personal

Reasons to be Grateful: 25

Experiment, week 25. Continuing the experiment here are this week’s five things which have made me happy or for which I’m grateful.

  1. Sunshine. Yes, for the umpteenth week running the weather has been so dismal I’ve really appreciated what little sunshine we have had.
  2. Animals Inside Out. On Wednesday we went to see Gunther von Hagens’s Animals Inside Out exhibition at the Natural History Museum, which I blogged earlier. Despite my disappointments I did enjoy the exhibits and the incredible skill that goes into the plastination process.
  3. Prawns & Pasta. Again this week I cooked pasta with prawns for evening meal. I like cooking it, and I like eating it!
  4. Not having the Alarm on. I love being able to sleep until I wake up naturally, which is usually rather later than the time the alarm would go off.

  5. Scheurich Glass. I’ve been searching for suitable cachepots for my orchids. They really should be clear-ish glass as orchid roots like light. But I came across these rather lovely German glass pots. They come in a variety of colours: red (which is gorgeous), green, purple and white/clear. Amazon.co.uk sell them at a sensible price, although they don’t always have them in stock.
books

Literary Styling

There’s an interesting short article in New Scientist of 5 May 2012 by Sara Reardon. It seems mathematicians have worked out why/how authors have distinctively different styles. Apparently it’s all down to all the small, meaningless words they use. The article is behind a paywall but I hope I might be excused for reproducing it here for the benefit of my friends in the literary community.

Writing style relies on words with no meaning

Few novelists today would have a character say, “It is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.” That is not only because few modern characters ponder death by guillotine, but also because writing styles have changed dramatically since Charles Dickens wrote A Tale of Two Cities in 1859. So how does literary style evolve? Surprisingly, clues lie in words with seemingly little meaning, such as “to” and “that”.

By analysing how writers use such “content-free” words, mathematician Daniel Rockmore and colleagues at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, were able to conduct the first, large-scale “stylometric” analysis of literature (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.l073/pnas.lll5407109).

Content-free words are indicative of writing style, Rockmore says. While two authors might use the same words to describe a similar event, they will use content-free “syntactic glue” to link their words in a different way.

Using the Project Gutenberg digital library, Rockmore’s team analysed 7733 English language works written since 1550, tracking how often and in what context content-free words appeared. As you might expect, they found that writers were strongly influenced by their predecessors.

They also found that as the canon of literature grew, the reach of older works shrank. Authors in the earliest periods wrote in a very similar way to one another, the researchers found, probably because they all read the same small body of literature. But approaching the modern era, when more people were writing and more works were available from many eras and numerous styles, authors’ styles were still very similar to those of their immediate contemporaries. “It’s as if they find dialects in time,” says Alex Bentley of the University of Bristol, UK, who was not involved in the study. “Content is what makes us distinctive, but content-free words put us in different groups.”

That writers should be most influenced by their contemporaries rather than the great works of the past is interesting, Rockmore says, because it challenges the reach of “classic” literature. When it comes to style at least, perhaps we aren’t so strongly influenced by the classics after all.

words

Word : Chitty

Chitty (noun)

A letter or note. A certificate given to a servant or the like. A pass.

Hence the short form chit.

Anglo-Indian from the Hindī chiṭṭhī.

quotes

Quote : Marriage

Marriage teaches you loyalty, forbearance, self-restraint, meekness, and a great many other things you wouldn’t need if you had stayed single.

[Source unknown]

photography, pleasures

Something Colourful for Another Grey Spring Day

Three Orchids

These are my three orchids (all commercial Phalaenopsis hybrids) which I wanted to get as a group. This was best done after they’d been watered (a weekly soak) so they’re in the shower. The lighting is a mix of natural (grey, evening) daylight and the bathroom “white” fluorescent. Not the best of pictures, but at least something more cheerful than the greyness outside.

photography

Buggered Britain 7

Another in my occasional series documenting some of the underbelly of Britain. Britain which we wouldn’t like visitors to see and which we wish wasn’t there. The trash, abused, decaying, destitute and otherwise buggered parts of our environment. Those parts which symbolise the current economic malaise; parts which, were the country flourishing, wouldn’t be there, would be better cared for, or made less inconvenient.

Buggered Britain 7

These two closed and uncared for shops are at Greenford Broadway, although in fairness the pet shop has moved to better placed premises 100 yards round the corner.

current affairs

Vote Lizard

So today is the four-yearly London mayoral voting jamboree. Whoopee! Vote for the lizard of your choice! Or not! Maybe!

Nevertheless we have just returned from doing our civic duty for the year.

And what a farce it is!

I don’t mind walking round to the local scout hut, which has been our local Polling Station for some years. Or the local school (which was used before they started using the scout hut when the school was rebuilt). Or the church hall. What I mind about is the daftness of the voting system.

We are voting for (a) the Mayor, (b) a constituency member of the London Assembly and (c) party list members of the same Assembly.

The Mayoral vote is easy. You have a first choice vote and a second choice vote. If, when the votes are counted, the first choice votes give anyone over 50% they’re elected. If not, all but the top two are eliminated and the second choice votes of those eliminated are (re)distributed. The one with the most votes then wins. It’s a sort of buggered up Single Transferable Vote system. I don’t have a problem with this; I’d prefer STV but that’s too hard for Joe Public (it taxed the brains of students when I was an undergraduate!).

The London Assembly however is different; and in my view a shambles. There are just 25 Assembly members. That’s less than one for each of the 33 London Boroughs and one for roughly every three of London’s 73 parliamentary constituencies. That’s leaving aside the fact the the Assembly has no real power: what the Mayor wants done, gets done.

First one has a single vote for a (named) constituency member. There are 14 constituencies, where “constituency” means two or three London Boroughs. What sort of constituency is that!? It is the equivalent of dozens of local councillors and some five or so parliamentary constituencies. As such the Assembly constituencies are so big as to be meaningless.

