Not quite a year after I read the first in this series, I’ve read the second, and have certainly worked up an appetite to read the rest now. Niccolò, the Flemish apprentice-turned-magnate of the first book, is sent on a mission of cut-throat mercantile competition to Trebizond, the only surviving point of the Byzantine Empire; but the year is 1461, and Trebizond’s time is also running out. There’s some very skeevy (though not at all explicit) underage sex in this book, though our hero nobly stands aside from it; there’s also a lot of appropriately byzantine political conspiracy, with tendrils reaching from Georgia to Scotland in a beautifully drawn pattern of entanglement. It’s all very lush and convincing, and just as I was wondering if Niccolò would ever actually lose any of the conflicts he gets involved with, I was blindsided by one of the several twists at the end. Good stuff.
July Books 23) Coldheart, by Trevor Baxendale
If you can swallow the completely implausible geological setup for this story – a desert planet with an ice core (or at least a permafrost mantle) – it’s rather a good tale of the politics of a citadel society under stress, as the monsters arise both from the icy depths and from the elders’ own children; it’s rather effective as a body-horror story in its own right, and there are some excellent character moments for Fitz (one of the greatest of Who companions), the Doctor and even Compassion. But I can’t quite forgive the geology.
Jago & Litefoot 4; The Davros Mission
I don’t want to compain too much. The first two are very good on their own merits: Nigel Fairs’ Jago in Love takes the duo to Brighton, where Jago, as one might guess, falls in love and Litefoot is haunted by a lovelorn ghost. Trevor Baxter in particular does a brilliant turn as the possessed Litefoot; Christopher Benjamin as the besotted Jago is not surprising but still entertaining.
John Dorney’s Beautiful Things sees Alan Cox totally stealing the show as Oscar Wilde, playing him as a sharp-tongued, quick-witted, mildly Irish man of action, who out-alliterates Jago, makes a dreadful pun on the name of fellow-Irishman George Bernard Shaw, and saves the day. Louise Jameson also gets some great lines as Leela, hating the new Wilde play (A Woman Of No Importance). The plot is a clever riff on Dorian Gray, though I did not really feel the villain’s means were adequately explained.
Matthew Sweet’s The Lonely Clock felt a bit less integrated. Sweet is excellent at weaving literary allusions into his Who scripts, but I didn’t spot any here (apart from Leela doing a Sherlock Holmes impression). There are lots of fantastic images – a glass business card, a time-travelling tube train, people frozen in time – and an excellent guest performance by Victoria Alcock (one of the passengers in Planet of the Dead) but it didn’t quite come together for me.
Justin Richards is a hit-or-miss writer, and I’m afraid The Hourglass Killers was a miss for me; Colin Baker’s character has adopted the pseudonym Claudius Dark for no good reason, Kempston and Hardwick imprison Terry Molloy’s character Lord Ampthill in an hourglass for no good reason, there is a very silly scene in the British Library, and the denouement is reminiscent of the Silvester Stallone film Daylight except rather less plausible. The ensemble cast are all having good fun, but we are dangerously close to jumping the shark here.
I am still looking forward to the next season, even though it will have no Leela; I think the writers may find it easier to write good stories with only two main characters to write about. One of the problems with this season, I felt, was a bit of a tendency to put stuff in just so that the characters had something to do.
In summary, The Davros Mission is well worth seeking out, especially as it comes as part of a job lot with the other Davros plays; and the first half of Jago and Litefoot’s fourth season is mostly good, while the second half is mostly OK.
Links I found interesting for 27-07-2012
- The Aleppo Codex Mystery
An extraordinary story.
- The Kremlin and Georgia – collusion or illusion? | openDemocracy
Georgia’s politicians are hypersensitive to charges of collusion with Russia, the old imperial power. President Saakashvili denounces opposition figures for being tools of the Kremlin. But the record suggests that he might himself be vulnerable to the same charge
- The Big Three in EU Foreign Policy
Excellent analysis by the excellent Stefan Lehne of the roles of UK, France, Germany in the EU.
