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2003-10-17 13:27
Well, sort of.
The Prinshenrik of Denmark, who is French,'s brother, who is also
French, got an entirely undoubtedly unnepotistically arranged
interview with the kronprinspar who are shortly to finally, completely
and definitively upstage said Prinshenrik, and in interviewing them
largely in Ingleesh but writing it up in le French, he has somehow
(oops!) contrived to completely stuff it up, and make it look as
though Kronprinsfred thinks Merkins are simpletons. From the Point
de Vue ("Frankrigs f�rende kongelige ugeblad"!) interview in question:
Quand j'ai travaill� aux Etats-Unis, j'�tais beaucoup plus jeune et
tr�s admiratif de ce pays - son enthousiasme, son dynamisme, sa
vitalit�. Et puis, au contact d'autres pays, la France en
particulier, j'ai nuanc� ma position, apr�s avoir r�alis� que les
Am�ricains avaient les d�fauts de leurs qualit�s : � force d'�tre
directs, il's en deviennent parfois trop simples, simplistes m�me.
[When I worked [sic] in the US I was much younger and full of
admiration for the country - its enthusiasm, its dynamism, its
vitality. And then, after contact with other countries, France in particular,
I have some reservations, after realising that the Americans have
flaws in their qualities: being direct, they sometimes become too
simple, even simplistic.]
Courtesy of the Danish meeja, he appears to have rethunk
and he wants
another go:
�I deres �appearance� (optr�den eller udseende, red.) kan de somme
tider synes, som om de ikke er sofistikerede.� Kronprinsen sagde det
p� engelsk og mente ikke �simple�, som jeg skrev, men �not
sophisticated�.
Da vi ikke har ordet �sofistikeret� p� fransk, er det min franske
fortolkning �simple�, der er kommet frem i artiklen. Det er ikke lige
n�jagtig Kronprinsens ord, men mit ord.
"In their 'appearance' (effect or outlooking - ed.) might it seem at
times that they are not sophisticated." The kronprins said it in
English and didn't mean "simple" as I wrote, but "not sophisticated"
There's no word "sophisticated" in French and "simple" in the article
is my rendering in French. It's not precisely the the Kronprins's
word, but rather mine.
My Collins Gem English/French dictionary - that pint-size paragon of
precision - offers "raffin�" and "sophistiqu�" as possibilities for
"sophisticated", but perhaps they lacked a certain - 'ow you say in
English? - je ne sais quoi. Better insulting than stodgy, for
sure!
Anyway, Merkins, Kronprinsfred doesn't think you're
simple-minded yokels so much as just boorish peasants, so there's no
need at all to be getting all upset with Denmark, whatever that is.
(I did mention my unflagging commitment to harmonious international
relations, didn't I? Only for good, Varied Reader, only for good.)
[And thanks to Birgitte for the Danish coverage.]
[Permalink]
2003-10-17 09:25 (UTC+1)
Oh pointy bird,
Oh pointy pointy,
Anoint my head,
Anointy nointy.
- Steve Martin.
Parrots, me hearties! They squawks and even talks, right
enough, but be they jes' critters, or be they blessed with souls like mortal men?
Deep waters, shipmates, deep waters:
We are going to do some more studies with recursion. Hauser, Chomsky
and Fitch published a paper in Science at the end of October 2002
stating that only humans produce recursive phrases and that recursion
is thus what separates human language from animal communication
systems. Well, parrots, dolphins and sea lions respond to recursive
sentences. Dolphins and sea lions will differentially respond to
statements such as "Touch the surfboard that is grey and to the left"
versus "Swim over the Frisbee that is black and to your right." Alex
[an African grey ("gray") parrot] responds to questions such as "What
object is green and three- corner?" versus "What color is wood and
four-corner?" or "What shape is paper and purple?"
[...]
Researchers such as Pinker and I get along well because I never claim
that Alex has full-blown language; I never would. I'm not going to be
able to put Alex on a "T" stand and have you interview him the way you
interview me. But Alex has basic building blocks that are
language-like behaviors ? and also elements of phenomena like
consciousness and awareness. Is Alex conscious? Personally, I believe
so. Can I prove it? No. Does he have perceptual awareness? That I can
definitely prove.
("Recursion"? As the good book says: "Recursion n.: see
recursion." Arrr! Just a little joke, me hearties, no offence be
meant and I'll run a cold steel blade through any man who takes it!)
Pinker, I know a Pinker: first mate on Cap'n Chomsky's ship, he was.
They're all mad as hell on that boat, iffn you asks me. All this talk
of as how yer langwige reflects the Glories Of The Human Spirit and
sets us aside from mere beasts, a pox on't. I've sailed the seven
seas, meself, and I've heard all sorts of rum tales from folks as I've
run into - or through as the case may have been - about what sets yer
yuman bean apart from mere critters. Happentimes it be fire,
happentimes it's a taste for clothing as is said to be owing to
modesty or pride or somesuch, and happentimes it be langwige, right
enough. I've said it before and I'll say it again, and I'd be glad to
say it to his face: Cap'n Chomsky's talk is just more of the same, and
the amount that there is to it that is more than that ain't nothing
that there is:
Me, all dressed up an' talkin' fancy an' that, arrr!:
Chomsky's "Cartesianism" is merely a cartoon Hegelian antithesis of
behaviourism - instead of the behaviourist hypothesis that the only
scientifically legitimate account of the contents of persons' heads
involves lumps of grey porridgy goo obeying the laws of physics,
Chomsky insists that the mental phenomena inside his head constitute
both the only legitimate data and the only legitimate validation
procedure for linguistics, and (I have seen him quoted to this effect,
albeit by enemies) that the communicative possibilities of language
are merely epiphenomena of its real purpose in introspection. (My
desire to say, "Behold the ineluctable unfolding of the dialectic!"
only just loses out to my desire to exclaim, "Good grief!")
Arrr! I tell ye: 'Appen as a man's as much of a man as a man takes
him for, and that's as good for a parrot as a scurvy dog like you.
[This is the same thesis as the monsterpost, of course, which PF
linked, right enough, in his own parrot post. (See the discussion of
recursion, above, arrr!)]
[Permalink]
2003-10-16 14:57 (B"S"T, for crying out l
The BBC has an article on the demise of the bog-standard lager which
yearns desperately to be a repulsively inbred Meeja Studies
investigation of the Branding Issues, but can't quite manage to leave
out all of the facts of the case, for which hoorah:
Millions of Britons returned from their first package holidays in the
1960s and early '70s with a taste for lager.
This continental brew was stronger than the real ale they were used to
drinking - at 5% alcohol content - and served in smaller measures than
the traditional British pint pot.
The breweries liked lager because it could be served from bottles and
cans easier than traditional British ale.
But they were worried that the British drinker could not consume the
stronger beer in the large volumes they were used to - and the
breweries needed to keep their profits up.
So a variety of tasteless and unpalatable 3.2% lagers were ("was")
duly invented and marketed with fittingly tasteless and unpalatable
adverts. (The past is another country: they have wretched taste
there.) More recent shifts in the public taste have eaten away at the
sales thereof, and they are now being culled. No great loss in many
ways, and I'm all in favour of brewing as large-scale chemical
engineering but it's slightly depressing to see the extent of the
industry's contempt for variety. My vision of capitalism is would let
a thousand thousand beers flourish, for sure.
There is however a charmante irony in the use of aspirationally
Continental marketing to sell what is in fact a weakaspis made-in-the-UK-for-the-UK pastiche "beer" that no right-thinking Foreigner (yes, I
know, but it's a Gedanken experiment) would touch with a bargepole.
