Stufi

According to ANP:

The European Commission have brought the Netherlands to the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg over discrimination with regard to student grants. According to Dutch law, students who want to qualify for student grants to study abroad, need to have been legally resident in the Netherlands for at least three of the previous six years. According to the European Commission, this residency requirement is in breach of EU rules about free movement of labour.

AHRC, ESRC, and friends – please take note. Thank you.

More politics (unstructured thoughts)

Three interesting Op/Ed pieces from the Dutch press:

Martin Sommer in De Volkskrant continues the Irish EU referendum theme. Kees Aerts in Trouw discusses the apparent demise of social-democracy in Europe. And Hans Goslinga, also in Trouw talks about difference between old and new people's parties, and why it's important to stick to politics rather than settle on a cross-party business cabinet.

Points that they (more or less) make that I agree with:

• As there is very little that can be done against whatever comes from Brussels, opposition politicians that run on an anti-Europe ticket are misleading the electorate. European integration is at a point where opting in or out of individual treaties and rules and regulations makes very little difference indeed. Empty words, then, all of it.


• One of the old values of social-democracy was cultural enlightenment. Aerts is right that this was probably a top-down process. The idea is levelling upwards, raising the level of the masses, rather than levelling downwards, lowering the level of the elite down to the gross common denominator. Of course you can ask whether this is actually true, seeing as even news and discussion programmes on tv have been turned into "infotainment".


• The masses see Europe as a case of "their rights versus our interests", and are no longer interested in the left-wing intellectual elite's messages about how cool international cooperation is. They feel threatened by globalisation, sometimes rightly so, and put more faith in messages about cultural conservatism, regardless of whether these messages come from traditionally right-wing or traditionally left-wing parties.


• It's probably better to keep talking rather than sidelining politics and give power to a cross-party cabinet of successful academics and businessmen. That idea is probably not even that bad in theory, but in practice, it won't be accepted by the masses who have lost their faith in people with a different outlook in life. Recall the PVV's hate speech against intellectuals with university degrees and designer glasses.

Final question: is this really a question of a change from politics of left versus right to politics of intellectuals versus non-intellectuals? Are they all that different? And should we care?

Politics

I was reading up on some of the issues around last week's referendum in Ireland about whether or not to ratify the Treaty of Lisbon. The quickest way to get to some relevant links of course is to look up the referendum on Wikipedia, which was made even easier by there being a link to the article on the Wikipedia front page. (Which for me functioned as a reminder that I was meaning to read some more about it.)

Two things.

I was amazed and slightly appalled that one of the people active in the "NO to Lisbon" campaign was Nigel Farage, leader of the UK Independence Party. This is not an Irish party that is rallying for Irish independence from the UK – of course, they managed to kick out the Brits somewhere between 1916 and 1949, depending on how you define independence. No, it is a British party (in fact, mostly an English party) rallying for the European Union to stay out of British politics. But apparently it is alright for UKIP themselves to butt into Irish politics. I can understand that UKIP are evangelical about their "No to EU" message, fair enough, but if you want other countries to stay out of your politics, maybe you shouldn't get actively involved in another country's politics either.

The other thing is that the same Nigel Farage has said that the referendum was like a corrupt election in Zimbabwe or Afghanistan. Part of this is probably sour grapes, but it is a bit awkward to just disregard the outcome of the previous referendum (2008) and try again just because you didn't like the result. This reminds me of a talk at the Sociolinguistics Symposium in Amsterdam, where one of the keynote speakers pulled off exactly the same trick: the first set of experiments didn't show what we wanted it to show, so we re-did them, and then we liked the results better. Maybe the Irish should have waited with a new referendum – at least the two EU referenda in Norway were twenty years apart and there was enough change in both the electorate and the political situation in Europe to warrant trying again.

I also have thoughts about referenda, the provision and processing of relevant information, and the political landscape in general, but they are for some other time.

Metro maps

I'm a big fan of the stylised maps often used by metro and railway companies, where geography is made secondary to conveying information, and as a result, the world is just a little bit more typographically pleasing. So obviously different levels of my geekery got together in rejoicing over this map:



Not a true metro or train map, although the buses go through plenty of tunnels, and the 300, 400, and 410 services even go under the sea for a bit. Another bit of the geek in me is happy that there seems to be some underlying systematicity in numbering the bus and ferry connections, although it could have been done a little bit more elegantly.

Robot musicians don't like me

Last weekend, me and CS went to the last day of the Cybraphon exposition, a strange robot contraption that can make music on lots of different instruments inside a 1920s-style cupboard. It was designed by two people from the department, Simon and Ziggy-who-is-really-Barry. In the middle of the top shelf of the cupboard is a sort of barometer that indicates the Cybraphon's mood. Supposedly the music it plays depends on its mood, but of course if you only go and see it once, you can't tell...

The mood-o-meter goes from "desolate" to "delirious". When we came in, the Cybraphon was moderately happy. I can't remember exactly what the mood-o-meter said, but if it's really 1920s British it would have been something along the lines of "chirpy" or "jolly". However, the minute we positioned ourselves in front of the Cybraphon, its mood went down to "indifferent".

Thanks.

But also, likewise. Simon and Ziggy's previous contraption was a whole range of chimes and xylophones and things hidden in the bushes in one of the big greenhouses at the Botanic Gardens. They were connected to motion sensors, so certain things would play if you were standing near a certain plant. You could move around the greenhouse and make things happen. The Cybraphon doesn't have this interactiveness – at least, no direct interaction between the thing and the spectators. Apparently it takes its mood from how many people write about it positively on the internet. So sorry Cybraphon, I'm going to go ruin your day now: you weren't as good as the Botanics set-up.

Perspective

Part One
Somewhere in the Haymarket area. This was a while ago already, but it's a bit of a faff getting photos off my phone onto my computer. (SonyEricsson don't like Macs, obviously.) I think this is a very nice example of how the English language doesn't quite make complete sense. If the road is open, it's closed, and if it's closed, it's open. Whichever way you look at it.



Part Two
Inside Appleton Tower, where you can't see Appleton Tower, but where you can see the new Linguistics and English Language computer teaching lab. Unlike the outside, which is falling to bits, or the view out, which is the netting that is supposed to keep the bits falling off the outside from hurting people, the inside is a true feast for the eye:



Apart from the Logitech keyboards and Microsoft mice, of course. Apart from the price, what's wrong with the proper stuff?

But then there was a little bit of cognitive dissonance here:



Oh dear.

Also: want! (But don't bother with the dual boot.)

Scottish-themed comedy

Yesterday on Dutch tv in De Wereld Draait Door: comedian Marc-Marie Huijbregts shows the new tartan of his native Tilburg, the first city in the Netherlands to get their own tartan. For the occasion, he is wearing a kilt.

Backwards.

Oh well, they can be in their own selection of tv gaffes next Monday.

(Click "Bekijk Uitzending"; Marc-Marie's fashion faux pas starts approx. 4 minutes into the show.)

Moving around

I'm being very good and keeping up with my New Year's resolution of being more active.

Dancing
On the dancing front, the past couple of weeks have seen the Annual Dance, at which I danced pretty much everything, and Linda's birthday ceilidh, at which I didn't. Together with Katie we also managed to put together a display dem for Newcastle, with nice music and some interesting dances. Miraculously it seemed to work on the first night of practices, and we almost hit the lines halfway through sixteen bars of poussetting too. This is very encouraging for Newcastle, especially after all the headaches with the SUSCDF dem at the end of last year.

Dancing on Thursdays has been a bit slow on several fronts. The social programmes I write don't tend to work, even though I've made them significantly simpler since the Annual Dance. There seems to be a fair amount of turnover from week to week, so every week there's people who don't actually know what they're doing. The new plan is to write a social programme of four dances with one extra. Maybe that way we can fool the Time Gods into allowing us five dances per evening? Also, my dancing has been very intermittent, usually because of some sort of injury or (like this week) trying not to be ill. This week I had dem class off (no display practice, only technique) so I decided to go to Dunedin instead, where I danced about half because the balls of my feet started hurting. Not good. I have now ordered new dance shoes, including shockproof insoles, from James Senior (because Dancewear doesn't appear to do them), so they should be arriving by the end of the month. I'm hoping they'll hurry up and get them to me by Newcastle – one can always hope.

