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(I know, I know, but it's the way we
diarylanders have done it for generations.)
2004-06-03 fika (utc+1)
Instead of storing the memory, during the period when the memory is
the predominant faculty, with facts for the after exercise of the
judgment; and instead of awakening by the noblest models the fond and
unmixed love and admiration, which is the natural and graceful temper
of early youth; these nurslings of improved pedagogy are taught to
dispute and decide; to suspect all but their own and their lecturer's
wisdom; and to hold nothing sacred from their contempt, but their own
contemptible arrogance; boy-graduates in all the technicals, and in
all the dirty passions and impudence of anonymous criticism. To such
dispositions alone can the admonition of Pliny be requisite, Neque
enim debet operibus ejus obesse, quod vivit. An si inter eos, quos
nunquam vidimus, floruisset, non solum libros ejus, verum etiam
imagines conquireremus, ejusdem nunc honor prasentis, et gratia quasi
satietate languescet? At hoc pravum, malignumque est, non admirari
hominem admiratione dignissimum, quia videre, complecti, nec laudare
tantum, verum etiam amare contingit.
Biographia Literaria, Mr S T Coleridge
I studied Latin from the age of 7 until that of 14, when I took the
GCE O-level exam. Needless to say, I now know approximately none,
which is making this edition rather opaque, since Mr Coleridge clearly
anticipated a readership better equipped to indulge his fascination
with the remarks of the very dead persons.
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2004-06-03 12:21
I shall be attending the ceremony of investiture of a brother-in-law
on Saturday, which turns out to require surprising elaborate
preparations. I'm travelling up to Derbyshire tomorrow (there will
thus be no bloggage, hélas); my suit is at the dry cleaners' for
pick-up on the way to the station; my hair has just been cut.
Apparently there's a parallel universe out there where these things
are quite mundane. In particular, the people who live and work there
seem as baffled that I don't know the relevant protocols as I am by
trying to figure them out on the hoof.
It has not been the most restful of weeks. For example, the
hairdresser I went to last time has since shut for good, and no
hairdressers open on Bank Holidays. I am, though, looking forward
quite a lot to the extended öl-drinkning which such ceremonies are
invariably postceded by.
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2004-06-03 morning (utc+1)
Yeah, obviously
it was difficult out there
Conditions weren't ideal
and there were some nervous moments at the start
But the lads 've kept their shape
and we've stuck to our game-plane
and we've shown a lot of character out there
And at the end of the day
we've got the result we wanted
and you can't ask for more than that
The lads 've done us proud
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2004-06-02 16:47
A canonical book on its subject is Space Between Words: The Origin
of Silent Reading by Paul Saenger. I haven't read it, but I have
read this
interview
transcript:
And the story of my book I think, one of the parts which I hope is
original, I think it is, is this migration of word separation from the
British Isles - which people have known about, I didn't discover - to
the Continent, and how it spread geographically, starting in Northern
France at the end of the 10th century, in the course of the 11th
century spreading to Southern France and to Italy, informing a
language, a graphic language of what I call protoscholasticism, the
language of Fulbert of Chartres, which created the graphic language of
the great scholastics of the 13th century. I mean one cannot think of
St Thomas Aquinas having composed the Summa Theologica in scriptura
continua [i.e., without spaces]. The medium becomes part of the
message.
What I really really need to find is someone denouncing the practice
of putting spaces between words as a symptom of the moral decay of
contemporary society, for some value of contemporary.
Let not thine eyes the scriv'ner's craft beguile -
This spatiousness all men of faith revile -
But strain thy ear to catch the dying fall
Of that still small voice of the Lord of all.
[From "What is the world coming too?", St. Reactionarus]
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2004-06-02 hot hot hot (utc+1)
And at home, we are seeking to end the so-called "gold plating" of EU
law in the UK to ensure that undue regulatory burdens are not placed
on businesses and public bodies here in Britain.
