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Cultural differences May 4, 2009

Posted by globalizer in Crazy stories, Denmark.
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Breaking radio silence after a bit of a hiatus in the postings. Caused by a move from North Carolina to California, and a new job.

In that connection I have been reading the study guide for drivers to prepare for the written test I have to pass to get a California driver license, and one item in particular struck me: in California it is actually legal to park in the bike lane!

Quite apart from this sort of defeating the entire purpose of having a bike lane, it served to remind me of the significant cultural differences that still exist between the US and Denmark – especially since I had just read this.

The gap in bicycle culture (not to mention the question of imbibing alcoholic beverages in public places) looks more like a Mariana trench. And this is California, for crying out loud…

Touching faith in machine translation July 2, 2008

Posted by globalizer in Crazy stories, Translation.
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Words fail me.
Both at the fact that the machine translation error message itself seems to be machine translated, and at the fact that there is apparently zero involvement from a sentient being before a giant message like that is posted.

Can you spell “b-u-b-b-l-e”? October 24, 2007

Posted by globalizer in Crazy stories.
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When I saw the headline saying Microsoft had paid 240 million USD for a stake in Facebook, I actually thought they had made a good deal. That was until I clicked through to the story and saw that this was for a 1.6 percent stake.