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2003-03-14 18:37 (UTC)
From the Guardian's coverage of the cricket (NZ vs. India) this morning:
21st over: New Zealand 75-5
Two no-balls and three singles. New Zealand are ticking over quietly
but nicely at five an over. Bob O'Hara is backing up the point made
earlier by Peter Liljenberg. "The Finnish spring started this
week. The temperature has finally risen above zero and the snow has
started to melt (and then re-freeze overnight). This morning I was sat
at home working on my computer with the sun streaming in through the
windows. The only reason I came into my office was to read your
commentary." There's a tear in my eye here, Bob, a tear in my eye. And
it's because I want to live in Scandinavia.
Go read. It doesn't matter that you don't like cricket, cricket
barely comes in to it.
28th over: New Zealand 96-6
Just one off the over from Harbhajan, who bowled that one so very
quickly I only saw Harris's sweep down the leg side for one run. "Two
weeks ago I was having breakfast in Gothenburg, without a care in the
world," recalls Richard Burgess. "Then I went into an Irish pub to
watch some cricket and found it was full of Aussies. The grass is
always greener, Scott."
Man oh man, is that some crazy stuff to be seeing on a national
paper's sports commentary, and there's a lot more like that.
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2003-03-14 14:01 (UTC)
The new Borders opened for its first full day of business at 9 o'clock
this morning, which is also where I was at 9 o'clock this morning.
It's certainly has the best selection of any bookshop in town for any
field I'm interested in, by a lot. It's just as well it also plays
the worst music otherwise I would be tempted to move in to live there.
I bought the Routledge
Swedish:
An Essential Grammar partly because of the groovy new cover
colour scheme it's acquired since I last saw one, partly because we've
started doing Heavy Grammar in class, but largely because it was just
there.
Meatspace bookshops are just a local cache for Amazon, of course, but
there is something to be said for having a preliminary heft of the
merchandise.
(I did feel a bit like a Latvian peasant on his first trip to
McDonald's, yes, but I think I covered it.)
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2003-03-13 13:50 (UTC)
Ever wanted to pass yourself off as a v�rldsmedborgare (citizen
of the world) without the inconveniences of actually going
anywhere?
Fret not, Varied Reader, for
help is at hand from Aftonbladet's timely guide:
14 "Harry"s bar i Venedig �r faktiskt bara en kopia av Harry"s i
Paris. (Hemingway, alla barfyllons kung, f�rknippas ofta med Harry"s i
Venedig. Men baren i Paris startade redan under f�rsta v�rldskriget
f�r amerikanska soldater. Den i Venedig �ppnades f�rst p�
1930-talet. D�rf�r �r det v�ldigt v�rldsvant att kunna sl�nga ur sig
att Harry"s i Paris �r originalet.)"
[Harry's bar in Venice is actually just a copy of Harry's in Paris.
(Hemingway, the king of all barflies, is often associated with Harry's
in Venice. But the bar in Paris opened during the first world war for
American soldiers. The one in Venice was originally opened in the
1930's. So it's hugely urbane to be able to throw in the fact that
Harry's in Paris is the original.)]
On the other hand, their handy guide to not making a fool of yourself
contains
Den som knystar om "half pint" f�r inte s�tta sin fot p� en engelsk
pub. Det heter "a glass".
Anyone who says "half pint" hasn't set foot in an English pub. It's
called "a glass".
and either I'm screwing up the Swedish something chronic (always a
possibility) or they've dropped the ball themselves. "A half of X,
please," is the idiomatic expression (assuming there's some legitimate
medical reason why you can't manage a pint) and specifying "X" is
important. "Lager" will do if you're stuck, but "beer" won't, and
those of us who drink beer typically check the pumps to see what's on
offer. (For the record, it was mostly Fuller's London Pride at
the weekend.)
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2003-03-13 10:54 (UTC)
is called H�ret (which would mean "the hair" in Swedish, so let's go
with that) H�rek (thanks, Maus!) in Norwegian, and is scripted in the lesser-spotted
Scandewegian flavour of Nynorsk. This is funny in its own right, as
well as being the best reason anyone has ever offered me for learning
Nynorsk.
Norwegian cartoons in general here, and a
collection of Flash-driven sales pitches by the holders of the net
license for H�ret (amongst other things) here.
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2003-03-12 16:23 (UTC)
It is
Kronprinsess
Vickan's nameday today. Hoorah for Wednesday the Vickanth of
March!
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2003-03-12 11:19 (UTC)
[To the tune of "My girl lollipop", of course]
Since Google bought Blogger (and thus Blogspot),
there have been more accurately targeted ads
chez Languagehat, and now
Torill observes that the
Norwegian blog
gummihjertet (hosted
at blogspot) has banner ads in Norwegian.
I vaguely remember, although I am too idle to check, that there was
some kerfufflage about the Googlicious ones' intentions with said
heretoforeabove-mentioned deal, not excluding even Dark Mutterings
about conflicts of interest. Now, though, everything is clear.
