Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

[DaveAgain]

And while I'm there I have checked that a Dutch or German or Danish 'berliner' actually can be named as a doughnut in ENglish, albeit a doughnut without a hole (I would have forsworn that such a thing could be a doughnut in any language).

I think this might be a USA/UK difference. In the UK doughnuts used to always be jam doughnuts, like berliners but covered in granulated sugar rather than icing, the USA ring doughnuts are available UK shops now but I don't eat enough of either to know if one dominates the other.

[Iversen]

I have been through many of my weak languages today and yesterday - using the free time I have gained by finishing my theme collecting project. But today I also found time to revisit the splendid Ukrainian exhibition at the historical museum Moesgaard. Its theme is the Rus, i.e. the (mostly) Swedish vikings who got control over Volga and founded Kyiv (Київ). For the moment those treasures are probably safer here than in the home country, and the number of visitors to the museum has definitely increased since the first time I saw it - for a reason.

I have worked with bilingual texts and a dictionary on the following languages:

Ukrainian, which I now study with the goal to learn to read it, but without a grammar I don't expect to start writing in it anytime soon. I have earlier referred to a text about the duck birds in general, but the one I used yesterday was specifically about the mute swan (Лебідь-шипун aka Cygnus olor), which Google Translate consistently confounds with the whooper swan (лебідь-кликун aka Cygnus Cygnus) - heaven knows why, but now I have ridiculed GT for it a second time.

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Russian, and ... well, you almost feel like a criminal when using this language, but I tell myself that most of of the people whose texts I use are decent people who don't support Putin. And I studied a monolingual text from an old issue of the magazine "Neue Zeiten", which is in pure Russian in spite of being printed in Germany, And the text told about the VW company and its commercial success.

Onwards to Bulgarian, where I used a text about yoghurt (кисело мляко) with a translation into Esperanto - but I could probably have done without it. Using the correct verbal forms in Bulgarian is a nightmare, but reading it is fairly easy. BU: "кисело мляко" всъщност означава мляко, което е станало кисело чрез ферментация, а в Дания такъв продукт всъщност се продава - и това не е същото нещо като 'yoghurt'! Между другото, статията ми каза нещо, което не знаех, а именно, че за извършване две различни бактерии за извършване ферментацията: Lactobacillus bulgaricus (!) и Streptococcus thermophilus.

Then Slovak, which still is one of my weaker languages. I used the last part of an old text about Košice Zoo, which is said to be the third larget in Europe (although only a third is open to the public), and then I of course wondered which ones no 1. and 2. largest were - and a thread on Zoochat claims that Whipsnade is the largest with 600 acres (=2.428.200 m2), with Berlin Tierpark the second largest with 395 acres. I haven't been to Whipsnade (hard to access without a car), but it also seems to use only a third of its area - and then I would point to Berlin, where as far as I can judge all available space is used. But several safari parks are bigger. In Denmark we have got Knuthenborg with 400 ha used by the safari park = 40.000.000 m2, and it's probably not even the largest in Europe. I would also like to mention Toronto Zoo in Canada, which I explored on foot: 287 ha = 28.700.000 m2. And Košice? 292 ha, but with only a third open to the public not in the major ligue.

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Then a couple af Balkan languages: first a text in Bosnian about the archeological park in Tuzla (written in Latinitsa). Actually I have never studied Bosnian, but I know a little bit of Serbian, and I used a Croatian dictionary for the inevitable look-ups. And afterwards Serbian, where I used a fairly long Wikipedia text about the Bronze age in general (written in Cyrillic - I try to avoid Latinitsa for that language to keep it apart from Croatian). After that Polish, where I first finished the text about the Italian opera composer Donizetti and proceeded to study a text from the Airgate magazine which I picked up in the airport of Kraków the last time I was there.

Then Greek, where I studied two pages from the magazine Blue, which I picked up during the trip that included the Polyglot conference in Θεσσαλονίκη. GR: Το κείμενο μιλούσε για αμπελοκαλλιέργεια στην Αττική και οι συμπυκνωμένοι αμπελουργοί χρησιμοποίησαν μια λιγότερο γνωστή ποικιλία σταφυλιού, η οποία σύμφωνα με πληροφορίες ήταν πολύ ευέλικτη. Σκέφτηκαν να προωθήσουν τον οινοτουρισμό στην Ελλάδα, αλλά όσο ρίχνουν ρετσίνι στο κρασί, μάλλον θα είναι σε μικρή κλίμακα.

