Data is, um, are, datum is, oh boy!

I think that the battle over keeping datum singular and data plural has been lost. However, many would disagree. This recent press release from the University of British Columbia wants data to be plural, but in this section... well, I'm not quite sure what is going on.

“Publicly funded science generates an extraordinary amount of data each year,” says Tim Vines, a visiting scholar at the University of British Columbia. “Much of these data are unique to a time and place, and is thus irreplaceable, and many other datasets are expensive to regenerate.
“The current system of leaving data with authors means that almost all of it is lost over time, unavailable for validation of the original results or to use for entirely new purposes.”

I suspect that the quote from Vines started with data being singular - "Much of this data" etc - but that someone changed bits of it into the plural. How "Much of this data are" can be correct with "is irreplacable" escapes me. The second paragraph has a similar confusion.

Peak time

Still on the subject of time, in a recent edition of the Infinite Monkey Cage, I was surprised to hear Professor Brian Cox say "counter-clockwise", since I had taken it to be a term from US English. I assumed that it was because he must have spent no little time in the US, and presumably reads a lot of US literature. When I looked at the relative frequencies of "counter-clockwise" and "anti-clockwise" in the Google ngram viewer, I noticed something surprising:

Here's the chart for UK English - a closer battle than I would have expected, but with anti-clockwise just keeping a lead. However, there is a distinct peak in the 1940s, since when the use of both terms has been on the decline.

The peak is even more pronounced in American English. Counter-clockwise wins comfortably, but since 1940 has been in decline.

Why should this be? Perhaps as more stuff has been displayed digitally, and we are less in touch with making and repairing things by hand, the words for rotating something one way or the other are falling out of fashion.

This seems to be supported by a search for "clockwise", which is suffering a similar, if less marked, decline:

American English

British English

Finally, although I won't include the graphs, mentions of the pre-clock words "sunwise" (ie, clockwise) and particularly "widdershins" (ie, anti-clockwise) have tended to grow over the same period. I have no idea why.

The time seller

The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography does a regular podcast, which every fortnight, as well as the famous, covers more obscure British lives.

The latest edition featured Ruth Belville, also know as the Greenwich Time Lady, who sold time. Although chronometers were becoming increasingly accurate, their makers were desperate to know the correct time, but had no way of finding it out. They used to go up to Greenwich Observatory to find out what it was, but the Astronomer Royal, Sir George Biddell Airy, got fed up of them interrupting work, and asked his deputy, John Henry Belville, to set up the time selling service. The business became a family affair, run by John Henry, then his widow, then his daughter Ruth.

Incredibly, it continued for more than 100 years, only ending in 1940 when Ruth was 86 and her age, and the effects of World War II, finally forced her to retire. I love finding these hidden corners of life.

Don't sell dishwashers in Shanghai

If you are considering setting up a business to sell dishwashers in Shanghai, think again. The latest PISA results show that children living in Shanghai, and who have a dishwasher in their home, do worse on their reading scores than their peers.

This bucks the trend for the rest of the OECD countries covered by the report. Everywhere else, if you have a dishwasher at home your reading scores will be higher.

Given the enthusiasm for education in Shanghai, it seems unlikely that you would be able to make a success of a dishwasher business (unless your market is people who don't have, and don't want, kids). So, basically, set up your business somewhere else. You're welcome.

If you want a serious explanation, I suggest that in the UK and elsewhere homes with dishwashers are likely to be those of reasonably well-off people, whose children will be better at reading. The difference in Singapore is small (although it is still there, even with error bars). Maybe they are so rich that they have servants who do the dishwashing, so the people with dishwashers are actually poorer than the rest. I don't care, I just like the fact that data can show stupid things.

Christmas morning

Greg Lake's song, I Believe in Father Christmas, is one that I don't particularly care for, but it is difficult to avoid at this time of year. It contains this slightly odd verse.

And I believed in Father Christmas And I looked to the sky with excited eyes Then I woke with a yawn In the first light of dawn And I saw him and through his disguise 

This morning the first light of dawn was about 7.30am, and that was outside on a reasonably clear day. In a bedroom with curtains, I would think it would come a bit later. Sunrise on Christmas Day is 8.05am in London, and later in the North. So my questions are:

1. What sort of child wakes up as late as 7.30am on Christmas morning (even though he was up late watching the sky with excited eyes)?
2. What sort of Father Christmas is still putting out the presents at 7.30am?

