Fair vs. carnival

Yesterday one of the secretaries asked one of the Dutch PhD students, in Dutch, what the English word for kermis was, and I immediately said “carnival”. I think she was rather taken aback that I understood and gave a (plausible) translation.
When I thought about it later, it’s more like “fair” than “carnival” (although van Dale [...]

Unidentified object #438

I spend a lot of my time looking at things and wondering what they are exactly, usually because I can’t read the words on it. (For example, cooking dinner often involves Babelfish so I can understand how to prepare things.)
I went to Kruidvat (not unlike Priceline in Australia) on Friday night. Everyone was being given [...]

The news for June

I just realised it’s a new month, so time for some more weird and wonderful stories from last month.
Two bits short of a puzzle (June 15): I’d be annoyed too if I was doing a 18,240-piece Ravensburger and then couldn’t find the last two pieces.
Court to rule on lottery loser (June 20): I really don’t [...]

Rambling about social networks (probably not for the last time either)

My PhD involves creating a computational model of the effect of social networks on travel behaviour. This seems fairly obvious really (most PhD topics are though when explained in one sentence) in that your friends and contacts influence where and how you travel, for example visiting each other/meeting up or making a decision to reside [...]