In two weeks' time, I'll receive my first formal assessment in British Sign Language... taking the test for CACDP (Council for the Advancement of Communication with Deaf People) Level 1 certification. The test criteria (taken from the CACDP's website) are whether the person is able to:

identify and use simple, commonly used expressions, question forms and conventions associated with BSL/ISL*;
request and provide information appropriate to the context;
express themselves in the language clearly enough so that a sympathetic native user of the language would understand questions and contributions.

*ISL = Irish Sign Language; CACDP certification is available in either.

The test is conducted face-to-face with a fluent signer, and takes about 10 minutes, with three components: basic conversation (what's your name, what do you do for a living, etc.), question and answer, and storytelling (take a minute or so to tell a story based on a series of pictures). Everyone seems fairly confident that I will breeze through it, mainly because I get a lot more practice than the others in my class (I share an office with three fluent signers, and the informal rule is that I should try to use BSL first in office conversations, particularly those of a social nature). But that doesn't help when it comes to the examination jitters -- the assessment was arranged yesterday and I've already had my first "Level 1 assessment nightmare". I swear this blog isn't going to turn into a dream journal, but here goes anyway:

The format of the Level 1 exam was a little different than specified above: it was a panel interview in a large auditorium. The content was a bit different as well: I was asked to describe my Ph.D. thesis research in BSL and answer questions of a technical nature. I had of course not prepared for this type of examination, instead rehearsing things like "I grew up in America, now I live in north London. I work as a language researcher and I have a wife and a cat." Needless to say this was not suitable to deal with (signed) questions like "how can you justify making a distinction between conceptual, nonlinguistic representations and semantic representations that are strictly verbal in nature?". The only thing missing (or not missing as the case may be) was that I was fully clothed.

A while back there was an interesting "HIT" on Amazon's Mechanical Turk. The instructions were to draw a sheep (facing left) using a simple mouse-based drawing interface. Artists (including me!) were paid the princely sum of two US cents for creating a sheep of sufficient quality (presumably, anything that vaguely looks like a sheep. The requirement that it be facing left is clearly not a strict one; see sheep #7653 for example). Now the project is complete, and the creators have unveiled The Sheep Market ("10000 sheep created by online workers"). A chosen sheep can be sent for free by email, or you can also shell out $20 for a "one of a kind plate block of lickable adhesive stamps... complete with a certificate of authenticity in a collectable package." That's $1 per sheep, which seems like a hefty markup indeed as the professional artists' services were obtained for a mere $200. Now, one of those sheep is mine. If you can guess which one it is, you'll receive a special prize. One guess per person, offer subject to additional restrictions not specified here.

And now it's happened. Just before noon today, the Dunces gathered at the Civic Centre in Wood Green, where we were naturalised as British citizens, along with about 25 others (none of whom seemed to be from North America or western Europe). It was a group ceremony of the "repeat after me" variety ("I, state your name"... "I, state your name" and so on). Although they dodged the "your name here" bit by asking each person to state his or her name before the actual swearing/pledging allegiance to the queen. Despite this, responses were nowhere near unison; one gentleman in particular seemed inclined to try and say his bit faster than anyone else (much like a young Dunce might have done), while others didn't quite catch on to the concept, reading the card along with the Registrar instead of with the rest of the group. The mayor of Haringey (our local council) said a few words about diversity, tolerance and respect (the only detail I remember is that he claimed that a mere 190 languages are spoken in Haringey). The national anthem (instrumental version) was played as we stood reverently, and then we were called up to shake the Mayor's hand and receive our certificate of citizenship and a Haringey council goodie bag (contents: 1 pen, 1 keychain, letter of welcome from (ex)Home Secretary Charles Clarke [bearing a replica signature], information sheet re: dual citizenship and right of abode, information sheet and application for British passport, a voter registration form, a list of local councillors' contact information, a Haringey streetmap, and a voucher good for a free exercise class, swim, or steam/sauna at local leisure centres). Once we were finished, we were given the chance to pose for photos with the Mayor (and a picture of the Queen). How could we not? And then it was over; everyone disappeared in a matter of seconds it seemed. Getting on with being British, I suppose.


