In the 6 months to September 24 national lottery sales rose 1/5th - by over £500m to more than £3¼ billion.
Good causes got a slightly smaller increase (17%) – up to £918.3m from £784.8m.
£1.69 billion was paid out in prize money.
Owners Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan have asked for a 5 year extension to their licence to 2019 to help their investment plan.
More than 2,700 people have become lottery millionaires since the launch in 1994.
The success of Euro-Millions has prompted Camelot to explore the possibilities for a Global Draw.
Camelot ‘admitted’ last Friday that the highest-grossing retail outlets for a Euro-Millions rollover were mostly in the City of London & Canary Wharf.
Once a gambler, always a gambler.
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Monday, November 21, 2011
Ten Bob, Ted Bastin & the paranormal
Norman Sanders of Ipswich wrote to The Times last week to point out that a picture of the wrong EDSAC had been used to illustrate their obituary of Ted Bastin: ‘The pictured EDSAC1 was taken away for ten shillings by a man with a horse & cart in mid-1958, by which time EDSAC2, a very different machine, was up & running & was that used by Mr Bastin in the early 1960s.’
I was left wondering about the direction of this transaction; did the carter pay for the scrap, or did the University have to pay to get rid of the unwanted contraption?
It was not much later than that that I was considered lucky to get £1 from a mother who wanted a piano for her daughter, instead of having to pay someone to take mine away because it was deemed to be one of the items which had to be disposed of as we were moving to a smaller house in the city, & pianos were no longer considered an essential or desirable feature of every home, or playing it a vital accomplishment for every young lady. And it is odd to think now that residential property was so much cheaper in a small country town in the days when anyone who even contemplated a long commute would have been thought to have taken leave of their senses.
Ted Bastin was a remarkable character whose interests extended beyond Combinatorial Physics to embrace the paranormal & religion. In 1972 he organized a small select meeting to observe Uri Geller in action – the audience included Arthur Koestler, Arthur C Clarke & (a young) Kwame Anthony Appiah – I think I remember reading reports in the press. Bastin recorded his mixed feelings about what he had witnessed, which would make interesting reading now (A copy is available on the web)
Links
REPORT ON A MEETING WITH URI GELLER AT THE ROYAL GARDEN HOTEL, LONDON, OCTOBER 30, 1972.
EDSAC 1 and after - a compilation of personal reminiscences
Early English computers
Arthur Koestler in Wonderland
Related post
Honour
REPORT ON A MEETING WITH URI GELLER AT THE ROYAL GARDEN HOTEL, LONDON, OCTOBER 30, 1972.
EDSAC 1 and after - a compilation of personal reminiscences
Early English computers
Arthur Koestler in Wonderland
Related post
Honour
Picture comes from Early English computers & shows the cabinet of the Cambridge University EDSAC II computer (1957), showing the microprogram control store
Salt
Professor Graham MacGregor of the Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine & chairman of CASH (Consensus Action on Salt & Health) is very cross about health claims made on packages of ‘gourmet salt’ which encourage (or should that be trick?) people into paying very high prices.
Ordinary nationally branded table salt costs 80p per kilo (own brand probably costs less).
Cornish sea salt is on sale for £7.50 per kilo.
Himalayan crystal salt will take your breath away at £13.46 per kilo.
You can buy a 10kg bag of ‘white salt’ in Asda for £3 – 30p per kilo - good for keeping your paths clear of winter ice.
Probably not recommended for human consumption but, if it were, enough to keep a family of two adults & two children going for about 16 months if they all stick to the Guideline Daily Amounts.
Ordinary nationally branded table salt costs 80p per kilo (own brand probably costs less).
Cornish sea salt is on sale for £7.50 per kilo.
Himalayan crystal salt will take your breath away at £13.46 per kilo.
You can buy a 10kg bag of ‘white salt’ in Asda for £3 – 30p per kilo - good for keeping your paths clear of winter ice.
Probably not recommended for human consumption but, if it were, enough to keep a family of two adults & two children going for about 16 months if they all stick to the Guideline Daily Amounts.
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Pangur Ban
This deceptively simple poem, written over 1000 years ago by an Irish monk, says so much, & certainly makes me consider inviting a cat into the house.
No mice available there (I hope). Perhaps my Pangur Ban could get her practice & pleasure from chasing spiders instead.
I & Pangur Ban my cat,
‘Tis a like task we are at:
Hunting mice is his delight,
Hunting words I sit all night.
Better far than praise of men
‘Tis to sit with book & pen:
Pangur bears me no ill-will,
He too plies his simple skill.
‘Tis a merry task to see
At our tasks how glad are we,
When at home we sit & find
Entertainment to our mind.
Oftentimes a mouse will stray
In the hero Pangur’s way;
Oftentimes my keen thought set
Takes a meaning in its net.
‘Gainst the wall he sets his eye
Full & fierce & sharp & sly;
‘Gainst the wall of knowledge I
All my little wisdom try.
When a mouse darts from its den,
O how glad is Pangur then!
O what gladness do I prove
When I solve the doubts I love!
So in peace our task we ply,
Pangur Ban, my cat & I;
In our arts we find our bliss,
I have mine & he has his.
Practice every day has made
Pangur perfect in his trade;
I get wisdom day & night
Turning darkness into light.
No mice available there (I hope). Perhaps my Pangur Ban could get her practice & pleasure from chasing spiders instead.
I & Pangur Ban my cat,
‘Tis a like task we are at:
Hunting mice is his delight,
Hunting words I sit all night.
Better far than praise of men
‘Tis to sit with book & pen:
Pangur bears me no ill-will,
He too plies his simple skill.
‘Tis a merry task to see
At our tasks how glad are we,
When at home we sit & find
Entertainment to our mind.
Oftentimes a mouse will stray
In the hero Pangur’s way;
Oftentimes my keen thought set
Takes a meaning in its net.
‘Gainst the wall he sets his eye
Full & fierce & sharp & sly;
‘Gainst the wall of knowledge I
All my little wisdom try.
When a mouse darts from its den,
O how glad is Pangur then!
O what gladness do I prove
When I solve the doubts I love!
So in peace our task we ply,
Pangur Ban, my cat & I;
In our arts we find our bliss,
I have mine & he has his.
Practice every day has made
Pangur perfect in his trade;
I get wisdom day & night
Turning darkness into light.
Saturday, November 19, 2011
Memory lane
29 July 1997
Parts & Wholes Daniel Lerner (ed) MIT
The Free Press of Glencoe NY 1963
I first came across this last year, but reread it with pleasure. It's the proceedings of a colloquium at MIT, the third in a series dealing with common problems of concept & method in fields of modern knowledge. For example, particle physics, magnetism which depends on all or nearly all the electrons pointing the same way, how this changes with temperature and how they decide to do it even though they are all the same & indistinguishable. Which raises the spooky idea that electrons are as individual as humans if we only looked at them in the right way.
There's a lovely piece by Kuznets on parts & wholes in economics which I really wish I could have read when I was at college; instead of pretending that there was nothing arbitrary about the level of analysis & the consequent derivation of theory I might have understood that struggling with this was part of the charm of the intellectual challenge of economics instead of coming away with the belief that it was deeply intellectually dishonest.
The final piece has the disarming title "How Does A Poem Know When It Is Finished?" by IA Richards, which unfortunately does not live up to expectations
Parts & Wholes Daniel Lerner (ed) MIT
The Free Press of Glencoe NY 1963
I first came across this last year, but reread it with pleasure. It's the proceedings of a colloquium at MIT, the third in a series dealing with common problems of concept & method in fields of modern knowledge. For example, particle physics, magnetism which depends on all or nearly all the electrons pointing the same way, how this changes with temperature and how they decide to do it even though they are all the same & indistinguishable. Which raises the spooky idea that electrons are as individual as humans if we only looked at them in the right way.
There's a lovely piece by Kuznets on parts & wholes in economics which I really wish I could have read when I was at college; instead of pretending that there was nothing arbitrary about the level of analysis & the consequent derivation of theory I might have understood that struggling with this was part of the charm of the intellectual challenge of economics instead of coming away with the belief that it was deeply intellectually dishonest.
The final piece has the disarming title "How Does A Poem Know When It Is Finished?" by IA Richards, which unfortunately does not live up to expectations
Related post
How to knit a poem
How to knit a poem
Money in the mirror
In her Point of View on Radio 4 on Friday night Mary Beard managed, in the space of ten minutes, to make the connection between coinage through the ages, Greece (Ancient & Modern), Empire, the Euro & the UK ID card (now available to those here on a visa but not to established citizens).
Brilliant.
Brilliant.
Friday, November 18, 2011
Our Queen
I really enjoyed Robert Hardman’s book Our Queen. It is a proper history of how monarchy (the institution) has changed over the past 60 years, & highly readable.
Hardman has had superb access to senior & junior members of the Royal staff, to prime ministers, politicians & prelates, & to Prince William & the Duke of York.
And he provides plenty of not-so-trivial trivia, has a crafty sense of humour which made me laugh out loud more than once, & a sympathy which once or twice made me feel a bit weepy.
Of course you do have to aim off a bit while reading – this is not a warts & all biography.
I for one had not noticed that a second function has been added to the monarch’s role as Head of State – that of Head of Nation.
This term was first set down in print by Antony Jay (who wrote Yes, Minister) in 1992. He defined the duties as those which ‘can be done well, or adequately, or badly, or not done at all. They are the ones concerned with behavior, values & standards; the ones which earn the respect, loyalty & pride of the people. If the Sovereign becomes just another occupant of a high office of state with no more relevance to people’s daily lives & inner feelings than the Lord Chief Justice, then that crucial link between nation & state will be seriously weakened & will perhaps break.’
This definition is now incorporated into the Role of Monarchy section on the official Buckingham Palace website.
In the book there are long sections about how the management of the whole business has been transformed – hence the management guru status - & I was especially intrigued to read that the expulsion of hereditaries from the House of Lords was regarded almost as something to be welcomed because it decoupled the Royal family from the idea that it depends upon & is a part of an exclusive aristocracy, & so leaves them free to make clear that anybody (well, almost) can be a welcome & honoured guest at an official Royal function.
Some bits of trivia to mention here – merely because I have previously noted them on this blog:
Only one real worry: “After 60 years on the throne, the Queen no longer depends on Parliament to provide public funds to keep the monarchy afloat. It is now supported by the property market.”
So fingers crossed there then – let us hope monarchy does not go the way of others who believed that, with property, the only way is up.
Hardman has had superb access to senior & junior members of the Royal staff, to prime ministers, politicians & prelates, & to Prince William & the Duke of York.
And he provides plenty of not-so-trivial trivia, has a crafty sense of humour which made me laugh out loud more than once, & a sympathy which once or twice made me feel a bit weepy.
Of course you do have to aim off a bit while reading – this is not a warts & all biography.
I for one had not noticed that a second function has been added to the monarch’s role as Head of State – that of Head of Nation.
This term was first set down in print by Antony Jay (who wrote Yes, Minister) in 1992. He defined the duties as those which ‘can be done well, or adequately, or badly, or not done at all. They are the ones concerned with behavior, values & standards; the ones which earn the respect, loyalty & pride of the people. If the Sovereign becomes just another occupant of a high office of state with no more relevance to people’s daily lives & inner feelings than the Lord Chief Justice, then that crucial link between nation & state will be seriously weakened & will perhaps break.’
This definition is now incorporated into the Role of Monarchy section on the official Buckingham Palace website.
In the book there are long sections about how the management of the whole business has been transformed – hence the management guru status - & I was especially intrigued to read that the expulsion of hereditaries from the House of Lords was regarded almost as something to be welcomed because it decoupled the Royal family from the idea that it depends upon & is a part of an exclusive aristocracy, & so leaves them free to make clear that anybody (well, almost) can be a welcome & honoured guest at an official Royal function.
Some bits of trivia to mention here – merely because I have previously noted them on this blog:
- The Queen’s lifeboat hat was by Rachel Trevor-Morgan.
