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| Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 |
jemck
|
9:08a |
From today's article in The Guardian,(where NBA means Net Book Agreement and nothing to do with basketball, for our American cousins) But surely the NBA was a constraint on free trade that meant we had to pay artificially inflated prices for books? One reason for the NBA's existence given by the Restrictive Practices Court, when it analysed the agreement in 1962 was that it enabled publishers to subsidise the printing of the works of important but less popular authors by using money from bestsellers. Today, the worry is that the demise of the NBA has meant there is no new generation of British literary talent to follow the likes of Martin Amis, Julian Barnes and Ian McEwan.
"There's been a slow bonfire of literary authors in the last 18 months," says Hamilton. "Publishers are sending out to pasture established literary novelists because they realise they aren't going to be sold by the chains. The complaint now from publishers is that most of their quality books hardly get a look in at all. In the past, sales for many literary novels were never very high, but now publishers are cutting down on their lists in desperation."
Hamilton cites the example of the crime novelist Ian Rankin: "Rankin was selling nothing at all for the first few novels he wrote, but publishers knew he would take off and so they kept with him. The opportunity isn't there to do that any more because sales are so low that you lose too much money initially, even if you make money later. That old, very successful business model doesn't make sense any more. Thanks to the prevailing way in which books are sold there would be no new Rankin." Like I said... Only - I would draw your attention to this notion of a bonfire of 'literary authors'. Actually, I reckon we stand more chance of seeing another Ian Rankin than we do another Martin Amis. Genre readers (and agents, and editors) are more dedicated, more loyal and more inclined to still be looking for new authors, with their choices not so driven by discounts, because they're not so prevalent on our shelves - that's crime, SF&F and to some extent, romance. And we in SF&F have the convention circuit which is an invaluable resource unparalled in other genres. So all of you fantasy fans out there - buying and reading books and organising events - are doing just as much as we writerly types to keep our genre vibrant and healthy. Thanks, one and all. Oh, and if anyone's really interested in the full judgement on the NBA, from the Restrictive Practices Court in 1962, I happen to have a copy of it, thanks to the good offices of ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) slovobooks. It's called 'Books are Different' and makes for fascinating reading. |
oursin
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8:22a |
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| Monday, November 9th, 2009 |
nineweaving
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8:18p |
"You go about the school so exactly like Minerva!"
Off being an Angel in the House, so I've loaded up the iPod with Edwardotorian light reading—it makes a spiffy torch for those secret passages!—and I've been flicking my way through golden-age Angela Brazil, up to 1922. Of course, I'd much rather have the books—nice, chubby, fluffy things with cocoa stains and awfully jolly plates—but the pixels will have to do. Heaven knows, I'd hate to wake up in a girls' school, but the stories are utterly comforting, smooth and sweet: like bowls full of floating island. Even the titles make me smile: The Madcap of the School, The Jolliest Term on Record. They're all the same and all different—seaside schools, moorland schools, Georgian halls, dissolved abbeys with optional ghosts; shy girls, snobs, hoydens, madcaps, malaperts, twenty girls or two hundred. Mind you, Brazil can't plot for toffee, but she knows fourteen. There are misunderstandings, meannesses, masquerades, undying crushes, ghosts which aren't, and the occasional uprising in the Fourth. (She has rather a pash for gipsyish brunettes.) There are censorious or adulated mistresses; there is frolicking with garlands on the lawn, in Attic attitudes. There is real landscape, done in watercolor—and not only English. Much to my surprise, there are jaunts to Sicily. She must have visited and fallen madly in love, pressing flowers, taking note of the picturesque: "You can always tell a brigand because he never carries an umbrella." So, what featherweight reading do you like? Nine |
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pepysdiary
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11:00p |
Friday 9 November 1666
http://www.pepysdiary.com/archive/1666/11/09/ Up and to the office, where did a good deale of business, and then at noon to the Exchange and to my little goldsmith's, whose wife is very pretty and modest, that ever I saw any. Upon the 'Change, where I seldom have of late been, I find all people mightily at a losse what to expect, but confusion and fears in every man's head and heart. Whether war or peace, all fear the event will be bad. Thence home and with my brother to dinner, my wife being dressing herself against night; after dinner I to my closett all the afternoon, till the porter brought my vest back from the taylor's, and then to dress myself very fine, about 4 or 5 o'clock, and by that time comes Mr. Batelier and Mercer, and away by coach to Mrs. Pierces, by appointment, where we find good company: a fair lady, my Lady Prettyman, Mrs. Corbet, Knipp; and for men, Captain Downing, Mr. Lloyd, Sir W. Coventry's clerk, and one Mr. Tripp, who dances well. After some trifling discourse, we to dancing, and very good sport, and mightily pleased I was with the company. After our first bout of dancing, Knipp and I to sing, and Mercer and Captain Downing (who loves and understands musique) would by all means have my song of "Beauty, retire." which Knipp had spread abroad; and