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2004-05-28 16:34
Ping Ping! It is pingst on Sunday which is Whitsun over here, and
for once the England-and-Walesish Bank Holiday associated with this
period but officially named the "End of May" bank holiday because it
occurs on the last Monday in May regardless of the not inconsiderable
vicissitudes Whitsun inherits from Easter Sunday, 7 weeks later than
which it falls, coincides with the Swedish pingst which
presumably stalks its churchly prey somewhat more fastidiously.
Many years as a choirboy have left me entirely ignorant of what
exactly Whitsun is, but I should imagine it probably mostly involves
�l and traffic jams on roads down to the Cornwall.
[Permalink]
2004-05-28 post-samwidge (utc+1)
�1. Moderate
In Swedish class we had an exercise I do not very much enjoy about the
differences between men and wimmins. I do not very much enjoy it
because it is not easy for me to say "I question the validity of an
epistemological methodology based exclusively on the having of
opinions" in Swedish, and I have essentially nothing else to say on
the subject. But the moderate coeeficient of strangeitude arises from
the circumstance that I was paired for this exercise with a guest
Swedish, which are very rare, and that last year when we did this
exercise I was also paired with a guest Swedish, which (you will
recall) are very rare.
In case this ever happens again, I'd welcome corrections to the
following: "Kanske skulle man ifr�gas�tta en epistemologisk
metodologi som bara best� av att h�ller opinioner."
(UPATE: Birgitte suggests
"Jag ifr�gas�tter giltigheten av en kunskapsteoretisk metod som enbart baserar sig p� enstaka, otillf�rlitliga �sikter".)
�2. Moderate to Mildly Abnormal
I went to check the pigeon-hole that it is that I have, and in the
room a wimmin was speaking to a man. We do have some wimmins in the
maths department so this is not in itself especially especial,
notwithstanding the gentleman's choice of facial hair, but as I gazed
blankly at the updated departmental contact list, it intruded into my
consciousness that the speakage they were perpetrating was in fact of
the Swedish flavour or variety. They had every reason to think
(wrongly) that their conversation was effectively private, and I
didn't want to interrupt just to disabuse them, so my cover remains
unblown.
But Swedishes have infiltrated my workplace!
[Permalink]
2004-05-28 sm�rg�s (utc+1)
- B�rjan: Nyk�ping ("Stockholm South") 10 juli, kl. 11:40
- Slutet: K�penhamn, 18 juli kl. 17:50
[Permalink]
2004-05-28 mornin (utc+1)
The BBC is doing its level best, bless it. The EU parliament: don't
misunderestimate it:
In fact, it has acquired a significant amount of power over the last
20 or so years so that it now stands as a co-equal to the Council of
Ministers, that is the member states, in making decisions about many
European laws.
It doesn't seem to have had the power to block the shameless
capitulation of the Council of Ministers to the FDRUSA on the issue of
transferring flight data - against the EU's own laws, which also don't
count for much when the CoM is getting tough on civil liberties
terroristes.
Parliament was also disgracefully overruled by the CoM on the question
of whether the budget deficit rules imposed at the behest of Germany
and France applied only to other, less important, countries.
(Apparently they do).
If you have a vote in the forthcoming EU elections you should use it,
precisely because the EU parliament needs all the legitimacy it can
get to act as a counterweight to the Council of Ministers. The CoM is
made up of ministers (hence the name) from the governments of the EU,
but there is no obvious reason to share the view it seems to hold that
this puts the dodgy backroom deals it unaccountably hammers out in
camera to everyone else's disadvantage, beyond the law. (The UK's
David "Security" Blunkett and Jack "Boot" Straw are bad enough at home
under scrutiny; you really don't want them making deals with Ashcroft
behind your back. Really really really, for very sure indeed.)
The EU parliament - very substantial warts and all - is on the side of
righteousness rather than otherwise and deserves your support, persons
of Yoorp.
[Permalink]
2004-05-27 fika (utc+1)
'Scuse me while I squish this
pie! (Da-der-der, you will have anticipated, der-der-der
der-der-der.)
