Àvia gelidenca: I tu, tens nuvi?
Nena: No, es mi prima.

It’s being refitted in Barcelona harbour.

1: Kijk, Barcelona ligt aan zee.
2: Het is zeker warm hier.

Slugger O’Toole quotes Mark Durkan on RTE’s Question and Answers: “Gerry Adams has been on more roads to Damascus than a Syrian bus driver.” For the best election analysis you’re likely to read anywere, check the current edition of Portadown News.

I can’t think of a better web project to come out of Germany than the Technical University of Munich’s LEO. Their collaborative online GermanEnglish dictionary is outstanding, it’s free, and it’s getting in the order of three million hits a day. Now these excessively good people have announced a FrenchGerman version, to be launched early [...]

Els americans

treballen més
són més joves
saben solucionar els seus desafiaments polítics.

Font: New York Times.

Good post by Mark Liberman on Language Log:
Captain John Dunn, of the Shreveport LA police department, is quoted by CNN as attributing the failure of the speech recognition technology in their new PBX to “Southern drawl and what I call lazy mouth”… Message to Captain Dunn: the fault is in your system’s technology, not in [...]

This is so silly I can’t believe anyone’s taking it seriously.

Persbericht van de (legale) Baskische separatisten, de PNV: de Commissie Regionaal Beleid, Vervoer en Toerisme heeft een amendement van hun Josu Ortuondo aangenomen, zodat alle schepen die onder de vlag van een lidstaat zeilen straks een versie met een toegevoegde Brusselse stralenkrans moeten gebruiken (leze: minder ruimte voor de Spaanse vlag). Nu gaat u nog [...]

Humans vestits com dibuixos animats; també hi ha una versió adulta.
Via Fleshbot.

An interesting article by Massoud Ansari in The Asia Times highlights the role of Pakistani madrassas in ongoing recruitment:
Says Haji Sardar Lashkari, a former provincial minister in Balochistan: “How is it possible for senior Taliban leaders and the likes of Mullah Dadullah and other most-wanted Taliban remnants to come to Pakistan quite often, convince students [...]

Despite the Grimms’ usual fiddling, Rapunzel remains - as Violet Bergen notes in a fine article - a story suffused with powerful Biblical imagery, most of it Old Testament in origin. The New Testament’s most famous virgin usually parades with her head covered, but on the cross-vaulting of the C15th cloisters of the monastery of [...]

Onder de noordelijke steden, alleen Oldenzaal - verborgen in de verschrikkelijke nevel en moerassen die u tegenkomt achter Deventer - heeft zijn oorspronkelijke functie behouden van overwinteringsplaats voor spleeuwen, rijgers en andere vliegmonsters uit Het Overige. Terwijl het Stroat Ensemble Armeense malsjes mangelt, dansen ze samen tijdens de jaarlijkse Stroadl Oamd, dit jaar op 12 [...]

“Definitely not for those with scrupples. “

Aquest tio és el campió del món en llegir. Li agrada practicar en una part de Montjuïc poc visitada de manera que pugui concentrar-se correctament. Perquè és tan famós, els de BCNeta! el patrocinen donant-li una furgoneta gratuïta.

Some completely useless information: la setmana anglesa (ie a working week that ends at lunch on Saturday) is specified in Article 201 of the constitution (PDF) written by Josep Conangla i Fontanilles and approved by Francesc Macià’s separatists in Havana, Cuba in October 1928. This is possibly the last positive mention of British working practices [...]

Poc alta, poc dreta, ben sola.

The catamaran bird (or so I’ve heard)
Sobbed softly into its Kleenex:
“Some drunken twats burned half my slats
So I’m neither bench nor phoenix.”
You may console the catamaran bird during this walk.

You probably saw the story run by the Telegraph yesterday re the siting of the Dracula theme park down on Ceausescu’s farm. Fine, but I do think it’s time to move on from this type of old, bad news and celebrate the dawning in global consciousness of Romania as the new Rome. For, although we [...]

Les paneroles velles es mouen 40% menys en un espai obert que els nens, diu el New Scientist. Matar a paneroles és una qüestió d’esperar.

Better at everything, even in death:

Many of the cemeteries I visit - the cat has to be fed - are being enlarged at the moment, although in some of the smaller villages there doesn’t seem to be anyone left to die. The first one, which you can see for yourself during the Santa Coloma to Montgat walk, combines traditional stuff-em-in-the-wall [...]

