Spelling B

Bushw(h)acking : Well right now I read that West-Sacramento (US) based Michelle is teasing me :-) We disagree on how to spell Bushw(h)acker. She uses the American spelling, I use the English one (whose language is it anyway?). So she thinks I have a superfluous "haitch", and I think she and her compatriots have a superfluous "dubya" :-)

What disturbs me more though, are the different semantics. Chambers 20th century dictionary (from England) defines Bushwhacker as a guerilla fighter, whereas Google(US) confirms there is no definition of Bushwacker (her spelling). However Princeton defines Bushwhacker as . . . well google define:bushwhacker yourselves.

I'll stay with Chambers' definition thankyou!

posted by Stu Savory on 30th January 2004 at 06:20 Central European Time ;)

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January : Finally . . .

Justice : "Justice must not only be done, it must also be seen to be done." An Alaskan federal judge has ordered Exxon Mobil to pay $6.75bn in damages and interest in relation to the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill. Just how long will it be before they hike the prices at the pumps?

Friends : Meg points out that The Other Side also linked to my post in Scots. Thanks Shirl.
And Frank got me to sign up with Orkut - one of these social network things - although I must admit I don't see what it does that Blogs don't do, except maybe profile us for the CIA.

BTW, the sketch below shows where my January 2004 blogreaders all come from.

posted by Stu Savory on 29th January 2004 at 10:27 Central European Time ;)

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Welcome. Welcome, Everyone :-)

Lots of new blogreaders, mostly as a result of me posting in Scots on Sunday (thanks due here to Frank Paynter, Gary Turner, Gary Williams, and Yule Heibel who all linked to it).

But what is interesting, is where all the new blogreaders came from, one expat Scots even sending an eMail thanking me for helping(sick!) his homesickness. Welcome to the new blogreaders (of the Burns Nicht article) from :- Australia , Austria , Brazil , Canada , Czeck Republic , Denmark , France , Germany , Greenland , Holland , Hong Kong , Iceland (or was that you, Agnete, instead of reading from Sweden?) , Irak (sic!) , Israel , Japan , Mauritius(double sic!) , Man (although he read the motorcycling pages too) , New Zealand , Norway , Poland , Sweden , Switzerland , Turkey , UK , USA & West Indies. Did I miss anyone?

Had Meg been posting this, there would have been a beautiful quilt made from the flags of the countries of these visitors, but sadly I don't have the time right now to assemble one for you. (Yes, Meg, you may steal the idea :-)

This really IS becoming an international blog nowadays, I hadn't realised there was such an interest in the Scots language. Thanks to all of you for visiting, drop in again anytime :-)

Note to Milly, who caught a grammatical error and two spelling mistakes :-) As you suspected, the Mickeysoft Spelling Corrector failed miserably on Sunday; and the dictation software did too, I had to hand-type the Blog instead, so they were MY errors mea culpa!

Not everyone came for the Scots posting though. I also got a moving thankyou note from Jacquie Bambery in Australia, which I reproduce - with her permission - here : I'm an ex-pat Liverpudlian, living in "The land Down Under". My Ozzie husband died ten years ago and I have a copy of a poem which featured in an old British movie called, "Carve Her Name With Pride". Then I found a copy of the book by the same name, in a second-hand bookshop. I've kept the poem because it "sort of comforts" me, since my husband died. However I've always wondered who the author, was - and now I know, having found this poem on your web-site! Thanks. Great site. Jac. Glad I could help Jac. Sometimes - very occasionally - I'm a nice guy, not just bashing the right-wing politicians. Keep in touch. BTW folks, here is a link to the poetry anthology.

posted by Stu Savory on 28th January 2004 at 05:02 Central European Time ;)

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Scots wha hae : 'tis Burns Nicht, ye ken!

Robert Burns wiz aye scrievin in tha Scots leid. "Tae see oorsels as ithers sees us" : oor forgaitherin is on 25th Jan an Burns Nicht, wi a Burns Supper: Haggis, Neeps an Tatties.

If ye’re a native Scots speaker, try an get uised taday tae seein the language ye speak ilka day in its written form athin ma blogh. If nae, tak a guid uisghe!

The ither year, Burns nicht : me a ree ray in ma waddinbraws. Twa faikin fums (agnats) shue laik scowpers. I lerb twa jutes, muckle manky jutes, an gledge a redhieded peronall. Ah skleush ower tae her, fer tae splunt thae loorach. Wi thae fower bask jutes, ah thrammle like a kenspeckle kensy, an partle tae rush instead o ma whaisk frae sculduddery.

Ah yove : nae mair upfesh!

Pittin Dubya tae a wee scuil Scots test.
Robert Fairnie scrievet : The media reports that niair nor £1m is tae be spent on forderin Robert Burns aw roond the yird. Politeecians haes thocht up this noirie sae Scotland's dwinin tourist mercat can be biggit up agin. MSPs an aw are conseederin haudin a Burn's supper in Edinburgh Castle for Tony Blair an George W Bush. Seems a muckle daud o siller for juist the twae tourists! Is the Immortal Memory tae be delivered in Scots, the language o Burns' hert, or juist in peeliewallie English fur thae Sassenachs? Nae prizes for jalousin richt! Cuid they be donnert eneuch tae praise the man wi £1m an then be seen tae reject his langaage?