And has there ever been a more pungently apt metaphor for the
invention of a distinctly "Continental" form of philosophy in
Anglophonia? The lutin d'amazon ("Amazon pixie"), knowing that
as a connaisseur of Continental culture I shun and eschew such
bastardisations, brought me today my very own copy of M. Derrida's
De la grammatologie still stinky from the garlic patch where it
was harvested.
I have been arguing off and on with sci.langistes who seek to
abuse Derrida, not because I care very much about his own work, but
because implicit in their rejection of him is a rejection of the
phenomenological tradition with which (if not within which) he is
engaged.
So it's two pints of the metaphysics of presence and a packet of
crisps, for me thanks. And one for yourself?
[Permalink]
2003-10-16 11:48 (UTC+1)
We are still somewhat submeteorological, so we will
opt for the English coverage:
The Danish Foreign Ministry says the remains of the Empress-Dowager
Maria Fedorovna are to be moved next year from Denmark to a cathedral
in St Petersburg.
Denmark's Queen Margarethe has given her consent for the remains to be
sent, at the request of Russia and the former Russian royal family,
the Romanovs.
Her original name was of course (he bluffed wildly)
Dagmar
[dk], back when she did a stint as a Danish prinsess to qualify for
both marrying the Czar and - in a demonstration of really quite
remarkable foresight - coverage in this 'bladet.
Sleep well and pleasant dreams, prinsess D!
[Permalink]
2003-10-16 12:28
It turns out the NYT - that FRDUSAian
newspaper of record in an age of mp3 - has an
exemption to its Draconian two-weeks-and-you're-pay-archived
policy for allowed unhindrance of bloggage.
So huzzahs for them! (Even if they don't carry cartoons and are
therefore still clearly rubbish.)
[Permalink]
2003-10-16 08:03 (UTC+1)
For some tastes, perhaps, anyway. Not ours though, eh Varied Reader?
It's not a holiday, it's an
Official
Visit:
27. oktober drar kronprins Haakon og kronprinsesse Mette-Marit til
Russland p� offisielt bes�k.
[On the 27th of October Kronprinsess Mette-Marit and her husband are
going to Russia on an official visit.]
All according to Sven Gj. Gjeruldsen, of the courtinformationstaff,
who adds that the kronprinsess is very pregnant (which is after all
her day job) and will be obliged to cut down on her gallivanting after
this trip.
Meanwhile the trashiest of Scandewegian trashbladets, the enchantingly
inane Se og H�r, has been having a
fight started with it:
- Se og H�r hevder offentlig at prinsessen har tatt opp l�n til huset
sitt. Det betyr at de mener at prinsessen lyver, og at hennes
troverdighet trekkes i tvil, sier Rasch.
"Se og H�r claims publically that the prinsess has taken out a loan on
her house. That means that they're calling the prinsess a liar and
that her integrity is called into question," says Wensch "Rottweiler"
Rasch.]
Blimey. Does anyone else think that S&H is getting some of the
grief the court would dearly love to inflict on the German liebladets?
We note, also, that apparently it really does take two men to
do the job of one Elizabeth Tarras-Wahlberg; who'da thunkit?
[Core brand repositioning therapy via Anna Louise, tack]
[Permalink]
2003-10-15 14:57 (UTC why woncha come home&
Awakenenening, as I did this morning, at 5 o'clock is not an entirely
welcome experience, but it did give me an opportunity to peruse the
TLS (which I rarely buy but had this week). The downside, of course,
is that my brain is leaking out of my ears and leaving spicy patches
on the carpet, and we don't even have a carpet in the office,
oh dear.
I don't know whether it's a good thing or a bad thing, but I seem to
program OK in this state, although my typing goes from merely
erratic (its usual condition) to borderline performance art. Either
way, don't expect any sense before tomorrow. (NB: Punch-line
left as an exercise.)
[Permalink]
2003-10-15 12:38
No, but why,
really? What have lampreys ever done to you?:
We have developed a hybrid neuro-robotic system based on
a two-way communication between the brain of a lamprey
and a small mobile robot. The purpose of this system is to
offer a new paradigm for investigating the behavioral,
computational and neurobiological mechanisms of sensory
motor learning in a unified context.
