Poor computer

I had a blue screen of death today. I didn't think XP did blue screens of death, that is sooo Windows 98.

I have momentarily blamed Windows Live Messenger, which I think is the only programme I installed recently. It lasted a while before the problems began, but it seems a likely candidate to blame. So I've closed that down and prevented it from starting itself up again. Same with Skype.

For the geeks:

KERNEL_DATA_INPAGE_ERROR
****STOP: 0X0000007A (oXC02016E4, 0XC000000E, 0x805B709C, ...)

I couldn't write down the last one before the computer shut itself down. Oh, it did a disk check thing and froze after giving me the results.

Please... does anyone have any ideas how to cure my computer?

Ceilidh

It was rather dead. I think tigger_boing nearly fell off her chair at the following bit of IM conversation...

her: "Dunedin was very quiet. We only had three sets."
me: "Oh, you beat us then."
her: *blinks*

Instead of the £530 we had budgeted to fundraise in our endless optimism, we ended up fundraising -£150,44. Yes, that is a minus sign right there. Joy. We did give out some flyers at the end to interested parties, so we may see some people again. Or maybe not.

Bold statement

Now here's someone who's confident of his own theories:

"Of course, as Mufwene concedes (2001: 76), the founder principle works unless it doesn't."

In other news, I have finished two of the books I wanted to finish (Schreier 2003 and Trudgill 2004, from which is the above quote), sent off the PhilSoc essay, and e-mailed EUSA about when the Pleasance booking is, but I haven't heard back from them and I guess they don't know themselves either. I have also made flyers for our dance classes and sent them to ylla to print.

Lists

More or less inspired by ylla.

Recent accomplishments
(not in chronological order)

• Sorted out the New Scotland money box. We have very many banknotes and coins of higher denominations and therefore are rich!
• Sent a New Scotland cheque to Stanley Mackay. We are now slightly less rich.
• Typed up the minutes from the New Scotland GM. Found out that TeX’ing tables goes easiest by making the table in Excel, copying to Word, then doing Convert table to text with “&” as column separator and then replace line breaks with “\\” plus line break; then copy result into .tex file.
• Formatted the crib sheet for the New Scotland Beginner’s Dance and sent it back to ylla for printing. It looks reasonably okay, but for some reason it didn’t seem possible to make it look as good as last year’s crib sheet.
• Updated the New Scotland constitution with changes from the GM. Yawn.
• Went to Teviot to book rooms for Inters Highland (in vain). They’re redeveloping the entire thing and sending all the dance societies to the Pleasance because they have more space there. No, the Pleasance only has two rooms that are suitable for dancing. That’s why all the dance societies are begging to please be allowed to use the concrete floors in Teviot.
• Read chapters in Schreier (2003) and Trudgill (2004). Their books are better than their article on Tristan da Cunha English phonology, which makes the article even worse. If you know what you’re doing (sort of), why don’t you make an effort in that article? Plus they still need to look at their data a bit better.
• Formatted my entry for the Philological Society’s essay contest according to PhilSoc rules. That would have been so much easier if PhilSoc just make a LaTeX style sheet.
• Became a member of the Linguistics Association of Great Britain. Or at least, filled in the form, copied my matric card as proof of my unwaged status, and included a cheque for £16.50 for membership including the Journal of Linguistics. The envelope is in the mail and I should be hearing from them at some point soon. (They give LAGB members a discount at Oxford University Press!)
• Wrote all the details from my cheque book on my bank statements. New Scotland and Dunedin are both excruciatingly slow in cashing cheques.
• Brought the Palaeography folder to the office. So that Oksana can pick it up at some point and learn all about Old and Middle English handwriting.
• Laundry. But not ironing.
• Chinese Food dem. Which had a very high number of Chinese people, many of the girls in high heels, but contrary to last year, was very low on actual Chinese food. We had to make GH lobby for us being fed. (Yay for a Mandarin speaker in New Scotland!) In the end we all got a pot of noodles. I hope they send James a big fat cheque.
• Marked EL1 assignments. Some know what they’re doing. Most have a reasonable idea, which is definitely enough to pass the exam. There’s a couple who are in real trouble. Actually going to lectures and tutorials may help there.

Still to accomplish

• Send off the PhilSoc essay. Which includes getting a letter from April saying that I am indeed doing a Ph.D., printing the thing off umpteen times and sending it to London somewhere.
• Read the rest of Schreier (2003) and Trudgill (2004). And come up with a reasonably flowing train of thoughts about what could be improved in the books and what they need to look at more. Or less.
• Read Guignet & Lottin (2006) in the NLS. Which probably involves re-applying for the book as it has been more than 6 days since I was there last. It is also a very boring book which doesn’t help.
• Remember what the other thing was I wanted to become a member of. I’m sure it was something languagey but can’t quite remember what. It may also have been Time which I thought about subscribing to a while back but have now decided it would be a waste of money.
• More dancing. Greek dancing, dem class, Halloween ceilidh, Thursday classes, possibly including inters country if it doesn’t rain.
• Sort out committee meeting. Involves pestering more committee members for when they can make the meeting and then try and figure out if there’s a date before the Beginners’ Dance that everyone can make. (That looks particularly unlikely at this point.)
• Call Mrs Wilson. Must try to book Kirk O’ Field for Inters Highland.
• E-mail EUSA. When are we supposed to freeze to death in early morning hours so that we can have rooms at the Pleasance to dance in?
• Pack. To go home on Saturday morning for all of four days.
• Claim. I spent £38.40 on train tickets to and from Aberdeen last week. It appears I can claim this back from Aberdeen University. All I need is for them to send me some forms. Which they’ve said they’ll do.
• The umpteen other things that I can’t remember right now.

Train journey up North

Is incidentally a very nice and easy (yet seemingly complicated and liable to mess up) dance that has been done at Dunedin for the past umpteen weeks, until everyone gets it right. Apart from that, it’s also what a large part of my Wednesday this week consisted of.

I went up North to Aberdeen to give a talk at their Linguistic Circle-type seminar thing. Quite nervous about the whole train journey – well, not so much the train journey as the buying a ticket for it. There was quite a long queue so I decided to try the machines. Seemed easy enough, Aberdeen was a popular destination so it had its own button. But then something happened that my simple brain was not prepared for: I had to choose between ten different ticket types (all with different prices). So how am I supposed to know what is what? So I joined the queue after all.

The journey was quite nice and uneventful. Hid from Creepy Graeme upon arrival in Aberdeen. It appears that he works for First Scotrail or whatever the company is called this week. Got picked up from the station, was given tea, did the talk, answered questions (none too difficult), was fed dinner and transported back to the station for the train back South. I was home at 11.30pm.

Then back to the normal rhythm of teaching tutorials on a Thursday and Friday. The guy on (e) continues to amaze me with his ceaseless attempt to impress er... don’t know who he wants to impress but he’s clearly doing his best. His homework contained a selection of slightly garbled transcriptions of English words, and the phrase

honeyboner = English language erection

which is a word play on the name of the phonetics lecturer. Hilariously funny, of course. But why exactly he thought it was a good idea to put this on his homework I have no idea. I shall have to ask him.

New Scotland GM went by rather painlessly, although I think JF’s mumbled suggestion to lock JB up in a cage somewhere before the next GM should perhaps be seriously considered.

Friday tutorial as usual completely different from the Thursday one. It’s not a question of the amount of linguistics vs. lit students like it was last year, I think it’s more personalities this time. No one feels the urge to be on (e) on Friday, I guess. The Friday group is collectively cold, but there is a kettle next door. Not sure if I should bring cups and tea/coffee next week or whether it’s their own responsibility.

I like the tunes Calgary Fiddlers’ Welcome to Shetland and Tam Lin. In general, tunes that are in some way or another related to Shetland are generally very stomachable.