The Mayor, the Queen and Mrs. Dunce


The Mayor, the Queen and Mr. Dunce

Dear friends

It is our pleasure to announce the normalisation of our place in this fine country. On Friday the 19th of May at 11:30am we will publicly affirm our allegiance to the Queen and take our place among you as upstanding British citizens.

Then a week later on Saturday the 27th May at 8pm we would like to invite you to our home to demonstrate that we can still party like hooligan immigrants. We will be serving a couple of fine real ales from the Milton Brewery (Sparta and Nero) and some nibbles, please bring anything else you would like. If you don't already know our address please drop me a line (EMAIL).

This past weekend we joined some friends of ours at sea, on an attempt at a sailing journey. Seven of us were involved, of whom only the Captain had significant sailing experience. He's recently moved his boat (BUGLE) from the very inconveniently located Isle of Wight to the much more accessible (from London, anyway) Chichester, a small city in West Sussex perhaps best known for its cathedral. Last summer Mrs. Dunce and I took a very relaxing and enjoyable sailing journey on this same vessel, under the same command (see here), although several of the other guests had experienced less delightful conditions (a Channel crossing featuring copious vomiting; hanging up on a sandbar on choppy seas, again featuring copious vomiting). The Captain had warned us in advance that we should not underestimate just how cold it would be out there, and to bring a variety of waterproofs we don't actually own. Fortunately there were a number of extras, and once we were outfitted and some safety instructions were given, we set out.

Bugle's mooring is at Chichester Marina, which as you can see from its location at the very top of this map is quite some distance into the harbor. So we had plenty of time motoring along the narrow channel (we'll get back to the channel soon) eagerly anticipating the excitement when we would finally set sail. Not without a bit of dread, however. The winds had kicked up to force 4-5, reaching 6, a scale which is fairly meaningless to me, but indicates that they're 15-20 knots, possibly into the mid 20s. Again fairly meaningless to me; even conversion into good ol' mph (15-25 or a little higher) doesn't actually tell me anything. A lot more informative were the subtle clues, like the significant number of small sailboats in the harbor resting on their sides while wet folks struggled to right them. Or the mayday call on the radio while we were being shown how to use it (just in case).

It took us the better part of an hour to make it to the mouth of the harbor, where we approached Chichester Bar. Unbeknownst to most of us (all of us?) this area might offer some interesting seas. The navigation report says "Mariners should be aware that ebb tides in the entrance to the harbour can attain a rate of up to 6 knots on springs. When falling tides coincide with strong winds from a southerly sector a dangerous sea may be encountered.". This local website puts it in perhaps more comprehensible terms: "Spectacular seas can sometimes be seen at the entrance to the Harbour at times of high winds from the south combined with spring ebb tides which reach their fastest around 3 hours after high water. If the conditions are right, the sea state over Chichester Bar (an area of shallower water) can be very exciting. You will not see many boats around as their skippers will hopefully have anticipated these conditions.". Well, it seems we were approaching the Bar under near-optimal conditions for seeing spectacular seas. It was already getting a bit exciting, especially as the depth gauge was indicating shallower and shallower water, as the boat's rising and falling increased dramatically. Fortunately for all involved, a quick decision was made to turn back, and we negotiated the channel back to the marina.

Or we would have, but for the particular shallowness of the low spring tide. Despite moving right along the channel, it was just not possible to get all the way to the marina, so after quite a few failed attempts a few feet apart from each other, we decided to tie up and wait out the tide with a picnic. Eventually the tide came back in, and we followed another boat of similar size through the (still quite shallow) channel, into the lock and back to the mooring. And from there it was off to dinner, than back below decks for the night.

There's definitely a lot going on in the area, so many mishaps that can involve boats. Maybe I shouldn't have read last year's report from the Chichester Harbour Patrol (pdf), or the local lifeboat launch summary. Perhaps I'm only a fair weather sailor after all.

