Et Cetera

“Scott Eric Kaufman”:http://acephalous.typepad.com/ has a “bad case”:http://acephalous.typepad.com/acephalous/2006/06/finish_silar_we.html of “summer vertigo”:https://crookedtimber.org/2005/06/07/summer-vertigo/.

Wait, is this “Marginal Revolution”:http://www.marginalrevolution.com/ or something? Anyway, “consider the following”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5104252.stm story:

Dutch fans are being handed orange shorts to watch the Argentina World Cup match if they wear trousers promoting a beer which is not the official sponsor. Up to 1,000 fans had to watch Friday’s game against Ivory Coast in underpants after being denied entry because they were wearing the orange lederhosen.

Fifa said a bid at “ambush” marketing – free publicity at the expense of official sponsors – was not allowed. But Dutch brewery Bavaria defended its decision to give away the lederhosen. It said no sponsors had the right to tell fans what to wear. American firm Anheuser Busch, maker of Budweiser beer, is among 15 companies to have paid up to $50m (£27m, 40m euros) each for the right to be an official partner at this World Cup.

Fifa spokesman Tom Houseman told the BBC News website that staff at the Ivory Coast match had been briefed in advance to look out for the trousers with Bavaria slogans and logo. Officials were instructed not to ask fans to remove the lederhosen if they had only underwear underneath, he said. “The idea of hundreds of fans removing their trousers is always potentially amusing, and our suspicion is that trousers were chosen as an ambush tool specifically because of the publicity that fans taking them off would generate,” he said.

“As a goodwill gesture this evening, I have provided gate staff tonight with piles of spare pairs of plain orange shorts should anybody require them.” Mr Houseman added that individual fans wearing items not made by the official World Cup sponsors need not worry about being turned away. Bavaria has defended its decision to give away the orange lederhosen with purchases of its beer. “I understand that Fifa has sponsors but you cannot tell people to strip off their lederhosen and force them to watch a game in their underpants,” Bavaria chairman Peer Swinkels told Reuters news agency. “That is going too far.”

I think your intuitions on this one would predict a lot about your views on IP law.

I’m reading and enjoying Steven Poole‘s _Unspeak_ at the moment, but was a little disappointed not to find one of my least favourite bits of unspeak, the term “Islamofascist,” in the index. It’s what Lewis Carroll’s Humpty-Dumpty (surely the patron saint of unspeak) calls a “portmanteau”:http://www.cs.indiana.edu/metastuff/looking/ch6.html.gz word, and indeed there’s something of the badger, something of the lizard, and something of the corkscrew about it. I’m also dipping into various volumes of E. Haldeman-Julius’ _Questions and Answers_, courtesy of Scott McLemee, and was a little startled to find Haldeman-Julius using a quite similar term in the 1930s:

bq. We thus see that the people most subject to Catholic-Fascism’s idea of censorship is most given to crime … True, we have our crime problem in this country, but Catholic apologists should be the last to throw this fact into the face of those who oppose Catholic-Fascism and its policy of suppressing heterodox literature.

And so on.

Now Haldeman-Julius and his friends (most prominently former Franciscan priest, “Joseph McCabe”:http://kenmacleod.blogspot.com/2006_02_01_kenmacleod_archive.html ) certainly had a thing about Catholicism, but it seems to me that the term Catholic-Fascism was rather more defensible in the 1930s than Islamofascism is today. You had the practical example of Franco’s regime in Spain, and Salazar’s in Portugal. Both were fascist; both had strong elements of Catholic clericalism (and Church support). Islamofascism … not so much (you could certainly make a case that Baathism was fascist, but it wasn’t really Islamic).

OK, it’s “dumpster-diving”:https://crookedtimber.org/2003/12/16/rough-trade/, but I was quite taken with the writing style of this post on the “Arrogance and Evil of Crooked Timber”:http://tjic.com/blog/2006/06/18/the-arrogance-and-evil-of-crooked-timber/.

bq. I’m reading through more and more of the comments now, and the hideous intellectual dishonesty of the leftists continues to alternatively make my blood boil in anger, and run cold in fear of the kinds of totalitarian “reforms” they would make if they ever seized control of society.

The boiling blood running ice cold and then boiling up again makes for quite an arresting metaphor. But then, don’t watery liquids simultaneously boil and freeze in the vacuum of deep outer space? (perhaps the author is trying to tell us something about where he’s dialing in from).

Waiting for the England vs Trinidad & Tobago match to start (come on the Caribbean!), I came across “this story”:http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,19340338-29277,00.html about a giant ocean vortex spinning off the coast of Australia. The article notes in passing that the vortex is “visible from space.” I think this expression needs to be retired. These days, the hosereel in my back yard is visible from space, and conveniently catalogued in an NSA database somewhere. (See: Potential WMD.) While I’m wasting your time, I want to complain about English (and Irish) football supporters who prissily correct Americans for using the word “soccer” and avoid that word themselves. I mean, it’s not as if the Americans invented the word — the Brits did, in the late 19th century, and the modern spelling was standardized around 1910. People used it interchangeably with “football” (and occasionally “Garrison Game”) when I was a kid.

OK, the game is starting. I predict Wayne Rooney will come on some time in the second half, and he will be so pumped with weeks of pent-up excitement that he’ll charge two-footed into his first tackle, breaking the leg of whoever is on the other end and tearing his own cruciate ligament to ribbons.

_Update_: Argh, so close for T&T — cleared off the line! Also: Peter Crouch could have cooked his dinner in the box and still had time and space to hit that cross properly. England fans must be apoplectic at this point.

_Update_: Rooney on for Owen. Let’s see how long it takes for someone to stamp on his foot.

