Empty plate again...

The translation is finished. I should probably check it over before I go to sleep, but I'm too "close" to it right now.

And for the record, I only resorted to the use of "[illegible]" (the translator's last resort) six times in 1600 words.

So. There's a million things to write about. I'll confine myself to two.

* * *I keep hearing of a 50-book challenge (or 52-book, or whatever), both here on LJ and out there in the wild. It sounds interesting.

I do really need to read more (don't we all?), and while a reading certain number of books over the course of the year does sort of make sense from an accounting perspective, I wonder: would Montaigne's Essays really only count as one book? (Actually, in the course of that and other wondering, a painful image from 3rd grade just materialized in my mind, of a wall showing who in the class had submitted how many book reports; I was dead last, not because I didn't read, but because I didn't like writing book reports.)

Then again, I have become a habitual "dipper," pausing for a few minutes here and there when time allows to open a book at random and read a few pages. (I think I've done that so many times to Jonathan Spence's The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci that I've surely read the entire book several times.) And of course, I consume quite a bit of the non-fiction I purchase in a non-systematic manner (e.g., dictionaries - though I have been known to actually sit down and read a few pages from time to time - and computer books).

So I suppose that, instead of declaring a reading goal of so many books by the end of the year, I think I may just pay more attention - both here and elsewhere - to what books I actually do read. If truth be told, there is a powerful number of tomes that I've intended to read since goodness knows when (including Under A Lucky Star, by Roy Chapman Andrews, and The Day Christ Died, by Jim Bishop), so maybe this is the year that'll happen.

* * *I noted that Google's resistance to an Administration "request" for it to turn over search engine data kept being characterized as a child porn issue by a seemingly clueless media (the impression I got from several reports and talking-head interviews was that Google was fighting efforts to combat child porn). This is, of course, patent nonsense.

What's happening is that the government wants to use the search data to determine how often porn shows up in online searches, ostensibly in support of efforts to revive the Child Online Protection Act of 1998.

Dig it: This subpoena is not intended to aid in the prosecution of a criminal case, but to support a legislative effort! (And friend, it doesn't matter what the effort is; this time it's child porn, next time it'll be something else). This seems to say is the government can demand any or all of anybody's data for any reason at any time, no?

But wait, as the commercials say, that's not all!

I am not a lawyer, but it is my understanding that, in criminal cases, the defense has the right to know about evidence uncovered by the prosecution (more precisely, by law enforcement). This sort of makes sense when you consider that no defendant can hope to match, in terms of resources, the investigatory capabilities of the state.

So similarly, I think it may be argued, it may go with such fishing expeditions for public data: if the "pro" side of an issue gets to subpoena things like search engine data from Google - or the contents of your hard drive (why not?) - why shouldn't the same access to that data be granted to the "con" side of the issue? Not allowing such access sounds like it would grant a significant advantage to the side with the ability to issue subpoenas, no?

In any event, it's nice to know that Yahoo, AOL, and Microsoft are so happy to accommodate.

Cheers...

Treading water...

Galina went in to open the store this morning while I stayed at home and invoiced recent work. January translations started out well, but have faded in the middle. I have another document right now to do for tomorrow, but it's a small job. There's still a week left in the month, though, and I have to keep in mind that truly, it ain't over 'til it's over.

When I did get into the store, Galina told me the landlord called and gave us until April to vacate the premises. Considering that the shopping center has a whoppingly large vacancy rate, I suspect that means he's lined up someone to basically replace us (i.e., someone else who'll do packaging and mailing). So be it. Maybe we'll do better as a business with some local competition, or maybe they'll be so much better at it that they'll snuff us out in short order, I don't know. But I do know that I'll be personally a lot better off without having to contribute productive time to help keep the store running.

I managed to gain 5 pounds while in Texas, probably the result of eating "normal" meals at Luby's (entree and two veggies, no bread, no soft drinks, no dessert), interspersed with lunches at Wendy's. I pretty much laid off the sweet stuff and typically ate only twice a day, but apparently what I did eat was enough to trigger fat storage.

It occurred to me last night, after I saw the backed up shower downstairs, that the problem might well lie in the fact that we had been gone for almost 10 days, and that without the normal flow of graywater into our septic system, the system pretty much froze solid. I went down to the evaporation lagoon this morning and it was covered with ice, which I think is normal for this time of year (it snowed a little while we were gone, but I am told the temperatures were well and truly frosty), and it was thick enough for a round of 16 gauge buckshot to merely nick the surface of the ice. The level of water in the shower pan last night indicated that there is some drainage going on, slowly, so I figure we ought to be okay as long as we don't pour a lot of water down the drain all at once. I hope.

Cheers...

A madness came upon me...

So there I am, minding my own business, when I run across an item in ru_translate that asks about the terms "ground war" and "air war" when used in an economic context (this, going from Chinese into Russian). An excellent answer is provided by one weird_penguin who, alas, has a friends-only journal, except for a catchall post. I read the post, which soon leads me to another post by nevercertain, where she takes a crack at the following from Akhmatova and invites weird_penguin - and presumably anyone - to add their two cents.

The poem sort of grew on me, so I took a crack at it myself. Here 'tis:

Двадцать первое. Ночь. Понедельник.
Очертанья столицы во мгле.
Ведь придумал какой-то бездельник
Что бывает любовь на земле.
И от лености, или со скуки
Все поверили, так и живут
Ждут свиданий, боятся разлуки
И любовные песни поют
Но иным открывается тайна
И почиет на них тишина
Я об этом узнала случайно
И с тех пор все как будто больна…

--А. А. Ахматова

* * *Monday, the twenty-first. Night.
The capital looms in the haze.
And thanks to some sluggard's muse taking flight,
Some think "love" is more than a phrase.
Due to sloth or a weary arrangement,
All believe that love's in their midst,
Planning trysts and fearing estrangement,
They croon their love songs and exist.
But to some the enigma is opened,
And a stillness descends on their core;
I've learned of this only by hazard
And been sick to my soul evermore.

-- A. A. Akhmatova

Cheers...