Pligget

Pligget
Little to say for myself

Saturday, March 22, 2003

Abroad Thoughts from Home

Another little nugget from when I was in France:

When watching telly, there was the occasional advert for some awful crooner or other, ending with a closing caption saying the latest album was available on CD and K7. I thought: hmm - K7 must be their format name for audio cassettes. How quaint.

Then on another occasion there was an advert for a movie which had just come out - on DVD and K7. Now I'm thinking: wait a tick - audio cassettes and VHS can't possibly have the same format name - they're nothing like each other. Typical Frog illogic.

It was weeks later that I finally twigged. It's not "K7", it's "ka - sept". It was just French shorthand for "cassette". Silly me.

There must be loads of examples of this in all sorts of languages. The only English one I can think of off hand is "IOU". I wonder whether there are any French people over here wondering quietly what an "eeyoo" is...

posted by Plig | 03:28 |

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Forget the sentimental notion that foreign policy is a struggle between virtue and vice, with virtue bound to win.
Forget the utopian notion that a brave new world without power politics will follow the unconditional surrender of wicked nations.
Forget the crusading notion that any nation, however virtuous and powerful, can have the mission to make the world in its own image.
Remember that diplomacy without power is feeble, and power without diplomacy is destructive and blind.
Remember that no nation's power is without limits, and hence that its policies must respect the power and interests of others.
Hans Morgenthau

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts
Bertrand Russell

The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one
Albert Einstein

When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative
Martin Luther King Jr.

Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man
Bertrand Russell

I think it would be a good idea
Mahatma Gandhi, when asked what he thought of Western civilization

There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun
Pablo Picasso

Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others
Groucho Marx

Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it
Mahatma Gandhi

Always make new mistakes
Esther Dyson