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April 28, 2005
monster raving loony apoa
Yes, Apoa is representing the Monster Raving Loony Party in her school’s mock election (canvassing rather than standing as a candidate). She just watched the whole of the Question Time Special (no school tomorrow cos of a training day). Kiloh watched a bit of it too, but she does have school tomorrow so she was in bed before the vampire came on. It’s interesting to watch the girls begin to get interested in politics and think things through for themselves.
I’m still not sure exactly what I’ll do next week. Obviously, Howard and the Tories would be a nightmare, but can I really do the nosepeg thing? The bad bits of Labour are so bad I don’t think I can do it. On the other hand, I do think they’ve done some good. But is ‘we know we’re awful but these guys are worse’ really enough to convince me to vote for them? On the other other hand, as Joe E. Brown so famously put it, ‘nobody’s perfect!’ I’m thinking more and more I should just vote for something that doesn’t turn my stomach (that would be Green or LibDem) and see what happens. It’s interesting that the more Labour try to argue their case the less I want to vote for them.
B-}
Posted by Billy at 10:27 PM | Comments (0)
clearance
Kiloh’s been reading this blog. She’s asked me to check with her from now on whenever I’m going to post about her.
B-)
Whoops! Forgot to check about this one!
Posted by Billy at 3:06 PM | Comments (0)
April 27, 2005
pictures
Dug’s got Ohna a flickr account so we’ll soon be posting loads of pics there. Just put a few up just now to get started.
Meanwhile there are two loads from around Easter on my mac homepages:
(Dug, there are some Clemmies there, including ‘Spiderclemmie’!)
B-)
Posted by Billy at 10:32 PM | Comments (0)
paper thrower
Extract from Kiloh’s email to Ohna today:
> hi
> its so unfair i got sent out of class(first time in the whole of
> primary)
> today for THROWING PAPER!!!!!
She’s not known for this kind of thing so I guess we can let her off with one misdemeanour.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 10:24 PM | Comments (0)
April 25, 2005
Sister rules
The BBC doesn’t mention it (too busy blowing off about the ones they won). And Ohna’s not going on about it. So I guess it’s up me.
The short film Ohna produced won a Welsh BAFTA on Saturday.
I’d point you to the page in Welsh but I don’t know enough Welsh to find it.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 1:34 PM | Comments (0)
April 24, 2005
justifying the licence fee
Can’t believe they got to broadcast this story making an analogy between Tony Blair and evil aliens trying to destroy the planet (‘aliens have incredible superweapons … capable of deployment in 45 seconds … weapons of mass destruction … UN needs to grant us the power to use nukes… etc.’) during the election campaign. I suppose they’re counting on how stupid Tony would look if he kicked up a fuss about Dr. Who ;-)
Great to see Penelope Wilton in it too B-)
Posted by Billy at 7:53 PM | Comments (0)
whale's tails and princesses
Today I should have helped Ohna and Apoa sort out some of the mess in the spare room and I should have helped our local Woodcraft Folk sort out the camping equipment in the store. But I’ve done my neck in (probably partly to do with the bus trip to Oxford yesterday) so now I’m damaging my neck doing a pile of marking and listening to itunes shuffling around. The joy of ‘shuffle’ is of course the stuff you forgot you had. The Cocteau Twins singing Whale’s Tails was the highlight so far, but they’ve just been topped by Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret’s ‘A Broadcast Message To Children’ which they recorded during World War Two and you can hear on the British Library’s The Century In Sound. Very spooky to suddenly hear this very posh child’s voice from a whole other world.
I recommend the bus as a way of getting to Oxford, btw. A quick cycle down to Baker Street, the bike goes in the boot and you can fall asleep listening to David Bowie performing live and doing your neck in until you arrive, wake up and get cycling.
It was really nice to see Robbie and cycle round the pubs of Oxford with him. He needs to find some mates, though, and some artistic inspiration. Any friendly humans in Oxford?