he extols it above any thing he ever heard, and, without flattery, I know it is good in its kind. This being done and going to dance again, comes news that White Hall was on fire; and presently more particulars, that the Horse-guard was on fire;1 and so we run up to the garret, and find it so; a horrid great fire; and by and by we saw and heard part of it blown up with powder. The ladies begun presently to be afeard: one fell into fits. The whole town in an alarme. Drums beat and trumpets, and the guards every where spread, running up and down in the street. And I begun to have mighty apprehensions how things might be at home, and so was in mighty pain to get home, and that that encreased all is that we are in expectation, from common fame, this night, or to-morrow, to have a massacre, by the having so many fires one after another, as that in the City, and at same time begun in Westminster, by the Palace, but put out; and since in Southwarke, to the burning down some houses; and now this do make all people conclude there is something extraordinary in it; but nobody knows what. By and by comes news that the fire has slackened; so then we were a little cheered up again, and to supper, and pretty merry. But, above all, there comes in the dumb boy that I knew in Oliver's time, who is mightily acquainted here, and with Downing; and he made strange signs of the fire, and how the King was abroad, and many things they understood, but I could not, which I wondering at, and discoursing with Downing about it, "Why," says he, "it is only a little use, and you will understand him, and make him understand you with as much ease as may be." So I prayed him to tell him that I was afeard that my coach would be gone, and that he should go down and steal one of the seats out of the coach and keep it, and that would make the coachman to stay. He did this, so that the dumb boy did go down, and, like a cunning rogue, went into the coach, pretending to sleep; and, by and by, fell to his work, but finds the seats nailed to the coach. So he did all he could, but could not do it; however, stayed there, and stayed the coach till the coachman's patience was quite spent, and beat the dumb boy by force, and so went away. So the dumb boy come up and told him all the story, which they below did see all that passed, and knew it to be true. After supper, another dance or two, and then newes that the fire is as great as ever, which put us all to our wit's-end; and I mightily [anxious] to go home, but the coach being gone, and it being about ten at night, and rainy dirty weather, I knew not what to do; but to walk out with Mr. Batelier, myself resolving to go home on foot, and leave the women there. And so did; but at the Savoy got a coach, and come back and took up the women; and so, having, by people come from the fire, understood that the fire was overcome, and all well, we merrily parted, and home. Stopped by several guards and constables quite through the town, round the wall, as we went, all being in armes. We got well home ... Being come home, we to cards, till two in the morning, and drinking lamb's-wool. So to bed.
- "Nov. 9th. Between seven and eight at night, there happened a fire in the Horse Guard House, in the Tilt Yard, over against Whitehall, which at first arising, it is supposed, from some snuff of a candle falling amongst the straw, broke out with so sudden a flame, that at once it seized the north-west part of that building; but being so close under His Majesty's own eye, it was, by the timely help His Majesty and His Royal Highness caused to be applied, immediately stopped, and by ten o'clock wholly mastered, with the loss only of that part of the building it had at first seized." -- The London Gazette, No. 103. -- B. ↩
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oursin
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9:50p |
Poets, rats sorry voles, Paraguay's heroine, parasite self-sufficiency and Germaine does Marcel
Another poetic kerfuffle, this time author of book in which Andrew Motion discovered the lines he turned into a 'found poem' on World War I objects. Motion comes over as a bit of an up-himself prat, but I already codslapped him last week.
Ratty making a comeback to the riverbank, bless.
Revisionism of woman-blaming: Eliza Lynch was depicted by Brazil as a warmongering manipulator after South America's bloodiest war. Irish authors present a more sympathetic account:
Lynch was an unlikely interloper into South American history. Born into modest means in Cork in 1833, aged 16, she married a French army surgeon, Xavier Quatrefages. The marriage failed and four years later in Paris she caught the eye of López, who was buying arms for his father, the dictator of Paraguay. He took her back to Asuncíon where she bore him seven children, though they never married. Local elites mimicked the arrival's Parisian style, but snubbed her as a courtesan.
López inherited power in 1862 and two years later launched the so-called war of the triple alliance against Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay. As the tide turned against him López, paranoid and possibly insane, purged followers in death tribunals known as altars of blood.
Lynch remained steadfast and buried her lover with her bare hands in 1870 after Brazilian troops speared him to death. Yet another article about someone who spent a year living 'without money' but rather dependent on a) having already purchased various things and b) other people having, at some point, spent it on something they then got rid of.
I am still not sure what exactly the point is she's getting at here. Except a certain having it both ways of both saying that Proust is not worth reading and being molto pedantico about the various translations.
On Margate Sands, reprised: the very shelter itself
This entry was originally posted at http://oursin.dreamwidth.org/1127329.html. Please comment there using OpenID. View  comments. |
oursin
|
8:22p |
Who do you want beside you down those mean ol' streets?