The Hot Cross Bun
The birthday dance I wrote for Linda, which seemed to go down well both with experienced dancers and with beginnery types. It is an 8x32 Reel, but because of the odd progression (3-1-2) it's not suitable for ‘once and to the bottom’ encores. Then again, it can be done (as we did when we demmed it for Linda) as a 3-by.

1-8. Cross, cast, turn left (4 bars) to face first corners.
9-16. Set to corners and change places right hand. Corners now back-to-back in the middle dance half a reel of four with first couple.
17-24. Corners dance another half reel of four with second corners. This starts with men facing men, ladies facing ladies, and ends with the corners facing first couple again. Set and change places right hand.
25-32. First couple turn left hand (4 bars) to end in 2nd place on the wrong sides. All set and cross.

Athletic endeavours
On the swimming front it's been a solo effort for the past two weeks. Last week that wasn't too surprising seeing as Linda was probably too busy preparing for her party; no idea why no one else was there yesterday. Either way, it meant less faffing around and more swimming lanes. Last week I did 55, and yesterday I did 41 (although it might have been 43, I tend to lose count if I'm not paying too much attention). In both cases, I added another five which I timed, in the never-ending race to qualify for the fast lane. Last week it was 2.45 for five lanes (33 seconds per lane), and yesterday I managed 2.36 (just over 31 seconds per lane). The fast lane is 30 seconds or less per lane. It'll be a while before I can do that without actually racing for it.

It mightn't have been such a good idea to have tried that yesterday, what with me not being very happy with my stomach (or vice versa). So despite the personal best time in the swimming, the rest of the day was not very good and food didn't actually stay in. (You really wanted to know that, didn't you.)

The other athletic endeavours on the frozen version of a pool are going okay as well. Last week Jen and I had a different teacher who tried to teach three levels at the same time, and it went reasonably alright. Today it was just me, but we had our old teacher back, the one who says [arəms] and on the surface doesn't seem to be too convinced we can all do what she wants us to do. She was very good at giving advice this week (maybe she wasn't there last week because she went to that seminar in Sheffield they talked about, and maybe the seminar was about teaching?) and I even got a compliment that my skating was coming along really well. Also, the skate shop was finally open, so I spent more money on footwear.

The disagreement between myself and my stomach had settled by this morning, so that was no longer bugging me. Now just a good night's sleep tonight, and I'll be all set for more activity next week (i.e. the same as last week, plus actually doing some dancing again).

New Year and its resolutions

Be a nicer person
Apparently I am not a very nice person. In a way, this is probably true. I can be quite arrogant, or at least elitist in a wide variety of ways. And I appear to have a reputation for being bitchy. So the idea for 2008 is to be less bitchy in general, and also to be more careful with the contexts in which I am being bitchy.

So far this one seems to be failing. I don't think I am being significantly less bitchy, elitist or arrogant; and the fact that I haven't made any real faux pas is mostly due to the fact that I've not been in any contexts where such behaviour would have been inappropriate.

Also, this isn't my most popular resolution. People have been saying that I would not be the same person if I wasn't so bitchy.


Be healthier
I weigh 77 kg. This is a healthy weight. Still, there are the annoying chubby bits which really piss me off. In short, legs are rock hard, upper body resembles jelly pudding, especially around the waist area. So stuff needs to be done to get rid of that. The proposed methods are regular exercise and decreased intake of crappy food.

This one seems to be going alright. Of course the first week of January has a lot of candy left over from Christmas, and there's always the supply of licorice that my mum gives me when I go back to Edinburgh. But I have been eating healthy dinners, more fruit than I used to (which wasn't difficult), and I have until now avoided buying large supplies of biscuits and chocolate and crisps.