B-)
PS Seminar task: spot the syntactic ambiguity in this post ;-)
Posted by Billy at 4:57 PM | Comments (4)
surprising sounds: whale's tails and princesses
Today I should have helped Ohna and Apoa sort out some of the mess in the spare room and I should have helped our local Woodcraft Folk sort out the camping equipment in the store. But I’ve done my neck in (probably partly to do with the bus trip to Oxford yesterday) so now I’m damaging my neck doing a pile of marking and listening to itunes shuffling around. The joy of ‘shuffle’ is of course the stuff you forgot you had. The Cocteau Twins singing Whale’s Tails was the highlight so far, but they’ve just been topped by Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret’s ‘A Broadcast Message To Children’ which they recorded during World War Two and you can hear on the British Library’s The Century In Sound. Very spooky to suddenly hear this very posh child’s voice from a whole other world.
I recommend the bus as a way of getting to Oxford, btw. A quick cycle down to Baker Street, the bike goes in the boot and you can fall asleep listening to David Bowie performing live and doing your neck in until you arrive, wake up and get cycling.
It was really nice to see Robbie and cycle round the pubs of Oxford with him. He needs to find some mates, though, and some artistic inspiration. Any friendly humans in Oxford?
B-)
Posted by Billy at 4:51 PM | Comments (0)
April 23, 2005
reader
I was shocked at 1am last night to peek in on Apoa and find she was still reading three hours after we’d said good night. She’s still in bed now, though, which is good. Off to Oxford to see Robbie now (I’ve practically finished the validation document and have at least sent on the important bits, so I can do this with a bit less guilt than I would have otherwise).
B-)
Posted by Billy at 10:02 AM | Comments (0)
April 22, 2005
a very long engagement
Ages ago Jed sent Ohna the piece on A Very Long Engagement from American Cinematographer. He wrote ‘Go see!’ at the bottom of every page.
After Robbie gave it the double thumbs-up (‘best film I’ve seen in ages!’) we finally managed it on Thursday. We were both tired and wanted to spend some time together so we weren’t sure if a movie was the right thing, but it was great and just the right movie to see at that time - we even managed to stay awake long enough for a bite and a chat afterwards. Jeunet is very comic-booky which is only one reason why you’d expect Jed and Robbie to like the movie. The pacing was less frenetic and the storytelling a bit less gimmicky than Amélie but it was also a ‘fabuleux destin’. This one was both a fairytale and also to do with real things (such as World War One). It was fascinating to read about it from a technical point of view (mainly Bruno Delbonnel the cinematographer’s) in American Cinematographer, with details of lenses and colour mixing and testing to see which lenses would work with Audrey Tautou’s face, given that Jeunet wanted lots of wide-angle close-ups with a slight tilt:
We saw that her face worked well with the 25mm and the 27mm. The 21mm still works for her, but you have to be careful; the 18mm doesn’t work, nor does the 35mm.
I was particularly impressed with the 460-square-foot frame, with lights attached, that they suspended from a 70-ton crane above the trenches to block out the sun. The frame could also be tilted to change its orientation. Quite a contrast from some of Ohna’s low-budget affairs, and of course totally pointless if the story’s no good…
And then there was all the detail about the ‘naked’ camera with a foam cushion on the side so that offscreen actors could be really close to help the onscreen ones. And on and on…
Also interesting to hear him talk about how definitely he wanted it all not to be realistic (‘Realism doesn’t interest me! I strive for an unrealistic approach’) but also didn’t want the scenes in the trenches to be too beautiful to depict the horrors of war.
I could go on…
B-)
Posted by Billy at 10:34 PM | Comments (0)
April 21, 2005
new language
This is about a PhD student who earned $2,000 when he was commissioned to invent a new language. (Free registration needed to read it).