Have recently been re-reading in vaguely addictive way various of Robert B Parker's Spenser thrillers - sometimes fast and formulaic does that, even if, taken en masse, these are really rather annoying in rather a lot of ways. To the point where I was thinking that if I were to be in a pickle of a predicament, I'd much prefer the services of Travis McGee (which I am probably only not re-reading because I have already read them so many times) - esepcially as at my years, the therapeutic shagging would probably not be obligatory (though I seem to recall that there were one or two scenarios involving older women, here and there in the colourful spectrum). He is so much less up himself than Spenser.
Which led me to think, if one was in a pickle of a predicament, who would one really like to be on the case and fighting one's corner, out of all the possible fictional hawkshaws?
Okay, there are some predicaments where the cerebral and sedentary capacities of a Miss Marple or a Hilary Tamar or a Gregor Demarkian might be entirely what was needed, but supposing one needed someone with a bit more in the action department? (And excluding those sleuths whose method is to bumble around more or less until a process of elimination reveals the murderer.)
Top of my list would be Modesty Blaise and Willie Garvin.
V I Warshawski.
Sharon McCone.
I am rather off Kinsey Milhone at the moment.
It's some while since I've read Susan Moody's Penny Wanawake thrillers, because I'm not sure how well what seemed like v progressive when they first came out will have worn. But Penny W was a seriously ass-kicking heroine whom one would have appreciated having on one's side in a fix. (Nothing else by Moody was ever as good, at least to my taste, and I found her Secret Garden continuation unreadable.)
Who would you go for? And would brains or brawn be more of a consideration?
This entry was originally posted at http://oursin.dreamwidth.org/1127048.html. Please comment there using OpenID. View  comments. |
desperance
|
6:55p |
Smugging
There are two kinds of people in the world: those who have a warm fresh-baked crusty loaf of sourdough to munch on while they work, and those who don't. *smugs* I thought I'd lost my sourdough-fu for a while there, but apparently I was wrong. This is just gorgeous. (Oddly, tea-towels may be the key: I had tried substituting clingfilm, but that didn't work half as well.) And I, I point out, am a man who has been to San Francisco and sampled the sourdough that is so famous it has a yeast named all for itself, Lactobacillus sanfranciscensis. It's very nice - but for my palate? I think this is better. This is certainly sharper. I think they sweeten the dough in SF, to offset the sour or else to feed the yeast. I name this yeast Lactobacillus novocastriensis, and let dispute with me who will. I have the ferment, and you don't. |
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copyfight
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10:45a |
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eegatland
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3:57p |
why i am not a nanowrimo player
Isn't that an illegible acronym (or whatever it is) without the caps? I thought about NaNoWriMo this time round, because I have a novel bursting out at the pores. But then when I looked up the rules I thot it would be a bit of a cheat to participate, because I already started work on said novel in October. Also, it requires quite a bit of research which will take away from the writing time. Also, I have a child home from school with a cough. Also, glory be, I have got a commission for some work-for-hire (unconnected to said novel) which requires that I must more or less produce a 50,000 word novel this month ANYWAY. But I will get paid for that, so it doesn't count either. Finally, poking around at the sore spot that used to be my Ego, I discovered that actually I find the idea of thousands of participants writing-50,000-words-in-a-month-for-the-s ake-of-writing-50,000-words-in-a-month to be peculiarly distasteful. Nyaaaaaaaaah. I'VE SAID IT AND I'M GLAD. There is enough drivel in the world as it is. (I confess, I am producing quite a lot of it. I don't need encouragement.) |
ozarque
|
7:27a |
Linguistics; ET languages; your comments (4)...
