2002-11-22 19:39

Hoorah for Hogsbawm!

Language hat reminds me that there's a book called The Invention of Tradition, which I remember from years ago being trailed or blurbed as very sarcastic about the Scottish "tradition" of wearing kilts, and so on. But what had escaped my attention was that it was co-written by the celebrated Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm, probably because in the '80's I had little idea what a Marxist historian was, or why to celebrate them. (I dropped history at the age of 14, because that was the first chance I got, so you can imagine.)

I don't think it would be fair to hold me to a book freeze when we're talking about a book it is clearly my destiny to own, do you?

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2002-11-22 11:16 (UTC)

Royalty in bed

is still of course royalty. Consider the case of Louis XIV:

Let us consider briefly some of the aspects of the ceremony attached to Louis' daily life. He got up at eight o'clock, wherupon courtiers appeared in his room in groups of descending importance. [...] Only nobles of the highest rank were privileged to be present when the king left his bed (petit lever) and put on his dressing gown. Those of the least exalted rank arrived only when he had washed and finished dressing.
[from the R A Wilson's introduction to the Harrap's French Classics edition of Moli�re's Le Malade imaginaire]

This transcends the merely barking mad and ascends to the heights of ululating fricking lunacy, is it not?

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2002-11-22 09:50 (UTC)

Monoglot monotony

Here we go again - UK schools are saying that given half a chance, or possibly even if not, they'd drop compulsory foreign language education, which currently extends up to 16.

But on the other hand

The former education secretary, Estelle Morris, said that instead every primary school pupil should have the chance to learn another language from the age of seven by 2010.

Amid scepticism that enough teachers could be found, she suggested postgraduate students might be drafted in.

Ho hum. Has anyone told the postgraduate students? The British system for PhD students is already pretty broken without trying to pretend it can fix the shortfall of teachers.

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2002-11-21 13:03 (UTC)

A bit of the Other, or Vickan in Paris.

Autrui, en tant qu'autrui, n'est pas seulement un alter ego. Il est ce que moi je ne suis pas : il est le faible alors que moi je suis le fort; il est le pauvre, il est "la veuve et l'orphelin".
Levinas, De l'existence � l'existant, 1947

Il faut sentir les �tres et les situations avec son coeur. Savoir se tourner vers autrui.
Vickan, quoted in Point de Vue.

Zackly. (This is more fun than explaining things, I have decided. And my decision is final, so there.)

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2002-11-21 09:49 (UTC)

On pretending to have read Paul Muldoon - an fragment

Somewhat "Um, what?"
Kestrelling the causal
New hue, Kyoto brew
Car key, cow, coo, come come.
[...]

I'll explain why later, if I get time.

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2002-11-20 17:28

Not your ancestors' Python

The 2.2 style generator stuff in Python is pretty powerful. Put it together with the list comprehensions (available from 2.1 or thereabouts, I forget) and you can do this:

from __future__ require generators

def cartesian_iter(tup):
    if not tup: yield ()
    else:
        n, rest = tup[0], tup[1:]
        for i in range(n):
            for r in cartesian_iter(rest):
                yield (i,) + r
                pass
            pass
        pass
    pass

def get_indices(array, fn): # requires a Numeric array
    return [ind for ind in cartesian_iter(array.shape)
            if fn(array[ind])]

Nifty, huh? (The pass statements are there to restore redundancy to the indentation-based syntax, for which I make no apology.)

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2002-11-20 13:13 (UTC)

The hilarity of Danish numbers

is fully documented here. It is said that Danish and Norwegians are prone to the having of business meetings in which everyone uses their native tongue, except when it comes to numbers, at which point they switch to English.

Where English has ninety-one and Swedish has the analogous nittioett, Danish still counts in Old Skool one-and-twenty style, and uses half units base 20, so that you get enoghalvfems, where en is 1, og is "and" and halvfems is short for halvfemsindstyve, which we can gloss as "half five times twenty", and the "half" modifies the "five" downwards. (This is standard in Scandewegian clock usage - halv nio ("half nine") means 8:30. Oh the hilarity!)

Numbers are a pain in Foreign. In last week's Swedish class we took turns reading out a passage (on employment of immigrants. Gripping stuff, for sure) and I was going along just fine (reading is what Des's do best) until the bit that went "between 1992 and 1994 there was an increase of 23%..." and carried on in that vein for more than the tiny amount required for my humiliation. When I'm reading Swedish stuff to myself, subvocalising along happily, numbers are variously treated by switching to English, which is cheating; switching to French, which my brain knows is Foreign, and presumes is therefore an adequate substitute; or Slowing Down A Whole Lot. I don't fancy my chances with Danish numbers, frankly.

[via bluejoh, Permalink]

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2002-11-20 10:00 (UTC)

Konglig Kontributions

Aftenposten goes Vickan crazy. I haven't read it properly - Norwegish is no longer even my second-best flavour of Scandewegian, so even without a raging hangover this would be a challenge - but they conclude that she comes across as "engasjert, men litt reservert" and remind the prurient that "Kj�rligeten er et ikke-tema". And anyway, she didn't throw meringue at her daddy (he's the king!) on purpose. [via Laurel]

Meanwhile, the travelling exhibition of Drottning Margrethe of Danmark has reached Finland. Bizarrely, that link shows a painting of hers that I'd already seen (in Point de Vue, of course) when the exhibition was elsewhere. So maybe that's the only good one, or maybe they all look the same. ("Another garden scene, Your Majesty? How delightful!") I've also seen (photos of; I'm not completely deranged) ballet costumes she's designed, and I've heard rumours of translations and book illustrations and all sorts.

It must be difficult for Persons of Royalness to know if their artistic endeavours are really any good - who would tell them if they weren't? In which spirit: Give it up with the watercolours Charles, "Prince of Wales" of England - you're embarrassing yourself. [via Diana]

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2002-11-19 10:41 (UTC)

Slackage

I'm tired. This is what comes of Having Fun at weekends, rather than sitting around thinking (which is also fun, of course).

But while I'm thinking of things to say, here are some terrific photos of the Lofoten Islands in winter.

Now I must write code, if I can remember how.

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2002-11-18 14:28

Please form an orderly queue

The People's Permatanned Princess Madeleine of Sweden has dispensed with the services of her boyfriend, after her daddy (who is the king!) told her to vara slut p� dumheterna - it seems that the court was especially unamused by the recent revelation that he had not paid the fine imposed for an assault conviction.

The could improve the quality of gossip round here no end as Madeleine "concentrates on her studies".

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