Author: Peter

Web researcher

Did you play space Invaders?

A long time ago Alan Coren published what I thought was a very funny article parodying the use of computer technology by a national newspaper. The piece Coren wrote for Punch was about the use of a newspaper database supposedly used at The Guardian newspaper, or The Grauniad as it was known. How ‘The Guardian’ became called ‘The Grauniad’ is the stuff of urban legend.
Continue reading “Did you play space Invaders?”

I’m a lumberjack and I’m macho

It occurred to me that if I’m going to post to an Aussie blog site then, especially as a Pom, I need to show some ‘machismo’. Machismo is central to the theme in the novel ‘The Honorary Consul’ by Graham Greene. While the novel was a risible take on machismo in Latin America, it never sought to alter the meaning of the word. I can’t remember if Greene’s novel was my introduction to machismo, but when I read it I was aware that the term machismo wasn’t in common use, or the truncated version ”macho’. Macho is now of course widely used, especially by females who use it synonymously with Neanderthal. Language being one of the many subversive elements used to change society, which is now moving inexorably towards that portrayed in ‘The Worm That Turned’. How long will it be I wonder before this transformation is complete? That the male become mere chattel, a plaything, not worthy of education, relieved of his suffrage. How long I wonder before the role of the male in the reproductive process becomes a myth, leading to his acceptance that procreation occurs when the female turns her hindquarters towards Boreas?
Continue reading “I’m a lumberjack and I’m macho”

Er – like, you know, they’re only words.

On becoming a civil servant in the mid 70s, I found myself in the thrall of what could be called ‘civil service, or Mandarin, English’. That is, writing English as if you were an Oxbridge graduate, never using a single syllable word, when you could find one with at least three. The use of this style extended to the internal memos, which preceded e-mail, and especially those memos sent by senior management and those of us with a pretension to higher things. It took John Major’s Citizens Charter and the promotion of ‘simple English’ within the public sector to bring about a significant change in the attitude and style of correspondence within the public sector.
Continue reading “Er – like, you know, they’re only words.”

Of Mice and Zen and Factoids

The + Plus magazine is for those interested in mathematics and its applications.  While I am certainly not a mathematician, musician or scientist, I am mildly curious about a lot and obsessively curious about little. My curiosity is often triggered by my ventures into the ‘blogosphere’. So for those who do have a real interest in music, and perhaps some talent, the article in + Plus with the title What makes an object into a musical instrument? may interest you.
Continue reading “Of Mice and Zen and Factoids”

On Nursery Rhymes

In the early 70s I was studying for my National Certificate in Electrical Engineering. I was now 30 something, before ‘Friends‘, and at a time when being 30 meant being an adult and not some late developing adolescent. It was also the time when, for reasons unknown to me, it was decided that engineers lacked ‘culture’, and so lessons in ‘cultural studies’ were an essential part of the course. Having two young children at the time,my chosen subject for a particular presentation was Nursery Rhymes and their origin. Janus’ post on the poetry competition reminded me of this. The nursery rhyme books are in the loft, but unlike the 70s when there was no Internet available to me, I don’t have to search the loft for them.
Continue reading “On Nursery Rhymes”