Thursday, December 20th, 2007
Axel Springer’s Dziennik is in fine fightin’ form to judge by Tuesday’s edition of the paper. They’re not letting those Greens get away with the oil slicks that have been polluting the Wisła (Vistula) lately. An editorial thunders: “Ecologists take their Heads out of the Vistulan Sand.” And it’s all thanks to the brave journalists […]
Thursday, December 13th, 2007
I despatched Ukraine a few weeks ago. Epic though the travelogue was, panoramic and sweeping in its grandeur, it turns out that my deft, broad brushstrokes that summed up an entire country in a series of arresting images left out a few minor details. Here comes Daniel Olkowicz in this week’s Polityka with his impressi—errr, […]
Thursday, December 6th, 2007
2007-05-30 Telekomunikacja Polska. Press release. Darmowe rozmowy przez całą dobę. (Free conversations all day long.) That was May. This is December. The company’s subscribers have received a letter from one Jacek Mrozik, Marketing Director. Certain changes have been made in the nomenclature of Telekomunikacja Polska’s rich array of offers. Namely: “plan tp 60 minutes for […]
Tuesday, December 4th, 2007
Chavez has gone and spoiled it all. He only went and lost the constitutional referendum. Not only that, but he has had the impudence to graciously concede defeat! Dziennik quotes him as saying “We respect the rules of the game. Venezuela is not a dictatorship.” Further, he called on his supporters not to cause disturbances […]
Tuesday, November 27th, 2007
There was a stick but there was carrot too. Among the ways in which the Communist authorities in Poland tried to keep writers and creative types in line was by introducing in 1978 a tax free allowance of 144,000 zł per annum for them. This at a time when the average monthly wage was 4 […]
Monday, November 26th, 2007
Thirteen translators of Ryszard Kapuściński contributed their stories to a book that came out last year. It was to have been birthday present, but Kapuściński died before it appeared. The contributions vary widely in subject matter, some not referring at all to translation making it less than essential reading for the student of the subject. […]
Thursday, November 22nd, 2007
Ukraine is a land of contrasts. No wait – the past is a constant companion in Ukraine. Or how about Ukraine is the Montana of Europe? A trip to Ukraine is a trip back in time? Awful stuff but people seem to like it. According to Google Chile, Guinea (“the Switzerland of Africa”), Kansas, Jamaica, […]
Tuesday, November 13th, 2007
From today’s Irish Times: European consumer affairs commissioner Maglena Kuneva will issue an ultimatum to Europe’s biggest low-fares carrier and scores of other EU airlines tomorrow over the way they sell tickets online. She is expected to threaten to “name and shame” those airlines she believes are breaking European consumer laws and ask national regulators […]
Monday, November 12th, 2007
I’ll never tire of this one. Here’s Gazeta Wyborcza‘s page one headline from 10-11th of November: “Hugo Chavez brata się z Kolumbijskimi terrorystami” “Hugo Chavez fraternises with Columbian Terrorists” Turning to the story within it emerges that Chavez is mediating between FARC and the Columbian government in the matter of prisoner exchange. Mediating, fraternising – […]
Monday, November 12th, 2007
Further, it is obvious that since form is a principle of choice […], new forms will reveal new things in reality, new connections, and naturally, the more the internal coherence of these new forms is stressed in relation to others, the more rigorous they will be. Michel Butor, “The Novel as Research,” translated by Gerald […]