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2004-08-20 email! (utc+1)
More on cows and inconveniences!
A certain citizen of a small town of east Mymensingh, a contractor and
thus a helper of the Allied cause during the war, had the misfortune
of having his cow strangled by means of the rope by which she was
tied. The incident took place towards the end of 1944, and the
expiation the contractor had to make was severe.
To begin with, he had to go into sackcloth, drink half a glass of
bovine urine, and fast for one day. For the next three days he had to
live and sleep in the open on the spot where the cow had died, and
also to abstain from eating anything but plain rice, unseasoned even
with salt. This rice, too, he had to beg from his neighbors, and while
begging he had to ask for his alms bellowing like an ox, for during
these days he was not permitted to speak like a man.
Furthermore, all the time he had to wear a rope round his neck. At the
end of three days a most elaborate atonement ceremony was
performed. He was sprinkled all over with cow's urine, all the
Brahmins of the locality were fed, and the priests amply rewarded.
He could no no more, in fact, he would not have been asked by society
and the sacerdotal order to do more, if instead of his cow his mother
had been strangled, or for that matter he had strangled her with his
own hands.
But as chance would have it, for the contractor, this was not the end
of the matter. It was the cold season, and as the result of the
exposure undergone, he got fever and became delirious. In his delirium
he called aloud for his cow, and for a day or two it seemed that he
would join her. But the malady took a sudden, unexpected turn for the
better, and the supreme atonement that squares up all accounts was
almost miraculously averted.
[Nirad C. Chaudhury, The Autobiography of the Unknown Indian,
pp. 463-463. New York Review Books, New York, 2001.]
(via Tatyana, to whom much thanks, in the guestbladet.)
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2004-08-20 tea (utc+1)
So says my ASDA Memo Pad and it is quite right, although not
especially grammatical. Then I moved on to 0.18 Ls worth of vair vair
tiddly Latvian notebook, and now - h�las - I am at an impasse.
Varied Reader, I appeal to your expertise in matters of stationery -
where can I get a spiral bound (at the top) notepad which will sit
unnoticed in the back pocket of my jeans? There isn't an ASDA
to hand, although I dare say there's one closer than Latvia, and the
two (2) stationers near the university and the Paperchase concession in
Borders have all let me down.
I got a "Pocket Jotter" at the local convenience store but it won't do
at all - it's too bulky to have in a real pocket. (This is what
"pocket" means in marketing speak. Even Collins-Gem-size dictionaries
are too big for pocketses, and the ones actually
called pocket are a size up from that. Bad marketroids! No
biscuotroniques!)
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2004-08-20 gah! (utc+1)
The "IS" persons are now using the words "disaster recovery
procedures" in relation to the email service. I hope an abundance P45s is
involved.
For what it's worth, when I worked in the private sector the IT
support sucked too. The company paid badly and was located in the
arse-end of nowhere, but offered a Certified M$-Monkey Stifficate
training scheme. Guess how many persons wished to continue to be
employed there once they had acquired the sacred piece of paper.
(Plus everything ran on 'Doze kit, for the values of "run" that
prevail under those conditions. I wouldn't be surprised if the
persons here were doing likewise; the email system sucks pretty hard
even when it's up.)
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2004-08-20 samwidge (utc+1)
The huffenpuff over the German spelling reforms (blogosphere,
passim) reminds
Torsten K�lvemark - for it is he! - of something:
�r 1909 skrev 40 000 uppr�rda medborgare under en petition mot den
stavningsreform som Sveriges regering beslutat om n�gra �r
tidigare. Det talades uppr�rt om nystafningsbarbari och
kulturskymning. Hafva skulle enligt 1906 �rs r�ttstavningscirkul�r
f�rlora sitt f och godt f�rvandlades till gott. Fosterlandsv�nnerna
var skakade.
In 1909 40,000 disturbed citizens signed a petition against the
spelling reform that the Swedish government had decided on some years
earlier. It spoke with concern about newspellingbarbarisme and the
twilight of culture. According to the 1906 orthography circular
"hafva" should lose its "f" and "godt" was transformed into "gott". The
friends of the fatherland were shaken.
(Ask me about Norwegish spelling reforms some dull and rainy decade,
just ask.)
