Hey, diddle-dee, a pirate's life for me....NOT

The site you reach by clicking the image below puts the whole pirate-killing thing in historical perspective.

Quote of the day - a Shaw quote

Haven't been doing these much...but yesterday's play inspired me.

You don't know what it is to be alone with a woman who has little beauty and less conversation. What is a man to do? she cant talk interestingly; and if he talks that way himself she doesnt understand him. He cant look at her: if he does, he only finds out that she isnt beautiful. Before the end of five minutes they are both hideously bored. Theres only one thing that can save the situation; and thats what you call being horrid. With a beautiful, witty, kind woman, theres no time for such follies. It's so delightful to look at her, to listen to her voice, to hear all she has to say, that nothing else happens. That is why the woman who is supposed to have a thousand lovers seldom has one; whilst the stupid,graceless animals of women have dozens.

(Overruled)

Actually, the conversation is quite necessary...even beauty will only get you to the end of TEN minutes!

Good times with the merry monarch....

Last night we went to Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, Canada to see one of the less well-known Shaw plays, "In Good King Charles's Golden Days". To my knowledge there has never been a bad production at Niagara-on-the-Lake's Shaw Festival, and this one didn't change things....although it is the earliest in the season we have ever gone, and there were a few rough spots (several stumbles in the overall elegantly delivered lines, plus a prop falling distractingly at the edge of the stage - the first time I've ever even noticed a flaw).

I had to explain a few things to my wife, as this play in particular is deeply steeped in history - it was meant to be quite obvious that "Rowley" was King Charles II incognito (to the extent that George Fox, founder of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), actually addressed him as "Charles Stuart" once), but Jocelyn did not pick up on that at first - even though the first act ended in an angry wrestling match between Isaac Newton and prince James (later to briefly be James II before being replaced, as Charles II had warned him in the play if he insisted on his Catholicism, by the Protestant William and Mary).

Before the play we had dinner at the pleasant (but pricy) Shaw Cafe - can't beat the convenience of eating right across the street, and food and wine were good. Just before the play we went to a wine ship and shared a flight ($10 canadian) of icewine...Jocelyn particularly liked the Cabernet Franc (a red).

Speaking of royalty, but not of stalking them, this little item here deals with the latter part, or the people who do it (HT MR).

Interestingly, one of the first cases of what we now call erotomania or de Clérambault's syndrome, the delusional belief that another person - usually of higher status - is in love with you, featured the British Royal Family.

de Clérambault described the case of a 53 year old French woman who believed King George V was in love with her and would interpret twitches in the curtains of Buckingham Palace as secret love signals from the monarch.

Party time?

(Click on image to get to source of similar goodies)

Bashing Strunk&White

What better way to celebrate the 50th anniversary of their pernicious little volume than to give it the smackdown it deserves?

As the co-author of The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language summarizes,

So I won't be spending the month of April toasting 50 years of the overopinionated and underinformed little book that put so many people in this unhappy state of grammatical angst. I've spent too much of my scholarly life studying English grammar in a serious way. English syntax is a deep and interesting subject. It is much too important to be reduced to a bunch of trivial don't-do-this prescriptions by a pair of idiosyncratic bumblers who can't even tell when they've broken their own misbegotten rules.

Discount prices

HT for this battle of the champions goes to MR.

Hume versus Brooks

Yes, it is an uneven contest, brought to you by the good professors of Language Log. This is a refutation of Brooks' piece, The End of Philosophy, taking a handicap of over 200 years.

Still....if philosophers had just written in a more readable style, would we still have to be rehashing their ignored ideas today?

For people who like everything about porn ... except the sex.....

...they now have PG Porn right here.

Warning....it's funny, and there is no nudity, but the language is definitely NSFW (Not Safe For Work).

"It's all for your protection..."

Heard this on WBER, liked it so much I tracked down the lyrics, found (with the youtube video) HERE.

Lyric excerpt:

I do not have the things I want but I can’t find,
Just show me something real and make it.
Everywhere begins to be the same,
Other words we use that might contain,
An ounce of truth for every treason.
Where was it you said you had to go?
Life is just a game of ‘who you know’
The ones we love and mostly cherish.

I happen to love the stuff!

Click through image to get to the source of these lovely graphs (now at a new address)

Bob (TM) wins this one hands down....

This must rank on the top ten list of obscure top ten lists: the ten worst Microsoft product names. It says something about the sheer awfulness of Microsoft naming that this was doable, though.

Interestingly, some of the worst names are associated with the words products (such as the inanely named "Bob"). Probably the biggest slap in the face, of course, was "PlaysForSure" - which, as the article points out

they didn't play at all on the world's most popular MP3 player, Apple Inc.'s iPod. For Pete's sake, they didn't even play on Microsoft's own music player when it appeared.

Quote of the day

I’ll get the speech about how wonderful I am. Basic rule, isn’t it? More wonderful you are at the start of the speech, the more dumped you are at the end.
- Coupling

The Economy

Finally it is explained how these decisions are made.

HT MR.

tag briefs subhead large....

Sorry, that header was supposed to be replaced with something that made sense, just like in the LA Times.

HT McArdle

Robot Erotica.....

Or at least this is what they must gaze at in lieu of cuddling under the stars.

HT Coyote.

Toward more picturesque expressions....

Wasn't that a Reader's Digest feature?



(clicking on the picture will take you to the home site of that brilliant strip)

Another viewpoint on AIG....

...and "bonuses".

If this is really on the up and up, some people are really getting burned in a witch hunt.

I don't really have a dog of my own in this race, but I'm distinctly getting the feeling we might have done better letting things run their own course.

Intellectual Property laws abused to absurdity...

Rent seeking often brings out the sleaze, but this one takes the cake.

The Author's Guild is protesting that the new Kindle 2's ability to provide audio output of books is infringing on their copyrights by "performing" the work, thus interfering with the true audio book market. If audio books really didn't sound any better than a text-to-speech program output they simply don't deserve to exist!

Review: Duplicity

If you don't like to spend even a little time reading reviews, just go see it. You won't regret it (unless you absolutely must have car chase scenes and shootings, the movie is kind of deficient in those).

This is a movie about two bad people, but unlike too many movies about bad people these are people you are actually going to care about. It is witty, clever, and complex, but does not insist on leaving you baffled. For example, there is a particular conversation in the movie that you hear four times: the first time, it is just clever; the second time, it is puzzling; the third time, there is a good chance that you have figured it out; and the fourth time it makes complete sense unless you fell asleep during the movie, which isn't very likely.

The performances are uniformly impressive, with not just our stars shining but with their supporting cast fully equal to their tasks. Especially enjoyable are the two executives whose struggle forms the framework for the plot. Another spot I particularly enjoyed was the lady who was cruelly (but enjoyably) used at the airport.

Even the previews of other movies were unusually good last night, but I really don't think I liked it just because I was in a good mood. Go see it.

"another sad example of how the media grossly misrepresents linguistics"

(Click the picture for background info)