If posting gets a bit thin here, even though I usually like to offer quantity rather than quality, it’s down to an unprovoked and almost simultaneous attack on me yesterday by two pieces of software and two pieces of hardware. I won’t name them, as they may be OK.

The worst was when an antivirus programme deleted my whole email inbox. If anyone is waiting for an email, I now have an excuse not to reply. In particular, I received an email from a translator a few days ago which I was about to reply to, and I have no memory of her name – so please send again. I didn’t realize that inboxes could be deleted so easily. Fortunately, most of my email is automatically channelled into other files, but I still had more than I should have.

Meanwhile, Roger Shuy at Language Log talks about reasonable doubt, with references to early U.S. usage.

There’s an excellent website for the Cambridge Handbook of Phonology, where the whole tome can be searched and there are links and a forum. (Via Phonoloblog)

Boing Boing links to a doctored videoclip at Youtube (‘The Reagans on Drugs’) of Ronald Reagan and Nancy advocating drug use – good clean fun.

This was the closest I could get to a photo:

It reminds me of when I took the night ferry from Calais and some Germans regretted not seeing the white cliffs of Dover, but we were actually in Folkestone.
This one was taken at 2.08, 1/800 sec, with an ultrazoom camera and spot metering.

In the Independent, Mark Hix writes on sausages:

I occasionally get comments that the sausages we serve in our restaurants, lovingly created by Jean-Paul Habermann of the Franconian Sausage Company, are a bit tough. That can only mean that they must be used to the kinds of sausage that gives them a bad reputation in the first place – with synthetic skins and lots of filler. A proper bit of intestine, good chunks of meat and a generous seasoning is what a good sausage is all about – as well as a sausage-maker who has some passion and understanding in his belly like Jean-Paul (by which I mean that he’s a bit tubby).

Franconian Sausage Co. Ltd? Apparently so. Those red indentations represent the Franconian flag, by the way.

Here’s their site (it may be John Paul rather than Jean Paul, although the latter would be more Franconian). It looks good, although it may be a case of lese-majesty to refer to Leberkaes as Franconian luncheon meat.

More German food in the UK at the German Deli.

Oh dear.

(Shallow link)

Via RollOnFriday

It can be interesting to combine a legal qualification with another specialization. The Los Angeles Times reports on an attorney and ship’s captain who repossesses ships all over the world. He runs a business called Vessel Extractions, together with an admiralty lawyer.

Steering ships back into the waters of more reliable jurisdictions involves subterfuge and sometimes witchcraft. International waters are described as ‘worse than the Wild West’.

BEFORE repossessing a ship, they make sure the vessel has been seized illegally and the claims filed against it are fraudulent.
If negotiations and legal methods fail, the company will proceed with an extraction, a step that might include payments to local officials if a nation’s government is corrupt.
Those payments, Hardberger said, are made under exceptions in the federal Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which prohibits U.S. citizens from bribing foreign officials to retain or obtain business.

What about the Federal Voodoo Act? There’s a great story about the retaking of a ship from Haiti,

Hardberger managed to get the guards off the ship by offering to buy fuel. When they came down to the dock to discuss the transaction, off-duty Haitian riot police hired by Hardberger held them at bay.
MEANWHILE, an oceangoing tugboat also hired by Hardberger slipped into port and backed up to the Aztec Express. Under a full moon, the crew began cutting the anchor chains with blowtorches.
In case harbor officials noticed and tried to call for help on their cellphone, Hardberger had paid a witch doctor $100 to cast spells on the port’s soccer field. The witch doctor marked the field with gray powder, a clear warning to believers in voodoo, the nation’s dominant religion. No call ever went out.

(The soccer field was the only place where mobile phones worked). Hardberger has also written a novel, Freighter Captain.

Learn all about pirates at ecani.com.

Via Boing Boing and the pirates of the Costa Dorada

I really ought to week out some dead weblogs from my blog roll. Of course one doesn’t want all of them to be active all the time, but some of them are greatly missed. The demise of Open Brackets was a sad loss, to say nothing of Translation from the Trenches and Legalesed.

Here’s a promising new one, though: Heidi Kerschl writes in German and English at HeidiLives&Learns.

Via Oversetter (thanks for the kind words)