Atomic Razor

Vote Early, Vote Often

According to the latest YouGov poll Boris is 11% ahead of Ken. How can this be? Who are these people who are prepared to vote for Boris Johnson (I leave aside discussion of the opinions of certain people)? Boris Johnson! This isn't the OUSU presidency we are talking about here. This is the mayoralty of the most important city in the world. There is no place for an eccentric joke candidate. Ken has many flaws, but he has a proven track of running London, while Boris has a proven track record of running... The Spectator. New Labour might be finally imploding under the combined weight of a global economic slowdown, battle fatigue and its own internal contradictions, but that doesn't mean that we can afford to risk putting the reins of power in London in the hands of an absentee landlord. And does anyone seriously believe that Johnson will be anything other than asleep on the job? Worryingly I haven't received a pollig card, although I am as sure as I can be that I returned the electroral register form months ago and I did get an official pack of electoral material from the Returning Officer yesterday. I will have to head down to Green Dragon Primary School with my passport and hope in my heart tomorrow. I ought to feel a lot more depressed about this than I do. The only explanation I can adduce is that I am suffering from hysterical suppression of the symptoms. Anyway, tomorrow, if you can, vote Ken 1.

Just What I've Been Looking For

LI've long been ashamed of the paucity of my vocabulary. I remember when I was 15 being asked by a fellow pupil at St Cuthbert Mayne RC High School what "imperious" meant. I blustered, but Michelle Ogden came in with a terse and accurate definition. I've carried the scar for nearly a quarter of a century now. I bought the Chambers 21st Century Dictionary on CD-ROM a few years ago (as discussed in these pages in August 2005 - it seems much longer ago), but I found it inadequate to my needs - the C21stD is a mere shadow of my Chambers English Dictionary from ~1990. For Christmas 2006 I received the Concise Oxford English Dictionary, with CD-ROM, a great improvement on C21stD. My appetite was whetted and for Christmas 2007 I received the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary ("contains all the vocabulary in general English worldwide from 1700 to the present day, plus vocabulary from the Bible and Shakespeare"). You take things for granted for decades , but when, for whatever reason, you start examining them in detail, you realise that you didn't understand them nearly as well as you thought you did (if it all). Recently I've been become concerned about the exact meanings of various common (and perhaps not so common) prefixes derived from Greek and Latin that are such a useful and ubiquitous element of so many of the words of our language. Condemn, connect, confuse, cislunar, translunar, cryptography, metastable, paranormal, pseudoscientific, quasielastic. I know what the words mean, but what exactly do the elements mean. For instance, the Trans-Siberian Railway goes across Siberia, but translunar space is beyond the Moon just as a transhumanism is beyond a human (in whatever sense). Across/beyond. Yes, there are linked concepts (there we go again!), but it's obvious that they ought to represented by the word (whatever languages are, they are slippery beasts). SOED has helped me with coming to grips with a problem I didn't even know I had, but this site is, I think, going to help even English Language Root Search - PrefixSuffix.com. But the truth is that after four months of using SOED, it's clear to me that it doesn't fully meet all my requirements. I need more words, fuller etymologies, a much wider range of quotations. I think for Christmas 2008 I am going to request for the Oxford English Dictionary itself.

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Now Then! Now Then!

What in the name of living buggeration is Carol Thatcher wearing on The Apprentice: You're Fired!? Not only is she wearing a Jimmy Saville blouson, not only has she got Jimmy Saville hair, she appears to have had plastic surgery to look like Jimmy Saville. I think she is even wearing his jewellery. What's going on? With Sir James pretty much retired these days, has she identified a potential vacancy in the hierarchy of the nation's affection?

Thinking About the Immortality of the Crab

So that's what I've been doing all these years.

I really think I ought to move to Buenos Aires, learn Spanish and pretend to the Twenty-First century Jorge Luis Borges. Well at least I now know what the title of the novel (or, perhaps, in homage to Borges, it ought rather to be a collection of short stories or even a single short story) I will write there will be. (Many thanks to the estimable Greg Williams at the WikiWorld Project for the marvellous cartoon.)

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Hanging One More Decade on the Line

There is a Woody Allen film, Husbands and Wives, I think, in which a birthday party is thrown for minor character, the brother of one of the protagonists, something of a wastrel. During his speech, the character opines that "The one good thing about turning 50 is that you don't have to do it again."

 

At least that is one is how I remember the line, although Google seems strangely silent on the matter.

 

It's probably nearly fifteen years since I saw the film, but that line has stayed with me. It's also true of 40.

Got Posy Simmonds's Literary Life and Tamara Drewe. Superb stuff. Went to Chez Bruce for dinner. Superb stuff. I had a share of persillade of snails with polenta, red wine and jabugo ham and rabbit schnitzel with fried quail’s eggs, anchovies and capers followed by calf’s liver with a sweetbread, bacon and rosemary crust, venetian style onions, potato gnocchi followed by crème brûlée (I think - things get hazy about this point). Margaret from The Apprentice was there and now I want to live by Wandsworth Common. Perhaps when I am 50...

By Any Other Name

What's in a name? Our reputation, for a start | comment | EducationGuardian.co.uk

Buckingham Chilterns University College, which had a certain ring to it is now called Buckinghamshire New University (known as Bucks New University), which doesn't. Curiously, Terence Kealey, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Buckingham (an institution discussed here in a recent post) spends most of the above article complaining about the decision of the Privy Council to allow Bath Spa University College to rename itself Bath Spa University on the grounds that "the confusion of names can only obscure Bath's reputation for world-class research excellence", presumably on the grounds that he can't complain about the confusion of names between the University of Buckingham and Buckinghamshire New University obscuring Buckingham's reputation for world-class research excellence because it doesn't have one.

Nevertheless, the names of many of new universities are offensively stupid. Take the University of Central Lancashire (I wish someone would - Boom! Boom!). At least it has been called that since it gained university status in 1992, but it is an ungainly name. It should have been the University of Preston or, better, Harris University. There are rumours of a name change, but really, as a rule of thumb, stick to what you've got even if what've you got isn't ideal. Changing a name creates confusion and an institution grows into a name over the years and decades. The thing is to get it right in the  first place (not that hard really).

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