The big news in La Vanguardia today is crucifixion, sacrifice, and the indomitable Spanish spirit, with the merest nod to Indochina. However, there are a couple of short reports on foreign visitors that may conceivably be of interest. Interesting coincidence: Mallorca was the home base of Franco’s Mr Fixit, Juan March, who may have been…
Funny old world: just when I announce that this blog will henceforth be devoted to politics (ie money, sex, violence and food), Language Log goes and blogrolls me. Cool, cool, incredibly cool, but I know a secret agenda even when I’m on the drugs. What this is really about is one Mr Liberman@LL kicking his…
Thanks to the DG for news that the post about John Cage has bumped the Columbia Encyclopaedia off the no 1 spot for the word “thallophytes.” Now it’s time to work on our ranking for “Nazi wives” (post re a bizarre episode in Hispano-German relations), for which we’re currently in 10th place.
There’s a nice little number with this title on the New Scientist site: Milford Harrison edits what he describes as a “thrilling” journal called Waste Planning, and he was so struck by the units that kept appearing in the press releases he received that he wrote an article about them. It includes such gems as:…
Re the Abramovich boat post: I’ve been contacted now by three British newspapers, one gentleman who sounded suspiciously like a Russian investigator, various salesmen and a couple of nuts. Honest, I don’t know where the boat is, I haven’t got the faintest idea how he paid for it, and it doesn’t interest me in the…
The news today is dominated by the anarchist attempt on prime minister Antonio Maura near the Mercé on the 12th, the visit of Spanish king Alfonso to Catalonia (“The Velocipedists Club raised an obelisk formed of flowers”), and the Russo-Japanese war. However, a couple of interstitial text ads caught my eye in the edition of…
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