In a comment, maeveenroute asked two questions. First, this one: "What feature would (or did, in your story) make rests qualitatively different?" Here's an edited excerpt from "Honor Is Golden" [ Analog, May 2004] where Oka -- one of the two USCOL linguists sent to analyze the Goldens' language -- is explaining things to the U.S. Senate, in a hearing: ===== The Senator closest to her frowned, and rubbed at his forehead with the palm of his hand. “I don’t get it, Professor,” he said, sounding cross. “All those sounds you’re talking about -- dishes breaking, cats meowing, and so on -- we have those sounds on Earth, right? But we know they’re just noises. How come it doesn’t work that way in -- what did you call it? Oh, yeah -- in Moth. How come it doesn’t work that way in Moth? How could it not work that way? I can’t imagine such a thing!” “That’s exactly the point,” Oka said. “Human beings are hard-wired for human languages. We’re designed neurologically to recognize only certain things and combinations of things as languages, and we’re not able to imagine anything else qualifying. We have a whole universe of sounds around us, just as you say. The first thing we do, faced with all that data, is divide sounds into language and non-language. The next thing we do is divide the sounds that are language into vowels and consonants, and we can’t imagine there being something else that would be part of language. For the Goldens there is something else... that’s part of language in the same way that vowels and consonants are. There may be only one of those alien language-parts or there may be more than one; we have no way of knowing. ... Whatever they are, our brains are able to make the right division between language and nonlanguage -- presumably the reason we can do that much is because Moth is humanoid -- but that’s as far as we can go. Faced with all the sounds that are language on Golden, we can identify the vowels and the consonants, but we’re hopelessly lost with the others. Our brains keep trying, but they can’t do it, they just flounder around. Fortunately, I finally realized that that didn’t matter.” A Senator leaned forward and opened his mouth to speak, but Oka raised her hand to stop him. “Hang on just one minute, please, Senator,” she said. “I’m almost finished. ... You know how in music, when part of the melody is a silence of a certain size and shape, you use a symbol called a ‘rest’ to write that down? I was looking at a piece of music all full of rests, and I suddenly realized that we could handle the sequences of Moth that way. The other parts of the words are unquestionably stable, it’s only those non-vowel/non-consonant segments that human beings perceive as sometimes one thing, sometimes another. So I had the computer replace every last damned one of the mystery sounds with a pound sign -- there wasn’t a rest symbol on my keyboard -- and transcribe all the rest. ...” “But if you do it that way,” asked the Senator she had put on hold before, “then how can you pronounce the words?” “We can’t,” she said. “But it doesn’t matter. We’ll never be able to speak Moth -- it has sounds in it that aren’t possible as part of language for human beings, and we’ll never be able to learn them. But we can use the language to communicate, all the same. You wear your computer, you see, in the usual way, and the computer transcribes Moth as it’s spoken and prints it out for you. ... The same way native speakers of English can easily read written English that has misspellings in it or has coffee spilled on it, native speakers of Moth can read their own language even when it’s full of rests -- full of pound signs. It’s not elegant, and it’s not perfect, but it works.” ===== The second question from maeveenroute was: "What was the reviewer's problem with your rest phoneme? I mean, I just raised a point of clarification, but I can't think of anything serious enough to merit mention in a review, much less any kind of slamming." I don't know the answer to that question because what the reviewer said was just "And Elgin's solution is rests! Well..... duh!" I'm an old lady, but I do know what that means. I'm sorry I can't give you a link to the review; it didn't strike me as something I needed to keep track of. |
desperance
|
12:15p |
AKICOLJ/DW - ropes!
Damn. What's the nautical word for when a cable has snapped and you weave the two broken ends back together again? I know this, damnit, but it has slipped me, and my google-fu is weak today... ETA: thanks, folks. It is, of course, "splice". Too many mainbraces spliced in this house, that's the trouble, my brain has gone to goo... |
desperance
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9:21a |
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jemck
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8:58a |
Brandon Sanderson on Shelf Awareness
For those of you reading The Wheel of Time series - and actually, for those of you who aren't, but are interested in fantasy writers generally - there's an interesting interview over at Shelf Awareness. This particularly caught my eye: "Book that changed your life:
Dragonsbane by Barbara Hambly. I mentioned above that after the third grade people kept giving me books that bored me out of my skull--realistic fiction--and by the eighth grade I was basically not reading. Then I had an English teacher who told me I couldn't do a report on a Three Investigators book and instead pointed me toward Dragonsbane. When I first read it, I was amazed--I had no idea books like that existed. It engaged my imagination like no other book ever had. At that point I started reading every fantasy book I could get my hands on, including Robert Jordan's first Wheel of Time book, The Eye of the World, when it came out in paperback. I was hooked, and as I read more and more books, my grades went up in school--I went from a low-end average student to someone who got top grades. It didn't take reading many fantasy books before I decided writing them was what I wanted to do with my life. I started my first book when I was 15. It was horrible, but I just kept writing and writing until I actually got any good. I've been a writer full-time since 2004, but it would never have happened if not for Mrs. Reeder handing me Dragonsbane." His comment on Harry Potter is thought-provoking too. And of course, The Gathering Storm by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson has just - er - stormed into the New York Times best-sellers at No.1. |
| Sunday, November 8th, 2009 | |
pepysdiary
|
11:00p |
Thursday 8 November 1666
http://www.pepysdiary.com/archive/1666/11/08/ Up, and before I went to the office I spoke with Mr. Martin for his advice about my proceeding in the business of the private man-of-war, he having heretofore served in one of them, and now I have it in my thoughts to send him purser in ours. After this discourse I to the office, where I sat all the morning, Sir W. Coventry with us, where he hath not been a great while, Sir W. Pen also, newly come from the Nore, where he hath been some time fitting of the ships out. At noon home to dinner and then to the office awhile, and so home for my sword, and there find Mercer come to see her mistresse. I was glad to see her there, and my wife mighty kind also, and for my part, much vexed that the jade is not with us still. Left them together, designing to go abroad to-morrow night to Mrs. Pierces to dance; and so I to Westminster Hall, and there met Mr. Grey, who tells me the House is sitting still (and now it was six o'clock), and likely to sit till midnight; and have proceeded fair to give the King his supply presently; and herein have done more to-day than was hoped for. So to White Hall to Sir W. Coventry, and there would fain have carried Captain Cocke's business for his bargain of hemp, but am defeated and disappointed, and know hardly how to carry myself in it between my interest and desire not to offend Sir W. Coventry. Sir W. Coventry did this night tell me how the business is about Sir J. Minnes; that he is to be a Commissioner, and my Lord Bruncker and Sir W. Pen are to be Controller joyntly, which I am very glad of, and better than if they were either of them alone; and do hope truly that the King's business will be better done thereby, and infinitely better than now it is. Thence by coach home, full of thoughts of the consequence of this alteration in our office, and I think no evil to me. So at my office late, and then home to supper and to bed. Mr. Grey did assure me this night, that he was told this day, by one of the greater Ministers of State in England, and one of the King's Cabinet, that we had little left to agree on between the Dutch and us towards a peace, but only the place of treaty; which do astonish me to hear, but I am glad of it, for I fear the consequence of the war. But he says that the King, having all the money he is like to have, we shall be sure of a peace in a little time. |
oursin
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9:38p |
Cooking
Saturday breakfast rolls: malted brown apricot (half and half strong white and wholemeal flour, and possibly somewhat more malt than usual).
Today's lunch: clearsimmered lemon sole fillets with a soy and ginger dipping sauce (this time I remembered to get spring onions - not sure they make that much difference - also, feel that possibly the cooking time could be cut down for fillets rather than whole fish or steaks): served with Thai sticky rice cooked with lime leaves, spinach stirfried with star anise and garlic and a dash of toasted sesame oil in the cooking oil, and broccoli simmered/steamed in coconut milk with Thai shrimp paste and crushed chile.
Did not bake bread as there still seems to be lots.
This entry was originally posted at http://oursin.dreamwidth.org/1126717.html. Please comment there using OpenID. View  comments. |
desperance
|
7:04p |
The melting-point of octopus
Here's a curious thing. When they freeze seafoods - prawns, say, or as in this case baby octopodes - they freeze 'em with a shell of water around each individual fudz. They say this is to keep them separate, and not at all to add cheap weight to the package, no. But. I have noticed, often and often, how they defrost from the inside out: the fudz is soft and ready while the icy shell is still intact. Is this actually as weird as it seems to me? Fizzicks is strange, I know, but this is very counter-intuitive. Also, there may I suppose be a soft and ready novel somewhere inside the frozen shell of this damn book, but damned if I can find it. I have apparently cut a thousand words today, but I wish I'd cut ten thousand. God, but it's bad. How can it be, that a man has written as much as I have and is still crap? Worse yet, getting worse? I didn't use to be this bad, I swear it... |
oursin
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5:17p |
And what is the All we are supposed to want to have?
Aww bless, Kathryn Flett in today's Observer Magazine
[I]nstead of fetishising the glossy-magazine-style props of a "lifestyle"...the proof of a life well lived, of Having Had as much of the mythical All as any of us deserves, will almost certainly be internal, invisible to anybody other than ourselves. WORD. And also bless Barbara Ellen thinking about the Sir Nicholas Winterton groping incident in a wider context of recent harassment cases:
Is this where we are, culturally if not legally: a society automatically dismissive of women who object to chauvinism in their work environment? Are such females perceived as litigant opportunists, all too eager to cry "sexist wolf" when things don't go their way?
Certainly, many women spend their working lives shrugging off sexism. Sometimes it's because they couldn't care less; with others, it's because they fear being labelled "humourless", of "over-reacting". Is this how Engel was positioned – effectively made to feel more uncomfortable about her reaction (lighten up, Natascha!) than Winterton was about his actions?
Therefore, "silly" Winterton was not unrelated. His actions may be on the lighter end of the sliding scale but they are still part of the sexist culture of the workplace – men feeling entitled to behave badly, women having to put up with it. So, in future, keep your hands to yourself, Sir Nicholas. To paraphrase a prominent former female politician, the ladies are not for groping. Possibly Victoria Coren is a bit too sanguine on the matter:
I was sorry to read about the traumas of Moira Cameron, the Tower of London's first female yeoman warder, who was allegedly subjected to a campaign of harassment from long-standing Beefeaters which included nasty notes and the defacing of her uniform. Goodness, who would have expected such sexism from an all-male collective of royal guards in a 522-year-old post?