B-)
Posted by Billy at 1:55 PM | Comments (0)
the earlies
I’ve remembered.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 12:55 PM | Comments (0)
mystery music
Switched the CD in my walkman this morning (ipod broken) and am now listening to whatever I changed it to. It’s great but I can’t remember who it is.
B-)
(So far I have avoided the validation paperwork with a combo of emails and the work they generated and, rather inventively, sticking stickers on books to make sure they move to our new campus in the summer and don’t end up in a library book sale. Will get down to it in a sec. Honest)
Posted by Billy at 12:47 PM | Comments (0)
work and play
Good morning. I’ve got a few things to say today but I guess I’d better get this blooming validation paperwork done first, not to mention the other things that are queuing up at the door.
B-)
NB The queuing bit is a metaphor. The things are things and not people. The only things outside my door are books on the bookcrossing shelf.
Posted by Billy at 10:35 AM | Comments (0)
April 20, 2005
habemus linguam?
Language Log always has a load of interesting stuff on it.
Bill Poser just posted an interesting discussion of the syntactic ambiguity of Quebec English Teachers and a most unnatural intended interpretation, and Geoff Pullum’s post Habemus Linguam? uses yesterday’s communication from the Sistine Chapel to make a point about the definition of linguistics. The sentence from Syntactic Structures that puzzled Pullum in his early days is:
From now on I will consider a ‘language’ to be a set (finite or infinite) of sentences, each finite in length and constructed out of a finite set of elements.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 5:04 PM | Comments (0)
you say 'papam'...
OK. I know. I’m sorry. The cardinal who delivered the news pronounced the second ‘a’ fully but the reporters both used a schwa. I thought I did well to get the ‘habemus’ bit right…
B-(
Posted by Billy at 1:24 PM | Comments (0)
April 19, 2005
you say 'papum'...
According to a reporter on radio 5, we’re about to hear someone say ‘habemus papum’. But the next reporter said he’d say ‘habemus papum’. The first one said ‘pay-pum’, the second said ‘pah-pum’. That’s what happens when you speak a dead language (it happens with live ones too, of course).
B-)
Posted by Billy at 4:59 PM | Comments (0)
London Language
London Language - Middlesex language blog
Well, we’ve just launched a blog for students of Communication and English Language at Middlesex. Marta has posted the first message - she’s looking for help with her nonverbal communication project.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 4:40 PM | Comments (0)
obtenez derrière moi satan
‘I LOVE computers’ Kiloh said to me last night. The kids are getting more and more computey. There was much excitement this morning when we downloaded the new White Stripes single, which is as immediate as ever. The kids think ‘Get Behind Me Satan’ is a great name for the album.
A question: do you think it’s appropriate to use babelfish when doing your French homework?
B-)
PS I’m not French but do you think that ‘obtenez derrière moi satan’ is a bit unidiomatic?
Posted by Billy at 11:57 AM | Comments (1)
April 15, 2005
civilisation
Went to bed at around 10 o’clock last night. This is early for me. I was drained after spending the morning at a rather charged meeting and then heading straight off to Cambridge for a conference.
I had to miss the first day of the conference because of the meeting but I had a nice evening cycling around looking at cows and popping into an overheated internet cafe where I bumped into Mai who had had the same idea. I’ve just left the conference room because I missed the speaker’s handout and he’s talking too fast for me to follow it. I then asked a couple of people and discovered that they have a room here with computers just for us to use.
It’s all very civilised here. I made a joke about auditors to an academic downstairs and he said ‘what are auditors?’ (Maybe only academics will know why the next sentence might begin ‘Picking myself off the floor, …’). I also enjoy all the College stuff. Having breakfast in a big dark hall (candles are the only illumination on offer) and trying to get a proper view of the portraits (some top quality stuff), and I must make sure I stay up late tonight just so I can come in the night way (through a tiny door in the back garden, into the back of a building, out the front of it, and then along the terrace to our place).