Italy has drawn up a series of rules that must be met for a Neapolitan
pizza to be worthy of the name.
[...]
Drawn up by the Agriculture Ministry and professional Neapolitan
pizza-makers, the guidelines were printed in the Gazzetta Ufficiale, a
publication normally reserved for financial and legal notices.
[...]
If the law is approved, pizzas that make the grade will allowed to
sport a prestigious STG or Guaranteed Traditional Speciality label.
This is not a bid for EU-wide protezione (at least, not yet)
but we must be getting towards the silly season, isn't it? So let's
have it once for, with
feeling:
Il rigido disciplinare per la produzione della vera pizza
napoletana quale specialita' tradizionale garantita (Stg) e' stato
pubblicato sulla Gazzetta ufficiale, nell'ambito della proposta di
riconoscimento della Stg 'Pizza napoletana' presentata al ministero
dall'Associazione verace pizza napoletana e dall'Associazione
pizzaioli napoletani.
Veramente!
[Permalink]
2004-05-27 14:58
Travel companies' web interfaces are often so sophisticatedly designed that I can't use them at all with any of the four (4) non-IE
browsers at my disposal. (Hello, SAS!)
Swedish web sites are, to a frankly distressing degree, convinced that
frames are a really neat idea.
Swedish travel web sites - you're ahead of me, aren't you? - are a
complete bloody nightmare. The array of options is considerably less
bewildering if you ignore the ones that so badly need to be ignored,
which I am.
But I've just got to get my boss's approval and then I'll book,
hurrah! (Ryanair, Train, Easyjet. Train wins, because looking out of
the window is a feature not a bug in a country that I've never
visited, and because they're more likely to be relaxed about luggage.
I can post stuff from Denmark, before you start, but not from Sweden
which has overseas postage rates that qualify as clinically insane.)
(I was browsing akademibokhandeln.se's
site for Kalle Anka pocket specials, this morning. It is time to be
in Sweden!)
[Permalink]
2004-05-27 pie! (utc+1)
A little foopball,
sir or madam, and especially sir?
Porto �r b�st i Europa.
Och Jos� Mourinho �r v�rldens hetaste tr�narnamn.
- Mitt uppdrag h�r �r slut.
[...]
D�rmed sp�dde Porto-tr�naren ytterligare p� de rykten som sedan en tid
placerat honom i Chelsea, som ers�ttare till Claudio Ranieri, som
hamnat i on�d hos �garen Roman Abramovitj.
Porto are the best in Yoorp.
And "Yes-way!" Jos� Mourinho is the world's hottest name in
management.
"My work here is done." [he said]
[...]
With that the Porto manager added further to the rumours which have
for some time placed him at Chelsea, as a replacement for Claudio
Ranieri, who is now harboured in the disfavour of owner Roman
Abramovitch.
Chelsea are the best team that there is and you must admit that it is
so! Brecht himself couldn't devise a better satire on the nature of
modern foopball than Abramovitch is perpetrating! (Deracinate me
harder, Chelsea, and don't spare the Vatican!)
I mention this partly because it is there, and partly in revenge for
field-of-vision-full of En-ger-lund flags in my local pie shop. The
national form of the noble game of foopball is, despite what you may
have heard, a boring and irrelevant distraction contaminated by
geographically constrained loyalties of at best genealogical interest,
although we are quite fond of Sven-G�ran Eriksson as En-ger-lund
manager.
[Permalink]
2004-05-27 11:55
Two more accounts (1,
2)
of the EU translation crisis, clearly from a common source, both at
odds with yesterday's version. E.g.:
From now on, most documents will be limited to 15 pages while many
will be produced only in English, French and German with just a short
summary in the other languages.
Yesterday they were to be produced in English and French (no German)
and it was the summaries themselves that were to be limited to 15
pages.
The Grauniad hints at the prospects of succes for the non-binding
length recommendation:
Similar calls for bureaucrats to be less verbose were issued in 1995
after Finnish and Swedish were added to the list of official
languages.
