Yearly Archives: 2004

Asia begins at the Landstraße

Posted on March 9, 2004 by acb

said Metternich and I used, when I stayed in Vienna, to walk to that dusty street to feel it. I couldn’t feel anything. But it’s still a wonderful sentence, in some ways unsurpassed until the morning of March 9th, 2004, … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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The opposite of support

Posted on March 6, 2004 by acb

Sometimes I think that anyone who has ever used Linux should be banned from any contact with the public. The trouble is that they can almost communicate with normal humans. They use the same words. But they only have one … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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Performance

Posted on March 2, 2004 by acb

If anyone is reading this in the neighbourhood of Bath and Bristol, do come along to the two shows I am doing at the Bath Literary Festival tomorrow. There is a talk at 4.30pm in the Guildhall, which I think … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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a tasteless anecdote

Posted on March 1, 2004 by acb

In my hotel brochure in Jerusalem there was a story about a sculptor, the daughter of a holocaust survivor. Almost all her mother’s Polish family had been killed — Grandpa had gasoline injected into his vein; one brother was made … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Posted in Travel notes | 1 Comment

Six million degrees of separation

Posted on March 1, 2004 by acb

Transcribing the Benny Morris interview, I stumble over a name. It is “Henry ?Pullen”, a Cambridge historian, under whom he did a PhD. So to Google, where eventually the name of Henry Pelling turns up in the context of a … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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A small Jerusalem statistic

Posted on March 1, 2004 by acb

The Moment café on Gaza Street in Jerusalem serves very good sandwiches. I know because I ate there twice, appreciating also the fact that it was never in the least bit crowded. At least before nine I never saw more … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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A techie question

Posted on March 1, 2004 by acb

I have had to re-reconfigure the wireless network on my return from Jerusalem, since the hotel I was in didn’t use any WEP encryption on their network. I can never remember how to generate a WEP key and there seems … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Posted in Software | 3 Comments

Examines self for anti-Semitism

Posted on March 1, 2004 by acb

I must have been sixteen before I knew I knew anyone Jewish. My parents were warmly pro-Israel: there is a family legend that in May 1967, my mother drove into the back of a Stockholm tram while distracted with worry … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Posted in Blather | 1 Comment

A postcard from Jerusalem

Posted on February 28, 2004 by acb

Mass tourism is pretty horrible. But to see a city where tourism has died off is ghastly. Of course, it looks absurd to come to Jerusalem and see the city’s problems as primarily touristic, but I’m not sure that the … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Posted in Travel notes | 3 Comments

gone again

Posted on February 25, 2004 by acb

I’m off to Israel until Sunday, so there may be no posts till then. It all depends on business and connectivity. Continue reading →

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