I’m now very excited because I’ve been looking at this book on Grice longingly since it came out, not being able to afford it and not wanting to wait until the library finally gets it, and it was on special offer here for conference attendees (half price). Now I don’t know whether to wait until I’ve polished off The Inheritors before getting into it.
The Inheritors is looking good, although I just started last night. Two days after Tim persuaded me I had to read it, Sylvia deposited it on the book crossing shelf outside my office. Tim is here and tells me he’s also persuaded himself to reread it. We looked at in class the other day, doing a bit of Hallidayan analysis on it. It seemed appropriate, since Halliday’s paper on it is a stylistics classic. The class was fun and, for me at least, the exercise demonstrated Hallidayan analysis, showed how it’s useful for stylistics, revealed some of the style of the book, and made me want to read more.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 1:18 PM | Comments (0)
April 13, 2005
gerunding gone mad
International Herald Tribune - The World Is Englishing
Just got this link from LINGUIST
I especially like the bit at the end about Spanish people having to coin the term ‘bullying’ because ‘we’ve never needed a word for that before in Spain’
B-)
Posted by Billy at 9:45 AM | Comments (2)
'love the wardrobe, darling'
After confusing Mai and Hanna with the mad king’s doctors, I just saw another nice syntactic ambiguity: ‘Patient Transport Service’ on the side of an ambulance-like van. Reminded me of the classic ‘theatrical removals’ truck.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 9:37 AM | Comments (1)
April 12, 2005
'Grandma, when is the world going to end?'
This was a question Kirstin asked Elma in the car the other day. I collected a few other nice bits of linguistic data today:
Daddy, you should be finished your class by now!
(A pouty voicemail from Kiloh at 4.37pm, with a dramatic pause between each word - class finished at 5pm)
PAEDIATRICS - Please remember gonad protection. This is a legal requirement
(Sign behind the screen when Apoa was getting her arm x-rayed. The diagrams were also cool, one with flesh and one with bones)
The other was Apoa’s bewildered silence when the doctor asked her, ‘How can I help you?’ I thought it was because she was used to doctors talking to me rather than her, but she said it was because she didn’t expect to be asked how the doctor could help. She says next time she’ll just say, ‘cream, painkillers and an x-ray please!’ ;-)
You’ll have gathered that I did have to take Apoa to the doctor and then an x-ray today. Bad choice of day. The doctor was very busy and the x-ray department was busy and had some broken machinery. The receptionist explained there’d be at least an hour of a wait and asked us to take a seat, pointing to a waiting area with no unoccupied seats. The floor was fine, though. There’s no fracture so it’s just a case of waiting for it to feel better. Meanwhile no PE or guitar or anything.
Missed my office hours this morning and ended up over half an hour late for my class (I did warn them, though). The topic today was grammar in schools so we looked at Debbie Cameron’s discussion in Verbal Hygiene of the conservative obsession with grammar and standards in the 1980s. So, of course, we had to talk about Mistress Chloe
B-)
Posted by Billy at 5:50 PM | Comments (0)
April 11, 2005
shopping and cycling
Big day of shopping yesterday. I had two things on my list - shoelaces and photos to develop - and, after trailing round Oxford Street and Covent garden all day, I managed to come home having accomplished neither of them. We had a good day, though. The town wasn’t too crowded but the kids did get bored of being constantly flattened by people in a hurry. We managed to buy some nice clothes and the birthday presents that were needed, as well as spending some of the girls’ christmas credit at HMV and Claire’s Accessories, before going for a lovely meal in Carluccio’s on the way home. Got home too late, though, with one girl (Apoa) suffering serious tummyache.
Apoa was surprised yesterday morning by the delivery of her new bike so we arranged to go out cycling with the kids and some of their pals this afternoon. Tragically, though, Apoa hurt her arm landing badly off the trapeze this morning, so she and Jessie walked to the park instead. She had a hard time getting to sleep tonight so I might be going to the doctor’s instead of my first year class tomorrow morning. I feel bad about the students but i don’t want to repeat my mistake with Kiloh when she broke her arm and it took me 10 days before I thought of taking her to the doctor (I even forced her through a swimming lesson with an arm she couldn’t straighten out properly - bad dad!)
