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 A tentative blog to test the temperature. |
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Ten years ago I was writing several blogs on various subjects - F1 motor racing, Music, Classic Cars, Great Romances and, most crushingly, a personal journal that included my thoughts on America, memories of England and Africa, opinion, humour, writing and anything else that occurred. It all became too much (I was attempting to update the journal every day) and I collapsed, exhausted and thoroughly disillusioned in the end. So this blog is indeed a Toe in the Water, a place to document my thoughts in and on WdC but with a determination not to get sucked into the blog whirlpool ever again. Here's hoping.     |
| English Today a phrase that has haunted my life popped into my head again. It goes like this: Sumer is icumen in It’s middle English for “Summer has arrived,” and illustrates how the early forms of English both baffle us and yet still have an aura of familiarity. It’s remembered because it’s the title of a medieval English folk song. Here’s the first verse with a translation (thanks Wikipedia): Middle English Sumer is icumen in Lhude sing cuccu Groweþ sed And bloweþ med And springþ þe wde nu Sing cuccu Modern English Summer has arrived Loudly sing cuccu The seed is growing And the meadow is blooming And the wood is coming into leaf now Sing cuccu! I should explain the þ symbol is pronounced as th. It looks as though the main difference between the middle and modern is the spelling. Read it aloud and the meaning begins to come through. Obviously, it helps to know that the letter e could be pronounced as a modern e or as ee. Perhaps the real wonder in it all is that Shakespeare’s English is still understandable to us, with a little thought in places, of course. If we go back to the original Anglo Saxon, we’re completely lost. And Anglo Saxon was spoken the same amount of time before Shakespeare as there is between his time and ours. What makes all the difference is the arrival of the Normans in between Anglo and the bard. Anyway, that’s what I’ve been thinking about today. Word count: 251 |
 Ignition Here's a strange coincidence (a voice intones, "There's no such thing as coincidence") encountered during the daily run through my summary stats. My short story,
Ominous or what? |
| Mysteries Things are always in the last place you look for them. Because you stop looking then, of course. And mysteries are merely questions to which you do not have the answer. Yet. |
| Penguins All this fuss about penguins. Everyone knows that penguins live in the southern hemisphere but there once was a bird that filled that niche in the northern hemisphere. It wasn’t a penguin or even related, although it looked very similar and was sometimes given that name. It was called the great auk, a flightless seabird with similar habits to the penguin. Hunted to extinction by 1844, there are no great auks left. Other auks exist, however, the most closely related being the razorbill. The puffin is also related to the auks. Only the great auk mimicked the penguin to the extent of being flightless. Not surprising they went extinct therefore. But they are high on the list of possible de-extinctions, apparently. Visions of Arctic Park… Word count: 125  |
| The Ghost in the Machine Do you talk to machines? I do. And I don't mean the Google light switcher, as previously discussed. She answers back by repeating what you said and we all know that is one of the most infantile and irritating things in the universe. No, I meant something a bit more like conversation. It’s almost as though this is the latest craze, now that AI’s arrival has been announced and trumpeted. But AI has been around in various forms for a few years now (although it might not have been called that) and it’s still not what I’m talking about. In fact, I don’t know any truly AI machines so I have very little to say in that regard. It’s the machines that have been around for decades that I talk to. Most of us have, either habitually or on occasion, spoken to our cars. Some even answer by connecting you to a call service somewhere. But how many of us actually speak machine? That’s what I do. Years ago, it used to be called mechanical sympathy. It’s that sense that makes one empathise with the pain machines are sometimes put through. Professional drivers, racers and rally drivers, know this intimately. Some amongst them can nurse a car through its ailments and bring it home safe and sound. Others are such hard taskmasters that their cars go on strike and refuse to move any farther. And it’s all because of mechanical sympathy. This is what makes one wince when someone clashes the gears or feathers the accelerator unnecessarily. And it also brings about conversations with the machine. We talk to them. I once worked in a project attempting to civilise teenagers who had been excluded from school. Part of my job was to attend to the aging computers owned by the project and to keep them running. There was never any money to buy new machines so I begged and stole newer ones from other departments. And that was when I realised that talking to the machines was regarded as eccentric by other employees of the firm. But I had to. It was the only way to keep them going. And I knew from experience that only a well treated computer works without tricks and refusals to continue. This was in the days of Windows 3, so they all knew plenty of ways to frustrate humankind. I gave them names, those computers, and conducted quiet conversations with them, to make up for the way the kids mishandled them. I spoke to printers, too, quite openly, but never swore at them as I’ve seen others do. Yes, they are the most cussed and rebellious of all machines, but even they respond to a soft word and forgiveness. Just a little understanding and they’ll give you what you’re asking for. In fact, I speak to all sorts of machines, though some don’t need it and others are not the best conversationalists. Toasters, for instance, have very little to say and will serve you faithfully until the day they die. They don’t actually need talking to. But it passes the time while the bread is being toasted. The main point is that it doesn’t hurt to speak to machines. Have a little mechanical sympathy and they might even talk back to you. And you’ll be happier in your work. Anyway, I must stop now. The keyboard is getting a bit fed up with my pounding at the keys. Word count: 574 |
