Friday, November 11, 2005
It's been a very busy week; I'm in
the midst of preparing an extensive application to obtain ethical
approval for several years' future experiments in language processing
and cognitive neuroscience. I don't write much at all about specific
things I'm doing at work, mainly because my work-related writing is
channeled toward more practical ends like publications, applications
and a minor project known colloquially as a Ph.D. thesis.
But when it comes to messing around with people's brains, how could I
not write about it? I'm talking, of course, about Transcranial Magnetic
Stimulation (TMS). TMS is a way of directly affecting the brain by
using directed magnetic devices on the surface of the head, in order to
induce electrical currents in fairly precisely-identified areas of the
brain (at least on areas near the surface). The main concern is safety:
the International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology
reports safety considerations (most importantly, avoiding TMS if you
have metal in your head, sensitive implanted electronic devices,
epilepsy, heart disease, etc.). Anyway, TMS has generally been used for
two main purposes. First, as a treatment for depression (see this psycom.net link for more details), essentially as a safer, less invasive and generally nicer version of electroconvulsive therapy.
I know little about this research, but there is a lot of interest in
this application, although to date the US FDA has not approved TMS
devices for use in therapeutic settings (some have been approved by
similar bodies in Canada and Israel).
The area I'm involved in, instead, focuses on trying to gain a better
understanding of brain function by assessing the effects of TMS upon a
specific part of the brain. The logic here is fairly simple: if a
particular part of the brain is involved in processing information of a
certain kind, TMS to that area will affect tasks that involve that kind
of information. For example (a fake example using entirely invented
areas and ideas, but which is very much an analog to the real studies
we are considering), suppose that we are testing a hypothesis that the
Ultramarine area of the brain is responsible for performing
mathematical operations of addition and subtraction. A TMS experiment
might then test participants' ability to add and subtract under
different stimulation conditions: No stimulation at all (to get an idea
of each participant's different abilities), stimulation to the
Ultramarine area, and stimulation to the Periwinkle area (which is not
believed to be involved in adding and subtracting). If the Ultramarine
area is indeed involved in adding and subtracting, we would expect to
see differences when comparing performance between the Ultramarine and
Periwinkle stimulation conditions. Such differences are not enough to
allow conclusions that indeed, the Ultramarine area is involved in
addition and subtraction (for example, it could be involved in all
mathematical operations, or in combinatorial processes of all sorts, or
in visual recognition processes, or "cognition", or numerous other
things the brain can do). In order to make conclusions like that, it's
also necessary to conduct similar experiments using different tasks
(for example, multiplication and division, for which differences would
not be observed if the Ultramarine area is only doing addition and
subtraction). This is especially important (and difficult) since many
areas of the brain seem to subserve multiple functions, and it's
extremely hard to isolate specific functions. Think of everything that
is involved in doing a simple addition problem like 2+2. Seeing the
image of "2+2", distinguishing the individual numbers and symbols as
distinct entities, identifying the referent of each (i.e. "+" means to
add), retrieving or calculating the answer (however that is done!), and
all the steps involved in producing the answer (let me assure you,
there are many). In short, it's a hard problem that requires many, many
steps.
Yesterday for the first time, I participated in a TMS experiment.
Unfortunately, it didn't go so well, despite all my knowledge about the
relative safety of TMS, and also my knowledge that the particular area
being stimulated (visual area V1) is not typically a painful or
unpleasant site (other sites can have uncomfortable consequences, such
as an icky twitch of the facial muscles each time a magnetic pulse
occurs). I blame it on the fact that I am a delicate flower of a man.
It was a rather strange sensation, somewhat like someone tapping on the
back of my head. But I managed to work myself into a sort of state
(quite similar to my reaction to blood tests or other medical
situations): by about trial number 10 (of 150+) I was shaking, sweating
profusely, light-headed and nauseated, and I had to call a stop to it.
I'm afraid I'll have to wear my tinfoil hat into the TMS lab in the future.
Wednesday, November 09, 2005
Last Friday the Dunces (and a special guest) had the opportunity to enjoy various pleasures of Eritrea at north London's Zigni House restaurant (Time Out review here, and my own glowing review from a previous visit is here1). The invitation described it as "...a cultural event, capturing the essence of Eritrean food, drink and cultural traditions in hopes of adding to the already rich and diverse community of Islington Borough." With that sort of description, how could we say no? My brother-in-law The Noblesvillain was in town for the evening at the end of a tour promoting international peace and harmony (or at least high-tech solutions for all aspects of biomedical testing), so he got to come as well.
We got to the restaurant and took our seats, and hung around chatting for a while as the place filled up. All the while people were circulating with home-made Eritrean drinks. A couple different kinds of home-made beer (one of which is "suwa", made from roasted grain), both of which were tasty, quite reminiscent of cider (more so than beer), a honey wine ("mies"), not exactly my preferred flavor but quite well regarded by Mrs. Dunce, and some sort of thick fruit drink tasting of pumpkin or squash, and perhaps celery? It was a strange flavor and we were a little concerned about the Noblevillain, given his history with unfamiliar fruits (a terrible allergic reaction to lychees when he came over for our wedding). Fortunately he was spared on this occasion.
Following a very lengthy settling-in period (and some running around by restaurant staff trying to get a PA system working), the distinguished guests arrived, including the mayor and mayoress of Islington, the Eritrean ambassador, and various religious and media dignitaries. After a couple of speeches by the proprietors, the events began. It started with some sort of food demonstration in the front of the restaurant (ingredients, preparation methods, etc.), for which the guests were divided into three groups. First, the dignitaries got to see the food demonstration while the rest of the guests continued to chat, sip drinks and so on. Then the dignitaries went to a downstairs area for a cooking demonstration and a musical performance (some sort of Eritrean lounge band, as best as I can describe it), while the second group went to the food demonstration. The third group (our group), hung around and waited for a while. And then a while longer. It was not exactly organized and I was beginning to panic a little bit about getting to eat something.