Google is a private company, so it doesn't pubish accounts, but they
say they're profitable (and I choose to believe them) by virtue of
licensing their engine, and more interestingly, by selling adverts.
Adverts are sold on a key-word basis and appear, discretely
segregated, on search results pages, on both the web search pages and
the Deja-Google archive of Usenet. (We may note in passing, that
after teething troubles they've restored Deja-Google back to a state
that's faster and at least as functional as it ever achieved in it's
previous life and that the adverts don't get in the way there,
either.)
The search engine lives and dies by associating content with key
words. Their advertising model does, too - I understand that they're
good enough at this to charge more than the going rate in the industry
and I dare you to claim to be surprised.
So, the Blogspot deal is a perfect fit for their core strategy - let
other people provide the content that brings the eyeballs in, and sell
accurately targeted advertising to the people who want their products
in front of those eyeballs. They're on course to make content
profitable on the web, finally, by inventing the role of content
broker, and realising that the future's bright - the future's
us.
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2003-03-11 17:04 (UTC)
This is Desbladet, reporting on a BBC report
on American newspapers' responses to the threatened French UN veto.
(Sigh.)
That trick never works, does it? I have no feel for the implications
of being condemned by the Chicago Sun-Times, because I didn't even
know there was such a thing. (I'd like to try, though, so if
the rabid rabble-rousers of the Chicago Sun-Times are reading, I dare
you to condemn me! I can take it, you obese, opinionated American
buffoons!)
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2003-03-11 13:36 (UTC)
The 17th of May is the date when Norway celebrates being handed over
as part of the spoils of war from smelly old Denmark to Sweden
Glorious Sweden. (Funny chaps, the Norwegish; probably best to humour them, I
should think.)
To celebrate this glorious day, a whole bunch of stuff happens (none
of which I can remember off the top of my head, sadly) and this year
Kronprinsess Mette-Marit will be
back
back BACK! for the festivities. (Aftenposten.) Unless
you consider the Bergen Festspillene an essential part of the
festivities, that is, because her packed study programme means she
won't be able to make it for that. (Festspillene? I have no idea,
sorry.) She'll be in Oslo to wave at schoolchildren, though, so just
cut her some slack, OK?
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2003-03-11 09:32 (UTC)
Ideally, one should know one Romance language really well, have a
reading knowledge of the others, and be willing to acquire a
conversational knowledge of any one of those at, say, six week's
notice.
"Language made plain", Anthony Burgess
And over at Ren�e's they're discussing
how (not in the context of Romance, particularly). I do like the
idea, discussed in the comments there, of a brisk grammatical overview
followed by a more communicative approach.
I'm officially declaring this weekend to be Drunken Italian Grammar
weekend (sponsored by Desbladet!). Anyone else want to play?
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2003-03-10 16:42
I'm going to Italy in just over a month. Only for a couple of days,
but still; it's Abroad, and they speak Foreign there. Thus the question naturally arises: how much Italian can I learn in a
month?
I suspect I could learn quite a lot, given suitable materials, but those seem to be
hard to come by. Modern textbooks are big on colour and happy friendly
fun fun fun, but refuse to admit that phonology exists and dollop out
grammar in homeopathic doses.
I want "Italian in a month for people who've done Latin and French and
let's face it, it's just another flavour of Comedy Romance so let's
just get on with it" and nobody seems to be selling it. I'm tempted
to try and track down an old yellow-and-blue Teach Yourself in
protest.
(Background: I've long claimed that I could acquire a working
knowledge of Spanish in under a month, in the unlikely event that the
mood happened to take me. Italian isn't Spanish, so I don't
have to do this, but it could be a useful proving ground for
techniques.)
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2003-03-10 10:45 (UTC)
London is good. Being challanged to infer the theory of Gray codes
from a series of hints over a lunch at a good Japanese restaurant is
fun; I may write that up for you if you're good.
The Aztec exhibition at the Royal Academy rocks, despite the queue to
get in and the crowds inside, and a principled abstention from the
audio guides in favour of a more sociable experience (the correct
choice, even if we missed out on some information). The textual
commentaries had a heavy pro-Aztec spin; it was at pains to point out
that they weren't a bunch of blood-thirsty and brutal savages, but
overall it couldn't do better than to repackage them as a bunch of
blood-thirsty and brutal sophisticates. Most of the archeological
stuff they had accumulated was associated with human sacrifice, and
one forlorn caption asserting that it wasn't an everyday occurrence
read in context seemed to have the emphasis on every,
suggesting that they might conceivably have taken a ritual day off
once every other leap year.
Amusingly, despite the many captions concerning the consumption of
cactus-derived narcotics (enhanced with other psychotropic plants),
the practice isn't mentioned in the cheapest museum leaflet (the one
that I got) which turns out to be for secondary school pupils. Also,
they didn't serve samples at the end, although there was a themed
hot chocolate experience available.
It was a little embarrassing to realise I couldn't place the Aztecs,
Mayans and Incas in space or time before the exhibition, and since it
only dealt with the former, I still don't know anything about the
other two which I need to fix. Because I am desperately short of
things to think about, of course.
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