Ironically, he goes on to back the
germanspellingreformoppositionmovement, on the obvious grounds that he
has a stake in the old system, intherewhich having been instructed
back in the day.
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2004-08-20 morning (utc+1)
�1. The world is so full, after all, of a number of things.
�2. Yngling
The Grauniad, being an achingly hip leftbladet, would never stoop to
anything as gauche as simple-minded jingoistique tub-thumping. So
instead we
get elaborately nuanced jingoistique tub-thumping with 50% of your
recommended daily intake of irony:
A subeditor's nightmare, Yngling (pronounced ing-ling) is the Olympic
event in which Team GB has claimed its first gold medal. Sarah Webb,
Sarah Ayton and Shirley Robertson crewed the Yngling boat that sailed
to glory in Greece today.
[...]
Yngling was invented in 1967 by Norwegian Jan Lingel, who wanted to
build a boat for his son, Oyvin, who was 14 days old at the time. The
word means youngster, with the boat named in honour of the teensy
Oyvin, whose reaction to it is, alas, not recorded.
I had been wondering about the 'Wegian angle, of course.
�3. It isn't easy being a cow
"Cow parade" is an art project in which large quantities of brightly
coloured life-size cow statues are placed variously around and also
about. It has been perpetrated in a number of Yoorpean cities over
the last five years or so and was in Stockholm when I was there. (If
you are my mother you will wish to reproach me for the many fotos I
neglected to take of this. But after all, I took no fotos of other
things either.)
Some persons are unamused,
and you will enjoy the picture of silhouetted guerillas with their
hostage cow, for sure:
"Vi kr�ver att korna f�rklaras icke-konst. Annars kommer gisslan
att offras", skriver de.
We demand that the cows be declared non-art. Otherwise the hostage
will be sacrificed.
�3. Is it easy being a cow? It is not!
'Twas in another lifetime, one of toil and blood
When blackness was a virtue and the road was full of mud
I came in from the wilderness, a creature void of form.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."
[Dylan]
Unless you're a cow:
A Danish dairy farmer is mourning the loss of 31 of his cows, killed
in a lightning strike in Jutland.
[...]
The Danish insurers' association said it was the largest number of
reported deaths of farm animals from a single bolt of lightning.
Sadly, however, this is not yet an Olympic sport.
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2004-08-19 tea (utc+1)
�1. Harry Potteur
a.
JKR speaks
(at the Edinburgh festival). [via]
b.
An update on last year's riddle
translation story - the full
version [.pdf] is now online.
�2. A source of "soccer" stuff
I had assumed that rec.sport.soccer
would be rubbish, since only Murkans and a very few of the huffier
sort of rugger fans think foopball is called "soccer". But I was
wrong - the name is a quirk of Usenet history, and it seems to be a
better source for international club foopball in particular than
anything else around. Which is to no small extent a damning
inditement of everything else, but what can you do? The Olympics
coverage I've been exposed to takes it for granted that I will care
about any old rubbish (oh archery and dinghy sailing, how thrilling!)
as long as Team GB is in with a shot at medalling. Sport seems, in
fact, to be one of the most vigorous parts of the ideological
apparatus of nationalisme. (Remember where you read it here first! I
know I do; it was Hobsbawm.)
�3. Centralise me harder!
The university now has a centralised email service, which has borged
the various department systems of the past. (At least, we used to
have our own.)
This has the immense benefit that I can be quite sure that nobody else
in the whole university can check their email either.
(Passing libertoonians are cordially invited to refrain from arguing
that this proves the necessity of overthrowing the Venezuelan
government if at all possible, thanks.)
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2004-08-19 samwidge (utc+1)
�1. Why I hate neural networks
Daniel "Plus-sign" Davies is talking about
markets as black-box decision support tools, but the point
generalises:
[D]ecision support tools shouldn't be black boxes. I've spent quite a
percentage of my professional life over the last ten years arguing
this point and by now I think it's won. Any improvement in decision
quality that you get from a black box is more than outweighed by the
fact that you can't explain the output of the tool. You can ask
questions of a committee, but you can't ask a market why it thinks
what it thinks. For most practical purposes, this is likely to mean
that there would have to be an absolutely huge gain in information for
it to be a good idea to move to aggregated preferences as a decision
support tool.
