blog: file knapsack problem

[Kilmatead]

Did we ever stop making fun of it? Zabkat towers is now in the hands of the Russian-Mafia. Oi, 'vat a canoodle!

[Tuxman]

At least this means more vodka-induced "features" (at least I hope so).

[Kilmatead]

I had a Slovakian girlfriend once. She had this thing about pancakes. I won't say what she had about pancakes, just that she was more partial to them than vodka. Pancakes and hockey. That's all she ever talked about.

She did like cognac though, come to think of it.

Are they even "in the Euro" yet?

[nikos]

slovakia is a poor but upright and decent country. They are in the euro and quite strong in it (unlike greece, ireland and other PIIGS). I demoted greece just for summer holidays, because that's the only thing it has going for it, the weather. Of course had the weather in greece been as lousy as in slovakia or germany, we (they) might had more appetite for work and less siesta under the coconut tree

[Kilmatead]

Of course had the weather in greece been as lousy as in slovakia...

Heh, let's see how long you last once the winter really kicks in! Firewood blogs will be the least of your concerns. Even the Germans ran away (eventually), except for those super-tough-skinned Carpathian types.

Or maybe it was the Dracula accents that scared them away? Hmm... Nikos the Impaler...

One wonders how many languages your butterfly is going to be speaking come Spring...

[nikos]

One wonders how many languages your butterfly is going to be speaking come Spring...

that's funny... I speak in english with little vanessa, and she talks greek and slovak too, but now coming fresh from greece, she talks to everybody in greek! The simple rule in her little head must be: "these guys don't speak english like dad so let's try the other language". Hopefully she'll get the hang of 3 languages without burning up the head

[Tuxman]

Why not German? Most widely spoken language in Europe!

[nikos]

a 4th language will be a certain ticket to kookoo land

[Tuxman]

It's lovely there!

[Kilmatead]

The Swiss commonly speak 5 or so (officially educated). A quick look suggests India has 23 recognised languages in the constitution and South Africa 11. Which explains a lot, if you think about it.

Interestingly, German only ranks 11th in the overall picture, and the more incestuous it gets (they want their own closed internet now?) the more they sideline themselves to becoming victims of a pretend history yet again, except this time no one is bothering to impose it upon them - they do it themselves.

Exclaiming popularity "in Europe" is rather meaningless, what with Europe in the decline as a centre of knowledge and culture and economic concern - nothing special about that, it hit its Zenith in the Renaissance (on the back of a Medieval strength that few like to admit) and it's rather difficult to top that. America is not really a concern, as it was never the height of anything except in their own history books - saving, perhaps, a few short years after the war when it gleaned an economic dominance, and latterly a political-bullying tactical turn - but that's long over (economic and global political status become irrelevant when undermined by a lax citizenry and corrupt embittered officialdom; did they learn nothing from Rome?).

As the (abstract) West slips to the quarrelsome nadir, no other amalgam-culture has risen to the challenge yet, nor even shown the necessary arrogance to proclaim such (unless you count the weirdness of North Korea) so we're probably due a good few centuries of general decline and absence of focus until anything worthy of erudite thinking rolls around. (But that's the "nice" picture - the reality is probably going to be a bit messier involving the usual wars of solipsism, plagues of reactionaries, and an indeterminate battle with the planet itself - just for good measure.) One would hope the next influencing-interlocutor to rise won't be the corporate-states of science-fiction lore, but it's hard to imagine anything else as a truly dominant legal factor for at least a few centuries - "the kids need to get it out of their system", as it were.

And the language of violence those kids manoeuvre within won't be a spoken one, so German's as good as the next when you're describing the restless fallen - and if you count the potential auguries of Strauss' Im Abendrot, you've already got a poetic head-start.

[drac]

The way the world is going, you may want to teach her Farsi as her forth language.

[Tuxman]

Far what?