'Nuff said!
[Permalink]
2004-05-27 morning (utc+1)
The EU constitution is back, and so is the preamble
question:
The controversial question of Christianity returned to the EU
yesterday when seven states, led by Italy, urged the union to
recognise a "historical truth" and refer explicitly to the "Christian
roots of Europe" in its new constitution.
If Italy and seven states think they have established a historical
truth, they could by all means contact a textbook manufacturer.
Talk of "roots" is a bad omen at the best of times, and no project
endorsed by the Vatican qualifies as the best of times.
The European parliament even rejected a proposal from Christian
Democrat MEPs to mention the continent's "Judaeo-Christian roots".
But the largely Catholic states of Italy, Poland, Lithuania, Malta,
Portugal, the Czech Republic and Slovakia have made clear they want
more.
The largely Catholic states of Italy, Poland, Lithuania, Malta,
Portugal, the Czech Republic and Slovakia can just sod off, though,
isn't it?
We note with joy and delight that Spain has removed itself from the
list of shame as a result of the Socialistes's victory in the recent
election.
[Permalink]
2004-05-26 post-samwidge
Do doo, duh der duh, isn't it?
Anyway, I decided I hated all of the interfaces on all of the currency
convertors in all of the world, so here's your chance to walk in to mine.
It's just a front-end to the Yahoo! engine (chosen for the hackability
of its URL) so you have to deal with their output. Bear in mind that
I've written it like this because this is how I want it: if you want
something else then somewhere else is the place to get it.
Meanwhile, Swedish trains (Sveriges
j�rnv�g? Jag vet inte...). The train ticket could easily cost more
than both plane tickets put together, but I'm very used to that.
[Permalink]
2004-05-26 samwidge (utc+1)
How about: 10-17/18 July? (With a possible detour to Shoppingharbour
at the end, not least because I can then fly straight home to Bristle.)
And is there anything to choose between V�ster�s and Skavska?
(Answers of "Arlanda" will be treated as provocation.)
[Permalink]
2004-05-26 11:58
And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.
And
it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a
plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there.
And they said
one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them
thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for
morter.
And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower,
whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be
scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.
And the LORD
came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men
builded.
And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they
have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will
be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.
Go to,
let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not
understand one another's speech.
So the LORD scattered them
abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off
to build the city.
Therefore is the name of it called Babel;
because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and
from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the
earth.
Genesis, 11:1-9
Babel is invariably invoked in articles for the EU-translation and
interpretation services. Today, I am pretending not to understand why
- why don't you play along too?
The theme of the Babel is a communal undertaking made possible by a
single language, and subsequently made impossible by the lack of one.
The EU bureaucracy is a communal undertaking that is possible
despite its long-standing linguistic pluralism, allegedly
threatened by a mere increase in the number of languages. Now, it's a
safe bet that the author of Genesis wasn't an expert on the
combinatorial implications of quadratic functions, but translation is
as parallelisable an algorithm as you could hope for, so the problem
is surely simply one of a lack of translators.
Problem, you ask or enquire? Problem, for sure.
[Yoorpean] Commission vice-president Neil Kinnock has reportedly
proposed to his colleagues that, in the future, a substantial part of
the official documents will not be translated into all EU official
languages but instead these texts will be available in all the
languages in the form of a summary of around 15 pages.
Under this proposal, while the majority of documents will be in their
complete form in the EU's working languages, English or [sic,
presumably this should be "and"] French, only a translated summary
will be available in all the other EU languages.
A great deal depends on what we have occasion to mean by "official
documents", isn't it?
