Made file "Minister for health," from an old file about an Irish sort of corruption ... | Steve Edwards' website |
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Made page "write what you know [rage]," about one of the kids who harrassed me for a couple of years in Kilkenny, Ireland.
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31 January 2010
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Made page "McCarthy's Folly," about an odd monument in Cork City.
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31 January 2010
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Improved the page "aphorisms" — 24 January 2010 | |
Made the page "to bring on a Romanian train." — 3 January 2010
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Working on a page that is intended to succinctify the Dutch Golden Age. — 7 December 2009 | |
Improved the page "polders," about the basic unit of Dutch terrain/water-management. — 7 December 2009 | |
Made file "Jesus and me" — 6 December 2009 | |
Improved the page "B and B Complex fire," about a forest fire in Central Oregon that served as a backdrop for a G.W. Bush speech on forest management, and which many considered suspicious.
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The Irish don't know how to complain. — 4 December 2009 | |
A few generalizations— probably untrue most of the time; but true often enough that they are worth noting ...
— 2 December, 2009 | |
I started the page "good Polish words." — 30 November 2009 | |
The only difference between living with men and living with children is that you can't tell a man to clean up his mess.... — 17 November 2009 | |
Improved the short page about Anglo-Normans, who first entered Ireland in 1169 Wexford. — 15 November 2009 | |
La nonstop — drinking late in smalltown Romania ...| |
Improved page "Bombing of Nijmegen" | |
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Improved page Irish-English terms — 7 September, 2009. | |
Mosquitoes, new to Ireland — 1 September, 2009. | |
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— 27 August, 2009
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To do: Start learning Polish; figure out how to do some screenprinting. Not necessarily in that order and both at the same time.
— 21 August, 2009. Cork city, Ireland | |
A gang — or copycats — in rural Ireland are stealing ATM's with stolen construction equipment.
— 21 August, 2009 | |
"But I'm [also] an immigrant." "No you're not." ... — 15 June 2009
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None of you stopped harrassing me because you decided that it was wrong....
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I improved the page "Bible truth in a page." — 26 March 2009
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Chopped shit out of link page "international," improving it greatly. — 20 March 2009
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I improved the file "Bleeding heart my ass."... — 16 March 2009
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I improved the file "Lot's daughters" — 15 March 2009
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Perfection changes — To Twitter, 14 March 2009
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"Learn words," a thought on language aquisition... — 11 March, 2009, adapted from an old file
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Carbon fuels ...
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I had an argument with a crow....
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Created page "Thanks a million," about a common Irish-English expression and its translation from Gaelic.... — 8 March 2009
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Anybody who enjoys watching a close-up shot of a man's face that shows how much he's enjoying f*cking a woman should probably be watching videos of men f*cking men. — 7 March 2009
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Improved file "real index," which is an attempt to create a root directory of sorts.... — 7 March 2009
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War — at least it's a job.
... Remembering Ronald Reagan, the senile genial fool of a president who started that whole idiot "Republican Revolution." — 6 March 2009
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Improved the page "twig," about the few Gaelic words extant in Irish English — 5 March 2009
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Liberals tend to have gaps in their logic. Conservatives tend to have lies. — to twitter 27 February 2009
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Began the agglomeration file "outward links." — 25 February 2009
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Improved file "exploitation" — most importantly by hacking off almost half of it. — 23 February, 2009
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Consciousness is to matter as magnetism is to electricity — components of a single phenomenon. — 22 February, 2009.
(Added to my Facebook profile as "religious views," and posted as a "tweet" on Twitter.)
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Improved page "phonetic," a bit of a short poim. — 22 February 2009
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I improved the page "European- and American-English spelling." — 22 February 2009
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I made the page "The United Kingdom of the Netherlands, Nederland, The Netherlands, and Holland," about the name of the modern state and anglophone guilt upon mis-stating it. — 21 February 2009
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It's too bad Bill Gates didn't think of his philanthropy when he was presiding over the software that most of the computerized world uses. — 6 February 2009
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I'm working on a page called "succinctoids." — 6 February 2009
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WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican lawmakers opposed to a bill expanding a children's health insurance program argued that Democratic-led efforts would draw about 2.4 million children away from private insurance into government-sponsored insurance. — In their explanation about how a cruelty-based economy is better than one considerate of human reality.
