Bush and Blair are not at all welcome in Spain at the moment, so guess who is: Marbella anxiously awaits the antidote to Jult [you try saying July with half a gram up your nose] which was slow month tourist-wise, with not too many famous faces around either. Now the town is getting ready for…
Whatever’s happening in Najaf today, it’s never going to be half as frightening as South Africa. IOL tells of a newsreader trying to interview an on-the-spot reporter while, unbeknown to her, the latter is being robbed by a gunman: As Katopodis crossed live to Thaw at the first take, his cellphone stayed on – with…
To be fair, Austrian writer Robert Menasse is going after The System in his German spelling reform diatribe, not the 2 l8, m8 clan, but it’s still heavy stuff. Apparently–and I find him a bit difficult to follow–the reform was racist because it Germanised both “German” and “force-assimilated” immigrant words, neoliberal because it has created…
Mark Liberman has omitted a major British contribution to redundancy from this spelling reform post. “[About] as much use as …” is found pleasantly unassertive by lovers of warm beer, and it also tongue-trips with a greater joie de vivre. Our maths teacher (who had hair on the palms of his hands) used to tell…
Bombs and drunks galore here, but it’s still not as bad as California. Here’s Fashion Week Daily (“How L.A. fashionistas spend their summers”) on the West Coast alternative to alcoholism: Checking out the new “Feather Lift.” The secret password of this L.A. summer. Some plastic surgeons are already experimenting in the hottest new development in…
David Bell, the British Chief Inspector of Schools, said last summer that infants increasingly lacked speaking skills because of the “disrupted and dishevelled” lives some were forced to endure. So how come George W’s oracy has declined now he’s no longer a boozer? Mr Bell thinks that the answer to the problem lies in more…
Wulong has gone today from being a starving, soaking peasant living in a bamboo hut with his Tosh (1/2) to collecting funds on behalf of Shan secessionists, on which I have no view. It’s too hot.
Satirical mag Titanic has gone one better than publishers Springer & Spiegel, who yesterday deserted the state language reforms of the mid-90s: TITANICK kehrt zurück zur ganz, ganz alten RechtschreybungSie habent eyn Eynsehen: Der Spiegel-Verlag und Springer kehren zurück zur alten Rechtschreybung. Doch TITANICK gehet noch eyn Schrittleyn weyter und schreybet ab dem heutiglichen Tage…
If you’ve read Edward Tufte’s stuff, you’ll know that the Japanese used to be good at cartography. So were the British, the Dutch, the Swiss…, but since WWII the Americans have made the running in terms of technological and graphical innovation, as well as putting together some wonderful resources–just think of the University of Texas’…