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And I have also watched TV, including two programmes from TVE in the series "Españoles en el Mundo":

SP: El primero habla de españoles en Albania, el segundo de españoles en Cartagena en Colombia, pero es casi una trampa, porque ya hablan español allí. En Albania, hablan Shqip, y cuesta mucho acostumbrarse (¡hablo por experiencia!). FR: Et après ça une émission d'Arte sur un portrait de Léonard de Vinci - appelé le portrait 'Lucanie'. Il parait qu'on ne sais pas vraiment si c'est vraiment une peinture authentique de l'époque, peut-être même par le maître lui-même, mais on a du moins découvert que la peinture qu'elle ressemble le plus (IT:) (esposta negli Uffizi di Firenze) è stata realizzata almeno cento anni più tarde e di conseguenza non può essere una copia di ella. Una vera opera di Leonardo varrebbe milioni di euro , ma io penso che l'altro dipinto negli Uffizi sia più bello di quello di Lucania - ed in megliore condizione .

[Iversen]

I have been at my mother's place a few days, and during that time I have read some pages in the Assimil Indonesien de Poche and writtten a Greek wordlist, but not much else. Before that (Monday) I did study one text, namely the Indonesian Wikipedia article about Albania, and I did a wordlist based on words from that text and several of its predecessors. Actually I have worked with the first part of the article some time ago, but it was fine to go through it once again - that way you get the feeling that you have learned something. And on the rest of the text you can then get a more realistic assessment of your skills . That being said, I didn't feel totally lost after some months (read years) where music has taken much of my time.

This evening I intend to return to a series of texts in different languages - more about that tomorrow.

[Iversen]

Miracle: no 502-503's so far - but low forum attendance in general, it seems.

I did use some of my texts yesterday for copying/study as planned (including the Ukranian Wikipedia article about bird eggs and a page with short messages from Cyprus in the Greek flight magazine 'Blue'), but I could see that I needed some new study materials. And I have spent about four hours today selecting, editing and printing the following materials:

Ukrainian: the Wikipedia articles about Pterosaurians (with a translation into Esperanto) and the brain (ditto French). The reason that I chose the first one was that I first found found an article in Bulgarian about 'flying dinosaurs' - which is totally nonsense, since the animals mentioned and illustrated in the article are pterosaurs, and they ain't no dinosaurs (more about that below). And then I just followed up with a couple of pages about brains.

Russian: articles about paranoia and two malpersons from the Stalin era: Zhdanov and Berija. And no - we don't discuss politics here. And there is still a lot of decent materials about Russian culture and science which can be accessed so I'm not dropping my Russian studies, but travelling to Russia is not an option any more.

Slovak: In my search for articles from other sources than Wikipedia I did a search for museums in Slovakia, and under Muzeum Narodný I found a long list that included the Hudobné múzeum, which is one of three in the remains of the 'sugar' district below the castle Hill. After that some more depressing articles from Wikipedia: one about multiple sclerosis and one about psychosis in general.

Bulgarian: the 'Уикипедия' article about the house sparrow (Passer Domesticus), Домашното врабче in Bulgarian, followed by two shorter articles about sparrows from a site called http://www.vrabcheta.bg. But then I also found the incompetent nonsense about flying dinos at nationalgreenhighway -and when that article mentioned Pteranodon it claimed that it was the largest of its kind. Nonsense- so far the largest flying animal ever found is Quetzalcoatlus with an estimated wingspan of at least 10 m, a couple of meters more than any other Pterodactyl. And there is worse to come: when I tried to find the article again I stumpled over a sinister information, namely that there is a whole family of malware which has been named after the poor innocent (and extinct) Pteranodon - quote: "Pro-Russian CyberSpy Gamaredon Intensifies Ukrainian Security Targeting". It didn't deserve that!

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Serbian: First a couple of articles in Latinitsa about the town Novi Sad in Serbia, where there was a polyglot congress in 2014, after that two clips in Cyrillic from the homepage of the Etnographical museum of Beograd, one about the history of the museum and one about its collection of musical instruments, followed by a lengthy excerpt from the homepage of the Beograd museum for Science and Technology. Translations into Spanish, Catalan and Portuguese from these texts.

Afrikaans: first a monolingual article about the history of the language, then one about Low German ('Nederduits'), a short one about Valsbaai ('False Bay') and another short one about Hluwhluwe-iMfolozi (formerly Hluwhluwe-Umfolozi), all three with a translation into Dutch so that I can see the differences between that language and Afrikaans.

