Year: 2011

Feuilles volantes

While waiting in the basement for the washing machine to finish, I picked up a book from the open boxes stacked under the stairs, the remainder of our unpacking from … almost two years ago *gulp*. The book was a well foxed paperback of Victor Hugo’s Choses vues, a sort of memoir of major and minor events from 1830 to 1846. On a whim I riffled the pages, looking for today’s date, and got a hit within seconds — and what a great one for a language lover:

At a meeting of the Académie Française held on this day 168 years ago, the members, or immortels, were discussing spelling reform (dropping double consonants so as to give ateindre instead of atteindre), and whether to bow to current usage. This was odd even then, for the Academy normally resists changes to the language, especially those from common usage. Hugo confessed his ignorance of such usage — indeed it is pretty odd — and refused to accept the idea. Fellow academician Victor Cousin responded by suggesting that such changes were part of the natural shift of language, which always tends towards decline.

Hugo replied:

“I would add that language shift and decline are two different things. […] Since its very first day, language has been in motion; can we say that it has been in constant decline? […]”

Cousin: The decline of the French language began in 1789.

Hugo: A quelle heure, s’il vous plaît ?

Boo-Yah! In! Your! Face!

It’s refreshing to read how pompous egos could be so neatly slapped down in 1843; and if he was around today, Hugo would be a regular guest on the Daily Show and Colbert Report.

Meanwhile, the Académie Française is still fighting a rearguard battle against any perceived threats to the French language. After the fight against franglais in the 1990s (software => logiciel, email => courriel), the Academy more recently protested the inclusion of regional languages in the French constitution (Read more …)

*beep* *beep* *beep*

Laundry’s done. Back to work.

Once more unto the intocht, dear friends

All of the Netherlands turned out yesterday to welcome the return of a pensionado (retiree) from Spain — Sinterklaas! And his merry band of pranksters, the Zwaartepieten (Black Peters), whose political incorrectness is tempered by the addition of fantasy Piets, such as the Elvis Piet.

 

Define nitpicky

Of all the Jobs anecdotes doing the rounds from Isaacson’s biography, this one stuck in my mind:

 

“At one point, the pulmonologist tried to put a mask over his face when he was deeply sedated,” Isaacson writes:

Jobs ripped it off and mumbled that he hated the design and refused to wear it. Though barely able to speak, he ordered them to bring five different options for the mask and he would pick a design he liked.

Read more …

 

Going beyond the anecdotes, the New Yorker article discusses the influence of tweakers over that of more original inventors, citing examples in England to explain why industrialization first took off there rather than elsewhere. (I thought the enclosure Acts were more of a prime cause.)

What is clear, however, is that Jobs was one nitpicking son of a gun. If he or I believed in an afterlife, then he would be sulking or shouting on his iCloud, demanding they change the colour and make it incompatible with all the other clouds.

A slew of …

In a CNN Money article yesterday about the Facebook vs Google+ rivalry, my editor’s antennae started twitching when I read

“But defensive moves are not Zuckerberg’s style, and in September, at the company’s F8 developers event, he unleashed a sea of new features that alter the current service radically.”

“A sea of features”?

A sea change, yes, in a different context; better still, a raft or slew of new features.

My preference is for the latter, derived from the Old Irish, sluagh, meaning “army”.

“A slew of” — it sounds violent, cool and sophisticated in one shot.

Give it a try today!

Freedom means the right to choose your own truth

I love following American politics. It’s so much more fun than in other countries. I think my fascination comes down to the exceptional degree of chutzpah shown by candidates and commentators, and the almost inevitable exposure of the mismatch between what they say and what they do. Once the flaw is exposed, it is fascinating to watch the public story unravel day by day. In the UK recently, we could enjoy the hilarious backsliding, lies and coverups by the Defence Minister; in contrast, such exposure occurs on an almost daily basis in the US during election period (which is in fact most of the year).

And with the death of one of the most insightful US political analysts, Hunter S. Thomson, I rely on The Daily Show for the most pleasurable way to follow US current affairs.

Last week, however, there was a particularly gob-smacking moment with a send-up interview with Republican Party Consultant and Strategist, Noelle Nickpour, on the subject of the place of science in the US.

Watch it and be afraid. Nickpour is actually serious about what she says!

 

Nickpour:  It’s very confusing for a child to be only taught evolution to go home to a household where their parents say, “Well, wait a minute … God created the Earth!”

Daily Show Interviewer Aasif Mandvi:  What is the point of teaching children facts if it’s just going to confuse them?

Nickpour:  It confuses the children when they go home.  We as Americans—we are paying tax dollars for our children to be educated. We need to offer them every theory that’s out there. It’s all about choice; it’s all about freedom.

Mandvi: It should be up to the American people to decide what’s true.

Nickpour:  Absolutely! Doesn’t it make common sense?