Okay this is taking some serious time away from my studies. I'm laughing like an idiot by my computer. This is so much fun. Check this out:
Maria is so cool and she deserves some chocolate ice cream
Italian: Maria è in modo da raffreddisi e merita un certo gelato del cioccolato
Maria kicks some serious butt!
French: Maria donne un coup de pied un certain bout sérieux!
Italian: Maria dà dei calci ad una certa estremità seria!
Greek: Η Μαρία κλωτσά κάποια σοβαρή άκρη!
German: Maria tritt irgendeinen ernsten Kolben!
Who do you think you're messing with, buddy??
Russian: Вы думаете вы messing с, buddy??
German: Mit wem denken Sie Sie verwirren, Freund?? (Oh I have to memorize that).
Portugese: O quem você pensa de você messing com, camarada??
I have an axe stuck in my head, but nobody knows it (hey, you never know what might come in handy someday):
German: Ich lasse eine Axt haften in meinem Kopf, aber niemand kennt ihn
Spanish: Hago un hacha pegar en mi cabeza, pero nadie la sabe
I can't believe it! Thanks to Lisa for pointing this out!
Click here to enter the url of a website and have it translated. Shit is "shit" in Russian! Man I'm gonna have some fun with this! It's a pity it doesn't translate into any languages I understand, for me to check how well it works. Oh I think I better go find myself an Italian blog and translate it into English now! Ciao a tutti!
Update: I have been translating blogs. It is (apparently) customary to describe things (I haven't quite figured out what it means yet) as "spiny" in Italian. Such as a "spiny argument" (that makes sense though).
I also translated the Japanese CNN website. Japanese, apparently, is very strange. Here's an example: "The former priest, with boy rape guilty decision", and "24 businesses of pub possibly England", along with "Superbowl, winning successively achievement". Oh and this one I can't resist "Don marry no, and the Steve young palace entering NFL".
Okay, enough slacking. But try this website, it's a lot of fun!
The Real Story on Aid to SE Asia (Hat tip: Israpundit)
It is important to note that now with about $2 billion in aid pledged by countries, companies, and individuals that the largest donor nations have been (in order of amounts provided) Japan, U.S., U.K., and Sweden.
Israel, one of the smallest country in the world, sent major rescue and aid teams and packages to Sri Lanka, Indonesia, India and Thailand. Israel's aid works out to be the highest per capita donation of any country in the world.
Some of Israel's initial aid was refused for political reasons. It seems some countries would rather have their people die than accept aid from Israel. Someone suggested that all donor countries should put Israeli flags on their packages and then let the recipients decide if they want the aid or not.
It should also be noted that most of the countries devastated are either Moslem or have very large Moslem populations (Indonesia is the world's largest Moslem country). Despite this fact, none of the Moslem countries including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the UAE (with all their oil and the huge sums of capital they has gathered over the past year of oil price gouging) have not pledged nor sent anything.
It reminds me of the saying by Rabbi Hillel: "If I am not for myself, who will be? If I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, when?" Just thought it might be nice to know the real story for a change. You certainly won't see or hear any of that from the Christian Science Monitor, the LA or NY Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, The Guardian, National Public Radio, CNN or the BBC.
SHARM EL-SHEIKH - Echoing the words of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas moments before, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on Tuesday announced an agreement to end more than four years of hostilities between Israel and the Palestinians.
Ariel Sharon and Mahmoud Abbas meeting during the Mideast summit in Sharm el-Sheikh on Tuesday. (AP)
"Today, in my meeting with Chairman Abbas, we agreed that all Palestinians will stop all acts of violence against all Israelis everywhere, and, at the same time, Israel will cease all its military activity against all Palestinians everywhere," Sharon said at the close of a day-long summit in the Red Sea resort town.
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I'm not going to to pretend to be some kind of an oracle. I certainly hope that something good will come out of this. That's all I will say.
By Israel Insider staff and partners February 5, 2005
Israeli and Palestinian Authority representatives met Saturday night to resolve their differences concerning the release of Palestinian prisoners before Tuesday's Israel-PA summit in Sharm e-Sheikh, Egypt.
Palestinian protest for release of prisoners (AP)
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's senior aide, Dov Weisglass, is expected to arrive in Cairo on Sunday to finalize summit arrangements.
PA officials warned that unless thousands more prisoners are released, the summit would collapse and the Palestinians would return to terrorism. "If Israeli intransigence on this issue continues, the summit will fail," said Minister of Communications Azzam al- Ahmed. "If the prisoners aren't released, we will return to the cycle of violence."
The Palestinians are planning demonstrations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the coming days to demand release of all Palestinian prisoners held in Israel. The protests are intended to pressure Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.
Abbas, Palestinian sources say, wants Israel to release dozens of veteran Fatah prisoners who were imprisoned before the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993.
PA representatives stomed out of a meeting with Weissglas last Thursday after being told that Israel would release only 900 prisoners, none of them murderers, as a gesture to Abbas. PA officials called the offer "insulting," and Minister of Negotiations Saeb Erekat said "The Israeli offer is completely unacceptable," he said. "This is one of the most important and sensitive issues for the Palestinians."
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To return to terrorism? Wouldn't that mean that they left it in the first place? Well there surely will be in increase in terrorism is such large numbers of convicted criminals will be returned. In the meantime, Israel has for decades fought merely to acquire the bodily remains of a true hero.
Mourning your dead kid. Well that sounds like a reasonable thing to do. And yet palestinians rejoice in the death of their children as long as their child manages to also take the life of a Jew (what they call "shahada"). So are these people just faking it for the cameras, or are they simply incapable of making up their minds? Call me a coldhearted bitch if you want, but I just don't get it.
I really wasn't going to blog more today, but it seems like I always have so much to say.
I am on a study break, and I just finished reading some incredibly useless & mindnumbing article by one of my least favorite people in the world, anthropologist Talal Asad. I am disgusted by the fact that so many of the biggest idiots in the academia have chosen the same subject as I have.
For those of you who don't know, Asad is the son of a Saudi Arabian princess, and a Jewish father who converted to Islam. I can't even begin to tell you how much that digusts me. I normally feel that people should be free to choose their own religion... EXCEPT if they're Jews who want to convert to Islam. Or, come to think of it, if they're just basically anyone who wants to convert to Islam.
But anyway, Talal Asad grew up to be a fervent supporter of the palestinian cause. When Edward Said died last year (at long last), he expressed his sorrow, and claimed that Said (who was one of history's biggest liars <--- read that!) was "the manifestation of ethics".
But anyway, I wanted to post this comment I saw somebody wrote about Talal Asad, which I thought made a lot of sense:
Palestinians as "victims"? Anthropology is generally the study of diverse customs and traditions, not political ideology. So I was both surprised and disgusted with your recent article, "An International Double Standard?," which reported the views of anthropology professor Talal Asad. Clearly the professor is biased when he recounts the political plight of Palestinians, decrying their status as the "victims of victims" who have suffered at the hands of the Israelis. I guess he has forgotten the proclaimed goals of the Arab-Israeli wars of 1948, 1967, 1973, and 1982 to destroy the Jewish state and commit genocide by pushing all the Jews into the sea. Professor Asad should stick to his own field of study, lest he continue to expose his real prejudice without the security of his academic trappings.
