In the wake of Ireland’s
From Reuters: “President Bush thanked Minister Yang for China’s assistance in facilitating United Nations Special Envoy (Ibrahim) Gambari’s visit to Burma,” Gordon Johndroe, spokesman for the White House National Security Council, said.”It’s encouraging–China’s leadership is facing up the responsibilities concomitant with its emerging superpower status. It’s helping to put pressure on a corrupt autocratic regime […]
When a friend recommended the HBO series Flight of the Conchords (currently showing on BBC4) by claiming it featured “comedy songs that are actually funny” I was sceptical. I had visions of whimsical ditties fresh from an airing at the Edinburgh Festival, where alcohol and the slight hysteria of a live show commingle to extract […]
In connection with research by one David Amodio, Krzysztof Szymborski writes in the current Polityka that the results of scientific experiments and research are often incorrectly interpreted by journalists and misunderstood by readers. Results presented in the cold, clinical language of science inevitably become valorised, which can disgruntle the reader. Perhaps he has in mind […]
From the ABC news blog: “Bush’s UN Speech Full of Fone-eh-tick Pronunciations for World Leaders””[This] year, a glimpse of how the President sees his speeches was accidentally placed on the UN website along with the speechwriters’ cell phone numbers.Pronunciations for President Bush’s friend French President Sarkozy “[sar-KOzee]” appeared in draft #20 on the UN website. […]
Katyń is where the Soviets murdered between 15,000 and 25,000 Polish soldiers and other citizens during the second world war. Andrzej Wajda has made a film called “Katyń,” to which hordes of schoolchildren are trooping off to every day. Here’s Tomasz Sakiewicz of Gazeta Polska on the subject: “The elites of the Second Republic [inter-war […]
When I was young and green I truly believed that having a No. 1 single and a spot on Top of the Pops was enough to retire on. This was before I learnt that the disposable income for a pop performer is, after various deductions by the record companies, managers, and assorted hangers-on, usually about […]
Poland has told the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, of which it is a member, that it does not want monitors at its forthcoming general elections. One of the lamer arguments in favour of the general oppression (bugging, lustracja) in PiS-dominated Poland is that “if you are honest you have nothing to fear […]
“Kraków is my home and I learned Polish in about a week.” Impressed? These are the words of Argentine soccer player Mauro Cantoro, as quoted on page 8 of last weekend’s scrupulously accurate Dziennik. Cantoro must be either extraordinarily gifted or extraordinarily deluded. I turned at once to page 29 and the full interview. In […]