Tom McMahon

The Two Dialects of the Albanian Language

From Wikipedia:

There are two principal dialects of limited mutual intelligibility: Tosk and Gheg. The geographical border of the two dialects has traditionally been the Shkumbini River in Albania, with Gheg being spoken north of the river, and Tosk south of the river. The two dialects have phonological as well as lexicological differences.

Tosk is spoken in southern and central Albania, by the Arbëreshë of Italy, among the Albanian minority of Greece: the Çam and the Arvanites, and in small communities of Albanian immigrants in Ukraine, Turkey, Egypt, and United States.

Gheg (or Geg) is spoken in northern Albania and by the Albanians of Serbia and Montenegro (including the province of Kosovo) as well as those of the Republic of Macedonia.

Long ago when I was a little kid, grocery stores would occasionally sell encyclopedias, with one volume offered each week. The "A" volume was all we ever got, because it was always offered for the introductory price of 99 cents, while the rest of the volumes were too pricey at around 4 bucks. As a result, I got to be quite an authority on all subjects beginning with the letter "A" (Albania, Amphibious Warfare, Armadillo, Atomic Bomb, etc). So not to brag or anything, but I've known about this whole Gheg/Tosk thing for 40 years now. So I got that going for me, which is nice . . .

FDNY Firefighters 2005 Calendar

FDNY Firefighters 2005 Calendar

This one requires a bit of explanation. I was talking last week with a friend of mine who just got back from attending the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade in New York. I asked her what the most surprising thing she experienced on her trip was, and without hesitation she replied "How gorgeous the NYPD policemen were along 7th Avenue!". Well, I couldn't find any NYPD calendars for her, but this FDNY one is a top seller, bigger than Brooke Burke even.  I honestly had no idea . . .

The New and Improved Racism Of The Democratic Party

From Ann Coulter:

So this week, they've turned with a vengeance to Clarence Thomas. Only the Democrats would try to distract from their racist attacks on one black Republican by leveling racist attacks against a different black Republican. If Democrats don't nip this in the bud, soon former Klanner and Democratic Sen. Bob Byrd will be their spokesman.

In the past few weeks, there have been nasty insinuations all around about Condoleezza Rice's competence for the job. Democratic consultant Bob Beckel – who demonstrated his own competence running Walter Mondale's campaign – said of Rice, "I don't think she's up to the job." ...

Most recently – at least as we go to press – last Sunday Harry Reid, the Democratic leader in the Senate, had this to say about Justice Clarence Thomas: "I think that he has been an embarrassment to the Supreme Court. I think that his opinions are poorly written." You'd think Thomas' opinions were written in ebonics.

In the same interview, Reid called Justice Antonin Scalia "one smart guy." He said that although he disagreed with Scalia, his reasoning is "very hard to dispute." Scalia is "one smart guy"; Thomas is the janitor. If Democrats are all going to read from the same talking points, they might want to get someone other than David Duke to write them.

Reissue of the 1978 National Lampoon Sunday Newspaper Parody

National Lampoon Sunday Newspaper Parody

Now in a vibrant tabloid format, the Dacron, Ohio Republican-Democrat, one of America’s newspapers, returns with a complete Sunday edition of all the news that’s unfit to print. With stories and photos that are as remarkably plausible today as they were in 1978.  Includes National News, Local News, and More Local News, a Sports Section, Entertainment, Television Listings, Travel, Real Estate, Gardening, Your Pet, Women’s Pages, Classified Ads, a Swillmart Discount Store Advertising Supplement, a Parade Magazine Parody, a Sunday Week Local Magazine, and Eight Pages of Comics.

The Limits of Mammography

Via practicing radiologist Paul Hsieh, an excerpt from a wide-ranging article by Malcolm Gladwell:

Gilbert Welch, a medical-outcomes expert at Dartmouth, has pointed out that, given current breast-cancer mortality rates, nine out of every thousand sixty-year-old women will die of breast cancer in the next ten years. If every one of those women had a mammogram every year, that number would fall to six. The radiologist seeing those thousand women, in other words, would read ten thousand X-rays over a decade in order to save three lives—and that’s using the most generous possible estimate of mammography’s effectiveness. The reason a radiologist is required to assume that the overwhelming number of ambiguous things are normal, in other words, is that the overwhelming number of ambiguous things really are normal. Radiologists are, in this sense, a lot like baggage screeners at airports. The chances are that the dark mass in the middle of the suitcase isn’t a bomb, because you’ve seen a thousand dark masses like it in suitcases before, and none of those were bombs—and if you flagged every suitcase with something ambiguous in it no one would ever make his flight. But that doesn’t mean, of course, that it isn’t a bomb. All you have to go on is what it looks like on the X-ray screen—and the screen seldom gives you quite enough information.

Yiddish With Dick And Jane

Yiddish With Dick And Jane

Via Hanan Levin, who is a real Mensch. You can also buy the non-Yiddish Dick And Jane readers at the Vermont Country Store.

A Collection of Over 500 Christmas CD's

Carl McClaskey explains:

I love Christmas music.

Actually I guess you could say I’m obsessed with Christmas music. After all, I’ve been collecting Christmas music for well over 30 years starting when I was a child. My first ever album was “Snoopy’s Christmas” by the Royal Guardsman. My parents also gave me my very first record player that Christmas as well; a plastic, white stereo made by GE. It had that late 60’s/early 70’s space-age look to it and had three speeds (33 & a third rpm, 45 rpm and 78 rpm). I played that album so many times that Christmas morning that my parents actually confiscated it for the rest of the day.

I guess they just didn’t appreciate good music.

Currently I have over 500 Christmas CD’s in my collection and it covers a vast spectrum of music styles: pop, country, rock, ska, novelty, classical, jazz, salsa and many, many others (some defying easy description). I listen to them throughout the year periodically whenever I need an emotional pick-me-up and really increase the time listening the closer it gets to Christmas.

Lots of great stuff there . . .

Wisconsin School of Chainsaw Carving

Wisconsin School of Chainsaw Carving

Believe it or not, it is The Only State Licensed Chainsaw Carving School in the USA.

OOPS! I Guess That Wasn't Really Czar Nicholas After All . . .

OOPS! I Guess That Wasn't Really Czar Nicholas After All

From the Moscow News

Japanese researches have confirmed doubts of the Russian Orthodox Church, announcing that the remains of Russia’s last czar, Nicholas II, are not authentic. ...

The church has been divided over questions about the remains of Nicholas, his family and servants. Most of them were buried in 1998 in a grand ceremony after years of elaborate DNA and other tests that scientists said proved their authenticity conclusively. The remains had first been unearthed from a mining pit near Yekaterinburg in 1991.

All Earl Grey, All The Time!

This site does nothing except rate all the various brands of Earl Grey tea on a one- to five-star rating scale. Amazing, really, and nicely done.