There's been another temporary outage at Confederacy of a Dunce, this time because we took a long weekend in Washington DC. I figured I'd be able to write a little bit while we were there, but you know how that goes. We chose to spend a few extra quid to take Virgin Atlantic in order to take advantage of their impressive in-flight entertainment. You might laugh, but despite our desperate viewing from start to finish of both flights, we didn't even come close to watching everything that interested us. We did manage to get through Syriana, Junebug, The Constant Gardener and Murderball (three of which were disappointing), plus highlights of the Japanese program "Masquerade" (perhaps best known for the "Matrix Ping-pong" video clip that circulated widely a while back), a Chinese action game show "Challenge 321". Mrs. Dunce also saw Transamerica while I chose lowbrow comedy (Green Wing, Arrested Development, the American version of The Office). Of course this meant we didn't sleep on the return flight; thanks to that yesterday was a complete blur, and our 8:30 bedtime took forever to arrive.

We were graciously hosted by Mrs. Dunce's oldest friend who took time out of her busy schedule at the Peace Corps (especially busy as she has some responsibilities for East Timor) to hang out with us. And her boyfriend (although I heard her use the F-word on one occasion) who drives their apartment's only blog. Our main purpose for attending was the wedding of another of Mrs. Dunce's old friends, but we also managed to cruise through an impressive assortment of activities in our short visit.

I have to start with food, mainly because I'm a serial eater. Bring on those American-sized portions, that's my cry. We started on the eve of Cinco de Mayo at a Mexican restaurant; even though we now have a decent option in London, good Mexican is our first choice elsewhere as well. Mrs. Dunce and I are so closely tuned to each other that we ordered exactly the same thing, gigantic crab enchilada and a margarita (rocks, salt). Um about those American-sized portions, maybe not such a great idea for someone who's just eaten an airplane breakfast. The next morning we got in the car and headed for Bethesda, where Matuba Sushi awaited us. They offer a lunch special: all the sushi you can eat for a mere $11.95. From the "only rotary sushi bar in the DC metro area". Needless to say this was problematic for anyone lacking in willpower (that's me); the only solution was an afternoon nap. After which we headed out to the home of another of Mrs. Dunce's old friends (the capital area seems to be crawling with them) where we somehow managed to eat yet again.

It's starting to sound like our visit was only about eating, but we did some museuming as well. Like the new National Museum of the American Indian. I liked the approach of their displays, taking a central theme (e.g. history, cosmology, contemporary identity) and putting together parallel displays on that theme from different tribes from different parts of the Americas. And, (whoops, here I go back to food again) the museum restaurant was truly amazing. Our hosts had already mentioned how good it was, but I had no idea. The cafe is called Mitsitam, which means "Let's eat" in a local Indian language, and features a whole range of indigenous foods, grouped geographically (Northern Woodlands, South American, Meso America, the Great Plains, and the Northwest Coast and Columbia Plateau). I had an excellent black bean tamale; Mrs. Dunce a crab salad sandwich. Other choices included buffalo, venison, salmon, plus a whole variety of side dishes also generally representing the various locales (here are a couple of reviews).

Well, I've come to the end of my allotted time today, and I haven't even mentioned baseball or street numbering/naming conventions. I guess I need to threaten another DC entry next time.

One real challenge for me as a wannabe scientist is communicating my work effectively. I've had plenty of practice writing for an advanced audience (peer-reviewed publications in academic journals) but practically none intended for the general public. Until now, that is. I was recently asked to write a short piece about the sign language research I've involved in, to be published in a magazine whose primary readership is British signers. Fortunately I received plenty of feedback from one of my colleagues, a native signer who is substantially more experienced in writing for the community. It'll be interesting to see how people respond to it (if they respond at all). But I thought I'd post the article here as well, just to give a general idea of the kind of work I'm doing with sign language. All flaws, overstatements and errors of any kind are strictly my own and should not be attributed to my co-authors in any way. If you'd like to see the "academic journal" paper reporting this work please drop me a line.

Words, signs and imagery: when the language makes the difference.

