Dolly by Falstaff, fakir

There is a poem called simply "Dolly" by the author Axel Wallengren, also known as Falstaff, fakir. It goes like this:

Dolly, Dolly, har du hjärta?
Svara mig, du grymma snärta!
Nej, du har ej. Oh, vad smärta!
Därför går jag nu till Berta.

As far as I know there is no English translation of it, so I will do an attempt of my own to render as much of the eloquence as possible:

Dolly, Dolly, where's thy heart?
Answer me! Thou cruel art!
Oh, what pain, for thou hast none.
Therefore I'll to Betty run.

Brain Sport

The human brain accounts for only 2% of the body weight but it takes 15-20% of the body's energy consumption. Consequently, the most efficient way to lose weight must be to think really hard.

I'm not sure that is true, but it is worth thinking about.

The Tongan Word for "No"

You may have heard this educational song by Flanders and Swan:

Oh its hard to say, olimakityluchachichichi, but in Tonga that means "no",
If I ever have the money, 'tis to Tonga I shall go...
For each lovely Tongan maiden there, will gladly make a date,
and by the time she's said olimakityluchachichichi,
It is usually too late!


You may also have spent hours, perhaps days, repeating "olimakityluchachichichi" to yourself, as a first step to learn Tongan.

You then wasted some time, I'm afraid. Flanders and Swan were not particularly accurate on this point, and the real Tongan word for "no" is "‘ikai".

(I have not found any overly reputable source for this, but search the web for Tongan no 'ikai, and you will find some bilingual official forms and private blogs that confirm it.)

Xinjiang and Turkey - who gets at whom?

10 July 2009, there was an article about the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, describing the events in Xīnjiāng (新疆, شىنجاڭ) as a kind of genocide.

11 July, there was another article, stating that three quarters of the victims were Han (汉) Chinese and not Uighur.

Does that mean that mr. Erdoğan denounced an Uighur genocide of innocent Han Chinese?

Considering that the Uighur are a Turkish people, that is unlikely. It is more likely that he either did not know the official numbers or did not trust them.

Global Times also gives a gender breakdown: 26 Han Chinese women were killed. Only one Uighur woman was killed.

We do not need to trust Chinese official figures - as little as we need to trust figures from any other source which has interests at stake. However, neither do we have to pretend that they do not exist.

Analysing this kind of events is usually very difficult, considering the complexity and how little facts are available. To ignore some claims but not others does not make it easier.

Bizarre

This is a blog entry entirely for my own benefit. There is a word I simply cannot spell correctly. Actually, I'm sure I can spell it correctly, but I do not know which language I spell it in, when I spell it. So:

• Bizarre is how you spell it in English and French.
• Bisarr or bizarr is how you spell it in Swedish.
• Bisarr is how you spell it in Norwegian.
• Bizarr is how you spell it in German and Hungarian.
• Bizzarro is how you spell it in Italian.
• Bizar is how you spell it in Dutch and Danish.
• Bizarro is how you spell it in Portuguese or Spanish.
• Bizarní is how you spell it in Czech.

How it spells itself is not yet known.

Why hunt the pirates? Why Hadopi?

The French government recently passed a law that will cut off internet users who use their account for illegal file sharing.

Sharing copyrighted files is illegal, and there is nothing strange about that. Artists have created something, and they should receive some compensation. Protecting their rights is a perfectly legitimate thing to do.

However, what is strange is the proportions the issue has taken.

Governments do not usually spend huge amounts on artists and art. However, here, suddenly, the government is willing to sacrifice people's right to share information, something which is article 19 in the the United Nations declaration of Human Rights:

“Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

In other words, the French government is willing to take the risk of breaking an internationally accepted law of human rights for the sake of artists.

They can do so of course. It is a matter of weighing one law against another. But I still wonder why they choose to do it? If artists are so powerful lobbyists, why do they not ask for more public subsidies?

There are other important things in the world. Global warming. Economic meltdown. Diseases. Wars. Why, pray why, do governments spend so much time on controlling file sharing, when they do not support the artists more economically?

Documentary that is not documenting

There is a National Geographic production called "Wall of Death" about wildlife close to the Dead Sea.

The program has no obvious purpose. It is a "nature program", so it of course has sequences with wild animals. However, it also shows obviously staged sequences like a "live recording" of animals' behaviour during an earthquake. Clearly it is impossible to time camera setup with earthquakes, that can happen any time or never, and even if they managed to catch a real earthquake, it is a slim chance that they would be able to film any animals during the few seconds an earthquake usually takes.

Sometimes it is obvious what are staged sequences, and sometimes it is impossible to tell. The result is that you sit and spend all your time thinking "is this true? or is it fake?" And once you have seen the program to end, you have no idea what you actually learnt from it, if anything. However, you know you lost 50 minutes of your life.

Creationists have more fun

I met a man in the main square today. He asked me if I had read the bible, and I answered yes.

"It is a magnificent book, isn't it?" he continued.
"Well, partly yes. But I have problems with things like the bits about Adam and Eve. It is not easy to fit with modern science."
"Oh, forget modern science! God created all plants and animals."
"You seriously believe that?"
"If you admire the wonders of the trees on the steep slopes in a valley, would it not feel great to have someone to say thank you to? If you see a strange insect, would it not be great to be able to say that's the way God made it, instead of trying to figure out some strange evolutionary purpose?"
"But do you believe in it?"
"Of course, I do. I like feeling great. We creationists may be wrong, but we have more fun."

No Fondness for the Enemy

I do not like this. On NPR, a military psychologist, Bryce Lefever, on the subject of torture says:

"I have no fondness for the enemy, and I don't feel like I need to take care of their mental health needs."

There are many logically valid arguments for torture, even though they rarely hold morally. If someone knows he can extort information from a prisoner, thereby saving the lives of thousands of others, then logically, torture may be an option. It is another story that the techniques used by the US apparently were useless. They could have worked, and that means that the argument theoretically works.

But what is really disturbing with Lefever's statement is not that he approved of some useless painful interrogation techniques. It is that there are people he felt he did not need to take care of. Labelling other human beings as people you do not need to take care of, gives a very bad taste in one's mouth.

There is not any such category of people according to the laws of any Western (or Eastern) democracy. Bank robbers have legal rights. Enemy soldiers have rights described in the Geneva Convention. Murderers cannot legally be lynched by angry mobs. Every human has a value. Every human is worth some care and protection. Every human has rights.

I took Lefever's statement verbatim but out of context. It is possible that he did not mean it quite that bad. Let's give him the benefit of the doubt. He has the right to it. He is human.

Negative apples

When I went to school we had plenty of examples counting with apples. "You have 2 apples. Bob has 3 apples. How many apples do you have together?" I thought that was pretty easy, I'm proud to say.

However, nowadays, people seem to count in negative assets. Fiat lost 48 million euro the first quarter 2009. Still, as they lost less than the competition, that makes it possible for them to buy (?) other companies, like Chrysler, Opel and Saab.

"You do not have 2 apples. Bob doesn't have 3 apples. Who has most apples? How many apples do you not have together?"