary of the Communiste Partie of Great Britain, Rob Griffiths, but Tony "Baloney" Blair's recent alleged comments on the sustained excellence of American military hegemony and all its works made us feel like we needed an equal and opposite overreaction.

The crucial thing in meeja-politicks, as our Varied Reader surely knows, is balance.

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2006-03-28 15:08

Two (2) things

Thing the first: we are alone in an office of (nominally) four (4) persons.

Thing the second: the university seems to have switched its heating off, since the calendar does after all say it is Spring.

Thing the bonus: we are tired.

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2006-03-28 11:24

What we are not doing on our Summer Holidays

It is Steve Fuller's The Epistemology of Journalism and it is even in Lund in Zweden!

His, um, heterodox account of the history of evolutionary biology and his social-constructionist account of scientific authority are currently making him many new unfriends over at the Timber, of course, but that is how it is.

We mostly like neo-Darwinisme just fine, of course, but we do have a soft spot for things that make Richard "All-Dawk" Dawkins grind his teeth with rage, so long as they aren't too Jesusy.

Incidentally, has our Varied Reader had occasion to muse upon or contemplate the remarkable similarities in the prevailing tones of the commentariates at Red State and Pharyngula?

Beleaguered minoritism and dissent-is-treason work out just the same in practice for FDRian rightistes and scientisme fundamentalistes.

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2006-03-27 14:50

Sm�rg�spost

�1. Beep beep mm beep beep, yeah!

"Baby, you can drive my car
yes, I'm gonna be a star
Baby you can drive my car
And maybe I'll love you"

Drive my car, The Beatles

It is the European driving license!

European Union ministers have agreed to the creation of a European driving licence which will replace the dozens of different types used across the EU.

�2. A question and another question

It is those Baying Munchkins of M�nich!

F�r die Bayern-Fans ist der Titel-Kampf schon gelaufen. 9 Punkte Vorsprung vorm HSV. Aber "Deutscher Meister" trifft es nicht wirklich. Denn soviel Deutschland steckt in diesen Bayern nicht mehr.

For the Bayern fans is the title-battle quite over. Nine points ahead of HSV. But "Cherman Champions" doesn't quite fit. Because so far as Chermany this Bayern no long rooted in is.

The other question, of course, is this: if Bayern are stacked with juicy foreigners, why are they so persistently useless in Yoorpean competition?

�3. We should cocoa, New Lefties!

It is a vacancy at the New Late Review for an "editorial assistent"!

Responsibilities will include research and editorial work across a wide range of issues - politics, economics and culture. Command of good English prose essential. Knowledge of the print edition of NLR an advantage. �18,000 p.a.

Please apply with CV and covering letter to [email protected], stating language skills. Candidates with fluent German or Arabic particularly welcome. Closing date: 6 April 2006. New Left Review, 6 Meard Street, London W1F 0EG.

The thing about the non-profits is that lots of persons want to do it, and some of them have parents rich enough to cushion the impact of a peppercorn salaris. (GBP 18K in London is not really a living wage, with all due apologies to any nurses surviving on less.) And the 'bladet presumably is constrained by the terms of its many handouts, and so it goes.

We are starting to think that the almost flaunted uselessness of the militantly non-profit is skewing our nice public discourse, is what we are starting to think.

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