[Permalink]
2004-05-26 10:23
This was the
EU expansion article as published in Aftonbladet:
Att f�rkasta en s�dan fixering vid en dold nationell skatt har
ingenting med etniskt sj�lvhat att g�ra. Po�ngen �r enkel och grym:
alla slovenska konstn�rer som bidragit med n�gonting av betydelse har
vid n�gon tidpunkt varit tvungna att "f�rr�da" sina etniska r�tter,
antingen genom att isolera sig fr�n den kulturella mittf�ran i
Slovenien eller genom att helt enkelt l�mna landet under en period och
bos�tta sig i Wien eller Paris. Det �r likadant som i fallet Irland:
det var inte bara James Joyce som k�nde sig tvingad att l�mna landet
f�r att kunna skriva Odysseus, m�sterverket om Dublin; sj�lvaste
Yeats, det irl�ndska nationella �teruppvaknandets poet, tillbringade
flera �r i London. Det st�rsta hotet mot den nationella traditionen �r
traditionens lokala v�ktare som varnar f�r farorna med utl�ndska
inflytanden.
Rejecting this fixation with a hidden national treasure has nothing to
do with ethnic self-hatred. The point is simple and cruel: all
Slovenian artists who made a relevant contribution where at some point
forced to their ethnic roots, either through isolating themselves from
the cultural mainstream in Slovenia or through simply leaving the
country for a period and living in Vienna or Paris. It is similar to
the case in Ireland: it wasn't just James Joyce who felt himself
forced to leave the country to be able to write Ulysses, his
masterpiece on Dublin; even Yeats, the poet of Ireland's national
reawakening, spent several years in London. The greatest threat
to the national tradition is the tradition's local guardians who warn
of the dangers of foreign influences.
(That's my translation, but the original Engleesh
is also available.)
Why didn't I think of Yeats primarily as a National Reawakeningiste
before? Because I encountered Yeats before I had a National
Reawakeningiste category under which to file him, for sure. This
needs fixing.
Incidentally, the dialectic of exile and locality sketched here is
surely conclusive proof that I am in fact the foremost blogger in
Sweden precisely because (rather than merely in spite of the
fact that) I haven't ever been there.
(There is also some yummy Bonus Zizek on Abu
Ghraib.)
[Permalink]
2004-05-25 15:27
�1.
Quand ?
In response to the protests against the hunt, in 1989 Norway banned
the harvest of pups less than a year old, but this ban was later
amended to cover only suckling pups. Harp seal pups are left by their
mothers as early as 12 days after birth.
�2. Comment ?
Seal pups can be killed either with a spiked club, or hakapik, or a
rifle. For adult seals, the use of a rifle is compulsory, and
afterwards the animal's skull must be smashed with a hakapik to ensure
that it is dead. There is an inspector on board each vessel whose job
it is to make sure that quotas and legal killing methods are observed.
�3. Comment, encore ?
This is meat with an intense flavor and little or no fat. Seal has the
texture of steak and tastes like mild beef liver. It's not bad fried
with onions, grinds up nicely for meat balls to simmer in a spicy
tomato sauce, and holds its shape in a basic Iles de la Madelaine four
root (onions, carrots, potatoes, and turnip) stew.
The black colour is a magnificent counterpoint to the red of the
tomato sauce or the subtle orange, gold and white of the
vegetables. Nature has provided for an incredible spectrum of food
colours but black is sorely lacking.
�4. Rouge ou blanc? [ibid]
It's not bad with white and it's fine with a full-bodied red; but it
is perhaps most memorable as it was once served to me in Newfoundland,
with copious amounts of extremely potent rum.
�5. Est-il Halal ?
According to the Hanafi Madhab, all water creatures besides those
falling in the category of fish (Arabic samak) are
impermissible. (Shaami vol.6 pg.306-7; HM Saeed)
The Seal, being a carnivorous mammal is not classified as a fish,
hence not permissible.
You will surely agree, then, that if I can't feast on the flesh of
freshly weaned seal cubs, the Islamofascists will have won. Don't
let's let it come to that!
