Maybe the inclusion of magic word “Linux” in the announcement calmed them down, but I’m still a bit surprised that neither the opposition nor the wild-eyed crazies of the decentralisation lobby have yet cried foul over the government’s surprise announcement, two weeks before the elections, of a €70M plan to install an IBM one-room 40-teraflop [...]

Zaid Khan, a merchant in Doha, Qatar with cancer of the esophagus, has contacted me again this morning to talk about the future of his fortune. This sudden wave of fatal stomach ailments amongst the Middle East’s HNW individuals leads me to wonder why no folklorists seem to be tracking the way these stories spread [...]

The headline figure this morning is 20%, but the survey (.doc) asks the question twice and the other answer is different. First there’s question 3:
I’m going to read you a list of apparatus and new technologies that are being used more and more frequently in Spain. Tell me, please, of each one whether you have [...]

Oh, if only empirialism weren’t such a well-established (260 ghits) misspelling of imperialism! For what would suit those evangelical empiricists better?
Word found in the comments section of swampman Chappell’s blog, currently awaiting recolonisation.

That insolent colonial, John Chappell, has launched an all-out assault on this house, suggesting that I perform the work of a yeoman:
1a. An attendant, servant, or lesser official in a royal or noble household. b. A yeoman of the guard. 2. A petty officer performing chiefly clerical duties in the U.S. Navy. 3. An assistant [...]

The scan below (100K) is of the front cover of Gil de Rusena’s El Memorialista Català, cited in the previous post. All I know of the artist, “Robert”, is that he worked for Salvador Bonavia and other publishers on a number of other books, including folklore collections. Bonavia’s old shop is just down the road [...]

Taking the view that the plain folk of Catalonia were illiterate and uncouth to a degree that would lead to ridicule in more cultured lands, Catalan language evangelists at the turn of the nineteenth century launched a barrage of self-help books. These guides taught business and social forms that will be familiar to English-speaking readers, [...]

Mrs Rodríguez opens her front door, walks down the street to the large public waste container, jacks open the lid with her foot, and screams in terror as a very dirty man inside reaches to take her bags. Who needs state-run recycling?

Orthodox history has for long held that the Rosetta Stone is a celebration of Greek colonialism in North Africa. No longer, for Shaheen Abou-Alfoutouh has now proved conclusively that, according to some laws he just invented but hasn’t written down yet, and because there are already enough sailors in Athens called Rosetta, the British Museum [...]

Normally I’ll read any kind of rubbish, but this has got me defeated and puzzled. It’s a collection of instructions dating from 1484 to 1576 on how to run an inquisition (there’s some Torquemada in there) that belonged to one Doctor Martín Yánez de Padilla. However, not only are there no bloodstains on the pages [...]

Lie as they may, the truth is that all wind players share mouthpieces. So what’s your best risk mitigation strategy if you have to kiss a musician? Here’s some useful info:

Potential risk of salivary-mediated viral hepatitis type B transmission from oral exposure to fomites.
Osterholm MT, Max BJ, Hanson M, Polesky HF.
Twelve grade school and junior [...]

One of the proudest memories of my musical career is of a mission undertaken on behalf of the Dutch nation to a Swedish folk festival, at which a programme of James Last covers was performed to accompany the wobblings of a display team of penny-farthing riders. Some believe that the deep affinity that exists between [...]

The Calcutta Telegraph is generally acknowledged to be the Indian daily with the best Polish coverage, and so it is this evening, with a story about Polmos, a Zielona Góra vodka producer facing prosecution for handing out a free English course with each bottle. Said Renata Durda of the state Agency for Solving Alcohol Problems:
Nad [...]

I just love all these social networks on which people tell you what they own and eventually where they live and what they do on Saturday night. I just wish they wouldn’t list all the crap I can get on P2P.

Irish opposition parties are trying to stir up the nationalist vote with a proposal to get Irish (ca 0.2M fluent speakers) adopted as an official EU language. I know when I’ve lost an argument, and I hereby renounce everything I have said on this subject in the past. Let’s make every European tongue (including the [...]

From Sri Lanka’s Daily News:
In a message to the first celebration [of International Mother Language Day in 2000] United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said “the Day raises awareness among all peoples regarding the value of languages.” He called for increased efforts to conserve languages as a shared heritage of humanity.
A brief examination of various PR [...]

Someone just mailed me this disgraceful image:

Bad news for Basque neo-Nazi thugs hoping to meet in remote places with Catalan wuzzocks: you may get eaten by a wolf. Examination of dead sheep and of mounds of poo – yep, that’s the romance of life as a forestry agent – suggests that there’s a young Italian male specimen loose in the Cadí-Moixeró [...]

Sez Christina Foerch in Lebanon’s Daily Star:
Gaudi became obsessed with the church and concentrated all his energy on it. In 1926, he was hit by a car and died three days later at the age of 74. However, construction continued on the church and it was finally completed in 1987.
Christina must mean “finished” in the [...]

Cockroach-eye view of the choir up to the usual nonsense in a garage in Sants: