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2003-08-22 16:09 (UTC+1)
Hello? No, this is Germany; France can't come to the phone right now,
it's
on holiday, can I take a message?
Although the Health Ministry has not so far collated an overall
figure, the paper notes, Professor Gerd Jendritzky of the German
Weather Service "said that the situation in this country could not be
compared to the disaster in France".
"I expect a few hundred people died who would have lived without this
heat," the professor is quoted as saying. The "major difference"
between the two countries, he added, was that "Germany does not 'close
down' as France does in August", so "there were more people around to
look after the elderly".
Right, I'll pass that along as soon as they get back.
[Permalink]
2003-08-22 15:35
Relief is at hand:
Cutting a cake, dividing up the property in an estate, determining the
borders in an international dispute - such problems of fair division
are ubiquitous. Fair Division treats all these problems and many more
through a rigorous analysis of a variety of procedures for allocating
goods (or bads like chores), or deciding who wins on what issues, when
there are disputes. Starting with an analysis of the well-known
cake-cutting procedure, I cut, you choose, the authors show how it has
been adapted in a number of fields and then analyze fair-division
procedures applicable to situations in which there are more than two
parties, or there is more than one good to be divided.
Whether these have been tested on governmentals, I have not been able to
ascertain.
[Permalink]
2003-08-22 09:21 (One more than UTC)
1. Metres.
There is one thing of which one can say neither that it is one metre
long, nor that it is not one metre long, and that is the standard
metre in Paris.
["Ludic" Ludwig Wittgenstein]
I haven't read any significant amounts of Wittgenstein, so I first
came across this in a philosophybladet in the library where someone
was proposing a very sophisticated reading of the Philosophical
Investigations in an attempt to establish that he couldn't
possibly have, like, meant it.
Whereupon I had a feeling that goes with a jutting-out lower lip and a
stamping of a foot on the floor. I felt I wanted to say "Not FAAYYuh!
Want!" but they don't hold with that sort of thing in the library on
account of as how it is against the rules.
I'm with "Ludic" Ludwig, then, in that the Parisian metre
(superceded by a definition in terms of wavelengths, unlike the
kilogram, but the metre is the traditional thing to argue about by
established practice or custom, and I am very practiced and
accustomed) is used to establish that other things are a metre long by
direct comparison (i.e., something you actually have to do) and that
you can't do a comparison of a thing with itself. You might
think that there'd be an even split between people who claim that a
comparison of the length of a thing with that of the same thing is
trivially satisfied and those that claim that it's a category error,
but my extensive survey of University laboratory technicians has
established that the procedure followed when asked to compare the
length of a thing with the length of that same thing is a Hard Stare,
which strikes me as operationally distinct from the other kind.
Of course a mathematician might simply say that, "by abuse of
terminology, we say that the Paris metre is one metre long," but
that's because it's so much fun to say "by abuse of terminology."
("Hand over your metres or the terminology gets it!"
"I think he's serious, George, you'd better."
"Damn right I'm serious, and don't try fobbing us off with any
platinum-iridium bars of formally undecidable length; The Austrian's
put us onto your tricks.")
2. Mette-Marit.
A nice,
happy story about the lovely Norwegian kronprinsess.
Kronprinsesse Mette-Marit skal hospitere i NORAD. To dager i uka fram
til jul skal hun f� praksis i utviklingssamarbeid.
The kronprinsess Mette-Marit is going to hospitere NORAD. She's going
to get experience in development work two [of your Earth] days a week
until Twinkletree ("Christmas").
NORAD is a charity which does lots of good things (he bluffed
shamelessly), especially if this leads to trashbladetphoto�pportunities
(that's not an umlaut, it's a diaeresis, "placed over the second of
two adjacent vowels to indicate that they are to be pronounced as
separate sounds rather than a diphthong, as in The New Yorker
na�ve") in abundance.
[The author thanks Anna Louise for her helpful suggestions on
material discussed this post.]
[Permalink]
2003-08-21 16:21 (yooteecee plus one)
(Recycling while the cricket's on - especially while England are doing
well.)
It's very odd how the Engleesh philosophy came to fetishize the
"statement" - a kind of hypothetical utterance deprived of speaker,
hearer, context and purpose - as its privileged object of study.
To the Continentally-inclined philosopheur Austin seems to be going to
an awful lot of very sophisticated trouble to unstitch an
misconception nobody in their right mind could possibly have had, but
I'm not planning to dig out the Ayer to disabuse myself of this
retro-optimism.
(And Anna Louise brings
us news of norska trashbladet VG apologising to Mette-Marit with
flowers for splashing the front page with a plea for her to get in
touch with her estranged father. If VG stories don't feature here
quite as often in the future, you'll know why. For more, you should
be following the guestbladet, of which this is but a humble satellite,
and quite right too.)
