27th August 10:30 (UTC+1)

Gone Fishin'

Hah! The RAID array is down and there's noone here who can fix it - the University is celebrating yesterday's Bank Holiday by taking an extra day off today. Since it is sunny outside and there's not the least chance of getting any work done, I'm bowing to the inevitable.

Tomorrow!

27th August 10:07 (UTC+1)

Do not adjust your browser.

The shared file-system has gone down again, and the System Administrator is on holiday. I'll be delivering the top-quality blogging excellence that you have come to expect just as soon as this isn't the case, of course, but for the time being I'm going to go read a book or something - blogging with raw Diaryland via Lynx is not my idea of fun.

Vi ses!

2002-08-23 12:08

If it's not worth carving, it wasn't worth writing.

Here, have some pessimism. I remember these Domesday boxen of which they speak:

In 1986, while the Voyagers were still hopping between the planets, the BBC and Acorn Computers created the Domesday Project - two interactive video disks which were read in a specially adapted Philips VP 415 player.

It is worth being precise, because there are now very few working VP 415s around, and as a result most of the Domesday disks are effectively unreadable.
[...]
[T]here are millions of tapes in company and university archives which contain all sorts of undocumented file formats and this is digital data that is almost certainly unrecoverable.

It's not just archives, though - Microsoft has systematically exploited file-format incompatabilities as a business strategy. Even if the Eisner-Ashcroft-Gates lobby concedes that in principle you might conceivably have some vestige of a right to the (carefully supervised) use of your bits, they are hardly likely to feel any duty to assist in the process.

This was always my objection to William Gibson's cyberpunk - in his universe some wizened (or teen-aged) guru can always bend a paperclip into the shape of a plot device and magic everything better.

The future - our future - isn't going to be like that. It's going to be full of single-purpose machines that aren't even good at the only thing they can do and have obsolence built-in to them at the molecular level, and the one thing none of them will be doing is copying bits without permission (no, not your permission, silly).

Anyone for a sweepstake on how long it takes Them to require licenses to generate and distribute content? I'll take 2015, please.

---

Incidentally, Monday is a Bank Holiday - vi ses p� Tisdag.

2002-08-23 10:18 (UTC+1)

A dynamic sport which requires constant movement and no set positions.

The illustrious Professor Leuschke blogged this paper:

Not that we believe there really are any such things as infinite sets, or that the Zermelo-Fraenkel axioms for set theory are necessarily even consistent. Indeed, we're somewhat doubtful whether large natural numbers (like 80²⁰⁰, or even 2²⁰⁰) exist in any very real sense, and we're secretly hoping that Nelson will succeed in his program for proving that the usual axioms of arithmetic--and hence also of set theory--are inconsistent.

and it reminded me that I never got around to being wildly opinionated about the foundations of mathematics. At least, not in public.

So, I hereby decree that mathematics amounts to a recursive hermeneutics of some aspects of innate psychological categories - specifically small integers; the phenomenological sense of space; and the ability to contradict a statement. It's recursive in the sense that this original "text" is just a bootstrap, and in successive iterations the "commentary" becomes part of the text. Incidentally, in my tribe Descartes is honoured as a geometry hacker of genius for linking the categories of number and space - I'd forgotten that he did the cogito, too. Neat hack, that, also, as well.

There are no bonus points for spotting that my entire philosophy/mind/language/mathematics research program basically amounts to hoping that George Lakoff hasn't figured out the significance of Paul Ricoeur, yet. It's bad enough that he's hip to Merleau-Ponty...

(No spoilers, either, please - I'm studiously avoiding Lakoff for the time being.)

2002-08-22 14:27 (UTC+1)

On code-switching.

Switching to a minority language is very common as a means of expressing solidarity with a social group. The language change signals that the speaker is from a certain background; if the listener responds with a similar switch, a degree of rapport is established. The same switch may of course also be used to exclude other people, who do not know the language, from the group.
[ The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language]

It has plenty of other stuff to say on the subject and much of it is interesting, but socio-linguistics upsets me with its bizarre obsession with (ugh) people. As a misanthropic geek I get on much better with civilised disciplines like phonology and syntax where one can simply assume that everything refers to a (post-Chomskian) Spherical Native-Speaker In A Vacuum.