I hope Moira will be comforted by the thought that this is an inevitable part of being the first woman to do anything. She should have seen life in the poker room 15 years ago. You don't know you're breaking ground until you get hands on your arse, jokes about your tits and anonymous jibes about your ability.
Don't worry, Moira, it won't last. Think of it as no more troublesome than trying to get seven-year-olds to eat spinach: keep trying and they'll swallow it eventually. This entry was originally posted at http://oursin.dreamwidth.org/1126499.html. Please comment there using OpenID. View  comments. |
medievalist
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8:26a |
On The Uses of Jello in Cooking
I was talking with mac_stone about how we learned to cook, how our moms cooked, and how we see people a few years younger than us not knowing how to cook, and it got me all nostalgic for what my friend jasmijnh once referred to as (with a nod at James Lileks) regrettable food. I still use Campbell's Mushroom Soup (AKA Lutheran Binder) in cooking, though with a freezer I'd make my own. I had Green Bean Casserole for the first time ever last Thanksgiving—going to have that again for sure. I was born in 1962,  and spent my early years in Richmond, Indiana and we moved to New Hampshire when I was five. My dad was a clergyman, and a college teacher so there were lots of potlucks. Many of them featured Things Done With Jello. My mom used to make Cherry jello with bing cherries in the summer, and it was a huge treat. Other moms had copper-colored jello molds of leaping fish, and hearts and bundt-cake shaped tower things on their walls; mine didn't. There were jello desserts then, made with things like cream cheese, and cottage cheese, and nuts, and canned fruit and grated carrot peels. And Cool Whip, and ginger ale. A writer friend posted a recipe for Orange Stuff elsewhere on the 'net as an example of Mandatory Thanksgiving Dish for her family. This is the kind of thing I remember being made with jello at church suppers and potlucks, and I think I'm going to make it. It's made with dry orange jello, canned crushed pineapple, canned mandarin oranges, cool whip, cottage cheese and pecans. ( The recipe is behind the cut ) Current Music: Radiator Steam |
ozarque
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8:59a |
Linguistics; ET languages; your comments (3)...
I am guilty of having done a post here that could only have been understood by cybertelepaths. I had all the backstory for my new novel in my head, I had all my linguistics-stuff in my head, so I just went blithely along with that post as if you [youall] were similarly encumbered. I am greatly blessed that houseboatonstyx came to my rescue with a comment, and -- with that resource in hand -- I am going to do my best to straighten up the mess I made. Here's the first paragraph of the comment: "If we're looking for sounds that would be PERCEIVED as something other than vowels or consonsonants or something along that continuum -- that's an issue about the perceivers, isn't it? If they've been trained that to be meaningful, a sound must be classified as v, c, or in between -- then won't anything that might be meaningful be stuck into one of those categories, whether it physiologically fits the physiological definition or not?" Yes. Terran linguists listening to the speech of native speakers of an ET language are going to expect to hear vowels and consonants because that's what they've been trained to hear, and are going to sort the sounds they hear into those two categories for that reason. Only after the U.S. Corps of Linguists (USCOL) had accumulated a large database of ET sound-based languages that included vowels, consonants, and "something else" would it be possible to train them to identify and analyze that "something else." And my conviction is that that would take a very long time to happen. And here's the next paragraph of the comment: "Are we looking for sounds from the vocal tract that would be so different physiologically/phonetically that they COULD NOT be fitted into those v-c categories, even by a sort of legal fiction? But would somehow be clearly meaningful so that they COULD NOT simply be disregarded or somehow marginalized?" Yes again. My Brethandi ETs -- because their anatomy is very different from the anatomy of the Terran cattle they so closely resemble to the casual eye -- are able to speak in a fashion comparable to Terran speech, although they of course have distinctive accents. [ I knew that. So I did a cognitive SHAZAM-leap and took it for granted that you would know it too. Sheesh.] And my question was serious. Supposing one or more of the Brethandi languages was composed of three meaningful classes of sounds -- vowels, consonants, and something else -- then what, I wanted to know, could that something else possibly be? One possibility turned up in a comment from kelsied: "Consonants, vowels, and rests. As in music. The rhythmic and intentional interruption of consonants and vowels to modify their meaning." That option -- musical rests -- is the one I used in my USCOL story "Honor Is Golden," published in Analog. [Not online anywhere, so far as I know.] It worked, to my satisfaction and my editor's, although I got slammed for it in a review. My linguists weren't able to isolate the rest-phonemes or work with them, but they were able to establish communication. Which was their primary goal. I hope this clarifies things just a tad. If it doesn't, let me know and I'll try again. |
desperance
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12:33p |
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oursin
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12:08a |
Possibly not entirely coherent late-ish thoughts
Have been provoked to think by something to which the question is somewhat tangential, how well do you have to know a person to describe the feelings you have towards them as liking? To oneself or to other people who may ask what you think of X, not as something actually expressed to X.