Also exercise-wise all is well. This weekend was swimming on Saturday morning, then ice-skating for Jen's birthday on Saturday afternoon. Then Jen and I decided we wanted to be able to skate better, so we went back on Sunday afternoon to take skating lessons. I think I want to continue those. And then of course there'll be dancing twice a week.

The only problem of course is that dancing and ice-skating only works to make my legs even rock-harder, and it's only the swimming that would potentially work for the upper body. Although the amount of muscle ache in my shoulders and arms has not been such that it looks like it's working. Yet.


Be less uptight and more open etc. (but not tonight)
This is one from before New Year, but it may as well count as a New Year's resolution as well.

I am still too early for everything and get slightly annoyed if other people aren't, so as far as that's concerned, this one isn't looking too bright either. But if it's also about confronting fears, there was a little victory this Sunday when I managed to do cross-over turns on the ice rink (I can't do the silly little going backwards and forwards exercises from the lessons, but I manage the things that Dutch people consider skating, so it's all good I suppose) even though I didn't want to fall and I didn't have Martina to hold my hand like the only other time I managed to do it.

The trick appears to be being quick and sitting low. At least that's what it looked like the little brats were doing and copying it worked.


Be less stressed
Ultimately being less uptight and more healthy is supposed to make me less stressed (and get rid of the bags under my eyes). Another way to that goal is taking a bath, which is what's going to happen now.

Places

Nicked from Jen and brought to you by the power of boredom.

List the towns or cities where you spent at least a night away from home during 2007. Mark with a star if you had multiple non-consecutive stays.

In alphabetical order:

• Aberdeen, Scotland.


• Armbouts-Cappel, dép. Nord, France.


• Athens, Greece, at Eleftherios Venizelos Airport.


• Bergen, Norway.


• Den Haag, Netherlands. *


• Kalloni, Lesbos, Greece.


• London, England, near Heathrow Airport.


• Montréal, Québec, Canada.


• Westerbork, Netherlands. *

Next year promises to be less exciting, what with finishing the PhD and only going to a conference in Amsterdam.

New money

The Bank of Scotland (one of three banks in Scotland that issue paper money) issued a new series of banknotes on 17 September, and it wasn't until last Thursday that I finally managed to get new money out of the cash machine.

I like them.

Most people find them very similar to the euro banknotes. This may well be because the previous series of Bank of Scotland banknotes (as well as the current series of Royal Bank of Scotland notes, Bank of England notes, and in particular Clydesdale Bank notes) looked like it was printed in Poland in 1934, and the design finally looks like it may have been done this century. Apart from British money, the only money people here know are US dollars (which look even shiter), and euros. So I think the main reason why people think the new notes look like euros is that they look modern.

The other euro-like feature is that the design is based on bridges. But whereas euro notes feature imaginary bridges that exist only in the brain of Robert Kalina, the bridges on the new Scottish notes are real. The £10 note I have features Glenfinnan Viaduct. The one major design flaw I could spot was that it does in fact say this, in what I estimate to be a 36-point font, whereas the text Ten Pounds is only in about a 14-point font. (The reverse/front has a picture of Sir Walter Scott. Here they do have Ten Pounds in 36 points, and Sir Walter Scott in approximately 6 points.)

The Glenfinnan Viaduct, by the way, is on the way to Fort William. It apparently appears in three Harry Potter movies, notably The Chamber of Secrets where there is a whole scene of the Hogwarts Express crossing the viaduct.

But comparing the £10 note to other countries' banknotes, I find them quite similar to the 8th series of Swiss banknotes, designed by Jörgen Zintzmeyer. I find these really clever, both because of the upright rather than oblong design, and because all banknotes are equally wide but incrementally taller as the denomination increases. This goes in steps of 11 mm, and exactly the top 11 mm of each banknote includes a specifically coloured bar, the denomination, and the Swiss cross. Genius.

The Swiss are planning on changing their banknotes again, but the current plans are not necessarily an improvement.

