Sunday, November 20, 2005
Travel Joys and Atlanta Fashion

The Dunces have safely arrived in Pensacola, Florida after a fairly ordinary and uneventful journey, and are now installed at Opal's Mother's Manor. For the longest leg of the the journey (9.5 hour flight from London to Atlanta, GA) we sat in front of two strangers (a twentysomething Philadelphian, and a middle-aged Englishwoman now living in rural Spain) who spent the last five hours of the journey talking absolute rubbish about various societal issues (religion, politics, paedos, etc.). Just a little bit too loud for me to ignore or tune out. I won't rant about anything they said, with the exception of "baby sign" which deserves its own entry later (don't start yet, I am not anti-baby sign). But it was just enough to make me slightly insane and extremely curmudgeonly.

When we changed in the airport in Atlanta, we had some time to occupy ourselves. Some of it was spent walking the length of the airport (none of your fancy-dancy airport light rail for us!), and obtaining then gobbling some messy sandwiches, but we did also have a few moments to observe the passing crowds. To me the most impressive demographic trend concerns the wearing of skirts and dresses by female individuals. Opal Dunce is a skirt-only sort of a person: her wardrobe does include garments with separate legs, but these items are only worn in circumstances of illness, or as pajamas. But at least in the Atlanta airport, she was as anomalous as a priest with a Mohawk. Perhaps I exaggerate as we saw no priests with Mohawks (nor any priests of any sort, come to think of it), but among the hundreds and hundreds of womenfolk heading to and fro, the number of skirts or dresses could be easily counted on one hand, with a couple of fingers left over for nose-maintenance issues (and my hands are normal, at least when it comes to the number of fingers). I hope Opal isn't planning to buy many skirts in these parts. Or perhaps Pensacola is different (I understand there are some Mennonites around, but Opal doesn't exactly favor floor-length denim).

Although we are traveling, our home is occupied. So don't get any ideas about helping yourself to our goodies.

travel
Sunday, November 20, 2005 4:36:44 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Disclaimer  |   | 
 Friday, November 18, 2005
Returned valuables

Several weeks ago we had a break-in (see my entry here). It was an extremely targeted burglary as the only items taken were a laptop belonging to J--- ("the Lodger"), a US one dollar bill, and an Estonian five kroon note (worth about 20 pence). Well, as it turns out the laptop is no longer stolen but, incredibly, has found its way home (Just like Poco, the little dog with the big heart!). And here's the tale (subject to inaccuracies as I am telling it second-hand).

It all started when J--- received a phone call from Officer Friendly. A shifty gentleman had been spotted with a laptop that officers had some reason to suspect was not his (he may have been stopped for some other reason, I am not sure). His answers to questions about when, where and for how much he had purchased said laptop were not satisfactory, so the police offered to hold it for him (presumably waiting so that he could produce proof of purchase). Although this individual had deleted some of J---'s files, he hadn't deleted everything. Most importantly, a copy of J---'s CV with current contact details. So Officer Friendly contacted J--- and she was able to go to the police department and pick up the laptop!!! Or so you would think.

Upon arrival at the police department at the arranged time, she was informed that Officer Friendly was not in, and he was not expected until several hours later. A few days passed, and apparently more telephone calls were exchanged. Now the laptop was not available for release; it was being dealt with as evidence. Etc., etc. Some of us began to suspect that this was some sort of elaborate wind-up by someone not actually affiliated with the police, but using a real police officer's name. Perhaps ransom would be demanded, or perhaps even more sinister (maybe the laptop's new owner had claimed authorship of J---'s written work and wanted to taunt her with a multimillion pound book deal).

Anyway, another meeting was arranged, again at the police station. J--- arrived at the police station, but received a call on her mobile phone from Officer Friendly (calling from a mobile phone). "Are you at the station?" he asked. Indeed she was. "Go outside, across the street, and wait by the flagpole". A bizarre request indeed, but J--- was bold (and accompanied) so she complied. A vehicle pulled up, containing two women in plain clothes, who passed J--- the laptop (perhaps having her sign a form) and then took off. So, to my amazement, she did indeed recover the laptop.

