March 2010
53 posts
“I just had a librarian tell me that “wikipedia is like sex”. When he...”
– Texts From Last Night
Another salute to Belgium’s finest: Man stabbed to death in Trone, 10 p.m. Sunday. Police car pursuing attacker crashed into a Mercedes, pushing it onto the pavement, killing a 24-year-old female passerby…
I can barely contain my excitement:
Herman Van Rompuy, President of the European Council, and the Poetry Centre Publishers should like to invite you to the launch of an anthology HAIKU by Herman Van Rompuy
“Let me start by apologizing to anyone who went to see “Battlefield...”
– Writer J.D. Shapiro, who wrote the movie ‘Battlefield Earth,’ apologizes to viewers and explains how the bomb came to be - NYPOST.com
“A film about a stressed-out mother, featuring the Hollywood superstar Uma...”
– Times Online
“Though it may not have been evident to politicians or populations at the time,...”
– Europe’s Next Great Test: Competitiveness Is Lacking - WSJ.com
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World - Movie Trailers -... →
:-D
95 years young and still working | Video |... →
“Post hoc, ergo propter hoc.”
“Internet search and analytics companies today have more access to high quality,...”
– Three Google / China Follow-Ups - Science and Tech - The Atlantic
“Frau Merkel ist in dieser Sache weniger flexibel, als es manchem Südeuropäer...”
– FAZ
“Das hat es noch nie gegeben: Eine deutsche Bundeskanzlerin droht anderen...”
– FAZ
“Many old-time Tories are leaving Parliament this year, including the...”
– Election Looming, Tories Put Posh Foot in Mouth - NYTimes.com
“I remember hearing Joschka Fischer, then German Vice-Chancellor, telling...”
– Has Germany just killed the dream of a European superstate? - Telegraph
After reading this — Greece Finds Villain in Germany’s Competitiveness (sorry, WSJ.com subscription required) — I cannot help but wonder whether the EMU sceptics were right all along. Was European Monetary Union one big mistake?
There are undisputed positive effects — immediately obvious to tourists or expats such as me. The euros I get paid here in Belgium are the same...
“Griekenland moet steun zoeken bij het Internationaal Monetair Fonds (IMF) en...”
– nrc.nl - Economie - Tweede Kamer blijft bij IMF-route Griekenland
“Latvia is going through a version of this IMF-pain-without-an-IMF-cure...”
– Greece, the euro, and the Battle of Jutland – Telegraph Blogs
EETimes.com - Quantum film →
“Much has been made of late about how a Greek default could tear the euro zone...”
– WSJ Editorial
“Captain of our fairy band…”
– William S., again. As a rule, I prefer his dramas, but this line from “Midsummer Night’s Dream” is just too good not to quote out of context.
I, Translator
NYTimes:
The father of machine translation, William Weaver, chose to regard Russian as a “code” obscuring the real meaning of the text. His team and its successors here and in Europe proceeded in a commonsensical way: a natural language, they reckoned, is made of a lexicon (a set of words) and a grammar (a set of rules). If you could get the lexicons of two languages inside the machine (fairly...
Kaki King →
Baseline Scenario: The Coming Greek Debt Bubble
… just look at the numbers.
By the end of 2011 Greece’s debt will around 150% of GDP (the numbers here are based on the 2009 IMF Article IV assessment; we make some adjustments for the worsening economy and the restating of numbers since that time – for example, the fiscal deficit in 2009 will likely turn out to be about 8 percent, which is...
The 11-year-old son of Azerbaijan's president just... →
Architektur : Freies Schweifen →
Eine Bibliothek für die Generation iPod: Die Technische Hochschule in Lausanne will das Lernen neu erfinden – mit wunderbarer Architektur und weitem Blick auf den Montblanc.
The Israel Crisis - Walter Russell Mead →
This is going to be interesting
NYTimes:
… potential financial doomsday, or what bond analysts call a maturity wall. From $21 billion due this year, junk bonds are set to mature at a rate of $155 billion in 2012, $212 billion in 2013 and $338 billion in 2015.
“There’s no store where you can buy toxic assets; you have to know a guy....”
– We Bought A Toxic Asset; You Can Watch It Die : NPR
We Bought A Toxic Asset; You Can Watch It Die :... →
WatchBreaking News: Some Bullshit Happening Somewhere | The Onion - America’s Finest News Source
“Es gibt ein Bild von Klee, das Angelus Novus heißt. Ein Engel ist darauf...”
– Walter Benjamin, Über den Begriff der Geschichte
Yves Smith: The focus initially is on the Economists….and the argument is that the Crisis is actually rooted in bad economic theory.
Translation: Milton Friedman was a shill. They have been feeding us bullshit since this started in the 70s. It became a massively bigger pile of bullshit in the Reagan years. We are now at the pinnacle of the Himalayas of bullshit. Domestically speaking, we’re at the summit of the Mount freakin’ McKinley of bullshit.
Yves Smith: Financial markets have no propensity to equilibrium. They fundamentally have a predisposition to boom-bust cycles.
Translation: Financial bullshit always hits the fan.
http: //outsidethe-cardboard-box.tumblr.com/post/439576967/yves-smith-for-dummies
“Approaching the derelict shell of downtown Detroit, we see full-grown trees...”
– Detroit: the last days
Tribune Company CEO Randy Michaels has banned 119 “newsspeak” words and phrases from ever crossing the lips of anchors and reporters at WGN-AM. There’s a list here, but if you’d like them in a sentence, how about this:
In other news, stay tuned, because in our top story tonight, some really good (or bad) news: as expected, in a surprise move yesterday, informed sources...
“Ajami” von Scandar Copti und Yaron Shani ist ein beeindruckender Film über...”
– ZEIT ONLINE
Das Schicksal der Erde stand auf dem Spiel →
Das Schicksal der Erde stand auf dem Spiel. Eine Frau hatte gegen Versuchsreihen am europäischen Teilchenforschungszentrum Cern Verfassungsbeschwerde eingelegt, weil sie die Zerstörung der Erde befürchtet. Doch die Klägerin wurde nicht erhört.
WatchJon Stewart does Chatroulette
“Geert Wilders, der in seinen zwei ausgewählten Zentren Almere und Den Haag auf...”
– FAZ.NET
BBC News - Lost Jewish tribe 'found in Zimbabwe' →