Fortunately all was not lost, as we were entertained by a couple doing some traditional Eritrean dances. Many of the dances seemed to focus upon abrupt head, neck and upper body movements which made the dancers' beaded necklaces jump around (the movements reminded me a lot of popping and locking). After each dance, a quick costume change and another dance. Here's a picture of the dancers: you can just see the male dancer in the background, wearing a very pimp-like costume. This particular dance was especially suggestive with lots of pelvic thrusting and "attempted groping" (and the Mayor's face showed a suitable level of disapproval, if only for a few moments).
When the dancers finished, it was finally our turn to get up from our seats, although the food demonstration had seemingly finished by then. But never mind the demonstration as a buffet full of real food was in place, so we filled up our plates and began to gorge ourselves. As in our previous visit to Zigni House, the food was fantastic (and somehow I managed not to eat myself into a state of foundering or illness). I won't go into specifics about the food as it's quite the same story as before (link). As we finished, the dignitaries came upstairs for their food, so we took the opportunity to see what was going on down there for ourselves. At first, not much (the band was taking a break), but eventually they took the stage again (electronic keyboard with drum machine, electric krar [a sort of lyre], and electric bass) and played a few electric/lounge versions of classic Eritrean songs (hard to say much about this as none of us had the linguistic background to understand the lyrics). The Eritrean cooking continued, and occasionally someone would come around with one dish or another to sample (too bad we had already eaten our fill).
Finally we came back upstairs for another dance performance and a coffee ceremony. Although, due to the large number of guests the coffee ceremony was not so ceremonial. Ordinarily the green coffee beans are washed, then roasted and the aroma wafted under the noses of the awaiting coffee drinkers, only after which are the beans ground and added to boiling water. The coffee is quite strong and is served with a bit of sugar (and popcorn / roasted nuts and grain). Although I didn't know it at the time, proper coffee ceremony behavior is to have a minimum of three cups, complimenting the taste after each (and it is rude to leave beforehand!). Mrs. Dunce and I only had one (the first round is called "awol"), and the Noblesvillain was marginally less rude, having a second ("kale eyti"). None of us had a third ("bereka") and definitely not a fourth ("derdja"). I think our (ignorant) rudeness was not noted, however, as the coffee was being served to so many people at once. Besides, so much strong coffee so late in the evening? It would have been a jittery, insomniac disaster.
Noblesvillain (left) and Dunce, ready for coffee:
The event definitely had the intended impact on us. We're definitely going back, sooner rather than later, and are doing all we can to encourage other people to visit Zigni House as well. Mmmmmmmmmm!
1 My previous review of the restaurant appears to be the reason we were invited in the first place. Not many reviews of Zigni House appear online, and mine was especially enthusiastic. Plus the (email) invitation matched up with a visitor who had made his/her way to my blog via Google a few minutes beforehand. Although I'm not looking for payola, I sure don't mind this kind of benefit of blogging. Don't worry, you won't see a sudden boom in restaurant reviews as I don't plan to start trolling for free food and drink.
Friday, November 04, 2005
I've been writing about the demise of the traditional London Routemaster buses quite a bit (e.g. this post),
and recently one more route bit the dust. The #38 has now been
converted from the iconic double-decker Routemasters to the mammoth and
much-reviled single-decker bendy buses, leaving only one route served
by Routemasters. And even that route (#159 between Marble Arch and
Streatham) will be converted to "modern buses" after 9 December.
According to routemaster.org.uk
a handful of Routemasters will run on "heritage routes" (five RMs each
on Trafalgar Square to Tower Hill and Royal Albert Hall to Aldwych
routes, running only during daytime hours).
The Diamond Geezer has done a stellar job at reporting the end of the era on the #38 route: walking the route on the penultimate day of the Routemasters and creating a pictorial tribute (The 38 Stops). And then a report on the first day of the new bendy buses (also including links to many others' tributes to the 38).
I've been keeping track of the various travel options available to the
dedicated Routemaster rider by updating the London bus map to include
only "travel by Routemaster" options. Here is the first post, with a Routemaster map just after the demise of the 19, and here is the updated map after the 14 and 22 were killed.
I now present for your approval the last in the series (expires 9
December 2005). The heritage routes don't count, it's probably better
to pay your respects in the London Transport Museum. When it reopens in 2007, that is.
London by Routemaster
(Please click on the image for a much larger version, perhaps suitable for framing).
Thursday, November 03, 2005
When we first moved to our new neighborhood we
were quite pleased to be in close proximity to the Oakdale Arms, which
we quickly settled upon as our local.
I've previously been quite pleased at their online presence,
particularly the ability to check an up-to-date list of the beers they
have in stock (see my eager post here). And how can I complain about their beer festival
practically on our doorstep? (Well I suppose I could have complained
about the Umbel Magna which smelled like urine and tasted like tincture
according to Mrs. Dunce, but it was her drink and not mine.) But crisis
arrived in the form of a planning application, under which the pub
would be demolished. The committee report after the first meeting
sounded quite grim (casually dismissing most of the reasons given by
people opposing the plans), but there was some hope as the decision was
deferred pending a visit by the committee. I guess that visit happened,
and something must have gone well because now I see a user comment on beerintheevening which reads as follows:
C O N G R A T U L A T I O N S ! ! !
The planning application for the Oakdale's demolition appears to have
been defeated on 31/10/2005 - await formal confirmation. If this is
confirmed, this is the great news we have all been waiting for.
If this is true, this is excellent news indeed. And what better way to
celebrate it than the next Oakdale Beer Festival (15-22 Nov, about 40
different beers, plus cider and perry). We'll have to fit in a visit
before we jet off for our Thanksgiving holiday.
ADDED:
According to the planning permission site, permission has indeed been
refused. But the listed reasons for refusal do not include anything to
do with the pub itself, but seem to have more to do with the imposing
nature of the proposed building. So it may be only a reprieve while the
owners revise their plans. Anyway, I'll keep my fingers crossed.