[Permalink]
2004-05-25 postsamwidge (utc+1)
Jag har kuskat genom landet hundra g�nger upp och ner
Snart har jag sett varenda m�tbar fl�ck av Sverige
H�ga kusten g�r mig lyrisk Oviksfj�llen g�r mig stum
Indals�lven g�r mig gr�tmild in i m�rgen
Det �r ett h�rligt land vi bor i
Det �r kargt och det �r vilt
Och understundom �r det vackert som en dr�m
Men jag har aldrig sett n�t vackrare �n du min �lskade
I've been up and down this country a hundred times or more
I'll soon have seen every single nook and cranny in Sweden
H�ga kusten makes me wax lyrical, Oviksfj�llen strikes me dumb
Indals�lven makes me maudlin to the marrow
It's a glorious land we live in
It is bleak and it is wild
And in places it is lovely as a dream
But I've seen nothing lovelier than you, my beloved
Odyssevs - Bj�rn Afzelius
I have of course never been to Sweden, but I do have an acoustical
guitar equipped with the chords D, G and A and it is my considered
opinion that the latter takes precedence when it comes to singing this
jolly song (of which there is considerably more than I have quoted).
Anyway I'm coming this summer, for sure. Anyone up for a bladetmoot
out there in the Sweden?
[Permalink]
2004-05-25 10:21
�1. Of means and ends and the stuff in-between
The most wonderful things are brought about in many instances by means
the most absurb and ridiculous; in the most ridiculous modes; and,
apparently, by the most contemptible instruments.
Edmund Burke, Reflections on the
Revolution in France
Of all the kinds of causes and effects whose alleged relationships I
am disposed to dispute, which I certainly am, it is the
historical that I consider by far the least defensible.
�2. En-ger-lund! (Slightly Adriatic)
The Adriatic island of
Vis,
a former British colony. It's part of Croatia now, of course,
But in one respect, Vis has decided to hark back to the brief spell
when it was a truly British island - it has formed a cricket club.
More accurately, it has revived the club which played here nearly two
centuries ago, in Britain's Adriatic heyday. The club's rebirth is
the work of a Croat, Oliver Roki: he learnt to love the game from his
father, who lived in Australia. It has been going two years, and has
20 adults and 50 younger members.
Oliver's claims to distinction on the pitch are varied. He was the
only person on the island who knew the rules of the game when he first
suggested the club - and in its inaugural match, he boasts of having
scored the first duck on Vis in 200 years. He is convinced that
cricket is catching on in Croatia, though local opponents remain
scarce - a club in Zagreb, and another just begun in a small town near
the capital. But there have been visits by teams from France and a
pub in Cambridge. Vis lost to both of them, but still pulled in 200
spectators, Oliver says, none of whom understood the first thing they
were watching.
This summer, the islanders are looking forward to a visit by a Royal
Navy side, and hoping for a game with their Ionian neighbours on
Corfu, where cricket is a much older tradition.
"Cricket: Baffling forreners for centuries!", isn't it?
�3. No time for hoppning!
Not skihoppning; h�sthoppning. Prinsess Madeleine used
to do it, but now h�las she hasn't got time.
Madeleine, som sj�lv har varit duktig t�vlingsryttare i hoppning,
invigde det nya h�stsjukhuset p� Str�msholm i M�lardalen i g�r.
Madeleine, who was a talented competition rider herself in hoppning,
inaugurated the new horse hospital at Streamhill in M�lardalen
yesterday.
It occurs to me that wanting a pony is a much more successful strategy
if you take the simple precaution of being a prinsess first: prinsess
M�rtha Louise was a keen rider, especially of horses, and li'l
Charlotte of Monaco is also a sh�-jumper of some repute.
[Permalink]
2004-05-24 14:24
�1. Zizek on Laibach:
BS: Years ago, you were involved with the band Laibach and its
proto-state, NSK (Neue Slovenische Kunst). Why did you get involved
with them?
