Monthly Archives: December 2007

Unity sees the bright side

Posted on December 28, 2007 by acb

There is more to the story I told in the previous entry about the SS man who found he was a Jew. Here is how it ended, in Unity’s telling to Diana. Of course poor Heinz was completely erledigt [shattered] … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Posted in Blather | 8 Comments

Nazis stole my Christmas

Posted on December 27, 2007 by acb

I was given a copy of the Mitford sisters’ collected letters, and have sunk, enthralled, into its currents, occasionally surfacing, sputtering and expostulating, to read whole chunks out loud to the nearest victim. The nicknames and the silliness no longer … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Posted in Blather | 7 Comments

Two short notes on theology

Posted on December 21, 2007 by acb

I can’t resist quoting at length from a glorious piece by Fred Clark on his problems with a spam filter. Clark is a Baptist journalist, whose blog, the Slacktivist, contains an extended, gloriously funny, deconstruction of the Left Behind books, … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Posted in God | 18 Comments

Life in the South

Posted on December 11, 2007 by acb

So, to a party in London, where the first person I talk to is Fay Weldon. It is incredibly noisy and cramped, and when I tell her that my latest work is really a sort of time-travel book about Sweden … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Posted in Blather | 4 Comments

Book cover

Posted on December 9, 2007 by acb

Here at last: the back cover text is in the alt tag. Continue reading →

Posted in Literature, Sweden | 6 Comments

How to adjust the area

Posted on December 9, 2007 by acb

You’ll have to scroll down to the bottom of this Language Log post to learn the answer. It is a wonderful example of the perils of machine translation. A rather cleaner piece of linguistics, from the same sourse, is a … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Posted in Net stories | Comments Off on How to adjust the area

It’s not for me

Posted on December 7, 2007 by acb

It’s for a friend, honest: but does the lazyweb know a way to tweak the firewall in OS X so that all traffic on Port 80 is forbidden between midnight and 3.30pm, so that some work gets done? Continue reading →

Posted in nördig | 5 Comments

Sell all your bank shares

Posted on December 7, 2007 by acb

A terrifying glimpse into the US mortgage market, via Rafe Coburn, from which it emerges that until about six months ago, you could borrow enough to buy a house valued at a million dollars on a household income of less … Continue reading →

Posted in British politics, USA | 4 Comments

Truncated brain processes

Posted on December 7, 2007 by acb

And you, too can be left looking like Cletus the slack-jawed yokel if you just read this. Part of me feels a twinge of shame for the Spectator that Alexander Chancellor edited. This is what might be called the nut … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Posted in War | Comments Off on Truncated brain processes

Are virtues Christian?

Posted on December 6, 2007 by acb

Someone — I think Phillip Pullman — was complaining the other day that he got really pissed off by the claim that love, goodness, courage, etc, were “christian virtues”, since they can be exhibited by atheists and other non-Christians. Are … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Posted in God | 3 Comments