h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Yellowstone.

My cats have tended to become like their names. Especially Limbo, who has gone feral but still shows up regularly to come in and be fed.

Sol, have you considered naming him after a certain ensign, a navigator on the Starship Enterprise?

[Bagpuss]

I've always liked Vlad, but of course, the connotations aren't that great...

Much as I'd enjoy the nerdiness of naming a child after a star treck character, Pavel is one of B's choices which I don't like much. He says it's a nice tribute to my Dad, whose name is the anglicised version.

Aside from the terrible jokes possibility, Vlad is short for Vladislav and getting a bit long when coupled with our already quite long surname and the patronymic B will donate. I was unable to book Eurostar tickets once because my name and surname together crashed the system and that's without a patronymic.

I have finished the essay, for a given value of finished. Luckily this is just the draft, but I make make an effort to add in the bits that at the moment read 'insert diagrame here technological skills willing' before I submit it at least.

All three of my boys have a Tolkien name, somewhere. J's is his forth name, Meriadoc, B's is obvious, Beren, K's is his third, Aragorn

I'd never considered Star Trek names . I'm too old to have any more (did consider it last year though )

*hits head against a brick wall*

preview is my friend

fourth

Our dog is Maxim von Thunder - Maxim becaue my fantasy dog when a young lass was a Russian Wolfhound named Maxim, after the younger Shostakovich. von cos it's a German breed, and Thunder cos that's Dai's biker name.

He gets called Max for short, and Maximillian when he's being told off.

Dmitri's quite a nice name?

Boris? Although there's jokes in there too (gods and goddesses help him if he winds up with a girlfriend named Natasha).

I really don't want to do my grading. I just don't. It's not a good thing.

I once knew a Russian lad called Foka. It's the name of a saint, no, honest, guv. Luckily this was in Italy, so there were no Unfortunate Consequences, but blimey, you'd have to loathe your offspring to call them that in an English-speaking country. It took a while for him to understand why his mere presence after about, say, 10:30 pm and several pints, would reduce the entire clientele of the ex-pat Irish Pub to giggles. We were all far too chicken to explain. Partly because he was approximately six foot five and nearly as wide across the shoulders.

My favourite Russian boy name is Taras, sadly because I like Yul Brynner doing Manly Laughing after leaping off his horse (and his sons were wet as haddock, weren't they?) and not because I'd read the novel all the way through at all. Alas. Not Gogol's fault, it was a rotten-bad translation. But are blood-thirsty vengeful cossacks allowed?

All Russian names sound terribly exotic and wonderful to me. If I ever had a boy (just the fact that I would ever have a child is a minor miracle on the order of the Immaculate Conception, so the likelihood of this happening is slim-to-none--odds are currently being given in Vegas as I type), I would name him Peter. Not because of The Great, but tradition: my grandfather, father, and brother are named Peter, and I quite like the name.

I'm home and sorting my way through 320 photographs. I'm not keeping all of them, of course, but I hope to have some lovely shots of bison, Old Faithful erupting, and the beauty of winter in Yellowstone for everyone by the end of the week.

[GDZ]

[SG V] 'ning

*snoopy-dancing for Daniel Day-Lewis's Oscar*

also snoopy-dancing, but mostly because the sobfest got shut out...

Mornin All

Welcome to a brand new week and the dawn is back this morning, all torquoises and pinks but we're battening down the hatches for storms tomorrow.

{Teuchter}

[p]

If "Pavel" is ruled out, how about "Anton"?

I haven't seen any of the Oscar contenders yet, but I'm glad to see Joel and Ethan Coen win for best picture.

I read an interesting interview with the host for the Swedish documentary series 'Efterlyst' ('Wanted').

They take up cold cases, create reconstructions of the crimes and present every little possible clue, from eye witness reports to surveillance camera tapes to found items.

Real policemen man the phones where people who think they might have information about a case can call in.

Sometimes cases are solved, sometimes they are opened up again because of new evidence/information.

Anyway, the host said something interesting - I'll try to translate it as well as I can:

He says that hosting the series has lead to his view of humans being changed for the better.

'People are stronger than you'd think. They don't break down altogether and they don't demand death penalty. There is a restrained wrath and there, in the restraint, is a kind of strength and dignity. It took a while before I realised that this was very common. Those affected mostly seek redress - not revenge.'

I think he's right - I don't think I've ever heard any crime victim in Sweden (or relatives of a victim) demanding death penalty (not much point I suppose, since we don't have it anyway).

But it made me think of some American documentaries I've seen (and yes, I'm aware that they probably don't represent the 'average' American - if there is such a thing).

These documentaries pictured relatives of murder victims behaving like blood-thirsty lunatics demanding an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth and insisting on attending the execution.

Is it true you can attend an execution in those US states that practise execution? Can ayone attend? And how common would you say this urge for revenge is?