en – Page 50 – Denseman on the Rattis

BLOGGING · EN

WordPress upgraded

2008/10/09 22:58

LG-CU500_Update_Complete_Finish
Originally uploaded by Adam Comerford

I’ve just upgraded WordPress to version 2.6.2 (from 2.6.0).

I used the Automatic Upgrade module, and it did everything for me – I just needed to press next step repeatedly.

As far as I can tell, everything is working well. Let me know if anything seems to be broken.

ECONOMICS · EN

Update on Iceland

2008/10/09 20:41

Today’s best story about Iceland is this on in the IHT which claims that Iceland is virtually bankrupt now.

EN · MEDIA

I’ve just finished reading The Beekeeper’s Apprentice by Laurie R. King. It’s the first book in the Mary Russell series. I happened to start out by reading number 5 (“Oh, Jerusalem”), followed by 6 (“Justice Hall”), 2 (“A Monstrous Regiment of Women”), 4 (“The Moor”) and 3 (“A Letter of Mary”). I’d actually recommend reading number 5 before number 1 because the whole of the former is summarised on two pages in the latter (I expect the author didn’t at that time expect to write it up […]

EN · POLITICS

Will Iceland go bankrupt?

2008/10/04 23:07

Not of this Earth – The Bubbling Sulfur Pools… Originally uploaded by Stuck in Customs There’s a scary article about Iceland on BBC. Basically, the Icelandic banks have overstretched themselves to such an extent that the Icelandic state may have the choice between letting all the major banks collapse or taking them over and then possibly having to declare a state bankruptcy. Some of the comments suggest that Iceland might have to introduce the euro to prevent a collapse of its currency. Things might be bad here, […]

ECONOMICS · EN

Trust and the Great Depression

2008/10/01 22:21

"Trust Me" Context Originally uploaded by Dimmerswitch There’s a good article in the NY Times today. It describes how trust disappeared in the early 1930s, and how we’re seeing something similar now. It’s not very technical, and well worth a read.

EN · KIDS · TRAVEL

Center Parcs

2008/09/29 20:44

Lots the archer Originally uploaded by viralbus We’ve just come back from three full days in Center Parcs (Friday noon–Monday noon). It’s basically hundreds of wooden cottages inside a forest, with lots of activities for kids and adults. Most of them cost money, except for the subtropical water complex. The kids loved it – they now want to go there for all their holidays (although I think Marcel will change his mind in about five years’ time – like Legoland, it’s devoid of young people between 15 […]

EN · POLITICS

Neocons and born-again Christians

2008/09/20 22:12

I’ve just finished reading a very important book. Conceptually, it consists of three parts: Firstly, it describes the American evangelical (or born-again) Christian movement, tracing its history and explaining what its thinking and aims are. Secondly, the book deals with the neoconservatives, showing how they started out as marxists, later becoming conservatives but retaining their revolutionary instincts. Thirdly, it goes over George W. Bush’s presidency in great detail, in particular the decision-making processes leading up to the Iraq war. Every European should read the first two parts […]

ECONOMICS · EN

Icelandic currency board

2008/10/07 22:28

East African Currency board Originally uploaded by DEMOSH This is really annoying! Just yesterday I was planning to blog that I thought Iceland should peg their currency to the euro, but I was tired and decided to postpone it till today, and now those bastards have gone ahead and have stolen my idea, and I can’t even prove I thought of it first! ;-( Anyway, I’m not sure just pegging the króna to the euro is very safe, not given the reportedly diminutive size of the Seðlabanki’s […]

EN · MEDIA

The Beekeeper’s Apprentice

2008/10/06 22:12

CULTURE · EN · HUMOUR

Mixed surnames

2008/10/05 20:22

Thinking about surname equality, the problem with giving a child both parents’ names is that they’ll get really long after a few generations. I mean, Buchanan-Widmann sounds nice, but if Anna’s children were to be called Buchanan-Widmann-Fernández-Markovi? or similar, things would get a bit silly. So Phyllis and I discussed an alternative today: People could mix their surnames. If this had been introduced when our grandparents married, it would have worked as follows. Großmutter (née Kohler) and Großvater (Widmann) could have called their kids either Wider or […]

EN · POLITICS

Crazy time zones

2008/10/03 22:34

Given the width of the USA, it’s no wonder that the country is divided into several time zones. However, in my European naïveness I had assumed that it worked by each state deciding which time zone it wanted to be in. This is not at all the case, however. Time zone borders run through the middle of many states (click on the map for details), e.g.: CST/MST boundary divides the southwest portion of North Dakota from the rest of the state divides South Dakota roughly in half […]

BLOGGING · EN · IT

What others are saying

2008/10/03 16:45

my notes taken… Originally uploaded by arimoore You might have noticed that I’ve added a new feature in the top right corner of my blog: What others are saying. It’s using the homonymous WordPress extension, but I had to make a couple of modifications. First of all, I wanted the most recent postings, whatever their source, not just one per blog, so I needed to comment out a break, but this was easy as it was already explained in the source code (but I think it should […]

ECONOMICS · EN

25 øre

2008/09/30 23:08

Almost history Originally uploaded by Funchye The Danish crown (krone) used to be divided into 100 øre (from Latin aureus). However, when I grew up, the smallest coin was 5 øre, so all amounts had to be rounded up or down to this amount. Then in the late 80s, 5 and 10 øre were abolished too, leaving 25 øre as the smallest coin. However, tomorrow that too will cease to be legal tender, and 50 øre (5p) will be the smallest Danish coin. I think the UK […]

EN · POLITICS

Drunk party workers

2008/09/26 09:45

Peroni Originally uploaded by mikepilat If this is true, it’s astonishing. Did Ruth Kelly have to go, and did Gordon Brown have to have the effects of his speech ruined, just because their spindoctors were drunk?

EN · POLITICS

Mean-tested computers

2008/09/23 22:33

Xatarra i xinet Originally uploaded by art_es_anna Gordon Brown’s idea to hand out computer vouchers annoys me. Just to summarise: The prime minister announced that parents are to be offered vouchers worth up to £700 to connect the 1.4 million children growing up in homes without a computer. “To ensure that we are prepared for the times to come, the government will fund one million more households to get online, enabling parents to link with the teachers at their children’s school and helping young people with their […]

ELECTION · EN · POLITICS · SCOTLAND

Labour will be reduced to 93 seats in Westminster

2008/09/18 22:21

The new Mori poll has Con 52%, Lab 24%, LibDem 12%, SNP/Plaid Cymru 4% (the latter is a UK figure, so probably something like 40% in Scotland). Some reports have claimed that this would lead to the following seat distribution in Westminster (using Electoral Calculus): Con 493, Lab 121, LibDem 8. However, this is not taking into account that the SNP rather than the Tories are the ones benefitting from Labour’s collapse. If instead one uses Electoral Calculus’s regional predictor, the result is even more stunning. Basically, […]

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