December 2006 – Denseman on the Rattis

Merry Christmas

2006/12/24 23:19

This is how the nativity scene would have looked if Jesus had been born today in Port Glasgow rather than in Nazareth two millennia ago.

Merry Christmas to all readers of this blog!

CULTURE · DA

Duck in Glasgow Originally uploaded by viralbus. Mystikken spreder sig… I sidste måned bloggede jeg om en badeand, jeg fik, og i dag så jeg dette billede af en and på bagsiden af et gadeskilt på strøget i Glasgow. Intet budskab, kun en and! Hvorfor?

BLOGGING · DA · KIDS

Børneblog

2006/12/20 23:02

Marcel (min stedsøn) har nu også fået sig en blog! Den er ikke for sarte sjæle! 😉

EN · IT

The Danish police

2006/12/18 22:56

Google has a function that allows you to find web pages similar to a given one. For instance, here is their list of pages similar to this blog. Many of the links there are very relevant: Some are the pages of friends (Palle, Hotdog, MW, Mailund, Sebastian), and some are pages of organisations or resources I’m either involved with or have an interest in (DK-TUG, DSN, FIDUSO, ODS), but some of them are just plain weird – Bones Family Restaurants (I’ve never ever eaten there), houses in […]

DA · FAMILY · KIDS · TRAVEL

Til Danmark

2006/12/16 10:46

Denmark covered in snow Originally uploaded by supergnuen. Jeg tager i år til Danmark sammen med min kæreste, Phyllis, og hendes børn (Marcel, Charlotte og Léon). Vi ankommer til Tirstrup tirsdag den 26. om aftenen, og vi flyver tilbage torsdag den 4. januar om morgenen. Her er en kalender over besøget, så alle let kan se, hvornår vi er optaget. Jeg vil prøve at holde den up-to-date: Dato Program tirsdag 26/12 Ankomst. onsdag 27/12 torsdag 28/12 Portvinslæsegruppe. fredag 29/12 “Juleaften” i Sdr. Vissing med Miriam etc. lørdag […]

EN · POLITICS

Nuclear weapons, internet pornography and belief in the supernatural

2006/12/14 23:23

UKPollingReport has an article about Trident. It finishes off with this sentence: It looks as though nuclear weapons and power is one of those rare issues, along with things like internet pornography, embryonic research and belief in the supernatural where women and man have sharply contrasting views. It’s brilliant how he just lists those issues as if it’s self-evident men and women differ on these topics. Is it?

EN · POLITICS

Tories now want us to slap hoodies, not hug them

2006/12/10 10:51

There’s an article in the Guardian/Observer today about the Tories who apparently are “demanding the right for citizens to tackle teenage yobs physically”. I do understand what they’re trying to do – they basically want to reassure good citizens that’s it’s OK to step in and help old ladies attacked by happy slappers, even if it involves slapping one or two of them. However, what on earth would the law say? That it’s OK to attack any group of people aged between 13 and 20? If so, […]

EN · POLITICS

Fish

2006/12/21 23:34

The new EU fishing quotas made me wonder whether this problem is handled in entirely the wrong way. We’re restricting the days the fishermen can spend at sea and we’re telling them to throw away big parts of their catch. But wouldn’t it be an alternative to restrict the technology instead, ordering them to use small, slow boats with small nets and no fancy technology to spot the fish, basically taking them back to the days when overfishing wasn’t a problem?

EN · POLITICS

A death that makes me happy

2006/12/21 22:25

Today it was announced that Türkmenba?y, Saparmyrat Ataýewiç Nyýazow, the dictator of Turkmenistan, had died. Although I don’t normally rejoice in the death of other people, I sincerely think this is a man that Turkmenistan and the world will do better without. Some of his more unusual actions according to Wikipedia included: ordering that physicians swear an oath to him instead of the Hippocratic Oath decreeing that teachers who wished to avoid being put on the lowest grade of pay or even sacked, would have to write […]

EN · FEATURED · HUMOUR

Broken joke

2006/12/19 14:15

I’m just back from the Chrismas lunch in the canteen. In my cracker I found half a joke – the other half had mysteriously vanished. Here’s what I read: …at’s yellow and stays…in the fridge?…stard. What’s the joke? My first idea was the following: What’s yellow and staysfresh in the fridge?Custard. But somehow it doesn’t seem very funny. 🙁 People suggested various kinds of custard to make it funny, but it didn’t really work. An alternative would be this: What’s yellow and stayswithin the fridge?A bastard. That […]

DA · KIDS

Julestjerner

2006/12/17 23:36

Jeg begyndte i dag at lave julepynt med Marcel og Charlotte. I Storbritannien har de af uransagelige grunde næsten ingen traditioner for at lave juleting – de laver ingen julepynt, de bager ingen julesmåkager, de laver ingen julesylte – de køber bare alting færdigt (selv julemiddagen). Så min mor fløj over med glaspapir og papirstrimler til mig, og vi lavede i dag nogle hjerter, og vi forsøgte også at flette stjerner – det gik nu ikke så godt, så jeg skal vist lige øve mig i frokostpausen […]

DA · FEATURED · PHOTOGRAPHY

Kameraoversigt

2006/12/16 22:35

Flickr har nu endelig tilføjet en funktion, så man kan søge på kameraer og se statistik og populære billeder, og man kan finde billeder, man har taget med specifikke kameraer. Her er en liste over de digitale kameraer i mit liv: Kamera Beskrivelse Eksempel Sony ?100 Vores digitale spejlreflekskamera, som jeg købte for et par måneder siden. Klik her! Polaroid PDC4350 Mit første digitale kamera. Flickr ser ikke ud til at have det med. 🙁 Klik her! Samsung D900 Min mobiltelefon, som rummer et kamera med en […]

EN · POLITICS

Carbon pounds

2006/12/15 18:49

I read an article in the Guardian about Labour’s idea about personal carbon allowances that can be bought and sold. One sentence struck me in this article: “[…] [It] redistributes money from the rich to the poor, from the frequent flyers to never-flyers, with a parallel currency.” A currency is exactly what this would be. I don’t understand what the actual difference is between this system and increasing green taxes while lowering other taxes. Or more concretely: Rather than giving each person a carbon quota worth, say, […]

EN · PHOTOGRAPHY

Huge photos

2006/12/12 21:22

I discovered a program today called Rasterizer. It takes a JPEG photo and generates a multi-page rasterised PDF in black and white which one can then print out, cut out, glue together and put onto the wall. I’m afraid it’s rather hard to recognise Léon on the sample I made for the posting, though. 🙁

EN · LINGUISTICS

Globish

2006/12/11 23:15

According to this article in The Times, a French guy has come up with a subset of English for international communication which he calls Globish. I’m not quite sure what the difference to Basic English is, though. There is a nice quote in the article: “He says that in multi-national meetings, Anglo-Saxons stand out as strange because they cling to their original language instead of using the elementary English adopted by colleagues from other countries.” I’ve experienced this myself, and it’s very true!

CULTURE · EN · FEATURED · LINGUISTICS

Phyl(lis)

2006/12/10 10:03

Writing about my name made me realise there’s another name I ought to write about. One of the reasons I call myself Thomas in English, and not Tom, Tommy or Big Tam, is that Danish names are almost never abbreviated – Thomas, Tom, Tommy and Mads are all considered different names – so I felt I was changing my name if I abbreviated it. Funnily enough, I’ve never had any problems with short forms of names in Russian and Georgian… I wonder whether it’s because it’s an […]

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