- These days the Queen seldom troubles the big name designers, preferring to leave her outfits to a small in house team led by Angela Kelly (her dresser).
- The beads & crystal embroidered national birds & flowers of Trinidad &Tobago on the Queen's dress (by Angela Kelly) were unthreaded & re-embroidered in a maple leaf pattern for the next year’s tour of Canada. Her team call this ‘credit crunch couture.’
- The garden party rule for guests used to be just a spouse of the invitee plus any unmarried daughters aged 16-25. In the 90s the Queen decided no one should come without someone with whom to share the day. The rules were amended to include a friend ‘of whatever complexion’ - & unmarried sons were added for those with families.
Only one real worry: “After 60 years on the throne, the Queen no longer depends on Parliament to provide public funds to keep the monarchy afloat. It is now supported by the property market.”
So fingers crossed there then – let us hope monarchy does not go the way of others who believed that, with property, the only way is up.
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Odd houses
In an interesting article on Straight Statistics, Nigel Hawkes persuasively argues that the finding that odd-numbered houses in the UK are worth an average of £538 more than even-numbered ones really just reflects the premium enjoyed by end-of-terrace properties.
I found myself speculating idly about whether in fact there might be another explanation – perhaps something to do with one of those strange ‘irrational’ biases beloved of behavioural economists?
I have a strange belief that odd-numbered houses are always on the left hand side of the road, & that the left hand side is always the one on the western side (just as up is always north & down is south). And that (apart from #1) even numbers are nicer than odd ones.
Perhaps there is something that makes the people in charge of such things as house-numbering give odd numbers to the more desirable side – perhaps the side which have gardens which are sunny in the afternoon.
According to Singing Banana, you are more likely to have an odd than an even numbered house.
I found myself speculating idly about whether in fact there might be another explanation – perhaps something to do with one of those strange ‘irrational’ biases beloved of behavioural economists?
I have a strange belief that odd-numbered houses are always on the left hand side of the road, & that the left hand side is always the one on the western side (just as up is always north & down is south). And that (apart from #1) even numbers are nicer than odd ones.
Perhaps there is something that makes the people in charge of such things as house-numbering give odd numbers to the more desirable side – perhaps the side which have gardens which are sunny in the afternoon.
According to Singing Banana, you are more likely to have an odd than an even numbered house.
Black is the colour
An unexpected treat right at the beginning of Max Reinhardt's Late Junction on Radio 3 last night – Langston Hughes's description of Nina Simone’s voice - as different from other singers as beer from champagne or crackers from crepes suzettes - followed by one of her earliest recordings (1955), Black is the colour of my true love’s hair.
Magic.
Magic.
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Looks like carelessness.
Within the space of four months the Home Office has lost three of the most senior people on whom it relied for security. Sir Paul Stephenson & John Yates (Commissioner & Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police) resigned in July after criticism over the News of the World phone hacking business, now Brodie Clark, the head of the border force, has resigned as well over something or the other.
Home Secretary Theresa May took the unusual step of addressing all staff in the Home Office to try to restore their confidence after Brodie Clark’s departure. Mrs May thanked staff for their hard work & insisted that she appreciated all their efforts before encouraging them to keep up their good work.
One official said: ‘It was the Home Secretary saying that she loves us really.’
Coincidentally I have just been reading Robert Hardman’s book The Queen – not something I might normally have been tempted by but I was intrigued by a comment that this is now a must-read for ministers, the Queen is the latest management guru …
One quote from the book: ‘You can’t do anything in the short term. It’s all about relationships. That’s what the. Queen has been doing for 60 years … the more you do it, the greater your ability to lead, to change, to manage, to listen, to learn … ‘
And, by another coincidence, ‘It’s all about relationships’ was one of the lessons which Labour guru Philip Gould tried to encourage.
Of course politicians are, by definition, only in a department for the short term, & it is very dangerous for them to steer the tricky course between on the one hand stamping your authority on the organisation , identifying & removing the problems which may flow from people who have just grown stale & set in their ways from a lifetime of service & developing expertise, & on the other relying on those who not only might know better than you but also have a lot of friends in the organisation who might believe that too.
Home Secretary Theresa May took the unusual step of addressing all staff in the Home Office to try to restore their confidence after Brodie Clark’s departure. Mrs May thanked staff for their hard work & insisted that she appreciated all their efforts before encouraging them to keep up their good work.
One official said: ‘It was the Home Secretary saying that she loves us really.’
Coincidentally I have just been reading Robert Hardman’s book The Queen – not something I might normally have been tempted by but I was intrigued by a comment that this is now a must-read for ministers, the Queen is the latest management guru …
One quote from the book: ‘You can’t do anything in the short term. It’s all about relationships. That’s what the. Queen has been doing for 60 years … the more you do it, the greater your ability to lead, to change, to manage, to listen, to learn … ‘
And, by another coincidence, ‘It’s all about relationships’ was one of the lessons which Labour guru Philip Gould tried to encourage.
Of course politicians are, by definition, only in a department for the short term, & it is very dangerous for them to steer the tricky course between on the one hand stamping your authority on the organisation , identifying & removing the problems which may flow from people who have just grown stale & set in their ways from a lifetime of service & developing expertise, & on the other relying on those who not only might know better than you but also have a lot of friends in the organisation who might believe that too.
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Business opportunities
Touch wood, cross your fingers … so far no sign of a hard winter. Very different from this time last year. Today the sky is clear, the sun shining brightly but waterly weakly. And we have had no rain to speak of for quite some time.
But nobody is letting us forget that these days winters can get hard – we need to be prepeared.
Local radio carries adverts for 12kg bags of rock salt. Asda are selling large bags of what they call White Salt. Every supermarket has prominent displays of wellies to suit all tastes.
May Gurney, Britain’s biggest operator of road gritters, had 240 spreader lorries round the country. Now they have paid £65m to make that 320; they bought a company called TransLinc, originally a management buyout from Lincolnshire CC.
TransLinc’s current bosses get £2m each & will stay with the business.
Links
May Gurney acquires TransLinc
RJD Partners: TransLinc
Buy-In Management Buyout – BIMBO
Related posts
Winter comes early
Snow report
More winners & losers
But nobody is letting us forget that these days winters can get hard – we need to be prepeared.
Local radio carries adverts for 12kg bags of rock salt. Asda are selling large bags of what they call White Salt. Every supermarket has prominent displays of wellies to suit all tastes.
May Gurney, Britain’s biggest operator of road gritters, had 240 spreader lorries round the country. Now they have paid £65m to make that 320; they bought a company called TransLinc, originally a management buyout from Lincolnshire CC.
TransLinc’s current bosses get £2m each & will stay with the business.
Links
May Gurney acquires TransLinc
RJD Partners: TransLinc
Buy-In Management Buyout – BIMBO
Related posts
Winter comes early
Snow report
More winners & losers
Focus Group or Club
The death of Labour guru Philip Gould last week prompted many affectionate tributes, the gist of which was how he worked, principally through the medium of focus groups, to teach politicians to listen to & learn from the electorate.
This set me to thinking about how these lessons used to be learned, particularly in the latter years of the C19th when politicians had to cope with the vastly expanded electorate, following the completion of the project to bring about universal (male) enfranchisement in 1884.
I was remembering the days I spent travelling round local libraries & archives in the Greater Manchester area. Coincidentally the historians who appeared on Start The Week last Monday all stressed the importance & value of visiting the places you are writing about, & I too learned this.
From my vantage seat (usually on a bus) much of that old townscape remained – I also realised that modern bus routes still follow, for the most part, the old routes of stage coach or horse-drawn omnibus.
From the bus you also got a good view of the tops of buildings, which remain pretty much unchanged, whatever might have happened to the street level facades. And so one thing I noticed was how many of those Victorian or Edwardian buildings still proudly proclaimed themselves to be the local Conservative or Liberal Club.
These clubs were a vital way of connecting with potential voters, often more social than overtly political, & if the party dogma was not often taught there it was not unusual for it to be caught over the beer & billiards.
The Times obituarist though that Philip Gould was not above introducing a little two-way instruction inot his focus groups:
These clubs still played an important social role, regardless of politics, in the 1930s. The highlight of the week for teenagers in my mother’s village was the weekend dance organised by the Conservative Club.
By the time the Second World War was over however the clubs had somehow lost their ability to attract the uncommitted in this way & the parties they hosted were merely for the boringly political kind.
Links
Start the Week: Writing History with Peter Englund, Norman Davies, Boris Johnson and Alison Weir
[pdf]THE CONSERVATIVE EVENING. NEWSPAPER PROJECT IN EDW ARDIAN. MANCHESTER'. Colin Buckley
Conservative & Liberal Clubs
What I learned from Philip Gould
Labour peer Philip Gould has died aged 61
1884 Reform Act
Related post
Architectural thees & thous
This set me to thinking about how these lessons used to be learned, particularly in the latter years of the C19th when politicians had to cope with the vastly expanded electorate, following the completion of the project to bring about universal (male) enfranchisement in 1884.
I was remembering the days I spent travelling round local libraries & archives in the Greater Manchester area. Coincidentally the historians who appeared on Start The Week last Monday all stressed the importance & value of visiting the places you are writing about, & I too learned this.
From my vantage seat (usually on a bus) much of that old townscape remained – I also realised that modern bus routes still follow, for the most part, the old routes of stage coach or horse-drawn omnibus.
From the bus you also got a good view of the tops of buildings, which remain pretty much unchanged, whatever might have happened to the street level facades. And so one thing I noticed was how many of those Victorian or Edwardian buildings still proudly proclaimed themselves to be the local Conservative or Liberal Club.
These clubs were a vital way of connecting with potential voters, often more social than overtly political, & if the party dogma was not often taught there it was not unusual for it to be caught over the beer & billiards.
The Times obituarist though that Philip Gould was not above introducing a little two-way instruction inot his focus groups:
Philip Gould’s management of focus groups was interventionist, as he interrupted speakers with his questions, directing them to get to the point, usually his point.Times obituary 8 November 2011
These clubs still played an important social role, regardless of politics, in the 1930s. The highlight of the week for teenagers in my mother’s village was the weekend dance organised by the Conservative Club.
By the time the Second World War was over however the clubs had somehow lost their ability to attract the uncommitted in this way & the parties they hosted were merely for the boringly political kind.
Links
Start the Week: Writing History with Peter Englund, Norman Davies, Boris Johnson and Alison Weir
[pdf]THE CONSERVATIVE EVENING. NEWSPAPER PROJECT IN EDW ARDIAN. MANCHESTER'. Colin Buckley
Conservative & Liberal Clubs
What I learned from Philip Gould
Labour peer Philip Gould has died aged 61
1884 Reform Act
Related post
Architectural thees & thous
Monday, November 14, 2011
Children & the gaze
Why do we, most of us, now feel a sense of unease when looking at photographs of children who are not related or close to us?
Of course we will admire the baby pictures, & formal portraits or school photos are probably ok, as are photos of the school play or formal occasions. But a picture, snatched or posed, of just a single child?
We used to be able to look at such pictures & see nothing but innocence, no matter what the pose or degree of déshabille, no matter how challengingly the child was gazing back at us.
We even bore, after a fashion, the excruciating embarrassment of the moment when the photo album came out & your parents showed the new boy or girlfriend your first picture – the one of a smiling chubby baby lying naked on a rug – sometimes passed off as revenge for the heartache your teenage tantrums had created.
Victorian photographs can seem especially troubling; never mind Lewis Carroll, Julia Cameron’s child models can look disturbingly louche & ambiguous to our no longer innocent eyes. And yet, unless the Victorians were being deliberately complicit, leaving things left unsaid, their attitude to children was nothing like the fabled ‘seen & not heard’, at least not all the time. Trollope is very good at children, & Janet Ross speaks of how Lord Macaulay used to converse with her when they ere out walking together as if she were as well read & intelligent as he.
