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2004-09-13 10:34
Swedishes write "1600-talet" (approximately "the 1600s") rather than
"the 17th century". This is a much better system, for sure, but
Engleeshes will perhaps protest that it is ambiguous and could refer instead
to the first decade of the century.
So, I propose from now on to write of the 16--s
or the 160-s, and the world will accordingly be a
better place.
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2004-09-10 16:24
On the road again
Yow!
I made a careful note of the hotel I need to get to for tonight in my notebook, and then promptly mislaid the notebook.
So I needed an Interweb caff, such as this, to get at my email. Thank heaven, though, for the putty ssh client! (My University's web-mail server is a substantial contribution to the world's ungoodness, and my standard email client is pine in an xterm. New software, as is well known, is mostly useful for reminding you how good old software was, and with Free software they can't make you upgrade to a newer generation of bloatware, and they lack even incentive to try.)
Back, now, it is to the road, the endless road, I hear it calling me, "Onwards! Onward! On!"
2004-09-10 13:20
There's cricket
on today, if the rain ever stops, but I'm into panic mode.
Trevlig helg till all, och vi ses n�sta vecka!
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2004-09-10 10:17
Tallinn, to put it another way, or Riga? Both are vair vair nice
Baltic capitals with lovely and amazingly well preserved medieval old
towns, for sure. But if you had to choose just one (1), which would
it be?
Stalwart guestbladeteer Tatyana favours Tallinn, but the editorial
staff at this 'bladet have a weakness for Riga. And so, it
turns out, does Aftonbladet. We note with delight that it
recommends particularly Radi un Draugi, bra mellanklasshotell i
gamla stan, dubbelrum cirka 800 kr ("Radi un Draugi, a good
mid-market hotel in the old town, double rooms around 60 zloties
Sterling"), which is where the dowager Countess and I stayed last
Twinkletree.
Riga �r en internationell storstad med kosmopolitisk karakt�r, ibland
med k�nsla av Paris, Wien eller Barcelona.
Tillv�xten h�r �r bland Europas h�gsta - det �r gott om flotta
bilar och mobiltelefoner, internetanv�ndandet �r utbrett och det finns
en m�ngd exklusiva butiker. Men du ser ocks� en utbredd fattigdom, d�r
m�nga blivit akterseglade i den snabba samh�llsomvandlingen.
Riga is a international big city with a cosmpolitan caracter, with
something of the feel of Paris, Vienna or Barcelona about it.
Growth has been among the highest in Europe, there are plenty of
stylish cars and mobile telephones, Interweb usage is widespread and
the are many exclusive shops. But you also see widespread poverty
where many have been left behind by the rapid social transformation.
(Swedishes take their social consciences on holiday with them,
apparently.)
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2004-09-09 14:08
How slightly, you ask or enquire?
This
slightly:
Efter sex �r med sin flickv�n har den tyske komikern
Mario Barth, 31, kommit till insikt om att m�n beh�ver hj�lp.
D�rf�r har han skrivit ordboken som ska hj�lpa m�nnen att f�rst� vad
deras kvinnor egentligen menar.
After six years with his girlfriend the German comedian [sic]
Mario Barth, 31, realised that men needed help. So he compiled a
dictionary which would help men to understand what wimmins actually
meant.
The interesting things about this are two (2), especially in number,
and they are this ("these"):
- It's coming out from Langenscheidt, a Serious Dictionary
Publisher.
- An Engleesh translation is on the way; despite Aftonbladet's
coverage, a Swedish one is merely hoped for.
The hope that this will work in overseas markets, if it is not simply
wildly misplaced, suggests that as common denominators go the one to
be appealed to will by no means be high. (I'm not going to translate
any of the proffered examples, so there.)
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2004-09-09 11:10
A fabulous
(Danish) radio programme (in Engleesh) on "Being British in Denmark"
(admittedly with some very few very brief Danish interludes, some of
which featuring Engleeshes speaking Danish so badly that even I can
understand them). Go listen!
There are about twice as many Englisches other than of gender as of
gender over there, incidentally. Anyone familiar with Danish wimmins
will surely not find this surprising, unless they also have for some
reason a favourable opinion of Danish mens. If you twist my arm for a
sensible theory, it would be that Danish wimmins come over here, as
au pairs and loot our glorious homeland of its menfolk, tsk
tsk. (Danish wimmins seeking silly Engleesh booty are of course
warmly invited to contact this 'bladet at the usual address.)