Scots Leid :
In mony weys, Scots is gittin tae be an unspoken/unscrievet leid. Tho there millions o hamelt Scots speakers o ane kin or anither, maist o thaim dinna recognise the wey they speak as bein "Scots". Ay, they've heard uphauders o "Scots" on the media giein it nae want o praise - but aye in English. Sae thae hamelt Scots speakers haesna heard whit "Scots" soonds like an, cause its uphauders on the media is aye weel educatit fowk, they jalouse that this "Scots" leid maun be somethin a sicht mair fantoosh nor the 'local slang' that they're mair acquent wi.

So ah gi ye thae kenspeckle cleeks:-

Cleeks : tae ither Scots Language wabseids.

• John M Tait’s wabseid wi an innin tae Shetlandic an maitter in an on Scots
• Mither Tongue’s new wabseid. Cairds maistly in the Scots Language.
• Robert Fairnie's Hame Page (Scots Tung).
• Sandy Fleemin’s Scots Text, poetry, sangs, plays, novels, essays an owersettins.
• Scots Language Resource Centre, the high heid ane o aw the Scots leid organisations.
• Scots Speikers Curn, Glesca.
• Scuil Wab for bairns.
• The Scots Pairlament’s Cross Pairty Group on the Scots Language.

Vizzied enuff? Dinna fash yersel!
If you need help understanding this, please refer to the short Scots-English wordlist I've provided onsite.

I'm an ex-pat Scot, living in Germany since the late sixties, so excuse any errors as I don't speak/write Scots regularly/usually/normally at all!.

posted by Stu Savory on 25th January 2004 at 08:01 Central European Time ;)

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Silly Sky Security ?

New Airline rules in Europe :
Well it's not just Tom Ridge of the Department of Homeland Security (abbr: DOH Sec.) that I sometimes don't understand. Starting 1st February in the EU (European Union) the rules will be toughened as to what you can take aboard an airplane as hand-luggage and what has to be checked in. I can understand that ski-sticks, hockey-sticks and golf-clubs have to be checked. But ice-skates and skate-boards and fishing rods?

Fishing rods? Oh puh-leez. I may have tried to angle a stewardess or two in my time, but I can assure you it wasn't a fishing rod I used. Maybe the EU stenographer misunderstood when taking dictation? Perhaps they just didn't want fission devices in the hand luggage? I can't really imagine an almanac-carrying terrorist would don his ice skates before jumping on his skateboard to surf (uphill) along the aisle to the cockpit then attack with a terrifying karate kick of the ice-skates. That just doesn't slice! Surely the sky martials(sic!) would give him a red card and time out on the bench?

Sky martials : Yes of course I DO know it's meant to be spelled marshals, I'm just making a point! The GB reaction to this idea has been posted elsewhere. Go read it. A bad idea.

Fingerprinting and iris-scanning : DOH Sec spends 380 million USD per year on this ineffective measure. It's not like you could identify the terrorists in advance (how do DOH Sec propose to get their fingerprints/iris-scans on file?). The 9/11 terrorists would not have been deterred by this useless system; many of them entered the US legally, with valid passports and with visas. It's just a massive inconvenience for all air travellers. And the governments all get your biometric data because Tom Ridge has already promised to pass them on to other governments , so every other tinpot dictator - whose name may not contain a W - may do whatever he likes with the data. How long before the nigerian scammers have your fingerprints, your iris-scans, and yes, even your identity?

STOP PRESS : Wanna know why the Rover transmissions from Mars were cut off? SECURITY REASONS!! This is the latest secret shot from the NASA Mars photo lab ;-)

posted by Stu Savory on 23rd January 2004 at 16:08 Central European Time

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A Sense of Humour?

Borderline Humour :
A sense of humour is a valuable but borderline thing, varying strongly between cultures. In particular, it is inhibited by whatever is 'politically correct' in the cultural environment of the reader. Jokes? We don't need no steenkin' jokes. Today I want to explore this issue a little.

Friends would probably describe my psychological make-up (and also my sense of humour) as a blacker reincarnation of Edmund Blackadder. So my bitter, heavy sarcasm (such as used when I'm Bushwhacking, as on 11th January) is too much sometimes and - I know - has offended people I much respect and hold in high regard for their coping with life's adversity and their sense of service to the community. This is a public apology, you know who you are.

On the other hand, light humour and multicultural puns are sometimes missed, either because they are too wry or writer and reader did not share a common cultural base. So lets step through some humour and you can judge where your limits are - and let me know where to pitch this blog.

Step 1 : Look at yesterday's picture. A gentle joke for Kees from Holland. Holland is famous for producing tulips and the Dutch royal family is The House of Orange. If you didn't know this, you would have missed the gentle reference given by the photo of a (rare) orange tulip.