Also, why not nip over and ask David
TEFLSmiler for a copy of his distinction-worthy masters'
dissertation The Use of Referring Expressions in English and
Danish - it's more fun than a barrelful of cybernetically enhanced
eels (and not just for the eels!).
[lamprey linkage via Simon Lintott in email]
[Permalink]
2003-10-15 9:24 (UTC's coming home, +1
if man is 5 [trois fois]
then the devil is 6 [cinq fois]
then god is 7 [trois fois]
this monkey's gone to heaven
[The Pixies, "Monkey gone to heaven", Cocteau's Orph�e mix]
Monkeys! Robots! Cyborgs! Brains! The Internet! Be very glad that
the attempts to involve Beyonc� and a teleport device that
mysteriously failed to work on clothes were abortive - had they succeeded the entire Slashdot
"community" would have had no choice but to believe the Eschaton had
finally been immanentized and would undoubtedly have promptly committed mass suicide
on a scale that made the Jonestown
massacre look like a solitary stubbed toe, and then who'd patch your
email server to within an inch of its life? Eh? [Eh? - the Readership]
Still, monkey brains and
robot
arms: two great tastes that taste of, um, press release:
Rhesus monkeys have been taught to control a robot arm using brain
signals alone.
Researchers at Duke University Medical Center in North Carolina said
the animals appeared to operate the robot arm as if it were their own
limb.
Actually the Internet was only really involved in the
2000 edition of the story, back when the Internet was still hip:
"It was an amazing sight to see the robot in my lab move, knowing that
it was being driven by signals from a monkey brain at Duke," said
Touch Lab director and co-researcher Mandayam Srinivasan. "It was as
if the monkey had a 600-mile- (950-km-) long virtual arm."
(Or more like a digitalised signal can travel over a digital network,
but that was news to many persons in 2000.)
A shout-out to our monkey-minded
friends is also included in this .pdf-full of brainy goodness, but
we refer you to our own archives (because this is what they are for)
for the churlish recalcitrance of
paralysed patients:
"They say, 'well, I prefer sluggish, slow communication and no hole in
my head,'" he says.
Luckily, Duke's ethical committee has established beyond reasonable
doubt that the more-enlightened monkeys were "well up for it, for
sure."
(Note to Duke's lawyers: this last remark is intended as
satire, and I would not for a second mean to seriously suggest that
your researchers give a toss how the monkeys feel about all this.)
[Linkage from PF and the man they call whatever they
like since he has, after all, No-Sword]
[Permalink]
2003-10-14 14:41
Emmanuel Anati, Director of a centre of prehistoric studies at Capo di
Ponte in Italy has a theory,
which is his, about cave paintings:
Il y a des arch�types dans la nature de l'homme et, quand on les
repr�sente, ils signifient la m�me chose que l'on soit en Australie,
en Am�rique ou en Europe. Une logique de base impose certaines
associations d'id�es qui se r�p�tent dans l'art pr�historique. Cette
hypoth�se �nonc�e il y a quelques ann�es a �t� beaucoup critiqu�e
mais, depuis, beaucoup sont convaincus que j'ai raison. Je livre
aujourd'hui cette th�orie au grand public et je peux d�montrer ce qui
n'�tait qu'une intuition � l'�poque. Il existe des symboles standard
pour le masculin et le f�minin : la branche pour le m�le et les l�vres
pour la femme, c'est un langage universel que l'on trouve
partout. L'utilisation de l'animal en tant qu'image tot�mique de la
tribu est �galement quelque chose d'universel.
[There are archetypes in human nature and their representations mean
the same thing in Australia, America and Europe. A fundamental logic
imposes certain associations of ideas which are repeated in
prehistoric art. This hypothesis has been criticised a lot since I
proposed it several years ago, but since then many persons have become
convinced I'm right. Today I'm bringing that theory to the general
public and I can demonstrate what was no more than an intuition at
that time. There are standard symbols for the masculine and
feminine: a branch for male and lips for female, that's a universel
language that's found everywhere. The use of an animal as a totemic
image for the tribe is universal as well.]
