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2003-03-28 14:00 (UTC)
I have decided, and that is final.
Via Maus, here's an
online shop apparently specifically tailored for the liquorice-
(or "drop")-starved members of the Anglophone Dutch diaspora. (Have I
ever mentioned that I *heart* the InterWebNet? I do, I do!)
Don't miss the historical
background, where we learn that:
Warriors used it for its ability to quench thirst while on the march,
while others (including Brahma and venerable Chinese Buddhist sages),
recognized Licorice's valuable healing properties.
When I was a kid, we used to buy liquorice wheels (which they stock)
with what we called bobbly sweets in the centre. They call the latter
"Zaanse licorice of the Dutch windmill area" and sell them separately,
the heretics. But in any case I am not a child, and I have put away
childish things. Instead, have I of course ordered some yummy
"Briketten double salted" (not quite as salty as regular double
salted, faintheart that I am) and some pithy (so to speak) "Licorice
herrings", which are blurbed thuswisely:
Licorice herrings are of a special body. Pithy, so to speak. Directly
from the North Sea. It's a salty kind of licorice in the shape of a
fish. A newcomer with character.
Oh, yes. Beware, Swedish classmates, for I swear that your laughably
unliquorish "choklad" shall be avenged! (Although even I wouldn't be
keen to try the new Festis liquorice and lemon drink of which Birgitte
speaks; there are limits, and that clearly transgresses them).
HEALTH WARNING:
But remember, kids: in moderation only, and watch those blood
potassium levels!
[Permalink]
2003-03-28 12:18
This page tops Google's search results
for "saltlakrits", yum yum, which we rarely get in Swedish class
anymore. People pass around chocolate instead, of which I disdain to
partake. But delicious as liquorice is, even unsalted, it must sadly
be classed as one of those good things of which you can have too
much. A English woman has become paralysed as a result of
overindulging, says Aftonbladet today:
Den 56-�riga kvinnan i York-shire, Storbritannien, �t 200 gram
lakrits varje dag eftersom hon trodde att det skulle hj�lpa mot
hennes f�rstoppning.
N�r hon f�rdes till sjukhus var niv�erna av potassium i blodet mycket
l�ga, en bieffekt av att �ta f�r mycket lakrits.
[The 56 year old woman from York-shire [smirk], Storbritannien, ate 8
oz. [sigh] of liquorice every dag, since she believd that it would
help with her constipation.
When she was taken to hospital, the levels of potassium in her blood
were very low, a side-effect of eating too much liquorice.
It is, of course, the glyhyrizzicsyra (?????oxide?) that does
the damage. But a quick potassium supplement later, and she's right
as rain. But what is this mysterious "britisk variant av lakrits"
which is made by Haribo? (I thought they were Dutch, but their website is
quite startlingly polyglot - 18 different flags greet you. Den er
go'!, as they say in both Danish and Norwegian.)
[Permalink]
2003-03-27 13:27 (UTC)
Alex Martelli's newly-released
Python in a Nutshell looks slimmer than its 654 pages,
but it seems to have more information, more coherently (and concisely)
presented than any comparable resource.
Programming in Python is much of what I do when I'm not in exciting
meetings, so this is all very good news for me. In fact, I'm planning
to spend a big chunk of the afternoon just sitting here reading it.
Gratuitous metaclass hacking, here I come!
[Permalink]
2003-03-27 10:30 (UTC)
Boycotting French fries? Two can play at that game!
Today's Lib�ration article:
Au McDonald's de Strasbourg-Saint-Denis, � Paris, la gr�ve pour
d�fendre les conditions de travail a commenc� presque en m�me temps
que le conflit. Du coup, le combat des salari�s a pris des accents
anti-guerre et le restaurant occup� est devenu le d�versoir de
l'antiam�ricanisme. �Quand tu bouffes chez McDo ou Pizza Hut (dont
l'�tablissement voisin est aussi en gr�ve), tu finances la guerre�,
dit un autocollant.
[At the McDonald's on Strasbourg-Saint-Denis in Paris, a strike about
working conditions began almost at the same time as the conflict. As
a result, the employee's struggle has acquired an anti-war slant and
the busy restaurant has become a hotbed of anti-Americanism. "When
you eat at Mickey-D's or Pizza Hut (the nearby branch of which is also
affected by a strike) you finance the war," says a sticker.
C'mon, this is entertainment, is it not? Lo sciopero (the
strike) features heavily in Italian instruction materials, also, where
it sometimes seems to be the local replacement for the Anglophone
obsession with talking about the weather. (And can I just mention how
unseasonably warm it has been here lately? Thank you.)
[Permalink]
2003-03-26 13:59 (UTC)
[The world is beautiful because it is varied - Italian proverb]
Unlike Desbladet, which has a single-minded inflexibility that our
marketing people prefer to call "focussed". With war, prinsessor, and
foreign media all high on the agenda, what could be better than a
foreign newspaper
reporting the cancellation of Kronprinsess Vickan's trip to the US
as a result of the troubled world situation?