[Permalink]
2003-08-21 11:28 (UTC+1)
Where's Vickan? This autumn ("fall") all
over the place with a schedule packed full the kind of state and
UN business typical of a go-getting kronprinsess in today's increasing
global world. And her bestly belov�d, you ask? Sadly, not.
Hovet meddelade i g�r att Victorias pojkv�n Daniel Westling inte
kommer att delta i n�gra officiella programpunkter under h�sten.
- Nej, han �r inte inbokad p� n�gonting �nnu, s�ger hovets presschef
Elisabeth Tarras-Wahlberg.
[The court announced yesterday that Victorias boyfriend Daniel
Westling isn't going to take part in any official duties during the
autumn ("fall").
"No, he isn't booked for anything ,"
said the court's presschief Elisabeth Tarras-Wahlberg. [Emphasis mine
- des]]
2003-08-21 09:27 (U to the T to the C +1)
Have you ever watched footage of Persons Of Note on official state
visits being served a charmante mix of traditional local
behaviours and dances and foodstuffs, all of which they are obliged to
swallow and pretend to enjoy?
("Maka'ai, are the 'local delicacies' ready for our beloved Imperial
Oppressors?"
"Nearly, Nguaji, and I must say we've surpassed ourselves this time -
my mother boiled and ate her toad-skin loincloth to survive the Great
Famine and she says this stuff is definitely worse. At least I think
that's what she said, it was kind of hard to make out what with the
vomiting.")
I do but ask, in a spirit, as you will appreciate, of inquiry.
Anyway, today is Stinkyfishday, hoorah hoorah hoorah! And remember -
it's not rotten; it's fermented, and it's
meant to smell like that. Really:
Ruben Kronwall Madsen f�rst�r att vissa ser med skr�ckblandad
f�rtjusning p� surstr�mmingen. [...]
F�r Ruben Kronwall Madsen �r kulten kring surstr�mmingen viktigare �n
sj�lva �tandet.
- Det handlar inte om att �ta sig m�tt. Surstr�mmingen �r ett
traditionsf�rem�l.
[Ruben Kronwall Madsen [for it is he!] understands that some look on
stinkyfish with horrorblended delight. [...]
For Ruben Kronwall Madsen [for it is still he!] the cult around
stinkyfish is more important than eating it oneself.
"It doesn't matter if one eats one's fill. Stinkyfish is a target of
traditions."]
A dish fit for a king, for sure!
[Permalink]
2003-08-20 15:26 (UTC+1)
- John Searle's The Mystery of
Smugness Consciousness,
so we'll see.
- Carcassi's 25 studi melodici e progressive (50p in the
public library's remaindered bin - I was shopping for Bach chorales
but the nearby music shop now only really sells chartalongs and exam
pieces.)
- Puy lentils & goats cheese salad, yum yum
- An old skool glass bottle of Mssrs Coca and Cola's celebrated
beverage
It's National Unordered List Week, hoorah!
[Permalink]
2003-08-20 14:56
The Grauniad brings bad tidings:
Officials in Brussels won't admit it, but they are bracing themselves
for another Scandinavian euro rejection: not, this time, from Denmark,
but from Sweden.
With four weeks remaining before Sweden votes on whether it wishes to
abandon the krona in favour of the single currency, campaigners for a
yes vote are mired in gloom.
Could everyone please note that they say "krona", which is the usual
Engleesh word for such a thing, and not "crown", which isn't? Thanks
very.
And could those of you in Sweden please fix it so that we can all say
"Euro" instead? Because if Sweden doesn't join, Denmark won't either
(this could easily happen anyway, while the Folkfuckwitfront remains a
political force, yuck) and then the Briteesh will be under less
pressure to play nice.
Likesaid, j�ttesuck.
[Permalink]
2003-08-20 10:28
I'm struggling to keep up with the Annas Louise and K on
prinsessgossip at the moment, but gasp once more as I deploy my
instinctive, post-ironic Old Skool mastery of the unordered list:
- Oh my! �Tr�ngsel och fylla �r orsakerna till att en av prinsessan
Madeleines favoritkrogar kan tvingas att st�nga� ("Crowding and
drunkenness are the reasons why prinsess Madeleines favouritepub may
be forced to close.") No real prinsess content.
- Mette-Marit's
Birthday, hoorah! (�Kronprinsesse Mette-Marit fikk en personlig og
musikalsk gave av kronprins Haakon under feiringen av hennes 30-�rsdag
tirsdag kveld.� ("Kronprinsess Mette-Marit got a personal and musical
present from kronprins Whassname during her 30th birthday party on
Tuesday evening".) A home-made and personal CD, how nice.