Also, with the new Bank of Scotland design, I am now preferring their banknotes over all the others, where I previously liked the Royal Bank designs best. Clydesdale designs still suck, and I can only hope they'll get their act together and introduce something new soon...

SUSCDF 2007

This Saturday was SUSCDF, conveniently in Edinburgh. I had been part looking forward to it – as I do to most dances on the university programme, because that means seeing all those nice people that you don't get too see very often – and part dreading it. The dread was because of the dem, which I have previously said shall not be mentioned. Much.

The dem went better than expected, and probably as well as could optimistically be expected given the choreography and the music we were supposed to do it to. Glasgow had a traditional-type dem like we normally do, Celtic did the same Variations on a Theme-type dem that they always do, and Aberdeen have now managed to get seven couples in a Schiehallion reel, with eight planned for SUSCDF 2008.

Dance-wise, I don't think I've done as many dances off a programme as I did this Saturday for a long time. I only missed the two on either side of our dem, and I sat out Purple Heather Jig, as I do not understand, comprehend, grasp nor get any colour of Heather Jig. I think we raised some eyebrows when Johann asked me to waltz with him. Apparently he's wanting to improve his waltzing as a lady. (Scary images of Little Britain happening now.) I also danced with Bobby until he managed to rip a scab off his hand and started bleeding like a pig,* so I replaced him with Andy.** And I danced with Zsofia, Anna, Jen, Heather, Liz, Jenni, Holly, Jessie, Kirsty F.,*** Fran, Kirsty F.,**** Cara, Sarah, Jenni, Erika (those five in Caddam Wood, so they don't really count), Rosie, Kirsty F. again,***** and Emma.

* In Dutch you bleed like an ox, which sounds less pejorative, if only marginally so.
** What are Celtic doing right that we aren't?
*** Originally Edinburgh, now St Andrews.
**** Originally Newcastle, now Aberdeen.
***** As ****.******
****** Not the best system, these asterisks. I may have to look into using superscript, or be all old-fashioned about it. From Robert Bringhurst's Elements of Typographic Style: "For footnotes, symbols can be used if the notes are few. (The traditional order is * † ‡  || ¶. But beyond the asterisk, dagger and double dagger, this order is not familiar to most readers, and never was.) Numbers are more transparent, and their order is much less easy to confuse." Good to know Bringhurst doesn't trust all readers not to confuse the order of numbers...

The after dance party was slightly hard work. As soon as I got there I decided that it had probably been a bad plan to go, but then inertia took over and I didn't leave until quite a while later, and I was home and in bed by 3am.

Dancing

The Dunedin night that Jen and I ran together was a big success. The dances were quite manic but most people appeared to cope. Afterwards we got lots of thanks and compliments for a good programme, which was nice. The best was this old frail-looking woman who first asked me where my accent is from, and then said the programme was very nice, and that she'd also said this to 'the Jen girl'.

I don't know where my accent is from. I know where I am from, but my accent is a mutt. I have been playing with the idea of having Warren record me and put my realizations in the NeighborNet programme, to see what I come out closest to, but transcribing 110 words is a lot of work and it's not really benefiting anyone, so thus far I have been reluctant to ask.

I have now also been social convenor for New Scotland for about a month. It's quite good fun to puzzle the programmes together, and to make sure that it's not too repetitive, too difficult or too boring, to make sure that the most important dances from the most important upcoming dance programmes are covered, etc. Finding callers is maybe a bit more of a challenge, but I try to cover a couple of weeks at a time in an e-mail and I also wave the social programme around on Thursday nights and press people into calling.

This Saturday is SUSCDF. It's going to be in Edinburgh, which is conveniently close. I'm sure it's going to be a ball.

There is also a dem. We shall not talk about that. People might not survive.