- Proposals for Ulster-Scots GCSE outright dangerous
“Ulster Scots simply isn’t at the level of development necessary for anything approaching a formal academic test”
- The History of the NRA Is *Really* Interesting
“gun hysteria emerged in response to the civil rights movement.” With evidence.
Links I found interesting for 26-07-2012
- Top 20 des étonnantes sculptures sur pierre de Hirotoshi Ito
Superb stone sculptures by Japanese artist.
- Why Moldova Has Turned Its Back on Russia
How Moscow lost Chisinau – a liberal Russian perspective.
- Mary Tamm (Romana I) has died
Only 62.
Poll: The BSFA, Clarke and Tiptree winners
The 94 books which have won the BSFA, Clarke and Tiptree awards in more or less chronological order.
Links I found interesting for 25-07-2012
- Groups welcome passing of Bill on gender quotas – The Irish Times
Hooray!
- The Mayor of London’s introduction to the Olympics
Marvelous.
- A Syrian Stalemate?
Looks at the cartographic history of the Syrian state. Fascinating.
- Election in Georgia ‘already stolen’ | New Europe
Former foreign minister speaks.
July Books 22) Speed of Dark, by Elizabeth Moon
Probably the best known of many SF stories dealing with autism, this is a near-future novel told in the first person by an autistic man who is being pressured to try an experimental “cure” by his employers (who are in the right line of work to provide it to him).
The actual plot is pretty straightforward – there’s an Evil Boss and an Evil Acquaintance who both have to be dealt with in fairly unsurprising fashion – but the success of the book is Moon’s depiction of what it might feel like to be autistic and write down how your life seems to you. Of course, one must take this as it is – Moon is not autistic, and so this is a literary experiment inviting the reader to inhabit the author’s impression of the uncanny valley of autistic experience rather than a clinical description of a real-life individual – but sf fans are used to authors asking them to inhabit imaginary worlds, imaginary cultures and imaginary states of consciousness, so it’s not surprising that a book that pulls this off well, as Speed of Dark does, would appeal to readers of the genre.
On first reading, I felt that the ending of the book, when we discover what choice Lou makes with regard to the cure, somewhat undermined the rest of the book. On re-reading, I felt rather more comfortable with it: it seemed to me this time that the climax is signalled decently far ahead and that in fact Moon avoids the temptation of giving the book too pat an ending. There is an interesting use of the New Testament in reaching the conclusion, though I will grumble about inaccuracy in a comment to this entry.
Speed of Dark won the 2004 Nebula Award for Best Novel. The others on the shortlist were Lois McMaster Bujold’s Diplomatic Immunity, Carol Emshwiller’s The Mount, Kathleen Ann Goonan’s Light Music, Nalo Hopkinson’s The Salt Roads and Jack McDevitt’s Chindi. The only one I have read is the Bujold and I will admit that it is minor; I don’t remember hearing much about the others at the time let alone since. None of the shortlisted books was on the Hugo ballot, which is unusual and can sometimes mean a healthy strength and diversity and sometimes mean that the selection process generated a weak list. However, Speed of Dark is a worthy winner.
Links I found interesting for 24-07-2012
- Hoe separatistisch of pro-Belgisch bent u?
I come out 51%/49% – balanced or confused, rather than separatist or unionist!
- Sally Ride has died
🙁
- The Top 50 ‘Pictures of the Day’ for 2012
Beautiful!
July Books 21) Parasite, by Jim Mortimore
A New Adventure with an impressively imagined setting, a possibly living cylindrical structure containing madly mutating mosses, monkeys, and massive trees, into which the Doctor, Benny and Ace arrive and get tangled up with terminal mayhem. I found it a bit of a slow read but have a feeling that may be my fault rather than the author’s. The science of the setting may not be completely sound but I was able to suspend my disbelief.