Must. Stop. Rambling.

Things not to say in tutorials

One of the guys in my tutorial was asking questions about a question that we hadn’t discussed yet. We were still debating all the possible answers to question (d), but he had moved on. So the other students were confused and didn’t know what he was talking about. I clarified:

He’s on (e).

Everyone started laughing, I realised what I’d said... and the only person looking completely clueless was the guy who was on (e).

It’s not as bad as Amanda last year, when dividing her group into smaller groups that had to work together to write down all the characteristics of the consonants in the word smoothing:

So if you guys do s and m, ...

Hmm... it seemed funnier at the time.

Accomplishments

Okay, I can’t remember everything that happened since the last post. A more detailed overview of part of last week follows below. Things that also happened: tutorial groups, meeting Zakaris, dancing, AF’s birthday party, generaly work-type things.

On Tuesday I...

• ... went to Dem Class where we learned a completely new step that goes with a menuet. Step right, step left, close right behind. Step left, step right, close left behind. It caused a lot of confusion but we’d better learn it as it will be part of the SUSCDF dem. I can see the other universities going “What the...?” already.

On Wednesday I...

• ... went to the National Library to read two chapters from a book about the history of the North of France. As it’s mostly not entirely relevant, I can read through it at a reasonably high speed.
• ... had a budget meeting for New Scotland with AL and CI. Being slightly optimistic we managed to get the budgeted expenditure within £250 of the budgeted income. Unfortunately Freshers’ Weekend is hideously undersubscribed so that’s the budget out the window already.
• ... went to the New Scotland cupboard in McEwan Hall with AL to retrieve our kilometer of cling film. It is quite an impressive stack.
• ... learned about norms in Computer Hong Kong English and attitudes about the esthetics of language among speakers of Swiss German. Also known as the Language in Context research group.
• ... went to Dunedin and danced. Train journey up North or whatever the dance is called is a nice dance.

On Thursday I...

• ... went back to the National Library to read two more chapters in the French book, and wondered why people need to sit in the chair directly next to me if there’s plenty of space elsewhere.
• ... went to the first year lecture on morphology and taught a tutorial.
• ... went to the Linguistic Circle which was reasonably interesting, and to the drinks and nibbles afterwards. There were exactly zero other students at the drinks and nibbles, which was slightly annoying. But Miriam did suggest ‘we’ (i.e. ‘I’) do something about the Tristan da Cunha article. (See Friday.)
• ... left the Linguistics building at 5.40, went home via my office, stuffed New Scotland stuff in my bag, left the flat at 5.50, then on to LG’s to deliver the kilometer of cling film, left LG’s at 6.03 (having also gulped down a cup of tea – thanks LG!), and was at Lutton Place at 6.10.

On Friday I...

• ... did assorted bits and bobs on the taboo language, the Shetland marriages, the Aberdeen talk (which is basically an amalgamation of the other two anyway), and some other things.
• ... had a meeting with HG and all the other tutors about the morphology module.
• ... went to the English Language Research Group where we thrashed an article on the origins of Tristan da Cunha English.
  
• ... didn’t go to the first year lecture on morphology (we were late out of the ELRG and decided it wasn’t worth it) and taught a tutorial.
• ... waved goodbye to the bus for Freshers’ Weekend.
• ... read things on the history of Tristan da Cunha.

Today (so far) I...

• ... did laundry.
• ... went on a Big Shop in Cameron Toll and spent £40 on food and other stuff.
• ... read two chapters from the morphology textbook and another article on Tristan da Cunha English. Now I really wonder why, if the authors did have all this historical population data available, they didn’t use it in the article we thrashed on Friday. They could have done a much better job.
• ... spent the afternoon in the kitchen chopping meat and veg and making a big pot of pasta sauce (3 boxes for the freezer, and dinner for myself), and a big pot of goulash which was filled to the edge until it started boiling and little bubbles of goulash exploded out of the pot. Still I expect to have at least 3 boxes, maybe 4. (These are still to be filled out.)
• ... updated my blog!
  

Body

I have a sillily shaped body.

I went to buy a slightly more wind- and waterproof jacket than the ones I have, but all the ones in the outdoor store – at least all the ones in a slightly affordable price range – seemed ridiculously wide. I guess they don’t make these things for people who are skinny. So I didn’t buy anything, because I didn’t feel I should spend £120 or more on something baggy.

Having failed in that mission, I went into H&M and bought a black shirt (yay! designed for skinny people!) and a zipped hoodie. I also tried to buy jeans but even H&M doesn’t do 29/36. They had one 29" waist one that would have been okay but it had loose threads here and there and I didn’t want that.

I also want new shoes. I always want new shoes, but I now want new shoes that fit into a category in which I have no shoes at present: the dressed-casual category. They had a couple of nice ones but they were rather expensive and I wasn’t sure they were the absolute nicest ones that I would find within a reasonable timespan, so I didn’t buy them.

I also went to Coda to buy Marieke’s new cd, but they didn’t have that one (neither did Virgin and HMV). So I bought some odd Norwegian folk instead. The ploinky-ploinky instrument which I don’t know the name of does tend to get annoying after half an hour...

All in all a very cheap day, considering the stuff that I didn’t buy...

Public rant

As I start writing this, it is Thursday morning just before 8am. I am already dreading what’s going to happen ten hours from now. I am looking unforward* to New Scotland tonight. This is not a Good Thing. In fact, it is a Very Bad Thing.

The Curse that is the ghettoblaster has ended up in our flat. It will have to be at the Chaplaincy for 6.30 tonight. Also in our flat are two sets of SCD CD’s, the money box, the membership book, soon a lot of flyers about Freshers’ Week, and the keys to Lutton Place. They will have to be at Lutton Place no later than 6.15. Anyone familiar with the area will know that this is an impossibility.

It appears that no one is available to take the ghettoblaster off my hands (although I still have a slight hope that someone will volunteer), so I am going to have to make myself available, running from my office to the Chaplaincy, and then to Lutton Place. Just hoping there will be someone at the Chaplaincy (New Scotland or friendly servitor) to take the [expletive] thing off me.

I am in lectures/teaching until 5.30. I will have no time for food tonight.

I am also not very happy with the behaviour of some of the more experienced members in the society. I know they’re only trying to help, but still. The society elects a committee to run everything. The point of this, and the point of not standing for committee, is that people don’t have to organise everything themselves. This also means that they should be able to let committee organise things. Friendly advice is always welcome, of course, but certain things don’t need to be said, or can be said at a different time or in a different tone.

I do not appreciate being messengered in the early morning before I can even open Thunderbird to check my work e-mail, to be told that (including the enumeration) [1] we need to announce in notices that there is Country Dance Basics on Tuesdays, and [2] I need to include in next week’s classes e-mail that the new dem class teacher wants us to wear kilts or short skirts.

I have a brain. I can remember something the dem class teacher said less than twelve hours earlier. I can remember it until next Monday. I had even been thinking about the wording. I don’t need to be “reminded” of something so trivial and non-central to the running of the society when there isn’t even the slightest sign that I may have forgotten. (And even if I had forgotten, it wouldn’t have made a difference. People were told individually that they had to wear kilts or short skirts. We are all adults. Surely people can remember for themselves?)

I am also not in charge of notices. I remember very well that I did notices once somewhere in March and got scourged for them being too long and too sarcasting. I have been well and truly impeached from notices and I want nothing to do with them every again.

Also, as far as I understand it, Country Dance Basics is directed not at the people who actually stay at social (who are at least 75% experienced people). It is not really directed at the people who go to cèilidh class and can’t do Beginners’ on Thursday. It is for the people who go on Thursday and want to get better faster. That’s why it’s free: they’ve already paid on Thursday and are making an extra effort, hopefully to the benefit of the society (dem-wise). So anything to do with announcing Country Basics is best done in Beginners’, and the relevant person to ask about putting a notice in that class is the Beginners’ teacher.