27 January 2009
Made file "Minister for health," from an old file about an Irish sort of corruption ...
— 23 January 2009
Baarle is a town in the municipalities of Baarle-Hertog and Baarle-Nassau — The Netherlands and Belgium, respectively.
Yes — one town, two municipalities (and, yes — two countries.)
— 12 January, 2009
Cannibalistic humanoid robber barons — a poem ...
— 11 January, 2009
When a bilingual speaker notices that a native-English-speaker is listening to his language, he becomes obsessed with one question: "do you understand this," and cannot help asking it — in English.
— 10 January, 2009
Uploaded file "International space-mirror compact."
— 10 January 2009
Created the files "terminal morraine" and "SETI, 0."
Linked the latter from home page.
— 9 January 2009
The crazy thing is that we're experimenting with our own bodies and minds, fiddling and fucking around with all these "legal-until-otherwise" marijuana substitutes, while in the meantime we have already a perfectly suitable material that people have used for millenia.
But it's not legal.
— 8 January 2009
Created files dutch food,
high form of art,
for a year from old files. — 6 January 2009
Stoked by people who have something to gain, supported by those who don't say anything, evil deeds come from those who think that what they're doing is right.
— 6 January 2009
Rich Irish farmers, always complaining about something (in popular mythology) ...
— 4 January 2009
Houses are empty.
People are homeless.
— 4 January, 2009
Botellón — public drinking in Spain...
I finally finished an uploadable version of the page "Blue Moon," which I drafted in March 2005, about an incident in November 2001 in a Kilkenny (Ireland) poolroom.
Made file "amphibiguous," about buffalo and language.
— 15 December 2008
I'm working on a page about the good Dutch word peperduur, which means "as expensive as pepper." ...
— 13 December 2008
Made page "Bertie Ahern wins big on the horses," from a news item of last summer here in Ireland.
— 11 December 2008
The Irish didn't know George Carlin, a hero of standup comedy and an Irish-American....
— 27 November 2008
The genetics of skepticism ...
— 22 November 2008
Created page "Lost founder effect." ...
— 10 November 2008
How can I find out whether or not anybody has counted my vote?
— 22:20 30/10/2008
Challenge:
Describe how Sarah Palin is the future of the Republican party without violating Godwin's Law.
— 30 October 2008
There are a million people I don't want to see in this little town.
— 17 October 2008
Important differences in a few Irish-English definitions ...
A Roman legion probably arrived in what is now The Netherlands about 55 years B.C. ...
Leonardo da Vinci invented a bicycle, but religious oppression kept it in his notebooks.
— 6 October 2008
Solar everything.
Any device that uses electricity and has any surface exposable to the sun.
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What if the Large Hadron Collider provides quickly an answer so explicit that it, the hadron collider itself, becomes mostly obsolete?
— 12 September, 2008
My memory is not what it used to be, and I'm sure of it. But the question is — how could I know that? — 8 August 2008
"The more you drink, the more you save." — A Dublin Irish friend of mine, when I told him about the price of a beer in Romania.
— 01 August 2008
"He's autistic." "I don't care if he's Vincent van Gogh, ..."
When fools encounter greatness...
"The question now becomes whether evolution has gone through the trouble of selecting for these particular patterns more than once." — Doctor Philip Steven Low (at Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego California,) talking with a reporter from The New York Times about sleeping/dreaming patterns of the zebra finch, which are quite like those of mammals.
— Added to file "Media Bites," 1 July 2008
Brokering and pillaging ... — 19 June 2008
Why do you need space if you're not punching and kicking? — 12 June 2008
Chainsaws, black markers, and salt: you can always do more, but you can never go do less. — 3 June 2008
Art, science, and religion go into a bar.... — 3 June 2008
Whether or not we find a Higgs, the experiments will be a revolution of science. What ever in this universe the Higgs really is, nobody will ever know.