Another example : just the other day I was introduced to a drink called the Pensacola Bushwacker. I replied "Pensa Cola : the thinking man's drink?". Pensacola is a town in Florida USA; so this can be interpreted as irony about Florida (Jeb Bush's state) OR if you know that pensa is Latin and means to take a well balanced decision (thus explaining the allusion to 'thinking man') can be seen as a multi-culti pun. Take it or leave it, humour disappears when explained, a cheshire cat indeed (reference to Lewis Carroll's Alice).

Step 2 : Political humour is a much more sensitive subject, especially when you are making a point too. This little thumbnail humour assumes you know a) that CinC Dubya was once a Leutenant in the US Reserves (National Guard) - abbreviated LUSR - who went AWOL, and b) the Purple Heart is a US medal awarded for merely being present on the front (cf. the turkey's trip), and c) you recognise Campaign Candy when you see it. So this humour uses only american culture references. Apropos american culture, a famous Irish humourist - I can't remember whether Shaw or Wilde - was once asked at a reception by a gushing american lady "What do you think of american culture?" and duly replied "Madam, I would be very much in favour!". This last joke assumes you have sufficient grasp of English grammar that you can recognise the subjunctive. It may not be understood by readers for whom English is not the mother tongue. It really is difficult to write humour for an international audience.

Step 3 : Political humour may not be as direct and in-your-face as the last example. The picture on the left is a snapshot made yesterday. You can only realise the very subtle nature of their humour by knowing a) what a Banana Republic is and b) knowing that Dubya is has sometimes been referred to as the chimp ( a reference to his appearance/IQ???), and of course c) knowing that Dubya delivered the State of the Union Address on that very day. I bet even most americans didn't understand Google's sly humour.

But maybe it was innocent, and Google were merely celebrating the Lunar New Year '04, the Year of the Monkey (that bodes ill in an US election year), which the Chinese are welcoming right now. Your choice.

Step 4 : Recursion : If you want to polish your sense of humour - in particular to appreciate more of the European dark humour, sarcasm and irony, you might like to take UK Open University Course - C&Q - I100 Understanding Irony. I quote their prospectus Understanding Irony, The course introduces some of the key ideas and ways of thinking involved in irony, sarcasm and satire.

Shall I stop now for today, whilst I'm ahead?

posted by Stu Savory on 22nd January 2004 at 10:25 Central European Time

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Wotcha readin', Dude?

Reading list question : A blogreader from Holland, Kees mailed asking why I list only English language books in my reading list (see left sidebar). He likes my choice of books - having similar reading tastes - and picks up the tips often, he writes. Well true, Kees, at present I am reading "Wind, Sand and Stars" again in French, struggling through an Asterix Comic (because it's in Latin), and am reading the German translation of Bill Bryson's "In a Sunburned Country", which latter I have added to the sidebar just for you :-)

However, I can't cope with Dutch or Flemish, they're double dutch to me :-)

But most blogreaders are in the US or GB and so I surmise (probably?) only read English. So I'll just stick to English book recommendations in the future!

As far as writing is concerned, most of my short-stories and books were written in German, some (decades-old) scientific papers about AI in French and English too though. But heroic Gary Williams is currently struggling through a really crappy novel I wrote in English about a dozen years ago. Poor man, may he forgive me for wasting his time :-)

This blog is aimed at an international audience too, so I blog in English rather than German. But if you want to see other languages here Kees, wait until Sunday 25th which is Burns Night, dedicated to the famous scottish poet Robert Burns. Then I'll blog that day in Scots! It would be nice if fellow exiled Scots Gary Turner and Steve MacLaughlin would synchronise. That OK?

posted by Stu Savory on 21st January 2004 at 06:04 Central European Time

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Just your average blog.

TEACHING MODE ON
Let’s first define which average we are talking about, using an example. The histogram shows my hourly pageview rate measured over an arbitrary 24 hour interval. That is, there were single 1 hour periods with 1,5 and 8 pageviews respectively. There were three 1 hour periods with 2 and 7 pageviews respectively. There were five 1 hour periods with 4 and 6 pageviews respectively. And six 1 hour periods with 3 pageviews/hour.

The most commonly occurring number (3 pageviews/hour) which happened six times is called the Mode. The (arithmetic) Mean is calculated by totalling all pageviews during that day and dividing by 24, and so = 4.375 pageviews/hour. The Median is 4. This means that half the hours (12) got a number of views less than or equal to this and the other half got more. The Median is the most useful average to use when looking at highly unsymmetrical distributions like blogging statistics, which are more like Zipf distributions than a bellcurve.
TEACHING MODE OFF.

The Median Blog
Various studies ( like this one) show that the median active blog gets 24 hits daily, or 700 per month (cf. Sitemeter). This one too. The median blog has 7 inbound blogs (cf. Technorati). This one 8. The median update interval is 3 days for active blogs. This one two. Visitors to a median site spend only 96 seconds per visit (median); readers of the top 10 blogs spend only 37 seconds there (short & superficial one-liner postings maybe?).