Tuesday, November 01, 2005
And now it's time for another gig report, even though I have quite a lot of trouble writing about music in any sort of way that actually reflects my experience of it. Last night we went to see Sufjan Stevens performing an "acoustic show with strings and horns". Plenty has been written elsewhere about Sufjan (thanks especially to largeheartedboy whose excellent detective work has turned up loads of Sufjan articles, reviews and downloads (follow this link to a google search of sufjan in largeheartedboy),
or check out some of his rave reviews on Pitchfork) so I'll stick to descriptions of the shows.
The first time we saw him was a couple of weeks ago, at a sold-out show at the Shepherds Bush Empire (all seated, capacity of 1278). That show featured heavily from his hotly-tipped latest album "(Come on feel the) Illinoise" and was heavy on midwestern kitsch. He and the band (the Illinoisemakers) were dressed in cheerleader costumes (University of Illinois colors but not logos), and many of the songs were introduced by cheers which served not only to provide aforementioned midwestern kitsch but also to explain some of the details to an audience who may not have been familiar with, say, Casimir Pulaski Day, or the amenities of Decatur. It was a fantastic show in my opinion, although I overheard a couple of hipsters grumbling about the squeaky-clean midwestern uncoolness (happy clappy cheerleader performances are difficult to accommodate within a framework of studied cynicism) and the no-smoking policy (signs around the venue read "This show is NO SMOKING at the artist's request". Good on him). So I was extremely happy to read a brief posting on the Londonist announcing that Sufjan would be playing another show, this time an acoustic gig at the Kings College London students' union (capacity, a few hundred sweaty people).
We scrambled to get our tickets, wondering what an "acoustic" gig might be like. After all, the show at the Empire was quite acoustic (excluding amplification equipment); the only "non-acoustic" instrument I can think of was an electric guitar or two ("acoustic" instruments including piano, banjo, acoustic guitar, xylophone (or one of its close cousins), trumpet, trombone, drums and various percussion instruments. And cheerleaders which fall into "acoustic"). Well, as it turned out all of the above instruments featured, plus a string quartet. No cheerleader costumes, however. But as the show was on Halloween, all of the performers wore masks. Well, they wore their masks onto the stage, and quickly decided that impaired vision wasn't the best option. So it was a stage full of unmasked masked performers, all with masks on the tops of their heads. The acoustic nature of the show came, as it turns out, in the material. Nearly all of the songs came from his 2004 album Seven Swans, with reworked arrangements (including the string quartet). The first half of the show featured Sufjan on guitar (and included Mrs. Dunce's favorite song from "Illinois", "John Wayne Gacy Jr." [follow this NPR link to hear it for yourself]), for the second half he switched over to the banjo. The audience was impressively quiet, although Mrs. Dunce suffered from an undesirable invasion of personal space (by someone much taller who crowded in front of her then spent the whole show leaning back over her [despite her various escape attempts]). Again, an excellent show, but completely unlike the previous one.
Monday, October 31, 2005
Hallowe'en in London is a strange sort of
holiday, as it's taken on certain elements of US Halloween
(trick-or-treating, casual vandalism), merged with elements of Guy Fawkes Night
("penny for the guy", fireworks). Despite Halloween-themed displays in
all sorts of shops, plenty of pumpkins for sale, etc. it doesn't seem
to have caught on so well (I've certainly not seen many
jack-o-lanterns, for example.). As far as I can see, it's celebrated
only by:
1. A very small number of parents of very small children, who take them
on the London version of trick-or-treating (for comparison, my
brother's account of the Young Bee's first Halloween can be found HERE).
Unlike the typical US home on Halloween, no one is equipped with bags
of candy for such visitors, so they have to make do with the modern
version of the "penny for the guy" (minus the effigy, plus a 2000%+
markup as to give only a penny would be an insult). And due to the
unwillingness of city dwellers to open their doors to strangers at
nights (and also perhaps to maximize the reward:effort ratio), they
tend to visit public locations such as shopping centres, train stations
and pubs. Mrs. Dunce and I saw two such trick-or-treaters at the Local
last night (where I appear to have earned the nickname "Spartan" due to
my preference for Milton's Sparta, a very tasty [hoppy] beer in the
Ancient Cities series). They looked to be in the under-eight age group
and were wearing costumes (well, masks at least) and wandered around
the regulars at the front of the pub, shaking them down for cold hard
cash. I prepared to make our own donation (20p each) but they didn't
make it back to our section. They may have been thrown out of the pub
(after all, children shouldn't be in a pub at that hour), they may have
gathered too much money to be able to carry any more, or they may have
been children of another regular (and thus only administered the
trick-or-treat shakedown to known individuals).
Halloween:
+ Wear costumes
+ Say "trick or treat"
- Collect money not candy
- Unlikely to "trick" if treats are not given
- Not scary
Guy Fawkes:
+ "Penny for the guy"
- No fire
- No effigy
- No explosives
2. Feral teenagers, who also participate in a trick-or-treat-like
activity. In this instance they dispense with the costumes (or rather,
they wear the year-round costume of hooded sweatshirts), but they do go
door-to-door, shouting "Trick or treat" and demanding "treats". But
more like "Give us 20 quid" than leaving it to the trick-or-treat-ee's
discretion. Failure to give them the money? Who knows, it's better not
to risk answering the door, although the door/entry/front garden may
suffer somewhat. Other activities include throwing fireworks at cycles,
cars, trains, basically anything that moves; burning things that will
burn (and trying to burn things that will not); drinking alcohol;
loitering. Pretty much like any other day, then, with slightly more
door-to-door activity.
Halloween:
+ Say "trick or treat"
+ If you don't give a "treat" you may be "tricked"
+ Scary
- They collect money not candy
- Really too old to be trick-or-treating
- No costumes
Guy Fawkes:
+ Demand money
+ May use fire
+ May use explosives
+ Teenagers are thought by many to be plotting the downfall of society
- No effigy
3.