Be of stout heart, "New" Labour! Stand up and speak out against these
perfidies practised by, um, "New" Labour, who have been in government
for the last 8 years or so...
Just for that, I'm voting Lib Dem. (Which I would never do in a
domestic election, unless I was voting tactically to keep the Tories
out, because they are rubbish, apparently on principle: it is less
likely that Queen Lilibet will find herself asking a Lib Dem to form a
government than it is that Kronprinsess Vickan will headhunt me for
the role of court philosophe and gigolo, and especially gigolo.)
(The BBC has summaries
of parties' agendas and links to manifestos where available for all UK
parties, including the proliferation of charmless far right splinter
groups in a range of unappetising "independence", anti-immigration and
anti-abortion flavours. And where are the unreconstructed Trotskyites
to balance the lunatic fringe up, I should like to know.)
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2004-06-02 11:37
(That's a great title, though, isn't it? Just call me A J "Freddy"
Lugnström...)
The Moving Finger writes; and having writ,
Moves on; nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.
[The Rubaiyat as Translated
by Edward Fitgerald.]
Print culture gave birth to the Romantic notions of "originality" and
"creativity", which set apart an individual work from other works
[...], seeing its origins and meaning as independent of outside
influences, at least ideally. [Ong, p.133]
The writer's audience is always a fiction. [Ong, p.177]
(That's the stand-out sentence in a book full of excellent sentences.)
The Romantic Movement marks the beginning of the end of the old
orality-oriented rhetoric [...]. [Ong, p.158]
Med men den tysta läsningens segertåg på 1800-talet dog retorik inom
elitkulturen.
But with the advent of silent reading in the 19th century, rhetoric
died out within high culture. [Hägg, p.251]
(I think Hägg may be drawing on Ong there. But I am now persuaded I
need to know more about romanticism as an ideological movement,
although if you think I'm going to start liking Wordsworth you've got
another think coming, for sure.)
[T]he medieval Christian mind had no conception of history as an
endless chain of cause and effect or of radical separation between
past and present. [Anderson, p.23]
Deities and other supernatural agents which have served their purpose
can be quietly dropped from the contemporary pantheon; and as society
changes, myths too are forgotten, attributed to other personages, or
transformed in their meanings. [Goody and Watt]
(Anderson is very good on time; Goody and Watt on the homeostatic
possibilities afforded by an absence of written records of myths and
geneologies.)
Nature states no "facts": these come only within statements devised by
human beings to refer to the seamless web of actuality around
them. [Ong, p.68]
(Nature states no facts, and that's a fact!)
The illusion that logic is a closed system has been encouraged by
writing and even more by print. Oral cultures hardly had this
illusion, though they had others. [Ong, p.158]
(The "proposition" of logiciste philosophes is, of course, an
exceptionally sophisticated literary device.)
Sources:
- Orality and Literacy, W. Ong
- Imagined Communities, B. Anderson
- Praktisk retorik, G. Hägg
- "The consequences of literacy", J. Goody and Watt.
[Permalink]
2004-06-02 morning (utc+1)
There's bound to be talk tomorrow - Making my life long sorrow
At least there will be plenty implied - If you caught pneumonia and died
I really can't stay - Get over that old out
Ahh, but it's cold outside
"Baby it's cold outside"
Lars Bevanger reports from the very Arctic Norwegish island of Svalbard
on the new Norwegish ban on smoking in bars and restaurants, for which
the deeply ill-informed across Yoorp are probably blaming the EU as we
speak:
Many Norwegians reacted with horror when their country became the
first in the world to suggest a blanket ban on smoking in bars and
restaurants, but as the idea sank in and people have seen how a
similar ban is working in Ireland, a majority of Norwegians now
support the new law.
Speaking as someone who has done his fair share of smoking in
Norwegish restaurants and bars, and especially bars, I have no opinion
on this at all except to remark that summer is certainly the time to
introduce such a ban.