_Update_: Oh well.

I used to think “back fat”:http://www.deliciousitaly.com/lardo.htm was a “pizza topping”:http://newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/food/openings/n_9571/ at “Babbo”:http://www.babbonyc.com/. Now I “know better.”:http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/15/fashion/thursdaystyles/15skin.html Mario Batali should make like _Fight Club_ and lipo it off the customers at the first dinner sitting and serve it to those at the second.

A “transcript”:http://world-o-crap.com/blog/?p=42 from World O’Crap, with Tim Russert and panelists Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter, Satan (“Call me Bob”) and Jesus Christ. A taste:

*Russert*: Mr. Christ, what do you say to accusations that you’re opposed to fighting a battle to bring about the end of all life on Earth because you’re an Anti-Semite?

*Jesus*: Well, first of all, I’d like to point out that I myself am Jewish—

*Ann Coulter*: Yeah! Just like George Soros. Another Jew who somehow figured out a way to avoid crucifixion.

*Jesus*: I WAS crucified! (DISPLAYS WOUNDS IN HANDS)

*Michelle Malkin*: Why don’t people ask him more specific questions about the nails in his hands and feet? There are legitimate questions about whether or not they were self-inflicted wounds.

*Russert*: What do you mean self-inflicted? Are you suggesting Mr. Christ crucified himself on purpose?

*Michelle Malkin*: Did you read the book by Barabbas and the Golgotha Veterans for Truth? Some of the thieves who were actually crucified have made allegations that these were self-inflicted wounds.

*Jesus*: I did not NAIL MYSELF to the cross!

From the weather forecast on the radio this morning: “Highs around 100 until Friday, warming up after that.” I’m looking forward to next month, when I’ll be in Palo Alto.

John has already mentioned that today is special for those who care about that sort of thing. (I’d link to his post if I wasn’t writing this on a somewhat malfunctioning Treo.) I was alerted to the special date by an email from a friend who let me know that he jumped in the shower at 6:06:06am. For those of us who aren’t ready to be doing anything at that hour (including notice the significance of the date and time) and who aren’t too strict about the specifics, another opportunity will arise at 6:06pm. What’s interesting enough for such an occasion? I will be on Broadway in NYC dropping off a friend at his show at 6pm. But so then what?

UPDATE: I’ve fixed the numerous typos in this post now that I have Web access again. I’ve also uploaded what I ended up doing at 6:06pm 6/6/06. In true photogeek fashion, I was just taking a picture.

“Miriam Burstein”:http://littleprofessor.typepad.com/the_little_professor/2006/05/cliche.html on academics in the movies.

bq. The $1,000,000 office. All faculty offices have built-in, glass-fronted, mahogany bookcases, as well as executive desks and leather chairs. Moreover, all professors keep their antique books _in_ their offices. Where _are_ these offices, and, more importantly, when can I have one?

“P. O’Neill”:http://bestofbothworlds.blogspot.com/2006_05_01_bestofbothworlds_archive.html#114798404611215661 on Flack Central Station and supersized astroturf.

bq. McDonald’s] is also funding TCS Daily, an arm of the Washington lobbying and public-relations firm DCI Group, that is making more pointed attacks against Mr. Schlosser and his work. Last week, TCS Daily launched a Web site called Fast Talk Nation that called his theories “rhetoric” and argued that he wants to decriminalize marijuana … Last Friday, TCS Daily abruptly closed the Fast Talk Nation site two days after its launch. James Glassman, who says he “hosts” the TCS Daily site, says he closed the Fast Talk Nation site because he wanted to pool his resources with the broader industry’s Best Food Nation site. … Are we really expected to believe that anything TCS now publishes about the film is not influenced by the food industry even with the more blatant lobbying now hived off to a separate — industry funded — website?

“Nick Antosca”:http://brothercyst.blogspot.com/2006/05/interview-with-john-crowley-contains_30.html interviews John Crowley.

Seeing as Pirates of the Caribbean II is coming out soon, I wonder whether it’s too late to get Johnny Depp back into the studio for a gratuitous falling-out-of-a-palm-tree scene, as a hat-tip to his character’s inspiration. Seems like an obvious option (I mean, _I_ thought of it). Though seeing as Richards had post-accident brain surgery recently, maybe the studio doesn’t want to risk it.

A “comment by Bitch PhD”:http://bitchphd.blogspot.com/2006/05/go-tell-norbiz-happy-fucking.html reminded me that this week I’ll have been blogging for four years. I’m not sure what to think about that, so let’s look at some data. Here is a time-series of the number of posts per month on “my blog”:http://www.kieranhealy.org/blog from its “inauspicious beginning”:http://www.kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2002/05/21/the-hello-world-entry/ in May 2002 to the present. (Since CT started, I’ve just posted the same material to my own blog, so the trend represents all my posts.)

*Update*: More trendline goodness added below.

[click to continue…]

Friday fun: You’ll remember the “Sony Bravia Ad”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Bb8P7dfjVw&search=bravia from a while back, with all the bouncing balls, melancholy José González music and sunny San Francisco streets. Well, Swansea is not San Francisco, and fruit doesn’t bounce all that well, but “apart from that it’s pretty close”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjHzS_twDVY. Local, uh, residents “spoke out in protest.”:http://www.swansea-res.org.uk/news.html (Note also the news of Fr Vincent’s departure at the bottom of that page.) Elsewhere there’s also “this”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sl5Nv2hOkYE (somewhat less interesting) and “this effort”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjOgFRMobMk.

I would like some “Koranic Tuna”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4995100.stm with my “BVM Toast”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4034787.stm, thanks. If I could talk Krishna into manifesting himself in some wasabi, lunch might get taken care of.