University students, who wear costumes to participate in fancy-dress
activities such as drunken pub crawls, drunken club nights, drunken
scavenger hunts, and drunken drinking. The amount of effort made on
male costumes seems to be in direct proportion to the quantity of
science-fiction/fantasy material consumed on a regular basis, with a
few specific exceptions: Any male may dress in drag regardless of
s-f/fantasy tendencies. In such circumstances "comedy drag" (i.e. giant
balloon breasts, extreme makeup, etc.) may be employed to prevent
passersby from drawing mistaken (?) conclusions about the wearer's
sexuality. Also, only members of the royal family (or outlaw bikers, or
goths, or Nazis) should wear Nazi regalia. As far as female costumes, the guide from the Onion (2001) still holds: (jpg image)
.
Halloween:
+ Full costumes
- No trick-or-treating of any kind
- No vandalism
- Not very scary
Guy Fawkes:
- Spend money not collect it
- No effigy (unless it's a particularly impressive and unusual costume)
- No fire
- No explosives
All in all, I think the feral teenagers are the closest to the
(midwestern) spirit of Halloween, AND to the legacy of Guy Fawkes at
the same time. Well done to the yoof.
Friday, October 28, 2005
On the bus today I found an index card. Someone had written, in big, bold letters
LOGICLE
FALLACY
I love the misspelling of "logical" (not unique
to this particular instance) and have been pondering the purpose of the
LOGICLE FALLACY card. Maybe it was part of a set, reflecting common
errors of logic (others in the set might be AD HOMINUM [or AD HOMMINEM], BEGING THE QUESTION, CIRCULER ARGUMENT, FALSE ANNALOGY and so on). But there was nothing written on the back so it wasn't a flash card. Maybe it was part of something like a Buzzword Bingo
set. I've been at a lot of academic talks in which scribbled notes are
exchanged about the speaker's idiocy, ignorance or foolishness, but
most of these are in, errrr, a more informal register. No, I think this
card was intended for display. Woe betide anyone who tries to sneak a
LOGICLE FALLACY past me from now on as I am ready for you.
Wednesday, October 26, 2005
As a young lad I was especially obsessed with the idea of devising the perfect murder (I blame this in part on growing up without television). I decided right away that the victim had to be a stranger (so that I would have no motive should I prove to be a suspect), and there needed to be no witnesses. These were fairly easy: strangers are everywhere, and they're BAD! (Take the stranger quiz here! [Hint: They're all strangers even the fireman and the nice man with the flowers). So I figured it was probably OK to murder a stranger, as long as I got away with it. I had also decided that I had to do it on my own: accomplices are likely to fold under interrogation, and without accomplices there's no need to keep a story straight. I wasn't so worried about setting up an alibi, as a small child is seldom a suspect in a murder case. Especially if there are no witnesses, no motive (except for my desire to commit a perfect murder [which I did not publicize at the time]), and no accomplices to brag about it on the playground or at church.
The hard question was really the murder weapon. Although our house had plenty (knives [especially the one I used to chop at the edges of the kitchen countertops. It was more like a machete than a kitchen knife, at least as I recall]; lawn mowers; hatchets; rope; piano wire [inside the piano], just to mention a few), none of them were really suitable. If found (post-murder), many of them could be identified as Dunce family property (I was certainly not planning to let any family members know about it, so one of them might unwittingly incriminate me). So the weapon needed to be something that I could obtain from outside the house. Buying a weapon of some kind at a store was not really a viable possibility as I was young enough that the purchase of any potential murder weapon I could think of would be likely to attract notice, should the weapon be found and its possible purchasers investigated.
I was especially worried about the possibility that I could be identified using fingerprints or some other physical residue (perhaps a hair caught on the rivet of a knife handle, perhaps a swatch of fabric from the sleeve of my shirt, perhaps an unusual chemical residue that turned out to match the homemade Agent Orange my father used to kill poison ivy in the yard [as you can see, I read a lot of murder mysteries so I was eager to protect myself against these kinds of possibilities]).
Then it occurred to me: an icicle would be the perfect murder weapon. In central Indiana there was no shortage of icicles, and one could be obtained from many outdoor locations without arousing much suspicion. Stab the victim with the icicle, then abandon it somewhere safe where it would be likely to melt away before it was found. Even a little melting would obscure any fingerprints (I'm not sure why I didn't just think of wearing gloves). A genius plan, or so I thought. The victim's heavy winter clothing would prevent me from becoming too blood-spattered (I didn't consider that it might also make the stabbing more difficult). I could also probably find a single victim on his own (for some reason I had decided that my victim needed to be a man), for example, shoveling snow. I could even commit the crime during a blizzard, which would obscure any telltale footprints which could lead back to me (I would of course take a circuitous wander before the killing, and a similar wander afterwards). It would be important to only do this once: I was worried about being identified by geographical patterns, or being spotted by a witness. Anyway once you've committed the perfect murder there's not really any way to improve on it.
Imagine my surprise when I learned that this perfect weapon is far from perfect, being in fact quite well-known (at least in the realm of possibility):
Google search: Results 1 - 88 of about 174 for "stabbed with an icicle".
Google search: Results 1 - 10 of about 25 for "murdered with an icicle".
And if you search for the phrase "the perfect murder weapon is", Google obligingly provides the following terms (in order of their listing on Google): a big icicle, paper, An icicle, an icecicle, ice that has been shaped into a point, CHAINSAW (also includes "icicle"), an icicle. Maybe my idea was not so original after all. It's even mentioned in a Telegraph article entitled "How to commit the perfect murder" (P.D. James advises potential perfect murderers to "Keep it simple" and "don't tell a soul", while Patricia Cornwell sneers contempuously at crime of all sorts, preferring to plug her misguided notions of the identity of Jack the Ripper). So it's a really good thing I didn't do it. Honest, officer.
Tuesday, October 25, 2005
The past week has been a great one for live music. So good, in fact, that I am going to barely mention a fantastic show by Sufjan Stevens and the Illinoisemakers (reviewed in the Independent).
