This expression I encountered in La fille de la ville:

A few days ago, Flojindamesa over at Eat Drink Nola posted about Baru, a Caribbean/Tapas restaurant on Magazine Street. Of course after reading her post, Baader-Meinhof Syndrome set in and I saw Baru mentioned everywhere!

The meaning is obvious from the context; Wikipedia has more:

The “Baader-Meinhof phenomenon” was coined by a reader of the St. Paul Pioneer Press, Terry Mullen. The Minnesota newspaper runs a daily column called “Bulletin Board,” for which readers, using pseudonyms (in this case it was ‘Gigetto on Lincoln’), submit humorous or interesting anecdotes. The term was coined when Mullen submitted a story around 1986,[1] about how he first heard about the terrorist group known as the Baader-Meinhof Gang and then heard about it again a short while later from a different source.

What term do Germans use for this phenomenon? After all, Baader-Meinhof is scarcely trivial information over here.

This is a mysterious ad from the current version of the booklet announcing the BDÜ September translation conference in Berlin:

Weird. This is the best I can do for the most common pronunciation:
sım baı ‘ǝʊs ıs

The o sound in the third syllable is a bit different in the US. The second syllable suggestion is less common than mine, and the schwa in the last syllable is recorded as non-RP British in the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary.

Mind you, their use of an o indicates they are not using the IPA. I am open to correction!

The shops in England are full of displays for Father’s Day.

The Independent, in Fritzl: a perfect gift for Father’s Day, say Tesco and WH Smith, reports that some retailers had the book The Crimes of Josef Fritzl in their Father’s Day displays:

But to some branches of Tesco and W H Smith, The Crimes of Josef Fritzl: Uncovering the Truth seemed a surefire hit for the Dad market. The book, which details how the Austrian, now 74, imprisoned his daughter Elisabeth in his cellar for 24 years, repeatedly raping her and fathering her seven children, has featured as a Father’s Day promotion.

One amazon reviewer writes:

And that’s the terrifying part, you really start to understand the dysfunctional family dynamics. Dynamics that started way before Elizabeth, that were born out of the atrocities of Nazi Austria and his horrifying one-eyed mother. This is a really great read.

One Tesco shop apparently had to think twice before removing the book from the display.

This basilica is not usually part of the route from Upminster to Fürth, at least not since the Brussels orbital motorway was built. It’s a good idea to try the detour in afternoon rush-hour, so there’s time to take a photo. Photos of the King Leopold II tunnel and various immigrant grocery shops are unfortunately missing.

Here is the last food before the Eurotunnel (Folkestone side):

and here the view approaching the tunnel on the Calais side:

High Court decision on the right to anonymity of a blogging police officer (relating to an application for an interim injunction). The blog – Nightjack – has been deleted by the authors.

The case is about whether a blogger (policeman or journalist) has the right to preserve his or her anonymity if someone finds out the blogger’s identity. It was Mr Justice Eady who made the decision in favour of privacy on Max Mosley.

What seems wrong to me is not so much the decision as the conduct of Patrick Foster, the journalist who outed the blogger. Charon QC links to two rather negative entries on him, which suggest he specializes in unmasking identities.

Neutral Citation Number: [2009] EWHC 1358 (QB)
Case No: HQ09X02293

IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN’S BENCH DIVISION

Royal Courts of Justice
Strand, London, WC2A 2LL
16 June 2009

B e f o r e :

THE HONOURABLE MR JUSTICE EADY
____________________
Between:
THE AUTHOR OF A BLOG

Claimant
– and –

TIMES NEWSPAPERS LIMITED
Defendant

____________________

Hugh Tomlinson QC (instructed by Olswang) for the Claimant
Antony White QC and Jonathan Barnes (instructed by Times Newspapers Ltd) for the Defendant
Hearing date: 4 June 2009
____________________

Mr Tomlinson submitted that the thousands of regular bloggers who communicate nowadays via the Internet, under a cloak of anonymity, would be horrified to think that the law would do nothing to protect their anonymity if someone carried out the necessary detective work and sought to unmask them. That may be true. I suspect that some would be very concerned and others less so. Be that as it may, Mr Tomlinson needs to demonstrate that there would be a legally enforceable right to maintain anonymity, in the absence of a genuine breach of confidence, by suppressing the fruits of detective work such as that carried out by Mr Foster.

It’s a problem for translation blogs too, of course. I don’t intend to attempt to unmask the Masked Translator – not that that blog goes out of its way to anonymously chastise real translation companies – but most translation blogs are cheery and positive, for good reason: potential clients might prefer that – and it’s refreshing to read something different. Then again, it would be unprofessional to publish traceable information about one’s translation work, except where and when that work is published.

The police blogger has been given a warning and will not be further punished:

A spokeswoman for Lancashire Constabulary said that Det Con Horton, who is understood to be an officer with the force’s Eastern and Pennine divisions, had been spoken to and received a written warning but would not be disciplined further “unless anything else was to come out”.

She added: “We have conducted a full internal investigation and the officer accepts that parts of his public commentary have fallen short of the standards of professional behaviour we expect of our police officers.”

Meanwhile, The Independent reports on the unmasking of a pro-life blogger whose blog about being pregnant with a terminally ill baby was invented.

LATER NOTE: See Head of Legal on NightJack: the Times should be ashamed

Article by the legal editor of The Times, Frances Gibb – with photo of the blogger, now permitted.

Article by Patrick Foster himself with details of blog entries that could be traced to real cases.

Blog entry from Pupillage and How to Get it.

Possibly the oldest wooden church in the world – insofar as it still is a wooden church. Or maybe not quite so old, depending on your dendrochronological view.