Thomas Widmann – Page 44 – Denseman on the Rattis

I’m John Ritter so I’m happy

2009/09/01 10:11

The Telegraph has a nice series of weird signs.

I like this one: It neatly illustrates the value of good punctuation.

Mum & dad in Georgia Originally uploaded by viralbus Det er i dag 40 år siden, mine forældre blev gift i Odder Kirke. Tillykke til dem! De fejrer dagen alene i Italien, hvor de i praksis nu bor, så jeg håber, de får en god dag. Jeg véd allerede, hvad de giver hinanden i rubinbryllupsgave, da de købte den, mens vi besøgte dem tidligere på måneden: En Gaggia Syncrony Logic, og den er altså dejlig! 🙂

DA · POLITICS

Den radikale tunge på vægtskålen

2009/08/28 17:16

balance Originally uploaded by hans s Socialdemokraterne og SF’s beslutning om at ignorere Det radikale Venstre i formuleringen af deres fælles valgprogram er endnu en konsekvens af, at De Radikale ikke længere er tungen på vægtskålen. Alt afhænger derfor af, hvordan situationen ser ud efter næste valg. Hvis den nuværende balance bevares, har Enhedslisten + SF + SocDem + DrV ikke flertal, og der er hamrende ligegyldigt, om de fire partier er indbyrdes enige eller ej. (Medmindre Dansk Folkeparti skifter side, men det tvivler jeg nu på, […]

CRIME · EN · POLITICS · SCOTLAND

1000 CCTV cameras to solve one crime

2009/08/26 20:00

One nation under CCTV Originally uploaded by jordi.martorell There was a must-read article in The Telegraph yesterday about CCTV cameras. It points out that very few crimes are solved due to the cameras: “For every 1,000 cameras in London, less than one crime is solved per year.” I’m sure there are many other ways to spend the money that would lead to more crimes being solved. But I guess Brits have got too used to them: “Britain has 1 per cent of the world’s population but around […]

EN · KIDS · LINGUISTICS

C₁V₁(C₁V₂)

2009/08/23 21:48

Every Child Ready … Originally uploaded by Beaufort County Library (SC) With very few exceptions (mainly /(w)uf/ ‘dog’ and /ba?dabade/ ‘TV’), Anna’s vocabulary consists of words that adhere to the syllable structure C?V?(C?V?). In other words, she uses some monosyllabic words of the structure CV(V), e.g.: /ka/ ‘cat, tiger, lion, car’/na(i)/ ‘no’/mi/ ‘my, drink’/pi/ ‘bed, sleepy’/?a/ ‘meat, sausage’/m?/ ‘sheep’ [from Danish mæh ‘bah’]/t?a/ ‘toe’ [from Danish tæer ‘toes’]/?ai/ ‘sibling’ [from ‘guys’] /te/ ‘more’ [from Danish til ‘to’] Other words are of the structure C?V?C?V?, that is, a […]

CULTURE · EN · MEDIA

The jury is out

2009/08/18 23:26

Eurovision (From VLADStudio) Originally uploaded by Quang Minh (YILKA) Back in May I blogged about Eurovision that I thought the UK and France were only saved by the juries: “But I think it’s beyond doubt that Azerbaijan would have been very close to winning, and that the UK and especially France would have been huge disasters had they not introduced juries.” Now they’ve released the results of the televoting. It turns out Azerbaijan would indeed have been number 2 (not 3), and that the UK and France […]

ELECTION · EN · POLITICS

Resolver One

2009/08/11 08:46

Conservative Club Originally uploaded by gerry balding The uniform swing was probably a good model in the old two-party system, but there are many signs that it simply doesn’t predict future elections very well any more. Some time ago I wrote about some regional results that indicated that the LibDems were collapsing in the Tory-dominated south but doing well in the Labour-dominated north. And now a new predictor tool, Resolver One, has appeared. Basically, it uses a much more complex model that takes into account that different […]

EN · KIDS · LINGUISTICS

Anna’s grammar

2009/08/30 22:20

Syntax Error – Folded Up Beyond All Recognition Originally uploaded by Simon Pow Anna’s language is developing rapidly at the moment – my recent posting is already out of date. However, I feel I should write a bit about her grammar while it’s still simple. For a very long time, most of her utterances consisted of one or two words. The vocative would be expressed by a name on its own (Dade! Mimi!), but in all other cases, the name would be introduced by the copula/article ?, […]