�2. Why I do like W G Sebald
Grauniad obit
He was reluctant to call his books "novels", because he had little
interest in the way contemporary writers seemed to find all meaning in
personal relationships, and out of a comic but heartfelt disdain for
the "grinding noises" which heavily plotted novels demanded. "As he
rose from the table, frowning ..." was precisely the type of clumsy
machinery, moving a character from here to there, which Sebald mocked.
[via]
�3. Silly season, slightly saintly
There is strong resistance in the Vatican to the drive for
beatification of the founder of the EU, Robert Schuman, the Daily
Telegraph reports.
[...]
However, to date, the [diocese of]
Metz investigators have found no evidence of miracles - a prerequisite
for beatification.
Words! Fail! Me!
�4. "Madde"
dansade, klappade och sj�ng
[Permatanned reformed-party-prinsess Madeleine of Sweden danced,
klapped and sang.]
We've been a bit starved for happy fun Madde stories since the
previously obsequious rightiste-bladet Expressen turned on the
prinsessor, so this is especially welcome. Key points:
- It was the last night of Gyllene Tyder's tour!
- She went backstage to meet the band!
- She sang, klapped and sang!
- Her boyfriend was there too!
Splendid stuff.
Bonus link: Kronprinsessmary ("Knudella") and Kronprinsfred of Danmark
go
Olympic Village!
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2004-08-19 morning (utc+1)
With our bisynchrollamathonage dreams in tatters, Llinda has taken the
disappointment hard:
En lama s� onsdag morgen sitt snitt til � stikke av fra eieren sin
og ta seg en tur i Bymarka i Trondheim.
A llama saw a chance on Wodin's day to sneak away from its owner and
take a tour in Bymarka in Trondheim.
Come back, Llinda!
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2004-08-18 tea (utc+1)
I'm not allowed to sing a song
Unless its author passed away
A million years before today.
Oh, Mousey, Mousey have a heart,
Without a commons, what price art?
To you it's just a case of money,
To us it's Glorious Patrimony
"Mousey, Mousey", (Sung by Miss Florrie Furthington)
Anyway, I've been looking for some repertoire ("stuff") for
playing and singing on my little ukulele, and today I picked up a few
slim volumes to that effect from Mr Oxfam's shop, from which all the
profits go to the disadvantaged in the Empire and Commonwealth, so I
don't begrudge them a penny.
The next step is for our team of legal researchers to establish which
ones are public domain, and the one after that is to figure out how to
make recordings so that we can all have nice sing-a-longs. The
musique for "Where did you get that hat?" is included. I do hope
that's pre-Mouse. Althoug "Greenland Fisheries" is promising:
O, Greenland is an awful place,
It's a place that's never green,
Where the cold winds blow and the whale fishes go,
And the daylight's seldom seen, brave boys,
And the daylight's seldom seen.
Simply ghastly!
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2004-08-18 morning (utc+1)
�1. Our Glorious Serbian Patrimony, Fresh From the Oven
OK, so the last we heard Serbia and
Montenegro needed a new anthem for the Olympics, but the emergency
parliamentary vote (which I didn't blog) failed (which is why).
And now the BBC is reporting
that Serbia has fixed itself up with a new bunch of Glorious National
Symbols (dating back to the Middle Ages, nat�rlich) in a move
in no way connected with a similar move by Montenegro in July which
was widely considered to be kitting itself in preparation for
independence from the S&M mothership, good Heavens no.
Serbia's new anthem, Boze Pravde or God of Justice, was sung by
pro-democracy protesters who helped oust former President Slobodan
Milosevic in 2000.
�2. Wimmins' Beach volleyball is sexiste entertainment, and that's bad
You may wish to consider that an assertion
in two parts, but watch out for Swedish feministes if you do:
Det internationella volleybollf�rbundet har strikta regler f�r hur de
kvinnliga beachvolleybollspelarnas kl�der ska se ut. Alla ska b�ra
bikini och trosornas sids�m f�r inte vara l�ngre �n sju
centimeter. F�r herrlagen d�remot g�ller helt andra best�mmelser.
The international beach-volleyball association has strict rules on how
wimmin beach-volleyball players should dress. They all must wear
bikinis and the side seam of the briefs must not be longer than 7
centimetres. A completely different set of rules applies to men.
