How to learn Swedish in 1000 difficult lessons

Those wacky CIA operatives! What will they do next? (Credit goes to David, one of the editors working for me who showed me the article in the Guardian by Julian Borger from which this excerpt is taken).

In another snapshot of folly offered by the new files, a memo dated 1967 on "Views of Trained Cats" looks into the possibility of surgically inserting microphones and transmitters into cats and using them as walking bugs. The operation was codenamed "Acoustic Kitty" and was a resounding failure. Having wired their first trained cat for sound, they released it near a park with strict orders to eavesdrop on two men on a bench, but the poor animal was run over by a taxi before it had taken more than a few steps towards its target. The CIA researchers came to the conclusion that they could train cats to move short distances, but that "the environmental and security factors in using this technique in a real foreign situation force us to conclude that for our (intelligence) purposes, it would not be practical."

Oh, yes. The Central ''Intelligence'' Agency is always on the cutting edge of, uh, intelligence. (The full article is here.)

The Swedish word for the day is märklig. It means funny peculiar (not funny ha ha).

- by Francis S.