Lastly there is the party list. Here you vote for which of the list (of about a dozen) parties you like; you have one vote. Eleven party members are elected to the Assembly from a prioritised list provided by each party for the whole of London. Seats are allocated to parties pro rata to the number of votes received, with any party getting 5% or more of the votes guaranteed seat(s).

All three of these ballots are counted separately, so that’s three A4-sized ballot papers in different pretty colours all of which go in the same ballot box.

I agree with having an elected Mayor for London and a London Assembly. But in God’s name who thought up this shambolic way of doing it?

In my view the Assembly (or whatever you want to call it) has to have some teeth to actually control the Mayor’s possible excesses. And it has to have a sensible number of members elected directly to represent people; that probably means a member for each parliamentary constituency perhaps arranged as two or three “members” per Borough. And the voting system needs to be simple: “first past the post” will do, but STV would be better.

Whether Londoners — well at least the small number who bother to vote — return the current Mayor, Boris Johnson (Conservative), for another term or re-elect the previous Mayor, Ken “the Newt” Livingstone (Labour), remains to be seen. It is very unlikely to be any one of the other five candidates. We’ll probably know sometime tomorrow. It’ll be close.

medical, science

Plastic Animals

Yesterday we took a trip to London’s Natural History Museum. I’ve not been inside the NHM for maybe 50 years although I go past fairly frequently. I left feeling strangely disappointed.

We went mainly to the the latest Gunther von Hagens exhibition, Animals Inside Out, which is a display of his plastination, anatomical and display skills. It is the animal equivalent of the blockbuster Bodyworlds, which I’ve still not managed to see.

Von Hagens’s skills are incredible. And the displays were interesting, revealing and illuminating. They varied from the tiny brain of a hare to a complete giraffe; from a scallop to a shark. The blockbuster pieces had to be the giraffe, an elephant and an entire bull. Oh and this camel which is outside the (paid) exhibition in the impressive Central Hall of NHM underneath the dinosaur’s tail!

Plastinated Camel Plastinated Camel

The actual display pieces were amazing. But having said that I was disappointed. We spent about 45 minutes in the exhibition. I would have liked to spend longer there, and would have done had there been any more to see. The expense of putting on an exhibition like this is immense; GOK how much it costs and how much time it takes to plastinate an ostrich, let alone a bull or a giraffe! But even so I felt the exhibition was a bit thin, both in the number and variety of exhibits and the information provided. I would have liked many more examples.

Especially I would have liked a lot more explanation of what I was looking at. My anatomy is pretty damn good for a non-medic/zoologist/vet. I know where a fish’s gill plates are but does Joey Schoolboy? But I don’t know the detail of how a sheep’s guts are arranged. And I wanted to be told, if only with some labelled diagrams. I felt the explanatory texts were much too terse. OK many people don’t want, and can’t take in, huge amounts of detail. So put that detail in separate panels which they can choose not to read.

Oh, you mean the detail is all in the book of the exhibition? But why do I have to buy the book? OK so it’s only £12.99, but I neither want nor need the book. I wanted to be told what I was looking at! But then the exhibition is only £9 (full price) which I thought very reasonably priced — I’d expected it to be more like £15 or even £20. So I suppose I shouldn’t complain.

After the exhibition we went to the main restaurant for coffee and cake (the NHM has something like four food outlets and as many shops!). This was another depressing experience. The restaurant system is so arcane (and unwelcoming) they have to employ someone full time to explain it to people. The décor was fairly dire. The only saving grace was that the chocolate fudge cake was fairly good.

Then after that I wanted to look at the fishes. What fishes?! The fish displays seem to consist of four wall displays tucked in a blind corridor at the back of nowhere. And totally uninteresting. This was old style museum display at its worst: a selection of almost random exhibits stuck in a case with nothing to make it at all interesting, no obvious variety of different biotypes (marine vs freshwater; tropical vs temperate). The marine invertebrate displays next door were exactly the same: a huge room with very boring displays in wall cases and nothing else.

After that, and looking at the plastinated camel and (over-hyped) dinosaur in the Central Hall my back was complaining so we didn’t investigate further. Maybe we should have done and maybe some of the other displays would have been better, but it didn’t look enticing. So we gave in and came home.

OK so what’s the bottom line?

If you’re interested in the broad ideas of how animals work then do go and see Animals Inside Out. It is worth the admission charge; just don’t expect too much. If you go expecting anatomical detail and explanation, as I did, you’ll be disappointed. And judging by our experience if you go on a mid-week early afternoon during school term the exhibition will be quiet.

As for the rest, frankly I won’t be going back in a hurry.

Sorry guys, but I much expect better of major world museum in this day and age.

quotes

Quotes : Explanations

Well yes, these quotes do explain a few things …

Here’s all you need to know about men and women: women are crazy, men are stupid. And the main reason women are crazy is that men are stupid.
[George Carlin]

You never know what is enough, until you know what is more than enough.
[William Blake, Proverbs of Hell]

Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled.
[Michael Crichton, Caltech Michelin Lecture, 17 January 2003]

I believe that it is better to tell the truth than a lie. I believe it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe it is better to know than to be ignorant. The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary. The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out … without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.
[HL Mencken]

Warm-heartedness reinforces our self-confidence – giving us not a blind confidence, but a sense of confidence based on reason. When you have that you can act transparently, with nothing to hide! Likewise, if you are honest, the community will trust you. Trust brings friendship, as a result of which you can always feel happy. Whether you look to the right or the left, you will always be able to smile.
[Dalai Lama]

If you can’t get rid of the skeleton in your closet you’d best take it out and teach it to dance.
[George Bernard Shaw]