- Kronprinsessan och hennes familj k�nner att hon ska vara hemma med
tanke p� v�rldsl�get, s�ger Elisabeth Tarras-Wahlberg.
[ "With the world situation in mind, the Kronprinsess and her family
feel that she should stay at home," says Elisabeth Tarras-Wahlberg
[the celebrated Court spokesperson - des].]
I don't think I'd want to be flying to New York if
photographs of me with my face all camouflaged up while training with
a militia associated with a foreign power not included in the
Coalition of the Obedient had just recently been splashed over the
cream of Yoorp's skvallerbladets, would you?
[Permalink]
2003-03-26 12:57
Torill
asks about bloggers reporting American protests about the war, to
complement the rather one-sided coverage of the globally influential
CNN.
I don't have any, sadly; I follow French media coverage instead. The
Nouvel Obs has a master
page of their photographic coverage with Googlefish-style
autotranslation.
They've got Showed
them in the United States (1500 demonstrators arrested in various
protests) and
The
demonstrations against the war in the USA (focussing on the
Chicago protests), and they're covering the demonstrations world-wide
on a daily basis.
It's not blogging, and it's not just America, but it's in English and
it's not shy about registering American dissent.
[Permalink]
2003-03-25 17:57 (UTC)
A timely Guardian story
reminds us
just how much concern the American administration had been
paying to human rights when it wasn't Their Boys that were on the
wrong end of abuses thereof.
While
Lib�ration reports on our Tony's success in broadening at least one
international coalition:
Des manifestants br�lent le drapeau anglais, mardi � Damas. Des
milliers de jeunes Syriens marchent dans les rues de leur capitale,
demandant l'arr�t de l'offensive am�rcaine contre l'Irak leur voisin
et ancien ennemi.
[Demonstrators burning the Union Flag [the
English flag is the cross of St George, silly French persons, not that
I care for it much myself - des], Tuesday. Thousands of young Syrians
marched in the streets of the capital, asking for an end to the
American offensive against their neighbour and old enemy Iraq.]
Well done, Tony!
[Guardian link via
Little Red Boat]
[Permalink]
2003-03-25 13:17
I owe to fr.sci.linguistique the
information that Courrier International has a Hors
S�rie issue out on the theme of "A la decouverte des 6 700 langues
de la plan�te" (Discover the world's 6700 languages).
Only an editorial teaser is online - they cheerfully announce that it
is �actuellement disponsible en kiosque� for 6.50 EUR, but this is not
likely to be true of kiosks to which I have access (Courier
International was ruled out of the Economist-replacing hebdo sweep
because I couldn't find it for sale), and I simply must have
this thing.
So far as I can tell the new Borders doesn't do Forrin magazines; I
shall have to see if I can change their policy by whining at them.
[Permalink]
2003-03-25 09:49 (UTC)
From the Lib�ration's Dutch-language
literature
round-up:
Les Flamands utilisent des mots qui sonnent un peu archa�que de
l'autre c�t� de la fronti�re. �La langue parl�e en Flandres est plus
m�lodieuse, plus pure, presque m�di�vale. Les N�erlandais trouvent �a
� la fois charmant et amusant�, explique la critique litt�raire Margot
Dijkgraaf.
The Flemings use words which sound a bit archaic on the other side of
the border. "The language spoken in Flanders is more melodious,
purer, almost medieval. The Dutch find it charming and amusing at the
same time," explains the literary critic Margot Dijkgraaf.
"Go stick your head in a pig," retorts the exasperated blogger Des
von Bladet.
[Permalink]
2003-03-24 15:20
We are very much not all about the meme-age, hos von Bladet, but this
one made us laugh. Ho ho! we chortled merrily, ho and again
ho!
des is a
Plankton-Eating Assassin Monkey with a Battle Rating of 5.6.
And besides, I still feel more than a bit the worse for wornness.
[via
Bluejoh]
[Permalink]
2003-03-24 10:37 (UTC)
Sigh. Denmark, isn't it? I have a hangover about the size of Denmark
today, so I'm not really up to grocking this story in
fullness. The news is that there is no news on the details of the
universally anticipated nuptuation of His Kronprinsness, Fred, of
Denmark, and his Australian de facto fianc�e the belovely
Knudella (n�e Mary). This has been the case for a very long time, of
course, and possible newspaperly angularities have been in a state of
faminitude for quite some time and I suspect this is but further
barrel scrapage.
Det er nemlig ikke l�ngere nok at f�lge med i de seneste royale
nyheder i ugebladene. Man vil vide noget helt for sig selv.
It is namely no longer enough to follow the latest royal news in
weekly magazines. One wants to know something entirely for oneself.
Meanwhile Denmark has declared
war on Iraq. Here's
BT's original announcement which I'm not in the mood to translate,
just now.
[Permalink]
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