The drama queen
Charlotte really can be a drama queen sometimes. Today we were going for a walk along the river, and we stopped at a sunny spot where there were a couple of big thingies to sit on.
However, there weren’t enough for all of us, so she had to share hers with Marcel. She occupied two thirds of it, but she still accused him of pushing her, and she subsequently burst into tears.
Ryanair’s blind spot
I was looking at Ryanair’s destination map today, and it suddenly occurred to me that while they fly to lots of destinations all over Europe, and some areas are covered very densely, it seems they have a kind of black spot in an enormous area covering eastern France, southern Germany, Switzerland, some of Austria and the western part of the Czech Republic. Sure, they fly to Friedrichshafen and Karlsruhe, but only from very few airports.
Why is this? Are the airports too expensive in this area? Or are there too many competitors?
Esperanto lingvistisk set
Måske burde jeg skrive lidt mere om, hvordan John Wells’ Esperanto lingvistisk set ændrede mit liv.
Jeg opdagede esperanto som teenager (jeg var vel omkring 13, vil jeg tro), og lærte sproget på basis af bøger, jeg lånte på biblioteket i Viborg (jeg kan anbefale Esperanto laŭ metodo Friis, også kendt som Esperanto laŭ naturmetodo). En eller anden (min far? min mormor?) gav mig derfor John Wells’ bog i dansk oversættelse.
På dette tidspunkt vidste jeg intet om lingvistik, lydskrift og grammatik, jeg kendte intet til videnskabelig litteratur med litteraturreferencer og den slags, og mit kendskab til esperanto, engelsk og de andre sprog, der omtales i bogen, var slet ikke godt nok til at forstå alle hans pointer.
Men jeg elskede bogen – jeg må have læst den mindst ti-tyve gange. Jeg lærte uhyggeligt mange ting ved at læse den. Fx opdagede jeg, at min engelskudtale måtte være forkert, da den ikke passede med hans transkriptioner. Min far gav mig senere John Lyons’ Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics, og fra det øjeblik var jeg dømt til at studere lingvistik.
Så hvis jeg aldrig havde fået John Wells’ bog havde jeg måske aldrig fået lært mig selv grundlæggende grammatik og lydskrift, og så var jeg måske aldrig blevet glad for at lære sprog, og jeg var måske endt op som ensidig computernørd. 
Recommended reading
I recommend reading John Wells’s phonetic blog today (28/3). 
The problem with eBay
I’ve now sold a few items on eBay, and I’ve bought a few too (and been a low bidder for several more). So I think I’m qualified to comment on the process now.
Novice eBay users think the auction period is for bidding, and that eBay will make sure that you pay as little as possible. However, in practice only inexperienced people bid early – all others watch the item and try to snipe just before it ends.
So in practice, the auction period functions as a kind of public notice of a future auction, and the actual auction takes place in the last five minutes. However, in contrast to real auctions, the bidding doesn’t stop when there are no more bids, but at a specified time. This is great for experienced buyers with time on their hands, but it’s not great for sellers or inexperienced buyers.
I think it’d be much better if eBay moved to a model closer to real auctions: Announce a week in advance when the auction will start, and then let it run until there has been no more bids for a minute or so. Of course people could still use robots to do the actual bidding for them, but at least everybody would then be bidding at the same time.
Eat it, baby!
I love this video to go with Weird Al’s song:
John Sinclair has died
John Sinclair, one of the founders of corpus linguistics, and driving force behind the COBUILD dictionaries, died yesterday in his home in Tuscany. He will be buried in the English Cemetery in Florence.
I spent a bit of time with him six months ago, working on a secret dictionary project, and he was definitely still full of ideas then. It’s odd to know that he will now never see this project completed.
£10
One of the good things about working for a major publisher and book distributor is that we can buy books at a very low price. However, yesterday was an exceptionally good day: I managed to get the three-volume collection of Calvin & Hobbes for only £10 (DKK 109)!
Google bus
It turns out Google have built up a network of buses to take their employees to work. Really nice idea! It’s obviously mostly suited to people without kids, but for many people, it’s a great solution.
Gizzi’s
It seems the refurbishing of the Bistro du Sud is finally coming to a completion. However, it seems to have changed its name in the process, to Gizzi’s.
Update: I’ve found out what the connexion between Bistro du Sud and Gizzi is!