Is it spam or just really bad marketing?

A series of emails have been arriving that I assume are spam. The thing is, they are a bit different.

Firstly, they are mostly promoting reputable companies, such as Laithwaite's, Ladbrokes, The Sun, NatWest, Anglian Home Improvements, and Match.com. OK, there is some PPI/debt management nonsense, but most of it seems fairly respectable.

Secondly, the offers are all fairly dull. They don't offer miracle cures for personal problems, or pretend that you have won the lottery – they are simply dull things like 0% on balance transfers, or a £10 Tesco voucher for taking out a subscription.

One offer arrived recently for The Sun – ", join Sun+ today for a 10 Tesco voucher" was the subject, so the weird punctuation makes you wonder if something is not quite right (a lot of them seem to have that rogue comma at the beginning). The Sun does make that offer

so that seems genuine. Picking sample phrases and googling them (such as the terms and conditions) finds similar copy on The Sun's website. But there are a couple of very odd things that make me suspicious.

Firstly, the websites used for the links are different in each email and are bizarre, although also, frankly, quite funny – teensy neutrinos, prominences penny frog, council absent jester, mellow connotation, and so on.

Secondly, they all come with an address in Florida at the bottom – 7862 W. Irlo Bronson Highway Suite #313 Kissimmee, FL 34747, which seems to be associated with a company that owns at least 500 domains.

And at that point, my interest begins to fade. Except to wonder what the business model is. Is it to make spam that is almost identical to the boring and dull messages we get from regular companies? In the past spammers have concentrated on exciting, sexy or alarming messages, but now they realise that we are suspicious of those, they're copying the dull marketing messages of normal companies, which do work, after all. I'm guessing that, unfortunately, it will also make them harder to spot. As I've written before, though, if spammers got their grammar sorted out, then we would be in real trouble.

CON - Artists

I don't know if this proposal for the Intellectual Property Office's 2013 Fast Forward Competition was real or a piece of performance art (ie, the proposal was a piece of performance art, as opposed to the show they were proposing). Either way, unfortunately it didn't get funded.

CON - Artists [Copyright Owners Network - Artists]

This Coventry School of Art and Design show delivers an entertaining look at the complex world of copyright, taking a look at its early conception, through to the rapidly changing digital world encountered today. The outcome will be a UK business and academic sector well informed of the importance of copyright in the global economy, and to face the issues head on.

The audience will be left with an understanding of the duration, scope, limitations, economic and moral rights associated with this unregistered form of IP and its importance to our economy. It is designed for this generation, born into a global information rich society, where click copying is a way of life. Copyright will be seen throughout [sic] this kaleidoscope of dance, music, literature, film, photography and mime, made by our creative industry, for the entire nation.

Nasty road accident

Upset by this accident I saw on the way to work – a multi-pack of Twix had been run over. Difficult to say from the mangled wreckage what had happened, but it looks like at least a pack of nine, and possibly as many as 12. Tragic loss.

Dirocev, what's a dirocev?

The Sun, there, not wanting to make an anagram too taxing for its readers.

Mealtimes

A quick guide to the timetable of mealtimes:

Midnight–5am Late-night snack

5am–10am Breakfast

10am–noon Elevenses or, if more substantial, brunch

Noon–2pm Dinner (or lunch)

2pm–4.30pm Afternoon (or high) tea

4.30pm–8.30pm Tea (or dinner)

8.30pm–11pm Supper

11pm–Midnight Late-night snack

The Day of the Doctor

I am not sure that I quite understood the Doctor Who episode The Day of the Doctor. However, here is what I think happened:

After the Doctor Who TV movie of 1996, which failed to re-ignite the series, the Eighth Doctor (played by Paul McGann) got really angry, and turned into the Ninth Doctor (played by John Hurt). Upset by the cancellation of the series, he rampaged through the old sets, destroying the Daleks, Gallifrey and the Time Lords. At the time, this seemed like a reasonable thing to do, but everyone decided this was something we should never speak of again.