B-(
Posted by Billy at 12:59 AM | Comments (0)
a new analogy
The guy in the bike shop offered a new analogy instead of the one about the axe with the changing handle and blade, which was pop groups like The Cure who have had loads of changes of personnel but people constantly remaining fans. I’d have thought The Fall would be a better analogy, since they’ve had about a million members and even had their line-up change during a gig. I had the incredible experience once of seeing my brother appear as their lead singer at the start of their set at Dingwall’s. The linguists I was with thought I was joking when I got excited and told them that was my brother. One of our au pairs was in a band in Sweden who had an open membership policy. Anyone who wanted to be was in the band whether or not they ever actually performed with them.
B-)
PS I feel very positively about the shop who fixed my bike, so I think I won’t mention to them that they put my tyre on back to front B-}
Posted by Billy at 12:45 AM | Comments (0)
April 8, 2005
don't look back/forward
This summer, Middlesex is closing its Tottenham campus and a load of us are moving to Trent Park, which is where I was based when I first came here. So today I left Mark fixing the flood and leak (he was there working on a bunch of things including our still malfunctioning and now electrically dangerous central heating system when a huge amount of water fell into the hall having slowly built up from a leak in a heating pipe under the landing (the water had risen to just below floorboard level before it came through)) and Apoa and Rachel on their way to the swimming pool (are your linguistic processing modules still with me?) and travelled by train and tube up to Oakwood and on to my former workplace (the bike is still in the shop after a bit of confusion about a wheel yesterday*).
It’s weird coming back. I started by standing at the wrong place waiting for the minibus up from the tube station to the campus and since then I’ve been bumping into lots of people whose names I used to know and wondering whether or not to reintroduce myself. I’m sitting now in a large open-plan computer centre which includes what used to be my office and I’m also more or less underneath what will be my shared cupboard after September. Trent Park is a lovely campus in a country park that has a lot of history (George III used to visit here, the Sassoon family owned it at the start of the twentieth century, it was a POW camp for German officers during WWII, etc.), lovely views and great walks and cycle trails. Still, I’ve always liked Tottenham, which is more ‘street’ and has buildings named after Jimi Hendrix, Jenny Seacole and Toussaint L’Ouverture rather than mad king’s doctors (forgive the syntactic ambiguity) and things.
I came for an open day and spent it meeting some really nice potential students and staff (although I’m now being made nervous by the student next to me whose mouse keeps getting too close to my left hand). I particularly enjoyed chatting to my History and English colleagues about Leavis and the legendary William Empson scandal of the condoms.
B-)
*I sent it in for a service and spoke repair. I’m collecting it later today with a new chain, cassette, rear wheel and saddle. The holdup was because I told the guy working on it I had a spare wheel in the shed, only to find out too late that it was a front wheel rather than a rear one. Soon my bike will be like the axe that’s had its handle and blade changed several times but has been in the family for generations.
Posted by Billy at 4:20 PM | Comments (4)
April 7, 2005
the sounds of silence
Hey, apathetic non-voters. Here’s your chance to let someone hear your silence.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 10:58 AM | Comments (0)
April 6, 2005
'Labour's unthinking opposition'
Guardian Unlimited | Columnists | Labour’s unthinking opposition
I agree with David Aaronovitch’s criticism of the ‘prejudice, cynicism and lack of political nous’ of some people who oppose Tony Blair. It seems that humans are designed to like broad conclusions and over-strong generalisations, and to hold conclusions strongly without fully exploring all of the relevant evidence. This applies as much to academics as anyone else, even though one of the main aims of their work is to practice and teach careful analysis of arguments. (There will undoubtedly be some academics who disagree with this but, by definition, not in such a way that I could enter into an argument with them).