Lessons learned

• Size does matter : From the median values given above, we learn not to write long diatribes but to portion our blog entries to make them readable in just one and a half minutes. That is about one non-scrolled screenful in 1024*786 screensize, line-spaced for better readability, or just one sheet of A4 paper on the printout.
• K.I.S.S : In a separate analysis I fed some top blogs into a unique-word counter and found that the vocabulary being used is rather small (about 2500 unique words). So don’t use difficult words (like those in my blog’s subtitle) because you may not be understood. For comparison the pleb’s newspaper here (Bild) uses a really small 1700(sic!) word vocabulary and averages a 7 word sentence length, the high-brow newspaper has a 22,000(sic!) word vocabulary and averages 25 words per sentence, as reported by a local schoolteacher I know. So keep your average sentence length below about 15 to 20 words and you should be understood.
• Use typesize at least 12 points and contasting colours for legibility as Michelle teaches us.
• Link sparingly : Look at your pageviews per hit ratio. People don’t seem to follow links embedded into sentences in the text. About 3 links/blog entry is the best median.
• Updating : We should update every other day or so, with themes that interest other bloggers enough so that 7 or more link back to us (no automatic she mentioned me courtesy-blogrolls here!).
• Multi-theme blogs : appear to be slightly less popular than the more focussed blogs. With few exceptions, people want to be entertained, rather than educated (oops!).

Welcome to the C-list folks :-)

Special Thanks today go to Stephen Downes - a bright guy from Canada - for showing us all how to write an RSS feed manually. Praise be, finally I now have a validated RSS feed on my left sidebar (even more stuff to maintain!).

posted by Stu Savory on 18th January 2004 at 08:24 Central European Time

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Far Queue :-)

Foreign Language Blogging : Back on the 12th, Jeneane Sessum was talking about cleaning up her multiple blogs. I asked if she did one per language but she replied that she only knows one language. So I'll have to do something about that right now!

7 dirty words : On the 15th, Gary Williams quoted Adam Thierer (athierer@cato.org) : Nothing brings out the puritanical streak in American politicians more than the utterance of a few dirty words on TV or radio. There are far more mature and sensible ways of dealing with filthy words than resorting to censorship, be it by the FCC or whoever else.

Swearing : So I thought I'd kill two birds with one stone here, Jeneane. Probably the first words one learns in any foreign language are some swear words. So I'll teach you a few and so some foreign language at the same time :-)

Some cultures don't swear at all. Malay, Japanese, most American Indians and Polynesians have no native swear words AFAIK. Highly taboo words in other languages are :-

• turtle - highly taboo to the Chinese,
• devil - Norwegian,
• oozlie loorach (literally 'slovenly trollop') - Scots,
• hlebeshako (literally 'your mother's ears') - Xoxa (in South Africa),
• tu madre - Spanish = 'your momma' (i.e. incest implied),
• Himmelherrgottdonnerwetternochmal German heavenlordgodthunderweatheronceagain,
• ravintolassa - Finnish (literally 'in the restaurant').

And no, I don't understand the last one either, which is why it's at the finish (sorry!).

Bush fans : I get to learn my fair share of american bad language too, mostly from Dubya fans' feedback mails. For example, I got about a dozen pieces of hate mail in reply to my Bushwhacking piece of last Sunday (11th) and the Guantanamo Bay article of the 9th of January. These pro-Bush hate mails are amusing because they merely spew anger, they don't even attempt to counter any of the arguments I make in my Blog, and most of them use the most abominable spelling. In fact the only words not spelled wrongly are the swear words! So I'd just ask their authors to line up behind one another in a distant place (Far queue)!

posted by Stu Savory on 17th January 2004 at 11:00 Central European Time

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Storm Fronts :-(

Pride of America sunk : We've been having some really bad weather here in Germany, one storm front after the other for more than a week now and no sign of it easing off. Incessant rain - even a tornado in Stade (near the north coast), whose 400kph whirling funnel tore roofs off, uprooted trees and whirled cars off into the river. The picture on the left shows an american cruise ship which is being built in Bremerhaven. It was thrust against the quay there, pushed over too by 120 mph storm winds and the surging storm-whipped seas got into the lower 3 decks, sinking it in the harbour. So when I blog Pride of America sunk, for once I'm not talking about another of Dubya's escapades.

Rivers'r'up too : Rain, rain and even more pouring rain for a week now. Some places in southern Germany the water is is already a couple of feet high in the streets, cellars flooded etc. The rivers Main, Donau and Mosel are so high now that shipping has been stopped on them. On critical parts of the Rhine, shipping has been stopped too. In our village the river is now up to the footbridge, so I'll be walking the dog elsewhere today.

