One day a week embracing poetry
Meant nothing to me
Misery again and a life of pain
Beauty unopposed
Oh, the shame that arose
My long lost hope of happiness
I never, never want to change
I will never, never love change
Put your roots down
Stay in the ground

Glamorous girl cuts a swathe through the fears of the world
I was right there in your whirl
Glamorous girl

Blade Runner

The only Blade Runner in the news at the moment is Oscar Pistorius, currently on trial for something or other in South Africa. (I always want to call him Oscar Pretorius because he is South African.) It was not always that way, though.

Next week the University of York is holding a workshop into the film Blade Runner. It looks like the kind of workshop I would not feel happy at, for several reasons:

• There is a lot of philosophy involved, and I have never really got the hang of philosophy, even though I consider myself a philospher of sorts.
• I have never seen all of the film Blade Runner. Like many other films, there was a time and a place to watch it (which I think was probably the 1980s) but now the moment has passed. Everything it did mean will no longer mean anything. See, I told you I was a philosopher.
• You have to make your own arrangements for lunch. Come on, at least make the day feel special.

But then, in an uncanny coincidence (or was it?), I found this book in a charity shop yesterday. It was a free copy given away with the May 1997 issue of Computer Gaming World, when the 21st Century was just a glint in the eye of time. I particularly like the way that they emphasised the film title, rather than the actual title of the book

and how the back cover includes the credits for the film, rather than book-related information.

Computer Gaming World ceased publication in 2006, which gives this book the odd feeling of being a historical document about a future world, which should have existed by now, but doesn't.

The All Nite Soul Review

At the All Nite Soul Review
Judith, 52,
Dances along to songs
She always knew

The acts upon the stage
Some are showing their age
The Classic, the Original and the New

Before them glittering ranks
Applaud their sweaty thanks
Their tits swinging lower than they ever used to do

Fulled by cheap warm wine
They're having a fine old time
Forgetting the miserable lives for an hour or two

With the girls they can forget
Every mistake they've met since 1962
Their eyes sparkle at the drummer in
The Classic, the Original and the New

Vicious spiteful words
I feel ashamed and absurd
They're only saving themselves like we all do

The Classic, the Original and the New
May not sparkle like they used to do
May not even be able to stand
May not be the ones they used to be

But Ladies and Gentleman, just for you
And Judith, 52,
Tonight I give to you Direct from 1972
The All Nite Soul Review

Different scales

James Ward has posted some pictures of Airfix kits of bombed, shelled or otherwise damaged buildings. The Italian farmhouse looks like the kind of project you would see on Grand Designs, or similar, although they would inevitably ruin it, and by the end of the programme you would be keen to throw a few shells at it yourself.

But the thing that really intrigued me was the difference in scale. Some of the buildings are 1:72, but most are 1:76. I remember all Airfix kits being 1:72 – at least those of roughly that size. There were larger and smaller scales, which from memory were 1:144, 1:32 and 1:24, but 1:72 was the most frequent one. So why would they introduce 1:76? Surely there is not that much difference between the two. Surely it does not matter.

It turns out it matters a lot.

Lost in translation

Wikipedia's "Did you know?" for today features this slightly puzzling entry.

In China, Lou is both the 229th, and 269th, most common surname. Of course the answer is that two different Chinese surnames have been translated into the same English word.

Ullage

In the Daily Telegraph, Helen Yemm has her jobs of the week. She includes this task

Clear emerging perennial shoots of old wet leaves and winter ullage – to make it easier to see what is going on and get the upper hand in the slug war.

My question is, "what is ullage?" The OED defines it as

The amount of wine or other liquor by which a cask or bottle falls short of being quite full (originally the quantity required to make good the loss by leakage or absorption).

There are some vaguely colloquial usages, but nothing that really matches "the soggy stuff that collects around plants over winter". My guess is that it is a typo for "foliage", although I'm not entirely convinced that's right. Either way, it's a great word, and the next time I have a bottle of wine I will point at the air at the top of the bottle and say, "Wow! Look at the ullage on that!"

Creading

There are many words in use in academia that I don't understand - palimpsest, for one. When I came across the description of this symposium, therefore, the word "creadings" jumped out at me:

Chanting Students

Dr. Matthew Cheeseman

I began researching and collecting examples of student chanting in 2005 and have found them a stimulating way of thinking about students and their experience of higher education. Far from simple, chants are both verbal forms and performances, full of contradictory meanings and creadings. In this paper I look at how they are received by others and how they operate as expressions of student identity and enactments of 'lad culture'. Using data collected following an ethnographic methodology, I attempt to situate chanting within larger and no less contradictory performances (such as being a student) and explain its relationship to a language that has become a totemic within the United Kingdom: banter.

Rather than assume that "creadings" was a typo for "readings", I supposed that it must be a new word coined in academia. (I have no idea what "a totemic" is either, but that's beside the point). I assumed that a "creading" would be something like a cross between a reading and a creed. It would be a way of analysing that involved reading whatever you were reading while looking for evidence that it might be connected to some kind of belief system. It sounds logical to me.

I looked it up in the OED and, naturally, it wasn't there. It isn't a word that crops up in a Google search either. It is, after all, a typo.

Black book

I increasingly find that I have strong opinions about people, but I have very little idea why. When I look at the people who are in the various categories, they don't seem to have anything in common. When I try to look at it objectively, there is no particular reason why I should find one likeable and another hideous. I don't understand it.

Can't stand

Clare Balding
James Corden
Dermot O'Leary
Gareth Malone
Kirstie Allsopp

Can put up with

Tony Blackburn
Evan Davis
Chris Evans
Brian Matthews
Susannah Reid

Like

Mishal Husain
Alex Jones
Carol Kirkwood
Graham Norton
Jamie Oliver
Bill Turnbull

Similarities

Watching the news this morning, I was struck by the resemblance between Tom Cruise and Thomas Hitzlsperger. I wonder if they could be related?

Cruise

Hitzlsperger

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.