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

Waz,

Being killed deliberately by people motivated by mindless malignant evil is much worse psychologically. The recent deaths from the London bombings will be much more unsettling to many more people than a similar number of smuggled immigrants suffocating accidentally in a Dover Lorry through simple stupidity and incompetence...Much has been written about 9/11 and the post traumatic stress it caused for that reason...But that's just a counter-thought about good and evil intentions.

I see what you're saying, and from the viewpoint of survivors... perhaps. But, I can't think clearly using those examples, they're just too awful. And I've too much uncertainty and distrust of all sides in the games of power whose pawns kill for them.

What these London bombers are fighting for is horribly undeclared. And whatever it is, what they're doing is absolutely unjustified. But I can't get away from the feeling that we sow what we reap in the West.

Your 'good and evil intentions' have brought back memories of the experience of living in Rhodesia where some classmates (boarders from places too far from schools) lived in fear of 'terrorists' throwing grenades through bedroom windows and ambushing their family cars, then suddenly being back in the UK listening to accounts of the Zimbabwe freedom fighters. Of course they were fighting for a freedom they had a right to, and a right to fight for, but to people who saw their children killed, it couldn't be anything other than malignant evil. In the end it wasn't good and evil, it was all just so human. What we do to each other, huh?

Hey Phred, I've been regretting posting that ever since posting it. It's an AWW thread stopper and I wasn't answering your post but commenting from thoughts you'd triggered.

Can I just pass the thread back to its previous line of drift and say Hamlet is a play I love, and I got hooked on h2g2 when talking to two Tasmanians and a South African?

Hi Waz,

Never apologize for a correct belief. I agree with all you said and regret originally being intemperate in disagreeing about whether "it is better to be or not to be" at the hand of a well intentioned bungler or at the hand of someone who actually sets out to deliberately do you in....so...Anyway...The interesting Denmark conversation drifted off to another thread (without Hamlet) at 4AM this morning.

*Listens*

Hamlet was supposed to be a Danish Prince who lived at Kronborg on the east coast of Denmark. http://www.ses.dk/157000c. But according to the signs and names of places his grave lies just 15 km from where I live - aprox 500 km to the west of Kronborg.

The host of an old American quiz show would ask questions like "who's buried in Grant's tomb?" and award $100 for the corect answer.... Grant.

Apparently the answer to the Hamlet question is more elusive? Is Helsingnor nearby or is this another gravesite?
http://www.ajc.com/news/content/travel/content/0204a/22eurohamlet.html

Marienlyst Castle is the prime minister's/government's estate for meetings and is situated, as far as I gather from the article, close to Helsingør/Ellsinore. Zeeland difinitely.

Here is the real (?) story: http://vikja.dk/viking/ukamled.htm.

This (see below) is supposed to be the true gravestone some 15 km from here. I've never taken the trouble to go there - but has now read several articles about how come Shakespeare wrote his story.
http://www.hum.au.dk/engelsk/engmik/kronik/ (you have to scroll down a bit).

Did you like the story?

I hate to admit it, but I'm absolutely fascinated by stories where the bad people are cut up and fed to the pigs. Has "Hannibal" by Richard Harris been translated into Danish? How about the movie?

-Phred

Amled does sound a like like Hamlet...I saw the gravestone, but couldn't read many of the world in the second link.

I like the story - very close to Hamlet, up to the point where he survives. For a time at least. Shakespeare must have had real problems coming up with his own plotlines.

"Hanibal" - I don't know about the book, but the movie did come to Denmark.

In the Danish article the author explains why Shakespeare cannot have the story directly from Saxo but perhaps from another dramatic piece based on Saxo's story. Shakespeare has never actually visited Kronborg, as there are only flat beaches around the castle and not cliffs as in the play - the only cliffs in Denmark are in Bornholm, a small island south of Sweden.

Well - the oldfashioned words in Danish I cannot find in a dictionary to translate - but the meaning:

Amled Ypperste Amled the supreme
Oldtids-snille ingenuetee of antiquity
Teed sig taabe behaved as fool
Til Hævnens time until the hour of revenge
Kaaret paa ting elected in court/parliament (from then)
Af jyder til konge by Jutlanders as King
Højsat han hviler honored he rests
Paa Ammel Hede on the heath of Ammel

The word Højsat describes, how important and rich men were buried in those time. Not put in a hole in the ground but in a burial mound or barrow - my dictionary suggests as a translation.