I think this will be an interesting election because the electorate is more aware than ever of things they don’t like about the various voting options. I live in a fairly sheltered part of North London so I don’t have much contact with the real world where there are people who are worried about immigration, who supported the war in Iraq, and even some who would ever consider voting Tory (I remember how the neighbours all pitied young Toby, the Tory candidate in our last local elections who was dutifully working the doorsteps asking everyone to confirm that they wouldn’t be voting for him). The people I meet are quite unsure what to do in the election. There’s definitely unhappiness with Labour, particularly to do with the war, but people don’t seem too sure what they do want to do with their vote and they’d definitely hate to see the Tories get in.
Of course, there’s also a general feeling of powerlessness associated with not being in the small group of voters who will really decide the outcome. I guess that’s one thing that my world does share with the majority of the country.
Despite their shortcomings, I do see that Labour are far preferable to the Tories. The main thing that annoys me about them is still the war and the way they defend their decision to join in (mainly by pretending that anti-war people are pro-Saddam and anti-ever-doing-anything-about-it).
Locally, our MP is Barbara Roche. I know a lot of the ‘literary dinner-party’ people David Aaronovitch mentioned will be quite negative about her, but I do think she does a good job for people here (and not just because she has been supportive of The Lecture List). We see plenty of her in school and elsewhere, and she did get the graffiti off of Andrew’s wall for him.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 8:14 AM | Comments (0)
April 5, 2005
devon
We had a great Easter time in Devon with Clemmie and her extended family. Clemmie’s approaching her third birthday now and her egg-hunting skills have really come on. Her linguistic abilities are also amazing - she’s now firmly in the stage which Steven Pinker describes as ‘all hell breaks loose’ and never stops speaking. She loved her day out at the fun park - a context where grownups just say yes to everything you ask to do! Although I think Swinging Queen Bess was one ride too far.
The other kids had a great time too. Highlights for me included the fishermen silhouetted in the moonlight on Easter Saturday, Oisin racing ahead and getting lost on our walk along the cliffs (that’s a loose use of ‘highlight’, you understand) and the Sunday pub visit with a really enjoyable walk there and back. Apoa and Kiloh took 80 photos on the walk to the pub. Thank god for digitisation!
B-)
Posted by Billy at 10:42 PM | Comments (0)
special providence
Three posts in a row! Or is it four? Anyway, I’m very much enjoying cycling home in the daylight these days and with less clothing. I’ve found recently that the only way I can be allowed to spend time vegging on the sofa watching things like supersize me (last night - great fun, and yes, we did accompany it with some junk food - interesting to see the themes shared with Jamie’s School Dinners, the third time that he’s provided our most must-see TV, we realised) with Ohna is if I stay fairly late at work, which has meant it’s been dark on the way home rather a lot recently. So it’s great that the clocks have changed and now I cycle home through the park in daylight listening to loads of birds. And today i saw a sparrow (a rare sight in London these days).
B-)
Posted by Billy at 7:47 PM | Comments (0)
computer youth
We’ve reached the stage now where, when I sit at my computer working on my homework, either Apoa or Kiloh is sitting next to me working on theirs. Which is cool. At home, I’m in the soppy mac world while they’re masters of the PC universe.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 7:40 PM | Comments (0)
musical youth
Apoa’s new school is in Enfield which means she had her Easter break a week later than everyone else and is still off this week. The Harringay kids had a training day yesterday so they all spent the day composing songs and filming pop promos. They’ve been working on the music constantly since then. The band they’ve formed is called ‘The Neighbours’.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 7:37 PM | Comments (0)
april fools
Some nice linguistic data in this april fool I was pointed to by dug
We managed quite a few on the day itself, as well as one that grandma wasn’t going to fall for not no way,
B-)
Posted by Billy at 7:21 PM | Comments (0)