— 27 May 2008
And on her list of desirable characteristics was an asterisk leading to a sublist, a heirarchy of surnames that would be sonorous as appended with "MBA."
— 23 May 2008
Nijmegen is the oldest city in The Netherlands.*
With an asterisk. ...
— 23 May 2008
They're going to talk. If you don't give them something to talk about, they're going to fill in the gaps — and you won't like what they say.
— 22 May, 2008
Pasteurized?
Up to me bollix, please.
— 20 May 2008
Why can I not draw upon a text document?
Okay, so they're different file formats; but can't we do an overlay — can we not get some of these idiot programs to work with each other?
— 18 May 2008
The lingua franca, as we call it in English [from the Italian for "French,"] is English....
— 18 May 2008
A relatively small amount of words compose the guts of any language that uses words.
— 14 May 2008
A.D. 2050 —
A rush on products containing glacier-water and deepsea minerals is driving eco-manic shoppers to destroy the last pristine environments....
— 12 May 2008
George W. Bush, the executive shit-eating-grin boy
— 9 May 2008
the strangest is which that what everybody knows.
— 8 May 2008
Flevoland became the twelfth province of The Netherlands in 1986, after three-quarters of a century of work claimed its 1400-square-kilometer area from the former Zuiderzee.
— From the page "The naming of the 'Nieuwe Hollandse Waterlinie'"
— 8 May 2008
I made a page called "Foxy John's," from an old file about a visit to a pub/hardware-store in Dingle, Ireland.
— 4 May 2008
Barbie has no ass.
— 3 May 2008
I'm working on a page about the history of St. Canice's Cathedral, Kilkenny Ireland
— 3 May 2008
It would be naïve to assume that George W. Bush is going to relinquish the office of the presidency in January 2009 in recognition of the November 2008 elections.
— 3 May 2008
I'm seeing a lot of doves, in Ireland, for the first time, this spring.
Last summer was the first time I've seen mosquitoes here, since I arrived in 2001.
— 28 April 2008
"The Hubble Space Telescope has captured stunning images of colliding galaxies, which have been released to mark the 18th anniversary of the telescope's launch."
— BBC, in a stunning abuse of the language, 26 April 2008
— Added to file "media bites."
I improved the page about the house that was falling down a hill in Berkeley California, 1998.
— 26 April 2008
No, no, no — don't become more like America. What, are you blind? Are you stupid? Can you not think; are you under control? Stop; don't do it; please — don't Americanize.
— 16 April 2008
Anglophonia, Century 21 —
It is okay for a woman to treat a man like a meal ticket, but not for a man to treat a woman like a piece of meat.
— 13 April 2008
If most people were left-handed, would we consider the South Pole to be "up?"
— 7 April 2008
Watching a few airplanes — Osdorp, The Netherlands, December 2000.
— page created 28 March 2008
— 26 March 2008
The phrase "this totally proves" almost categorically disproves the objectivity of an idea.
— 20 March 2008
• "Mies and Le Corbusier designed pretty uncomfortable miniature manifestos," said Gareth Williams, curator at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. "That's probably why most photographs of their furniture don't include people."
— International Herald Tribune, 3 March 2008, in yet one more article about revolutionary, unusable furniture.
— Added to file "media bites."
• For the first time, more than one in one-hundred Americans are incarcerated.
• "If Democrats can?t landslide the Republicans this year, they ought to just wrap up, close down, emerge in a different form."
— Ralph Nader, announcing his bid for the United States Presidency as a third-party candidate on the TV show "Meet the Press," 24 February 2008.
— Added to file "media bites."
• William F. Buckley Jr. is Dead.
— 27 February 2008
• I found a Huge topographical map of the Netherlands (3459 x 4893 pixels.)
• Kosovo declares independence from Serbia
— 18 February 2008
• But they all cause a problem for me, too, individually — because in each of them I find a vestige of the collective thinking, the "group mind," and it is a deeply conservative way of thinking that was never properly nuanced or accurate anyhow.