Links I found interesting for 22-07-2012
- CONSILIUM – Bloggers meet Cyprus Presidency
#cy2012eublogs next Thursday.
- Georgia: Authorities must stop violence against opposition ahead of elections
Latest Amnesty International statement
- Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math
May 2012 was “the 327th consecutive month in which the temperature of the entire globe exceeded the 20th-century average”. Read.
Links I found interesting for 21-07-2012
- How I Lost My Fear of Universal Health Care
A conservative Republican is converted by experience of the Canadian system.
- Big Finish – Books Special Offers
Big discounts this weekend only!
- Aurora: Nothing Wrong With Politicising A Tragedy
Because sometimes politics is about real stuff.
- Tougher Voter ID Laws
How to stop people voting the wrong way – don’t let them vote at all!
- Lines in the Darkness: An Atlas for the Blind
Amazing.
- Cutting a great road through the truth to get to the Devil
Interesting discussion of Greenpeace’s anti-Shell campaign.
- Aurora Shooting: We’ve Seen This Before
Roger Ebert: “This would be an excellent time for our political parties to join together in calling for restrictions on the sale and possession of deadly weapons. That is unlikely, because the issue has become so closely linked to paranoid fantasies about a federal takeover of personal liberties that many politicians feel they cannot afford to advocate gun control.”
- Why Women Still Can’t Have It All
International relations guru Anne-Marie Slaughter gets personal.
July Books 20) Wonderland, by Mark Chadbourn
The last of the run of Doctor Who novels set between The Power of the Daleks and The Highlanders takes the Doctor, Ben and Polly to San Francisco in 1967, where a flower child called Summer tells the story of an alien power trying to take over the world through bad acid. The first-person perspective is quite rare in Who books, but done well here, though the story has few surprises.
July Books 19) Lucy, by Jamaica Kincaid
A memorable short novel about a Caribbean teenager who comes to the US to look after a white American family’s children. Lucy is a little naïve, a little tactless, sometimes quite observant, and doing some rapid growing up in a strange country. Recommended.
Links I found interesting for 20-07-2012
- Revising “Blogging”: blogs and journalism
“One reason I blog and comment less on blogs is that I read mostly on my phone or iPad, and typing is a nuisance and linking is a pain.”
Links I found interesting for 19-07-2012
- Homosexuality Explained To My Mother
A Moroccan writes.
- Dumping Facebook: Why More People Are Leaving
The slide begins to accelerate…
- Rejoice Gods of Georgian Democracy!
“Last year, the government of Georgia held a session of the cabinet in a grotto named after the mythical martyr of humanity, Prometheus.”
- Carne Ross: Participatory Democracy Opens Political Process
“we cannot expect government to produce equality. We have to work for it ourselves”
Links I found interesting for 18-07-2012
- Euro Leaders Sleepless Summits Seen Prone to Mistakes
Sorry about the crisis, time for bed!
- 10 Major Blunders in Doctor Who
I disagree with several of these!
Links I found interesting for 17-07-2012
- What Central Europe thinks of Britain and why
“the new member-states will have few reasons for wanting to spend political capital on supporting UK demands for exemptions from EU legislation”
- Right Said Blake
A Blake’s 7 / Bernard Cribbins mashup. What more can you ask for?
- Updated Supporter Numbers | London in 2014
Bid to bring the World Science Fiction Convention to London in 2014 is going well!
- GPO restored
W.T Cosgrave re-opens the GPO (1928?) after it had been restored following the 1916 Easter Rising.
July Books 18) Dracula, by Bram Stoker
A very enjoyable reread of the fundamental vampire novel, which I guess I read first when I was about 15 and again when I was about 30; I am now 45. It remains a rollicking good story, as our heroes (a lawyer, a lord, a psychiatrist, an American, a weird Dutchman and a beautiful woman) chase to the end of Europe to prevent foreign evil from contaminating the purity of the heart of Empire. You can read all kinds of political agendas into it, and you are probably meant to.
