Lot of reading in grad school. Oy. I have to read this account of St. Theresa of Avila from 1642 It’s about 100 pages of text. The spelling and language is all old and obscure; S equals F, and VV equals W. Sometimes, U equals V. I don’t know how the non-native speakers of English (everyone in this class but me) are getting though this weekend. Their English is, of course, is really solid, but this reading is terrible. My head hurts already.

Today’s song:

OK, here’s my biggest nerd-out to date. Brace yourself;  I just looked up undergraduate thesis (short novel about the Bijlmerramp) to see if it’s in Frost Library, and it’s totally there. All of the undergraduate thesis are printed on acid free paper, and live in the basement of Frost rarely to be seen again. However, they all get assigned call numbers and can be looked up (often accidentally) like any other book.

On the off chance you’re on Amherst’s Campus and want to take a peek at what I’ve been going on about for months, be my guest. As promised, there are a few color photos. However, if you know me, email/facebook me and I’ll send you a revised copy that contains fewer embarassing grammatical errors.

(Stolen from Koreanish, and he took it from someone else.) This is a wordle rendering of my thesis. It’s odd viewing a piece of work like this. It’s like all those months of work boil down to a bunch of keywords. There’s something sad about how easily is can be reduced to a pile of words, but I love neat little cells, so it’s also strangely appealing about this.

After this summer’s revision, I want to watch the words shift. Some of them need to get smaller, and others need to get larger.

I love today’s nytimes.com series of photos depicting stock market disappointment from across the world. This picture is from Frankfurt. The picture in the Netherlands isn’t pretty either:

Share prices on the Amsterdam stock exchange fell by as much as 6% on Monday as fears grew that the US economic crisis would drag other economies down with it.

Shortly before 1pm, the AEX blue chip index had fallen to 421.5 points before recovering slightly to around the 432 points by 3pm.

The downturn comes a day after central bank president Nout Wellink warned that the American credit crisis would have an effect on the Dutch economy and finance minister Wouter Bos is being too optimistic in his forecasts.

Wellink told television programme Buitenhof on Sunday that he expected economic growth to fall to between 1.5% and 2.5%, compared with the 2.6% forecast at the end of 2007.

Bos must start planning to offset any economic downturn now, Wellink said.

Analysts said Monday’s decline was accelerating towards panic. ‘The stock exchange declines and the negative sentiment are increasing. No-one knows where the end will be and that is extremely scarey,’ Rob Koenders of asset managers Harmony, told the Financieele Dagblad.

‘Investors are throwing in the towel,’ Rik Zwaneveld of AFS Brokers was reported as saying.

Meanwhile, research by marketing consultancy USP published on Monday, found that fear of a recession was receding. One in five households expected the US housing market crisis to impact on the Netherlands, compared with 25% six months ago.

© DutchNews.nl

Shortly after my sports based post from a few days ago, the Amsterdam city council announced that they want to boost their chances for getting the 2018 World Cup, as well as the 2028 Olympics. They’re building a new stadium on reclaimed land near Almere. Good luck!

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