There are 13 posts tagged ENG (this is page 1 of 2).
«Che gelida manina,
se la lasci riscaldar»
— «La bohème», opera di Giacomo Puccini, aria di Rodolfo
Hai un problema che ti dà pena?
Risolvo.
Preoccupata dal peso sul cuore?
Ascolto.
Sei a terra? Giù di morale?
Sollievo.
Piangi di lacrime calde?
Le bevo.
Parli dei tuoi successi?
Gioisco!
Ti lagni dei fallimenti?
Capisco…
Continue reading
Email once united the world, now it is living difficult times under the pressure from instant messengers (IM). Let’s compare them.
0️⃣:0️⃣ Gong!
Both IMs and email are rapid, both are instant: IMs arrive in deciseconds, emails arrive in seconds, that’s insignificant.
No winner here. Score unchanged: IMs 0️⃣ — Email 0️⃣ Continue reading
Nothing personal. Just figures.
Computed as follows ↓
Spanish Flu |
Hong Kong Flu |
Covid-19 |
|
| Period | 1918-20 | 1968-69 | cumulated as of 7 March 2021 |
| Deaths worldwide, mln | Medium estimation: 75 mln; Pessimistic est.: 100 mln Source: Wikipedia |
Medium est.: 2.5 mln; Pessimistic est.: 4 mln Source: The Lancet |
2.591 mln Source: Johns Hopkins University |
| World Population, mln | 1912 | 3552 | 7851 |
| Population Lost in the Pandemic, % | 3.92% | 0.07% | 0.03% |
Covid-19 data as of 7 March 2021.
And… Have you ever heard of the Hong Kong Flu? Honestly. It was only 52 years ago. Twice as many victims as our Covid. Honestly, please.
« Stopped by a policeman for exceeding the speed limit, Moshe Dayan says with a wry smile: “I have only one eye. What do you want me to watch: the speedometer or the road?” »
A good driver is an attentive driver. A driver who is watching out, at all times. And I used to be one of those good drivers. My cornerstone principle was 360°×100%: watch the road, monitor the situation around my car every second, anticipate bad surprises and leave enough room for correcting my own and others’ mistakes. I was always adjusting my speed according to the real-time circumstances, not theoretical prescriptions invented by a bureaucrat in an office.
My first ±18 years of driving in the 360°×100% mode proved efficient and safe. I never looked at my speedometer during these 18 years, I was watching the road instead. I could be probably driving 32 km/h instead of the allowed 50 in a street of Namur if I deemed 32 the adequate speed. I could be probably driving 134 km/h instead of the allowed 120 when I was alone on the illuminated motorway in the middle of the Ardennes — maybe yes, maybe no, I don’t know. I never ever diverted my attention away from the road. As a result, during these 18 years of road-focused driving I have never had any radar flash, any fine, any warning, any problem in any country on any type of road — it means that my speed was always adequate, just naturally.
Life is like a box of chocolates kaleidoscope. Throughout our lives we see changing patterns that emerge and vanish as epochs come and go. Sometimes the speed of rotation is faster, sometimes it’s slower, sometimes the kaleidoscopes are not moving at all.
Imagine an average man, let’s call him Hieronymus, who lived in let’s assume XIVth century in let’s assume the Holy Roman Empire. He had a kaleidoscope too. What has he seen in it during his life? Always the same picture: same society, same values, same technology. What changed between his life under Henry VII and his life under Charles IV (provided the guy survived in the Plague)? Absolutely nothing. Hieronymus’s kaleidoscope didn’t move a single degree, all life long he has been observing one primitive pattern, one utter boredom.
Some generations are luckier. My Generation X (borns between ±1965-1975) is among the luckiest ones. Okay, we didn’t enjoy the “Trente Glorieuses” and “Wirtschaftswunder” of the Baby Boomers, but we can’t complain: we knew no Black Death, no World War I/II, no nuclear bombing, no ice period, no slave trade, no witch trials, no hunger. Our lives are safe and extremely interesting because the speed of rotation of our kaleidoscopes is faster than ever in human history. Our kaleidoscopes are fascinating. Here’s what I have seen so far in my personal kaleidoscope ↓
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There is a language, óne language, spoken “from Đerdap to Jadran”, from Subotica to Podgorica across Vukovar, Sarajevo and thousands of picturesque towns and villages. Like Persian or Hindustani, the Serbo-Croatian language is pluricentric with two perfectly interchangeable and fully equivalent alphabets, with two equivalent standards of pronunciation (Ije- and Ekavian) unrelated to political borders (see map), with one single literary Štokavian norm and a number of extra-literary dialects, all unrelated to political borders across the linguistic continuum. Most important: the grammar — what principally makes a language a language — is identical in Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro, Srpska Republic and the Federation of Bosnia-Hercegovina. Without forgetting the Brčko district.