This is even though Sufjan Stevens is odds-on favorite to win the Dunce
household's coveted "Musician of the Year" award for 2005 (the only
thing standing in his way is that no such award exists). And I'm also
not going to say much about a great show last night by Chris Mills, another of the Dunce family's favorites (aha! his tour blog is over here, but doesn't mention this show just yet). Mainly because anything I write about the show would turn into a rant about the Borderline
and the terrible job they've done in promoting shows since they've
become a part of the whole Mean Fiddler enterprise. Monday night shows
are lower in attendance than other nights anyway, and, well, as Chris
put it himself, "Welcome to the secret Chris Mills gig". (see also a
couple weeks ago when Mike Ferrio's Monday gig was even more secret, not even appearing on the club's own website). Harrumph, that's what I say.
No, today's entry will focus upon New York City's angriest yodeling banjo player, Curtis Eller, and his recent show at the 12 Bar Club.
From the bio on his website, "He
sings about pigeon racing, performing elephants and Jesus, all of which
he has seen with his own eyes. He started his show-business career at
the age of seven as a juggler and acrobat in the Hiller Olde Tyme
Circus in Detroit, but has since turned to the banjo because that's
where the money is. His biggest musical influences are Buster Keaton,
Al Jolson and Abraham Lincoln." He's made it to London a few times
now (solo, leaving the rest of the American Circus behind). The first
time I saw him was at the Fiddlers Elbow (the now-defunct Come Down and
Meet the Folks club with which regular readers should be quite
familiar) where his banjo antics won the crowd over. His songs take a
lot of themes from the period between the wars. And by that I mean
beteen the Civil War and World War II. For example, one song takes the
perspective of Karl Wallenda's wife (shockingly, the Wallendas are still at it [despite all the falls] although they've fractionated into various groups of [superlative] Wallendas). Or "1890" which is a song of misery, with the message
...And I’m hoping this is just a run of bad luck
And maybe next season the crowds’ll be better
And the spanish web will turn in the spotlight
And the blood will return to my heart
And here’s hopin’ things pick up in 1890...
His songs of bygone days aren't just fictional, either. For example,
consider the lyrics of his song The Execution of
Black Diamond, a tale of a circus elephant shot dead in Corsicana,
Texas (Bb minor if you're humming along), and compare it with the
historical record (rootsweb.com link).
OK there are some questions about the number of bullets it took to
bring Black Diamond down, but I bet those questions have been around
since the day it happened.
Another historic incident, well, I know I've vowed previously not to
turn this into a political blog, but how could I avoid ranting about
the insanity in the White House?! It's crazy, that's what it is, the
utter madness of the President of the US, and if I'd known about this
tale sooner maybe I'd be a political blogger today. Thanks to
super-patriot Curtis Eller for bringing it to our attention!! I'm
talking, of course, about the madness of Abraham Lincoln as mentioned in the song "Sugar in My Coffin".
Digging up the corpse of his dead son (not once but twice), bad enough
that Mary Todd had to hold a seance? OK maybe the body was in a tomb
and required no mud-digging, but still.
And I still haven't mentioned his performing style which has to be seen
to be believed (waltzing with the banjo, standing perched on a rickety
stool, climbing into the balcony, creeping into a corner, contorting
and jigging and stretching in all sorts of directions). Or
name-checking Ypsilanti (Actually, come to think of it, of the artists
I've seen this week only Chris Mills doesn't have a song mentioning
Ypsilanti, thanks to "For The Windows In Paradise, For The Fatherless In Ypsilanti"
by Sufjan Stevens). All that and a really nice guy too. It was good to
see the 12 Bar packed with people to see him. I'll be making a real
effort to see him again, maybe even outside of London.
Finally, cosmik.com has a great interview with him here; I didn't have a chance to weave the link into the tale above.
Friday, October 21, 2005
I've always been someone who keeps my eye on the ground looking for interesting things that have been dropped or abandoned by others. When I was very young I read a storybook about a little old man who had once found some money on the ground. He spent the rest of his life looking down at the ground, eventually becoming permanently hunched over, and never seeing the pretty things like sunsets, rainbows, birds, trees, clouds and so on. In other words, the moral was that you should look up and not down. Even as a child I had a very curmudgeonly response to this, after all, he FOUND MONEY ON THE GROUND!! And probably found A LOT MORE in the rest of his life, along with other great stuff. Perhaps I was sensitive to this issue due to my own downward-looking tendencies, but I felt that spending at least some time looking downwards was an entirely valid lifestyle. Not only can you find great stuff (aforementioned MONEY, bottle caps, colored glass, used-up lighters, nuts and bolts, old keys, etc. etc.) but a lowered gaze is a good way to avoid aggressive reactions from nonhuman primates and bullies (whether human or non-). And I have found some great stuff in my day, without a hint of scoliosis (AND I've managed to see my share of sunsets, rainbows, even eclipses and meteor showers which weren't even mentioned by the silly author I mention above). I should insert here the time-worn phrase "One man's trash is another man's treasure" which is the only way I can really justify the hundreds (if not thousands) of rusty bottle caps that we collected over a number of years. And to be honest, I can't really think of anything that would be universally judged as a "great find" (when I say "universally" I only mean "among friends, family, acquaintances and others who might read this entry"). But fortunately this new-fangled innernet thing has revealed a community of like individuals, (perhaps) centered around FOUND Magazine ("We collect FOUND stuff: love letters, birthday cards, kids' homework, to-do lists, ticket stubs, poetry on napkins, telephone bills, doodles - anything that gives a glimpse into someone else's life."). And yesterday I found something that would certainly qualify for FOUND Magazine (in fact I shall be sending them the original). It was a page of hand-written text, reproduced below (as written, including formatting as best I can without scanning it in). I think it's a plan we all should follow. Fortunately the 'new' items are only vaguely specified and can be sold in numerous locations. Internet.
**********************************************
Where do I want us to be?
-- Renovate French property with some land (pref. with own water supply and woodland.)
-- Retain London flat - rent out in short term, use as London 'base' in long term.
-- Use French 'base' for workshop to create 'new' items, renovate, reuse to sell in London, Bath, Cambridge, etc. Possibly also Paris in the medium term. Internet.
-- Grow some food, plant fruit, nut trees. Evolve bottling etc. mainly for ourselves but possible sideline business.
'Issues'
-- Language
-- May (will?) need to raise a mortgage (let to buy)
-- Complicated accounts / tax / pensions position
Thursday, October 20, 2005
While writing a previous entry I noticed a high frequency of the term "fortunately" in my posts. Perhaps I've had many fortunate experiences, or perhaps I've been telling lots of tales involving possible misfortune, but in which the worst possibilities did not come to pass. Or maybe I just like the word "fortunately". Anyway, since I've been doing some simplistic work analyzing corpora of texts, I thought I'd turn these analyses on my own blog entries and see what other atypical patterns of word choice are present in my writings (up to and including my last entry). I am focusing here strictly upon word frequency: what uncommon words do I use especially frequently? what common words do I use less frequently than would be expected? And what do I write about the most, just in terms of the content words I recycle again and again?
For the sake of simplicity I am using a somewhat out-of-date word frequency database (Kucera & Francis, 1967. Information on the corpus can be found here); this was once the accepted source of word frequency information (approximately 1,000,000 words from 500 different sources), although much larger texts have since supplanted this database (for example, the British National Corpus is based on 100m words). To give you an idea of the distribution, here are a few of the most common words in the K&F corpus and how often each one occurred:
THE 69971
OF 36411
AND 28852
TO 26149
A 23237
IN 21341
THAT 10595
IS 10099
WAS 9816
HE 9543
I combined all the text of my blog entries (including titles, picture captions, and the text of hyperlinks, but not including dates, category labels or comments) and calculated how often each word occurred (a handy online tool for doing this can be found here). I discarded all words that occurred less than five times, and obtained K&F frequency values for each of the remaining words (a handy tool to do this and more can be found here). My ten most frequently used words were quite similar to the K&F set (above):
THE 3218
A 1663
OF 1646
TO 1477
AND 1242
IN 994
I 942
IS 602
FOR 478
IT 470
There are generally similar patterns between the two although I am clearly talking about myself more than the K&F sources ("I" is the 7th most popular word in my writing, and 20th most common in the K&F corpus), and less about other men ("HE" is #10 in K&F, but barely squeaks into the top 50 in my list).
When it comes to "fortunately" (and words like it), unfortunately I neglected to consider an important aspect of the K&F frequency database: it seems that certain kinds of derivational terms were counted under their stem rather than as a specific wordform. So "fortunately" (which I have used 40 times) did not ever occur in the K&F database. Nonetheless, a list of my most frequently used words that never occur in the database is still somewhat informative about my usage tendencies. Among those that don't occur for derivational reasons are (in decreasing order of frequency)
especially (50)
seems (50)
fortunately (40)
words (33)
times (31)
folks (27)
things (25)
minutes (23)
probably (23)
definitely (22)
So it's not just "fortunately" but quite a few other similar adverbs that characterize my writing. Some other terms that I use frequently but don't appear in the database are contractions (I'll, 51; that's, 32; I'd, 31; there's, 21) or abbreviations (ABV, 40; UK, 33; OED, 23). Once all of the above are excluded we are left with the terms that I definitely produce more frequently than the database would predict:
dunce (61) (no surprise there)
bike (39) (I am quite bike-obsessed, and perhaps this abbreviation for "bicycle" is more popular now than in the mid-60s? It's been around since the 1880s, though.)
blog (30) (a very new term: OED's earliest citation is 1999, although the source "weblog" is seen as far back (!) as 1993.)
google (24) (rarely used except in cricket until 1996)
Tallinn (19) (I guess there was not so much mention of Soviet cities in the [American] texts that made up the K&F corpus).
website (14) (another new one; OED's first citation ("WEB site") is from 1993)
spam (14) (The product made of pork shoulder and ham certainly existed in the sixties, but this dirty little secret was brushed under the rug as far as the frequency corpus goes. Spam as a verb dates back only to 1991, again according to OED [but which does not mention the Monty Python origin)
So there are a few (but not many) quite predictable terms that I use more often than the corpus would predict. Now how about the other direction? I selected the 200 most frequent words in the K&F database and checked which (if any) I used less than five times. There were four such words: (wept, 507; united, 482; government, 417; knew, 395). "Wept" and "knew" are irritating because these are clearly derived from "weep" and "know" (why do these appear in the database, but "especially", "seems" and "fortunately" do not? Probably because they're irregular, but still...). I don't use the word "weep" in regular conversation unless I'm being dramatic, but am surprised not to have mentioned "knew" given my constant discussions that seem related to knowledge). "United" and "government": my infrequent use of these terms is probably a very good sign that I'm not a political blogger (I get riled up enough writing about traffic, meal times; classifications of nerds and so on).
Finally, I looked at all of those words that appear both in the frequency database and my own writing. I did some statistical tricks1 in order to assess which words occurred unexpectedly often in my writing (as predicted by K&F frequencies), and which words occurred unexpectedly rarely. Here are the results:
My "unexpectedly often" words came from specific topic areas which I must admit I've spent perhaps too much time on: the consumption of alcohol (pub, ale, beer, cider), transportation (zebra, bus, cycle, traffic, destination, commute, London, route), language (noun, etymological, Albanian, verb, slang), and other more specific matters which have drawn my attention (marmalade, Portuguese, quince; slug, bug; badminton). Strangely very little about music ("festival" had a z-score of +1.79 but I've also referred to beer festivals). I should also note here that "toilet" still appears more often in my language than would be expected. I'm still the same little boy who got in trouble on a third grade assignment to write sentences including the words from that week's spelling list. All of my sentences included the word "toilet", and I was therefore given the opportunity to write "toilet" another 500 times. It clearly didn't cure me of it. In general, I also used content words (the, a, an, to, etc.) more often than would be expected from the corpus; perhaps this comes from my (attempted) conversational tone.