Dunedin Dancers

Courtesy of Jen and myself tonight:

1. Minard Castle (R 8x40)
2. Campbeltown Loch (J 4x48)
3. Schiehallion (S 64 + R 64)
4. Gothenburg's Welcome (J 8x32)
5. Neidpath Castle (S 3x32)
6. Rest and Be Thankful (R 8x32)
7. The Bees of Maggieknockater (J 4x32)
8. Caddam Wood (R 5x32)
9. Bonnie Lass of Bon Accord (S 64)
10. Glens of Angus (R 4x32)
11. The Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh (R 8x40)

Mess

The package of stir fry vegetables wasn't supposed to fall over and knock over the pot of yoghurt that then rolled off the worktop and made a big "thud", splashing yoghurt all over the kitchen floor and lower regions of the kitchen cupboard.

However, I don't think it was aware of that.

Myshele said it wasn't very cooperative yoghurt. This is true. It was Tesco's.

Urban exploring

I went for a walk along the Water of Leith with Christina yesterday.


On the way to the point where we met (which was an hour's walk, and I later found out Christina had thought I would probably take a bus) I finally took a picture of the road sign that had grabbed my attention a couple of times before. I was never a real fan of rap music, but somehow this grafitti conveys a nice nostalgic feeling...


Slateford isn't the most inspiring area of Edinburgh, and it got worse the further south I walked, but sometimes there were nice views to be had. Somehow I like this railway going toward the Pentlands.


Nice autumnal colours.


Some local fauna in the Water of Leith. Spotting the heron would be a lot easier if I had had a proper camera on me, but as I only remembered that I should have taken it when I was already more than ten minutes from home, I decided the camera on my phone would do.


Really, there was nowhere else to go.


Or was there? We just soldiered on anyway.


The Edinburgh Street Naming Committee does not discriminate.


Some more local fauna.

After that it was Apfelstrudel and vanilla ice cream at Christina's flat, and there was much tiredness.

English clock

I saw a cool clock on the gadget reviews part of a Dutch news website (here). It tells you the time not in numbers, but in words, so it has a part that has numbers one, two, three, four, ..., ten, eleven, twelve and a part that has phrases five past, ten past, quarter past, ..., ten to, five to. The website shows a nice picture of this clock.

There is also a link to Amazon, where you can buy it. Amazon has a picture as well, with two clocks. One as described above, the other one saying één, twee, drie, vier, ..., tien, elf, twaalf and vijf over, tien over, kwart over, ..., tien voor, vijf voor. In Dutch.

This gadget website usually works in a very non-journalistic way: copy, paste, don't read closely and get things wrong, and steal pictures from your source website. But I wonder why they cropped the Amazon image to show the English clock rather than the Dutch one.

I suppose it's cool or something.

Style don't

Surely it is wrong for boys to wear Ugg boots?

So, Dumbledore eh?

According to the Beeb and J. K. Rowling, Albus Dumbledore, the late headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, was gay. Although this isn't made explicit in the book, this was Rowling's image of the man, and she even made sure that a reference in the sixth Harry Potter movie script to a childhood girlfriend of Dumbledore's, which isn't in the book either, was removed. Rowling is well aware that this gives our evangelical friends one more reason to hate the books, but who cares.

As per the BBC,

... a spokesman for gay rights group Stonewall added: "It's great that JK has said this. It shows that there's no limit to what gay and lesbian people can do, even being a wizard headmaster."

Well, yes, apart from the fact that it's actualy impossible for anyone, gay or straight, to become a wizard headmaster, as such beasts are things of fiction and do not really exist in real life.

This, by the way, has been the most read and most e-mailed news story on the BBC website all day. So it's apparently very important.

There's a time and place for everything

Dinner time conversation was about silly names I got from the Dunkirk marriage registers. Lupus who turned out to be Wolfgang, a Swiss mercenary. Or Iler, in Latin Hilarius, which was Hillary. And there were a couple of Ægidiuses, which prompted some Middle Dutch poetry recital:

Egidius, waer bestu bleven?
Mi lanct na di, gheselle myn

This in turn prompted a modern Dutch parody:

Egidius, waer bestu bleven?
Het is al twintig over zeven

Then Myshele asked for the time and it was, in fact, 19:20.