— February 2008
• An Eastern European cannot understand why an American would live in Ireland.
— 10 February 2008
222232244629420445529739893461909967206666939096499764990979600 divided by 137347080577163115432025771710279131845700275212767467264610201 = 1.61803399
• Made file "Saint Canice's Psychiatric Hospital," about an imposing structure here in Kilkenny Ireland....
— 8 February 2008
• I made the old file "handaxe" look like a respectable page, anyhow....
— 6 February 2008
• Your misconceptions of me are outdated ...
— 6 February 2008
The phrase "war on terror" is a deception; and whether it's used intentionally or incidentally, it has no honest meaning.
— 3 February 2008
English for Romanians — a proto-page...
— 3 February 2008
It's hard to write about a place when you have lived there.
Travelogue is easy; or if not easy at least superficial and incidental.
But when you live somewhere and meet people, it becomes different.
...The definite article, the indefinite article, and the infinite article, the latter of which he said was beyond my understanding and which he did not try to explain to me...
2 February 2008
• People tend to associate God with religion, and fail to associate God with an unbelievably complex Universe that has a mysterious tendency toward life, the complexity of which appears to violate the second law of thermodynamics.
— 1 February 2008
One cannot spell in English. One cannot spell in Chinese, either — but English has an alphabet....
— 31 January, 2008
• And I could see how this beautiful child had become confused, and angry, and disatisfied, and unhappy.
I could understand how I had become lost, for two decades. I could see who I really am, and how the child who knew so much became the adult who had let people make him believe that he did not know so much.
— 24 January 2008
• The new leu; Romanian currency...
— 21 January 2008
• If you don't bring proper change into a Romanian shop, you will occasionally have to pay extra....
— 20 January 2008
• The technology is still primitive, the way we have to wait variable and significant periods for a simple function to perform....
— 20 January 2008
• Was America ready for an idiot president?
— 8 December 2007
"Clinton-bashing is the last shared article of faith (and last area of indisputable G.O.P. competence) that could yet unite the fractured and dispirited conservative electorate."
— Frank Rich, New York Times, "Who?s Afraid of Barack Obama?" 2 December 2007
In the debate about robot soldiers, nobody seems to be asking "who are these robots going to be killing?" Humane, cost-saving, as if they have a mission as simple as sweeping the kitchen floor.
— from an old file (11 March 2006.)
— 02 December 2007
It's 2007, and Romanians born during the revolution of 1989 are now able to cast a vote in the European Union.
— 30/11/2007
I try to be patient with Irish pedestrians....
— 30 November 2007
http://ro-en.ro is an excellent dictionary function, by first appearance. Romanian-English, it gives multiple definitions; provides a running list of recent searches (by oneself and others.)...
This is an online dictionary that one can use to learn a language, and I like it very much.
(I'm trying to learn some Romanian.)
— 29/11/2007
Customer support hangs up the 'phone
Her first impression was that I was not able to get access to a website that I was creating on their system. But I was in fact trying to find out why, on my Chorus-NTL broadband access account, I can not view my website at geocities.com — or indeed any page hosted by geocities.com.
It took me moment to explain to her. When she got it, she made strange sounds....
— 28 November 2007
It's easy to discount religion, but impossible to discount it.
— from an old file (14 December 2006.)
— 28/11/2007
The original Dutch military floodwater region, the Oude Hollandse Waterlinie, did not encompass Utrecht because at that time (1672,) Utrecht was already overtaken by French troops.
The Nieuwe Hollandse Waterline of the 19th century brought Utrecht within the protection of inundative defense.
— 26 November 2007
• The Waaiersluis — A Dutch water-management innovation pertinent to the Nieuwe Hollandse Waterlinie...
— 23 November 2007
The idea that an automobile can be "zero emissions" can only be valid if the production of its fuel is accounted.
— 20 November 2007
The Irish mama's boy apparently does not know that his mother has been swabbing up after him for all these years....
— 18/11/2007
"Although 113 years is not much when you've been dead for 140 thousand millennia, it nevertheless seems remarkable that a new dinosaur genus [Xenoposeidon] could go unnoticed for so long in the museum's* collection."
— The Journal Nature, 15 November 2007.
* Natural History Museum in London, UK.
• Currently my favorite radio program: The Eamon Lowe Show, from "The Spirit Store" in Dundalk, Ireland. Recorded before a live audience, with a panel of guests. [broken link removed]
Not for the easily-offended. Eamon Lowe is irreverent, and plays up a bit on a philistine, emperor-has-no-clothes persona. I think he chooses his panel at least in part based upon their humorlessness, because he almost always (so far) offends at least one guest beyond exasperation and into real anger.
But he's funny, in my opinion — and pertinent. He is certainly more intelligent and in possession of more guile and wits than many of his guests appear to believe.
Prodictions
— 14 November 2007
— from my dreambook ca 8:30 13/11/2007
Barack Obama's Speech at the Jefferson Jackson Dinner
— 10 November 2007
Ever since I lived in The Netherlands for a year-and-a-half, I have been unable to tolerate the way that Irish people walk in public.
I get exasperated, flustered, and angry — and then I feel guilty, because I love the Irish....
— 10 November 2007
"It?s much easier to transport electrons than octane molecules."
— Shai Agassi, a Silicon Valley technologist. New York Times 29 October 2007
• "The half-life of irregular verbs is proportional to the square root of their frequency."
— The Journal Nature, 10 October 2007
Even the book begins to seem an antiquated format....
— 7 October 2007
I am an American, here in Ireland.
Romanians love America. No, not all of them — "they" are not "them."
There is a trend, however, in Eastern-European cultures, to enamorize the culture of the United States of America; yes, to love "America."
But an American? Here in Ireland? And what is he doing outside of the United States? And what does he do, anyway? And what is he doing outside of the United States?
— 03/Oct/2007
— 23 September 2007
— 22 September 2007
... Which means that they are not under rules of engagement.
— 21 September 2007
— 20 September 2007
Somebody had bought a mobile phone on a plan that included insurance in the case of theft or loss of the unit.
She accidentally dropped it into a canal.
She rang the company from which she'd bought the phone and requested a replacement.
They did not give her one. It's not lost, they said — you know where it is.
— from a memory, 17 September 2007
• Sleep. Older people need less sleep. Young people don't know this — young people tend to believe that old people are tired. That's not true.
• "Old eyes." After about the age of 40, the eyes tend to lose their ability to focus upon objects near to the face. It is often necessary for an older person to hold reading material, for example, at a distance nearer to arms-length than underneath one's nose. That's because it's easier for us to read small print when it's not too close to our eyeballs.
— 15 September, 2007
— 15 September 2007
— 14 September, 2007
Jesus Christ. You'd think Moore's Law would kick in at some time, and your "Notepad" program would open within one second. That's really not so much to ask, in modern computational terms.
— 14sep07
Ah, writing machines...
• Though both of its names are Gaelic, Dublin is a Viking city by origin.
— 12 September 2007
— 9 September 2007
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— 6 September 2007
— 4 September 2007
• Vehicles, instruments, devices — "products" of financial engineering, making the compounding of wealth sound almost like real productivity....
— 31 August 2007
• Senator Larry Craig (R-Idaho) denies charges that he tried to have gay sex with an undercover agent he met in a public restroom.
• 47 million Americans are uninsured. The number of children lacking health insurance rose for the second consecutive year.
— 29 August 2007
I have discovered Ireland for America.
I cannot tell what I have found, because the secrets are holy.
— 24 August 2007
— 23 August 2007
— 21 August 2007
Media bites
....
Which is the more obscene of these two items in today's news?:
Politics
....
St Brendan discovered America for Ireland.
• I may be a solipsist, but I don't know why I invented such an effete word.
• President George W. Bush reaffirms his confidence in the U.S. economy. I hope somebody else can think of an ironic joke about this.
• Made file "The paradox about last Thursday." In a retarded state of awareness, I learned something important....