In spoken languages, the way most words sound or are written has nothing to do with the actual thing each word represents. For example, neither the sound of the English word "hammer", nor its written form, have any resemblance to a hammer. Nor do the sounds of words for hammer in other languages ("kakas" in Hungarian, "martello" in Italian, "kanazuchi" in Japanese, "mlot" in Polish to mention but a few). This fact has led to a view held by many researchers: that "language" can be defined, in part, by the fact that words do not resemble the things they refer to. However, this view is based almost entirely upon research on spoken languages. Words referring to real-world things and events almost never resemble those things and events, because the languages are limited to sounds that can be produced by voice.

On the other hand, signed languagescan express far more information about the real world. In BSL, for example, numerous signs look like the object or action they refer to. For example, the sign HAMMER is produced by moving a fist up and down, resembling the typical use of a hammer, and the sign SCISSORS is produced by moving the index and middle fingers outward and inward, as if they were a pair of scissors. This sort of similarity between things in the world, and the form of signs, has often led people who know little about signed languages to the wrong conclusion that sign languages are somehow inferior to spoken languages, we know that research on sign languages shows otherwise.

We conducted an experiment designed to test whether the visual information of BSL signs affects native signers' judgements of similarity between different kinds of objects and actions, compared to English words which do not resemble things and events in the world. We used three types of signs/words: tools (e.g. SCISSORS, BROOM), tool-actions (e.g. DRILLING, DRAWING), and body-actions (e.g. SLAPPING, PUNCHING). The difference between objects (tools) and actions (tool actions and body actions) seems to be extremely important in understanding how language works, especially as they have very different roles in sentences (objects are nouns, actions are usually verbs). In BSL, all three kinds of signs are visually linked to their meanings, but tools and tool-actions are especially similar. For both of them, BSL signs look like the act of using a tool, while for body-actions, the signs look like the body movements:

Stills from BSL video clips used in the experiment. Arrows reflect direction of movement.

In this experiment, we showed BSL signers groups of three video-clips and asked them to decide which two of the signs were the most similar in meaning. We also asked English speakers to do a similar task, but using spoken words instead of video-clips. This kind of task has been used quite often to examine words' meanings in spoken languages, and speakers of a language tend to agree highly in their judgements. Because we wanted to look at the effect of the visual properties of signs, we looked at signers' and speakers' judgements of signs and words referring to tool actions. BSL signers were twice as likely to judge tool actions as more similar to tools than to body actions, while instead English speakers were four times as likely to judge tool actions as more similar to body actions. For example, SAWING and SPANNER were chosen as similar by BSL users 77% of the time, while English speakers chose them only 5% of the time; in contrast, SAWING and SCRATCHING were chosen as similar by BSL users only 5% of the time, but English speakers chose them 50% of the time.

The visual properties of signs are quite important in signed languages. Because BSL signs for both tools and tool-actions are so similar to each other, resembling the act of using a tool, BSL signers were far more likely to think of the two as very similar in meaning. This was very different from English speakers who thought of objects and actions as extremely different in meaning, even though both of them were related to tools. These results show that language cannot be defined by a lack of resemblance to things in the world, and that research on signed languages is an important part of understanding language itself as a whole.

At the end of summer, I will be joining a few friends on a small bike ride: flying into Krakow, from whence we will head southward, towards the High Tatras in Slovakia, eventually reaching Stary Smokovec before looping back to Krakow. The plan at the moment is slow steady long days in mountains, 60-80 miles per day, and staying in hotels/B&Bs so we don't have to carry camping gear. It seems like quite a difficult ride: any mountain range that includes the word "High" in its name is bound to be threatening, and pictures of the area seem to give the same impression. And at least according to this map the most significant mountains seem to be between Poland and Stary Smokovec.

Now I'm a true flatland boy, and while it's an exaggeration to say that the highest elevation I've ever cycled was a highway overpass (readers in the know will already be aware that the Kokomo, Indiana metro area does not offer many overpass options), the closest I've been to mountain cycling is flying over the Appalachians with my bike in the luggage compartment. Or, riding in the rolling hills west of Madison, Wisconsin. Not quite the same as real mountain riding, that's for sure. Oddly enough, I'm not so concerned about having enough stamina for the climbs: I've been gradually increasing my mileage and trying to find uphill stretches wherever I can (and also planning on doing at least a little training on some "real hills" somewhere away from London). Instead, it's the downhills that worry me most: even on minor downhills I find myself clutching the brakes as if they're trying to escape. Of course this may be a product of riding in and near London: within the built-up sections there's almost always a road crossing, a line of traffic, a construction zone, a small family crossing the road without looking or some other hazard; in the surrounding countryside it's quite typical to find a speeding driver taking his half of the road in the middle. So I'm quite anxious about getting used to riding downhill without squeezing the brakes until they melt and/or my hands turn into cramped claws.