Surprisingly, a few years later Russell T Davies managed to revive the series, with Christopher Eccleston playing the Ninth Doctor. It was a huge hit, and everyone was very happy. But the problem remained of what to say about the fact that there were no Daleks or Time Lords left. Well, thankfully, a few Daleks were found in an old warehouse, or possibly a gravel pit near Slough, and, after a bit of a redesign to make them suitable for merchandising purposes, they were brought back into the series.

The Time Lords were still missing, though, so the Tenth (David Tennant) and Eleventh (Matt Smith) Doctors had to go back in time to convince John Hurt of a couple of things. Firstly, that he no longer needed to go on a rampage and destroy the Daleks and the Time Lords. The series is a huge hit again; everyone loves it. Secondly, that he will never be the Ninth Doctor, and that title is to be kept by Paul McGann. He will have to accept the title of War Doctor (I think Angry Doctor would have been better, but it is not my call). Gallifrey will be frozen in time until it is needed in the next series, when the sweary Twelfth Doctor (Peter Capaldi) can be sent to look for it.

I may have got some of the finer detail wrong, but I think this is pretty much it.

Movember spawned a monster

I have never taken much interest in awareness campaigns. That I began taking part in the latest Movember was largely by chance. My daughter kept getting into the bathroom before me and steaming up the mirror, so I developed an increasingly unshaven look. Then my son suggested that I take part in Movember, like his friend's dad, and I agreed, you know, for fun. It was a mistake for two reasons.

Firstly, my face is unsuited to a moustache. I had envisaged something dashing, like Robert Donat in The 39 Steps, but I do not have the time, and probably the face, to create that look. It does make me wonder how he managed to keep his moustache in trim while roughing it in the Highlands, but that is another story. I ended up looking more like Magnum PI or a member of the Village People. I found this disturbing, not only at the purely superficial level, but also as a reflection of who I am. I have not had time to consider this in detail.

Secondly, it introduced me to the disappointing worth of the Movember campaign. Medical colleagues told me that prostate cancer is overdiagnosed and overtreated and, perhaps because of the success of Movember, arguably overfunded. As this comment on a Guardian piece about Britain's top 1000 charities put it:

More people die from COPD than Breast, Bowel and Prostate Cancer, and COPD is just one of the lung diseases covered bythe British Lung Foundation. I know they call us the Cinderella Disease but it really is scary to see how low down the scale the BLF comse! It's below 'Uppingham School' or Glyndebourne Arts or Greater Manchester Accessible transport. We have a death rate of one every twenty minutes in England and Wales alone. Oh to be a donkey or a cat - we might stand a chance then ...

When I expressed this concern on social media, the results were disappointing, with people hoping that I didn't get prostate cancer myself. I suppose it could have been worse, as they might have wished I did get it. As I understand it, the odds are that I will get it, but it won't do me any harm.

I think the issue here is probably the way that the media, and particularly social media, discourage sensible debate, and encourage a sort of frantic national consensus – something that has also been apparent in the latest Remembrance Day – or Remembrance Weekend as it is now being described (Remembrance Week/Month coming soon).

This story in the Daily Telegraph – Google criticised for 'demeaning' tribute to Britain's war dead – highlighted the issues neatly. There had apparently been criticism of Google's decision to put a subtle poppy on its homepage, rather than something more spectacular.

MPs criticised today's understated Armistice Day design. Gerry Sutcliffe, a Labour MP who sits on the Culture, Media and Sport committee, said: “Around Remembrance Day it is demeaning not to have something that is spectacular.”

My reaction was that the opposite is the case, and that Remembrance Day is a time for dignified respect. Perhaps he was confusing it with Bonfire Night.

For once, the comments on the article provided a measure of reason, rather than hysteria:

Ah, Remembrance Day as pissing contest. Remember the days when we just quietly got on with it? 

Each year I go to the ceremony at our local war memorial, not in order to be spectacular, but merely to do the decent thing. And every year, this simple ceremony is profoundly moving.

I am increasingly thinking that this is the answer. "Think global; act local" went the old slogan, and it is still true. Rather than engaging with screechy national debates on Twitter I think the only way of debating these things sensibly is at a local level. Or by writing long and tedious articles like this, of course.