When it comes to words I didn't use as often as would be expected, there were a lot of male terms (men, himself, man, "John", Mr., him), and a lot more terms which you'd expect to see a lot on your bog-standard political blog (system, social, state, development, program, action, war, court, general, power, against, society, American, freedom, business). Am I intentionally avoiding these hot-button topics? Yeah, I guess so.
1Technical note: Frequency data like these are notoriously exponentially distributed, so in order to do this comparison I first transformed frequency by taking the logarithm, then converted the log frequencies into z-scores within each sample (K&F z-score for "the" = 4.16; K&F z-score for a word with frequency 1 = -3.22). I took the difference between K&F z-score and the z-score derived from my own word frequencies as a measure of the difference beyond the distributional patterns.
Wednesday, October 19, 2005
My final tale of the Folks is the tale of the Dunces. It begins shortly before my Tale of Adam Ant; the exact beginning of this tale can be identified as 3 November 2001. The occasion was the "Beyond Nashville" festival at the Barbican, featuring not only a series of evening concerts but also loads of free musical performances starting about noon and continuing after the evening's main event. On this particular day the event was an eagerly-awaited gathering of assorted luminaries of the (so-called) alt-country world, led by Howe Gelb (including Giant Sand, Vic Chesnutt, PJ Harvey, Kurt Wagner, Mark Linkous, Evan Dando, perhaps others but this tale is not about the show [reviewed here if you are especially interested] so I'll stop there [if these names are not familiar to you, you'll have to trust me].). During one of the free music events I was a-wandering and ran into L____, one of the central (and most lovable) characters of the Folks family, who took a moment to introduce me to another of his friends who had not spent much time at the Folks of late. Although I didn't know it at the time, this was indeed the future Mrs. Dunce, and L____ was the Cupid who brought us together.
One look at each other and we both got dizzy and weak in the knees, flushed of forehead and perhaps a little shaky of hand. I would like to say this was because of love at first sight but a more realistic explanation was that we were both already suffering from assorted ills (I should also note that it couldn't be love at first sight because (the future) Mrs. Dunce had already noticed me at previous music events [I should note that she has a steel-trap mind when it comes to recognizing people's faces, while I am severely deficient in this area]). So we made our introductions and a moment of light conversation before staggering off in our respective directions. Fortunately I had extracted a key piece of information from her: that in the very near future she would be attending a Hawksley Workman gig with her sister (who was in town at the time). Seeing that as an invitation of sorts, I arrived at the Spitz only to find the show sold out (and very sold out, as no one was selling an extra ticket, and my various attempts to blag my way in, or even blagging my way into buying a ticket, were rudely rebuffed). Denied entry, I sought other entertainment: a terrible evening with London's top Grateful Dead tribute act the Cosmic Charlies (I have enjoyed them on many occasions, but this was not one of them: a lackluster performance by a subset of the band, played to a very small, mostly unappreciative [and in one case, outrageously offensive in behavior] audience). Fortunately (the future) Mrs. Dunce resumed attendance at the Folks, so we met again soon after that evening, and quickly became inseparable (not literally).
Time passed and things went well. An image of a calendar shedding pages would be appropriate (if clichéd) here (or feel free to insert your own narrative device to express the passing of time [if the overt "Time passed" is not sufficient]). OK, that'll do.
It's "now" about two years later, or to be exact 14 December 2003. As usual we had made our way to the Fiddlers Elbow for the Folks. Performers that evening were NYC's own primitive-style dobro flatpicker Breadfoot, and Neil Cleary (I ended up with a N.C. bumper sticker which says "If you're in a folk song, don't go to the river" which is sensible advice indeed) among others. But this isn't about the music; unbeknownst to (the future) Mrs. Dunce some plans were afoot. The Autocrat played a couple of songs then (by prior arrangement) made an announcement: something like "A friend of mine has a bit of a performance now, please welcome Mr. Dunce to the stage". And then it was my moment as I came to the stage and took the microphone. I started with a bit of rambling about how I'd been coming down to the Folks for a while now and had made a lot of friends and gotten to know a lot of good people very well, that it was a really great community &c &c. I made the mistake of using the phrase "I'd like to come out ... " which was met (of course) with a heckle concerning my sexuality. But then I continued, mentioning that it was thanks to the Folks (and L____ in particular) that I had met (the future) Mrs. Dunce. And then I asked her to marry me (not from bended knee, at least as I recall. Sorry about that). Needless to say the crowd erupted and called on her to come up and give an answer. Which will be no surprise (given all my signaling what with "the future Mrs. Dunce", &c) was a loud and enthusiastic "YES!" into the microphone. And with that, we were engaged. With the expected consequences: cheering, a few tears here and there, hugs, pats on the back and so on. The rest of the evening was a major celebration, unfortunately slightly marred by some degree of excess (I blame the pub locale, and a surfeit of enthusiasm [and I would fully support any Governmental move to make absinthe illegal again]) but definitely my personal highlight of my Come Down and Meet the Folks experience.
Monday, October 17, 2005
It looks like I will have to delay telling my third (and favorite) "Folks Tale" until another day, thanks to what certainly qualifies as a case of unforseen circumstances. Yes, the Dunce has suffered another injury due to clumsiness/awkwardness/etc. It used to be (in university days) that the Dunce Parents would learn of such happenings through the family's health insurance policy (at least when the happenings were mild enough not to require their immediate attention), but now that the Dunce is under the care of the NHS this option is no longer available. However even if you are not a Dunce Parent you are welcome to read on and share in my misery (fortunately fairly minor, so even you sensitive sorts will not require more tissues than a usual entry of mine warrants).