— Sunday 19 August 2007
He informed me that I would have to take a drug test as a part of the application process....
— Made file "meth testing," about a moment in late-1990's Central Oregon.... 11 August 2007
No matter how competent you are, you cannot really plan every next move in exact sequence and within an intended space of time; because you may have to wait for some unfamiliar function to complete its process -- and this may create a delay of however many (unknown -- which is the point) moments needed to resolve issues on board the machine....
I don't want to go anywhere. I don't want to see anybody.
— 6 August 2007
Cuvinte grele
N_ called me at about 11:30. I was sleeping to the strains of the film "El Laberinto del Fauna" (Pan's Labyrinth.) He told me that he was going to Brennan's. Are you sleeping? Yeah; listen, I'll meet you there in thirty minutes. Okay.
I needed some time to wake up, and acquire the taste for a pint of Guinness.
Hip hop adeverat.
I arrived at Brennan's at about midnight. Ani and "Paul" were just in before me. N_ was not there. Ross had seen him in the off-licence, a few minutes before.
I got a pint. I talked briefly with Paul and Ani. I tried several times to ring N_; I left a message on his voicemail. He never showed up.
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Paul, in the course of our casual interchange out in the beer garden, asked me the inevitable question about why I'm here (or, presumably [and more to the point,] the real meat of the question why I'm anywhere else but in America, being American.)
Eastern Europeans are mostly unable to imagine any but a sinister purpose for not living in the United States, if one is able to do so. That, however artful as an expression of the reality, is indeed an expression of the reality — the Eastern European "why are you here" is almost always a question flavored with morality, with a taste of ethical suspicion. Beyond "what did he do that he has to be outside of the United States" (a question that feeds on the urban-legend-style mythical rumoresque possibilities) is indeed the moral verdict that it's just wrong to be outside of the United States when so many people want inside.
— 05/aug/2007
"Diesel" — a local rumor (rumour) about an unknown component of hashish in Ireland...
— 4 August 2007
International convention has long held that a nation's territory extends to 320 kilometers (200 miles) beyond its coastline; and that waterways beyond such an extent is international, the property of nobody.
Russia's contention that the polar seabed belongs to their country is based upon a claim that the Lomonosov Ridge is an extension of the continental shelf -- that is is a part of the continent, and Russian.
Yesterday a submersible vehicle planted the national flag, in a metal container, on the seabed at 0° N latitude.
— 03/08/2007
— 3 August 2007
I've learned a subtle cringe when I hear that sound....
7 confirmed dead
Bumper-to-bumper traffic one lane each way -- the rest of the road closed for work
A train passing underneath was crushed.
At least 50 vehicles in the river
— 2 August 2007
— 27 July 2007
"Bucharest — A poison cloud of yellow phosphorus from Ukraine is unlikely to enter Romania, Environment Minister Atilla Korodi said Wednesday" — Balkan Investigative Reporting Network
Yesterday, A_ was telling me that the Romanian governement has [even before this event] quelled even the disclosure of information about the weather. Record-high temperature of recent years (this year, she said, being the most extreme) are held as quiet as state secrets.
— 19 July 2007
• Made file "work," an agglomeration of links to pages on the subject ... — 10 July 2007
— 8 July 2007
— 7 July 2007
— 27 June 2007
— 18 June 2007
— from my dreambook, ca. 4 AM, 11 June 2007
— 16:27 22/05/2007
Irrelevant meaning, of course, "relevant."
— 22 May 2007
— 21 May 2007
— 20 May 2007
— 19:32 15/05/2007
— from my dream book, May 2007
— from my dream book, May 2007
You must to kiss my ass
— 16:58 13/05/2007
— A file I found on my website...
23:32 09/05/2007
16:46 06/05/2007
Changed the spelling of the word "affects," which I meant as "effects," in the journal entry of 7 December 2006.*
00:54 02/05/2007
It only works in practice, as the funnymen say.
00:49 02/05/2007
13:56 01/05/2007
— 19:43 21/04/2007
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• See Journal archive, August 2005 - May 2007...
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