(Actually, before you start, the full piece concedes that one-piece
wimmins outfits are allowed, but there are comparable restrictions on
the leg cut there, also.)
Margareta Winberg - for it is she! - is furious. We merely note that
Norwegish bladet VG has a beach-volleyball photo
special to facilitate the detailed research that this bladet, for
one, considers necessary.
�3. Sk�l!
Sin tax tarriffs, thwarty-thwarty
Distort my markets, 'storty-torty
(von Bladet, with apologies to birds of pointiness)
Distort me harder
The average price of the locally most consumed bottle of spirits (0.7
litres) vary from 5.57 euros in Estonia to 20.09 euros in neighbouring
Finland, according to the alcohol control database of the World Health
Organisation, (WHO).
In Germany, the price is just 5 euros on average, while the Danes on
the other side of the border have to pay 10.75 euros.
Topping the expense league is Norway where liquor is priced at 39.01
euros on average per bottle, followed by Iceland 28.37 euros and Sweden
21.54 euros.
(I've amended plural "euro" to "euros" throughout. Sigh. Is there
anything more tiresome than the Besserwisser who does not, in fact,
know better? And I don't care if it is established Irish usage, we
hatesss it. Horrible dry pluralsss with no essssesss, we hatesss
them!)
Spirits in Germany at 5 euros a bottle? I'd guesstimate 15 for the
UK. Of course, now that intra-EU travelleurs (and presumably
EEA if Norway's throwing a strop) can load up unrestrictedly abroad,
they are doing just that, and the tax is neither lucrative nor
preventative. With hilarious consequences!
[Permalink]
2004-08-17 15:56
Is not finding a bug in your code.
(Sigh. I'll get my silk dressing gown...)
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2004-08-17 11:17
�1. Let's put on an avant-garde
show:
Des [von Bladet] asks: "Could you remind us when the synchronised
llama dressage biathalon is on, please? My cousin's next door
neighbour is one of the pleatistes for Team UK, and I've heard we've
got a good shot at medalling this time round, after the debacle in
Sydney." Oh no, not another sport I know nothing about. Do they wear
top hats?
The Grauniad is doing live
coverage (top of the left hand bar; URLs vary). Since coverage is
split country by country (except in the FDRUSA which has apparently substituted
random flatulent talking heads for actual coverage to prevent the
bloated nincompoops they anticipate by way of audience from finding
out that the rest of the world exists and is even allowed to join in -
even Foreigners, quel horreur!) they would have, it seems to
me, no way of knowing that this 'bladet's readers were making it all
up, if they happened to email requesting a summary of the synchronised
llama dressage biathalon, that they just saw a glimpse of on local
teevee before it cut away to the kayak slalom or some such.
�2. Nameslation
Now, I'm reading a book on the history of ideas by Sten H�gn�s, and I
wish, of course, to translate his name as "Stone Highnose", because
that's what it says, after all.
But "Stone" is a problem, because the Engleesh word "Peter" is derived
from a word in Foreign meaning basically "Stone" itself
(cf. Frenchy-French "Pierre") as in this famously inscrutable pun:
And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will
build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
[Matthew 16:18]
Good one, Lord. Very droll. So the question is, should one really go
with "Peter Highnose" instead? Answers on the back of a hermeneutic,
please, to the usual address.
�3. On the manifest superiority of the Enlightenment to Romanticisme
Upplysnings centrum var storstaden Paris. Romantikens centra
finner vi i sm� tyska universitetsst�der som Jena och Heidelberg.
The Enlightenment was centred on the metropolis of Paris. By
contrast, Romanticisme was based in small German university towns such
as Jena and Heidelberg.
Id�ernas historia, Sten H�gn�s ("Stone Highnose, AKA Peter")
It is not, in my view, at all to the credit of the nineteenth century
that this seemed like a good idea at the time.