On our way home from a birthday gathering (another individual putting an end to the evils of 35 for the delights of 36) I was distracted by a 24-hour bakery which had opened its doors now that the Sabbath had come to an end (it being somewhere in the vicinity of midnight on Saturday night/Sunday morning), and did not pay complete attention to safely exiting the bus. So it was not really a surprise that I failed to step on a flat piece of the curb (kerb) but instead took my first step onto a rounded part of the road surface which had somehow been formed into a bulge/slope/(whatever you'd like to call it, it was not a typical road surface formation). And my foot happily turned underneath me (inward) taking my not-insignificant weight upon it as I toppled to the pavement (fortunately [one of my favorite words, it seems] not under the wheels of the bus). Fortunately (again!) Mrs Dunce was there to assist me to a seat at the bus stop where (being a delicate flower) I may have had a little swoon before the arduous three-legged race toward home. Ice and ibuprofen were the main treatments, and fortunately there was little (if any) swelling. Sunday should have been a stay-in-bed day but instead we ventured out to the last day of the Folks at the Fiddler's Elbow (with a minimum of steps, I should note, and also that I had no ankle discomfort whatsoever so was able to do an awkward walk using the heel of the injured [right] foot).
Today the soreness hadn't really reduced so it was a trip to the hospital for me. No complaints about the NHS, perhaps it was my arrival in A&E ("Accident and Emergency") at 10am on a Monday. Not too many patients waiting before me (almost all of them sharing some foot-related injury, which I guess as in my case can wait until Monday), and I had prepared by bringing some reading matter (David Foster Wallace's Oblivion, IMO a far better collection of Wallace's short stories than his previous Girl with Curious Hair [possibly sic]). Three hours later I had been triaged, then "seen", then X-rayed, then "seen again" with a diagnosis of "not broken, but nicely sprained" ("nice" not my terminology, thank you). So it's a bandage and a limp for a while.
Friday, October 14, 2005
Wednesday, October 12, 2005
If I'm telling tales about the Folks, I can hardly omit my one and only performance on stage at the Folks (I mean my one and only musical performance on stage; I'll discuss that other performance in my next entry). It was Christmas Eve eve, and the last Folks of 2001. And what says Christmas more than a musical tribute to Johnny Cash, featuring London's best Johnny Cash tribute act The Folsom Four (featuring Morrisey's guitarist Boz Boorer) with "special guests"? As usual anyone was welcome to perform a couple of songs beforehand, and on this occasion the suggestion was made that floorspot performances should really be Johnny Cash related.
What better occasion, then, for me to make my performance debut? The Autocrat and I had gotten together a couple of nights beforehand and ran through a couple of appropriate songs (No Depression in Heaven, Daddy Sang Bass) until I was able to manage to get everything mostly right, or at least close enough. We were on first and I'd never seen so many people crowded into the Golden Lion. Fortified with a sip or two of the dark stuff I was ready to take the stage (or as ready as I'd ever be). I don't recall much at all about the performance, other than that the songs were really short, that my (brief) solos were pretty much disastrous, and worst of all that I didn't sing the "Daddy sang bass" line particularly low, which ruins the whole effect (thank goodness the Autocrat was able to provide a quality falsetto for the "tenor" part, as well as being an excellent player despite my hacking performance). We did, however, receive a roaring ovation when we finished (perhaps out of pity, but it doesn't matter, I'll take it) and it was such a relief to be finished that I can't exactly remember what happened immediately thereafter.
Eventually the Folsom Four came on stage and ran through the whole range of Cash material (they played pretty much everything you'd expect), but the best was yet to come as the special guests started to appear, each one backed by the Folsom Four. First up was one of the guys from psychobilly band The Meteors (at least, I think that's who it was. If not, well you'll have to blame my unfamiliarity with the world of psychobilly [or anything-billy for that matter]). Following him was UK comedian Mark Lamarr, radio personality and host of the music/comedy TV program "Never Mind the Buzzcocks" (a favorite in the Dunce house). Surprisingly enough he was quite good as a musical performer as well (follow this link if you'd like to book him for your event. Fee bracket £11k - £15k) although I can't recall any details of his performance. Because of my shock and awe at seeing the next performer...
At first I thought it was just another drunk crazy guy off the street, a common occurrence at the Golden Lion. But then he was introduced... as Adam Ant! He was wearing a cowboy hat, a dark jacket and some heavy sunglasses, loads of rings and camouflage trousers. When he took off the hat it was clear why he was wearing it: a mohican doesn't look so good when the front half has been devastated due to baldness. In honor of the Johnny Cash tribute theme he began by complaining that Elvis Presley is underappreciated, and therefore he'd treat us to a few Elvis songs. Very strange to hear an aging, crazed Adam Ant singing "In the Ghetto", that's for sure (not to mention "Bang a Gong [Get it on]" which was also part of his performance according to my records). Once he'd staggered through the Elvis songs it was time for some Eighties classics (Cleopatra, Young Parisians, Prince Charming among others). I think his performance was rubbish but by that point it didn't matter, everyone was crowded toward the front, standing/dancing on every available horizontal surface (and some not-quite horizontal surfaces). Eventually it was over and Adam Ant eventually staggered off into the Camden night. What a memorable night it was... the night I opened for Adam Ant.
Epilogue: Only a couple of weeks later, Mr. Ant (real name Stuart Goddard) got into a bit of trouble around Camden Town. The NME headline says it all, really: "ADAM ANT IN MENTAL WARD", while the BBC was a bit more sensitive "Adam Ant detained in hospital". According to follow-up reports (BBC source), "The singer was charged earlier this year after the incident in January at the Prince of Wales pub in Kentish Town, north London. He returned to the pub after regular drinkers there laughed at his "cowboy" clothes. He was said to have smashed the pub's windows - injuring musician Plato Contostavlos - and waved a starting pistol at customers who ran after him. It appeared he was furious that customers had mockingly sung the theme from The Good, The Bad And The Ugly when he walked in.". Fortunately it seems that things have improved for Mr. Ant, according to gigwise his autobiography is on the way: "The book, entitled, ‘Stand and Deliver’ will chart the singer’s dysfunctional childhood and his rise to fame and his decline into manic depression. Ant has kept in-depth diaries of his life since the 1970’s and has signed a lucrative deal to spill the beans on his crazy life."