The point is that code-switching is (and/or isn't) completely different to just showing off, depending on whether you're feeling out common ground, emphasising a sympathy with a linguistic group, or just plain showing off.

(The later group certainly includes anyone foolish enough to think that the plural of the English word octopus is octopodes. It is, in fact, octopi - the -us -> -i rule for plural formation has, by a process of analogical levelling, become productive in English. Etymology is not destiny! Say it, Brother! Say it, Sister! Say it, Sibling Of Indeterminate Gender!)

In any case, questions of code-switching are inseparable from questions of audience, and when we're talking about blogs, that can get confusing really quickly. In fact, even to summarise all the things I have to say about this is too daunting.

One thing I would say, though, is that Swedish and French occupy completely different positions in my Inner Emotional Ecology of language - a part of the reason I'm (re)learning (some) French is as a linguistic parallel to my alienation with the English (analytic) tradition in philosophy - Point de Vue is just a bonus, honest.

On the other hand the original roots of my interest in Scandinavian countries lie in the contingency plans for evacuation that I started making back when it looked like the Tories where going to be in government for ever, and even now I'm not above occasional wistful dreaming of endless summer evenings, street caf�s where coffee, beer and food are all available (in the same establishment!) for civilised periods of time, and the public transport system is actually fit for transporting the public. (In my scoring system, incidentally, trams are the equivalent of a double word score in Scrabble - trams are just so cool.) And near the sea, too. I don't need beaches, but I do need seagulls. Sigh.

Has anyone seen a point lying around? I could have sworn I had one...

Oh yes, that was it - my occasional use of Swedish (or Danish or Norwegish) is affectionate and slightly aspirational, whereas my relationship with French is much more ambivalent. Which in practice means that I would be happy to provide translations of the latter if anyone wants them. (Actually, I'm curious now - do Scandiwegians still fall for the Important Global Language schtick the French are always pulling?)

2002-08-22 09:47 (UTC+1)

Men f�rst

I only got around to reading this weeks Point de Vue last night. It doesn't help that the cover story is Monaco again. This time the story amounts to an extended announcement that now li'l Charlotte a seize ans she can expect the full paparazzi treatment with no mercy. Endearingly, the number of photos showing her draped around �son inseparable amie Valentine� suggest that she could be a candidate for the much coveted First Openly Gay Crowned Head of Europe if it wasn't for the fact that Monaco isn't so much a State as a car-park with a sea view, and therefore doesn't count.

The article on Princes Consort, though, is a delight - after careful study I'm still unable to tell whether the writer is really commiserating with their whining or just giving them Enough Rope. I haven't really paid a lot of attention to Danish royalty in the past, but Prince Henrik could change all that - he gives a self-pity masterclass here:

�Un prince consort, c'est un �quilibriste sur un fil. Le public attende qu'il tombe. Parfois m�me, il le pousse.�

Magnifique! Since we only really care about princesses at Desbladet, we've decided to consider Henrik an Honorary Princess from now on. Long may he flounce!

The significantly less risible Claus of le Pays-Bas has become popular in his adopted country largely by learning the language well (which doesn't seem to have occurred to Henrik, but it's only been 30 years, eh?). Even so, he suffers from depression to the point of hospitalisation:

�Je sais que j'ai �t� accept� par les N�erlandais. Je peut m�me affirmer que je suis populaire. Mais est-ce que l'on m'aime vraiment?�

A fickle country, the Netherlands. It'll tell you it really loves you, that it'll respect you in the morning, that it wants you to be on its postage stamps. Don't you believe it - it's just using you. Don't ask me how I know, I just know. (*sob* It doesn't write, it doesn't call. Just one stamp, is that so much to ask?)

2002-08-21 14:00 (UTC+1)

B�ger me sideways.

It turns out that the best online Swedish book shop is Danish. At saxo.dk you can choose a Swedish or Danish interface and (separately) restrict the language of books searched for.