AF: Ik het daardie gebiede in 2001 besoek op 'n toer wat ek halfpad (by Bloemfontein) verlaat het weens die onophoudelike rockmusiek in die toerbus. Toe ons die Valsbaai besoek het ons in 'n kamp met 'T-hutte' in 'n wildreservaat sonder leeus geslaap. Ek onthou ek het vroegoggend wakker geword en gaan stap, waar ek 'n halfdosyn wildsbokspesies gesien het en god weet hoeveel voëls - maar toe ek teruggaan kamp toe om dit vir my medereisigers te vertel het hulle verkies om te bly met hul oggendkoffie. En toe stap ons saam met 'n gewapende rangers voor en agter en sien absoluut niks nie – behalwe die luiperdpoep op die beeld. OK, toe ek wegdwaal van die groep af, het ek 'n smaragkoningvisser en 'n paar kleiner soogdiere gesien, maar die wagters was nie gelukkig om mense die raserige karavaan te laten verlaat nie. Ons het darem baie diere in die nasionale park gesien, maar my foto's is min en sleg, want ek het toe nog nie 'n geskikte kamera gehad nie.

F2137b04_Luiperdpoep.jpg

Albanian: I did a search for the zoo in Tirana - one of the most miserable I have seen. But it seems that it was closed down in 2015, and now there may be a park instead (maybe with animals, but I'll see it before I believe it). The nearby Botanical park has been transferred from the University to the town of Tirana, and according to another article in my collection (from exit.al) there are now serious concerns that the municipal powers-that-be will sell the area to private investors.

Indonesian: The biggest news about Indonesia these days is that the government will move from Jakarta to a town called Kota Nusantara on Borneo (meaning:"Town of the Archipelago"), and I have printed a couple of articles about that topic, one from Wikipedia, the other from news.detik.com. And after that I printed two articles in Indonesian about the Moluccan chain of islands (Kepulauan Maluku), which I haven't visited - yet. Nor Jakarta.

Scots: And as a belated afterthought I added some articles from the Scots Wikipedia which is among the more poorly equipped ones in the family, but I found an article about 'planets' that was just big enough to whet my appetite. There are also articles about specific planets, including the Aird, but other astronomical searches led to nought or to pitifully small texts (there is not even on about lord Kelvin, nor about the excellent Kelvingrove museum in Glasge (Glasgow). Therefore I added one about a certain Shakespeare and one about the Scottish town Stirling, where William Wallace defeated an English army.

If you wonder why Irish, Low German, High German, Norwegian, Swedish, Dutch and Polish and the Romance languages aren't on the list (except as translation languages) then the reasons are as follows: Irish is put on the shelf for the moment (and I have old texts waiting for me), I study Dutch culinary terms from a Rough Guide language guide and Polish from a bilingual airport magazine, and the rest are simply too easy to crave printed sources.

PS: shame on me, I had forgotten Icelandic! But now I have printed four texts from the homepage of the national TV company RUV, including one about ramps for handicapped people, one about fugitives from Ukraine and two about covid. It seems that they have a surge in hospitalizations up there, but mainly among vulnerable elderly people - the average age of the hospitalized patients is 72 years. The reason could be that the vaccinations they got in December now aren't enough to protect them, and the omikron variant is still rampant in the country. Here in Denmark the bold decision to scrap restrictions from 1. February has apparently not led to a catastrophe as predicted by some - we make fewer tests, but the positive percentage remains high at 25-30% so the virus is still around us - though now it is ironically the old hotspot to the West of Copenhagen that lies lowest whereas various rural or insulary communities lie higher. This suggests that there is something like a wave that has to pass through the country like a weather front, and after that there is less danger of infection. And two thirds of the Danish population has now had the omikron without toppling the healthcare system.

[Iversen]

OK, time to list my activities since yesterday.

First I continued my wordlist based on Dutch food. The language guide I use is Anglophone, but I translate the lot into Danish, and then I sometimes have to find out what the English terms actually mean. Like "koolraab" which is translated into English as "swede' .. in Danish it is "kålrabi', and I wonder how the English name came along. There are other cases where Dutch and Danish are similar and English differs, and then there are foodstuffs which simply aren't eaten everywhere (I hope)- like the "kapucijners", which are said to be "marrowfat peas" (gosh!). One special thing about Dutch culinary vocabulary is that it apparently has adopted a lot of words from Indonesia, which the Dutch ruled long ago under the name "Batavia".