I don't think you have to know them particularly well at all. I may have met someone pretty much in passing, or once or twice, and have thought that they're a nice/interesting/etc person, and that I might like to meet them again, and perhaps get to know them better. And I would call that liking. A general sense of positivity in one's emotions towards a person.
(I am sure I have used the formula when talking about people I know slightly to other people who know them or have heard of them that I don't know X well/only met X once/haven't seen X for many years but I like/liked them.)
Just as there are some people to whom one develops an immediate, and not necessarily explicable or justifiable, antipathy.
In neither case is there necessarily any reciprocity or expectation that it might exist but merely it's merely way of describing one's own positive or negative feelings evoked by X.
And initial liking may not endure if one does get to know the person better, just as initial antipathies sometimes dissolve.
I'm also beginning to wonder if 'like' is one of those words which can encompass altogether too many meanings and nuances, but that may just be the lateness of the hour.
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| Saturday, November 7th, 2009 | |
pepysdiary
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11:00p |
Wednesday 7 November 1666
http://www.pepysdiary.com/archive/1666/11/07/ Up, and with Sir W. Batten to White Hall, where we attended as usual the Duke of York and there was by the folly of Sir W. Batten prevented in obtaining a bargain for Captain Cocke, which would, I think have [been] at this time (during our great want of hempe), both profitable to the King and of good convenience to me; but I matter it not, it being done only by the folly, not any design, of Sir W. Batten's. Thence to Westminster Hall, and, it being fast day, there was no shops open, but meeting with Doll Lane, did go with her to the Rose taverne, and there drank and played with her a good while. She went away, and I staid a good while after, and was seen going out by one of our neighbours near the office and two of the Hall people that I had no mind to have been seen by, but there was no hurt in it nor can be alledged from it. Therefore I am not solicitous in it, but took coach and called at Faythorne's, to buy some prints for my wife to draw by this winter, and here did see my Lady Castlemayne's picture, done by him from Lilly's, in red chalke and other colours, by which he hath cut it in copper to be printed. The picture in chalke is the finest thing I ever saw in my life, I think; and did desire to buy it; but he says he must keep it awhile to correct his copper-plate by, and when that is done he will sell it me. Thence home and find my wife gone out with my brother to see her brother. I to dinner and thence to my chamber to read, and so to the office (it being a fast day and so a holiday), and then to Mrs. Turner's, at her request to speake and advise about Sir Thomas Harvy's coming to lodge there, which I think must be submitted to, and better now than hereafter, when he gets more ground, for I perceive he intends to stay by it, and begins to crow mightily upon his late being at the payment of tickets; but a coxcombe he is and will never be better in the business of the Navy. Thence home, and there find Mr. Batelier come to bring my wife a very fine puppy of his mother's spaniel, a very fine one indeed, which my wife is mighty proud of. He staid and supped with us, and they to cards. I to my chamber to do some business, and then out to them to play and were a little merry, and then to bed. By the Duke of York his discourse to-day in his chamber, they have it at Court, as well as we here, that a fatal day is to be expected shortly, of some great mischiefe to the remainder of this day; whether by the Papists, or what, they are not certain. But the day is disputed; some say next Friday, others a day sooner, others later, and I hope all will prove a foolery. But it is observable how every body's fears are busy at this time. |
truepenny
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12:41p |
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ozarque
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12:42p |
Linguistics; ET languages; your comments (2)...
The second batch of your comments I want to tackle -- about a possible "third class of meaningful sounds" in an ET language -- is those that propose various kinds of noises. The noises described in your comments included percussives [sounds that could be made with drums, rattles, and the like]; crackling; clicks; whistles; burps and belches; teeth-clicks; farts; squeaks; squeals; and more. Those of you who've complained that I didn't define my terms -- neither "vowel" nor "consonant" -- are absolutely right, and I apologize. For me, vowels are speech sounds that are produced without any obstruction of the flow of air through the vocal tract; consonants are speech sounds for which that flow of air is obstructed in some fashion. That of course means that the vowel/consonant distinction has to be a continuum, not an either/or binary split. As pgdudda has pointed out, the English liquids [L and R] and the English glides [Y and W and H] are neither strictly vowels nor strictly consonants; they fall in between the two, somewhere on the continuum. My opinion -- and it's only that, an opinion, since I've never encountered an ET language -- is that all of the varieties of noises proposed in your comments would be perceived by Terrans, and by Terran linguists, as falling somewhere on the vowel/consonant continuum; that is, as either vowel-like or consonant-like. I don't believe they would perceive the noises as a separate, third class of meaningful speech sounds. I could be wrong about this. For sure. |
oursin
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3:37p |
It's link-time!
When the Bauhaus art school opened in 1919, more women applied than men - so why have we never heard of them?. Reasonable point that women were being shunted into less prestigious fields of production like weaving and ceramics, but don't we also suspect that a lot of them ended up being a combination of muse and all-round support system to the male students?