Unfortunately, the power supply was not recovered (and Dell apparently uses a nonstandard power supply that costs a fortune and is not even compatible with power supplies for other Dell laptop models), so a complete examination of the laptop's contents has not yet been possible. Rumor has it, however, that it contains some music files, including what appears to be a set of home-made rap tracks. I'm hoping to get my hands on these. Perhaps we'll pretend to be the Artiste and get ourselves a multimillion pound record deal.

Oh yeah: The laptop isn't being kept in the house, so don't go breaking in trying to get it again. And we don't have any better valuables than we did at the time of the break-in.
Friday, November 18, 2005 12:12:49 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Disclaimer  |   | 
 Wednesday, November 16, 2005
The English equivalent of pounds

We have recently had a research article accepted for publication in a major journal (a link to the page proofs can be found here: pdf version, although the link may break as lab pages are being adjusted). One of the final editorial queries was a request for currency conversion:

"Wherever you list the monetary amounts that people were paid to participate, you list it only in pounds. We'll need the English equivalent, which we will place in parentheses."

It's true, we did list the amounts only in pounds (people were paid £3 for participating in our experiments reported in the paper). But I had a terrible time trying to find a conversion from British pounds to the English equivalent. For future reference, today's exchange rate seems to be 1.000000, which in a strange coincidence appears to be exactly the same as the rate for Welsh and Scottish currency.
Wednesday, November 16, 2005 11:11:16 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Disclaimer  |   | 
 Tuesday, November 15, 2005
Eating in the Axis of Evil

Last night Opal Dunce and I had the opportunity to travel to west London to see a gig1 at one of our favorite venues: Bush Hall (venue site)2. One of the added benefits to visiting the area is an excellent restaurant, Abu Zaad. It's a Syrian restaurant, apparently the only one in London. Back in 2002 when the "Axis of Evil" was extended to also include Cuba, Syria and Libya (BBC article), we saw a report on Channel Four News in which a reporter visited "the only Syrian restaurant in London" to get comments from the newly-appointed ambassadors of Evil. We were interested, not only in brazenly benefiting the spread of evil through capitalism, but also in eating the delicious meals that fill the tummies of evil people. When we finally went, we didn't see much evil, just quite a few local people (plus your occasional table of BBC employees) and our own table full of, well I am getting ahead of myself.

Abu Zaad is especially well-reviewed on london-eating.co.uk (9/10 on food, 8/10 on service, 8/10 on atmosphere, 8.8/10 on value). I would also include a link to a Time Out review but they only give a teaser for free: "A local restaurant for local people, and in Shepherd’s Bush that means Sudanese, Levantines, more Sudanese, westerners... and they all seem to be on first-name terms with the staff. Abu Zaad...". To read more you must sign up for a "free trial promotion" ("When you sign up during a free trial promotion you will be asked to supply your credit card details, however your credit card will not be charged until the free trial period has expired." How irritating). Anyway, we've now visited there going on ten times (I'd say) so now I feel quite ready to write about it myself. The mains on the menu are quite meat-heavy; there are a couple of veggie and fish options, but we have never bothered as the starter options are so great. We've found ourselves in a bit of a routine where we order (exactly) six of the starters (each priced at £2-3), which is plenty of food and a lot of variety as well. It's always a bit of a difficult decision which of the choices will make up our six. It always includes cheese sambouseks, batata harra (spicy potatoes with peppers), [ummm, I can't remember the name, but it includes pasta, lentils, fried onions, fried bread, mmmmm]. Sometimes also including spinach fatayer (a sort of squishy filled bready product, ready to be drizzled with lemon juice and mmmmm), hummus, falafel, stuffed vine leaves, baba ghanoush, and an assortment of others. All washed down with a nice glass of mint tea. Did I say mmmmm? And it always comes to less than £20 (we also seem to gobble our food like mad, so we don't spend very long there either. When it comes down to it, the food is quite similar to other eastern Mediterranean locales, and I have to say not evil at all. I can't wait till the next show at Bush Hall or Shepherds Bush Empire brings us back to Abu Zaad (it may be a while. Nothing good on the horizon, I'm not interested in seeing, say, Jethro Tull [and besides, they aren't playing until March]).




