Every time I read an article about the melting ice caps, there is always a sentence like this:
Shipping firms have already proposed taking short cuts through the polar region, which also contains large reserves of oil and natural gas.
[From Al Jazeera English - Americas - Arctic ice 'could melt by 2013' ]
Aaaaand cue intro riff to Crazy Train. All aboard the ‘We’re Looking For The Bright Side of Things Even If It Fucking Kills Us’ Express!
Iran has no weapons-grade uranium, US military officials have said in an attempt to clarify recent statements from Washington and Israel.
[From BBC NEWS | Americas | Iran 'has no bomb-grade uranium']
Can we just make up our mind about this?
This is one of those weird things I like: nationalism and it’s influence on historical imagination. Specifically how in the Balkans it’s impossible to talk about linguistics without talking about nationalism. Romanians claim their language has an ancient substrate from Dacian, Greeks get all pissy about the Macedonians calling themselves Macedonians, and the Macedonians get pissy when the Bulgarians claim that the Macedonians are speaking Bulgarian. And oh, how it goes on and on.
Not that we North Americans are too much better. I’m still morally convinced that in two hundred years every white man and woman will be convinced that they’re ‘Cherokee’ and that the ‘American people’ have lived on these lands since the beginning of time. Read any American history or literature textbook and tell me I’m wrong.
But it’s not always the case that Deep Sociological Insight is the sole thing to be found when reading about the influence of modern nationalism on historical consciousness. Sometimes you just get pure fun like this man from Bulgaria who
…claims to be an expert in linguistics, cryptography and transcendental analysis…
[From Gradeshnitsa tablets - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia]
If you want more backstory, read on and follow the many links for a quick explanation. But really, I’d just like to savor the words transcendental analysis.