GhanaWeb, one of the world’s leading portals, reports that

Kofi Abrampah was born in Ghana and studied molecular science at Rhode Island College, from which school he subsequently obtained his doctorate. He is currently employed by Amersham as a nuclear pharmacist which, according to Africa’s finest portal, GhanaWeb, means that “he compounds and prepares radio pharmaceutics (radioactive drugs).” So what do you think he [...]

Says the FT:

In Jews in the Notarial Culture: Latinate Wills in Mediterranean Spain, 1250-1350, Robert I Burns, SJ, writes:
Moneys in testamentary legacies followed the standard medieval pattern of the penny, the sou (or shilling) containing 12 pence, and the pound containing 20 sous or 240 pence. Only the penny and half-penny (òbol) were actually minted and circulated [...]

This is cool: Rumsfeld’s famous Feb 12th “As we know,/There are known knowns” briefing and other of his texts set to music. (Thanks A.)

We already knew that Barcelona’s Forum lacked any political credibility, but it has now done something that is completely unpardonable: hurt Michael Jackson’s feelings. Here’s the Google version of a piece on BlackFedora.net:

This morning in one of Barcelona’s beach-side districts, Barceloneta, l’Agrupació Coral Humorística “El Rossinyol”, founded 1925, was singing the following ditty, accompanied by a band that in Holland would be referred to as a boerenkapel:

Sa-le_el sol por la ma-ña-na,
por la ma-ña-na sa-le_el sol.
Los bor-rachos por la tar-de,
y por la no-che_el ros-sin-yol!
I don’t know who sang [...]

With Lithuanian star Gregor Fucka already doing fine in FC Barcelona’s basketball sub-brand, it’s a pity that el Barça don’t seem to be able to find a brother to sign along with Michael Ballack for the football entity.

Some of the locals would have you believe that Barcelona is the global capital of crazy. Not at all, for, as Holmes remarked in The Adventure of the Copper Beeches, “the lowest and vilest alleys in London[, Barcelona, whatever] do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.” [...]

Graham over at Baldric’s Trousers is publishing photos of the Forum event here, and it sounds rather as if he’s got a season ticket. I’ve had the occasional glance at the webcams (1/2) which, once you get past the stupid DHTML, show great empty spaces - visitor numbers are terrible - so it’s good to [...]

Unfortunately this is not the case at Sexo para extranjeros. Oh dear, back to those extra-terrestrial marrow monsters.

Notorious scumbag Patrick Kluivert was convicted this week of threatening a Barcelona waitress. I am just trying to imagine what will happen to him if Middlesbrough buy him and he tries the same trick in a Teesside bar.

I always thought that a commodity was an article that could be traded, and that time (99-year lease, delivery in October, they’ve already started rotting) was a major determinant of price. Not so in the Guardian, where Hugh Muir writes of Simon Hughes’ moribund campaign to become London mayor that

Recognising an urgent need, Barcelona’s excellent Institut Français has undertaken to explain love to the Catalans (translation Googlebotted for style, steam, and speed):

Lorna’s Shorts is a feed consisting of English summaries of Barcelona news which you can use for free on your website. The standard version looks like this:

You can use Lorna’s Shorts if you understand and accept the following terms and conditions and any that may subsequently be imposed, news of which will be [...]

On Saturday, while I was being chewed by a sheepdog with an intestinal disorder, that notorious socialist Catalan republican separatist (I think that’s the correct sequence), Francesc Ferrer, was watching the Spanish royal wedding. Our Francesc takes life seriously - his writing leads one to suspect that he, too, was once bitten by a dog [...]

By a real live linguist, re criticism of Bush’s “hesitant pronunciation of Abu Ghraib”.

John Chappell writes that “Only [Rafael Ramos] could somehow establish a comparison between a 1930s realist painter and the Iraq war.” What, Barcelona’s leading illiterate plagiarist with an original idea? John might change his mind if he checked Jonathan Jones’ Guardian article, published last week. In fact, all that Ramos (search) adds to the sum [...]

Check the front page of the Vilafranca weekly, el 3 de vuit, but be quick: they might publish something.

I reckon that most of the money invested by local and regional government in providing e-services, ranging from bog-standard pages for rural councils to the more ambitious attempts seen here in Barcelona, was wasted. This is because most projects served either as a means to funnel money to new media businesses set up by the [...]

This is really cool:

These guys crack me up:

Mr Atukwei Okai, Secretary General of the Pan African Writers Association (PAWA), on Tuesday advocated African Common Language Policy to enhance communication among Africans as a vital ingredient in ensuring the success of African unity.
He said some proponents had indicated Swahili as a possible adoptive language, but cautioned that the choice [...]

Apparently the Bengali government has been taking advice from the Generalitat on how “to improve drinking water supply and sewerage and develop waste-water sanitation”. That presumably means a boost for the Catalan textile industry, because everyone here holds a handkerchief over their face when they walk down our street.

Margaret Marks agrees with me, which means either that I am right or that she is importing substantial quantities of Catalan wine. The menus on my main page will rediscover their true essence when, only when, affairs right themselves or when I am mugged by the estate of Ireland’s greatest writer. From La Miseria in [...]

Really, really interesting spam.

He’ll bounce back, says Mosnews in an article on Roman’s Empire:
The head of the empire navigates the world in a privately owned plane, and not some Falcon or Gulf Stream, either, but a Boing-737.

I do sincerely hope that Europe turns out to have nipples, but first I think we should establish whether it has a belly button.
Via Stefan Geens.

How fine is the sound of the military mock-Arabic word for a pregnant camel!

Go check out Barcepundit, the new home of ex-Hispalibertas bod, Franco Alemán, who is neither a dead dictator, nor French, nor German, but who does have some rather important things to say to you in English and Spanish.
I wonder if it is not time to declare a moratorium on new blogs with the prefix Bar[c/ç][e/a].

When people emerge from feudalism only to find themselves imprisoned once more by pyschopaths dressed as plumbers, it’s difficult to take exception to any desire they may have to change their condition and to make that change permanent. However, there is always the odd Cassandra in trousers determined to find defeat in victory. “In China [...]

Not a single person wanted to come on the Republican Picnic today, so I went a-wandering in a very quiet valley in the pre-littoral range. There I met a 75-year old shepherd, out for the day with a couple of dozen young ewes and goats, who explained to me a number of very interesting things, [...]

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 up [...]

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 forces [...]

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:

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.

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: