The handling of the London bombings so far seems to be admirable. Truly disgusting, however, are some of the comments on Free Republic. I knew it was a right-wing site, I didn’t appreciate how much.
Blog
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Wealden gardens in the NYT
The eminent journalist R. W. Apple Jr. writes in the New York Times about the gardens of the Weald, my neck of the woods.
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Rage-inducing PR spin of the nanosecond
On a cash machine outside Tunbridge Wells station:
Alliance & Leicester customers will not be charged to use this cash machine. Other users will be charged a convenience fee.
CONVENIENCE FEE! ARGH!
Alliance and Leicester – taking your hard-earned money, for your convenience.
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Impactful
Deep Impact hit comet Tempel-1 today, with good results and a huge plume of debris, brightening the comet by a factor of 11. One excited scientist quoted by the Register said:
“We’ll really be able to constrain our models with the new data.”
Yeah, baby! I shouldn’t be sarcastic. It sounds dull – but it may actually be quite exciting.
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Jackanory returns
In a piece of excellent news, Jackanory – the children’s programme where people read stories – is returning to TV. It’s such a simple format, but so effective. Almost Reithian in theory, I remember it from my childhood as a fun, involving programme. Long may it continue!
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Spain Legalizes Gay Marriage; Law Is Among the Most Liberal – New York Times
It’s going to be really interesting to see how this turns out.
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The Stories of English (David Crystal)
David Crystal’s The Stories of English
is a fascinating book, shot through with honest passion for the language (also on display in his excellent Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language
). It’s a long book, and closely typeset on long lines, so I wouldn’t recommend buying the paperback unless your eyesight is very good.
The book tells the unexpurgated story of English, including its dialects and non-standard forms. Mr Crystal, rightly, puts just as much weight on ‘dialect’ English as on the RP/standard forms, and the book tells a story of a lively language that the 18th century tried to put in corsets. But now with the rise of the Internet & othr cmnctn techs, the lngge is brkng 3 agn.
The story of how English was standardised was a surprise to traditionally-educated me. Mr Crystal’s case that rules don’t really matter, and only comprehension does is very persusive, and I for one pledge to not even slightly worry about split infinitives any more.
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Sellotape and trains
Much artificial outrage in the tabs today at a train driver who asked his passengers for sticky tape to fix his train. What is the world coming to, is the Mail’s view.
Of course, aficionados of the Thomas the Tank Engine oeuvre, as my son and I are, will remember that James’s driver used one Mr Jobling’s bootlace to repair a brake pipe after James had treated his carriages roughly one day. “The passengers told the Driver, the Fireman and the Guard what a Bad Railway it was,” wrote W. Awdry in 1948.
Well, indeed. Even now.
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Wimbledon 2005
Off to Wimbledon with my sister yesterday. Three hours queuing for ground passes, which on a warm day was just fine. Saw the Andrew Murray game on Henman Hill/Murray Field/Aorangi Terrace, and plenty of snatches of good live tennis – Mary Pierce beating Ivanovic, a moment or two of Grosjean’s game, a Czech mens doubles pairing battling a Polish duo, and Jiri Novak being beaten by his doubles partner Max Mirnyi.
The match that may well stick in my mind in future years is Jade Curtis, going down in a girls’ singles first round game. She’s only just 15, however, and showed a lot of talent once she got past what looked like some nerves in the first set. The thing that really impressed me, other than Curtis’s age, was her clear determination to win, and obvious irritation with herself when she didn’t. It’s a good attitude, and hopefully in a few years’ time, we’ll all be sitting on Murray Field/Curtis Curve/Aorangi Terrace.
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Price William, MA
Prince William graduated from university today (MA in geography, for what it’s worth), and the press hoopla around it reminded me of how cruel fate is to make people Royal.
Not only are the general public (and a fair sprinkling of nutters) constantly speculating about your love life, but it’s a life sentence, whether you like it or not.
I feel deeply sorry for Prince William and Kate Middleton, who appear to be perfectly normal undergrads, if perhaps a shade richer than the average (an article from the Mirror, linked above, described Ms Middleton’s family home as ‘a £500,000 mansion in Berkshire’. I know Berkshire, and £500,000 don’t buy you no mansion).
Perhaps it’s a mark of civilisation that monarchies have stopped oppressing the people and started oppressing themselves. But couldn’t Republic (or at least Amnesty) move away from the bone dry arguments about heads of state, and start a Human Rights case?