One point in Stoker’s favour is that Mina Murray, later Mina Harker, actually has rather an active role despite needing to be rescued (and actually it’s her husband who is most in need of rescuing at the end of the first section of the book). She types up all the notes and distributes them; she knows the railway timetables from Varna (pretty damn impressive); her telepathic link with Dracula allows the team to guess where he is; and the men make a mistake, and admit it is a mistake, when they try to keep information from her delicate ears. Of course the other female characters who get turned by Dracula (including Mina’s friend Lucy) are much more passive, but I thought Mina’s role worth noting.
After an early reference to a Kodak camera startled me, 
clanwilliam pointed out that the book is all about technology – the camera, the phonograph, the typewriter, the railway trains. But this isn’t rationality alone defeating superstition – our heroes also use garlic, crucifixes and consecrated Hosts (this in a book by an Irish Protestant!) alongside the latest tech. It’s about the forces of good, with technology and teamwork, using all means at hand to defeat an individualist, primitive evil. (One of the more chilling moments is when they realise that Dracula is strong enough to hump his own coffin about the place; he works best without allies, and consumes his servants.)
Now that I know the Balkans and Eastern Europe to an extent, I was interested to check off the extent to which Stoker used reality for his setting (I believe that he never visited what is now Romania himself). Various people (including Ken MacLeod) have pointed out that all this vampire stuff gives the historically liberal and pluralist lush arable territory of Transylvania a bad name; the more isolated and geographically challenging Bukovina is the more likely location for the castle. I’m also a bit dubious about the eastward spread of the Czechs – I think Stoker meant Hungarians there. But he namechecks several local delicacies which I have eaten myself. I note that Harker takes the western route, tied into normal business practices of Central Europe, when he approaches the castle at the start of the book, whereas the final campaign is waged from the less developed and more obscure south-east.
There are some incongruities. Dracula has a moustache; I can never quite get over that. Also Stoker’s ear for accents is not unerring; while I will accept his Cockney, his Whitby yokels seem to me to be under some Irish influence, and Van Helsing does not speak like any native Dutch speaker I have ever met (see my pedantic comment). I also don’t quite understand why Dracula first imprisons Harker and then lets him go, except that the plot needed Harker’s diary to get back. These are not fatal points.
There is probably more to say about deviance in general, and also Lucy’s love life (is her vampirism punishment for having three boyfriends?) But I am out of space. Read it, if you haven’t.
Links I found interesting for 16-07-2012
- What Google Is – TechCrunch
Hmmm….
- Georgia’s New Public Center is its Crown Jewel
“shiny glass buildings, sleek lime green waiting areas and touch-screen computers do not alone a democracy make.”
July Books 17) Leaves of Grass, by Walt Whitman
I used to confuse Walt Whitman with Wally Whyton, and was always vaguely puzzled as to why a performer of comic songs on 1970s British children's TV seemed to have some kind of iconic status in American literature. It may also be telling that none of Whitman's poetry (in fact, I think no American poetry at all) made it into the curriculum of my Belfast grammar school's English department. But I seem to be in Whitman's historical zone at the moment – this is the fourth book I have read since the start of June about nineteenth-century America – so I shall confuse him with Whyton no more.
Leaves of Grass is one of those seminal (I choose the word for reason that will become clear) works of literature that may be as important for its influence as for its actual content. I do not consider myself especially well-read in great poetry, but even I can tell that Yeats was drawing a lot from Whitman's well, both in terms of style (the free verse following thoughts through variations of meter) and substance (creating a national story steeped in history), and that the more experimental prose writers of the twentieth century, including Burroughs and Delany, owe a lot to Whitman's stream of consciousness approach and also to his frank sexuality. Indeed, the fact that a mid-nineteenth-century writer could adopt such a clearly bisexual perspective was the biggest surprise of the book for me.
