FIRST AMONG UNLIKELY VOTERS
The Financial Times has an article about a worldwide poll that shows that the rest of the world favors Kerry over Bush in the presidential race. I find that the most useful polls are really those conducted among people who have no say in the race. How come no pollsters have asked me about the race in the Third Congressional District in Virginia yet?
By the way, no link, since the FT only keeps them open for two days.
KARMIC JUSTICE
I spend lots of time on this blog unmercifully mocking the Houston Chronicle. I only do this because the Chronicle is a terrible paper. Yesterday they ran a story about a Venezuelan ice cream parlor that has unusual flavors. The flavors include ham and cheese, asparagus, smoked trout, and hamburger and fries.
This is not news. This is a condensed version of Iron Chef, where Japanese chefs seem to take it as an affront if they cannot use the ice cream maker, regardless of the theme ingredient. Just as I was ramping up to really let the Chronicle have it on this one, I noticed that the byline indicated that they lifted the story from the Chicago Tribune. I don’t get the right-wing, union-busting rag that is the Tribune, but what a blow to civic pride.
PROVERBS NOT FROM PROVERBS
The San Diego Union-Tribune, which makes the aforementioned Chicago Tribune look like Soviet era Pravda in its politics, ran an interesting quasi-book review about a book called “Coined by God.” The book traces a number of words and phrases that appeared in English first in various translations of the Bible. Among the words are brokenhearted, communication, cucumber, ecstasy, horror, and blab. These are all good words, but if they appeared for the first time in the language in the Bible, how did anyone know what they meant? Particularly cucumber. I mean, you’ve had a cuke, or you haven’t, and there’s no explaining it if you haven’t, right? How does this work?
As for the phrases, they include all things to all men; eat, drink, and be merry; my cup runneth over; and two-edged sword. With particular reference to eat, drink, and be merry, the book attributes this to Luke, but the same language appears in Ecclesiastes and Isaiah. I guess judge not lest ye be judged (Matthew) would be an appropriate caution for me here. Anyway, the article is sort of interesting.
GEOGRAPHY IN THE NEWS
I like geography. I like when there are geographic tidbits in the news. Here are two of the kinds of stories I really like.
In rural France, women have been leaving the villages for the cities. This has left the men to work the fields alone, and has created a dearth of marriageable females. As anyone who has ever seen Pepe LePew knows, you don’t want a situation where the French have too few women. In such a situation, one of three things can happen. First, the men can follow the women to the cities and depopulate the countryside. Second, the men can lead a life of sexual frustration and work the fields until they die. Third, the men can put a pox on the French women and import a bunch of third world women who don’t know about the bright lights of Paris. This is the Eddie Murphy solution, named in honor of his joke about getting a woman from Africa who didn’t know what alimony was before he would get married.
In any case, the women in question are from Madagascar. It is a former French colony, so they speak French, and it is poor, so rural France seems like a pretty good deal. It started with one guy who had been stationed there in the military, and now her friends and family are marrying French guys from this village and emigrating to France. This is creating a remarkable little demography where the local grade school is 30% interracial. Very interesting. I guess LePen won’t be winning this area any time soon.
Meanwhile, east of France, past Madagascar, and around the Straight of Malacca are the Kuril islands. Japan and Russia have disagreed about sovereignty over these islands since at least 1946. However, with Russia’s current distress, the Japanese are really stepping up their efforts to get the islands back. The history of the conflict goes back to 1855, and is full of ambiguity, Yalta deals, and war. However, the Russians will not give them up because there is a very basic element of sovereignty over the Russian Far East they are anxious to assert, lest the Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans start eyeing this territory. Retaining the Kurils sends the signal that Russia is on the Pacific to stay. Japan won’t give up because . . . I don’t know why. Only 17,000 people lived on the islands at the end of World War II. Still, Japan has pushed the issue for a few years now, and doesn’t look like it will be moving on any time soon.