Of zips and zippers

I have recently read George Orwell's 1984, and William Golding's Lord of the Flies, and was struck that both of them used the word "zipper". This surprised me, as I had always thought of it as an American word, and I wondered if I had an American edition.

She stood looking at him for an instant, then felt at the zipper of her overalls. 

1984

He laid a hand on the end of a zipper that extended down his chest.

Lord of the Flies

As always, though, it pays to be careful with assumptions. The OED has the first use of zipper in 1925, when it was registered as a trademark, with use of the term claimed from 1923. Only shortly afterwards (1928) it was being used in the Daily Express. 1984 was written in 1948, of course, and Lord of the Flies in 1954.

The first use of "zip" as a noun in the OED is also from 1925.

The nearest approach to sustained bitterness that he was ever to know was caused by the sight of the women on the Avenue with their galoshes fastened by the ‘Zip’— every last one of them.

E. O'Shaughnessy, Married Life

By an odd coincidence Eileen O'Shaughnessy was George Orwell's first wife. Subsequent uses are mainly British, including one from John Braine's Room at the Top from 1957. The Google ngram viewer results are as follows:

US English

Zipper takes an early lead, but is gradually overtaken by zip. I suspect this is largely because of other uses of "zip", ie as a verb, or to mean "nothing", etc

British English

Zip has a lead even before the introduction of zipper, and never looks back. However, the frequencies on this graph are less than half those in US English

It seems entirely reasonable, then, that Golding and Orwell would use zipper, although it reads strangely now.

Vacancy for Pied Piper

Big Lottery Fund (“BIG”) is seeking a service provider to deliver a UK wide youth engagement and outreach campaign. The service provider will be required to engage young people from across the UK on broad social issues, utilising their interest in music to gain their attention ...

If the Pied Piper is out there somewhere, more details are here.

John Cushnie

The Daily Telegraph seems to think that John Cushnie is still alive. Either that or they have found another John Cushnie who is also a gardening expert, which seems to be an odd coincidence.

This article was published by the Telegraph in July 2013, even though the gardener and popular panellist on Gardeners' Question Time died in 2010. It seems poor not to give some kind of explanation - the most likely being that it is a republished article from a long time ago. Incidentally, it is an excellent guide to growing figs.

The universe is in our house

For a mortgage application I have been asked to confirm whether or not we have offsite garage/parking. Here is the solicitor's definition of "offsite":

By “offsite” we mean, not attached to your property/not within your property boundaries or in a separate location.

That sentence appears to exclude the entire universe, implying that the entire universe is "onsite". Their definition suggests that "offsite" is, firstly, anywhere that isn't in our property boundaries. That seems sensible. But then it also says that "offsite" is anywhere that isn't in a separate location. But logically, anywhere that's in a separate location is, well, anywhere. I am doubtful that we could use this in a court to prove that we own the entire universe, but we do appear to have the universe "reclining in our hair", or at least on our garden seat.

I thought that lawyers were taught to be precise with their language. In fact, I remember hearing that they were taught not to use any punctuation within sentences, to ensure that sentences were not written ambiguously. Perhaps not all solicitors got the memo (or perhaps the memo itself was badly written).

It's as easy as 1-2-3...

@ThreeUK, rather than being as easy as 3-2-1. The Google Fight is pretty convincing.

Last week we bought you our 10 best Mancunians

The supplements that you get with your newspaper keep getting bigger and bigger.

Last week The Guardian came with ten Mancunians. I have no idea where to put them, and am a bit worried that the council will not take them away for recycling.

The Christian foundations of reading instruction

This is one of the course modules recommended by the US National Council on Teaching Quality. It is part of a teacher-training course at Dallas Baptist University, and is for their module on struggling readers.

I have no idea what the Christian foundations of reading instruction might be.