Whitman's vision of America is pretty coherent, of manly white men (and their women occasionally) creating a new society on a new continent which will be a beacon of civilisation for the rest of the world to admire and emulate. The continent's previous inhabitants are preserved in place names – New York is always Mannahatta, Long Island is Paumanok. It is also striking that Canada (or Kanada) is part of the geographical vision. It's a fascinating example of a political programme expressed in verse.
It's therefore a shame that such a lot of it isn't actually very good. The early piece, "Song of Myself", which is the core of the original mercifully short 1855 Leaves of Grass, and the elegy to Lincoln, "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd", were the two pieces that actually grabbed me. Otherwise, I found it frustrating that in many of the poems, even the shorter ones, a good opening concept gets lost in lists and in listless repetitions, with the occasional good line jumping out at you. Whitman is very easy to parody, but sometimes the original is so absurd that there is no need. As Rossini (or was it Shaw) supposedly said about Wagner's operas, there are some beautiful moments but some terrible half-hours.
So I'm glad I finally got through this, but would recommend that others interested in getting to know Whitman look for highlights, preferably in an anthology including other writers.
Links I found interesting for 15-07-2012
- The great wedding present crisis of July 1981
Brings back memories!
- Walt Whitman – Court of Appeals to Common Sense
How difficult it is to parody an absurd original.
- Georgian politics: The Economist
Georgia’s richest man remains without Georgian citizenship, an absurd situation of which most of his compatriots disapprove; the sooner that is resolved, the better. The Chamber of Control stands accused of levying disproportionate fines on the Georgian Dream movement, which Mr Ivanishvili has refused to pay. (It has responded by seizing some of his assets).
Fantasy Mistressworks meme
From
2. The Bloody Chamber – Angela Carter
3. Rats and Gargoyles – Mary Gentle
4. Outlander – Diana Gabaldon (this was published as Cross Stitch in the UK)
5. The Riddle-Master of Hed – Patricia McKillip
6. The Blue Sword – Robin McKinley
7. Lud-in-the-Mist – Hope Mirrlees
8. The Curse of the Mistwraith – Janny Wurts
9. Shadow Magic – Patricia C Wrede
10. Assassin’s Apprentice – Robin Hobb
11. A Wizard of Earthsea – Ursula K Le Guin
12. Familiar Spirit – Lisa Tuttle
13. Beauty – Sheri S Tepper
14. Diadem from the Stars – Jo Clayton
15. The Crystal Cave – Mary Stewart
16. Black Horses for the King – Anne McCaffrey
17. The Clan of the Cave Bear – Jean M Auel
18. Fortress in the Eye of Time – C J Cherryh
19. Red Moon and Black Mountain – Joy Chant
20. The Birthgrave – Tanith Lee
21. Briefing for a Descent into Hell – Doris Lessing
22. Interview with the Vampire – Anne Rice
23. The Wood Wife – Terri Windling
24. Briar Rose – Jane Yolen
25. The Porcelain Dove – Delia Sherman
26. The Winter Prince – Elizabeth Wein
27. The Time of the Dark – Barbara Hambly
28. Sword of Rhiannon – Leigh Brackett
29. Tam Lin – Pamela Dean
30. Fire in the Mist – Holly Lisle
31. The Sacrifice – Kristine Kathryn Rusch
32. The Beleagured City – Margaret Oliphant
33. The Soul of Lilith – Marie Corelli
34. The Citadel of Fear – Francis Stevens
35. Jirel of Joiry – C L Moore
36. Sheepfarmer’s Daughter – Elizabeth Moon
37. Dragon Prince – Melanie Rawn
38. Black Trillium – Julian May, Andre Norton & Marion Zimmer Bradley
39. The Thief’s Gamble – Juliet E McKenna
40. Daggerspell – Katharine Kerr
41. The Blue Manor – Jenny Jones
42. The Barbed Coil – J V Jones
43. In the Red Lord’s Reach – Phyllis Eisenstein
44. The Spirit Ring – Lois McMaster Bujold
45. The Last of the Renshai – Mickey Zucher Reichert
46. Archangel – Sharon Shinn
47. The Hall of the Mountain King – Judith Tarr
48. A Blackbird in Silver – Freda Warrington
49. Kindred – Octavia Butler
50. The Red Magician – Lisa Goldstein
Any particular recommendations from those I haven't read? NB that I did not particularly enjoy Rats and Gargoyles, and hated Interview with the Vampire.
