Last post

The picture associated with this post shows the envelope I sent off earlier this week containing my completed crossword grid for their weekly competition.  The prize is to see your name in print, and a dictionary, or set of dictionaries (depending on whether you come first or are a runner up).  I don't particularly need either of those things, but I enjoy the ritual of not only doing the crossword, but putting it in an envelope and paying the postal service to convey it to the newspaper offices, then flicking through the paper the next week to see if my name has been drawn from a hat.

This will be the last time I will be sending off the crossword to the Independent on Sunday.  The very last print edition comes out this coming Sunday, 20th March, and I will not be in the country that day to get a paper copy.  Part of me will miss it, but I can always switch to another newspaper, though I do like the crossword style in the Independent.  It seems to be inevitable that print newspapers will come to an end.  I'm not sure I will really shed too great a tear.  In many ways I found the Independent a frustrating thing:  A newspaper that purported to appeal to left-leaning people of a non-partisan nature with somewhat progressive ideals, but then the first edition of the Independent on Sunday that I picked up after the announcement that they were ceasing print publication contained a supplement on picking the best private schools to send your kids to.  When it came to such "lifestyle" articles, they were clearly always aiming at a small percentage of well-paid people, which I thought was a bit ridiculous, but probably says something sad and true about how the existing newspapers receive funding, how they peddle influence, and what they thought of the downtrodden masses they thought they were treating sympathetically.  Really, the democracy of social media is something that appeals to me much more.  A single newspaper might be much cheaper than a device with which one can access Twitter, but a smartphone contract costs less than a daily newspaper and provides other functionality.

I'm not around on Sunday because I'm going to Australia tomorrow.  I've never been before.  Doesn't quite seem real that I'll be there next week.

Paul Greenlees on YouTube

I came across this, via Facebook:  A nuclear physicist talks on YouTube about what he does.  I share it via this blog

Let's Twist Again

I started reading Oliver Twist while waiting at Clapham Junction for a train yesterday.  I came across this nice slyly-observed paragraph in Chapter 2 on a Victorian-era justification for cutting welfare benefits to the poor.  They don't look entirely different from arguments one sees and hears today,  uttered with all seriousness:

The members of this board were very sage, deep, philosophical men; and when they came to turn their attention to the workhouse, they found out at once, what ordinary folks would never have discovered—the poor people liked it! It was a regular place of public entertainment for the poorer classes; a tavern where there was nothing to pay; a public breakfast, dinner, tea, and supper all the year round; a brick and mortar elysium, where it was all play and no work. 'Oho!' said the board, looking very knowing; 'we are the fellows to set this to rights; we'll stop it all, in no time.' So, they established the rule, that all poor people should have the alternative (for they would compel nobody, not they), of being starved by a gradual process in the house, or by a quick one out of it.

I also happened to listen to some of Saturday's edition of Pick of the Pops on Radio 2, where they happened to play through the chart from this week in 1962, featuring Chubby Checker's Let's Twist Again.  I missed the part where they played Vienna by Ultravox, for the 1981 countdown, alas.

World Book Day

It was World Book Day yesterday.  It seems, for parents of school-aged children in the UK, to have turned into an annual ritual whereby one is supposed to make a fancy dress outfit so that your child can go into school dressed as a character from a book.  I don't think that can have been the original spirit of World Book Day, but judging by pictures posted by either proud or weary parents on Facebook, this seems to be what happened.  I think I preferred the pictures of kids with simple additions to their normal clothes rather than the attitude from the rather despondent parent I met at nursery complaining that they paid £6 for special delivery of an outfit, from an online shop, that didn't arrive on time.  Alba, pictured, went in as Posy from the Pip and Posy books, who just wears normal but distinctive clothes.

My University made an interesting blog post entitled "13 books to read before starting University".  The list just comes from a single Department at the University, which is a shame, but it doesn't read like a canonical list of Nation's Favourite Books.  I can only admit to having read two of them:  Herman Melville's Moby Dick and Quantum: A Guide for the Perplexed by our very own Jim Al-Khalili.  That leaves 11 unread, though a bit late for me to read them before starting University.  Can any readers recommend any of them in particular?  I'm slightly trepidatious about the first book on the list, which looks like it could be a book on magical thinking dressed up as self-help pop psychology, but it's won a Royal Society prize, so may be not so bad.  I was also surprised that the authors used the word inarguably in describing book number 13 (Complete works of Shakespeare).  Neither OED or Chambers list the word, though it's obvious what it ought to mean.  If it existed.  Perhaps I'm missing something and it's a word that Shakespeare uses.  Guess I should read his complete works and at least up my tally of the list to three books read.

Physics English

I am rather spoiled by the fact that English is the, um, lingua franca, of the scientific world.  My competence at foreign languages extends as far as French, to GCSE level, and German to A-level level, while my international colleagues are required to write more or less all their physics publications in English if they want them to be widely read.

Scientific English usage is not always the same as everyday usage.  For example, scientists often use data as a plural, while general English usage treats it as a mass noun.  There are some common constructions, though, that I think are basically incorrect, but have occurred so often in scientific papers (at least in my field) that they just slip by now and may almost be regarded as correct enough.  I'm reading through a draft manuscript at the moment, and two of the most common such phrases occur:

1. associated to: As in "The occurrence of the wobbling is associated to the deformation of the doobrey." This should be associated with.  This seems to come about from a direct translation of the equivalent phrase in Romance languages
2. allows + infinitive: As in "This super method allows to calculate terms up to fifth order".  It seems a bit unfair that this logical enough construction doesn't work, but one has to say something like allows one to calculate or allows the calculation of.  There are allow+infinitive usages that are okay, such as in the sense of giving permission:  A allows B to do C, but not A allows to do C

any other common examples out there?  There must be lots.

A Mental Health App for Students

I received an email from the mental health charity, Mind, yesterday.  It asks if I am a student, or I could spread the word about their new mental-health-for-university-students app.  I'm happy to oblige:

Hi Paul,        Do you know a student (maybe you are a student)? The thing is,we just made an app called Emoodji - to help people at uni stay mentally healthy - available now for iPhone and Android!                               We really need your help spreading the word, by sharing these links to students up and down the UK : Download link for iPhone  Download link for Android Emoodji website link                And it definitely is *not* your typical ‘mental health app’...                 Emoodji is a way for friends at uni to send emoji selfies to each other, while also keeping an eye on each other's wellbeing. You probably know how mental health problems can seemingly start at Uni, sometimes with devastating results (in fact, 1 in 8 students have felt suicidal at university). So Emoodji is quite silly, and secretly slightly serious too.                Please lend us your support and help spread the word to all the students!                               Many thanks,                       Sam at Mind                P.S. Of course, if you’re a student yourself please *review it* on the app store!

Second prize in a beauty contest

Sometimes I repost news here concerning my employers, the University of Surrey, especially when it relates to things of interest to the topic of the blog.  Here's something completely off-topic, but which I thought I'd pass on anyway.  As reported by the Antigua Observer, a graduate of the University of Surrey won second place in a beauty contest (I don't know if he won £10).  There were several categories on which the contestants were judged.  Given the picture, with our graduate on the right, it's a surprise to me that he did not come first in the magnificent wear category.  I think his outfit is splendid.

I also like how the language in the story uses the verb cop in the headline.  Though a perfectly acceptable usage in standard British English, I don't think it's a word I'd expect to see ever in a British newspaper, used in that way.  Lovely.