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2004-08-17 09:29
In spite of industrialisation and its two satellite towns of Weststadt
and Lankow, old Schwerin is delicious. Founded by Henry the Lion in
1160 and the oldest city in the land of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern,
Schwerin has trams, beaches, French-style houses, a sports and
congress hall, and a symphony orchestra whose origins as the
Mecklenburg Staatskapelle go back four centuries. Lake Schwerin
itself (the Schweiner See) has a surface area of 65.5 km� and reaches
a depth of 52m. Schwerin's Altstadt lies between two other lakes, the
Burgsee and the Pfaffenteich. The citizens have taken these lakes to
their hearts, endowing the Pfaffenteich with a fountain. It is also
flanked by a huge, white, comically pseudo-Gothic arsenal, built in
1844 by G A Demmler (whose capacious architectural tastes here
encompassed a Germanic mock-Tudor style).
A Guide to Eastern Germany, James Bentley
65.5 km�, you say? Gosh!
I like old travel guides, but I can't stand this one. It's like
Bassett's Central Yoorp (reviewed
earlier) - not surprising since it seems to be in the same Viking
Penguin series - but with all the humanity squeezed out of it. It's
just endless litanies of architectural details. Basset occasionally
stopped for a word about cake-shops or an observation about persons,
but Bentley just keeps on grinding on and on and on.
Admittedly, I only made it through the first chapter. And now I've
moved on to Gordon Cooper's vastly more entertaining Your Holiday
in Germany which will feature in a future Monday Review of
Stuff, for sure.
[Permalink]
2004-08-16 15:40
My ASCII-IPA to IPA convertor seems to be working fairly well, but
in terms of its distributability it is strictly pre-alpha. (I.e., you
can't have it yet. I'm thinking that I'll probably put up a web
interface rather than package up the source, but not, likesay, yet.)
ɪksˈpɛkt mɒː wɛː ðɪs kaɪm fɹɔm
(Note: I really do seem to have some kind of monophthongisation of
vowels in place of [ɘ] off-glides - never mind syllabic
[ɘ] - in places where there were once syllable final /r/s. I'm
not just non-rhotic - I'm post-rhotic.)
[Permalink]
2004-08-16 digestif (utc+1)
Attributions vary wildly, but I find it ideologically expeditious to
attribute the quote "there are only two kinds of music - good music
and bad music" to Kurt Weill, who certainly wrote more than one kind.
�1 �
gauche is having a nice rant:
Anglo-American philosophy as widely practiced is a dead
thing. Sometimes it is animated (but only in the zombie sense, since
if God is, God is not an object for thought) by theology, and you get
airy moral philosophy or even naked metaphysics - postulation without
shame. Absent that, there is the mummified husk of thought, around
which so many agents wrap perfumed cloths made of epistemic
justifications and wholly impotent theories of justice.
�2. Mr Of the Machine likewise:
One loose index of the value of a discipline is whether it helped
humanity out of the cave. Mathematicians, scientists, engineers, and
even a few economists have all made their contributions. As for
philosophy - we programmers have a term to characterize a programmer
without whom, even if he were paid nothing, the project would be
better off. The term is "net negative."
(Actually, this rant comprehensively lacks niceness, as those of you
previously acquainted with Mr otM will have anticipated.)
[Latter link via Harvestbird, who'd be
better off with the former, if you ask me.]
[Permalink]
2004-08-16 mornin (utc+1)
�1. Oh dear.
Sadly, I will not after all be competing in the synchronised llama dressage
biathalon at this Olympics. The panel accepted that I had been
prescribed olive oil for a legitimate medical condition, but with
aural lubrication such a crucial part of the top-level
synchrollamathon (as we call it), my pleas fell on deaf ears. Still,
my hearing is fixed, and that's the main thing. I'll be back for
Beijing, for sure!
�2. Oh, we hate Man U and we hate Man U!
We hate Man U and we hate Man U!
We hate Man U and we hate Man U!
We are the Man U ... haters!
Челсий 1-0 Man U
BBC,
Aftonbladet,
VG all cover
it, of course, but connoisseurs will of course prefer the homebladet
of Viking striker Ei�ur Sm�ri Gu�johnsen on the occasion of his
decisive goal. (For future reference, ��r�ttir is Viking for
sport, which I should have spotted since idrott is Swedish for
athletics. )
�3. USA 73-92 Puerto Rico
That's a stupid score for a foopball match, but this is
basketfoopball, and while it's a pretty stupid flavour
("flavor") of foopball, it's also one that the Murkans have the habit
or custom of caring about, ho ho. Just wait till they come up against
the mighty Lithuanians, then there'll be fireworks, for sure.
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