Powerlines : Most of our powerlines are safe. On some of the low-voltage lines though, branches have fallen - or whole trees - taking the power out, particularly in the Black Forest area. Gary Williams wrote to me from upstate New York saying that this is usual there, outages about once a month (the big outage was back in November, he wrote, so we will have to watch for an upstate NY baby boom in July '04 :-)

posted by Stu Savory on 15th January 2004 at 11:33 Central European Time

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Powerless plans

Yesterday we had a planned power outage 8 through 11:30am, because the village's stepdown 11kV to 230V transformer was getting an upgrade. Normally in Germany we have on average only 1.2 unplanned outages per year averaging only a 3 minute duration, so it's not like California with its rolling powerfails or the US east-coast cascade outage. But three and a half hours outage needed me to do some planning myself. Does the emergency generator ( 1 kW via a lawn mower engine) still work, or is the carb gunged up again from lack of use? Do I have fresh fuel for it? Where are the spare fuses for it? Where is the outside water-proof extender-cable? Remember to open the garage (electric rollup door) before 8 am !! Are the mobile-phone batteries charged? Where are the distribution strips (multisockets)? Need 4!

So what are my priorities for the max. 1 KW load? Up to 18 separate sockets dammit!

1. Cellar sump pump to avoid any potential flooding from the incessant rain. Deep freeze kept frozen. Circulation pump for the oil heating. Doorbell.
2. Refrigerators. Alarms & Clocks (hassle to reset em). Videocorder (ditto).
3. 1 lamp per storey if needed. (Torchlights' batteries charged?)
4. Coffee machine? (Espresso-Junkie!) Telephones & answering machine.
5. PC. (this blog can wait, dammit!)

Wow. We really are dependent upon electricity, aren't we?
Oh BTW, we were back on the powerlines by 11am. Well done lineboys! But it really does make you think how dependent we are on our infrastructure. Civilisation might collapse after a powerless week or two!

One benefit of this exercise is that I now have a written plan and a parts list and everything in one place should there be an unplanned longer outage :-)

posted by Stu Savory on 13th January 2004 at 06:11 Central European Time

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Bushwhacking

World Crash ahead (thanks Dubya!) : I fear that Dubya's economic chaos will have a domino effect, pushing the whole world into a depression. Already we in Europe are having to pay for his brinkmanship by shoring the dollar to some extent.

The IMF recently reports that "With its rising budget deficit and ballooning trade imbalance, the United States is running up a foreign debt of such record-breaking proportions that it threatens the financial stability of the global economy."

The steps downhill are:-

• Collapse of the Dollar (fallen from 1 Euro down to 1.26 Euros in the last quarter).
• US inability to borrow in dollars, lenders insist on the stronger Euro instead.
• Thus double digit interest rates (your mortgage foreclosed).
• US domestic stock and bond markets crash (your savings worthless).
• IMF cancels its credit line to the US (import/export slows).
• US government spending slashed, large US tax hikes, US poverty grows.
• One major benefit : Financing of foreign wars becomes impossible for the US!

Dave Pollard wrote about this too, on January 9th. He has a longer article than this one (which is in my usual telegram style). Go read it.

Let's hope the US voters have enough wits about them to elect someone else in 2004!

Playing the religious card :
Of course the Rev. Dubya from the Church of the Latter Day Morons will try to distract voters from the economic issues by playing the religious card. I already pointed out in my Blog of december 24th that the US is not a rational society, but rather a faith-based one. Fundamentalism is dangerous! 81% of americans said in a gallup poll that they pray daily.
If we had a leader like Dubya, I probably would pray too!

Of course many americans cannot see this, never having left their state or been abroad or in another society for any reasonable time. And even if they have, it's a blind spot. Even Frank Paynter doubted this perception of the US a faith-driven irrational society after I posted it.

Guantanamo Bay :
After my rant on Friday, with which Human Rights Watch wholeheartedly agrees, I am happy to report that 135 British peers and MPs are filing a legal brief with the Supreme Court, an appeal on behalf of terror suspects held in Guantanamo Bay by the US.

Warmonger Dubya : The Bush Administration began laying plans for an invasion of Iraq including the use of American troops within days of President Bush's inauguration in January of 2001, not eight months later after the 9/11 attacks as has been previously reported. That is what former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill says in his first interview about his time as a White House insider (cf. 60 Minutes show on US TV today).

Hidden Government : We all know that Dubya's Junta is turning the US into a police state. Your personal data privacy has all but disappeared, the government keeps huge secret databases on everyone and operates via secret task forces. So it's good to see that the democrats would put a stop to this. Of course the FBI sniffers will regard you as a suspect, should you dare to click on the Cryptome link under news-sites in my left sidebar (so be warned). But even Victoria's Secret cater to the sniffers now :-)

All this Bush stuff is depressing, isn't it, so let's look at a couple of positive things . . .