More to the point they are hardly in a position to refuse to sell books to anyone outside Sweden, which has been the stumbling block in previous negociations with the more Swedish sort of Swedish book shop.

So Mange tak, Danmark! - soon I too will be able to relish the breezy upbeat hi-jinks which have made Henning Mankell a household name. Or something.

2002-08-21 09:56 (UTC+1)

Back to school

Actually it's the Merkins who are starting school, if my hypersensitive cultural antennae are to be believed, but my research group is reassembled after various holidays and we're having epic meetings again.

Not everyone in our group is a native speaker of English and it seems unfair to put them at a disadvantage, but so far my suggestion that we level the playing fields by having the meetings in Swedish (my preference) or even French (which, lest we forget - and how often we do forget! - is an Important Global Language) has not been implemented.

I remember reading that Joyce used to switch the working language of his household around on a whim, and characters in the Dune books used to switch just so that certain nuances could be better expressed. When I'm in charge of a multi-national corporation I'll change the Corporate Language every year, and simply ignore any reports that aren't in West Greenlandic (say). This is what I think about in long meetings.

Cthulhu, but how I hate long meetings.

2002-08-20 13:10 (UTC+1)

Quite right, too.

VG is rather sheepishly covering yesterday's lack of coverage of Mette-Marit's f�dselsdag (note spelling!).

93.5% of respondents to their online survey had also forgotten, but thanks to Birgitte's emergency infusion of timeliness Desbladet managed to scoop most of the press.

The Swedish press has still not reacted, so here's an old Aftonbladet link, instead: How Mette-Marit are you?

Being a newspaper they haven't yet grasped the importance of a hyperlinkable image as a result, but I can assure you I am now, officially, very Mette-Marit indeed.

2002-08-20 12:00 (UTC+1)

Timeliness is a virtue

Lunch-timeliness doubly so.

Aye thang kew.

2002-08-20 09:34 (UTC+1)

Alternatively

An even more compelling account of descriptive linguistics is given in Gleason's Introduction to Descriptive Linguistics although it is both out of print and a little short on spaceships.

It's certainly the most compelling book I'm reading at the moment, although since its rivals are French and Swedish grammars and a book on phenomenology then that may not be saying much. I'm going to introduce a strict policy that every fourth book is mindless trash in English, I think. Even a mind must lie fallow from time to time to remain fruitful.

2002-08-19 17:19

Better birthday bulletin

I found a proper story about Mette-Marit's birthday. From last year, unfortunately, but what can you do?

I also discovered that the prefered form in Norwegish is bursdag rather than f�delsdag (Danish and in principle also Norwegian) or f�delsedag (note the extra e) in Swedish. You'd think they were different languages or something. They (norskarna) even have a different song, singing for the use of.

If only I knew the tune and the actions...

2002-08-19 14:02 (UTC+1)

Grattis M-M!

It's Mette-Marit's birthday!

And I had no idea until Birgitte tipped me off in the guestbook. Gah! I had even checked VG this morning to see what was up. Nothing was up, was what was up.

Heads will roll for this, Varied Reader, you may be sure of that.

In the mean time, Ja, m� hon leve uti hundrade �r...

2002-08-19 12:20

The Evils of Imperialism

I can still read fiction, as it turns out. Science fiction, even. After the first 60 or so pages of The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell I had stopped wincing (good prose is orthogonal to good science fiction, although hers isn't really that bad) and wanted to know what happened.

It's essentially a riff on the theme of HG Wells Time Machine - nice herbivore aliens and less-nice carnivorous aliens in an ecological/economic relationship which I really think we're supposed to find shocking. (Oops.)

Bonus points for the First Contact riffage - it got onto my reading list via a Swansea University field linguistics course - but debit points for the theology - the mission is organised by Jesuit priest and structured around the religious crisis of the only survivor of the Bad Experiences that ensue on the alien planet.

In fact, although the emotional manipulation is laid on thickly and for the most part effectively, the nastiness is never quite as shocking as when they're wittering on about gravity and someone cites the acceleration in feet per second per second. My soul recoils in horror at the prospect of such a future.