Funeral + Striptease = Not any more

Finally a reason for learning swedish. According to SvD (one of Sweden's biggest newspapers), is it important in some chinese areas to attract as many mourners as possible to funerals to show respect to the deceased. And what better way to attract many visitors than to combine the funeral with strip tease? But now local authorities have had enough - in some instances the mourners have joined the strippers on stage - and from now on families have to let the authorities know before funerals what entertainment they are planning to attract visitors.

Infinity and the Mind

I've just added a link on the right of this page to Rudy Rucker's blog. What a guy - great scientist, science fiction author, hacker, and science writer. He lives the kind of life I wish I will be living when I'm 65.

For I am the Budgieman

Yesterday on my run I saw the Budgieman outside of Tate Modern. He was singing and giving various commands to the budgies, and the budgies did everything he said. I had no idea budgies could learn so many things. During the final song two budgies jumped up on a meter-long stick that the Budgieman was slowly moving around while singing. Each time he sang the command "kiss" the two budgies really kissed!

On learning languages

An old man is standing by the road with his grandson in his local village in Finland when a foreigner stops. The foreigner asks in swedish the way to the local shop and the old man doesn't understand and responds "eh?". The foreigner then tries the same question in english, german, french and german with the same response. Finally the foreigner drives off. The old man turns to his grandson and says "See, there's no point in learning foreign languages - that foreigner knew five different languages and still couldn't find the way".

Hero

Tom Neale is my new hero. What a guy!

Flame still burns

Now it's exactly one month until Sydney marathon and I feel pretty strong. I'm still thinking about whether I should run with my own Camelback water system and carry my own gel for carbohydrates - something that I feel comfortable with - rather than stopping every five k at water stations to drink and eat bananas etc.

Now when I'm out of the uni environment I miss studying - hence I'm thinking about studying Akkadian, the language of Babylon at Birkbeck University of London. Maybe not the most pragmatic choice but it seems really interesting to learn to read and write the language of Snowcrash.