Les Osbourne … Everyone’s second-favourite bishop’s son … At least I’m not working there™. 27th of March, 2006 POST·MERIDIEM 03:42

Belle du Jour, at http://​women.​timesonline.​co.​uk/​article/​0,,17909-2021934,00.​html says:

“[Sharon Osbourne] will always be someone’s wife first and her children, while tragic in that fame-addled way unique to celebrity offspring, do not tug the heartstrings the way that Katie’s do. ”

I love that “fame-addled” phrasing; and the whole article’s well-written. I suspect the good bloggers that don’t have other full-time jobs will all end up in journalism—shame, buying the Sunday Times or whatever Matthew Yglesias writes for is of no interest to me. (If you’re in the US and the article isn’t readable for free, shout and I’ll see what I can do.)

In more British media news, there’s a great interview with Jon Snow, at http://​news.​independent.​co.​uk/​media/​article353823.​ece . This in particular strikes me as sage:

“I realised that, 25 years on, absolutely nothing had changed in terms of the relationship between Iran and America, for which you could obviously blame both sides. The way I saw it was that America had never come to terms with what had happened--having their embassy seized, 52 diplomats held for 444 days. The utter humiliation of the failure to rescue them has left a sort of unbound wound, and you feel it.” 

And the third pointer for you on this rainy Monday; a hugely funny anecdote from China on the general chaos at a Chinese state newspaper, from an English speaker employed to proof an English piece there:

“[…] except it was written in German. Good German, from what my mostly-forgotten high school and college German could make out, but nonetheless not English. I brought it to my supervisor and had a conversation something like this (in Chinese, the management spoke and read almost no English at all).” 

“Turns out she had studied for four years in Berlin, spoke pitch-perfect Hochdeutsch, and had never claimed to be able to speak English. It was just assumed when she (honestly) said she was a fluent speaker of a foreign language that that language was English, and when she had been told to translate the document she had assumed that it was into her second language, German, that it should be translated.” 

Word of the day: Муаллим is Tajik for “(male) teacher”; I imagine it’s related to “mullah.”