- Mette-Marit
in prinsessattitude shock: �Da Mette-Marit skulle i privat bryllup
til en venninne p� Vestlandet i helgen, rekvirerte kronprinsessen
politieskorte med kystvaktskipet "KNM Gars�y"� ("When Mette-Marit was
going to a private wedding of a friend in Vestland at the weekend the
[lovely blonde] kronprinsess demanded a police escort from the
coastguardship KNM Gars�y.") Good heaven's, of all the coastguardships
she could have picked she went for KNM Gars�y?!
Happy Birthday, Mette-Marit!
[Permalink]
2003-08-19 16:34
"Actions can only be performed by persons." - J L Austin, How to
do things with words, Ch. V (p. 60 in the OUP paperback
edition)
Note:
- He says "persons," hoorah!
- This is the kernel of Searle's Chinese Room "Argument".
And Searle was Austin's student,
the InterWebNet confirms,
although I think it's more accurate to think of him as Ayer's revenge
on Austin given the way he turned a subtle and open-ended enquiry into
a smug and constipated substitute for thought.
Look
how photographers insist on cropping the top of Searle's head in an
desperate but unsuccessful attempt to disguise the baldy comb-over that is such a
perfect metaphor for his place in Anglophone philosophy. Give it up,
persons, you're fooling nobody!
[Permalink]
2003-08-19 11:59
There's been plenty of research on the storage and recall of la
musique within le cerveau �pic� - Sacks' The Man Who
Mistook His Wife for a Hat quotes from a 100-page 1963 paper by
Penfield on the results of electrical stimulation of said organ:
"We were surprised by the number of times electrical stimulation has
caused the patients to hear music. [...] The localisation for
production of music is in the superior temporal convolution."
In each case [...] the music was fixed and stereotyped. The same
tune (or tunes) were heard again and again, whether in the course of
seizures, or with electrical stimulation of the seizure-prone cortex.
Thus these tunes are not only popular on the radio but equally popular
as hallucinatory seizures: they are, so to speak, the Top Ten of the
cortex.
On the other hand, the NYT, a Merkan bladet,
has
found a consumer psychologist with a cute name for the phenomenon
of getting a tune stuck in your head.
A recent study by the University of Cincinnati looked at the
affliction, which the author, James Kellaris, calls earworms from the
German word ohrwurm. The ear part is obvious, but the worm part is not
incidental. Dr. Kellaris, a consumer psychologist, says it conveys the
parasitic nature of the unending tunes, which lodge too deep in the
mental continuum to be easily ousted.
Consumer psychologists, earworms and the word "oust" - don't
say I don't bring it on with the linkage, Varied Reader, because that
would simply be false and you know it.
(In Swedish "earworm" would be �rmask, since orm of
course means "snake" in said beforked tongue.)
[Permalink]
2003-08-19 08:30 (UTC+1)
In possibly the most exciting vicarious kronprinsess sighting since
Anna K bumped into
Mette-Marit at the SOAS,
the kronprinsessan Vickan will be at the KTH today:
N�rvaro vid invigningen av konferensen ICED, International Conference
on Enginering Design 03 p� Kungliga Tekniska H�gskolan Stockholm
[Present at the opening of the International Conference
on Enginering Design 03 at Kungliga Tekniska H�gskolan, Stockholm]
which is of course where Simon TFL and Birgitte both hang out. How
exciting!
Meanwhile:
Hovet rasar �ver smygtagna bilder av prinsessan Madeleine som blivit
till en utvikningsaffisch i en herrtidning.
[The court is rampaging over sneak-taken pictures of prinsess Madeleine
as became as a digressionposter in a gentleman's magazine.]
Tsk. They do not, you will note, say which ladbladet was
responsible for this outrage, which we are anxious to know so that we
can, um, more accurately focus our disapproval, yes.
[linkage via roving reporters Anna Louise and Simon TFL, hoorah.]
[Permalink]
2003-08-18 14:26 (UTC+1)
There is a certain autumnality about the air today, I think, although
it might just be wishful thinking since I love autumn ("fall") best of
all the seasons that there are.
But then again, maybe
not:
Om ett par veckor b�rjar h�sten, enligt v�derexperten Wolfgang R�der.
Autumn will start in a couple of weeks, according to weatherexpert
Wolfgang R�der.
Certainly time to be practicing,
then:
V�gen hem var mycket l�ng och ingen har jag m�tt,
nu blir kv�llarna kyliga och sena...
[Permalink]
2003-08-18 12:15
OK, now
pay attention. The lovely kronprinsess Vickan heads a charity to
fund leisure activities for persons of limited mobility. The
spokesperson for the organisation Young Persons of Limited Mobility
has organised a satirical counter-charity to fund leisure activities
for the lovely kronprinsess, by way of making the point that being
marked as a recipient of charity can be an alienating experience.
Which is all very well, but since being a kronprinsess already marks
one as other than Ordinary Persons, this is unlikely to have quite the
allegedly desired impact on her Herselfness, although it's a clever
publicity stunt.
[Link via Birgitte, tack.]
[Permalink]
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