Poincare Conjecture : Russian mathematician Grigori "Grisha" Perelman MAY have proved the Poincare Conjecture, one of mathematics' most abstruse problems. He can collect a million-dollar prize if he has :-) But I'm too dumb to understand the proof :-(

Mandarin design : Thanks to Michelle today on several counts. She introduced me to the descriptor "Bushwhacking" for my Blog's politics and on January 6th taught me the trick of raising the line-spacing to 140% to increase readability, and kerning the dateline headers. She still won't like what I write about the US, but she'll be able to read it better :-) I've also linked the book frontispieces in my left sidebar to their respective author's biographies where possible, at her suggestion. She has an apolitical blog, but she sure can teach us web design!

posted by Stu Savory on 11th January 2004 at 11:50 Central European Time

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Law-breaking politicians

What is the USA doing illegally in Guantanamo Bay? : Is the USA torturing prisoners held in Guantanamo Bay? We don't know. Dubya says not, and Dubya is an honourable man. They are all honourable men . . . (apologies to The Bard for quoting him in this context). But there is no evidence either that they are not, no independent observers being allowed admission. We don't even know if any may have "died in internment".

Certainly, the USA is occupying Guantanamo Bay illegally. The 1903 treaty with Cuba has run out. The treaty limited the USA's usage rights anyway : "for naval and coaling stations only, and for no other purpose". Detention of 31,000 Haitian refugees in the 1990s and now 680 prisoners of war is clearly incompatible with the lease agreement. The US is enforcing the occupation by military force, against Cuba's declared will. Bush the Bully again. The UN as usual, does nothing.

For more details, I refer you to lecture notes by Prof. Alfred de Zayas (former secretary of the UN Human Rights committee and Visiting Professor of International Law at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver).

National and international laws, including the Geneva Convention, are being violated by the Bush administration with impunity. Concentration camps were a war crime in 1945, but now they are part of Bush's foreign policy. We can just hope that US voters get rid of him in 2004!

Tony B.liar sees some hope to at least get the Brits being detained there out soon.

Going to Mars ? BTW , I just read that Dubya will announce US plans to send a man to Mars. May I politely suggest who the passenger should be?

No WMD in Irak : The Carnegie Institute report confirms what we all suspected. Dubya lied. Bush administration officials exaggerated the threat from Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, stating wild rumours to be facts. Now the Bush administration is withdrawing their WMD inspectors from Irak. They found nothing, just as Hans Blix predicted, there were no WMD there. If warmonger Bush had believed Hans Blix - a man of great personal integrity - the world could have been saved a war. Conspiring to conduct a war of aggression was a war crime at the Nuremburg trials in 1945 by the way.

Walter Liesler Kiep : But we have law-breaking politicians here in Germany too. Graf Lambsdorff was done for tax-fiddling. The late Jürgen Möllemann made nearly a million in illegal contributions to party funds. And finally, Walter Liesler Kiep - accused of illegal party funding too - has been fined 40,000 Euros (about 50,000 dollars) for lying to a parliamentary investigation committee. How come these bigwigs get off with just a fine (peanuts to them) ? Why don't they get locked away for half a decade? That might discourage the others a little.

posted by Stu Savory on 9th January 2004 at 15:50 Central European Time

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Lotsa Uncool cats & 1 cool french cat.

Obesity : A study in Europe, Israel and the US of 29,000 children between 13 and 15 shows the most fat kids to be in the USA. 13 to 14 % of the boys and 11 to 15% of the girls (varies by state) were overweight. The thinnest in Europe were in Latvia (3%). Behind top-listed USA came Ireland, Greece and Portugal. Germany was midfield (3.5% boys, 4.3% girls at 13 years). Personally I think it's due to the junk food. The USA will have to approach the problem or have a Medicare issue in 2030 at the latest.

Of course, if wee Scots had been high on the list, I would have attributed it to the Haggis ;-) For fun hunting the Haggii, try this Haggishunt website. Gimmie a earock, nae a fum, Jimmie!
(What do you think of the idea of me doing a whole day's blogging in the Gaelic or at least in the Scots dialect? Maybe Gary Turner et al. could join in? Scots Blog Day, wha hae!
I would link to a small Scots dictionary, to help the Sassenachs read the blog! CooL )

Like a thief in the night : Have you noticed how the Bush administration has cowardly taken to sneaking disadvantageous (latently unpopular) legislation by - in the wee small hours.
After the newspapers have had their deadlines too, under cover of Darkness.

Terrorism coverup : The right wing Bush administration is only too quick to go to status orange with the slightest hint of a terrorist attack by Osama bin Laden (whom they have still failed miserably to find). But a more effective internal attack by extremist right wing Americans is swept under the carpet.

Or what have you been able to read in the US media about the Texas Cyanide case?

Mirrored : To the Ennessay folks looking at this blog : Here's looking at you too!

Un chat français frais : Yesterday there was some cool cat from Alcatal in France reading my Blog and I noticed you used Google to translate my Blog automatically into French! You're some cool cat, but their translation leaves much to be desired! Neat link though, thanks! So I tried their translation into German too; it's just as bad as the one into French. Merde! :-(

posted by Stu Savory on 8th January 2004 at 06:00 Central European Time

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Best of my blog 2003.

