Author Archives: David Weman

About David Weman

The founder of A Fistful of Euros. He is Swedish, and was born in 1980. Works as a translator and subtitler.

Satin Pajamas

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I’m finally done, about three weeks too late. Go vote.

Btw, we lost the page for last years awards, but you can look at it here.

…The polls will close on Friday.

…20:00.

Update (by Tobias, 23:43 CET) – I’ve seen some nominees use screenshots of our lovely satin pajama wearing teddy bear in order to visually enhance a post about their nomination, but that’s clearly not overly convenient. So I’ve made three banners in different sizes. I hope that one of them fits your needs. You can find the banners below the fold.
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The Second Annual Satin Pajama Awards

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…The Satin Pajamas have been delayed because of the webhost migration and some other unforeseen things. The voting will begin soon, within a week at least, so I’ll bump this post again.

‘Tis the season of blog awards, among them our own European Weblog Awards or Satin Pajamas.

Last year I wrote: The purpose of the awards is to recognize the efforts and contributions of Europe’s many talented bloggers, to maybe help build a sense of community among us, and, more than anything, it’s a chance for people to discover lots of new good blogs.

Last year’s awards did just that, and they were great fun. I’m sure this year will be no different.

…I really should clarify the rules. A blog is eligible if it’s written by Europeans or has a European (Czech, Catalan…) theme. Our own blogs aren’t eligible. Finalists are chosen based on the number of nominations as well as editorial discretion. So you want to nominate your favored blog even if someone else already mentioned it.

…Bumped.

Nominees for Best Southeastern European Weblog
Nominees for Best CIS blog
Nominees for Best Writing
Nominate Best Culture Weblog
Nominees for Best Personal Weblog
Nominate Best New Weblog
Nominees for Best European Weblog Overall
Nominate Best Political Weblog
Nominate Most Underappreciated Weblog
Nominees for Best German Blog
Nominees for Best French Weblog
Nominate Best UK Blog
Nominees for Best Expat Blog
Nominate Best Academic Weblog

Secret Sources

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Germany’s Agency for Civic Education (Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung/bpb, Germany) now publishes a nice, daily, free round-up of the European press. It’s by no means comprehensive, and thank goodness or it would be impossibly long, but I like the eclectic selection of papers and topics. Today brought items from Czech, Austrian, Francophone Swiss, German, Francophone Belgian, Spanish, Italian, Irish, Latvian, Polish, Cypriot and French papers. Nifty. Plus it’s available in English, French and German.

The bpb is doing it in cooperation with Perlentaucher Medien GmbH (Berlin) and Courrier International (Paris). More details at Eurotopics.

In other Turkish censorship news

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The Comics Reporter reports:

A court of appeals in Turkey has thrown out a fine against a cartoonist who depicted Prime Minister Reycip Erdogan as a horse. Sefer Selvi’s cartoon appeared in April 2004 and led to an approximately $7500 fine — although I admit I’m guessing on that latter fact, what with their being multiple Turkish currencies and my having a general conversion incompetence that usually only rears its ugly head whenever I buy DVDs from Hong Kong.

Erdogan has cases or threatened cases out against Musa Kart and Erdil Yasaroglu for animal-related cartoons they made that would be mild by US publishing standards but nonetheless honked off Erdogan. Erdogan’s habit of checking the press by lawsuit has come under fire throughout Europe as a potential issue that could keep Turkey from becoming a bigger economic partner with the West.

Orhan Pahmouk on his trial

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The New Yorker: The Talk of the Town

In Istanbul this Friday—in Şişli, the district where I have spent my whole life, in the courthouse directly opposite the three-story house where my grandmother lived alone for forty years—I will stand before a judge. My crime is to have “publicly denigrated Turkish identity.” The prosecutor will ask that I be imprisoned for three years. I should perhaps find it worrying that the Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink was tried in the same court for the same offense, under Article 301 of the same statute, and was found guilty, but I remain optimistic. For, like my lawyer, I believe that the case against me is thin; I do not think I will end up in jail.

Old Bailey database symposium

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The Head Heeb: Call for papers

I’m pleased to formally announce a project that Sharon Howard and I have been discussing for some time: the first online symposium on the Old Bailey Session Paper database. The Old Bailey database is, quite simply, the largest primary source collection currently available online, with reports (and often complete transcripts) of more than 100,000 criminal trials from 1674 to 1834. As such, it provides almost unlimited opportunity to use the online medium for original historical work.