Eeeeeuuuwww, creepiness - In sleepy Sussex is a group of dedicated cryonicists who believe they hold the secret to eternal life. I must confess I didn't read this attentively end-to-end, but feel that this is part of the great British trad of DIY and the building of scale models of the Taj Mahal in the back garden out of used matchsticks. And nerdy people with strange political views... Also, feel that the invocation of John Hunter
Read the book The Knife Man, about John Hunter, one of the greatest men in your country. The greatest surgeon in London, and they wouldn't even let him lecture in the official facilities. He had to build his own building in his home to teach his students." Darwin feels he has much in common with Hunter, a prophet without honour. may be in the fine tradition of 'They said Columbus was mad! they said Beethoven was mad!' but probably rather skates over Wendy Moore's nuanced account of the world of medical and surgical practice in C18th London and how Hunter fit into that. Matthew Norman is not impressed by Apsleys: while I love the description of the decor, I am not enticed to go see it:
[A] room of such hideously overbearing opulence to inspire a parasexual fantasy featuring gelignite. God knows what the designer intended, but the grandiose chandeliers, plushest of multicoloured carpets, striped chairs and wallpaper, art deco fripperies and general festival of creams and beiges link assonantly with a Roman myth mural to suggest an asylum for obscenely wealthy inmates driven mad by the inability to decide whether they are Regency dandies or Eurotrash swankers. Oliver Burkeman on backlogs.
Luisa Dillner, Friends can be good for your physical as well as your emotional wellbeing - and what's interesting is that apparently they don't need to be exceptionally close and intimate friends for the effect to work.
A S Byatt praises Enchanted Hunters: The Power of Stories in Childhood by Maria Tatar:
atar begins with a wry analysis of how stories have the opposite effect from the desired one of making children drowsy and ready for sleep. She is splendidly contemptuous of books such as Disney's three-minute Bedtime Stories, Condensed Fairy Tales and even One-Minute Greek Myths. Good stories excite, delight and frighten. They are, as Tatar puts it, a solitary addiction, not necessarily teaching sociability or virtuous behaviour. Those of us who as children read late into the night under the bedclothes with torches know exactly what she means.
Children, she observes, do not "identify" with characters in stories. They inhabit the world of the tale, as lookers-on, learning brilliance and danger and horror in another world. Two books on the legacy of the First World War: one on the immediate aftermath (okay, I have some qualms about the accounts of sex and drugs and to what extent this is reviewer or author) and one on the longer view framed round Harry Patch, the final surviving veteran.
A L Kennedy on Tove Jansson and a newly translated novel of hers.
Sam Leith on a DVD that teaches men how to be fathers:
It's marketed at women.
"The amusing and educational DVD," it says on the front, "that will make him the perfect pregnancy and birth partner!" The insensitive old silly needs reprogramming, and he's hardly going to do it himself, is he?
Make him watch this film, and maybe something about what's actually going to happen will sift into his football-filled, beer-drinking noggin. Then, cross fingers, he won't be as much of a spare dick at the birth as he was when he got drunk (again!) at your birthday party.
The opening sequences are designed to reassure men that fatherhood won't turn you into a big blubbering girly-boy. We see men. Talking to other men. In pubs. There are pints of beer, and plates of rolls, and cutaways to cricket. The box warns, or promises: "This DVD contains male behaviour and occasional coarse language." Meet Troy, our hero. Troy is so much of a man's man that he is actually Australian. More than that, until recently he was living "the haphazard lifestyle of extreme sports holidays and kerr-azy nights out with the boys" – yet now he's a dad.
....
The archetype of masculinity the film relies on is one of the man as overgrown boy: the centre of his own universe.
That's the shift. You were in a Ptolemaic universe: everything orbited round you. But when – like Troy in the end of the film – you are presented for the first time with an angry, purple, bloody, vernix-covered, shit-smeared, breathing human being, everything changes.
You are now in the Copernican universe: you are the one in orbit, and everything is suddenly in motion. It leaves you, well – unmanned. Sex, drugs, music and a pension: why 1948 was the luckiest year to be born: a point missed here:
Obviously for the first few years you had rationing, but that wouldn't have worried you because you were so young.
Well, a) there were special allowances for mothers and babies and b) rationing probably provided a sounder nutritional basis for future health than before or since.
Renationalising the railways - go for it!
Awww, bless, break out the homemade jam and let's all join in for a rousing sing of 'Jerusalem': university students sign up to Women's Institute • Calls to set up college branches inundate HQ • Women find alternative to drinking and sport. Okay, we do wonder a bit whether there is a certain degree of ironic retro-ness going on, but given that the WI actually emerged from the suffrage movement, it's not just all about flower-arranging, so maybe this is a bit more than that.
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