I have been thinking that if Scotland votes to leave the UK and return to the EU, will that not mean that England will have to remove its submarines and forces from Holy Loch and Clyde?
And just to add some ridiculousness: what does that do for the Duke of Edinburgh? Does he change titles? And what about that big royal castle in Scotland? Who keeps that bit?
]]>PS: Feynman is God. And God's Words are now free online - http://feynmanlectures.caltech.edu
]]>I bought a Kindle recently (U.S.) to see the garden from inside the wall. It's worse than Apple's, significantly worse it seems to me.
I have bought a few ebooks via Amazon or the Kindle, but mostly am using .mobi versions of vendors like O'Reilly and Gutenberg that offer other file types and no DRM. It's my way of examining the trap without getting trapped. Am about to write to one writer who only offers through Amazon and tell him I'm buying the paperback directly from him though I prefer electronic, but I won't buy through his Amazon web store. (He'll have to think about that as he packages one book by hand. But he's getting far more than market so he's not being hurt.)
"Malignant monopoly or just plan evil?" Does it have to be either/or? It seems to be both.
I read Boris Johnson's column in the Telegraph, and then read the comments. First he seemed to contradict himself, then to insult the Ukip fanatics, and then to attempt to hijack the movement he decries - all in less than 750 words. Oh and he insults the French FN and the German AfD while trying to co-opt their Ukip fellow travelers. Odd. I read further about Cameron's, Clegg's, and Farage's comments and it seems like everybody but Farage is in near panic. The same is happening in France, and all the more because France's conservative UMP not only lost yesterday to the ultraconservative FN but the UMP has just today become embroiled in a huge campaign finance scandal that goes all the way to the top. So they are in full panic too. Hollande is denying that anything extraordinary is happening, though his party was so far in third place that it's like they didn't matter. The Belgian P.M. has resigned (forced), and the right wing separatist party won. So long to Belgium's government for another…forever? Other European countries have seen their far right (crazies) do well too. I still have to read Yanis Varoufakis from Greece for the high level view. Here in the US the Democrats look like they may lose fairly big to whatever is driving the Republicans over the cliff. And India just installed their new far right nationalist leader.
As the lady said, hang on, it looks like it's going to be a bumpy ride.
]]>(Oh wait, different religious historian…)
]]>Before going to Estonia I did some homework. I can write out what homework I did (TMI), but here is what I learned (from both observation and authoritative sources).
So, Estonian is a language with about 1 million speakers, which is hardly enough to make a big splash in the world. But they have a long and important tradition of literature, theater, and film.
The young people in Estonia largely speak English, and some of them are quite fluent.
Charlie was interviewed by an Estonian man, Mart Kalvet, who spoke English well, and well enough to be understood by any random English-speaker who might have dropped by. During the interview I sat next to another Estonian man (writer and translator Andrei Tuch) whose English was flawless, and barely accented.
Those Estonians whose English is near flawless and barely accented actually are often mistaken for having learned their English in Ireland. They do a thing with some English language diphthongs like the Irish do where the sound "aye" sound goes to "oy". This wasn't uniform, but I noticed it a lot with native Estonian speakers who are fluent and well practiced in English. I asked one of the tour women about it and she laughed and said she is asked about that frequently by English speakers on her tour.
** I met a number of educated and bilingual Estonians who were noticeably underemployed. Estonia has a (serious?) problem with its educated young people going abroad for better employment. This is especially a problem with their medical professionals, who emigrate.
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