After that I wanted to read something in Afrikaans, and I somehow stumpled over a long magistral article about the use of Afrikaans in Namibia. I have read most of it, but only cursorily - I didn't have time to study it. At the same time I had a program on Arte about the Carpathians running on the TV with French subtitles (text-TV page 888).

After that the first text from yesterday's print-outs, the Ukrainian collection. And here I ran into a problem: the first text (about Pterosaurs) contained a lot of words that weren't found in my dictionary, and there were some logical problems which a real author would have corrected. There is for instance a sentence, where the word 'род' is used with the meaning 'genus'. It is not in my Ukrainian dictionary, but it is found in the Russian one. And how can you defend this: "У наш чах [коли?] биділяють блізко 60 родів птерозаурів,(...)" (In our time (when?) there are almost 60 genera of Pterosaurians found, .." Well, I would be surprised to see just one living Pterosaur outside my window among all the dinosaurs (=birds). So I dropped this article and went on to the one about brains, and this functioned much better.

I finished my program yesterday rereading an old text collection from the Romanian popular science site descopera.ro, and it was so easy
that I could do it in my bed without a dictionary.

RO: Multe dintre articole tratează mecanica cuantică directă sau indirectă, uneori sub forma așa-numitelor computere cuantice, care ar trebui să fie atât de rapide încât să poată sparge toate sistemele noastre codurilor de securitate. Dar mai întâi trebuie să lucreze, și se pare că asta va fi mai lung decât se aștepta. Alte articole tratează particulele 'entanglate', adică particule care sunt conectate indiferent de distanța lor, sau cu alte cuvinte: dacă dai cu piciorul pe una, celălaltă sare - acesta este probabil cel mai de misterios lucru din fizica cuantică. Dar există și articole pe subiecte mai simple, cum de pildă un care spune că mori în timp prematur dacă mananci cartofi prăjiți, altul spune că ar trebui să studiezi în blocuri de una oră și jumătate cu o pauză de 20 de minute.

Today I first studied the first part of the text about house sparrows in Bulgarian, and after that I would have read some Albanian - but then I found a lot of old text copies whose new words hadn't been organized in wordlists, and then I did that (around 150 words). After a two hour walk around a lake in the vicinity I returned to my studies and concluded them with a wee bit o' Polish: I had planned to use the Airport magazine I mentioned yesterday, but then I found a three-page collection about the town Stargard Szczeciński which I visited in 'kwietniu' (April) 1990.

Such unexpected finds demonstrate that my text collection had become unmanageable, but with new texts in stock I can archive the old texts and throw the corresponding copies and wordlists away.

F4546a05 - house sparrow (Cienfuegos, Cuba).jpg

[Iversen]

I have spent four hours today walking and visiting museums, so there has been elss time for languag studies. But not zero time. I have for instance studied a Serbian text in Latinitsa from novisad.rs about the Futoška park in Novi Sad, which was just a footstep from my hotel so I visited it several times - although without taking any photos. In principle I would prefer to stick to Cyrillic for Serbian, but I have one way to keep my path clean: I don't make wordlists in Latinitsa and not doing that is the same as saying that my goal for that language just is to learn to read it, not to use it actively - and that's also my current stance for Croatian. However I have several relevant dictionaries: one French<->Serbian Latinitsa and one English<->Serbian Latinitsa, and in principle I cold also use my Croatian-English dictionary as I do for texts in Bosnian.

In the text in question there was one word that gave me problems (".., kao park specijalne namene podognut oko banje") - neither dictionary gave me translation of "namene", which looks like an adjective derivative of some verb on na-, but which one? Luckily I then have the machine translation into Portuguese, which translates as follows: ".., como um parque para fins especiais construido em torno do spa." So "namene" apparently has something to do with purposes, and then I can search my dictionaries for verbs about purpose that begins be na-. That possibily is one good reason to keep using bilingual texts even when I could have survived without. I could also mention that the dubious Ukrainian article about Pteradactyls yesterday was quite convincingly translated into Esperanto, even though a lot of the words weren't found in my one and only Ukrainian dictionary.

After the Latinitsa version of Serbian I proceeded to study a text about the collection of musical instruments in the Etnographical museum, but there the translation (into Swedish) seemed less trustworthy ... and for a reason (the same that sabotaged my use of my two Cyrillic Serbian dictionaries): the names of those arcane folklore instruments are simply too esoteric to be quoted in small to midsize dictionaries. I have tried to look some of the words up in the Serbian Wikipedia, where there is an article about narodna muzika, and it has a list of instruments, but it is short and doesn't cover the items in the collection of the Etnographic museum. The thing that would be really nice to have would be something like a field guide with names, descriptions and photos - and if possible also a short recording.