Who then sneered at me at Dunedin yesterday, “So I hear I have to be psychic again about what’s happening in my class tomorrow?” Well, it appears that no psychic powers are necessary and he was already told that there was a request for a notice in his class. If he doesn’t want that notice, surely they can sort it out between themselves. Why this warrants a sarcastic comment thrown at me, is still beyond me.

Incidentally this also blurred the sacred distinction between Dunedin (where I can just turn up and enjoy dancing and socializing, no stress) and New Scotland (where I could do that for exactly four weeks before I was drafted onto committee). It did actually take the half-hour walk back home through the wind and drizzle to calm down again.

I hope I can become confident some time during the day that I might actually enjoy New Scotland tonight.


* I need the opposite of ‘looking forward’ but not as strong as ‘dreading’ (yet).

Space

If the people in charge of the space bookings system could allocate me a slightly less confusing one, that would be intensely appreciated.

Thank you.

More conspiracy

More signs that there is a worldwide conspiracy against New Scotland became obvious on Thursday. Not only was it pouring down with rain which may not have done very good things to the cd player (oops), but what exactly do you do when you arrive at McEwan Hall to ‘No you don’t have a ceilidh here tonight!’?

The servitors were great, JB’s skills to navigate the University buildings system came in very handy, Tim and Tom from EUSA were use- and helpful, committee and other NS members excelled, and the numerous freshers who were outside getting drenched until the hall finally opened helped out carrying several hundred chairs off the dance floor.

More NS drama when RW was rushed to hospital earlier that day, but she is fine now. And it turns out I was right all along – a W junior is on his or her way.

In the end we proved the McEwan Hall people wrong, and we did have a ceilidh there tonight. Considering the rain and the late start we actually had a great turnout, Andy was marvellous and his Orcadian probably even better than the one at Rukkus.

Friday morning was spent with JB sorting Thursday’s events out with EUSA, and that too seems to have worked fine. Friday afternoon was the workshop in Teviot with LG, which went really well too and we had five sets at some point. The last hour was a bit slower, we may want to consider that non-dancers (or not-yet-dancers *grin*) will have limited stamina on the last day of Freshers’ Week. Four people joined us in Teviot Middle Bar, which I think is a good score.

The Societies’ Fair will always be one of the middle levels of hell, but we survived. And exactly whose idea was it to put us next to the stuck-up Reelers Club? ‘So do you have free booze at your dances?’ No, we actually like to dance? We made friends with the Flamenco Society and above all with Choc Soc. (‘Join Choc Soc and get free chocolate!’ ‘Come to our ceilidh and dance it all off again!’) At some point AL was handing out Choc Soc flyers while the Choc Soc girl was rallying for our ceilidh.

We also made friends with the Officers Training Corps. They have pipers. AL, LG and me did a fling to the pipes in the Pentland Room. Let’s just say we got an audience...

Worst line of the week, when it was pouring down with rain on the Thursday: ‘You look very wet. We have an indoor event.’

We also seem to have succeeded in attracting Norwegians. There is a Norwegian girl anyway, which is a start.

It’s official!

They are out to get us. There is a world-wide conspiracy against New Scotland, jeopardizing both the running of the society and my personal sanity. It’s been going on for a while, the first signs was the news about when the booking at Pleasance was mysteriously not reaching New Scotland. The Church of Scotland are against us as well, deliberately planning youth Bible groups on Tuesday evenings. Teviot and EUSA aren’t so much against New Scotland in particular, they’re just against societies in general. The Council are being arses, as are the people that run youth hostels. Or those that run marathons.

On a positive note, the workshop that JW ran yesterday went quite well. We even had men. Well, two. But although they may not have been entirely serious about coming to the workshop, they did seem to enjoy it and they did take a flyer with them. Tomorrow and Thursday is the Societies’ Fair.