Zizek: The reason I liked them at a certain moment (which was during
the last years of "really existing socialism") was that they were a
third voice, a disturbing voice, not fitting into the opposition
between the old Communists and the new liberal democrats. For me,
their message was that there were fundamental mechanisms of power
which we couldn't get rid of with the simple passage to
democracy. This was a disturbing message, which was why they got on
everyone's nerves. This was no abstract theoretical construct. In the
late 1980s, people got this message instinctively - which is why
Laibach were more strongly repressed by the new democratic,
nationalist powers in Slovenia than previously by the Communists. In
the early 1980s, they had some trouble with the Communists, but from
the mid-1980s onward, they didn't have any trouble. But they did again
with the transition of power. With their mocking rituals of
totalitarian power, they transmitted a certain message about the
functioning of power that didn't fit the naive belief in liberal
democracy. The miracle was that they did it through certain stage
rituals. Later, they tried to change their image (to put it in
marketing terms) and they failed.
�2. The Catholic Encyclopedia on the Gettier Problems:
Truth and certitude are conditions of knowledge. A man may mistake
error for truth and give his unreserved assent to a false
statement. He may then be under the irresistible illusion that he
knows, and subjectively the process is the same as that of knowledge;
but an essential condition is lacking, namely, conformity of thought
with reality, so that there we have only the appearance of knowledge.
[...]
Seeing "through a glass" and "in a dark manner" is far from the vision
"face to face" of which our limited mind is incapable without a
special light from God Himself. Yet it is knowledge of Him who is the
source both of the world's intelligibility and truth, and of the
mind's intelligence.
The authors of the Catholic encyclopedia know a thing or two about
hypothetical omniscience, for sure.
�3. Cassirir on Cusa likewise:
At the same time, Cusa also insists equally on participation, and
claims that participation and separation are not opposed but mutually
necessary. No empirical knowledge is possible except as it is related
to "an ideal being and to an ideal being-thus." Yet, empirical
knowledge is not simply knowledge of the truth of the an ideal:
"everything conditioned and finite aims at the unconditioned, without
ever being able to attain it." Empirical knowledge is thus true
knowledge, but it is also clear that this knowledge is always subject
to correction; every measurement will be superceded by a more precise
measurement. Empirical knowledge thus remains a "probability," a
"conjecture," in which "the notion of the eternal 'otherness' of idea
and appearance is joined with the notion of the participation of the
appearance in the idea."
Even warmer!
[Permalink]
2004-05-24 fika (utc+1)
Let us pretend, briefly, not to know why Trashbladets file their
Agony Auntage under the rubrique of the wimmins' pages, and decline
further to speculate if the absence of specifically men's pages
implies that they're actually the whole of the rest of the 'bladet.
We are by no means Gender Studiesistes at this 'bladet, and we cannot
be expected to understand such things. (Are our heads not pretty and
little? Do we not not bother them with that?)
Anyway, if it's good enough for the other 'bladets, it's good enough
for us, so we hereby introduce the Desbladet Kvinna k�rlek expert, me.
(I have, of course, no qualifications for this, which is, of course,
plenty.) On with the fun!
Dear Desbladet,
I've been going out with a great guy for two years now, and we've been
starting to think about wedding bells. We're from kind od different
social backgrounds but he gets on really well with all my friends.
There's just one problem - my daddy doesn't think he's a suitable
husband, and my
daddy is the king!
V.
Gosh, that's a puzzler, for sure!
Dear V.,
Lots of fathers find it difficult to accept that "their little
prinsess" is all grown-up and can make her own decisions, especially
when it comes to boyfriends. Give him time, but make it clear to him
that Daniel this guy really is the man for Your
Highness!
[link via Anna Louise, tack!]
[Permalink]
2004-05-24 morning
Cricket being the greatest - and not coincidentally the most
preposterous - game ever invented, it is a great joy to discover that
it is also the most cosmopolitan:
[Former England captain and present batsman Nasser] Hussain himself
was substituted for a time yesterday, by a 21-year-old Danish
wicketkeeper attached to the MCC groundstaff called Frederik Klokker.
This was a bit of an eyebrow-raiser as Klokker is not actually
qualified to play cricket for England, but close perusal of the
England and Wales Cricket Board regulations reveals that you don't
have to be English to become a substitute fielder in a Test match.
Every Danish boy's dream, surely?
[Permalink]
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