More modern writers, such as Mary Wesley in Camomile Lawn show the complicity of heads turned away & things left unexplained to children who were subject to abuse. It would have been socially embarrassing to do more than keep a watchful eye on someone – somebody’s husband, somebody’s father - someone like us, someone with predilections. But we do not have to discuss it or tell the children.
Now we can no longer just do & hope for the best – we know.
The photographed gaze of a child can now have the same disturbing & unsettling effect as that of one of Picasso’s Demoiselles d’Avignon. It says, We know who you are, what you get up to.
And we feel guilty, regardless.
Links
Julia Margaret Cameron
Janet Ross: Early Days Recalled
Mary Wesley: Camomile Lawn
Les Demoiselles d'Avignon
Of course we will admire the baby pictures, & formal portraits or school photos are probably ok, as are photos of the school play or formal occasions. But a picture, snatched or posed, of just a single child?
We used to be able to look at such pictures & see nothing but innocence, no matter what the pose or degree of déshabille, no matter how challengingly the child was gazing back at us.
We even bore, after a fashion, the excruciating embarrassment of the moment when the photo album came out & your parents showed the new boy or girlfriend your first picture – the one of a smiling chubby baby lying naked on a rug – sometimes passed off as revenge for the heartache your teenage tantrums had created.
Victorian photographs can seem especially troubling; never mind Lewis Carroll, Julia Cameron’s child models can look disturbingly louche & ambiguous to our no longer innocent eyes. And yet, unless the Victorians were being deliberately complicit, leaving things left unsaid, their attitude to children was nothing like the fabled ‘seen & not heard’, at least not all the time. Trollope is very good at children, & Janet Ross speaks of how Lord Macaulay used to converse with her when they ere out walking together as if she were as well read & intelligent as he.
More modern writers, such as Mary Wesley in Camomile Lawn show the complicity of heads turned away & things left unexplained to children who were subject to abuse. It would have been socially embarrassing to do more than keep a watchful eye on someone – somebody’s husband, somebody’s father - someone like us, someone with predilections. But we do not have to discuss it or tell the children.
Now we can no longer just do & hope for the best – we know.
The photographed gaze of a child can now have the same disturbing & unsettling effect as that of one of Picasso’s Demoiselles d’Avignon. It says, We know who you are, what you get up to.
And we feel guilty, regardless.
Links
Julia Margaret Cameron
Janet Ross: Early Days Recalled
Mary Wesley: Camomile Lawn
Les Demoiselles d'Avignon
Riot studies
I am impressed by the Ministry of Justice Statistical Bulletin report on the August riots.
In what may be a first, the statistics are put together by combining data from the courts with information already held in government databases – specifically the National Pupil Database held by the Department for Education & the National Benefits Database held by the Department for Work & Pensions.
This is a careful exercise; he authors stress both the inaccuracies inherent in any such process, & the need to remember that these figures apply only to those brought before the courts – the ones who got away may be different.
Attention was paid to privacy issues too – memorandums of understanding between the departments were signed before work could start.
The Overview Of Recorded Crimes And Arrests Resulting From Disorder which was published at the same time by the Home Office adds police figures to the mix.
This may explain why it uses the word disorder 211 times & the word recorded 133 – in a 33 page report, much of which is occupied by statistical tables, maps & graphs.
Links
Statistical bulletin on the public disorder of 6th-9th August 2011
An Overview of Recorded Crimes and Arrests Resulting from Disorder Events in August 2011
Related post
Labour blames the servants again
Aliens desirable & undesirable
In what may be a first, the statistics are put together by combining data from the courts with information already held in government databases – specifically the National Pupil Database held by the Department for Education & the National Benefits Database held by the Department for Work & Pensions.
This is a careful exercise; he authors stress both the inaccuracies inherent in any such process, & the need to remember that these figures apply only to those brought before the courts – the ones who got away may be different.
Attention was paid to privacy issues too – memorandums of understanding between the departments were signed before work could start.
The Overview Of Recorded Crimes And Arrests Resulting From Disorder which was published at the same time by the Home Office adds police figures to the mix.
This may explain why it uses the word disorder 211 times & the word recorded 133 – in a 33 page report, much of which is occupied by statistical tables, maps & graphs.
Links
Statistical bulletin on the public disorder of 6th-9th August 2011
An Overview of Recorded Crimes and Arrests Resulting from Disorder Events in August 2011
Related post
Labour blames the servants again
Aliens desirable & undesirable
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Y'a de la joie!
On the same day that The Times gave me the Tagore quote about butterflies, Last FM gave me Charles Trenet’s Y’a de la joie – a song which also took me straight back to the happy days of childhood, even though in this case the thought of girls is what brings joy to a young man of twenty.
Y'A DE LA JOIE
Y'a de la joie! Bonjour, bonjour les hirondelles
Y'a de la joie! Dans le ciel par dessus les toits
Y'a de la joie! Et du soleil dans les ruelles
Y'a de la joie! Partout, y'a de la joie!
Tout le jour, mon coeur bat, chavire et chancelle
C'est l'amour qui vient avec "je ne sais quoi"
C'est l'amour... Bonjour, bonjour les demoiselles
Y'a de la joie! Partout, y'a de la joie!
Le gris boulanger bat la pâte à pleins bras
Il fait du bon pain, du pain si fin que j'ai faim
On voit le facteur qui s'envole là-bas
Comme un ange bleu portant ses lettres au Bon Dieu
Miracle sans nom à la station Javel
On voit le métro qui sort de son tunnel
Grisé de soleil, de chansons et de fleurs
Il court vers le bois, il court à toute vapeur
Y'a de la joie! La tour Eiffel part en ballade
Comme une folle, elle saute la Seine à pieds joints
Puis elle dit: "Tant pis pour moi si je suis malade
Je m'embêtais toute seule dans mon coin..."
Y'a de la joie! Le percepteur met sa jaquette
Plie boutique et dit d'un air très doux, très doux
"Bien le bonjour! pour aujourd'hui fini la quête
Gardez tout Messieurs, gardez tout!"
Mais voilà soudain que je m'éveille dans mon lit
Donc, j'avais rêvé, oui car le ciel est gris
Il faut se lever, se laver, se vêtir
Et ne plus chanter si l'on n'a plus rien à dire
Mais je crois pourtant que ce rêve a du bon
Car il m'a permis de faire une chanson
Chanson de printemps, chansonnette d'amour
Chanson de 20 ans, chanson de toujours
Y'a de la joie! Bonjour, bonjour les hirondelles
Y'a de la joie! Dans le ciel par dessus les toits
Y'a de la joie! Et du soleil dans les ruelles
Y'a de la joie! Partout, y'a de la joie!
Tout le jour, mon coeur bat, chavire et chancelle
C'est l'amour qui vient avec "je ne sais quoi"
C'est l'amour... Bonjour, bonjour les demoiselles
Charles Trenet
Happy thoughts of France had already been stirred that morning by Bleached Bone & Living Wood, the type of slightly quirky Radio 4 documentary (about the newly opened Wilfred Owen memorial at Ors) which makes us love the station so much.
One way or another, these experiences triggered a forgotten sensation – itchy feet.
You don’t have to go through an airport to get to France. An itinerary begins to form:
That would be some trip.
Y'A DE LA JOIE
Y'a de la joie! Bonjour, bonjour les hirondelles
Y'a de la joie! Dans le ciel par dessus les toits
Y'a de la joie! Et du soleil dans les ruelles
Y'a de la joie! Partout, y'a de la joie!
Tout le jour, mon coeur bat, chavire et chancelle
C'est l'amour qui vient avec "je ne sais quoi"
C'est l'amour... Bonjour, bonjour les demoiselles
Y'a de la joie! Partout, y'a de la joie!
Le gris boulanger bat la pâte à pleins bras
Il fait du bon pain, du pain si fin que j'ai faim
On voit le facteur qui s'envole là-bas
Comme un ange bleu portant ses lettres au Bon Dieu
Miracle sans nom à la station Javel
On voit le métro qui sort de son tunnel
Grisé de soleil, de chansons et de fleurs
Il court vers le bois, il court à toute vapeur
Y'a de la joie! La tour Eiffel part en ballade
Comme une folle, elle saute la Seine à pieds joints
Puis elle dit: "Tant pis pour moi si je suis malade
Je m'embêtais toute seule dans mon coin..."
Y'a de la joie! Le percepteur met sa jaquette
Plie boutique et dit d'un air très doux, très doux
"Bien le bonjour! pour aujourd'hui fini la quête
Gardez tout Messieurs, gardez tout!"
Mais voilà soudain que je m'éveille dans mon lit
Donc, j'avais rêvé, oui car le ciel est gris
Il faut se lever, se laver, se vêtir
Et ne plus chanter si l'on n'a plus rien à dire
Mais je crois pourtant que ce rêve a du bon
Car il m'a permis de faire une chanson
Chanson de printemps, chansonnette d'amour
Chanson de 20 ans, chanson de toujours
Y'a de la joie! Bonjour, bonjour les hirondelles
Y'a de la joie! Dans le ciel par dessus les toits
Y'a de la joie! Et du soleil dans les ruelles
Y'a de la joie! Partout, y'a de la joie!
Tout le jour, mon coeur bat, chavire et chancelle
C'est l'amour qui vient avec "je ne sais quoi"
C'est l'amour... Bonjour, bonjour les demoiselles
Charles Trenet
Happy thoughts of France had already been stirred that morning by Bleached Bone & Living Wood, the type of slightly quirky Radio 4 documentary (about the newly opened Wilfred Owen memorial at Ors) which makes us love the station so much.
One way or another, these experiences triggered a forgotten sensation – itchy feet.
You don’t have to go through an airport to get to France. An itinerary begins to form:
- The Wilfred Owen memorial at Ors
- Monet’s garden at Giverny
- Matisse Rosaire chapel
- Victor Jacquemont memorials
That would be some trip.
Saturday, November 12, 2011
Post-war relations
The founders of the European Community had one overwhelming objective – to bring an end to wars between the European nations which so disfigured the C20th.
Two programmes, back to back on Thursday morning (10 November) illustrated how, in small unofficial ways friendly reparations between countries are taking place at the level of individual citizens, as they always will even without political intervention.
The last item on From Our Own Correspondent looked at ‘British Germans’, soldiers who had stayed on after serving on British bases which are still not yet completely wound up nearly 70 years after the end of WWII and more than twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
In many, maybe all of these cases, the decision followed marriage to a German woman.
Rather than ‘British German’, one man said, he considered that he had just reclaimed his identity as an Anglo-Saxon.
Then we went to Ors in northern France, to hear the story of how the mayor, who discovered that his godfather had translated Owen’s poems, set out to achieve the aim of turning the house from where Wilfred Owen wrote his last letter home before he was killed (just a week before the Armistice) into a fitting memorial, a project which involved the co-operation between an English artist, a French architect & a great deal of effort to raise the €800k from private donors, & some harrumphing from the English Wilfred Owen society who really would have preferred the house remain exactly what it had been, but are more than happy with the final result.
Links
From Our Own Corespondent
Bleached Bone & Living Wood
Jacky Duminy veut faire d'Ors un village des plus accueillants
War poet's last post of hope from a tiny cellar
Simon Patterson / La Maison Forestière
Related post
Historically English
Two programmes, back to back on Thursday morning (10 November) illustrated how, in small unofficial ways friendly reparations between countries are taking place at the level of individual citizens, as they always will even without political intervention.
The last item on From Our Own Correspondent looked at ‘British Germans’, soldiers who had stayed on after serving on British bases which are still not yet completely wound up nearly 70 years after the end of WWII and more than twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
In many, maybe all of these cases, the decision followed marriage to a German woman.
Rather than ‘British German’, one man said, he considered that he had just reclaimed his identity as an Anglo-Saxon.
Then we went to Ors in northern France, to hear the story of how the mayor, who discovered that his godfather had translated Owen’s poems, set out to achieve the aim of turning the house from where Wilfred Owen wrote his last letter home before he was killed (just a week before the Armistice) into a fitting memorial, a project which involved the co-operation between an English artist, a French architect & a great deal of effort to raise the €800k from private donors, & some harrumphing from the English Wilfred Owen society who really would have preferred the house remain exactly what it had been, but are more than happy with the final result.