In other news, I saw a property that was being let by Alba, and on one side it had a sign “Sorry, it’s gone!”. On the other side it had “Przepraszam juz wynajty” (I think it was). So the Polish contingent in Edinburgh is now so significant that lets are being advertised in Polish. Maybe we should advertise our ceilidhs in Polish as well?

(I already discussed with JW the necessity of advertising in Norwegian.)

Late

You know that it’s late when you suggest that doing Brooms of Bon Accord is both funny, a good idea and doable.

And it all started with this photo of a variation on the Broad Swords. New Scotland do broad women, these Californians seem to be doing Broad Farming Equipment.

Hurrah!

They’ve managed to find back the painting Skrik (The scream) by Edvard Munch, which was stolen from a museum in Oslo two years ago. It’s all okay. I came across something Munch-y just the other day, and I remember thinking what a pity it was that the painting was lost forever (as everyone assumed). I feel a weird sense of relief.

In other news, I managed to get through the entire Register of Testaments of Shetland (1611-1650) today. I’m pretty sure they haven’t recorded everything, unless either very few people died or there were very few people to begin with, neither of which I believe is true. I noted down 266 marriages; the next step is to code the names for Norse or Scottish and then I can try and say something sensible about exogamy (inter-ethnic marriage patterns).

Fun fun.

And the purpose is...

Wikipedia (though evil) is very useful. Although sometimes you wonder what the purpose is of the information it gives. For some odd reason that I really can’t remember anymore, I started looking into post codes earlier this evening. Riveting read. It doesn’t seem British post codes are actually used for sorting the mail anymore, because (a) the system isn’t very efficient, and (b) automated handwriting recognition isn’t either.

More to the point: there is an article on the postal areas of Edinburgh, and for some reason for the postal areas of Edinburgh city, it gives the supermarket that serves the area. Whoever wrote this article mustn’t consider Scotmid a supermarket, though. We don’t have a supermarket, says Wikipedia.

Oh well, I guess it’s only a small one. But it sells food and that’ll do.

So

Bleurgh.

Time flies...

(Ah, I’d used that title before.)

I’ve already been back for a week and a half, and I haven’t done a proper blog update for at least a month. In short, I was back home, was first baking for a week and a half, and then suddenly, when AL arrived, was drenched for a week and a half. It was fun though and I had never done a tour on a canal boat in Amsterdam before.

Back in Edinburgh, I made a start with editing the Postgrad Conference papers. This is a tedious job because... well, basically because Word is misbehaving. Also, the first-years’ inability to reference properly seems to be an epidemic that is spreading to postgrads. I guess they were never taught how to reference as first-years either.

I also spent time at the National Library again. Somewhere between two and two-and-a-half hours each day. It wasn’t as bad as previously; I guess that reading French is less offensive than reading German (from the time that Stalin was still a hero, so it’s German nonsense as well). I still need to spend lots more time at the NLS, because they have the books that Edinburgh University Library doesn’t have. Also I need about a truckload of Inter-Library Loan vouchers.

Now how did I end up reading stuff on historical demography?

In other news, my friends are slowly returning from various places which is a good cure against social isolation. I still haven’t managed to do any Fringe Festival thing, although I did go to the Book Festival and bought a book. If you take away the workshops which I have no intention of attending, and the meet-and-greets with authors who I don’t know and whose glory I am therefore not very likely to want to bask in*, the Book Festival is nothing more than a café and bookshop in a tent. That was slightly disappointing, although I don’t quite know how I would imagine a book festival other than that.

[* Now draw a Chomskyan tree for that! I wonder if it doesn’t violate a few constraints on pied piping...]

Freshers’ Week is coming scarily close, it’s only three weeks. I’m sure it’ll turn out fine in the end, but there are far too few ticks on the “Things to organize” sheet. It would also be very nice if we could find teachers for two of our classes, and venues for three of them. I have reasonable hope for the venues. Anyone feeling inclined to teach Beginners Country?