The Emerald Tiger / The Jupiter Conjunction / The Butcher of Brisbane
I'm not quite up to date with Big Finish, as there are several Sixth Doctor audios which I have yet to write up, but I have now listened to the three most recent Fifth Doctor stories, featuring Turlough, Tegan and Nyssa (set just after Nyssa's departure in Terminus, the idea being that she has been picked up by her former crew-mates several decades late in her own timeline).
As you can tell from the music, the setting is India, in 1926, and the Doctor and colleagues end up in an exciting chase by train, car and balloon of dubious Brits and a large telepathic tiger to a lost valley where mysterious things are afoot due to a local infusion of handwavium (not what it's actually called but you get the idea). All jolly good fun, with the trememndous energy of the music reflected in the performance of regulars and guest cast (who include Cherie Lunghi).
(Though the story's treatment of the Time Agents seemed to me at odds with what we know of them from New Who and Torchwood.)
So, in summary, The Butcher of Brisbane is the best dramatically; The Emerald Tiger has superb music; and The Jupiter Conjunction is not recommended for astronomers. I think all three are fairly penetrable for non-Who fans – the Talons of Weng-Chiang references in The Butcher of Brisbane are important only for the choreography of the dénouement.
July Books 16) The Imprint of Place, by David P. Becker
This was a freebie book slipped into the goodie bag for a conference I spoke at in Camden, Maine, in early 2007. I confess that my knowledge of Maine is pretty much restricted to the two-hour drive through a snow-filled landscape from Portland airport to the conference venue, and my knowledge of print-making as an art is not a lot more than my knowledge of Maine, so it is not very remarkable that it took me five and a half years to get around to reading it. It was published in conjunction with The Maine Print Project, which was apparently the largest collaborative fine-arts project in Maine's history (this may not be a hotly contested claim to fame).
But it's a nice coffee-table book (if we only had a coffee-table), with some spectacular examples of lithography etc. I illustrate with the rather evocative "Dawn", by Will Barnet, which is actually on the book's cover, but there were half a dozen or more where I turned the page and gasped in delight; you will find most of them on the Maine Print Project site. The nineteenth-century section is interesting from a historical perspective, in that some of the artists illustrated were professional printers using their own equipment in their spare time, while others were ladies of leisure who came up the coast from Boston or even New York to sketch evocative images of he Main landscape on their lithographs. It's a nice book to have in the house.
And the moral is that if someone in Maine invites you to come look at their etchings, it's probably worthwhile accepting the invitation.
Links I found interesting for 14-07-2012
- Tim & Freya the full story & Conclusion!
Couple break up on train, fellow passenger live-tweets it all.
- TomTom Congestion Index
Hooray! Brussels was most congested city 2011, now overtaken by Warsaw, Rome, Marseilles!
- George Monbiot – For Those Who Love Life
Activists who are attacking the fish industry.
- Despatches from Caledonia: It’s Not You, It’s Me. Officially.
On being diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome at the age of 46.
Links I found interesting for 13-07-2012
- 10 Things Most Americans Don’t Know About America
“As Americans, we’re brought up our entire lives being taught that we’re the best, we did everything first and that the rest of the world follows our lead. Not only is this not true, but people get irritated when you bring it to their country with you. So don’t.”