The Financial Times has an article about a worldwide poll that shows that the rest of the world favors Kerry over Bush in the presidential race. I find that the most useful polls are really those conducted among people who have no say in the race. How come no pollsters have asked me about the race in the Third Congressional District in Virginia yet?
By the way, no link, since the FT only keeps them open for two days.
KARMIC JUSTICE
I spend lots of time on this blog unmercifully mocking the Houston Chronicle. I only do this because the Chronicle is a terrible paper. Yesterday they ran a story about a Venezuelan ice cream parlor that has unusual flavors. The flavors include ham and cheese, asparagus, smoked trout, and hamburger and fries.
This is not news. This is a condensed version of Iron Chef, where Japanese chefs seem to take it as an affront if they cannot use the ice cream maker, regardless of the theme ingredient. Just as I was ramping up to really let the Chronicle have it on this one, I noticed that the byline indicated that they lifted the story from the Chicago Tribune. I don’t get the right-wing, union-busting rag that is the Tribune, but what a blow to civic pride.
PROVERBS NOT FROM PROVERBS
The San Diego Union-Tribune, which makes the aforementioned Chicago Tribune look like Soviet era Pravda in its politics, ran an interesting quasi-book review about a book called “Coined by God.” The book traces a number of words and phrases that appeared in English first in various translations of the Bible. Among the words are brokenhearted, communication, cucumber, ecstasy, horror, and blab. These are all good words, but if they appeared for the first time in the language in the Bible, how did anyone know what they meant? Particularly cucumber. I mean, you’ve had a cuke, or you haven’t, and there’s no explaining it if you haven’t, right? How does this work?
As for the phrases, they include all things to all men; eat, drink, and be merry; my cup runneth over; and two-edged sword. With particular reference to eat, drink, and be merry, the book attributes this to Luke, but the same language appears in Ecclesiastes and Isaiah. I guess judge not lest ye be judged (Matthew) would be an appropriate caution for me here. Anyway, the article is sort of interesting.
GEOGRAPHY IN THE NEWS
I like geography. I like when there are geographic tidbits in the news. Here are two of the kinds of stories I really like.
In rural France, women have been leaving the villages for the cities. This has left the men to work the fields alone, and has created a dearth of marriageable females. As anyone who has ever seen Pepe LePew knows, you don’t want a situation where the French have too few women. In such a situation, one of three things can happen. First, the men can follow the women to the cities and depopulate the countryside. Second, the men can lead a life of sexual frustration and work the fields until they die. Third, the men can put a pox on the French women and import a bunch of third world women who don’t know about the bright lights of Paris. This is the Eddie Murphy solution, named in honor of his joke about getting a woman from Africa who didn’t know what alimony was before he would get married.
In any case, the women in question are from Madagascar. It is a former French colony, so they speak French, and it is poor, so rural France seems like a pretty good deal. It started with one guy who had been stationed there in the military, and now her friends and family are marrying French guys from this village and emigrating to France. This is creating a remarkable little demography where the local grade school is 30% interracial. Very interesting. I guess LePen won’t be winning this area any time soon.
Meanwhile, east of France, past Madagascar, and around the Straight of Malacca are the Kuril islands. Japan and Russia have disagreed about sovereignty over these islands since at least 1946. However, with Russia’s current distress, the Japanese are really stepping up their efforts to get the islands back. The history of the conflict goes back to 1855, and is full of ambiguity, Yalta deals, and war. However, the Russians will not give them up because there is a very basic element of sovereignty over the Russian Far East they are anxious to assert, lest the Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans start eyeing this territory. Retaining the Kurils sends the signal that Russia is on the Pacific to stay. Japan won’t give up because . . . I don’t know why. Only 17,000 people lived on the islands at the end of World War II. Still, Japan has pushed the issue for a few years now, and doesn’t look like it will be moving on any time soon.
posted by David at 10:17 AM
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