It is also amazing how quickly crap accumulates. It took half an hour to sort and put away all the bank statements, gas bills, book bills, New Scotland letters and other paperwork that had piled up on my desk. My folder with financial stuff is now officially full.

Tomorrow and Tuesday are American High School dems. They’re promising to be a hoot. Well, they’re usually okay and a better audience than the IALS ones, we don’t get haggis [that is a Bad Thing] but also we don’t get Mozambiquan dancing, Japanese singing or the so-manieth cross-dressing IALS staff contribution [that is a Very Good Thing]. It does involve silly monkey suits though, and I’m too polite to abuse the fact that BW really needs me to get rid of that uncomfortable pseudo-traditional garment.

Think that’s all for now.

Historical pedantry

I have a bone to pick with Dr. Jorge Cham. In a recent Piled Higher and Deeper comic [link], the character Prof. Smith is described as “recipient of the Alexander von Humboldt Prize of the Federal Republic of the Netherlands”, among other things. This is total and utter nonsense. Of course I understand that the Ph.D. comic is a work of fiction, but it does at least suggest a real-life and contemporary setting – witness references to Stanford University and current events in the real world.

So just to educate the general populace that will not read this anyway...

Alexander von Humboldt (* Berlin 1769 – † Berlin 1859) was an explorer from [drum roll] Berlin, which was in Prussia. In other words, in Germany. In other words, not in the Netherlands. He did probably set foot on Dutch soil at some point during his travels, but the main foci of his work were Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and Latin America. He did not write anything major about the Netherlands which makes a Dutch prize being named after him extremely unlikely in the first place.

More ridiculously... the Federal Republic of the Netherlands? My passport clearly says “Kingdom of the Netherlands” in twelve languages. Not Republic. Not Federal. We were a republic once, or rather, twice, in our history. From 1581 to 1795 we were the Republic of the (Seven) United Netherlands/Provinces, and then from 1795 to 1806 we were the Batavian Republic. (Those were the days.) Sure enough the United Provinces (not the Batavian Republic) were a federal republic but we were never called such.

Alexander von Humboldt’s first publication dates from 1790, so five years before the Netherlands ceased to be a federal republic. His major claim to fame, however, the five-year expotition to Latin America (1799 to 1804) came when the Netherlands were no longer federal and well on their way to becoming a Kingdom with a rabbit king.

In conclusion, a badly-named Alexander von Humboldt Prize of the Federal Republic of the Netherlands is not entirely beyond the realms of possibility, but the probability of a certain comic strip (anti-)hero graduating is doubtlessly infinitely greater.

Rant over.

(Only one more month before I can tell first-years that Wikipedia is evil!)

Pyramid tea bags

What they want you to think:

Pyramid tea bags are specifically designed by top-of-the-bill tea bag designers to improve hot water circulation through the tea bag, in order to perfect the brewing process as the tea leaves come into contact with the water. The design was inspired by the age-old knowledge that pyramids are a magical source of health, good luck and other invariably Good Things.

What really happened:
— Hey boss? There’s been a slight hitch in the tea bag sealing machine and they’re now asymetrically sealed.
— What? You [expletive deleted]!
— Yeah, sorry boss. But look, if you fiddle with it it kind of looks like a pyramid.
— “It kind of looks like a pyramid.” Now what good is that going to do?
— I s’pose not... But wait... What if we claim it was all on purpose? With the right ad campaign we can put 50 tea bags in a box instead of 80 and put 20% on the price as well. It’s a winner boss, we can’t lose I tell you!
— Yeah I guess those Britons are stupid enough to fall for it. Let’s give it a go.

Letter from the AHRC

I got a letter from the AHRC. I have funding for the remaining two years of the Ph.D.! That means (a) financially, that I don’t have to get so much money from my parents and (b) psychologically, the knowledge that other people have faith in me! Yay!

In the unimitable words of LG: *BoInG!*