More Quality Blogs : I've added 8 blogs to my list; let's see how they do over the coming weeks. Please go give them a try. A couple of people whom I read regularly seem to be giving up blogging, e.g. bmoeasy and Doug Alders, who is ill right now. Get better soon, Doug!

Peer judgement : Yesterday I scanned through my access logs to see which were the most popular articles in the opinion of the blog-readers. Only 17 blog-entries got above 200 readers, mostly due to links from George, Frank, Susan, Michelle and Yule. Thanks, all you linkers!

These were the 17, should you want to re-read them:-

• Friday, April 18, 2003 = It's Good Friday! (Motorcycling)
• Tuesday, May 6, 2003 = Wrong decisions (Humour)
• Monday, June 2, 2003 = Jacques E. (Doc)'s Story (Humour)
• Wednesday, July 16, 2003 = True Lies (Bushwhacking)
• Wednesday, August 6, 2003 = It's the Economy, Stupid! (Politics)
• Thursday, August 28, 2003 = Prime Time (Multicolour Maths)
• Wednesday, September 10, 2003 = The longest day (a motorcycle trip)
• Tuesday, September 16, 2003 = Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise (Politics)
• Sunday, September 21, 2003 = Economics 101 (Politics)
• Tuesday, October 7, 2003 = Pocket Enigma®: The Review (Crypto)
• Sunday, October 19, 2003 = a lap of the Nurburgring (Motorcycling)
• Saturday, November 1, 2003 = Halloween Horror Stories (Dog story)
• Saturday, November 22, 2003 = the math-ouija board (Maths)
• Wednesday, December 3, 2003 = Secret codes to boost your career (Crypto)
• Thursday, December 11, 2003 = @fp : On losing your dog (Dog story)
• Sunday, December 14, 2003 = How big is yours? (History)
• Sunday, December 21, 2003 = How Saddam was REALLY captured (News) TOP ENTRY.

I have concatenated these on their own page as the Best of my Blog 2003.

posted by Stu Savory on 6th January 2004 at 06:06 Central European Time

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Sunday Fun : Making the rules.

During the 1994 Caribbean Soccer Cup the FIFA experimented with some new rules. In the case of a draw after 90 minutes, extended time would be played until one team scored a goal, this "sudden death" goal deciding the winner and stopping the game. However, in the preliminary rounds all 3 teams of a group were to play one another and the team with the best goal ratio go on to the cup knockout rounds. Several teams objected to these two rules, since any "sudden death" goal could prevent a team from accumulating more goal points. So the rule-making FIFA decided that any "sudden death" or "Golden Goal" in extra time would be worth two normal goals.

So far so good. But it lead to a very bizarre game.

In the preliminary round Group A comprised Barbados, Grenada and Puerto Rico. On January 23rd Puerto Rica beat Barbados 1:0, but two days later they lost against Granada also 1:0, but in extra time.

Because that goal was scored in extra time - thus counting as worth 2 normal goals - Puerto Rico totalled 1:2 and Grenada 2:0. Then Barbados played Grenada in the bizarre decisive game on 27th January.

Consider the rules. For Barbados to win the preliminary round they needed a two goal lead, whereas Grenada could afford to lose by one goal.

After 10 minutes Barbados lead by 2:0 but after 83 minutes Grenada scored, so it stood 2:1 for Barbados. Barbados were now worried about getting the 3:1 in only 7 minutes. Their clever captain worked out that it would be better to even score an own-goal - making it 2:2, thus forcing extra time - and hope to get the Golden Goal thus making it 4:2 for the 2 goal lead needed.

Now Grenada's team had worked this out too, so had not only to defend their own goal against the 3:1 but also to defend their opponent's goal against the 2:2 for extra time!

In which they failed, Barbados put in an own-goal for 2:2 after 5 minutes.

But that was not enough silliness! As they re-assembled with just 2 minutes left, Grenada realised that if they too now scored an own goal (making it 2:3) this defeat would still leave them with the best goal ratio and thus leave them as the winners of the preliminary round!

So now the Barbados team had to defend both goals against the Grenada players making a score - it didn't matter in which goal!

As it turned out they did so successfully, scored a Golden Goal in the 94th minute thus being credited with 4:2.

Needless to say, in later years the rules were changed!

And the message to the politician dumbchucks is : before you change the rules of the game we all have to live by, make sure you understand ALL of the consequences!

Now that was Sunday's Fun - "making the rules". Later this week I'll get more serious and blog about "breaking the rules" or what is the USA doing illegally in Guanta'namo Bay ? Bummer, Bummer! Be sure to come back and read it.

posted by Stu Savory on 4th January 2004 at 08:27 Central European Time

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First Blogiversary - unsugared.

Thankyou : to those eight who wrote congratulating me on my first year of blogging. Feedback is always welcome and helps steer the subject matter. Right, Meg, George, Yule ??
And did you too notice how the number of readers dropped off over Xmas? I guess people blogread from work usually. These were my site-meter statistics for the Xmas week:

12/22  12/23  12/24  12/25  12/26  12/27  12/28   Week
 48     61     33     16     15     13     17     203      and on 1/1 up to 25+ again

Low numbers you say? Maybe so. But at least I don't descend to the depths of depravity posting p0rn0 pix in the blog, like another total loser I could name (but I'll ignore him).