In the meantime, perhaps I will start working on my Polish vocabulary which at the moment is only a handful of words mostly referring to foodstuffs (an ad for Chicago's Czerwone Jabluszko [Red Apple] Polish all-you-can-eat buffet really belongs here). Somehow I doubt the online Polish translator will be very useful on the road. But just in case I've prepared a few useful phrases, even though the online translation may not be very accurate at all:

You can have my bicycle. Please don't kill me.
Wy mozecie miec mój bicykl. Prosze nie zabija mnie.

Thank you for your kindness, but I cannot drink any more.
Dziekuja za wasza dobrotliwosc, ale JA nie moze pic wiecej.

Have you heard of Vanilla Ice?
Ma wy wysluchaliscie Vanilla Ice?

Those should pretty much cover it.

It's official! We've received our official "CITIZENSHIP INVITATIONS":

"APPLICATION FOR BRITISH CITIZENSHIP BY
Dunce

I am pleased to tell you that this application for British citizenship has been approved. To complete the process of becoming a British citizen, you will need to attend a citizenship ceremony to receive your certificate. In the ceremony you will take an Oath or Affirmation of allegiance to the Crown and a Pledge of loyalty to the United Kingdom. This is a formal promise to Her Majesty the Queen and the United Kingdom."

The choice between Oath or Affirmation depends upon whether Almighty God is mentioned or not. We'll do the ceremony sometime in the next three months (to be scheduled quite soon). It only took one month for our citizenship to be approved (from the day we submitted our documents: 20th of March); we were shocked it happened this quickly as the official website gave an expected waiting time of four months. We haven't even thought about planning the party. I guess our applications were very straightforward.

The date on the official letter was the 20th of April (Adolf Hitler's birthday, the date of the Columbine school shooting, and also a date revered by numerous American cannabis users for its resemblance to the not-at-all-secret number 420). In a not very modern twist, both citizenship invitations arrived in a single envelope addressed only to me. I like to think this was only because my name was on the payment slip, rather than Mrs. Dunce being considered chattel.

After I looked for the heavily English-speaking counties (failing to find the jewel in Montana's crown, the elusive 100% of Powder River County), the next step was to examine where English is least-spoken, at least according to the US Census. Judging from the English map I posted yesterday, it was a no-brainer to wander along the Mexican border and find areas where Spanish is especially dominant.

Although I wasn't exhaustive in my search, I think I did pretty well finding Maverick County, where a shade under 8% speak English as their first language (38,560 Spanish speakers, 91% of the population. 375 Kickapoo speakers, and a handful of Aztecan and German speakers round out the mix). Maverick County has a Wikipedia entry that is even less informative than usual, but plenty of historical information can be found at the Handbook of Texas Online (for example, that "[d]uring the decade before the Civil War, the area was a haven for outlaws, slave hunters, and other disreputable people"). The county seat, Eagle Pass, is "The Best Way to Mexico!!!" and "where yeehaw meets ole'" according to its website.

It's easy enough to find counties where Spanish is dominant, but not nearly so easy to find counties where yet another language besides English and Spanish is the most commonly spoken (at least according to the US Census). I noticed one quite easily when I peeked at the language map of Alaska. In the Bethel Census Area, there are 9,005 speakers of Yupik (an Eskimo language also spoken in Siberia, more info here), amounting to more than 63% of the population, vs only 4,950 English speakers (less than 35%). This area is in the midst of the Yukon Delta (and Bethel itself is apparently often called the "armpit of Alaska" by other Alaskans: Wikipedia link [hardly NPOV in wiki terms]). Here is an interesting local news site, and here is a nice local photo site. As far as the Bethel Census Area goes, the Wikipedia entry posed me a clear challenge: "Bethel Census Area is one of only 38 county-level census divisions of the United States where the most spoken language is not English and one of only 3 where it is neither English nor Spanish.". I immediately decided I had to find the other two.