[Permalink]
2004-06-01 fika (utc+1)
§1. Prinsessly Pumpning!
They say that Madde is pumping
the iron:
Prinsessan Madeleine ligger i stenhård träning inför badsäsongen
2004.
Prinsess Madeleine is training hard ahead of the 2004 bathing season.
§2. Befrockning!
Norwegish kronprinsess Mette-Marit,
trooper that she is, is showing no sign of flagging, even though
Det er deres tredje kongelige bryllup på to uker.
It's their third royal wedding in two weeks.
This time in Jordan, attending the nuptuations of prinsesse Noor
Hamzah i Amman and some random kronprins. As ever, it is the
befrockning that is the real story:
Kronprinsesse Mette-Marit feiret bryllup i Amman med
orientalsk-inspirert kjole.
Kronprinsess Mette-Marit celebrated the wedding in Amman with an
Orientally-inspired frock.
Where's Edward Said when you need him, eh?
§3. Befrockning igen!
Norwegish B-prinsess, Märtha Louise, whose befrocknings are no
stranger to the headlines makes instead the headlines for a
befrockning such as not to make the headlines, shock horror!
Kjolevalget under kronprinsbryllupet i Spania skapte storm. Men i
vennebryllup i Molde lørdag holdt en strålende blid og blomsterprydet
prinsesse Märtha Louise en lav profil.
Frock-choice during the kronprins-wedding in Spain caused a storm.
But at a friend-wedding in Molde on Saturday beamingly blid and
flower-demure prinsess Märtha Louise kept a low profile.
§4. Seal cub, yum yum.
well boss did it
ever strike you that a
hen regrets it just as
much when they wring her
neck as an oriole but
nobody has any
sympathy for a hen because
she is not beautiful
archy
The Swedes are all about the cute, and have apparently forgotten all
about the tasty,
sigh:
Det finns gott om säl i Luleå skärgård, men nu närmar de sig
centrum. I söndags skapade en kut stor uppståndelse när den kröp upp
vid en trottoar, nära Luleå centrum.
There's no shortage of yummy seals in Luleå's archipelago, but now
they're coming to town! Last Sunday a cub created a sensation when it
crawled up on a pavement near the centre of Luleå.
A heated argument about whether to serve it with red or white wine,
one would hope, albeit forlornly.
§5. Cricket in the USA
The 2nd Test, which starts on Thursday, won't be shown on terrestrial
TV - there is a precautionary law limiting the amount of sports other
than foopball that can be shown because just imagine!
But the FDRUSA (which has never really got the hand of foopball) is
gearing up to be a cricketing powerhouse, and we will certainly be
lending LA
Unity our unqualified support this summer. Which surely makes
make me a substantial proportion of their fan-base, or are there still
lots of Indian ex-pats out there seeking Silicon Valley riches?
§6. Cricket in the USA (2)
In a three-day match against the FDR, John Davison took
a startling 9 for 76 in the second innings to add to his remarkable 8
for 61 in the first and take Canananada to victory. Is it that the
FDR batting line-up has something of a weakness against off-spin, or
what?
(Cricket bores often like to point out that the first international
match was between precisely these two nations, so kindly consider that
duly outpointed.)
[Permalink]
2004-06-01 samwidge (utc+1)
Notwithstanding the problematical ontological status of post-holiday
Mondayhood, this time, since in any case this isn't really a review of
Göran Hägg's Praktisk Retorik either.
The reason for that is that when I started reading it a while back I
was quite clearly out of my depth and I was reduced to reading at a
philologiste's pace, which compares unfavourably to that of a snail
(snigel). Reading for comprehension is like riding a bicycle,
though, in that there is a speed below which it becomes very tricky
indeed, and I improved my vocabulary far more than my understanding of
retorik during this period.
Then, having got more or less up to speed, I read the remaining
three-fifths of it over the weekend, at an average of fifty pages a
day, which is a lot for me in the Swedish.
