The Lexicographer's Rules

“I’m sorry; but just because they haven’t been translated into English doesn’t mean they don’t exist. There was supposed to be a conference ten years ago in St. Louis, and the university there announced, “Mr. Robbe-Grillet will speak French.” So a minister who is interested in literature calls the university and is told by a professor that I do not speak English. The minister replies, “He could have made an effort to learn English, because God wrote his Bible in English."—Interview with French author Alain Robbe-Grillet by Thomas McGonigle from Book Forum.

“We found fourteen claimants and they all had problems. All their items were displayed in a heap, or a stack, so you just had to take their word for it. Like one guy said he had a million bottle caps, but underneath the top layers was a heap of dirt.” (Source Link)

;My friends in the university next door to mine have been told to stay in after two students were whisked off with suspected SARS; here at my place we were given kits containing some kind of medicine, a thermometer, and a packet of facemasks. We have to take a thermometer reading every morning and contact the foreign affairs office on campus with the results. This is a provincial-level ruling, apparently. We are also not supposed to stray too far from campus, and have been advised not to go to the supermarket (too crowded). And this morning I walked past the bizarre sight of my stairwell being sprayed with disinfectant by a bored looking waiter from the restaurant next door. His mate, clearly misunderstanding the whole process, was walking behind him spitting out sunflower seed shells all over the place. (Source Link)

;I’m fascinated by them. What’s at work is an enthusiasm for conspiracy theories that operates in lots of areas in modern life. Sort of, “Wouldn’t it be fun if everybody was wrong about a big issue like this and somebody else had really done this?” (Source Link)

;You have to admit that Americans in one stroke were able to knock down the EU, NATO, Europe and the Middle Eastern region. As far as Europe is concerned, in just two or three weeks we will wake up with a terrible hangover. Maybe it’s happening right now. We’ve all realized that it’s easy to destroy something, harder to build it. So we’ve started to glue together the broken pieces. This will take place in connection with the reconstruction of Iraq. Europe still has a chance to draw a positive lesson from this catastrophe. In the face of the chasm that is the world economy there will need to be a greater European presence. If the world economy tanks, Americans will have a problem, because they will need to pay the gigantic costs of war. (Source Link)