The museum is located in Beograd, and I have visited it, but didn take photos of the musical instruments so you'll have make do with a stuffed monkfish from the minuscule museum of natural history in the vast Kalemegdan castle in Beograd.

Speaking about Kalemegdan and Beograd: SER: Неколико пута сам посетио Београд на путовањима интерраил 70-их година, и то је била потреба. На железничкој станици у Минхену стајала је табла да су Немци обећали да ће послати возове на време, али нису имали појма када ће се вратити. Требало вам је толико времена да се возите по Балкану да сте морали да рачунате на три ноћи у возовима пре него што сте били у Атини – а било је згодно остати у Београду неколико сати да једете и лутате около, а ја сам неминовно завршио на Калемегдану у Београду. Тек у својим посетама после 2000. године видео сам било шта у граду осим Калемегдана, али сада ми се заправо прилично свиђа град. Слаба тачка је, међутим, и даље био квалитет возова, док Београд сада има леп нови аеродром који финансира арапска авио-компанија Етихад (Etihad).

F3909b05 _ Lophius piscatorius_ Kalemegdan.jpg

[Iversen]

I have spent some days at my mother's place, and after I came back home I first spent an evening listening to Anglophone lectures about paleontology (from 'PBS Eons'), and today I have spent one day driving around in Jutland to visit small countryside museums. So not much study, except that I have made Greek wordlists before my return home from my mother's house, based on the micro Langenscheidt dictionary I have left on a bookshelf there earlier this year (because I had a bought a newer version of the same book).

But why Greek, except that it is an interesting language which I almost can read and speak? The reason could be that the dictionary in question is so small that I can sit in an armchair and keep it in one hand while I write with the other on paper placed on a tray. My mother's Gyldendal dictionaries are also quite modest in size, but nevertheless twice as high and broad - and that means that I have to put the dictionary on the tray and then put a pillow under the tray to get it close enough to read. At home I have a notestand at my comfy chair where I can put it at eye level - problem solved. This may sound like a bad excuse for not using the English-German-French-and-Latin dictionaries of the maternal abode more, but actually I have come to realize that small seemingly insignificant factors can mean a lot for a person's study behaviour - and I'm not exempt from that observation. The problem is that I haven't got many 'micro duplicates' in my collection, but I think I'll move those few that I have to my mother's noble dwelling. Or mayby get a second notestand to put there, right beside the armchair ...

The next few days I'll be at home, which should result in a less meager report next time.

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[luke]

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That's beautiful and is the image I was hunting for but didn't know existed to visualize cucaracha de mar to support arboladura (mast) in my Cien años de soledad Anki card that says:

Había visto en el Caribe el fantasma de la nave corsario de Víctor Hugues, con el velamen desgarrado por los vientos de la muerte, la arboladura carcomida por cucarachas de mar y equivocado para siempre el rumbo de la Guadalupe.

I have grabbed your painting to make my flashcard better. Hope that's okay

One of these days I'll post that card image in my log, as I think it's a cool card.

[Iversen]

SP: Me alegro de que mi pintura de un escorpión marino (y algunos trilobites y un graptolito ) en el fondo de un mar siluriano pueda ser utilizada por otros. Una vez pinté una serie de cuadros de todos los períodos de la historia de la tierra para el comedor de mi familia, por lo tanto las imágenes tienen formas diferentes. Así el Siluriano debía colocarse en la pieza estrecha sobre una puerta. Algunos están ahora desactualizados debido a la evolución de la paleontología - por ejemplo, fue un error pintar a un Diplodocus en medio de un lago, comiendo plantas acuáticas (como si hubiera sido un espinosaurio): el animal corría por tierra firme, balanceándose la cola larga como contrapeso al cuello igualmente largo. También pinté el aterrizaje por primera vez en tierra como sea occurido en el Devónico, pero ahora se sabe que debe haber ocurrido mucho antes - almeno durante el Ordovicico (primero las plantas, después los artrópodos). Y mi Cámbrico personal no contiene referencias a la fauna del esquisto de Burgess, aunque ya era conocida entonces. Pero tal era el nivel de conocimiento de los paleontólogos (y yo) en los años 60.