Està bruta, el menjar és fastigós (i hi ha massa), però és la pizzeria mes antiga de Tehran.
Via IranFilter.

OK, Pere (who has starting writing most of this blog) has got me to do The Election Test. The green dot is what I think I am and the red dot is what I apparently really am: an ideological moderate with a strong Spanish nationalist streak who should be voting (if I had a vote, [...]

AP: Amb el llançament de la seva edició a La Coruña, Metro tindrà una tirada nacional de 600.000, 50.000 més que El País.

It would be tasteless and premature to suggest any connection between the detention of Michael Jackson and the proposed UK ban on face transplants.

Rafael Ramos, corresponsal de La Vanguardia a Londres, continua sorprenent per la seva incapacitat d’expressar de manera satisfactòria la seva profunda ignorància del seu país adoptiu en particular i del món en general. Com vaig assenyalar a La Vanguardia fa sis mesos, no sap escriure anglès, plagia el treball d’altres periodistes, i inventa material que [...]

In LA County mag je de tech terminologie master/slave niet meer gebruiken in contacten met de locale overheid, zegt BoingBoing:
The County of Los Angeles actively promotes and is committed to ensure a work environment that is free from any discriminatory influence be it actual or perceived. As such, it is the County’s expectation that our [...]

Sez the Beeb. Campo Antiimperialista site here, but hurry: soon there’ll only be Indymedia left. (Apparently Magdi Allam already exposed this one in the Corriere della Sera back in October.)

Dit soort teken kom je vaak in plattelandse kerken tegen ipv ramen. Ik moet altijd aan Twentse geveltekens en stiepeltekens denken, al heb ik volgens mij deze typische Catalaanse vorm nooit in Nedersaksen gezien. Zit er iets achter, of ben ik een samenzweringskundige aan het worden?

Zegt de Guardian.

A boring morning: I can’t find anyone who, following yesterday’s Catalan parliamentary elections, is prepared to bet against a ruling coalition consisting of conservative nationalists, Convergence and Union (CiU), and the secessionists, Republican Left (ERC). The conventional wisdom is that, in synch with their legal and proscribed Basque counterparts, their strategy is going to be [...]

Trobat en un informe escrit per Margaret Thatcher i dos altres al desembre de 1945:

La capacitat de l’individu per a dur bona vida serà el criteri definitiu de qualsevol política.Corol·laris d’això són :-

Que l’individu és més important que el sistema.
No serà útil una política que es basi en una indiferència respecte a la naturalesa humana.

… [...]

Le Monde Diplomatique contains a very interesting article (larded with the customary anti-democratic spin) on socio-religious change in Egypt. In it Patrick Haenni and Husam Tammam identify four common attributes of Cairo’s photogenic prophets of personal salvation:
Almost all are the product of secular education and their religious knowledge is that of the dilettante; they [...]

Per als que van gaudir de l’assumpte Tamayo-Sáez: el govern marroquí va a intentar a criminalitzar canvis “corruptes e il·legals” de partit. Sigui la que sigui la veritat del transfugisme marroquí, això demostra l’augment en importància del parlament marroquí, els debats televisats del qual encara s’assemblen a un museu de cera.
Font: Maghreb Arabe Presse

Els contrabandistes algerians lligen radiocassets als rucs i prémen Play. “Err, err,” diu la casset, i els rucs es van al Marroc. A menys que la duana marroquina els mati. Segons la BBC.

Antoni Munné Jordà, “Is there a Catalan Science Fiction?“:
If we look into what is lacking from science fiction written in Catalan, we become aware that the literary culture prevails over the scientific aspects, that our science fiction has to make an effort to acquire a balance.
Smaller even than the Girona Intergalactic Hub, this landing strip [...]

Aberog, abhaw, abzaw…

De locale politie heeft twee weken campagne gevoerd in onze parkjes tegen mensen met verkeerd poepende honden en/of zonder pasje. Resultaat volgens La Vanguardia: bijna 2.000 proces-verbalen en een opstand van boze eigenaren. Er zit een beetje klassenoorlog in het laatste bericht: Sarrià-Sant Gervasi is een dure wijk en veel stadsagenten spreken nogal gebrekkig Catalaans.