CULTURE · EN · MEDIA

The ethnic composition of Balamory

2009/08/29 14:49

Toy-Tobermory Originally uploaded by marinegirl The kiddie programme Balamory has eight main characters: Archie, a white English man in a kilt Edie, a white Scottish woman Josie, a black English woman Ms Hoolie, a white Scottish woman PC Plum, a white Scottish man Penny, a white English woman Spencer, a black American man Suzie, a white Scottish woman That is, there are five women and three men. Four of them are white Scottish, two are white English, one is black English and one is black American. That […]

EDUCATION · EN

Grade inflation

2009/08/27 11:34

Writing Exams Originally uploaded by ccarlstead The English GCSE results are out. Shockingly, 21.6 per cent of grades were awarded an A* or A, and more than 67.1 per cent of entries were at grades A*-C. [A* is a English invention because too many pupils were getting an A.] This makes a mockery of having an international scale of grades. In Denmark, where the A-F scale was introduced recently (disguised as the -3–12 scale), there is a target percentage for the number of pupils getting each grade: […]

BLOGGING · EN · MEDIA

When to write

2009/08/25 20:00

This Is Disruptive Originally uploaded by Subspace The Study Hacks blog has a posting about when and how “real” writers write (hattip: Mailund on the Internet), and it makes the following recommendations: Spread out work on an assignment over several days. Coming at it fresh increases its quality. During these days, get up early. Probably earlier than you are used to. Say, around 7 or 8 am. (This means these days will be weekdays, probably early in the week so you can avoid temptations to party the […]

EN · POLITICS

Too little farming

2009/08/24 22:31

Valley Farm, West Wratting Originally uploaded by Andrew Stawarz I was reading an article about the UK’s EU rebate when a sentence jumped out at me: “The main reason for this discrepancy was that the UK had relatively few farms, so it got a small share of farm subsidies, which at the time made up 70% of budget expenditure.“ I’ve seen this explanation before, so I guess there must be some truth in it. What I don’t understand, however, is why the UK’s reaction to this fact […]

EN · GADGETS · TRANSPORT

Watching the wheels

2009/08/21 23:08

Split wing mirror Originally uploaded by viralbus Shortly after I got my driving license, we went to Tuscany on holiday. My parents, who we were visiting, thought it would be good for me to learn to drive on the right, too, so they let me drive their car, a Fiat Multipla. One feature of that car is that it has split wing mirrors (see the photo): The top part is a normal wing mirror, while the bottom part is fixed to show the bottom edge of the […]

CULTURE · EN · HISTORY

Clock design

2009/08/16 18:08

09-08-04 (23) Originally uploaded by PhylB They have this wonderful clock in the Duomo of Florence. It’s clearly from before clock design was standardised. These days we take it for granted that analogue clocks are divided into 12 hours, counting from midnight and noon, starting from the top and moving clockwise round the circle. But this clock demonstrates that none of these design decisions are natural or obvious. The duomo clock is divided into 24 hours, counting from sunset, starting from the bottom, and moving anti-clockwise round […]

EN · KIDS · LINGUISTICS

/(t)ɬa/

2009/08/13 08:36

Tiger eating his meat Originally uploaded by Tambako the Jaguar Anna has her own vocabulary. Most of the words are based on English or Danish ones – /?a?a/ for ‘flower’, /ka/ for ‘cat’, /m?/ for ‘sheep’ (Danish mæh ‘bah’), etc. However, her word for ‘meat, sausage, burger’ doesn’t seem to be based on any word known to us: /(t)?a/ (that is, as if it had been a Welsh word spelled lla, or a Zulu one spelled hla, but sometimes the fricative becomes an affricate as in Nahuatl […]

EN · POLITICS

Legalise drugs

2009/08/09 08:42

MoYuMe – Seems our neighbour is diabetic… Originally uploaded by cj.sveningsson I’m increasingly of the opinion that legalising drugs is the only way out. At the moment, alcohol is often dearer than drugs, and tobacco carries more warnings, so the current situation clearly does not work. There is an excellent blog posting in The Devil’s Kitchen about this topic. Here are the three reasons he lists in favour of legalisation: The first reason is that, like the US, a large part of Britain’s criminal activity—especially gang activity—is […]

Earlier stories »