Links
From Our Own Corespondent
Bleached Bone & Living Wood
Jacky Duminy veut faire d'Ors un village des plus accueillants
War poet's last post of hope from a tiny cellar
Simon Patterson / La Maison Forestière
Related post
Historically English
Small white loaf
M&S are now selling a small white loaf – about the same size as the old Hovis, & thinly sliced.
I discovered this by accident – one was on an end-of aisle yellow label reduced price items, only 50p to you madam.
Let us hope that this is just the beginning of a trend, & we can go back to relying on what should be a healthy, waste free staple in our diet.
I discovered this by accident – one was on an end-of aisle yellow label reduced price items, only 50p to you madam.
Let us hope that this is just the beginning of a trend, & we can go back to relying on what should be a healthy, waste free staple in our diet.
Friday, November 11, 2011
Demand, theft, supply
Another village supermarket was broken into after midnight earlier this week. The thieves made their escape with ‘a large quantity of cigarettes'.
That is the third such robbery of which I personally have heard.
There never seem to be any queues these days at the Asda tobacco kiosk when I walk past on the way to pick up a trolley.
The latest price rises seem to have had their effect on conventional sales. Some smokers, at least, are looking to alternative sources of supply.
But Imperial Tobacco is pleased with growth in sales of the premium brand Davidoff: up nine per cent in Saudi Arabia, 11 per cent in Taiwan, 12 per cent in Ukraine and 33 per cent in Russia.
Link
Imperial Tobacco: Preliminary Results for the twelve months ended 30 September 2011
Related post
The problem with tobacco
That is the third such robbery of which I personally have heard.
There never seem to be any queues these days at the Asda tobacco kiosk when I walk past on the way to pick up a trolley.
The latest price rises seem to have had their effect on conventional sales. Some smokers, at least, are looking to alternative sources of supply.
But Imperial Tobacco is pleased with growth in sales of the premium brand Davidoff: up nine per cent in Saudi Arabia, 11 per cent in Taiwan, 12 per cent in Ukraine and 33 per cent in Russia.
Link
Imperial Tobacco: Preliminary Results for the twelve months ended 30 September 2011
Related post
The problem with tobacco
Butterflies
The butterfly counts not months but moments
And has time enough.Rabrindranath Tagore
That was The Times quote for the day yesterday, & I was instantly transported back to a field near Tenby the summer I was 10.
It was a glorious summer & we were on our regular summer camping holiday. I had just been told that butterflies live for only one day.
It seemed unbearable that such beautiful creatures should have such a brief life.
But as I walked carefully round the edge of the field, (where the corn, mixed, as was still common in those days, with wild flowers which attracted butterflies of every hue), trembling on the brink of tears, it occurred to me that if that was all they knew of life, then to a butterfly their life was just as long as was mine to me.
I cheered up immensely. I may even have skipped all the way down to the beach.
Link
Rabrindranath Tagore
Related posts
Camping holidays
The one that didn't get away
Thursday, November 10, 2011
The impossible does exist
Needing a new television set in the early 1980s I was keen to buy one which had the latest Ceefax services – the price of sets which came equipped to receive these had dropped dramatically, as had the size of set required, & I had seen an enthusiastic BBC man saying, of the latest services, – You can get real-time information on landings at Heathrow, just as if you were looking at the displays inside the airport.
In those days I, not often, but often enough, had to go to Heathrow to meet friends arriving from abroad; by that time it had, unlike in earlier days, become almost impossible to get through to the airline to find out about any delays, which meant that every now & then you spent a few frustrating hours just mooching.
But even if the plane landed on time it would take at least an hour for non-UK passport holders to get through customs & immigration – just about the time it would take me to get to the airport using the new(ish) Underground connection, leaving me free to stay at home doing something useful until Ceefax told me the plane had landed.
The service turned out not to be exactly as specified – at best you were just told ‘flight delayed.’
At the end of the 1980s I was doing a weekly commute by train from the North to London. It was always tough trying to decide whether to put up with cattle class conditions on the Friday evening trains, or lose a precious half day by travelling on Saturday morning when sometimes the only fellow-passenger would be Brian Redhead on his way home to Macclesfield after doing the Saturday morning Today programme.
I soon learned that, before making the decision, it was essential to check the football fixture list.
The worst journey of my life took place on 3 May 1973 – an afternoon train from Newcastle to London, filled with supporters of Sunderland United Football Club who had, unexpectedly, got through to the final of the FA Cup to be played at Wembley that Saturday..
By the end of the 1980s not too many football fans were still travelling to matches by train, but the 1985 Act prohibiting the carrying of alcohol on certain trains meant that passengers could not always freely board a train at Euston unless a policeman was standing guard at the ticket barrier ready to inspect the bags of any likely-looking suspect.
One Saturday I learned, too late, that four FA cup round matches were taking place in the north west that day. The queues for trains wound round & round the station; I saw at least two elderly people collapse – there is no option but to stand. Lesson learned.
These two stories illustrate that the problems facing those in charge of immigration control are far from unique. Certainty – checking everybody – has undesirable consequences too. And certainty about the nature of the checks also carries its own hazards – those who would wish to get round them will find it easier if they know exactly what to expect.
My feeling is that, whatever the final outcome of the present row between ministers & civil servants about airport security checks, the real villain will turn out to be Godels law of administration
Links
Immigration Minister joins debate on border row
Sporting Events (Control of Alcohol etc.) Act 1985
The risk of queuing?
Border controls: still no answers
Related post
Gödel’s law of administration
In those days I, not often, but often enough, had to go to Heathrow to meet friends arriving from abroad; by that time it had, unlike in earlier days, become almost impossible to get through to the airline to find out about any delays, which meant that every now & then you spent a few frustrating hours just mooching.
But even if the plane landed on time it would take at least an hour for non-UK passport holders to get through customs & immigration – just about the time it would take me to get to the airport using the new(ish) Underground connection, leaving me free to stay at home doing something useful until Ceefax told me the plane had landed.
The service turned out not to be exactly as specified – at best you were just told ‘flight delayed.’
At the end of the 1980s I was doing a weekly commute by train from the North to London. It was always tough trying to decide whether to put up with cattle class conditions on the Friday evening trains, or lose a precious half day by travelling on Saturday morning when sometimes the only fellow-passenger would be Brian Redhead on his way home to Macclesfield after doing the Saturday morning Today programme.
I soon learned that, before making the decision, it was essential to check the football fixture list.
The worst journey of my life took place on 3 May 1973 – an afternoon train from Newcastle to London, filled with supporters of Sunderland United Football Club who had, unexpectedly, got through to the final of the FA Cup to be played at Wembley that Saturday..
By the end of the 1980s not too many football fans were still travelling to matches by train, but the 1985 Act prohibiting the carrying of alcohol on certain trains meant that passengers could not always freely board a train at Euston unless a policeman was standing guard at the ticket barrier ready to inspect the bags of any likely-looking suspect.
One Saturday I learned, too late, that four FA cup round matches were taking place in the north west that day. The queues for trains wound round & round the station; I saw at least two elderly people collapse – there is no option but to stand. Lesson learned.
These two stories illustrate that the problems facing those in charge of immigration control are far from unique. Certainty – checking everybody – has undesirable consequences too. And certainty about the nature of the checks also carries its own hazards – those who would wish to get round them will find it easier if they know exactly what to expect.
My feeling is that, whatever the final outcome of the present row between ministers & civil servants about airport security checks, the real villain will turn out to be Godels law of administration
Links
Immigration Minister joins debate on border row
Sporting Events (Control of Alcohol etc.) Act 1985
The risk of queuing?
Border controls: still no answers
Related post
Gödel’s law of administration
Cassava beer
South African brewer SAB Miller is meeting its amateur competition head on by launching Impala Cerveja – a beer made from cassava.
Really a miracle plant!
Really a miracle plant!
Wednesday, November 09, 2011
Tempus fugit
I have grown used to seeing photographs in The Times which produce a reaction of Goodness me! How strange that world looks - & yet it looked perfectly normal when I was in it.
But those were all pictures from the days when I was young - the 1940s, 50s or 60s; perhaps just one from the 1970s.
It was a real jolt to have that reaction to one which, it turned out, was from 1981.
Sadly it was illustrating the obituary of Colin Heald, former prison governor, & shows a group of about a dozen men escorting Prince Charles on a visit to Dartmoor.
Those suits! Braces! Watch chain! Top pocket hankies! A uniformed prison officer who could have stepped out of an Ealing comedy.
Well at least there are no women to make me cringe even more at the thought of what I & my friends might have looked like in those days.
Related posts
Swinging London
Snowbound
But those were all pictures from the days when I was young - the 1940s, 50s or 60s; perhaps just one from the 1970s.
It was a real jolt to have that reaction to one which, it turned out, was from 1981.
Sadly it was illustrating the obituary of Colin Heald, former prison governor, & shows a group of about a dozen men escorting Prince Charles on a visit to Dartmoor.
Those suits! Braces! Watch chain! Top pocket hankies! A uniformed prison officer who could have stepped out of an Ealing comedy.
Well at least there are no women to make me cringe even more at the thought of what I & my friends might have looked like in those days.
Related posts
Swinging London
Snowbound
Kiss & tell
I am reading A Walk-On Part, the final volume of Chris Mullin’s diaries.
One very intriguing snippet tells of an encounter with John Major (with whom he got on well) in the division lobby one evening in January 1996 as that long period of Tory government was drawing to its close.
In response to a question, Mullin denied that he was writing. Major said ‘I thought you’d write a kiss-and-tell story.’ Mullin found this an odd thing to say & replied ‘That’s Edwina’s department.’
Edwina Curry’s [in]famous kiss-and-tell diaries did not appear until 2002, so readers are just left dying to know what Mullin meant by that riposte – he offers no explanation.
I suppose he must have been referring to Edwina’s novel, A Parliamentary Affair, but in the light of what we now know Mullin’s remark must have given John Major a real fright.
One very intriguing snippet tells of an encounter with John Major (with whom he got on well) in the division lobby one evening in January 1996 as that long period of Tory government was drawing to its close.
In response to a question, Mullin denied that he was writing. Major said ‘I thought you’d write a kiss-and-tell story.’ Mullin found this an odd thing to say & replied ‘That’s Edwina’s department.’
Edwina Curry’s [in]famous kiss-and-tell diaries did not appear until 2002, so readers are just left dying to know what Mullin meant by that riposte – he offers no explanation.
I suppose he must have been referring to Edwina’s novel, A Parliamentary Affair, but in the light of what we now know Mullin’s remark must have given John Major a real fright.
Tuesday, November 08, 2011
The illusion of Linda
That people give the wrong answer to the question of Linda may, rather than revealing their lack of understanding of probability theory, be just another example of the power of suggestion & misdirection.
The question has much in common with that old chestnut:
Or as originally formulated, that is
Perhaps Derren Brown could predict the outcome of such experiments.
The question has much in common with that old chestnut:
How do you spell the white of an egg? Is it Y-O-K-E or Y-O-L-K?Has anybody, I wonder, conducted randomised trials, with the subjects randomised to have the alternatives presented to them in slightly different ways.
1 A Linda is a bank clerk & an active feminist
B Linda is a bank clerk
2 A Linda is an active feminist
B Linda is an active feminist & a bank clerk
Or as originally formulated, that is
A Linda is a bank clerkbut with the questioner a schoolchild (or a blonde bimbo, or a little old lady) – that is not someone with the authority of an academic & the power of a teacher.
B Linda is a bank clerk & an active feminist
Perhaps Derren Brown could predict the outcome of such experiments.
Reaching for the stars
The Times last week carried an update on Centre Point, the skyscraper at the foot of Tottenham Court Road which has had a chequered history.
It was bought out of administration for £120million in March this year, not by an overseas sovereign wealth fund but by a Luxembourg based company Almacantar; another, British, private company, Frogmore has just taken a 25% share in Center Point.
