Mon, 25 Sep, 2006
Pay and Display
I've got it. We can make people realize how expensive carbon is by making them pay for it through parking meters. People who think nothing of paying GBP 1.50 for a cup of coffee will have fits of the vapours if Muckborough charges them the same for an hour's parking, and probably spend a fiver on fuel driving to Sharnley where you can park for nothing.
Fuel is still amazingly cheap, though. You can get nearly half a gallon of the dearest non-renewable petrol for the same as a pint of renewable beer. How is that fair?
posted at: 20:23 | path: /maunderings | permanent link to this entry
Sun, 24 Sep, 2006
There's no such thing
Every so often in the current press enthusiasm about free newspapers, someone says something along the lines of "But there is concern that advertisers could unduly influence editorial lines". Does anyone keep a list of this somewhere?
Searching the web for this, I was amused to see:
"€śMoradvertisers ask us to blur the lines between advertising and editorial,"€Nina Lawrence, publisher of Bride and Modern Bride, told Advertising Age.
as if wedding magazines weren't utterly and irremediably complicit in the wedding industry anyway.
Some time ago, I compared the Independent to taz. This is extremely unfair, because die tageszeitung carries practically no advertising, relying instead on personal subscriptions.
posted at: 12:24 | path: /D | permanent link to this entry
Wed, 06 Sep, 2006
It's just common sense
There's an amusing bit of yesterday's Times on the floor over there. It says "TARGETING ASIANS: Is it common sense or racist?" for all the world as if 'common sense' didn't consist of prejudice, ignorance and misplaced certainty. I have no confidence in anyone who plans security on the basis of common sense.
posted at: 21:18 | path: /maunderings | permanent link to this entry
Tue, 05 Sep, 2006
Gammel
I thought I could keep separate languages apart in my head, but it took me ages to notice that the Gammel component in Gammelfleisch didn't use to be standard German, rather being familiar to me as a Scandinavian word for "old". Gammelfleisch, I assumed, was meat that was too old for human consumption.
According to de.wikipedia.org (translation mine):
"Gammel" is a Low German word, which means "old". Colloquially, according to Duden, Gammel indicates "cheap, worthless, unusable things of many sorts". Officially, the expression stands for food not fit for human consumption - the part of the catch which is used to make fish meal or fertilizer.
posted at: 19:30 | path: /D | permanent link to this entry