He's got a book out, see. Whether this amounts to more than
Jungianism by assertion remains to be seen. (Officially, at least.)
And proper good old-fashioned cannibalism,
hoorah!:
The family of an English missionary who was eaten by Fijian
tribespeople 136 years ago are to receive an apology.
[...] Reverend Baker was killed and cooked by the people of Tui
Navatusila on 21 July, 1867, after he took a comb out of a chief's
hair.
It is forbidden to touch the head of a chief in Fiji.
Hands up everyone who has made a careful note of this fact. (And who
says the death penalty isn't a deterrent?) Sadly, even if this is
magnificently archetypal, it does not seem to have been generic:
Reverend Baker is the only white man to have fallen victim to Fiji
cannibals.
[Permalink]
2003-10-14 09:51
I'm really quite down with one of those pointless viruses that doesn't
so much incapacitate you as just make you really bad at everything.
I've come in to work largely because I don't pay for the heating here
(and this is not at all my usual motive, thankyouverymuch).
Item: A BBC article on machine
translation which suffers from a severe case of Feature
Journalisme and consequently has all the charm of a concrete meringue.
Item: the DIY Knudella
T-shirt: they'll all be wearing them next year! [Tack to Birgitte
for that one.]
Item: The effects of music on brains:
Students in two Rhode Island elementary schools who were given an
enriched, sequential, skill-building music program showed marked
improvement in reading and math skills. Students in the enriched
program who had started out behind the control group caught up to
statistical equality in reading, and pulled ahead in math. - Gardiner,
Fox, Jeffrey and Knowles, as reported in Nature, May 23, 1996
Etc. The effects of a rich and varied musical diet of skronk (Albert
Ayler, Cecil Taylor, Ornette Coleman), noisenik chic (The Stooges, The
Velvet Underground, My Bloody Valentine) and occasional outbreaks of
Western Art Music (Purcell, Bach, even Schubert sometimes these days)
on the spiciness of your humble bladeteer's brains have so far not
been conclusively established. What Sisyphean drudgery is science!
Item: Where's the sn�kaos, already?
[Permalink]
2003-10-13 14:43 (UTC+1)
Ah ! La belle pleine Lune,
Grosse comme une fortune !
La retraite sonne au loin,
Un passant, monsieur l'adjoint ;
Un clavecin joue en face,
Un chat traverse la place :
La province qui s'endort !
Plaquant un dernier accord,
Le piano cl�t sa fen�tre.
Quelle heure peut-il bien �tre ?
Calme lune, quel exil !
Faut-il dire : ainsi soit-il ?
Lune, � dilettante lune,
A tous les climats commune,
Tu vis hier le Missouri,
Et les remparts de Paris,
Les fiords bleus de la Norw�ge,
Les p�les, les mers, que sais-je ?
Lune heureuse ! Ainsi tu vois,
A cette heure, le convoi
De son voyage de noce !
Ils sont partis pour l'�cosse.
Quel panneau, si, cet hiver,
Elle e�t pris au mot mes vers !
Lune, vagabonde lune,
Faisons cause et moeurs communes ?
� riches nuits ! Je me meurs,
La province dans le coeur !
Et la lune a, bonne vieille,
Du coton dans les oreilles.
[Jules
Laforgue, bien s�r]
[Permalink]
2003-10-13 14:11
In English:
MARY DONALDSON: It was, wow! Um, the sight looking out over the
balcony was extremely beautiful, the mix of Danish and Australian
flags was a very nice feeling.
Danish persons! When assessing her mad Danish skillz, do you think
you could non-dimensionalise with her articulacy in Ingleesh? Thanks
very.