[via Birgitte]
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2004-09-09 09:53
Henry von Timber (n� Farrell) remarks:
Zermelo was never translated into English before Schwalbe
and Walker's paper, so I imagine that nobody much bothered to try to
read him (especially since his article was published in 1913 and was
quite likely printed in Fraktur).
If anyone needs me, I'm curled up in the foetal position under my
desk.
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2004-09-08 bah! (utc+1)
I hate software.
That is all.
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2004-09-08 12:07
�1. Bucketwatch!
Kronprinsessmary of Denmark, where did you get that
hat and especially why?
�2. Being a prinsess and things which are easy - a study in disjunction
Kronprinsess Vickan of Sweden has been in the
Land of fire and ice and especially ice:
Kronprinsessan lyckades i g�r s�tta nytt prinsessrekord i att skaka
hand. Under statsbes�ket p� Island h�lsade hon p� 500 personer p�
mindre �n 40 minuter.
The kronprinsess succeded yesterday in setting a new prinsessrecord in
shaking hands. During her state visit to Iceland [brrr!] she
greeted 500 persons in less than 40 minutes.
Phew!
�3. Oh, alright then, some languagey goodness
And interactive quiz! Can you recognise all the
languages based on a short extract of the instructions for a game
included in a McDonald's Happy Meal? If I know my Varied Reader, you
probably can. (I struggled with the various Cyrillics, I'll admit.)
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2004-09-08 09:48
Easyjet's inflight magazine's Berlin featurette is online:
With an abundance of cool clubs, funky fashion, creative cuisine and
hip hangouts, could Berlin be Europe's answer to New York?
That depends, Ren� Blixer (FIIH!), on what the question was, isn't it?
If it was "Where's your major financial centre?" or "Where's all the
media that isn't based in LA based?" or "Where is that if you can (bah
bah!) make it there you can make it (bah bah!) anywhere?" then the
answer is still twice London and once "Huh?" (and even Germany's meeja
defaults somewhat to Hamburg). But let us be charitable and assume
Blixer is a congenitally vacuous trendster whose horizons do not
extend beyond fashion and clubs (this is charitable, and I
speak as a someone who has read the article), since Berlin still
rocks:
Der Strand liegt nicht unter dem Pflaster - das Pflaster ist der
Strand.
The beach lies under the pavement? No, the pavement is the
beach.*
[Stefanie Grimm reviews the Neu Sommargarten in Kreuzberg in
Zitty, 02.09.2004]
Berlin is cool because the listings magazine writer can drop in a such
allusion to the '68 Situationiste slogan "Sous les pav�es - la plage!"
("Under the pavement - the beach!", although it's often quoted as
"Under the pavement lies the beach!" and apparently in German also)
and we all get it because we're so vair vair hip.
* The extra verb in "The pavement doesn't lie under the beach"
makes it unacceptably flabby to my ear. Silly Englisch!
[Permalink]
2004-09-07 16:58
I met a bloke in a bar in Riga over Twinkletree who said Ryanair
was coming to Latvia, and now
they are:
Passengers thirsty for cheap flights to the so-called New Europe
booked more than 8,000 tickets on low-cost airline Ryanair's routes
to-and-from Latvia's capital in the first week of sales, said a
company spokeswoman.
I will pay more attention to the assertians of blokes in bars in Riga
in future, for sure. Riga is great, although it remains to be seen
how it handles a flood of obnoxiously drunk Englisch stag parties.
Expect to see "Riga is the new Prague" articles the minute as soon as
they actually start flying, if not before.
Meanwhile, I am a proud
statistique:
UK budget airline Easyjet saw passenger numbers jump by 24% in August,
compared with the same month of 2003.
Flying from Bristol (Slightly) International airport is fabulous if
you happen to live in Bristol, and Easyjet's forthcoming route from
here to Budapest is certainly very tempting.
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2004-09-07 13:27
Amongst other things, my remaining unmarried sister is to cease to be
my remaining unmarried sister, without in any way ceasing to be my
sister, on Saturday.
Coming back to provincial En-ger-lund from a city with functioning
public transport infrastructure and sane licensing laws always comes
as a shock to the system, isn't it?
[Permalink]
2004-09-07 10:18
My comedy matchbox-size l'espion digital camera, in particular. This
allows me to demonstrate why I prefer to work with words.
Checkpoint Charlie:
A Spreewald canal:
NB: More about the Spreewald and its celebrated gherkins hos
Margaret von Transblawg.
[Permalink]
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