Learner-Centered Outcomes and Objectives:
The major objective of this and all courses on Dallas Baptist University campuses is to support the mission statement of the university and to demonstrate a Christian world view. The outcomes are engagement of study of the content of this course to the glory of God and to the end of developing excellent competencies and skills worthy of Christian service to mankind.
Upon completion of this course, the successful student will be able to:
A. Explain the Christian foundations of reading instruction.
B. Explain the major components of reading.
C. Contrast the five different reading programs and be able to apply each one to given situations.
Etc

The profession of letters

Inspired by the latest XKCD

The profession of letters is so little understood, and so far from being seriously appreciated, that responsible editors will accept and publish magazine articles by women of "title" and "fashion", who prove themselves as ignorant of grammar as they are of spelling. The printer's reader corrects the spelling, but the grammar is generally left as its "aristocratic" writer penned it, in majestic incompleteness. The newspapers are full, not of thoughtful, honestly expressed public opinion on the affairs of the nation, but of vapid "personalities", interesting to none save gossips and busy-bodies.

Marie Corelli, 1905

Someone at the Daily Telegraph has taken today off

... judging by the prominent typos in these two stories:

treament

and
Defnece

About to...

A text arrives from a building society:

Your mortgage offer is about to expire. Please take urgent action to confirm how you wish to proceed, or the offer will expire and all fees will be lost.

In fact, the mortgage offer does not expire for another month. The offer in question actually lasts for three months in total. So the offer is "about to expire" after 2/3 of its time. If your lifespan is three score years and ten, that is like saying that you are "about to expire" when you are 46. (I thought this would make the message sound absurd but, in a morbid frame of mind, it makes it seem entirely reasonable.)

It is not the most useful message to send. Particularly as no contact details are given in the text, and they used some clever number-cloaking system so that it is not possible to reply, phone, or indeed do anything about it.

Chasing your shadow

And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust. 

Still, at least the sun's shining

Just in time

The Wickes website has a promotion on for the Bank Holiday weekend. Maybe they were a bit quick in publishing that graphic, though.

Ah, Thurday, when we're all starting to look forward to the weekend - Aturday and Unday.

Cover his face, mine eyes dazzle

Difficult decisions down at the Gardeners' World magazine office this month:

"Where are we going to put the subscribers' promotional postcard for this issue?"
"How about over Alan Titchmarsh's face?"
"That's a great idea."
"Seriously?"
"Seriously."

The only problem I can see is that no one would want to remove it. (Just kidding, Alan, love you really. Although maybe stop wearing jeans with a shirt tucked in - I don't think that look works for you.)

You're going home in a Crispy Ambulance

So my friend on the Gardeners' World website is back. After the last outing, sneaking Bournemouth Runner by The Fall into a multiple choice question, this time the stakes have been raised.

The competition is to win a day out at the Malvern Spring Show, one of the first gardening shows of the year. The question to win the prize is as follows:

I have no idea what this has to do with gardening. My suspicion is that these questions are sneaked in when the regular question setter is on holiday. The first was over Christmas, and this one appeared over Easter. Whatever the reason, I am mightily impressed, and am now looking forward to the summer holidays with great anticipation.

Costa Event Horizon

In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy books is the theory of the Shoe Event Horizon. According to this theory, when depressed, people look at their shoes and think that, in order to cheer themselves up, they should buy some more shoes. This creates a demand for shoe shops, but unfortunately the production of good quality shoes cannot keep up with this demand and so cheap, shoddy shoes are produced instead. People buy the cheap, shoddy shoes, but they are uncomfortable and fall apart, and they have to replace them. This leads to even more demand for shoes, more shoe shops, more cheap shoes, etc. Eventually the economy is only capable of producing shoes and shoe shops, and collapses as a result.

I was reminded of this by a trip to Donington Park Services,  just off the M1. It is a medium-sized service station, and yet within are four Costa outlets*:

• A normal-looking Costa cafe with tables and chairs;
• Next door to this, an Eat and Drink Company outlet, which appears to be different but, on closer examination, sells only Costa branded drinks;
• A smaller Costa market-style stall, where you can queue up and get a take away coffee; and
• A Costa Express machine within WH Smith.

As far as I could tell, there was no alternative for buying hot drinks. Indeed, at the Burger King they had signs up saying that they were unable to sell hot drinks, and you had to go to Costa. I can appreciate that Costa might have some sort of arrangement with the services whereby they are the only company allowed to sell hot drinks, but why would you then need four different outlets? It is creating an illusion of choice, a sort of communist capitalism.