The current hope is that it will, after all this time, finally be turned into flats, though not, one imagines, for the homeless. First however there is the little matter of getting the appropriate approvals for what is now,because of its unique architectural style, a Grade II listed building .
It was bought out of administration for £120million in March this year, not by an overseas sovereign wealth fund but by a Luxembourg based company Almacantar; another, British, private company, Frogmore has just taken a 25% share in Center Point.
The current hope is that it will, after all this time, finally be turned into flats, though not, one imagines, for the homeless. First however there is the little matter of getting the appropriate approvals for what is now,because of its unique architectural style, a Grade II listed building .
Monday, November 07, 2011
Technology afoot
With the right kind of paving stones beneath your feet you can now do your bit to save the planet by generating electricity simply by walking about.
Accidental Saturday
Two odd little accidents within the space of minutes around 7 o’clock on Saturday evening.
The first was on one of the more open stretches of the main road – houses set well back on one side only. The driver had just closed the bus doors, ready to move away from the stop, when I heard a strange metallic scraping sound – looked out of the window where I was sitting, near the back of the bus to see a smallish motorbike, still in its own lane travelling in the opposite direction, but just coming to the end of a slide on its side, driver still astride.
He, well protected by leathers & a helmet, tried to get up but fell back, putting his arms up in a gesture to protect his head.
There was nothing he could obviously have collided with, & he clearly had not been going at all fast, so it is a complete mystery why he should have gone over like that. Damp spot on the road? Another vehicle coming out from behind the bus, causing the biker to wobble? – if so they had gone back in or at least stayed back well out of my sight.
The bus driver moved off regardless; he wasn’t in a terribly good mood & it was his last run of the day, so it is possible he just decided there was no need for him to hang around, but more likely I think that he really was unaware – almost certainly his mirror would be angled to show anything coming out from behind, not something on the ground.
An elderly lady further forwards stood & seemed inclined to shout at the driver to stop, but nobody else joined in. Since another car, which had been travelling (not at all fast) behind the bike, had stopped well clear, turned his headlights on full & opened his door to get out, I decided there was nothing to be gained from our stopping too. A girl sitting close to the elderly lady rang the emergency services, & was still explaining when she herself got off the bus about half a mile down the road.
The second (near) accident happened just after I got off at my stop. As I waited on the edge of the pavement a tremendous shouting erupted from the car just passing in front of me, which came to an immediate halt. The offside rear door was swinging open & the noise continued – youngsters I assumed.
The driver (not a young man) got out, I turned my head to look as I crossed the road, & gained a confused impression that it was a dog which was trying to make its escape from the car, only to be disabused of that notion as the woman in the front passenger seat began screeching at someone too small for me to see Put your foot back in, else we cannot close the door.
Well at least it hadn’t happened on a busy main road or motorway.
All I witnessed were two people, their family & friends plus emergency services, having lucky escapes from real personal pain & grim tragedy, unlike all those caught up in what we used to call motorway madness in Somerset on Friday night.
We haven’t been much troubled with fireworks this year; mostly they have been confined to last weekend & this, whereas in earlier years there were bangs & explosions most nights for about a month. Whether this happy circumstance has been brought about by stricter controls on the sale of fireworks or is just another example of people being careful with their money – who can tell.
Even so, smoke was clearly visible on Saturday night, hanging in the damp air as the temperature dropped rapidly, so it comes as no great surprise to hear that smoke from a nearby bonfire night event is suspected of causing drivers to brake sharply on the M5, with tragic results.
Amidst the collateral damage from that awful accident, our new Secretary of State for Transport Justine Greening is going to find it difficult to go ahead with the raising of the motorway speed limit to 80mph. Even before that, Saturday’s newspaper carried the surprising news that road accident statistics show that deaths on the road are already up in the first half of this year – surprisingly so, given the drop in traffic because of the recession & the supposed widespread adoption of more steady & fuel-conscious driving habits.
The first was on one of the more open stretches of the main road – houses set well back on one side only. The driver had just closed the bus doors, ready to move away from the stop, when I heard a strange metallic scraping sound – looked out of the window where I was sitting, near the back of the bus to see a smallish motorbike, still in its own lane travelling in the opposite direction, but just coming to the end of a slide on its side, driver still astride.
He, well protected by leathers & a helmet, tried to get up but fell back, putting his arms up in a gesture to protect his head.
There was nothing he could obviously have collided with, & he clearly had not been going at all fast, so it is a complete mystery why he should have gone over like that. Damp spot on the road? Another vehicle coming out from behind the bus, causing the biker to wobble? – if so they had gone back in or at least stayed back well out of my sight.
The bus driver moved off regardless; he wasn’t in a terribly good mood & it was his last run of the day, so it is possible he just decided there was no need for him to hang around, but more likely I think that he really was unaware – almost certainly his mirror would be angled to show anything coming out from behind, not something on the ground.
An elderly lady further forwards stood & seemed inclined to shout at the driver to stop, but nobody else joined in. Since another car, which had been travelling (not at all fast) behind the bike, had stopped well clear, turned his headlights on full & opened his door to get out, I decided there was nothing to be gained from our stopping too. A girl sitting close to the elderly lady rang the emergency services, & was still explaining when she herself got off the bus about half a mile down the road.
The second (near) accident happened just after I got off at my stop. As I waited on the edge of the pavement a tremendous shouting erupted from the car just passing in front of me, which came to an immediate halt. The offside rear door was swinging open & the noise continued – youngsters I assumed.
The driver (not a young man) got out, I turned my head to look as I crossed the road, & gained a confused impression that it was a dog which was trying to make its escape from the car, only to be disabused of that notion as the woman in the front passenger seat began screeching at someone too small for me to see Put your foot back in, else we cannot close the door.
Well at least it hadn’t happened on a busy main road or motorway.
All I witnessed were two people, their family & friends plus emergency services, having lucky escapes from real personal pain & grim tragedy, unlike all those caught up in what we used to call motorway madness in Somerset on Friday night.
We haven’t been much troubled with fireworks this year; mostly they have been confined to last weekend & this, whereas in earlier years there were bangs & explosions most nights for about a month. Whether this happy circumstance has been brought about by stricter controls on the sale of fireworks or is just another example of people being careful with their money – who can tell.
Even so, smoke was clearly visible on Saturday night, hanging in the damp air as the temperature dropped rapidly, so it comes as no great surprise to hear that smoke from a nearby bonfire night event is suspected of causing drivers to brake sharply on the M5, with tragic results.
Amidst the collateral damage from that awful accident, our new Secretary of State for Transport Justine Greening is going to find it difficult to go ahead with the raising of the motorway speed limit to 80mph. Even before that, Saturday’s newspaper carried the surprising news that road accident statistics show that deaths on the road are already up in the first half of this year – surprisingly so, given the drop in traffic because of the recession & the supposed widespread adoption of more steady & fuel-conscious driving habits.
Sunday, November 06, 2011
Bad babies
One of the disadvantages of motherhood is that you ‘never, ever, ever’ sleep. So remember that when you are contemplating taking the plunge when you are not as young & energetic as you used to be.
I doubt if there is any reliable historical or contemporary statistical evidence on this, but my memory tells me that a baby who was still, regularly & as a matter of course, preventing its parents from getting a half-decent night’s sleep after the age of about 2 months was a problem – a bad baby, one not properly trained or introduced to a routine.
The diagnosis was usually ‘Baby’s hungry’ & the remedy the introduction of a small amount of thickening (Farleys) to the milk in the bottle. This required that you made sure to use a teat with a larger hole & to check regularly during a feed that it had not got blocked by any tiny lump, this advice dished out by the health visitor, district nurse or weighing clinic.
But if that is cruelty to small defencelss beings then you just have to put up with the tyranny of on-demand feeding through the night, at least for the first six months while the mother is the only one who can provide the service
I doubt if there is any reliable historical or contemporary statistical evidence on this, but my memory tells me that a baby who was still, regularly & as a matter of course, preventing its parents from getting a half-decent night’s sleep after the age of about 2 months was a problem – a bad baby, one not properly trained or introduced to a routine.
The diagnosis was usually ‘Baby’s hungry’ & the remedy the introduction of a small amount of thickening (Farleys) to the milk in the bottle. This required that you made sure to use a teat with a larger hole & to check regularly during a feed that it had not got blocked by any tiny lump, this advice dished out by the health visitor, district nurse or weighing clinic.
But if that is cruelty to small defencelss beings then you just have to put up with the tyranny of on-demand feeding through the night, at least for the first six months while the mother is the only one who can provide the service
The White Man's Burden
This poem appeared in the New York Times in 1901 in riposte to Rudyard Kipling's The White Man's Burden, which was in turn written in 1899 in response to the American take over of the Phillipines. Both poems were read on last week's Empire edition of Radio 3's Words & Music.
I personally read Kipling's version as a satire & an awful warning:
The White Man's Burden
I.
What is the White Man's burden?
Does destiny demand
His back be laden higher
By every dusky hand?
Am I my brother's keeper --
Or keeper of his land?
II.
What is the White Man's burden?
Is it the mounting flood
Of treasure, vain to vanquish
The tides of patriot blood,
While our Supremest jewel
Is trampled in the mud?
III.
What is the White Man's burden
That weighs upon his sleep?
To hear the hundreds dying?
To see the thousands weep?
Oh, wanton war that haunts him!
Oh, seed that he must reap!
IV.
What is the White Man's burden -
The burden of his song
That once was "Peace and Justice;
The Weak beside the Strong"?
He falters in the singing
At memory of the wrong.
V.
What though our vaunt of Freedom
Must evermore be mute,
And the trading of men's vices
Drag both below the brute;
Go bribe new ships to bring it -
The White Man's burden - loot!
I personally read Kipling's version as a satire & an awful warning:
Take up the White Man's burden -which seems particularly prescient, post-Iraq & Afghanistan: however well-intentioned & self-sacrificing your motives, you delude yourself if you expect gratitude for your intervention.
Ye dare not stoop to less -
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloke your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples
Shall weigh your gods and you.
Blair … did not see himself as an imperialist & would have denied indignantly that he was anything of the sort, but that only proved that he lived at a time when empire had become a dirty word & imperialist a term of abuse. In truth, his vision of Britain’s identity & place in the world harked back to those quintessential Whig imperialists Macmillan & Churchill, while his approach to international politics was simultaneously reminiscent of the soft, accommodating imperialism of Gladstone & the harder version encapsulated in Rudyard Kipling’s famous plea to the Americans to ‘take up the white man’s burden’
David Marquand: Britain Since 1918
The White Man's Burden
I.
What is the White Man's burden?
Does destiny demand
His back be laden higher
By every dusky hand?
Am I my brother's keeper --
Or keeper of his land?
II.
What is the White Man's burden?
Is it the mounting flood
Of treasure, vain to vanquish
The tides of patriot blood,
While our Supremest jewel
Is trampled in the mud?
III.
What is the White Man's burden
That weighs upon his sleep?
To hear the hundreds dying?
To see the thousands weep?
Oh, wanton war that haunts him!
Oh, seed that he must reap!
IV.
What is the White Man's burden -
The burden of his song
That once was "Peace and Justice;
The Weak beside the Strong"?
He falters in the singing
At memory of the wrong.
V.
What though our vaunt of Freedom
Must evermore be mute,
And the trading of men's vices
Drag both below the brute;
Go bribe new ships to bring it -
The White Man's burden - loot!
Robert Underwood Johnson
Links
Radio 3 Words & Music: Empire
Rudyard Kipling, The White Man's Burden
Related post
1905
Links
Radio 3 Words & Music: Empire
Rudyard Kipling, The White Man's Burden
Related post
1905
Saturday, November 05, 2011
Staying in business
In this week’s edition of Radio 4’s The Bottom Line presented by Evan Davis, guest James Reed, chairman of recruitment specialist Reed, pointed out that, even a 6% reduction in GDP leaves us with 94% of the economy – much bigger than it was in, say, 1981 - & offers lots of opportunity for those who can innovate & find new ways of doing business.
For the rest of us it is also worth remembering that, although we have grown accustomed to the idea that a house is by the far our biggest & most important asset, in times like these, the only asset really worth having is a job.
As the unemployed realise only too well.
For the rest of us it is also worth remembering that, although we have grown accustomed to the idea that a house is by the far our biggest & most important asset, in times like these, the only asset really worth having is a job.
As the unemployed realise only too well.
Being a lady
I got called a lady an awful lot last week.
Because it was half term & there were a lot of young children about - with a parent who cared about teaching them manners. So quite often they needed to have it pointed out to them that they should be careful, look where they were going, move aside, make way for the lady to pass by.
Funny this thing about words for ladies – there simply is none which can be used with perfect neutrality in all circumstances. I think I would have bridled if anyone told a child to let ‘the woman’ get past.
And everybody still wants to be a lady, at least at some level.
During the summer of my second birthday I had a passion for trying to get away, out of the house, although it was nearly bed time.
One day I managed to get out through the front door while mummy was seeing to the running of my bath.
I was naked.
When mummy asked why I had taken my red plastic handbag with me, I said scornfully that it was, of course, because Nana always said that a lady never goes out without her handbag.
Related post
Bread
Because it was half term & there were a lot of young children about - with a parent who cared about teaching them manners. So quite often they needed to have it pointed out to them that they should be careful, look where they were going, move aside, make way for the lady to pass by.
Funny this thing about words for ladies – there simply is none which can be used with perfect neutrality in all circumstances. I think I would have bridled if anyone told a child to let ‘the woman’ get past.
And everybody still wants to be a lady, at least at some level.
During the summer of my second birthday I had a passion for trying to get away, out of the house, although it was nearly bed time.
One day I managed to get out through the front door while mummy was seeing to the running of my bath.
I was naked.
When mummy asked why I had taken my red plastic handbag with me, I said scornfully that it was, of course, because Nana always said that a lady never goes out without her handbag.
Related post
Bread
Friday, November 04, 2011
Able bodied seaman
Seasoned solvers of cryptic crosswords, who are used to seeing what normal people regard as weird connections between words, will be used to thinking Ah! AB whenever the word sailor, or seaman, or salt, or rating appears in a clue.
That most useful (not to say hackneyed) reference, which alerts the solver to the fact that the word to be entered as a solution in the grid contains the letters ab, derives from the common abbreviation for able-bodied seaman.
A calling which, in both senses of the word, would be familiar to even small children in the days when the British navies were of a size to be reckoned with.
But as I was solving one such clue the other day I suddenly thought How could you have a seaman who is not able bodied?
Perhaps one who cannot climb the mast or the rigging, must stay on deck or even be confined below?
In fact there is some confusion over whether it means able-bodied or simply able, one with more training & experience than a mere ordinary seaman. As an abbreviation the OED rules that A.B. stands for ‘able seaman (formerly able-bodied seaman)’.
Me no’ able wi’ that
Searching for further elucidation on the web brought me to a charming website which, as well as giving a very helpful description of the jobs available at sea, is about a volcano:
That most useful (not to say hackneyed) reference, which alerts the solver to the fact that the word to be entered as a solution in the grid contains the letters ab, derives from the common abbreviation for able-bodied seaman.
A calling which, in both senses of the word, would be familiar to even small children in the days when the British navies were of a size to be reckoned with.
But as I was solving one such clue the other day I suddenly thought How could you have a seaman who is not able bodied?
Perhaps one who cannot climb the mast or the rigging, must stay on deck or even be confined below?
One who cannot swim?
In fact there is some confusion over whether it means able-bodied or simply able, one with more training & experience than a mere ordinary seaman. As an abbreviation the OED rules that A.B. stands for ‘able seaman (formerly able-bodied seaman)’.
Me no’ able wi’ that
Searching for further elucidation on the web brought me to a charming website which, as well as giving a very helpful description of the jobs available at sea, is about a volcano:
Instead of filling their bellies
Correspondents to The Times have recently revived the use of the term emoluments to describe the pay & bonuses of bankers & leaders of FTSE 100 companies.
This practice is definitely one to be encouraged. Indeed the fat cats should be barred from using any other term, in public at least.
The OED suggests that, rather than deriving from the Latin ‘to bring out by effort’, the word really comes from the Latin emolere ‘to grind out’, with a sutble hint that it may the faces of the poor which are being ground.
There is also a hint of the emollient about it, with its hint of oiliness: ‘True emollients are perfectly bland, fatty substances’, according to Horatio Curtis Wood’s Treatise on Therapeutics, comprising Materia Medica and Toxicology, with especial reference to the application of the physiological action of drugs to clinical medicine of 1879.
The BBC should insist that all news bulletins use this term; even the best-trained most neutral news-reader could hardly prevent at least a slight sneer from entering their voice. I might even look forward to a John Humphrys interview if he was going to ask a banker to justify his emoluments.
This practice is definitely one to be encouraged. Indeed the fat cats should be barred from using any other term, in public at least.
The OED suggests that, rather than deriving from the Latin ‘to bring out by effort’, the word really comes from the Latin emolere ‘to grind out’, with a sutble hint that it may the faces of the poor which are being ground.
There is also a hint of the emollient about it, with its hint of oiliness: ‘True emollients are perfectly bland, fatty substances’, according to Horatio Curtis Wood’s Treatise on Therapeutics, comprising Materia Medica and Toxicology, with especial reference to the application of the physiological action of drugs to clinical medicine of 1879.
The BBC should insist that all news bulletins use this term; even the best-trained most neutral news-reader could hardly prevent at least a slight sneer from entering their voice. I might even look forward to a John Humphrys interview if he was going to ask a banker to justify his emoluments.
Thursday, November 03, 2011
Occupied from top to bottom
Was it a first, I wondered. Yesterday The Times print edition carried the word hat-tip on page three. And in an enthusiastic description of the plans for next years diamond jubilee celebrations, no less. A 90-minute horse-filled pageant will contain ‘a series of hat-tips to various nations.’
The term hat-tip has become common on blogs, to acknowledge someone who has made a significant contribution, or someone who drew attention to something new or interesting. A vital part of netiquette.
I assumed it had come from the old fashioned habit of tipping one's hat to a lady, or a male acquaintance, in the street, a kind of informal version of a military salute, though why it should suddenly crop up in something so cutting edge as Web 2.0 was a bit of a mystery. Do young people tip their back-to-front baseball caps to each other nowadays? Or their hoods?
The Oxford English Dictionary gives us, via a quotation which appeared in the Dictionary of Occupational Terms 1921, a definition of hat tip which has nothing to do with manners but refers merely to the circular piece of stuff used to line the crown of a hat.
Hence a hat tip sizer prints a hat tip with size before gold leaf or bronze dust is applied by hat tip printer.
Hat tip sizer is one of those occupational titles which could make reading the detailed indexes to the Census Classifications of Occupations such harmless fun, but it is not quite up there with saggarmaker's bottom knocker.
Links
The Diamond Jubilee Pageant
What is a saggarmaker's bottom knocker?
Official Social Classifications in the UK
The term hat-tip has become common on blogs, to acknowledge someone who has made a significant contribution, or someone who drew attention to something new or interesting. A vital part of netiquette.
I assumed it had come from the old fashioned habit of tipping one's hat to a lady, or a male acquaintance, in the street, a kind of informal version of a military salute, though why it should suddenly crop up in something so cutting edge as Web 2.0 was a bit of a mystery. Do young people tip their back-to-front baseball caps to each other nowadays? Or their hoods?
The Oxford English Dictionary gives us, via a quotation which appeared in the Dictionary of Occupational Terms 1921, a definition of hat tip which has nothing to do with manners but refers merely to the circular piece of stuff used to line the crown of a hat.
Hence a hat tip sizer prints a hat tip with size before gold leaf or bronze dust is applied by hat tip printer.
Hat tip sizer is one of those occupational titles which could make reading the detailed indexes to the Census Classifications of Occupations such harmless fun, but it is not quite up there with saggarmaker's bottom knocker.
Links
The Diamond Jubilee Pageant
What is a saggarmaker's bottom knocker?
Official Social Classifications in the UK
Wednesday, November 02, 2011
Dean of St Paul's
When poet John Donne was appointed Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral in 1621 one of his tasks & responsibilities was, to quote John Stubbs, ‘policing the masses’, the unruly crowds who loitered, operated illegal businesses on a Sunday, piled rubbish in the aisles, stumbled in drunk, & caused the place to stink. One man, charged with urinating within the precincts, pleaded in mitigation that he had not realised that he was actually passed from the street into the Cathedral.
Two years later Donne was one of the victims of an epidemic of relapsing fever. His urgent wish to record this experience, even when lying near to death, maddened by the tolling of the city bells, gave us the Devotions & Meditations, with its reminder that No Man is an Island.
Donne remained grimly aware of the plight of those in the City outside who were not as privileged as he.
Two years later Donne was one of the victims of an epidemic of relapsing fever. His urgent wish to record this experience, even when lying near to death, maddened by the tolling of the city bells, gave us the Devotions & Meditations, with its reminder that No Man is an Island.
Donne remained grimly aware of the plight of those in the City outside who were not as privileged as he.
How many are sicker than I and laid in their woeful straw at home (if that corner be a home) and have no more hope of help, though they die, than of getting a good job if they live?
They no more expect to see a physician than to be an officer after. The first person who takes notice is the sexton who buries them, buries them in oblivion too.
For they do but fill up the number of the dead in the statistics and we shall never hear their names till we read them in the Book of Life with our own.
How many are sicker than I and thrown into hospitals where (as fish left upon the sand must wait for the tide) they must wait for the physicians hour of visiting and then can be but visited?
How many are sicker than all of us and have no hospital to cover them, no straw to lie in, to die in, but have their gravestone under them? They breathe out their souls in the ears and in the eyes of passersby, harder than their bed, the flint of the street.
They taste of no part of our physick but a sparing diet, to whom ordinary porridge would be Julep enough, the refuse of our servants Bezar enough, and the off-scouring of our kitchen tables cordial enough.
O my soul, when thou art not enough awake to bless thy God enough for his plentiful mercy in affording thee many helpers, remember how many lack them and help them to them, or to those other things which they lack as much as them
Independent travel
A nice young lady working for GfKNOP was handing out survey forms on the bus yesterday, on behalf, she said, of an independent organisation called Passenger Focus.
Independent of what, I wondered.
According to their website ‘We are an independent public body set up by the Government to protect the interests of passengers.’ So not independent of passengers, I presume.
There are currently 10 board members, three board bus advisers and over 40 staff working out of two offices in London and Manchester.
Only two of the board members are women, which seems low. But then since men travel more than women I suppose that is fair.
Independent of what, I wondered.
According to their website ‘We are an independent public body set up by the Government to protect the interests of passengers.’ So not independent of passengers, I presume.
There are currently 10 board members, three board bus advisers and over 40 staff working out of two offices in London and Manchester.
Only two of the board members are women, which seems low. But then since men travel more than women I suppose that is fair.
Link
Passenger Focus
Related posts
The enemy
Independent government
Passenger Focus
Related posts
The enemy
Independent government
Tuesday, November 01, 2011
Just rewards
Whoever would have thought that a long-established private sector statistical organisation could be an agent of revolution.
OK, that’s a bit of my favourite hyperbole, but Incomes Data Services achieved, if not revolution then at least a tipping point last week with the revelation that the average chief executive of a blue chip company enjoyed a 49% pay rise last year.
Part of me wants to make at least a half-hearted defence of 7- or 8-figure salaries for those who hold such positions of responsibility, to point out that it was the average pay of all chief executives which rose by 43%, the ‘average chief executive’ got rather less than this, & so he will feel poor in today’s London, quite likely to be unable to afford a proper house in the most exclusive areas of Belgravia, Knightsbridge or Hampstead which are populated by oligarchs, dictators & foreign squillionaires …
But no. I shall just sit back & enjoy the stunned silence & the squirming from the usual suspects who used to leap to explain the absolute necessity, in a global economy, for the payment of such rewards & compensations.
OK, that’s a bit of my favourite hyperbole, but Incomes Data Services achieved, if not revolution then at least a tipping point last week with the revelation that the average chief executive of a blue chip company enjoyed a 49% pay rise last year.
Part of me wants to make at least a half-hearted defence of 7- or 8-figure salaries for those who hold such positions of responsibility, to point out that it was the average pay of all chief executives which rose by 43%, the ‘average chief executive’ got rather less than this, & so he will feel poor in today’s London, quite likely to be unable to afford a proper house in the most exclusive areas of Belgravia, Knightsbridge or Hampstead which are populated by oligarchs, dictators & foreign squillionaires …
But no. I shall just sit back & enjoy the stunned silence & the squirming from the usual suspects who used to leap to explain the absolute necessity, in a global economy, for the payment of such rewards & compensations.
Monday, October 31, 2011
Intellectual exercise
Zipf’s law – something else I was introduced to by Is That A Fish In Your Ear, the stimulating book about translation by David Bellos.
But it sounded vaguely familiar, rang some sort of bell – 80/20, negative exponential, something like that?
Google found me a paper which looked within my scope: Power Laws, Pareto distributions & Zipf’s law, not too mathematical, well written, by an author with a wide range – city populations, earthquakes, wars, moon craters, book sales, incomes …
Well that was just the first page, but now that I have (slightly belatedly) realised that my laptop came complete with a preloaded Adobe reader I have had the luxury of being able to download such documents to read at my leisure at home, without having to use up some of my precious time online or pay for a printout.
And so it came about that last Sunday, usually a time spent sorting out & tidying up & catching up, I found myself exercising intellectual muscles I had almost forgotten that I had, rather than the straightforwardly interesting read I was expecting.
In fact the experience left me pondering whether some of the difficulty was just me or whether reading from a screen really does call on previously un- or little-used cognitive functions or abilities that we all have to develop.
I have long been aware that I simply cannot properly assimilate densely argued textual information when reading with my head up. Is this because I have spent more than 60 years reading with my head down, from paper(s) which are spread over a flat horizontal desk, or resting on my knee, or propped up against the marmalade on the breakfast table?
Does it have something to do with the fact that reading is often closely associated with writing, recording notes or the results of calculations by hand, which of course involves watching what my hand is doing?
Would I find it easier to read with my head up if I had, after all, learned to touch type when I was young?
I remember turning green with envy one day in the microfilm room of the university library; there was I, labouring to make manuscript notes from the (printed Parliamentary Papers) on the screen, while at an adjacent desk sat a (male, not all that young, probably American) person, fingers flying over the laptop as he gazed steadfastly, transcribing direct to disc the old, handwritten manuscript document on his screen.
But then expert secretaries & typists will tell you that they produce fast, accurate scripts without knowing anything about or absorbing the content at all. So perhaps the American had to go away & read the document to find out what it said, while I had already a good idea of how the new information fitted in with the rest of my research.
Musicians, when they need a score, for the most part read with their heads down. The exception may be players of an upright piano, church organ, or in a marching band; organists however must simultaneously do other complicated things – changing stops & playing pedals with their feet. Marching bands must also master the art of keeping in step.
I cannot think of any circumstance, at least since the invention of the book, when humans were regularly required to absorb complex information while reading with their heads up – nothing longer than a nameboard, sign or inscription – no more than the 64 letters & spaces of the on-screen subtitle, less than allowed in a Tweet. Of course the sheer weight of a book made it impractical to hold it up to read, & why go to the bother of building a vertical rest when the simpler horizontal surface of a table or the slightly raked one of a lectern would do.
So the question is whether reading ‘better’ with your head down is learned, or physiologically innate.
The sheer bulk of early desk top computers & work stations did not allow for anything other than the head-up position, unless there were specially adapted desks. Thank heavens for laptops.
But reading anything other than a relatively straightforward narrative is not easy if you can see only one small section at a time. Anything more complex …
This particular paper on power laws makes things more complicated by being printed over two columns per page – presumably to meet the requirements of a print journal. Then there is the conventional academic furniture of footnotes (at the foot of each page) & bibliographic references (at the back) plus multiple graphs & mathematical equations to consult. A recipe for giddiness, when you cannot even mark your place by holding your finger between the pages.
While it is true that clever people have invented ways of making this easier to do on screen (hovering mice?) & some of them may be available on my lap top. I just haven’t yet got that far up the learning curve.
It is also true that over time we as authors & originators too will think of different methods of organising, presenting & conveying information.
For one thing most written texts, in the form to which we have grown accustomed to them, contain a great deal of redundancy in terms of the quantity of hard information encoded therein. Yes, there is a lot of soft information, about the character of the writer etc, but a lot could be removed without damage to the main points. And form always affects content, so there is an inevitable degree of self-editing by an author to fit the space available.
Then there is the question of the thousand word picture, &, increasingly, animations.
I was particularly attracted to this paper about power laws because it contains a whole section on the mechanisms which may give rise to such distributions in either natural or man made systems. Some of these involve complex physics.
In my opinion users & analysts of statistics often fail to pay enough attention to the processes which generated them, & therefore assume over-simple structures of causation.
In the present case, when it came to these more complicated processes with even more diagrams, I longed for some animations instead. But until that day, there is really no alternative to printing out the pages so that I can spread them out to look at.
Still, at least I was able to assess the worth of the expenditure before I opened my purse.
I have so far been coy about the authorship & provenance of this paper. That is because the version which I originally downloaded appeared to be a complete orphan – no author's name, no title (of either parent institution or publication) & no date, though it is clearly post-2003 (UK traffic statistics for that year are quoted, which show that motorway speeds peak at 5mph above the current limit of 70).
Another Google search however revealed that it is Power laws, Pareto distributions and Zipf’s law by M. E. J. Newman, Department of Physics and Center for the Study of Complex Systems, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, published in Contemporary Physics, Vol. 46, No. 5, September–October 2005, 323 – 351
PS the first time I ever heard of the 80/20 rule (expressed in those very terms) was in the 1980s in relation to GP appointments, 80% of which were said to be with 20% of the patients on his list.
But it sounded vaguely familiar, rang some sort of bell – 80/20, negative exponential, something like that?
Google found me a paper which looked within my scope: Power Laws, Pareto distributions & Zipf’s law, not too mathematical, well written, by an author with a wide range – city populations, earthquakes, wars, moon craters, book sales, incomes …
Well that was just the first page, but now that I have (slightly belatedly) realised that my laptop came complete with a preloaded Adobe reader I have had the luxury of being able to download such documents to read at my leisure at home, without having to use up some of my precious time online or pay for a printout.
And so it came about that last Sunday, usually a time spent sorting out & tidying up & catching up, I found myself exercising intellectual muscles I had almost forgotten that I had, rather than the straightforwardly interesting read I was expecting.
In fact the experience left me pondering whether some of the difficulty was just me or whether reading from a screen really does call on previously un- or little-used cognitive functions or abilities that we all have to develop.
I have long been aware that I simply cannot properly assimilate densely argued textual information when reading with my head up. Is this because I have spent more than 60 years reading with my head down, from paper(s) which are spread over a flat horizontal desk, or resting on my knee, or propped up against the marmalade on the breakfast table?
Does it have something to do with the fact that reading is often closely associated with writing, recording notes or the results of calculations by hand, which of course involves watching what my hand is doing?
Would I find it easier to read with my head up if I had, after all, learned to touch type when I was young?
I remember turning green with envy one day in the microfilm room of the university library; there was I, labouring to make manuscript notes from the (printed Parliamentary Papers) on the screen, while at an adjacent desk sat a (male, not all that young, probably American) person, fingers flying over the laptop as he gazed steadfastly, transcribing direct to disc the old, handwritten manuscript document on his screen.
But then expert secretaries & typists will tell you that they produce fast, accurate scripts without knowing anything about or absorbing the content at all. So perhaps the American had to go away & read the document to find out what it said, while I had already a good idea of how the new information fitted in with the rest of my research.
Musicians, when they need a score, for the most part read with their heads down. The exception may be players of an upright piano, church organ, or in a marching band; organists however must simultaneously do other complicated things – changing stops & playing pedals with their feet. Marching bands must also master the art of keeping in step.
I cannot think of any circumstance, at least since the invention of the book, when humans were regularly required to absorb complex information while reading with their heads up – nothing longer than a nameboard, sign or inscription – no more than the 64 letters & spaces of the on-screen subtitle, less than allowed in a Tweet. Of course the sheer weight of a book made it impractical to hold it up to read, & why go to the bother of building a vertical rest when the simpler horizontal surface of a table or the slightly raked one of a lectern would do.
So the question is whether reading ‘better’ with your head down is learned, or physiologically innate.
The sheer bulk of early desk top computers & work stations did not allow for anything other than the head-up position, unless there were specially adapted desks. Thank heavens for laptops.
But reading anything other than a relatively straightforward narrative is not easy if you can see only one small section at a time. Anything more complex …
This particular paper on power laws makes things more complicated by being printed over two columns per page – presumably to meet the requirements of a print journal. Then there is the conventional academic furniture of footnotes (at the foot of each page) & bibliographic references (at the back) plus multiple graphs & mathematical equations to consult. A recipe for giddiness, when you cannot even mark your place by holding your finger between the pages.
While it is true that clever people have invented ways of making this easier to do on screen (hovering mice?) & some of them may be available on my lap top. I just haven’t yet got that far up the learning curve.
It is also true that over time we as authors & originators too will think of different methods of organising, presenting & conveying information.
For one thing most written texts, in the form to which we have grown accustomed to them, contain a great deal of redundancy in terms of the quantity of hard information encoded therein. Yes, there is a lot of soft information, about the character of the writer etc, but a lot could be removed without damage to the main points. And form always affects content, so there is an inevitable degree of self-editing by an author to fit the space available.
Then there is the question of the thousand word picture, &, increasingly, animations.
I was particularly attracted to this paper about power laws because it contains a whole section on the mechanisms which may give rise to such distributions in either natural or man made systems. Some of these involve complex physics.
In my opinion users & analysts of statistics often fail to pay enough attention to the processes which generated them, & therefore assume over-simple structures of causation.
In the present case, when it came to these more complicated processes with even more diagrams, I longed for some animations instead. But until that day, there is really no alternative to printing out the pages so that I can spread them out to look at.
Still, at least I was able to assess the worth of the expenditure before I opened my purse.
I have so far been coy about the authorship & provenance of this paper. That is because the version which I originally downloaded appeared to be a complete orphan – no author's name, no title (of either parent institution or publication) & no date, though it is clearly post-2003 (UK traffic statistics for that year are quoted, which show that motorway speeds peak at 5mph above the current limit of 70).
Another Google search however revealed that it is Power laws, Pareto distributions and Zipf’s law by M. E. J. Newman, Department of Physics and Center for the Study of Complex Systems, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, published in Contemporary Physics, Vol. 46, No. 5, September–October 2005, 323 – 351
PS the first time I ever heard of the 80/20 rule (expressed in those very terms) was in the 1980s in relation to GP appointments, 80% of which were said to be with 20% of the patients on his list.
Eating in the canteen
As an intriguing contribution to BBC Radio 4’s From Our Own Correspondent Stephen Evans spoke of how he makes a habit of eating in works canteens which, by serving the food that the locals actually eat, give you a much better sense of the country than the fare available in commercial restaurants. Berlin was the focus for this piece.
Although the idea sounds very attractive I must say the prospect of Baltic lobscouse does not appeal. A version of Chatsworth Smodge ( potatoes mashed with corned beef tomato & onion), but with beetroot, roll mop herring & fried eggs – yuck!
In many parts of the world canteens are, as in Berlin, totally open to the general public; not, I think, something which has ever generally been the case in this country.
in my student days the BBC World Service canteen at Bush House in The Aldwych used to be an exception – though I expect this may have changed after the IRA bombing campaigns began. It made a change from the college canteen – they served exotic things like quiche – but a bit expensive for the student pocket.
There were some, among the large number of foreign students, who were able to earn a little from contributing occasionally to the overseas service - £1 a minute I believe, for a script, more if you read it yourself. It was one such (a Ghanaian) who gave me my first sight of the inside of a BBC studio; we went to see a continuity announcer, whose ability to talk for exactly the number of seconds remaining after the end of a programme, ending on a full stop just as the first of the Greenwich pips chipped in, impressed me so mightily.
Although the idea sounds very attractive I must say the prospect of Baltic lobscouse does not appeal. A version of Chatsworth Smodge ( potatoes mashed with corned beef tomato & onion), but with beetroot, roll mop herring & fried eggs – yuck!
In many parts of the world canteens are, as in Berlin, totally open to the general public; not, I think, something which has ever generally been the case in this country.
in my student days the BBC World Service canteen at Bush House in The Aldwych used to be an exception – though I expect this may have changed after the IRA bombing campaigns began. It made a change from the college canteen – they served exotic things like quiche – but a bit expensive for the student pocket.
There were some, among the large number of foreign students, who were able to earn a little from contributing occasionally to the overseas service - £1 a minute I believe, for a script, more if you read it yourself. It was one such (a Ghanaian) who gave me my first sight of the inside of a BBC studio; we went to see a continuity announcer, whose ability to talk for exactly the number of seconds remaining after the end of a programme, ending on a full stop just as the first of the Greenwich pips chipped in, impressed me so mightily.
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Self hate
From the Diary of Lady Frederick Cavendish:
January 15th, 1867.—The subject of female suffrage (odious and ridiculous notion as it is) is actually beginning to be spoken of without laughter, and as if it was an open question. I trust we are not coming to that
Related post
Lady Frederick Cavendish
Lady Frederick Cavendish
Non-smoker’s plea
Although I am an unrepentant smoker, I am entirely in sympathy with this plaintive plea.
There is one of those animated versions by Jim Clark available on You Tube for this not-very-well-known poem. I think he must have the same poetry books as I have,
Plaintive plea of a non-smoker
I’m not a smoker but I do not hate
My fellowmen who seem to feel a need,
Quite irresistible, to cultivate
The weed.
I’m tolerance itself. I would not bate
The smoker’s freedom by one jot or tittle,
But could he not reciprocate
A little?
What quirk of mind is it that makes him able
(And for the moment I’m no longer joking)
To smoke in perfect peace beneath a label,
‘No Smoking’?
Is it unreasonable to deplore
Effrontery that nothing will abash
And that allows him to bestrew the floor
With ash?
Forgive me if I seem a heretic.
I might have paid my homage to a queen
But not the satyr that he served – Old Nick
-otine
Link
"Plaintive plea of a nonsmoker" by Kennedy Williamson Poem animation
Related posts
A poem about smoking
Guy Boas reincarnated
There is one of those animated versions by Jim Clark available on You Tube for this not-very-well-known poem. I think he must have the same poetry books as I have,
Plaintive plea of a non-smoker
I’m not a smoker but I do not hate
My fellowmen who seem to feel a need,
Quite irresistible, to cultivate
The weed.
I’m tolerance itself. I would not bate
The smoker’s freedom by one jot or tittle,
But could he not reciprocate
A little?
What quirk of mind is it that makes him able
(And for the moment I’m no longer joking)
To smoke in perfect peace beneath a label,
‘No Smoking’?
Is it unreasonable to deplore
Effrontery that nothing will abash
And that allows him to bestrew the floor
With ash?
Forgive me if I seem a heretic.
I might have paid my homage to a queen
But not the satyr that he served – Old Nick
-otine
Kennedy Williamson
Link
"Plaintive plea of a nonsmoker" by Kennedy Williamson Poem animation
Related posts
A poem about smoking
Guy Boas reincarnated
Saturday, October 29, 2011
Aliens desirable & undesirable
Much was made this week about the news that, out of every seven people in prison for offences connected with the August riots, one was a foreign national.
I wonder what those same commentators make of the fact that, in many of the poshest areas of London, a very high proportion of residents (a lot more, I would guess, than 1 in seven) are also foreign nationals, born ‘as far away as Cuba, Samoa & Vietnam’, not to mention China, Russia & the Middle East.
Why are commentators much less concerned about the foreignness of these people & the effect they have on our way of life & property prices?
Even David Aaronovitch concluede that the lastest figures just go to show that the rioters were just the usual suspects.
Too right they were - three-quarters of all those who appeared in court had a previous conviction or caution. For adults the figure was 80% and for juveniles it was 62%.
But this cannot be taken to represent rioters as a whole.
Given that you were a rioter, the chance of getting identified from film & cctv footage & picked up by the police, was much greater for those ‘already known’. Those who were ‘not known’ had a much greater chance of melting away.
I wonder what those same commentators make of the fact that, in many of the poshest areas of London, a very high proportion of residents (a lot more, I would guess, than 1 in seven) are also foreign nationals, born ‘as far away as Cuba, Samoa & Vietnam’, not to mention China, Russia & the Middle East.
Why are commentators much less concerned about the foreignness of these people & the effect they have on our way of life & property prices?
Even David Aaronovitch concluede that the lastest figures just go to show that the rioters were just the usual suspects.
Too right they were - three-quarters of all those who appeared in court had a previous conviction or caution. For adults the figure was 80% and for juveniles it was 62%.
But this cannot be taken to represent rioters as a whole.
Given that you were a rioter, the chance of getting identified from film & cctv footage & picked up by the police, was much greater for those ‘already known’. Those who were ‘not known’ had a much greater chance of melting away.
Friday, October 28, 2011
Early Alzheimers
There is no language in the world that is ever spoken aloud without accompanying hand movements … the greater the effort of concentration on live speech, the more the speaker needs to move their hands
Quote comes from Bellos: Is that A Fish In Your Ear?
Is there a difference between the kind of striving displayed by those aging normally ( senior moments accompanied by hand waving to try & make the word come), & those with Alzheimers (just sitting passive & unmoving)?
Links
Observation of Hand Movements by Older Persons with Dementia: Effects on Cognition
Effects on memory of verbal labeling for hand movements in persons with Alzheimer's disease
Observation of Hand Movements by Older Persons with Dementia: Effects on Cognition
Effects on memory of verbal labeling for hand movements in persons with Alzheimer's disease
Added 9 November:
If you really want to see the brain in action look at someone moving their hands or talking
Professor Sophie Scott: Radio 4 Mind Myths 8 November 2011
House-bound
I have just finished reading House-Bound, a novel by Winifred Peck. It was chosen by Sara Maitland for a recent edition of the BBC Radio 4 programme, A Good Read.
Written in 1942 it tells the story of Rose Fairlaw, a woman born to privilege who suddenly finds herself, in middle age, having to manage without servants, her last two live-in maids having gone off to work for better pay & conditions in a munitions factory.
Not a very enticing description, as Michael Morpurgo, the other guest on that edition of A Good Read who thereby found himself duty-bound to read it, freely admitted.
But what a revelation when you do read it. We have sympathy for Rose when, in response to an incredulous But didn’t your mother even make sure you could cook? reflected that her mid-Victorian mother would simply never have been able to imagine that her daughter’s household would not contain, among others, a vegetable maid, a scullery maid & a kitchen maid. So Rose, when needs must, finds herself surreptitiously having to watch out of the corner of her eye to see ‘whether you used hot or cold water for the ablution of potatoes & ‘veg’ & if you did or didn’t use soap.’
Rose & Stuart, her husband, had each been married before – Rose to a dashing young officer who died in WWI leaving her with a baby daughter. Her best friend, mother to a new-born son, died of pneumonia, so Rose had thrown herself (with plenty of help from servants) into caring for the two babies. When the widowed Stuart returned from his war service &, in due course proposed, she accepted this most suitable arrangement for two half-orphaned children & their remaining grief-stricken parents.
One of the more interesting aspects of this novel – written by a sixty year old woman & published twenty years before the Lady Chatterley judgement – is the way that it deals with sex, of which there is quite a lot in the book. So we read that, having assumed that she was entering a marriage of convenience between two people each mourning the loss of the great love of their life, Rose was ‘surprised that Stuart suggested a honeymoon at all, & still more surprised at the honeymoon itself.’ and that since Stuart’s ‘simple masculine attitudes about graves & beds were entirely different from her own … she accepted them dutifully.’
Would explicit description of the exact details of her surprise add anything worth reading to this?
The book is in turn funny, tender, tragic. Although obviously not another Middlemarch, I quite often found myself thinking of Dorothea in this tale of courage in all its guises & circumstance. It also makes for an interesting comparison with the last volume of Elizabeth Jane Howard’s Cazalet Chronicles, which too deals with women of the privileged middle classes coming to terms with doing their own housework & fending for themselves in a very different world after WWII had ended.
The novel also struck me as very Priestley-esque, with the bumptious, plain spoken American taking the part of the picaresque hero.
Well worth a read indeed - & currently being reprinted according to the publisher’s website.
Written in 1942 it tells the story of Rose Fairlaw, a woman born to privilege who suddenly finds herself, in middle age, having to manage without servants, her last two live-in maids having gone off to work for better pay & conditions in a munitions factory.
Not a very enticing description, as Michael Morpurgo, the other guest on that edition of A Good Read who thereby found himself duty-bound to read it, freely admitted.
But what a revelation when you do read it. We have sympathy for Rose when, in response to an incredulous But didn’t your mother even make sure you could cook? reflected that her mid-Victorian mother would simply never have been able to imagine that her daughter’s household would not contain, among others, a vegetable maid, a scullery maid & a kitchen maid. So Rose, when needs must, finds herself surreptitiously having to watch out of the corner of her eye to see ‘whether you used hot or cold water for the ablution of potatoes & ‘veg’ & if you did or didn’t use soap.’
Rose & Stuart, her husband, had each been married before – Rose to a dashing young officer who died in WWI leaving her with a baby daughter. Her best friend, mother to a new-born son, died of pneumonia, so Rose had thrown herself (with plenty of help from servants) into caring for the two babies. When the widowed Stuart returned from his war service &, in due course proposed, she accepted this most suitable arrangement for two half-orphaned children & their remaining grief-stricken parents.
One of the more interesting aspects of this novel – written by a sixty year old woman & published twenty years before the Lady Chatterley judgement – is the way that it deals with sex, of which there is quite a lot in the book. So we read that, having assumed that she was entering a marriage of convenience between two people each mourning the loss of the great love of their life, Rose was ‘surprised that Stuart suggested a honeymoon at all, & still more surprised at the honeymoon itself.’ and that since Stuart’s ‘simple masculine attitudes about graves & beds were entirely different from her own … she accepted them dutifully.’
Would explicit description of the exact details of her surprise add anything worth reading to this?
The book is in turn funny, tender, tragic. Although obviously not another Middlemarch, I quite often found myself thinking of Dorothea in this tale of courage in all its guises & circumstance. It also makes for an interesting comparison with the last volume of Elizabeth Jane Howard’s Cazalet Chronicles, which too deals with women of the privileged middle classes coming to terms with doing their own housework & fending for themselves in a very different world after WWII had ended.
The novel also struck me as very Priestley-esque, with the bumptious, plain spoken American taking the part of the picaresque hero.
Well worth a read indeed - & currently being reprinted according to the publisher’s website.
Thursday, October 27, 2011
More winners & losers
An interesting Costing the Earth last night on Radio 4 about how everybody has upped their game in getting ready to cope with winter snow.
Heathrow has spent a small fortune on new equipment & extra staff to operate it.
Some councils are switching over to imported marine salt which can work more efficiently & does less damage to cars, but may be bad news for archivists.
Heathrow has spent a small fortune on new equipment & extra staff to operate it.
Some councils are switching over to imported marine salt which can work more efficiently & does less damage to cars, but may be bad news for archivists.
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