Well, the French map from my first "Language map" entry was staring me in the face, so I thought I ought to start with the darkest French-speaking areas marked there. In the Northeast, there were a few possibilities, but all of them fell far short with more than 75% English speakers (Aroostook County, Maine: 22.37% French speakers; Androscoggin County, Maine: 14.29%; Coos County, NH: only 16.17%). So the next natural possibility was Louisiana, full of French-speaking Cajuns. But again, far short: the best I could find was St. Martin Parish (26.65% French speakers, but 69.74% English). Even Acadia Parish only clocked in with a miserable 17.27% French speaking rate. My next unsuccessful try was German, as there are a few highly German parts of the northern Plains (a few counties in the Dakotas), but the best I found there was McIntosh County, North Dakota (35.55% German, but over 64% English).

This was starting to get frustrating, but then I reconsidered the example of Yupik. What about other indigenous languages spoken only in certain parts of the country? When you think of native American languages, Navajo is the first to come to mind (at least if you are me). And it turns out to be the right place to look: as the Wikipedia entry puts it, "The Navajo people are one of the very few Native American tribes that still use the native language of their tribe in everyday usage.". As it turns out, the MLA site even offers a Navajo map, reproduced below:

And in two counties, Navajo is indeed the most-spoken language. In Apache County, Arizona, they are a majority: 36,775 Navajo speakers (58.39%) to only 24,180 English speakers (38.39%). McKinley County, New Mexico is the third non-English, non-Spanish county: 30,900 Navajo speakers (45.79%), 26,250 English speakers (38.9%), but also a significant number of Zuni (9.04%) and Spanish (5.72%) speakers. Navajo County, Arizona falls a little short (60% English, 25% Navajo). Now that I've solved the mystery I've somewhat run out of steam, but I can't leave without a link to the official site of the Navajo Nation.

In my previous entry, I started playing around with the MLA Language Map. Today I decided to do some more investigations, this time starting with the English map, which shows the percentage of people in each county who speak English as their first language:


First, I thought I'd try and find the county in which the greatest percentage of respondents are English speakers. Guessing from the legend on the map above, it looks like I should be able to find one county with 99.58% English speakers. Looking at the map, though, gives an idea about how hard this may be: vast stretches of the midwest and southeast are marked with the darkest color, including almost all of Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee. It was trivially easy to find counties at 98% or higher (just wander around Mississippi and Alabama) but was extremely hard to cross the 99 barrier.

Where do you find the elusive 99? How about "up in the hills"? The Ozarks was where I found my first, and so far only, 99: Searcy County, Arkansas (99.06%, with only 64 Spanish speakers and 8 Italians). The Wikipedia entry is especially dry (even for a "county" entry) so I offer you some information about the controversy concerning the 1998 election for sheriff (pos-c.com link).

Encouraged by this success, I checked various other Ozark counties without finding any other 99s. Next stop, Appalachia. And surprise, West Virgina brought in the second 99+ (Pleasants County, 99.10%, only 63 Spanish speakers). Here's a small site with some local information (and the dry-as-a-bone Wikipedia entry). It also has a bridge. But Pleasants County is as high as I managed to get. Can anyone do better? You can do searches here.

Next entry: counties where very few people speak English. Of course you would expect to find most of these in the Southwest where Spanish is spoken by a significant population, but there are three counties in the US where a language besides Spanish or English is the most commonly spoken. I have found two of them at the moment, but the third is proving elusive so far.

The Modern Language Association (MLA) has recently launched a new version of their US Language Map which displays language information from the 2000 US Census at variously fine levels of detail (main page here; map page here). One of the most important developments of this map is the ability to display speaker information as a percentage of the population (previous versions just showed raw numbers which gave excessively high weights to urban areas). The percentage-based maps give a very nice impression of linguistic distributions (although note that maps for different languages use different scales:

German:


Italian:


French:


You can also get details of where various languages are spoken (complete list of languages reported to the US Census, LINK). For example, Shawnee is spoken by 490 respondents in the entire US: 140 in Oklahoma, 110 in Ohio, 65 in West Virginia, 25 in Ohio and the rest in other states. Or Luxembourgian which is apparently spoken by 834 respondents (more in Wisconsin and Iowa than anywhere else). Surprisingly, neither Jedi nor Klingon appear on the list.

Regular readers will no doubt be dismayed to discover that, of all the various recurring themes (that) I've suggested (that) will appear here, I've decided to revisit the junk that's appeared through our mail slot (previous entry HERE if you are masochistic). It's been two weeks since that entry, and a mountain of junk has made its way into our entryway (thanks to the good weather and the holiday period, no doubt).

Clearly springtime has brought with it a boom in home improvement services which again were the most common (12 pieces). The highlight in this category was a fairly high-quality corrugated cardboard "SOLD" sign (about A5 size, 6.5" x 8") by an estate agency clearly desperate to grab business away from Winkworth. This category also yielded our first expenditure as a direct result of letterbox spamming, to which I'll return later. The next most popular category was taxi services (6 pieces), although there was massive duplication in this category: three cards each from two different car services (one card for each member of the household including the cat). Restaurants were surprisingly low (6 pieces), and mostly from establishments that have already donated excess paper to us in the past month. Only a couple of election-related items made it through (one Labour, one Conservative) despite the approaching local elections. I guess it's true: they don't want us to vote. One more dodgy clothing collection company, "Island of Hope Ltd", although the fact that they are a commercial enterprise rather than a charity is mentioned much more prominently than the previously-mentioned "Silverwall Ltd.". They also include reference to a website (HERE) which does not entirely allay my suspicions. We also got five miscellaneous ads from shops that I don't have the energy to describe any further.

I think my favorite this time around is the two self-improvement ads from "Professor" Uossof who claims to be "one of the best International Marabouts in Spiritual Healer and Advisor", helping you "solve all your problems regarding Black Magic, Sexual, Exam, Love, Voodoo, Transactions in Business and Self Spirits, Unwanted Union or to bring Lover back from Dark to Bright way". He did at least have the (no doubt psychic) insight to leave us two ads, one for me and one for the lady of the house.

We did make one purchase in this period based on letterbox spam, but this is an unusual circumstance. Our local authority is part of the government's recycling initiative called WRAP (it's unclear what the acronym represents), and is encouraging home composting by offering cut-price home composting bins (details of the program HERE, but we learned about it from the flyer through our postbox). We were one of "nearly 200" households in our area who jumped on the offer of a large compost bin at the knockdown price of £6. So now we will be collecting foul household waste in the back garden for a few weeks before we grow tired of the process and ask the Landlord to take it away and get rid of the smell.

Score for the past two weeks:
14 days, 34 pieces of advertising (2.4/day)

Score so far:
35 days, 64 pieces of advertising (1.8/day)
Total amount spent by the Dunces based on letterbox advertising: £6 (17 pence/day)

The Dunces spent the past week gallivanting around England with the Dunce parents, hence the lack of recent updates. For our travels we were issued a brand new hire car with three miles on the clock; we brought it back with just under 900. Not bad for a long weekend; in this country that sort of mileage can be considered quite respectable. Yes, I know in other countries 900 miles would be considered a long day on the road.

Today is their last day in town and I've crept off to the lab to do a little work. And being very effective at it, as you can see from this entry. Business as usual, then.

It's 43 hours and counting until the Dunce parents arrive for their first visit to London and the UK. Preparations are being made to ensure their maximum well-being and entertainment pleasure. We have sourced the finest drugs the underworld has to offer, made arrangements with exotic entertainers of all sorts, and put together a 24/7 clubbing itinerary that will eclipse even those legendary raves from back in the day. They've both expressed some concerns that our fair city will be unable to meet the demands of their high-flying party lifestyle, and to be honest we aren't sure either. Fortunately the cat has agreed to be on her best behavior, so at least there's that.