I am not quite sure how a Costa Event Horizon would work. Service stations and high streets would be filled only with Costa coffee shops. In the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, people evolve into birds to escape the ill-fitting shoes of the Shoe Event Horizon. I suppose that, to escape the Costa Event Horizon you would go home and have a nice cup of tea instead - “At the centre of an uncertain and possibly illusionary universe there would always be tea.”

Incidentally, as you drive away from Donington Park Services, you may realise that you need fuel, and decide to call in at the petrol station. You will be delighted to know that this also contains a Costa.

* In no way do I wish to imply that Costa supplies cheap, shoddy, or even ill-fitting coffee. I have had a coffee there on two recent visits, and, although I did feel slightly ill afterwards, I am sure that this was either a coincidence, or entirely my fault.

Teams in red-and-white stripes

Yesterday's match report in The Sun of the game between Newcastle and Sunderland got a bit confused. If Newcastle are playing a team that usually plays in red-and-white stripes, and starts with an S, it is easy to assume that it is this one.

Shop'n Drive

There has been a Shop'n Drive on the outskirts of York for a while - the garage shop next to a Total garage. Some work was being done on our local garage - the fascias had been removed - and I thought briefly at the time "Oh no, not a Shop'n Drive". Sure enough, that is what emerged.

Given that there are at least two Shop'n Drive stores, it seems fair enough to conclude that this is something of a chain, and not a single shop. I do not feel it is fair to poke too much fun at individual shops, since they might have had a sign produced - "Robs Rolls", for example - and only afterwards realised the mistake. There might have been an argument with the signwriter over who should have checked the grammar. Money might have been mentioned, and at that time the shop owner decided not to bother, and just live with it.

But Shop'n Drive, really. It should say Shop 'n' Drive, of course, unless they are going for some obscure pun based on Chopin Drive that I have completely missed.

I found out more about the design of the shops from this article in The Grocer magazine, which helpfully confuses things further by calling the shops Shop N'Drive. Presumably they thought it was some sort of pun involving Sunderland footballer Alfred N'Diaye.

The shops are owned by Gerald Ronson, who was one of the "Guinness Four" in the 1980s. I thought for one delicious moment it was Gerald Ratner, but sadly not.

The identity was designed by an agency called Pyott, which describes Ronson as a "forecourt retail legend". "Who single-handedly has been responsible for all of the developments in retail on our petrol forecourts for over the past 45 years." That is a complete sentence, so grammar is clearly not their strong point. They say the identity will "create a memorable and distinctive brand that will change people’s perceptions and present a modern, slick retail environment". I agree with most of that - it is memorable and distinctive and it has changed my perceptions of our local garage shop.

On the design itself, I know that these things are subjective, but it does remind me of something from the sixties, or possibly seventies. I think it just looks tacky, actually.

#weirddreams Crumble rumble

A "crumble rumble" means the civil disorder that takes place when a regime breaks down. In the midst of a dream I saw this on someone's Twitter feed. To be honest, it seems rather too friendly a term for something that could result in death and destruction, but who am I to argue with the power of dreams?

The Fall and Alan Titchmarsh bend sinister

Chalk this one up to bizarre. The Gardeners' World website has a weekly competition for assorted garden-related goodies. It is usually a multiple choice question that does not tackle either the brain or Google. For example, which of these is found in the soil - branches, leaves or roots? That's maybe a bit easier than the usual standard, but you get the idea. This week's competition is a bit more interesting, though. It is a competition to win an Alan Titchmarsh Wild Bird Collection (a collection of food for wild birds, rather than the birds themselves). Here is the question:

Which of the following is not the name of a bird commonly seen in the UK:

• Blackbird
• Bournemouth runner
• Song thrush 

OK, the answer is the second one, but what is a Bournemouth runner? The only place I know it from is the title of a track by The Fall on their Bend Sinister album. According to this site it was the story of someone who stole the band's backdrop and then did a runner. I gave it three pages of Google and could not find another meaning of Bournemouth Runner suggested. Clearly there is a sub somewhere in the Gardeners' World empire with a more than passing interest in the cheeky vocal stylings of Mark E Smith. Good work, sir, we salute you. Next week, try and sneak in The Birmingham School of Business School.

Below is a screenshot, for when the page fades into the dust: