The house is in uproar following the arrest (using a fire engine) in Marseille of Hossein Ghanbari, an Iranian, in possession of explosives, detonators, grenades, guns, police regalia, car number plates, Spanish mobile chips, and a map of Catalonia, as well as wigs and bullet-proof corsets, freely translated. Will the police here over-react and round…
Jordan: taking the piss? Librarians are incredibly cool (I was employed as one, once, briefly), and, although not all cool people are librarians, like the just before Christ those currently unlibraried should receive the benefit of the doubt. Any doubts remaining as to the benevolence of those who devote their lives to war with the…
Waszynski’s extraordinary 1937 Dibuk still drifts into the occasional dream. Der Volf was written by another Polish Jewish artist, H Leivick at around the same time as the play on which Waszynski’s film was based. Both introduce the supernatural in order to help us understand why it is wrong to do wrong, but where Der…
There is – as usual – an interesting discussion over at Transblawg. This time it’s about creaky-sounding (legal) phrases in which the noun precedes the adjective, some of which may be inverted: court martial/martial court, secretary general/general secretary, law merchant/merchant law etc. I assume the post-positives to be Norman-isms, since it was the Normans who…
From a lovely bit of work, Formatting the Word of God: The Charles Caldwell Ryrie Collection, produced by the Bridwell Library at SMU in Dallas: This [a 1551 Estienne bible, published in Calvin’s Geneva] is the book to which we are indebted for our custom of quoting the Bible by chapter and verse. It is…
Job 1: While [the messenger to Job] was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, The fire of God is fallen from heaven, and hath burned up the sheep, and the servants, and consumed them; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee. So what do you do then? Phone a certain gentleman…
Invited by Tony Blair, the Iraq national team is apparently playing a British parliamentary XI tomorrow and then heading up the M1 to West Brom to take on that well-known Midlands outfit, Trinidad and Tobago. The Spanish authorities have refused them visas, presumably out of political spite, and Mr Bush has not replied to their…
A story from a while back about Barcelona’s Baja Beach Club suggesting customers implant chips under their skin to facilitate entry and billing is now doing the rounds of the Anglosphere. There’s a good piece over at The Register, but I don’t see what the fuss is about: Baja’s average female client already has a…
The government has just announced that the minimum wage is to be increased to slightly less than even most illegals are earning, and the usual crazies are up in arms about this betrayal. Here, from the edition of Ideal published August 17th 1936 is something that would have been closer to their hearts: In Barcelona,…
OK, you know that Trevor isn’t so damn clever, but am I really the only blogger in the world who reads books as opposed to rereading them? (By the way, I did enjoy rehearing the MIDI of My Love She’s But a Jug of Lassi Yet, to which Q Pheevr links.)
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