- 10 Reasons Why Oxytocin Is The Most Amazing Molecule In The World
“oxytocin is proving to be a crucial ingredient to what makes us human” – a strong claim, presumably other animals have it!
Links I found interesting for 12-07-2012
- Game of Thrones Season Two RPG
Season Two of GoT as an old-style video game.
- John Quincy Adams’s Self-Assessment on His Birthday in 1812
“I am forty-five years old— Two thirds of a long life are past, and I have done Nothing to distinguish it by usefulness to my Country, or to Mankind— I have always lived with I hope a suitable sense of my duties in Society, and with a sincere desire to perform them— But Passions, Indolence, weakness, and infirmity have sometimes made me swerve from my better knowledge of right, and almost constantly paralyzed my efforts of good— I have no heavy charge upon my Conscience—for which I bless my Maker, as well as for all the enjoyments that he has liberally bestowed upon me— I pray for his gracious kindness in future”
- New study says American families are overwhelmed by clutter, rarely eat together, and are generally stressed out about it all
“our country has 3.1 percent of the world’s kids — and 40 percent of its Little Tikes EasyScore basketball hoops. Many of them belong to 2-year-old Anjellisa Redfern.”
- When The Media Found Congressional Experts Interesting
The conspiracy of silence.
- А is for Андроид
The new Russian alphabet. (I especially like Щ for Щкайп.)
- 573 – Look Mum, No Mermaids!
Where to go for coffee in London.
- Hubble Discovers New Pluto Moon
…and that makes five.
Language quiz: answer and poll
The language that I posted about last night is Marshallese (Kajin Majol), the indigenous language of the Marshall Islands. The “ri Majol” are therefore the Marshallese people. Congrats to
I cut and pasted the two articles from my source (a PDF of the 25 May edition of Marshall Islands Journal), so the orthography is as used in newspapers. This means that none of the diacritical marks of the standard language have been used: “ri Majol” should strictly be “ri M̧ajōļ”, with hooks under the M and l which your browser may not render (mine gets the ļ but not the M̧).
Actually, that’s a good excuse for a poll:
(Sorry,
Language quiz
Here's a language I hadn't come across before:
Jilnuul bojjan in ri Majol, rej kio mour im jokwe ilo United States, im kab jikin ko jet an, ekkar nan aer keidri ilo bonbon ko jimor, an US im kab <redacted>.
Bonbon eo an <redacted> nan 2011, ej ripoote 53,158 armij, rej kio jokwe ilo Aelon Kein. Bonbon eo an US nan 2010 ej ba bwe ear wor 22,434 ri Majol rej jokwe ilo United States im kab jikin ko an.
Bonbon kein ruo, elane kobaiki ippen dron, rej kwalok 75,592 ri Majol, ak 30 bojjan in jonan ro im rej jokwe kio ilo US im kab jikin ko an.
Bonbon eo an US nan 2000 eo, ej kwalok bwe ear wor 6,650 ri Majol ilo US. Bonbon eo an <redacted> nan 1999 eo, ear bune 50,840 ri Majol ilo Majol in.
Bonbon kein rej kwaloke 57,490. 6,650 eo im rej jokwe ilo US, rej tarrin in wot, 12 bojjan in woran aolepen ri Majol.
And the English translation:
Thirty percent of <redacted> now live in the United States and its territories, according to a comparison of the recent US and <redacted> national censuses.
The <redacted> census in 2011 reported 53,158 people living in <redacted>. The 2010 US census said there are 22,434 <redacted> living in the United States and its territories.
These two figures combine for a total of 75,592 <redacted>, with 30 percent being accounted for by those living in the US and its territories.
The 2000 US census showed 6,650 <redacted> in the US. The 1999 <redacted> census counted 50,840 <redacted>in the <redacted>.
These total 57,490. The 6,650 living in the US accounted for about 12 percent of all <redacted>.
Anyone like to guess who the "ri Majol" are? (And no sneaky Googling!)