[And thanks very also to Anna Louise, Austrilian link provider]
[Permalink]
2003-10-13 11:39 (UTC+1)
German qualitybladet Die Zeit (goodness, is that Die Ziet? I have to
go, ho ho) interviews inexplicably sensible French philosopher and
Education Minister
Luc Ferry:
zeit : Une proposition: Sortez l'anglais des langues �trang�res et
mettez-le dans le panier �techniques culturelles� comme les maths ou
la langue maternelle.
Ferry : Je suis d'accord avec votre argument. Il faut consid�rer
l'anglais comme une langue � part. Une possibilit�: On apprend
l'anglais � l'�cole primaire et on passe � deux autres langues dans le
secondaire. Car il serait terrifiant de ne parler entre nous,
Allemands et Fran�ais, que en anglais, et en plus dans un mauvais
anglais.
[zeit: A proposal: take English out of foreign languages and put
in the basket of "cultural skills" like maths or one's native language.
Ferry: I quite agree with your suggestion. English has to be treated
as a special case. One possibility might be to teach English in
primary school and move on to two other languages in secondary
school, because it would be terrible for us, the Germans and French,
not to speak to each other except in English, and what's more in bad
English.]
zeit : Faut-il apprendre de la po�sie par coeur � l'�cole ?
Ferry : Bien sur. Nos enfants apprennent de la po�sie par coeur tous
les jours. Et cela � partir de trois ans : en maternelle on commence
par des comptines. Je trouve cela tr�s heureux..
[zeit: Is it necessary to learn poetry by heart at school?
Ferry: Certainly. Our childrens learn poetry by heart on a daily
basis. And that starts from the age of three: in nursery school it
begins with nursery rhymes. I think that's a good thing.
The thing just drips with quotes, dammit. Let's assume PISA is some
Europe-wide edumicationalism assessmenting:
zeit : Dans l'�tude PISA la France fait meilleur figure que
l'Allemagne. Certains disent: Gr�ce � votre syst�me de
Ganztagesschule.
Ferry : Pisa est tr�s vexant pour la France comme pour l'Allemagne.
On est un peu devant l'Allemagne, mais en v�rit� nous sommes tous au
milieu de la classe europ�enne. Or, au 18�me et 19�me si�cles, nos
deux pays �taient les plus brillants sur le plan des syst�mes
�ducatifs. Aujourd'hui, nous deux sont loin derri�re la Finlande. Je
n'ai �videmment rien contre la Finlande. Mais comme philosophe je dois
admettre que la philosophie allemande m'impressionne toujours plus que
la philosophie finlandaise. Il y a l� une grande d�ception.
[zeit: France did better than Germany in the PISA study. Some say
this is due to your system of Ganztagesschule.
Ferry: Pisa was very annoying for France as well as Germany. We may
be a bit a head of Germany but in fact in Europe as a whole we're both
in the middle of the table. Now, in the 18th and 19th centuries our
two countries had the most briliant educational systems. Today we're
both a long way behind Finland. I've nothing against Finland, of
course, but as a philosopher I have to admit that I'm more impressed
with German philosophy than Finnish philosophy. That's very
disappointing.]
And there's plenty more. An absolute must read, if you can...
[tip off from the Fistful of
Euros which linked the German version if you'd rather]
[Permalink]
2003-10-13 10:42
On Sunday, I was in the early stages of coming down with something and
walking along the road I started thinking in Swedish rather than
English, which is of course neither my habit nor my custom.
And all at once I understood how it is that childrens can sustain the
rate of vocabulation which is the hallmark of their linguistic
experience (you know the sort of thing: if each word weighed as much
as a penny and you had to fit them all into a head the size of a head
then after a few years one spoonful of the resulting mixture would
stretch to the moon and back three times! Something like
that, anyway): it's because IT'S INCREDIBLY ANNOYING to be stuck inside
a head talking to itself in a language where there aren't any words
for any of the things it wants to say.
This is my theory, which is mine.
[Permalink]
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