Some scattered remarks and approving quotations, then, will have to
stand in for the measured scholarly critique my Varied Reader has come
to associate with the Monday Review of Stuff.
First, this is old-school retorik - the art of persuading an
audience by means of an oral performance*, and not the decadent
tropology of later scholarship. Aristotle's treatise on the subject
is dismissed as an impractical irrelevance, in favour of the fairly
obscure Rhetoric for Herennius**, but the
terminology of classical rhetoric is treated without undue reverence
and illustrated with examples from an all-star cast featuring Cicero,
Nixon, Churchill and rather more Swedish politicians than I had
previously heard of.
There is a great deal of practical advice, much of which is the
opposite of current orthodoxy - Hägg insists that you should
not precede your talk with an outline (I quite agree) and that
the use of technological aids in an attempt to make a kind of parody
of bad TV out of what should be a good talk is a bad thing
(I quite agree) and that the popular exercise of videoing talks for
instant peer-review is as unhelpful as it is excruciating (I very
strongly agree, having had this exercise inflicted on me during my PhD
training). This is diagnosed to be part of a broader fallacy:
En säckert sätt att mislyckas some lärare eller föreläsare är att i
förväg försöker tänker sig i elevernas/publikens psyche och fråga sig
hur man själv skulle reagera på saker man planera att göra. De tänker
helt enkelt inte so du, reagera inte som du. Eller ochså saknar vi
helt enkelt tillräcklig fantasi för att se oss själva på det viset,
ens när vi se oss agera på inspelad bild.
A sure way to go wrong as a teacher or lecturer is to try to
anticipate pupils' or the public's reaction by thinking your way into
their minds and asking how you yourself would reacter to what you're
planning to do. They quite simply don't think like you or react like
you. Besides, we quite simply don't have enough imagination to see
ourselves in this way, even when we see ourselves perform on screen.
Instead, you should pay attention to how audiences do react
(especially on the spot but also in subsequent analysis) - it is the
defining characteristic of bad speakers (Hägg claims) that they don't
pay attention to this.
I'm planning to reread at least chunks of this in preparation for the next time
I'm called on to give a talk, and I really wish the publishers had
equipped it with a glossary of the classical terms and an index, so
that it could be used as the standard reference it deserves to be.
In closing, reiterating his commitment to the view of retorik
as primarily an art of emotional manipulation:
Det grepp i det föregående som måste anses som klart fusk är som sagt
paradoxalt nog de som riktar sig till förnufter istället för till
känslan. Objektiva sanningar är givetvis oemottagliga för retoriska
behandling.
The devices in the preceding which must be seen as simple cheating are,
paradoxically enough, those that are directed to reason rather than
emotion. Objective truth is clearly unsusceptible to rhetorical
treatment.
The von Bladet seminar on muntlighet och sanning ("orality and
truth") will be coming back to that theme, for sure.
* Oooh, you lot!
** It's very bloody obscure indeed if you're Googling for
"Herrennius". Sigh.
[Permalink]
2004-06-01 morning (utc+1)
Euro 2004 is set to distort economic indices as patriotic punters
splurge
on insignias of supportitude and sundry trashobilia:
Spending by business and consumers may hit £1.05bn, the Centre for
Economic and Business Research (CEBR) said. [...]
The Bank of England recently raised interest rates to 4.25% in a bid
to cool surging consumer spending. But with shelves filling up with
merchandise for the football tournament - ranging from replica kits to
supporters packs - the CEBR expects Britons to keep shopping.
When I was buying my Chelsea replica shirt (I am so very Chelsea) at
the weekend I couldn't help but notice that the shop was doing a
roaring trade in En-ger-lund tat, and that there were no national
merchandises available for other countries - including Wales, which
is just over the Severn bridge.
And the number of En-ger-lund flags flying from cars and vans, and
especially vans, is frankly disconcerting.
Foopball, though, isn't it?
[Permalink]
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