Dawn

Dawn

Monday, August 24, 2015

Adulterers; The EU; Schlepping; Curating; The Galician AVE; & Tiffintown FC.

It's amusing to see that the Ashley Madison adultery site had members from the Vatican, as well as a Christian fundamentalist US reality star. He's admitted he was(is?) a hypocrite and assured us he's sent his apologies to God. Who possibly knew all about it. A British columnist has referred to the site as a 'penile Ponzi scheme' but I'm not sure it falls within this technical term, as newcomers didn't finance dividends for old-comers. As it were.

Olli Rehn was the European Commission’s top economic official at the height of the eurozone crisis. He's now gone on record as saying: "Political paralysis in the eurozone will force the bloc into permanent turmoil unless countries stop 'muddling through' and take responsibility for reforms". Thanks to political rifts between countries within the single currency block, he said, he didn't see it becoming a 'transfer union' where stronger economies paid for weaker ones. Which was totally predictable. See next para. More here.

If you're really into the EU and its shortcomings, here's a brilliant Paul Krugman article on "Europe's Impossible Dream".

The word 'schlep' appeared in an article yesterday and I had to check on the meaning, viz. 'To drag or haul (an object); to walk, esp. to make a tedious journey'. Or 'To carry clumsily or with difficulty. To move slowly or laboriously'. The noun means: 'An arduous journey'. I wasn't surprised to see it came from Yiddish - שלעפּן or shlepn - and is also a German word - schleppen. It's also spelt shlep. Just thought you'd like to know.

Talking of words I've had to look up recently . . . . 'To curate' and 'curation' seem to have become fashionable. The original meaning was to 'To act as curator of; organize and oversee'. But it may have morphed into something else now. Or is just de rigeur if you want to appear hip. Which you aren't if you use the word 'hip', I fear.

Here in Galicia, we're all agog at the Prime Minister's assurance that we certainly will have the AVE high-speed train to Madrid by 2018 - originally 2008, as I recall - but, then, what else is he going to say ahead of general elections?

Finally . . . After 4 years of just failing to do so, Pontevedra FC finally made it to the Segunda B (Second B) Division of the Spanish League for this season. The difference between this and the Segunda Division [A] is that there's only 1 league in the former but 4 leagues in the latter, devised on a largely geographical basis, I think. So, really our club is, at best, in the 3rd Division but possibly the 6th. But who's counting? Incidentally, they lost their first match on Saturday. But they wuz robbed, said the local paper.

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