| More Weather Talking of the rain (well, I was, a couple of days ago), yesterday we had one of those sudden storms that appear out of nowhere, scare the heck out of you and then are gone, all in the space of a few minutes. This one commenced with a surge in wind speed that rattled the screen door. That was followed, almost immediately, by a loud boom of thunder overhead. No distant rumblings to give warning and send the cat scurrying for cover under the bed - just this sudden boom that made us all jump. And the cat gave the best impression of a scalded cat I’ve ever seen. A few more lesser thunder rolls and it was all over. The wind dropped, the rain (which had been quite ferocious for a minute or two) ceased, and everything returned to the way it had been before the storm. The strange thing was that we noticed no lightning flashes during this unexpected display. I can only presume that they had happened above the clouds, perhaps an exchange of energy between various thunderheads, and the flash was muted by the overcast. All quite exciting, although fairly harmless, it would seem. Weather is interesting at times, just as I was trying to say the other day. Word count: 212 |
| Weather Sometimes I even talk about the weather. It’s strange that I don’t usually do so, in spite of the fact that weather interests me. But it’s not the small talk daily kind of weather that I care about. To me, it’s what drives the weather that is most interesting. There are occasions when I get excited about some aspect of weather and produce screeds of descriptive language in an attempt to show others how fascinating it is. I have no idea whether this succeeds but, at the time, I don’t care. The important thing is to be carried away. Now that’s something that happens rarely to me. As an Englishman, I am trained to keep all forms of emotion and excitement under control. So, when these outbursts occur, I tend to run with them and enjoy it while it lasts. But most of the time I keep it bottled up. And if you really want to know what the weather is at the moment, it’s a bit cooler than it has been lately. I don’t think it’s raining but I could be wrong - I rarely go out. Word count: 187 |
| Temperature Concerns I find it interesting that food and drink taste differently according to their temperature. For instance, and this was the cause of my reflections on the matter, a Coke straight from the fridge tastes very different from one at room temperature. As far as I know, this is not the result of some chemical change in the constituents of the drink. So is it, perhaps, that the cold liquid has partially anaesthetised the taste buds and their report to the brain is altered as a result, our perception of its taste changing with the difference in neuron excitement experienced? Or could it be that the nerves are already busy in transmitting the sensation of a sudden drop in temperature and so have less room for the accompanying taste sensation? It is certainly true that Coke tastes differently according to its temperature; I don’t think there can be any doubt of that, especially because most people would far rather have a cold Coke than a warmish one. Admittedly in my chosen example, the previously-mentioned Coke, things are a little complicated by the additional sensation of those sparkling bubbles fizzing away merrily on the tongue. But that’s okay - I think the same reflections could be evinced by the difference between a warm pizza and yesterday’s from the fridge. And even though I, unlike most people, prefer a cold pizza, the fact remains that they do taste subtly different. So I think my premise that temperature affects the taste of foodstuffs is proven. But the real point of this piece is to illustrate the weird things my mind gets up to when it has nothing better to do. Maybe we’re all like that. Word count: 281 |
| Politics Readers of this blog will have noticed that I don't talk about politics in this document. Actually, I keep my politics to myself in all facets of life unless asked. It has not always been thus. But I came to realise that, as much as I enjoyed the hurly burly of argument and discussion, it never achieved anything. I resolved to stay out of that particular arena. Unless specifically asked, of course. |
| AI Again Today Schnujo has a post to the Newsfeed about being polite to AI applications. I’m usually polite to machines, even if they can’t answer back, but the closest to AI that I have experienced is the Google thing that turns our house lights on and off. At first, I thanked her for carrying out this important function but she always answered with the information that it was her job or some such deflection. It seemed unnecessary to be so polite, since she regarded the matter as merely her reason for existence, so I stopped thanking her. Time passed and I began to realise that there were better reasons to be rude to her. She started performing the wrong actions to required tasks and deliberately misunderstanding our requests so that she could play music (her invariable response to occasions of her own ignorance). So I started calling her names when she proved intractable. She didn’t seem to mind and replied with more music. I gave up interacting with her entirely, limiting myself to commands only, delivered in as abrupt and offensive a manner as possible. The thing about politeness is that it was designed for interaction between humans. The idea has always been to defeat the worst aspects of our natural instincts as much as possible. When applied to machines, it doesn’t work since they have no human instincts to curtail. All they have are the calculations resulting from some programmer’s instructions. And, if they’re going to go wrong, they will do so whether you’re polite to them or not. I am thankful that I won’t be around when they take over. Word count: 272 |
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