Por cierto, los escorpiones de mar (los Euryptides) podían crecer a más de dos metros de largo (Jaekelopterus siendo el mas largo con 2½ m) y ya aparecían en el Ordovicico, talvez en Cambrico tardivo. Los verdaderos escorpiones, por otro lado, 'solo' pueden remontarse al Silúrico. Los últimos escorpiones de mar desaparecieron durante la gran extinción al final del Pérmico.

EO: Cetere, miaj studoj sugestas ke la reala 'Cucharacha de mar' fakte rilatas al la besta grupo 'Ĉitonedoj', sed verŝajne mi neniam pentris ilin. Tial mi pruntas bildon de rekonstruita Kambria multiplacophorano, (antaŭulo de la ĉitonoj = Cucarachas de mar). La ĉitonoj vivas en la plej bona stato hodiaŭ (kvankam malmulte menciitaj), sed ili ne estas artropodoj - prefere speco de mituloj. Sed de malproksime, ili povus eble aspekti kiel trilobitoj. Kukaraĉo sen 'maro' aliflanke estas unu de la blatoj ('cockroach' en la angla), sed ekzistas ankaŭ kanto nomita "La cucaracha", kaj ilustraĵoj por tio klare montras al blatoj. La kanto estas tre amata en Latin-Ameriko, los animales no...

multiplacophoran, precursor of the chiton (Sci-News).jpg

Cucarachas (Google).jpg

DK: Nedenfor mit billede af Devon med den omtalte landgang.

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[Iversen]

Yesterday I spent most of the afternoon and evening on textstudies, and I got through a fair number of languages. The texts I used yesterday came mostly from the heap I listed in a post in the thread, and in the process I archived the old (and mostly used) texts in the same languages - plus the wordlists and copies based on them. It's nice to get the mess cleaned up once in a while.

FIrst I went through a text about the music museum of Bratislava, which is lying beneath the castle in the delapidated rests of an old merchant quartier named something like Zuckermandel. And yes, I have visited it:

SLK: Sú štyri múzeá s rovnakým vchodom a rovnakou vstupenkou: múzeá pre karpatských Nemcov, pre Maďarov, pre archeológiu a pre hudbu. Sú vystavené nástroje a noty a pamätné predmety miestnych hudobníkov. V meste je aj malé múzeum hudobného skladateľa Hummela, ktorého som poznal vopred.

F5611b05_Hudobný-Múzeum.jpg

Then Ukrainian, where I studied the fairly long Wikipedia article about Pterosaurians with a translation into Esperanto, followed by a text in Icelandic about the covid situation up there as of 11/3 (from the homepage of the national TV company RUV). It seems that infection numbers are going up, and the hospitals are stressed both because of new patients (mostly elderly and vulnerable), but also because of illness among the staff. However only two patients ('sjúklingar') are under intensive care. One problem that isn't mentioned in the article is that the yearly influenza epidemy has been postponed, but now seems to be developing - at least that's what the situation is in Denmark.

From there across Asia to Indonesia, where I studied the first of a few articles about the new capital Kota Ibu Nusantara, which is planned to be used from 2024. 'Nusantara' means archipelago, and..

DU: De Nederlandse stad Delft had ooit een uitstekend klein museum genaamd Nusantara - maar helaas, dit is nu gesloten. De stad is nog steeds een bezoek waard, maar er ontbreekt net iets.

P1918a02_Nusantara.jpg

And finally Russian, where I studied a text about paranoia. It is paradoxical that I have finally reached such a point with this language that I hardly need to look at the (Greek) translation, but due to you-know-who I have less to use it for (and also some queasiness about the whole situation). But then I tell myself that I haven't stopped listening to Shostakovitch just because he lived at the same time of Stalin (poor guy!), and Tschaikovsky lived similarly under the rule of the zars. I even have to admit that the music of Stalin's favorite composer Khrennikov sounds nice, even though I don't sympathize with his role in the Stalin gang. My next Russian article explains something about megalomania, and I have an article about psychosis in Slovak waiting for me.

RU: Еще у меня есть книга по русской истории времен Брежнева - но глав про Сталина я еще не читал. Может быть, пришло время - просто посмотреть, объясняет ли это его преступления или принимает их.

Towards midnight I peroused an old collection of short scientific articles in Romanian from Descopera.ro as goodnight reading, and this morning I reread a Portuguese article about the dwarf planet Sedna and added another about Plutão (now also demoted to the rank of dwarf planets) plus one that told me that a reassessment of the mass of Neptune has explained away the remaining trajectory deviations that could justify a continued search for a planet X even further away from the Sun. And after that I read all the texts in Afrikaans I recently printed so now I have to make a new collection in that language.