What excellent timing! I have a spate of proofreading coming up, and I’m going to try to work this sentence in somewhere: [T]o correct a bad sentence satisfactorily is not always possible; it should never have existed, that is all that can be said. From The King’s English, spotted by Maud Newton.
We spent a weekend in Bath recently. Among other attractions of the area, it turns out there is a quarterly auction of musical instruments quite close by. This trip didn’t synchronise, but I’ve been browsing the catalogues of previous auctions to see if it’s worth trying to be there at the right time next year. [...]
Original by Phil Gyford, rearranged by Paul Mison [via]. Might it have something to do with this? Here’s the other end of the spectrum. (I tried to do this recently with books: pages-per-day estimated from page counts and start/finish reading dates. Scrapped the project for a number of reasons: (a) I had to fill in [...]
I got a giggle from a couple of judicious put-downs in this week’s TLS. A review of Max Hastings’ “family fable” Did you really shoot the television? picks out his headmaster’s observation that “his contemporaries do not like him, and they are not bad judges of character”. I actually suspect the other one is not [...]
At first sight, the Dutch seem to be very well-informed about New Zealand: they all want to go there for a holiday. A bit of questioning, though, often turns up a certain lack of awareness of the enormous gulf separating the Kiwi holiday experience from the Aussie one. Here are a couple of youtube clips [...]
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Municipal elections are coming up. I’m not paying much attention, but an amusing piece of self-assured advertising pushed itself under my nose this evening. There’s a smart initiative here, issuing stickers for on your mailbox that say “No unaddressed advertising, no house-to-house newsletters” (or no to one but yes to the other). They’re nationwide and [...]
Sunday, February 21, 2010
A funny thing happened to me the other day: one of my students called me a monkey.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Here are some handy hints I can offer to UvA PhD students in the late phases of dissertation preparation. Make sure you spell the name of the Rector Magnificus correctly, where it appears prominently on your title page (part of the boilerplate that “So-and-so has been awarded the degree of doctor…”). They’re picky about this: [...]
Saturday, November 7, 2009
At the restaurant the other night, I had a genuine spontaneous conversation in Greek. It went like this (while I was sitting with some folks playing music): Μια κοπέλα με ρώτησε κάτι που δεν κατάλαβα. Είπα, “Δεν είμαι Έλληνας.” Είπε αυτή, “Δεν είσαι Έλληνας και παίζεις μπαγλαμά;” Εγώ: “Δεν είναι μπαγλαμάς! Τζουράς είναι!” Είπε “Συγνώμη”… [...]
Thursday, October 22, 2009
“Bo,” said Jack, “I’m not sure we should be eating the Professor’s allergy medicine. There might be all kinds of side effects.” Bo popped a last pill in her mouth: “I assumed we would be ok,” she said, and chewed thoughtfully. “Now that you mention it, I wonder. . . ” She munched a moment [...]