Regional differences in vocabulary are manifold (different areas use different blends of Slavic, Turkish, Hungarian, German and other ingredients), but those differences are well-known and intelligible for the speakers from other areas, exactly as is a Hollywood movie for a British film watcher. Croato-Serbian unconditionally remains a supranational koiné for 20+ million native speakers of this beautiful language.
Politicians and nationalists blindly ignore this obvious reality. They upgraded regional variants of the common language to a language proper, they invented “Serbian”, “Croatian”, “Bosnian” and “Montenegrin” languages emphasising trivial particularities and leveraging on minor differences.
Three TOTALLY identical texts. Political correctness 80 LVL
But the common sense should not suffer from this narrow-minded political myopia. Progressive people struggle for promoting the common sense, and this Declaration on the Common Language signed by a lot of good people is a good example that there is hope.
If the equation sovereign state = language is deemed normal, then I wonder why we still have no “Austrian language”, “Kuwaiti language” or “Australian language”. «Do you speak Nicaraguan?» — «No, sorry, I only speak Salvadorian, please translate». If being a sovereign state is enough to claim an individual language, then there would exist even two “Belgian languages”, because both Belgian Dutch and Belgian French do have a number of particularities vs. the Amsterdam and Paris norms, so why not? With this logic I would, as anybody else, have easily tripled or quadrupled the number of spoken languages.
P.S. The above text was proudly written in Bahamian. Don’t confuse with English!
Gaston Dorren, the author of the fantastic Lingo and other books on comparative linguistics, asked his readers to share their associations and connotations with different languages, how these languages are felt from outside?
Here’s what I feel, subjectively, as Gaston asked.
Russian is the Pacific Ocean to me — no limits, no end in sight, an absolute immensity both in width (inherent expressive tools of the language) and in depth (inherent bottomless vocabulary). Russian is a modelling clay I can shape anything with — not only because it’s my mother tongue, but mostly because of a total 3D freedom and flexibility a Slavic language can offer.
Yiddish (which calls itself ‘màme-lošn’ — ‘Mom’s language’) and Belarusian both taste home, bread, warm milk and fireplace — so sweet and cozy. Continue reading
Here is what we’ve got so far with this Presidential election: Continue reading
Voting for Gary Johnson is good — not because the two big competitors are both bad options for America and the world. Voting for Gary Johnson is good per se, because only Libertarians manage to simultaneously embrace freedom, peace, prosperity, justice and — last but not least — common sense. 
How to start an engine with another car’s battery?
Here is my checklist.
© A. Kobzar, 2014.
Voltage 12V=12V CHECK Similarity of mAh CHECK Cable fits car types CHECK Cars touch NO Gear NEUTRAL ON BOTH Handbrake ENGAGED ON BOTH Electric consumption OFF ON BOTH Connect in this sequence: 1. RED: Recepient's Plus 2. RED: Donor's Plus 3. BLACK: Donor's Minus (Earth Screw) 4. BLACK: Recipient's Minus (Earth Screw) Donor's engine START Let running X MINS Recipient's engine START Let running X MINS Donor's engine STOP Disconnect cables in reverse order
I can watch this webcam eternally: our dear planet seen from the International Space Station in live 24/7 stream. Ground speed = 14400 knots. Belgium is crossed in 37 seconds from Arlon to Ostend. A flight from Geneva to New York takes 14 minutes. You say Good morning and Good night 32 times a “day” because sunrise/sunset magnificently occurs every 45 minutes.
Rapture… and serenity… No borders, no governments, no “territorial integrity”, no “motherlands”, no nationalities, no ideology, no god and no religion too. Just our Earth — a flash of living light in the middle of an Endless Nowhere.
Just our home.
Just majestic.