GLYX Diet : Two of you wrote asking for more info about the GLYX diet I mentioned on January 1st ; so here is a simplified version, bearing in mind that I'm NOT a medical doctor. Low GLYX foods send little insulin into the bloodstream, high GLYX a lot. Insulin inhibits fatburner enzymes. So to get the fatburners working you should eat only low GLYX foods.

Examples of Low GLYX foods (eat whenever & as much as you want) :
Apples, avocado, cherries, coconut, codfish, Edam cheese, figs, fungi, garlic, green beans, hazelnuts, kidney beans, lettuce, lobster, low-fat skimmed milk, mandarines, onions, oranges, pears, salmon, soyabread, turkeybreast, vegetable juice (unsweetened), zucchini.

Examples of Medium GLYX foods (less than thrice per week) :
Basmati rice, corn, fruit juice, honey, kiwi, mixed breads, mustard, muesli, pizza, tinned peas, unleavened bread, whole wheat breads.

Examples of High GLYX foods (to be avoided) are :
Bananas, beer, fries, cornflakes, croissants, grape sugar, instant rice, isotonic drinks, lemonade, milk chocolate, salted potatoes, watermelon, white bread.

posted by Stu Savory on 3rd January 2004 at 06:08 Central European Time

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Superb new Celtic Scrimshaw by M.M.Roe

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Frank Paynter had a nice quotation in his blog's left sidebar yesterday, which read : There is an artist imprisoned in each one of us. Let him loose to spread joy everywhere. (Bertrand Russell). So this inspired me to show you some of the work of a friend of ours, M.M.Roe, who lives in Washington State (USA) painting, carving etc. Native American Art. This is a fossil walrus tusk carved with Celtic designs.

If you are driving in the WA area, go visit the Quinault Lodge country store to look at her work. Online, you can visit the Wild Spirit Gallery Ebay Shop which sometimes has works of hers. We have a couple of her paintings and they are really good! Back in 1998 Maggie Roe painted a calender Tiere - Spiegel der Seele for which my wife Cornelia did the texts.

posted by Stu Savory on 2nd January 2004 at 06:11 CET

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New Year Resolutions

As usual during the New Year's Eve party everyone was publicly quizzed on what they wanted for the future. Lots of goodwill and peace for all was wished if course, but my better half surprised my with a very specific and personal less time as a widow!. So, assuming she wasn't asking to have her clogs popped and taking it seriously, I've just been doing a little multivariate analysis of actuarial tables to calculate life expectancy.

Life Expectancy : L.E. is often given as a simple age number, which many appear to believe implies that one will definitively live to that age and then suddenly die. Not so. The number actu(ari)ally means : You have a 50% chance of dying before reaching this age (and a 50% of becoming older). It is a function of your lifestyle and habits, age and weight etc. etc.

Given my existing lifestyle and habits, age and weight etc. the actuarial tables gave my life expectancy as 77.8 years (I'm 59.5 now), and my wife's as 86.8 - which implies she ( 10 months younger than I) would statistically spend almost ten years as a widow. So what are the best ranked steps for me (most effectively) to reduce this 10 year difference?

1. Twenty minutes exercise daily adds 2.8 years (of which 0.7 are spent doing the exercises, so it's 2.1 net gain). I already do 1 hour in the gym twice a week, but maybe 20 mins a day at home wouldn't be so hard. Reduces coronary risk and makes 80.6 LE.
2. Avoid butter, cream and other saturated fats. Adds 2.0 years by reducing arteriosclerotic risks, making 82.6 LE. Need to read that GLYX diet info.
3. Minimise meat consumption, more fruit, veg, and fibre. Adds 1.8 by reducing colonic cancer risks, making 84.4 years LE. Need to read that GLYX diet info again!
4. Consume 800IU vitamin E and 150 microgrammes of selenium daily. Adds 1.6 years, giving a 86.0 LE. Don't know how these pills help though.
5. Drop weight by 26 lbs adds 0.6 giving 86.6 LE. Reduces coronary risk. (Difficult tho').
6. Drink green tea instead of coffee, (reducing colonic cancer risks?) Adds 0.6 too giving 87.2 LE. And by the way, we should be drinking 3 liters of water a day!
7. Drink a small amount of alcohol regularly, preferably 1 glass of red wine daily (good for the heart). Adds 0.5 too giving 87.7 LE. Too much is bad for you though.

And these seven simple steps - if I can stick with them - would wipe out the difference in our life expectancies. The UK cancer research site has more in the same vein (sic!).

But Remember : Your mileage/mortality rate WILL vary. But why don't you start now too, after all, today is the first day of the rest of your life.
Gotta blog off now, time to go base-jumping ;-)

posted by Stu Savory on 1st January 2004 at 14:41 Central European Time

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