1 We saw South San Gabriel (band site), a fantastic band I'd never seen live before (although I have heard some recordings of their live material. I felt compelled to attend and buy merchandise not only because I liked what I heard, but because they are one of those groups who don't seem to mind people recording their shows and sharing them online for free). On this tour they were performing the songs from their new CD "The Carlton Chronicles: Not Until The Operation’s Through". Perhaps a rock opera, definitely a concept album as it is the story of a cat, told from the cat's perspective (I will ruin the ending by telling you all "the cat survives"). Once they finished with the cat business (apparently this was the last show on the "cat tour" of Europe) they did play some other songs not of a feline persuasion. I am rubbish at writing about music but I will say this: the sound was very layered: multiple guitars (acoustic, electric, pedal steel), keyboards and a few effects. What I could catch of the lyrics... very interesting and seemed to be on the intelligent side (I should note that I have a lot of trouble hearing and/or paying attention to lyrics in general). All in all a really good show. A friend of ours who also goes to lots of gigs (her personal site) called it her gig of the year. As far as I am concerned, it didn't quite top Sufjan Stevens, Curtis Eller, Swearing At Motorists, but it was definitely in the top ten (gosh, I haven't even mentioned M Ward, Broken Family Band, Drive By Truckers, Rufus Wainwright, Danny Barnes, or the Rosinators. Fortunately I haven't had to actually decide upon a top ten).

2An excellent venue indeed. According to the venue's website (info here) it was built "in 1904, [when] a publisher called William C. Hurndall presented a gift in the form of a dance hall to each of his three daughters: Lillian, Eugenie and Olive." It's quite an ornate room (and has served previously as a bingo hall and snooker parlor); general consensus around our table was that it would make a great location for a bingo/disco party. Here is what it takes to hire the place for your own special occasion.
consume | music
Tuesday, November 15, 2005 2:34:27 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Disclaimer  |   | 
Hiatus and downtime

Sorry about the outage... my blog lives on a machine that wasn't cooperating very nicely. But it's been coerced into behaving, at least for the moment. I have a small backlog of entries which I'll be posting in the next day or two.  They will be backdated to reflect when they were actually written, so please scroll down to see them (unless you're using an aggregator).
Tuesday, November 15, 2005 1:31:14 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Disclaimer  |   | 
 Friday, November 11, 2005
Stirring the brain

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.
science
Friday, November 11, 2005 1:33:13 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Disclaimer  |   | 
 Wednesday, November 09, 2005
Eritrean culture

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.
consume
Wednesday, November 09, 2005 12:20:13 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Disclaimer  |   | 
 Friday, November 04, 2005
And then there was one: London Routemaster III

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
Larger image
(Please click on the image for a much larger version, perhaps suitable for framing).
travel
Friday, November 04, 2005 11:05:59 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Disclaimer  |   | 
 Thursday, November 03, 2005
The Local may survive after all

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.
consume
Thursday, November 03, 2005 11:38:23 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Disclaimer  |   | 
 Tuesday, November 01, 2005
Sufjan Stevens live

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.
music
Tuesday, November 01, 2005 2:00:30 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Disclaimer  |   | 
 Monday, October 31, 2005
Trick or treat

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.
consume
Monday, October 31, 2005 2:01:32 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Disclaimer  |   | 
 Friday, October 28, 2005
Another found note

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.
Friday, October 28, 2005 1:23:59 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Disclaimer  |   | 
 Wednesday, October 26, 2005
The perfect crime

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.
Wednesday, October 26, 2005 12:10:03 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Disclaimer  |   | 
 Tuesday, October 25, 2005
Part of the American Circus

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.
music
Tuesday, October 25, 2005 3:27:02 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Disclaimer  |   | 
 Friday, October 21, 2005
Found!

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
read
Friday, October 21, 2005 9:40:36 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Disclaimer  |   | 
 Thursday, October 20, 2005
My blogging language

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.
language | meta
Thursday, October 20, 2005 12:22:30 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Disclaimer  |   |